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<em>The St. John's Review</em>
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<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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The College, The St. John's Review, July 1980
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Volume XXXII, Number 1 of The College. Also referred to as The St. John's Review. Published in July 1980.
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1980-07
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Radista, Leo
McClay, Wilfred M.
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Sisson, Barbara J.
von Oppen, Beate Ruhm
Wilson, Curtis A.
Brann, Eva T. H.
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The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_32_No_1_1980
St. John's Review
The College
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�The College
Cover: St. John's College celebrates its
275th anniversary, by Seth Goldwin.
Inside Front Cover: McDowell Hall,
Annapolis.
The College is a publication for
friends of St. John's College and for
those who might become friends of the
College, if they came to know it. Our
aim is to indicate, within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in
our opinion, St. John's comes closer
than any other college in the nation
to being what a college should be.
If ever well-placed beacon lights
vvere needed by American education
it is now. By publishing articles about
the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind
that is the College, we hope to add a
watt or two to the beacon light that is
St. John's.
Acting Editor: Malcolm Wyatt
Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter
Alumni Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer
Tl1e College is published by the
Development Offices of St. John's
College, College Avenue, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404 (Julius Rosenberg,
Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico
(J. Burchenal Ault, Vice President);
Member, American Alumni Council.
President, St. John's College, Richard
D. Weigle.
Published four times a year in April,
July, October, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis,
Maryland, and at additional mailing
offices.
Vol. XXIII
October 1971
No.3
In the October Issue:
On Precision, by Jacob Klein
I
The Report of the President, 1970-71
9
News on the Campuses
21
Alumni Activities
27
�On Precision*
I am afraid this will be a tedious and annoying lecture.
I do not know how you will stand it. I propose to reflect
on the meaning and the various implications of precision.
Why should I do that? Well, however untidy, vague, and
undisciplined we may be, something like precision rules
over our lives, rules in fact over the Western world as a
whole. And by the West I mean great many parts, although not all parts, of our globe. I said something like
precision is a ruling power in our lives. For the very word
"precision" is ambiguous. To begin with, it is not identical
with "clarity." Something that is clear need not be precise, and something that is precise need not be clear.
Moreover we should note that the English word "precision" does not retain the connotations of its Latin root.
I shall have to come back to this point later on. On the
other hand there is close kinship between "precision,"
"accuracy," "correctness," and "exactitude," but these
words are not synonyms, although very often they appear
to be and arc used interchangeably. (Modern statistical
theories do, by the way, make a distinction between exactitude and precision.) At the risk of treading in the footsteps of Prodicus, the man most concerned with the right
usc of words, the man whom Socrates calls his 0 teacher"a deceptively ironic appellation, which is as much funny
as it is serious-! shall try right away to distinguish the
meanings of these four words. Many examples will be
needed for this purpose.
A tailor has to be very careful about the length and the
width of a suit at different points of the body of the man
for whom the suit is made. The tailor has to be accurate
in his measuring, cutting, and sewing. So has a carpenter
in making a table or a door. Accuracy is required to fit a
part of a machine into or onto another part or other parts
of that machine so that it can do its work properly. If I
am asked by a stranger how to get from the place where
we meet to a certain building in town, I have to be careful in describing the way he has to take, as for instance:
three blocks ahead, then turn to your right, continue for
two blocks and then turn to your left; then you will see
the building you are looking for. In saying this I must be
*A lecture given at St. John's College in Annapolis on February 23,
1968.
By Jacob Klein
confident that the description I give is accurate enough. In
all these cases accuracy connotes carefulness in the work
one is doing or in the words one is uttering. Let us turn
to correctness. I might ask someone to answer a question.
After the answer is given, I say: this is correct. I mean
the answer is a right one. I might advise a friend to behave
in a certain way when he faces Mr. X and Mr. Y or some ·
peculiar circumstances. If he does, he behaves correctly,
that is, in the right way. I might instruct someone how
to pronounce certain words in a foreign language. If he
learns how to do that, he will pronounce those words in
the right way, that is correctly. Children are supposed to
learn (and sometimes do not learn) how to conduct
themselves correctly, that is, according to accepted stand. ards and modes of life. In every case correctness implies
rightness in speaking, behaving, reacting. What about
exactitude? We say: the collection comprises exactly 1163
paintings; or, this lump of metal fits exactly into this hole;
or, I feel exactly as you do about this event; or, the distinction you just mentioned coincides exactly with that
which exists between justice and mercy. Exactitude seems
to point to the perfect matching ot something with something in terms of number or of size or of some other
quantity or even of some yardstick that cannot be quantified. It is in this vein that we speak of various mathematical disciplines as of exact sciences, allowing for approximation procedures which do not detract from their
exactitude.
Thus carefulness, rightness, and perfect matching characterize accuracy, correctness, and exactitude. Do they not
also circumscribe the meaning of precision? They do, and
let me repeat forcefully: they do; and that is the reason
why these words arc so often used interchangeably. But
precision seems to have broader connotations. Let us again
consider some examples.
In a novel by Henry James, we find the following description. I quote, leaving out a great deal:
He [Christopher Newman] had a very wellformed head, with a shapely, symmetrical balance
of the frontal and the occipital development,
and a good deal of straight, rather dry brown
hair. His complexion was brown, and his nose
l
�The College
had a bold, wcii-marked arch. His eye was of a
clear, cold gray, and save for a rather abundant
mustache he was clean-shaved. He had the flat
. jaw and sinewy neck which arc frequent in the
American type .... The cut of this gentleman's
mustache, with the two premature wrinkles in
the cheek above it, and the fashion of his garments, in which an exposed shirt-front and a
cerulean cravat played perhaps an obtrusive part,
completed the conditions of his identity.
Henry James is praised for the "extreme precision of his
style," but we might remain dissatisfied by this description of Christopher Newman. Are the "conditions of
his identity," to use Henry James' own words, sufficiently
delineated? Can this be done at ail?
Let us turn to another example. In an old zoology textbook a precise description of the leech is given, which
again I shaii not quote in fuii:
The leech is an elongated flattened worm, from
three to five inches in length, and provided with a
muscular sucker at each end. The body is marked
externally by a series of transverse constrictions
dividing it into rings of annuli, and is capable
of considerable elongation and contraction . . . .
The shape varies greatly with the degree of
elongation or contraction. The body is broadest
a little way behind the middle of its length, and
is oval in transverse section, the dorsal surface
being more convex than the ventral. _ .. The
anterior sucker is oval, with the longer· axis
longitudinal. ... The posterior sucker is circular,
and larger than the anterior one. . . .
The picture of the leech emerges distinctly, and we would
appreciate its precision even more if I had quoted the text
in its entirety. We note, it is nreant to be precise in the
first place.
The last example is taken from Gulliver's Travels. Most
of you wiii remember that the Liiiiputian king orders a
search of Gulliver's belongings and persuades Gulliver to
submit to the search. Two officers are appointed for the
task. Gulliver lifts them gently up and puts them into his
pockets, although some of them he chooses not to divulge.
The officers examine everything they find and write a
formal and precise report about their findings. Most of
the objects in Gulliver's pockets are unfamiliar to the
two Liiiiputians, and espcciaiiy his watch, which-parenthetically-is odd, considering the Liiiiputians' indisputable
mathematical and mechanical competence and inventiveness. This is what they write:
Out of the right fob hung a great silver chain,
with a wonderful kind of engine at the bottom.
We directed him to draw out whatever was
fastened to that chain; which appeared to be a
globe, half silver, and half of some transparent
2
metal; for on the transparent side we saw certain
strange figures circularly drawn, and thought we
could touch them tiii we found our fingers
stopped by that lucid substance. He put his
engine to our .ears, which made an incessant noise
like that of a watermiii and we conjecture it is
either some unknown animal or the god that he
worships .. _.
The description of Christopher Newman is that of an
imaginary being. The description of the leech applies to
any leech and is a description of a living creature. The
description of Gulliver's watch might also apply to any
watch, although the investigators do not know what it is,
what purpose it serves. Ail these descriptions are as precise
as they could be. What is to he learned from them about
precision?
In every case the description intends to show what the
object described looks like, be that object familiar or
unfamiliar to us. Depending on the degree of its precision,
the description will enable us to recognize the object in
question more or less readily. In the case of Christopher
Newman, we are somewhat doubtful. But we should
certainly he able to identify with the help of the description a leech as a leech. And being familiar with oldfashioned watches, we recognize in the "wonderful kind
of engine" described by the Liiiiputians-a watch. Note
that in every case the description appeals to features assumed to be known: to a "well-formed head," a "mustache," a person "of American type"; to a "worm,"
"elongation" and "contraction," an ''oval" and "circular"
shape; to a "globe," "transparency," the noise of a watermiii. The description brings up a realm of known things
and appearances to which the object described is supposed
to belong. This is all-important: without such a known
realm to which the object described can be allocated,
precision is not possible at all. The closer this allocation,
the better described the object becomes. This is how all
legal documents tend to be precise, so much so that
precision in the domain of jurisprudence is the prototype
of all precision everywhere else. The relation between
persons, or bodies of men, or estates, must indeed be
stated in terms that make it possible to apply the stated
relation precisely to any particular case; or, conversely,
actions of men, together with the circumstances surrounding these actions, must be described in a way which permits us to refer to these actions as precisely falling or not
falling under certain statutes or laws. To point out where
something can he located, to what sort of thing or stuff
something belongs, is indeed the primary task of a precise
description, the primary concern of precision itself. Andto repeat-this allocation is accomplished by describing
what the thing or event in question looks like.
I just said: what something looks like. But should I not
rather have said: what it is? You sense immediately that
the phrases "what something looks like" and "what some-
�October 1971
thing is" can be, but need not be, identical. And you know,
or at least you ought to know, that this phrase "what is
it?" (.rl Ean) is the Socratic question, which-in all its
seeming simplicity-revolutionized human thinking and
human behavior. To answer this question requires indeed
-precision. Both the closeness and the disparity of what
things look like and of what they are have been forever
incorporated in the Greek word <l8o> (or i8ta) and in
its literal Latin translation species (in l'~nglish parlance:
species). These words do indeed signify both the looks
and the what of a thing. The use and abuse of these
words have moulded human thought in various ways for
more than two thousand years. Whether the looks and
. . . this phrase "what is it?" (Ti irrn) is the Socratic
question, which-in all its seeming simplicityrevolutionized human thinking and human behavior.
the what of a thing can be identified or must be separated depends on what the thing in question is aiiocated to, to what sort of group or family or tribe or
genus of things this particular thing belongs. Examples:
an oak looks like a tree and is a tree; a marine polyp (a
coral) looks like a tree, but is not a tree. And let us not
forget: while we were trying to grasp the meaning of
precision~ we had to use examples of precision, and these
examples showed us either something that was like what
we were seeking or the very thing itself. Let us also keep
in mind that the group or family or genus to which the
thing sought is allocated, to which it is supposed to belong
or actuaiiy belongs; is something familiar, something if
not known 7 at least quasi-known to us.
There is hardly any doubt that young and old in Plato's
Academy exercised their powers to answer the Socratic
question, what this or that thing is, with precision. (And
may I say, this entailed more than I had occasion to mention so far.) Not only do Platonic dialogues bear witness
to such exercises in precision-and do that as much seriously as playfuiiy, ironicaiiy, and even critically-but there
are stories which report both gleeful and malicious attacks
on this Academic preoccupation. There is a passage in
Plato's dialogue, the Statesman,' in which Man is described-playfuiiy, to be sure-as a "featherless biped."
And there is the story' that a Socratic extremist, Diogenes
1
266E
2
Diog. Laert. VI, 40
the Cynic, threw a plucked rooster into the Academy,
saying: ~<There you have the Platonic man," whereupon
the Academy is supposed to have added to "featherless
biped" the expression "with flat nails." It is possible that
the passage in the Statesman, far from being the source
of Diogenes' joke, is-among other things-an echo of it.
Athenaeus the Grammarian (about 200 A.D.) quotes' a
fragment of Epicrates, a contemporary of Plato, of Plato's
nephew, Spcusippos, who succeeded Plato as head of the
Academy, and of Aristotle. In this fragment Epicrates, who
must have been an eyewitness of many things in and
about Athens and presumably an avid coiiector of all the
gossip swirling around him, gently parodies the pursuit of
precision in the Academy. I shaH quote it in full. It isunderstandably cnough-'a dialogue. I shall call the two
speakers Q and A. Mentioned in this dialogue are not
only Plato and Speusippos, but also Menedemus, another
follower of Plato. Here it is .
Q. What are Plato, Spcusippos and Menedemus
doing? vVith what are they busying themselves
now? What are they speculating about? What
proposition are these people tracking down? Tell
me this discreetly, if you have reached the point
of understanding anything about it, tell me, by
the Earth ....
A. Oh, but I know how to speak about these
things in ali clarity. For, at the Panathcnaean
festival, I saw a herd of striplings . . . in the
school of the Academy and heard them say
things ineffable, out of all order. They produced
definitions about nature, distinguishing the ways
of life of animals, and the natures of trees, and
the genera of vegetables; and, among the latter,
they scrutinized the-pumpkin, searching to what
genus it belongs.
Q.
And how in the world did they define it and
to what genus did they say this plant belongs?
Reveal it, if you know.
A. First all of them were speechless, then they
looked at it attentively and, bent forward, meditated for quite a while. Suddenly, while the lads
were still bent and searching, one of them said:
the pumpkin is a round vegetable, another said:
a round grass, and another again: a round tree.
Hearing this, a doctor from Sicilian lands farted,
intimating that they were talking nonsense.
Q. They must have been terribly angry, weren't
they? Did they not shout that this was an insult?
For to do that in public is unbecoming!
s II59 D-F
3
�The College
A. The lads didn't blink an eye. Plato, who was
present and exceedingly mild, did not stir a hit,
and enjoined them to define the pumpkin again
and anew and to state to what genus it belongs.
... And they went on dividing.
Some of the comical effects of this parody do not come
through in an English translation. For the words ~'define,"
"distinguish," ''divide," as well as "genus" do not retain
in this translation the flavor of the unusual mixed with
their accepted colloquial meaning. And yet the pomposity of these technically inflated terms is not the least
important element of the parody. These terms arc the
fruit of the pursuit of precision. Accustomed as we are to
them, we understand-and misunderstand-them easily.
There is, however, one word in the last sentence of Epi~
crates' fragment ("and they went on dividing") which
certainly attracts our attention. It is the word "divide."
It is pretty clear, by the way, that many exchmoges between
Q and A, which must have preceded the last sentence,
were not recorded by Athenaeus. What does that word
"divide" mean?
Let us assume that agreement is reached about the
family, the genus of the pumpkin or of anything else. The
family is familiar to us (as in Epicrates' parody "vegetable," "grass/' "tree" arc familiar to the young men),
but is at best only a quasi-known. Does not, therefore,
for the sake of precision, a new question necessarily arise:
What is this genus, that is, to what family does tl1is
genus belong, what is the genus of this genus? This new
genus, this new family, will have to be larger than the
first. And then again the question will have to be repeated
for this new genus, and then again for the next one, and
so on, and so on. Is there an end to this questioning in
the pursuit of precision? If there is, will not the final
genus be the all-comprehensive one? Will it still be a
"genus" then? And shall we be able to comprehend it?
It will have to be something that does not lack anything,
that is self-sufficient, complete,-perfcct. Will it be accessible to us at all? And this question means: Is it within
our powers to be really precise? Let me say haltingly and
unprcciscly that this is the point around which the intellectual effort of Plato and of those who follow him
gravitates always.
Let us consider anew what I have been saying. In order
to grasp what something is, we have to allocate it to a
family of things quasi-known to us, and then to allocate
this family of things, this genus, to another larger family
also quasi-known to us, and to keep on ascending. Only
when and if the last step has been made, can we say that
we have found out what the unknown thing, that X which
started us off on this journey is, can we say that we know
what it is. It is this last step that illuminates-sun-likenot only all the intermediary genera, but the very thing,
the what of which we wanted to know.
4
This entire procedure so far can be likened to an
analysis in mathematics. A mathematical analysis handles
the unknown as if it were known by relating it to known,
or as we say, given, quantities, that is, by setting up an
equation, and then, by reversing itself, finds out what the
unknown is. I say "by reversing itself," because the final
computation is not analytic, but, as the tradition calls
it, synthetic. A 1\uclidean proof is synthetic: it descends
from given magnitudes, through given magnitudes, to the
unknown magnitude and thus makes it known. This is
what is called a de-monstration, an U7r63n~t~, a showing
by starting from something that is known. The finding,
the discovery oi a de-monstration is accomplished analytically: we have to ascend from the unknown, taken as
known, to the actually known. The proof, then, the synthetic de-monstration, is the reversal of the analysis.
What we have been dealing with so far in the pursuit of
precision was the ascent from the unknown, allocated to
the quasi-known, up to the highest point which we have
to assume as actually known. This assumption is fraught
with uncertainty, and yet precision hinges on it. This
much, however, can be said: if we reverse the direction of
our pursuit and descend from the highest point to the
unknown of which we want to know what it is, we shall
"define" it. ''Definition" in the Socratic-Platonic scheme
amounts indeed to "de-monstration" in the strict sense
of the word.
How can this descent be accomplished? The simple succession downwards of the genera that could lead to
Epicratcs' stately and ridiculous pumpkin for instance may
not be immediately and directly available. What we have
to do is to ''divide" every family, every genus, suitably into
parts, into sub-genera (or sub-species, if you please), then
choose that family part in which the pumpkin itself is
finally reached. It is to this procedure that the word
1
4 Had we more of
' divide" in Epicrates' fragment alludes.
Epicrates' text, we could perhaps witness Q's astonishment and A's joking explanations of such ''divisions." As
matters stand, we have to rely on Plato's dialogues. There
we find prescriptions for how to go about dividing a genus.
In the Phaedrus it is said" that we should do the cutting
"where the natural joints are" and not try to break any part
after the manner of a bad carver. But where are the natural
joints? In the Statesman 6 we are enjoined to cut every
genus "through the middle," for in that way one is more
likely to find the species, the "ideas," inherent in the genus
which is being cut. This prescription seems to favor the
halving of the genus so as to get two sub-genera, two
species, and it is not immediately clear why this should
be the most desirable, the most advantageous, the most
precise dividing. Nor is it clear how we can start dividing
the all-comprehensive genus, if there be one.
4
C£. Aristophanes, Clouds, 742
'265E
"262B
�October 1971
In the examples of division given in Plato's Sophist and
Statesman the cutting does not begin that high. The first
division in the Sophist begins with the family of human
arts, the genus ''art," and ''defines/' that is, de-monstrates
"angling" as follows (I quote the summary of the division)7:
manual work, all handicraft; the other, manifesting itself
in any art, as for example in carpentry. The first one, the
purely cognitive one, the one detached from all handicraft,
is then again subdivided, and now I quote the summary of
the delimitation which is given after the two main speakers
in the dialogue had gone to great lengths to reach their
goal":
Of Art as a whole half was acquisitive, and of
the acquisitive, half was coercive, and of the coercive, half was hunting, and of hunting half was
animal hunting, and of animal hunting half was
water-hunting and of water hunting the lower
The purely cognitive knowledge had, to begin
with, a part that gives commands; and a portion
of this was called-from [its] resemblance [to
the way of those who sell what they themselves
produce ]-the part that gives its own commands;
and again the art of rearing li.ving beings was
detached, which is by no means the smallest part
of the art which gives its own commands; and a
species of rearing living beings was herd-tending,
and a part of this again the herding ot walking
animals: and from the herding of walking animals
the art of rearing those without horns was cut off;
and of this in turn the part called the science
of herding animals that mate only with their own
kind will have to be intertwined in no less than
in a threefold way, if one wants to draw together
into one name the very thing we seek; the only
further cut, executed on the flock of bipeds, leads
to the science at herding human beings, and this
is what we were looking for, namely what is
called both statesmanship and kingship.
Plato makes us understand that all artful act1v1ty
has to be governed by the concern for the standard
of due measttre, the standard of the right mean.
part was fishing, and of fishing half was striking;
and of striking half was barb-hunting, and of this
the part in which the blow is pulled from below
upwards rat an angle J has a name in the very
likeness of the art and is called angling, which is
at this moment the object of our search.
It is assumed in this definition, this de-monstration, that
the starting point, the genus "art" is known. Each cut
divides the genus in question into two parts. The smnmary lists only the right-hand parts, as it were, and ignores
of course the left-hand ones and their possible sub-divisions. The procedure thus delimits what is to be found out,
and this is precisely the meaning of the word "definition,"
so unbelievably familiar to us, namely-delimitation. In
the dialogue, this division serves a deeply serious purpose,
but we would be singularly blind if we overlooked its
playfulness. There is still another awfully important aspect
to it which becomes clearer in the first division of the
Statesman. IIere the starting point is the family of know].
edges, the genus "knowledge," and that which is being
defined, delimited, is "statesmanship." Again "knowledge,''
the starting point, is taken as a genus known. This genus
is first divided into two parts: one, detached from all
What this delimitation then finally amounts to is the
statement that statesmanship is the "science of herding
human beings/' which in Greek is only one word
( UvOpw7r0110fW<0) ·
It turns out, as we see, that the way of reaching this
result is far from precise. We do actually see that, in
delimitations, precision may overreach itself. The explicit
delimitation, to which the summary I just quoted refers,
makes this even clearer. On the other hand, the subsequent discussion of the delimitation of statesmanship
reveals that it not only overreached itself, but also neglected to separate statesmanship from other arts and
activities which compete with it in the herding and nurturing of human beings. The delimitation proves to be
not only excessive, but also deficient.
The lesson Aristotle (and perhaps other people in the
Academy) drew from these blemishes of divisional definition was to limit it to the closest family, the nearest
genus, and to add to it the unique feature which, within
this genus, characterizes the thing sought. This remained
the classical wdy of defining for centuries to come, of
defining by the nearest genus and the specific difference
(per genus proximum et diflerent.ian1 specificam). Aristotle
cut the delimitation short, and the etymology of the
8
267 A-C
5
�The College
Latin word praeclSlo reflects this short-cut. 9 We should
not forget that in crucial cases Aristotle does not stick to
this pattern at all. And Plato himself has his own way
of coping with the task of delimitation.
Let me try to pursue Plato's own path or rather paths.
Let us note, first of all, that both in the Sophist and in
the Statesman the delimitation procedure is taken to be
unaffected by the dignity or meanness of the genera it
happens to descend on. The art of generalship and the
art of louse-catching are equally well suited to belong to
the genus "hunting"'; 10 kingship and swineherdship are on
par 11 as sub-genera of the genus "art of herding animals
that mate only with their own kind." The delimitation
procedure "pays no more heed to the noble than to the
ignoble, and no less honor to the small than to the
grcat." 12 It does not prefer the king Odysseus to the
swineherd Eumaeus. It is in this "neutrality" that the
possibility of excess or deficiency in the procedure of
delimitation appears to be rooted. Now, in pointing to this
possibility of both excess and deficiency Plato makes us
understand that all artful activity has to be governed by
the concern for the standard of due measure, the standard
of the right mean. This concern is actually kept alive by a
power that man-and perhaps only man-possesses,
namely the power of making comparisons. It is in comparing-and only in comparing-that we may find different
degrees of size, or of weight, or of beauty, or of worth. It
is comparing that lets us see something as "better" or
"worse" than something else, that makes us discern the
noble from the ignoble, the impeccable from the faulty.
To live up to the standard of due measure we have to
refine our comparing power: we have to learn from "examples." To cope with the danger of excess or deficiency
in the delimitation procedure we have to turn to an
"example.'' 13 This is what happens in the dialogue the
Statesman. But before this happens the very meaning of
"example" is subjected to a close scrutiny. Example, as the
Greek word 7rapU0£~Yf!a implies, is something shown alongside of the thing we want to grasp. To use an example is
to be engaged not in rbroOwwVvat, in ''showing down
from. . .," but · in trapa3nKvVvat, in "showing alongside
of...." This kind of showing mn elucidate the thing we
are after only if there is some resemblance between this
thing and the example used. To avoid excess or deficiency
in the delimitation procedure, this procedure must, then,
be supplemented by the use of examples, based on resemblances. It is thus that the ambiguity of the word ,roo~
finds its ultimate justification: both the what and the
looks of the thing in question become apparent. And it
+ cad a =
9 Pmc
1o Sopll.
pmccido
227B
n Statesman 266C
12 Ibid., 266D
13 Exemplum (from eximo): something chosen out of an assemblage
of similar things
6
is thus that out of "delimitations" and "examples" -or, as
we could say, though perhaps kss precisely, out of definitions and comparisons-the web of learning can be
woven. To rely on examples alone, that is, on nothing but
resemblances (as Speusippos seems to have been inclined
to do) is dangerous: a marine polyp resembles an oak
and could be used as an "example," but not much would
be gained by this. And let us not forget: in the dialogue
the Statesman the Stranger asserts that there are no
examples for the most important cases, that is, on the
highest level of intellectual scrutiny.''
What examples have to provide, according to Plato, are
safeguards against the dangers of excess and deficiency
inherent in the pursuit of precision. They have to lead us
to what must be the ultimate guiding light in the effort
of delimitation. This light is that wl1icl1 is precise in itself,
as it is said in the Statesman pointedly and yet obscurely."
It would follow that the pursuit of precision which is required to answer the Socratic question has the "precise
itself" (aDro raKp,f3i,) as its beginning and its end. Isn't this
mockery! some of you may be tempted to exclaim. What
is this "precise itself"? Let me try to answer this question.
There are quite a few hints in Plato's dialogues and also
explicit statements on Aristotle's part, when he refers to
Plato's intimate views, which allow me to do that. The
~~precise itself" is oneness itself, is the One, not one thing
or one unit among many things or many units which,
when gathered together, form a number of things or a
number of units, but that which makes any one thing
or any unit one, which puts on any one thing the stamp
of its sameness, without which neither a world, nor think~
ing, nor speaking, nor learning, nor precision would be
possible at all. It is, by the same token, that which I hesitatingly called a short while ago the all-comprehensive
final stage to be reached when, facing a thing, we try to
answer the Socratic question "what is it?" Being all-com~
prehensive, it is self-sufficient, perfect. Plato calls it the
Good itself. The "precise itself" is the "good itself" beckoning to the cognizing soul. The pursuit of precision leads
to the Good.
Still, the uncertainty remains: can it be reached? We
tend to assume that it can not. More than that: that it
ought not to be reached. When I say "we tend to assume,"
I do not mean that, traveling the path I have just indicated, we may arrive at this melancholy conclusion. I do
mean that to insist on precision, to persist in being precise, shows, often enough, lack of good manners, is offensive and ruins social intercourse. Does not this insistence
lead to quibbling, a word derived from the formalistic
precision in legal documents? Does not a pronounced and
rigidly maintained tidiness in our living quarters stifle the
spirit of a party? Let us hear Plato himself. In the
14
15
285D-286A
284D
�October 1971
Gorgias 10 he makes Socrates report the opinions of some
well-bred and sophisticated young men to the effect that
one should not be eager to be minutely precise in the pursuit of wisdom. In the Thcactctus 17 Socrates says: "the
avoidance of strict precision is in general a sign of good
breeding; indeed, the opposite is hardly worthy of a
gent1eman, 11 but Socrates adds: ((sometimes though it is
necessary." Wherein lies the necessity? The Platonic answer to this question runs against the most cherished and
most deeply seated habit of our thinking, not only in our
age, but at all times. \Ve are inclined to think that things
just are as they are; to attribute goodness or badness to
It would follow that the pursuit of precision which
is required to answer the Socratic question has the
"precise itself" (avr6 rlixp,f3£,) as its beginning and
its end.
their factual existence is to make "value judgments," as
we say cheerfully and with conviction. Such attribution
is rooted, we think, in our prejudices, in our being conditioned by the prevailing circumstances, in our "culture," as
we say no less glibly, perhaps in our gregariousness, perhaps in divine commandments. The Platonic answer is
that the very being of things depends on Goodness, and
that this alone makes the pursuit of precision possible and
necessary.
But enough of Plato and his kin. Why bring up this old,
old wisdom, this alleged wisdom, some of you might have
been thinking all along. Did I not say in the beginning
that the world in which we live is full of something like
precision? Are not our lives regulated to an immense
extent by schedules which depend on the ever-abiding
motion of the hand of a clock? Do not the marching of
drum majorettes and the twirling of their batons seem to
some ridiculously and to some pleasantly precise? Is not
the step of soldiers-in peace time at least-impressively
precise? But more than that: some of our joys and deep
satisfactions depend on precision. It is my guess that a
piece of music is the more excellent the more precisely it
is constructed. The lasting impact of a poem is tied to
487C
'' 184C
16
its precision. I do not refer to meter and rhyme. In a
poem that deserves this name, no word or, to be very
cautious, almost no word, both in meaning and sound, can
be replaced by another word; the sequence of words and
lines is unalterable; any one line wins its significance only
from the context of the whole. And something analogous
holds for great works of prose. Do we not know that everything in good writing depends on how precisely the words
we usc are chosen? Flaubert, we have heard, spent sometimes one week to complete one page. He is one of those
who are overwhelmed by the insight that what matters is
to know not only what to say, but also how to say it. In all
of these cases, we see, or in almost all of them, precision
evokes praise. This precision does not imply all-comprehensiveness. It implies either regularity or the exclusion of
alternatives.
But what about our knowledge of the world? What is
striking, first of all, is that we use mostly another word
for this knowledge, the word ''science." "Science" is derived directly from the Latin scientia which can only be
translated by "knowledge." Yet, in common usage, we
distinguish knowledge and science. Sometimes we say,
redundantly, it seems: scientific knowledge. Occasiomlly
we identify knowledge and science, as I have done in
naming a sub-genus in the delimitation of "statesmanship."
There is the verb "to know," a cognate of the noun
"knowledge," but there is no English verb corresponding
to the noun "science." Is all this a matter of chance, or
does it have a good reason? It has, and this reason is not
beyond our reach, although we are not always aware of it.
Let me state it in the simplest way. The center-piece of
science, mathematical physics, this colossal edifice which
has been built in the last four hundred years, has-on the
whole-abandoned the Socratic question "what is it?" in
favor of the question "how does it happen?" And the
answers that it gives are indispensably mathematical. The
image of edifice is not quite appropriate. Science is like a
very large city with many suburbs and parks, wide avenues
and many smaller streets, with huge traffic in them, not
too well regulated, and a massive down-town section consisting of quite a few blocks which are constantly renovated. This down-town section corresponds to mathematical physics. We all live in this city or in its suburbs
and, although we might not be close enough to the downtown area, we all get our sustenance from it. It shapes our
way of thinking and our way of living. The country-side
around the city, on the other hand, corresponds to the vast
complex of "social sciences" and to the domain called the
"humanities"-a strange word, as if the life in the city
itself were not a human life. Now, the down-town area,
mathematical physics, thrives on exactitude, that very
exactitude I talked about at the beginning of this lecture.
It is bent on matching the consequences derived mathematically from hypotheses with observations dictated by
these hypotheses. The endeavor to accomplish such a
matching is called an experiment. The mathematical de-
7
�- - - - - ------
The College
rivation by means of differential equations or other equating devices is exact. Only slightly less exact or, as we
usually say, precise or accurate are the experimental measurements made to verify the mathematical results and
thereby the hypotheses. These measurements, in turn,
depend on the efficacy, precision, or exactness of the
instruments used. Precision and exactitude arc indistinguishable in this context. We speak of instruments of
precision to indicate that the results obtained by using
them in observations are as exact as possible, that is, yield,
on the average, numbers irreplaceable by others. Whatever mathematical operations and experimental observations might be performed, they have nothing to do with
anything that could be called goodness or badness, the
dignity or baseness of the events considered. Science is
totally neutral with regard to worth or worthlessness. It is
proud of this neutrality. We are reminded of the provisional neutrality of the Academic delimitation procedure.
The scientific neutrality, however, is not provisional, but
final. It is only its exactitude itself, the perfect matching
of mathematically obtained results with the observable
data, that science considers praiseworthy. This matching
provides the answers to the question "how does it happen?" It is the light that shines over the city I have just
described. It is the peculiar-and intrinsically incomprehensi,b1e-''mora1ity" of science. This has ever been so
since Galileo established that in a motion, which proceeds with a uniformly accelerated velocity, the distances
traversed are as the squares of the times in which these
distances are traversed. The Socratic question "what is
it?" lurks, as it were, behind the bright light of exactitude.
But mathematical physics docs not presume to answer
this question. It is not its business to say what, for example, gravitation, or electro-magnetism, or energy is, except
by establishing in a symbolic-mathematical formula the
relations that bind these entities (if it is at all permissible
to usc this word) to observable and mathematically describable magnitudes. To try to state what something is
otherwise we consider a vain "metaphysical" endeavor, to
use a post-Aristotelian term. We arc still in need of
"definitions" in ·our quest of knowledge, but their character is very different. A definition is now either a readily
acceptable description of the meaning of a term, to which
we are asked to subscribe, or a statement used as an
irreducible element in a subsequent mathematical exposition. However important the role of such definitions may
be, it is subsidiary. A modern book on precise thinking
need not mention the term "definition" at all_1 8
The truly amazing intellectual effort that underlies our
science cannot be disregarded for a single moment. It is
one of the greatest achievements of man. It is the very
foundation of the city in which we live, the city of science,
the source of genetics, of electronic computers, of nuclear
fission and ·fusion,-the source of technocracy. It is our
18
8
E.g. Quine, Methods of Logic
duty, I think, to acknowledge this fundamental fact and
to try to understand its meaning. The more so, since in
the country-side surrounding our city, in the region of the
humanities and social sciences, and in the region of politics
as well, the light of exactitude or, if you like, of precision
tends to dim. Let me give you two random examples of
the dimness of this light, and I readily confess to being
unfair by quoting out of context. Example one from a book
on "personality":
Personality may be defined as that which tells
what a man will do when placed in a given situation. This statement can be formulated: R=
f(S.P) which says that R, the nature and magnitude of a person's behavioral response, i.e. what
he says, thinks, or does, is some function of the
S, the stimulus situation in which he is placed,
and of P, the nature of his personality. For the
moment, we do not attempt to say precisely what
f, the function, is. That is something to be found
by research.
Example two from a book on sociology:
falling in love is a universal psycho-dynamic potential in the human being. Most human beings
in all societies are capable of it. It is not. .. [as
another scholar says] a psychological abnormality
about as common as epilepsy.... Far from being
uncommon, ... love relationships are a basis of
the final choice of mate among a large minority
of the societies of the earth. If all this is so ...
how is the love relationship handled? As can be
seen, this problem is derived from the problem
discussed earlier, the relation of structural variables to the functions of socialization and social
control.
That's what I meant by the dimming of the light of exactitude in the country-side around our city of science.
Beyond this, exactitude, the rule of the clock, of schedules, of tidiness, of squareness in our world today begins
to produce waves of revulsion. You probably know this
better than I do. But the remedy for this disease of exactitude is not rebellion, or vagueness, or wildneSs, or love of
flowers. It is the pursuit of precision in our speaking and
thinking and acting. It is the concern about the "precise
itself."
Jacob Klein has been a Tutor at St. John's Co1Jege, Annapolis, since
1938. He was Dean of the College from 1949 to 1958. He received
his Ph.D. degree from the University of Marburg, Germany. He is
the author of Greek Matl1ematical Thought and the Origin at Algebra
(translated from the German), Massachusetts Institute of Tech·
no1ogy Press, 1968; and A Commentary on Plato's Meno, University
of North Carolina Press, 1965. His "Introduction to b-ristotle" may
be found in Ancients and Moderns, Basic Books, 1964.
�The Report of the President
1971
1970
><-··-·----------------··-·>:
1 AND MAY IT BE ENACTED, by the King's 1
l
most excellent majesty, by and with the advice,
prayer and consent of this present General As~
sembly, and the authority of the same, That for
the propagation of the gospel, and the education of the youth of this province in good letters
and manners, that a certain place or places,
for a free-school, or place of study of Latin,
Greek, writing, and the like, consisting of one
master, one usher, and one writing-master, or
scribe, to a school, and one hundred scholars,
more or less, according to the ability of the
said free-school, may be made, erected, founded,
propagated and established under your royal
patronage. And that the most reverend father in
God, Thomas, by Divine Providence lord-archbishop of Canterbury, primate and metropolitan
of all England, may be chancellor of the said
school; and that, to perpetuate the memory of
your majesty, it may be called King William's
Schoole, and inanaged by certain trustees, nominated, and appointed by your sacred majesty.
_,.,_,_,,___
by the General Assembly to St. John's College.
To celebrate this major anniversary in the life of the
College, special events have been planned on both
campuses. The first was a joint summer celebration with
the Santa Fe Opera in early August, with Mark Van
Doren as the speaker. The principal celebration in Annapolis will be five days of concerts, seminars, and panels,
commencing October 12th and culminating in a formal
convocation October 16th, to be addressed by Martin
Meyerson, President of the University of Pennsylvania.
In December the Santa Fe carnpus will be the scene of
the dedication of the Tower Building. Other special
events are scheduled for the year, including lectures on
both campuses by Sir Eric Ashby, Master of Clare College
and former Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University.
The Provost
~
~-----------·-"-·"
Thus read in part the Petitionary Act passed by the
Council of the General Assembly of the Colony of
Maryland on July 8, 1696. Addressed to "our Dread
Sovereign," King William III, the Act was signed by the
Royal Governor, His Excellency Francis Nicholson, and
forwarded by him to London. So "King William's
Schoole," forerunner of St. John's College, came into
being just 275 years ago this year. It was only after the
War of Independence that St. John's College was
chartered in 1784 and that the property, funds, masters,
and students of King William's School were conveyed
My report of last year told of the creation of the
position of Provost in the latest revision of the College
Polity. This new position on the Annapolis campus
carries presidential powers, though the incumbent reports to the President rather than to the Board. The aim
of this Polity revision was to relieve the President of
administrative detail and to assure a greater measure
of attention to the developing needs of the Annapolis
campus. After extensive search, Paul D. Newland, of
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was appointed first Provost. He
assumed his new duties in January. Mr. Newland had
had extensive experience in the business world and then
had served as Executive Vice President of Franklin and
Marshall College. He has already more than justified
our confidence in orienting himself within the College
and in addressing himself to problems of administration
and finance for the Annapolis campus .
.In his first report Mr. Newland cites the year just
ended as a splendid one from the standpoint of in-
9
�The College
struction. A number of Tutors told him that this was
their most satisfying year of teaching. In the words of
the Dean, "for most of the year almost nothing was
happening except students learning and Tutors teach~
ing." During the second semester, however, there seemed
to be a degree of complaining about the College. Some
students cited the coldness of Tutors, the hypocrisy of
grades, and the allegedly unfriendly spirit of the place.
Any such complaints bear investigation, but certain facts
seem to contradict them. Students did exceptionally wen
in their studies: Only four students failed during the
first semester; more sophomores than ever were enabled;
and an unprecedented number of students are returning
this September. For example, the Junior Class of 86
will be the largest in the College's history.
Dean Robert Goldwin's Statement of Educational
Policy and Program was adopted by the Faculty on both
campuses and reported- to the Board. The Statement
calls for consideration of the question whether the program now requires too much work of the students. Some
claim that students and Tutors are confronted with too
much routine study and, therefore, have too little time
to think for themselves. During the year ahead inquiry
into this question will be pursued.
Others matters to which the Provost and the Dean
expect to address themselves are improvement of student
morale, more vigorous recruitment of new students, and
reduction of the overload of work in the Dean's Office.
The Dean feels he should be, and hopes he actually can
be, "a teacher and studier first, a leader of teachers and
students second, and a manager of affairs last."
The Vice President
On the Santa Fe campus ]. Burchenal Ault of Oyster
Bay, New York, was appointed Vice President with overall responsibility for administrative and financial matters.
Mr. Ault graduated from Yale University and held two
presidencies in business firms. He had also been active
in educational and civic affairs: He served on the alumni
board at Yale and the alumni fund at Phillips Academy,
Andover, and
was a trustee of Hofstra University and
president of the Pro Arte Symphony Association on Long
Island. He assumed his new duties September 1st and has
demonstrated a high degree of imaginativeness and initiative ever since.
Mr. Ault's interest in music and the fine arts has contributed importantly to making the Santa Fe campus a
more exciting place, not only for students and Tutors
but also for members of the community. Showings of
the thirteen-part film series "Civilisation" were arranged,
and Howard Adams, Assistant Administrator of the
National Gallery of Art, came to Santa Fe for the open.
ing. An "Indian Table" was instituted, bringing Santa
Fe residents to the College for a monthly dinner and
lectures by authorities on Indian culture, including N.
he
10
Scott Momaday who is a Pulitzer Prize novelist. A local
radio program called "A College in Action" offered a
half-hour weekly discussion by Tutors and students.
Popular book-and-author luncheons continued to attract
capacity crowds under the auspices of St. John's Library
Associates. The Santa Fe, Los Alamos, and Albuquerque
Boards of Associates met quarterly and continued to work
helpfully for the College's benefit.
The Students
At commencement exercises on the two campuses, 71
seniors received their Bachelor of Arts degree, 45 of
these in Annapolis and 26 in Santa Fe. In addition,
eleven Santa Fe seniors and four Annapolis seniors successfully completed their work in August under the
three-year transfer plan. This was the first such summer
program. It will be repeated next summer, but a decision
has already been reached to discontinue the transfer
program for the future. The total number of graduates
for 197 I, therefore, is 86. Two Watson Traveling Fellowships and one Danforth Fellowship were awarded to
Santa Fe seniors, while one Danforth Fellowship and
one honorary mention went to Annapolis seniors.
Attrition was greatly diminished during the last academic year on the Annapolis campus. Because of the
entering February class of 21, more students were
registered in June than had started in September. Dean
Goldwin believes that a major factor in retention of
students has been the fact that poor and uninterested
students have been asked to leave. This policy has
tended to hold the better students. In Santa Fe, too, there
was marked improvement in retention for the -:year,
though larger numbers than usual have dropped out
at the end of the year. St. John's is not immune to the
"estlessness that pervades this college generation.
Figures comparing the September and June student
enrollments follow:
Annapolis
Men
Sept. june
liVomen
Sept. June
48
45
8
48
45
16
16
18
16
Freshmen
February Class
Sophomores
Juniors
Seniors
69
62
35
36
64
13
59
35
35
Totals
202
206
-130
61
43
33
17
56
40
29
17
154
Grand Totals 356
Total
Sept. june
110
51
54
!09
21
!04
51
51
130
332
336
45
35
22
13
40
30
20
12
106
78
30
96
70
49
29
142
115
102
269
244
348
245
232
601
580
117
Santa Fe
Freshmen
Sophomores
Juniors
Seniors
Totals
55
,\
�------------
October 1971
After sixteen years as Director of Admissions on the
Annapolis campus, James Tolbert has relinquished his
administrative responsibilities and returned to full-time
teaching as a Tutor. In recognition of his effective and
dedicated service, the Faculty passed a formal resolution
of commendation. I, too, would record my deep gratitude
for his devotion to the College. Michael Ham was appointed to replace Mr. Tolbert. Mr. Ham received an
M.S. in mathematics from the University of Iowa in
1968. He has most recently been manager of PLAN
Systems Analysis and Programming for the Westinghouse Learning Corporation.
The September 1970 freshman class in Annapolis was
composed of 117 students from 26 states, the District
of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Eighty-four percent ranked
in the top or second fifth of their respective classes in
secondary school. Five were National Merit scholars,
16 were semifinalists, and eight received letters of commendation. The 23 February freshmen came from nine
states, the District of Columbia, British Columbia, and
Puerto Rico. Three-quarters ranked in the top or second
fifth of their respective graduating classes. Six were
National Merit semifinalists and two won letters of
commendation.
At Santa Fe Gerald Zollars completed his first year
as Director of Admissions. The entering class of 106 on
the western campus was drawn from 27 states and the
District of Columbia. Eighty-eight percent ranked in the
top or second fifth of their class in high school. Fifteen
were National Merit scholars. An innovation this year
was the use of the Educational Opportunity Service
of the American College Testing Program. This introduced St. John's College by mail to over 12,000 students
whose responses on the ACT examination matched the
following criteria: (1)' a considerable interest in writing
in high school, (2) a concern about the intellectual
atmosphere of the college to be attended, and (3) a
major interest in the arts and humanities or indecision
as to a major field of study. Results from this program
have been inconclusive for this first year, since information about St. John's reacl1ed the students late, after
a choice of college had probably already been made.
Comparative statistics on admissions for the two
campuses show an increasing number of inquiries, but
without a proportionate increase in the number of
applications:
Santa Fe
Annapolis
1969-70 1970-71 1969-70 1970-71
------1,839
3,867
3,383
Inquiries
2.904
208
164
178
Visitors
277
241
211
232
265
Applications
!56
182
!58
181
Accepted
50
60
40
59
Rejected
83
80
66
Withdrawn
56
104
108
Deposits Received
125
113
106
106
Enrolled
117
125
Teaching Faculty
Again both campuses were inundated with applications
for teaching positions. Despite 300 applications submitted
at Santa Fe, there was not a significantly larger number
of promising candidates, fully qualified to teach in the
St. John's program. Nevertheless, three excellent new appointments were made for Santa Fe and one for Annapolis. The Santa Fe appointees are Mrs. Vida Chesnulis
Clift, who holds a B.A. from Radcliffe and a Ph.D. from
Harvard, and who taught for two years at Boston University; C. Donald Knight, who has a B.A. from Baker
University and a master's degree from the University
of Toronto, where he was a teaching fellow; and Mrs.
Caroline Higgins Richards, a graduate of the University
of Colorado, who received a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1970 and since has been an instructor in the
history of Western civilization at Brooklyn College. The
only new Annapolis appointment went to John White
who was awarded his B.A. at St. John's College in 1965.
He holds his M.A. from the New School for Social Research, where he has been teaching. Aaron Kirschbaum,
Annapolis Tutor, is moving this fall to the Santa Fe
Faculty.
Two teaching interns, Mrs. Toni Drew and Mr. Paul
Mannick, both of them alumni of the College, were appointed on the Santa Fe campus, thanks to a grant from
the Ford Foundation in its Venture Funds programs.
Both proved themselves to be promising teachers and
valuable members of the Faculty. In reviewing their
work, the Instruction Committee recommended that
they be reappointed for the coming year and that they
be allowed to submit essays in fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts during the
coming year. It is hoped that the teaching internship
program can be expanded in the future.
With regret I report the resignations of two tenure
members of the Santa Fe Faculty. Clarence .J. Kramer,
who had served as Dean of the Santa Fe Faculty and
as Associate Dean of the College for four years from
1964 to 1968, resigned to accept the Deanship of Marlboro College in Vermont. Thomas ]. Slakey, who was
first appointed a Tutor on the Annapolis campus in 1959
and who was one of the cadre that launched the western
campus in 1964, resigned to accept the position of Vice
President for Academic Affairs at St. Mary's College in
California. I should like to record the College's debt of
gratitude to both men for their service over the years.
One of the new Tutors in Annapolis, Brian McGuire,
resigned at the end of the first semester and returned to
Europe. Four other Tutors completed their appointments
and left the College at the end of the academic year:
William B. Pitt in Annapolis, and Elizabeth F. Gilbert,
John C. Rodgers, and Barnett ]. Sokol on the Santa
Fe. campus.
11
�The College
The College's generous sabbatical leave policy continues to pay dividends. For more than twenty years
the College has made is possible for a Tutor to have a
full year away from his teaching responsibilities at full
salary. The first such leave is granted after nine years
of teaching; subsequent leaves follow six further years
of teaching. More recently the College has liberalized
this policy to enable Tutors to take early sabbatical
leave at a salary proportionate to the number of years
served since first appointment or since the last leave.
During the year under review four Tutors from Annapolis were on sabbatical leave: 'Samuel S. Kutler,
Barbara H. Leonard, Michael S. Littleton, and Elliott
Zuckerman; Charles G. Bell and Dean R. Haggard were
on sabbatical leave from the Santa Fe campus. Two
Tutors from Annapolis were on ordinary leave for the
first semester at their request: Mrs. Gisela Berns and
Thomas A. McDonald.
from other institutions. These were Brother S. Robert
Smith, Glenn H. Ballard, and .James Collins from the
Integrated Progtam of St. Mary's College of California;
A. Lowell Edmunds, Assistant Professor of Classics at
Harvard University; Charles E. Butterworth, Associate
Professor of Political Science at the University of Maryland; and Norman S. Grabo, Professor of English at the
University of California at Berkeley.
Once again the Institute received generous support
from the National Endowment for the Humanities. There
were helpful matching grants for fellowships from the
Calritz Foundation of Washington, D. C., the Hoffberger
Foundation of Baltimore, Maryland, and the Richardson
Fund of New York City. In addition, generous grants
for fellowship purposes were received from the Vincent
Astor Foundation, the Jac Holzman Foundation, and the
Henry Luce Foundation, all of New York City.
The Staff
Libraries
Miss Charlotte Fletcher and Mrs. Alice Whelan, the
Librarians on the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses re~
spectively, report gratifying growth of the College's two
collections. Thanks to the enlarged stack space in reconstructed '1\Toodward Hall, the book collection in Annapolis, which had always been held at approximately
50,000 volumes, has now grown to 62,930 volumes. The
Santa Fe collection has grown to half its goal of 50,000
volumes, with 23,684 volumes catalogued and another
4,000 volumes in special collections. Completion of the
Tower Building in October will enable the Librarian
in Santa Fe to consolidate books, records, and tapes in
two locations~the present library in the Peterson Student
Center and the ground floor of the new building. These
expanded facilities will enable the College to make
excellent use of the three fine music collections now
stored: the Wilhelm Schmidt, the S. Ellsworth Grumman,
and the Amelia Elizabeth White collections, all of them
recent gifts to the College.
GTaduate Institute
Robert A. Neidorf was appointed Director of the
Graduate Institute in Liberal Education this year, succeeding James Shannon, who resigned to study law at
the University of New Iviexico. Under Mr. Neidorf's direction the Institute completed its fifth session this past
summer with great success. Enrollment of I 46 teachers
and other adults was the largest to date. Eighteen students
successfully completed the Graduate Program in the
Liberal Arts and were awarded their M.A. degrees. This
brings to 57 the total number of degrees awarded since
the first class completed the requirements in 1969.
There were twenty members of the teaching Faculty.
Once again most of the Faculty was drawn from the two
St. John's campuses, but there were six Tutors appointed
12
At Annapolis Mrs. Gayle F. Kline was appointed secretary to the Provost in April. Mrs. Ingrid E. Miller replaced Mrs. Amalea Noyes as secretary to the Director
of Development in December, and Mrs. Susan Platt's
place as secreta1-y in the Admissions Office was filled by
Mrs. LaNece P. Lamonte at the start of the year. Mrs.
Virginia S. Schenck replaced Mrs. Virginia West as Resident Head in Humphreys Hall. Miss Phyllis Doyle resigned her position as Laboratory Technician at the end
of the year to undertake studies at The Johns Hopkins
University.
At Santa Fe Mrs. Geraldine Foster left the Admissions
Office to become seo-etary to the President, succeeding
Mrs. Minnie Mae Powell. Ivirs. Esther Lopez moVed into
the Treasurer's Office as Cashier, and her place in the
Development Office was taken by Mrs. Nicki Gonzales.
Miss 1\tfary Lou Neal succeeded Miss Corinne Martinez as
Bookkeeper, and Miss Dolores Vigil became secretary in
the Buildings and Grounds Office. Mrs. Rebecca Lang was
appointed Bookstore Manager, succeeding Charles Webb.
Mrs. Ruth Archer replaced Mrs. Linda McCormick as
Director of Reader Services in the Library, and the
resulting vacancy on the switchboard was filled by Mrs.
Dolores Williams. Mrs. Lois Delaney replaced Miss
Georgelle Durkin as secretary in the office of the Vice
President.
The Alumni
The revised College Polity provides that the alumni
are lile-long members of St. John's College and that
the Alumni Association is the formal means by which
alumni participate in the life of the College. During
the past year the Alumni Association evidenced its active
concern for the undergraduates in two ways: a counseling
program was undertaken, and three discussion sessions
were held~one on graduate schools, one on law as a
career, and one on opportunities in government and
�October 1971
business. These sessions were well attended by juniors
and seniors. A second program sought to involve the
alumni more actively in college admissions. Temple G.
Porter '62 conceived and published a comprehensive
guide to helping alumni volunteers find and recruit able
prospective students. A recruitment kit was assembled
and is being distributed this summer.
At Homecoming in October the alumni elected
William R. Tilles '59 as President and Bernard F.
Gessner '27 as Executive Vice President. Philip I. Bowman '31 and W. Bernard Fleischmann '50 were reelected
to the Board of Visitors and Governors for second threeyear terms. For the first time in the history of the Association, three alumni Awards of Merit were awarded.
Recipients so honored were Philip A. Alger '21,
Schenectady, New York; General Alfred Houston Noble
'17, La Jolla, California; and Luther S. Tall '21, Baltimore, Maryland.
The year just ended was marked by the finest record
to date in annual giving. Under the chairmanship of
Jack L. Carr '50, 880 alumni responded to the appeal
of the College and contributed a total of $30,483. In
addition, there were 17 gifts from alumni for scholarship endowments totaling $1,375. Including the special
gift of Paul Mellon '44, the alumni gave a total of
$400,860 to the College during the year.
New Construction
In October of 1970 a contract was awarded to the
firm of Sewell and Stanton, general contractors of Santa
Fe, for construction of the Tower Building. This twostory structure will enable the College to house all administrative offices under a single roof and thus free
classroom and faculty office space now occupied in Evans
Science Laboratory. Furthermore, the basement will provide space for 20,000 volumes so that the Library can
relinquish space in the women's dormitory complex and
carry on its functions more efficiently. The building is
fully funded, thanks to generous grants from the Fleischmann Foundation of Reno, Nevada, the Kresge Foundation of Detroit, Michigan, and the United States Steel
Foundation of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as well as to
substantial gifts ·from two Board members-Mrs. Walter
Driscoll of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and John D. Murchison of Dallas, Texas. The building will be completed in
October and dedicated on December 4, 1971.
At Annapolis a change in architects was made for
the proposed Harrison Health Center: James Wood
Burch of Annapolis, Maryland, replaced R TKL, Inc.,
of Baltimore, Maryland. Full architectural plans are now
being drawn, and it is expected that a contract for this
two-story building will be awarded this fall. The site
will be between the Carroll Barrister House and Randall
Hall. Meanwhile, the College will use the Chancellor
Johnson House as a temporary infirmary and nurse's
apartment. The College's properties at 5 and 9 St. John's
Street are being sold to the State of Maryland as part
of the site of the new office building of the House of
Delegates.
Finances
One could hardly overstate the immense material and
psychological value of Paul Mellon's superb gift of a
million dollars in December. In effect, it rescued the
College from mounting indebtedness and assured that
both campuses would complete the fiscal year in fully
solvent condition. Moreover, it freed the Faculty and the
stall from immediate financial worries and gave them new
confidence and hope. The gift was divided between the
two campuses in accordance with current needs. Annapolis received $354,562 and Santa Fe $651,000. The
Treasurer in Annapolis applied $40,000 of this figure to
repay a bank loan incurred to air-condition two dormitories, $118,584 to restore the depleted cash revolving
fund, and $70,884 to balance the current operating
budget. This has left the sum of $124,938 as a reserve
for the future.
In Santa Fe the fiscal year had begun with a cumulative deficit from the first six years of the new coiiege's
life amounting to $143,936. Interest charges proved a
heavy drain on the annual budget. Fortunately two special gifts during the early part of the year reduced the deficit to $384,638. Mr. Mellon's generous gift erased this balance and thus made available once again the College's
full line of credit at a local bank. The sum of $130,975
of the Mellon gift was used toward current expenditures,
so that the Santa Fe campus, too, completed the fiscal
year in the black. This has left $135,243 of the Mellon
gift as a welcome reserve against future operations.
The statements of current revenue and expenditures
appended to this report are self-explanatory. It should be
noted, however, that actual expenditures on the Santa
Fe campus were $1,640,010, some $6,500 under the
budgeted estimates of $1,646,539. At Annapolis, too, the
actual expenditures of $1,844,196 were well within the
budgeted figure of $1,856,282.
Steps were taken during the year to place the entire
investment portfolio in the hands of T. Rowe Price
and Associates. By instruction of the Finance Committee,
T. Rowe Price divided the total portfolio into two parts,
one with growth as its primary objective, the other with
maximum income as its aim. This arrangement was
thought to constitute a hedge in investment under the
"total yield" concept. The College draws six percent
of the market value of the fund for current purposes.
A portion of this drawal comes from dividends and
interest, the balance from realized gains on the sale of
securities.
The year just ended has been one of painful adjustment, as the portfolio manager has sold off poorly performing stocks and has made new investments. Losses
13
�The College
of $463,503 were taken. Moreover, real estate previously
donated to the College was sold at a book loss of $95,843.
These transactions reduced the cumulative reservation of
profits on the sale of securities from $895,527 to $336,181.
Drawals under the "total yield" concept further reduced
this balance to $186,385. As of June 30, 1971, the book
value of the College's endowment funds stood at $8,333,008, and the market value at $8,541,349.
It is significant that for the first time in some years
major repayments were made by the Santa Fe campus
to the Annapolis endowment fund against the monies
advanced to construct the new campus in 1963 and
1964. Gifts totaling $85,375 reduced the balance of the
loan to $1,375,625. In addition the sum of $5,000 for
debt retirement was raised by the Santa Fe seniors
through a benefit showing of Bondarchuk's film, War
and Peace. In presenting the gift the seniors said:
We have two things in mind in wishing to
give this amount toward the repayment 'of the
Annapolis endowment debt. First perhaps, it
can in a small way express our thanks to Annapolis for helping this campus to come about
with its own critical funds, not to mention the
men and experience it gave. Secondly, this gift
is given in the hope of continuing and yet finer
achievements, through books and discussions, by
all members of the College. Money as well as the
more magic constituents is needed and nothing
can be put toward projects of an academic
nature until this debt and the many others
are paid.
275th Anniversary Fund
In recognition of the two and three-quarters centuries
of the life of this institution and in commitment to its
program of liberal education, friends of the College
are being invited to contribute to the 275th Anniversary
Fund. This fund is designed to provide a firm foundation of endowment for both campuses, to meet the immediate needs for new buildings, and to supply operating funds for the three years of the campaign period ending in 1974. The goals established jointly by the Faculty
and the Board of Visitors and Governors are $5,000,000
for the Annapolis campus and $10,000,000 for the Santa
Fe campus. As the fund is formally opened, I am pleased
to report advance gifts and pledges of $1,460,462 for Annapolis and $4,357,723 for Santa Fe. Two notable gifts
deserve special citation and acknowledgement: the pledge
of a million and a quarter dollars by Mrs. Duane L.
Peterson for the Student Center and the gift of a million
dollars to erase current indebtedness and to provide
operating funds from Paul Mellon, alumnus and honorary co-chairman of the College's National Committee.
With challenge gifts of this magnitude, St. John's College
14
can move forward into the campaign period with confidence and enthusiasm.
Gifts and Grants
The year just ended has been considered a preparatory
or preliminary year in the College's 275th Anniversary
Fund. Goals for both campuses in the campaign included current operating funds for 1970-71, as well as
for the following three years. Gifts and grants received
at Annapolis and at Santa Fe over the past year have
been credited against the substantial objectives of the
275th Anniversary Fund.
I am happy to report that the Annapolis campus received a total of $779,884 in cash from 1,372 donors
during the course of the year. Apart from the $354,562
received from Paul Mellon, alumni of the College contributed $46,298, parents of students $3,425, Board members $142,685, corporations $23,405 (including $17,251
through the solicitations of the Association of Independent Colleges in Maryland), foundations $171,848,
and Faculty and friends $37,661. These gifts were applied as follows: endowment $267,481, plant $16,674,
and current purposes $141,167. There were also gifts in
kind, principally books for the library, aggregating
$36,535.
St. John's College records its deep gratitude to all
who have demonstrated their friendship and their confidence through gifts and grants over the past twelve
months. I should like to register our particular thanks
to Paul Mellon for his munificent gift; to Mrs. Elizabeth
Myers Mitchell for $125,000 to establish a landscaping
fund in memory of her late mother, Mrs. Kate :Myers; to
the Hodson Trust for an unrestricted grant of $40,000;
and to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for $119,988
for endowment purposes. The Mellon Foundation grant
represents the final installment on a matching offer of a
million dollars for endowment originally made by Old
Dominion Foundation in 1963 and generously extended
by the trustees of the new Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
On the Santa Fe campus gifts and grants for the fiscal
year aggregated $1,869,210. Apart from the Mellon gift
of $651,000, funds were received from the following
sources: Board members $649,850, members of the
National Committee $21,010, Faculty, staff, and students
$15,091, parents of students $5,816, alumni $1,349,
corporations $9,870, foundations $423,705, government
$52,490, and friends $39,029. These funds were applied
as follows: endowment $6,179, construction of the Tower
Building $535,684, retirement of the loan from the Annapolis endowment fund $90,375, the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education $126,145, and current purposes
$459,527.
Again I should like to record the College's gratitude
to each donor. The task of underwriting a new college
�October 1971
which lacks both alumni and endowment is at best a
formidable one. All of us on the Santa Fe campus realize
that our friends must demonstrate a special brand
of confidence and hope in order to give as generously as
they have. Special mention should be made of Mr.
Mellon's gift and of the following: $125,000 from the
Max C. Fleischmann Foundation of Reno, Nevada,
$100,000 from the Kresge Foundation of Detroit, Michigan, $175,000 from John D. Murchison of Dallas, Texas,
and $100,000 from Mrs. Walter W. Driscoll of Santa Fe,
all toward the cost of the Tower Building, $50,000 from
the Ford Foundation, as the initial payment of a threeyear grant in the Foundation's Ventures Fund program;
and $85,375 from Mrs. Duane L. Peterson toward retirement of the construction loan on the Student Center.
Bequests
The Board has already adopted a resolution on the
death of Richard Herman Hodgson '06, who served
helpfully for many years as a Visitor and Governor of
the College. By the terms of Mr. Hodgson's will the sum
of $100,000 will be added to the Hodgson Scholarship
Endowment. These scholarships are awarded on the basis
of character, academic achievement, and promise, with
priority accorded applicants from Wicomico County and
the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The Hodgson Scholarships are a fitting memorial to one of St. John's outstanding alumni.
During the spring Richard Hammond Elliott '17 died
following protracted disability. Mr. Elliott had. a long
and useful career as editor of the Annapolis Evening
Capital. I well recall that he was the first person to interview me after my appointment _to the St. John's presidency in September of 1949. Mr. Elliott's entire estate,
amounting to approximately $300,000, comes to St. John's
College to endow a tutorship in his name. This constitutes a welcome addition to the College's permanent
funds.
Finally, let me record Mrs. Weigle's and my gratitude
for the leave which the Board granted us this winter
and spring so that we could take part in the Danforth
Foundation's program of Short-Term Leaves for College
and University Administrators. We made three separate
trips during the four-month period from mid-January
to mid-May. We spent the first five weeks in South
Africa, Rhodesia, Tanzania, and Kenya. In South Africa
we were afforded the opportunity of visiting a representative number of universities and of conferring with
their administrative heads. In March we spent three
weeks as members of a traveling seminar to study
socialist education in Hungary, Romania, the Soviet
Union, and Poland. The third trip took us to England
in late April. For a fortnight we lived at Clare Hall
in Cambridge, where I was an Honorary Fellow of Clare
College. All three of these experiences abroad provided
not only a welcome change from our regular routine
but interesting new perspectives and insights on education in general. We return to St. John's with renewed
faith in the College and its mission.
RICHARD
D.
WEIGLE
President
September I, 1971
15
�The College
ST. JOHN'S
Annapolis, Maryland
BALANCE SHEETS,
ASSETS
Annapolis
CuRRENT FuNns
Unrestricted
Cash ...................................
Accounts Receivable .....................
Due from SJC-Santa Fe .................
Due from Other Funds ...................
Prepaid Expenses .......................
Bookstore Inventory .... , ...............
Total Unrestricted Funds ............
$
Santa Fe
5,084
59,718
$
$
50,987
4,316
17,878
1,503
442
25,514
100,640
Restricted
Cash .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. $
Investments ............................. .
Loans Receivable ......................... .
Total Restricted Funds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $
Total Current Funds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $
317,331
12,169
840
330,340
430,980
$ 238,505
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
34,956
27,236
23,106
150,100
$
3,226
. ' ' ....
$ 241,731
$ 391,831
LoAN FuNDS
Cash ....................................
United Student Aid Deposit ............. .
National Defense Student Loans .......... .
Other Student Loans ..................... .
Total Loan Funds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
$
5,893
$
146,290
2,031
154,214
$
3,668
1,000
139,782
24,675
$ 169,125
ANNUITY FUNDS
Due From Other Funds
Total Annuity Fund.s
$ 210,910
$ 210,910
$
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
Cash ................................... .
Accounts and Notes Receivable ........... .
Faculty Home Loans ..................... .
Loan to Santa Fe Campus ................. .
Due from Other Funds .................. .
Miscellaneous ........................... .
Investments
Securities-at Cost ..................... .
Mortg-ag-es on Real Property ............ .
Total Endowment Funds ........... .
$
231,677
6,759
141,221
1,375,625
911
830
$
44,000
2,443
.......
.......
.......
15,596
6,531,773
46,677
$ 8,335,473
$
62,039
$
$
91,286
185,000
136,774
.......
PLANT FUNDS
Cash .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Investments-Real Estate ................. .
Dormitory Trust Fund ................... .
Land and Campus Development ........ , .. .
Buildings and Improvements .............. .
Cons~ruction in Progress ................. .
Equipment and Furnishings .............. .
Library Books .......................... .
Land and Building-s-Other .............. .
64,363
375,677
5,194,326
.......
Total Plant Funds .................. .
$ 6,028,587
$6,401,919
Total Funds ........................ .
16
394,221
5,082,804
284,743
436,757
77,452
107,103
$14,949,254
$7,235,824
�October 1971
COLLEGE
Santa Fe, New Mexico
June 30, 1970
LIABILITIES
Annapolis
CURRENT FUNDS
Unrestricted
Accounts Payable ........................
Deferred Income .......................
Due to Other Funds ......................
Due to SJC-Annapolis ..................
Reserve for Future Operations ...........
Total Unrestricted Funds ............
.
.
.
.
.
.
$
19,478
67,702
Santa Fe
$
$
13,460
100,640
13,627
93,815
20,512
17,878
4,268
$ 150,100
Restricted
Fund Balances
$
Due to Other Funds ...................... .
Total Restricted Funds .............. . $
Total Current Funds ................ . $
329,843
497
330,340
430,980
222,740
18,991
$ 241,731
$ 391,831
154,214
$ 156,108
13,017
$ 169,125
LoAN FuNDS
Fund Balances
Due to Current Funds ................... .
Total Loan Funds .................. .
$
$
. ..... .
154,214
ANNUITY FUNDS
Fund Balances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Total Annuity Funds ................. .
$
$ 210,910
$ 210,910
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
.
.
.
.
.
$ 8,146,627
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
$ 5,964,224
62,446
$ 6,028,587
$2,722,836
1,693,000
199,399
1,375,625
136,774
274,285
$6,401,919
Total Funds ........................ .
$14,949,254
$7,235,824
Principal ...............................
Reservation of Profits-Sale of Securities ...
Due to Other Funds .....................
Unexpended Income .....................
Total Endowment Funds . , . , .... , ....
$
61,769
186,381
270
2,465
$ 8,335,473
62,039
PLANT FUNDS
Invested in Plant ........................
Federal Dormitory Bonds ................
Due to Other Funds ....................
Notes Payable to Annapolis .............
Dormitory Bond Sinking Fund ...........
Unexpended ............................
Total Plant Funds ...................
1,917
17
�The College
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Annapolis, Maryland
CONDENSED STATEMENT OF REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES
Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1971
Annapolis
Santa Fe
.
.
.
.
.
$ 784,578
$ 625,291
418,754
186,190
87,464
18,242
2,833
644,377
40,713
31,573
Total ................................. .
$1,495,228
$1,344,787
REVENUE
Educational and General
Tuition .................................
Endowment Income .......................
Gifts and Grants ........................
Scholarships ..............................
Miscellaneous ............................
Auxiliary Enterprises
Bookstore ................................ .
Dining Hall ............................. .
Dormitories .............................. .
$
47,798
161,390
139,780
$
33,875
140,260
125,355
Total ................................. .
$ 348,968
$ 299,490
Total Revenue
$1,844,196
$1,644,277
EXPENDITURES
Educational and General
Administrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $
General .................................. .
Instruction ............................... .
Graduate Institute ....................... .
Student Activities ......................... .
Operation and Maintenance ............... .
Total .................................. .
Miscellaneous
Student Financial Aid
Federal Programs ......................... .
Capital Appropriations ................... .
$ 205,283
15,391
332,652
159,586
513,771
117,688
25,667
160,013
$1,473,568
$1,182,008
Auxiliary Enterprises
Bookstore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $
Dining Hall .............................. .
Dormitories (Debt Service) ............... .
Total ................................. .
191,571
183,392
750,562
46,127
150,259
$
34,141
103,383
109,302
$ 196,386
$ 246,826
$ 174,242
$ 171,170
17,094
22,912
Total ................................. .
$ 174,242
$ 211,176
Total Expenditures .................... .
$1,844,196
$1,640,010
Excess Revenue ........................ .
18
$
4,267
�October 1971
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
Annapolis, Maryland
PERMANENT ENDOWMENT FUNDS-PRINCIPAL AND INCOME
June 30, 1971
A. W. Mellon
of DonoY
Foundation
klatching Gift
Total Fund
Principal
.$1,989,!153.37
$ 500,000.00
150,215.75
150,000.00
$2,189,953.37
300,215.75
$2,140,169.12
$ 650,000.00
$2,790,169.12
Gift
TUTORSHIP ENDOWMl•:NTS:
Addison E. Mullikin, 1895
Arthur de Talma Valk, 1906
SCHOLARSHIP ENDO\".IMENTS:
Annapolis Self Help
George M. Austin, 1908, Memorial
WalterS. Baird, 1930
Chicago Regional
Class of 1897
$
Class of 1898
Dr, Charles Cook
15,000.00
25,000.00
2,500.00
3,070.00
8,672. I1
87,933.19
$
:!,070.00
135.00
$
23,862.59
4,908.54
28.783.25
45,050.08
16,034.00
300,500.00
45,287.10
1,000.00
72,000.00
28,352.94
20,025.00
7,367.00
150,250.00
2,500.00
500.00
36,000.00
4,44.\.00
45,370.00
22,685.00
9,000.00
26,000.00
28,362.47
52,000.00
6,165.00
1,120.00
12,500.00
7,055.56
3,061.00
3,661.00
7,056.20
1,551.91
560.00
3,']-13.00
$ 323,864.00
$
20,000.00
1,170.00
30,000.00
50,000.00
2,500.00
6,1'10.00
8,672.14
87,933.19
13,705.26
270.00
135.00
2,359.00
26,12'1.25
25,025.08
8,607.00
150,250.00
'12,787.10
500.00
36,000.00
28,352.911
4,445.00
22,685.00
19,362.17
26,000.00
6,165.00
560.00
12,500.00
7,055.56
3,061.00
3,6611.00
3,643.20
1,55!.91
$ 581,715.10
·I
908,579.10
I
13,862.59
6,378.54
-----
-------
i
ALUMNI AND MEMORIAL ENDOWMENTS:
Granville Q. Adams, 1929
Charles Edward Athey, 1.Y8l
William C. Baxter, 1923
Drew H. Beatty, 1903
Dr. William Brewer, 1823
Frederick VV. Brune, 1874
Benjamin Duvall Chambers, 1905
Henry M. Cooper, Jr., 1934
Walter I. Dawkins, 1880
Robert F. Duer, Jr., 1921
Dr. Philip H. Edwards, 1898
Joseph W. Fastner, Jr., 1960
Allen Lester Fowler, 191.?
Edna G. and Roscoe-E. Grove, 1910
Charles W. Hass, 1927
Dr. Amos F. Hutchins, 1906
Clarence T. Johnson, 1909
Clifford L. Johnson, 1911
Helen B. Jones and Robert 0. .Jones, 1916
Jonathan D. Korshin, 1966
Oliver M. Korshin, 1963
Dr. W. Oscar La:tvlotte, 1902
Hi,OOO.OO
25,000.00
13,705.2{)
Corp. George E. Cunniff III, 1930
Faculty
John T. Harrison, 1907
Hillhouse High School, 1927
Richard H. Hodgson, 1906
Alfred Houston, 1906, Student Aid
Houston Regional
Jesse H. Jones and Mary Gibbs Jones
Robert E. and l'vlargarel Larsh Jones, 1909
Arthur E. and Hilda Combs Landers, 1930
Massachusetts Regional
Philip A. Myers II, 1938
Oklahoma Regional
Thomas Parran, 1911, Memorial
Pittsburgh Regional
Readers Digest Foundation
Clifton A Roehle
Murray Joel Rosenberg Memorial
Hazel Norris and]. Graham Shannahan, 1908
Clarence Stryker
Friedrich J. Von Schwerdtner
STUDENT LOAN FUND ENDUWMENTS:
George Friedland
John David Pyle, Hl62, Memorial
$
28,771.13
·I
1,100.00
5,825.00
25.00
500.00
125.00
854.50
2,637.50
1,000.00
$
$
200.00
125.00
507.00
!,000.00
58,682.82
3,265.00
1,135.44
2,000.00
500.00
16,555.96
10.00
658.18
100.00
100.00
18,357.00
200.00
200.00
5,!10.00
335.00
985.00
500.00
633.00
7,563.00
i
50,241.13
$
21,470.00
-----
1,100.00
5,825.00
25.00
700,00
250.00
1,361.50
2,637.50
2,000.00
58,682.82
3,600.00
2,120.44
2,000.00
1,000.00
16,555.96
110.00
1,291.18
100.00
100.00
25,920.00
200.00
200.00
5,140.00
-------
19
�~
The College
125.00
625.00
1,000.00
23,223.16
1,020.00
5,000.00
325.00
441.50
4,000.00
600.00
12,218.68
100.00
5,0000.00
10,000.00
5,133.34
1,000.00
1,107.00
850.66
502.00
100.00
4,300,50
500.00
28,633.39
3,000.00
2,500.00
125.00
625.00
2,000.00
John H. E. Legg, 1921
William Lentz, 1912
Leola H. and Thomas W. Ligon, 1916
Col. Harrison McAlpine, 1909
James R. McClintock, 1965, Prize Fund
Vincent W. McKay, 1946
Robert F. Maddox, 1876
William L. Mayo, 1899
Ridgley P. Melvin, 1899
Wm. S. Morsell, 1922, AthlcLic Fund
John Mullan, 1847
Walter C, My lander, Jr., 1932
M. Keith Neville, 1905
Dr. John 0. Neustadt, 1939
Blanchard Ranc\all, 1874
Susan Irene Roberts, 1966
Leroy T. Rohrer, 1903
Harrison Sasscer, 1944
G H, Schoff, 1889
Henry F. Sturdy, 1906
Rev. Enoch M. Thompson, 1895
John Tucker, 1914
Dr. RobertS. G. Welsh, 1913
Dr. \Villis H. White, I 922
Amos W. W. VVomkock, 1903
23,223.16
2,040.00
5,000.00
650.00
441.50
4,000.00
600.00
12,218.68
200,00
10,000.00
20,000.00
5,133.34
2,000.00
1,107.00
1,180.66
502.00
200.00
•1,300.50
1,000.00
28,633.39
6,000.00
2,500.00
250.00
1,250.00
3,000.00
1,020.00
325.00
100.00
5,000.00
10,000,00
1,000.00
330.00
100,00
500.00
3,000.00
$ 231,306.63
OTHER ENDOWMENTS:
Hertha S. and Jesse L Adams
Concert Fund
Alumni Memorial Book Fund
Philo Sherman Bennett l'rize Fund
Benwood Foundation Library Fund
George A. Bingley Memorial Fund
Scott Buchanan Memorial Fund
Helen C. and George Davidson, Jr., 1916
Fund for Tomorrow Lectureship
Floyd Hayden Prize Fund
Mary Safford Hoogewerff Memorial
Library Fund
Library Fund
Monterey lVIackey Memorial Fund
Emily Boyce Mackubin Fund
Ellen C. Murphy tvfemorial Library Fund
Kate lVloore Myers Landscaping Fund
Henry H. and Cora Dodson Sasscer
Newspaper Fund
Adolph \V. Schmidt Fund
Richard Scofield lviemorial Fund
Mrs. Blair T. Scott Memorial Pri7e Fund
Kathryn Mylroie Stevens Memorial Prize Fund
. Clare Eddy and Eugene V. Thaw, 1947,
Lectureship Fund
Elma R. and Charles D. Todd Memorial
Library Fund
Clara B. \.Yeiglc Memorial Library Fund
Daniel E. Weigle and Jessie N. Weigle
Memorial Fund
The Jack Wilen Foundation Library Fund
in Memory of Murray Joel Rosenberg
Victor Zuckerkandl J\llcmorial Fund
Alumni Endowment
General Endowment
$
31,973.00
$ 266,279.63
60,000.00
$
60,000,00
$ 120,000.00
·I
355.00
308.ll
25,000.00
14,897.00
5,770.00
20,025.00
3,000.00
77.50
25,000.00
3,000.00
25.00
31,683.07
560.00
400.00
75,192A3
1,500,00
124,349.36
400.00
1,500.00
355.00
308.ll
50,000.00
1'1,897.00
5, 770.00
20,025.00
6,000.00
102.50
31,683.07
960.00
400.00
75,192.43
3,000.00
121,349.36
1,500.00
15,627.86
895.00
517.95
1,250.00
1,500.00
15,627.86
895.00
517.95
1,250.00
900.00
900.00
19,500.00
1,195.75
19,500.00
39,000.00
1,195.75
2,500.00
2,500.00
1,000.00
19,325.19
205,270.2 I
523,179.04
1,000.00
19,325.19
391,579.21
523,179.04
$1,155,778.'17
186,309.-00
------$ 295,734.00
$1,451,512.47
------
Andrew \.Y. Mellon Foundation Grants
Not Applied to Named Funds
.$
$2,679,845.67
$2,679,845.67
Reservation of ProfitsSale o£ Securities
$ 186,380.89
.$
$ 186,380.89
$4,327,121.31
$4,005,886.67
.$8,333,008.01
Total Endowment Principal
20
�NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
CALIFORNIA CoLLEGE
MoDELED oN ST. JoHN's
St. John's has received news that its
educational program has been adopted
by St. Thomas Aquinas College, a new
school in Calahasas 7 California.
"Unabashedly Catholic," the college
will be staffed by laymen and is mod·
cled on the "Great Books Liberal Arts"
program.
Located on a 200-acre campus near
Malibu, the college will feature a curriculum emphasizing the ''classical
ideal" of educating its students to the
"integrative" thinkers \vith "relentless
logic and absolute dedication to the
truth," according to the August 8th
issue of Twin Circle published by the
National Catholic Press.
The founder and president of the
new college is Dr. Donald P. McArthur, a graduate of St. Mary's College in California who received his
Ph.D. degree at the Pontifical University at Quebec.
Twin Circle notes the St. John's
program has enjoyed ''stunning sue~
cess" since its introduction.
COLLEGE AWARDS DEGREES
TO FIRST SUMMER
GRADUATING CLASS
The first summer class to graduate
from St. John's College received B.A.
degrees at Santa Fe on August 18th:
Douglas Cotler, Stephen R. Deluca,
Twyla Fort Deluca, Cleo Fowler, Bruce
F. Glaspell, Jan Goodman, Marc
Haynes, Lewis M. Johnson, Lynda Jean
Lamson Johnson, Patrick E" Porter
and Gretchen Vadnais.
These eleven students participated
in a special program for students transferring to St. John's with credits from
other· institutions of higher learning.
They were able to complete their work
for a degree in three regular school
yeaiS 7 plus the summer course, which
included writing of an essay and oral
examination on it.
President Richard D. Weigle presided at the informal commencement
program. He was assisted in the graduation exercises held in the Junior
Common of the Peterson Student Center by Tutor David Jones, who headed
the summer studies.
ginia; and Frances T. Zender, Illinois.
The Institute offers four eight-week
courses of study: Politics and Society,
Philosophy and Theology, Mathematics and Natural Science, and Literature.
Completion of all four (or any three
if nine hours of transfer credit are
submitted) leads to the degree of Master of Arts.
GRADUATE INSTITUTE
COMPLETES SUCCESSFUL
SUMMER
Recently the City Council of Annapolis unanimously voted to expand
the boundaries of the Annapolis Historic District to include St. John's College and additional areas within the
old city.
One of the new boundaries extends
from the city to College Creek, the
northwest portion of the 36 acre campus.
Last December the Board of Visitors
and Governors unanimously agreed- to
approve the inclusion of the College in
the District after the Annapolis Faculty
Campus Development Committee recommended the action.
The expansion of the District was
made to assure the preservation of the
historic atmosphere of a wider area of
the old city.
One disadvantage to the College
would be the requirement that all
architectural plans for new buildings or
for renovation of old buildings would
have to be approved by the Historic
District Commission.
On the positive side, it would seem
inclusion in the District, which is reg~
istered in Washington, D.C., would
help to assure the long-term future of
the College from any possible incursions by outside organizations.
The College is already included in
a National Historic District, designated
by the federal government.
The summer Graduate Institute in
Liberal Education enrolled a record
total of 140 this year and awarded
Master of Arts' degrees to eighteen
students from five states and the District of Columbia. It was the fifth summer on the Santa Fe campus for the
advanced studies program based on
readings in the major works of Western
thought.
Robert Neidorf, a Tutor at St. John's
College, is Director of the Graduate
Institute. 'T'hc commencement speaker
was James P. Shannon, who directed
the Institute in 1969-70 and is now a
student in the School of Law at the
University of New Mexico.
Members of this year's graduating
class, the third since the Institute was
started in 1967, included: New Mexico-Lucy MacGillivray Dix, Susan
Kinslow, Betty Ann Milligan, Mary
Navratil, Eleanor Bramlett Ortiz,
Bruce Rolstad and Herbert Weinstein,
all of Santa Fe; Maryland-Bela Kissh,
Alice F. Kurs, Paul M. Blackwell,
Cecilia JVI. Holtman and Mary P. Justice; VVashington, D.C.-Juanita Goodson Allen, Edna F. Frye and Lovie W.
Ward; other states-Debbe R. Goldberg, Ohio; Jane G. Lemmond, Vir-
ST. JOHN'S IN ANNAPOLIS
INCLUDED IN HISTORIC DISTRICT
21
�The College
MARK VAN DoREN WRITES
SPECIAL POEM FOR ST. JoHN'S
275TH ANNIVERSARY
OBSERVANCE
lVIark Van Doren, one of America's
most distinguished men of letters, gave
the main address at the August 8th
Anniversary celebration in Santa Fe.
Mr. Van Doren has written numerous poems, plays, novels, short stories
and books of literary criticism. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for
his Collected Poems. He was a professor of English at Columbia University
for almost 40 years and is a mcm bcr
of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. The Autobiography of Mark
Van Doren was pu blishcd in 19 58 and
1968. President vVeiglc, in introducing ~
him, cited Mr. Van Doren's book Lib- ~
eral Education as a major factor in Mr. ~
Weigle's decision to accept the presi- ~
dency of St. John's in 1949.
~
''St. John's College more than sur- 2
vives, it flourishes," !vir. Van Doren The poet and the Governor-Mark Van Doren and Druce King, Ne\V J-..rJexico's chief executive·said in preface to his speech entitled at the ''Summer Celebration" in Santa Fe, August 8th.
"How to Praise a World That May
Not Last?" He said Dean Darkey had Place so ermvdcd with his creaturespaintings at T'yson's Corner, Virginia;
suggested he might wish to speak on \Vith us all----{)h, praise the time
a one-man show at St. John's; and a
That's left, ·praise here and now, praise
the act and the art of praise.
Master Thesis show at the University
Him that by his own sweet will
"I said yes, of course, I would come May suddenly remake the world
of Maryland. Her works have been
and talk about praise. And I would Forever, ever, ever, ever.
in sales and rental galleries of the Baleven do some praising. I would not
timore Museum of Art and the Corpraise this or that thing, this or that ANNAPOLIS APPOINTS
coran ~~Iuseum of Art in Washington,
person. I would praise everything and
D.C.
New ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
everybody. I would have the nerve to
In 1965 she won second prize in the
praise the world."
JVIrs. ~~Iichon Semon, a former grad~ Advanced Art Student Competition at
During his remarks, he quoted three nate assistant at the University of the University of South Florida, and
of his poems and he closed \vith one Maryland in College Park, has been third prize in 1966 at the Annual Sidewritten especially for the occasion:
appointed Artist-in-Residence for the walk Art Festival in Orlando. Her
Annapolis campus for 1971-72.
works were exhibited in the 1966 Area
A native of Portland, Oregon, Mrs. Show of University Teachers and
IIow praise a 1vorld that will not be
Forever? Stillness then. Time
Semon lives in Laurel, Maryland. She Pupils in Clearwater, Florida, as well.
Sleeping, never to wake. No prince's
received her B.A. degree in fine arts in
Kiss. No prince. Praise? E\'en
1966 from the University of South SANTA FE RECEIVES GIFT FROM
'l'he echo of it dies, even
Florida in Tampa, and her M.A. degree
Memory, in the last brain
ARTHUR VINING DAVIS
in fine arts in 1970 from the University
That lm·ed it, withers away, and in mind
FouNDATION
Not even dozes, being done
of Maryland.
\Vith work that mattered not at all.
In 1960 Mrs. Semon taught a sumSt. John's in Santa Fe has received a
IIow then praise nothing?
mer recreation program in the fine arts grant of $75,000 from the Arthur VinYet that day
at an Episcopal summer camp in ing Davis Foundation of Miami, FloriI las ncYer dawned. Here is the world
Florida, and in 1969 an adult recreation da. The contribution to the general
So beautiful, being old, so
class for Prince Georges County in support of the College will be made
:rviindftil of its maker-what
Maryland.
in three payments: $35,000 this year,
Of him when that day comes-you say
In 1970-71 her exhibitions included $25,000 in 1972, and $15,000 in 1973.
It mnst-vvhat then of him, and of this
24
�October l 971
admitted to St. John's on the basis of
NEW APPLICATION PoLICY
AT ST. JOHN'S
their own qualifications, not by com-
parison with other applicants. There-
The College recently adopted radically new application procedures: it
fore, it would be unfair, and even
asks for no irrelevant information and
come, first-served basis."
pointless, not to admit them on a first-
requires no application fee.
Admissions Director in Annapolis,
Michael W. Ham, Class of 1961, stated
in the announcement that "we admit
persons, not collections of numbers and
statistics. Therefore, we try to give the
applicant a chance to tell us of his
judgments and his values."
All of the traditional but non-pertinent requests-for the applicant's
height, weight, age; for the names of
the other colleges to which he has
applied, and whether he was accepted
or rejected; for the parents' name,
oc~
cupations, college background-all are
gone.
Instead the applicant supplies no
demographic data beyond his or her
name, address, and telephone number.
The rest of the application consists of
answers to searching questions on the
applicant's evaluation of his education,
his non-school experience, his experi-
ence with books, and his plans for his
education and his life.
Mr. Ham and Mr. Gerald F. Zollars,
Class of 1965 and Admissions Director
in Santa Fe, recently revised the entire
application form.
The College has also discontinued
the application fee, the non-refundable,
non-applicable charge of $10-25 that
must accompany applications to almost
every college in the United States.
"There is no . reason/' added Mr.
Ham, "why an applicant should have
to pay in order to find out if he is
acceptable as a student at St. John's.
The six to ten pages of essay writing
that are usually written in answering
our questions-and I have seen applications much longer-eliminate frivolous applications."
St. John's will continue its policy of
rolling admissions, in which an application is acted upon as soon as it is
completed, and the applicant is notified immediately of the decision.
Mr. Paul D. Newland, Provost in
Annapolis, noted that "students are
SANTA FE AssociATES
VISIT SEMINARS
Members of the Boards of Associates
for St. John's in Santa Fe gather at the
College from time to time to hear
reports on its progress and to meet
students, Tutors and officers. The Associates are friends of the College in
Santa Fe, Los Alamos and Albuquerque who help interpret St. John's to
their communities. In September they
were invited to have dinner in the
student dining hall and visit seminars
to see how they are conducted.
In July the Associates met at the
Peterson Student Center for dinner
and to hear and see a report from
President and Mrs. Weigle on their
recent travels in Africa, Russia and
England. Although not a fund-raising
group, the Associates contributed
nearly $500 to help pay Commencement Ball expenses as their gift to the
senior class. Mr. A. J. Taylor is the
FIVE TUTORS JoiN
SANTA FE FACULTY
Five Tutors joined the Santa Fe Faculty this fall, including one who transferred from Annapolis-Mr. Aaron
Kirschbaum.
Mrs. Vida Chcsnulis Clift received
her B.A. degree magna cum laude from
Radcliffe, her M.A. degree from Berkeley and her Ph.D. degree from Harvard where she has taught English,
composition and narrative fiction.
Mrs. Carolyn Higgins Richards graduated summa cum laude from the Uni-
versity of Colorado and won Phi Beta
Kappa honors. She received her M.A.
and Ph.D. degrees in history from
Stanford University. She was an instructor in the history of Western civilization at Brooklyn College and taught
English and history at Santiago (Chile)
College, where she also was an assistant
to the Dean of Studies.
Mr. Allan Pearson received an A.B.
degree from Boston College and an
A.M. degree from Boston University.
He attended the University of Munich
on a German government grant in
1964-65. He taught German language
and literature at Berkeley and was a
lecturer in German language, literature
chairman of the Santa Fe Associates,
and culture at the University of Cal-
and he has been very active in efforts
to help strengthen College-community
relationships.
ifornia at Riverside.
MRS. NEIDORF PRESENTS
CONCERT
Mezzo-soprano Mary Neidorf and
pianist Gillian McHugh presented a
concert August 3rd in the Peterson
Student Center at Santa Fe. Mrs. Neidorf is the wife of Robert Ncidorf, St.
John's Tutor and director of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education.
Mrs. Ncidorf has sung in numerous
oratorios, operas, and musical com-
edies. Mrs. McHugh is a graduate of
the Royal Academy of Music in London, England. She was three times
winner of the Bach piano contests of
Western England and various open
piano competitions. She was a soloist
last spring with the St .. John's College
Chamber Orchestra.
Mr. C. Donald Knight is a graduate
of Baker University, Kansas, and he
received his M.A. degree from the University of Toronto (Canada) where he
was a Teaching Fellow in moral philosophy and also participated in an experimental high school. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Annamalai University
in India.
TUTOR NAMED VICE PRESIDENT
AT SAINT MARY'S
Mr. Thomas J. Slakey resigned as
Tutor at St. John's in Santa Fe this
summer to accept an appointment as
academic vice president of Saint Mary's
College of California. A magna cum
laude graduate of Saint Mary's in 1952,
Mr. Slakcy was affiliated with St. John's
for eleven years, joining the faculty in
Annapolis in 19 59 and moving to .the
·new campus at Santa Fe in 1964.
25
�The College
Minnesota in 1959. Upon his graduation he received fellowships from
the Danforth, National Science, and
Woodrow Wilson Foundations.
He is married to the former Elizabeth Stoltz of Minnesota and they
have five children.
Nominations for the Outstanding
Educators of America awards program
arc made by officials of colleges and
universities including presidents, deans,
and other faculty members. Guidelines for the selection include an educator's talents in the classroom, contribtJ.tions to research, administrative
abilities, civic se1vice, and professional
recognition.
THREE FULL SCHOLARSHIPS
AWARDED TO FRESHMEN OF
INDIAN AND HISPANIC DESCENT
Annapolis Tutor Robert L. Spaeth (left) is interviewed by Paul F. Rhetts, Producer, Public
Affairs, Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting, on a television program, "Crosstalk," which was
broadcast on Channels 67 and 28.
TUTOR CHOSEN
OUTSTANDING EDUCATOR
Robert L. Spaeth, a Tutor in Annapolis, has been chosen an Outstanding Educator of America for 1971.
Nominated earlier this year, he was
selected for the honor on the basis of
his civic and professional achievements.
Outstanding· Educators of America
is an annual awards program honoring
distinguishcd.men and women for their
exceptional service, achievements, and
leadership in the fi'ld of education.
Annapolis Dean Robert A. Goldwin
was named an Outstanding Educator
in 1970.
Newspaper accounts of Mr. Spaeth's
honor led to a television interview on
"Crosstalk," a program designed espe~
cially for educators who have interesting sidelights. A conversation with Mr.
Spaeth covering St. John's College in
detail was broadcast three times in
September on Channel 67, WMPB,
26
in the Baltin1ore area, and on Channel
28, WCPB, on Maryland's Eastern
Shore.
A member of the College Faculty
since 1963, Mr. Spaeth served as an
Assistant Dean from 1966 to 1971. He
was Director of the Summer Program
in Annapolis in 1969 and 1970.
In 1969 Mr. Spaeth was elected an
alderman from the Third Ward of the
City of Annapolis, and in 1970 he was
elected to the Anne Arundel County
Democratic State Central Committee.
He is a member of the City-County
Joint Committee on the Property Tax
Differential and a Commissioner on
the Urban Renewal Authority. He is
chairman of the Housing Committee
of the City Council. Last summer he
was at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., doing research on the
economic impact of airport noise.
The Tutor is a native of St. Cloud,
Minnesota, and a s·umma cum laude
graduate of St. John's University in
St. John's in Santa Fe awarded three
full scholarships funded by the Noyes
Foundation to freshmen of American
Indian and Hispanic descent: Anna
Dean Arcvalos, Fowler, Colorado;
Ernest A. Torres, Farmington, New
Mexico; and Cynthia E. Williams of
Santa Fe.
This is the first year these scholarships have been available. They cover
full tuition, room and board fees, and
a campus job.
INDIAN LEADERS ADDRESS
MoNTHLY MEETINGS
AT SANTA FE
The monthly series of dinner meetings in Santa Fe called "The Indian
Table" has lined up a full schedule of
speakers on politics, education and the
arts for 1971-72. They include, among
others, Governor Robert Lewis of the
Zuni Pueblo, Chairman Benny Atencio
of the All-Indian Pueblo Council, and
Fritz Scholder, well-known artist. Attendance is by invitation and around 30
townspeople, students and Tutors
regularly participate in the lectures and
discussions to be held on the third
Tuesday of each month during the
school year, except for December and
March.
�ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
PROFILE
In the year in which St. John's celebrates the founding of King William's
School, it seems appropriate that we
publish the profile of an alumnus who
is vitally concerned with matters of historical record. In so doing we are also
featuring the first pre-1937 graduate to
appear in this series.
Gust Skordas was born in Washington, D.C., was raised in Virginia, and
moved to Annapolis in 1928. Two years
later, after graduation from Annapolis
High School, he entered St. John's
College. Mr. Skordas majored in economics, and received his B.A. degree
in 1934. In a recent interview he spoke
fondly of Greek classes with John
Kieffer, freshman English with the late
Richard Scofield, and English with
Ford K. Brown.
While at St. John's Mr. Skordas was
historian of the Varsity Club for one
year, which was as long as the Club
lasted, he recalls. He was quarterback
of the football team for two years, and
lettered in basketball his senior year.
The 1934 Rat-Tat alleges that he was
the best passer on the football team
his junior year; frmn the accounts of
the 1933 season, he must also have
been a great running back.
Upon graduation Mr. Skordas performed a variety of j'odd jobs" until he
went to work for the Maryland Hall
of Records on August 2, 1937. He
started as a general research assistant,
and four years later was promoted to
assistant archivist.
The Hall of Records, under the
supervision of the Hall of Records
Commission, is administered by the
State Archivist. It is charged by the
General Assembly with being the repository of non-current documents and
records of Maryland State agencies,
cities, towns, and counties. For exam-
Maryland's Governor Marvin M~mdel and St. John's President Richard D. Weigle examine
the King WilliaU1's School Charter which is exhibited in the Maryland Hall of Records on the
campus in Annapolis. Standing, left to right, are Profile subject Gust Skordas '34, assistant
archivist of Maryland; Mrs. P. James Underwood of Historic Annapolis, Inc., in a costume
of the period; and Paul D. Newland, Provost of the Annapolis campus.
ple, courthouse records which were
created before April 28, 1788, the date
on which Maryland ratified the Federal Constitution, must by law be
deposited in the Hall of Records. As a
matter of interest to alumni, a number
of historic documents of the College
are also stored there.
Gust Skordas, Assistant Archivist of
Maryland, has been a Fellow of the
American Society of Archivists since
1959, and was among the first members to gain that status. (Only ten percent of the membership is elected to
fellowships.)
A contributor to a number of pro~
fessional journals, Mr. Skordas is the
editor of The Early Settlers of Mart
land, Genealogical
Company, Baltimore, 1968. In au•uaw••>
has co-edited or contributed
""·""""'" '
eleven publications of the
Records Commission.
Mr. Skordas is married toth<efj)\(}"
Anita Parkinson of
have a son, Ralph,
ifornia, and who is the
two grandchildren.
�The College
agents, and telephone volunteers who made this year's
results possible. We at the College are most grateful for
their help.
For .comparison, we present the results of the last four
campmgns:
1967-68 1968-69 1969-70 1970-71
ALUMNI ANNUAL GIVING
Perhaps by the time this is published, the final report
on Alumni Annual Giving will be in print; that depends
in large part on how soon we complete Homecoming planning. To cover any eventuality, therefore, we herewith present a brief summary report.
The 1970-71 Campaign was simply the best ever. While
the figures themselves are significant, they become more
important in light of the economic situation which has
existed in this country for the past several years. Our
alumni obviously have not been dissuaded from supporting
their College.
Highest praise must certainly go to the Campaign
Chairman Jack Ladd Carr and the class captains, volunteer
---·
Unrestricted Gifts $14,390
P crcen t Response
13.1%
Alumni Donors
363
King William Associates
$21,200
22.5%
629
83
·----
$26,139
29.2%
828
87
$30,483
30.5%
883
99
(The designation "King William Associates" was first ap·
plied to donors of unrestricted gifts of $100 or more during the 1968-69 Campaign.)
ALUMNI DELEGATES
From September, 1970, through
May, 1971, the following alumni graciously represented the College on the
occasions indicated:
H. Willard Stern '43, at the inauguration of Nathan W ciss as president of
Newark State University; Stephen
Benedict '47, the inauguration of Harris
Wofford as president of Bryn Mawr
College; Jolm D. Oosterlwut '51, the
convocation in observance of the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Montgomery College (Maryland); Dr. Robert L. Burwell, Jr. '32,
the inauguration of Merlyn Winfield
Northfelt as president of Garrett Theological Seminary (Illinois); James M.
Green, Jr. '60, the fiftieth anniversary
convocation and inauguration of Alfonsc Ralph Miele as president of The
College of St. Rose (New York); and
William M. Davis '63, the installation
of John Robert Silber as president of
Boston University.
CLASS NOTES
1921
A call from 'Vi11iam I-I. Y. Knighton informs us that the Golden Anniversaty Class
is planning a class reunion at Homecoming
time. A vety fine turn-out is expected for a
reunion dinner at the Stafford Hotel in Baltimore on Friday, October 15th. (A detailed report will appear in the December issue.)
The group plans then to come to Annapolis
for the various activities on Saturday.
with the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone
Co. According to his brother, the newly-retired Mr. Clark will devote his time to such
interests as travel, golf, and bridge. As a
matter of additional interest in this anniversary
year, the Clarks' sixth-great-grandfather, Colonel
Edward Dorsey, was one of the original trustees
of King \Villiam's School.
1931
James D. Morris's son Jim, whose career with
the Metropolitan Opera Company shows
promise of stardom, is scheduled to give a
concert at \Vashington College, Chestertown,
J'vlaryhmd, on next April 4th.
1935
Mmyland Governor Marvin Mandel recently
appointed John C. Donohue as chairman of the
Board of Election Supervisors of Baltimore
City.
1945
\Ve have just learned that Kenneth G.
Gehret is education editor of the Christian
Science I\1onitor.
The Rev. Christian A. IIovde may be a
bishop by the time this issue appears. An
early summer convention to elect a suffragan
bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago
resulted in a three-way deadlock, with Father
Hovde one of the nominees. Another election
was to be held in October in an effort to break
the deadlock. Father Hovde is director of
the Bishop Anderson House in Chicago.
John D. Mack this summer left his position
as executive vice president of Cbirol Company
to join The Gillette Company as group vice
president of Gillette North America,
1947
Richard S. Harris continues his insightful
probing of the many facets of the Federal government in a series on political campaign spending in The New Yorker.
He i:> now Deputy Director, Office of Population and Civic Development, Bureau for
L8tin America, ALD., U. S. Department
of State, in Washington, D. C. Mr. Davies
makes his home in Riverdale, New York.
Alan S. Maremont is now the Executive
Director of the Mid-Peninsula Coalition Housing Fund, with offices in Palo Alto, California.
Jules Pagano is now a professor of sociology
at Florida Internatimml University in Miami.
Another Pagano, LeRoy E., until recently
professor of management and department
chairman at Federal City College in Washington, ha::; moved to the Department of Industrial Engineering at Newark College of
Engineering.
1950
Last spring the World Research Institute at
Villanova University, John J. Logue, director,
was the site of a three-day "Fate of the Oceans"
Conference. Ecology, Seabed Authority, and
Ocean Wealth were the major topics for discussion by an international panel of students,
scientists, civic leaders, diplomats, and professors.
1951
A recent visitor to the Annapolis campus
\vas Richard J. Batt, in town to do some research for his doctoral dissertation on American
Revolutionary History. Mr. Batt received an
LL.B. degree from Tulane University in 1954,
and was in the private practice of law until
1968. He entered Tvlane 1s graduate school
in 1967, and has taught there and at Newcomb College, Tulane's Women's College, since
1970.
L. Donald Koontz writes that he saw John
Franke, Jr., in Detroit at the annual meeting
of the National Education Association. Mr.
Franke teaches in St. Petersburg, F1orida, and
is a member of the NEA Resolutions Committee. Mr. Koontz, president of the Cherry Creek
(Colorado) Teacher's Association, also leads a
Great Books discussion group in his spare time.
1927
1948
1952
Louis D. Clark writes that his brother, Henry
B. Clark, has retired after 4 3 years of service
Peter J. Davies has returned to the United
States after many years abroad with USAID.
Vlilliam D. Grimes has accepted a two-year
assignment to London as representative to the
28
�r-··
October 1971
United Kingdom for the U. S. Naval Ordnance
I ,a bora tory at White Oak, Silver Spring, Maryland. '11le 22nd staff member to hold this
position since 1941, Mr. Grimes's major role
is to provide for a ready exchange between
British and American nava1 ordnance research
and development activities. Mrs. Grimes
(Diane), son Bill, and daughters Corky and
Lauralce \Vill accompany Mr. Grimes.
1955
Classmates and friends of Elisabeth M.
Chiem will be pleased to know that on August
25th she successfully passed oral examination
on her senior essay, "The Concept of Property
in Karl Marx", and thus completed all_ requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts
from St. John's College.
1956
Pasquale L. Polillo and his vvife Sandi
adopted a baby girl, Liza Sloane, this past
spring. About the same time Mr. Polillo was
elected chairman of the California Assocjatctl
Press Television-Radio Association. He has
just completed his first year as News Director
of KGO-TV in San Francisco.
1962
Wlilliam R Salisbury, Attorney-Adviser in
the Office of the Legal Adviser, Department of
State, was recently promoted to Classs 5 in
the Foreign Service. He is married to the
fanner S. Diane Curns of Detroit.
1964
Mary (Biggar) J\1ain is co-author, with T.
Berry Brazelton, M.D., of an article in the
September issue of Rcdbook. Entitled "Arc
There Too Many Sights and Sountls in Yonr
Baby's World?", the article concerns the effects
of various external stimuli on infants.
John F. White has joined the Annapolis
facnlty this year. Since graduation from St.
John's he has earned a M.A. degree from. the
New School for Social Research and IS a
doctoral candidate.
1965
Jan F. Rlits joined. the faculty in Colby
College in July as an instructor in the department of government. Mr. Blits has taught at
the Cathedral School_ in New York City and
the American International School in Zurich,
Switzerland. He earned a M.A. degree at the
New School for Social Research, and during
this past summer has been studying under
a National Science Foundation Fellowship.
1966
George F. Kramer (SF) rcceived'his Juris
Doctor degree in June from the University of
New Mexico Law School.
July lst brought a visit from Marine Captain
Peter S. Morosoff. He was on his \vay from
Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to Ft. SiB,
Oklahoma, \Vherc he will undergo advanced
artil'cry training for about nine months.
1968
After leaving St. John's, John L. Bergman
graduated from the State University of New
York, and is no\v studying for a doctor's degree in the history of science at The Johns
IIopkins Universi-ty.
John McCaflery (SF) has joined the Holy
Order of Mans in Chicago. l'ather McCaffery
writes that he is grateful for the \VOrk he did
at St. John's in Santa Fe.
Just after the last issue went to press \ve
received an excellent letter from C. Kerry
Nemovicller. He writes that St. John's is much
on his mind as he pursues his duties as a
second lieutenant in the Israeli Army. Lt.
Nemovichcr is now married to a native-born
Israeli, Miss IIadassah Ben Sasson, a graduate
of the University of Tel Aviv \vith majors in
history and Bible.
The class of 1968 did well with letters this
summer; early July brought one from George
\V. Partlow, yvith the Peace Corps in Jamaica.
He has been \Vorking in a joint nniversitygovernment project to up-grade mathematics
teaching in primRry schools on the ishmd, and
has just extended for a third year. His address
is c/o Peace Corps, P.O.B. 107, Kingston,
Jamaica, \V.I.
Amelia Ruth (Hummel) Rarick graduated
in June from TI:c George _\Vashingt~n U,niyersity, with spccml honors m economiCS. She
has held t11e position of summer research assistant \Vith the International Bank for Rcconstmction and Development, and has been
awardee'~ a Virginia State Library Fellowship
for study at the University of Maryland library
schooL
Sarah (Braddock) WI cstrick has been accepted
this £811 as a student at Ursinus College.
1969
Philip G. Holt and Miss Meredith Morgan
of Austin, Texas, were married on August 23rd.
-Mr. Holt \Vill pursue his classical studies at
St:mford University this fa11, after what he
terms "a very good decompression period after
St. John's" at the University of Texas.
HOMECOMING OcTOBER
15-16
Since a detailed Homecoming schedule was mailed about the time this
went to press, we will not repeat it
here. The July issue listed the 275th
Anniversary Celebration events, to
which all alumni are cordially invited.
Of special interest will he a paper by
Jacob Klein, about the St. John's
Seminar to be presented Friday afternoon. A panel discussion will follow.
Alumni activities that week-end will
include an informal party Friday night;
alumni seminars and a graduate school
discussion for students on Saturday
morning; the Annual JVIeeting in the
afternoon; the Alumni Reception and
Dinner; and informal parties Saturday
night. Make your plans now to join
us in Annapolis.
1
1970
A postcarc'l note from Jolin R. Dean, sent
from r..llunich, Germany, informs us that he
spent the summer in Bavaria_ learning Ge~man,
climbing the Alps, and tcstmg the quahty ?f
German beer. The language study was m
connection \vith his doctoral \vork at the University of l\llassachusetts, the other two activities
purely for enjoyment.
Stephen J. Forman, now in hi~ sec_ond year
at the University of Southern Cahforma School
of l\lfedicinc, writes that he was elected president of the student body of the school last
spring. He comments that while the first year
of medical school may be harder for a St.
John's graduate because of the ~uantity ~f
the information he must absorb, his academ1c
background is a distinct atlvantagc.
In Memoriam
1912-Dr. Mark Ziegler, Olney, Mel .• July
24, 197!.
191 ~-Asa
\Villard
Joyce,
Millersville,
Mel .• July 30, 1971.
1916-Hiram F. Plummer, Jr., Baltimore,
Mel., July 6, 197!.
1921-Gcorge B. Woelfel, Sr., Annapolis,
Md., July 22, 1971.
1931-IIorace H. Snow, Jr., Truro, Mass.,
July 2!, 1971.
1934-W. Thetford LeViness, Santa Fe,
N. M., September 9, 1971.
1935-John H. Von Dree1e III, Annapolis,
Mel., June 18, 1971.
Baltimore,
1953-Bemard H. Ude1, Vi/ashington,
D. C., July 12, 197!.
1923-Gen. \Villiam C. Pnrnc11, Linthicum, Md., June 23, 1971.
1970-Susan Una Schnurr, New York City,
!968.
1922-W. Beaton Connolly,
Md., June 30, 1971.
29
�Friends of St. John's College and the Santa Fe Opera enjoy the "Summer Celebration" honoring the College's 275th
anniversary and the Opera's world premiere performance of "Yerma" by Villa-Lobos.
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
·>i
•·.·
' ····
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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<em>The College </em>(1969-1981)
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The College, October 1971
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Volume XXIII, Number 3 of <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in October 1971.
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The_College_Vol_23_No_3_1971
President's Report
Presidents
The College
-
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Text
'sReview
St. John's College
1784-1984
Summer, 1984
�Editor:
J. Walter Sterling
Managing Editor:
Thomas Parran, ·Jr.
Editorial Assistant:
Jason Walsh
Editorial Board:
Eva Brann
S. Richard Freis,
Alumni representative
Joe Sachs
Cary Stickney
Curtis A. Wilson
'
Unsolicited articles, stori~s, and poems
are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope in each instance. Reasoned
comments are also welcome.
The St. John's Review (formerly The College) is published by the Office of the
Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre,
President, Samuel S. Kuder, Dean.
Published thrice yearly, in the winter,
spring, and summer. For those not on
the distribution list, subscriptions:
$12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or
$36.00 for three years, payable in advance. Address all correspondence to
The St. John's Review, St. John's College,
Annapolis, Maryland 21404.
Volume XXXV, Number 3
Summer, 1984
©
1984 St. John's College; All rights
reserved. Reproduction in whole or in
part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Compos£t£on: Fishergate Publishing Co., Inc.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co.
Cover courtesy State of Maryland
Maryland State Archives. Laws 1784
Chapter 37 Page 1.
�THE
StJohn's Review
Contents
2
A Search for the Liberal College (book review)
Joseph Killorin
6
The Analysis of Fictions
Scott Buchanan
15 . . . . . .
The Breathing Side of Ocean (poem)
William Thompson
16 . . . . . .
The Problem and the Art of Writing
jacob Klein
23 . . . . . .
Passage (poem)
Elliot Zuckerman
24 . . . . . .
The Myth and the Logic of Democracy
John S. Kiiffer
31 . . . . . .
Bandusia, Flower of Fountains (poem)
Richard Freis
32 . . . . . .
On Mimesis
Victor Zuckerkandl
40 . . . . . .
The Archimedean Point and the Liberal Arts
Curtis Wilson
48 . . . . . .
The P~ogram of St. John's College
·Eva T H. Brann
OccASIONAL DrscouRsEs
56 . . . . . .
Sermon Preached at St. Anne's Church, Annapolis
J Winfree Smith
59 . . . . . .
The Golden Ages of St. John's College
Eva Brann
62 . . . . . .
William Smith: Godfather and First President of St. John's College
Arthur Pierce Middleton
BooK REviEw
66 . . . . . .
The Early History of St. John's College in Annapolis
Charlotte Fletcher
68 . . . . . .
The Old Gods (poem)
Gretchen Berg
�BooK REviEw
Summer 1984
A Search for the Liberal College
]. Winfree Smith, St. John's Press, Annapolis, 1983, vii+135 pp., $11.00
Joseph Kill orin
T
his is the story of how a man conceived
and founded, as an act of war against the
familiar educational enterprises of our age,
a college to cultivate the intellectual virtues
by means of what he called the liberal arts;
how, after a decade, its restle~s and weary maker, overreaching to a grander goal, attempted to confound his
original creation; and how, abandoned by him, it fell at
first into confusion until a second man, after a good
night's sleep, restored it safe and sound on its foundations, not without dire warnings thereafter against safe
foundations and sleep.
Who could possibly have thought, as Winfree Smith
says some did think, "that it would be preferable to have
someone from outside the college tell the story on the
ground that I might be partial to the curriculum and the
men who had most to do with starting and establishing
it"? The same Athenians, perhaps, who thought some
Scythian might tell their story more impartially than
Thucydides? Winfree Smith "went through the program"
under the conscript fathers and has acted for over forty
years a part in the life of the college that itself demands
a chapter. Yet his allegiance to St. John's appears only
in the restraint and decorum with which he presents its
history, and in the clarity with which he handles its principal intellectual concerns. The restraint is that of one
who knows first-hand far more of the facts and has had
cause for far sharper judgements than archives and other
secondary sources record, and which facts and judgements, one assumes, must sometimes therefore be forbidden to this history. On a very few occasions he gives
Joseph Killorin graduated from St. Joh.n's College, Annapolis, in 1947. He
is Callaway Professor of Literature and Philosophy at the Savannah unit of
the University of Georgia.
2
us only the deed with insufficient clue to motive; we
need the help at least of
"Some said ... , while others
said ... :'
Nowhere is Mr. Smith
more discreet or his interpretation more needed than
in the exit of Buchanan at
the conclusion of this history's enthralling central
episode, perhaps misleadingly titled "The Fight with the
Navy in Wartime and the Departure of Barr and
Buchanan:' The chapter begins, "This is a strange and
perhaps incomprehensible story:' Mr. Smith links up the
moves between the Navy and St. John's Board, both of
whom seemed to find this local war they discovered themselves in strange and incomprehensible. No wonder. As
Mr. Smith makes us see, it was a war in one man's soul,
in which war Mr. Barr was merely a messenger, the Navy
was merely an historical occasion, and the St. John's
Board a chorus of friends found to be betrayers. For the
war at the end of Buchanan's career with St.John's was
a psychomachia. The Demiurge, comparing his copy of
St. John's to the pattern laid up in Possibility, raged in
despair. Or, can one say, his "mistaken historical judgement'' at last revealed him to himself as a N essus, not
a Heracles, and in self-horror he demanded that his poisonous "program should be laid on the shelf and forgotten:' As Mr. Smith now presents this story, it is a good
deal more comprehensible than it seemed on the spot
(or even than Mr. Smith made it seem to me on the spot).
But for so byzantine a story, res ipsa non loquitur, or at least
the tears of this res do not speak out.
Buchanan in April 1945 virtually offered to sell the
campus to the Navy. Why within a year did he reverse
himself and decide to fight the government in the name
SUMMER 1984
�of"the great liberal arts college family;' "the sacred city,"
although he still did not wish to continue the college in
Annapolis? And why, after the battle to keep the campus was won, did he denounce the St. John's Board as
"stupid and blind . . . and therefore highly irresponsible to the vision . . . and disloyal" because they wished
to hold on to what they had? Of course Buchanan's life
had always been responsible "to the vision;' but why had
he been overcome with a holy horror at housing this vision in the scaffolding of his own New Program? He
called the New Program merely "a revolutionary blueprint to subvert and rebuild education, ... a bulldozer
inside a Trojan horse." And when after ten years it had
not yet subverted education, he cursed his program not
only as "a mistaken historical judgement;' but as "a poison
corrupting a household at St. John's and ... because of
its being at St. John's it would become a poison wherever
it was tried." It was also, in one of his favorite figures,
"a wind-egg;' an empty birth. (Thirty years later he asked
St. John's students how the search for a liberal college
was going, "and if it's still on, why do you have the same
curriculum now that we had thirty years ago?" [Embers
of the World, p. 180].) Was this turning in 194 7 against
the New Program connected in Buchanan's mind with
his turning from a non-voter to a political activist (on
the national platform committee of the Progressive Party
[Embers, pp. 99-195])? Mr. Smith's summing up of
Buchanan's tormented saga keeps our eye on the
subject -St. John's: if there was a tragedy in all this, he
says, it was that Buchanan's behavior jeopardized the only
college he and they had by losing for it Mellon's $4.5
million.
Not much is illumined in this history of Buchanan's
charm or of his power of mind and character. (Nor do
these things often appear in Wofford's conversations with
him. Perhaps Saul Bellow is needed.) But that mind and
that presence struck all with respect and many with love.
That is why it is so important to comprehend this story
as far as possible.
The community, dispirited if not paralyzed entirely
by the founder's curse, whispered in groups and
floundered for two years. Who now could speak for them?
Anyone would be measured against Buchanan. Yet
neither another Buchanan nor, worse, a new prophet with
a new program could save what they felt was worth the
saving. What was needed was a N uma or, rather, an
Augustus. And of course they knew he had actually been
among them all along. Neither imitator nor innovator,
he was a restorer.
In Scott Buchanan and in Jacob Klein, other faculty
members and students all saw plainly in act before their
eyes what Heidegger called the "faculty of wondering at
the simple, and of taking up and accepting this wondering as one's abode~' And Buchanan's fear that established
routine (even in the best possible curriculum) might inhibit spontaneous learning was also a persistent fear of
Klein's. They both saw college as an abode for practicing the habit of staying awake among the almost over-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
whelming inducements everywhere to sleep in unexamined opinion.
One might gather from Mr. Smith's portraits,
however, that Buchanan and Klein, both as philosophers
and deans, not only differed about why men do not stay
awake, but-far more to the St. John's point-about why
men do stay awake (when they do). Buchanan saw inducements to sleep embedded in the deficiencies of the
educational tools: in second-rate books and curricula, and
in arts unhoned for activating and liberating men's thinking power. Under the spell of the best books and the true
liberal arts the soul of any faculty member and any student learns to fly. Klein saw inducements to sleep welling from within, from "inactivity of vegetative or at best
appetitive souls~' It is a part of our nature, he told our
class, to fall "subservient to the appalling practical
automatism of our way of life;' for intellect to sleep, to
forget, before "the dull onslaught of routine and matterof-fact attitude:' Perhaps the life of almost all men (including in one year all but ten members of St. John's
faculty) is mostly a sleep and a forgetting. But, yet, intellect does not die.
Why do (some?) men desire to stay awake, to know
in the fullest sense? Mr. Smith presents, with an admirable explication, what is obviously a treasured parable
about the two Fathers- treasured, I would guess, because
it shows how one of them (almost?) forgets his own deepest faith, the faith of St. John's. The self-exiled founder
had wandered for six years when he returned to the sacred
city he once said he had poisoned- for a conference.
At St. John's "in the early days," Buchanan
remembered, "we were concerned about the whole range
of virtues, and the theological virtues were seriously inquired into. There was a concern about Faith, Hope, and
Charity ...." Because "the intellect does not live without
faith, without (hedging here; Mr. Smith may have caught
his eye] something ofthe sort ... :• Mr. Smith reminds
us that even Thomas does not see faith "as an imperative
for bringing intellect to life:' But did Buchanan say intellect is dead? Yes. Intellect unwatered by "ideology, faith,
or something or other" has died, he seemed to say, leaving everywhere in the house of dead intellect "a dismal
grim dullness:' The founder's suggestion that without faith
men do not desire to know thrusts to the heart of St.
John's. So Mr. Smith persists, "But did Mr. Buchanan
really mean that without faith (intellect] was dead?" And
the historian charitably answers that this is unlikely, on
the ground that Mr. Buchanan never before had faith
in Faith, but only employed it for "lively intellectual gym_nastic:;s~'
Now, like Mercury bearing the words of Jupiter to
that other wandering founder ("heu! regni rerumque oblite
tuarum!- Alas! forgetful of your own world, your own
kingdom!"), or like Parsifal opening the forgotten shrine
to heal the self-wounded Leader, Klein speaks.
Buchanan: We have to have something that will bring
intellect back to life. I have not any solution for this.
Klein: The intellect lives.
3
�Some men desire to know most fully, and intellect, the
highest activity, is under no necessity to proceed from or
to flower in faith, much less in ideology "or something
or other!' It is this other faith, in intellect itself, that both
of them demonstrated in their lives: the faith that
tormented Buchanan to abandon St. John's and sustained
Klein in restoring it. It was the spectacle of that act of
faith in intellect- most eminently in the lives of those
two and of Leo Strauss, but of others too- that many
of us carried away to ponder in our hearts in all the years
after.
Not, as our historian notes, that this confusion of
faith-in-intellect with faith was not itself a regular theme
for questioning. And indeed Mr. Smith himself usually
led the questioning. Note the extra-dryness of tone when
Mr. Smith recalls Buchanan on the sacraments or the
Incarnation, or rather the idea of them. And there is no
word in the vintner's vocabulary for the dryness with
which we are told that a President of St.John's once said
"the college as such was committed to belief in a God
who listens to and answers petitionary prayer?' Intellect
at St. John's came up against Faith in what seemed to
us at first novel ways: some had Faith (I mean Jews and
Christians now), and hated Theology, while some had
no Faith and loved Theology. And, again, Mr. Smith was
a citizen, we gathered, of Jerusalem, who nevertheless
elected alien residence in Athens. (He once ended a
review of a lecture on Kierkegaard: "Is it necessarily true
that faith in Jesus Christ requires the opposition of
reason? Is reason, after all, that important?" Just as he
couldn't believe Buchanan thought intellect was dead, we
couldn't believe Winfree thought that in any respect reason
was unimportant.) Mr. Buchanan claimed equal citizenship in both Athens and Jerusalem, or rather he thought
that each was also the other. Mr. Klein was a citizen of
Athens, for whom the desirability of citizenship in
Jerusalem was not even discussable. Mr. Kaplan (our
semi-official guide to Jerusalem) and Mr. Scofield (our
strongest guide to tragedy) were life-long renters in the
House of Intellect; we loved them, among many other
reasons, for their smiles of suspicion as they heard out
the landlord in his more aggrandizing moods.
Another persistent theme in the College and appearing in Mr. Smith's account of Mr. Klein was its ambivalent view of history. There was a public ban on
history, as sometimes there is a public ban on alcohol;
one drink can lead to the gutter, a little history can lead
to "historicism," which is the curse of the intellectual class
throughout and since the nineteenth century. Yet we
learned (in the coffee shop) from Mr. Klein that he and
Leo Strauss had studied under the greatest and most subtle "historicist" of all, Heidegger, whose "radical
historicism" seemed to us, after all, a little like the attempt of Mr. Klein himself to make clear the history of
"thinking:' (This conversation followed Mr. Klein's annual week of extra-curricular [!]lectures on the radical
difference between Greek and Cartesian mathematics.)
Yes, it turned out, there was a legitimate form of
4
history- only one: the history of thought (in Mr.
Klein's-and Husserl's-written words) as "the interlacement of original production and 'sedimentation' of
significance." At St. John's we were attempting to reactivate "sedimented" thought, recovering thinking, the
original "wondering at the simple" (the original production would be reflected in the greatest books), out from
history. All along in our often trackless seminar wandering (do they still try to cross Thomas on law with Burnt
Njal?) we had been holding on, Mr. Klein made us see,
to this Ariadne's thread from the thinking of great
thinkers. The way in which Mr. Klein suggested we examine how words present things to us was different from
the ways ofWittgenstein or Austin. We were, it seemed,
superimposing, from our great authors, word on word,
context on .context, examining-as on a palimpsesthow the oldest, the original, handling of this thing showed
through the new and colored it, or, on the other hand,
was blanked out. How startling to see through Descartes,
Hobbes, Leibniz, Swift, Rousseau, the paths back to
Aristotle and Plato that had led from a thinking to a
rethinking! Mr. Klein in seminar, throwing up his hands
from time to time, would explode with twenty minutes
or so of this legitimate history. Mr. Strauss, besides his
lectures, would offer at times in Klein's seminar a full
evening of it. The discussions that followed later were
never so keyed up and so "informed" Heidegger and late
Husserl were mentioned, but we could not know then
also how unique were Klein's and Strauss's "history" lectures, which, except for Strauss's Hobbes, we never read
unless as mimeographed lectures. (Speaking of lecture
subjects, am I alone in not remembering now what was
said in a single lecture about the liberal arts-except
about Music, where-aside from Augustine-you simply
had to invent, the wilder the better. I see Music, the
traviata of the Seven Sleepers, has been downgraded to
Harmonics.)
If chiefly Buchanan and Klein informed this search
for a liberal college in its first twenty-one years, Mr.
Smith's subject is not the separate actors but the College
as a community concerned with the learning effort and
particularly the curriculum, its surprisingly adaptive soul,
as it moved from its first frantic plenitude through its
successive, more practicable, shapes.
And in the curriculum, one should mention (I am
not the one to say more) a last persistent theme or obsession. I remember that in our first week the Demiurge
himself warned us they had all been struggling with the
"matter" of the laboratory to try to make it more rational
and that the struggle would, with us, continue. The
laboratory has provided a theme more native to St.John's
than even faithless theology or anti-historicist history. Mr.
Smith calls attention to the now ancient yearning of these
knights of intellect to unify all the sciences, sheer force
of analogy having regularly failed. With Humphreys,*
*Humphreys Hall, where the laboratories were located in the 1940s
and 1950s.
SUMMER 1984
�it seemed then, the eros of intellect could not get beyond
an interesting fumble. Consideration of this matter of
the laboratory makes one see, on the one hand, how
romantic was St. ] ohn's reach as opposed to its grasp,
and, on the other hand, why an insider had to write this
history. For how could any outsider write the next
sentence with so little sarcasm and with so much smiling rue?
give unity to all knowledge (p. 57), was nevertheless in
an essential way like other modern seekers for unity
through method, and thereby unlike Klein.
Actually [Engelder, Dunkelberger, and Schiller] was not
a bad text for learning chemistry, but it did not do much
in the way of relating chemistry to the question of being qua being.
This kind of overriding concern to unify the diversity
of experience Buchanan shared with, say, both Dewey
and Whitehead, but not with Klein, who held "it is very
hard even to postulate unity" in the sciences as well as
in all the other fields of learning (p. 119).
Mr. Smith shows us, then, that the "radical inquiry"
which "St.John's College means to be engaged in" meant,
in its beginnings, at least two, and very different, kinds
of questions and answers. We cannot know how a longer
interchange between two such different men and different
concerns might have altered the content and style oflearning at St. John's. From what interchange we actually
observed there arose a spontaneity, a liveliness, a felt
presence of intellect, and along with this a model of intellectual manners which it is impossible to forget.
About Buchanan versus Klein, there was also, in their
last years together at St. John's, a distinct but light-hearted
sense of danger to students' minds, not that either man
willingly (horrible dictui) provoked it in the slightest way.
For the Collegian (August 20, 1943) five seniors wrote a
spoof in which J ascha, having sat at Euclid's feet, and
having rejected Descartes ("Jascha: All the world's in rack
and ruin/Grecian dough has ceased its brewin'./Genus,
species have passed by,/All that's left is x and y!'), at last,
arriving at Coney Island, is enticed by a carnival barker
named Buchanan:
So Mr. Smith's whole view of St. John's beginnings
arouses on every page comparisons with one's own partial memory of admirations, exhilarations, frustrations.
We felt at once the thrill of participants in Odysseus
Buchanan's plot to halt the Decline of the West by driving our unaccredited Trojan Horse into the Sacred City
of Higher Education, assured by Mr. Barr on our first
Sunday night that it was ripe for bulldozing, dying in
fact of the bourgeois-vocational-elective-system disease.
There were, to be sure, other, but "progressive;' Trojan Horses at work before us (Sarah Lawrence, Bard,
Antioch, Bennington, Black Mountain, and Minnesota),
and "we" found ourselves often at war with their sympathizers, instead of the common enemy we were all out
to do in. What followed was mere pretension at debate
about education's proper end and means in which, as it
has long since become clear, there was not much will,
on any side, to ')oin" the issues, except, perhaps, in
Meiklejohn's reply to John Dewey (Fortune, January
1945). But the difference between us and all of them was
obvious: we depended on the (mostly long past) great
books.
Now Mr. Smith's whole view invites us to see what
could be meant at St. John's by its goal of "radical inquiry" at that historical moment (1) when the American
scene was breeding such opposing Trojan Horses, all
radically inquiring, and (2) when a man with Klein's view
of the past joined a man with Buchanan's view of the past.
Buchanan and Klein shared an anti-historicist interest
in thinkers of the past, where even Meiklejohn understood
history, like education, as a progress towards wisdom.
Buchanan had, like that other American transcendentalist, Emerson, a trans-historical openness to past
thinkers in his desire to connect all insights to the eternal. But with this he combined a modern addiction to
logical systems and methods, such as Ockham's, Ramus's,
and Hegel's. (That Buchanan could not see the antisystematist Nietzsche as a serious philosopher may be
a sign of the differences between his education and
Klein's; it was from the attack launched by Nietzsche, from
phenomenology and deconstruction with their radical
questioning of the metaphysical tradition, that Klein returned to the tradition with a concern for recovering
thinking out of it.)
Mr. Smith implies that Buchanan, for all his faith that
metaphysics and theology were the sciences that would
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
[Buchanan] was a man of the post-Cartesian world in
that he was seeking methods and formulas and symbolic
structures for learning or philosophizing, methods that
would, he hoped, bring together the most diverse worlds
of thought and imagination.
All tickets win, and none do lose,
It doesn't matter which you choose.
Systems great and systems small,
Numbered you must try them all.
Won't you come and play my game,
Metaphysics is its name.
Uascha hesitates, then buys a chance. While
Buchanan turns the wheel, Jascha murmurs.]
J ascha: Oh fate, oh misery, oh dark forebodings . . . !
Buchanan (smiling): You've won a free ride on the
Platinic system.
f]ascha approaches the wheel, hesitates, tears the
ticket up and turns to go. The entire carnival, however,
converges on him in a whirling vortex. Thunder, lightning. Curtain.]
We heard that the piece caused somewhat hurt feelings
all-round. In any case, it turned out to be bad prophecy
about who tore the ticket up and turned to go, and no
doubt too light-hearted an assessment of what the game
rightly was and is.
0 beloved Pan and all you other gods of that place,
grant the fair-and-good man who wrote this book as
many blessings as he has the thanks-for unnumbered
reasons- of those he wrote it for!
5
�The Analysis of Fictions
Scott Buchanan
atter-day discussions of the fine arts have
led to an interesting metaphor which has
suggested the title of this little book. In the
attempt to clarify the criterion of 'purity' in
poetry, music, painting, and sculpture, and
to disentagle it from the older criteria of truth, sincerity, and depth, critics have spoken of 'distance: There is
no doubt that the metaphor has sharpened the sense of
a certain quality recognizable in our appreciation, one
which is closely related to formal clarity. On the other
hand there is little sharpness or formal clarity in the exposition of the metaphor itself. In fact it seems improbable that distance should become an exact technical
term in art criticism as long as the divorce between works
of art and symbols is maintained. The metaphor is empty
until we recall that a symbol, or a work of art, was
originally only a part of something from which it had
been separated, but to which it functionally belonged.
The immediate suggestion from this etymology is that
distance would neatly refer to the degree of separation
of sign from thing signified.
I shall not plead with art critics and aestheticians for
a nostalgic rapprochement between works of art and symbols, but I shall plead with linguists and logicians for the
inclusion of their studies within the broad traditional field
of the arts. The intellectual arts, at any rate, are concerned with symbols, and, it may be added, they are at
present painfully and crucially concerned with symbols
as their essential subject-matter. The pain involved in this
concern arises chiefly from the modern difficulty of
achieving distance or detachment in the terms of our arts
L
The late Scott Buchanan founded the New Program at St. John's College.
Ana(ysis qf Fictions appeared as the first chapter of Symbolic Distance, published
by Faber and Faber in 1932.
6
and sciences. It may be that our art critics are teaching
a deeper and broader lesson than they themselves realize,
a lesson that should be studied by scientists and moralists
as well as the man in the street.
The ancient arts of the trivium, grammar, rhetoric,
and dialectic, which we have relegated to the finishing
school for young ladies, were concerned equally painfully with the symbols of a previous age; they were studied
and applied for a thousand years before their task was
accomplished and they were allowed to give place to the
symbolic discipline of modern science with its operational
skills and its speculative generalizations. It seems worth
while to attempt a brief statement of their methods and
aims, and to enquire into the possibility of reconstituting
the technique to suit modern symbols.
In the first place it was considered dangerous to allow
students to enter upon the higher studies, law, medicine,
and theology, without a thorough training in the trivial
arts. The dangers were literal interpretation of symbolic
formulae and violent application of doctrine to special
cases. No vitally important study was safe in the hands
of untutored persons who could not deal easily and fluently with figurative, abstract, and general terms. No
small portion of our fear and confusion of medieval ideas
is due to the untutored experience we have had with the
isolated fragments of these subtleties that have persisted
into modern times. Laboratory training and mathematical discipline are necessary for the successful handling
of modern subtleties, and in some cases it seems that they
are not enough: vide recent attempts of mathematical
physicists to bring theology down to earth.
The distinctions and consequent specialized treatments of subject-matters in the trivial arts are still important. In the first place the trivial artist distinguishes
between what he calls impositions. There is the use of
words or symbols in the first imposition, as when 'apple'
SUMMER 1984
�refers to this or that concrete spherical red object. 'Apple' in the second imposition is the word itself, a part of
speech or writing. The confusion of imposition leads to
syllogisms like this:
This is an apple.
Apple is a word.
Therefore, this is a word.
In the second place, the trivial artist distinguishes between intentions. A term may be taken in the first intention as when Freedom is intended to refer to free beings; or it may be taken in second intention when it refers
to an abstract principle which may or may not govern
the behaviour of free beings. Confusions of intentions
lead to more serious, because more cryptic, selfdeceptions which we shall discuss under the head of
fictions.
It is in terms of these two distinctions that the trivial
arts operate. Grammar as a science studies words or symbols in the second imposition and the laws for combining them as parts of speech. In modern mathematical
language, grammar studies notations and their useful
manipulations. Rhetoric as a science studies these notations as natural objects having causal connections between themselves and with other natural objects, including man. In this respect rhetoric embraces important parts of psychology and anthropology. In addition
to studying words and symbols in the second imposition,
rhetoric also studies them as terms with second intention. When an orator manipulates notations in order to
'move' an audience, he almost necessarily also instructs
or misinstructs it by elucidating an abstract idea or principle. The lawyer may develop a valid argument by means
of enthymemes in order to convince a jury, or a teacher
may analyse a geometrical figure and prove a theorem
in order to instruct his pupils. The rhetorician must then
give an account of the verbal magic of second impositions and also show how a discourse clarifies or obscures
an ideal subject-matter. Finally the dialectician abstracts
second intentions from terms for the sake of discovering
and isolating the forms which many apparently diverse
notations may have in common. Eventually the dialectician will be concerned with the limits and boundaries
of meanings in which all symbols, even in the first imposition, are implicated. If he is easily tired with formal
distinctions or powerfully moved by rhetoric, he may
become a metaphysician, and hold theories about facts
and universals.
It should be noted how complicated, in the radical
sense of the word, these sciences are. Each one can cover
the whole field of symbols in the one single aspect that
it selects as its proper subject-matter. Another may cover
the same symbolic territory taken in another aspect, and
any given linguistic or logical unit may have three interpretations, or possibly more if rhetoric be more finely
divided. Adequate treatment demands at least three separate accounts which are normally complementary, but
may conflict badly if they are not carefully distinguished.
Finally there is a more general distinction between
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the tnv1um as a group of sciences whose application
results in a criticism and theory of the symbols and the
trivium as a group of arts whose practice accomplishes
this or that ulterior purpose. It is impossible to speak,
write, read, think, or observe without at the same time
being as an artist, a grammarian, rhetorician, and dialectician. It is impossible to be in any adequate way more
than one of these at one time as a scientist and still is
quite as impossible to make an assertion in one science
without inferences being forced in the others. The controversies between the nominalists, conceptualists, and
realists of the late middle ages are incidents in the
development and differentiation of the corresponding
arts, and it would seem that the ability to understand
and appreciate the arguments has again become important to us although our subject-matters seem very foreign
to the ways of logic-chopping.
Modern scientific training has fairly completely
transferred the grammatical art from the authoritative
texts of the scholastic to human experience as given
material. It has also, though somewhat half-heartedly and
cautiously, followed the ways of rhetoric and dialectic,
but it has not yet achieved the linguistic balance and facility which it should provide. My contention is that its deficiency in rhetoric and dialectic has prevented us from
discovering and maintaining proper symbolic distances
in our highly specialized sects and cults of thought.
The point may be presented in an illustration taken
from our most familiar technical language for symbolic
problems. Perhaps it is its familiarity that has encouraged
us to omit scrutinizing the figurative modes from which
the language has been drawn. A symbol is said to 'represent' what it symbolizes. The metaphor is taken from
optical theory, where mirrors are said to reflect objects.
Imagine a series of mirrors set up between an object and
a human eye in such a way that the first mirror catches
an image from the object and throws it on to the second
mirror which in turn throws it to a third mirror, and so
on to fourth, fifth, and nth in which the eye finally sees
the image. There will then be a series of (possible) images corresponding to the series of mirrors. We may ca11
the image in the first mirror primary, and the other images secondary since they are derived from the first.
Whether we refer to a geometry of perspective merely
or add to that a theory of light transmission, there will
be certain distortions to be taken into account, and hence
qualifications or degrees of representative accuracy. If
we add to such distortions, due to perfectly plane and
efficient mirrors, the possibility of imperfect planes or
degrees of concavity and convexity, and if we allow for
imperfectly reflecting materials, we shall have a problem in the resolution of images such as an astronomer
must solve before he can trust the data which he gains
by the use of a reflecting telescope, spectroscope, and
interferometer.
The representation theory of symbols presupposes
some such analogy as this. Notations whether they are
verbal, imaginative, or operational, correspond to im-
7
�ages in mirrors. Usually primary images are all that the
theory envisages and the problems of multiple distortion
and resolution which arise in connection with secondary
images are ignored. The theory of symbolic distance is
an attempt to introduce into the critique of symbols some
of the devices for circumspection and calculation that will
correspond to optical theory in the art of astronomical
clause can take its place. In this account of grammar it
would seem that discourse is the successive selection and
exhibition of sections from a matrix whose constituents
are adjectives and whose order is fixed by the subsumption of adjectives. As a matter of fact such hierarchies
have been the main content of European thought
throughout long periods of history, as is evidenced in
observation. I hope it is not necessary to warn the reader
variations of the neo-Platonic hierarchy of forms, the
that the analogy is only an analogy and should not be
taken literally before it is fully expounded.
Symbolic distance is a constituent of any set of symbols. It should first be recognized, and then its measurement should be attempted. The suggestion for the latter
is that the number of reflections as given by the nota-
theory of ecclesiastical and political official ranks, and
the rise of the classificatory sciences.
However, this analysis will not do. Forcing it leads
to serious paradoxes, and in fact many symbolic forms
are suppressed even in what we have already described.
tions intermediate to the extremes that correspond to the
For instance, the copula tends to be restricted to only
one of its many meanings, namely, "is identical with;'
concrete object and the observant eye would give a rough
scale of measurement. We shall see that the problem of
pretation when "is a case of' is allowed. Paradoxes are
distortion and resolution in symbols will require considerable revision and reformulation of this suggestion,
were well aware. The connective force of prepositions is
and is only partially relieved of this paradoxical interborn of both these meanings as the Greek Megarians
but it may serve as a working diagram or archetypal image from which the exposition can proceed. It will become
lost when they are buried in prepositional phrases which
clear as we proceed that unresolved distortions of sym-
logical force have to be eliminated with the result that
bols are favourable conditions for the production and per-
whole sentences undergo reconstruction. Nouns become
sistence of fictions, and that the measurement of sym-
hypostatical and immanent entities and threaten the
whole hierarchical structure, as F. H. Bradley so eloquently showed in his defense of adjectives against the
absolute.
bolic distance itself effects some degree of resolution.
So much at present for the field of symbols within
which we are to find and determine fictions. There will
be more to say of it explicitly later, but at this point grammar calls for the choice of' the elementary units from
which the field may be said to be built up. The grammar usually taught to school children deals with the parts
of speech, by which it means the parts of sentences:
are then used as adjectives. Conjunctions that have any
On examination these paradoxes and suppressions
show more or less thinly disguised the elements that have
been ignored, the relations. The copula always is asserted
in respect of some relation, or in logical terminology, in
some category. The preposition is obviously relational
nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and
and directive. Conjunctions with logical force express very
so forth. Older grammar began with smaller units, such
as the parts of words: syllables, sounds, and marks, and
it might even include non-verbal elements. Certainly
fundamental relations, and nouns are either substantives
or, like functions in the mathematical sense, systematic
there is no reason apparent in the representation theory
relations. In fact with the same kind of ingenuity that
educes the adjectival hierarchy from the sentence struc-
why these should not play the part of elementary units,
but it may be well for us to start with the parts of
ture, we can educe a network, or matrix, of relations from
sentences, and allow generalization to follow the suggestions we find there.
The form of the simple sentence seems to dictate its
division into three parts, the noun, the verb, and the ad-
analyzed into relations, and after the manner of the contemporary mathematical physicist we can rearrange our
preconceptions in such a way as to turn the world into
a relative and expanding universe. Relations are mar-
jective, or the substantive, copula, and the adjective. The
vellously elegant hypostatical entities, and they appeal
strongly to the metaphysical imagination. We shall have
to say more of the fictions arising from this mode of
need for an account of more complex sentences and the
possibility of substituting phrases and clauses for one or
another of these parts of speech has led to the separation of the form of the sentence and the making of rules
of substitution. These allow not only a prepositional
phrase to be substituted for an adjective, or a copula and
an adjective or an adverb for the verb, but also for the
replacing of a substantive by an adjective. In fact, by the
which all discourse can be drawn. Adjectives can be
generation also, but here it will be sufficient to point out
that we have paradoxes and suppressions like those that
accompany the adjectival grammar. The chief sufferers
here are the adjectives and nouns that serve as terms for
perform the function of a substantive, as when it is the
the relations. They are needed to anchor the relations,
but their service is soon dispensed with and they give
their places to relations between still other terms whose
life and activity is also limited. Here again also the whole
network is finally taken in one piece and attached as an
adjective to some substantive of hypostatical origin and
subject of a sentence, and that an adjective may be very
complex as when a preposit\onal phrase or an adjectival
that we are pushing good analysis too far in each of these
proper selection of rules of substitution it is possible to
show that any sentence expresses some section of a merely
adjectival hierarchy. This means that an adjective can
8
we have Bradley's problems on our hands again. It seems
SUMMER 1984
�cases, and that there ought to be a more temperate
medium which will throw the precedin$ methods into
complementary service.
This last suggestion is reinforced by certain points
in Bentharns' Theory of Fictions (Kegan Paul, 1932). It
seems that J ererny Bentham spent the greater part of his
life in exposing ghosts. There were ghosts in his family
horne when he was a child, and later he found john Doe
and Richard Roe in the law courts, as well as the economic and the natural man in Rouges of Parliament. In
fact every institution harboured ghosts, and some of them
were even worshipped. After a busy life spent in exorcizing ghosts of all descriptions and reputations, Bentham decided to retire to some quiet place and draw up
the rules for the permanent cure of ghost-seeing in
general. He had learned that the genesis of ghosts is
linguistic, and he therefore knew that the required rules
would be orthological, and in particular would deal with
the clarification of fictions. The exposure of ghosts is
brought about by the clear exposition of meanings in
language. For this purpose he lays down the fundamentals of a suitable grammar and rhetoric.
He begins with a classification of words as substantives, adjectives, relatives, and operatives according to
the usual conventions of school grammar except for the
substitution of operatives for verbs. We shall see the importance of this exception later. He then points out the
various practical devices for fixing the meaning that a
word shall have in a given piece of discourse. These are
chiefly comparison of words by means of dictionaries and
etymologies, and definition by means of classification according to genera, species, and differentiae. So much he
expounds only to point out the subject-matter and the
conventional and therefore recognizable ways of handling
it. Nothing has happened to fictions and ghosts up to
this point. And so it is with the types of grammar that
we have pointed out so far; they are not sensitive enough
to discriminate between fhe vicious and the efficient uses
of language.
The clarification of fictions requires exposition by
paraphrasis. This in turn depends on a certain telescopic
character in words as Bentham recognized, particularly
in words that have a fictional force. A single word may
stand for and at the same time obscure very complex
linguistic forms. A sentence containing such a word may
convey quite false and misleading intents to a hearer who
cannot make the proper reference. Thus in the grammar of adjectives a single adjectival word may be
substituted for a whole clause or phrase, and then this
single world may occur as the subject of a sentence. The
result for a naive hearer or reader may be the addition
of an apparently substantial entity to the sum of things
that the ordinary person would call his real world. Thus
as Bentham shows, many people have fought wars and
died in order to achieve Liberty or Justice, simply because
they have heard someone use these words as subjects of
sentences. Phlogiston, caloric fluids, and the ether have
influenced centuries of laboratory practice for the same
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
linguistic reason. Bentham recognized the telescopic
character of these and other words, and recornrnend~d
paraphrasis for the resolution of their distorted images.
Paraphrasis is the process by which a real subject may
be substituted for a fictional subject in such sentences.
It has two parts, archetypation and phraseoplerosis, as
Bentham very pictorially calls them. These names really
refer to parts of the process by which the fictional subject was generated, and therefore call for the reconstruction of the structure that lies behind or inside the
telescopic word. Archetypation is the process by which
a term is made to represent a thing. In terms of the representation theory of symbols it is the setting up of the first
mirror so that it will reflect some one aspect of the concrete individual. It is on such archetypes that the rest
of our symbolic world depends. Phraseoplerosis is the
filling in of the secondary, tertiary, and n-ary symbols
that mirror for us the primary or archetypal symbols.
When some of these intermediate symbols are lacking,
we mistake the remaining ones either for archetypes or
for individual objects, and we suffer from fictional
deception.
Bentham has this to say about archetypation: Simple propositions are either physical or psychological.
Psychological propositions have physical propositions for
archetypes; physical propositions are asserted about
things either at rest or in motion. Ultimately every proposition predicates the existence, past, present, or future,
of some state of things which is either motional or quiescent. These remarks have a heavier metaphysical load
than we need to carry for our purposes, but it is easy
to see that the distinction between physical and
psychological propositions accords with the distinction
between primary and other symbols. The specifically
psychological side of symbols will more suitably come
into the next chapter when we are discussing the production and gcowth of fictions. The formal and operational side will concern us here.
Phraseoplerosis may be a very complex process, and
Bentham has listed many suggestions that we shall have
to systematize. The general term of the separate processes
is synonymization, and these processes correspond very
closely with the various sorts of transformations that take
place in secondary symbols under the conditions of
distortion, on1ission, and amplification of representation
or mirroring. The Benthamite list follows:
Antithesis
Illustration
Exemplification
Description
Enumeration
Parallelism
Ampliation
Restriction
Distinction
Disambiguation
(Determination by opposites)
(Adducing analogies)
(Showing instances)
(Application of unique traits)
(Of instances)
(Comparison by complex analogies)
(Characterization by relations to other terms)
These terms are fairly pictorial and, with the explanatory
phrases that I have added, help to· convey what may be
better gained by reading the archetypation and
9
�phraseoplerosis of the word 'church' as Bentham gives
it (Theory of Fictions). It can also be seen that the list has
overlapping terms, and that it is probably not exhaustive
of the processes that would be necessary in given cases.
These are Bentham's brief suggestive descriptions of processes that we find him employing throughout his other
writings. If we can translate his terms to a new basis,
I think it will be possible to show the systematic foundation on which he was working. This new basis will be
taken from the science of rhetoric, or that part of it which
deals with figures of speech, but, as an account of notational structure, rightly belongs to grammar.
There seem to be two important ways that sentences
involve figures of speech. In one of these ways a sentence
is to be understood metaphorically; in the other a sentence is to be understood literally. It is by ignoring this
distinction that the grammar of adjectives and the grammar of relations gain the specious generality that leads
to the paradoxes that we have noted in them. The grammar of adjectives tends to conceal metaphors, as when
an adjective in one hierarchy is predicated of an adjective in another hierarchy without confessing the jump.
The grammar of relations on the other hand pretends
to give all sentences a literal interpretation. Each grammar has its proper virtues, but the virtues are heuristic
and speculative rather than analytical. A first rough division of sentences into literal and metaphorical serves a
practical and common-sense end, and the possibility of
referring them both to more complicated units, the
figures of speech, takes care of their complementary
properties.
In the language of one contemporary school oflogic
sentences may be divided into two different kinds of incomplete symbols. Some sentences, those to be understood literally, need other literal sentences as co-ordinate
context to make their meanings clear. Other sentences,
metaphors, need to be expanded into sets of literal
sentences. In this manner of speaking, metaphors are
condensed summaries of systems of literal sentences, and,
as we shall see, they become fictions when their exposition is ignored.
·
The distinction between metaphors and literal
sentences is important and obvious in the literary use
of language. 'Napoleon was a wolf and 'Napoleon was
a soldier', though in the grammar of our schools of the
same verbal form, are easily distinguishable in a literary
context. In 'Napoleon was a wolf' we have a good case
of Bentham's archetypation, the picture of a wolfleading
a pack to the destruction of flocks of sheep, and this picture obviously represents, or can be represented by, a
system of literal sentences, one of which would be
'Napoleon was a soldier: The finding and articulating of
this set of literal sentences would be what Bentham calls
phraseoplerosis. There is no doubt that such archetypation and phraseoplerosis would have been comforting to
the ordinary folk in the Napoleonic period of history. We
usually have similar but closer and less recognizable fictions in our minds, and they need similar treatment.
10
As in the case of the previous grammars, there are
matrices of terms from which metaphors are drawn. As
a matter of fact such matrices are constructed by the proper combination of adjectival hierarchies and relational
networks, but they have much greater generality and
usefulness than either of their constituents, and the process of combination would not be illuminating at this
point. These figurative matrices are like those from which
determinants are made in algebra, terms set in rows and
columns to make rectangular patterns, some oblong and
some square. Diagrammatically they look like this:
a
b
c
d
a
b
h
c
i
b
e
h
c
!
b
e
h
k
!
g
a
d
g
a
d
(1)
e
k
d
J
j
I
(2)
(3)
'
c
(4)
'
!{
I
J
Thus 'Napoleon is a wolf could be interpreted as a
metaphor drawn from a matrix of the first type, with four
terms thus:
Napoleon
peasants
wolf
sheep
(1)
Or from the second type:
Napoleon
army
peasants
kings
wolf
shepherds
(2)
pack
Or from type (3):
ambition
plans
hunger
hunting
end
means
sheep
success
satisfaction
consequences
(Napoleon)
(wolf)
(man)
It will be noted that the terms in this matrix do not include any of the terms in the metaphor except as these
are expanded in the matrix. This example might easily
be extended for the purposes of a psychological-ethical
analysis of the history of Napoleon. Another type might
state the comparative anatomy of Napoleon and a wolf.
The extent and shape of a given matrix depends on the
explicitness of the subject-matter, the available notations,
and the purpose of the diagram.
According to the mathematician a matrix should be
read merely as it stands, but this is doubtfully possible
in algebraic matrices, and quite impossible when the
terms are verbal. The mathematician's point is that matrices are merely arrangements, and the moment any
selection or rearrangement is attempted, a matrix
SUMMER 1984
�becomes a determinant with a value at least potentially
determined. The mathematician's insistence is somewhat
like the metaphysician's insistence that a prime matter
completely unformed can be separated from things and
dealt with in isolation, and in the metaphysical analogue
we may see what the mathematician intends to point out.
For the metaphysician wishes to say that matter can enter
into any of a certain class of things, and is not restricted
to this as against that form, except disjunctively, either
this or that. Likewise the mathematician intends to say
that different determinants can be drawn from the same
matrix, and this means that a matrix has a greater range
of possible forms than any one interpretation can put
upon it, though this range has definite limits, as could
be shown by the application of a calculus of permutations and combinations to the aggregate of terms.
It is the presence of the indeterminacy under a
definite form that makes it so difficult to read a matrix
without imputing to it one or another of the possible interpretations. On the other hand the attempt to make
a matrix fully explicit meets with great difficulties. A
matrix as it stands has many meanings but we do not
know which one is intended. A verbal matrix is like an
algebraic formula in which we do not know what is being talked about nor whether what it says is true. The
fact that it has words as terms makes it doubly puzzling
to the ordinary reader because we recognize the words
of which we usually think we know the meaning and yet
the clues these give us lead to labyrinthine confusions.
Just so to some people an algebraic equation calls for
solution and the filling in of unknown quantities, search
for which by the untrained algebraist leads across the
swamp of trial and error. The trained algebraist notes
the form of the equation and follows the rules appropriate
elements, the table top and the number five, but the
analogy makes clear that the similarity is not directly relevant. It rather holds between two relations, one between
a part and the whole of the table-top, and the other between one and five; it is between these relations only that
the similarity holds. Furthermore the similarity does not
hold between any two terms either of the metaphor or
of the analogy, but rather between two relations about
which nothing more than a similarity is stated. The
distinction here between what is stated and what is not
stated in the analogy shows what is definite in the matrix,
and what is left indefinite, and the distinction is important to keep in mind when dealing with metaphors,
analogies, and matrices in general.
The example chosen above is of course of the simplest
sort, and there are more complicated sorts, correspon-
ding to the types of matrices diagrammed previously. In
each case a similarity is stated between the respective relations that connect the terms in the several rows or columns. The primary relations connecting the successive
terms in any row or column may be of any sort as long
as the other rows and columns involve similar relations
similarly placed. Also terms may be repeated from one
row or column to another, resulting in the type of matrix
from which the Greeks drew their favourite analogical
formulae, the mean proportional. A completely
degenerate case of this would be a matrix in which all
the terms were identical and all the relations relations
of identity. The other extreme of this type would be a
matrix in which all the terms were distinct and different
and the relations in any one row or column different from
those in any other row or column. In this case we should
have what might be called a thin analogy, the similarity
holding only between orders resulting from quite different
to it. In some cases he will know that there are no determinate solutions, in others that there are several solu-
relations. All cases of physical measurement are cases of
tions, and in still others there may luckily be one and
only one. But there is still another kind of mathematician who will realise that the solutions are trivial illustrations only and that there is more to be learned by a study
of the form itself, and that such study may proceed
in either terms or relations, provided the relations give
rise to similar orders. Stated otherwise, a matrix consists of rows and columns of terms, such that the relational order in one row is repeated throughout the others,
and the relational order in one column is repeated
through transformations, generalization, and the many
tricks in mathematics that correspond to what Bentham
calls archetypation and phraseoplerosis. The ways of
such thin analogies. Any degree of diversity is allowed
throughout the others. Obviously the most abstract
matrical notation as it is written on paper fulfills the above
requirement in the bare spatial relations of its terms, but
generalization and manipulation of forms seem vague
that does not prevent it from exhibiting the form of an
and confusing to those who have like ourselves lost grasp
of their language, and these remarks about mathematics
may be comforting by way of citing precedent for the
following remarks about matrices of words.
The form that we have exhibited in matrices is the
form of the analogy; this is true both for mathematics
and for grammar. The relation between metaphors and
indefinite number of other matrices. One further point
their matrices is best shown in the expressions we have
for measurement. Thus to say that the table is five feet
long is a quasi-metaphorical short statement for the
analogy: a certain section of the table-top is to the whole
table-top as one is five. The original metaphorical statement says that there is a certain similarity between two
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
of formal description: Any retangular part of a given
matrix is also a matrix; and any given matrix may be
included as a part in some larger matrix. Any shifting
of the order of terms, and the rules for such shifting would
come under the treatment by rhetorical operations.
Bentham illustrates archetypation by an analysis of
the fiction of moral obligation. Chasing etymologization
as the clue, he says that the archetype involved in any
reference to obligations incumbent on persons is the pic-
ture of a man pinned to the earth by a heavy weight which
must be removed if he is to get free. This picture is the
archetype of the fiction in that it sets the pattern for the
11
�phraseoplerosis that is required to make clear just what
the elements and relations are that go ioto the social situation where we fmd obligations. In another place he cites
the picture of a man bound by ligatures to a load which
he is carrying as the archetype of obligation, and then
goes on to detail the elements in this situation. The flat
literal-mindedness of these interpretations is a striking
quality in all of Bentham's work; he was vividly aware
of the great distances in fictional discourse and was not
afraid to take them at one stride. The rest of the analysis
is concerned with the details of his well-known hedonistic
ethical theory.
If we assume that the analysis consisted in the construction of a matrix, the picture of the man pinned to
the ground by a heavy load serves to fill in the top row:
man
load
This row then serves as an archetype or model upon
which the other rows are to be built, and we may imagioe the last row as follows:
person
duties
There will be as many intermediate rows as are necessary
to make the fiction clear. In Bentham's case the middle
rows would present the main terms in the hedonistic
theory, and the original archetype would be expanded
to more terms for the sake of a finer analysis.
As the matrix grows by the addition of rows, the columns also take form and when it is complete we have
another archetype in the first column, which repeats its
form in the succeeding columns, and as a matter of fact
this second archetype is often used in the construction
itself. It would be used as an aid for the purpose of suggesting terms where the words for things and ideas are
in a confused state and difficult to choose. We may call
these second archetypes cognate to the first; they become
useful in measuring distances as we shall see. They may
displace the original archetypes in cases of emergency.
It should be noted that often the relations that constitute
the archetypal order in the columns are very thin relations of correspondence; whether they give place to
thicker relations or not depends on the skill of manipulation applied to the matrix in deriving formulae from it.
There are two important processes in scientific method
that are exceptions, the so-called one-oneing of series and
the observation and measurement of data. In these cases
there is a stage where mere correspondence is taken as
original and the process of induction passes from this to
detennination of relational order (for instance, in the case
of series, to the analysis of serial orders, and in the case
of measurement, to the articulation of relational hypotheses). The shift of attention from an archetype to its
cognate and back again sets the twin problems of
mathematical and empirical induction in a most instructive light. It informs imagination and memory, and may
at any time save the analytic process from complete
collapse.
12
Archetypation lays down the basic structure of the
matrix in the rows and columns. Phraseoplerosis completes the matrix by filling in secondary rows and columns. The remaining part of grammar is concerned with
the determinants and the rules by which they are drawn
from the matrix. In the first place two kinds of determinants are to be distinguished, the analogical determinant and the literal determinant. The analogical determinant is little more than a reformulation of the matrix,
though there is some variation in the ways that this can
be done. Thus the matrix
a
d
g
c
b
e
h
/
l
can be written as a determinant thus
a:b:c:d:e:J:g:h:i
which may be read
a is to b is to c as dis to e is to f as g is to h is to i.
The same matrix can also be written
·j ·
a .· d .· g .· .· b .· e .· h .· .· c . . ,·
In the Euclidean account of proportions, from which
this notation is taken, the second determinant would be
said to result from the first by alternation, and other
forms with which the reader will be acquainted result
from the first by inversion. The application to matrices
and analogies is obvious and needs no further comment.
These might be called the complete analogical determinants derivable from a matrix. Partial determinants
can also be derived by taking any rectangle or square
of terms as they stand, or by taking the corresponding
parts of selected rows or columns. For instance,
a
g
b
h
gives rise to the determinants
a:b::g:h
and
a:g::b:h
The derivation of literal determinants is a more fundamental process. Suppose we try to take a single row
or column by itself. We can do as Bentham did and
translate it into a picture, for instance, the man bound
to a load, but pictures are too ambiguous. If we are to
keep the necessary degree of rigour and explicitness, we
shall have to substitute some more determinate relation
for the implicit or variable relation that is indicated in
the matrix. Instead of simply
a
b
c
or
a: b : c
we shall have to say
SUMMER 1984
�where R 1 and R 2 are more or less explicitly defined relations. Thus
man
load
will have to be amplified or explicated to
man bound to load.
The derivation of literal determinants demands some
determination of the unknown or unstated relations of
the matrix. It is a more difficult process than any other
so far mentioned. It leads to the notion of a fully determined matrix in which all the relations would be made
explicit thus:
a
R'''
R'
R"
c
R'''
R'
b
R'''
e
d
R'"'
g
R"
f
R'
h
R"
R""
R''''
in which the primes show the diversity and yet the
similarity of the relations. Fortunately such fully determined matrices, if we may still call them such, are not
always needed. If the archetype is sufficiently familiar
as ,il picture, the determinate relations may quite
harmlessly remain submerged, as far as the analysis of
fictions is concerned. On the other hand, some degree
of explicitness must be brought into the analysis at some
point. Otherwise matrices, determinants, and analogies
in general become the vehicles of mysteries and the multiplication of mysteries. Familiarity with pictures is a scaffolding built in imagination for the sake of the establishment of explicit relational structures.
The derivation ofliteral determinants from matrices
actually calls for the specification of the relations in the
rows or columns concerned. These relations, as long as
they are in matrices, need only be specific enough to fulfil
the demands of analogical similarity; that is to say, they
are apparent variables as they enter into analogies. The
analogy says that there is at least one relation between
a and b which is like at least one relation between c and
d. It may be that there is more than one such relation
on each side for which the analogy holds. Literal determinants, on the other hand, substitute constant relations
for the variables, and since there may be more than one
constant that satisfies the conditions of the analogy in
the matrix, there may be several literal determinants for
any one row or column. If there is only one such constant, we say the original row was thin; if more than one,
the original row was thick Thin and thick relations make
weak and strong analogies respectively, and the usual objections to arguments by analogy are directed against
abuses that arise from confusing such relations. The cure
for such abuses is the careful explication of literal
determinants.
Certain violations of the rules for drawing literal
determinants from their matrices may give rise to what
might be called metaphorical determinants. In the matrix
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
a
c
b
d
it may be noted that a in the first row corresponds to
c in the second row. If we now substitute 'is' for 'corresponds td, we have the simplest and most familiar type
of metaphor. 'Napoleon is a wolf is an instance, and it
was drawn from the matrix
Napoleon
wolf
peasants
sheep
Another class of violations give rise to more subtle and
lively metaphors. 'Napoleon barked at the sheep' or 'The
Wolf stampeded the peasants' would seem to argue the
supposition of diagonal relations in the matrix, or the
product of the cognate relations. Strictly speaking this
is not the case. It is easy to see that 'barked at' and
'stampeded' belong in the literal determinants for the second and first row respectively, and that the metaphorical
sentences merely appear to shift them to the diagonal.
A literary purpose has been fulfilled by ellipsis, which
in these cases has either crushed or staggered an analogy.
Metonymy and synecdoche play similar happy havoc with
matrices, and likewise allegories, myths, and scientific
theories with more complex analogies.
It should now be clear that the results of phraseoplerosis consist in explicit relational statements extracted
as literal determinants from analogical matrices. Some
propositions as we meet them in discourse are metaphors
which are to be analysed and made explicit by archetypation and exposition in matrices. Metaphors are thus elliptical expressions for a group of propositions that we derive
as literal determinants from their matrices. The simplest
literal determinant will be a proposition that states a
dyadic relation holding between two terms of the matrix.
Larger literal determinants can be analysed into these
units. These are the atoms whose confluence in discourse
results in symbolic structures, and their conjunction in
analogies is the basis for the representation theory of
symbols.
One of the difficulties in the representation theory
is that propositions do not always show in their verbal
structures the kind of precise correspondence to one
another and to their objects that the theory demands.
I think I have shown one reason for this, namely that
some propositions are metaphorically elliptical, or contain telescopic words and incomplete symbols. A!llllysis
of these propositions removes the difficulty by showing
their elementary units and how they do correspond in
analogies. Another difficulty is due to the fact that not
all the symbolic units, the relational couples, are expressed in verbal propositions. In fact relations are in
a real sense themselves fictions, as Bentham says. They
can be translated into other symbolic elements, and in
ordinary discourse some relations are so translated and
some are not.
The best term to describe the symbolic elements into
which some relations are translated is operation, or
13
�operative. The discovery of operations in mathematics
and their careful formulation was a turning point in
analytic theory. So it might have been in the other
linguistic sciences. In mathematics it is possible to formulate the assumptions of geometry in terms of points,
translations, and rotations. The last two are operations
to be performed, first, on points and then on any elements
that result from such operations. Thus a line results from
the translation of a point in a given direction, and a circle from the rotation of this line about a point. When
such a formulation has been made, it becomes apparent
that the operations have taken the place of the fundamental relations in the older geometry. Likewise in
algebra the relations in an algebraic equation can be
formulated as operations on elementary symbols. Similarly the relational constituents of any language can be
translated into operations, a fact which has recently been
noted and developed by anthropologists and pragmatists
in philosophy, and recognized by them as parallel with
the operational interpretation of physics as we have it
stated in Bridgman's Th£ Logic of Modern Physics. As a matter of fact any material that is used symbolically can be
interpreted operationally, and this is done by substituting
operations for relations in all cases.
Some conservatives are alarmed at the apparent
degradation of science and thought in general brought
about by this translation. They think that relations have
been annihilated and that therefore rigour must have
been lost. They should be reminded that all the rigour
that is essential has been carried over in the translation,
and it should further be pointed out that there were very
puzzling paradoxes in the calculus of relations that were
disguised and hidden in the rules of operation. In other
words operations have always been present, and sometimes their neglect has had confusing consequences. The
operational interpretation of symbols recognizes these
puzzles, and at the same time applies its grammar to a
wider range of symbolic materials such as, for instance,
the use of scientific instruments and the patterns of
human behavior that enter into intellectual arts. Thus
the rules of grammar become mure general and adequate
as the grammarian admits that the whole field of symbols is his subject matter.
However these controversial matters may stand, the
point for us here is that a full analysis of fictions should
include operations as well as that part of the symbolic
14
complex which happens to be symbolized in sentences.
Thus the metaphor of measurement noted above, "The
table is five feet long;' must be analyzed into an analogy,
one side of which collslsts in the operation of successively
applying the unit of length to an interval which corresponds to the multiplication of one by five in arithmetic.
Most discourse for reasons of brevity and convenience
is half relational and half operational in its significance,
and the difficulty of deriving literal determinants from
matrices is often avoided by the introduction of operations where relations are not named. Similarly, the
representation theory will often not apJrly unless operations are introduced to supplement the propositional form
which is deficient.
Bentham realized this point a hundred years ago and
for that reason substituted operatives for verbs, thus gaining at the outset directness and concreteness in the results
of his analysis. The pictures which he used for archetypes,
when given operational interpretation, lead directly to
the detail of phraseoplerosis and the full exposition of
fictions. The final interpretation of matrices would also
treat the spaces between the terms in the rows and columns as blanks to be filled in with operations appropriate
to the analogical form. Thus we can say that the operation that will transform a to b is similar to the operation
that will transform c to d, and discover that Love makes
the World go round because the turning of one's head
and the apparent whirling of the visual field involve the
same relation or operation, namely, rotation.
With the extensions which the operational interpretation make possible for verbal symbols, sentences can enter
grammar in two ways: metaphorical or literal. If they
are metaphorical, they should be interpreted and analysed
by archetypation and phraseoplerosis with the help of
analogical matrices and the derivation of literal determinants. Literal determinants can then be asserted as
propositions or entertained as propositional functions
whose forms are relational. If sentences are literal, they
can be placed in matrices with their proper analogical
contexts. All of this may be done under the operational
interpretation.
Such is the grammatical account of the structure of
symbols and the description of the field within which fictions arise. It remains for rhetoric to show how these
structures arise in use, and what changes they undergo
and pass on to other things.
SUMMER 1984
�The Breathing Side of Ocean
The storm has lifted and the summer sea
lies still, a shimmering immensity,
as the spent waves slide over the sand.
The mind can almost grasp a sea this still,
is tempted to forget itself until
the vacationers return, crowding the strand.
They are well-equipped: umbrellas erected,
towels placed, radio-stations selected,
bodies well-oiled and tanning, they compose
a tedious leisure. Let the sun bless
them with lethargy. It will suffice.
I watch their children bobbing in the shallows,
and remember wading here, a child-king
for whom the sea dreamed freely, waves arching
toward the shore with the glory of Chinese
warriors, their horses crowned with foam,
their swords flashing victoriously in a prism
of mist beneath the chalky, mountainous clouds.
At evening I meander down the beach
to where the pelicans feed on dead fish.
The clouds are high and thin, luminous ghosts
attending the seas heavings, the waves crashing
dim silver. I lie down, thinking of nothing,
and watch the sea for hours, how it persists.
William Thompson
William Thompson is a graduate student in English at the University
of Virginia.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
15
�The Problem and the Art of Writing
Jacob Klein
T
he subject of this lecture is The Problem and
the Art uf Writing. And that is what I am going
to talk about. My real theme, however, the
theme that prompts me to deliver this
lecture, is- Reading. For what we do here,
are supposed to do here, most of the time, is- reading.
I submit- and I hope you will not mind my saying thisthat, on the whole, we do not read too well. There are
obviously many reasons for this failure, varying from individual to individual, from circumstance to circumstance. It would be quite a task to try to account
for all of them. But there is one reason- one among so
many-which is conspicuously noticeable. Reading
means, first of all, to face a written text. And it seems
to me that we do not sufficiently reflect on what this fact
entails, on what writing itself implies or presupposes, and
on what it, of necessity, precludes. To talk about Reading
leads thus unavoidably to the subject of Writing. Hence
this lecture.
In reflecting about writing it is impossible to disregard
the spoken word. How could we, indeed? For human
speech, this marvel, this greatest marvel perhaps under
the sun, is right there, behind or beneath or above the
written word. It is difficult (although not impossible) to
conceive that there could have been writing without
human speech existing in this world. I mean, writing
seems to follow speaking. Writing and speaking exhibit,
at any rate, common aspects as well as aspects in which
they differ. Let me discuss those similarities and differences at some length.
The differences are not as clear as one might sup-
The late Jacob Klein taught at St. John's College, Annapolis, for over thirty
years. For a decade, from 1948-1958, he served as Dean of the College.
16
pose at first. Speaking, we might say, appears, of necessity,
as an audible sequence of sounds, a sequence in time;
actual human speech is never available as a whole, while
anything written is visibly there at once, in a book or
on a piece of paper or a chunk of stone. While reading,
even silent reading, takes time, as does the act of writing,
a written text, which takes up some space, is present all
at once in all its parts. But what about a tape-recorded
speech or conversation? Is not the whole right there, on
the marked tape? Are not written records of the proceedings, say, in a law court complete in such a way as
to project the temporal sequence of all the speaking that
goes on into a more or less limited space in which the
entire sequence is duplicated, and thus preserved, at
once? Such projections, duplications, and preservations
of live speech by means of manual skills or mechanicoelectrical or electronic devices amount to canning processes. The result is indeed canned speech that can be
released again into its proper medium by vocal or
mechanical or electrical means. The written word, however, is not at all canned speech. The primary cause for
the existence of the written word is not the desire to
duplicate and to preserve the sound of the spoken word,
but the desire to preserve its meaning so that it could
be conveyed to others over and over again. Writing tends,
therefore, to a shortening of the spoken word, a shortening that manifests itself in a variety of ways. Let us consider this phenomenon in some detail.
First of all, any writing is shorthand writing. Any
writing will do violence to the sound of the spoken word
for, although it cannot help reproducing words, its
primary purpose is to convey the meaning of those words.
The various methods of writing show that clearly. Chinese
characters, as you all know, although they can be read,
are drawn not to be read but to be understood without
recourse to the medium of sounds. They are appropri-
SUMMER 1984
�ately called ideograms. Egyptian hieroglyphics, at least
the oldest ones, convey their meaning directly, even
though out of them evolved a syllabic and alphabetic
script, something that happened to Chinese characters,
too. But even alphabetic writing, i.e., writing reproducing the sounds of words with the help of some thirty letters and combinations of letters, can often be read only
if the meaning is grasped first. This is particularly true
in the case of English writing. We would not know how
to pronounce, for instance, the assemblage of the three
letters BOW or ROW without the context that gives this
assemblage one of its several meanings. The reason for
this ambiguity is that the number ofletters is not sufficient to indicate the various sounds we are producing
while speaking. Although in many cases, as in the examples given, it might be easy to remedy the situation
by changing the spelling, it does not seem possible to
reproduce in writing the sound of all spoken words with
complete faithfulness. And that would probably still be
true if we adopted a phonetic system of signs, as the
linguists do, unless we multiplied the number of those
signs immeasurably. It is rather remarkable that the inadequacy of our sign systems does not really bother us.
It is true that something very similar can be said of
spoken words (in any language) inasmuch as the same
sound may convey differnt meanings depending on the
context, as for example the sounds "spell;' ''lie" (lye), "die"
(dye), or the sound of inflections in nouns and verbs. In
cases like those, writing might help to distinguish the
meanings, but it does not always do that. The relation
of written signs to the sounds of words seems, on the
whole, more ambiguous than the relation of those sounds
to their meanings.
Now, what seems to me significant is that the shortcomings of our character or letter systems appear to
reflect the tendency inherent in all writing to shorten the
flow of spoken words for the purpose of clarifying and,
above all, of preserving their meaning. This shortening
is done by reducing the number of the spoken words,
by condensing them, as it were, and this in turn is done
by selecting and arranging them in a proper way. That
is where the problem of writing begins to emerge.
Such shortening and condensing cannot be attempted, let alone achieved, unless the whole of what is to be
written is in some way present to the writer- I mean the
whole as a whole, not necessarily in all its details. In
shortening and condensing the spoken word, writing extends the devices by which words and sentences are con-
joined in live speech. The device of shading the meaning of words by inflections or prepositional and adverbial linkages, and above all, the device of combining not
only words but whole sentences by means of conjunctions and variations of verbal forms- the sum total of
all such devices constitutes what we call the arts and
disciplines of Grammar and Syntax. These terms refer
to disciplines which are the result of some reflection on
the manner of our speaking. It is not without interest
to observe that such reflection bore fruit, in other words,
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
that those disciplines took shape, in confrontation with
the written word, as the very word "grammar" indicates.
But writing itself transforms those grammatical and syntactical devices by applying them on a much larger scale
to the whole of a written work. The term "syntax"
( cruv"ta~t<;), in particular, acquires a much more comprehensive meaning. The word means "co-ordering," "putting things together in a certain order;' "com-posing." Anticipating the whole of what is to be written down, the
writer has to fit the parts of that whole into a proper order.
We have a direct pointing to this procedure in the title
of Ptolemy's book that we study here: it is called
Matherrwtical Composition (cruvra~t<; !!<XStl!i<X"tlKl'j)-"mathematical" in contrast to a possible non-mathematical composition relating to celestial phenomena. But the same
term cruvra~t<; could be applied to all written works. The
anticipated whole imposes upon the writer the task of
com-posing its parts with the graduated emphasis due
to each of them. And just as the devices of such a composition are extensions of syntactical devices (in the
restricted sense of the term "syntax"), the devices involved
in varying emphases, the devices of articulation, appear
to be extensions of grammatieal shadings observable even
in simple sentences of live speech.
The shortening and condensing of spoken words in
writing demand, then, modifications and extensions of
grammatical and syntactical devices. In writing, the
devices of Articulation and Composition add a new
dimension above and beyond the one governed by grammatieal and syntactical rules. It is in these new devices
that the problem of writing resides. That problem can
be formulated as follows: how can the anticipated whole
be made to unfold itself so as to become an actual whole,
that is, in Aristotle's immortal phrase, to become
something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end?
Right at this point, we see that the term "writing"
may be somewhat misleading if it is understood to suggest that the act of writing must be done with some kind
of instrument on some visible material. A speech in a
political assembly, in an election campaign, or on some
other public occasion (a lecture, for example) may well
be delivered without any written text, even any written
notes; the speaker could, of course, have prepared his
speech beforehand in writing, but he need not have done
so; he must, however, have prepared it somehow by thinking about what he is going to say and about how he is
going to say it; he must thus have anticipated the whole
of his speech and have committed this whole to his
memory, again not necessarily in all its details, but in
such a way that its composition and its main articulations are present to his mind. A speaker of this kind is
a writer, too. His rhetorical problem is not different from
the problem the writer faces. The speaker's memory is
covered, as it were, with the "imprints" of the whole. On
the other hand, a letter, a hastily scribbled note, can, on
occasion, be something like canned speech, if that letter
or note reproduces faithfully what would have been said
without writing.
17
�The distinction, then, between the spoken word and
the written word reduces itself to the distinction between
saying something spontaneously and saying something
in the light of an anticipated whole. Yet, this does not
seem sufficient. It could become more meaningful if we
looked at the effect speaking or writing may have or may
not have on the listener or reader.
We all remember a phrase that Homer uses so often
when describing human speech, the phrase "winged
words" (E1tEU n·mp6EV'tU). Whence this image? In most
cases, the phrase occur& when a personage, a god or a
man, addresses another single personage, a god or a man.
Occasionally it is also used when someone speaks to a
group or a crowd of people. Minstrels in Homer are never
said to utter or to sing "winged words." Now, words are
not called "winged" to indicate their soaring or lofty quality. The image seems rather to imply that words, after
escaping the "fence (or barrier) of the teeth'' (EpKo<;
OOOV'tOJV), as Homer puts it, are guided swifty, and
therefore surely, to their destination, the ears and the soul
and the understanding of the addressee. Words, especially
spontaneous words, can indeed be spoken in such a way
as to "sink in;' as we say. But this possibility grows more
uncertain with the growing indefiniteness of the addressee. It is more difficult to reach a crowd of men than
a single man. Exertions of a special kind are then required. In writing, the indefiniteness of the addressee
becomes almost complete. Live speech is spontaneous,
not confined within the boundaries of an anticipated
whole, and more often than not endowed with wings.
Written speech, visibly put down or invisibly committed
to memory, is prepared, composed and articulated as a
whole, and may yet lack wings. The problem of writing,
then, is: how to give wings to written words so that they
may reach their destination, the soul and the understanding of men.
To solve this problem, that is, to know how to compose and to articulate words so as to give them wings,
is to possess the art of writing. However artful the composition, some of us, of course, will not be touched by
the wings. There are no safeguards against that.
In the main, there are two ways in which this problem Baa be solved.
One is: to say explicitly all that is necessary for the meaning of the written text to be grasped, that is, not to omit
any link in the chain which binds our understanding,
and not to say anything which could disrupt that chain.
This kind of composition is conspicuously present in
mathematical works, in Euclid, Apollonius, good calculus
textbooks, and so forth; it is prevalent in any writing
meant to convey to us an understanding of the ways of
nature, of nature's structure, of the interlocking of natural
phenomena; its traces may be found elsewhere, too, especially in legal writing. The articulation of such works
tends to follow the sequence oflogical inferences. In fact,
it is the reflection on what is implied in this kind of composition that leads to the conception and establishment
of a very special art and discipline. This discipline has
18
as its subject that element in human speech, that element of the A.6yo<;, which gives it the character of
reasoned discourse. It concerns itself with the pure structures of the A.Oyo<; and bears therefore the name of Logic.
Subsequent reflection may make us doubt whether words
derived from actual speaking can serve as vehicles of
logical inferences. This doubt, in turn, leads to more
refined versions of the discipline of logic, leads to what
is call today Symbolic Logic. Any writing termed
mathematical or scientific is under the spell of the idea
of a strictly logical demonstrative discipline that proceeds
from accepted premises through a chain of inescapable
inferences to irrefutable conclusions. Seldom,. if ever, does
a composition embody this idea in its purity. The degrees
to which this idea is being approximated form a wide
range. What interests us here is the character of the wings
proper to compositions of this kind. This character is the
necessity inherent in our thinking.
The other way in which the problem of writing can
be solved is quite different. Here what is most important and decisive is not said explicitly at all. Compositions of this kind tend to articulate the whole in such
a way as to raise questions about the link that holds them
together. It is our answer that will either illuminate the
whole or plunge us into further darkness out of which
we shall be groping anew for light. Writings of this kind
taunt us. The character of the wings proper to them is
the taunting presence of a hidden answer, yet of an answer
within our reach. In what follows I shall try to give examples of this second way of writing. I shall take them
from Homer and Plato. But before embarking upon this
dangerous enterprise, I have to add a not unimportant
remark to what I have just said.
I said that in the main there are two ways of solving
the problem of writing and I have tried to indicate what
they were. I said "in the main" because there are- as
always- border cases and fringe phenomena in writing
that may loom large before our eyes and glow in a
peculiar light. Among the oldest cases of writing are, for
example, written laws. There are also monuments, themselves something like imprints on the collective memory
of mankind, but imprints made visible, and there are
inscriptions on them glorifying the deeds of some great
man or of some great ruler or of an infamous one. There
are epitaphs. There are short poems expressing a mood
or a whim, aphorisms, sayings, and proverbs. I omit mentioning other examples. (There are too many of them.)
We tend to cherish such border cases and fringe phenomena and to devote special attention to them. But I should
venture to say that they find their place on the map of
writing in terms of coordinates derived from the two main
stems of writing I was talking about.
And now, let me turn to the first example of the
second of these main stems.
Consider the Iliad. Among the great many events that
follow each other in the story and the description of which
constitutes the whole of the poem, there are certain ones
of decisive importance, which are quite familiar to us:
SUMMER 1984
�(I) the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles which
leads to Achilles' withdrawing from the fight; (II) the victorious advance of the Trojans; (III) the intervention and
death of Patroclus; (IV) the reappearance of Achilles on
the field of battle; (V) the death of Hector; (VI) the
funeral ofPatroclus; (VII) the surrender of Hector's body
to Priam. All these decisive events could be put in a
diagram as follows:
I
JI][·
·--------------- -x --..z
,6 " '
Disregarding the more or less superficial division into
books or songs and even allowing for all kinds of tampering with, and dislocations of, the original text, there is
no denying that the decisive events are crowded into the
last third of the whole. Between (I) and (II) events of great
significance certainly do occur, as, for example, the death
lost through Agamemnon's action. It is then said (I,
511-12): "But Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, said nothing at
all to her and sat in silence for a long while (&ljv):' An
awful silence! Thetis repeats her plea. At last, Zeus consents and nods, a sign of an irrevocable decision. Olym-
pus shakes. Thetis departs, apparently satisfied that she
has accomplished her mission. Has she?
The second event occurs after Patr~::>elus' death
(XVIII. 165-229), while the battle for Patroclus' body
rages before the ships between Hector and the Aiantes
and while Thetis is on her way to get new arms for her
son from Hephaestus. Hera sends Iris to Achilles, without
Zeus and the other gods knowing anything about the mission, to urge Achilles to intervene in the struggle for
Patroclus' body. Since Achilles has no arms at this juncture, he is asked by Iris to do nothing but to show himself
to the Trojans, to frighten them by his mere appearance.
Achilles, "dear to Zeus" (203), obeys and does more than
what Hera through Iris asked him to do. Pallas Athene,
who is nearby, does her share: she casts the tasseled aegis
around his shoulders and she sets a crown in the guise
of a golden cloud about his head and from it issues a
blazing flame. Thus he appears- alone, separated from
the other Achaeans- in the sight of the foe, a flaming
torch. But not only does he appear, he shouts, three times,
and the wounding of many and important warriors, the
Diomedean terror, the wounding of two gods, the encounter of Diomedes and Glaucus, the peaceful scenes
a terrible shout, clearly heard-and "from afar Pallas
Athene uttered her voice" (217-18). Unspeakable confu-
in Troy, the unsuccessful embassy to Achilles, inconclusive
duels among men and delightfully treacherous actions
on the part of the gods-all of which contribute in varying degrees to the unfolding plot. In the main, however,
the battle is swaying back and forth all the time until
finally the Trojans reach the ships of the Achaeans. During all that time Achilles sits in his tent, sulking, and only
occasionally watching the fight. The pivotal event, the
death of Patroclus, which changes, which reverses
saved.
What kind of shout is this? Is it one of triumph? Of
everything, occurs very late in the poem, in the sixteenth
book. It is as if the poem took an exceedingly long breath
to reach that point and afterwards rushed with breathtaking speed to its end. This is the more remarkable since
the entire period of time the poem encompasses is one
of 49 days and Patroclus' death occurs on the 26th day,
that is, very nearly in the middle of that period.
Why is the composition articulated in such an unbalanced way, we wonder. Let us see.
There are two events-among many others-which
I have not mentioned at all. Yet it is these two events that
seem to be the two foci from which all light dispersed
throughout the poem stems.
The first takes place when Thetis, Achilles' mother,
is visiting Zeus to ask for his help on behalf of her son,
reminding Zeus of the help he once received from her.
She wants Zeus to turn the scales of the war, to let the
the Trojans have the upper hand until finally, in the hour
of the Achaeans' greatest peril, 'Achilles, and only Achilles,
might be able to save them from certain defeat, lead them
to victory, and thus regain his honor, which he allegedly
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
sion and terror seizes the Trojans. Patroclus' body is
threat? Is it an ordinary war cry, raised to a very high
pitch? It is certainly not like the bellowing of the wounded
Ares (V, '859, 863). Two verbs are used to describe that
shout, one of a rather neutral taint, and, at the decisive
moment, another,
iuxro
(22S), which has a range of
meanings. One of these meanings is "crying out in grief;'
Shortly before (29) the same verb was used in precisely
this meaning to describe the lament of the maidens at
the news of Patroclus' death. It will be repeated shortly
afterwards (XIX, 41) to describe Achilles' shouting when
he rouses the Achaeans to battle. Why does Achilles shout
now, though not urged to do so by Iris? Certainly, to
frighten the Trojans, to make them desist from Patroclus'
body. But can this shouting fail to express the unspeakable
pain that fills his heart, the pain which had just brought
his mother to him from the depth of the sea? Here indeed is a terrible sight to behold: a man raised to his
highest glory by Pallas Athene, wearing the aegis,
crowned by flames, radiant, truly god-like-and this same
man crushed by grief, miserable in his awareness of hav-
ing himself brought the immensity of this grief upon
himself. The apotheosis of Achilles is the seal of his doom.
And it is his voice, his brazen voice (XVIII 222), his terrible shouting, which brings terror to the foe, that expresses
his misery and his doom. Pallas Athene's voice seems but
a weak echo of that of Achilles or is even completely
drowned out by the latter's intensity.
But are not these two events related?
19
�Does not Achilles' shout sonorously echo Zeus' silence?
Can we not guess now why Zeus remained silent for a
long while? Surely, he had to take account of the susceptibilities of his wife, as any husband would- and in his
marital relations Zeus is no exception- but is it only
Hera whom he was silently thinking about? Must he not
have been concerned about the whimsical nature of
Achilles' plight and Thetis' plea? And, on the other hand,
how could he have refused to satisfy Thetis in whose debt
he was? Is it not right then and there that Zeus decided,
in wisdom and sadness, irrevocably too, to accede to
Thetis' demand, to give honor and glory to Achilles, but
to do that in a manner which neither Thetis nor Achilles
suspected? The long stretch of the poem which corresponds to Achilles' inactivity fills Zeus' silence. While
the tide of the battle is being reversed, Patroclus' approaching death is announced twice (VIII, 476; XV,
64-7), the steps which lead to it are carefully pointed out
(XI, 604, 790-804, especially 792-3). Achilles will get
what he wants, but at the price of the greatest loss he
could suffer- the loss of his beloved friend, his other self
(XVIII, 79-82). In the hour of his triumph he will be
the most miserable of men. The ways of Zeus are as wise
as they are crooked. Zeus does not know about Iris' mission. But do the strong-headed and light-minded goddesses, Hera and Pallas Athene, know what is going on?
They do not, nor does Achilles' mother (XVIII, 74-5).
While Pallas Athene transfigures Achilles into a god,
Achilles is mortified. He has grasped Zeus' intent. He
says himself (XVIII, 328): "Not all the thoughts of men
does Zeus fulfill"; as Homer has said before (XVI,
250-2), commenting on Achilles' prayer before the slaying of Patroclus: "One thing the father granted him, the
other he denied:' Zeus denied him the safe return of
Patroclus. He denied it for Achilles' true glory's sake. For,
as Zeus confides to Poseidon, mortal men are his concern even in their perishing (XX, 21). That is what
neither Hera nor Pallas Athene understand. Hera does
not understand the biting irony of Zeus' remark to her
(XVIII, 357-9): 'Well, then, you have accomplished this,
you have aroused Achilles free of foot. Verily, the flowinghaired Achaeans must be your children:'
Achilles' suffering at the moment of his triumph is
Achilles' own. It cannot be matched by anything on
Olympus. It is as much the prerogative of a mortal as
it is the attribute of a hero. Homer is the teacher no less
of Aeschylus than he is of Plato.
This, then, is one example of the way in which a piece
of writing taunts us to understand what is being said not
20
in so many words, but through the articulation and composition of the whole. The answer I have given may not
be the right one or may not suffice. It is up to you to
find a better one.
Let us turn to the second example, Platds Phaedrus.
This example has the virtue of being not only an example of writing, but also a piece of writing the main theme
of which is writing itself. The two people who do the talking in this dialogue are Socrates and Phaedrus. Phaedrus
is a young man who loves passionately everything connected with words. He is a qnA.6A.oyo~ and so is Socrates.
The conversation is between two lovers of words and takes
place, on a summer day, outside the walls of Athens, near
a cool brook, under the shade of a tree in which cicadas
make a continuous and, I suppose, sometimes deafen.
.
1ng nmse.
The dialogue is divided as follows: there is an introductory part which I shall omit, although it is highly
significant. Then there are two clearly distinguishable
parts as follows:
"' Q00
~
=·
" lis.
I
The whole dialogue is framed, as it were, by two
figures. One is. Lysias, a famous speech-writer, who, at
the very beginning of the dialogue, appears on the scene
in the most suitable mask, to wit, as the scroll in
Phaedrus' left hand. (The scroll contains a speech written by Lysias.) Lysias remains present in that guise
(although presumably not always in Phaedrus' left hand)
throughout the entire dialogue. The other figure is
!socrates, another famous speech-writer, who is conjured
up by Phaedrus and given stature and dignity by Socrates
at the very end of the dialogue. One emerges as a past
master of bad writing and the other as full of promise
of becoming a writer of superior standing. Between these
two extremes Phaedrus is confronted with the problem
of Speaking and Writing-and so are we.
In the first part, three speeches are heard, the one
written by Lysias and read by Phaedrus, the other two
spoken by Socrates who keeps attributing their authorship variously to somebody he cannot remember, or to
the local deities, the Nymphs and Pan, or to the poet
Stesichorus, or to the cicadas, or to Phaedrus. The two
speeches spoken by Socrates are, at any rate, painstakingly elaborate, and, if they are not to be taken strictly
as written speeches, can hardly be conceived as impro-
SUMMER 1984
�vised unless, indeed, they are "inspired;' that is, dictated
by divine or superior powers.
Lysias' speech is the plea of a man to a young boy,
in which it is contended that it is better to favor a nonlover than a lover. Phaedrus considers it a wonderful
speech, "charming," as he would say today. Socrates finds
plenty of faults in it and proceeds to deliver a better
speech on the same theme, except that this speech blames
the lover and stops short at the point where it is supposed
to begin praising the non-lover. Phaedrus does not succeed in making Socrates finish that speech. It remains
truncated. Instead, Socrates, by way of recantationbecause he has offended Love- delivers another speech
in praise of Love. This speech, the most eloquent, occupies the middle part of the dialogue and is spoken by
Socrates while the sun goes through its highest course.
There is a definite change in the tenor of the dialogue
after the speeches are done with, and this changed tenor
persists throughout the second part. The conspicuous difference in the tenor of the two parts poses the problem
of the dialogue's composition.
Socrates and Phaedrus begin to speak, quietly and
soberly, about the spoken and written word and continue
doing so until the very end of the dialogue. Phaedrus
agrees with Socrates that the real problem concerning
writing is to distinguish good writing from bad writing
and is ready to embark on a discussion on this subject.
It is here (258E-259D) that Socrates calls Phaedrus' attention to the cicadas over their heads. He tells a story
about their origin: they were once human beings, even
before there were Muses; now, in their present form, so
says Socrates, they are supposed to report to the Muses
and to tell them who among men honors whom among
the Muses; they are watching, says Socrates, him and
Phaedrus now, at noontime, and if they see both talking
to each other and not asleep -like sheep and most
men- they might be pleased and report accordingly. The
question arises: why does Socrates tell this marvelous and
fantastic story of the cicadas' origin and nature at this
moment? It seems to be done to underscore that, from
now on, Phaedrus and Socrates, instead of exchanging
elaborate speeches, that is, written or dictated words, will,
in leisurely and sober fashion, converse about speechmaking and speech-writing and thus restore to the spoken
word its proper and unchallengeable function. The trouble is that Socrates' tale interrupts this sober conversation. And let us not forget that this sober conversation
is embodied in a written text.
In what follows, we witness the previous speeches being criticized and analyzed. The beginning of Lysias'
speech is subjected to a special scrutiny. And in the course
of it this beginning of Lysias' speech is made to repeat
itself, twice (262E; 263E-264A), word for word. We hear
Socrates interpreting freely the speeches he himself made,
assuming the role of their "father," so freely indeed that
they appear somewhat changed: the doubtful is omitted,
the wording is modified, additions are made (264E ff. ).
It is Socrates' way of supporting and defending the truth
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
they might contain. We observe Socrates and Phaedrus
bearing down on various books which claim to teach the
art of speaking. Phaedrus, the "lover of the Muses," is
not altogether satisfied with this kind of conversation
which he describes as "somewhat bare" (262C).
At the crucial point, when the discussion seems to
revert to the problem of good and bad writing (274B),
it is again interrupted by Socrates. He suddenly asks:
"Do you know in what way you would best please divinity
in the matter of words, either in making speeches or talking about them?" Phaedrus replies: "I certainly do not.
Do you?" Socrates: ''A tale, no more, I can tell from hearsay; a tale that has come down from our fore-fathers;
as to the knowledge of the truth, it is theirs alone:' And
Socrates casually adds: "But should we ourselves find this
truth, would any human fancy or opinion (S6l;uaJ.LU)
about it still be of any concern to us?" To which Phaedrus
replies: ''A ridiculous question!" Urged by Phaedrus to
report what he heard, Socrates proceeds to tell the tale
of Theuth and Thamous, legendary Egyptian personages,
a tale in which Theuth is reported to have invented letters, and thereby writing, and to have presented this invention to the god-king Thamous. I shall read now what
Thamous, according to Socrates, says (274E-275B):
"Most artful Theuth, one man has the ability to beget
artful things, another the ability to judge of their
usefulness or hamfulness to their users; and now you,
who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that
which they possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because
they will neglect their memory, inasmuch as their tftist
in writing will make them recollect by means of external marks which are no part of themselves and will not
make them recollect from within through their own effort. You have thus discovered an aid not to memory but
to reminding. And you give to those who learn not truth
but merely the appearance of wisdom: they will become
acquainted with many things without proper teaching
and will seem to know, while remaining for the most part
ignorant and hard to get along with since, instead of getting wise, they will merely have acquired the reputation
of being wise:'
We should not forget that this is a tale and that we
have been warned by Socrates: hearsay is no substitution for our own discovery of the truth. Again, we should
not forget that this tale presents itself to us as a written
text which, according to the very content of the tale, cannot be relied upon without proper teaching. Neither
should we forget that the discussion of the problem of
good and bad writing has, once more, been successfully
interrupted.
What follows in the written text is a description of
writing that makes it appear a playful thing, undertaken
for "amusement's sake" (276B-D). One cannot expect
written words to be serious. For, as Socrates says (275D),
"you would think that they (the written words) speak as
if they had understanding, but should you, from a desire
21
�to learn, ask them anything about what they say, they
do nothing but repeat always one and the same thing!'
They cannot, therefore, defend themselves against misunderstanding and abuse. Furthermore, they cannot and
do not discriminate between those to whom they speak.
Any author who holds that there could be much solidity
and clarity in his written work, whatever its subject,
deserves to be blamed for that, regardless of whether there
is anyone to voice the blame or not (277D-E; 275C).
What, then, about the distinction between good and
bad writing that Socrates and Phaedrus set out to discuss?
Nothing is said about it. The answer to that question has
been- of necessity, it seems- playfully withheld. Still,
whatever has been said about the problem of writing has
been enacted in the dialogue. The repetitiousness of the
written word, its inability to defend itself, the superiority of the spoken word in spontaneous conversation which
interprets with understanding what was written downall that has been enacted by Socrates and Phaedrus in the
dialogue. Must we not continue the conversation to solve
the problem of good writing, to find the answer which
was not stated in the dialogue? And does not precisely
the Phaedrus, as it is written, offer an example of how good
writing can be done?
I have few concluding remarks.
Is Plato right in attributing superiority to the spoken
word, to any conversation in which winged words can
be exchanged spontaneously? There is a point at which
this superiority seems to disappear altogether.
22
A most remarkable similarity obtains between words,
spoken words of live speech, and money, money that is
available in coins and bills. Both are precious, both circulate freely, coins and bills from hand to hand, words
from mouth to mouth. The imprints on coins and bills
are gradually erased, effaced, rubbed off, just as the
meanings of words seem to become fuzzy, blurred and
empty with the passage of time. There is even
counterfeiting in language as there is in money. Human
speech, that greatest marvel perhaps under the sun, can
and does indeed deteriorate to an extent which renders
it obnoxious and totally wingless.
It is at this point that the written word may come
to its rescue. As we so aptly say, words can be "coined."
This happens both ways: words can be coined in support of cliches, fostering and increasing the ever-present
tendency to diminish the vigor and meaning of speech;
but words can also be coined afresh.
In a letter to a friend, Virgil, a writer, says that he
gives birth to verses in the manner of bears and according to their custom (parere se versus modo atque ritu ursina),
that is to say, that he handles his verses the way the mother
bear handles her newly born cub: assiduously and persistently she licks it into its proper shape. Such assiduous
work, performed on the written word and undertaken
to assure the right articulation of a composed whole, can
and does restore and preserve the integrity of human
speech. It is thus that the written word repays its eternal
debt to the spoken word.
SUMMER 1984
�Passage
Ich habe unter meinen Papieren ein Blatt
gifunden . . . wo ich die Baukunst eine
erstarrte M usik nenne.
Goethe
Cold as it is, this Duomo isn't frozen
Music. Measures I have in mind grow stiff
To no fa<;:ade, no calculable space,
No shrines for worship. God
And Goethe can't discern the difference,
Not having heard my music. This is not
To say that music has anything much to do
With sound- the unessential ear-caress
Of cello or contralto. Only the tones
Have number. Music moves
By turnings, unprefigured, unannouncedFallings that promise risings, like the wink
Of Eros at the crossing of the bar.
Elliot Zuckerman
Elliot Zuckerman is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis.
THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW
23
�The Myth and Logic of Democracy
John S. Kieffer
D
emocracy is a myth. From one point of view
there is not and never has been a government or a society that is truly democratic.
But on the other hand, when the name is
given with sinGerity to a government, there
are demands imposed on that government and its people that compel them to act so that the name is not completely falsified. This is the nature of a myth. It is a story
that is both false in detail or in literal fact, true in spirit
and in general.
The myth of democracy is, however, in our tradition
more definite than these general considerations. The
myth of democracy is the history of ancient Athens. It
has its quintessential formulation in the funeral oration
of Pericles, though it is told by all the great Athenian
writers; poets, historians, orators, or philosophers. It is
a lively, living myth. When modern historians write about
Athens, they reveal as much about modern political feeling as they do about ancient Athens. All the battles of
politics in the nineteenth and twentieth century have been
fought in the Agora of Athens.
The myth of Athenian Democracy has been one of
the great formative myths for our times. The goddess
Athena stands in the center of it. Athenas place in the
myth is exemplified in the Eumenides. She was the founder
of the court of the Areopagus, which symbolized the
wisdom and justice that were to replace the tribal custom
of blood-feud. The Athenians saw themselves in this central myth as escaping from the reign of the daughters
of Night, the furies. Now Athena is the goddess of the
In the course of a lifetime of teaching at St. John's College, Annapolis, John
Kieffer served as professor, tutor, President and Dean of the College.
24
household arts, of weaving, of managing. She also gives
the art of persuasion and practical reason.
In the Statesman Plato draws an analogy between the
art of weaving and the art of government or kingship.
It is not fanciful to suppose that he had Athena the weaver
in mind when he did so. He must have been thinking
of the way Athena had woven the fabric of her polis from
the warp of the bold natures who dominated the assembly
and the woof of prudence in the Areopagus. At any rate
the history of Athens shows this interweaving of boldness
and prudence, grandly in Themistocles and Aristides,
meanly in Nicias and Alcibiades.
The myth of democracy is largely legend, that is, a
story explaining some great phenomenon of history.
What does it explain? To take an example of another
myth, in the case of the Trojan cycle it seems probable
that the myths explain the breakdown of the Mycenaean
world. Periods of chaos are productive of legend. But this
is not the full story. The my.th of Troy as we have it is
the work of a man of genius who seems to have lived long
after the disappearance of the Mycenaean world. The
expansion of Greece through colonies seems to have been
the exciting cause of the Homeric poems. This was again
a period of swift change such as to be fertile in making
myths. So, for the Trojan war,. it seems that two periods
of history contribute to the story. (I am not saying that
the Homeric poems are caused by historical circumstances. The absolute cause must be the myth-making
faculties of Homer and his unknown predecessors. I am
saying that historical periods supply the material for the
poet's imagination to work on. And further, that periods
of change supply the most usable kind of material. Still
further, it may be that the finished poem, the Iliad or
Odyssey, is produced in a stable period following a period
of change.)
With the analogy of the Iliad and Odyssey in mind,
SUMMER 1984
�we may try to see what historical circumstances furnished
material for the myth of democracy. I am not going to
say "the fifth century," because that was the myth. To us
looking back it has historical being and becomes circumstantial to the myth; to the people living then it did
not, of course, exist historically, and so could not be the
phenomenon they felt called on to explain. I think the
historical phenomenon I am looking for is that same
period of colonization, or rather its concluding phase,
that had been, in its earlier phase, the material for
Homer. The second set of historical conditions for the
myt~ of democracy would be the rise of the Persian
empire.
So it is my contention that the myth of democracy
that we know from a community of bards and classic
writers, and that they knew from the rhapsodes of the
assembly, somehow told itself by applying its imagination to the colonizing period that ended in the sixth century B.C. and to the Persian wars. What was there about
that period that aroused the imagination to see a way
of government by words? And secondly, why does this
produce a myth of democracy?
I answer my first question first. Words must have
achieved a new importance for the sea-faring colonizers.
Ulysses shows by his example how his survival depended
on his skill with words: his quick repartee with the
Cyclops, his courteous speech and inspired tale-spinning
among the Phaeacians, his self-concealing lies when he
had returned to Ithaca. We can well imagine how often
a group of colonizers had use for quick wit and ready
tongue, to ease their way among strange tribes on the
coast ofltaly or the Crimea, to gain advantage over rival
groups seeking. a "home far off' on the same site, to settle disputes among the colonists themselves, now they
were living far from their accustomed ways and ancestral
habits.
This last was perhaps most important of all, for,
though hearth fire.and home gods accompanied the colonists, and ancestral customs were carried in their very
souls, the change of setting must have weakened the sentiment with which the colonists regarded them. Moreover,
many of their gods and customary rites must have been
inappropriate to their new surroundings. Add to this that
the colonizers went in small groups to widely scattered
places, from the Crimea to Spain, and came from many
different home cities, and so there was no central direction of their movement. They were forced to rely on their
own resources. No wonder then that the colonies were
often pioneers in new constitutions and in the development of written law. In all this words assume an importance not only greater than before, but also of a different
kind. As confirmation from the converse let me remind
you that the Spartans, who did not colonize and did not
carry on commerce overseas, were a byeword to the rest
of the Greeks for brevity of speech and have given us
our word Laconic. No one should be surprised to notice
that Homer was an Ionian and that both poetry and
philosophy sprang into being in colonial areas: Sappho,
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Alcaeus, and Archilochus in the islands; Thales, in Ionia,
Pythagoras born in Samos and settled in Southern Italy.
The rise of Persia contributed to the myth in a different way. In the first place Persia created Greece. It
was the threat of conquest by her world empire that made
the Greeks know themselves as Greeks. This was the
origin of the myth of Hellas. The Hellenes were forced
into a cooperative effort for self-defence. Once more the
power of words was made apparent. You cannot read
Herodotus without observing how rational discussion
among the allies was essential to the measures taken to
meet the Persian danger and how much persuasion was
needed to bring the leaders to agree on plans in common.
So we have the myth of Hellas and have seen how
the Greeks have discovered the power of words to hold
together a self-uprooted, changing society. Why does the
myth of democracy eventuate from this finding? To
answer this question we may first look at the political
myth that prevailed in Greece before the colonizing
period and that guided the plans and actions of the colonizers. That myth, I suggest, was the patriarchal myth,
the myth of fatherhood, of the wisdom of the elders. It
was the myth that was to be named aristocracy when later
ages became self-conscious and invented labels for its
customs. Its foundation in economics was in the ownership of land and its legal expression was through ancestral
custom, the laws (thesmoz) of Zeus-born kings and the pronouncement of oracles. The myth or elements of it survived all through the later age of democracy, oligarchy,
and tyranny. You can feel its presence on every page of
Plato. By contrast one of the formative myths of modern
democracy is the Social Contract. Now the Social Contract implies the natural equality of all men; it
foreshadows brotherhood rather than fatherhood and is
forward-looking not backward-looking. Men in a SocialContract society ask what new agreement shall we make
to deal with a new situation; in a patriarchal society they
ask, what does the custom of our ancestors, or the will
of our father, God, direct us to do. Probably the inner
logic of political behavior will always interweave the
strands of fatherhood and brotherhood. Our society is
founded on the Social Contract and yet our own Social
Contract, the Constitution of the United States, has
become, and had to become, an institutionalized father
image, the incarnation of ancestral wisdom.
In the foundation of the Greek colonies this order
is reversed. The colonies, as we have seen, were founded
according to the ancestral model of the mother city, but
by the logic of the situation, geographical dispersion, and
political autonomy, the colonies were forced to look ahead,
not back, and to act in practice as if on the theory of
the Social Contract. Accordingly, as we have seen, they
became leaders in the writing of constitutions and the
making of legal codes. Moreover, as we have also seen,
the Social Contract implies equality. Therefore, the
tendency toward democracy acquired the backing of
political practice. When the cumulative force of the many
separate experiences with government showed what had
25
�happened, historic patterns came into view. Tyrannies
arose, oppositions in the name of ancestral custom converted the traditional, unself-conscious aristocracies into politically conscious oligarchies, and the people, the
Demos, thereby became conscious of itself as a political
force.
I see the grounding of the myth of democracy, then,
in the colonial movement, which weakened the unquestioned acceptance of the old patriarchal way oflife of the
land-owning aristocracy pictured and idealized in Homer
and Hesiod, and in the Odes of Pindar. I have argued
that colonizing put a new emphasis on the use of words
as means of politics and that this meant a tendency away
from ancestral custom toward something like a Social
Contract. Another way of putting it is that tradition
disappeared to be replaced by reason. Historical realities
never exactly conform to categories of thought. The more
rational new forms of the colonies retained traditional
forms and relations and developed their own tradition.
Conversely, the traditional forms began to use the mode
of reason in their struggle for self-preservation.
The democratic myth includes something more than
a set of historical conditions and a new way of using
words. It includes also an implicit change in the view
of men in relation to one another and a new foundation
of political power. These two changes are related to each
other. If we can believe the accepted view of most
historians, the colonizing movement was one expedient
adopted because of population pressure. Rather than risk
revolution, the citizens of the metropolis decide to encourage a portion of the populace to emigrate and colonize. So, you see, a group that may have been an unconsidered mob of base-born paupers acquires a new
status. Partly this is because of its physical strength as
it grows more numerous, and perhaps because of the appearance of bold and intelligent leaders in its ranks. More
significant, however, is that, by the proposal to send out
a colony, the old aristocracy confers on the group of colonies the dignity of a rational equal. No longer are they
just a number of poor people who can be absorbed as
tenants or clients and cared for in a fatherly way by the
well-born land owners. It is now in embryo a corporate
body with whom the aristocracy can treat in a reasonable
way. This is the birth of Demos.
It is noteworthy that colonization was only one of the
possible expedients for dealing with the problem, but the
most rational and successful one. Another was the Spartan solution of the opposite extreme. The Spartans converted themselves into a permanent police force, holding
down lower orders by terror in a state of permanent subjection. Another solution, which went along with colonization, was conversion of the metropolis from agriculture to commerce and industry. This was the course
taken by Athens and Corinth, the former not an active
colonizer, the latter one of the greatest mothers of colonies. It was to these commercial cities that the progressive back-flow of new ideas and institutions first extended its influence and was most permanently effective.
26
In both Athens and Corinth the accommodation to the
new age was made by means of tyranny. Athens, however,
passed through the stage of tyranny under Peisistratus in
the sixth century and went on to Periclean democracy.
Corinth lapsed from Periander's tyranny into oligarchy.
As you remember, Athens and Corinth were the first antagonists in the Peloponnesian War.
In all this ferment which gave birth to Demos, and
Anti-Demos, we may add, there operates a world force
that assisted and hastened the coming of Democracy and
perhaps helped move events in that direction. This was
the introduction of coined money. Coinage both made
possible the commerce that sustained the colonial
development and was an important factor in the rise of
rationality. The latter because first coinage simplified
numbering and measuring goods for exchange, and then
because it struck a blow against the aristocracies' system
of personal values. As Marx puts it, exchange value
became dominant over use value. Whatever evils follow
from this exchange, it does represent a greater rationalization of human life. Protagoras' "Man is the measure" is
the philosophical end product.
One result was the substitution of property qualifications (represented in monetary terms) for qualifications
of birth, in settling the constitutional organization of the
polis. This was Solon's fundamental reform in sixth century Athens. Although he graded political power according to wealth, the successors to Pericles gradually
transformed the institutions until the property qualification became meaningless. But while these reforms ended
forever the old aristocratic power, they introduced the
schism that was to prove fateful, that divided Greece between democracies and oligarchies. For as to the birth
of Demos there always remained an uncertainty. Was
Demos the poor alone, or was he the whole state?
Periclean Athens came close to ending the schism, but
at the cost of a new division. The Demos of Athens was
corrupted by the imperial power the city gained as a result
of the Persian War, and ultimately the rational basis of
democracy and its appeal to the aspirations of men was
lost in the struggle for power. So the myth of Athenian
democracy ends in tragedy.
I believe we can trace a progress in the form of one
central question. Aeschylus and Pericles seem to ask the
question, 'What will make democracy work?" while Plato
asks rather, "Why won't democracy work?" Socrates is
the pivot on which the question turns. The transformation of the question is due, I think, to the tragic flaw in
the democratic myth that I have pointed out. For
Aeschylus, the answer to his question is that democracy,
which is represented as the victor over the Furies, will
work if it reverses the compact between Athena and the
Furies, now become the Eumenides, and preserves
Athenas court of Areopagus. In other words he accepts
the democratic exchange, but warns that the wisdom of
the elders, which we have seen to be characteristic of the
old aristocracies, must be allowed to make its voice heard.
Democracy is to be the government of all, not the govern-
SUMMER 1984
�ment of the many. Pericles, to judge from the funeral
oration, finds the source of the wisdom needed to guide
deliberation in the character and institutions of the Athenians. Athens is the School of Hell as, and must be, consequently, her own first scholar. For Pericles, too,
colonial experiments in rational construction of government had time to sink into the consciousness of the
Hellenic world, the authority of ancient wisdom, enshrined in sententious sayings, was first perverted then
democracy is the government of all; Demos is not just
challenged: perverted by being applied in contexts apart
from the old ways of behaving, then challenged by a ra-
the poor. The city will have wise leaders and a public
opinion that is a judge of good leadership, even if it is
not capable of originating policy. For Aeschylus and
tionalizing ascription to reason. For example, the most
famous gnomic utterance, "Know thyself," attributed to
various ones of the Seven Sages, meant, first of all, no
Pericles wisdom is something a little mysterious. They
each, in fact, are somewhat complacent in accepting the
doubt, know thyself to be an insignificant ephemeral
creature, the kind of being Zeus in Prometheus Bound intended for destruction. The perversion of the saying is
confident view that the success of Athens is due to her
wisdom and that one need not doubt that the wisdom
is there.
Socrates' whole life was a life of questions. In him
the power of rationality puts ancient wisdom to the question to declare its meaning to a new generation. The
democratic heirs of the old patriarchate had inherited
the noble terms, Ko./...6<;, tlya96c;, 8tKat6c;, "noble," "good"
and '~ust:' But just as Cleisthenes had rearranged the
patriarchal tribes of old Athens into geographic wards,
in order to obliterate the political power of the ancient
birth, so the sophists were rearranging meanings of the
ancient words and thereby obliterating the ancient moral
wisdom of the polis. As they became gradually aware of
what they were doing, the Sophists summed up the
discussion with the words qn)av; and v6!J.ot;, nature and
convention. 'What is just by nature differs from what
is just by convention" is a thesis that points up the contradiction in the democratic position of Pericles and his
contemporaries. To Conservatives the ancestral custom
of justice is natural and opposed to the injustice of tyranny, which is conventional. The sophists transvalue
values. Ancestral custom is conventional, brute power
is natural. "The natural is just" is the major premise here.
The mysterious paternal wisdom that Aeschylus saw interpreted by the goddess Athena and Pericles found in
the curriculum of the School of Hellas has become a subject of inquiry to the rational spirits of the sophists.
Socrates therefore appears in the pivotal role of
democratic dialectic. To the simple man, who was satisfied
instanced in the chorus of the Antigone, "Many the wondrous things, but none more wonderful than man." The
challenge, or substitution of new authority, is portrayed
in Prometheus who gives man the liberal arts and the
industrial arts, and frees him from his abject dependence
on the powers of nature. Finally, the naked opposition
to the original meaning of the saying is subsumed in Protagoras' "Man is the measure of all things." This saying
is effective because it not only expresses the end point
of an intellectual tendency to reverse man's relation from
one of dependence on nature to one of control of nature;
it also, additionally, reflects the economic and political
shift from an aristocracy of land-owners, with their
dependent tillers of the soil, and their own dependence
on the whims of weather and season, to the commercial,
sea-faring society of the colonies and Athens. In this society all things are measured by coined money, man himself
becomes a coin that measures all things with which he
comes in contact.
Socrates is a statesman, then, because he made possible the rational criticism of politics. He is a democratic
statesman, because it was only in democracy that his
method could work. I do not mean that people in an
oligarchy or an aristocracy could not play the game of
dialectic. But for Socrates his method was not a game;
it was a political program, aimed at the improvement
of the process of government. The reason why it could
work only in a democracy is that it is only in a democracy
that the means of governing is speech. Oligarchy and
with the wisdom of his fathers, he was a sophist. To the
aristocracy alike rest on a non-rational foundation, the
sophists, themselves, he was the supreme antagonist and
reactionary.
Socrates claimed to be the only true statesman in
one of wealth, the other of personal prestige or nobility.
Political control is reached either by purchase or by inspiring awe and in the end, sustained by force. Whatever
reasoning may go on among the elite themselves, the final
Athens because he alone went about asking people to
examine themselves and to find out what as men they
really wanted. The so-called statesmen simply out-bid
each other in giving the people what they thought they
authority is external to reason. In a democracy, on the
growth of democracy, was tending to destroy the foun-
other hand, reason is the final authority. I do not imply
that a democracy always reasons well or that the authority of reason never breaks down. I mean simply that you
can't have democracy without this principle. In Athens
the people discovered the principle, used it implicitly
without full understanding, were insufficiently self-critical
dation in ancestral wisdom not alone of democracy, but
of their own wisdom, and so put Socrates to death.
of any orderly government. The early aristocracies could
The death of Socrates was followed, within less than
a century, by the death of Athenian democracy at the
hands of the Peripatetic philosopher, Demetrius, of
Phalerum. In their dying both became myths for us.
wanted. This position of Socrates' is a rational criticism
of democracy. He saw that the movement to rationality,
which, as we have seen, played so large a part in the
subsist in their moral life on the gnomic pronouncements
of the sages, buttressed by the ambiguous declarations
of the oracles. As soon, however, as the success of the
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
27
�There is a curious difference, however, in our reception
of the myths. No one, I suppose, would hold that Socrates'
death is a warning for us not to seek knowledge. Yet there
have been many who have held the death of Athenian
democracy a warning not to practice democracy. To a
certain extent this difference may be due to the dialogues
of Plato. In them Socrates is hero and democracy villain,
at least as many read the dialogues. But Plato is not
melodramatic. The death of Socrates is as much the
tragedy of Athenian democracy as it is of Socrates. Plato,
I think, makes it clear that this is his feeling. One has
only to read his loving and hating satire on democracy
in the eighth book of the Republic and compare it with
the coldly disinterested treatment of oligarchy, the unmitigated contempt of tyranny, to see that Plato was no
oligarchical reactionary. In spite of Platds anti-democratic
profession we gain from him a sense of the power of the
democratic myth to make itself the standard by which
all other forms of government are judged.
One point the myth puts immediately before us for
decision. Are we going to understand democracy as a
government of the many or of all? This, as we have seen,
was the tragic uncertainty in Greek democracy. Thucydides has shown the irreconcilable division that drove the
democrats more and more in the direction of many rather
than all. It is not primarily an intellectual confusion, but
a real difficulty. Walter Lippmarm has stated the difficulty
for our time in his recent book, The Public Philosophy. In
it he shows what confusion surrounds the term "the people" in our political thought. It is not a semantic or intellectual confusion, though he uses a semantic device
to make it clear. It is the kind of confusion that cannot
be cleared away, because the people means both things
at once that Mr. Lippmann tries to separate. His two
senses are, the electorate at any given election, "the peepul" of political satirists, and the whole host of the nation, the ancestors, ourselves who now are living, and
the unborn generations to come. Government belongs
to all the people in this latter sense, while the electorate
of the moment is but a temporary trustee for the whole
people. Yet in so far as a generation is the product of
its ancestors and holds its beliefs from them (in large part)
while also having in its heart hopes for its progeny, it
is impossible to separate the people from the People. And
on the other hand the larger People is itself a temporary
part of humanity. Its habits and beliefs may be, in a larger
context, as momentary as the people in any given election year. It seems to me that, just as ancient democracy
both lived and died through the tension of few and many,
so our democracy lives in this same tension, extended
through time. Whether it will eventually die from the
tension is not for us to say. Mr. Lippmann has done us
a service by reminding us that it exists. Aware of it, we
know better where we are and, possibly, how we should
act.
Mr. Lippmann's analysis brings to light another problem in democracy that has its analogue in the Athenian myth. He is concerned with the encroachment of
28
the legislative on the executive. From this point of view
the history of Athens is eloquent. By the time of Pericles,
and in large part owing to his policies, the Athenian
assembly had acquired untrammeled supreme power. By
force of his personal persuasive powers Pericles guided
the policy decisions of Athens. While he lived Athens was,
according to Thucydides, ('in name a democracy, in fact
a government by the first citizen." The story of the corruption of affairs by demagogues after the death of
Pericles is too familiar to need retelling. We have seen
it repeated here under the name of McCarthyism. Demagoguery thrives because of the tendency of the people
to forget that it is not the People and the second problem is the outgrowth of the first.
Whether the cure for these conditions is possible
within the democratic framework is not settled by
reference to the myth. A slogan used by ardent democrats
that "the remedy for the ills of democracy is more
democracy" is an expression of faith and hope, but hardly
a prescription. One asks how will "more democracy" work
its curative effect. Moreover, the demonstration that cures
attempted by non-democratic :means, the ancient oligarchies, the modern fascisms, are invariably remedies worse
than the disease merely displays another slogan. It does
not help point to a solution.
Perhaps Plato offers a solution in his conviction that
politics is a science, an episteme. For Plato this discovery,
which he generalized from Socrates' claims to statesmanship, led to the conclusion that monarchy or aristocracy
(of the wise) was the best government. Since only a few
can be wise, therefore, only a few can govern. In this way
democracy is put out of court. In the Politicus, however,
Plato in despair puts all human government out of court,
by showing, against the Republic, that a wise king must
be a god, no man having sufficient wisdom for the task
of kingship. Platds desperation is our opportunity. Having once and for all disposed of government by an elite,
Plato forces us to the only possible course of action, which
is to discover how to make do with what we have.
If Plato is driven to despair because the science he
held politics to be was beyond human capacity, the fault
may lie in Platds conception of science rather than in
human nature. Plato sets up a rigid alternative: either
an all-wise king or an unchangeable code of laws, embodying the unchanging principles of political conduct.
The dialectic of wisdom and reason, out of which we saw
the myth of democracy grow, is replaced by complete
separation of them into mutually exclusive realms. In the
myth of the dialogue, the Statesman, they are placed in
different eons of the world, kept apart by a cosmic
catastrophe.
In trying to escape Platds dilemma, let us first agree
that politics is a science, that is, that a government will
be successful in achieving justice only when it is conducted by men of intelligence, possessing wisdom and
knowledge. I shall further premise that a dictatorship or
an oligarchy, however intelligent, wise, and knowing its
leaders, necessarily rests in the end on extra-rational foun-
SUMMER 1984
�dations and will ultimately rely on force to keep its power,
in other words, to exist. This means that opposition to
the government, however rational, will be a crime. All
such governments are therefore unjust. Hence, only
democratic government can, in principle, achieve justice.
Can democratic government achieve justice in practice? I do not know, but before fleeing with the despairing Plato to Utopia, I would consider what means may
exist to make democracy worth a try.
I would first see whether the rigid alternatives of Plato
are really so separate. Considering his first alternative,
the all-wise king, we can see that, if his wisdom is to succeed in making just decisions in particular disputes, it
is not sufficient for the decisions to be abstractly just.
They must be accepted as just by the parties to the
dispute; otherwise, the king will have to use force and
to that extent his government will be unjust. His subjects therefore must have at least the intellectual capacity
to recognize justice. But so they will be intellectually
above the standard supposed by Plato to measure the
capacities of all but a few men.
In the case of the other alternative, rigid laws governing by general principles admitting no exceptions, there
is no chance at all for justice, since no particular case
exactly fits a general principle. Therefore, the standard
for men is even higher. The men in this society must have
the wisdom to recognize that everyone must accept a little
injustice for the sake of others.
I have pointed out these consequences of Platds position in the Statesman because I believe they reveal two
demands that just government makes on its citizens, one
that they know what justice is and the other that they
accept something less than justice for themselves in any
given situation. These seem to me to be the presuppositions of the Social Contract, but they do not depend for
their existence on the theory of the Social Contract. It
is rather the other way around. The Social Contract is
a myth to account for these two inescapable demands of
society. It now remains to show that they can be met by
a democratic society, and to suggest some of the means
available to a democracy for meeting them. That they
cannot be met by a society other than democratic has
already been stated as a premise.
The first demand requires the assumption of human
rationality, while the second requires the assumption of
human wisdom. You will notice that Platds hypothesis
of an all-wise ruler entails rational subjects, while his
hypothesis of pure rationality of government entails wise
subjects. Insofar as democracy is government in which
all rule and are ruled in turn, both presuppositions are
entailed. You will notice too that the government of
wisdom is personal government, while the government
of rationality is institutional or government of law. I think
you will now see how I will argue that democracy meets
these demands. A government of laws is no respecter of
persons, but any government other than democratic is
a respecter of persons, insofar as it distinguishes a ruler
or ruling class from the other members of society. The
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
condition that makes the injustices inherent in human
government bearable, however, is that they be justly
distributed without respect of person. So the second demand is met by democracy.
You may well say here that I have fled to a Utopia,
only I am in the company of John Stuart Mill instead
of Plato. I admit at least to idealizing, since I would be
hard put to show that our own or any democracy is now
practicing or ever has practiced these principles. I do
believe that our practice under the constitution comes
within nodding distance of them and I will say what
means seem to me to have developed in the course of
history since the days of Athens to make them less
unrealistic.
The two principles are that men are capable of acting rationally and of acting wisely, that is, capable of
knowing principles and having the skill to apply them.
The means to establishing democracy are the ways of converting these capabilities into actualities, of bringing it
about that men do as they are capable of doing. From
Aristotle on, teachers have recognized that men learn by
doing. This fact makes sense to me of the slogan that
the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. If
democracy operated by rational discussion, the way to
learn the art of rational discussion is through discussing
rationally the problems encountered in society.
The foundation, then, for bringing democracy into
being and maintaining it is the liberal arts. There are
two practical problems here. One is to have liberal arts
in one's tradition, the other is to make them available
to all citizens. On the first count we are in one respect
more fortunate than the Athenians. They were inventing the liberal arts while they were inventing democracy.
The positive work of the sophists was their invention of
the liberal arts. Sophocles, Herodotus, Euripides,
Aristophanes, the whole list of classic Greek authors
testify to the lively effect of this invention. Thucydides
and Plato confirm it, while they portray its somber side
of failure. We are more fortunate in this, that having the
tradition that they invented, we are less dazzled by the
brilliance of the invention and can use it more soberly.
On the other hand, we can lose the liberal arts by reducing them to routine, as the Greeks reduced the wisdom
of their early sages to conventional opinion. Nevertheless,
because we have the Greek authors, we can go back to
them, and have done so from time to time to light again
the fires of the liberal arts.
Secondly, to make the liberal arts available to all has
been the work of the universities and of educational institutions. Although education has all too often seemed
to divide society into the educated and the uneducated
and so to become an instrument of aristocracy, this has
not really been the case. Even when education has subserved aristocracy as in Europe, where university training became the road to wordly prestige in church or government, the very possibility of acquiring this prestige
drew men of ability from all ranks into the upper classes
and so promoted a movement towards democracy. For,
29
�however perverted the use of the liberal arts, the simple
lesson they propounded remained the indifference of
reason to false distinctions of pride. When education at
times became completely perverted, offering itself as a
mark of culture, it generated its own antithesis in the
class of self-made men, self-graduates of the "school of
hard-knocks;' and the resulting discussion brought education back to its true purpose. The very existence of educational institutions tends to universal education, which is
the first prerequisite of democracy.
In addition to educational institutions as a ground
of possibility for democracy today is a difference in the
material of education. This is the shift from the spoken
word to the written word, and the accumulation of a great
number of books. At first sight these changes might seem
irrelevant to democracy. The first great library was built
by the Macedonian kings of Egypt. The decline of speech
in favor of writing reflected the withdrawal of intellectuals from political activity in times of monarchy and
empire. May this not, however, be an instance of
Toynbee's "withdrawal and return." The oratory of Athenian democracy was partly the cause of its instability.
Books gave a haven to the liberal arts and preserved them
for a better day. They gave a stable form to the tradition
of rationality. Whatever harm there was in the medieval
deference to the authority of an Aristotle or a Galen, their
books conveyed still more the authority of reason. Even
before the barriers to learning had been broken by the
printing press, and increasingly thereafter, there was a
rational authority to rally around that could and did oppose the blind authority of despotic governments. The
Bible, of course, was the spiritual center of the bookish
tradition. Quite fortunately, the Bible never despotically
blotted out the books of the secular tradition, as the
Koran had done in the Muslim world, but Revelation
took reason as its handmaiden.
One consequence of this for the preparation of the
new experiment in democracy was the demarcation of
the political sphere from the spiritual. The Athenian experiment foundered in part because the polis demanded
the whole of men's energies. As Ernest Barker has said,
the polis was both state and church. Thus political conflict among the Greeks led to irreconcilable opposition
and the formation of Platds two cities. The church
drained away some of this passion and, by pointing to
an otherworldly standard, made it possible (after much
confusion, it is true) for men to differ rationally and not
always feel compelled to attempt to murder one another.
The church became the guarantor of wisdom in human
affairs and enabled it to avoid entanglement in conflict
with reason, which, as we have seen, was the confounding of Greek political life. The result of the Christian
belief in the temporary nature of this life led to a
30
tempered effort to ameliorate evil conditions and prevented the doctrinaire insistence on immediate, wholesale solution of problems, the kind of attitude that so often
has wrecked the order of society.
Democracy, of course, was not an immediate consequence. What I mean to suggest is that our democracy
is the heir to a tradition that contained it in seed, because
it preserved and nourished the two conditions of wisdom
and reason, so delimited that they could work together.
This is manifest especially in the law. The law came to
depend on written records of a peculiar sort. Where the
Athenian courts pretended to the wisdom to discover absolute justice in every case they had to decide and had
no concern with rational precedent, our modern law
learned from the written record of justinian's Roman law
the lesson of the rational adjustment of principle and particular case. Plato had proposed as a desperate remedy
for the masquerade of Athenian courts as omniscent kings
a rigid law which could never be changed. Roman
jurisprudence had set itself the task of discovering law
as a science and had transmitted this ideal to the modern
world. In the concept of law that can be interpreted to
fit different cases, jurisprudence gave an answer to Platds
contention that democracy cannot work because government is a science and the many are not wise. By granting an appeal from the unwisdom of the momentary majority to the institutionalized wisdom of the lasting majority, the law made an answer to Plato. This is. Lippmann's "tradition of civility."
I have all too briefly sketched some of the materials
that democracy has to work with in the human attempt
to achieve justice. In conclusion, let me say what I think
I have been saying. Democracy is the best form of government because the people insist on governing themselves,
and any attempt of men to govern other men against their
will begets injustice, which is the negation of the end of
government. People can govern themselves, because they
can be wise and reasonable. Athens once made a brave
attempt at democracy and left us a myth from which we
can learn about democracy. Moreover, she left us the
beginnings of the liberal arts, which, once given to the
world, took to themselves the discoveries of Romans, of
Jews, of Christians and have transmitted to us the
paradigms of the science of government, especially in
education, law and religion. I hold neither to the law of
progress, which would affirm that democracy is the inevitable final stage of history, nor to a biological analogy
which places democracy as one stage in some cyclically
unfolding course of events. I think that men can and
sometimes do succeed in governing themselves; that by
rational self-criticism they may prolong their success; that
a genuine education will sustain their self-criticism.
SUMMER 1984
�Bandusia, Flower of Fountains
for Martha
(Horace, Odes, Book III, 13)
Bandusia, flower of fountains,
clear uprushing of waters,
due thick, sweet wine with roses,
tomorrow's rite; due this kid
whose tipped brow and goatish play
hint the loves and the battles to comenever! His hot, thick blood
will curdle with dark your bright fall.
No rage of midsummer can quicken
your quiet; dispensing cool ease
you soothe the meandering cattle,
heal the yoke-weary ox.
Fame will mirror your beauty
when I speak the ilex branched over
the riven rock, whence loquacious
clear rivulets chatter and leap.
Richard Freis
An alumnus of St. John's College, Annapolis, Richard Freis is currently
collaborating with the composer, Alva Henderson, on a new opera, Achilles.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
31
�On Mimesis*
Victor Zuckerkandl
T
he motif of this lecture-"motif' in the sense of
what set it in motion- is Aristotle's definition
of tragedy as imitation- mimesis- of human
action, and in gen'eral of the arts of painting,
sculpture, poetry-narrative, dramatic, lyric
poetry-music, and dance as mimetic arts, imitative arts.
This is the group of arts which we today call by the unfortunate term of fine arts. (I am not going to use this
term; I shall call them, with Aristotle, the mimetic arts,
or briefly, the arts; for the context of this lecture, then,
the arts means the so-called fine arts. One of them is missing from Aristotle's list: architecture; so I will not refer
to architecture either.)
All these arts, Aristotle says, are mimesis, imitation.
They represent, so to speak, different species of the genus
imitation. The imitative element is not something secondary, accidental in them; it is their essential quality. A work
of art is what it is, namely, a work of art, because it imitates; the artist is essentially an imitator. Take away from
a work of art the element of imitation, there will no longer
be a work of art; deprive the artist of the imitator's skill,
he will no longer be an artist.
This theory seems to rest on solid ground, to be in
sound agreement with the facts. Nobody can deny, for
instance, that every painting, every sculpture, shows
something, represents something, and in this sense imitates that which it shows. (This is true for non-objective
painting, too; the only difference there is that the things
shown are not objects of external visual experience, but
1
The late Victor Zuckerkandl came to St. John's College, Annapolis, in 1948.
He taught at St. John's for over a decade. On Mimesis was delivered as a formal lecture at St. John's College, Annapolis, in 1955.
32
objects of the imagination.) Every tragedy or comedy represents an action, and in this sense imitates the action
and the people involved in it; every narrative poem tells
a story, every lyric poem expresses some idea; they imitate the story, the idea. It is not as obvious with music
and dance, but Aristotle states, as Plato did before himand he has a large following through the ages- that music
and _dance express, and in this sense imitate, emotions,
passwns.
We can grant all this and immediately move on to
the directly opposite position: there is no imitation in
the arts. When Aristotle looked at the paintings which
decorated the walls of Greek houses, what did he see?
Colors and shapes covering a two-dimensional surface.
The things represented are three-dimensional. How can
two dimensions imitate three? By the art of perspective,
we say, which creates an illusion of depth on a surface,
and which the Greeks of course knew. There are no more
Greek wallpaintings to be seen; they are gone. But we
know the art of painting of the Greeks from the vases
that have been preserved. There is no attempt at perspective here; everything is strictly two-dimensional. Would
Aristotle maintain that a mediocre wallpainting which
makes skillful use of perspective is a better work of artbecause it is a better imitation- than one of those perfect
vase paintings? When he walked up the great steps leading
to the Acropolis and looked at the Parthenon, what did
he see? Among other things, the long series of marble
reliefs-the remnants of which we still see todayrepresenting the long procession of men and horses at
the festival of the goddess Athene. Men and horses in
motion-do the sculptures imitate them? The marble
does not move. How can sculpture, frozen in time, imitate motion, change in time? When Aristotle went to
the theatre to see a tragedy, what did he see? Figures on
the stage wearing huge masks. If they were intent on im-
SUMMER 1984
�itating human beings, why should they hide the only visible testimony of their being human, their faces? When
the chorus sang and danced, did they intend to imitate
emotions, say, of mourning, or fear? People who experience these emotions do not dance or sing. Aristotle
must have been either very naive or very unresponsive
to the experience of works of art if he could hold that
theory. How responsive or naive Aristotle was, I do not
know. But he certainly was not that naive. We can safely
assume that he was aware of these circumstances. Naive
in this case is not Aristode's understanding of the arts
but our understanding of Aristotle, more specifically, our
understanding of the meaning of mimesis.
When Aristotle says "the arts are mimesis," he did
not mean that they produce mechanical duplicates,
replicas, copies that might be substituted for the real
thing. When he called the artist an imitator, he did not
class him with the man who knows how to bark like a
real dog. He understood mimesis in a wider sense which
might be translated, "making of images, imaginative imitation." Image in this sense is never a mechanical
duplicate; it involves a transfer into another medium, a
sort of translation or transformation. The painter
transforms three-dimensional things into twodimensional colored shapes; the sculptor transforms moving things into unmoving stone, bronze, wood; the poet's
medium, into which he transforms actions, events,
characters, are words; the musician's, tones; the dancer's
gestures. In the process of transformation the maker of
the image may be led very far away indeed from his
model; elimination, condensation, on one hand, extension, elaboration, on the other, may produce an image
which is anything but a mechanical substitute of its model
(e.g., Steinberg). But always will the image be recognized as image, that is, as representing something. Its very
significance rests on the fact that it is an image, that is,
related to that which ·it represents. The adequate
understanding of an image is not plainly to see it, but
at the same time to see through it to its model, to see
the relation of image to model.
A closer scrutiny of the evidence, however, will show
many discrepancies between even this refined mimetic
theory of the arts and the observed facts. (I am not going to review the whole evidence; I merely mention a
few points.) First of all, the artist himself is very inadequately described as an imitator, in any sense of the word.
The young man or woman who decides to become an
artist -we assume that the decision is justified- does not
do so out of any desire to imitate anything-or rather,
the one thing he desires, passionately desires, to imitate
is another artist. The decisive events in a future painter's
life are visits to art galleries, not hikes in the country;
the future dramatist's fate is determined by evenings in
the theatre, not by reading the newspapers or witnessing a murder. Andre Malraux, whose PsycholOgy of Art
is the most comprehensive presentation of the visual arts
from a non-mimetic viewpoint- it has nothing to do with
psychology as we understand the term; it is a
THE
S1~
JOHN'S REVIEW
philosophy- puts it very pointedly: "The composer loves
compositions, not nightingales; the painter loves paintings, not sunsets." It is always art that makes the artist,
not nature, or life. The arts therefore have no
beginning- no more than language- or, in other words,
the beginnings of the arts are mythical.
Before we go on I want to clarify further these
concepts- image, and maker of images. The prototype
in a way is the demiurge in Platds Timaeus, who fashions
the universe as the image of the ideal model. All the essentials are here. Where there is an image, there must be
a model. The maker has his sight set on the model; he
takes his bearings from the model. The image is derived
from the model. The model is prior to the image, not
only in time (which is obvious- the image can hardly
precede the model) but also in rank: the model is more
than the image- if in no other respect, then because it
is the real thing; the other is 'only an image.' As Plato
puts it at another place, the image is farther removed
from truth than that of which it is the image. One might
object that many works of art glorify, idealize, their
model (for instance, in the case of an idealized portrait).
But in this and all similar cases the actual model is not
the real object in front of the artist, but an idea developed
from the contemplation of that object-in the case of a
person, the idea of his unrealized potentialities, or the
idea of what this man should look like in order to look
like a great man.
With this understanding of image it seems hard to
admit that a work of art is essentially an image. In the
strictest sense there is no model. The role of the model
in the making of a work of art is of the most trivial sort.
This becomes evident when we watch artists at work. A
famous example is Beethoven's shaping of the melody
of the last movement of the Ninth Symphony, the Hymn to
Joy. We have the testimony of this working process in a
few sheets of sketches. If a melody is an image of an emotion, then the model here would be the emotion of joy.
It is perfectly clear that the composer is not concerned
with joy or any other emotion, but with the relations between tones; if there is a model, he certainly is now working with his back to it. Nor is he now engaged in matters of secondary importance, like the search for the right
means to express an emotion. He is now struggling with
the essential problem; success or failure of this as a work
of art will not be determined by the finding of the right
relation between tones and an emotional model, but by
finding the right relation between tones and tones. This
corresponds to the fact that when the melody is heard
for the first time in the symphony it makes perfect
sense- I still have yet to find the person who would find
any relation between the melody there and the emotion
of joy. The model, if there is one, is as unimportant to
the understanding of the melody as to its making.
Recently I read a paper which analyzed the seven different versions of a famous German poem- successive
stages of development from a crude beginning to a finished work of art. The poet: Conrad Ferdinand Meyer;
33
�the title of the poem: Dead Love. The model is clearly
recognizable from the very beginning: two people returning from a walk one evening, and realizing that their love
had died, and that they themselves had killed it. The
whole development has nothing to do with the relation
to the model-like trying to tell the story clearer, throwing more light on the relationship between the two, and
so on. It has to do exclusively with rhythm, verse, rhyme,
syntax, choice of individual words- choice of words not
for the sake of a better relation between words and story
but between words and words. And again, the development is not concerned with means, secondary matters;
the changes mark the difference between a very poor and
a very good poem, that is, with the essence of poetry.
As these changes have nothing to do with the realation
of the words to the model, the poem cannot essentially
be an image. Even more disturbing is this: the story at
the end, after all the changes, is no longer exactly the
same as it was at the beginning; but it is quite clear that
the changes in the poem were not adjustments to a
changed story; it seems rather the other way, the changes
in the words, rhythms, etc., changed the story. So if we
want to call the poem an image, it would be the rather
extraordinary case of the image changing the model, or
even of the image making the model.
Or take a tragedy, Hamlet. Where is the model of
which this is an image? Is it the story Shakespeare read?
The chronicle which reported the events of bygone days?
The vague, uncertain figure, the real Hamlet? Was
Shakespeare's sight set on any one of these as the model
of which he wanted to make an image? It is clear that
if there is a model of which Shakespeare's Hamlet is the
image, it could only be Shakespeare's Hamlet againthe idea of such a man, such a character which
Shakespeare formed in his mind and then made the central figure of his play. If this is the case, the essential
achievement is not the making of the image but the forming of the idea; Shakespeare would be the artist he is,
not because of his capacity to make images but because
of his power to produce models. But is this a reasonable
account of the process? That he first figured out the man
and then wrote the play about him? I would rather say
that the writing of the play was his way, the only possible way, to figure out the man. By making the image he
produced the model- if you want to put it in this
paradoxical way. When Phidias made the statue of Zeus,
what was his model? His idea of the ruler of the gods?
Where did he get this idea? It was certainly not a current idea -witness the statues of the preceding generation. It was an idea generated in his own mind. And
again, it does not make sense to me to imagine that he
first figured out his idea and then made the image. Most
likely he did not begin with the idea but with a block
of material; he then uncovered the idea in the material
on which he worked. If we call it an image, then the model
comes into being together with the image. Those who
saw it did not understand it because they knew the model;
they understood the model because they saw the image.
34
That is, the statue gave them a new understanding of
Zeus. The image makes the model. Not even with
painters like the impressionists and their followers who
turn again and again to nature in order, as it seems, to
be as close as possible to their models, is the case as simple as it looks. When they leave their studios and go out
into the open, it is primarily to effect a break with an
outworn tradition; what they expect from nature is
delivery from the dead weight of convention. Nature tells
them what not to do, but as to nature being the modelwe have only to look over their shoulders and see what
they do, what they mean when they say 'true to nature.'
True to their own nature, maybe. Otherwise it is much
less a transformation of the model into an image thanand I use once more Malraux's words- the secret destruction of the model for the benefit of the construction of the canvas.
I think this is enough to give an idea of the evidence
contradicting the image theory of the arts. The evidence
in turn supports the diametrically opposed theory: the
work of art is not an image. Still it is important, meaningful, significant. The significance of an image lies in
its relation to something outside itself; the work of art,
not being an image, has no such relation. Its significance
therefore must lie wholly within itself. It is a completely
autonomous construct, closed within itself, without any
essential relation to anything beyond itself, carrying its
full meaning strictly within itself. I quote (this is Clive
Bell, the protagonist of this theory; he refers mostly to
the visual arts, but the implications are that the theory
extends to all the arts): "He who contemplates a work
of art inhabits a world with an intense and peculiar
significance all it own; that significance is unrelated to
the significance of life . ... The representative element
may or may not be harmful; always it is irrelevant. For
to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing
from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no
familiarity with its emotions ... for a moment we are
shut off from human interests ... to appreciate a work
of art we need bring with us nothing but a sense of form
and color and a knowledge of three-dimensional space
... I appreciate music, a pure art with a tremendous
significance of its own and no relation whatever to the
significance of life.... The contemplation of pure form
leads to a state of extraordinary exaltation and complete
detachment from the concerns of life."
To me this seems a theory of despair. I fail to see how
anything completely detached from the concerns oflifeand one of them is the search for truth- can be in any
way important, significant. This theory builds a wall
around the arts, isolates them completely from the totality
of human experience, makes of them a world of their own.
It leaves the fundamental question wide open. No matter how self-contained a construction the work of art is,
tones related to nothing but tones, colors to colors, words
to words, there must be at least one relation to something
which is not tones, words, colors, namely, me. Granted
that music is tones related to tones, but their being so
SUMMER 1984
�related must be related to me, the listener; otherwise,
why should I bother? The same for the other arts. The
statement about the work of art being meaningful in itself
is no answer; it merely pushes the problem further back,
and makes it in a sense insoluable.
I understand the force of the argument which pushed
the theory in this direction. The work of art can only
be either an image, related to something outside itself
and meaningful because of this relation, or not an image, not related to anything outside itself and meaningful
only within itself. If the evidence against the image theory
gets too strong-as it did -what remains but the other
alternative? At this point we have to recognize that this
whole alternative- image or no image- is phony. There
is no either/or situation here. We have not yet fully exhausted the meaning of mimesis.
It is Aristotle himself who sets us on this track. In
a paragraph of his Metaphysics he uses mimesis in a very
much different meaning. In Chapter 14 of the Vth book,
when he talks about the concept of quality in reference
to number, he mentions composite numbers. For the
benefit of those who have not yet read the VIIth book
of Euclid or have forgotten it, I have to explain what composite numbers are. The Greeks distinguished between
linear, plane, and solid numbers. The linear or onedimensional number is simple number as we think of
it when we imagine the units, so many of them as there
are in the number, all lined up in one straight line; the
plane or two-dimensional number is the number we get
when one number is multiplied by another number: so
many times so many-like a rectangle contained by two
sides; the solid or three-dimensional number adds one
more factor: so many times so many times so manylike a solid figure contained by three sides. For instance
24, if considered as so many units, is a linear number;
considered as 3 times .8, it is a plane number; considered
as 3 times 2 times 4, a solid number. A number like 25,
5 times 5, or 81, 9 times 9, is called a square number,
for obvious reasons; 27, 3 times 3 times 3, a cube number.
All the numbers which are not linear are together called
composite numbers. Now Aristotle says: "composite
numbers which are not in one dimension only, but of
which the plane figure and the solid figure are the
mimema':_ the word mimema means the result of
mimesis; the Greeks have two words for our one, "imitation;' which means both the process of imitating and
the result of that process, the thing which imitates.
It is clear that none of the meanings of mimesis we
have so far considered apply here. A square, for instance,
is not an image of a number like 25, 36, and so on. The
number is not the model of the square. The square is
not derived from number, is not meaningful because of
its relation to number. We do not understand a square
by recognizing its relation to number. And the maker
of the square, so to speak, is no image-maker, did not
have his sight set on any number, did not make the square
as an image of a number. The square is, W-as made as,
and is understood as an element in the autonomous con-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
text of geometry. It is even impossible to understand a
square otherwise than in the context of geometry; the
study of the square-and of the plane figure, or the solid
figure- involves only references to geometric figures, no
reference to anything outside of geometry. Whatever
meaning a geometric figure has, this meaning is completely contained within the figure as an element of
geometry.
On the other hand, there is, over and above this
meaning of the geometric figure which we now call its
immanent meaning, another, a transcendent meaningand I am using the word transcendent literally, without
metaphysical connotations, that is, going beyond one's
limits. The meanings of all words are transcendent: the
meaning of apple pie, for instance, is transcendent, as
the word is something audible, while the things belonging to it lie beyond the limits of the audible in the edible. So square or plane figure or solid figure have, in addition to their immanent, a transcendent meaning, a relation to something which is not figure but number, and
this is the meaning Aristotle refers to. This meaning is
not arbitrarily assigned to the geometric figures as we
arbitrarily assign meanings to words or symbols; the relation seems to arise from the nature of both geometric figure
and number, and therefore, when it is called up, it throws
a new light on number, and reciprocally also adds to the
significance of geometric figures.
I would like to clarify this new meaning of mimesis
further, by using a quotation of a more modern thinker.
Pascal writes: The numbers imitate space. Here space
does not mean geometric figures but extension, the great
receptacle, that in which all the extended things of the
universe have their place. In what sense can number be
said to imitate space? Numbers are not images. 17 cannot be the image of 17 things as we have no 17 things
without first having 17. Number is pure construct, a construct which knows only its own inherent laws, takes no
regard of anything outside; numbers are primarily related
to numbers, not to something which is not number. Their
system is a perfect example of an immanently meaningful
order. Still we all know, are all aware, that mathematics
is not a beautiful game of numbers, that it has over and
above its immanent a transcendent meaning. I do not
refer here to the usefulness of mathematics but to its
truthfulness. What this transcendent meaning is, is of
no concern to the mathematician or to the student of
mathematics; in the making as well as in the understanding of mathematics we are exclusively concerned with
numbers in relation to numbers, not with numbers in
relation to other things. This does not mean that the
transcendent meaning is less important; without it,
mathematics would not be what it is, namely, true. But
the question of that meaning is no longer a mathematical
question. When the transcendent meaning crystallizes
in a philosophical mind- that of a person or a
generation -as it did for instance in that thought of
Pascal, then it becomes clear that the pattern of this meaning is not that of an image. If it were, we would have
35
�to say that number is the image of the order of universal
space. How could it be this, as the very idea of a universally ordered space, is the outgrowth of our having
numbers. The mimema here is not derived from its
counterpart but reveals, or almost produces, its counterpart. This is a very disturbing observation, that a pure
construct of the mind discovers itself as in profound
agreement with a universal order. It is as if we were
writing a test and then discovered that we had written
a translation.
We can now try to formulate the difference between
image and mimema in this new sense. The image has
its origin in the model and its significance in the relation to the model; the mimema has no model. Its origin
is in its own context- number from number- and its
significance is twofold. Primarily it is pure construct. It
is nothing but construct, determined solely by the inherent logic of the construction, not by any outside factor. Its transcendent meaning is of an entirely different
type from that of image. The relation image-model is
a one-to-one relation- image of this, not of that -like
that between a word and its meaning, a sign or symbol
and the thing signified or symbolized (and this takes into account the possibility of one word having different
meanings, etc.). The relation of the mimema to its
counterpart must be different, as we see from what we
have said: the mimema made and understood without
any regard to its counterpart~ the mimema revealing or
even producing its counterpart, and so on (this is-like
saying to a foreigner: you listen only well to the sound
of 'apple pie' and you will understand what it means).
What precisely this relation is, is the problem which I
will raise and maybe clarify a little, but not answer. The
main thing, it seems to me, is to show that such a problem exists. We are so caught in the meaning pattern
of words and symbols that we take this to be the pattern
of meaning. Statements like: "I know this is meaningful
though I do not know what it says," sound foolish to us.
They would not to less positivistic minds. Socrates did
not doubt that the sentences spoken by his inner voice
were meaningful, although he had sometimes a hard time
finding out exact1y what they meant. The ancient world
was full of oracles which were supposed to speak the truth
even though it was very difficult to understand what they
said. And even today, the Christian does not doubt that
the sentences of the Bible speak the truth, irrespective
of whether or not he understands what they say.
Let us come back to the mimetic arts. I would now
say this: Aristotle is right in defining painting, sculpture,
poetry, music, dance as kinds of mimesis- provided
mimesis is understood as we do it now. I would not flatly
say that Aristotle did understand it in this way when he
applied it to the arts. But it might have been a marginal
possibility in his mind. After all, we gathered this meaning of mimesis first from his own use of the term.
We recapitulate. What have we got? Two theories.
One asserting that the work of art is essentially image,
significant because of its relation to the model, a transcen-
36
dent relation. The other asserts that there is no such
essential relation of a work of art to anything outside
itself, and that therefore its significance lies all within
itself, is immanent. We have now a third possibility: the
work of art is mimema as we now understand the term.
The work of art has both transcendent and immanent
meaning. Primarily it is pure construct, nothing but construct, made and understood without any reference to
anything outside. This construct has by nature a counterpart outside, and the relation to the counterpart makes
it what it is, a mimema. Accordingly the question: What
does it mean? (namely, over and above the immanent
context), is a legitimate one. Only we must not forget
(as we usually do) that the relation between the work of
art and its counterpart, which is in question here, is not
the same and not even similar to that between the image and its model.
The art to which this interpretation most easily and
most naturally applies is of course music. The element
of construction is very much in the foreground in music,
perhaps more so than in any other human activity with
the exception of mathematics. It comes as close as possible
to the idea of a pure construct- its material, the tones,
have relation only to each other, not to anything else (the
opinion that the tones of music are kinds of idealized
sounds of nature, need not be taken seriously); we express this also by saying that music is pure form, form
without content, or-as this seems to imply empty
form- that in music form and content are the same.
Music is essentially tones-in-relation; whatever meaning
there is in a tone points to another tone, not to something
which is not tone. A perfect example of immanent meaning. Yet we are also aware that this statement, "Music
is tones-in-relation;' -is not an adequate or satisfactory
answer to the question which the phenomenon of music,
its presence among us, puts to us. We are aware that in
this answer something has not been accounted for; in
other words, we are aware of the fact that music is
mimesis, of the fact of its mimetic significance. Not all
the threads of meaning that attach themselves to music
coil inwards; some of them lead outwards, and they hold
the whole construct in its proper place, as it were, the
place of mimema. But although without an awareness,
however dim, that there are such threads of transcendent meaning there is strictly speaking no musical experience, the knowledge what they are, where they lead
to, is in no sense a prerequisite either for the making
or the understanding of music. The question: What does
it mean? referring to the transcendent, not the immanent meaning, is no longer a musical question. The composer does not ask it, at least never when he writes music,
only when he philosophizes, which he rarely does. And
the study of music, if it is to lead to an understanding
of the works of the tonal art, is the study of tones-inrelation, of immanent meanings. Of course the question
of the transcendent meaning is a valid question -a question for philosophy. But before even admitting it as valid,
we must make sure that it is not asked in a thoughtless
SUMMER 1984
�way: What does it mean?-with 'what' I usually ask for
a 'this' or 'that', and so I tacitly introduce the assumption that the relation between music and its mimetic
counterpart is of the same kind, of the same type, as that
between a symbol and a thing, an image and a model,
a word and its meaning. This way, the very asking of
the question would prejudge the answer. The problem
is precisely to find out what kind of relation prevails between music and its mimetic counterpart. You see, from
the outset we get deep into philosophy; and so we understand why good answers to this question do not usually
come from musicians but from philosophers. One of these
answers, a famous one, I will now quote, not because
I want to suggest that this is it, but because it helps us
to understand the nature of the questions.
In his Harmonies of the World Kepler writes:
The movement of the heavens is nothing but a certain everlasting polyphony (intelligible, not audible) effected by dissonant tensions comparable to
those syncopations and cadences wherewith men
imitate those natural dissonances, tending towards
certain and prescribed clauses, each involving six
terms (like the six parts of polyphonic music),
demonstrating and defining with these notes the immensity of time. It is therefore not too astonishing
that man, the ape of his creator, should finally have
found the knowledge of polyphonic song which was
unknown to the ancients, so that in some short part
of an hour, by means of an artful harmony of many
voices, he might play the everlastingness of created
time, and thus to some extent taste the satisfaction
of God the Workman with his own works in the
sweetest feeling of delight which comes from the experience of music, that imitation of God.
The word imitation appears here twice. Certain
elements of music, syncopations (which then meant a type
of dissonance, not a rhyth,mic irregularity) and cadences,
are called imitations of the motion of the stars; and music
as a whole is called an imitation of God- Dei imitatri
Musica. Clearly imitation stands here for mimesis, in the
sense we try to understand it. It has nothing to do with
image. Otherwise the study of composition would have
to begin with Ptolemy or Copernicus. And no listener,
however familiar with astronomy, has yet-as far as I
know-discovered in a polyphonic piece any reference
to the motions of the planets. Neither is music an image
of God; atheists can be excellent composers, and religious
faith is not a prerequisite to the enjoyment and
understanding of music. Also many of those polyphonic
songs Kepler referred to were written to decidedly nonreligious words (to say the least) and in this sense were
certainly no images of God. Still, by being music, mov-
composer produces a piece of music according to the laws
of the tonal construct. By doing this, he produces an imitation, a mimema, of the heavens, of God. He did not
know it, he did not intend it, he could not help it happen. It happens behind his back, as it were. The listener
hears tones-in-relation. In hearing this he becomes aware
that this is an imitation of something which is -not tones,
a mimema. What it imitates he does not know and need
not know; yet he may have a sense of direction in which
to look for that counterpart. In some mind this awareness
may crystallize into an act of mimetic recognition in
which the counterpart of the mimema is apprehended.
Kepler saw it in the stars, in God. The result is a new
recognition of the universe, of God. I would even say,
more strictly, it is the recognition of a new universe, a
new God. The Universe, the God, whose imitation we
recognize music to be are not the same as they were
before. Not only did the man who made the music imitate something he did not know, which nobody knows,
but also the imitation produced the thing imitated. This
is like saying: a man writes a text and later finds out he
has done a translation; or: a man is charged with writing
a translation, but he gets no text; when he asks for the
text, he is told that the text does not exist, but that it
will come into existence by way of his translation.
These are fantastic propositions. I will try a metaphor
to make them more manageable. Imagine a man working on some material, some block of metal. His intention is to produce a perfect surface -whatever he may
consider a perfect surface. This he accomplishes. When
he has done it he discovers that his surface shows a reflection-. He-discovers that he has produced a mirror. It was
not his intention to produce a mirror, he did not even
know that there are mirrors. (I do not think here of mirror
in the conventional sense, as a surface reflecting visual
images, but of mirror in the most general sense, in the
sense in which a magnetic needle might be called a mirror: its existence "reflects" and thus makes apparent the
existence of a magnetic field. In the case of our man's
metal surface, the reflection may for instance assume the
form of vibration.) The reflection may be vague, not well
defmed. The chief thing about it is that it is not the reflection of a thing that was there and seen before; it is the
reflection of something so far unseen: the mirror receives
the reflection from a direction where there was emptiness
before. The reflection leads to the discovery that there
is something there to be reflected. Considering the very
special shape of the surface which seems to be the condition for its functioning as a mirror, one might even
ing according to those dissonant tensions, cadences, and
suspect that the thing reflected had an interest in becoming manifest in the reflection, and secretly guided the
hand of the worker so that the outcome would be as
desired. This sounds a little mystical. I refer to the everrecurrent comment of artists that while at work they feel
the other rules of tonal motions, it imitates God. There
is also the profound remark that the musician in truth
enacts a play the subject of which is everlasting time; but
this I won't take up now. So what are the inferences? The
themselves as instruments, as tools of some power whose
source is located outside themselves-a sort of Socratic
diamonion for workmen. However this may be, returning to music, the tones are the surface; if they are in the
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
37
�right relation, they will become a mirror; there will be
a reflection from somewhere, testifying that there is
something out there to be reflected. To Kepler's eye the
thing reflected, revealed in the reflection, was divine
order. The order of tones appeared as 'imitation', as the
mimema of a divine order.
What about the other arts? What happens if we apply our interpretation of mimesis to them? The application there is not as obvious as in the case of music. The
painter or the sculptor certainly do imitate in the conventional sense of the word, do produce images; yet if
the work of art is essentially miinesis in the other sense,
then the imitation in the conventional sense cannot be
essential. The painting, the sculpture, are essentially, like
a piece of music, free constructs, that is, determined by
the laws of the construction, not by anything coming from
outside. That the painting is a likeness of something is
a secondary, an accidental factor; it is not that which
makes the painting a work of art, a mimema. In other
words: insofar as the painter makes an image he is not
an artist, and insofar as he is an artist he makes no image. On the other hand, as mimema, the painting has
also transcendent meaning, a counterpart; but this
counterpart cannot be that which the painting represents,
of which it is an image. A good painting of a chair is
not essentially an image of a chair; it is essentially a construct of shapes, lights, colors, which happen to look like
a chair-the reference to the real chair is non-essential.
The likeness is merely an element in the construction;
it belongs to the immanent meaning. The transcendent
meaning has nothing to do with 'chair', real or ideal. In
the terms of our metaphor: the chair of the painting is
mirror, not thing mirrored; it is not a reflection, but a
reflector; and what it reflects is certainly not 'chair'.
I look at a Greek statue, say, of the god Apollo. I
know, I have been informed, that this represents that particular god. I understand what the statue is an image
of. Whether the model of this statue was a real person
or an idea does not matter. I can deduce from this statue
all kinds of thought regarding Greek art, religion, culture.
With all this, I have only seen the image, not the
mimema. I try to see better, that is, to do nothing but
see, forget all information, speculation, rationalization,
give the eye a chance to find its way undisturbed. After
a while, the statue so to speak takes me over, takes over
my body. My body assumes the attitude of the statuenot actually of course, and not in imagination- this has
nothing to do with imagination- but in what I would
call body-thought; my body consciousness becomes the
inner. counterpart of the external attitude of the statue;
I have the experience of body which the statue would
have if it had consciousness. In this case the experience
is of body at rest- not of body, the thing, in a state of
rest, but of body and rest as absolutely one. This is contrary to our normal experience where rest is felt, when
there is no consciousness of body, in complete
relaxation- body being the source of perpetual unrest.
Here, however, there is full presence of body, full·
38
awareness, awakeness of body-the statue stands-and
perfect rest. In other words, it is rest not as absence of
tension but as equilibrium of tensions. This is a revelation of a previously unknown mode of body existenceand this, not the God Apollo, or the Greek idea of a god,
or Greek culture, is what this statue is the mimema of.
Let us lastly consider tragedy. Aristotle defines it as
imitation, memesis, of human action -a certain kind of
action- done in the medium of language- a certain kind
of language. As long as the word imitation is not taken
too literally nobody will quarrel with this. Every tragedy
has a plot, action involving people, and in this sense imitates, represents human action; and the making of a
tragedy is concretely a writing- tragedies are writtenwritten language is the medium in which it comes to light.
The only question is: is this, as Aristotle seems to say,
that which makes a tragedy what it is? Is written work
a tragedy because it is this particular kind of imitation,
representation?
I would deny it. If tragedy is mimesis in the sense
in which we now understand it, it is primarily an
autonomous construct, a language construct, not a
representation. The representation in it is not its essential quality. On the other hand, as mimema it does have
transcendent meaning, is significantly related to a
counterpart. But this counterpart is not the story, the plot,
the people, is not that which it represents-and this includes ideas, the moral, anything that can be deduced
from it.
This requires some clarification. The term "language
construct" seems to imply that we consider a piece of
poetry, such as a tragedy, primarily from the viewpoint
of syntactical construction, rhythm, meter, verse, rhyme,
sound- from a purely formal standpoint. We would then
deal with them as organized sounds in time- organized
according to certain formal patterns, not according to
meanings. We would then detach the constructive element from the meanings, consider words apart from
meanings. This would be a misunderstanding of the term
language construct. Words arc not sounds plus meanings; they are meaningful sounds. Words divorced from
meanings are no longer words, no longer language. If
language is the material of my construct, then meanings
are a part of the material. In handling this material I
cannot but always handle meanings too. A language construct is a construct of sounds and meanings. To call
tragedy a language construct does not therefore mean
that it is considered, as we say, from the formal stand. point only, apart from the content. The content- plot,
people, action- is itself an element of the constructionthe most important element-along with the language.
The writing of a tragedy is not the making of an image
of people in action, or the search for the most convincing (persuasive) way to present people in action; it is
primarily a construction of people in action, whose chief
means of communication is language. These people and
their actions and passions have no existence apart from
the words; in tragedy, as in music, form and content are
SUMMER 1984
�one. The words are the tones, the people are the melodies;
it is as impossible to think of these people apart from
the language as it is to think of melodies apart form tones.
So if tragedy is mimesis, the so-called content belongs
entirely to the context of immanent meaning of the
mimema; the plot, the people cannot be that of which
the tragedy is the mimema. Again in the terms of our
likeness: the people and their action are not that which
is mirrored, they are the mirror; not the reflection but
the reflector; or as Aristotle would say, they are not that
which is imitated but that which imitates.
With this in mind we can face the question how to
understand, how to explain to ourselves, the peculiar
quality of the experience of a tragedy, the difference between being a spectator in the theatre, having the thing
represented really happen to oneself, watching it happen to others, reading a report about it. These other
possibilities- misfortune befalling oneself, observing
misfortune befall others, reading or listening to a story
about such misfortune -are certainly most depressing
experiences. The experience of tragedy leaves us in a state
of elation. We desire it. How can we understand this?
Take Oedipus Rex. Why should we expose ourselves
to it? The story we know well enough. Of course, knowing the story, and being made actually to live through
it-which is what happens in the theatre-are different
things. But for what purpose should we be made to live
through it? What else could this be but a torture? It is
true that this is theatre, that it is not a real story, real
happenings which we observe on the stage-and there
are certain styles of representation which emphasize this
quality of non-reality. But no matter how realistic or
unrealistic the representation, if that story does not come
fully alive on the stage and make it come alive in the spectators, we might just as well stay home and not go to
the theatre at all. So what does it profit us to live through
it? Aristotle's answer is: only by living through it can we
learn from it; we learn through imitation. I confess I am
not convinced. What can I possibly learn from Oedipus
Rex-and I take the word learn to mean what we usually
understand as learning? I do not want to make any cheap
remarks. Seriously, the idea is that by living through
Oedipus' experience and at the same time reflecting on
it-as we can because we are not really living through
it-we might detect the point on his way where he
possibly erred and where the choice of another course
might have saved him from his tragic fate. But is this
really the moral of Oedipus? Does the tragedy not do
the very opposite to us, namely, drive home with the
greatest possible force that no matter what you do, how
hard you try, fate cannot be avoided, that there is no
escape from fate, and if this fate is fall, then fall one must.
The whole impact of this tragedy seems to me the experience of the inevitability of fall. And what could such
an experience be but of most depressing kind: still, this
like any other tragedy leaves us elated.
In its pattern the experience of tragedy is similar to
the experience of a work of the visual arts as I have tried
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
to describe it. It is not an illusion- believing something
to be real which is not real- nor can I ascribe it to
imagination -lending the color of reality to something
which I know to be not real- it is an experience of participation. As I experience a tragedy I remain what I am
and where I am; at the same time my consciousness
spreads out and goes over into the people involved in the
dramatic action- into all of them; in reference to the
words, I am at the same time hearer and speaker. The
words, the people, the action are all together, as we said,
the construct of tragedy. By participating in them I
become one with the construct, I become mirror, and
I receive the reflection of something-whatever it may
be- that of which tragedy is the mimema. I become
aware that the immanent order of the construct is order
also in relation to something else, that there is
something- not a thing, rather a state, a mode, a dimension of human existence whose order is revealed in :;
tragedy, in reference to which tragedy is in order. In this
sense we can say: we experience tragedy as true. This is
the source of the elation. Take away tragedy- there is
the suffering, dejection, despair, the great visitations, the
inscrutable catastrophies- the whole chaos of human
misery. This chaos tragedy transforms into order. Tragedy
does not explain suffering, or justify it, or give it to us
as a fact to which we have to resign ourselves; but it
bridges the gap between suffering and reason. Oedipus
Rex is not an explanation or a justification of fall; it is
I would say the logos of fall. This is then one way to
redeem fall, and tragedy on the whole, one way to redeem
the suffering of man. We understand that tragedy
originated in the cult of the god Dionysus, the redeeming god of the ancients. We understand also why in a
truly Christian world there is no room for tragedy. The
Christian finds redemption in other ways.
I want to come to a conclusion. In the last analysis
the problem will boil down to the question about the relation between a work of art and reality. We have mentioned one theory which denied there was any relation
between them. If we admit a relation, there are two possible interpretations of mimesis: as image, where reality
is the source from which the work of art is derived; and
mimesis as reflection, where the work of art is the source,
the detector, of new realities. I will close with two legends
which 'imitate', better than I would be able to, the two
different views. One is the well-known story of the most,
famous painter of Greece, Appelles; it is said that wheEL
he painted grapes, birds would come and pick at them.
The other is the story of one of the great painters of old
China. When he became old he began to work on a painting which he showed to no one; he worked on it for years,
and finally he called in his friends and pupils, and there
it was: showing a .landscape with mountains and a road
leading from the foreground back towards the hills. They
looked at the painting and at the old man, and suddenly
they saw the man enter the painting, begin to walk on
the road, getting smaller and smaller until he finally
disappeared in the mountains.
39
�The Archimedean Point and the Liberal Arts
Curtis Wilson
T
he subject of the lecture is, in accordance
with tradition, the liber.al arts, liberal artistry.
And I wish to point out, to begin with, that
these words "art" and "liberty" are difficult
words; they do not designate anything you
can point at with the index finger; they belong, not to
the order of motion and perception, but to the order of
action and idea. They are, as I shall try to explain later
on, dialectical words. And the question arises, how are
such words to be defined? Where should one begin? What
standpoint should be taken in setting out to define these
words? These are not merely theoretical questions; wars
are fought between those who understand words like
"liberty;' ')ustice;' "right," "obligation;' in different ways.
Archimedes, the mathematician, is said to have said:
Give me a fixed point on which to stand, and I shall move
the world. He was referring, of course, to the power of
the lever; to the law according to which the ratio of the
two forces is the same as the inverse ratio of the lever
arms. All that Archimedes requires, then, is a fixed pivot
or fulcrum, a lever of extraordinary length, and a place
to stand, and he will be able to move the earth.
This claim would not be stated in quite the same
terms by modern scientists, beginning with Newton; I
shall not go into the modifications required, but only state
that they are required precisely because, in a sense that
is both real and figurative, man has now discovered the
Archimedean point, the point outside the earth, the
knowledge of which permits us to unhinge the earth. And
Curtis Wilson is a tutor at St.John's College, Annapolis. The Archimedean Point
and the Liberal Arts was delivered as the Dean's opening lecture in the fall of
1958 at St. John's College, Annapolis.
40
this point, being a place to stand, is also a standpoint
from which man attempts to view himself. Kafka
somewhere says that, while man has discovered the Archimedean point, he uses it against himself; that it seems
that he was permitted to find it only under this condition.
Modern science, beginning with the Copernican or
heliocentric theory, is a return to Archimedes, and was
so regarded by its founders, particularly Galileo. Copernicus discovers in the sun the fixed point from the standpoint of which the earth moves. He looks upon the earth
as though he were actually an inhabitant of the sun. He
lifts himself, by an act of the mathematical imagination,
by means of ratios and geometrical diagrams, to a point
from which the earth and its earthbound inhabitants can
be viewed from the outside.
The Archimedean point'is shifted yet once again, or
rather made infinitely mobile, when Giordano Bruno announces the infinity of the universe. What is characteristic
of the thought of Bruno is the fact that the term "infinity"
changes its meaning. In classical thought the word "infinity" is understood negatively. The infinite is the indeterminate, the boundless; it has no limit or form, and
is inaccessible to human reason which lives in the realm
of form. But according to Bruno the word "infinity" no
longer means a mere negation of form. It means rather
the immeasurable and inexhaustible abundance of the
extended universe, and the unrestricted power of the
human intellect. Man no longer lives in the world as a
prisoner enclosed within the narrow walls of finite ordered
cosmos. He can traverse the air and break through the
imaginary boundaries of the celestial spheres. The human
intellect becomes aware of its own infinity through
measuring its powers by the infinite universe.
Einstein has insisted that we may assume with equal
validity that the earth turns round the sun or that the
sun turns round the earth; that both assumptions are in
SUMMER 1984
�agreement with observed phenomena, and that the difference is only a difference of the chosen point of
reference. Thus the Archimedean point is moved a step
farther away from the earth to an imaginary point in the
universe where neither earth nor sun is a center. We are
no longer to be bound even to the sun, but move freely
in the universe, choosing our point of reference wherever
it may be convenient for a specific purpose.
This shift of standpoint, from the earth to a point
outside the earth, received a certain kind of corroboration in Galileo's telescopic discoveries, the discovery of
the moons of jupiter and of the phases of Venus. These
discoveries did not prove the truth of the Copernican
theory; theories are never proved, only confirmed. And
in fact, if we accept the theory of Einstein, we can no
longer ask about the truth of the Copernican theory, for
the Archimedean point becomes infinitely shiftable. But
for those of Galileo's contemporaries who already accepted the Copernican theory, his telescopic discoveries
were a confirmation of the power of the human intellect,
which, by means of man-made instruments and mathematical theories, can free itself from the earth, and break
down the age-old barrier between the sublunar and the
celestial spheres.
One cannot fail to note, in the works of Kepler and
Galileo, a certain exhilaration, a sense of the power of
the human mind. According to Galileo, ". . . the
understanding is to be taken in two ways, that is, intensively, or extensivefy; and extensivefy, that is, as to the
multitude of intelligibles, which are infinite, the
understanding of man is as nothing, though he should
understand a thousand propositions; for a thousand in
respect of infinity is but as a cypher: but taking the
understanding intensively, I say that human wisdom
understandeth some propositions so perfectly, and is as
absolutely certain thereof, as Nature herself; and such
are the pure Mathematical sciences, namely, Geometry
and Arithmetick: in which Divine Wisdom knows infinite
more propositions, because it knows them all; but I
believe that the knowledge of those few comprehended
by human understanding equalleth the divine, as to the
objective certainty, for that it arriveth to comprehend the
necessity thereof, than which there can be no greater certainty."
By mathematics Galileo understood implicitly the
science of physics, since the book of nature, as he says,
"is written in mathematical characters." For both Kepler
and Galileo, man becomes a god, travelling through
space, able to calculate for his own displacement, and
so to arrive at knowledge which, intensively considered,
is perfect.
I shall not attempt to retrace the vicissitudes of this
scientific faith through the last three centuries. It would
be a complex story, I would even say a dialectical story,
a romantic biography, as it were, of a recently deceased
friend. The aim was to express qualities through figure,
to substitute a geometrical configuration for each primordial quality, to explain all things by figure and move-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ment considered as situated in an infinite matrix of time
and space. The doctrine of atomism was part and parcel
of this scientific faith, the notion of an inert matter or
stuff cut up into tiny shapes. But it was soon found
necessary to attribute occult qualities to the matter of
the atoms, mysterious dynamic qualities like gravitation,
and the atoms were gradually transformed beyond recognition. The geometrized space of Galileo has become with
Einstein a symbolic space-time matrix. The development
of theoretical structures has been constantly in a direction away from the simple geometrical object, which the
mind's eye can see with the certainty that it is there. Einstein has to deny that at a definite, present instant all
matter is simultaneously real. Whatever theoretical
physics is talking about today, it is not something which
is imaginable with the eye of geometrical imagination.
I am told that you can learn the fundamentals of quantum mechanics in about six months; then it takes another
six months to understand that you understand it, though
you cannot imagine what the theory is supposed to be
about. The tension between the empirically given and
the imaginable on the one hand, and the content of theoretical physics on the other, has increased to the breaking point. The mirror of nature that scientific faith
endeavored to build has been shattered, and the scientist finds himselflooking straight out into the unknown.
Already in the seventeenth century the new conception of the world- the world as viewed from the Archimedean point- had given rise to a reaction of doubt and
fear. "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens
me;' says Pascal. Pascal's distinction between the esprit
de geometrie and the esprit de finesse is directed against the
geometrical and astronomical view of the world. The
geometrical spirit excels in all those subjects that are
capable of a perfect analysis into simple elements. It starts
with axioms and from them derives propositions by universallogical rules. Its excellence lies in the clarity of its
principles and the logical necessity of its deductions. But,
Pascal would say, there are things which because of their
subtlety and variety defy the geometrical spirit, which
can be comprehended, if at all, only by the esprit de finesse,
the acute and subtle spirit. And if there is anything which
thus defies the geometrical spirit, it is the nature and
mind of man. Pascal holds that contradiction is the very
essence of human existence. Man has no "nature;' no
homogeneous being; he is a mixture of being and nonbeing. His precarious place is midway between these
poles.
The discovery of the Archimedean point produced
a crisis in man's knowledge of himself. Self-knowledge
has almost always been recognized as the highest aim
of philosophic inquiry. It is impossible to penetrate into
the secret of nature unless one also penetrates into the
secret of man. The discovery of the Archimedean point
demanded that man view himself from a totally alien
standpoint, that he understand himself ultimately in
terms of geometrical figure and the impact of atoms. The
seventeenth-century philosophers were fully aware of this
41
�cns1s, and attempted to meet it in different ways. But
the most obvious and crucial step, the step which was
already implicit in the Copernican shift of standpoint,
was taken by Descartes: the removal of the Archimedean
point into the mind of man, so that he could carry it with
him wherever he went, and thus free himself entirely from
the human condition of being an inhabitant of the earth.
Descartes says: I think, therefore I exist; or: I doubt,
therefore I exist. Beginning with the idea of universal
doubt, he concludes that there must be something which
doubts, which thinks; and this something is what he is.
He identifies himself as a mind, a thinking thing. And
this thinking thing is the fixed and immovable point from
which all else must be derived, the existence of God and
of other minds, and of things which have extension or
occupy space. Descartes himself recognizes the connection of his thought with the Copernican revolution, for
he states that if the earth does not move, then all of his
doctrines are false.
Unfortunately the Cartesian removal of the Archimedean point into the mind of man fails to assuage the
Cartesian doubt. Descartes' argument, cogito ergo sum) I
think, therefore I exist, is faulty. For as Nietzsche pointed
out, it ought to read: cogito ergo cogitationes sunt) I think
therefore there are thoughts. It does not establish the existence of a something which thinks; it can only end with
what it begins, namely thinking. And the questioning
and doubting remain; universal doubt, not in the sense
of really doubting everything all at once, which is impossible, but in the sense of the indefinite possibility of
doubting things one by one as they occur in thought.
And so one becomes a question to himself, asking who
he is- which is one sort of question- and what he is,
which is another sort of question.
Both the successes and failures of the scientific revolution have resulted in an anarchy of thought with regard
to the nature of man. The Archimedean standpoint leads
to theories of man in terms of impulses, forces which are
analogous to mechanical forces, the sexual instinct for
,_ Freud, the economic instinct for Marx. But the different
theories contradict one another. No age previous to ours
was ever so favorably placed with regard to the empirical
sources of knowledge of human nature, and yet never
was there so little conceptual agreement. And it becomes
the task of modern man, if he is to avoid the piecemeal
response of dissipation, and the one-track response of
fanaticism, to inquire once again into the being that he
is, and that he can become.
I make a new start, not from the Archimedean point,
but right in the middle of things.
And let me begin this time with the obvious, with
the observation that man is a linguistic animal. He
speaks; also, he uses writing as a substitute for speech.
The word "linguistic" is derived by a metaphorical extension from the word for a bodily organ, the tongue.
The tongue is used in articulating the voice. The Homeric
epithet for men was oi lltpo:n:e~ iivepw:n:ot; !ltpo:n:e~ is
from llepi~w, the verb meaning to divide; and the phrase
42
means those who divide or articulate their voice.
This does not, of course, tell us what a language is,
or in particular what human language is. A chimpanzee
can articulate most of the sounds used in human speech;
his tongue and lips can be used to articulate sound in
the same way as the human tongue and lips; but he is
not a linguistic animal in the same sense as man is. The
chimpanzee uses gesture and voice to express rage, terror, despair, grief, pleading, desire, playfulness, pleasure;
he expresses emotions. Man also utters cries expressive
of distress, pleasure, and so on, but these interJections) as
they are called, are quite frequently vocal sigus of a higher
order, the use of which as interjections comes about by
a degradation from their proper use; in fact, they are
quite frequently vocal signs borrowed from the language
of theology.
Man articulates his voice with the conscious intention of signifying, or sign-ifying, something to somebody.
The notion of a sign is, ordinarily, wider than that of
language. With respect to the relation between sign and
thing signified, we can distinguish three kinds of signs.
First, indexical signs, or indices. Here the sign is causally
connected with that which it signifies; thus smoke is a
sign of fire, because it is. produced by fire; the direction
of a weather vane is a sign of the direction of the wind,
because the direction of the weather vane is determined
by the direction of the wind; and the position of a
speedometer needle indicates the speed of the automobile,
because it is causally connected with the rotation of the
wheels. Secondly, there are iconic signs, or icons, which
are significant of something to somebody because they
are similar to that thing in some respects. Examples of
such signs are photographs, replicas, geometrical
diagrams, images of every kind. Finally, there are conventional signs, often called symbols; and under this
heading fall most of the words of human language. Symbols are all those signs which are signs only because they
are interpreted as such by some organism or mind; there
is no other connection between sign and thing signified,
as there is in the case of indices and icons.
Sometimes the word "language" is taken in a broad
sense, as any set or system of objects or events which are
significant for some being, or which are such that certain combinations of them are meaningful or significant
for some being. In this case, we should have to include
as special cases the language of looks and glances, the
language of the bees, and the language of the stars.
The incredible navigation feats of migratory birds,
such as the white-throated warblers which migrate between northern Europe and Africa, have been shown
recently to depend on celestial navigation, a reading of
the stars as indexical signs oflatitude and longitude. The
experiments were performed in a planetarium, and it was
shown that during the migratory period the birds decide,
on the basis of the look of the sky and an inner time sense,
exactly in what direction to point in order to be aiming
toward their destination. If they are so far put off course
as to have, say at midnight, the midnight appearance of
SUMMER 1984
�the Siberian sky over their heads, they know in what
direction to point in order to regain their course.
The language of the bees, on the other hand, consists in significant actions which are mostly iconic. As
the researches of von Frisch have shown, a honey bee
that has returned after successful foraging for food goes
through a strange and complicated dance, and this dance
is so designed, by the direction of the step and tempo,
as to show to the other members of the hive both the
direction and distance of the find.
None of these systems of signs is strictly comparable
to human language, which differs in essential respects.
But all of them consist of signs, and a sign is a very special
sort of thing, which would not come into focus if we stood
at the Archimedean point.
Wherever there is a sign, there is a relation which
is at least triadic in complexity, that is, a relation which
relates at least three things. The sign stands to somebody
for something. The something may be called the object
of the sign; but it should not be supposed that the object
is always, or even ordinarily, what we call a physical object or thing, something that is spatially bounded, capable
of existing for a stretch of time, and movable. The object of the sign is just whatever the sign signifies, which
might be redness or horizontality or justice. The
somebody, human or not, for whom the sign is a sign,
interprets the sign as signifying the object; or we may say
that the sign produces in this somebody an interpretant
or thought. Thus the three things related in the signrelation are (1) the sign, which will be a physical object
or event in any particular case; (2) the object, or thing
signified; and (3) the interpretant.
A triadic relation, such as we have in the sign-relation,
cannot be reduced to any sum of dyadic relations, that
is, relations relating two things. Dyadic relations can be
diagrammed by means of a letter with two tails, thus:
-R- . It is understood that something has to be written
in at the ends of the tails, to indicate the two things
related. Hitting is a case of such a dyadic relation, as
when we say "a hits b." Triadic relations, on the other
hand, have to be diagrammed by means of a letter with
three tails, thus: -1}-. An example of such a relation
is the giving involved when john gives the book to Mary;
the giving is a relation between three things, John, the
book, and Mary. Similarly a sign signifies something to
somebody.
Now it is easy to show that the combination of dyadic
relations only leads to further dyadic relations; for instance, by combining the relation "uncle of'' (- U-) with
the relation "cousin of'' (-C-), we only obtain the relation "uncle of cousin of' (-U -C-) or "cousin of uncle of'
(-C-U-); and the diagram shows that the combined relation has only two tails. Therefore triadic relations cannot be built up out of dyadic relations. Hence the sign
relation is not reducible to anything involving only dyadic
relations. As a consequence, no theory about the world
which seeks to account for everything in terms of dyadic
relations, such as we have in the impact of atoms or
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
gravitational attraction, is adequate to account for sign
relations. Lucretius, for instance, is wrong.
Now given the irreducibility of signs to things which
are not signs, we have yet to advance another step before
we reach the level of human language. We have, in the
first place, to understand the distinction between a sign
which is a signal or operator, and a sign which is a designator
or name; between a sign which serves as stim.ulus to a
motor response, and a sign which serves as an instrument of reflective thought. Man is a naming animal.
Human language is characterized by a freedom of
naming. Man can devise a vocal name for anything that
he can identify or distinguish as. being, in some way, one.
This freedom of naming depends, for one thing, on the
manifoldness of the sounds which the human voice can
produce and which the human ear can distinguish; and
it depends for another on leisure and reflectiveness.
Among peoples whose mode of life grants them little
leisure, the naming of things may be very restricted; thus
Malinowski found that among the Trobrianders of the
South Seas there are no special names for the various
trees or bushes which provide no edible fruit, but all of
these are alike called by a name we may translate "bush:'
When leisure intervenes, however, the reflective botanist
or zoologist, or in general the reflective namer, makes his
appearance, and nothing is safe from being named, not
even the Nameless, which after all has that name.'
The identification that goes with naming is like the
drawing of a circle, which separates all that is outside
the circle from all that is inside. Among the words which
name, I include adjectives and verbs as well as nouns,
for all such words have the general function of identification, of signifying something that is, in some way, one.
Corresponding to every adjective or verb there exists, or
can be invented, a corresponding noun; in English, for
instance, we frequently turn adjectives into nouns by adding N-E-S-S, and verbs into nouns by adding T-I-0-N.
All such words are called, traditionally, categorematic terms.
And the key to the categorematic terms, the key noun
or noun of nouns, is "monad" or "unit;' which Euclid
defines as that in accordance with which each of the
things that are is said to be one; and which was also defined by the ancients as the form of forms, dlirov ellio~.
The categorematic terms are of different sorts, depending on the kinds of thing they designate. Some of the
things they designate can be simply located in space and
time, and others cannot.
There are, for instance, terms for simple qualities like
"red;' "bitter;' "shrill." The awareness of such a quality,
considered by itself, is unanalyzable and incommunicable; it is just what it is and nothing else. I can
never know that my neighbor's awareness of the redness
of the curtain is the same as mine; if he uses the words
"red" and "blue" on the same occasions as I do, this only
means his classification of colors corresponds to mine. The
identification of qualities by name presupposes acts of
comparison and classification.
There are names for physical oqjects, "horse;' "chariot;'
43
�"Hektor!' A physical object has unity insofar as it is
bounded in space, persistent for a stretch of time, and
capable of moving or being moved. It is identified as an
invariant within a spatial and temporal framework. The
character of the spatial framework is determined by the
character of possible motions. Motions are reversible, so
that one can return to his starting-point; and motions
are associative, so that one can change direction, add motion to motion. In other words, motions form what
mathematicians call a group of operations. The character
of possible motions implies that space is homogeneous,
that it constitutes a uniform background against which
physical objects can manifest their unity and invariance,
that is, their boundedness, persistence in time, and
mobility.
There are names for materials, such as gold and
water, and names for such strange beings as rivers and
streams; whatever a stream or river is, it is something
you can step into twice, though the water is never the
same.
There are names for happenings, events, motions;
running, grasping, twisting, leaping, coronation,
assassination.
All the kinds of name I have mentioned so far
designate things that can be pointed at. But the meaning of such words cannot he defined simply by pointing;
pointing by itself is totally ambiguous; if the pointing
is to be understood, something else must be understood
at the same time. For instance, we have to understand
that it is a physical object that is meant, or a color, or
a shape, or a material, or a motion. The tree is not only
a tree, but is green-leaved, tall, branched, and so on. In
whatever direction one points, there is manyness, plurality of aspect.
All such naming, then, presupposes and implies an
act of comparison and classification, the isolation of
something from a matrix or background of possible
meanings. Man is an animal who compares, finds ratios;
he is a rational animal.
There are names for things which cannot be localized
in time and space, names like "law;' "liberty,"
"art;' "nature," ')ustice," "knowledge," "wisdom." Such words
belong, not to the order of perception and motion, but
to the order of action and idea. We ascend here to a new
level which, once again, is not discernible from the Archimedean point. These words cannot be defined through
classification, through specification of genus and differentia. They are polar or dialectical words, which take up
their meanings in relation to the meanings of other words
of the same kind. The word "freedom" presents different
facets to the word "tyranny" and to the word ''slavery";
and any one of these words requires the services of the
others.
Most if not all of the dialectical words are borrowed
from the realm of the corporeal, visible, and tangible;
the original reference is forgotten, and only the metaphorical extension survives. Both the Greek 0iK11, justice,
and the Chinese word i, morality, originally meant a way
44
of life, that is to say, a particular way of life. But there
are many ways oflife, and the adjudication between rival
opinions requires a universal meaning. The universal is
then grasped in the particular. The definition of the
dialectical words depends on representative images or
anecdotes, like the Hobbesian state of nature, or the state
constructed in Platds dialogue, Republic.
In all cases, naming involves the location of a kind
of commonness, law, regularity, invariance- something
on the basis of which one might classifY or predict. And
in all cases the commonness, law, regularity, invariance,
makes its appearance in a matrix of relations. Whenever
anyone has managed to grasp such an invariance or
regularity or commonness, he has thereby in some
measure released himself from the tyranny of diversity.
As Aristotle says, the soul is so constituted as to be capable
of this process. And he adds that it is like a rout in battle, stopped by first one man making a stand and then
another, until the original formation has been restored.
The human freedom of linguistic formation is not
limited to naming. Human language is combinational;
it permits the combination of sign with sign to form a
complex sign called the sentence, the proposition, the affirmation or denial, or-to use the Greek word-the logos.
In order really to say something, one must say something
about something. The fundamental type of expression
with complete or independent meaning is the sentence;
a meaning is completely specified only if it is imbedded
in an affirmation or denial, something that could be an
answer to a question.
Words that, in a broad sense, name or identify, can
be answers to questions. They have a certain possible completeness of meaning, which becomes actual when they
are uttered in a context of other words or in a non-verbal
situation which serves to specify the way in which they
are being used. The single word "fire;' for instance, may
have different meanings depending on the situation in
which it is uttered; whether, say, by a neighbor whose
house has caught on fire, or by an artillary officer, or
by Pascal in his study, in an attempt to express a theological truth.
Or to take a case where the context is verbal: the
meaning of the word "man" in the sentence "Some man
is a liar" is not entirely the same as its meaning in the
sentence "Man is mortal;' and is different again from its
meaning in the sentence "Man is a species!' In "Man is
mortal" the word stands for all things which it is capable
of signifying, all men who ever were, or are, or will be,
this man and that man and so on. In "Man is a species"
the word stands for a certain nature which it signifies; and
it is not possible to descend to individuals, to assert that
this man or that man is a species. In "Some man is a
liar;' the word "man" stands not for all things it is capable
of signifying, but only for an indeterminate individual,
this man or that man. We may say in general that while
any categorematic term is capable of signifying, the
precise way in which it signifies is determined by its use
in an assertion, a sentence.
SUMMER 1984
�Every sentence contains, besides categorematic terms,
other signs which are called syncategorematic signs,
words like "if;' "with;' "by;' "the;' "is;' "every;' "because;'
"not;' and signs which consist of inflectional endings or
word order. These signs are not names; they determine
the range of meaning of other terms, or the mode of connection of terms in sentences; they express instrumentality, the modalities of the possible or probable, tense,
negation, conditionality, and so on. In translating from
one language to another, these signs present the greatest
difficulty, for they are most likely not to translate into
a completely analogous form in the second language. The
conditional "if;' for instance, can be expressed in German by a mere inversion of the order of subject and verb;
Greek and Latin can express the instrumental "by" or
"with" by means of case endings of nouns; .and Latin
somehow- though not very happily- manages to get
along without a definite article. Nevertheless, we can expect that any adequate language will supply the connective and determining functions in some way.
The crucial syncategorematic sign is the sign of assertion itself. In the Indo-European languages this is supplied by the finite verb form; the verb has, in addition
to its function of naming or identifying, the function of
indicating that sometlllng is to be affirmed of something.
In Chinese there is no verb "to be;' and instead there is
a little particle "yeh;' which may be translated "indeed?'
Thus one says ''Tail long indeed;' meaning The tail is long,
and ''Boat wooden-thing indeed;' meaning Boats are made
of wood. The particle "yeh" may be taken as an epitome
of the business of the sentence, to assert or declare.
There is, then, a freedom of linguistic formation in
human language, freedom in the formation of names and
sentences. And this freedom extends to the subject-matter
of language itself; we can talk about language, use
language to describe language. This peculiar atop-theatopness is characteristic pf human capacity. Thus we
can make machines which make tools, which are used
in turn to make macliines. And according to Kant, man
is the only animal who can read a sign as sign. This implies that man is the only animal who can make signs
of signs; the only animal that has a hierarchical or selfreflexive language. And it implies also that he can become
aware, as by a sidelong glance, of his own linguistic activity, and raise it to the level of conscious artfulness,
liberal artistry.
Because of the triadic relation between the sign, the
object, and the thought or interpretant, we can distinguish three branches of linguistic artfulness. Grammar will
deal with linguistic formation, with the conditions which
any sequence of signs, and in particular any sentence,
must satisfy if it is to be meaningful. Logic will deal with
the conditions which any sequence of signs must satisfy
if it is to be true of any object, and in particular with
linguistic transformations which preserve truth, with the
derivation of one sentence from another in such a way
that if the first sentence is true of any object or objects,
then so is the second. Rhetoric will deal with linguistic
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
transformations that are persuasive, with the conditions
under which one thought or interpretant leads to another
in the mind of the interpreter. The focal topic of grammar is the sentence; of logic, the argument; of rhetoric,
the trope or figure of speech.
Grammar has to do with the conditions of meaningfulness, or conversely, with the avoidance of nonsense.
Meaninglessness or nonsense is to be distinguished from
absurdity. A word heap like king but or similar and is meaningless, and so is Gertrude Stein's A rose is a rose is a rose,
unless a comma be inserted after the second occurrence
of "rose"; an expression like round square or All squares have
5 comers, is absurd or countersensical, though meaningful.
The avoidance of nonsense is the business of grammar;
the avoidance of absurdity is the business of logic.
Grammar has to do with the recognition and distinction of forms and modifications of meaning which any
adequate language must be capable of expressing, the
existential sentence, the hypothetical antecedent, the
generic sense of a common noun, negation, the plural,
the modalities of the possible and probable, past, present, and future, and so on. If a language is to mirror
truly, in its verbal materials, the various kinds of possible meanings, then it must have control over grammatical
forms which permit the giving of a sensuously distinguishable "expression" to all distinguishable forms of
meanings. Different languages may differ with respect
to their adequacy. It is the task of the grammatical art
to see through the grammatical forms of particular
languages to essential distinctions of meaning, and to the
ways in which meanings may be combined so as to result
in the completed meaning of the sentence.
Logic is concerned with relations between sentences,
with transformations of sentences yielding new sentences,
in such a way that if the original sentences be true of
any objects of thought, then so are the derived sentences.
Wherever logic is being employed, the logical function
will be expressible in terms of a sequence of sentences,
of which one or more will be regarded as antecedent,
and one or more' as consequent.
Among sentences, some are denials or contradictions
of others; in fact every sentence has a denial, and the
denial of a denial is the same as the original sentence
denied. Everyone who cares to speak or assert anything,
has to take it as a rule that a given sentence cannot be
both truly affirmed and truly denied; on pain of contradiction, we say, he cannot both affirm and deny
something of something at the same time and in the same
respect. This principle, called the law of noncontradiction, cannot be proved. Anyone who dares or
cares to deny it cannot be talked with without absurdity, for his very denial would imply a denial of his denial.
He is, as Aristotle says, no better than a vegetable.
There are sentences which are consistent or compatible with one another, so that one can be denied or affirmed without our having, on pain of contradiction, to
affirm or deny the other.
And there are sentences which are related as antece-
45
�dent and consequent, where the affirmation of the one
requires us, on pain of contradiction, to affirm the other.
In this case, the antecedent is said to imply the consequent.
Implication always depends on syncategorematic
words, words which do not name, but which connect or
modify the meanings of names, words like "and;' "or;' "ifthen;' "all;' "every;' "some;' and so on. For instance, if p
and q are two sentences, and if I assert the sentence "If
p then q," and also assert the sentence "p;' then I am forbidden on pain of contradiction to deny the sentence ((q."
Or if A, B, and C are objects of thought, and if! assert
that all A is B, and that no B is C, then I am forbidden
on pain of contradiction to deny that no A is C.
In all applications of logic there are signs- either
categorematic terms or sentences- which occur vacuously; all that is required of them is that their meaning
should remain self~identical. The implication depends
solely on the connective and determining words, the syncategorematic signs.
The logical art enables us to pass from sentence to
sentence, to draw out the consequences of what has
previously been asserted, to construct the tremendous
deductive sciences of mathematics and theoretical physics.
An omniscient being would have no need for such an
art, but man is a discursive animal, who can only pass
from truth to truth in some consecutive order, in time.
Rhetoric has to do with the ways in which one thought
leads to another. As rhetorician, one is concerned with
linguistic transformations which occur in daydreams and
reveries, in jokes and poems and myths, in the formation of opinion, in the coming about of discoveries and
insights. While the task oflogic is to look through signs,
so to speak, toward the self-identical character of objects
of thought, the task of rhetoric is to look through signs
toward the polar character of thoughts.
Every identification of meaning involves the drawing of a circle which includes and excludes. Every
sentence involves affirmation or negation. The fundamental polarity in thought is that between same and
other.
There is an ancient Pythagorean table of opposites,
contrarieties, polarities: odd-even, unity-plurality, rightleft, male-female, rest-motion, light-dark, good-bad, and
so on. These polarities rest not only on the law of contradiction, but on the polarized character of man's life,
the erotic character of his linear voyage through time and
space. The other polarities become invested with Eros,
the desire for pleasure, for honor and power, for community, and for knowledge.
Wherever there are poles, there are tropics. The word
"pole" comes from the Greek word n6Ao<;, meaning pivot.
Wherever there are pivots, one expects to find something
that turns; and the Greek word -rp6n:o<;, from which we
derive the word "tropic;' means a turning. Thus the
tropics of the earth turn round the poles. Wherever there
are polar oppositions of terms, one may expect to find
what are called tropes, that is, turns or figures of speech,
similes, metaphors, metonymies, ironies.
46
In the 15th book of the Iliad, there is a point at which
Hector is seeking to break the ranks of the Achaians, but
is unable, we are told, for they endured like a tower, 'just
as a rock in the sea endures despite wind and waves:' The
rock in the sea is a simile, of course, for the endurance
and courage of the Achaians. The polarity here is between man and rock. I read into the rock the human endurance, and then I turn round and read into the human
endurance the steadfastness of the rock. I look at each
from the standpoint of the other; I use each to obtain
a perspective of the other. The movement is from man
to rock and back to man. I obtain an echo of man from
the rock.
As I pointed out earlier, the words for moral notions
and for the activities of the mind are derived by metaphor
from words for visible or tangible things and motions.
Poetry involves a regaining of the original relation in
reverse, a metaphorical extension back from the intangible into a tangible equivalent. It involves the discovery
of what T. S. Eliot calls an objective correlative of the interior life; that is, the finding of a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, which will be the formula of a
particular feeling or thought, so that when the external
facts are given, the feeling or thought is immediately
evoked.
Modern science can also be viewed, on the theoretical
side, as a gigantic trope or series of tropes, a series of
models or images whose meanings are drawn out by
logical inferences. Thus one may conceive electric current after the analogy of a river, or electric oscillations
after the analogy of mechanical oscillations, and other
aspects of electricity suggest other metaphors which in
turn acquire corresponding mathematical formulation.
Modern mathematics and mathematical physics overlies
a mass of disjunct imagery which it does not appear possible to unify; instead, imagery is used dialectically to transcend imagery, in successive stages of formalization.
Finally, let me not fail to mention the trope of irony,
the dialectical trope par excellence. Irony is an elusive trope;
its essence lies in simulation or dissimulation, in the use
ofthc tension between what appears and what is. It can
be savagely or gently mocking, but it also contains the
seeds of humility. When Newton* sees a criminal being
led to the gallows and says "There but for the grace of
God go I;' he is not congratulating himself on not being
a criminal; he reads himself in the other and the other
in himself, and the irony lies in this peculiar combination of"yes" and "no;' as these two are connected by means
of the God-term. When Socrates says "I know that I do
not know;' he combines affirmation and denial in such
a way as to produce a peculiar transcendence. Irony is
here the net of the educator.
The possibility of irony rests on the tension between
what appears and what is. Man exists at the horizon be-
*The hymn-writer.
SUMMER 1984
�tween appearance and idea; his being is an intermediate,
a metaxy, as Plato would say (co l!oca~u). And the task
of education, starting in the middle of things, is to use
the appearances, the images, the names and the
sentences, to produce a development toward hierarchy
and wholeness which uses all the terms.
I have but a few more words to say. Man is a being
who is constantly in search of himself; this is the human
condition. Socratically speaking, he is a questioning
animal, a being who, when asked a rational question,
can give a rational answer. So questioning and responding, both to himself and others, man becomes a responsi-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ble being, a moral being. In the image of the Republic,
the movement of dialectical or dialogical thought, as
guided by Socratic irony, is upward, from darkness into
light, from partiality to wholeness, from appearance to
intellectual vision. The Socratic irony produces a transformation of terms, a hierarchy, a perspective of perspectives, in which the contradictions of pOlitical life, and of
the soul which is an inner political life, are resolved by
becoming hierarchially related to the idea of knowledge.
The Socratic irony punctures pretense, and points
beyond, to the unity of knowledge and to the great dialectical interchange which has yet to be carried out.
47
�The Program of St. John's College*
in Annapolis, Maryland,
and Santa Fe, New Mexico
Eva T. H. Brann
I. Principles and Parts of the Program
I. The Principles and Parts of
the Program
Authors
Arts
The Community of Learning
II. Problems and Questions
Concerning the Program
The Place of the Program
in American Education
The Omission of Certain
Studies
Study Modes of the Program
Institutional Difficulties
"Real Life"
Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. The Program of St. John's
College, was written for the Rockefeller Foundation Conference KToward the
Restoration of the Liberal Arts Curriculum;' September 28, 1978.
48
E
very plan of education, whether borne up by a
passing trend or bound into a long tradition,
is fraught with implicit philosophical principle.
Since the program of St. John's College is
devoted to that peculiar kind of learning which
of necessity includes a reflection on its own conditions,
most members of the college accept the obligation- or
yield to the fascination- of engaging in ever-recurrent
discussion and review of the philosophical bases that
underlie their activity. A part of the life of the college
(some say too much, some too little) is devoted to such
reflection. To mention this activity is a matter of minutes,
while to reproduce even a sample of it would require not
hours but, probably, years. Furthermore, precisely
because it is a living inquiry, it is impossible for one
member to state the results in behalf of the whole college. That would be tantamount to announcing that we
had communally determined the answer to such questions as "What is learning?", ''What are the objects of
learning?", "What is human nature?", and "What is truth?"
Such an announcement is, judging from good precedent, not in itself unthinkable, but it would be absurd
in view of the central aim of the college, which is the
pursuit of what I can only call radical inquiry. The college certainly has other and, it sometimes seems, conflicting aims. If the usual purposes of institutions of higher
learning can be said to be: 1. training for scholarship or
research; 2. pre-professional preparation, 3. broadening
of views and sharpening of intellectual faculties and
development of the sensibility, 4. initiation into the
cultural tradition- then the college eschews the first
almost completely, does the second fairly adequately, succeeds in the third but erratically (that is to say, about
SUMMER 1984
�as well as other good schools), and accomplishes the last
superbly, albeit according to its own lights. But, however
well the college may do any of these things, it does them
only incidentally to the central aim, which is to us the
very purpose of liberal education.
By radical inquiry I mean the attempt to delve as
deeply as possible into the roots of the world, to bring
to light not only the nature of things but also the nature
of thinking. When I say that it is the central aim of the
college, I do not- God forbid- mean that every waking
moment is devoted to first philosophy, but rather that
philosophical questions are always in the background, are
always welcomed, are always on the brink of being entertained, even when the subject at hand is highly technical
or acutely esthetic.
Now precisely because such an inqu~ry is a search
for truth and substance, it needs to be free, free in the
sense of being conducted in a setting that imposes the
fewest bars and the least presuppositions possible. The
program of the college embodies an attempt to provide
such a setting. If the actual life of the college is difficult
to describe succinctly, its formal aspect, this very plan
oflearning, should be quite capable of coherent and concise presentation.
Now the program of the college consists of an almost
totally prescribed course of studies. It sets not only the
books to be read but the exact order in which they are
itself. I shall try below to set out our approach to the intellectual world, an approach that still accords it enough
integrity so as to engender in a faculty the confidence
to derive a plan of studies from it.
The enabling freedum which is essential to our sort
of inquiry depends on a program explicitly embodying
strong but minimal notions- strong enough to help and
sparing enough not to hinder inquiry.
We have agreed on two approaches as meeting these
demands. They stem from an old tradition. But it is not
because they are old that we adopt them; on the contrary, they are, presumably, long-lived because they contain much pedagogical wisdom. These approaches have
the medieval designation of Authors and Arts.
AUTHORS
The wisdom of the West is handed down in a collection of books by individual authors, books of words, symbols, notes and images, books of philosophy, science and
poetry, books of intellect, reason and imagination. I
believe that the existence of such a written tradition is
an accepted fact among all educated people. The issuing of definitive lists of these books has been a favorite
activity of pedagogues since the Renaissance, and the
zestful debates concerning the inclusion or exclusion of
items have usually confirmed a perennial core. We tinker
with our list-which we find in the main satisfactory-
to be studied and even the times, to the hour, when and
for various reasons. The main cause is that far more
the people with whom they are to be discussed. It requires its students to forego all notions of being born a
books by right belong on it than can be read in four years.
(We now have an informal rule obligating anyone who
wishes to add a book to the list to point out- at his
peril- the one to be dropped to make room for it.) Again,
humanistic or a scientific type, makes the silent speak
and the speech-makers be quiet, imposes dozens of
earnest formalities, requires teache.rs to teach what they
certain texts turn out to be unsuccessful in discussion.
do not know well to students who did not particularly
choose to be taught by them, and requires relentless activity in the name of true leisure. And all these constraints
Also, the splintering of the tradition in recent times makes
the modern choices much less settled. So, while we invariably begin with the Homeric epics, our final readings
vary. When I last taught seniors about to go forth into
the so-called world, we ended most appropriately with
that perfect conflation of thought and action embodied
in Supreme Court decisions.
These books form a coherent tradition because their
are imposed, I must now try to show, in the interests of
intellectual freedom.
It is not, of course, academic freedom in the usual
understanding, that is, the students' right to study what
they please and the professors' right to say what they
think. In the St. John's community, the latter is not so
much a right as a duty, though a duty mitigated by a
pedagogic tact. The former freedom is, except for small
choices, confined to the initial decision to come to the
college, though that decision is never permitted to be
made sight unseen. Electives, which the program ex-
common mode is response, repudiation, revival. Each
book is explicitly or implicitly a commentary on, or a
critique of, preceding books. Much as we regret having
affixed to ourselves the fatuous formula of a "great books"
college (and exactly 100 of them, forsooth!), the irrefutable experience seems to be that these books are
great, that they are inexhaustible in their depth and
cludes, are the most characteristic feature of modern
university organization, introduced into this country
definiteness, in their responsiveness and self-sufficiency.
significantly by Thomas Jefferson. They were devised,
on the one hand, to take account of the individual talents
(and what often weighs more, the supposed inabilities)
of the students, and on the other, to make up for the loss
It is, after all, by these criteria that the educated consensus has chosen them and guarded their survival.
What makes the study of these books relevant to practical inquiry is that they are all occupied with versions
of consensus concerning a universally enforceable educa-
of the same root questions. Arguments have been made
in this century claiming that these questions are radical
misdirections of human effort, and that the tradition is
tional plan. The St. John's program, on the contrary, is
based on the assumption that certain fundamental studies
are still universally accesssible, reliably exciting and formulable as a plan to which a whole faculty can commit
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
in need of a respectful but merciless dismantling, but such
critiques are, and mean to be, themselves within the tradi-
49
�tion. In short, these books are helpful only on the simple working assumption that human questions are so continuously transformed as to remain fundamentally the
same now, then, and tor all time. If that is false, the study
of these books-and indeed any book not written here
and now-is a mere antiquarian amusement. I should
add an observation essential to the enterprise: The
acknowledgement that there are perennial questions is
the very antithesis of the claim that such questions have
no answer-a presumptious supposition which implies
that one has seen deeply enough into the well of things
to know that it has no bottom.
One chief characteristic of these works is that they
are original in both senses of the term: very much the
author's own product and very much at the beginning
and origin of an intellectual development. Such texts differ from text books by communicating the order and
the difficulties of discovery rather than delivering prepared packets of knowledge. Hence, precisely by reason
of their originality, they imply a certain arrangement of
studies, or better, they obviate the principal organizational features of modern university studies, which is the
department corresponding to a field of study.
The department is the expression of a thoroughgoing
intellectual prejudgement, namely the Baconian division
of the intellectual world into parcels of ground, fields,
areas, within which can occur that concentrated cultivation, that intensive specialization, and that well-defined
research, which make possible the advancement oflearning and the accumulation of intellectual products.
Without attempting here to sketch out the intellectual
revolution which made such a division of labor possible
and profitable, let me simply say that this college, as an
undergraduate teaching institution, is willing to forego
all its advances for the sake of radical reflection. For us,
students "make an original contribution" when they go,
for themselves, to the origin of things. We want them
not so much to think something new, as to think anew,
not so much to discover truths for the world as for
themselves.
These books, then, in their o~iginality, precede the
fixing of the divisions of studies. In the language of hindsight, in them philosophy is not yet one of many equal
specialties, poetry is still a source of wisdom, physics and
theology are still continuous. Hence the reading of
authors involves fewer assumptions than the study of
fields and permits the more natural pursuit of those questions otherwise so frustratingly formulated as
"interdisciplinary?'
The order in which the books are read is by and large
chronological. This observation of the given order again
embodies a minimum of prejudgement. In addition it
makes obvious sense for the student to have read what
the author has read. As Hegel knew his Aristotle or
Milton his Homer or Stravinsky his Bach, so, perhaps,
ought the student. In certain, though by no means all,
cases it is even indispensable to be so prepared.
Contrary to appearance, this temporal order is not
intended to have anything to do with the "history of ideas".
50
We have no interest at all in having students learn how
different notions have succeeded each other. Indeed, in
distinction from every school I know of, we have no interest in the past whatsoever (though a good many of
us are privately avid readers of history). The fact that
some of these books are written by authors who happen
to be physically dead is perfectly peripheral. For insofar
as the books really do form a tradition, their matter has
entered into the present. It has done so in at least two
ways, which correspond to the two old senses of the word
tradition: It signifies a process of handing down but also
of traducing- of preservation, but also of subversion.
Hence the matterrofthe older books is always there, either
as an absorbed and digested element of the development
or as the forgotten cause and motive of an antithetical
formulation.
The attitude toward the books which the college tries
to foster is one of respectful~ attention combined with
vigorous independence. We demand such respect even
for the small number of lesser or even shoddy books
which we include not on their own account but for the
influence they have had. This respectful listening and
critical responsiveness are meant to be carried over into
the communal exercise which seems to us most appropriate to the study of tradition.
We call this institutional device the seminar and
regard it as the central class of the college. It is a discussion group of no more than twenty students, which-meets
twice a week throughout the four years of the program
on a set text. It is emphatically not intended as a rap
session or an encounter group, or as some exercise in
group dynamics. In fact, there is no manipulation and
no method which properly belong to the seminar; on the
contrary, the rule is the great Heraclitan saying, "Listen
not to me but to my speech." There is, however, a certain structure. There are two seminar leaders who alternate in asking an opening question. The object of having two is to prevent the unopposed profession of
authoritative opinion and to encourage students to address each other rather than the teacher. Every member
of the seminar is expected to contribute to the discussion and to do so responsibly, responsively, and civilly-all
members use a formal mode of address. The seminar
may work at explicating the text or attempt to determine the truth. These two and a half hours can be vapid
and they can be vigorous, silly or sublime, rambling, sequential, hilarious, serious. In accordance with the ancient discovery that speculative loquacity flourishes after
dark, the seminars are held at night.
Juniors and seniors are given a ten-week break in the
middle of the year to join the only elective class of the
college, the preceptorial. It is a small study group on
a book or a theme, offered by a tutor and chosen by the
student.
ARTS
Our second approach to reflective inquiry is through
the liberal arts. The liberal arts are traditionally, and,
I think, rationally, divided into the arts concerning speech
SUMMER 1984
�and the arts concerning learnable objects, that is, the
medieval trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and the
quadrivium (four grades of mathematics and natural
science).
The arts of language and of mathematics are root
skills. By adapting the way of these arts, the college hopes
to overcome the vexed question concerning what fields
of study the institution should offer and which of these
a student should be allowed to avoid. As I understand
this question, it has, from the pedagogical point of view,
two aspects. First, a modern university offers numerous
wonderfully ingenious and equipotent studies among
which young students have scarcely any way of choosing but by mere and unmatured preference. It also harbors certain dubious offerings, advertised in the language
ofpiffie-land, which the same student has hardly any way
of exposing but by bitter and expensive experience. Hence
the choice of goods and the avoidance of trash pose an
equally baffling problem to young learners, one whose
acuteness increases with their obliviousness of its existence. Second, the serious studies usually require of
those committed to them steeply increasing sophistication and specialization, and it is not clear that such learning is, in the language of educational psychology,
transferable; indeed it often seems that a high degree
of early specialization depresses rather than raises both
the students' willingness and ability to bring learning to
bear widely.
The arts, on the other hand, are eminently transferable, for although they are always wedded to a defmite
matter- the grammar is, say, French grammar and the
mathematics is, say, projective geometry-the skill and
the matter together can be continuously elaborated and
adapted to any use. What is more, they are eminently
defensible as required subjects for their own sake, for
they are by nature elementary, and that means that,
aside from the boom of their general accessibility, they
display an inviting combination of simplicity and depth.
At least our students seem to be won by some such quality
when they get absorbed, for instance, in the mysteries
of the copula "is" and why a certain type of Greek sentence does without it, or again, when they recover the
mental leap which leads from the naive to the formal
meaning of the mathematical limit notion.
Once more the use of the arts in the program serves
to avoid prejudgements. For these arts are antecedent,
both in time and in thought, to the debilitating split between the humanities and the sciences which dominates
modern schools. The skills of the trivium and the
quadrivium involve continuous and complementary
human abilities: It is not only that the art of mathematics
can be most humane and the art of language ought to
be very precise, but that the elements of both are rooted
in one and the same human power, the power of thought.
Furthermore, the arts help us avoid the necessity for those
"methods of analysis" courses with which schools attempt
to reintroduce some sort on generality into their studies.
We want to circumvent them because each such method
embodies an enormous amount of intellectual prepara-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tion which students are scarcely sophisticated enough to
to discern. For example, the tremendous intellectual
predeterminations involved in the application of quantitative methods to the social sciences can hardly become
perspicuous to students unless they have thoroughly
reflected on the nature of quantity and the process of
quantification itself- one of the very intentions of our
mathematical program which can, however, hardly be
achieved without some detailed but reflective study of
pure mathematics.
In accordance with the twofold way of the arts, the
program provides for two kinds of day classes called
tutorials: a language tutorial and a mathematics
tutorial. These are recitation classes, most of which meet
four times a week, and they are devoted to various exercises, above all to translation and demonstration.
The language tutorial uses translation as the chief
learning device. The languages studied and used are
Greek and French. An ancient language is useful to us
precisely because it is "dead;' that is to day, completely
fixed and literary. Greek in particular is chosen first,
because it is, in illuminating contrast to English, a highly
inflected language; next, because of its intimate relation
to our seminar readings; again, because of its literary
riches; and finally, because most of the faculty has quite
shamelessly fallen in love with it. The choice of French
is more arbitrary. German or Russian might do as well,
although it is argued that French poetry, in its artfulness,
best lends itself to rhetorical analysis. The work of the
language tutorial almost always begins with some sort
of translation exercise.
The object of the tutorial is above all to reflect on
the relation of language to thought, of the languages to
each other, of correctness to persuasiveness, of logic to
grammar, of form to meaning. It is secondly to support
the seminar by a slower and more detailed reading of
some of the central passages of seminar books, and last
(though, by our own intention, least) it is to learn the
language in question, for without some concrete medium
the discussion would be mere hot air. Hence the tutorial
always, and sometimes rather inefficiently, shifts back and
forth between the necessary rote learning and the desired
reflection, the more so since language, unlike mathematics, cannot be learned by advancing in a linear sequence from agreed beginning to desired conclusions;
it has no clear given "elements:'
The mathematics tutorial is apparently the pedagogically most successful part of the program, and, many
of us think, the most gratifying to teach.
First of all, it ought to be said that in the tutorials
the injunction against the use of textbooks is of necessity somewhat relaxed. As it happens, the most appropriate beginning mathematics textbook is also a work
of originality and subtlety: Euclid's Elements. All
freshmen begin their mathematical studies with a consideration of its first definition: "A point is that which
has no part;' and they end up, four years later, with the
four-dimensional geometry of Einstein's special theory
of relativity.
51
�On the way, they study mostly original texts. It may
seem surprising that in so unquestionably progressive
a study as mathematics and mathematical physics (the
tutorial includes both, especially astronomy) the original
sources are good teaching tools. But suppose one thinks
of it in this way: Einstein, in the famous 1905 paper which
sets out special relativity, explicitly presupposes a
knowledge of Maxwell's work. Maxwell cannot be understood without Newton, who, in his own phrase, "stands
on the shoulders" of Kepler and Galileo. Galileo advocates
Copernicus' system.
Copernicus revolutionizes the
Ptolemaic cosmos. Ptolemy's theories cite Appolonius'
Conics and Apollonius is inaccessible without the
Elements of Euclid. These are, in reverse order, some
of the very texts used in the tutorial. Seen in this light
the so-called "genetic" approach makes immediate sense.
And yet, regarded as textbooks, these works are often
cumbersome and complicated. They are frequently not
conducive to efficient learning and technical proficiency.
But then, it is not our object to train productive or
problem-solving mathematicians, though we acknowledge and want all the benefits usually attributed to
mathematical studies: precision of thought, logically valid
reasoning, the power of demonstration, and an appreciation of intellectual elegance. Once again, however, the
chief aim is reflection on the nature of mathematics and
the possibility of its application to nature. And for that
the original texts are almost indespensible, providing only
they are not approached in the spirit of the history of
science, that is, as repositories of past and surpassed forms
of thought. Instead, we look to them as setting out both
enduring intellectual acquisitions and accounts of the
revolution of intention and understanding which accompany their continual displacement and absorptionrarely refutation- by subsequent discoveries. In particular, we follow with fascinated care the development
of mathematical structures from those humanly immediate objects of the natural intellect which engage the
ancients to the sophisticated high-level abstractions of the
constructive reason which preoccupy the moderns. This
implied view-that the ancients and the moderns are at
once separated and connected by a deep intellectual rupture whose thorough apprehension is crucial to the
understanding of modernity-is perhaps the one substantial interpretative dogma built into the program.
For three years a full fourth of the students' time goes
into the laboratory. It is a most problematic, and yet
an absolutely essential, part of the program. While the
tutorial and the seminar take off from written texts, the
laboratory is concerned with what its early modern proponents, eager to assimilate the direct study of nature
to respectable learning, called the book of nature. But
at the same time they also spoke of putting nature to the
test of torture to extract her secrets. Contained in this
figure of speech is the necessity for a laboratory, literally a workshop, in which strange tools are usedinstruments not of production but of contemplation, instruments of observation and measurement. Close and
52
careful study of the appearances was certainly practiced
among the ancients, but the elaborately prepared and
controlled kind of experience which marks the central
device of the laboratory, namely the experiment, is
peculiar to the moderns. That is why this class is a
separate and problematic exercise in a program devoted
to interpretive reading.
Pedagogically, too, the laboratory has its special difficulties. The first function of the experiments is the determination of new truths of nature. In asking students to
repeat experiments, albeit crucial ones, we run the danger
of mounting a deliberately rickety reenactment with
unrevealing results, or of getting slick reconfirmation of
predetermined laws. Add to this the necessity, in more
sophisticated experiments, of using the notorious '~lack
box;' the instrument whose insides are a dark mystery
to the user, and it will be obvious how hard it can be
to engender and maintain thoughtful excitement in this
class.
Our aims are clear enough. We want to reflect on
that enormously powerful activity called science which
has arrogated to itself the name of knowledge simply;
to think about the changes in meaning that the word
"phenomenon" has undergone, from the ancient injunction to astronomy to "save the appearances" to Heisen-
berg's uncertainty principle; to consider the term "hypothesis'~ for example, to understand what Newton means
when he announces: "I make no hypotheses"; to understand how nature must be transformed to undergo
mathematization; to think about time as the beat of the
soul and the reading of a clock; to study force considered
as acting at a distance and as a field; to understand energy
in its continuities and discontinuities; to ask what life
is; and so on and on. I might add that the problem of
"scientific method;' much beloved of philosophers of
science, seems, somehow to fade away before the
brilliance of original natural inquiry.
The actual laboratory sequence remains somewhat
fluid even after thirty years of practice, mostly on account
of the embarrassment of riches from which to choose.
At present it begins in the freshman year with the observation and classification ofliving things and the atomic
constitution of matter, that is, roughly, biology and
chemistry. These subjects are taken up again in the senior
year and pursued beyond the threshold of ordinary observation as molecular biology and quantum mechanics. In
between there is a year of classical physics. Wherever
possible the preparatory readings are original papers,
from Aristotle to Monad, from Galileo to Schroedinger.
In the sophomore year a music tutorial replaces the
laboratory. Music is traditionally the coping stone of the
liberal arts, the juncture of the theoretic with the fine
arts and even with theology. Here mathematics becomes
qualitative in the ratios which govern consonances; here
grammar becomes passionate in the tone relations which
constitute a musical rhetoric.
The music tutorial is generally regarded as the most
difficult class to teach, because, our fond dogma to the
SUMMER 1984
�contrary, previous preparation and ta1ent are necessary
to the tutor and make disturbing distinctions among the
students. We do require all freshmen to sing together in
the chorus and to learn some musical notation, but that
is not quite adequate.
The music class begins with the elements of music.
The theory of proportions, which has been studied in
the mathematics tutorial, is applied to the construction
of the Western, diatonic scale, and rhythm, melody and
harmony are taken up. Then musical texts are subjected
to detailed analytic listening, partly in preparation for
the seminar, which includes a number of musical works.
One example is Bach's Matthew Passion. The seminar
might respond to the fact that Bach was a learned
theologian by asking how the arias of the musical passion comment on the Gospel text -an inquiry for which
the music tutorial has provided the preparation.
Finally, all members of the college are expected to
attend one formal weekly lecture on any subject, which
is given by a visitor or a tutor, and is followed by a
(sometimes interminable) question period in which the
mood ranges from puppy-dog aggression to deep cooperative probing. This exercise in listening and responding
to connected discourse is quite important, especially for
students who are so much called on to engage in
conversation.
It goes without saying that we have various special
devices for examining students beyond their daily performance and for reporting to them our opinion of their
work. The most important formal test is the senior essay,
which is intended to be a work of reflection rather than
research; these essays vary in quality from dispiriting to
exhilarating.
One last observation on the program as a whole:
Because of the many factors that have to be juggled, the
integration of the parts is in stretches so loose as to be
hardly discernible. HapP.ily there are other occasions
when it is satisfyingly ~patent, when the tutorials,
laboratory and seminar immediately and essentially bear
on each other. The details of the schedule of studies and
their relations are set out in the catalogue of the college,
a frequently revised document to whose authority we attach great importance.
THE COMMUNITY OF LEARNING
It remains to say something of the community of
learning in which this program is realized, that is, the
students, the faculty and, briefly, the administration.
First, our students. We have always maintained that
the program is intended for students of widely varying
intellectual capacities, and that there is no distinctive St.
John's student. Since our progress is stepwise and patient and almost all the work is elementary, there should
be few parts that are technically beyond anyone's range.
Indeed, a slow and naive student may contribute more
searching questions than a quick and sophisticated one.
·We find that, except for occasional sad cases, self-selection
is the best guarantee of aptitude; the desire to learn
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
outweighs the question of talent. Our students, consequently should and do come from everywhere-as they
end up doing practically anything. As it turns out, they
do, in fact, perform so very well on the standard national
tests (in which we, nonetheless, place little faith) as to
make the college appear far more selective than we intend it to be. There is, moreover, good corroboration that
the program is indeed universally accessible. It comes
from our Graduate Institute in Liberal Education, a summer- version of the program intended in the main for
school teachers. Our graduate students, who teach in
large part in inner-city schools, whose academic training is usually neither very recent nor, often, very good,
and who are preoccupied with urgent practical problems,
take to the program with great gusto and gratifying
success.
The faculty, on the other hand, has undeniably over
the course of time grown into a certain distinctiveness,
which is largely the consequence of the one circumstance
we have most difficulty in explaining to the academic
world. Just as we expect the students to study the whole
program, so we expect ourselves to teach it. Naturally,
not everyone has done every part of the program, but
it is an aim to be attained, though over decades. It means
constant new learning, sitting in on each other's classes,
phoning for help. It sometimes means being only hours
ahead of the students. But I think, on the whole, it makes
us better teachers, closer to the students' difficulties and
more apt to find the most revealing way out. What
characterizes the faculty is, therefore, a certain proud
shamelessness about admitting ignorance and engaging
in public learning. One way to describe this group might
be to say that it is recalcitrantly unacademic: No departmental politics-we form, if you like, one large department. No imperial references to "my field" or "my century" or "my material'!.._ we have a common subject, the
program. No pride of competence or rank- our single
rank and title is tutor, that is to say, "guardian" of learning. In spite of royal battles over matters of principles
and gently simmering personal animosities, the faculty
engages in continuous common study and conversation.
When I say "faculty" I include our administrators. Our
deans are, according to the college policy, chosen from
among the tutors, and the other administrators, including
the president, have always (as much as they could) joined
in the learning and the teaching-a circumstance of incalculable value to the college. I think that most of us
would say that this happy collegiality is simply a reflection of the integrity of the program.
This then is a sketch of the plan and the people that
constitute St. John's College. Now might be the moment
to ask why a community should feel entitled to devote
itself to the kind of inquiry I have described. I think our
communal answer- briefly formulable but not briefly
defensible- might be that such activity is both the
mark and the source of human excellence. And if we
are told that that is all very well, but that there are more
urgent and iinmediate tasks for a college, solid, realistic,
53
�practical aims, and if we are asked how we can, in good
conscience, set them aside, we might answer with some
counter-questions: Have any of those myriad accom-
modations to the times into which schools have been
driven made education one whit more immediate to life?
Have the educators' urgencies in any way made the stu-
dent a better judge of the right action? Is realism in
education practical? Does it work? Ever?
II. Problems and Questions Concerning
the Program
Of course, rhetorical questions do not adequately
dispose of the many difficulties raised about the college
by friendly and not-so-friendly observers, and most intensively, by the faculty and the students themselves. Let
me briefly list what seem to me the chief topics of debate,
and indicate some first answers.
THE PLACE OF THE PROGRAM
IN AMERICAN EDUCATION
We are often asked, and have to ask ourselves, why
St. John's College has not been more widely imitated,
and of what use, beyond its own minuscule enterprise,
it can be to American education if it is indeed inimitable.
There have, in fact, been a number of programs modelled
on ours, but by and large, the departmental organization of American schools is simply too rigid to accommodate the radical modifications demanded by this program, while the propitious conjunction of factors
fession, especially law and medicine. By their own report,
after an initial disorientation, apparently comparable to
that of Adam and Eve after their ejection from paradise,
they find their years at the college both professionally
and personally helpful to life in the world- though
"helpful" is too bland a word for the effects of the program. It would be more candid to report that some
students say they feel crippled by the habit of reflection
they have acquired, while others- far more- claim that
the world belongs to them as, they think, it does not quite
belong to their peers.
THE OMISSION OF CERTAIN STUDIES
One of the apparently inevitable questions at the
orientation session which the Instruction Committee, the
faculty group charged with the supervision of the program, has with the incoming freshmen is: Why do we
study no Eastern books? The answer is threefold. First,
four years barely suffice even to begin with our own
Western tradition. Nothing worth doing could possibly
happen in the time we might squeeze out. Second, it is
by no means clear that the Eastern books can be fitted
into a Western, academic, institutional framework
without making a travesty of them-that they do not demand to be approached within their own living discipline.
Third, we have reason to distrust available translations,
because by an undiscriminating use of metaphysical terminology they seem so often to turn Eastern wisdom into
a pale and unoriginal reflection of Western philosophy.
In the case of Western texts we are alert to the fact that
translations will tend toward the higher gibberish and
necessary to a new founding is very rare. I think we
we have the communal competence to counteract this
should not yield to the implication that institutions that
are good in themselves are not doing their social duty
unless they are also exerting wide influence around them.
Nonetheless, the college does have a wider role to play
difficulty- not so with Eastern works. We have similar
hesitations about Islamic texts. It is not from disrepect
but from the exact opposite motive that we omit these
traditions.
in American education, namely, as one distinctive point
of reference: a self-confident but receptive center of
the very notion of "encountering other cultures;' especially
debate, an established repository of experience and a will-
as an undergraduate enterprise. Our deeper difficulty
The fact is that we have the greatest misgivings about
ing source of well-tested working devices for the restora-
is with the concept of culture itself, which can, notor-
tion of the liberal arts.
iously, include anything from menus to metaphysics. The
The imputation of elitism is sometimes made in this
context, but we must simply reject it. The program is
intended for all literate human beings and most particularly for citizens of a republic-our style of learning is eminently participatory, and questions of political
philosophy play a large role in the program. If smallness
and intimacy is a sin, one might as well accuse the family
of elitism. As for the expense of such an education, if
the true costs of public, large-scale, higher education were
ever honestly reckoned, this college, which has, as it were,
only one single large department and no need for fancy
hardware, might look good.
Finally there is the problem of vocationalism, of
preparation for careers. Is this kind of education nothing
but a respectable luxury on the educational scene? In
fact, way over half our students go on to graduate and
professional schools and they enter every conceivable pro-
54
more immediate pedagogical problem, however, concerns
the idea of "encounter" or "exposure." Surely it is not safe
to encounter strange ways when one is not yet solidly
grounded in one's own, nor is it sound to approach alien
traditions when one cannot afford to pursue them in
depth and detail.
The other major omission of the program which is
often questioned is that of history. Even observers who
accept the fact that we do not study any of a number
of other worthwhile fields wonder how we can read the
texts without a "historical background." Our answer, far
too abruptly stated, would be, first, that such capsule
history conveys very little except a prejudgement, and
second, more importantly, that the works are intended
by their authors to be directly accessible and selfsufficient, and that this claim must be, at least to begin
with, respected.
SUMMER 1984
�STUDY MODES OF THE PROGRAM
Our students seem to have little difficulty in accepting an all-required program which they have, after all,
chosen, which has a fairly explicit rationale, and which
has the adherence of their teachers. Indeed, they turn
out to be the most orthodox defenders of the program
against the inroads of elective elements. What they do
complain about is the lack of choice in tutors, since they
are assigned to classes and discouraged from asking for
transfers. It is a necessary hypothesis of the college community that all tutors are about equal in their ability to
guide classes which do not, supposedly, depend so much
on the teacher as on the text and the students. Of course,
the hypothesis is not quite true; our classes depend a great
deal on teachers, and also all the tutors are not equally
competent and exciting; a few are not even very good
teachers. This is one of the perennial problems of a college whose faculty thinks of itself as primarily a teaching
faculty. The best that can be said is that we do agonize
over the situation.
On our part, we worry about the amount of spoon
feeding and handholding our students absorb and wonder
whether it strengthens them or unfits them for making
choices and working independently. We are never quite
sure what we ought to do in this respect.
Our students, again, tend to suspect us- sometimes
with irritation and sometimes with a kind of intellectual
frisson- of propagating some esoteric dogma through the
classes. Nothing can resolve these suspicions except constant readiness on the part of the faculty to make explicit
and to discuss the assumptions behind our studies.
An academic critic might question the complete
absence of scholarship and reasearch. Truth to tell, the
students do not miss them, and they do get the benefit
of their teacher's fuller attention. Perhaps there is some
loss in the absence of ongoing intellectual productivity
(though many of us do write quite a bit), but we comfort ourselves with the thought that there is something
very timely indeed ab6ut our ambition to recollect and
revivify our intellectual inheritance and our reluctance
to join in the further accumulation oflargely unabsorbed
rational artifacts.
Finally, the scantiness of our contemporary readings
is often criticized. I think that, like everybody else, we
are simply embarrassed by the fragmented enormity of
the material. We would excuse ourselves from fully resolving this difficulty by pointing out that the appreciation
and critique of modernity, which is indeed one of our
central preoccupations, is best initiated with the aid of
earlier, more fundamental texts.
INSTITUTIONAL DIFFICULTIES
Pressure is the chief difficulty in realizing the pro-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
gram institutionally: the pressure of doing difficult daily
preparation, the frustration of racing through extensive
seminar assignments, the weariness of continuous involvement in that contradiction of terms, the scheduled conversation. We used to call the week between semesters
"Dead Week!' Tutors and students alike felt like zombies.
By way of relief we have been slowly cutting down
the program, shortening the readings and giving
ourselves some long weekends. But oddly enough, the
final fact of the matter seems to be that, endless complaints notwithstanding, people like it this way.
The one aspect of this problem that observers most
often notice is the relentless, strenuous intellectuality of
the college. Again there is some relief in the art studio,
the drama groups and in amateur music. Also students
have the choice of being at the Western campus, which
is said to be somewhat more relaxed. But the condition
itself is not curable, since it is the consequence of a pro-
gram that has no intention of educating "the whole person" (an enterprise which is part impertinence, part im-
possiblity), but addresses itself mainly to what is selfaware, rational and communicable, in sum, to what is
traditionally called free in human beings. The faculty's
contribution must be a great effort to ensure that it is
not a dry and brittle but a passionate and absorbing intellectuality that dominates the community.
"REAL LIFE"
Our students persistently bring to us a perplexity
which we share, though more occasionally and less
acutely. Who is there who spends his life with objects
of thought and does not sometimes feel a panic of fright
that reality is not being reached, that life is going on,
but elsewhere? Young students are especially vulnerable
to such suspicions, because they are the most afflicted
with idealism, a propensity for pitching ideas too high
for action and too shallow for truth. But the sporadic
fear that thought and life are forever disjoined -which
has nothing to do with such mundane worries as being
prepared to make a living- is an endemic anxiety of any
serious community of learning and particularly of St.
John's College.
Now the ultimate relation of thought to things and
theory to action is precisely one of those perennial questions of the inquiring tradition with which we are incessantly preoccupied. Hence all we the faculty can immediately do is to urge melancholic students to engage
in lots of sports (we have a lively and inclusive intramural
program) and to refrain as much as possible from being
mere intellectuals- I mean, people who stake out arrid
claims in a ghostly, self-sufficient environment of abstractions. Probably the best we can do is ourselves to show
fairly unfailing trust, not to say faith, that thinking can
reach the world and that learning is indeed possible.
55
�OccASIONAL DiscouRsEs
Summer 1984
Sermon Preached at St. Anne's Church,
Annapolis
]. Winfree Smith
W
hen the latest edition of Tieline reached
me in Santa Paula, California, the first
thing that met my eyes was an
announcement that the St. John~ Program
had been adopted by St. Anne's Church
School. That, I thought, is taking too far the intimate
relationship between St. John's College and St. Anne's
Church which we are this day celebrating. Then, of
course, a careful reading of Tieline showed that the St.
John's Program mentioned therein was a program
developed for pre-school children at St. John's Cathedral
in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and, being for pre-school
children, differed in some particulars from the St.John's
College program.
There certainly has been an intimate relationship between St.John's College and St. Anne's Church, so much
so that Tench Tilghman in his recently published Early
History of St. John~ College in Annapolis could say that from
its earliest infancy St. John's College was haunted by
Episcopal clergymen. During the first century of its existence under charter as St. John's at least five rectors
of St. Anne's were also principals or vice-principals of
the college. Those were the titles given by the charter
to those who nowadays would be called presidents or vicepresidents. The Reverend Ralph Higginbotham, who had
taught in the King William School, was the first principal or president of the college to be also rector of St.
Anne's, having been elected rector in 1785, the year after
the college was chartered. That the intimate relationship
was not always a happy one is shown by the fact that Higginbotham's reputation suffered because it was thought
by some in the St. Anne's congregation that he gave too
For over four decades, the Reverend
St. John's College, Annapolis.
56
J.
Winfree Smith has been a tutor at
much attention to the college and not enough to the
church.
There were also presidents of St. John's who were
Episcopal priests but not rectors of St. Anne's. The most
noteworthy of these was the Reverend Hector Humphrey
who was president of St. John's for 26 years just prior
to the Civil War. He is the only one of all these clergymen,
whether rectors or not, to whom there is a memorial in
this building, the second window along the south aisle
starting from the chancel end.
In 1941, when I came to Annapolis, the St. John's
baccalaureate service was held in St. Anne's Church, as
it had been over the years and decades.
It has, however, been more than a hundred years since
a rector of St. Anne's has been president of St. John's
and more than forty years since the baccalaureate service was held in this building. And so one begins to
wonder whether the intimate relationship still exists, as
far as any institutional offices or formalities are
concerned.
But on this occasion it might be well for us to think
rather about a deeper relationship that might exist between what St.John's stands for and what the Episcopal
Church stands for. There is, as you may know, a motto
of the Virginia seminary: "Seek the truth, come whence
it may, cost what it will." This is a good motto for St.
John's, but it is a bad motto for the seminary or for the
church, and I know at least one seminary Professor who
agrees. It is a good motto for St. John's because what
Sf' John's stands for is the search for the truth, and there
is no presupposition as to the source of the truth or as
to what the truth might be if it were to be discovered.
St. John's as such is not hostile to Christianity or even
indifferent to it. But, unlike the Roman Catholic college
where I now am, it has no religious commitment. The
church, on the other hand, is not in the position of merely
SUMMER 1984
�seeking the truth nor is there for the church any question as to the source of those truths which are most im-
portant for human beings to know. The church rests on
the assumption that God has revealed the most important truths for human beings to know and that the source
from which we receive them is the Holy Scriptures of
the Old and New Testaments.
In spite of this assumption that there is divinely
revealed truth and that it is to be found in the Holy Scrip-
lead them to deny the truth of the articles that give them
difficulty. We have recently read reports of a poll taken
among bishops of the Church of England that disclosed
that a majority of them do not believe that Jesus is God
or that he was raised from the dead or that he was born
of a virgin. Now the reports did not give any account
of the reasons why these bishops have made these denials,
i.e., what they have found so difficult as to be impossible in the articles having to do with the incarnation, the
tures, there is considerable confusion at the present time
resurrection, and the virgin birth. These three articles
as to what the Episcopal Church stands for. My claim
during the whole of my long ministry has been that the
Book of Common Prayer is the guide to what the
Episcopal church stands for and that the Nicene creed
do not all stand or fall together. One might well believe
that Jesus was truly God and completely human and
believe that even now He is truly God with only a human
soul without believing that His human body was raised
from the dead and without believing that He was born
of a human mother without a human father. I happen,
as Archbishop William Temple did, to believe in all three
articles, but I recognize that some Episcopalians might
in one of these see a difficulty that they would not see
in the others. I would claim, however, that what is
definitive of a Christian is the acknowledgement that
Jesus Christ, while being completely human, is God,
recited as part of our act of Eucharistic worship contains
those revealed truths in which Episcopalians, indeed in
common with other Christians, put their trust.
This claim has been challenged by several Episcopal
priests on the basis of a little change in the English text
of the Nicene creed as it apprears in the Prayer Book.
The little change is the change from "I" to "We;' from
"I believe" to 'We believe" at the beginning of the creed.
The commission that made this change did so for no
other reason than that they wanted the English version
to be an exact translation of the original fourth century
Greek version of the creed. But these priests understand
whatever one may believe about the resurrection or the
up what they consider the burden of the faith. Accord-
virgin birth.
Does the New Testament say that Jesus is God? Yes,
the first verses of the Gospel ofJohn say that Jesus, who
is there called the Word, not only was with God but was
God in the beginning and that through him creatures
ing to them, when we say "we believe;' we don't mean
came into being. Do those verses say that Jesus is of one
that I believe everything that we believe. When we say
"we believe" we mean rather that the Episcopal Church
believes all those things that are in the creed while I may
believe only in God as creatorwithout believing anything
about Jesus or the Holy Spirit and some other Episcopalian may believe something about Jesus without believing that Jesus is God, of one being with the Father, or
perhaps even without believing that God exists. If this
is the right way to understand the change from "I" to "we;'
should we not, when the Prayer Book is next revised,
substitute for "we" the words "The Episcopal Church'' so
being with the Father? No. Does the New Testament say
that anywhere explicitly? Nowhere explicitly. Yet if the
Gospel of John has Jesus telling the truth when he says
in that Gospel, "All that the Father has is mine;' do we
not have to conclude that, ifJesus has all that the Father
has, that all must include the very being of the Father?
I do not know what the nay-saying English bishops
would reply. Perhaps they would raise questions about
the authority of the Gospel of John. A while ago I said
that the church rests on the assumption that Holy Scripture is the source of divinely revealed truth. That does
that each of us could say out loud "The Episcopal Church
not necessarily mean that every single sentence in Scrip-
believes" but where necessary and sotto voce "I don't" or
"God knows what I believe"? Is it not absurd to make
maybe is not so absurd. The articles of the creed are not
ture is true. It may be that the pure gold of the word
of God in Scripture is mingled with the dross of the
human authors of Scripture. But how do we separate the
gold from the dross? Sometimes it seems that all the skill,
a commendable human skill, of the Biblical critics is
needed to make that separation, a skill which one can-
easy to accept. Different articles present different dif-
not expect to average Christian to have. Also sometimes
that the shift from "I" to ''We" means that we can divvy
such a separation between the faith of the Episcopal
Church and the faith of Episcopalians?
But behind this absurdity there is something that
ficulties. Even Thomas Aquinas, who, one might sup-
it seems that the presuppositions of the Biblical critics
pose, would find it rather easy to accept the articles of
are themselves questionable.
the creed, on the contrary maintains that the articles are
There is a rather widespread modern dogma that is
the source of one difficulty that people in the modern
age have with the resurrection and the virgin birth. That
to be distinguished precisely according to the distinct difficulties they present.
Whatever difficulties Thomas Aquinas may have
seen, there are certain difficulties which modern
Episcopalians, including bishops and priests, as well as
laymen, encounter. The difficulties do not lead them to
say "Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief." Rather they
THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW
is the dogma that modern science has made it impossible for modern man to believe in miracles, that modern
science has shown that miracles are not possible. This
dogma lies behind all the talk about demythologizing
Scripture. Modern science, of course, has not shown what
57
�it is alleged to have shown. To show that miracles are
impossible one would have to prove the non-existence
of an omnipotent God. No one, as far as I know, has
ever done that. For if God is omnipotent, everything that
happens is within His power, and though things may for
the most part happen in the way science or ordinary experience says, they may by the will of the omnipotent
God happen differently.
If the difficulty is that we cannot believe anything
unless it is evident to our senses or evident of itself to
our intellect or made evident to our intellect through
reasoning, then, to be sure, we cannot believe the articles
of the creed, though we may not be in a position to deny
them either. But here we touch upon something fundamental. For the very reason that we say that it is faith
that grasps the truth of what is divinely revealed is that
such truth is not evident to the senses or the intellect.
It is not evident that there is a God. It is not evident
that God is the omnipotent creator of heaven and earth.
If we think we can believe only what is evident or can
be evident to our senses or intellect or that faith is not
a way of grasping the truth, then we should give up Christianity altogether.
I maintain that the articles of the Nicene creed as
a whole, with all the difficulties they present, lay a claim
upon every Episcopalian. Surely they need the whole context of Christian thought and life if they are to have
fullness of meaning. But these articles represent a fundamental part of what the Episcopal Church stands for.
Does the truth revealed by God exclude searching for
the truth? No. It provides a rich field for such a search.
The human intellect has much to do in exploring the
meaning of what is revealed, in tracing its presuppositions and consequences for Christian thinking and doing, and so in discovering truths that are involved in the
explicitly revealed truths. It also has much to do in seeking truths not revealed in Scripture and the ways they
may be related to those that are. St. John's College may
be instructive for Christians as regards the discipline of
thought necessary for any search and hence for this search
that presupposes revelation. There is also another way
in which St. John's might be an example both for
58
theologians and for inquiring Christians generally.
Among present day theologians there is often the prejudice thatthe theological thought of the past is of merely
historical interest, that the theology of the Fourth century fathers or of the Medieval theologians or of the
reformers or of the Anglican divines like Richard Hooker
or Lancelot Andrewes is old-time stuff. It is a mere prejudice that in the age-old mainstream of Christian
theology there are no or few permanent insights into
Biblical revelation, that in the words of a ridiculous hymn
"we must keep abreast of truth;' that in theology the new
supersedes the old (as it seems to have done in modern
physics, not in theology), that in the present day the
theologian must devise a theology compatible with what
is alleged to be the thought of the present day. Liberation theology, to take one example, is based on the
premise that it is only on the foundation of the teaching
of Karl Marx that justice for the poor and the oppressed
can be achieved, and so that theology, which rightly seeks
justice for the poor or the oppressed, identifies God with
the historical process as understood by Karl Marx and
his twentieth-century followers, an identification that
would be rejected by Marx and is to say the least doubtfully Christian.
"Seek the truth, come whence it may?' A good motto for
St. John's College. St. John's is open to the possibility
of new truth hitherto unknown and wherever it may come
from. But, as everyone knows, St. John's people read old
books. They read them not because they are old, not in
order to find out what this or that person or people
thought in this or that past age, but because those who
thought well in the past raised questions that are relevant in all times and gave answers worthy of consideration at all times. It may be well for theologians and inquiring Christians of the present day to forget about hopping on contemporary intellectual or philosophical bandwagons and seek to recover the thought of the great
theologians of the past because of its perennial relevance.
This thought, as all Christian thought must, centers in
the question "what think ye of Christ?" and in the answer
that He is both the truth and the way to the truth that
He is.
SUMMER 1984
�The Golden Ages of St. John's*
Eva Brann
F
riends of the college, Fellow Students and
Fellow Tutors:
The theme tonight is "Liberty and Liberal
Education:' but the occasion is the two-hundredth anniversary of the founding of our college. Late in 1784 a bill, no. 37, was introduced into the
Maryland Senate, entitled "An act for founding a college on the Western Shore of this State and constituting
the same, together with Washington College on the
Eastern Shore, into a university by the name of the
University of Maryland:' The "college on the Western
Shore" was to become St. John's. (The fascinating tale
of its naming has been convincingly reconstructed by our
former librarian, Charlotte Fletcher.) So St. John's was
first conceived as one of the two colleges of a state university. We have the honor of having Professor Fallaw here
tonight to represent our intended sister school.
I will spare you the protracted, fitful and even
tumultuous history of St. John's metamorphosis into a
private college. The legacy of its public origin is the
Charter of 1784 which remains in essence our charter:
It proclaims that "institutions for the liberal education
of youth in the principles of virtue, knowledge and useful
literature are of the highest benefit to society, in order
to train up and perpetuate a succession of able and honest
men for discharging the various offices and duties oflife
both civil and religious with usefulness and reputation ... ?' The charter expresses the prevailing view in
the early republic, propagated in numerous essays, that
liberal education is the necessary support of a republic,
*Eva Brann delivered this talk as part of a symposium on "Liberty and Liberal
Education" held at St. John's College, Annapolis (September 20, 1984), for
the Two-Hundredth Anniversary Colloquium.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
that tyranny and ignorance, liberty and knowledge are
to be equated. In this spirit, a frenzy of college founding followed the Revolution; nineteen colleges were
established between 1780 and 1799, among whom St.
John's was one of the earliest, being chartered in the very
first year "of the present favorable occasion of peace and
prosperity;' in the words of the charter.
The legislature's expectation for public usefulness
were amply fulfilled. Between the first graduation in 1793
and 1806 (when its troubles with the state became acute),
there came out of St. John's four future governors, seven
United States senators, five representatives, judges galore
and one governor of Liberia. That time was later termed
the "Golden Age:' So also is an early Golden Age attributed to the "New Program;' our present program, on
the principle that the time is always goldener on the other
side of this generation. Actually, it seems to me, the whole
near half-century of the New Program, constituting
almost a quarter of the college's history, is a second
Golden Age, though it has a distinction different from
that of the first founding. Let me therefore propose a
question to you which has a certain charm for me: Is
this present college of ours an old school or a new school?
To begin with I want to entertain you- I hope you
may be entertained- with several circumstances which
induce this question, some more wonderful than significant, but some significant as well as wonderful. For example, the first grammar master was called Peter
McGrath; who knows but that our Hugh McGrath is
his reincarnation? Similarly there was a friendly but unofficial relation between St.John's and St. Anne's Church
in the person ofthe Reverend Ralph Higginbotham, the
last master of the King William School and rector of St.
Anne's, who was one of the stalwarts of the first founding. Now we have our Winfree Smith. What is
remarkable about this relation is that it is scrupulously
59
�unofficial (though there have been lapses between the first
and second founding). The college charter stood early
in a developing tradition of religious liberty which prohibited religious tests for students and forbade that they
be urged to attend any particular religious service. St.
John's went even further: It was the first school, I believe,
to have a principal who was not a clergyman, ] ohn
McDowell, St. ] ohn's first president (though three
clergymen, a Roman Catholic, an Episcopalian, and a
Presbyterian had taken a major part in its organization).
Could this same spirit of religious liberty, a spirit whose
merit it is that it manages not to be anti-clerical, not to
be attributed to the present college?
To descend from the spirit to sticks and stones, there
is McDowell Hall, a half-finished ruin in 1784, which
became the college's first building, containing class rooms,
the library in the octagonal room under the cupola, and
the dormitory. Each student was furnished with a
chamber pot under his bed, a service which has been
dicontinued. McDowell burned down in 1909 but was
faithfully restored. Do we inhabit an old or a new
building?
have been played out all the perenially absorbing institutional issues of American liberty: the rivalries of local
with centralized foundations, ofwell-offwith poor man's
schools, of public with private establishments, of religious
with secular education. It matters even if we, tutors and
students, have more urgent things to do than to absorb
the history of this little local phenomenon. I would have
to be an Edmund Burke to say well and clearly why the
antiquity of the college matters to the cause of liberty,
but I will try to say it briefly: First, in its phoenix-like
propensity for reprise and revival the college is an offshoot and an index of American liberty, which seems to
me quintessentially characterized by that second chance,
that new departure, which does not kick its springboard
under but rather preserves and absorbes its ground. And
second, through its continuity, through the simple fact
that it was there with its liberal tradition, the college could
offer a home to a program which made a conscious and
deep connection between liberty and liberal education.
It is the making of that connection in the New Program which is the new wine, tart and heady, in the old
bottle of the classical college. Let me conclude by say-
But, of course, the question becomes really fascinating
ing, quite superficially, what I conceive that connection
with respect to studies. In those early days the college
proper (there was a preparatory department attached)
was called "the philosophy school:' The curriculum was
prescribed and unified. The students read original texts
and studied mathematics as well as '~natural philosophy;'
that is, science. The languages were Greek and optional
to be.
The idea that political liberty and education go hand
in hand was an article of faith with the educational writers
of the early republic, a matter of preachment rather than
inquiry. There was, however, much debate about the kind
of education the republic required: Should it be primarily
utilitarian training or liberal education, at least for youths
destined for leadership? (Since Aristotle's book on educa-
French. For example, the novitiates, or freshmen, read
Plato and studied Euclid and the juniors read Aristotle
and studied fluxions, that is, calculus. While we marvel
at these detailed similarities to the present program, we
must, however, remember that at that time these studies
were but a version of the normal classical American college curriculum, with account taken of the science of a
hundred post-Newtonian years. In histories of education
our New Program is sometimes described as reviving the
classical college curriculum. But granting- even revel-
tion, "liberal" in this context has properly meant "nonvocational.") But even in this discussion it was repeated
to weariness that, to quote our character, "institutions
ling in- the apparent parallelism, is it really such a
understood that liberal education somehow made for in-
revival?
Let me try an answer: the present St. ] ohn's is, to
coin a phrase, new wine in old bottles, and that has some
dividual enlightenment. For example, the Marylander
Samuel Knox wrote in an essay (which won a prize offered by the American Philosophical Society in 1799) that
"the one great object of education should be to inculcate
independence of mind and consequently an aversion to the
embracing of any species of knowledge, moral, physical,
bearing on the theme of liberty and liberal education.
First, the antiquity of the bottle matters. It matters
that the physical place remains recognizably the same,
that an alumnus of the first graduating class of 1796 could
nostalgically poetize the liberty tree:
And many a frolic feat beneath thy shade
Far distant days and other suns have seen.
(Dr. Shaw)
It matters that this tiny, tough college has sprung back
from two closings and several nadirs of mediocrity and
that it has throughout the centuries attracted the oddly
intense sentiment-accompanied, to be sure, until re-
cently by rather more subdued financial solicitude-of
its alumni. It matters that it is a microcosm in which
60
of liberal education are of the highest benefit to society?'
My point is: In the large enthusiasm of the founding such
fine-grain question as just how the liberality of education was to underwrite the liberty of the republic fell
through the cracks of the argument. To be sure, it was
or religious, without examinat~on and consequent conviction." (This same Samuel Knox, incidentally, nearly
did us in. Belonging to what might be called the] effersonian faction in education, he prefaced his essay with
an address to the Maryland legislature urging them to
support local academies, that is, secondary education in
the counties, rather than a college for the wealthy in the
state capital. This advice was what it had long been looking for: It withdrew financial support and the college fell
into its first decline.) But how one might implant liberty
in a mind was as dark then as "teaching students to think
for themselves" is now. It was a time not for theory but
SUMMER 1984
�for turning out competent citizen-rulers, and that is just
what the college did in its first Golden Age.
In its second Golden Age it was right and timely for
the college to ask the perennial question "what is the relation of liberty to learning?" and to make the ground of
the inquiry the hypothesis that the connection may be
found in the soul of the learner. Its doing so was timely
because thus the college acknowledged that the easy and
immediate relation of those early days between liberal
learning and republican statesmanship had long been
ruptured. And it was wise because thus the college
brought forward the oldest and the newest, the most persistent and the most urgent, of all political questions:
What is the relation of thought to action?
So the hypothesis which discerning critics who charge
the college under the New Program with being an "ivory
tower" would have to refute are these: That we do live
in a country in which there is liberty and that liberty
is both exercised and preserved by true action, namely,
free action. That such action is by its very nature preceded by thought, from which it follows that human beings, the young especially, ought to have a period of reflective learning as a prelude to both private and public
action. That this pedagogical prelude should take the
form of liberal, that is to say, non-vocational, education,
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
not only because such learning is a deep need and a perennial possibility of the human soul, but even more
because the theory that is meant to precede action cannot be pursued otherwise than freely, that is to say,
spontaneously.
The St. John's Program, then, is nothing but a
coherent set of occasions for encouraging liberal learning. The question of real interest, just how it is specifically
designed to induce liberty of soul, I leave, as is fitting,
to one of the most characteristic of these occasions, the
question period.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Charlotte Fletcher, "1784: the Year St. John's College Was Named",
Maryland Histon'cal Magazine, Vol. 74, No. 2, June 1979.
Richard Hofstadter, Academic Freedom in the Age of the College, (New
York 1955).
David Ridgely, Annals of Annapolis, 1649-1812 (Baltimore 1841), pp.
237-244.
Essays on Education in the Early Republic, ed. Frederick Rudolph (Cambridge 1965).
Bernard C. Steiner, History of Education in Maryland (Washington 1894).
J. Winfree Smith, A Search for the Liberal Arts College, (St.John's College Press 1983).
Tench Francis Tilghman, The Early History of St. John's College in Annapolis, (St. John's College Press 1984).
61
�William Smith: Godfather and
First President of St. John's College*
Arthur Pierce Middleton
0
n Wednesday, November 11, 1789, an event
occurred in Annapolis which the college's
historian, Tench Tilghman, has described
as the day that St. John's College officially
began its academic career. Members of the
General Assembly, the Chancellor, judges of the General
Court, gentlemen of the bar, and the worshipful corporation of the city, followed by the students and a "numerous
and respectable concourse of people;' went in procession
from the State House, through North Street, to what is
now called College Avenue, and then to Bladen's Folly,
which had been converted into a suitable building to
house St. John's College. There-presumably in the
Great Hall- Dr. William Smith, who had been named
the day before president pro tern of the College, preached
what the Maryland Gazette described as "an elegant sermon;' and the Rector of St. Anne's Parish and former
Master of King William's School, Ralph Higginbotham,
gave an oration on the advantages of a classical education.
Why William Smith was an excellent choice- indeed
the obvious one- for both president pro tern of the infant college and for preacher on this auspicious occasion
is what I am here to explain. And I may add that it is
strange that such an eminent figure in the intellectual
circles of eighteenth-century America needs any introduction at all. But the sad fact is that he is not as well known
today as he deserves to be- or as he was to his
contemporaries.
A Colonial historian, Canon Middleton is a former Director of Research for
Colonial Williamsburg, and former Research Associate and lecturer at the
Institute of Early American History at the College of William and Mary. This
discourse was delivered in the "'lCa and History" Series, King William Room,
The Library, November 6, 1984.
*An address given in the "Tea and History" Series, King William
Room, the Library, November 6, 1984.
62
Born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 172 7, William
Smith was the son of a small landholder and the grandson of a physician and astronomer. His sister married
an officer of the Royal Navy who later acquired fame
as an admiral who defeated a Dutch fleet in 1797 and
was elevated to the peerage as Viscount Duncan of
Camperdown. One of his brothers settled in Philadelphia,
practiced law, and eventually became a judge of the
highest court in Pennsylvania.
William Smith was educated at King's College, Aberdeen, just at the beginning of the great Scottish
renaissance of the eighteenth century. After serving as
a schoolmaster for a time, he came to New York in 1751
as a private tutor to the sons of a wealthy gentleman on
Long Island. While there he published poetry in the New
York and Pennsylvania newspapers, a letter in defense
of freedom of the press, and a pamphlet on education
urging the creation of a college in New York City.
In 1753 he published his magnum opus, a pamphlet,
(of 86 pages) entitled A General Idea of the College of Mirania,
with a Sketch of the Method of Teaching Science and Religion.
Intended for the proposed college in New York, it set forth
Smith's concept of the curriculum and methods of
teaching appropriate to a liberal arts college. And it was
a real breakthrough for the twenty-six year old scholar,
for, as we shall see, it fell into the hands of Benjamin
Franklin and led to Smith's appointment as head of the
Academy of Philadelphia, which was about to be made
into a college.
Smith was a strong believer in a classical education,
but, in the characteristic vein of the Age of Reason, he
proposed rejecting some things commonly taught at colleges and adding others. Inspired by a quotation from
Archbishop John Tillotson (1630-94 ), he held that "the
knowledge of what tends neither directly nor indirectly
to make better men and better citizens, is but a knowledge
SUMMER 1984
�of Trifles: it is not learning, but a specious and ingenious
sort ofidlenessc' Consequently, Smith rejected the "Rubbish" of the vast tomes of ancient Rabbis, Schoolmen,
and modern Metaphysicians, and also "the polemic
writers about Grace, Predestination, moral Agency, the
Trinity, Ec Ec;' and added that "The years of Methusalem
would be far too short to attain any Proficiency in all
the Disputes and Researches of this kind, which have so
long puzzled the learned world, and are still as much
undecided as at first. Almighty God seems to have set
the knowledge of many Things beyond our present Ken,
on purpose to confound our Pride."
Instead, Smith recommended "rejecting Things
superfluous and hypothetical" and urged that we "mount
directly up to fundamental Principles, and endeavour to
ascertain the Relations we stand in to God and universal Intelligence, that we may sustain, with dignity, the
Rank assign'd us among intellectual Natures, and move
in Concert, with the rest of Creation, in accomplishing
the great End of all thingsc'
Such a distinction was a little daring for a college
erected in a colony in 1753, where the natural tendency
was to avoid anything novel and to cleave, instead, to the
accepted ways of the Mother Country. Smith made
another distinction that was, perhaps, even more daring, by dividing the whole body of prospective students
into two categories: those who had an aptitude for the
learned professions, and all the rest- including those
whose aptitude inclined to the mechanic arts. Different
training, he thought, should be provided for the two
groups. The classic languages, for example, would be of
use to the former, but a waste of time for the latter.
The book had no immediate results. King's College,
which opened in New York six months after the book
appeared, was, as Smith ruefully observed, "on a plan
somewhat different:' But the copy of the College of Mirania
that he sent to Franklin did produce results, and Smith
was invited to be the head of the Philadelphia Academy.
Before taking up his post, however, he returned to
England where he was ordained a priest of the Church,
and where he conducted a highly successful fund drive
for the Academy of Philadelphia. Upon his return in
1754, he set about to transform the school into a college,
and began his long and distinguished career as its provost.
During the next quarter of a century, William Smith
became a fixture in the intellectual life of the City of
Brotherly Love, and one of the chief promoters of the
new liberal cultural movement in the fields of belleslettres, art, music, and drama that developed there in
the second half of the eighteenth century. His students
at the college formed a nucleus of a group that included
Francis Hopkinson (musician, composer, poet, and later
a Signer of the Declaration of Independence and designer
of the American flag); Thomas Godfrey, Jr. (poet,
playwright, and author of the "Prince of Parthia" c.
1758-59), and Benjamin West (whose aptitude Smith
discovered, and who studied art in Italy in 1760, and
became the court portrait painter to George III and
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ultimately president of the Royal Academy). In the realm
of law and politics, one of Smith's students who later made
good was William Paca, lawyer, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, governor of Maryland, and a
Federal judge. One of the ways in which Smith sought
out and encouraged literary ability was by founding a
magazine in 1757 which, though short-lived, proved to
be a vehicle for many rising young men of talent.
Culturally, it was the most influential periodical in colonial America-and was entitled The American
Magazine, or Monthy Chronicle for the British Colonies.
As Smith's biographer, Alfred Gegenheimer, has said,
the almost simultaneous production by three proteges
of Smith of one of the earliest American musical compositions, the first American drama to be professionally
performed, and the first American painting of permanent worth is a phenomenon-and William Smith was
the catalyst of this outburst of musical, dramatic, and
artistic talent.
Smith's fame spread far and wide, eventually reaching
his fellow countrymen in Great Britain. While he was
there, raising money for the college in 1759, he received
the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Aberdeen, Oxford, and Dublin universities-an uncommon distinction
for a colonial.
Liberal though he was in cultural and intellectual
matters, William Smith was somewhat conservative in
matters political. Almost as soon as he arrived in
Philadelphia, he began to participate in public affairs,
writing pamphlets, publishing letters, and preaching sermons. Though sharing many cultural and educational
ideas with Franklin, Smith soon quarreled with him on
political grounds. Franklin belonged to the antiproprietary or country party, whereas Smith identified
himself with the proprietary party and frequently
castigated the Quakers, who dominated the legislature,
for refusing to appropriate funds to defend the frontier
settlements against Indian attacks. On one occasionin 1758-he was arrested by the Assembly, convicted of
libel, denied the right of habeas corpus, and sent to prison.
Supported by the trustees of the college and by the proprietary governor, Smith taught his classes in moral
philosophy through the prison bars. Released by the
courts, he went to England and appealed his case. It took
a long time and a great deal of money, but eventually
the King-in-Council sustained his appeal and directed
the governor to declare His Majesty's "High Displeasure"
at the Assembly's unwarranted disregard of habeas corpus. Smith was completely vindicated and British justice
triumphed.
As the controversies that led to the Revolution unfolded, Smith readily sympathized with the grievances
that the colonists expressed after the Stamp Act debacle,
but he was very slow, indeed, to accept the idea of independence, holding to the increasingly forlorn hope that
sooner or later the British Government would make
amends and grant sufficient autonomy to satisfy the
Americans and to reconcile them to a continuance within
63
�the British Empire. But such was not to be, and his reluctance to embrace the concept of seceding from the Empire until after July 4, 1776, got him into trouble with
the patriot party. On January 6, 1776, he was called
before the Philadelphia Council of Safety charged with
speaking disrespectfully of the Continential Congress.
There being no evidence, the charge was dropped.
Curiously enough, the next month Congress invited him
to give an oration commemorating General Montgomery
and the men who had fallen with him in his unsuccessful
attack on Quebec. Smith also defended the colonists' action at Lexington and Concord as justifiable selfpreservation. And on December 8, 1778, Smith preached
in Christ Church, Philadelphia, to a Masonic gathering
in the presence of George Washington. Hence, he could
scarcely have been considered a loyalist at that time. The
moderation of his views, which caused some to suspect
him of being a loyalist, led others to look upon him as
a rebel. On December 20, 1776, the loyalist, Samuel
Seabury (later to become Bishop of Connecticut), wrote
to the English ecclesiastical authorities that Smith, like
other Philadelphia priests, "rushed headlong into the
Rebellion:' This perception of him by others as being
something other than what he felt himself to be did
nothing for his volatile disposition and probably provoked
him to register his resentment in rather strong language.
During the Revolution, soldiers were quartered on
the college grounds, and most students returned to their
homes. When the British troops approached Philadelphia,
the college was shut down for nearly two years. It reopened in January, 1779, shortly after the British
evacuated the city. But Smith's adversaries in the
Assembly persuaded that body to dissolve the trustees
and faculty of the college, and to substitute a new board
that was more under the control of the legislature.
It must have been heartbreaking for Smith to be cast
out after nearly thirty years of devoted and distinguished
service to the college. In 1780 he left Philadelphia and accepted a call to Chestertown, Maryland, where he became
Rector of St. Paul's and Chester parishes. Since his stipend of 600 bushels of wheat per annum was inadequate,
it was understood that he was free to accept a few private
students, and shortly thereafter he was put in charge of
the Kent County Free School, of which Charles Willson
Peale's father had been the master forty years before.
Within two years Smith had conceived of the idea of a
University of Maryland composed of two colleges, one
on each shore of the Chesapeake Bay, and he raised funds
and persuaded the Maryland Assembly to charter
Washington College in Chestertown. By May 14, 1783,
when the first commencement took place, Smith had
raised more than £10,000 Maryland currency, and the
list of subscribers was headed by the national idol,
General Washington, who gave £50 and permitted his
name to be used for the college. At its third commencement- in 1785- nine men were awarded Doctor of
Divinity degrees, including the Jesuit, John Carroll, who
had helped Smith draw up the charter of St.John's Col-
64
lege the year before, and who later became the first
Roman Catholic bishop in the United States and the first
Archbishop of Baltimore.
Meanwhile, Smith published a pamphlet in 1788 appealing to the Pennsylvania Assembly to reinstate the
violated charter of the College of Philadelphia. Now that
the rancors of the Revolutionary War were beginning to
subside, many prominent men exerted influence in
Smith's behalf. In 1789 the Assembly reinstated the old
trustees, faculty, and provost. Smith was vindicated once
more, but it meant that he must forsake his fledgling college in Chestertown and return to Philadelphia. Oddly
enough, in the year 1789 when he served as president
of St. John's College, temporarily and for ceremonial
reasons, he was also president of Washington College,
Chestertown, and of the College of Philadelphia as well.
I wonder how often in our history one man was president of three institutions of higher learning at the same
time!
When Smith created Washington College in 1782, the
preamble of the charter described it as a part of a projected university which was to include a sister college on
the Western Shore, the two to be united under one
jurisdiction. Since this concept of a state university
bestride the Chesapeake (like the Colossus of Rhodes)
was the product of his fertile brain, it is only natural that
Smith, the most eminent academician in the United
States, should have been in the forefront of the move to
create a college on the Western Shore to balance the one
in Chestertown. A group of gentlemen met in Annapolis
on December 3, 1784, to hasten the project. They appointed six men- three clerics and three laics- to a committee to "complete the . . . bill for founding a college
on the Western Shore, and to publish the same immediately:' Imagine how long it would take today! But
in those halcyon days, the job was done in less than two
weeks. ''A Draught of a Proposed Act ... for Founding
a College on the Western Shore of this State, and for constituting the same, together with Washington College on
the Eastern Shore, into one University, by the Name of
the University of Maryland" was published, and later
enacted by the House of Delegates on December 30,
1784.
In passing, it is worth noticing that pursuant to the
Maryland Declaration of Rights of 1776, which swept
away all the civil and financial prerogatives of the
Anglican (or Episcopal) Church, the three ecclesiastics
on the committee respresented the three principal subdivisions of Maryland's Christian community: Dr. Smith
the Episcopalians, John Carroll the Roman Catholics,
and Patrick Allison, a Presbyterian divine, the Protestants
generally, and especially the dissenters from the former
Established Church. The Draught borrowed large portions of the Washington College charter which had been
written by Smith. After the charter of the new college
in Annapolis was enacted, Smith declared that he and
his Roman Catholic and Presbyterian colleagues had
draughted it "happily and with great unanimity:'
SUMMER 1984
�This ecumenical concord, together with the toleration engendered by the Age of Reason, Jet them to write
into the charter that all qualified students were to be admitted "without requiring or enforcing any religious or
civil test" and "without urging their attendance upon any
particular worship or service, other than what they have
been educated in, or have the consent and approbation
of their parents or guardians to attend:' But there was
no idea of trying to eliminate religion from education.
The college was to nurture students in their own church
affiliations and provide them with opportunity to frequent
their particular foJ.ms of worship in the churches in
Annapolis.
While all this was going on in the 1780s, Dr. Smith
was active and influential in the Church in Maryland
and on a national level. Four months after arriving in
Chestertown in 1780, he presided over a convention consisting of three priests and twenty-four laymen, which
made the first move towards organizing the Diocese of
Maryland. This was the first convention of the Episcopal
Church in any of the thirteen American States that was
composed oflay representatives as well as clergy and that
undertook to cope with the changes brought about by
the Revolution in the polity and liturgy of the Anglican
Church in America. Annual conventions were held in
Maryland thereafter, and Smith was chosen to preside
over every one of them until he left the State and returned
to Philadelphia in 1789. These conventions erected the
diocese of Maryland, created a constitution and canons,
and, in 1783, chose Dr. Smith as biship-elect of Maryland.
On the national stage, too, Smith emerged as one of the
leaders, along with William White (first Bishop of Pennsylvania) and Samuel Seabury (first Bishop of Connecticut). Smith's organizing talent, impressive intellectual
stature, and speaking ability resulted in his election as
president of all the early general conventions of the
Church, and his selectiol'l as chairman of the committees that formulated the constitution of the Episcopal
Church and produced the first American Book of Common Prayer in 1789-the very year in which he served
as President pro tern of St. John's College, participated
in its opening ceremonies, and preached his "elegant Sermon." These are indications of his eminence in the eyes
of his colleagues and contemporaries.
William Smith's life and career were crowned with
success and recognition, and he became one of the
foremost celebrities of his day. But he suffered several
adversities, and they, rather than his triumphs, give us
insight into his character. One was when he was imprisoned unjustly by the Pennsylvania Assembly. Another
was when he was ejected from his provostship of the College of Philadelphia by the political machinations of his
enemies. In both cases he resolutely resisted and ultimately obtained vindication, which indicates his con-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
fidence in justice and his strength of character. After all,
the classical authors whom he taught had said that as
fire tests gold, so adversity tests brave men!
But his other great adversity, the chagrin and humiliation of being denied consecration to the Episcopate,
reveals him to be a man whose faith was even greater
than his pride and his ambition. All the reasons for this
disappointment are not known to us, but it appears that,
like many eighteenth-century gentlemen, Smith was accustomed all his life to imbibe hard liquor in liberal
amounts. He was certainly not an alcoholic-his active
life and prodigious achievements make that quite clear.
Although he did not habitually overindulge-at least in
public- he was reported to have done so once, while attending the General Convention in New York. Smith
denied the allegation and called for proof, which as far
as we know was never forthcoming. The Maryland Convention dismissed the allegation as unproven-and even
unlikely- but the charge hung over him like a cloud, and
he never again applied to the General Convention for
confirmation of his election or for recommendation to
the Archbishop of Canterbury for consecration.
This darkest hour, I think, proved paradoxically to
be his finest hour. He was, in effect, considered guilty
until proved innocent, which is a cr~el reversal of the
juridical axiom. And his undeniable contributions to the
Church, and especially his organizing and liturgical
abilities, seem to justify his consecration as the first
Bishop of Maryland. Much as he yearned for the lawn
sleeves of a bishop, Smith did not allow what in his view
was unwarranted rejection to curtail his devoted service
to the Church. He continued to serve in any way the
Church could use him. And he remained one of the most
prominent priests of the Church, being chosen to preside
over every convention in Maryland until he left in 1789,
and over every House of Deputies of General Convention until 1801 when ill health prevented him. In addition, he had the high honor of being selected to preach
the sermon at the burial of his old political enemy, Benjamin Franklin, and he was chosen to preach at the consecreation of the first three bishops of the Episcopal
Church that were consecrated in America: Thomas John
Claggett of Maryland, Robert Smith of South Carolina,
and Edward Bass of Massachusetts. Moreover, he remained on friendly terms with Bishop White, who opposed his consecration, and with Dr. Andrews, who made
the allegation against him in the first place. It would seem
that love of Christ and his holy Church took precedence
over egotism, righteous indignation, and- ambition. There
is perhaps no better illustration of his Christian character
than this. And this eminent and impressive academic and
churchman was the first president pro tern of St. John's
College.
65
�BooK REviEw
The Early History of
St. John's College in Annapolis
Tench Francis Tilghman
Annapolis, St. John's College Press, 1934.
XIII+199 pp. Illustrations. $13.00
hen Tench Francis Tilghman
wrote The Early His tory of St.
John's College some forty years
ago, he wanted to use it as a "kind of glass
to view the changes in American educa-
W
tion as they affected the smaller college."
What emerges in the telling is a conservative St. John's, more faithful to a liberal
arts curriculum adopted in 1789 than
responsive to the winds of educational
change blowing through other early
American colleges. Referring often to
passing educational fads in American colleges contemporary with St. Johds, Dr.
Tilghman details the insubstantial
changes made in St. John's original curriculum until, following the lead of other
American colleges, its board in 1923
adopted an elective program.
Dr. Tilghman writes wittily, irreverently, and ironically about the college's trial and perils throughout one hundred and fifty years. He describes the
state of student morals, faculty woes and
board resilience amid the snares of
sociable Annapolis, the "ancient city;'
which grew more provincial while
Baltimore developed into the metropolis
of Maryland. The book offers an entertaining slice of Maryland history, a
chronicle of youth at the Western Shore
college attended by many Eastern
Sharemen, where students studied,
drilled, frolicked and sported. Their life
styles were influenced by a series of
presidents, but most profoundly by three
outstanding ones: John McDowell, a
graduate of the College of Philadelphia,
a gentle disciplinarian who led by example; the Reverend Hector Humphrey, a
66
graduate of Yale, a stern disciplinarian
with puritanical leanings; and genial
Thomas Fell, educated at King's College,
London University, Heidleberg, and
Munich, who presided when sports and
dances became an integral part of college
life at St. John's and other American
colleges.
Private citizens and the Legislature
made generous pledges to launch St.
John's in 1784: the Legislature by charter
promised it a perpetual grant of 1750
pounds per annum. When St. John's and
King William's School merged in 1786
(Dr. Tilghman questions that it was a
merger), the King William's board
pledged two thousand pounds and agreed
to close their school, called the Annapolis
School, when the college opened. Because
of this agreement, St.John's felt a special
obligation to educate Annapolis youths,
and in 1789 it opened a grammar school
which operated as part of the college until 1923.
Between 1789 and 1805, years later
called the "golden age;' the college prospered. Then in 1806 a republican Qeffersonian democratic) majority in the
Legislature rescinded the charter provisions which promised St. John's and
Washington colleges adequate taxgenerated incomes "forever." The
Republicans favored the founding of
county academies over supporting the two
colleges founded by the Federalists. PresidentJohn McDowell resigned in protest.
Those who could have provided the
needed financial support, though outraged by the perfidy of the Legislature,
followed its example: they gave nothing
from their personal wealth to run the college. Thereafter the board was forced to
beg at each biennial session of the
Legislature for what little money it
received.
Twenty-five years later in 1830 the
board (helped by an alumni aSsociation
composed of men educated in the
McDowell years) persuaded the Reverend
Hector Humphrey to become president.
Under his administration the buildings
on St. John's campus known as Humphrey and Pinkney were built. He imposed strict rules of conduct on grammar
school and college students alike. He continued a voluntary military program
begun in 1826, partly for discipline, partly
for exercise (there was no athletic program), and partly for career training.
Like the grammar school, the military
program, compulsory at times, continued
until 1923. Dr. Tilghman believes that the
grammar school and the military program hindered the development of St.
John's as a college.
During the nineteenth century, student fees and state grants plus fees received from the pasturage of cows at fifty
cents a head per month, a fee later raised
to two dollars, made up the college income. The board converted each grant into scholarships. For instance, in 1850,
when the state granted $15,000, the board
offered one hundred and fifty scholarships
worth one hundred dollars each. What a
student was charged over and above the
amount he received as a scholarship was
reserved for faculty salaries, and a teacher
was assigned the job of collecting it. Once
in desperation an unpaid teacher sug-
SUMMER 1984
�gested that scholarships be sold to produce revenue. Dr. Tilghman remarks,
"How anyone could sell a scholarship, and
yet have it remain a scholarship, is more
than a little puzzling."
Out-of-state students would have
brought money to the college but none
enrolled. In 1853 Professor EJ. Stearns
resigned in disgust saying that St. John's
remained a small provincial college
because the faculty was horribly overworked and underpaid; antiquated textbooks were studied instead of original
works; and "young men will not come to
be treated under school-boy discipline."
Yet the presidents and faculty were
not provincial in either background or
outlook. They came from respected colleges and universities, and when they left
Annapolis many joined prestigious
faculties elsewhere. St. John's offered "a
complete and general education, that
which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices,
both private and public, of peace and
war," like Milton's ideal college, a model
cited in a letter written by President
Henry Barnard. In truth many St.John's
alumni filled important offices in the
state, church, and military services.
The early college almost expired
several times for lack of money. During
the Civil War the college campus was
commandeered as a Union parole camp
and hospital. Until the college reopened
in 1866 Professor William Thompson
held classes in town, thus fulfilling a college obligation by charter amendment
always to teach at least five foundation,
or charity, boys.
In 1809 the U.S. Supreme Court had
ruled for Dartmouth College against the
state of Massachusetts for breach of contract. The St.John's board, believing that
the state of Maryland had acted unconstitutionally, like Massachusetts, when
it refused in 1806 to continue an annual
grant promised St. John's by charter, sued
the state in 1859. Subsequently, the
Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that the
state had indeed breached a contract, but
because the college had continued to accept a lesser state money under an "Act
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
of Compromise" agreed to in 1830, it no Dean Scott Buchanan, and the colonizlonger had claim to the original grant. ing expansion to Santa :Fe, New Mexico,
Years later, in 1880, the St. John's board under President Richard D. Weigle, in
declared that state pride alone prevented the early 1960s.
it from taking its case to the U.S. Supreme
Dr. Tilghman's history and Reverend
Court. This veiled threat worked: "The J. Winfree Smith's The Search for a Liberal
Legislature rose nobly to the occasion," CoLLege, which covers the early years under
restored the arrearage accumulated since the New Program, both published by the
1861 and approved an annual appropria- St. .John's Press to celebrate the college's
tion plus a five-year grant.
two-hundredth anniversary in 1984,
When Thomas Fell became president should be read tog·ethcr. Interesting
in 1886, the college consisted of sixty-eight parallels are immediately obvious. Viewstudents and a campus full of dilapidated ing St. John's of the New Program era
buildings. The student body grew and through the glass Tilghman provides, we
three buildings- Woodward (the sec the Dartmouth College case cited
Library), Randall (a dining-room and again in the 1940s, by President Barr
dormitory), and Iglehart (the gym- when he defended the St. John's campus
nasium) -were built during his ad- against encroachment by the U.S. Naval
ministration. When he resigned in 1923 Academy. Earlier board efforts to unite
"he took with him the affection of hun- two colleges within a university under the
dreds of old students."
1784 charter preceeded the founding of
Dr. Tilghman divides the one hun- a second St. John's College in New Mexdred and fifty years of St. John's history ico in 1960 under that charter. In 1890 a
into eight epochs and describes in detail proposal that women be educated at St.
the curriculums adopted in each. The John's was introduced by trustee-alumnus
first, designed by President John ] udge Daniel R. Magruder: women were
McDowell and the Reverend Ralph Hig- admitted to St. John's in 1950. In 1891
ginbotham, was the most rigorous of all. President T'homas tell unsuccessfully
It required proficiency in the ancient solicited private donors for an endowlanguages, mathematics, natural philoso- ment: President Weigle made many sucphy, and logic. To graduate, a student had cessful solicitations in his administration
to undergo a public examination. In the (1950-1980). A good curriculum underlate 1860s President James Clarke Well- girded the early college just as the curing introduced English literature with the riculum known as the New Program
reading of Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, undergirds today's college.
Hooker, and 'T3.ylor; and he added Plato's
I disagree with Dr. Tilghman's view
dialogues and the Greek dramatists to the on the relationship between King
list of Greek classics read.
William's School and St. John's College.
Dr. Tilghman treats the eighth epoch I believe that a new corporation was
(1923-193 7) very briefly. I hope some day created by a merger between the two ensomeone will cover this period more fully. tities in 1786 and that St. John's College
For in 1923 the board discontinued the is a continuation of King William's
grammar school and military program, School. This view has been more fully
making St. John's solely a four-year liberal developed in a paper that has been acarts college. Four teachers appointed in cepted for future publication.
this period- George Bingley, Ford K.
Charlotte Fletcher
Brown, John S. Kieffer, who served as
both president and dean under the New
Program, and Richard Scofield -were to
help steady the college at two critical junctures in its twentieth-ce/ntury life: the Charlotte Fletcher was librarian of St. John's College, Annapolis, from 1944 until 1980. Her article
transition to the New Program in 193 7 1784: The Year St. John's College waJ- named was pubunder President Stringfellow Barr and lished in the Maryland Historical Magazine in 1978.
67
�The Old Gods
What titanic captive, god in chains
smokes the earth with his dire
breath that scorches? All are bound
in blood, lapping rock with flame
which flares towards the sources, then
reverses to fall back into the cave
where puppets dance in mockery
of truth.
Dolphins hammer the sea
to dints of foam, pressing a shield
for the adamant depth; who knows
what immortal agony exhorts them
to friend the singer as a brother.
How seeps that song of harmony
filtering through fault's abyss?
Stricken priestess chants her office,
mad eyes trail a clue of destiny.
Whose altar is the overwhelming will?
The answer blinds us, leaves us asking still.
Gretchen Berg
Gretchen Berg is a graduate of St. John's College, Annapolis. She lives in
Vermont where she pursues her interest in writing and painting.
68
SUMMER 1984
��The St. John's Review
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Non-profit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
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Lutherville, Md.
�
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<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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1984-07
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Sterling, J. Walter
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Walsh, Jason
Freis, S. Richard
Sachs, Joe
Stickney, Cary
Wilson, Curtis A.
Sachs, Joe
Brann, Eva T. H.
Killorin, Joseph
Buchanan, Scott
Thompson, William
Klein, Jacob
Zuckerman, Elliot
Kieffer, John S.
Zuckerkandl, Victor
Smith, J. Winfree
Middleton, Arthur Pierce
Fletcher, Charlotte
Berg, Gretchen
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Volume XXXV, number 3 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Summer 1984.
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The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_35_No_3_1984
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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THE
St.
Spring, 1984
�Editor:
J.
Walter Sterling
Managing Editor:
Thomas Parr an, Jr.
Editorial Assistant:
Susan Lord
Editorial Board:
Eva Brann
S. Richard Freis,
Alumni representative
Joe Sachs
Cary Stickney
Curtis A. Wilson
Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems
are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope in each instance. Reasoned
comments are also welcome.
The St. John's Review (formerly The Col·
lege) is published by the Office of the
Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre,
President, Samuel S. Kutler, Dean.
Published thrice yearly, in the winter,
spring, and summer. For those not on
the distribution list, subscriptions:
$12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or
$36.00 for three years, payable in ad·
vance. Address all correspondence to
The St. John's Review, St. John's College,
Annapolis, Maryland 21404.
Volume XXXV, Number 2
Spring, 1984
©
1984 St. John's College; All rights
reserved. Reproduction in whole or in
part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4 720
Composition: Fishergate Publishing Co., Inc.
Printing: The john D. Lucas Printing Co.
Errata:
In Beate Ruhm von Oppen, "Stu·
dent Rebellion and the Nazis: 'The
White Rose' in its Setting;' The St.
John's Review. Winter 1984:
page 4, column 1, paragraph 3, line
12, should read: of a dollar a year
later:
page 4, column 2, last paragraph,
line 1 should read: Life at school
changed greatly ...
page 7, column 2, paragraph 3, last
line should read: officially, in
international discourse.
paragraph 4, line 5 should read: he
ended a long speech with a long
sentence affirming
�THE
StJohn's Review
Contents
2 . . . . . . The Inefficacy of the Good
Douglas Allanbrook
14 . . . . . . Via Positiva; Via Negativa (poems)
Gretchen Berg
16 . . . . . . Logos and the Underground
Curtis Wilson
26 . . . . . . Orwell's Future and the Past
Ronald Berman
34 . . . . . . Is Nature a Republic?
David :)tephenson
40 ...... Between Plato and Descartes-The Mediaeval Transformation in the
Ontological Status of the Ideas
James Mensch
48 . . . . . . Looking Together in Athens
Mera Flaumenhajt
60 . . . . . . Two Manuscripts of Jacob Klein's from the 30's
Left and Right
The Frame of the Timaeus
OccASIONAL DrscouRSES
66 . . . . . . The Roots of Modemity
Eva Brann
BooK REviEw
70 . . . . . . U.S. Catholic Bishops, Nuclear weapons and U.S. defense policy
Robert L. :)paeth
73 . . . . . . Cumulative Index, April 1969-Winter, 1984
ON THE COVER: Athens, Acropolis, The Parthenon. Gallery of The South Peristyle.
�ST. JOHN's REVIEW
Spring 1984
The Inefficacy of the Good
Douglas Allanbrook
T
he field upon which political actions are
played is one of moral desolation. If certain
men or cities stand high and brilliant above
this field, are remembered and praised in
future generations by their countrymen or
by the world, this praise, these many political encomia,
almost never arise out of the goodness or true virtue of
the subject; they are service rendered by words and
memory to power, fame, and empire. Caesar's name lives
on in the very titles of power and empire- the Kaiser,
the Czar of all the Russias-while Catds suicide is
cherished in the memory of a few as a proper failure,
and he himself is most marvelously enshrined on the
lowest slope of Purgatory as Dante leaves Hell and begins
to go up. It is apposite in this consideration to rememher Thucydides' words concerning poor Nicias when his
life comes to an end at the end of the Syracusan adventure, as recounted almost at the very end of Book VII
of the histories. You will recall Nicias' actions against the
demagogue Cleon, whom Thucydides detests, and hJs
opposition to Alcibiades in front of the assembly which
was to decide upon the Sicilian expedition. He attempted
to deter the Athenians from the venture by calling to their
attention the enormity of the cost and the vastness of the
armaments required. Of course the effect of his speech
on the assembly was the opposite of what he had expected, "for it seemed to them that he had given good
advice, and that now certainly there would be abundant
security."* And soon, "upon all alike there fell an ardent
desire (eros) to sail~' (VI-XXIV, 2-3).
*The translations of Thucydides are Charles Foster Smith's published
in the Loeb Classical Library.
Douglas Allanbrook is a composer and tutor at St. John's College,
Annapolis. This article was delivered as a formal lecture in Annapolis
in the fall of 1983.
2
The Spartans in the Pylos affair knew that N icias was
for peace, and indeed the period of relative calm in the
midst of the long war was known as the Peace of Nicias.
He was a very rich and pious man, and it is a terrible
irony that this very piety fatally delayed a possible retreat
for the Athenians in the last awful month in front of
Syracuse. He knew that the Spartans trusted him,
and it was not least on that account that he trusted in
Gylippus (the Spartan general) and surrendered himself
to him. But it was said that some of the Syracusans were
afraid, seeing that they had been in communication with
him, lest, if he were subjected to torture on that account,
he might make trouble for them in the midst of their
success; and others, especially the Corinthians, were
afraid, lest, as he was wealthy, he might by means of
bribes make his escape and cause them fresh difficulties;
they therefore persuaded their allies and put him to
death. For this reason, then, or for a reason very near
to this, Nicias was put to death-a man who, of all the
Hellenes of my time, least deserved to meet with such
a calamity, because of his course of life that had been
wholly regulated in accordance with virtue.
(VII-LXXXVI, 4-5) ..
Many years ago from this platform I lectured on the
Spanish Civil War, and I employed a lengthy simile in
an attempt to catch the nature of what was revealed in
that and perhaps in all civil wars. It struck me in my
younger years that the Spanish War crystallized the conscience of the age, and revealed the more enormous civil
war that is the perennial fact of our political life. My
simile was drawn from Geology. Our landscapes, from
sea to shining sea, with their fields of grain and their
snowy Rockies, have their origins in vulcanism, in eruptions, in lava flows, in revolutions and the grinding of
tectonic plates. The intent of the simile was to focus the
attention of students upon the gleaming surface of our
SPRING 1984
�republics, empires, and cities, and to have them note how
fragile, temporary, and full of illusion is any appearance
of stability. The reality underneath is the force and power
of human ambitions, fears, hopes, and desires for fame.
In light of this simile any place that lastS for generations
with both splendor and decency should be looked at with
particular attention. God knows what blood was behind
Rome; it still remains a fact that this empire lasted as
a place of law for an enormous stretch of time. St. Paul,
a ] ew from Tarsus, demanded his rights as a Roman
citizen, and hence was not tortured. The thousand years
of the Most Serene Republic of Venice stand in front of
us as a monument of probity and sagacity. It was certainly for an enormous stretch of time ihe best place to
live and work in, and the best place to look at. It was
the hub of a commercial empire, as was Athens. Both
the Parthenon and St. Mark's Square are the most spendid and shining things to see and to visit. They are longlived memorials, though the increasing pollution of time
has eroded their surfaces. Can the look of them tell us
of Venice's long life and Athens' brief glory? As memorials
they affect us more than words, and seem to speak to
something apart from both them and us, a vision of a
place to be cherished. In this they resemble the funeral
oration of Pericles. Thucydides, however, puts us on
guard against reading too much into such appearances
in the famous passage in Book I:
For if the city of the Lacedaemonians should be deserted,
and nothing should be left of it but its temples and the
foundations of its other buildings, posterity would, I
think, after a long lapse of time, be very loath to believe
that their power was as great as their renown. (And yet
they occupy two-fifths of the Peloponnesus and have the
hegemony of the whole, as well as of their many allies
outside; but still, as Sparta is not compactly built as a
city and has not provided itself with costly temples and
other edifices, but is inhabited village-fashion in the old
Hellenic style, its power would appear less than it is.)
Whereas, if Athens should suffer the same fate, its power
would, I think, from what appeared of the city's ruins,
be conjectured double what it is. (I-X, 2-3).
My geological simile came to me in the course of
reading Thucydides' account of the revolution, or more
properly, the civil war that occurred on Corcyra, the
deeds committed in that island's internal eruption bear-
ing every resemblance to the deeds committed in the
Spanish War. In his account of the happenings on Corcyra Thucydides regards the larger more general war between Athens and Sparta as the catalyst which releases
the convulsions of party and faction. Every city has within
it democrats and oligarchs, but now the democrats can
call upon Athens and the oligarchs upon Sparta. This
fact brings to the surface something which Thucydides
dares call human nature:
And so there fell upon the cities on account of revolutions many grievous calamities, such as happen and
always will happen while human nature is the same, but
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
which are severer or milder, and diflt:rent in their
manifestations, according as the variations in circumstances present themselves in each case. (III
LXXXII-2).
This sentence has the chilling precision of a scientific appraisal of phenomena, presenting a general rule which
may be applied to the variables of the given case. Thucydides then applies it in detail to the particular situation on Corcyra:
The ordinary acceptation of words in their relation to
things was changed as men thought fit. Reckless audacity
came to be regarded as courageous loyalty, prudent hesitation as specious cowardice, moderation as a cloak for
unmanly weakness. (III LXXXII -4).
Words given as oaths lost all coinage, and under the banners of "political equality under law for the many" and
"temperate aristocracy" everyone marched to his own
tune. People who joined neither party were immediately
under suspicion "either because they would not make
common cause with them, or through mere jealousy that
they should survive." Another universal statement about
human nature occurs almost at the end of this section
on Corcyra:
At this crisis, when the life of the city had been thrown
into utter confusion, human nature, now triumphant
over the laws, and accustomed even in spite of the laws
to do wrong, took delight in showing that its passions
were ungOvernable, that it was stronger than justice, and
an enemy to all superiority. (III LXXXIV-2).
The section concludes with words which the author later
puts into the mouths of the Melians in their famous fictive dialogue with the Athenians:
Indeed, men do not hesitate, when they seek to avenge
themselves upon others, to abrogate in advance the common principles observed in such cases-those principles
upon which depends every man's own hope of salvation
should he himself be overtaken by misfortune-thus failing to leave them in force against the time when perchance a man in peril shall have need of some of them.
(III LXXXIV-3).
T
his lecture cannot have the brashness and passion
inspired by an event which roused my conscience
in high school, and which I found reflected in my
experience as a soldier in Italy during the second world
war. In Italy again, when I learned to see clearly, there
was a civil war going on under my nose, a country torn
internally with horrors being committed under the banners of party, and the whole of the mess fusing and coming to the fore under the catalyst of the great world war
between the Germans and the Allies. Instead this lecture is about the book, or rather the memorial, which
puts such contemporary events into focus for me.
3
�Thucydides states that this indeed was his intention in
writing such a history:
But whoever shall wish to have a clear view both of the
events which have happened and those which will some
day, in all human probability, happen again in the same
or a similar way- for these to adjudge my history profit-
able will be enough for me. And, indeed, it has been
composed, not as a prize essay to be heard for the mo-
ment, but as a possession for all time. (lXXII -4 ).
Such a book and such an attempt intend to make memory
for the future. All battlefields and all wars want
monuments. It is unbearable to think of all that blood
shed and forgotten. Speeches after a battle on a battlefield
must assert the worth and the fame of what has been
accomplished by the dead. Only too often they are halflies about the Fatherland, or an invocation to the God
of Battles for help in the future or a praise to him for
the victory. At their best they call on Providence to help
in binding up the wounds so unhestitatingly opened.
Thucydides' whole enormous book is a discourse intended
to memorialize. It is a landscape with no gods or God
or Providence either in the sky above or under the earth
in some law court in Hell. The author is enormously fussy
about facts, but the book is no chronicle. Certain events
are looked at with a particular intensity in view of the
purpose of the memorial, and so that the book may be,
if not the education of Greece, an aid to the clear seeing
of all who read it. About the speeches in the book Thucydides says the following:
As to the speeches that were made by different men,
either when they were about to begin the war or when
they were already engaged therein, it has been difficult
to recall with strict accuracy the words actually spoken,
both for me as regards that which I myself heard, and
for those who from various other sources have brought
me reports. Therefore the speeches are given in the
language in which, as it seems to me, the several speakers
would express, on the subjects under consideration, the
sentiments most befitting the occasion, though at the
same time I have adhered as closely as possible to the
general sense of what actually was said. (l-XXII-1).
I
n this book which lays claim to being a "possession
for all time" we must ask ourselves which the speeches
are present-what part they play in the artful composition of this book. It is clear that spoken words are
of crucial importance to Thucydides when the words are
public, when they are directed toward future action, and
when they issue from the mouths of certain men. Sometimes, however, the speakers are nameless; they are designated merely as "the Athenians;' or "the Corinthians."
And once in the book the speeches are part of a fictive
dialogue between the people of Melos and these nameless
are judging concerning the future; such would be
speeches made before a deliberative assembly. There are
speeches made before people who are judging concerning the past; such would be speeches made in a court
oflaw by a lawyer in front of a judge or a jury. Finally
there are speeches mainly concerned with the present,
eulogies perhaps, where the judges often are critics or
appreciators of the speaker's words. These three types
are formally spoken of a deliberative, forensic, and
epideictic rhetoric. The business of deliberative speeches
is to exhort and persuade concerning future actions, and
the reason for the talking, the end at which it is aiming
in its persuasion, is the expedient or the harmful. Will
it further the ends of the Athenian state to slaughter the
entire population of M ytilene or not? Thucydides gives
us two speeches on this matter, one from the mouth of
Cleon, a demagogue, which argues for the killing, and
one from the mouth ofDeodatus, an otherwise unknown
man in the histories, which argues against the killing.
Both speeches argue from expediency, and as such fall
precisely within the definition of a deliberative speech
as rhetoric aimed at the useful or the harmful. While
we may lament the lack of any talk of justice in the
speeches of Cleon and Deodatus, Deodatus' speech saves
the lives of the people ofMytilene. It is intended by the
author that we take careful note that the best speech on
expediency saves the population of an entire city.
The business of forensic rhetoric is to accuse or de-
fend, its time the past, its end the just and the unjust.
Was Alcibiades guilty of impiety in the scandal of the
desecration of the Hermes? If this were not cleared up,
the doubt would spoil his efficacy in the minds of the
assembly however much they had been moved by his
speech concerning their future. Did Mr. Nixon do the
right thing in lying? That again was judged, and the outcome had much to do later with the future. What I mean
to say here is that though speeches concerning past actions, which have to do with justice, are distinct from
deliberations concerning the future, which have to do
with expediency, we all wear two hats in such matters.
If in our judgement]oe did lie or did, in fact, steal, we
are not going to listen to him with any particular confidence when he advises us concerning the future, how-
ever prudently he may speak. ] ustice counts for
something. The business of the epideictic is praise or
blame, and it is most generally concerned with the present; its end is the noble or the disgraceful. At the end
of this lecture we will examine the most famous of all
epideictic speeches, Pericles' Funeral Oration.
In deliberative speeches the judges are immediately
concerned with the subject at hand. It is, after all, their
lives, their wealth, their fears, and their honor which are
at stake in an assembly which is debating a future action. One would expect them to be more critical and
''Athenians:' It will be helpful, and it is easy enough,
suspicious given this fact. Given this frame of mind, the
personal character of the speaker assumes a much greater
following Aristotle, to divide speeches in general into
three types. There are speeches addressed to people who
importance than it does in forensic pleading. Who and
what kind of a man Pericles is, has much to do with his
4
SPRING 1984
�persuasiveness. At the conclusion of Pericles' third speech
in Book II Thucydides states this with perfect clarity:
And the reason for this was that Pericl~s, who owed his
influence to his recognized standing and ~bility, and had
proved himself clearly incorruptible in the highest
degree, restrained the multitude while respecting their
liberties, and led them rather than was led by them,
because he did not resort to flattery, seeking power by
dishonest means, but was able on the strength of his high
reputation to oppose them and even provoke their wrath.
(II-LXV-8).
The same holds true, however, for Alcibiades; character
counts, both for and against. Once the enthusiasm for
his youth and brilliance have had time to cool off, doubts
of his virtue enter the assembly's mind, and he is relieved
of his command. As a result the disastrous Sicilian campaign begins its downward plunge. Part of the study of
power and politics, of things as they are, is the study of
how people are persuaded to action. What rhetoric does
is part of the truth of the way things are.
The very first speech in the histories begins with the
word "dikaion'!- it is fair or just. You may remember the
situation. The Corinthians are trying to prevent the
Athenian fleet from joining that of Corcyra, as this would
hamper them in settling the war as they wish to settle
it. An assembly is called, and first the Corcyreans and
then the Corinthians speak. The first sentence of the Corcyreans, which, as we have noted, begins with the expression "it is fair;' is a most complex sentence:
It is but fair, citizens of Athens, that those who, without
any previous claims on the score of important service
rendered or of an existing alliance, come to their neighbors to ask aid, as we do now, should show in the first
place, if possible, that what they ask is advantageous,
or at least that it is not hurtful, and in the second place,
that their gratitude can be depended on; but in case they
establish neither of these things clearly, they should not
be angry if unsuccessful. (I-XXXII-!).
The intent of the Corcyreans, which governs the device
they employ in this sentence, is to establish the reasonableness of what they want. Facts must be faced, and dismissed if they prove to be a hindrance. The fact is that
the Corcyreans have no existing alliance with, nor have
they rendered any important service to, Athens; in fact
they are a colony of Corinth, hence the opening section
of the sentence. Given this embarrassing fact, it must
be shown that what is asked is "xumphora'!- advantageous, or at least not harmful- and that the gratitude
of the Corcyreans might even offer a certain security. The
final reasonable appeal is that if none of the above can
be established, no one's feelings are to be hurt. It is clear,
even if it is not just, that the important persuasive word
must be "advantage;' and that other things that might
bind a political action, such as an alliance or ties of blood
with the motherland, must be glossed over in light of"advantage's" claims. The speech continues with an insistence
upon the changed fact of the Corcyreans' isolation in
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
foreign policy. What had been formerly considered discretion is now viewed as unwise and a cause of weakness. They then hold out to the Athenians the pleasing
package of both honor and advantage, honor in helping
one who is wronged, and advantage in having as an ally
a great sea power. They argue that the Spartans through
fear are eager for war, and that the Corinthians are abetting this fear. They then brush aside the illegality of an
alliance with them (the Spartans and the Athenians are
at this point allied, as you may recall) with a legal argument that has a certain petty rigor, and finally end their
speech with the strongest set of appeals to expediency
that they can muster. First they argue that if they have
more strength the Spartans will be still more afraid of
breaking the truce; second they appeal to the commercial and imperial passions of Athens by pointing out the
convenience of Corcyra, situated as it is so conveniently
for a voyage to Italy and Sicily, and third they tote up
a calculus of the naval power of Greece. There are three
major navies, Athens, Corinth, and Corcyra. Two is more
than three. Don't be stuck with only your own.
The Corinthians in their rebuttal take up one by one
the arguments of the Corcyreans. They argue that the
contingency of a war in which the Corinthians fight with
the Athenians is still most uncertain, and that to be
stampeded by such fear will be to make a real enemy
of the Corinthians; this then /will be a fact, and not a
contingency. Also, and most pointedly, the Athenians of
all people should not tamper 0ith colonies and allies; the
whole life of their city depends on its network of rule
abroad. After the two speeches the Athenians in a second session of the assembly go along with the Corcyreans, though all during the first assembly they are
for Corinth. They make, however, a defensive alliance
only, promising mutually to aid each other in case of attack. The Athenians believe that the war has to be faced,
and do not want to give up the navy of the Corcyreans.
Also they have done a calculus- or gambled on a probability- that the two navies, of the Corinthians and the
Corcyreans, will wear each other out, and hence Corinth will be weaker when war comes. And too the island
does indeed seem so beautifully situated for a voyage to
Italy and Sicily.
oth speeches are made before an assembly of
judges who are debating a course of action future
to them. The principal word in the vocabulary is
certainly expedience as regards future benefits, and this
is always contrasted with the harm that would result from
not calculating on proper self-interest. Fairness and
honor, fear and anger, figure also in this vocabulary, and
each person in the assembly must be consulting his own
desires and hopes and fears for the future. For us, the
readers, these speeches are very different in meaning.
We know, as did Thucydides, that the war will go on for
mofe than a generation, that Athens will lose, that the
society and world of the Greek cities will be debased by
B
5
�the war, that words having to do with probity, honor, and
justice will be tarnished. We are also perfectly aware that
it will not be the end of the world~ as can so easily happen to our world right now, but that it will be the end
of a kind of world in which certain cherished things somehow maintained themselves by tradition, luck, and guts
against the desolation of the barbarian periphery. In other
words, for us they are not deliberative speeches in that
they refer to a future which we the judges do not know.
We judge them not from their expediency or harmfulness
to us, but as judges judging a past event. We are concerned with the just and the unjust, the good and the
bad, and we accuse or defend the Athenians or the people of Melos, the Spartans or the noble defenders of
Plataea, as we look back and down upon their speeches,
knowing what their future is to be. They are for us
writing samples open to our inspection; we are critics
or appreciators or unabashed admirers.
Later in Book I the Athenians give a speech which
we the readers must closely examine. The occasion is a
general council of the allies in Sparta after the hostilities
up at Potidea have been going on for quite a time. The
Corinthians have been hard at work in a preceding
speech, stirring up the Spartans, inciting them to war.
In their speech they have praised the Athenians' resourcefulness and derided the Spartans' old-fashioned habits.
They have even put forth a general rule, stating it
categorically and introducing it with the word "necessity" (anangke ): "it is necessary that things coming after
other things prevail!' A more vivid translation would be
"The new must by the nature of things take over:' In our
role as onlookers and critics of the speech it is easy enough
for us to appreciate the reason the Corinthians have for
saying this, and even the effectiveness of stating it as a
law. The Spartans are stick-in-the-muds, and have to be
brought to their senses in a world that has changed and
that is more quick in its wits than they. If we, as readers,
are more than appreciators, we must ask ourselves if the
proposition is true; does it have any valid~ty as a law, or
persuasive power because we think it's scientific? On
another level of meaning we are aware that Corinth is
in many ways the same kind of place as Athens, commercial, rich, a port, and ancient.
The Athenians, who according to Thucydides happened by chance to be present, asked for permission to
speak. They wanted to slow down the Spartans and to
show the great power of their city, reminding the older
men of what they knew, and telling the younger ones what
they didn't know, believing that their words would direct
the Spartans toward peace rather than war. Their opening sentences should put us, the readers, on guard as to
what is being done. The Athenians submit that they are
not going to answer any charges or speak to the Spartans as if the Spartans were a jury deciding on matters
of justice or injustice, but are only going to speak to them
in order to dissuade them from making a wrong decision regarding the future. The record, on the other hand,
still must be set straight. ''As for all the words against
6
us, we want to show that we have what we have in a manner that is not unseemly and that our city is worthy of
being talked about:' The next paragraph in their speech
brings up the great event of fifty years ago, the Persian
War. There is one acid sentence in this paragraph, which
employs the perennial pair, actions and words, erga and
logoi. The sentence may be rendered as follows: "When
we did these things" (the Athenians are speaking of their
part in defeating the Persians) "when we did these things,
they were risked for the sake of a common benefit, and
since you had a piece of the action, we will not be
deprived of the words that give us credit, if indeed there
is any benefit in that." The sentence revolves like a snake
about the word "benefit:' A freer translation might be
as follows: "We did these things and suffered danger for
a common good; since you received a share of that work,
we will not be deprived of the account of what we did,
if indeed there is any good or profit in an account:' The
word logos, "account;' at the end of this sentence is
delivered with cutting irony. Its meaning might be
rendered as "lip-service':_ the homage that words pay to
action. Of course the actions the Athenians are talking
about are gone into in detail in the next part of the speech.
They are the glorious triumphs at Marathon and Salamis,
events which we memorialize as model triumphs of
civilization over barbarism, triumphs which the Athenians point to as being a benefit to the Spartans as well
as to themselves.
The next paragraph then asks the question of worthiness. ''Are we then deserving of hatred and jealousy
merely because of empire, or rule?" This is the crucial
fact to be dealt with in any dealing with the Spartans.
Thucydides has given as the underlying cause of the war
the fear the Spartans had of Athens' rule or empire, and
now the Athenians must speak to this fact of empire and
rule; they must demonstrate that it is natural and inevitable, and hence not blameworthy. They begin by
arguing that it was according to the necessity of the work
itself that they were driven to extend their rule, and that
they were under the push exerted by fear, honor, and
lastly self-interest. To quote exactly: "It was under the
compulsion of circumstances that we were driven at first
to advance our empire to its present state, influenced
chiefly by fear, then by honor also, and lastly by selfinterest as well:' Later in the paragraph they say "No man
is to be blamed for making the most of his advantages
when it is a question of the gravest dangers." The argument here might be stated as follows: if anyone in the
world would behave in a certain way given the appropriate circumstances, no blame follows for an individual who does behave in such a way. Certainly a very
familiar and only slightly sleazy inference. The argument
then turns to the named individual in a way we are all
accustomed to, saying that "you;' namely the Spartans,
would have done the thing as we had if you had been
in our shoes. The next stage is to pull in normalcy of
behavior under a more telling name, "human nature."
'Thus there is nothing remarkable or inconsistent with
SPRING 1984
�human nature in what we also have done, just because
we accepted an empire when it was offered us, and then,
yielding to the strongest motives- honor, fear, and selfinterest (the list now begins with honor and not fear, you
will note)-we declined to give it up:' 'The next step is
to move from normalcy of behavior to a general law,
hence the next sentence: "Nor again, are we the, first who
have entered upon such a course, but it has always been
laid down that the weaker are hemmed in by the stronger:'
The adverb in the argument has moved from "usually"
to "always!' We have now not an observation of normal
behavior but a binding law of universal action.
The next job to be done in this most central of all
paragraphs is to eliminate any principle or universal idea
which will conflict with the principle of the strong lording it over the weak. This is done slyly and personally,
with the intention of shaming any listener who clings to
such notions.
We [the nameless Athenians say] thought ourselves
worthy to rule, and you shared that opinion, until you
began toting up and calculating your own interests, and,
just as you are doing now, began resorting to talk of
justice ['t6 0tKnt6 Aoy6 ], which no one in his right mind
ever put in front of force and advantage when opportunity gave him the chance of getting something by sheer
strength. (I LXXVI-2).
The grand reversal from blame to praise now follows,
encompassing all that has been said, and carefully placing the small hand of justice into the muscular grasp of
power:
They are worthy of praise who, being subject to human
nature as ruling over us, are more just than they might
have been, considering their possession of power. We believe that anyone else, seeing our power, would demonstrate most clearly, as to whether we are walking a
moderate path; in our case, however, from the very fact
of our reasonableness, blame rather than praise arises
in a most unfitting manner. (I LXXVI -4 ).
This passage in this speech is of crucial importance to
the whole book. The Athenians are explicating their
power and rule. Their speech is an apology for empire,
and contains an argument based on what is claimed to
be a universal law, a law present in human nature, namely
that the strong rule the weak. In the immediate context
of Book I the speech is unsuccessful. The Spartans decide
that the treaty is broken and that the Athenians are to
be blamed, and decide to go to war with Athens. There
is some doubt that the speech was ever made; it seems
clear that Thucydides placed it here and composed it as
part of his explication and memorial of the war. Its propositions are present in the words of Pericles in later
speechs in the book. They are very much present in the
terrifying debate on the fate of the population of
Mitylene. They are the substance of the Athenian talk
in the so-called Melian Dialogue.
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
eaning, in even the simplest of contexts and
situations, has as many layers as an onion. This
is in no way intended to imply that the situation or the context determines the meaning, but tather
that the context or the situation is the occasion for meaning. Who is talking and why? Is it Pericles or Cleon or
Alcibiades or Nicias talking, and why do they say what
they say about the war or about an expedition to Sicily?
What kind of men are they- noble, ambitious, brilliant,
or moderate? Are they talking to a popular assembly,
or to a gathering of aristocrats? What kind of relation
have they to the assembly, or the soldiers, or the aristocratic gathering, or their neighbors? What are they up
to? Why does Pericles want the war? It can hardly be
for the same reasons that Clean or Alcibiades are driven
by, though both might use the same arguments concerning power and justice. Are any of the sentences true statements of the way things are? In the case of this invented
speech we have just examined there are still further layers
of meaning for us. We are an audience separated by an
enormous gulf of time from the author. Why he has the
Athenians say what they say when they say it, and
whether what they say is true or not, must be part of
the meaning to us. It would be only too easy to nod one's
head and, calling a spade a spade, assent to the propositions concerning power and human nature, the strong
ruling the weak, and the weakness of the good. Is it that
our very nodding our heads in assent to such propositions is part of the truth of the propositions? Does it reveal
something of what we are when we do assent to them?
Does rhetoric reveal the other side of being, the dark side,
the shabby side, the reverse side of the coin? Is part of
this dilemma embodied in that famous red-herring of
a term, human nature? I have heard persons of good
character sagely affirm that the Melians were wrong in
not knuckling under to the Athenians. It is a fact that
they were all slain and their city extirpated, and the
ground it stood on plowed under. The truth is that their
deaths only demonstrate the weakness of the good, not
·that they were wrong. I take this to be Thucydides' meaning, and it is with the darkest irony that he puts into the
Athenians' mouths in the speech we have just looked at
the harsh reference to just discourse, ( dikaios logos), their
attempt being to shame the Spartans for resorting to such
talk, to taunt them for their lack of manliness. I will read
the sentence again:
M
And at the same time we thought ourselves worthy to
rule, and you shared that opinion, until you began toting
up and calculating your own interests, and, just as you
are doing now, began resorting to talk of justice, which
no one in his right mind ever put in front of force and
advantage when opportunity gave him the chance of getting something by sheer strength (I LXXVI-2).
If we can be bamboozled by shame into knuckling under
to these propositions about force and power; then the propositions become operationally true.
7
�It is very popular in all ages to dismiss just discourse,
and you may recall Aristophanl'!s' bitter satire in the
Clouds, where just and unjust di'scourse parade their
arguments in front of the audience of Athenian citizens,
an audience full of the presence of the endless Peloponnesian War.
Pericles' Funeral Oration in Book II of the histories
is the world's most famous speech, and it is in praise of
the world's most memorable city. This speech is carefully
positioned in front of the most famous description of a
disease in literature, the great Plague of Athens. It is so
carefully positioned in the structure of the histories that
a former tutor, with his customary irony, used to insist
that the plague never happened. By this I gather he meant
that it was too patently plotted into the literary scheme
of the histories. Terrible and terrifying pairs are placed
in front of us, a juxtaposition oflight, life, and freedom
under law next to darkness, death, and anarchy. Both
the Funeral Oration and the account of the Plague have
been imitated or copied. You will recall Lucretius' Plague,
and we are all most familiar with the countless statesmen-like speeches which employ Pericles' oration as a
model.
There are in addition two other speeches of Pericles
in the book which frame the meaning of the funeral oration. The first one is in Book I, a speech in which he
urges the assembly to war. The other occurs after the
war has begun, and the city has suffered the plague. It
is because of the political aftermath of these events that
Pericles finds it necesary to give this speech, a speech
in which he urges the assembly to hold firm in its pursuance of the war. These two framing speeches, are of
course, deliberative speeches, delivered before the
assembly. They urge and advise concerning the future
course of action to be taken by the assembly, in contrast
to the Funeral Oration, which is a eulogy of the present
and shining spectacle of Athens.
The first paragraph of the first speech contains the
essence of practical decision-making, and as such comments ironically on a future which we, the readers, know:
I, 0 men of Athens, hold to the same judgement as
always namely that we must not yield to the Spartans,
although I well know that once engaged in the actual
work of warfare men are not actuated by the same passionate temper as they are when being persuaded to go
to war, but change their judgements according to what
happens. I also see that I must give you the same or
nearly the same advice I used to give you, and I insist
that those of you who are persuaded shall support the
common decision, even if we should fail, or, in the case
of success, claim no share in the good judgement shown.
For it is perfectly possible for the course of events to unfold irrationally and dumbly as it is for the calculations
of men; it is for this very reason that we lay the blame
on fortune for what turns out contrary to our calculations. (I-CXL-1).
We never deliberate about what we know, but about what
8
we don't know, and we don't know the future, and
especially the future of a war. We may hope for a felicitous
future, but hope is wishing for what rationally cannot
be counted on. There is a piercing logic in the classification of hope as a theological virtue, an excellence beyond
nature; for Thucydides, however, the word carries with
it an ever-present irony. A political decision is always
about the future, and aspires to be a contract. It can't
be a contract, however, for who will make it stick? What
is the binding rule, and if the rule is binding, who will
be the judge? It may be just as well that this is so, for
if the decision is for war, sticking to the decision may
bleed the city to death, or at the very least debase the
spirit and counterfeit the moral coinage.
Later in the speech Pericles goes on to insist that the
slightest concession to the Spartans will be read by them
as fear, whereas a downright refusal of their demands
means that they will treat the Athenians as equals. This
is a kind of argumentation that numbs us every day in
the discussions of deterrence and equal megatonnage.
Pericles throws this at the assembly as an imperative:
So make up your minds, here and now, either to take
their orders before any damage is done you, or, if we
mean to go to war-as to me seems best-do so with
the determination not to yield on any pretext, great or
small, and not hold our possessions in fear. For it means
enslavement just the same when either the greatest or
the least claim is imposed by equals upon their
neighbors, not by an appeal to justice but by dictation.
(I-CXLI-1).
You will note the force of the word slavery in the last
sentence, though there is no clear logical path to be followed from claiming that between equals the slightest
concession means slavery rather than injustice. It is cer-
tainly a normal phenomenon that neighboring states hate
each other. The nearer they are the greater the hate seems
to be, in a kind of inverse-force law whose terms are hate
and proximity. In Greece one has only to think of Thebes
and Plataea, Sparta and Argos, Athens and Corinth,
Athens and Thebes, or Athens and its even nearer
neighbors (regarded with even more intense hatred),
Megara and Aegina. This is one of the perpetual and
damning observations which Dante makes as he looks
at all the cities of Tuscany consuming each other in a
wrath which he can only describe in bestial terms. In
our own age we have only to cast our eyes on any part
of the globe to observe this phenomenon: Poland and
Russia, India and Pakistan, Iran and Arabia, Bolivia and
Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador, Russia and China, Vietnam and Cambodia, England and Ireland. Often the
hatred between neighbors grows up between states that
are somehow united- this happened between the North
and the South in our own United States, and the anguish
of Lebanon presents a spectacle of hatred and blood between every tribe and every sect of a variety of religions.
SPRING 1984
�hese hatreds are nearly ineradicable, and are a
part of the calculus of power. ~hey are present all
through the events of the history we are reading,
but they are never the cause of a major war. This is left
to the fear that exists between equals. While it was under
the aegis of the greater war that the The bans had finally
the satisfaction of seeing their nearest neighbors slaughtered one by one, that greater war arose from a fear between equals. Sparta and Athens are not near neighbors,
and are enormously different, one from the other. They
don't know or understand each other enough to be able
to hate. It is the fear between equals and the humiliation of being treated as an underling by someone who
is the same height as you are that is behind Pericles' statement. This is the heart of his appeal, and the goad to
the assembly's manliness. As Thucydides states over and
over again, a man or a state is more humiliated at being
treated unjustly by an equal than at being beaten or
cowed physically by someone patently bigger or stronger.
We ourselves for the past thirty years have seen an obscene
proliferation of nuclear arms spring like mushrooms from
the ground of fear between equals.
Any hope for the mere existence of the world lies in
an untangling of, or an accommodation to, this grotesque
calculus. And since the snarls caused by fear between
equals have never been untangled in the political affairs
of men, to hope for their dissolution may be irrational,
and even naive. Given the presence of fear and power,
reason staggers and redefmes itself. It becomes a calculus,
a rationalization arising out of the presence of fear and
power, and the word "irrational" comes to mean "imperfectly calculated:' It is for this reason that Hobbes,
the translator of Thucydides, must redefine the meaning of words, and base all meaning in the new and
mechanical psychology with its roots in the fear of war
and the presence of power. If I am driven, the fo'rces that
drive me must be analyzed, and a machine built to contain their energy and to ensure my life. In talking of
Thucydides, who is no systemizer, we must limit ourselves
to noting that in his gravest passages, when he discusses
and notes the events and writes down the speeches concerning the consideration-s we have been pointing to, he
employs the phrase "human nature."
In the next part of his speech Pericles totes up the
power and money of the Athenians. He notes that their
ability to act quickly, and to decide things with resilience
by means of their popular assembly. This he contrasts
with the complicated allied command structure of Sparta.
The Athenians' navy will be their security, and should
be their hope, as it was at Salamis, and with it they need
not fear for their land holdings; their strength lies in their
power, their commerce, and their drachmas. Given all
of these assets he hopes that Athens will prove superior.
This will only happen, he warns, if they do not attempt
to extend their empire while they are waging a war, or
weigh themselves down with other dangers of their own
making---!'for I fear more our own domestic mistakes than
the calculations of the enemy."
T
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
We, the readers, are well aware of the prophecy implied in this sentence, and after Pericles' third speech
Thucydides takes pains to point out the disasters that
followed Pericles' death. He lived only two years and six
months into the war, and without him Athens foundered,
just as under him it was great and glorious and entered
the path of war. The speech concludes by urging the
assembly to adjust in a strictly legal way their affairs with
the Spartans, but to do nothing upon dictation:
This answer is just and fitting for the city- but it
behooves us to know that the war is going to happen,
and that the more willing we show ourselves to accept
it, the less eager will our enemies be to attack us, and
also that from the greater dangers the greater honors
accrue both to a private man and to a state.
(I -CXLIV-3).
At the conclusion to the conclusion Pericles appeals to
the memory of their fathers, who withstood the Persians,
and who with a courage greater than their strength beat
back the barbarian and advanced their fortunes to their
present state. Thucydides comments, "The Athenians
thinking he was advising them for the best voted as he
told them to:'
It may be that a statesman has to act as if war were
inevitable, and see to it that the state is prepared. But
Pericles' argument to the assembly-that not only is war
inevitable but that the more we show ourselves prepared
to accept war, the less eager will our enemies be to accept it- is specious. To an enemy such as Sparta, an equal
in pride and strength, greater acceptance and
preparedness. on the part of the Athenians will mean
greater fear on the part of the Spartans, and thus greater
precautions. Out of that fear and preparedness will grow
further armament and further marshalling of allies, finally ensuring the truth of the proposition that war is
inevitable. It is apt to the point of slyness that the completion of Pericles' complex sentence contains the appeal
to the honor and excellence that accrue to a man and
a city from great dangers. He proceeds to buttress this
by appealing to the memory of the great patriotic war
waged against the Persian barbarians. This rhetorical induction from one war to another is false, as a war between Greeks and barbarian invaders has not the same
nature as a war between Greeks. It would be like arguing in this century from the nature of the First World
War of 1914, which in no way was worth the price of its
blood, to a position which would deny the moral necessity
of the war against Nazi Germany. An argument closer
to the present generation would contain the faulty inference that since the Second World War was honorable
to the nation, the war in Vietnam was also, and hence
should be pursued with vigor and moral certainty.
After the first speech of Pericles in Book I the war
begins. The Spartans invade the land of Attica. Pericles'
strategy has been to pull all of the population within the
walls, to abandon the countryside to the devastation of
9
�the invading Spartans, and to truSt in the navy, the empire, and the wealth of the city. Athens and Attica had
been inhabited continously for a length of time that
seemed mythical to its inhabitants. They were proud of
having been indigenous and co-eternal, as it were, with
the soil of Attica. Their habits and mores were attached
to the countryside, to their estates. The city of Athens,
though the center of Attica politically, was the traditional
center of this long-enduring and ancient countryside, and
had no existence apart from the land about. Pericles'
strategy changed all of this, and the whole countryside
crowded within the walls, squatting even within sacred
places. The Funeral Oration takes place during the winter
which closes the first year of war and the first invasion
of the land of Attica. The next summer the Spartans invaded the countryside again, and before they had been
many days in Attica, the Plague broke out. I shall quote
from Thucydides' account:
It is said, indeed to have broken out before in many
places, both in Lemnos and elsewhere, though no
pestilence of such extent nor any scourge so destructive
of human lives is on record anywhere. For neither were
physicians able to cope with the disease, since they had
to treat it without knowing its nature, the mortality
among them being greatest because they were most exposed to it, nor did any other human art avail. And the
supplications made at sanctuaries, or appeals to oracles
and the like, were all futile, and at last men desisted from
them, overcome by the calamity. (II-XLVII-4)
Thucydides then proceeds to inform the reader as to how
he will treat of this natural disaster:
Now anyone, whether physician or layman, may, according to his personal opinion, speak about its probable
origin and state the causes which, in his view, were sufficient to have produced so great a departure from
normal conditions; but I shall describe its actual course,
explaining the symptoms from the study of which a persons should be best able having knowledge of it beforehand, to recognize it if it should ever break out again,
For I had the disease myself, and saw others sick of it.
(II -XLVII -3).
This passage cannot help suggesting to us, the readers,
that Thucydides intends to write about the Plague in the
same way that he writes about the war. He had the disease
and saw others sick of it just as analogously he was an
admiral in the war, was exiled, and examined it then from
a distance. He next describes in detail the physical nature
of the Plague, and finally turns to the moral desolation
which resulted from it:
And no one was eager to practice self-denial in prospect
of what was esteemed honor, because everyone thought
that it was doubtful whether he would live to attain it,
but the pleasure of the moment and whatever was in any
way conducive to it came to be regarded as at once
honorable and expedient. No fear of gods or law of men
restrained; for, on the one hand, seeing that all men were
perishing alike, they judged that piety and impiety came
10
to the same thing, and, on the other, no one expected
that he would live to be called to account and pay the
penalty of his misdeeds. (II-LIII -4 ).
It is difficult not to compare this passage with the one
which details the horror of the civil war on Corcyra,
which Thucydides so clinically describes both as to its
symptoms and to its progress. The attempt is to describe
something so that it may be recognized if encountered
again. In comparing the Plague with the civil war that
broke out everywhere in Bellas there are differences to
be noted- the Plague may have been carried by rats, a
natural cause, whereas the civil war arose from human
causes. Are human causes a branch of the natural, and
are we obligated to employ the term "human nature?"
If both are diseases, justice becomes medicine, assuming the meaning so common to it in the dialogues of Plato.
he Athenians now suffered a change of feeling·s.
They blamed Pericles for having persuaded them
to go to war. Their land had been invaded for the
second time; the Plague had decimated the population.
The Athenians even sent envoys to the Spartans pleading
for peace, but accomplished nothing. "Being at their wits'
end, they assailed Pericles. . . . He called a meeting of
the assembly- for he was still general-wishing to reassure them, and by ridding their minds of resentment to
bring them to a milder and less timorous mood:' Pericles'
third speech is then framed to meet this occasion. For
us, the readers, it may be the saddest of his speeches.
The war which he had argued for has begun. The glorious city which had reached its zenith under his leadership has just suffered the Plague. The anger and fear of
the people have to be faced down, and the peace movement quelled. He has to ride the back of his tiger and
find words to fit the situation. He begins by saying that
he has expected this anger, and will show them that they
have no reason to be angry with him, or to give way to
their misfortunes. A man's private misfortunes are
worsened by the state's disasters, so it would be folly to
sacrifice the state's security because of troubles at home.
You're blaming both me and yourselves, he says, who
voted after all for the war. I am as competent a man as
you'll find, free from influence of money, and a good
patriot. If you believed me once, believe me now.
Next he waves in front of their eyes the banner of near
infinite rule and power, something, as he says, he had
been loath to do before, as it is almost unseemly and
boastful· to do so. Seeing them so cast down, however,
he will raise their spirits.
T
You think that it is only over your allies that your empire extends, but I declare. that of two divisions of the
world which lie open to man's use, the land and the sea,
you hold the absolute mastery over the whole of one,
not only to the extent to which you now exercise it, but
also to whatever fuller extent you may choose; and there
is no one, either the Great King or any nation of those
SPRING 1984
�on the earth, who will block your pqth as you sail the
seas with such a naval aramament as,you now possess.
(II-LXII-2).
That is, of course, Pericles speaking, nbt Alcibiades urging the conquest of Sicily.
You can go forth, he says, to meet your enemies not only
with confidence but with contempt. For contempt
belongs properly to the man who is persuaded by his
own judgement that he is superior to his opponent. Such
is our case. . . . Fortune being equal, this intelligent
scorn renders courage more secure, in that it doesn't trust
so much in hope, which is strongest when you're at a loss,
as in well-founded opinion, opinion founded on the facts
of the case, which is a lot surer as far as the future is
concerned. (II-LXII -4).
These words of Pericles' find their final home in the
mouths of the nameless Athenians as they present their
view in the fictive dialogue with the Melians:
Hope is indeed a solace in danger, and for those who
have other resources in abundance, though she may injure, she does not ruin them, but for those who stake
their all on a single throw- hope being by nature
prodigal- it is only when disaster has befallen that her
true nature is recognized, and when at last she is known,
she leaves the victim no resource wherewith to take
precautions against her in future. (V-CIII).
They later butcher the people of Melos, and existentially
demonstrate the truth of their words.
The next words of Pericles follow a kind of scenario
that might be summed up as follows: look at the truth,
the facts, shiver, and then gird up your loins; don't be
so fatuous as to play at being good, rather become
famous. Every one hates you because of the empire, but
"it is far too late to back off, even if someone in the present hour of danger wants to play the "good man" by
shrinking from public actions." The verb in this s~ntence
which carries the weight of the scorn is andragathidzetaifrom aner and agathos---.!'play the good or honest man."
Pericles continues:
The empire you possess is a tyranny, which it may seem
unjust to have taken on, but which certainly would be
dangerous to let go of. Such good and honest men would
ruin a state either right here, if they could persuade
others of their point of view, or if they went to found
another city all of their own- men of peace who refrain
from politics preserve nothing unless they are accompanied by men of action; it is no benefit in a ruling city
but only in a vassal state, to submit for the sake of safety.
(II - LXIII).
The speech ends with an exordium to the assembly to
act heroically. They are men, and Homer was their
mentor:
Anyone who has aspired to rule over others has been
hated; but anyone who, aiming high, accepts this hate,
is well advised. (II-LXIV-5 ).
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The Greek adverb in this sentence is orth6s, "getting things
straight!' The author then comments: "Speaking in this
way Pericles tried to purge the Athenians of their anger
towards him and to channel their minds away from the
present evils:' (II-LXV-1).
e, the readers, have now to attempt to step back
and test the meaning of this speech from our
numbing distance of over 2000 years, a span
approaching the everlasting memory Pericles speaks of
to the Athenians. The speech is enshrined in this book
designed by the author as a possession for all times. Are
there true propositions, bona-fide laws, stated in this or
in other speeches in this book, laws which stand and hold
as universal laws of power and politics? Or are the statements exposed to our attention by Thucydides merely
the sort of thing which is always said and always will be
said in order to persuade an assembly or a senate or a
prince when he is deliberating concerning a future course
of action? Is it true that the stronger rule the weaker,
and that he who rules will be hated? If it's true, must
Pericles say it to the assembly? If he does say it to the
assembly as a means of rousing them to continued warfare, will they then act in such a way as to bring it about
that they are hated even if they weren't before? Do words
aimed at the heart and passions of a people sink in to
such an extent that they become the mainsprings of their
actions, and become to all intents and purposes true? If
Pericles, certainly as good a politician as one will ever
get, finds it necessary to speak scathingly about men
wanting to be good and hence not paying attention either
to their own or to the state's benefit, what manly man
will choose to be "good"? The later shadow of the Gorgias
and the hero Callicles loom large in our minds as we read
these speeches. If at the end of the Gorgias justice and
right obtain only in the dark underworld court of Rhadamanthus, it is because the good and right do not rule
in the desolation of the landscape of power. It would be
a shameless naivete to conceive of any of Plato's political
works as arising from any ground other than one of the
blackest pessimism regarding human affairs. It is true
that he wrote after the Peloponnesian Wars, but that war
does not, in itself, account for what he said any more
than it accounts for what Thucydides said. The war was
an occasion, first for Thucydides and then for Plato, for
observing, for reflecting, and for setting things straight.
In both of them one feels the ache for, and the absence
of, an efficacious good, and while Socrates may speak
of himself as the only true citizen of Athens, Thucydides
the Athenian has put into the mouths of his Athenians
words that fix forever in our memory the inexorable grind
of power, time, and moral decline.
It remains now to speak of the most famous speech,
the Funeral Oration. As is so with many very famous
things, it turns out to be quite peculiar in many of its
features. The occasion for the speech is that "the Athenians, following the custom of their fathers, celebrated
W
11
�at the public expense the funeral\ rites of the first who
had fallen in this war;' and "a rna~ chosen by the state,
who is regarded as best endowed with wisdom and is
foremost in public esteem, delivers over them an appropriate eulogy."
Pericles begins his speech with the usual disclaimer
made by speakers on such occasions-who am I to praise
such men? Actions speak louder than words. The speaker
then attempts to give the best damn speech ever heard.
In this case he succeeds. After the customary opening
the speech takes on a rather sour note. The gist of what
follows is that those who know the dead and what they
did will think that scant justice is being done them by
the speaker, and those who did not know them and their
actions will think, out of envy, that the speaker has committed a gross exaggeration. Despite all this, he says, he
will say what he has to say.
Again, as is familiar and customary upon such occasions, the forefathers and the past are mentioned; again
the peculiarity is that, despite the enormous age and the
weight of custom and tradition in such an ancient city
as Athens, the forefathers are quickly passed over in favor
of the immediate past, the fathers of those in the audience
who acquired the empire, and those alive today who, in
the prime of their life, further strengthened this empire
so that it is well provided for both in peace and in war.
The speech then immediately turns to the City itself, and
becomes the most famous eulogy of the most famous city.
First the polity is praised; it is a democracy where all
are equal under the law in the settlement of disputes,
but where those who are distinguished are honored
regardless of class and wealth. Pericles then praises the
liberality of the town, its freedom from resentment and
back-biting, the vigor and pizzazz of its talk. It is also
a place with all kinds of relaxations, games and sacrifices,
fine buildings and proper houses, and it is so rich and
big that all the products of the earth flow into it. The
city is stronger now because it is freer in its training and
abhors secrecy. The citizen takes an interest at once in
both private and public things: "we are lovers of beauty
with the proper ends in mind, and lovers of wisdom
without softness."
What is of particular interest to us as we reflect on
the speeches is the next statement of Pericles, where he
praises the Athenians as being the most daring in action and at the same time as believing that debate is not
a hindrance to action; for most people boldness means
ignorance and reasoning causes delay. "In respect of virtue;' he says, "we differ from the many- for we acquire
our friends not by recieving good from them but by doing good. We alone confer benefits not by calculating
our own advantage so much as trusting in our own free
and liberal habits:'
If we pause for a moment in the midst of the praise
we realize that this speech is of course to be classified,
if we follow Aristotle's division, as a speech having to do
with the present; its business is to praise or blame, and
12
its aim is the noble or the disgraceful. All the other
speeches we have considered, the speeches of the Corcyreans and the Corinthians, the Athenians' speech to
the Spartans, and the two flanking speeches of Pericles,
had to do with deliberation about future events, and the
propositions embedded in them had all to do with the
exigencies of rule and power as applied to the benefit of
the state.
When we read the glowing praise of Athens' freedom
and liberality in this speech of praise, a facile judgement
might tend towards cynicism. After all, men of good sense
are always wary of exalted speeches, especially when they
issue from the mouths of statesmen on solemn occasions.
A part of prudence must always agree with Dr. Johnson's
dictum that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
In this century the very name "fatherland" sounds as a
nightmare when the memory of what was perpetrated
in its name crosses our consciousness.
What is our judgement now, and what are our feelings as the speech continues? One state:,rp.!=(nt rings so in
our memory as nearly to preclude judgement. Pericles
says, "Putting all this together I say to you that our whole
city is the education of Greece." (A more euphonious
translation speaks of the "School of Bellas:') The sentence
that contains this statement continues, however, as
follows:
And it seems to me that every single man amongst us,
could in his own person, with the greatest grace and versatility, prove hims.elf self-sufficient in the most varied
kinds of activity. Many are the proofs given of our power
and we do not lack witnesses, and we shall be the wonder
not only of men of today but of men of after-times. . . .
We shall need no Homer to sing our praise nor any other
poet whose verses may perhaps delight for the moment
but whose presentation of the facts will be discredited
by the truth. (II-XLI-1).
This is of course true, as we do all remember Athens
2500 years later.
Pericles then turns to the remains of the dead, and
says that it was for such a place that these men died.
Don't believe, he says, the advantages of such courage
by the mere words of a speaker when you yourselves
know as well as the speaker what is to be gained by warding off the enemy. Rather you must when you are about
your daily work, fix your gaze upon the power of Athens
and become lovers of her, and when she appears great
to you, consider that all this has been gained by courage.
(II-XLII!-1).
This is soon followed by another sentence so beautiful
that it is hard to look at it:
The whole world is the sepulchre of famous men, and
it is not the epitaph upon monuments set up in their
own land that alone commemorates them, but also in
lands not their own there abides in each breast an unwritten memorial to them, planted in the heart rather
than graven in stone. (II-XLIII-3).
SPRING 1984
�The eulogy becomes exhortation, and its charge may be
paraphrased as follows: "you have more to lose, hence
be unsparing of your lives, as the difference between your
present beloved splendor and a disaster: is enormous. The
more you have to love, the harder you should fight; ordinary folk have no place they passionately love, as you
do, a place so splendid, which shines in its might and
beautY:' The speech, whose occasion was the customary
eulogy over the first to die in battle, becomes the eulogy
of the city, not the city as a repository of old tradition
and habit, but the present city, replete with power and
beauty, standing in front of the citizen's eyes like the Parthenon on the hill, a love object of incomparable worth,
worth so much that there can be no hesitation in fighting
for her, as she is worth the price. The adoration of her
power becomes the heart of the matter. Beauty and power
are exhibited to the citizens, held up to them as love objects. Eros and Ares, Venus and Mars, are linked, and
the hope of immortal fame standing beyond the inevitable
future blood stirs them to heroic action. They have all
been brought up on Homer. The implicit argument may
be summed up as follows: major premise -lovers are
famous; minor premise- patriots are lovers; conclusion
-fight.
And fight they did. After Pericles' third speech
Thucydides carefully notes:
And yet, after they had met with disaster in Sicily, where
they had lost not only their army but also the greater
part of their fleet, and by this time had come to a state
of sedition at home, they nevertheless held out ten years
not only against the enemies they had before, but also
against the Sicilians, who were now combined with
them, and besides, against most of their allies, who were
now in revolt, and later on, against Cyrus, son of the
King, who joined the Peloponnesians and furnished
them with money for the fleet; and they did not finally
succumb until they had in their private quarrels fallen
upon each other and been brought to ruin. Such abundant grounds had Pericles at the time for his own forecast
that Athens might quite easily have triumphed in this
war over the Peloponnesians alone. (Il-LXV-12-13).
he fact remains that. they lost, and in that long
swath of wartime the words and arguments which
we have examined, which in peacetime might have
remained underground, in wartime came to the surface,
and became fixed and inexorable. They were used in the
assembly which debated the fate of the population of
M ytilene; they were present in the hearts of the Spartans as they led out the courageous citizens of Plataea
and slaughtered them one by one; they were dramatically
composed into the Athenians' dialogue with the Melians
before that population was eliminated. In this same swath
of time civil war erupted all over Greece, the paradigm
of it being the horror on Corcyra, where words changed
their meanings, and people became faceless, and words
became masks behind which the anarchy of the passions
paraded. The habits and customs of the past, the only
T
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
safeguard to be counted upon, crumbled, and the pure
present showed its face like the Gorgon's head.
Can the pure present of power and beauty waved like
a banner in the faces of the Assembly in the Funeral Oration inflame nobly? Is the vision seen worthy, and worth
such travail as the long years shift and pass? Patriotism
is infinitely more difficult for all of us who inhabit these
enormous modern nation-states; there's nothing to look
at. To be a patriot now one has to love a principle and
be willing to die for it, which is so different from gazing
upon a place, bounded by its fields, beautiful to look
upon, rich and marvelously racy to live in, full of ingenious and sharp-tongued people; a place where clearly
one lives a better life than one would anywhere else.
Can the present vision of a shining and glorious city,
the love object presented by Pericles, counter that other
present vision, the immediate anarchy and horror present in both the Plague and in the civil war on Corcyra?
Did Nicias see the same thing as Pericles? Does
Thucydides the Athenian see the same thing as Pericles?
Perhaps he does, but he frames the Funeral Oration with
the two speeches we have considered, and places it, in
his composition, directly in front of his account of the
plague. He also praises Nicias, dying far from Athens,
a failure at the end of a disaster, as the man who "least
deserved to meet with such a calamity, because of his
course of life that had been wholly regulated in accordance with virtue."
orne students with whom I read these speeches last
year felt thill the study of them and of this book led
to cynicism. This is to read what is intended as
irony wrongly. If no solution in human affairs is possible,
it is because nothing of heartfelt concern is a problem
that can be solved. If no solution is possible, human excellence calls for courage and shrewdness to walk hand
in hand with decency and compassion. They don't walk
hand in hand usually, and the best you can get is their
mutual awareness, one of the other. I was struck recently
by a documentary which I saw on television; it seemed
to me like an allegory of power and the good. In it two
women of extraordinary toughness and calculation were
exhibited to us, the viewers. The documentary was about
Mother Teresa, and the scene which stuck in my memory
was filmed in the grand audience chamber in New Delhi.
Mrs. Ghandi, that shrewd, tough, and resilient powerbroker, gave a medal honoring Mother Teresa to that
shrewd, tough, and resilient nun .. Mrs. Ghandi is the
ruler of the largest and most populous democracy in the
world, a nation-state that came into being in the midst
of one of those blood baths which our century is full of,
an event of such terrifying barbarity and slaughter that
ordinary descriptions of Hell seem painted in pastel, and
Corcyra seems a tempest in a teapot, in comparison. For
all that, the nation lurches on in its misery, guided and
coaxed and dictated to by Mrs. Ghandi. Mother Teresa
performs good works, and this is seen by any onlooker
S
13
�regardless of his faith or lack ther~of. It is hard to conceive that either woman, so aware Of the way things are,
expects anything to change in this world she is so much
in the midst of. Mrs. Ghandi, in addition to the parlous
state of her enormous nation, lives under the shadow of
the two monstrous powers with which she shares the continent, Russia and China. She lives also with the bloodhate of her nearest neighbor, Pakistan. Mother Teresa
lives in the midst of the most utter poverty and human
degradation in one of the great cities of the sub-continent.
In the television encounter one could see the hard, clear
glance of Mrs. Ghandi, but even more one could sense
the calculation behind the nun's eyes: was the minister
on the right good for a couple of ambulances, and was
the fat and powerful man on the left to be counted on
for a ton of medical supplies for the benefit of her hospital
for incurables in the heart of that ultimate human city,
Calcutta?
Via Positiva
Back home on a day this time of year
Sharp angled red-trunked trees stand
In a flat green field, new and fruitless,
Each articulate leaf cutting the air clear;
Down cellar where dark and cold are one
Deep baskets fill with roots and gourds,
Mold glitters on the step, damp webs
Softly shawl the ciderjugs and jams;
Past the creek where the hard water
Ducks on the cleaving rock and twists
Into shining braids slit with foam;
There sleep stones and people, slabs and angels;
Further on, after wall and hillside vault
Before mountains crest, a gap opens
Onto a plunging meadow faint with mist
Where ral{bits flash amid the warm still grass.
Gretchen Berg
14
SPRING 1984
�Via Negativa
The freeway inarticulate sea
Draws broken white spine and slurs
The cold haze with a shining edge.
What nimbus dares to charm and ride
From dirt toothed with uncertain traces
Pebbles and their alluvial shadows?
Brittle branches thorn dark streams,
Black ice reflective bridged
With a splintered board or none.
Pursy firs flicker and swerve
Their forked moss matting
An impasse in the blotted sky.
Sharp waters carve the instep's arch;
What name strikes blank air silent
To find no ear, be dumbfound?
I latecomer press my print
With others speechless wonders
Waiting to be spelled out.
Gretchen Berg
Gretchen Berg is a graduate of St. John's College, Annapolis. She
lives in Vermont where she pursues her interest in writing and
painting.
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
15
�Logos and The Underground
Curtis Wilson
AUTHOR'S PREFATORY NOTE
The lecture here printed was delivered in
September 1960 as the dean's 'opener: It is largely
based on Edmund Husserl's Erfahrung und Urteil,
which I worked my way through in the summer
of'60. When Mr. Sterling recently proposed printing the lecture in the Review) conscience told me
I should review the text, to determine whether
I could still endorse the propositions that I put
forward with such somber earnestness 25 years
ago. My conclusion has been both a Yes and a
No.
For the heroism of Husserl's repeatedly
renewed efforts to achieve a presuppositionless
'beginning' in philosophy, my admiration must
always remain. And the attempt to carry out
phenomenological description- the delineation
of how things (tables and chairs, words and sonnets and symphonies, universals like Justice; fictional characters like Sancho Panza, beings like
my cat, persons like the reader) present
themselves in awareness- has a value. In 1960
I considered the Husserlian descriptions as an
antidote to the self-defeating relativism that so
many freshman brought to the college: the pervasive disbelief in the possibility of improving
one's opinions, the bland assurance that your opinion is as good [or as bad?] as mine. Still today
I see as desirable an attentiveness to the
describable character of the things that present
themselves in awareness, just as they present
themselves-to echo the Husserlian phrase. It is
a mode of thoughtfulness that, in an age of reductive slogans, needs to be encouraged.
16
But concerning the Husserlian enterprise I
today have doubts that I had not quite formulated
25 years ago. The descriptions no longer appear
to me securely presuppositionless or selfexplanatory;
and
the
claim
that
phenomenological description constitutes "the
correct method" in philosophy seems to me far
too grand. "Man;' says Claude Bernard, "is by
nature metaphysical and proud;" and the
presumption of certainty seems to me more often
illusionary than not. Methods are useful or
necessary; but of method that claims to have an
exclusive right we must be wary, for any method
presupposes more than we are likely ever to know.
In short, if I have long known that we must begin
in medias res) I am no longer prepared to suppose
that the mind's improvement or the advance of
knowledge will consist in coming to an absolute
starting-point. The very process whereby we successively pronounce the words of a sentence while
intending a meaning seems to me utterly
mysterious, and I think it is a miracle that we
can begin at all.
This is not the place to pursue these thoughts.
(Let me only mention that today I would look
to linguistics and behavioral biology to throw new
light on the 'underground' of the liberal arts; and
I see it as a task for the future liberal artists to
explore with sensitivity the intricate dialectic between genotype and phenotype, between the deep
or hidden structures and what appears. This investigation would not presume to avoid
hypothesis; but insofar as hypothesizing
necessarily involves reduction, it would be cogni-
SPRING 1984
�n Platds dialogue Phaedo, Socrates speaks of
having, at a crucial turning-point of his life,
fled to the logoi. Previously, he says, ~e had pursued the investigation of natur~, seeking th~ <:fficient and final causes of the thmgs of the VlSlble
world. But this investigation having led to nothing that
he could trust he took flight to the logoi. What is
characteristic of Socrates, the Socratic questioning, takes
its start from this flight to the logoi.
The Greek word logos (plural: logoi) has a vari~ty of
meanings, but according to Liddell and Scott, Hs pnmary
meanings are, first, the word, or that by which ~he Inward thought is expressed, and second, the mward
thought itself. Additional and related meanmgs are: statement assertion definition, speech, discourse, reason.
Now I am ~ot going to give a commentary on this
passage in the Phaedo; but I wish to take a start fro~ the
observation that there IS such a thing as logos, meaningful
speech, speech which expresses the inward thoughL And
I am going to explore the questwn: What does this fact
presuppose? What underlies it?
.
I may as well warn you that I shall be attemptmg the
most pedestrian, prosaic, d~y s?rt of d~scnptwn and ~x
plication. I shall try to avmd zntroducznf? or constructzng,
hypotheses or theories, however attractive, which would
account for what is described. I shall try, on the contrary,
to describe certain kinds or types of things which are
recognizably involved in our speaking, and my effort will
be to delineate them just as they present themselves to
us, just as we are aware of t?e~. ~f there is a? ~ssump
tion in my procedure, I think 1t IS the conviCtiOn that
the "I" or self on the one hand, and the world on the other,
cannot be thought of separately. Accurate description of
my experience is description of the exp~rie~ce of al! "I"
or self in a situation, of a presence which IS essenttally
in the world and bound to the world. I shall have to
I
zant of the dangers thereof. The human spirit
is a 'tangled wing; to use Melvin Kanner's figure
for it, and I look to linguistics and biology, as
to the Bible and all deep literature, for the further elucidation of what we are and how we do
what we do.)
And what of the poor freshmen, for whom
the opening lecture of the college year is supposed
to be a kind of exhortation? I tremble to think
how widely my efforts must have missed the
mark; years afterward I was informed that it was
a standard bit of 'put-down' on the part of upperclassmen to tell the freshmen that they could
not expect to understand my lecture. But even
today I know not what verbal gestures might
count as useful, amidst the profusion and confusion of aims and ideas that freshmen arrive
with. How can I say, in one breath: (1) work patiently and hard, for the value of what you acquire will, in general, be proportional to the care
that goes into the acquiring; and (2) think! be
inventive! for what is in front of you can appear
in a new light, and discoveries are possible! but
(3) do not expect certainty? Ifi should say such
things, some of the brightest of my auditors
would find my sayings impossibly contradictory
in tendency, and the only response I could make
would be that I hope and believe it is not so. In
what puts itself forward as human knowledge,
it is by the care and thoroughness, and by the inventiveness and the unexpectedness that throws
a new light, that I attempt to distinguish the better from the worse. I know no other way.
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Curtis Wilson is a tutor and former dean at St. John's College, Annapolis. "Logos and the Underground" was origi~ally delivered as
the Dean's lecture inaugurating the 1960 academic year.
17
�analyze this experience into certain strata or levels, and
because of limitations of time, concentrate on certain fundamental strata which may, unfort~nately, seem to you
the least interesting.
.
In one respect I shall imitate the Socratic flight: I shall
leave out of account all results of natural science-physics,
chemistry, and biology. Over the past 350 years scientists have developed imposing structures of thought which
seem to reveal to us a previously hidden world, alongside
of or somehow behind or underneath the world in which
we live from day to day. Arthur Eddington would say,
for instance, that besides the apparent lectern behind
which I stand, there is another lectern, the real one, consisting of electrons and protons. I would maintain, on
the contrary, that this is an incorrect way of speaking
and thinking: there is only one lectern, the one that is
before me. What is meant by the electrons and protons
can only be understood by considering certain procedures
and experiments and the theories built up around them.
In seeking the roots of these theories I shall be led back
to the world of my everyday experience, and to the
language in which I formulate this experience. To ignore
the layered or storied structure within and underlying
scientific theories, to regard the electron as somehow on
a par with and alongside the table, is to commit what
Whitehead calls 'the fallacy of misplaced concreteness:'
So I shall begin with the analysis of everyday speech and
expenence.
Even here I must make a reservation. I am not trying to take account of all aspects of everyday speech. We
use speech to praise and to blame, to command and to
pray, or even for "whistling in the dark:' I shall be concerned only with the rather ordinary and colorless fact
that in our speaking we make statements, assertions,
which signify states of affairs, the "way things are;' as we
say.
he statement or assertion is the unit of fully
meaningful speech. A single word, outside
an assertion, does not have a fully determinate meaning. If I were to look and point in a certain
direction, and to shout "Firel", you would probably
recognize that I was asserting something. But the same
word "fire" in another context may have a quite different
meaning, for instance in the sentence, "The captain
ordered his men to fire." There are even subtler differences due to context. The meaning of the word "fire"
is not quite the same in the sentence "Civilization depends
on fire," and in the sentence, "The fire was burning brightly in the hearth:' Precisely what a word refers to depends
on the context in which it is used, which may be verbal
or non-verbal or both. But in any case, nothing is really
said until we have an assertion or statement-what traditional logic called the predicative judgment. What is
predicative judgment?
The word '(predication" comes from the Latin
"praedicare;' originally meaning to speak out, to enun-
T
18
ciate publicly. The word was later preempted by logicians in order to translate Aristotle's term katagorein. The
Greek word katagorein had originally meant to denounce,
to accuse in the marketplace or assembly (the root agora
means marketplace or assembly). Aristotle then appropriated the term to express the meaning: to say
something of a subject. What is spoken of, that about
which something is said, Aristotle calls the hypokimenon,
that is, the underlying; that which is said about or of
the hypokeimenon is called the kategoroumenon; it is, one
might say, what the hypokimenon has been accused of. The
corresponding English words, which derive from the
Latin, are "subject" and "predicate." Whenever a predicate
is attributed to a subject, then we have a statement, an
assertion, which expresses a decision regarding the validity of the attribution, or, the justness of the "accusation'~
for example, when "this" is "accused" of being a man in
the statement, This is a man.
Doubts about the universality of the subject-predicate
analysis of assertions have sometimes been raised. Consider for instance, the statement "It is raining?' It might
be suggested, in Aristophantic vein, that the pronoun ('it"
stands for Zeus. But this is surely not what we mean when
we say it is raining. Where is the logical subject- or is
there one?
I think this is a case in which we are fairly clear as
to what we mean or intend, while the structure of the
language fails to reflect the structure of the meaning. I
do not believe it is possible to find an assertion so simple as not to involve at least two mental signs. One is an
index, a sign which so to speak points to something; the
other will be a sign signifying a characteristic or situation or action which somehow belongs or pertains to that
which is pointed to. The assertion as a whole asserts
something of something, and therefore necessarily involves a two-foldness. Language may fail to mirror this
twofoldness. In the present case, I should say, we have
a kind of idea of a rainy day. The indexical or pointed
sign is that whereby I distinguish this day or time, as it
is placed in my experience. The assertion "It is raining"
as~e~ts th~t the present time is characterized by
rmn1ng-gmng-on.
There is another objection to the usual subjectpredicate analysis. When I say ''Alcibiades is taller than
Socrates;' it may be argued that I am talking about two
subjects, Alcibiades and Socrates. When I say, ''A sells
B to C for the price of D;' there are four indexical signs
A, B, C, and D, which are here connected by the relational predicate: ". . . sells . . . to . . . for the
price . . :• The logician may claim that there are four
logical subjects here, four hypokimena. The objection does
not deny the distinction between subject and predicate,
but points to cases in which there is not a single axis running from subject to predicate, but rather a relation which
relates two or more different things.
Let me pass this objection by for the moment.
Because of its greater simplicity, the assertion in which
a predicate is attributed to a single subject would appear
SPRING 1984
�to require consideration before relations are considered.
I shall return to relations later on.
An assertion, I said, expresses a 1 decision regarding
the validity of the attribution of predicate to subject, the
justness of the accusation. It presents itself as knowledge;
it pretends, so to speak, to be the truth. It may, of course,
turn out to be false. For instance, I may have pointed
at something and said, "That is a man;' and then it may
have turned out to be a showcase mannikin. Or the statement may become and remain doubtful or problematic.
Nevertheless, I should say that it belongs to the very
meaning of any assertion to make the claim to being
knowledge. Negation, doubtfulness, probability, or improbability are meaningful only as modifications of this
original claim. Even the statements which are used in
presenting to us a world of fantasy, say the fantasy-world
of a novel or of the Iliad, make this claim within the context of the unity of the particular fantasy-world. The
truthfulness of such a work of fantasy or imagination as
a whole is a rather more difficult matter, and lies in the
ways in which the fantasy-world imitates, either directly
or by analogy, certain features of the world in which we
live.
How do we determine whether an assertion is true?
Certainly we do this, day in and day out; but how? What
we encounter, in asking this question, is the problem of
evidence. What is an evident judgment?
The word "evidence" derives from the Latin word
evidens, meaning visible. The word "evidence" when used
in connection with judgments does not always mean
visibility, but visibility appears to be its most primitive
mean1ng.
think I should digress for a moment to point out
that most of the terms which we use in talking
about thinking depend on visual images. We speak,
for instance, of "definition;' which means setting bounds
or limits; of "synthesis" or "composition;' which means putting together; of"analysis;' which means breaking up; of"implication;" which means folding back upon. All these terms
exploit, more or less evidently, an analogy between thinking and certain motor activities which we can perform,
which we apprehend visually, and which in turn affect
or change what we see.
The assertion itself is something which is apprehended, not visually, but by means of hearing; although,
especially in a post-Gutenburg era, we may tend to think
of assertions as written out, visually. Now there appears
to be a fundamental difference between what is perceived
by hearing, and what is perceived by sight. What is
perceived by hearing is something that comes to be successively, in time. What is perceived by sight can present
itself as being there all at once, as a whole. A tone or
noise or statement comes to be successively, so that its
different parts exist in different times; it is a temporal
event. When I see a table, on the contrary, I take all of
its parts to exist simultaneously, even although what I
see at any one time is only one or two sides of the table.
I
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
I never see all parts and sides of the table at once, I can
only ·come to see all the parts in the sense that, by moving about, I am able to examine them one by" one in succession. But the table is not a temporal event.
This is an important difference, which may have important consequences; but the point for the moment is
this: A statement or assertion, coming to be in time,
makes a prima facie claim to knowledge. Knowledge of
what? We have to say, I think: knowledge of what is, and
of how it is. The judgment has a subject or hypokeimenon,
about which it is. This hypokeimenon must somehow be
pre-given, evidently given, prior to any asserting, if the
assertion is to be what it claims to be, namely knowledge
of what is. But what is evillently given? Many things,
perhaps, but first and foremost, what we can all agree
upon, the individual, visible objects which are presented
to us in the world. The object or thing presents itself to
us as being there, as a whole, with all its parts, within the
visible world. A temporal event, say a sound or a motion, seems, on the contrary, to demand further analysis:
we want to know what is moving, or what is the source
of the sound or other temporal event. The world as it
presents itself to us is first and foremost a world of individual objects.
T
herefore, I am going to start the discussion of
the problem of evidence by discussing the kind of
given-ness which a visible object has. Then I shall
go on to discuss other kinds of objects of awareness, which
can also be made subjects of predicative judgments, and
which may have their own modes of being evidently
given. These other objectivities, potential subjects of
judgments, are in a certain way founded upon our experience of the visible world; they arise for us in connection with our experience, but as Kant would put it,
they do not simply arise from experience- I think that
will be apparent.
How, then, are the individual objects of experience
given or presented to us? As I stated previously, I am
leaving out of account all that the physical and biological
sciences ran tell me of the processes involved in sensation and of the objects of experience. I wish to make,
in addition, certain further simplifications.
In sense experience I am confronted with individual
objects which present themselves as bodies, as corporeal.
But there are many individual objects of experience which
do not present themselves simply as corporeal. Animals,
men, and man-made objects, products of art, are indeed
perceived as bodies within the spatio-temporal world, but
they differ from rocky crags, rivers, and lakes, in expressing the presence or activity of what I shall call "soul." An
ash-tray is not simply a natural body; what it is can only
be understood by a reference to human beings who indulge in a certain vice. A human being is not perceived
as such in quite the same way as a rock is perceived as
a rock; there is involved an interpretation of what is perceived, as expressing the presence of soul, the psychic, the
subjective, the "I" or self of this other who is before me.
19
�The soul of the other is not simply perceptible in the manner of a corporeal object; but it is understood, through
more or less familiar types, with more or less familiar
interpretation of the simple perceptions, as being in and
the flrst time, I already know, in a sense, something about
kinds of characteristics. When I examine an object for
with what is simply perceptible. No.y this whole stratum
it. Not only do I perceive the side which is presented to
of experience, involving as it does the interpretation of
me, but I anticipate, in an indeterminate way, certain
what is bodily as expressing the psychic, I wish to leave
out of account, so as to attend entirely to what all such
experience presupposes, the experience of individual ob-
of the curtain here I imagine at this moment as being
jects as corporeal.
Finally, as a further simplification, you must permit
me to imagine that I am a purely contemplative being,
examining the individual objects out of a pure interest
in finding out about them. It is probably a rather rare
of the characteristics of the unseen side. The other side
grey; it is quite possible that it will turn out to be of
another color, but I am confident that it will have some
color. At the very least, the object is pre-given as a spatial
object, with such necessarz'ly accompanying characteristics
as color and shape; probably also as a spatial object of
a more particular type, belonging to a more specific
occurrence for such a pure interest to govern our activ-
category. The progress of the inquiry takes the form of
ity. Ordinarily we pass over the perceptions to go on to
manipulating objects, or valuing them in relation to cer-
correcting anticipations, or replacing vague anticipations
by definite, perceived characteristics. Every advance of
the inquiry has the form "Yes, it is as I expected;' or "Not
so, but otherwise"; in the latter case, the correction is
always a correction within a range of possibilities which
is not limitless. For instance, I may expect "red"; it will
tain practical aims. The "I" or self, living concretely in
its surroundings, and among other selves or persons, is
by no means primarily comtemplative. A pure comtemplation of a particular object can occasionally occur;
this involves a stopping of normal activity; it need not
be especially important. As subordinate to a philosophic
reflection which seeks to discover the structure of the
world, such contemplation can become serious. My sup-
position here of a purely contemplative interest may be
regarded as a fiction, designed to enable me to uncover
a basic stratum of experience.
The object does not present itself to me in isolation,
all by itself, nor does it present itself as something completely novel. With the awakening of my interest, it comes
forth from a background, in which I take it to have been
existing already, along with other objects. Suppose, for
instance, that the object which I am about to examine
is this lectern; I grasp it as something already existing,
something which was already there, in the auditorium,
even before I was looking at it. Similarly the auditorium,
with its stage and curtain and rows of seats, including
the part I do not see because it does not come within
my field of vision, was already there, was within the
bounds of the familiar St. John's campus, within the
familiar town of Annapolis, within the farther and less
not turn out to be Middle C. To each single perception
of the object there thus adheres a transcendence of perception, because of the anticipation of the possibility offurther determinations. In the succession of perceptions of
the object, I am aware of it as an identical something
which presents itself in and through its characteristics
and relations, but I am also aware of it as a unity of possible
experience, a substratum about which I can always acquire further information.
A
s I turn to the object for the first time, there is
a moment in which my attention is directed
to the object as a whole, before I go on to note
particular characteristics, parts not quite perceived of the
obvious whole. This moment has short duration; the attempt to make it last turns into a blank stare. But even
as I go on to examine particular aspects of the whole,
there remains an effect, a precipitate, so to speak, of this
first mental grasping of the object, this taking-it-in-asa-whole. As long as the object remains the theme of my
inquiry, the characteristics and aspects are not viewed
familiar reaches of Anne Arundel County, and so on,
separately, by themselves, but always as aspects of the ob-
till I say: within the world. This pre-given-ness of objects and of the world in which they are is prior to every
inquiry which seeks knowledge; it is presupposed in inquiry. The presupposition is a passively held belief, a
belief which I hold with unshakable certainty. It is doxa,
ject. If S is the object, and p, q, and r are characteristics,
the Greeks would say. There is a passive doxic certainty
in the being ofthe world and its objects; I cannot imagine it possible earnestly to doubt this belief. Every inquiry into an object proceeds on the basis of the believedin-world. Belief precedes inquiry which in turn aims at
knowledge.
The object itself is never completely novel, it never
presents itself as something completely indeterminate,
about which I can then proceed to learn. The world, for
us, is always a world in which inquiry has already gone
on; it is a familiar world the objects of which belong to
20
then my perceptions of p, q, and r are not isolated, but
each perception of a characteristic adds to, enriches the
meaning for me, of the substrate S; first S is seen to be
p, then S which is p is seen to be q, and so on. And always
in the background there is the sense of the object S as
a temporally enduring something which has these
characteristics. The persistence of S as an identity in time
presents itself passively, in the harmonius succession of
perceptions, as though I had nothing to do with it. Yet
I must note at least in passing that this grasp of the object as an enduring thing is complex, and presupposes
a structure in my inner time, in the flux of changing
awareness, whereby the object presented at any moment
is grasped as having been and as yet to be.
What I am seeking to describe here is a receptive ex-
SPRING 1984
�perience of the object in which I am first aware of the
object and then examine it, noting characteristics, without
actually making judgments or assertions; passing from
perception to perception, without attympting to fix once
for all the results of perception in the form of assertions.
But it is apparent that even in this receptive experience
of one particular object, prior to all judging, there
emerges the basis of the distinction between subject and
predicate, namely, in the distinction between substrate
and characteristic.
I can of course make anything which presents itself
into the theme of an examination or inquiry- the color
of the curtain, for instance, or the aggregate of seats in
the auditorium, which presents itself in a particular spatial
configuration. That with which the inquiry is concerned
as its theme then comes to be a substratum or substrate,
of which I proceed to ascertain the characteristics. The
distinction between substrate and characteristic would
thus seem to be relative to the theme of the inquiry. Some
of the things I perceive and attend to, however, are of
such a kind as to exist only as determinations or
characteristics of something else- for instance the color
here which I take as the color of the curtain. Other things
I perceive and attend to are not essentially dependent
in this way. The curtain, for instance, is not a
characteristic of the auditorium in the same sense as its
color is its characteristic. That the curtain is where it is
is in a sense accidental; it could be somewhere else, and
if it were, its color would have gone with it. In grasping
the curtain as an object of perception, I grasp something
which has a certain independence of everything else,
which does not present itself always and necessarily as
an aspect or characteristic of anything else.
I have been using the word "characteristic" in a vague
sense; and some further distinctions will be in order.
n individual object of perception, a body,
has parts, into which it could be divided by
some process; one part could be severed from
another. Such parts are to be distinguished from
characteristics which qualify the thing as a whole, for
instance the color of the whole, if it is of a sing1e color;
its shape or form; its extendedness; its roughness or
smoothness. Characteristics of the latter kind may be
called immediate properties of the whole. The parts, too, may
have properties, which are not immediately properties
of the whole, but first and foremost properties of the parts:
their shape, color, and so on. Moreover, there are aspects
of the thing which are properties of properties; for in:
stance, the surface of the thing is not an immediate property of the whole, but is essentially the limit of its extendedness, and hence a property of its extendedness.
Some characteristics or determinations of a thing involve an essential reference to other things. The other
things may be actually nearby and therefore perceivable
along with the thing I am examining, or they may be
presented in memory or in the imagination. I have already said that we perceive an object as being of a more
A
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
or less determinate type- it is a kind of tree, or rock,
and so on. The recognition of type depends upon a precipitate of past experience. I do not necessarily remember
particular objects which were previously experienced and
which are similar to the one before me; I do not make
an explicit comparison; but past experience, now apparently forgotten, has somehow produced a precipitate
of habitual familiarity which operates without my being
explicitly aware of it as such.
But comparisons of objects with respect to likeness
or similarity can also become explicit. The comparison
then involves a mental going-back-and-forth between one
of the objects and the other, with at the same time a
holding-in-grasp ofthe one I am not at the moment attending to. The object with which I am comparing the
one in front of me may be present or else absent; in the
latter case it is either remembered or imagined. The
similarity may amount to complete alike-ness or
sameness, or it may have to do with the whole of each
object but still involve difference,' as the large bright-red
ball is similar to but not completely like the small darkred ball. Or again, the similarity may relate only to particular aspects of the objects, as the table and chair may
be alike with respect to color or ornamentation.
The relations I have mentioned thus far- relations
of similarity and difference- are to be distinguished from
relations which presuppose that the things related are
actually present and co-existing, and not given in imagination or memory. For instance, the distance of one
object from another is a relation which requires both objects to be given as present. Again, in order that an object be perceived as part of a configuration of objects,
say a constellation of stars, it is necessary that all objects of the configuration be present in a perceptually
grasped whole. Such relations I think I shall call reality
relations, because they require the real, simultaneous
presence of the objects related.
All relations, whether comparison-relations or realityrelations, presuppose that the objects related are taken
together as a plurality. The awareness of the objects as
forming a plurality is, however, only a precondition for the
grasping of a relation. In order for me to grasp a relation, there must be a primary interest in one of the objects, in relation to which the other objects are seen as
similar, or nearby, and so on. I see A as taller than B;
the focus of interest is for the moment on A, which thus
forms the substrate of the relation. The interest, of course,
can shift to B, in which case I see B as shorter than Ain a sense the same relation. All relational facts are thus
reversible. The general fact that in relating objects I go
from one to the other would be my reason for regarding
the simple subject-predicate analysis of assertions as
fundamental.
The grasping of a relation presupposes that the
plurality of objects related is given; but the given-ness
of the plurality can be of different kinds. In a comparisonrelation one or more of the objects compared may be
an imagined or fictive object rather than a perceived ob-
21
�ordered in succession.] ust how such a form comes about
and there works to build my general familiarity with the
perceivable world. But it is not yet knowledge. We have
some way yet to go before we reach anything which can
be called, in a strict sense, knowledge.
The predicative judgment presupposes an active will
to knowledge. I return to the substrate S, and now grasp
actively and explicitly the fact that it is determined by the
characteristic p. The transition from S to p no longer
occurs passively, but is guided by an active will to hold
S fast by fixing its characteristics. The substrate becomes
the subject of a predication. Fixing the gaze on the hidden unity of S and p, I now grasp actively the synthesis
is a difficult problem. But the point I am making here
is that this objective time, which is presupposed in reality-
of the two which was previously given only in a passive
way. I say: "S is p"; or, "The curtain is beige" (if that is
relations, binds together my own experience and the experience of others, so that it is experience of one world.
the right name for this color).
Having uttered or thought a judgment, my fictional
contemplative fellow has for the first time used words. Now
what does this involve? Let me first distinguish two kinds
ject; and in this case the togetherness of the objects is
brought about only in my own
a~areness,
in my own
inner time, but not in the visible world. The objects
related in a reality-relation, on the other hand, stand next
to one another in a real duration,
ill
an objective time
valid for all objects of the visible world. This objective
time is also valid for other persons besides myself. If someone tells me of his past experience, what he remembers
has its fixed place in the same public time as does my
own past experience. Objective or public time is a form
in accordance with which everything perceivable is
All the distinctions I have been making- between
substrate and characteristic, immediate property and
mediate property, part and whole, comparison-relation
and reality-relation -are, I am claiming, recognizable
as involved in our experience of the visible world, the
world of broad daylight, independently of the forms of
our speech. The forms of speech, I am claiming, are rooted
in these distinctions. In our actual lives, the receptive
experiencing of the perceivable world, on the one hand,
and our speaking, our predicative judging, on the other,
are not separate but interlaced. I have separated them
in analysis because they are separable, and because in
separating them I find it possible to discern the ways in
of words in the sentence "The curtain is beige:' First,
words like "curtain" and ''beige," which could by themselves
. constitute assertions in certain contexts, for instance as
answers to questions. These have been traditionally
known as categorematic terms. Secondly, there are words
which influence within an assertion the way in which the
categorematic terms signify what they signify; these have
been traditionally known as syncategorematic terms. For in~
stance, the word "the" before "curtain" is a demonstrative
which makes the word "curtain" refer to this curtain; the
copula "is" a sign indicating the synthesis of subject and
which objects present themselves in experience. It is a
predicate in judgment. But it is the categorematic term
very simple and obvious thing I am saying. Speech, logos,
presupposes a world, the world, in which it is a fundamental fact that there are distinguishable, relatively
independent objects which present themselves in and
through their characteristics. The world, on the contrary,
does not presuppose speech or language.
"curtain" which tells me what I am talking about, and
the categorematic term ''beige" which tells me what I am
saying about it. These words are common nouns and adjectives; verbs are also categorematic. The meanings of
such terms are what we call universals because the words
in virtue of their meanings are able to refer to many particular instances. All predication involves such univer-
In calling our experience of the world "receptive;' I
do not mean to imply that the "I" or self is altogether
sals. This fact points back to the fact that every perceived
passive in such experience. Every awareness is an
awareness of something; there is a polarity here, with the
"I" or self at one pole and the object of awareness at the
object or characteristic in the perceivable world is per-
other. The "I" is affected by the object; it attends to or
grasps it. Activity and passivity are interlaced in each
awareness.
ceived as of a more or less known or familiar type. The
common nouns and adjectives used in predication refer
to such types. When I say, "This object is beige;' there
is implicit in this predication a relation to the general
essence beige. The relation to the general essence or
universal is not yet explicit here, as it would begin to be
I
f we turn now to the predicative judgment, we
encounter a new kind of interest and activity on
the part of the "I" or self. Let us suppose that I have
perceived a certain object or substrate S, and then noted
a characteristic of it, p. For instance, I may have isolated
the curtain as an object and then noted its color. These
activities- the grasping of the substrate, the holding of
the substrate in grasp while I note the color, which is
thus grasped as belonging to the substrate- these activities
are bound to what is immediately given. The result of
such activities, if I do not fix it once for all in a predicative
judgment, is not really my possession. Perhaps it is not
altogether lost, but sinks into the background of awareness
22
if I said, "This is a beige object;' where the indefinite article a points to generality. Later on I shall try to discuss
the problem of the given-ness of universals. But in assertions about individual objects of the perceivable world,
the explicit grasping of universals is not involved; the use
of common nouns and adjectives is based on our passive,
doxic familiarity with types of things and characteristics.
Assertions about individual perceivable objects run
parallel to our receptive experience of such objects. I have
already mentioned judgments of the type "S is p;' "The
curtain is beige:' Such judgments express the fact that
a substrate is characterized by the immediate property p.
If the focus of interest passes to a second immediate prop-
SPRING 1984
�erty q, we get an assertion of the form, "S which is p
is also q"; or the subordinate clause "which is p" may be
replaced simply by the attributive adjective p modifying S. To take another case: if the property p of S is itself
characterized by a property a, we get an assertion of the
form, "S is p which is a"; and again the subordinate clause
"which is a" may be replaced by an adverb modifying
p. The use of adverbs and attributive adjectives thus
presupposes prior assertions.
There are assertions of the form "S has T;' which express the fact that an individual object S contains a certain part; for example, "The house has or contains an
attic." Assertions of this kind refer back to experiences
in which an object is perceived as being a whole made
up of parts. These assertions cannot be converted into
assertions of the form "Sis p''; the part which is separable
cannot lose its independence and become a property. On
the other hand, a statement of the form "S is p" can be
turned into a statement of the form ''S has T"; for instance, the assertion "This object is red" can become "This
object has redness;' or reversely, "Redness belongs to this
object:' This shift involves a substantijying of the property
designated by the word "red." Substantivity means standing as something which can have characteristics, and
which can therefore become the subject of a predication;
it is opposed to adJectivity, which means being in or on
something else. Substantivity and adjectivity are not
merely a matter of grammatical forms; the difference in
the two depends on a difference in the manner of grasping something, either as for itself, or as on or in something.
Any characteristic of a thing, although initially presented
as in or on a substrate, can be substantified. This freedom
in substantifying rests on the fact that already in the
receptive experience of the world everything that presents
itself, whether substrate or characteristic, can be made
the theme of inquiry; it has characteristics which can be
ascertained, including relations of sirriilarity and difference to other substrates or characteristics.
Again, there are assertions based on our grasping of
relations in experience, for instance the assertion '1\. is
similar to B." Once more we have a subject and a
predicate, but the predicate is more complicated than in
the previous cases. The word "similar" is adjectival, but
its adjectivity is different from that of the word ''red";
it is grasped only through the transition in awareness
fi·om A to B, from the subJect to the obJect of the relation.
Once again, what is adjectival can be substantified, and
we can come to speak of the "similarity of A to B:'
N
ow this freedom in substantifying extends
further, and at this point we can take a very
large step forward. Having uttered assertions,
I can now substantify that which they mean, the synthesis of subject and predicate which is intended in the
act of asserting. I can make statements of the form, "The
fact that S is p, is q;' where q can be an adjective like
"just" or "pleasant." Here the subject of the sentence is
itself a sentence expressing a state of affairs. As subject
ST. .JOHN'S REVIEW
of the new sentence, the assertion "S is p" is no longer
traversed in a two-membered, upbeat-downbeat rhythm;
it is caught, so to speak, in one beam of the attention,
is treated as a substrate of which I can ascertain
characteristics. We here encounter a new kind of object
of awareness, the unity of meaning in a completed judgment. Such objects I shall call obJects of reason, because
they presuppose the activity of reason or logos, the faculty of making judgments.
These new objects, constituted in the activity of
reason, differ radically from the objects presented in our
experience of the perceptual world. The perceptual object is indeed presented in a temporal process; further
examination always enriches its meaning, adds to its
ascertained characteristics. But the object is always there;
the examination of the object can be broken off at any
point, and yet the object is always presented as being one
and the same and there. The activity of the "I" or self produces presentations of the object, but not the object itself.
In the case of an object of reason, on the other hand,
the synthesis of subject and predicate is required for the
object to be given at all; the activity of the "I" cannot
be broken off at an arbitrary point, but must be carried
through to completion, in order for the object to be
present.
The difference may be stated differently. The perceptual object, the individual object of the visible world, is
presented in the course of my inner time, the succession
of awareness, but it always stands before me as existing
in an objective time, a time which is valid for the whole
world of individual objects. It is an individual thing,
distinguished from every other individual thing of the
visible world in virtue of being localized in public space
and time. An object of reason, the unity of meaning in
an assertion, does not belong to the visible world in this
way; we do not find meanings in the world in the same
way in which we find things. The meant states of affairs
are indeed constituted and grasped in my inner time.
But what is grasped when I grasp the content of an assertion is not given as itself belonging to any particular
stretch of the objective time of the world. I am not concerned here with the truth or falsity of the assertion, but
only with the mode of given-ness of its content. That
Caesar crossed the Rubicon may be true or false; but
the kind of object I grasp when I grasp the content of
this assertion, namely a meaning, presents itself as transtemporal, something which is identically the same every
time I grasp it, that is, every time I think of it, but which
is not itself individualized in the space and time of the
visible world.
What I am saying here is, I believe, quite elementary, and is tacitly presupposed in every assertion I make.
For in making an assertion I intend that the auditor grasp
my meaning, and I am disappointed when what he says
and does implies that he has failed to understand. Any
particular uttering of the assertion is an event in the objective time of the world; but I act as if what is asserted
in many repetitions of the assertion is self-identical,
23
�always the same, and capable as such of being communicated.
Now there is one more kind ot object whose mode
of given-ness has to be discussed; tpis is the universal,
the idea, or in the Greek, eidos. The Greek word eidos
comes from the verb "to see;' and meant originally the
"look" of a thing. The look of a thing, what we see on
first impression, is the general type to which the thing
belongs. In the sense of familiar type, the universal has
been with us all along.
Up to now I have been talking about experience of
individual objects ofthe visible world, and about assertions immediately based on such experience. All such
assertions involve an implicit relation to generalities or
universals; this is shown by the fact that in making an
assertion we have to use common nouns and adjectives and
verbs, which in virtue of their meaning are capable of
referring to many individuals. Words of this kind, capable
of referring to many instances, seem to be fundamental
to any language. Even proper names often derive from
common nouns, Smith,. Brown, Klein, and so on. The
implicit relation to universals rests on our typical familiarity with the world, the fact that every object presents
itself as belonging to a more or less definite type.
Is there any way in which ideas or universals can be
explicitly grasped, as evidently given objects of consciousness? This is a difficult question. Let me point out
first that every inquiry aiming at knowledge seems to
presuppose that the universal can be clearly and distinctly
grasped, insofar as it assumes that questions of the form,
What is so-and-so, for instance, What is what we call a
tree, or a meson, or courage, can be inquired into, and
with effort and good luck, be answered. In Greek, the
question is -ri Eanv- What is it? The what is the universal, capable by its nature of being applied to many.
You must permit me once more to proceed on the
basis of the simplest example. Suppose I am confronted
with two objects, S and S', each of which has the property p, say "red." Of course S has its redness, and S' has
its redness; there is a separateness of the properties as
well as of the substrata. But there is also a unity here,
an identity, which I can grasp in shifting the attention
from S to S' and back again. There is a oneness in the
manyness. The comparison of objects, the focusing upon
that with respect to which they are similar, can go on
to further cases, and need not be limited to actually
presented cases, but may include the consideration of
imagined, possible cases. Thus through the medium of the
imagination I arrive at the notion of an infinity, an endlessness of possible individuations of the same eidos. It
may be difficult to define the limits of the possible variation of instances, but in some cases I do seem to be able
to do this, and to see that the universal involves definite
limits, a definite structure, definite relations to other
universals. For instance, I can imagine the colors of the
objects to be different; there is a range of possible colors, but I seem to grasp that whatever color is, it will
always be extended; an unextended color is unimagin-
24
able. Similarly, it appears clear to me that a tone or any
sound must in every instance have an intensity, as well
as the quality we call timbre or tone-quality.
I introduce these cases of intellectual perception, not
because of any importance they might or might not have
in themselves, but because of what they show. It is not
enough, and not quite correct, to say that they derive from
experience, that they are inductions or abstractions from
experience. If I observe 100 swans, and find them all to
be white, I may indeed guess that all swans are white;
but the conclusion is not necessary, and is in fact false,
since there are black swans in Central Africa. It is not
the same with the connection between color and extension; color involves extension essential(y, and I see this not
just by observing particular instances of color, but by a
variation of instances in the imagination, which allows
me to "see" what must be involved in any case of color.
And the idea or eidos, which thus appears as an identity
running through the imaginable instances, presents itself,
like the objects of reason previously described, as
something trans-temporal, something not in the objective world with its objective time, not even immanent in
the acts of consciousness, but as an identity which can
be repeatedly intended by consciousness.
Permit me to summarize what I have been saying.
I have been aiming, not to make hypotheses, but to describe and to explicate; what I have been attempting to
describe and explicate is that which is involved or presupposed in the making of assertions, judgments, predications. The description has proceeded by stages; at each
stage I seek to delineate precisely what the I or self grasps,
as being somehow presented to it.
The making of predications presupposes, in the first
place, my pre-predicative, pre-reflective experience of the
world. My pre-predicative experience of the world can
be separated, in analysis, from speech; our speaking, on
the contrary, appears when analyzed always to point back
to the pre-predicative experience of the world. Prepredicative experience is first and foremost experience
of perceivable objects. The objects present themselves as
in the world, along with other objects, in an objective
time which is valid for all such objects. They present
themselves as belonging to more or less familiar types.
And they present themselves in and through their properties, parts, and relations. There is always a sense of
"and so on" attaching to my experience of a perceivable
object, in that I can always make further determinations,
both of the internal characteristics of the object and of
its relations to other objects. But it remains throughout
an identity, a locus of possible experience, a substratum
of possible determinations.
Predication, on the simplest level, involves an active
repetition of the passage in pre-predicative experience
from substratum to characteristic. The flow of perceptions in our pre-predicative experience goes on harmoniously almost of itself. Predication, on the other hand,
presupposes an active will to fix, once and for all, that
which is given in experience, to make it my possession.
SPRING 1984
�The predication is embodied in a temporal event, in a
succession of sounds, the spoken sentence; but it is not
itself this temporal event. The sound erherges from silence
and falls back into silence; it passes li~e an arrow, leaving no trace in the air. But that which the sound
expresses, the predication, is a unity or identity of meaning which can be repeatedly intended and repeatedly expressed; speaking quite strictly, it is not in the objective
time of the world, but is grasped as trans-temporal. It
is constituted in the activity of the I or self, but it is nonetheless an objectivity; it can be substantified, and itself
made the subject of predication.
Finally, I have described one further and essential
condition of predicative speech, namely the universal.
Every assertion I make involves categorematic terms,
universals, which in their nature are capable of referring
to many instances. The use of the universal in speech
is based, to begin with, on the typical character of my
experience of the world, the fact that objects and
characteristics present themselves as belonging to more
or less familiar types. The universal first enters the assertion so to speak tacitly, without its range of meaning being explicitly grasped. But the will to knowledge can be
satisfied only if the universal can itself be made the subject of predication. The empirical sciences approach such
universal predications by means of statistical inference;
their results are always open-ended, subject to revision.
But it also appears that there is such a thing as intellectual perception, eidetic insight, by which one can grasp
the range of a universal, define it, and make necessary
predications about it, on the basis of a variation of instances in the imagination. I may note that, on a rough
count, nearly half the assertions I have made this evening are such universal assertions.
My effort at description has to end here, although
the stopping-point is arbitrary; there is a vast range of
possible explications of this kind, which would have the
aim of delineating each objectivity or kind of objectivity
presented to awareness just as it presents itself. I regard
such description as important, because I believe the correct method of philosophy is that of attending to and
grasping states of affairs just as they are given or presented, and explicating them with respect to such of their
connections and relations as are likewise presented and
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
grasped. Only by a repetition of this process can philosphically primitive ideas and propositions receive adequate
confirmation. Principles should not be just postulated
or constructed, accepted merely on faith, whether animal
or spiritual, or justified by the emotional comfort or practical success they may bring. That is part of the meaning, I think of the Socratic return to the logoi.
W
hat, finally, about the Underground, since the
announced title of this lecture included that
term? The German word "Underground" can
mean anything which either in a direct way or analogically underlies something else. So in talking about
hypokimena, or subjects of predication, and of the way
in which they present themselves, I can claim to have
been talking about the underground of speech. But as
everyone knows, there is a more subversive and indeed
altogether more interesting sort of underground, the one
which, Dostoevski intends in Notes from the Underground.
This underground is the location, so to speak, of certain writers of the present and of the last hundred years
who throw to us, and in fact to the whole tradition of
philosophy, a certain challenge. There are really many
challenges which they throw; the challenges are difficult
to characterize as a whole, but they might perhaps be
subsumed under the formula of the old myth of Prometheus, according to which all the gifts which make man
man, including speech, are based upon, and therefore infected by a fraud. So Camus and Jaspers and Heidegger speak of man as a castaway, shipwrecked on an island
of everyday-ness. And Heidegger above all has sought
to pull the tradition of philosophy up by the roots, and
to show that our awareness of the world and of ideas as
constituted in inner time involves a fraud. Then wisdom
can only lie in the destruction, the total dismantling, of
what is fraudulent in our awareness. And perhaps the
four revolver shots of Meersault, the hero of Camus' novel
The Stranger, are more efficacious in this respect than the
discipline of listening to and following the logos. On the
other hand, it might just be that the staccato notes which
issue from the Underground will shock us, and cause
us to look once more with open eyes and with wonder
at what is our most characteristically human endowment,
speech.
25
�Orwell's Future and the Past
Ronald Berman
C
zeslaw Milosz wrote in The Captive Mind that
Orwell was phenomenally popular behind
the Iron Curtain because readers were
"amazed that a writer who never lived in
Russia should have so keen a perception into
its life:' 1 But truth is not always the appropriate standard by which to judge fiction. Orwell may have given
us a convincing picture of life in the Soviet Union, and
of the social character of totalitarianism, but that is not
all he has done. He had more than Moscow or even London in mind when writing about the chief City of Airstrip
One, a province of Oceania: it may well be that Nineteen
Eighty-Four is as much about Athens as it is about
Moscow. A place in any work of fiction, like Pemberley
or Laputa or Vanity Fair, is primarily an idea.
Nineteen Eighty-Four differs radically from most stories
of the future. It is not about a great calamity which comes
from outside the social situation. It is resolutely conventional in its description of things and its understanding
of character. There can be very few other works about
the future life of man so permeated by the smell of boiled
cabbage. A producer has despairingly remarked of
science-fiction films that they have been all platinum hair
and diagonal zippers, but there is none of that here; no
fascination with the terrors of change. In many ways,
Nineteen Eighty-Four seems to resist futurism.
Rather it seems to require a lot of knowledge about
history. It challenges our recollection of Lenin, Stalin,
and Trotsky. It suggests events of the twentieth century
as we have experienced them. But the book is also about
certain philosophical arguments. Orwell intends us to
Ronald Berman served as chairman of the National Endowment for
the Humanities from 1971-1977. He is now director of the Humanities
Institute at the University of California, San Diego.
26
recall many of them, beginning with that between Socrates and Thrasymachus. O'Brien is the ultimate version of those Guardians "who keep watch over our commonwealth"' and preserve the purity of its laws. It makes
a good deal of sense to read Nineteen Eighty-Four in the
light of Plato's Republic- and of the Politics of Aristotle.
I think that the book also intends us to recall certain
literary themes. It is a superb example of the topos of
awakening into intellectual and spiritual life. Winston
Smith shares the awakening experience -"It is not easy
to become sane':_ not only with the wretched prisoners
of the Ministry of Love but with all those whose awakening challenges their capacity to understand it, with Lear,
with Kurtz, with Gregor Samsa. I would not call it a
genre, but one of the great literary forms of the West
is about a man who escapes from the Shadows of the
Cave, and is blinded by what he sees.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a very literary book, full of echoes
of other books. It develops ideas which have been argued
for centuries. In a seilse, the sources of this book are
everywhere. To go through Orwell's Collected Essays, journalism and Letters is to be overwhelmed by the names of
authors and the titles of books. His work is a library of
allusions to Arnold, Baudelaire, Belloc, Carlyle, Dickens,
Eliot, Flaubert, Gissing, Hardy, Lawrence, Powell,
Shakespeare, Waugh, and others the full mention of
whom would take a very long time. He read everything,
and he quarrelled with most of it.
We know that Orwell read the classics because he
complained in such detail about having to read them.
When he was at St. Cyprian's (immortalized in "Such,
Such Were the Joys") he was force-fed the classics like
a Strasbourg goose. In order for the school to make a
reputation off the brilliance of its students the scholarship boys were bullied into brilliance. In order to distinguish themselves on the examinations they had to become
SPRING 1984
�little encyclopedias of Latin and Greek, ''crammed with
learning as cynically as a goos~1 is crammed for
Christmas:'' Orwell said of his involuntary mastery of
the classics, "looking back, I realize that I then worked
harder than I have ever done since:'4 it is a fairly strong
remark from the author of Down and Out in Paris and
London.
Orwell's favorite reading on summer mornings at
school, when he was temporarily free from his own set
of academic Guardians, included the novels of H. G.
Wells. It seems odd to think that Nineteen Eighty-Four
should be in part a combination of two such different
kinds of reading: stolen hours with Wells and soldiering
through Latin and Greek. I think we should agree that
Wells stayed with Orwell till the end of his life, and, I
would argue, so did the reading he did with much less
enjoyment.
The dialogue form is rightly associated with Plato,
but before looking at The Republic we ought to consider
the connection between Orwell and Aristotle's Politics. For
the latter, I believe, is the most essential book in that
history of ideas which Nineteen Eighty-Four summarizes,
and of which it is the latest statement. Aristotle's Politics
contains nearly everything but Orwell's plot. The fifth
book of the Politics, on the causes of revolution, describes
a society penetrated by informers, spies, eavesdroppers,
and secret police. It analyzes the conscious institution
of poverty by the state. It discusses the rivalry between
the state and other social units like the family. It refers
to the public promotion of private hatreds. It talks about
war as a form of domestic policy. Above all, it is about
the attack on what Aristotle calls the "spirit" of the polis.
There are many tactical similarities between the two
books. For example, Aristotle writes that "men are not
so likely to speak their minds if they go in fear of a secret
police;' 5 and we can see without difficulty how this observation can have been put into narrative form. (Although,
clearly, given the totalitarian history of our own century
we need not go to Aristotle for the suggestion). It is probably more important for us to be aware of more specific
resemblances. Aristotle, like Orwell, is not concerned with
tyranny as a sudden calamity but as a development of
other forms of political life. When he writes that "the
methods applied in extreme democracies are thus all to
be found in tyrannies" (245) he provides us with a way
of recognizing and interpreting events in Nineteen EightyFour.
Both the Politics and Nineteen Eighty-Four are about the
development of political systems. Both are about a certain
kind of tyranny, which goes far beyond merely political
rule. Both are about oligarchy: Emmanuel Goldstein's
book (actually written by O'Brien and his collaborators)
is called The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism,
a title which neatly connects classical and Communist
terminology. The phrase "oligarchy" itself leads us inescapably to its classic definition, which is in the works
of Plato and Aristotle where the conception of closed
minority rule enters our political consciousness.
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Aristotle describes a number of forms of oligarchy,
not all of which concern us. What we are concerned with
is, I suggest, the kind of oligarchy which has some connection both to tyranny and to what Aristotle disapprovingly calls "extreme democracies:' The ultimate form of
oligarchy comes about when a dynasty has absolute control over property, men, and politics, "and it is persons,
and not the law, who are now the sovereign" (172). The
reader of Nineteen Eighty-Four tends to slide by distinctions, but The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
recognizes the differences between stages of despotism.
It is very close to Aristotle when it acknowledges that
"the essence of oligarchical rule" is to be found in "the
persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of
life." That ((certain world-view" means the law has been
replaced by a different conception, that of power. In
Aristotle, oligarchy becomes tyranny; in Orwell it
becomes dictatorship.
There is a passage in Nineteen Eighty-Four often cited
for its quality of psychological revelation. The passage,
from O'Brien's apologia for the Party, states the satisfactions of power as the reason for exerting it:
We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we
know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German
Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in
their methods, but never had the couragee to recognize their
own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that
they had seized power unwillingly, and that just around the
corner there lay a paradise. ... We are not like that. We know
that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing
it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish
a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes
the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. (116)6
The modern audience is rightly fascinated by the insight
into aberrant motivation. Any teacher of Nineteen EightyFour finds that this passage gets students to realize some
hidden truths about human desires. But the passage is
useful to us in another way, because it makes a crucial
distinction: "all the oligarchies of the past" have had
political ends. And, they have culminated only in the
forms described by Aristotle and other theorists. This
oligarchy will be different in its philosophical imaginativeness. It will extend political definitions.
Orwell has a highly organized sense of the operation
of such an oligarchy. His narrative is deployed around
three issues:,
1. The relationship of the state to certain individuals
who represent potential opposition to authority.
2. The object, political and non-political, of unconstitutional power.
3. The tactics of authority.
These issues cover the common ground between Orwell
and his source. We ought to see how they take shape in
Aristotle, and how they are dramatized by Orwell.
27
�I Individual and State:
II The Object of Power:
Aristotle's. discussion of tyranny is first of all concerned with the relationship of individual to government.
He writes of the man who is virtuous or "outstanding"
in a rather special way. This man is the natural object
of tyranny. He need not be in active opposition to the
state. It suffices that the state recognizes the fact of his
excellence, that it perceives his excellence to be a potential threat. This conception is at the heart of Orwell's narrative. Winston Smith seems unheroic to us, who have
been raised on a literature of more activist heroes. But
it must be understood that he is more honest than the
other characters- except possibly for O'Brien -and that
he is capable of independent thought. And, he loves what
is beautiful. In his world, these constitute remarkable differences. If his character did not constitute a danger to
illicit power then the following dialogue would not have
been written:
Perhaps the most important thing that can be said
about this part of Aristotle's discussion is that. it is not
political, at least not as the phrase "political" is commonly
understood. Aristotle's discussion (244) is existential. He
knows what the "traditional" policies of tyranny are, but
he is much more concerned with policies directed {against
'~nd you consider yourself morally superioi to us, with our
lies and our cruelty?"
"Yes, I consider myself superior." (119)
He has been kicked and flogged and insulted before saying this, and he has rolled on the floor in his own blood.
I think that qualifies as "outstanding."
All outstanding men are potential criminals. Aristotle
was much interested in a certain story about such citizens
(he mentions it on three separate occasions in the Politics).
It is about the appropriate punishment for excellence.
By the time the story had reached him it had become
a parable of political foresight: of policy dealing with propensity. The story is about the "advice which was offered
by Periander to his fellow-tyrant Thrasybulus" about the
best way to deal with those potential enemies, the
"outstanding citizens" of the commonwealth (237). Aristotle refers to this story a number of times, but in an .
abbreviated way. Here I quote the fuller account given
in Herodotus:
On one occasion he sent a herald to ask Thrasybulus what
mode of government it was safest to set up in order to rule
with honour. Thrasybulus led the messenger without the city,
and took him into a field of corn, through which he began
to walk, while he asked him again and again concerning his
coming from Corinth, ever as he went breaking off and throwing away all such ears of corn as over-topped the rest. In this
way he went through the whole field, and destroyed the richest
and best part of the crop. 7
The bewildered messenger returns home, and it is left
to the subtle imagination of tyranny to interpret the
meaning. Herodotus has reversed the asking and giving
of advice, but he has clearly provided the essential
strategy for tyranny: cut off the tallest heads. The Politics
takes its departure for the study of tyranny from this story.
Orwell has translated the idea of outstanding civic
merit- Winston differs from the rest because of his inward honesty, his sensibility, and his intellectual
stubborness- but, as both O'Brien and he acknowledge,
he is indeed morally "superior."
28
everything lihdy to produce the two qualities of mutual confidence
and a high spirit" (emphasis added). The statement seems
oddly inexact, especially for a methodical thinker. It
seems far afield from politics. But is very close to Orwell's
conception of policy in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The statement is rephrased in various ways throughout Aristotle's discussion of tyranny, surfacing finally as
one of his major conclusions about the subject. One of
the great ends of the authoritarian state is, he states, to
break the "spirit" (246) of its citizens. The Politics is a book
rich in detail and in historical example- it lets us know
just what policies are used by Sparta or Athens or Corinth in just what circumstances. But it is also a book of
consummate psychological insight. Aristotle's discussion
of tyranny is much more than a catalogue of ruinous
taxes, unjust laws, and inhuman penalties. He writes
about the effect of tyranny in a way which must have
captured Orwell's eye. He writes about the destruction
of what is intuitive in human character and free in human
expression. He is concerned with friendship, confidence,
trust, feeling and, above all, with spirit. He refers again
and again to "spirit:' coming back to it each time as the
ultimate object of tyrannic power. He insists on the
human necessity for association, and his essay is largely
an analysis of the forms it takes, forms which are the
natural object of unjust power. Nineteen Eighty-Four is
about association in all its forms, from the sexual union
through the choice of friends to the formation of the family, the consent of the community, and the largest voluntary association of all, the polis itself. Each of its episodes
in some exemplary way concerns the breakdown of
human association.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is not a story of political resistance.
It is about the operation of sensibility. It does not describe
the activity of a political cell-Winston's ideas of rebellion
are never more than hopes or illusions. The narrative
is about sexual and aesthetic consciousness. It is about
a man with a sense of taste and style who perceives things
artistically. Its central symbolic object is a piece of coral
embedded in glass; its central act is the act of love.
May I suggest that O'Brien as well as Orwell has read
the Politics? To O'Brien, political theory ofthe past is an
explicit challenge. He mentions that theory constantly,
and always points out how its conception of totalitarianism has been exceeded by his own contribution to that
subject. He takes an unholy delight in posing as a teacher,
conducting a "dialogue" with the uninitiated, discussing
to what degree the future will exceed the moral limits
of the past. He gives us what Aristotle did not guess at:
the reason why tyranny is pleased by power. And he is,
I think, fully and perhaps exquisitely aware of the truism
SPRING 1984
�that is at the beginning of Aristotle's fifth Book: "Men
tend to become revolutionaries from circumstances connected with their private lives" (227), He must be aware
of this, for it is this idea which validates his unending
search for deviations of taste, style, ·.or feeling.
O'Brien competes with all political theory before him.
When he discusses oligarchy his version surpasses the
classical definition; and when he discusses tyranny his
version outdoes the pallid beginnings of injustice
previously recorded. He has the trait-almost the ticof comparing the future with tbe past, which is to say
of comparing his own megalomania to that of all tyrants
before him. What all previous books say about the effect of tyranny on private life will be exceeded after the
orgasm has been "abolished:' The entire philosophical
category of "private" life will also have been abolished.
III The Tactics of Authoritarian Power:
How does the authoritarian state respond to the
natural human desire for association? By defending itself,
Aristotle writes, from "everything likely to produce the
two qualities of mutual confidence and a high spirit:' The
unjust state will prohibit public meetings and make
"mutual acquaintance" difficult. This necessarily means
the invasion of privacy, and Aristotle tells us how that
is accomplished. In essence, men must live their private
lives in public. What they say and whom they talk to must
always be under scrutiny. Under tyranny, all citizens must
literally be under the eye of government.
Citizens must not confuse themselves by assuming
that there are independent and opposed public and private realms. Aristotle's locution for the destruction of privacy is, to say the least, striking and anticipatory. The
forced exhibition of private association,
is meant to give the ruler a peep-hole into the actions of his
subjects, and to inure them to humility by a habit of daily
slavery. (244)
By no stretch of the imagination was Aristotle thinking
of television. But Orwell, who was thinking of television,
may have joined an idea to its technological realization.
In general, Orwell allows O'Brien to show how previous political theory, disarmed by its own limits of imagination (and possibly by its own decency), has failed to
understand both the power of the state and the human
nature upon which it feeds. When we read the list of state
activities provided by Aristotle we sense that it provides
Orwell with a skeleton structure for his story, and provides O'Brien with a history that must be exceeded:
A fourth line of policy is that of endeavouring to get regular
information about every man's sayings and doings. This entails a secret police like the female spies employed at Syracuse,
or the eavesdroppers sent by the tyrant Hiero to all social
gatherings and public meetings. (Men are not so likely to speak
their minds if they go in fear of a secret police; and if they
do speak out, they are less likely to go undetected.) Still another
line of policy is to sow mutual distrust and to foster discord
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
between friend and friend; between people and notables; between one section of the rich and another. Finally, a policy pursued by tyrants is that of impoverishing their subjects .... The
imposition of taxes produces a similar result. ... The same
vein of policy also makes tyrants war-mongers, with the object of keeping their subjects constantly occupied and continually in need of a leader. (244-245)
One grants that these ideas have passed into universal
currency and, after two thousand years, are to be found
scattered from Machiavelli to Lenin. But the vein of
discourse in Nineteen Eighty-Four is pointedly historical.
O'Brien's favorite rhetorical mode is to invoke the incomplete tyrannies of the past from Egypt to the Inquisition to National Socialism whenever he wishes to establish
the ultimacy of the Party. Orwell's historical references
and phrases are more pointed than a casual reading may
bring out. For example, Aristotle states that one of the
best ways to waste civic resources intentionally is to
undertake useless public projects: "one example of this
policy is the building of the Egyptian pyramids: another
is tbe lavish offerings to temples" (245). The Theory and
Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism agrees that it is indispensable for tyranny to destroy private wealth by public
means, but it takes the idea literally. O'Brien-Goldstein
considers Aristotle's example ...!'it would be quite simple
to waste the surplus labor of tbe world by building temples
and pyramids" (85)- but rejects it as too simple a solution. The new tyranny not only builds enormous public
works which waste private wealth; it then destroys them
by war in order to absorb yet more taxation.
There are other references to classical political theory,
and otber echoes of Aristotle's text. Aristotle had written that under tyranny it is customary "to increase the
poverty of the tyrant's subjects and to curtail their leisure"
(245) and O'Brien modifies that formulation: "Leisure;'
he writes, "must be abolished because the totalitarian state
is erected "on a basis of poverty" (84 ). A much larger
theme develops from the use of Aristotle's second major
conclusion about unjust power: the aim of such power
being to reduce citizens to slaves and conquer their innate "refusal to betray one another or anybody else" (246).
Since that theme is in a sense Orwell's book, it becomes
difficult even to organize resemblances. The phrase "betray" is everywhere in the text. But it is used in a special
sense. It does not mean giving up political secrets under
interrogation- it means giving up human association,
betraying the "spirit" of mutual trust, loyalty, confidence,
and love. This conception dovetails with Aristotle's. He
is intensely concerned with the existential conditions of
the unjust polis. The examples he gives and, as we shall
see, the conclusions he reaches are about the emotional,
spiritual, and ethical effects of tyranny upon association.
The unjust polis, he writes, corrupts the feelings of its
citizens, and intends above all "to break their spirit:'(246)
Before he is tortured, Winston makes an important
distinction between confession and betrayal. We should
be aware that Orwell is having him follow the implication of the Politics: that is to say, confession is a political
29
�act while betrayal is an act directed against human
association. Julia, who is measurably less conscious than
Winston, begins this particular exchange by saying that
"Everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They torture you" (73). Winston's reply is as follows:
"I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What
you say or do doesn't matter; only feeling~ matter. If they could
make me stop loving you- that would be the real betrayal."
(73-74)
The distinction is Aristotelian. It signifies not only that
the unjust polis must maintain order but that it must
internalize it. If it prevents "trust" and "confidence" from
developing, it prevents the development of the one thing
it really fears, association independent of political control.
Under torture, Winston first betrays all of humanity, with one vital exception. That is to say, he confesses.
Because confession is not betrayal, he remains, after the first
stage of torture, in some sense immune to the power of
the state. The measure of his character is not only that
he knows this, but admits it:
"You have whimpered for mercy, you have betrayed everybody and everything. Can you think of a single degradation
that has not happened to you?"
Winston had stopped weeping, though the tears were still
oozing out of his eyes. He looked up at O'Brien.
"I have not betrayed Julia;' he said.
O'Brien looked down at him thoughtfully. "No;' he said,
"no; that is perfectly true. You have not betrayed Julia." (121)
Being a good reader of the Politics, O'Brien knows the
distinction that Winston has unconsciously raised. He
reserves further punishment for him, of the kind that will
assuredly "break" his "spirit:' It is of some interest that
O'Brien's phrase, "you have betrayed everybody and
everything'' rings a change on Aristotle's implicit definition of the free and noble condition: the "refusal to betray
one another or anybody else!'
There is an answering passage, after Winston has
been to Room 101 of the Ministry of Love:
"I betrayed you;' she said baldly.
"I betrayed you;' he said. (129)
Julia's explanation is worth some emphasis: "After that;'
she says, "you don't feel the same toward the other person any longer!' The words are the words of Orwell, but
the ideas are the ideas of the Politics. When mutual trust,
confidence, or love disappear, then the "spirit" has in fact
been broken. Human association, the only rival left to
the power of the state, has itself been "betrayed!'
Sometimes words are identical-a key phrase like
"oligarchy" is an automatic reference to its source. It is
as much an indicator of Plato and Aristotle as the phrase
"surplus labor'' is of Marx. Sometimes the words are only
echoes. But the two texts continuously bear upon each
other. There are some small mysteries which crossreference may be able to clarify. For example, the beginning of Nineteen Eighty-Four is anti-feminist. It is so in
30
a special way, Winston being normally sexual and in fact
highly appreciative of the female body. But he hates
women. Or is it that he fears them?
He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and
pretty ones. It was always the women, and above all the young
ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the
swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy. (6)
Some nosing zealot in the Ministry (a woman, probably; someone like the little sandy-haired woman or the dark-haired girl
from the Fiction Department) might start wondering why he
had been writing during the lunch interval ... and then drop
a hint in the appropriate quarter. (14)
Since Orwell did not write like this in his other works,
the presumption is that he had something particularly
in mind. I think that he reworked classical misogyny in
this case, which becomes clear if we consider the source
for this idea about "amateur spies!' Aristotle is one of the
great anti-feminists, and he credits women with
totalitarian proclivities. Within slightly more than a single
page in the Politics (244-245) he refers to "a secret police,
like the female spies employed at Syracuse"; to tyrants
who customarily "encourage feminine influence in the
family, in the hope that wives will tell tales of their husbands"; and to the fact that "slaves and women are not
likely to plot against tyrants."
I have so far talked about tactical resemblances between two books. I would like to conclude with a more
strategic assessment. During the course of his torture at
the Ministry of Love Winston discovers the motives of
the Party. They seem to transcend ordinary political ends:
Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling.
Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be
capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or
curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall
squeeze you empty, and then fill you with ourselves. (113)
In one sense, this statement reveals the characteristic
megalomania of both O'Brien and the Party. O'Brien is
a character of fiction, and one of the things about him
is that he enjoys assuming the God. But the passage also
has an intense connection to the Politics. It is about
changes in emotion and conception- not really about
political changes at all. It is about human association
specifically; that is, about the feelings which connect people to each other. In short, the passage is about what we
should now call social psychology.
When we come to Aristotle's conclusions about the
aims of tyranny- conclusions which he emphatically
states twice on a single page- we see that he defines the
human changes imposed by tyranny also in terms of social
psychology. In fact, he defines the end of tyranny as the
accomplishment of change in human feelings. The following passage, which sums up Aristotle's view of the ends
of tyranny, is about psychology and ethics:
Their first end and aim is to break the spirit of their subjects.
They know that a poor-spirited man will never plot against
SPRING 1984
�~ybody.
Their second aim is to breed mutual distrust. Tyranny
never overthrown until men begin to trust one another; and
this is the reason why tyrants are always ~touts with the good.
They feel that good men are doubly dangerous to their authori~y -dangerous, first, in thinking it sham!'! to be governed as
tf they were slaves; dangerous, again, in their spirit of mutual
and general loyalty, and in their refusal to betray one another
or anybody else. The third and last aim of tyrants is to make
their subjects incapable of action. (246)
IS
The vocabularies of the two passages are similar. They
are both about human association. They are both about
~oc~a! ,~eeli~gs. Aristotle_ writes about "trust;' "loyalty," and
spint while Orwell wntes about "love; "friendship;' and
"integrity." It may be assumed that they bear on each other
in a certain way, for they both argue that a political relationship is founded on existential conditions. But the passage in Orwell is clearly very extreme. It seems almost
if the use of the term can be imagined, very romantic. It
looks at the history of political exploitation and states
that nothing in the history of the world can match its
own tactics and strategy.
It may be useful to compare O'Brien's sense of the
ends of tyranny with modern historical examples because
criticism of Nineteen Eighty-Four is almost hopelessly bound
up with the belief that the book is about actual totalitarian
regimes. My own sense of the matter is that it does not
make much sense to interpret the revelations which come
about during Winston's torture at the Ministry of Love
entirely as if they reflected "reality:' We know rather a lot
about twentieth-century totalitarianism after reading The
Destructzon of European jewry, The Origins of Totalitarianism,
and The Gulag Arch1pelago. These books are significantly
different from Orwell- that is to say, they perceive ends
different from those stated by O'Brien .. They do not suggest that the modern totalitarian state aims at anything
more than the extinction of opposition. The KGB is not
interested operationally in the feeling per se of dissidents:
it uses torture to beat people down and drugs to make
them helpless or psychotic.
In The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt sumnlarized the state's attitude toward political opposition:
"Criminals are punished, undesirables disappear from
the face of the earth; the only trace which they leave
behind is the memory of those who knew and loved them
:'nd one of the most difficult tasks of the secret polic~
IS to make. sure that even such traces will disappear
together with the condemned man."B And of course it
must be so- in a nation of 250 million prisoners it does
no ~ood at all to have the worst offenders on parole. The
business of the secret police is to eradicate them not
change their minds.
'
!_'he secret P<;>lice are. not romantic nor do they have
a philosophy. Nmeteen E<ghty-Four misleads us if it suggests that we are speaking only of historical possibilities
and examples. Secret police do not read books or worry
about the past, although O'Brien spends an awful lot of
his time doing both. Secret police have what may be called
the opposite of a philosophy, for they do whatever the
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
leadership requires, even if it contradicts what they were
told an hour before. In fact, as Hannah Arendt so brilliantly describes, the secret police find no trouble in doing things clearly contradictory at the same time: awarding some poor befuddled bureaucrat a medal and recommending the firing squad for him.
Need it be added that the secret police are often content with the appearance only of submission? They are
a huge bureaucracy, and find perfection to be quite hopeless. What they want is compliance, not conversions. For
example, in Poland right now the state is quite happy
not to have demonstrations take place: the provocateurs do
not go about arranging for people to undertake resistance
in order to be entrapped.
There certainly seems to be a big difference between
actual totalitarian ends and those stated by Orwell. It
must be fairly plain, if we return to O'Brien's revelation,
that he has no political objective. But he does have a
political-theory objective. And that objective is what
causes the book to have such striking powers of arousing outrage in the reader. It is concerned with what I
should call the nightmare of philosophy. Like the writing
of Machiavelli it holds a dagger to the body of the West.
It might first be noted that there is a difference between the book's quality and its effect. One recognizes
that Nineteen Eighty-Four is an influential but not a great
novel. It cannot be compared to anything by Dickens or
] ane Austen or even to writers not up to their exceptional
standard. Orwell's mind is first-rate and his language is
always a pleasure to read, but clarity and purpose do not
make great art. Why then is Nineteen Eighty-Four, which
IS not a great novel, a great book?
In_part because it ~ddresses a great concern meaningfully; m part because 1t belongs to a series of books and
meditations which have in certain ways not only captured
but formed our imagination. The reader will understand
when I say that this book-which is not great literaturebelongs with the Inferno, with Pilgrim~ Progress, and with
another book sharing its characteristics, The Prince. In
some important ways, even now in the Age of Criticism
not fully understood, such books provide the archetype
of experience: that is to say, we refer back to them to
understand our own experience. Not all of these books
are equal, but each of them has been definitive. Frankenstein is a much lesser work than the Inferno, but it has
become its own kind of datum.
. The reason why Nineteen Eighty-Four belongs with
Pdgnm~ Progress and the rest is its view of the past. Among
a gre~t ma~y other books it has in a singular way come
to gnps w1th a problem that has engaged political
philosophy since its beginnings. That problem, in one
?f 1t~ shapes, has been brilliantly stated by Isaiah Berlin
In his famous essay on Machiavelli:
If Machiavelli is right, if it is in principle (or in fact: the frontier seems dim) impossible to be morally good and do one's
duty as this was conceived by common European, and especially Christian, ethics, and at the same time build Sparta or
31
�Periclean Athens or the Rome of the Rrpublic or even of the
Antonines, then a conclusion of the first importance follows;
that the belief that the correct, objectively valid solution to the
question of how men should live can in principle be discovered,
is itself in principle not true. This was a truly erschreckend
proposition. 9
The principle of the good social life is familiar even to
literary critics. We see it at work-and being undermined- in every one of Shakespeare's political plays.
Berlin continues:
One of the deepest assumptions of western political thought
is the doctrine, scarcely questioned during its long ascendancy,
that there exists some single principle which not only regulates
the course of the sun and the stars, but prescribes their proper behavior to all animate creatures. Animals and sub-rational
beings of all kinds follow it by instinct; higher beings attain
to consciousness of it, and are free to abandon it, but only tO
their doom. This doctrine, in one version or another, has
dominated European thought since Plato; it has appeared in
many forms, and has generated many similes and allegories;
at its centre is the vision of an impersonal Nature or Reason
or cosmic purpose, or of a divine Creator whose power has
endowed all things and creatures each with a specific function;
these functions are elements in a single harmonious whole,
and are intelligible in terms of it alone.
This was often expressed by images taken from architecture: of a great edifice of which each part fits uniquely to the
total structure; or from the human body ... or from the life
of society.
We know these great metaphors, in Shakespeare, in Herrick, and in Sir Thomas Browne:
There are two books from whence I collect my divinity; besides
that written one of God, another of his servant nature, that
universal and public manuscript that lies expansed unto the
eyes of all; those that never saw him in the one, have discovered
him in the other.10
But such metaphors now have only psychological validity, for since Machiavelli we have been forced to conclude
that they were wrong, that there is no connection between morality and government, or between individual
and "body" politic. Since Machiavelli, Berlin writes, we
have for the most part believed simultaneously in Christian morality and in the political realism of Machiavelli.
But the two contradict each other, for Christianity cannot govern and the state is immoral. It is a Gordian knot.
Philosophers have described the effect of Machiavelli
on the West as "the wound that has never healed." Much
the same might be said of Nineteen Eighty-Four. But
perhaps I ought to put the matter this way: is this book
so traumatic to its audience because of its unequalled
mastery of description of the art of torture? Or because,
as so many suggest, it accurately describes the modern
totalitarian state? Or because of some other reason, a
reason more tragic still, but less visible?
Nineteen Eighty-Four accepts and even exemplifies the
ideas of Machiavelli- not to say the ideas of Lenin, Stalin,
32
and Hitler. But it goes beyond making a fiction of reality. It is about a world without justice. It tells us that
guilt and innocence do not matter, that there is no difference between good and evil. It tells us that the object
of power is power- not pain, not punishment, not
redemption, not correction, not even pleasure. It even
tells us that sanity does not matter, that reason has
nothing to do with rule.
It describes a world of random incident. No matter
how tightly organized the Party may be, and no matter
how strategic its intentions, life in Oceania is a series
of accidents. There is no relationship between necessary
causes and outcomes. Nothing really matters; there is
no definitive boundary between guilt or innocence. Nineteen Eighty-Four offers a great reversal to the concept of
predestination: all within it is a matter of chance. Even
the most perfect monad cannot hold; even Parsons
whispers in his sleep.
Since its beginnings and in all of its times of trouble, the West has feared and rejected the idea of chaos.
We have had much less trouble accepting the idea of the
Apocalypse. Apocalypse is, after all, intelligible. But Nineteen Eighty-Four is built upon the most primitive of
mysteries, of a return to a condition to us so fearful that
our whole mythology is about its transcendance. The
book is much more troubling than the art of the end of
all things. In a sense it is the most illiberal of all books
ever written, for it presupposes that all men will return,
without much troubling themselves, to the chaos which
is the very opposite of civilization.
Even The Gulag Archipelago is about justice, for it is
profoundly concerned with the discrepancies between
Soviet law and punishment. But Nineteen Eighty-Four is
not about the difference between constitutional and actual rights. It is about the nightmare of the West, a nightmare that has been sublimated and soothed by an endless
sequence of meditations on the just society. The reason
why this book is so literally reflective, why it alludes to
Aristotle, Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Lenin, and Hitler,
is that even the last of these had an order in mind. When
Nineteen Eighty-Four tells us that the past is over it means
that the dream of order and justice is itself finished; that
it never corresponded to human actuality. And, even for
moderns, it is a shock to know that the past is over. How
much more of a shock must it be to know that there is
no connection between the self and the polis?
Perhaps the last word ought to be left to a book that
has every few pages intruded into my text and into that
of Orwell: The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
tells us, among other things, of the failure of dreams:
In more primitive ages, when a just and peaceful society was
in fact not possible, it had been fairly easy to believe in it. The
idea of an earthly paradise in which men should live together
in a state of brotherhood, without laws and without brute labor,
had haunted the human imagination for thousands of years.
... But by the fourth decade of the twentieth century all the
SPRING 1984
�main currents of political thought were authoritarian. The
earthly paradise had been discredited.·. ~90)
To give up the vision of an earthly ,paradise is to give
up more than a myth or speculation. Tt is one of the many
vestiges of history which are to be surrendered. There
is a vision which underlies even this, however. The idea
of a just state, the aggregate of good men, has also
"haunted" or inspired the imagination of the West "for
thousands of years." Why has that been so? First, because
political science itself began in Plato and Aristotle with
that conception: it is by now woven into the strands of
imagination. And second, because the idea of the just
state has always been in critical relationship to the imperfect facts of social life. What Orwell writes aboutwhat makes this book so painful- is the destruction of
those values which make imperfect life endurable.
This book is not frightening because of its absolute
mastery of the detail of torture and disgust. Nor because
it puts totalitarian practice into believable fiction. It
frightens us- arouses what Orwell late in his life called
our "instinctive horror" 11 - because it conceives of a social
order without justice, and of human nature quite capable
ofliving that way. There is one more thing: while Orwell
was writing this book and thinking about it he was reflecting constantly on the development of such a social
order. 12 He was powerfully affected by the futurist novel
li0: by Zamyatin and in his review of it he said, "what
Zamyatin seems to be aiming at is not any particular
country but the implied aims of industrial civilization:' 13
That is to say, Orwell himself saw the future of tyranny
as a natural outcome of the ideas and realities of the past.
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Perhaps that is why his own novel of the future has so
much to say about the past, and why his own Grand Inquisitor takes such pride in his idea of progress.
1. From Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind (London, 1953), p. 42. Reprinted
in George Orwell: The Critical Heritage, cd. Jeffrey Meyers (London, 1975),
p, 286,
2. The Republic of Plato, ed. Francis MacDonald Cornford (Oxford University Press, 1945), p. 115.
3. George Orwell, "Such, Such Were the Joys," The Collected Essays, Journalism
and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (New York,
1968). IV. p, 336,
4. Ibid, p. 338.
5. The Politics of Aristotle, cd. Ernest Barker (Oxford, 1981) p. 245. Subsequent page references arc to this edition. This standard edition was first
published in 1946, just as Orwell began thinking of his novel of the future.
6. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, ed. Irving Howe (New York, 1963),
p. 93. Subsequent page references are to this edition.
7. Herodotus, The Persian Wars, trans. George Rawlinson (New York, 1942),
p. 417,
8. Hannah Arendt, The Origins rif Totalitarianism (Cleveland, 1962), p. 433.
On page 426 Arendt writes that "the task of the totalitarian police is not
to discover crimes, but to be on hand when the government decides to
arrest a certain category of the population."
9. Isaiah Berlin, Against the Current (New York, 1980), pp. 66-67.
10. This passage from Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici has been reprinted
in Seventeenth-Century Prose and Poetry, ed. Alexander Witherspoon and Frank
Warnke (New York, 1963), p. 336.
ll. Orwell, "Pleasure Spots," Collected Essays, IV, p. 81.
12. See for example "The Prevention of Literature," Collected Essays, IV, pp.
59-72; the review of We, pp. 72-75; and the letter to Herbert Rogers,
pp. 102-103, all of which speculate on the course of contemporary society, and the relationship of present actualities-many of them
technological-to the future. This volume covers the years 1945-1949, the
last five years of Orwell's life.
13. Orwell, Collected Essays, IV, p. 75.
33
�Is Nature A Republic?
David Stephenson
propose first of all to talk about "energy:' The word
is so common and so current that it is difficult to
extricate ourselves from the conviction that the
conservation of energy comes close to being the
unquestionable foundation of all physics and even
of all nature. Recent decades have made us acutely aware
of the necessary connection between energy and economy,
energy and threat, energy and business. Even news
reports frequently imply that energy is something that
our comforts and lives depend on, and we save, spend,
or waste it with greater consequence than we do money.
It is hard to remember that such universal affirmation
of this law is relatively recent; that three centuries ago
"conservation of energy." was not a conscious part of
anybody's thinking. How can one imagin~ ignorance of
the now so readily acknowledged presumption that
everyone must pay to accomplish a task; that a quantitative equivalence between effort and accomplishment
exists and can be expressed by a mathematical equation?
To question this "work-energy equation" nowadays would
arouse universl astonishment and ridicule. It is quite de
rigueur to presurrie the existence of unknown quantities
just to balance that equation when it seems to fail in some
experiment. Yet when Leibniz announced the first version of this law its apparently frequent failure in practice understandably discouraged many of those otherwise inclined to support his doctrines. There is a historical
mystery here: how did such a profound revolution in consciousness take place between Leibniz's day and our own,
resulting in the universal adoption of his essential theory,
when the overwhelming evidence of daily experience
seems to directly contradict it?
I
Mr. Stephenson, a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, delivered
this lecture at the Santa Fe campus in February 1983.
34
For we see the law apparently broken every day. Think
about it. Bodies skid to a stop, their energy of motion
vanishing into oblivion; the fire warms my hands without
thereby growing perceptibly colder; even the best bouncing ball fails to return quite to the hand that drops it;
clocks need rewinding; I wake up hungry from a sound
sleep; the table sustains a weight forever where my arm
would quickly grow tired. You tell me that I must look
more closely to discover the lost energy of these actions
departing in another form. But that demand really
amounts to assertion of a postulate, that, for example,
motion lost by friction is equivalent to the heat thereby
generated. There is no way of actually proving this
equivalence. The question of whether or not a law of conservation applies has been decided a priori. Might not
Aristotle's non-quantitative treatment of cause better correspond to what we see? Why should the fire lose heat
to what it warms any more than a teacher give up his
knowledge to a pupil in teaching him? And remember
that it is everyday experience that we are considering,
since we are seeking the reasons for the virtually universal
adoption of a law.
Conservational thinking has always persisted in some
form. Probably the oldest form derives from consideration of material things. Aristotle himself makes his four
elements mutually convertible but denies the possibility
of their emerging from nothing. Lucretius presents his
assurance that our bodily atoms will persist after death
as medicine to cure our fear of that event. But many
things are not conserved: knowledge, for example, or
disease, or perhaps even money. If I have a cold, it is
fortunately unnecessary to find someone else to give it
to in order to get rid of it. Money can be devalued or
invested, help to produce surplus value or can be gambled
away. Whatever knowledge you may gain from this lecture has nevertheless not left my side. On the other hand,
SPRING 1984
�conservation seems to be what we expect of whatever is
called "substance;' so our historical problem could be
restated: why and when did energy gain admission to
the category of substance?
If you are in doubt concerning the help offered by
such a metaphysical term, Leibniz will come to your aid
with a definition: "Substance is a being capable of action?'1 This definition even comprises an embryonic statement of the conservation law we seek. For consider a pendulum. Beginning at rest, it descends with increasing
velocity and then ascends and comes to rest again
momentarily before repeating and repeating the cycle of
motion and rest. Something, therefore, in the pendulum
even at rest is capable of the action that is manifest in
its subsequent motion. This substance, called "absolute"
or "living force" by Leibniz and later "energy"2 by others,
also appears to be transferable from body to body in an
elastic collision. In practice, however, some of this
substance, energy, always vanishes during any collision,
and it is quite possible to make the motion disappear entirely in what is called an "inelastic impact?' Fully aware
of the challenge to his theory of absolute force offered
by this experiment, Leibniz insists that despite appearances none of his precious substance is really lost:
it merely comes to be distributed insensibly among the
infinite infinitesimal parts of the bodies themselves after
such an inelastic collision. But this is an appeal to faith,
not evidence.
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
d _____ -"'
,_I
''-~'......
-
As pointed out later in the eighteenth century, the
theoretical justification for this faith immediately follows
if one makes another assumption, viz, that all interactions between bodies depend only on the distances between their particles, regarded as points. But even
Boscovich, whose universe is just such a sprinkling of
massy points separated by forces, and who thought in
other respects to have reconciled Newton and Leibniz,
refused to follow this hypothesis to its conclusion and rejected conservation of energy in the face of those vivid
violations exhibited by the inelastic impact that
characterizes our visible world.
Moreover, this example of inelastic impact may have
claims on us a priori, as it did on Newton, and on Maupertuis and others of Newton's successors during the succeeding century. For if we, like them, are true atomists- if
we commit ourselves to the belief that our material world
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
is assembled out of ultimately indivisible particles having some, though minute, extension- then these particles
must be absolutely hard: they cannot flex and change
shape as elasticity requires because they would then have
to have distinct parts. "If;' says Maupertuis, "in the majority of bodies the parts which compose them separate
or bend, this happens only because these bodies are heaps
of other bodies: simple bodies, primitive bodies, which
are the elements of all the others must be hard, inflexible, unalterable."3 Contact between such hard atoms,
therefore, could only follow the model of inelastic impact. Leibniz, in fact, only avoids this rock because he
denies the world an atomic foundation: matter is infinitely divisible.
Nevertheless, Maupertuis is not perfectly confident
of his atomic prejudices:
It appears, therefore, that one would be better grounded
in maintaining that all primitive bodies are hard, than
one would be in claiming that there are no hard bodies
whatever in nature. However, I do not know if the manner in which we know bodies permits us either the one
or the other assertion. 4
T
his doubt, together with a kind of natural piety,
led him to the formulation of one of the great
principles of physics, but one which does not depend on a special understanding of material constitution: the Principle of Least Action. ((When some change
in Nature happens, the Quantity of Action necessary for
this change is as small as possible." ((Quantity of Action"
he then defines to be the "product of the mass of the
bodies by their speed and by the space they travel:' 5 The
universality and unity of this principle obviously support and confirm Maupertuis's dedication to the discovery
of God's work in the world. For God, or Nature under
his dominion, thereby displays a kind of economy or even
parsimony. The Quantity of Action is not conserved, but
as little as possible appears at each natural event. The
relevance of final cause seems not to have vanished from
physics 6
With appropriate zeal Maupertuis seeks to derive
from this principle the known mathematical laws governing a variety of phenomena, including the refraction of
light, the equilibrium
of a balance or lever,
and both elastic and
inelastic impact. In
later, more capable
hands the Principle
emulates the fruitfulness
of Newton's Laws, in this
century proving remarkably
adaptable to Quantum
Theory and Relativity.
With great deference to
Maupertuis, his younger
B
contemporary, Euler, derived
35
�the path of a falling body from the principle, and
Lagrange and Hamilton soon afterwards based entire
systems of physics upon it. Maupertuis himself misapplied it. But in attempting to address the problem of impact he really invoked without realizing it the primitive
form of a totally different principle: the Principle of Least
Constraint.
To distinguish these two principles it should help to
compare them in their simplest manifestations:
1. Least Action involves the product oflength, velocity,
and mass. A ball thrown into the air describes a particular
arc ACB. The Principle of Least Action states that the
total action involved with this path is less than it would
be for any other under the same conditions. That is,
although the path is shorter for a flatter arc, e.g. ADB,
the velocity- determined by the height above the
ground' -will have to increase so much with respect to
corresponding points on the original arc that the sum
of the products of mass, velocity, and path segment for
the new path -which sum makes up the total actionwill exceed that for the original path ACB. Conversely
a longer path AEB, while decreasing the corresponding
velocities, more than makes up for this in the product
IfW~AC, W'~BC; U~BC, U'~AC.
IfW~AB, W'~O, U~BC, U'~AC.
Other supposititious values for U, U': BD, AD.
v.A
c
D
~
B
From the figure
EU2=Ac2+BC2 AD2+BD2
i.e., less than the supposititious EU2.
Example of two equal bodies with equal velocities AC, BC, and sticking to remain motionless at C thereafter (the actual case), or moving off together with velocity CD (a supposed alternative case). In
the first case velocities AC and BC would be lost upon impact, so
that these would represent U and U', the "deviations from free motion" caused by their meeting. The "constraint'' would according to
Carnot be represented by a quantity proportional to the squares of
these losses, i.e., to the rectangle on AB. On the other hand, the supposed alternative case would produce losses represented by AD and
DB, and "constraints" therefore proportional to the squares on these
lines, whose sum is clearly greater than this rectangle.
36
by the increased path length. Actual computation will
confirm the fact that the minimal path must be Galileds
parabola.
2. Least Constraint. A body, or (and this is the important case) a whole system of bodies linked together
rigidly, will move in such a way that the deviation in each
part from free motion is as small as possible. The
previously mentioned examples of inelastic impact satisfy
this principle in the following way: "free motion" in this
case would signifY that the bodies could be imagined as
not impeding one another, i.e., as penetrating one another
freely with velocities W, W', etc. Now the real nature
of the impact compelling the colliding bodies to each alter
its motion by amounts U, U ', etc. the principle determines this subsequent motion on the basis of collective
minimum for these deviations U. 8 One can easily
demonstrate in a Euclidean manner that the results of
the inelastic impact of equal balls we earlier saw are
precisely prescribed by this requirement alone.
However different these two principles appear, they
are yet more removed from the Newtonian- and to us
probably more familiar-world of push and pull, offorce
and resistance. For everything is by them determined
from a consideration of the whole array of what is possible, the actual motions we observe selected by Nature
according to their obedience to a universal principle involving some kind of economy. The whole procedure
resembles much more closely the planning and choice
we exercise consciously than does Newton's. Exactly what
is saved in the case of the second principle may not at
present be clear, but we will return to consider it later. 9
It was Lazare Carnot who first recognized the distinctness as well as the independent validity of the second principlel° Carnot is also largely responsible for
the discovery of a new quantity that is conserved in all
physical activity. He calls this quantity "moment-ofactivity" and identifies it with some very ordinary and
vulgar notions; of labor in particular and of wages; of
animal or human muscle power; of power drawn from
wind or water; of machines used to direct that power.
His practical interests in fact may provide the clue we
need to solve our original historical riddle of energy. For
our earlier dilemma can be resolved into two distinct
problems:
1. How can we account for the apparent loss of energy
in every physical activity? 2. How can such manifestly
different phenomena as heat, motion, and electric or
muscle power, all ultimately claimed to be different forms
of energy, be made to exhibit this essential kinship? The
questions are complementary. A reply to the second will
answer the fust. But this can only be done by the mediation of another concept, the concept of "work." Wind,
water, and fire can all drive engines whose work can be
quantitatively compared to what muscle can do. The conversion of motion into heat through friction can then,
at least theoretically, be restored to its original form by
letting that heat drive a suitable engine. Energy thereby
SPRING 1984
�becomes a substance taking various forms, but all of
which can exhibit the action we call ('work."
T
he name, Lazare Carnot, evokes very different
reactions in different circles. Scientists would
nowadays remember him, if at all, as an obscure
eighteenth century engineer preoccupied with machines
and their efficiency, and the author of ''Carnot's
Theorem;' which predicts that the more abrupt the
change the greater the amount of"living force" lost. Percussion of the parts in a machine makes it less efficient;
rapid acceleration- as in an automobile- wastes fuel. His
son, Sadi, is more famous, since he founded the science
of thermodynamics. To the politically or historically
minded, on the other hand, Lazare Carnot stirs up
memories of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Insulated from the first violent days of revolution
by prison walls, because he had been incarcerated after
presuming to propose marriage to his noble mistress, he
soon took charge of the new republic's military forces.
Although disorganized and discouraged by some military
defeats in the face of repeated attempts by other European nations to destroy the young republic and restore
royalty to France, the army under his leadership managed
to secure French borders and thereby save the republican
form of government from foreign invasion. As a member
of the Directorate and the Committee on Public Safety
he even survived Robespierre, without, so he later
claimed, condoning its bloody purges more than necessary.11 His association with Napoleon during the early
campaigns did not inspire him to accept more than a temporary post in the First Consul's government, and he even
dared to protest publically Napoleon's elevation to
emperor. Retiring to a private life of scientific and
engineering pursuits during the first decade of the nineteenth century, he did rejoin the army for the last
Napoleonic campaigns, earning thereby a final exile in
Germany, devoted primarily to writing memoirs defending his actions during the Terror. And in truth his greatest
passion seems always to have been the cause of republican
government.
His scientific works, though relatively few, all display
a unique marriage of the practical and the abstract. Consider, for example, his concept of a "machine." What he
calls a "machine in general" is any system of objects linked
together so that consecutive masses can neither approach
nor recede from one another: the links are rigid but the
machine as a whole need not be, since its parts may be
hinged even while they are linked by rigid connections.
Any ordinary machine, from a simple lever to the most
complicated factory engines satisfies this definition. But
so does a single rigid body, such as a baseball bat or a
hammer: their parts are rigidly connected. The curious
behavior of a top, gyroscope, or frisbee exhibits the unexpected effects of these linkages. Most animals- including
human beings- resemble machines, for their bones do
keep joints at fixed distances. 12 Most surprising of all,
perhaps: water and other practically incompressible fluids
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
are machines, as long as they remain in one continuous
or connected mass. For being incompressible, the fluid's
consecutive parts stay the same distance apart; they can
slide or rotate around one another but not approach one
another (imagine smooth sand in an hour glass). It is
in fact characteristic of Carnot's thinking that the agents
which operate machines are themselves in part machines,
especially since he ultimately can include elastic connections (like muscles), as well as rigid ones, within the same
theory.
Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and virtually all their successors agree on one subject: uniform rectilinear motion
is as natural as rest, so that any body will continue
whatever motion it has in a straight line if free to do so.
What happens, then, when moving bodies are linked
together to form a machine? Obviously their masses
mutually impede or assist one another. A lot of pushing
and shoving goes on, the resultant motion being a compromise, since each constituent body must depart in some
measure from its free motion. And this compromise continues to be worked out afresh each moment. The Law
of Least Constraint is an expression of this compromise.
By its means we can begin to understand why a spinning top does not fall over, the inertial motion of one
part counteracting the falling tendency of another. We
can also see how Galilee's experiments on inclined planes,
which he presumed to illuminate the motion of falling
bodies, could be corrected: the mutual constraint of the
parts of a rolling ball producing quite a different effect
from one that falls without rotating."
But it need not rest with the imagination alone to
demonstrate the effects of mutual constraint by the parts
of such "machines-in-general:' We can reduce these effects to experience: the experience of inelastic impact.
If one considers this experience, one can easily see that
before impact the bodies move freely (at least with respect
to one another); after impact their motion is constrained;
they are linked together as by rigid connections. Carnot's general conclusions about machines, therefore, can
be tested by experiment. Furthermore, the exact reverse
of inelastic impact is explosion, and one can view elastic
collision as the combination of these two phenomena:
inelastic impact followed by explosion. Thus elastic impact or connection may be regarded as a special case of
inelastic impact.
But whereas the Principle of Least Constraint seems
peculiarly well adapted to our understanding of machines, the equation of work and energy, or "momentof-activity" and "living force;' does not enlighten us so
obviously in this respect. After all, these machines all
seem necessarily to change the form of energy in ways
not entirely within our control, and any such change in
form can not be understood as a purely mechanical transformation. With this problem I arrive at the heart of my
thesis, one which I state with the more caution because
Carnot himself is not explicit about it, as far as I know.
It can be derived from his work by inference, but by inference only. I infer it primarily from the fact that the
37
�abrupt changes exemplified by inelastic collision are
primary for him, although he is not·'! confirmed atomist,
and so does not need to make this hypothesis 14
W
hat is crucial to Carnot's point- of view is his
refusal to get lost in the details of a problem.
He looks at phenomena grossly rather than
closely, and this "gross vision" is what I believe allows him
to ignore our ignorance of the inner mechanics of bodies
and machines._ If"a body meet a body;' the more intimate
consequences of this meeting seem to depend very much
on private matters beyond our ken. That is, for I am of
course thinking of mechanics, whether the bodies have
a continuous or atomic internal structure, whether they
or their parts are hard or soft, elastic or inelastic, it remains true that collision alters their motions. It is possible for Carnot to say something significant by consciously
ignoring the doubtful processes of impact, and confining
his attention to their relatively simple relationships before
and after impact. Motion is probably conveyed from one
body to all the parts of another through an incredibly
complex sequence of inner vibrations and interactions;
yet when this inward disquiet has subsided the bodies
do have some motion as wholes, and this latter motion
is the focus of his apparent interest. One could perhaps
see him as anticipating the modern quantum physicist's
tendency to imagine particles entering and leaving a
"sphere of ignorance;' within which they affect one
another in some mechanically indeterminate way. The
assumption of such a "sphere of ignorance" then permits
one to be relatively knowledgeable about what happens
outside that sphere, and the relationships between objects before and after entering it. Inelastic impact from
this point of view amounts merely to a succession of
events in which bodies at first moving independently of
one another are somehow-we need not say how-constrained to move off together.
What does this "gross vision" mean for energy? The
following dialog imagined between Carnot and Leibniz
should answer this question:
Carnot~'I observe rigid bodies and connections all around
me, and many degrees of absurpt and inelastic impact but
nothing so perfectly elastic as to entirely conserve your 'living force'?'
Leibniz~'But these bodies can not be perfectly inflexible,
for my reason demands that changes take place gradually,
according to Nature's great Law of Continuity. The transfer
of motion from one body to another takes time; viz., the
time during which those bodies remain in contact while
changing shape."
Carnot~'ln that case, as I have shown mathematically, no
'living force' would ever be lost!"
Leibniz (with evident satisfaction)~'Exactly!"
Carnot~'Nevertheless one ought to explain the appearance
of such a loss. It is after all manifest that 'living force' does
disappear from the scene of action in most, perhaps even
in all actions where bodies do not move freely but constrain
one another."
38
Leibniz~'I am content to find that you have confirmed my
expectations for the eternal survival of'absolute force; and
that the Principle of Continuity required by reason has in
fact entailed this survival. Look closely enough at an apparent discontinuity in Nature and you will discover continuity."
Carnot ~'Why should I not trust my observation that
changes do often happen abruptly, and that in fact the more
abrupt the more 'living force' lost?"
Leibniz ~'Your senses are not fine enough. They need to be
corrected by reason?'
Carnot~'But you are looking too closely! The trees are
obscuring the forest. Even if as you say motion and 'living
force' does survive in the microscopic motions of a body's
parts, it remains irretrievable for me. The gross picture remains the significant one. Perhaps it is true that 'living force'
is never lost, but it is always wasted, sometimes more and
sometimes less. That is, it is lost for all practical purposes."
At this point we might add two other characters to
our imagined dialog. Robert Mayer or Joule, or even
Count Rumford if present would no longer be able to
restrain his impatience ---='But you are talking about heat!
Could I not recover the 'living force; which you think
is permanently wasted, by applying the heat it generates
to run an engine?"
It is not Lazare Carnot, but his son Sadi who answers
this question. The answer is "No. There is no hope of
recovering all that 'living force'." Unfortunately
unavoidably abrupt changes in the temperature have the
same effect on a heat engine that the abrupt changes
characteristic of inelastic impact have on a purely
mechanical one: Loss, not of energy, but of usable energy.
This is an expression of the famous Second Law of Thermodynamics, of which therefore the elder Carnot's
theorem proves to be an adumbration.
This kind of a dialog somehow reminds me of Plato's
"Phaedo:' All of Socrates's assurances of immortality can
not entirely dispel the grief of his friends in the face of
his impending death. Nor should it. It is at least as true
that he will leave this world as that he will survive somewhere else. So with energy, whose loss and preservation
inevitably and paradoxically take place simultaneously."
R
eturning to our original political question, we can
now easily see that Maupertuis's principle implies a naturla monarchy; Carnot's republic. The
success of the Principle of Least Action compares most
easily with the government of a single intelligence, which
chooses the course and concourse of bodies from among
all possibilities according to the end desired and a single
prevailing principle of economy. The Principle of Least
Constraint, on the other hand, is a kind of law of
freedom. Every body or particle deviates as little as possible from its free flight, and it does so only in order to
accommodate the greatest possible compatible general
freedom for all the others. Nature thus resembles the most
perfectly democratic republic. 16 A presiding intelligence
SPRING 1984
�may have been necessary to organize such a scheme, but
not to take part in its normal daily progress by specific
decisions.
We might further extract from this latter principle
the suggestion that, because of the continual jostle and
readjustment of small motions, the most fruitful view of
Nature would be to concentrate on the overall net effect, i.e., to adopt what I have called Carnot's "gross vision:' The concept of"work" or "moment-of-activity" then
goes one step further by disregarding all difference in
the forms of energy in the interest of a reliable quantitative judgment. But·as we have seen, this same vision
that confirms the conservation of energy denies us the
means to fully exploit it. The full fruitfulness of energy
emphasized by its equivalence in "work" is ultimately
snatched from us.
Whether Carnot's political experience guided his
scientific research or his science his politics is hard to
decide, but one cannot escape the suggestion of mutual
influence. Carnot might even have considered the
resemblance between revolution and abrupt change, but,
unable to prevent the inevitable losses in either case,
sought to minimize themY If you think it was sang froid
rather than cold blood that enabled him to maintain his
position in the ruling Committee during the Terror, then
you probably base your admiration on our present
knowledge of the final outcome of his and others' connivance: that is the French Republic itself. As to the
details of his actions during this tumultuous period: don't
look too closely!
Carnot's Principle of Least Constraint bespeaks a kind
of natural republic; I do not know what political
analogues there might be for work and energy, or for
the joining of these concepts in which he played a major
part. The quantification of endeavor implied by them,
however, does emphasize by contrast all the human ventures that elude quantification. The importance of the
former magnifies the latter: against "work" we must
balance "play." A contemporary of Carnot, Friedrich
Schiller, expressed succinctly the importance of this: "Man
plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man,
and he is only wholly Man when he is playing. 18 But that is
a subject worthy of another whole lecture.
1. Leibniz, "Principles of Nature and of Grace, Founded on Reason."
2. The man responsible for introducing "energy" as a technical term
with roughly the modern meaning (but with scope limited to simple mechanics) into English was Thomas Young (cf. his lecture
"On Collision": number 8 from'~ Course of Lectures on Natural
Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts;' vol. I, esp. p. 78; cf. also
vol. II, p. 52, §347). Though obviously deriving from Aristotle's, Evsj)ysm the word appeared more in literature than in scientific writing before the nineteenth century, and, with the exception of Jean Bernoulli's occasionally prophetic adoption of the
French "energie;' seems to have born the more figurative than
mathematically decipherable sense of "eagerness" and "assidu-
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
itY.' In the works of David Hume this literary term does approach
the scientific one.
3. Maupertuis, "Les lois du movement et du repos deduites d'un
principe meta physique;' reproduced in vol V of the collection
of Euler's works, "Leonhard Euleri Opera Omnia'' (Lausanne
1957), p. 294.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid. p.298.
6. This conclusion, however, may be qualified by the fact that, as
discovered by Hamilton, under certain circumstances there is
a maximum of action, and in general only an extreme, or, as he
calls it, "stationary" value of action is required.
7. Knowledge of energy relations may be seen to be implicit in this
statement, even though all that seems necessary is something
which determines velocity as a function of height alone.
8. Actually it is the same 1:MU 2 that is minimized for all masses
M, M', etc., and deviations, U, U', etc., the square serving to
make all quantities positive. Carnot's manipulation of these fictitious quatities, U and U', etc., derives directly from the
mechanics of d'Alembert, who used them largely to avoid what
he saw as the too metaphysical concept of "force." Carnot's own
impatience with metaphysics may also have its source here.
9. It is, however, a true minimum principle, unlike the first one.
10. The name "Principle of Least Constraint;' or "Prinzip der
kleinstel); Zwange;' comes from the mathematician Gauss (cf. his
paper, "Uber ein neues allgemeines Grundgetsetz der Mechanik;'
pp. 25-28 in "Werke," Bd. 5 (G6ttingen 1877). Whether or not
Gauss knew ofCarnot's work might be worth investigating. The
latter, however, explicitly recognized the beauty of this principle
even without such an appropriate name. After rigorously deriving the principle from Newton's laws, Gauss remarked on the
curious coincidence of its having the same mathematical form
as the important statistical law of least squares, of which he was
the author: was the same natural law appearing in two different
guises?
11. He did, for example, mercilessly extirpate such potential anarchists as Babeuf.
12. Carnot, however, carefully avoided the logical fallacies of
J.un:d.j3ucw; ei~ liAA.o yEvo<; and infinite regress involved in any
assumption that the will or desires were essentially mechanical.
Thus he says in his "Principes" (§73): ''Je rCpeterai d'abord, qu'il
ne s'agit point ici des causes premiCres qui font na'itre le mouvement dans les corps, mais seulement du mouvement dCj.3. produit et inherent a chacun d'eux."
13. The descent of a yoyo is the true limiting case of a body rolling
down in increasingly vertical plane.
14. I do not know of any statement by Carnot expressly concerning
atoms. However, the following assertion in his "Essai" (par.
XLVII) about fluids could hardly have been made by anyone
committed to a merely finite division of material in the world:
"On peux regarder un fluide comme l'assemlage d'une infinite
de corpuscules solides, detaches Jes uns des autres
~· His
definition of "fluid" in the "Principes" (§12) is a little more
cautious: "Les fluides sont ceux qui se trouvent divisCs en parties si fines, qu'elles echappent a tousles sens aides des meilleurcs
instrumens. Tels sont l'eau, l'air. Un fluide parfait seroit la limite
vers Iaquelle tendent tous ces fluidcs a mesure que Ia tenuitC des
particules est plus complCt. On ignore s'il existe un pareil fluide."
15. But lest I carry this analogy too far, I refuse to assert that just
as the engineer may see his task as preventing the loss of "living
force" as long as possible, so should Socrates seek to stay alive
at all costs.
16. Not necessarily a purely egalitarian republic: individual mass
is a factor in the calculation of constraint.
17. Consider, for example, Napoleon's opinion that Carnot was "easily deceived" simply because, as construed by Louis Madelin in
his "The French Revolution," he desired to bring order out of
chaos. (Heinemann English ed., p. 490)
18. Fifteenth letter of Friedrich Schiller's "On the Aesthetic Education of Man." (Ungar English ed., p. 80)
39
�Between Plato and Descartes The Mediaevel Transformation
Ontological Status of the Ideas
•
In
James Mensch
I
E
ven the most casual reader of philosophy senses
the abyss that separates Descartes from Plato.
In Descartes a concern for certainty overshadows and, in fact, transforms the original
Platonic conception of philosophy. Such a conception, as exemplified by the figure of Socrates, involves
fundamentally a love of wisdom. Wisdom- ao<pia- is
not the same as certainty. That which I can be certain
of does no I> necessarily make me wise (see Phaedo, 98 b ff.)
We can mark out the difference between Plato and
Descartes in terms of two constrasting pairs of terms: trust
and opinion for Plato, doubt and certainty for Descartes.
Plato describes our attitude to the visible realm as one
of trust -rr(cr~u; (see Republic, 511 e). Descartes begins his
Meditations by doubting his perceptions. For Plato, the
examination of opinion is a necessary first step in the
philosophical ascent to the highest things. He depicts
Socrates as enquiring into the opinions of the most
various sorts of men. There is in Socrates a certain trust
in the existence of "true" or "right" opinions. At times,
such opinions can become "hypotheses"; they can become
stepping stones leading to "what is free from hypothesis"
(Republic, 511 b). For Descartes, precisely the opposite attitude is assumed. Because of his lack of such trust, he
begins his Meditations by withdrawing from the company
of men and systematically doubting every opinion he has
hitherto accepted on trust. His position is summed up
by the statement: "... reason already persuades me that
James Mensch is author of a recently published book on The Question of Being in Husser/'s Logical Investigations. He is an alumnus of St.
John's College, Annapolis.
40
I ought no less carefully to withhold my assent from matters which are not entirely certain and indubitable than
from those which appear to me manifestly to be false .. :'
("Meditation I;' Philosophical works of Descartes, trans. E.
Haldane and G. Ross, New York, 1955, p. 145).
This lack of assent, of qualified trust, reveals the
transformation that philosophy undergoes in Descartes'
hands. It is a transformation of philosophy from a love
of wisdom to a love of certainty. Certainty, even if it concerns what is apparently trivial, becomes the philosopher's
goal. Here, we may observe that the certainty Descartes
pursues has an absolute, almost mathematical character.
His assent will only be given to matters "entirely certain
and indubitable." This is a sign that certainty has, indeed, become the object of Descartes' philosophical love.
What a philosopher loves and, hence, pursues must, in
Descartes' eyes, be something absolute; nothing less than
absolute certainty will satisfy Descartes.
How did this transformation occur? Our thesis is that
it is a result of a transformation in the minds of
philosophers of what it means for an idea or eloo<; to be.
More precisely put, it is the result of a transformation,
occurring in the Middle Ages, in the philosophical notion of the ontological status of the idea. Because of this
transformation, doubt replaces trust in our perceptions.
In the consequent shifting world of doubt, certainty
becomes the necessary object of both the beginnings and
final end of our philosophical enquiries.
II
B
efore we present the historical evidence for our
thesis, we must be clear on what is meant by our
term, ontological status. The term signifies "status
of being:' An entity can be said to have the status of a
merely possible being. Alternately, it can be said to have
SPRING 1984
�the status of an actual existent. Here, we must note that
the question of the content of a being-the question of
its essence or "whatness'!_ is a question distinct from that
of its ontological status. Whether something is, i.e., whether
it is actual or merely a possible existent- is not answered
by giving a concept delineating what the entity is. As
Thomas Aquinas puts this: "I can know what a man or
a phoenix is and still be ignorant whether it exists in reality" (De Ente et Essentia, ch. 4, ed. Roland-Gosselin, Kain,
Belgium, 1926, p. 34 ). Kant expresses the same point
by writing, '''Being' is obviously not a real predicate; that
is, it is not a concept of something which could be added
to the concept of a thing'' (Kitrik d. r. V, B 636). If it were
a real predicate, i.e., part of the concept of a thing, then
from knowing the what, I could know the whether- i.e.,
whether the concept refers to an actual or a merely possible existent. That this is not the case is shown by the fact
that there is not the least difference in content between
the thought of a possible existent and the conception that
arises from its actual presence. As Kant observes, the
thought of a hundred possible thalers contains the same
amount of coins as a hundred actual thalers (see Kritik
d. r. V, B 637). It is because of this that loans can be
repaid, or, more generally, that what we think of as merely
possible can be encountered and recognized in reality.
If being did make a conceptual difference, if it was
something "added to the concept of a thing," then when
I was actually repaid, I would reply, "This is not what
I had in mind when I thought of the possibility of
repayment:'
The distinction we have given has a technical name.
It is called "the distinction between being and essence."
"Essence;' as Aquinas says, "is what the definition of a
thing signifies" (De Ente et Essentia, ch. 2, ed. cit., p. 7).
It is the content of an idea, the idea, e.g., of a man or a
phoenix as delineated by its definition. Being, as distinct
from essence, refers to ontological status. Admitting this
distinction between being and essence, we must also admit that what is defined conceptually is not specified according to its mode of being. The question of its ontological status, the question concerning the actual or merely
possible being of what is defined, is not answered through
its definition.
This point applies directly to our thesis about the
ideas. It does so because the ideas, considered simply in
themselves, are the same as essences. An essence, as we
said, is the content of an idea. An idea, however, is just
its own content and nothing more. It is, we can say, a
pure conceptual unit. It is such by virtue of the fact that
it is, in itself, simply the conceptual content which a
definition delineates. Given the fact that idea and essence
denote the same thing, what we said about the essence
applies to the idea. The latter, too, is necessarily silent
on the question of being. Otherwise put: no examination of an idea as it is in itself- i.e., as a pure conceptual unit- can answer the question of actual versus possible being. This silence on the question of being, based
as it is on the very nature of the idea, is absolutely general.
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
It, thus, applies to the question of the idea's own ontological status. If we attempt to answer it by considering the conceptual content that is the idea, we are always
free to answer it in two possible ways. We are free to give
the idea the ontological status of a possibility or an
actuality.
III
T
he history of philosophy gives ample evidence
of this freedom. For the moderns, the idea has the
ontological status of a possibility. To illustrate
this, we shall take three prominent figures: Kant,
Whitehead and Husser!. According to Kant, every conception that the understanding itself grasps is grasped
under the aspect of possibility (see "Kritik d. U rtheilskraft;' Kanis Werke, Berlin, 1968, v, 402). For very
different reasons, Whitehead concurs. Ideas or essences
are "eternal objects?' But, as he says, "... the metaphysical
status of an eternal object is that of a possibility for an
actuality . . . actualization is a selection amongst
possibilities" (Science and the Modern World, New York, 1974,
p. 144 ). Husser!, who would not at all be found in
Whitehead's camp, agrees on this one point: possibility
and essentiality are the same. The reason he gives for
this is that the being of an idea is the being of an ideal
or pure possibility (see Logische Untersuchungen, 5th ed.,
Tuebingen, 1968, I, 129, 240, II/1, 115, II/2, 103). Such
examples could be multiplied. In modern times, the idea
is universally given the status of a possibility: an empirically grounded possibility for the empiricists, an ideal
or "puren possibility for the idealists. In neither case are
ideas considered to be actualities.
For Plato, however, this was just what the ideas or
dol] were when he introduced them into philosophical
discourse. He names them oUaia which is taken from the
participle of the verb to be, etV<ll. A corresponding root
is found in the word essence, in Latin, essentia. The root
esse means in Latin to be. To call something oUaia or essentia was to say that it actually is. It has what is signified
by the verb to be. The same point can be made by looking at the divided line (see Republic, 509 d-511 e). In a
proportion involving the ratio between reality and image, the ideas are at the top. They are supremely real.
They possess oucriu in the highest degree.
One of the ways to see why this is so is to look at
Parmenides' statement: TO yUp o.lYrO voEiv Eanv 'tE Ko.i
dvo.t. We can translate this as "the same thing exists for
thinking and being;' and take this to mean: "the same
thing can be thought as can be." 1 So understood, we have
a statement of logical equivalence: thinkability implies
being and being implies thinkability. Now, whether or
not this understanding agrees with Parmenides' original
intention, it does yield a notion that for Plato is crucial
for the status of the ideas. This is that thinkability and
being pertain to the same thing. More precisely expressed, that which makes it possible for a thing to be
also makes it possible for it to be thinkable. The com-
41
�mon ground of these possibilities is self-identity or selfsameness. This self-identity will turn out to be a mysterious quality. For the moment, hoWever, we may define
it as the quality of something remai11ing the same with
itself.
·
That such a quality is at the root of being is affirmed
by Plato when he writes that "the very being of to be"the (w-rit f} oi'Jaia -roU dvat- is to be "always in the same
manner in relation to the same things!' As Plato explains,
this is to be "unchanging" and, thus, to remain the same
with oneself. The ideas, "beauty itself, equality itself, and
or self-sameness. This self-identity is, we observe, what
allows us to take the divided line and see it as a hierarchy of beings with the ideas at the top. Levels of being
could not be ordered and ranked if there were not a single
standard of being by which to measure them. This, for
Plato, is the self-sameness which images, things, mathematical objects and ideas respectively possess to a more
and more perfect degree.
IV
every itself' are called "being'!...... 'tO Ov- and this, because
they "do not admit of any change whatsoever" (Phaedo,
78 d). Platds position follows from Parmenides' statement
and an analysis of what change means. Its fundamental
intuition is that change is always change of something.
This something is an underlying self-identity. The consequence is that real loss of self-identity is not change.
It is rather annihilation pure and simple of the individual.
Now, the presence of self-identity not only makes possible the persistent being in time of the individual, it also
makes possible the predication of an idea of this individual. If change negated all self-identity, then nothing
in our changing world could have any intelligible name
or sense. Let us take an example: a person proceeding
from a newborn baby to extreme old age. It is the
presence of some self-identical element in this process
that allows us to predicate the idea "human" of this individual. When the person dies, this is no longer possible. What answers to the concept "human" is no longer
there. The point is that self-identity is required both for
being and being thought. What is not self-identical cannot be thought and cannot be.
A number of consequences follow from this reasoning. The first is that the ability to recognize being and
the ability to predicate an idea of a thing always occur
together. They must, if they are both based on the apprehension of an underlying self-identity. Given that
predicating an idea of a thing is the same as the recognition of the thing as intelligible, "being" and "intelligibility"
must be understood as co-extensive terms. One cannot
ascribe the one without ascribing the other; whatever has
a share in being must also have a share in intelligibility.
Now, participation- !J.E'tEXEtV- means literally "having
a share in." It, thus, follows that participation must be
understood as participation in both being and intelligibility. We can put this in terms of the Platonic doctrine that
a thing is intelligible by virtue of its participating in its
idea. The idea itself is the conceptual expression of the
self-identity that Plato calls the oucriu of to be. Thus, one
can also say that a thing has being by virtue of its participating in its idea-i.e., participating in the self-identity
that the idea expresses in terms of an unchanging concept. From this it follows that participation demands a
single notion of being, one common to both the thing
and its idea. A thing could not possess its being by virtue of its participation in its idea if both did not exist
by virtue of the same oucriu of to be. This is self-identity
42
H
ow does the transformation between Plato and
the moderns occur? How do the ideas, from being understood as pure actualities-i.e., entities
capable of being called 16 ov- become for the moderns
expressions of possibility? From a philosophical standpoint, the answer to this question has already been indicated. Our paper's position is that self-identity is not
a sure criterion of being. In particular, it does not point
to the actual as opposed to the merely possible. The
reason for this is that, like any other conceptual content,
self-identity is part of the essential determination of a
thing. As forming part of a thing's essence, it is silent
on the question of the status of the being of a thing. Thus,
to return to Kant's example, we can say that a possible
entity-a hundred possible thalers-possess as much selfidentity as an actual identity. Granting this, we must admit that self-identity does not distinguish between the
actual and the possible. An argument for the actuality
of the ideas, which is based, like Plato's, on their selfidentity, is thUs bound to fail. Here, indeed, we can find
the underlying reason for the ambiguity which, as we
shall see, characterizes the use of the term "self identitY:'
The concept per se is not ambiguous, its meaning being
simply sameness with self. It becomes ambiguous when
we attempt to make it into a criterion of being, something which no concept is fitted to do.
For Plato, the attempt to make self-identity a standard of being arises in connection with his doctrine of participation. As we have seen, entities have being to the
point that they participate-or have a share-in selfidentity. How are we to understand the self-identity which
is to be shared in? We cannot understand it as simple
identity with self. That which shares with another its
identity with self would either absorb the other into its
own identity or else lose itself in the identity of the other.
Thus, if the ideas and things are related by virtue of their
sharing in self-identity, either the idea would absorb the
thing or vice versa. A similar difficulty arises when we
take self-identity as the quality of being one. Is the oneness
to be referred to the oneness of a thing or to the oneness
of the idea?
The Parmenides shows Platds awareness of the difficulty
we are pointing to. He has Parmenides ask Socrates
whether "... the whole idea is one and yet, being one,
is in each of the many" (Farm., 131 a, Jowett trans.).
Socrates agrees that this is his meaning and further agrees
SPRING 1984
�that things must participate either in the whole of an idea
or in a part of it. Both, however, seem to be impossible.
Participation by parts would make the ideas divisible by
parts. It would also make us say that we can predicate
"part" of an idea of a thing. Such notions are strictly
speaking unintelligible. Ideas, which are not material
things, are not materially divisible. But neither are they
conceptually divisible. A simple idea cannot be conceptually divided. As it has no parts, part of it cannot be
predicated of a thing. A complex idea, so divided, would
become a different idea. Here, the notion of the idea as
maintaining its self-identity by virtue of its unity
precludes all division. If, however, we say that the whole
of the idea is participated in, we still cannot maintain
the necessary oneness of the idea. If individuals participate in the whole of the idea, then, according to
Parrnenides, "one and the same thing will exist as a whole
at the same time in many different individuals and
therefore will be in a state of separation from itself' (Ibid.,
131 b). Self-separation seems the opposite of self-identity
when we understand this latter as the quality of being
one. To be as a whole in many is to be many rather than
being one.
As is obvious, at the basis of Parmenides' dialectic
is the ambiguity of the meaning of being one. There is
being one in the sense that an idea or concept is one;
there is also being one in the sense that an individual
thing is one. If, with Plato, we understand participation
in terms of a single notion of being, one common to both
the thing and the idea, then we are faced with the problem of trying to put together these two different ways of
being one. This, of course, is the famous problem of the
universals. It is: How can the idea or species be present
in the individuals, or how can the single individuals share
in the unity of the species? The endless debate on the
question is actually about the notion of being. Both sides
agree that the very being of to be is being one, but disagree on what this last means. If to be means to be one
thing, then the ideas, which only have conceptual unity,
are not. They are nothing but "common names" produced
by habit, circles of association, historical processes- the
list is endless. An illegitimate child who is not owned up
puts everybody under the suspicion of parentage. If we
reverse this and say that to be means to be a conceptual
unity, then the same fate befalls individual things. What
a thing is, its form or common nature, is what is. In itself,
in its own individual unity, the thing is not. Both solutions are obviously one-sided. For just as our senses convince us that there are individual things, so without conceptual unities we would have no specifically human mental life.
The debate points out a problem, but it does not per
se give a solution. When, in the Middle Ages, a solution
does arise, it occurs by virtue of a transformation of the
ontological status of the idea. The context of this solution is set by Aristotle. More specifically, it is set by his
denial that ideas or essences exist in themselves as opposed to being either in the mind or in objects (see
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Metaphysics, 991 b, 1-3, 1039 a, 24 ff.). For his medieval
followers, this denial of the self-subsistent idea or essence
does not solve the problem of the universals. The denial
leaves intact the two notions of being on which the problem revolves. The facts of predication show this. What
is predicated is the idea in the mind. Viewed in terms
of the activity of predication, the idea has the characteristic of universality. As engaged in the individual
object, however, the idea has the characteristic of
singularity. Thus, we do not predicate the "humanity"
of Socrates or Plato. The "humanity" of Socrates is part
of his individuality. It is an informing form that makes
him into a definite individual- i.e., into what Aristotle
calls a "primary substance." We do, however, predicate
the idea of humanity, which is present in our mind, of
both Socrates and Plato. It has the characteristic of
universality; that is, the character of one thing being applicable to many. How is this possible? How do we
recognize that the ·humanity of a sensibly perceived
singular is the same as the intellect's universal idea of
humanity?
his is the question Avicenna, and eleventh century Persian philosopher, asked himself. His
answer is that such recognition is possible only
by abstracting the idea or essence from both forms of
being one. The unity of a universal and the unity of an
individual must both be seen as accidental to the essence
considered in itself. Without such an understanding,
predication is impossible. Let us quote Avicenna on the
essence "animal":
T
'Animal' is the same thing whether it be sensible or a
concept in the mind. In itself, it is neither universal nor
singular. If it were in itself universal so that animality
were universal from the bare fact of being animality, the
consequence would be that no animal would be a
singular, but every animal would be a universal. If,
however, animal qua animal were singular, it would be
impossible for there to be more than one singular,
namely the very singular to which animality belongs,
and it would be impossible for any other singular to be
an animal (Logica, Venice, 1508, III, fol. 12 r, col. 1).
Avicenna is here arguing that we cannot explain predication by identifying the essence either with the universality of the concept or the singularity of the thing.
Predication requires both the thing and the concept, and
they must be brought together through an essence that
is recognizably present in each. If this is the case, then
Avicenna's conclusion apparently follows. It is that we
conceive something "accidental" to animality when
beyond its bare content we think of it as singular or
universal (see Ibid., see also Avicenna, Metaphysica, Venice,
1508, V, fol. 86 v, cols. 1-2).
Avicenna's position is in some sense a return to Plato;
but it is a return that transforms Platds original conception. Plato has Parmenides ask: "In the first place, I think,
43
�Socrates, that you, or anyone else who maintains the existence of absolute essences, will admit that they cannot
exist in us?" To which Socrates replies: "No, for then they
would not be absolute" (Parmenides, 133 c, trans. Jowett).
Now, it seems to be part of the logic :of the notions that
make up Platds thought they they are incapable of being absorbed in incompatible philosophical systems. They
have, in other words, a certain resistance to their being
misunderstood. This resistance is evident here. Attempting to follow Aristotle, Avicenna begins with the position that essences are either in the mind or in things.
But then he examines predication, and the logic of the
notion of an essence compels him to say that essences
cannot be identified either with being in the mind or being in things. In themselves, absolutely considered, they
are, as Avicenna shows in the passage quoted above, in
neither. Yet the very way in which Avicenna affirms this
exhibits the transformation he has wrought on Platds
essence. It is a transformation of the criterion of being
which underlies Plato's notion of participation.
The problem with this criterion in Avicenna's eyes
is its equation of being and being one. How can we
understand oneness with respect to the ideas? How can
an idea or essence be-that is, be one-in many individuals, each of which is also called one? Avicenna's
answer is to split the category of being by asserting that
to be does not necessarily mean to be one. Let us restate
this. If asked how the idea can be one and yet, being one,
be in each of the many individuals, Avicenna would reply
that it is precisely because unity is accidental to the being
of an idea that its being in the many does not prejudice
the idea's own inherent being. To make the idea one is
to make it present either in the mind or in things. It is
to make it either an idea in the mind which is predicable
of many or an individual which is a subject of predica·
tion but not itself predicable of another. Both forms of
being one are accidental to it as it is in itself. In itself,
it represents a form of being which is other than
predicable notion or physical object. Itself neither, it has
the possibility of being either. In other words, from the
point of view of mental notion or physical thing, it is just
this possibility of being either and nothing more. Its on·
tological status is simply that of a possibility.
The transformation that Avicenna has worked on
Platds original position can be indicated by noting the
following. For Plato, participation is based on a single
notion of being. As a consequence, participation in an
idea is also participation in being. For Avicenna, this is
not the case. The essence, insofar as it lacks unity, has
not the same being which an individual entity has. Thus,
participation in an essence does not mean participation
in actuality. How could it if the essence, instead of being supremely actual, represents only a possibility? In
fact, for Avicenna, the function of sharing being is taken
over by God, the only necessary being. Things cannot
become actual by participating in their essence, since
essence has, for Avicenna, no inherent status of actuality.
We need a further step to come to the modern no-
44
tion of an essence or idea. Once again it can be looked
upon -at least in a superficial way-as an attempt to
return to Plato. This return attempts to restore to the
essence some notion of unity.
hile Avicenna's influence was spreading through
the Arab world, the Latin West was independently developing a doctrine of the
transcendent properties of being. These are the properties of being irrespective of where it is found. There are
a number of these properties, but we need only mention one: unity. The doctrine taught that being and unity
are co-extensive properties. Where being is present, unity
is present. To the point that being is lacking, there is a
corresponding lack of unity. 2 When Avicenna entered the
West with his assertion that an essence had being but
not unity, only two alternatives seemed possible to those
who thought being and unity were co-extensive. They
could accept Avicenna's denial of the unity of an essence,
but reject his teaching on the proper being of an essence.
Alternately, they could accept his assertion that an essence
has a proper being, and reject his doctrine that unity
does not apply to essence as such. 3 The first course was
followed by Aquinas who writes that essence, considered
in itself, abstracts from "any being whatsoever" (De Ente
et Essentia, cap. 3, ed. cit., p. 26). In other words, lacking unity, it must, in itself, lack being. This is part of
what Aquinas means when he writes that essence and
being are "really distinct!' The famous defense of this
distinction is the treatise, On Being and Essence.
The second course was taken by Scotus. Scotus agrees
with Avicenna that essences have a proper being. He thus
argues against Aquinas's attempt to conceive of essence
apart from being (see Opus Oxoniense, lib. IV, d. 11, q.
3, n. 46, Vives ed., Paris, 1891-5). He also asserts that
essences do have a unity- not the unity of a mental idea
or a physical thing- but something slightly less than this
called minor unity. 4 This unity corresponds to Avicenna's
being of an essence. Such unity is demanded by the fact
that the essence in the individual perceived through sensation and the essence in the mind's universal notion is,
in fact, one and the same essence.
How does Scotus know that it is the same essence?
The answer can be drawn from the elements of Scotus's
position. The first of these is that essence in itself does
not express reality, this last being understood as a mental idea or extramental thing. It expresses only the
possibility of a reality. Its ontological status- i.e., the
status of its being- is that of a possibility (See Op. Ox.,
ed. cit., lib. I, d. 2, q. 1, n. 56). The second is that the
examination of this possibility is the examination of the
essences's "minor unity;" This means, for Scotus, the terms
which make up the definition of an essence must not be
contradictory. They must be compatible, that is, be
capable offorming a unity. The insight here is that without this capability, the essence defined by these terms cannot be instantiated as a unity either in the mind or in
W
SPRING 1984
�things. It cannot be so instantiated in the mind, for as
Scotus observes, contradictories cannot be thought of as
single notions (see Op. Ox., lib. I, d 2, q. 1 in Duns Scotus,
Philosophical Writings, ed. A. Wolter, London, 1963, p. 73).
This applies to analytical contradictions such as "p and
not-p:' It also applies to synthetic contradictions such as
the concept of a red tone. In such a case, the notions
are so "distant" from each other that neither determines
the other. If we leave the notion of figure out of account,
color and tonality can only be thought of as separate,
unrelated notions. The same criteria of compatibility apply to instantiation in things. To say "this one" in the sensible world implies that there is a subject of predication
there. It presupposes that the predicates we express are
unifiable in this subject. Otherwise, there would not be
one but two subjects of predication there.
A further element in Scotus's positiOn is that we never
leave the field of being when we talk about an essence.
There is a being of an essence; in fact, there is an existence of an essence. Essences themselves are only
possibles; but as Lychetus, Scotus's authorized commentator, remarks: "It is simply contradictory for any essence
to have its being of a possible and not to have its existence
of a being of a possible" (Op. Ox., ed. Vives, lib. II, d.
3, q. 1, n. 7). In other words, since essences have being,
they also have existence. For Scotus, this means that
degrees of existence follow upon degrees of essence (see
Op. Ox., ed. Vives, lib. II, d. 3, q. 3, n. 1). We can illustrate this by an example: the person of Socrates. We
start out with the most general essence we can think of,
that of thinghood or substance. We now begin to specify
this essence, idding successively the predicates, living,
animal, two-legged, rational, capable of laughter, in
Athens, engaged in dialectic, snub-nosed, etc. The
essence, as it is further specified, gradually narrows and
makes more definite its unity. The possibility corresponding to its unity becomes more defined. The possibility
of a rational animal living in Athens is not the possibility ofthinghood in general. Now, the ultimate determination is, of course, one of singularity, in this case, the
numerical singularity of an individual thing. When we reach
it, then according to Scotus, we have an existence corresponding to this grade of determination. We have the
actual existence of an individual man. This view can be
summed up by saying that all individual existents are
completely full essences. They are specified down to the
here and now of their being. Let us make a comparison.
If we say that such essential determinations must take
account of every element of a person's life and, in this,
also his relations to all other actual existents, we shall
be able to see the monads of Leibniz peeping over Scotus's
shoulder. Such monads also owe their actual existence
to the fullness of their essence (see Discourse an Metaphysics,
XIII).
H
ere, it would be helpful to mention Scotus's proof
for existence of God. It involves a redefinition
of Anselm's formula for God. In Scotus's ver-
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
sion, it runs: "God is that without contradition than which
a greater cannot be conceived without contradition" (Duns
Scotus, Phil. Wr., ed. cit., p. 73). The addition of the words,
"without contradition;' points to the fact that Scotus's attention is on the essence of God. Since essences are
possibles, to demonstrate an essence is to demonstrate
a possibility. But, as we said, the basis of essential
possibility is minor unity. This is the same as the absence
of self-contradition. Thus, according to Scotus, what one
has to first demonstrate is that the essence of God '!wn
cantradicit entitatt!....._ i.e., "does not contradict entityness."
This phrase is typical for Scotus. Less literally translated,
it means "does not contradict that which every entity must
be in order to be." This, for Scotus, is being compatible
with self. Every entity must have compatible attributes
if it is to be. Thus, the major part of Scotus's argumentation is directed towards showing that God, as Christians conceive him -as causally active, as intelligent, as
willing, as infinite and perfect, but especially as the first
or highest- is, in fact, a compatible essence. This means,
for example, demonstrating that the notion of causality
is compatible with that of a first cause. It means
demonstrating that the notion of perfection is compatible with the notion of a highest or first degree of perfec- .
tion (see Duns Scotus, Phil. Wr., ed. cit., pp. 39-45, 48-9).
All of these demonstrations, if we grant them, prove
that God is possible as an essence. But what about the
proof that he is an actual existent, that he is a numerical
singular? To demonstrate this, we have to establish that
he is unique. This is because the grade of actual existence
corresponds to that of an essence specified down to the
uniqueness and singularity of an actual individual. To
manage this step of the proof, Scotus points out that the
notion of a first in the order of causality-as well as in
the orders of perfection, will, intelligence, and so forthcan only involve the same unique singular. The notion
of two firsts, as he argues, is simply contradictory. It is,
for example, contradictory to conceive of more than one
being which, at first, is defined as the necessary and sufficient cause of the world's existence. If there were more
than one, neither cause, by itself, would be a sufficient
cause. The result of such arguments is the assertion that
if God is possible, he must necessarily be an actual existent. This follows because God's notion specifies in the
order of possibility a unique singular. His essence includes his actual existence, for it is an essence which is
only possible as that of unique existent.
There are a number of ways Scotus makes this point.
For example, he notes that a first cause is essentially possible only as an actual existent. It is, he argues contradictory to the notion of a first cause of existence, to receive
its actual existence from some other cause. Thus, if it
is, indeed, possible for a first cause to exist, it must actually exist of itself. The possibility of its existence, however, has already been demonstrated by Scotus's arguments showing that the essence of a unique first cause
is a compatible essence. As a consequence, we must say
that a first cause does, indeed, actually exist of itself. It
45
�is an actually existent entity (see Duns Scotus, Phil. Wr.,
ed. cit., p. 46). A similar argument, is made about God
as the measure of perfectiOn.
Whatever else we might think about this proof, we
should keep an essential point in mind. It only works
for God. In other words, since nothing else is first,
nothing else can be proved to be unique and, therefore,
actual by this method. We can express this by saying that
God is a deductive singular. From this notion as a first,
we deduce he can only be as an actual singular. All other
beings, like our example of Socrates, are singular
inductively. They are' singular by the inductive addition
of conceptual formal note to conceptual formal note, each
further conceptual determination working to further
specify the essence in question.
What happens when we say that such "notes" or
specific differences are infmite in number, that they comprehend the specification of the relations of our finite
being to every other finite being? If we believe this, then
Leibniz's God is capable of seeing in our essence the
necessity of our actual existence. But we, with our limited
understandings, are not. In other words, for us, every actual existent other than God is, in terms of its conceptual essence, essentially unprovable. The conclusion
follows from our adoption of Scotus's metaphysics. The
result of this metaphysics is ultimately to collapse being
and essence together. In Scotus's words, "It is simply false
that being is other than essence" (Op. Ox., ed. Vives, lib.
IV, d. 11, q. 3, n. 46). Granting this, the proof of a being is also the proof of an essence. Thus, if we say that
a finite being has an infinite number of specifying differences in its essence, then a proof of its actual being,
as based on the examination of its essence, is a proof
necessarily involving this infinity. It requires the
demonstration of the compatibility of an infinite number of formal notes. Such a demonstration is impossible
for a finite mind. What we are saying, then, is that in
terms of our limited, human conceptions of individual
beings, we never cross the boundary between possibility
and actuality. This is because we can never inductively
specify an entity down to this one thing, to an actually
existing unique singular. We mention this to point out
the transformation which Scotus has worked on the
original Parmenidean equation between conceivability
and actual being, vo&iv and dvat. The equation no
longer involves, as it did for Plato, the identification of
a limited number of underlying, self-identical elements.
v
L
et us now return to Descartes. In his Meditations)
Decartes doubts the world and then finds it necessary first to prove God in order to assure himself
of the existence, say, of his ink pot. Why begin with God
rather than the inkpot? The procedure is in some sense
intelligible if we take into account the philosophical world
into which Descartes was hom. As a number of historians
46
have pointed out, the decisive influence in this world was
ultimately that of Scotus. 5 The influence of Scotus can
be seen by comparing Descartes' proof for the existence
of God with Scotus's original. The former is actually a
truncated version of the latter. The reason why Descartes
must begin with God's existence is, thus, at least
historically clear. In the order of demonstration, God's
existence comes first, since it is, in fact, the only existence
which we can in this tradition demonstrate.
What about Cartesian doubt? There are, as we maintained at the beginning, two sides to this doubt: doubt
of perception and doubt of opinion. Both, we claim, can
be traced to the transformation in the ontological status
of the idea.
Let us consider, first, the value Descartes places on
opinion. As indicated above, the transformation implies
that every essential predication we can make about the
world only grasps its objects under the aspect of possibility. In other words, the subject of our discourse, insofar as our discourse is concerned, is only a possibility.
It is an essence which we can only incompletely specify.
For all our talk, in terms of our statements' essential content, the object we are talking about may or may not actually be. The implication is that our statements, considered in themselves, express what may be called mere
opinion. By this, we mean that they have no inherent
claim to be "true" or "right:' Because of this, their examination is not, as Plato thought, a necessary first step
for philosophical enquiry. Since they are, in their essential content, inherently capable of expressing an actual
reality, they must, as Descartes believes, be, one and all,
doubted.
What about a direct perception of the object? Plato,
as we said, associates the realm of the directly perceivable with the attitude of trust. Trust, as opposed to certitude, is all that we can have if we remain on the level
of direct (or sensuous) perception. On this level, we cannot confirm a perception except through a further perception, and so we have ultimately to trust our perceptions. Between this trust and the Cartesian doubt of
perception, there also lies the change in the status of the
idea. The idea, for Plato, is etymologically and philosophically tied to perception. The Platonic term for the
idea, ei8o<;, is taken from sicSm, which means '(to
perceive!' The philosophical link between the two appears
when we take the ideas we garner from our perceptions
of the world as the highest expressions of actuality. If we
take the ideas as supremely actual, we are inclined to
trust rather than to doubt our perceptions; for then we
say that our ideas are and that their images, the directly
perceivable things, also are. The relation here is that of
actuality to image as given by the divided line. For Plato,
given that the ideas are, the directly perceivable thingswhich, as images, are dependent on the ideas- must also
be.
This philosophical position is, of course, completely
undermined once we say that the ideas have the ontological status of possibilities, i.e., that they express the
SPRING 1984
�fact that what sensibly instantiates them may or may not
be. At this point, they cannot provide a philosophical basis
for a belief in the existence of sensible things. Trust, therefore, turns to doubt, and like Descar:tes we must turn
to the benevolence of God to assure us of the world we
once took for granted. A sign of the new character of
this doubt is the fact that this benevolence itself becomes
an object of proof rather than a matter of direct perception. In the absence of any proof to the contrary, it is,
for Descartes, possible that God may be an evil, deceiving genius. Here we may remark that the direct experience of God's benevolence is grace. That grace could
be considered a matter of demonstration is the surest sign
that the modern age has been entered. 6
Was this transition to modernity necessary? Was it
necessary for us, with Descartes, to enter an age in which
we attempt to demonstrate matters which we formerly
took on trust or faith? Given that the whole of the history
we have recounted turns on the failure to distinguish being and essence, we cannot say this. What we can say
is that the question of being, of that which, as Parmenides
says, "is and cannot not-be;' still remains open.
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Footnotes
1. Both translations are given in 77le Presocratic Philosophers, trans. and
ed., G. S. Kirk and]. E. Raven, Cambridge, England, 1966, p.
269. The first takes the infinitives voetv and d:vm as infinitives
of purpose.
2. This is the doctrine of the Book concerning Unity by the 12 c.
philosopher and translator, Gundissalinus. See Die dem Boethius
folschlich zugeschriebene Abhandlung des Dominicus Gudissalinus De unitate,
ed. P. Correns, MUnster i. W., 1891, p. 3.
3. See Joseph Owens, "Common Nature: A Point of Comparison
Between Thomistic and Scotistic Metaphysics;' Mediaeval Studies,
XIX (1957), 4.
4. See Owens, pp. 8-9.
5. As Gilson points out, Scotus influenced Descartes, not directly,
but through Suarez's work, the Metaphysicae Disputationes. See
Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, 2nd cd., Toronto, 1952,
pp. 106, 109.
6. By way of contrast, we may observe that for Aquinas grace is emphatically not a matter of demonstration. See the Summa Theologica,
I-II, q. 112, a.5.
47
�Looking Together in Athens:
The Dionysian Tragedy and Festival
Mera J. Flaumenhaft
L
ooking at The Bacchae, we do not see all that
Euripides once meant to show, for the text is
incomplete. How is it that, just as we come
to the most terrible parts, after Agave has ex-
hibited the dismembered corpse of her son
and invited the Chorus to eat of the feast, how is it that
just here so much of the text is lost to us? Scholars
speculate about torn manuscripts and they scour ancient
citations, hoping to recover missing lines. Editors labor
to piece together sections from a twelfth century play called Christus Patiens, parts of which are cribbed from The
Bacchae. But we who read the play, or watch it in the
theatre, realize, as we approach the end, that we can
hardly bear to look, hardly bear to hear. What The Bacchae shows is obscene; what it says is unspeakable. Nevertheless, we feel compelled to see what it shows, to say
what it means.
This essay is a suggestion about a kind of poetic
justice. Might the mangled corpse have resulted in a
mangled text because, once the situation in which it was
originally confronted was gone, there was no way to face
such things? Dionysus may be unapproachable outside
the Athenian theatre of Dionysus, and perhaps such spectacles should not be watched except in circumstances like
those for which they were intended. The restored text
has been brought to life in the theatre. Modern
technology broadcasts the Greek drama to our living
rooms and flies us to Athens in attempts to reproduce
the original context. But viewed alone at home, or
watched in the company of strangers, the play must have
A tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis, Mcra Flaumenhaft has
published articles about Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Homer. An
earlier version of this essay was delivered as a formal lecture in Annapolis on September 23, 1983.
48
an effect thoroughly different from the one it had in an
Athenian festival two thousand years ago.
The Bacchae, like other Greek tragedies, is about,
among other things, looking together. While raising questions about Dionysus and the ordered, everyday life he
disrupts, the play suggests further questions about the
place oflooking in civilized human life. How do human
beings look at the world around them, at each other, and
at themselves? Are there things that should never be
looked upon, or should be viewed only in certain circumstances? Do rulers and ruled look differently when
public policy is determined in different regimes? Is the
looking of spectators in a theatre related by nature to
Dionysus; and is a festival like the one which once surrounded the play essential to the proper effect of such
looking? Let us look together, first at Euripides' depiction of Dionysus in Thebes, and then at the festival which
celebrated Dionysus in Athens.
PART ONE:
The Dionysian Tragedy at Thebes
acchus abolishes boundaries. This god shows up
oblivious to the lines and limits which define
ordinary human life. "Having changed his form"
(morphen d'ameipsas) (4) from divine to human, he is
simultaneously god and beast, male and female, terrible and gentle. The geographical sweep of the Prologue
depicts his disregard for natural and conventional distinctions alike. Transcending mountains, rivers, and great
seas, he has moved over a hugh diverse continent and
made it one. Different races, languages, and even walled
fortresses present no barriers. The coming resembles an
itinerary for an army advancing from the east, but
Dionysus' advent is an easy flow. The liquid sounds (lipon
B
SPRING 1984
�de Lydon) (13) indicate the ease with which he has come.
Embraced by the already "mingled" (migasin) (18) Greeks
and barbarians in Asia Minor, he returns to the "streams
of Dirce and the waters of Ismenus-." His sudden appearances are not through doors or gates or passageways.
Liquid himself, he slips in.
For those touched by Dionysus, life ceases to be
measured, articulated experience in place and time. The
women who follow him are merely ''Asians." "Having
passed from" (ameipsasa) (66) their origins, they forget their
former distinct lives in their single-minded devotion to
Bromius. They exhort others to follow them, to be
"displaced" (ektopos) (69). The stung Theban women
resisted at first but, now, they too are "all mingled
together" (anamemeigmenai) (37). They have left enclosed
houses in a walled city to dwell on 'unroofed" rocks on
the open mountains. There the distinctions between
human beings and the world around them are muted.
The Bacchantes are not separated from the earth by walls,
floors, and shoes. They've exchanged their shuttle sticks
. for thyrsus sticks, and now weave with ivy vines and living snakes. They are compared to birds, colts, and fawns;
instead of woven cloth they wear animal skins. Their fire
is not an instrument of art or domination. It is not used
for cooking, for forging tools, or for warmth against the
snows of Cithaeron. Nor does it harm them. Rather, it
flows from their rods, like lightning, a visible charge from
the god who electrifies them. They throw themselves to
the earth and sweet liquids spring up- not in rivers,
springs, or wells, but wherever the earth is touched. The
god's bounty is so great that even storage containers are
unnecessary. When Bacchantes dance, the whole mountain ''bacchizes with'' (sunebacheu) (726) them. But this
mountain is not properly their "place:' They speak of
Crete, and yearn for Cypris, Paphos, and Pieria, as well.
Furthermore, their holy places are peculiar in that their
sense of the holy precludes place as it is ordinarily experienced by human beings. As a proseletyzing cult, Bacchism aims at universality. The god could be anywhere,
anywhere one is not confined by the constrictions and
constructions of civilized life. He'll move on when he's
done with Thebes. To worship Bacchus is to be in
touch-with earth, air, fire, water- but not with any particular place. He promises a literal u-topia: no house,
no city, no defined home on earth. The Theban counterparts of these uprooted women tear up trees by the roots.
The women who worship Bacchus "out of place" also
live outside articulated human time. Neither natural nor
conventional time punctuates their lives; they do not plan
or wait. Unconcerned with time of year, they tend no
crops or animals, and store no food or wine for the future.
Their plants are ivy, bryony, and fir, ever-greens whose
looks do not reflect seasonal cycles, but whose lavish
growth is a continual show of powerful life within. The
ivy and vines grow freely, ungoverned by a set form which
they must reach to be themselves. The Bacchantes live
apart from men, mingling without regard to age, and
their lives are unmarked by ceremonies of birth, growth,
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
or death. The fertility god of seasons makes his followers
barren. They leave their own infants and nurse young
animals. New devotees must be made in the streets of
the cities which generate them. The Bacchantes chant
the remembered story of Bacchus, but they have no story
of their own. They do not look back together upon their
own pasts or forward to their own futures. Once again,
being in touch makes them deeply out of touch as well.
Immersed in the present, they are at one moment fast
asleep on the ground and then fully awake and upright,
or, at one moment bloody from battle and immediately
after, clean and refreshed, with no memory even of re-.
cent experience. The ritual orgia ---!'works in service'~ of
this god require little time-consuming preparation. There
are no embroidered robes, no burnt offerings, no altar
or hearth, no statues, no organized feasts. In short, where
there is no ordinary sense of time, there can be no articulated festival time; where there are no days, there are
no holidays.
The Bacchic celebrants merge not only with the earth
and other living things around them, but with the god
himself. To revere Bacchus is to ''bacchize" (bakcheuo) or
to "bacchize oneself' (katabakchioomai). The verb does not
. take an accusative outside the subject. Instead of offering libations and food to a distant divinity, the followers
of Dionysus drink him and eat him raw, ignoring even
bodily boundaries to become one with him. Losing oneself in Dionysis is a reassertion of one's ties to the earth,
but, at the same time, it is an attempt to assimilate oneself
to the condition of the god. Dionysus needs no priest to
mediate between· himself and his followers, no prophet
to explain him: "the leader- exarchos- is Bromius" (140)
himself. Anyone at anytime can be in touch with the god.
hose who merge with the natural world and with
Dionysus do so while merging with others. It's
not surprising that the most willing followers of
Dionysus are women, who are, perhaps, by nature most
attached to and in touch with other human beings. To
"bacchize" is to "thiasize the soul" (thiaseuetai psychan) (75).
Like most Greek choruses, the women of the thiasos, the
Bacchic band, speak in the singular: "I rush'' (thoazo) (66)
and "I shall hymn" (hymneso) (72). But here the dramatic
convention acquires special meaning as they are made
one by their dress, slogans, and the dance. Individual
heartbeats merge in the drumbeat, and ecstatic music
moves them "outside themselves;' not to isolation, but to
thorough communion. Even Cadmus and Tiresias feel
it; they say they've forgotten they are old men. Feeling
the same things, they slip into the dual (194) and share
a line of iambic trimeter (189). They "clasp hands and
together make a pair" (xunapte kai xunorizou chera) (198);
in Greek, they ()oin the horizon." "Counting out no one"
(diarithmon dbuden) (209), the god "has made no distinctions" (ou gar dierech') (206). As we soon see, the priest
of Apollo and the founding father of Thebes never fully
lose themselves in Dionysus. But the maenads on the
mountain are thoroughly merged. In a vase painting
T
49
�Dionysus faces two women, but it i~ difficult to tell which
of the four bare feet and arms beJong to which. The
thiasos distinguishes itself from hostile outsiders; left
alone, it is a unit. The Messenger mentions three groups
and the individuals around whom they gather, but the
women don't attend much to the division. Within the
thiasos there is no opposition or competition, in deed or
in speech. Once again, articulation iS foreign to Dionysus.
In contrast, the cattlebreeders and shepherds distinguish
themselves from each other, as well as from an easytalking city-slicker, and from the mute domestic animals
whom they again distinguish as young and mature heifers
(737,739). Like most messengers in the tragedies, the
Messenger from Cithaeron has looked with others. He
speaks in the first person plural, reporting that the herders
argued about what they saw: they "matched common
reports with each other in strife" (715). But the Theban
rnaenads, like the Asian chorus, cried out "in one voice;'
literally, "with one mouth" (athroo stomati) (725). Later as
they attacked Pentheus, "all gave voice at once" (en de pas 1
homou boe) (1131). The homogeneous democracy of the
Bacchantes merges into an impetuous "throng:' Ochlos
(117, 1058, 1130) is a word often used in political contexts to describe a fickle mob, female or male, as opposed
to the aemos, male citizens who assemble to discuss their
own and the city's common business. Though the women
sing antiphonal chants of some sort, there are no "winged,
words among the Bacchantes. In Homer the word ameibO
is used for exchange between persons, exchange of speech
or private possessions -like the self-conscious talk and
trade between Diomedes and Glaucus in Iliad VI. In The
Bacchae it refers mostly to change of position or appearance. It signals not organized giving and receiving
among separate individuals, but the fluidity of anything
touched by Dionysus.
The communion of the thiasos precludes private as
well as public relations. Ordinarily, human love begins
in distinguishing the loved one from others. Later, lovers
or friends rightly feel that they have become "one:' Nevertheless, in love and friendship, the others like oneself also
remain somehow other. The Bacchantes mention loveEros or Aphrodite- only as symbols of peace and release.
Since they make no distinctions within the communion,
they do not recognize either permissible or desirable
behavior in its separate members. Their gentle closeness
is thus deficient love, just as their angry violence can only
be primitive justice. Unlike friends, they look neither at
nor with each other, and feel no profound admiration,
pity, or fear for other human beings; they are too much
in touch.
Finally, placeness, timeless, merging Bacchism is opposed to the human self-consciousness which develops
from standing up and looking at the world, for Dionysus
makes it very difficult to look. The maenads are characterized by constant motion, interrupted by falls to the
earth. Euripides repeatedly calls our attention to the way
in which the god confounds "up and down" (anO te kai
kato), 1 turning the world topsy-turvy, and transforming
50
the relation of vision to the other senses. In the Parodos
the women sing of their feet, hands, mouths, and hair.
Those who feel themselves to have come alive through
Dionysus evoke the contact senses: the feel of air, smell
of smoke, taste of liquids, and sound of drums. In a later
ode they sing of the "pale-bare foot" dancing in the "green
pleasures of a meadow" (863-67). The synaesthetic mingling of visual and tactile expresses wonderfully the
powerful beauty of their undifferentiating awe. Similarly,
when they sing of colors in the Parodos, the effect is
kaleidoscopic. For them, color permeates, is diffuse; it
does not define the contours or limits of things. They
prefer night and shadows to light and clear lines. A vase
painting depicts a dancing maenad with head thrown
back and eyes open, but glazed over. Others shut their
eyes. The dancer's freely moving body extends and crosses
the defmed vertical space he usually occupies. 2 Ordinarily,
eyes see only when they are lifted on an upright body,
away from the earth, and when they remain still long
enough to gaze steadily. Through them, an autonomous
individual takes in what is outside himself. But the Bacchantes "take in" the world in order to merge with it. By
changing the relative status of the senses, Dionysus makes
the world look different.
The Bacchae odes have been compared to Romantic
nature poetry or to landscape painting. But the Bacchic
attitude is very different from that of the poet who looks
at himself looking at the natural world. This looking requires separation from as well as kinship with, the ivy,
snakes, fawns, and foals which twine, slither, and leap
through a world with no horizon, a world in which they
have not stood up. Wordsworth's poems are about mortality, time, memory, place, and his own changing
perspective on nature and human life. He is a mature
self-conscious beholder who often looks with or addresses
his observations to another. And he speculates about his
kinship with and his distance from the world upon which
he looks:
For I have learned
to look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity ... (Tintem Abbey)
Immersed in the beauty of the land, the Bacchantes have
never seen a landscape. The latter, as the word suggests,
must be "shaped" by the seer-or painter-who frames
the scene with boundaries and a horizon. When a Bac-
chic woman throws down the frame of her upright loom
(istos), she abandons all frames and the orientation which
framing makes possible in human life.
One reason The Bacchae is so unsettling is that the
Chorus, which in most Greek plays is tied to the city,
here consists of unrelated foreigners; there is no community "point of view?' Agave thinks she has seen and
killed a lion (1175, 1238), and, with eyes rolling in her
head, she calls upon her son to come look. (1257). Instead of withdrawing in pity and fear, the women, for
SPRING 1984
�once, are eager to look: "I see and shall accept you as
a fellow reveller" (1172). Their response to her invitation
to eat expresses their revulsion, but they urge her to show
her trophies to the citizens. The rest of the play is Theban
business and the Chorus hardly reactli to the dissolution
of the city through which they have passed, but with
which they have never looked. Agave finally comes to a
standstill, away from her thiasos. Only then can Cadmus make her see that this is not a happy "spectacle" (opsin) (1232), that, indeed, it is "not the sort of thing to be
seeri' (oud'hoion t'idein) (1244). Dionysus affects human vision not only by preventing and distorting it, but by making those he touches unable to distinguish between what
should and should not be beheld.
entheus rejects the god. He speaks the language of
opposition, not surprising in the grandson of
Cadmus, who emerged from the barbarians to
overcome a monstrous dragon, and reaped civilized
Hellenes from these chthonic, even incestuous beginnings. Pentheus has detached himself from these beginnings. He makes distinctions; between old gods and new,
immortals and mortals, Greeks and foreigners, free men
and slaves, men and women, Thebes and countryside,
day and night, dignity and folly. He orders out the articulated divisions (781-83) of his male army against the
female thyrsus bearers who mingle on the mountain. Pentheus trusts in gates and walls, jails and chains. Like his
grandfather, he has a strong sense of his own. He must
defend "my" mother, "our" women- the Greek does not
require the possessive- against alien forces. He will not
be touched: "Do not put your hands on me, do not wipe
off folly on me" (343-344), he cries. When the two old
men who have clasped hands urge him to recognize the
levelling god, Pentheus draws the line. But although he
is so different from the Bacchantes, he too is characterized
by his disordered vision. In both his public and private
behavior, he is unable to look with other human beings.
King Pentheus is alarmed for the safety of his city.
Most monarchs are vigilant about erotic alliances within
their regimes, for the private friendships of those who
see alike may result in invisible conspiracies against a
king. There are no such friendships in Thebes and, as
we have seen, the thiasos is characterized by an undiscriminating, blind form of "friendship:' Though the
maenads are unlikely to oppose the ruler in any political
way, the presence of a communion of citizens who no
longer feel their primary tie to be the city does constitute
a real threat to ordered political life. But King Pentheus
deals with this threat tyrannically. Without father, mother,
or friends, he looks and acts alone. The maenads are too
much in touch to look with others; Pentheus, like most
tryants, is too out of touch. His grandfather has abdicated to him, and there is no council of advisors. He alone
will spy out and act against opposition. Even the feeble
chorus of elders which provides a sort of public perspective in some plays is absent here. And anyone- even
P
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
a professional seer-who offers another point of view is
suppressed.
Pentheus' public behavior is tyrannical in another
way. Most kings rule by their manifest presence, often
through public ceremonies or processions in which the
ruler exhibits himself to his subjects, or in which they
are reviewed by him. 3 Even without planned ceremonial
occasions, the well-being of the community requires the
visible presence of its different elements. Ruler and subjects might not look together as equals, but each is a
viewer recognized by the other. Pentheus rejects mutual
viewing just as he rejects mutual council: only he is to
be on view; the city will look to him for its well-being;
opposition must be hidden away in dark dungeons. He
scorns even to look upon those who disagree (252).
Not surprisingly, the vision of the friendless tyrant
is defective. His view of the women is based on what he's
heard. "I hear (kluo), he begins a long distorting description of their imagined behavior (216ff). He "knows" of
Tmolus by "hearsay" ( 462), and mistakes a bull for the
odd-looking Stranger who makes him want to hear more
about the maenads. The eyewitness report of the
Messenger from Cithaeron, in the central scene of the
central episode of the play, looks both back to Pentheus'
hearsay envisionings and forward to his disastrous firsthand view of the Maenads. "Having seen the sacred Bacchantes" (664), he says that Pentheus too would have seen
(737, 740) that the thiasos was a "wonder of good order
to see" (693). "Having seen these things;' Pentheus "would
have come with prayers" (712-13). Then he describes the
attack on the villagers. In a striking image he reminds
us of the way in which human eyes almost reflexively close
to avoid seeing what should not be exposed to view: the
garments of [bulls'] flesh were drawn apart more quickly
than you could close the lids over your royal eyes"
(7 46-4 7). The Messenger continued to watch this Dionysian dismemberment. The "terror" ( deinon), he says, was
a "sight to see" (theam'idein) (760).
From now on, Pentheus' concern shifts from his
public responsibility to his private needs. For, suppress
him as he will, Pentheus too yearns for Dionysus. No
longer satisfied with reports, he develops a great "desire"
(eros) (813) to see the maenads with his own eyes (811),
to become a "watcher" (theates) (829). He says he would
be sorry to see them drunk, but Dionysus remarks that,
all the same, he would see these "bitter things" with
pleasure (815). To look differently, Pentheus must look
different. He dons the "costume" (stoiC) (828) of a maenad
but, unlike the women, he is painfully self-conscious. His
posturing betrays the armour between himself and the
"effeminate form" (gynaikomorphe) (855) he has assumed;
it is both shared costume and protective disguise. He says
he has been "playing the Bacchant" (bakchiazon) (931). The
verb differs slightly from the one used by the Chorus
(bakcheuo); it suggests the difference between engaging
in one's own activity, and watching oneself assume the
customs of others. Pentheus' carefully delineated world
has begun to blur. Hallucinating, he sees two suns and
51
�a double Thebes. The Stranger, who at first seemed "not
unshapely" (amorphos) (453), now appears in other shapes.
The transformed king is led off in a peculiar private "procession" (pompe) of unacknowledged retainers who later
report what happened, and by the Stranger, "the leader
of our viewing (theoria) (104 7).
Unlike the maenads who fall to the earth, Pentheus
rises far above it, an isolated "spy" (kataskopos) (916, 156,
981) and a "spectator" (theates) (829) of the absorbed
women below. Once again, his looking is aberrant. Pentheus is a voyeur. In the private realm he wishes not to
do, but to view, everything. The sexual voyeur watches
actions which, by nature, should not concern anyone but
the actors. By ignoring the line between private and
public, he obliterates both realms. Other voyeurs who
stare unblinkingly at the corpses of the dead, or the grief
of the living, also see what in civilized life must be
obscene, off-stage. The voyeur may seek out spectacles
of bestiality, incest, necrophilia, cannibalism, and other
violations of the natural lines of human life. Pentheus
surely is titillated by the suggestion of such things among
the maenads. In collapsing the distinctions between
private and public, seen and obscene, human and animal,
the voyeur may appear to embrace Dionysus. But the
embrace is false. Although the Bacchantes, like animals,
do not properly look with others, they do look- in their
fashion- in the presence of others. As we have seen, the
voyeur lacks their unselfconscious innocence. His furtiveness reveals a deliberately violated sense of shame
which they do not have; he knows he should not be looking. We call him "bestial;' suggesting not nature, but
degeneration.
The voyeur's vicarious embrace of Dionysus is false
also because, though somehow moved by what he sees,
he is an isolate, outside communal, as well as private,
combinations. Pentheus wants to see -"the things he should
not see" (912), but his looking must be seen by no one;
he must not be touched. Even as he ignores boundaries,
he erects a frame around others like himself, reducing
their actions and passions to material for his viewing.
Pentheus' private spying, like his public violence, is tyrannicaJ4 Earlier, he speaks only of the maenads' physical
behavior; now too, he can see only what their bodies are
doing. He cannot share their spiritual joys or sorrows
or "thiasize the soul" with others; at the end he feels only
the "pain:' or ''grief' (penthos), of Pentheus. In a terrifying reversal, this solitary and too-distant onlooker is
drawn swiftly into the scene. Seen by those who do not
ordinarily look up, he is pulled down to the earth he
denies in himself. Earlier he anticipates being held by
his mother; now he reaches out to touch her cheek and
is ripped apart, his ribs "laid bare" (gymnounto) (1134) like
those of the animals the Messenger describes. The corpse,
dismembered and unburied, will be displayed for all to
see. The young man who would maintain distinctions
is almost eaten, reabsorbed, by his own mother, in a terrifying violation of human time and relations. His city
is shattered; its founder will be transformed into a snake
52
and will lead a mingled barbarian horde against the
Hellenes he once civilized. Exiled by Dionysus, he will
return to "ravage the oracle of Loxias:' that is, of Apollo
(1336).
Apollds priest had warned Pentheus to join him in
recognizing the new god. But like the god he already
serves, Tiresias remains somehow aloof, always looking
from afar. His rationalized arguments on behalf of
Dionysus seem alien to the spirit of the god of umnediated
mergings. He is a Theban, yet he has the distance to look
into Theban affairs and see more than those whose
primary allegiance is to the city. Like the Bacchantes,
he is in touch with a god; but he is somehow out of touch
with other human beings; unmarried and childless, he
has been male and female; he has looked upon copulating
snakes, and once he beheld the goddess Athena naked,
as she bathed. Unlike the followers of Dionysus, he
transcends the city in isolation. His blindness, though
related to his insight and foresight, precludes his looking together with others. He alone is not punished, but
it is clear that, Apollonian vision, as well as the looking
of shameless Bacchantes, and voyeur-king, is inadequate
when Dionysus shows himself in Thebes.'
PART TWO:
Tragedy and the City Dionysia at Athem
magine now another city, one which tries to provide
an entire community with something like the experience of those who lose themselves in Dionysus.
We are all familiar with revels which sanction temporary
release from daily life: medieval Festivals of Misrule,
Twelfth Night, Jewish Purim, Catholic Mardi Gras, and
camp topsy-turvy days. These are characterized by reversals or blurring of political and sexual hierarchies and
distinctions, by unusual masks and costumes or no
clothing at all, by dramatic role-playing, by wild dancing, or by the conspicuous consumption of intoxicating
beverages. The most important of the Athenian festivals
was called the City Dionysia. The name differentiates
it from rural festivals by attaching it to the physical city,
astu; the location is crucial. This festival was far more
than temporary entertainment; it was an important part
of the positive training of the Athenian people. 6 Let us
delay considering the dramatic highpoint of the festival
and speculate about how the arrangements which led up
to it address the unsettling questions The Bacchae raises
about Dionysus, looking, and the city. We shall also consider some modern counterparts.
Like other civic events, this annual festival is
characterized by its attention to shared time and place.
In late March summer agriculture and war do not demand the full attention of the citizens. The seas are
navigable again, and allies send ambassadors to bear
tribute and also to look at the first city. In the spring,
I
SPRING 1984
�the citizens are constantly aware of the distinctions between themselves and outsiders, as w~ll as between themselves and resident aliens and slaves 1within the city. As
we shall see, the community which assembles to celebrate
the god who obliterates boundaries' is conspicuously
divided into distinct groups throughout the festival.
As in most civic business in Athens, responsibility
and preparations are shared. Though inefficient, this arrangement insures continual participation in public life.
Like other projects whose parts are contributed piecemeal
by private citizens who order and pay for them, the
festival involves large numbers of people. Several months
before, the Archon Eponymous and his aids, none of
whom is required to have any special training in drama,
choose the poets who will enter the competitions. Actors
are assigned and a preliminary selection of judges is made
from among the tribes. The ten names of these ordinary
citizens-not drama critics-are put into sealed urns in
the Acropolis; tampering with them is a capital crime.
Also chosen long before the festival are the choregoi,
private citizens who provide the money to outfit and train
dithyrambic and dramatic choruses and flute players.
This duty is called a leitourgia, a work on behalf of the
leitos, or folk. Unlike the Bacchic orgia, the leitourgia is the
civic duty of an individual, freely assumed, or assigned,
by tribe or city. Other "liturgies" equip a warship or
finance a delegation to a pan-hellenic festival. This great
public giving allows an individual to exhibit his wealth,
but to do so in partnership with the city, which pays the
actors and endows poets' prizes. A liberal choregos spends
gladly; though compulsory, the leitourgia is not a tax. His
giving, like all noble action in a small homogeneous community, is meant to be seen. During the festival, the
choregos exhibits not only his chorus, but himself, dressed
in splendid robes, as a noble object for the contemplation of his fellow citizens. This office seems to speak to
Rousseau's warning in The Social Contract, against the
substitution of money for public service. In fulfilling his
civic responsibilities, the choregos offers, in Rousseau's
terms, both his "pocketbook and his person"; 7 he expends
himself. Compare him with modern "philanthropists;~
an interesting word -who, in their own way, often
privately, and even anonymously, endow museums, parks,
and theatres of their own choosing. At another extreme,
a manual for producers of community dramas warns
against a single patron because even fmancial dependence
on one person reduces the community, group, effort. a
The modern representative republic often seems either
to put all the responsibility into private hands, or to fear
private initiative. The ancient participatory democracy
requires the wealthy citizen to spend his wealth honorably,
and then displays him and his work as examples of civic
liberality- even magnificence- befitting a free man
among equals. 9
The Proagon, before the poets' contest (agon), takes
place one or two days before the festival. Here the public
is officially given the details of the program. In the
Odeum, a hall near the theatre, each poet stands with
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
his choregos, actors, flute players, and chorus, to announce the titles, and perhaps plot summaries, of the
plays. The civic meaning of the Proagon is clearer when
compared with our practices. It is not a review by an
outsider who discusses and perhaps recommends the play.
Nor is it a coming attraction in which potential spectators are enticed by samples; there will be only one performance. Rather, it is an occasion for the many citizens
who will be acting to display themselves in their own persons, as fellow citizens, to those who will be watching.
In the Proagon, no one wears masks or theatrical
costumes.
The last event before the festival period is the torchlit night procession commemorating the coming of
Dionysus to Athens. The god's image, removed earlier
from the temple in the theatre precinct, is carried back
from the northwest Eleutherae road to the theatre. The
procession is the first properly "Dionysian" event but it
differs strikingly from the various manifestations of the
god in The Bacchae. Here again we see how the City
Dionysia links orgia with leitourgia. Instead of lightning
appearances and the removal of the population to the
mountain, here a manmade statue of the god is deliberately carried within city walls, through gates and streets,
and placed in a building made for institutional worship.
It is escorted by armed epheboi, young men in training
to defend the city, but who are not yet full members. Like
the festival period, they are on the border between civic
and non-civic time. In The Republic, Socrates would forbid them to watch plays and would restrict their "spectacles" to the noble warfare of their elders. 10 In his Letter
to D'Alembert, Rousseau suggests that they attend community dances instead of the theatre. 11 Athens requires
the young men to be present at the theatre festival, but
carefully regulates their role.
The next day begins the period during which all ordinary business is suspended. There is no assembly during the festival, and no legal action may be taken.] ailed
prisoners are released on bail. The first official event, a
turbulent procession, the pompe; is not an occasion for
careful looking and distinguishing. Pressed together, or
even from the sidelines or a reviewing stand, one forms
not a view of the whole, but a fragmented, kaleidoscopic
impression. Though it is difficult to gaze steadily, one
is intensely aware of moving bodies, of arms, bellies,
noses, backsides, and ritual phalluses. 1 2 Citizens and
foreigners, old and young, men and women move to the
same throbbing rhythm. Many wear masks, and perhaps
costumes, which blend their identities with those of the
opposite sex or the god they celebrate. The arrangements
do, however, maintain some shape, some direction. Now
the physical forms of the city, which may have blurred
in the flickering torchlight the night before, are visible.
The procession winds through the streets, halting in the
agora, perhaps for choral dances at the altars of other
gods. The epheboi sacrifice a bull and present the choicest
parts to prominent city officials. Unlike the mingled Bacchantes of all ages, only unmarried girls take part in the
53
�pompe. A maiden of noble birth leads, carrying a golden
basket of offerings. Others bear wine, now mixed with
water, and food, now cooked with \fire, to be consumed
on the way. The abundance of Dionysus in Athens is en-
closed in pots, baskets, wineskins, lind other manmade
containers. The rich ride in chariots. Prepared costumes
identify other groups: citizens in white, metics in red,
and choregoi in their finery. However immersed in the
crowd they are, the celebrants enter the theatre of
Dionysus together, in public procession, as citizens of
Athens. They are one, but the one is an articulated community, not a thiasos.
The theatron-watching place-where the entire city
will spend the next few days, from dawn to dusk, is a
round space like both a natural dell, and a conventional
agora or an enclosure within a city wall. Most sit closely,
knee to knee, with nothing between them. Jean-Louis
Barrault remarks on the warmth and unity of "houses"
where there is only one armrest between seats:
The spectator is part of the others ... the audience is
a sort of synthesis of the whole community of the world,
of the promiscuity of all the others pressing one against
the other; a sort of human stirring shoulder to shoulder
... which releases ... a monstrous god, a sole personality.... The audience is a kind of enormous baby ...
all the adults lose their personality. 13
his might recall the Bacchantes. But it does not
describe with sufficient subtlety the Athenian
theatre, or the way in which "the monstrous god"
comes there. The congregation includes the free male
citizens, the Assembly, who often gather in a similar amphitheatre on a nearby hill; the festival gathering is not
the first time they form a community. They are uniformly
encouraged to attend- Pericles arranged for the city to
provide tickets for all- but they are not mingled indiscriminately. And, while they are joined on this occasion by many resident aliens and foreign visitors, the aim
is not a "synthesis of the ... world:' Rather, grown men,
epheboi, maybe women and children, metics, and
visitors, sit in separate sections, identifiable in their
colored robes. Citizens may sit by tribe. It is the city of
Athens that is foremost, and not the unarticulated "world."
It has been conjectured that the wooden bleachers, which
were later replaced with stone ones, were made from the
timbers of Persian ships that these men, or their fathers,
defeated at Salamis a few years before.1 4 Whatever the
facts, it is important to remember the occasions on which
they gathered together in the past.
Finally, there is another kind of seating~'front row"
stone thrones for polis officials, generals, and choregoi.
Unlike Bacchantes who sit close together and look at
nothing, or Pentheus, who sits alone and spies on
everything, these "distinguished" citizens sit together and
apart, viewing and on view. Most prominent, at the
center, sits the priest of Dionysus, city official and intermediary between the god and his celebrants. Gone
is the exarchos who whips up the moblike thiasos to
T
54
ecstatic identification with Dionysus. A statue of the god
who always looked alone in Thebes, now joins Athens
as a fellow spectator at his own festival.
Dionysus is present in his altar as well. The flame
which burns in the orchestra throughout the festival is
neither the useful fire with which men master nature,
nor the narthex fire which streams spontaneously from
the wands of dancing Bacchantes. The altar fire is for
looking at, 15 not by solitary individuals or private households, but by the whole city together.
The visual focus of the theatre is the round dancing
place (orchestra) of the chorus and the platform (skene)
where the actors perform. This platform usually
represents the outside of a palace. There is no drop curtain to separate audience from ·acting place. Unlike
modern theatregoers whom an implied "fourth wall" putS
in the position of voyeurs looking into a private place,
Athenian spectators, like the dramatic characters, observe
what is normally on view to the public.
But while attention is focused on the stage, it is not
exclusively so. The performance takes place in the
daytime, so the acting area is not a lit place in a dark
space. Daylight preserves distinction which break down
in the dark. Changing as the day passes, it keeps those
who concentrate on artificial stage time in touch with
natural time. Since the theatre is so large, the figures
on stage are small, distant, and undetailed. The well-lit
audience which sits almost circularly around them, is thus
as much to be seen as the performers on stage. A citizen
in the theatre of Dionysus is far more aware of himself
and his fellow spectators than are modern theatre or
movie goers, strangers who are absorbed by the illuminated action at one end of a dark rectangular room.
Television, which enables viewers to watch in common,
but in private, all the time, with no preparation or
cooperation before the viewing, seems the complete antithesis of the civic viewing we are considering. The
modern extended republic does its governing through
representatives, now also mostly seen at a distance, on
television. It is not surprising that those who stay home
to view Thanksgiving parades organized by private businesses will view anything else that is shown. Electronic
inventions have the potential to turn millions of viewers
into voyeurs, who see without being seen, and keep in
touch only by looking from afar. This technology may
produce extreme unity and homogeneity, but at the same
time, extreme isolation. Such isolation was less possible
in the Athenian arrangements for overseeing public policy
and viewing dramatic performances in full view of one's
fellow citizens.
Two more views are shared by the spectators in the
theatre. One is of the mountains surrounding the city.
Scenic shots in film versions of Greek tragedies are
beautiful, but tend to remind most of us that we are
foreigners. The landscape beheld by the Athenians is their
own. The second view is of what they have built upon
the land. Though they are outdoors, in touch with the
weather and the natural contour of the hill they sit on,
SPRING 1984
�they can still, as Pericles tells another congregation of
Athenians and strangers, feast their eyes on Athens. The
unsettling wonders they will behold in the plays are
framed by the solid citizens and solid foundations of the
city which makes the festival.
·
The Bacchae, these singers are native-born men and boys,
present and future citizens. They are released from their
required military training to be trained for the festival.
Their trainer, though not 'a, poet, must also be native to
the city. As worshippers of the god, they sing and dance,
bound into a circle, crowned with flowers and ivy, but
B
efore turning to performances, let us glance briefly
at some of our contemporary American festivals.
In the context of our present discussion, they have
a decidedly unci vic look. Popular theatre festivals sell tickets
long distance, mostly to non-residents, and import
famous actors who perform for audiences that have never
before assembled and never will again. They gather at
various Stratfords, for example, to "see shows." Our
diverse and tolerant republic is rich in the variety oflocal
ethnic festivals which are celebrated traditionally, often
with the help of quite different friends and neighbors.
But, in America, these festivities cannot be civic festivities,
and it is evident that in a prosperous, mobile, and cos-
mopolitan society such traditions tend to atrophy. National holidays like Thanksgiving, Independence Day,
and presidents' birthdays do not seem to have the same
intensity as local or ethnic celebrations. Another variety of contemporary festival self-consciously aims to bring
together a diverse urban community. A recent Chicago-
fest was run by a non-local business called "Festivals Incorporated." It offered food, crafts, entertainment, and
publicity for the incumbent mayor, but deteriorated into
racial wrangling. In Annapolis, a national beer company
underwrites an annual city festival heavily attended by
outsiders. It is advertised in the Washington Post among
other area {(Festivals, Festivals, and more Festivals;' from
which a private family might choose a spring outing.
Most of the pleasant fairs and festivals in hundreds of
American towns have a commercial basis; their most visible activity, amidst preparations, decorations, and enter-
they are unmasked. Far from losing their identities, they
remain distinguishable from each other and identifiable
by their fellow citizens. Nor are the spectators moved outside themselves by these hymns, since the singers are not
fictional personages with whom they identify. 16
The next day begins with a political display in which
the city exhibits itself for its own citizens and for outsiders. After the priest of Dionysus purifies the theatre
by sacrificing a pig and pouring libations, there are processions which, unlike the earlier parades, are entirely
for watching. Young Athenians march before the vast
assembly, carrying jars of silver talents, the year's tribute
from allied cities. Citizens and strangers are honored for
their services to Athens. The orphaned, but now grown,
sons of men who died in battle parade in full armour.
They have been educated by the city, which now displays
them, as they make the transition from wardship and
seat themselves, as fellow spectators, among the citizens.
Now at last is the gathered city prepared to look upon
what is alien, alien not only because the dramas depict
semi-divine heroes, and kings, and assertive women of
other cities at other times, but because, in them, civil-
ized people must confront anew what they have made
alien to themselves: their own buried monstrousness. The
great chorus in Anti'gone articulates a paradox about man:
the very thing that makes this anthropos wonderful makes
him terrible. To be deinos is to be tragic. Human beings
are articulating beings who rise up and distinguish
themselves from the world and from other beings in the
world. Only man is conscious of place, time, and mor-
tainment, is exchange of merchandise; the crafts displayed
for looking are for sale, as is the food.
tality, and only man distinguishes between what he will
do and look upon from what is forbidden. But tragedy
Our hunger for something more than commercial
fairs has taken an interesting form in the past few yearsfood, crafts and entertainment in a setting of medieval
and Renaissance exotica. For example, at Columbia,
Maryland, a "planned community" with a heterogeneous
population which works in other cities, a corporation
started in Minnesota hosts a "Renaissance Festival" to
reminds us that man is also the only being who essentially strives to ignore or overcome such limits. Like
voyeurs' peep-shows and everyone's dreams, 17 the
tragedies reveal rape, parricide, incest, cannibalism, defiled corpses; their subject is human hubris, the violation
celebrate another place at another time. The Washing-
and impure.
oflimits and the failure to articulate. In the theatre spectators must face what is mixed and mingled, mangled
ton Post ad announces that, "the sixteenth century is back
by popular demand!' Of course, the sixteenth century
fair was also primarily a commercial enterprise. Our
celebration of such things must be very different from
Little Italy's saints' feasts, and even more so from Athens'
Dionysia. Examples abound to demonstrate the differences between the festivals of cosmopolitan modernity
and those of the ancient polis. Let us now return to the
theatre in Athens.
In the first watched performances, choruses from each
tribe sing dithyrambic hymns, often about Dionysus. But
unlike the identically masked, rootless Asian women in
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
o understand the theatre of Dionysus in Athens
one might have to understand why Oedipus ends
his life in Athens. Repeatedly, the plays show us
a tragic protagonist from Thebes- or some place like
it- who brings his terrible and wonderful experiences
to the most civilized city in Hellas. Athens is not simply
providing a refuge for them. These extraordinary suf-
T
ferers are somehow gifts to insure the fertile, vital
humanity of the city that takes them in. Consider Thebes,
the paradigm tragic city. Cadmus comes from the east,
brings the alphabet, slays a dragon, and turns a violent,
55
�chthonic, incestuous settlement into a walled and orderly
city. Then Dionysus is engendered·there and, when he
1
returns, the women run for the mo untain. The young
king is killed and the city is shattered. After a few generations, another watchful king exposes a baby on the mountain to avoid predicted disasters. The baby, who grows
into a fully developed version of Pentheus, returns to subdue the raw-eating sphinx-monster that has attached itself
to this city. Answering all questions and requests himself,
standing above the earth and the city, taunting the gods,
this autonomous paradigm of all human beings kills his
father, sleeps with his mother, and generates his own siblings. Years later the blind, dependent untouchable comes
to Athens, to a sacred grove containing the threshold to
the underworld. Adopted by the city whose ways he must
now feel out, and recognizing the power of love, he now
gives not his power to dominate or control, but himself.
Theseus recognizes that to accept him is to worship
simultaneously (hama) the earth and the sky. It is not clear
whether Oedipus vanishes up or down, but at last he
leaves something which will pass down properly through
generations of Athenians. Thebes, the city of violent
beginnings, of vines and wines, of dragons, snakes, and
sphinxes, of maimed walkers on earth, and of the wild
mountain, has come home to Athens, the city of peaceful
beginnings, of the rooted olive tree, of skilled horsemen,
and the tamed sea. Athens is deepened by this presence."
The plays, then, are emissaries between the community and what it must usually exclude. Like Oedipus,
the tragic drama is a necessary pollutant, "terrible to see,
terrible to hear" (deinos men horan, deinos de kluein) ( Oed.
Col. 140-41). Like Oedipus, it is also a blessing to civilized
human beings, to reconcile them with their primitive,
yet ever present, origins- with the buried dragon's teeth.
But these deina, terrible things, are now "most terrible
to men, yet most gentle" ( deinotatos anthrOpoisi d'epiOtatos)
(861). Dionysus on the mountain makes one forget the
bitter things; in the theatre, he recalls them, so that
remembering and looking are sweeter than forgetting and
turning away.
Athens understood that to be fully human, deinos
anthropos must recognize both static, pure Apollo, and
dancing, drunken Dionysus- and to come to "see" in the
ways of both gods. Officially sanctioned Dionysian
festivals, and the arrangement by which the Delphic
shrine was given over to Dionysus for several months of
each year, both bear witness to this understanding. But
like Tiresias' arguments, other festivals -and even the
sharing at Delphi- fail to recognize Pionysus fully. The
difficulty is that they are all from the point of view of
Apollo. One measures off part of the year, contains it
within strict boundaries, and permits a weak version of
once powerful devotions. Meden agan-='nothing in excess':_we hear Apollo say; metron ariston-='measure is
best"- even as the revellers toss their heads and drink their
wine. The wisdom which says one must know oneself,
and that both Apollo and Dionysus are that self, is an
Apollonian wisdom. One temporarily forgets oneself,
56
under orders from the god of clarity, articulation, and
the distant view. The difficulty lies in the serial character
of these arrangements, the alternation of distance a~d participation, vision and touch. Pentheus' acting and looking are not Euripides' images of the theatrical experience.
For true actors and spectators experience simultaneously
both Dionysus and Apollo, just as Theseus worshiped
earth and sky hama, "at the same time."
The actor undoubtedly "identifies" with the alien
character he impersonates. But, behind his mask, he retains his self-conscious awareness of who he is. In the
Proagon he showed his own face; in the drama he shows
the mask of Pentheus or Dionysus. The mask may call
into question our fixed identities, may suggest Dionysian flux. But, we do not see one person transforming
his very face into that of another.
The Chorus is also simultaneously foreign and
familiar. In The Bacchae fifteen male citizens impersonate
the Asian women. They sing of wild, timeless, placeless
running, while executing dances which require the utmost attention to time, place, and direction. Though they
speak as one and wear the same mask, they move in rectangular formations, always aware of rank. They sing
of open spaces in the shadows and contact with the earth,
but dance in an enclosed space, in broad daylight, on
a hardened orchestra floor. They sing of experiences
which obviate speech in complex diction and matched
stanza?. They have committed to memory hymns to
amnesia.
The spectators, who behold the action on the stage,
are also simultaneously themselves and others. Only as
separate, autonomous souls can they feel pity and fear
for others like themselves, but clearly other. As democratic
equals, citizens-friends, they look both at and with each
other. And like friends who act for and see themselves
in each other, they see themselves in those they watch
on stage. Unlike the cave spectators in the Republic, they
are not in the dark; they can turn their heads. They are
aware, even as they feel the real joys and terrors of
Dionysus, that they watch a framed imitation, a whole
with carefully articulated parts. Looking together, they can
face what, if experienced firsthand or seen privately,
might destroy their humanity. The "spectacle" (apsis), contest, and actors, which Aristotle and some of his interpreters dismiss as unnecessary, allow for facing such
things with others. Essential to the moral and civic ends
of tragedy, they are the proper work of legislators,
teachers, and citizens, as well as of the costume maker. 19
et us' pause again to consider some recent American theatre "experiments;' of interest to us because
they so often invoked Dionysus, while differing
radically from the theatre which celebrated him in
Athens. The "new" theatre of the 60's took its cues from
Cezanne and Cubists; it sought kaleidoscopic, collage effects unbound by frame or linear, articulated forms.
Often looking to eastern models, it was self-consciously
"total;' multi-media, not just visual. The followers of
L
SPRING 1984
�Artaud and his "theatre of cruelty" agreed that Sophocles
is too "fixed;' that the theatre must move away from looking, language, and "masterpieces?~zo Athens brought
Dionysus from the mountains through the streets, into
the theatre. Some "new" groups took their performances
"to the streets'~ to Times Equare and Grand Central
Station- in order to dissolve barriers between imitation
and "life?' Others abandoned the "fourth wall" convention and the distinction between watcher and watched,
encouraging audiences to mingle with "actors" and to take
part in the ('action." Distinctions between what is publicly or privately viewable lost their meaning in such spectacles; nakedness was a trademark of the "new" theatre.
The explicit goal was to create a democratic communion
among all participants, most of whom had never come
together before. Paradoxically, this communion was to
coexist with different reactions from different spectators.
Everyone could do and feel his own thing, but together.
Theoretically, any reaction was as good as any other in
this "democratization of Dionysus;'2 1 but the celebrants
themselves have described violent conflicts. The deliberate
avoidance of hierarchy and "rigidity" was the goal of such
groups as the Living Theatre, The Orgy-Mystery Theatre, The Any Place Theatre, The Ontological-Hysterical
Theatre, and the James Joyce Liquid Memorial Theatre.
The name of Dionysus was often heard, even before The
Performance Group produced its famous Dionysus in 69,
in which actors, spectators, speeches, and sets maintained
their "fluid" character from "performance" to "performance:' The published text, in which the triumph of
Dionysus is unequivocal, is based on Arrowsmith's
translation of The Bacchae. It includes the ruminations
of the director and members of "the Group;' and closeup
photographs of their writhing, blood-stained, naked
bodies. It is, appropriately, not paginated. 22
The so-called "people's" theatre thrived in the 60's during the most intense opposition to American "participation in the war in Vietnam." But the "participatory" antiwar "happeniog" rarely explored broad questions of policy
and conscience. It was often meant to substitute for, not
speculate on, political action. The Athenians participated
in the decision to fight the Persians, and those who sat
together in the assembly fought together at Salamis.
When they produced The Persians, however-and later
plays as well- they remained spectators, and their judges
were looking for universal "masterpieces!' What is the relation between ordinary aCtion in Athens and festival and
theatrical action during the Dionysia?
In their workaday world the Athenians look together
at the same things, from differing perspectives, in order
to reconcile private interests in domestic policy. From
a single shared perspective they must also look together
to formulate foreign policy for the whole city. This too
is self-interest. Hindsight, present-sight, and foresight are
for the sake of action. In their leisure time, in the theatre,
they feel and judge, but not from self-ioterest. These plays
are also civic actions, but they are not for the sake of
further political action. Like assembly, lawcourts, and
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
war, the festival unifies the citizens. The plays at the heart
of the festival also make them one, not from competing,
but from looking, together. Just as festival competition
is somehow higher than the competitive excellence of
Athens at work, so also is play watching superior to play
production, because, in addition to prizes, glory, and a
beautiful product, it has looking as its end. Pythagoras
said that some people attend games in order to sell for
gain, others to compete for fame, but that the best come
to see. 23 In the shared time of the festival, and especially
of the play, human beings cease trying to control the
world and others in it. They do not merely merge or
dissolve, but, for a time, they pause from working,·
building, and fighting, to recall their relations to the
earth, to other living things, to each other, and to the
gods. Duriog the festival of Dionysus, looking for the sake
of lookiog is joined with dancing for the sake of the dance;
looking here means staying in touch. The thoughts which
accompany such looking are likely to transcend particular
interests, and also distinctions between people who belong
to the city and others outside it. Thus, to this assembly,
Athens invites its resident aliens and foreigners to behold
both Athens and what Athens beholds. Many, no doubt,
are mere sight seers. But for some citizens and some
strangers, this dancing, looking, and feeling together may
approach a communion which far transcends that of the
city and that of the Dionysian communicants. Does this
kind of looking require others- or very many others? Do
philosophic friends require civic festival times to direct
their attention to the things which transcend time? The
few who emerge from the cave in The Republic appear to
be solitary spectators. Perhaps they might read tragedies
in private. But for most at least, the Athenian theatron
is somewhere between the thiasos and theoria, and it aims
at making them fuller human beings than they would
be without it.
aviog made such high claims for the tragic highpoint of the City Dionysia, I hesitate to bring us
back to earth. But we must return, if we are to
be true to the spirit of the festival. Back to the city would
be more accurate, since, as we have seen, the earth and
the city, though in touch, are not to be confused. The
exact order of the festival events is disputed, but nearly
all the schedules proposed agree that satyr plays and comedies follow tragedies. Either at the end of each day, or
at the end of the festival, the spectators turn to different
sorts ofDionysiac representations. It is impossible to explore them fully here, but we can at least note that both
differ from tragedies in that they depict unbounded appetites, distortions, and monstrosities as humorous supplements to regulated everyday life. They, like processions and carnival merrymaking, can coexist with that
life, without threatening to shatter it. The comedy after
the tragedy helps to return the partially transported spectators to full citizenship, even as it mocks them. Contemporary subjects, Athenian settings, topical and personal allusions, and unmasked addresses to the audience
H
57
�as citizens, repeatedly break the dramatic illusion. The
awarding of prizes, crowning of victors, and processions
out of the theatre, return them t~, ordinary time and
place. The Assembly is the core of their non-festival life
and the appropriate settiog for the formal transition back
into that life.
The first business transacted by the Assembly on the
day after the Great Dionysia is festival business. Now
only the citizens gather in the theatre to consider religious
matters and complaints about the processions, contests,
officials and participants in the festival. 24 Such selfconscious e-merging from festival to everyday time is
strikingly missing from the mergings which are central
to the Dionysian experiences we have examined in The
Bacchae. And it rarely occurs after conventional theatre
and television shows- contained gaps in ordinary timeor after anti-establishment performances which deliberately blur the margins of the action. The conclusion of
Mardi Gras in New Orleans provides a last example. A
reporter writes that at midnight a bullhorn abruptly announces that the holiday is over: " 'You must clear the
streets for the street cleaners' . . . by morning the natives
say, 'You'll never know it happened: "25 Mardi Gras takes
over the city for a day; but like most of the festivals
discussed above, it is not primarily a civic event. Exclusive
"crewes" organize parades, crownings, and balls, and there
is much general merrymaking, but the city does not
gather as one. 26 Rather, it provides police protection and
garbage disposal. The ends of the Great Dionysia and
of the Mardi Gras are a telling contrast of ancient and
modern notions of the ends of government.
In The Bacchae the god says he will manifest himself
"so that the city of Cadmus may see (horaz)" (61). But Cadmus and his people somehow cannot "see" Dionysus and
survive. The city of Athens arranges to look together
upon Dionysus and those who have beheld him, and at
the same time to look upon those with whom they are
beholding Dionysus. In this remarkable arrangement it
is possible, at least, that citizens may truly drink and
dance, yet look and learn, and yet again, return to their
looms and to their assembly on the day after.
We who live in a world where women no longer labor
at looms, and free men may never set foot in assemblies,
cannot return to the Athenian polis. Nor would most of
us want to, knowing that the coherent public life we have
been examining was accompanied by rigid sexual distinctions, by extreme censorship, by slavery, poverty, and
almost continual warfare. As we buy our machine-made
clothing and elect our representatives, as we feast together
after watching the parade in the comfortable privacy of
our homes, as we choose our plays and movies, and even
our festivals, we thank whatever god we will for our
physical, political, religious, and iotellectual freedom. But
we too have paid a price, a price having something to
do with Dionysus and with civic community. Perhaps we
can avoid becoming intellectual voyeurs who restore the
texts of unspeakable things, stage what should not be
58
seen, and examine with unblinking curiosity the cares
of a distant time and place, by keeping always one eye
upon ourselves, and by asking what our souls and cities
can learn from the ones at which we have been looking.
Notes:
1. Ba"ha" 80, 96, 349, 552, 602, 741, 753.
2. See Erwin Straus, "Forms of Spatiality'' in Phenomenological
Psychology. (New York, 1966). I have learned much from the essays
in this book.
3. One might think of the progresses of the first Queen Elizabeth,
or the coronation of her namesake. See Edward Shils and Michael
Young, "The Meaning of the Coronation;' Sociological Review) 1,
No. 2,1953.
4. We might also remember Gyges whose injustice and tyranny are
related to his voyeurism. In the Republic (II) Gyges~or his
ancestor -looks on an oversized naked corpse in a hollow horse.
The ring he steals from tQe body enables him to be present among
people who cannot see him, and to do unjust acts with impunity. He soon commits adultery with the king's wife and takes
over the rule. In Herodotus (!.8-13) the ruler of Lydia insists that
Gyges look upon his naked wife. After this viewing, Gyges kills
the husband and becomes ruler. Leontius is another solitary
viewer of dead bodies in The Republic (VI). Although his anger
and desire are at odds, it is not clear that intellect and desire
are. Injustice and voyeurism are also related in the Biblical story
of the lustful elders who watch Susanna as she bathes. Their looking, as much a violation as their rape would have been, is related
to their being corrupt judges, violators of community. Turning
their eyes from heaven, they bear false witness, and are finally
exposed because they could not properly look together with
Others.
5. I have found the following books most useful in thinking about
The Bacchae: G.S. Kirk's translation (Cambridge, 1979); E.R.
Dodds' Text, Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 1960); R.P.
Winnington-Ingram, Euripides and Dionysus (Cambridge, 1948);
Walter F. Otto, Dionysus: Myth and Cult (Bloomington, 1965).
Charles Segal's comprehensive study, Dionysiac Poetics and
Euripides' "Bacchae"(Princeton, 1982) appeared as I was finishing
the present essay. I have elminated some, but probably not all,
of the overlapping material. Segal's book is indispensible reading ·
for anyone interested in The Bacchae and Greek tragedy. I too
have learned much from many of the authors he cites: Rene
Girard, Arnold van Genneps, and others.
6. I have found the following books most useful in thinking about
the festival and about Athens: Alfred Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth (Oxford, 1961); H.W. Parke, Festivals of the Athenians
(Cornell, 1977). AVV. Pickard-Cambridge, Ditlryramb) Tragedy and
Comedy (Oxford, 1927) and The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (Oxford, 1953). H.C. Baldry, The Greek Tragic Theatre (Norton, 1971)
is an easily available paperback introduction.
7. Jean:J acques Rousseau, On the Social Contract, III, xv.
8. George McCalmon and Christian Moe, Creating Histon'cal Drama:
A Guide for the Community and the Interested Individual (Carbondale,
Ill., 1965). p. 48.
9. Aristotle, Ethics, IV
10. Plato, Republic, VI.
11. Jean:Jacques Rousseau, Letter toM. D'Alembert on the Theatre, IX.
12. Mikhail Bakhtin's Rabelais and his WOrld (Cambridge, Mass., 1968)
contains the best discussions I know of such periods of festival
abandon.
13. Jean-Louis Barrault, "Best and worst of professions," in The Uses
of Drama, ed. John Hodgson (London, 1972), p. 24.
14. E. O'Neill, Jr., "Note on Phrynichus' Phoenissae and Aeschylus'
Persae," Classical Philology 37 (1942), 425-27.
SPRING 1984
�15. One is reminded of the Jewish injunction about Hanukkah
candles: they are to have no utilitarian purpose, but to be only
for looking. There is conjecture that Hanukkah customs
developed deliberately in response to rur'al Dionysiac rituals: Jews
no longer need hide in the mountains like beasts, wild running
is replaced by standing around an altar; inarticulate shouts by
psalms of praise, and flowing torches by crafted candelabras. See
Theodore H. Gaster, Festivals of the Jewish Year (New York, 1966),
p. 252.
16. A thoughtful discussion of the civic status of the dithyramb can
be found in William Mullen's Choreia: Pindar and Dance (Princeton,
1982). Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy consistently underemphasizes
the institutional and civic context of both dithyramb and tragedy.
17. What does the dreamer behold? Often timeless, placeless, topsyturvy, his dream is peopled with fluid personae who merge with
each other and their surroundings. It may resemble the shifting
life of the Bacchantes, who wake or sleep in an instant. Having
no memories or restrictions when awake, perhaps they sleep
without dreaming. The dreamer may experience what is unthinkable in wal<;ing life. Not only J ocasta has observed that, "in
dreams many a man has lain with his own mother." Like a play,
a dream is often watched; Homer's people "see" their dreams. The
dreamer may be a spectator of his own actions; he may be the
protagonist of the drama, or "play" all the characters. In such
dreams, the line between watcher and actor is blurred or even
disappears. Because a dream has no continuity of time or place
with waking life, and no frame or context in which it is "seen;'
the dreamer is usually thoroughly absorbed by it. But at the same
time, a mysterious "second sight" says it is im(y a dream:'
Dreamers who lose all awareness that they dream a contained
"imitation" really choke, or scream, or wake, when the dream
becomes too "real;' too traumatic. They might remind us of
theatre spectators who miscarry when they see the Furies, who
shoot the villain, or who run from the theatre in fear. There is
another sort of frame around the dream vision. Not prescribable,
reportable, or censurable, the sweet dreams and hideous
nightmares of civilized human beings are their own business.
We cannot dream together, and so dreams can have only the most
indirect, unpredictable influence upon the waking life of citizens
and city. Those legends in which men about to violate their
motherlands dream of violating their mothers suggest that our
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
dreams are not the realm in which to nurture viable community life. [For examples, see "Caesar" in Plutarch and Hippias
in Herodotus (VI. 107)] The waking tyrant does what other men
would only dream of doing. The dreams of good men may be better than those of ordinary ones, but no one can learn to be good
while asleep. Dreams, like voyeurism, offer a less disruptive form
of Bacchism, but they are still private, in Greek, 1'idiotic;'
experiences.
I believe that a similar story is to be found in Suppliants, Persians,
Oresteia, Philoctetes, and Medea.
Aristotle, Poetics, VI.
Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double (New York, 1958).
Daniel Bell, "Sensibility in the 60's;' Commentary, June, 1971, 73.
The Performance Group, Dionysus in 69. Ed. Richard Schechner
(New York, 1970).
Diogenes Laertius, Life of Pythagoras. The present discussion raises
questions about the looking we do at "sports events?' Consider
the funeral games in Iliad XXIII, their more civic counterpart
in Aeneid V, the Panathe:qaea games in Athens, and the ancient
Olympic games.
The single most important source of information about the
festival assembly is Demosthenes' speech Against Meidias. In 349
B.C. Demosthenes served as choregos for his tribe's dithyrambs.
Harrassed by Meidias before the f~,stival, and publicly assaulted
by him in the theatre, Demosthenes won a preliminary motion
against him in the theatre assembly. The surviving speech was
never delivered-an out-of-court settlement was reached-but
it conveys vividly attitudes about the festival and its civic role.
Washington Post, February 25, 1982, B 1.
In 1968 a group of newcomers to New Orleans, concerned about
the aristocratic exclusivity of Mardi Gras, added an event in
which everyone might participate. The new "Crewe;' Bacchus,
founded a night parade for the Sunday before the holiday. Sunday was chosen, in part, because it was also prime television time.
Floats were designed by a professional, and the event received
nationwide coverage. The first king of Bacchus was not a local
citizen leader, but an imported Hollywood star, the jewish Danny
Kaye! See Myron Tassin, Bacchus (New Orleans, 1975). For the
more traditional celebrations, see Duforn Huber, If Ever I Cease
to Love (New Orleans, 1970).
59
�Left and Right
Jacob Klein
I.
The typescript bearing the above title was
found stuck in the German proofs of Mr. Klein's
book Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of
Algebra. It is published by permission of Mrs.
Klein. She thinks that she recalls hearing of Adolf
Mueller as a young friend who sought out Mr.
Klein for conversation in the "Romanische Cafe;'
a meeting place for intellectuals on the Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin. This rather early essay,
probably not intended for publication, is
somewhat uncharacteristic from the perspective
of later writings, both in its matter which is the
establishment of a political typology, and its style,
which employs the abstract language of impersonal entities. Translated by Eva Brann and Beale
Ruhm von Oppen.
For Ad. Mueller
November 1934
The following observations disregard all concrete
political situations, groupings and programs whatsoever.
They start with the assumption that there exist two, constantly antagonistic, human attitudes, perhaps at all
times, but in any case in the Western cultural sphere
within the temporal limits of its development, most
especially since the Renaissance. These may be termed
the "left" and the "right."
60
I
n all "left" endeavors two basic motives are always
to be distinguished which do, however, perhaps go
back to one root. The first is the insight into the
"misera conditio humana;' the misery of human
existence ~'misery" understood in every sense. The consciousness of this misery has always been present, as far
back as we can see. That it is better not to be born, is
a saying of Sophocles. The lamentations of] ob can never
be stilled. Christian consciousness has made these lamentations the basis of a universal exegesis of human existence. The sinful creatureliness of all creation is the
Christian interpretation of this constantly experienced
fact. 'lThe misery of the creature" which everyone must
feel who can feel at all, the vanity of every wilful attempt
to ignore it, the sense of compassion with all alien misery
as with one's own, the contempt for pride, for glory, for
power in which "compassion" and with it the deepest
sources of human life are, as it were, "forgotten'~ these
are all basic elements of every "left" position. In modern
times they are always conditioned by Christian consciousness, even if it is no longer at all understood as such.
To this first motive is joined a second: the feeling for
"naturalness" on the one hand and for the "artificial;' for
"imagination;' for the "unnatural" on the other. Human
life always moves within certain conventions, mores,
valuatiops. All these are something "artificial" as contrasted to the factual course of life with its desires, instincts, its happiness and unhappiness. "Bare" life appears
here as the overwhelming phenomenon; all limits and
norms which human beings erect appear not only as
useless, but as fundamentally reprehensible. This view
was already vital to the school of the Greek sophists, who
were first to develop the great opposition of physis and
nomos, of nature and convention. It is characteristic of
SPRING 1984
�this view that "natural" life admits of no valuation, that
it is simply not possible to maintain an affirmative or
rejecting attitude in the face of the 'fundamental fact of
natural existence. This view is also the root of all modern
science, which, according to its own' self-interpret<ition
is and must be "value-free." But since this view must
necessarily place itself in opposition to whatever the
prevailing "moral" estimations happen to be, it immediately acquires a polemical sense. It must attack all
the prevailing norms and values; it must attack whatever
is "artificial" and "according to convention": Thus it must
itself affirm and deny; it must itself value the "natural"
positively) condemn the "unnatural:' But thus this view
·is confronted with a question insoluble in its own terms,
namely how valuation is itself at all possible. The ordinary
answer to this question (which may, however, appear in
many guises) is the denial of the originality of valuation
in general and the reduction of every valuation to certain "natural" givens or situations. The scientific expression of this attitude is positivism.
For the left consciousness of the present, that is, of
the last three centuries, the fusion of these two motives
is characteristic. If we abstract from all the superficial
appearances of this left consciousness and imagine the
"ideal" case of a left human being (such as does indeed
occur in real life), we may describe him as follows: He
is dominated by the urge to be absolutely truthful, not
to fool himself or others, to attach no importaoce to the
external, to pay the highest respect to all feelings which
are "genuine;' that is, those which come from the depths
of natural and creaturely life, to sacrifice himself for
these.- But this kind of person fulfills his highest
possibilities only in confrontation with the "other" world.
His indignation against contrary conduct, against the
subjection of all that is kind, genuine and truly felt can
intensify so as to become- rebellion, and unconditional
rebellion at that. This rebellion aims at the restoration
of that condition in which alone life appears worth
living- from the perspective of the "natural." If this
rebellion turns to violence, this violence is understood
as the self-sacrifice of one's own nature. The few genuine
anarchists who have existed in the world represent this
type at its purest.
II.
W
ith respect to the attitudes of the "right" two
basic motives, which however do not by any
means need to go together, can be likewise
distinguished. The first motive has at least this in common with the corresponding left, that it acknowledges
the "misera conditio humana:' But here it is no longer
a matter of"sympathy" or "compassion" with the human
race. Starting from "misery" as an unchangeable and incontrovertible fact, "right" consciousness seeks to give the
human being an inner support. This support is based
on the necessity of"control" [Zucht] and "discipline;' and
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
this necessity is in turn based on divine law. All conservatism which does not rely internally on divine law is
self-delusion ( cf. the phenomenon of the Wilhelminian
conservatives). The basic principles which are the standard for this discipline are in each case already contained
in the factually given living tradition. But the continuation of the tradition must never undermine the forces
which are at work within it: Thus preservation of the
tradition does not mean mere resistance to the powers
which are hostile to the tradition (the phenomenon of
reaction); rather such preservation must always go back
to these original forces, must always honor the commandments which are the final justification of the will to preservation, must in this sense be absolutely righteous [gerecht].
Whether such a "right" attitude is possible or not does
not depend on the "self2will of the human beings whose
attitude it is. Such an attitude can therefore never become
the demand of a party program. A "conservative party"
is merely a phenomenon of reaction; there are only conservative forces, never conservative "programs." A socalled "party of the right" therefore succumbs to the "left"
under all circumstances.
The second motive for the formation of a "right" attitude is the striving for power. This motive too has an
assumption in common with the "left": here, too, the
"natural" is acknowledged as the last court of appeaL
However, the right makes a selection within the "natural"
which is not only opposed by "left" consciousness, but
which appears to it as simply unintelligible. So little does
the "left" take this attitude of the "right" seriously that
it must necessarily succumb to the right when things
become serious. There is a whole series of classical
witnesses to this attitude. The first is Callicles in Platds
Gorgias. Everything that Machiavelli or Nietzsche later
had to say on this theme is expressed by Callicles with
unsurpassable clarity. For this attitude the proper fulfillment of the human being lies in the (!;randeur" of human
life. This grandeur is, for the most part, connected with
"glory;' but glory is, as it were, only the external aspect
of inner grandeur. This grandeur may also mean the actual "mastering" [Beherrschen] of human beingsalthough this mastering may not always assume the form
of external rule [Herrschaft]. What is aimed at here, in
the face of all "misery;' is the human possibility of insisting on wanting-to-have-more [a reference to the verb
pleonektein often used in the Gorgias] despite all obstacles,
despite every weakness, despite all will to life. It is a fundamental error of all left theories to wish to derive this
wanting-to-have-more from more ('original" instincts, such
as the nutritive instinct, the sexual instinct and the striving for "gratification" of all kinds. Indeed, one might say
that the consciousness of the left is simply determined
by the fact that it not only condemns power and the striving for power but does not take them seriously. For left
consciousness, "those in power" are from the outset carricatures, as are also all the attributes of power. For the
attitude which is the "right" in this sense it is a question
of realizing "grandeur;' not only at the expense of all sorts
61
�of weakness, but also at the expeqse of any private or
public disadvantaging of any number of human beings,
no matter how great.
Up to tbe seventeenth century this possibility was
always present as a real possibility. It was taken into account. . . . The tyrant was not only a reprehensible individual but also a danger to be constantly expected. The
present situation is determined by the fact that tyrants
in this sense are simply no longer possible. Today rule
[HerrschaftJ is never exercised for its own sake: It must
')ustify" itself; it must be based on the interests of a class,
a nation, a race. This rule no longer understands itself
as "autocratic'' [selbstherrlich] but bases itself on demands
which arise out of specific "conditions." It is demagogic
not only for tactical reasons, but demagogy is for it an
inner necessity. Therefore it must perish.
The "left" and "right" types which have been described
are surely seldom met with in this purity. The present
day situation is in general marked by the fact that the
"typical" forms of human existence become "mixed" with
one another in an imperspicuous way. This has already
been mentioned in discussing the second type of "right"
consciousness. But it holds no less for all the "political"
endeavors, narrowly understood, of the present. Here
Marxism has sketched out a general scheme for determining the "true" tendencies of the historical development amidst the tangle of "convictions;' "world views"
or- in Marxist terms -!'ideologies." Starting from the
undeniably great preponderance of economic interests
in our world, it distinguishes two powers of politicaleconomic life: the one originates in "property" which
wants to hold on to itself under all circumstances, the
second comes from the more or less distinct consciousness
of the "propertyless'!_ the overwhelming majority of all
the people of the globe -who "have nothing to lose but
their chains:' The idea which was decisive for the development of this view is the idea of justice [Gerechtigkeit].
The conceptual means by which this view is articulated
all come out of the arsenal of "left" consciousness.
However neither of these is necessarily attuned to the
other.
A
ccording to its own consciousness Marxism is
based on positivistic science, although the impulse decisive to its formation had at first nothing
to do. with the latter. Brought up in the atmosphere of
Hegelian thought, Marx saw through the enormous tension which exists between this "thought" and the factual
"being" of the enormous majority of human beings. He
therefore undertook- though, characteristically, using the
means of the Hegelian system- to turn this thinking "upside down," and in order to be able to justify his procedure he began by understanding the Hegelian system .
in its already inverted form. The Hegelian system was
a doctrine of the "spirit." In its concept this spirit was
determined as being devoid of any immediate reference
to the world; just so the spirit had once been conceived
62
by Descartes. In the face of this spirit all "nature" collapsed into something unessential and indifferent. The
innocent blooming of plants and the eternal paths of the
heavenly bodies appear as something infinitely inferior,
compared even to the confusions of human consciousness,
compared even to evil. For what is here enmeshed in confusion is still "spirit!' The opposite pole of spirit in the
Hegelian system is "contingent" .. "matter." It is indeed
determined by nothing but the fact that it is the opposite
of spirit and to that extent "inactual." The inversion of
the Hegelian system was accomplished by Marx in the
sense that he took as his foundation not "spirit" but "matter!' Now Marx understood this matter not at all as the
last basic element of all "nature" (thus far he remained
completely Hegelian), but rather as the defining concept
[Inbegriff] of human life on earth. This Marxian concept of matter is thus completely ('anthropological," exactly
as is true for Feuerbach.* The whole Hegelian "left" is
in this sense anthropologically oriented: It sees the
"material" or "real" human being with all his desires,
instincts and entanglements in a battle with nature and all
her forces which oppose his will to life (wherein the left
is, to be sure, in agreement with the innermost tendencies of positivistic science). But now a gradual transformation of this basic view took place.] oined in battle with
the ruling norms of the state, the law, religion, the
Hegelian left found its obvious ally in positivistic science,
and the anthropological materialism, whose nucleus had
been for Marx the critique of economic conditions,
slipped by reinterpretation into a scientific materialism.
(Correspondingly, "dialectic" was more and more given
up in favor of "causal inquiry": Kautsky's mode was
typical.* Lately a school has arisen in Russia which attempts to distinguish economic materialism much more
strongly from natural science.- Its chief representative,
in no way sufficient, is Deborin* who has already been
excluded from the Party.- In tbis connection the recently
published writings of the young Marx are very important.) That was the basis on which the "scientific.
character" of socialism was understood. Indignation
against "injustice" was reduced to completely value-free
matters of fact. Such indignation was interpreted as
[merelyJ the mode in which the "necessary" development
toward socialism makes its break-through. Every possible assertion concerning the ultimate goals of human life
was referred to a "time to come;' because impossible under
present circumstances. The realistic goal of world revolution which must result from the antagonisms within the
system of production is, for the time being, the only con*[Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-1872, studied under Hegel, attacked
Christianity in favor of a ''humanistic theology." Karl Kautsky,
1854-1938, friend of Marx, a founder of the German Social
Democratic Party, leading defender of Marxist orthodoxy, first against
pragmatic reformism and then against the radical Leninist left.
Abram Deborin, 1881-1963, leading Soviet theoretician, lost his posts
under Stalin for "Menshevizing idealism," the separation of philosophy
from practice.]
SPRING 1984
�crete and actualizable goal. Only after its actualization,
in the "realm of freedom;' does genuine human history
begin.
In this transfer of the ultimate perSpective into "time
to come" appears the tension betwee_n the "left" theory
of Marxism and its practices, which cannot so simply
be labelled "left:' Everything depends on how the idea
of justice is going to be understood i!l tbe coming development of Marxism. The idea of justice stands beyond tbe
opposition of left and right. [It is] its relationship to the
idea of power which decides whether it is to be assigned
to the left or tbe right camp. If one abstracts from all
their other motives, the present "fascist" endeavors of all
kinds are fighting about this relationship. Every possible reflection about this relationship, whether it come
from the left or from the right, must seek to take its bearings from tbe place where it once received a fundamental
treatment which has never since been surpassed- Plato.
On the "Frame" of Platds Timaeus
Jacob Klein
The following fragment of a letter by Jacob
Klein was evidently addressed to Leo Strauss.
It was written toward the end of his first year at
St. John's College. It was probably a draft, and
there is no evidence that it was ever sent. It is
published with Mrs. Klein's permission.'
August 14, 1939
Dear Friend,
T
his time I would like to pass on to you some of
the results of my Timaean brain-rackings, not
only for your enjoyment, but also to gain a certain clarity for myself. As things stand, you are probably
the only human being who will believe me. I believe that
I have understood something about the "frame" of the
Timaeus, and that would naturally mean more than the
mere "frame."-The first question in a reading is this: what
is the point of having the Atlantis the story bifore Timaeus'
speech? As is well known, some super-subtle people have
wanted to transfer it to the beginning of the Critias. What
is striking about the Atlantis story is the emphasis on
the "ancient," the primeval. The speaker is Critias. According to the [dramatic] date, this Critias cannot, in-
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
deed, be the "tyrant'';2 he is differently characterized; he
is too old, and even taking into account all the indifference to "chronology'' within the texts of the dialogues,
the tyrant just doesn't fit into the affair. But naturally,
one can't leave it at that. Supposing it were not the tyrant
Critias, why [not] another Critias who (a) is the grandfather of the tyrant and (b) has himself in turn a grandfather called Critias? And then the first question: if he
develops the "program" [27 A- B] according to which
Socrates is to be regaled with his "guest gifts;' then he
should properly be assigned the second speech, but in fact
he anticipates the most important thing in his account
as the first speaker. And the Critias itself remains a fragment . . . . Naturally it is possible that it is a natural,
unintentional fragment; why not? But still, it isn't quite
convincing, the less so since the Timaeus and the Critias
are certainly not Platds very last works. Besides, the Hermocrates is missing, which seemed to have been firmly promised in the Critias [108 A-D] and which is, so to speak,
a necessary consequence of the "program" that Critias
develops in the Timaeus. Though it isn't quite apparent
from this "program" [Tim. 27 A-B] what Hermocrates
is to talk about.
On the previous day Critias, Timaeus, and Hermocrates had been the guests of Socrates. Today Socrates
is their guest. Yesterday yet a "fourth" was there: today
he is ''sick:~ Critias is, then, the grandfather of the "well-
63
�known" Critias (and has himself a further Critias as
grandfather). Timaeus is unknown- I mean "historically''- but in any case he is from lower Italy. Hermocrates
is very well known to the Athenians (and therefore to
us): he whipped them in Sicily-a capable general. Why
this combination?
The answer is: the three represent- Cronos, Zeus,
and Ares. "Yesterday:' when Socrates spoke about the
Polity, 3 three "gods" were Socrates' guests; "today" Socrates
is the "gods"' guest and is "divinely" entertained. Cronos
is the eldest, as is well known; thus he has to precedeprecisely in time. He is the father of Zeus and Ares; as
"Critias" he is the host of the strangers Timaeus and Hermocrates. He is somber and loves the night. Therefore
"Critias" ponders the old story in the night [26 B]. He
belongs to the old, old time -like the story which he tells
and at the end of which Athens and Atlantis disappear
into the deep, as he himself did, according to the myth.
But according to a -demonstrably~'orphic" interpretation, Cronos is ever and again rejuvenated- there is ever
and again another "Critias!' And the tyrant Critias too
bears the features of c·ronos; the Critias of the Timaeus
is all possible Critiases in one. It is entirely appropriate
for him, as it is for the tyrant Critias, to speak about
"matters of state": the Critias of the Timaeus and of the
Critias tells of a "good old time;' of a period oflife which
is proverbially designated as "the life under Cronos?' Nor
should one forget that for the Greeks, Cronos is associated
with Chronos, although the etymology is actually incorrect. Timaeus' role as Zeus is a consequence of his role
in the dialogue itself: he is the "Father" of the All, "of
gods and of humans;' if only "in speech." [27 A]- he
depicts the construction and ~he "genesis" of the visible
cosmos. Hermocrates is nothing but a warrior. That he
is suited for the relevant conversations here is the opinion of "many!' The joke is that he never even gets his
turn "to speak?' These are three "gods" with whom
Socrates is together, three "rulers," who ''yesterday" allowed
themselves to be instructed about true rulership and who
"today" instruct him about very questionable things. And
comically enough, Cronos-Critias says in the Critias [107
A-B]: "For, Timaeus, it is easier to seem to speak adequately when saying something about gods to human be-
64
ings than about mortals to us." "We:' this means, are the immortals. (Cf. also Timaeus 27 C-D: the ambiguous word
{'llepomen0s" 4 ) Besides, mockery of the "gods" runs through
the whole dialogue.
However, Cronos, Zeus, and Ares are not only the
old "gods:' but much "truer" gods, namely the corresponding planets. In fact, according to the "astronomy" of the
Timaeus, Saturn, Zeus, and Mars themselves together with
the moon form one group of the planets, while the Sun,
Venus, and Mercury represent another (revolving with
the same velocity). But Selene is first of all "feminine"
and secondly not the name of a divinity at all. Hence
"the fourth" is "sick'~and with this the dialogue immediately begins. 5
So that is the "frame" of the Timaeus. I would like in
addition to refer to the alliteration of Cmnos-Critias which
is unlikely to be coincidental and to the connection of
Timaeus and time [honor].
What do you think of this? How does it fit in with
your "esotericism"?
1. Translated and annotated by Laurence Berns, Gisela Berns, Eva
Brann, and Robert Williamson.
2. For the identification of Critias see A E. Taylor, A Commentary
on Plato's Timaeus (Oxford 1928), pp. 23-25 and Warman Welliver,
Character, Plot and Thought in Plato's Timaeus-Critias (Leiden 1977),
pp. 50-57.
3. Politeia is the Greek title of Plato's Republic.
4. hepomenOs can mean either "consequently" or "accordingly." In the
passage cited Timaeus prays to the gods and goddesses that what
is said may be agreeable to them "and consequently [accordingly]
to us." The first meaning conveys merely that "we" derive our
pleasure from the gods' pleasure but the second implies that "we"
are the gods.
5. In several conversations of later years, Jacob Klein suggested an
alternative interpretation: the missing "fourth" may represent
Uranos, the father of Cronos and, according to some legends, the
oldest of the male gods, who was emasculated by his son. The
Greek word ouranos also means the all-embracing heavens. On this
interpretation, the absence of the "fourth" would suggest that the
promised sequence of speeches by Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates lacks from the outset something needed for a complete
account of the "AU:'
SPRING 1984
�Den 14. August 1939.
Lieber Freund,
desmal moechte ich Dir einige Ergebnisse meines
Timaios-Kopfzerbrechens mitteilen, nicht nur, urn Dich
zu erfreuen, sondern auch, urn mir selbst eine gewisse
Klarheit zu verschaffen. Wie die Dinge liegen, bist Du
wahrscheinlich der einzige Mensch, der mir glauben
wird. Ich glaube etwas ueber den "Rahmen" des Timaios
verstanden zu haben, und das wuerde natuerlich mehr
als der blosse "Rahmen" bedeuten.- Die erste Frage bei
der Lektuere ist die: was soli die Atlantis-Geschichte vor
der Timaios-Rede? Einige ganz schlaue Leute haben sie
bekanntlich an den Anfang des "Kritias" versetzen
wollen. Was an der Atlantis-Geschichte auffaellt, ist die
Betonung des "Alten;' des U r-Alten. Der Sprecher ist
Kritias. Der Zeit nach kann dieser Kritias in cler Tat
nicht cler "Tyrann" sein, er ist anders charakterisiert, ist
zu alt und, bei aller Gleichgueltigkeit gegen "Chronologie" innerhalb cler Dialog-Texte, cler "Tyrann" passt
ueberhaupt nicht in die Sache hinein. Aber dam it kann
man sich natuerlich nicht beruhigen. Angenommen, es
sei nicht der Tyrann Kritias, warum dann [nicht] ein
anclerer Kritias, der (a) Grossvater des Tyrannen ist, und
(b) selbst wiederum einen Grossvater Kritias hat? Und
dann die erste Frage: wenn er das "Programm" entwickelt, gemaess welchem Sokrates seine "Gastgeschenke" vorgesetzt bekommen soH, so kommt ihm die
zweite Rede zu, er nimmt aber faktisch clas Wichtigste
als Erster in seiner Erzaehlung vorweg. U nd der "Kritias"
selbst bleibt Fragment.... N atuerlich ist es moeglich,
class es ein "natuerliches", nicht beabsichtigtes Fragment
ist. Warum nicht? Aber immerhin, es leuchtet einem
nicht recht ein, zumal der Timaios und der Kritias
bestimmt nicht die allerletzten Werke Plato's sind.
Ausserdem fehlt der "Hermokrates:' der im "Kritias" fest
versprochen zu sein scheint (108 A-D) undja auch aus
dem von Kritias im "Timaios" entwickelten "Programm"
sich sozusagen mit Notwendigkeit ergibt. Allerdings ist
aus dem "Programm" (Tim. 27 A-B) nicht recht zu
ersehen, worueber Hermokrates sprechen soH. Am Tage
vorher waren Kritias, Timai()s und Hermokrates Gaeste
des Sokrates. Heute ist Sokrates bei ihnen zu Gast.
Gestern war noch ein "Vierter'' da, heute ist er "krank.'~
Kritias ist also der Grossvater des "bekannten" Kritias
(und hat selbst einen weiteren Kritias zum Grossvater).
Timaios ist unbekannt, ich meine ''historisch;' stammt
aber jedenfalls aus Unteritalien. Hermokrates ist den
Athenern ( und darum uns) sehr gut bekannt: er hat sie
in Sizilien verdroschen-ein tuechtiger Feldherr. Warum
diese Kcmbination?
Die Antwort ist: die drei vertreten- Kronos, Zeus und
Ares. "Gestern;' als Sokrates ueber die Politeia sprach,
waren die drei "Goetter" bei Sokrates zu Gast, "heute"
ist Sokrates bei den "Goettern" zu Gast und wird "goettlich" bewirtet. Kronos ist der Aelteste bekanntlich, er
muss also- gerade in der Zeit- vorangehen. Er ist der
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Vater von Jupiter und Ares, als "Kritias" der Wirt der
"Fremden" Timaios und Hermokrates. Er ist duester und
liebt die Nacht. Daher ueberlegt sich "Kritias" die alte
Geschichte in der Nacht (26 B). Er gehoert in die alte,
alte Zeit -wie die Geschichte, die er erzaehlt und an
deren Ende Athen und Atlantis in die Tiefe verschwinden -wie er selbst der Sage nach. Aber, lautnachweislicher-"orphischer" Interpretation, Kronos wird
immer wieder "verjuengt'~ es gibt immer wieder
"Kritias." Und auch der "Tyrann" Kritias traegt KronosZuege; der Kritias des "Timaios" ist aile moeglichen
"Kritiasse" in einem. Es kommt ihm durchaus zu -wie
dem Tyrannen Kritias- ueber "staatliche" Dinge zu
sprechen. Der Kritias des "Timaios" und des "Kritias"
berichtet ueber eine "gute, alte Zeit;' ueber eine LebensPeriode, die sprichwoertlich als 6 btl KpOvou Pio<;
bezeichnet wird. U nd nicht zu vergessen ist, class fuer
die Griechen- obgleich die Etymologie gar nicht
stimmt- Kronos mit Chronos zusammenhaengt.Timaios' Zeus-Rolle ergibt sich aus seiner Rolle im
Dialog selbst: er ist der "Vater" des Ails "Der Goetter
und der Menschen':.._wenn auch nur t0 A.Oy41 (27 A)-,
er schildert den Bau und die "Entstehung'' des sichtbaren
Kosmos.- Hermokrates ist nichts als Krieger. Dass er
sich fuer die hier in Frage kommenden Gespraeche
eignet, ist die Meinung 'Vieler'' (20 B). Der Witz ist der,
class er garnicht "zu Wort" kommt- Es sind drei "Goetter;' mit denen Scikrates zusammen ist, drei "Herrscher;'
die sich von Sokrates ueber wahre Herrschaft "gestern"
belehren lassen und ibn "heute" ueber sehr fragwuerdige Dinge belehren. Und ulkig genug sagt Kronos~
Kritias im "Kritias" (107 A/B): m:pi 9e&v ydp, d) TiJ.L(UE,
A.tyovtd TtnpO<; Uv9p6:mou<; 8oKeiv iKo.vOO<; A.tyew {JQ.ov
~
7tEpi Ov~<WV npo, ~~a,.
"Wir" sind naemlich die "Unsterblichen'' (vgl. auch Tim.
27 C/D: das zweideutige Wort btaJ.LtVm<;). Im uebrigen
zieht sich durch den ganzen Dialog die Verspottung der
"Goetter" durch.
Nun sind aber Kronos, Zeus und Ares nicht nur die
alten "Goetter;' sondern viel "wahrere" Goetter, naemlich
die entsprechenden Planeten. Und zwar bilden Saturn,
Jupiter und Mars gemaess cler "Astronomie" des
"Timaios" selbst zusammen mit dem Moncl eine Gruppe
der Planeten, waehrend Sonne, Venus und Merkur eine
andere (mit derselben Geschwindigkeit kreisende)
Gruppe darstellen. Aber Selene ist erstens einmal
"weiblich" und zweitens gar kein "Goetter"- N arne. Daher
ist "der Vierte" "krank':.._womit cler Dialog unmittelbar
beginnt.
Das ist also der "Rahmen" des Timaios. Ich moechte
auch noch auf die wahrscheinlich nicht zufaellige
Alliteration Kr onos-Kr itias hinweisen und auf den
Zusammenhang von Timaios und time.
Was haeltst Du davon? Wie passt das mit Deiner
"Esoterik" zusammen?
65
�OccAsiONAL DiscouRsEs
Spring 1984
The Roots of Modernity*
Eva Brann
T
he part of the title of this talk w.hich I asked
to have announced is "The Roots of
Modernity:' But there is a second part which
I wanted to tell you myself. The full title is:
"The Roots of Modernity in Perversions of
ChristianitY:'
The reason I wanted to tell you myself is that it is
a risky title, which might be easily misunderstood,
especially since "perversion" is strong language. So let
me begin by explaining to you what I intend and why
I chose to talk to you about such a subject.
I think you will recognize my first observation right
off; you might even think it hardly worth saying. It is
that we live in "the modern age." We never stop trying
to live up to that universally acknowledged fact: we are
continually modernizing our kitchens, our businesses and
our religions.
Now what is actually meant by "modern times?" The
term cannot just mean "contemporary" because all times
are con-temporary with themselves. Modern is a Latin
word which means ')ust now." Modern times are the times
which are in a special way "just now:' Modernity is justnowness, up-to-date-ness. Perhaps that doesn't seem like
a very powerful distinguishing characteristic, because,
again, what times are not just now for themselves? How
is our modern age distinguished from ancient times, or
from that in-between era we call the "middle" ages, all
in comparison with our present times?
Well, the first answer is very simple. We live
differently in our time from the way those who came
before us lived in theirs. For instance, when we speak
of something or even someone as being "up to date" we
are implying that what time it is, is significant, that time
marches, or races, on by itself, and we have the task of
keeping up with it. Our time is not a comfortable natural
niche within the cycle of centuries, but a fast sliding rug
being pulled out from under us.
* This talk was written in 1979 for delivery at Whitworth College,
a Presbyterian school in Spokane, Washington. I was somewhat reluctant to submit it for publication, being mindful of Curtis Wilson's
severe but just criticism of an apparently similar effort in the last
issue of the St. John's Review (''A Comment on Alexandre Koji':ve's
'The Christian Origins of Modem Science' "). However, I was persuaded that the differences were sufficient to take the chance. E.B.
66
Furthermore, we have a sense of the extraordinariness
of our times; we think they are critical and crucial, that
something enormous is about to be decided, or revealed.
You might say that we don't just have a sense of doom
or delivery, but that things are, in fact, that way. And
yet such a feeling of crisis has marked decades of every
century for the last half-millenium. Modernity itself is,
apparently, a way of charging the Now with special
significance.
To ask about the roots of modernity is to ask what
made. this state, this chronically hectic state, we are in
come about. By the roots of modernity I mean the true
beginnings, the origin of our way of being in time.
At this point you might think that I am talking of
history and that I am planning to lecture to you on the
various historical movements which led up to our day.
But not so. Such "movements'!_ be they the Protestant
Reformation or the Industrial Revolution- are themselves only the names given to the sum of events which
are in need of explanation. Let me give an example. Suppose I were to explain the resolve or habit some of you
live with of turning directly to Scripture for your
knowledge concerning faith, by saying that you are "products" of the Protestant Reformation. This historical explanation would sound as if I were saying something
significant, but in fact it would say nothing about ·the
inner reasons why a part of Christianity decided to return
directly to the Bible. And inner reasons, namely ideas,
are in the end the only satisfying explanation of the actions of human beings.
Next, in explaining my title, I have to tell you what
I mean here by Christianity. I do not refer to the faith
itself. Nor do I mean specific dogma, that is to say,
dogmatics. What I do mean are certain spiritual and intellectual modes, certain ways of approaching thought
and life and the world, which are perhaps more noticeable
even to a non-Christian than to someone who lives within
Christianity. I hope the examples I mean to give you will
clarify what I am saying.
And finally I want to define as carefully as possible
what I meall by a "perversion."
I do not mean something blatantly heretical or terrifically evil, which we moderns should cast out. For one
thing I am not myself a Christian, and it is not my
business to demand the purification of other people's
SPRING 1984
�faith. For another, I mean to show 1pat all of us, simply
by reason of living as moderns, have been deeply
penetrated by these perversions and that we could hardly
carry on without them. They are an unavoidable part
of our lives. When I say "unavoidable" I do not mean
that there is no possibility and no point in resisting them.
In my opinion there are no inevitable movements but
only human beings willing, and on occasion unwilling,
to go along. These perversions are unavoidable only in
the sense that once certain very potent trains of ideas
had been set into the world, they were bound to be carried beyond themselves, to be driven to their inherent
but unintended conclusion.
Perhaps, then, I should speak less dramatically and
say that it is the secularization of certain Christian notions that is at the root of modernity. Nevertheless, I do
want to hold on to the stronger word to describe this
development, and for the following reasons.
You all know what the sin of Satan is said to have
been. It was resistance to God and rebellion against his
creator, and its cause was pride, the sin of sins. Satanic
pride, any pride, is, theologically speaking, a perverse
will, literally a will that turns things awry. In particular
it overturns the relation of the creature to his creator.
Satan rebels because he cannot bear to be derivative and
subordinate, and least of all to be more remote from the
center of knowledge than Christ. He communicates that
terrible impatience to Eve in the Garden when he tempts
her with the fruit of knowledge and promises "Ye shall
be as gods, knowing good and evil,':..... in Latin, this is the
scientia boni et mali.
Now, as it happens, the men of the generation around
1600 Anno Domini- the generation which was most
pointedly responsible for modernity and in whose
writings it roots are to be most explicitly seen- these men
were also unspeakably proud. I am thinking of names
probably familiar to you: of Galileo Galilei, of Rene
Descartes and of Francis Bacon, an Italian, a Frenchman
and an Englishman. You need only glance at the engraving published as the frontispiece of the most accessible
translation of Descartes' works to see how haughty he
looks.
olletheless anyone who reads their books must
be struck with the sober and restrained character
of their writing. They keep claiming that they
are not revealing great mysteries or setting out momentous discoveries. They present themselves as merely having found a careful, universally accessible method, which,
once they have set it out, can be used by all mankind.
All that is needed is the willingness to throw off old prejudices and preoccupations, all that Bacon calls our
"idols;" we are to throw off the nonsense of the ages and
to apply sober human reason to clearly-defined problems.
In other words, these initiators of modernity are
preaching rebellion against the traditional wisdom, but
in measured, careful, sometimes even dull words, so dry
N
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
that students often get rather bored with reading them.
That is, they get bored partly with the measured dryness
with which this tremendous rebellion is announced,
partly because the Baconian-Cartesian revolution is so
much in our bones, has been so precisely the overwhelming success its authors expected it to be that we, its heirs,
hardly recognize the revolutionary character of its
original declarations of independence.
But the overweening pride of these first moderns was
not essentially in the fact that they were aware of opening a new age. That was too obvious to them and they
were of too superior a character to glory much in it. Their
pride was the pride of rebellion, though not, perhaps,
against God. Interpretations differ about their relations
to faith, and I think they worshipped God in their way,
or at least had a high opinion of him as the creator of
a rationally accessible world, and they co-opted him as
the guarantor of human rationality. Their rebellion is
rather against all intermediaries between themselves and
God and his nature. They want to be next to him and
like him. So they fall to being not creatures but creators.
Let me give you a few bits of evidence for this contention. First, they all had a cautiously sympathetic
respect for Satan.
For example, as you may know, both Galileo and
Descartes had trouble with the publication of their works.
Galileo had such trouble because he supported Copernicus in his view that the earth is not fixed at the center
of the universe, but travels around, a wanderer (which
is what the word planet literally means) in the world,
so that we human 'beings become cosmic travelers, able
to see the heavens from various perspectives. Now, the
authorities of the Catholic Church at that time, considered the fixed central place of the earth as crucial to
the character of the place God had chosen to become incarnate. But they were not so crude as to quarrel with
an alternative astronomical hypothesis, if it happened to
be mathematically satisfying. What they forbade Galileo
to assert in public was that this was the true reality and
not just a possible theory. In this they were in the best
tradition of ancient science. The astronomers had always
known that there were alternative mathematical hypotheses for explaining the heavenly motions, depending on
one's point of view. The Ptolemaic, geocentric system was
simply the one more in accord with the evidence of our
unaided sense- everyone can see the sun running
through the sky-and the system then and now most useful for navigation. What the Church required of Galileo
was that he should keep science hypothetical instead of
claiming that it revealed the reality of the heavens; this
earth's motion could be asserted hypothetically but not
as a fact. We all know that he pretended to yield, but
is said to have muttered: '1\.nd yet it moves?' By that stubharness he showed himself the archetypal scientist. I
mean, he made it possible for that word scientia which
means simply knowledge, as in the scientia boni et mali,
to come to be confined to such knowledge of reality as
67
�Galileo had, which is what we call science today. Among
such realities is the fact that the he~vens are full of real
matter which is indistinguishable fr,om and moves just
as do the stones on earth.
,
Now Galileo and also Descartes, who had similar
troubles with the theological faculty of the University of
Paris, the Sorbonne, did find a publisher in Holland. And
this Dutch publisher had a most revealing emblem which
includes a very serpent-like vine twining around a tree,
an apple tree, I imagine, whose fruit is the new scientia}
modern science. Of course, the serpent is Satan's shape
as he tempts human beings to knowledge beyond that
proper to a creature! "Ye shall be as gods , knowing good
and evil."
A few more examples. When Bacon first sets out those
procedures which are now smoothly familiar under the
name of the scientific method, he constructed a type of
experiment he slyly calls light-bringing or "luciferic" experiments. You all know that the angelic name of Satan
before his revolution in heaven and his fall was Lucifer,
or the Light-bearer. Again, some of you have probably
read Milton's Paradise Lost, and perhaps you can compare
Milton's Satan with Dante's. Dante's Satan is a horrible,
inhuman figure encased in ice in the lowest hell in Inferno. Milton's modern Satan has much grandeur. He
is in fact represented as an overwhelmingly proud, antique, even Homeric, hero. Or one last example: Dr.
Faustus, an evidently not altogether fictional scholar who
stands on the brink of modernity, has a real intimacy
with the devil. And in those old tales from which the
famous later treatments are taken Faust sells his soul to
him not only for the pleasures and the dominion of the
world, but also for the secrets of modern astronomy and
algebra.
Here let me repeat my caution: I am not saying that
these founders of modernity played silly and wicked
blasphemous games, but only that they still had the
theological learning and the grandeur of imagination to
know what their enterprize resembled.
ow let me give you three enlightening complementary facts. Bacon wrote a book, a kind of
scientific utopia called the New Atlantis, a place
which is an imaginary island lying off the shore of
America. The book is, in fact, the first description of a
scientific research complex. Bacon calls the group of people in charge of it "the College of the Six Days' Work:'
Furthermore, Galilee's work called the Two-New Sciences,
in which he sets out the beginning of modern physics,
is a dialogue taking place on a succession of days, possibly
six. And finally Descartes's Meditations, intended to
prepare the world for modern science, takes place in six
sessions. There is no question in my mind but that these
men were thinking of themselves as re-doing God's work
of the creation, as creating a new world or re-creating
the old one in an accessibly intelligible, illuminated form,
and as revealing what they had done in a new kind of
N
68
scripture. They were light-bringers, making us, their
heirs, like gods, knowing a source for re-making the
world, for better or worse, as new creators. Here, finally,
is the point I have been leading up to; you may find it
a little outrageous, but see whether you can deny it: We,
almost all of us, have so totally absorbed such an attitude
that we hardly notice what we are saying anymore. Let
me ask you when you have last said that you wanted to
"do something creative" with your life, or have been told
to "think creatively" or called someone you admired "so
creative:' In fact we are in the habit of referring to all
our more exciting activities as "creative:' But creativity
is a precise theological idea whose meaning we are partly forgetting, partly perverting to our modern use.
Creativity means the ability to bring something into being out of nothing, in Latin, "ex nihilo;' frOm the very
beginning, as God is implied in Genesis to have separated
the heavens and the earth out of a chaos of his own
creating.
Clearly we are quite incapable of such production.
For example, take a potter to whose work we may refer
as "very creative." But a potter has clay out of which the
pottery is fashioned and a wheel on which it is thrown.
The ancient Greeks referred to all such work as "making," for which the Greek word is poesis, and they used
that word particularly for that kind of making which is
done in words and which we still call poetry. Creative
poetry is therefore, strictly speaking, a contradiction in
terms, and yet that adjective has a revealing significance.
For a maker works on given material according to a
tradition and from a pattern. But a creator is free of all
those restrictive circumstances and bound above all by
the inner demands of self-expression. It makes for that
kind of production we peculiarly think of as "Art;' with
all its courage, cleverness, sophistication and emphasis
on the artist's individuality. The story of modern art is
the story of the triumph of rebellious creativity, of
creativity divorced from its proper, superhuman agent.
But artistic creativity is only a later outcome of the
original perversion of the notion, and indeed, a reaction
to it. The first, and still predominant application of the
notion of human creativity is the re-enactment of the sixdays' work I have already referred to. That is to say, it
is the science of nature and its application, called
technology, which appears to put humanity in control
of the creation.
Now modern science, it seems to me, has two separate
roots. One is Greek. The Greeks began the development
of those mathematical tools which characterize modern
science. They also distinguished and named the science
of physics. Physics is a Greek word derived from physis,
which means growth and movement and is usually
translated as "nature." But the natural science of the
Greeks was, I think, in its very essence, incapable of
mechanical application. It was pure theory.-Theory is
another Greek word which means "beholding;' "contemplation:' The Greek physicists looked on natural be-
SPRING 1984
�ings but they did not control nature. You will not be surprised when I say that I think this attitude has everything
to do with the fact that the greatest of them, Aristotle,
regarded the world not as having a beginning and an
end but as unmade and indestructible.
Something very different had to arise to induce the
frame of mind which made a technological science possible. It was not merely the notion of creation, for you
remember that when God asks Job in the Old Testament:
"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the
earth?", Job has no answer.- He is overcome by his own
impotence in the face of God's power over nature. But
these moderns I have been speaking of, they do have an
answer. For example, when God goes on to ask; "Canst
thou send lightnings, that they may go and say unto thee,
Here we are?" Of course, the modern answer is: Yes, we
were there; yes, we can. What has intervened?
What has intervened is, I think, the notion that God
can appear in human form and work miracles, that transubstantiations, that is, substantial transformations of
nature can take place: in sum, that the creation can be
controlled from within. Modern science takes, I believe,
some of its impulse and much of its pathos from a
secularized version of these notions.
There are dozens of other aspects of modernity which
have a similar origin in a secularized version of Christian notions. Because I cannot set them out carefully nOw,
let me just pour them out before you and then choose
that one which particularly bears on the just-nowness,
the peculiar "modernity" of our time for a brief final word.
Here is a mere list of such aspects. It will probably
be a little unintelligible; it is certainly incomplete; but
it might be suggestive. Modernity, then, has adopted from
Christianity:
• The search for certainty in philosophic matters,
• The notion of a total adherence to an idea ( cf. the
bookburning of Acts 19: 19, 20, Hume, Enquiry, last
para.),
• A burning interest in facts of existence and in their
ordinary or extraordinary standing,
• The concentration on the self and its expression,
• The emphasis on the will and its power,
• The fascination with freedom,
• The conversion of the antique noble virtues to virtues of benevolence (such as Jefferson explicitly
urged),
• The passion for equality,
• The notion of salvation through work (cf. Weber,
The Protestant Spirit),
• The overwhelming importance of the written word,
• The idea of historical change.
et me, by way of finishing off, dwell a little on the
last aspect. I cannot imagine that there is anyone
here who does not have one of two possible attitudes toward the past. You may think either that the
past is too much dead and gone to bother with in this
L
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
modern, fast-changing world. Or you may think that you
need to study the past to get some perspective on the present day and its uniqueness. But that means that whether
or not you are interested in the academic discipline called
history, you believe in History as a movement of time
in which essential and irreversible changes come about,
and many of you may also think that this movement is
toward something, either doom or fulfillment, that is either
progress or decline.
The ancient pagans, to be sure, also knew that every
present passes away, that kings die, empires crumble and
ancestors moulder in their tombs. They too kept chronicles of times past, to keep alive the memory of heroes
or to prove how ancient was their own descent, and they
certainly thought that the world might have its epochs
and its cycles. But, to my knowledge, they never, never,
thought of history as having an intelligible, purposeful
movement; they never thought that time contained moments of revelation, or bore a spirit, or had in it a beginning and an inevitable end. Hence they had none of our
preoccupation with the future as a shape coming toward
us. What we keep calling "tomorrow's world" was for them
simply the "not yet;' the nothing.
Now I think that this way of thinking of time was
prepared for us by the Christian notion of the irruption
into time of divinity, that is, by the Incarnation, and by
the promise of a Second Coming and a Day of judgment
and a New Kingdom. The secularization these ideas have
undergone has removed their precise theological
significance, and what we have retained is only a sense
of doom or of progress, according to our temperaments;
and a sense of the whirling advance of time. But that
sense of living in a Now which is both unique and
vanishing- that is exactly what is meant by modernity.
Let me conclude by repeating what I said in the
beginning. This is emphatically not a sermon but alecture, and so I am in no way urging some sort of purification of modernity. On the contrary, I hope to have shown
that modernity consists of such perversions of notions
drawn from Christianity, and that to be a modern means
to be deeply enmeshed in them.
But there is a conclusion to be drawn. It is that there
is no way to understand ourselves and our world without
some deep study of the J udaeo-Christian tradition. Let
me tell you a brief anecdote. Some of my colleagues-forthe-year at Whitman College were arguing over the current curriculum reform the college is undertaking and
the difficulties of finding a subject matter that all could
agree on as indispensable. One member of the group
finally asked: What would you all say if you were asked
what was the single most necessary study? Then a man
who has, I am sure, only the loosest religious affiliations
answered unhesitatingly: Theology. And no one was willing to deny his explanation that students need a framework in which to think about the nature and ends of their
life. My point today has been that they need the same
study to understand the nature and ends of their time.
69
�BooK REVIEW
The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response.
Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1983
viii+103 pp., $1.50 (paper)
Moral Clarity in the Nuclear Age
Michael Novak
Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1983
144 pp., $3.95 (paper)
Catholics and Nuclear War: A Commentary on "The Challenge of
Peace;' the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Pastoral Letter on War and Peace
Philip J. Murnion, ed.
New York: Crossroad, 1983
xxii+346 pp., $10.95 (paper)
The Bishops and the Bomb: Waging Peace in a Nuclear Age
Jim Castelli
Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1983
283 pp., $7.95 (paper)
very group today seems to have a The drafting process also found the comleft and a right -legislatures, school mittee members accommodating themboards, advisory commissions, even sdves not only to the Catholic just-war
committees of Roman Catholic bishops. tradition but also to new expressioJ;lS of
The Committee on War and Peace of the pacifism among their fellow bishops and
National Conference of Catholic Bishops to the strongly expressed views of the
(NCCB) was evidently planned that way. Reagan administration and the Vatican.
Archbishop John Roach, the NCCB The story of this consultative process, unpresident. who appointed the committee's precedented for an American bishops'
chairman, has said, "I wanted articulate conference, has been competently told by
people at the extremes:' For the left wing, religion reporter Jim Castelli in The
Archbishop (later Cardinal) Joseph Ber- Bishops and the Bomb. In tantalizing detail,
nardin of Chicago selected Auxiliary Castelli describes the special influence
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, a wielded by two advisers to the commitwell known pacifist and president of Pax tee: the Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, director of
Christi U.S.A.; for the right wing, Aux- the bishops' Office of International Justice
iliary Bishop John O'Connor of the Mili- · and Peace, and Bruce Martin Russett, a
tary Ordinariate. The other members, Yale political science professor appointed
Bishop Daniel Reilly of Norwich, Conn., as the committee's principal consultant.
and Auxiliary Bishop George Fulcher of Hehir and to a lesser extent Russett were
Columbus, Ohio, were expected to be responsible for much of the precise
swing votes. Bernardin's skills at guiding language and subtle reasoning of the
this group to a consensus without visibly letter.
taking sides were unquestioned.
How the bishops' committee pulled
The bishop's committee worked from and hauled between the hawk and the
1981 to 1983, producing four drafts of a dove positions of O'Connor and Gumblebook-length pastoral letter on nuclear ton reveals some interesting aspects of the
weapons and U.S. defense policy entitled leftward drift of episcopal political views,
The Challenge of Peace. The drafts but the real significance of The Challenge
themselves, which culminated in the of- of Peace resides in the final text itselfficial version adopted by the NCCB in what it says, what it implies, how well it
May 1983, reflect major shifts of opinion argues its case, how it can be interpreted,
among the committee members, the how it will be used. The letter is signifibishops at large, and consultants to the cant both for the American Catholic comcommittee both invited and uninvited. munity and for the security of the nation.
E
70
The bishops' rhetoric rings clear and
strong: "as a people, we must refuse to
legitimate the idea of nuclear war . . .
our 'nd to nuclear war must, in the end,
be definitive and decisive" (Challenge, pars.
131, 138.) [These paragraph numbers are
used in all published texts of the letter;
the text is available in a low-priced edition from the U.S. Catholic Conference
and as an appendix to the Castelli and
Murnion books.] The bishops translate
their rhetoric into moral anathemas,
solemnly condemning the use of nuclear
weapons against population centers, retaliatory use of nuclear weapons "which
would indiscriminately take many wholly
innocent lives" and any "deliberate initiation of nuclear warfare, on however restricted a scale" (147-150). Although the
letter avoids a blanket condemnation of
any use of any nuclear weapon under any
circumstances, the bishops make no attempt to specify conditions under which
a nuclear weapon could be used morally.
If no moral wartime uses of nuclear
weapons can be foreseen, what moral
status can be attributed to a policy of
nuclear deterrence? The bishops' treat~
ment of deterrence mostly consists of expressions of concern and perplexity.
Deterrence, they write, is "currently the
most dangerous dimension of the nuclear
arms race" (162); it is a "moral and
political paradox" (167) as well as a "contemporary dilemma'' (174); and "any claim
SPRING 1984
�by any government that it is pursuing a
morally acceptable policy of deterrenc~
must be scrutinized with the greatest care"
(195).
ad the bishops been left to think
for themselves, they might well
have moved to a condemnation of
deterrence, as a goodly number of their
confreres wanted. But in June 1982 Pope
John Paul II sent a message to the Second
U.N. Special Session on Disarmament
containing a sentence on deterrence that
would once and for all determine the
American bishops' position: "In current
conditions;' the Pope wrote, "'deterrence'
based on balance, certainly not as an end
in itself but as a step on the way toward
a progressive disarmament, may still be
judged morally acceptable" (Challenge,
173). Taking this sentence as a papal
directive, the bishops simply adopted it
as their policy, interpreting it in American
terms, elaborating it in different language, without criticizing or altering it.
The effect on The Challenge of Peace was
seriously to soften the core of the letter
by substituting moral assertions on deterrence for moral analysis. The bishops'
own versions ofJohn Paul's statement on
deterrence include their "strictly conditioned moral acceptance of nuclear deterrence" (186) and their "lack of unequivocal
condemnation of deterrence" (192). The
strict conditions specify that deterrence
must be minimally sufficient and that
each new deterrent strategy and weapon
must be judged "in light of whether it will
render steps toward 'progressive disarm ament' more or less likely" (188).
The bishops' loyalty to the Pope's
every sentence prevented them not only
from developing their own moral analysis
of deterrence but also from uncovering a
serious deficiency in the papal statement
itself. John Paul evidently opposes deterrence if it is "an end in itself' but approves
of it "as a step on the way'' to disarmament. But in the real world of massive
Soviet threats and refractory U.S.-Soviet
negotiations, deterrence never is an end
in itself but definitely is a need in itself.
By itself it is not -and cannot be -a step
on the way toward disarmament. Deterrence is needed to deter the Soviet Union
from using its weapons. If the Soviets
decide not to negotiate, deterrence will be
needed; if a new treaty is signed, deterrence will still be needed; if George Kennan's dream of a 50 percent reduction in
nuclear weaponry is realized, deterrence
will still be needed. To be sure, disarmament is another need, but deterrence and
H
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
disarmament are different in kind. To tie
them together as the Pope did -with the
American bishops dutifully agreeingconfuses any argument about the morality or immorality of deterrence policies.
The moral category most in need of
study with respect to deterrence is the notion of intention. To a nuclear pacifist, the
intention of deterrence is analogous to the
plan of a murderer and is to be damned
accordingly. But since the goal of deterrence is to prevent war, not to wage war,
the moral question is not that easy to
answer. Michael Novak, in Moral Clarity
in the Nuclear Age (archly described by
Castelli as a "counterpastoral"), has
vigorously argued for moral approval of
deterrence:
It is clear that the complexities of
nuclear deterrence change the
meaning of intention and threat as
these words are usually used in
moral discourse. Those who intend
to prevent the usc of nuclear
weapons by maintaining a system
of deterrence in readiness for use do
intend to use such weapons, but only
in order not to use them, and do
threaten to use them, but only in
order to deter their use . . .
Clearly, it is a more moral choice
and occasions lesser evil to hold a
deterrent intention than it is to
allow nuclear attack. [Moral Clarity~
pp. 59, 61]
Moral Clarity ~·n the Nuclear Age is the
most cogent critique of the American
bishops' judgments yet to be published,
though it addresses itself mainly to the
issues rather than to the text of The
Challenge of Peace. The pastoral letter invites dialogue and criticism by claiming
that one of the major purposes of Catholic
teaching on war and peace is "to contribute to the public policy debate about
the morality of war" (16). From Novak,
in the book under review and in num~
erous articles, the bishops have been getting what they apparently want. In the
collection of essays, Catholics and Nuclear
JiVtzr, however, too much of the criticism
is mild and too many of the essaysists
follow the lead of the Rev. Theodore
Hesburgh, who in the book's foreward
writes, ''I believe [the pastoral letter] is the
-finest document that the American
Catholic hierarchy has ever produced"
(Catholics, p. vii). The writers in this
volume are mostly Catholics, about half
and half clerical and lay; well-known
names among them include the Rev.
Hehir and Prof. Russett, the Rev. Charles
E. Curran, James Finn, the Rev. David
Hollenbach, George F. Kennan, David J.
O'Brien, the Rev. Richard A. McCor~
mick, Peter Steinfels, Lester C. Thurow,
Gordon C. Zahn, et al.
nevitably when theologians take up
public policy, some bizzare opinions
emerge. For example, Sister Sandra
M. Schneiders, professor of New Testament and Spirituality at the Jesuit School
of Theology in Berkeley, locates a problem in connecting sacred scripture with
contemporary issues: "The problem is;'
she writes, "that we lack an adequate
hermeneutical theory" (Catholics, p. 91). As
to coping with nuclear weapons, Sister
Schneiders believes
I
it is not a theory of just war,
however morally sound, but the
gospel imperative to make peace
even at the cost of ultimate selfsacrifice that must guide our
response to the question of nuclear
arms. [p. 95]
To counter the Soviet Union's weapons,
Schneiders recommends for the United
States not an arsenal but "Christian defiance of death" (p. 103). For another example, Georgetown theologian Richard
McCormick brings his scholarly skills to
bear on the question of intention in
nuclear deterrence but gets helplessly tied
up in "ultimate intent;' ('instrumental intention," "comsummatory intention;' ('objective intentionality" and "inbuilt intentionality" (pp. 173-177 passim).
Catholics and Nuclear JiVtzr on the whole
is much better than these examples,
however. James Finn, editor of Freedom at
Issue, asks a central question:
Finally, we must ask whether [the
bishops'] recommendations, if they
become policy, would move us
'(toward a more stable system of national and international security"
(196), as the bishops intend, or
toward some less desirable and
more dangerous situation. [p. 133]
Finn finds serious flaws in the bishops'
analysis of deterrence, in their understanding of the facts of the "arms race"
and in their joining of the traditions of
just war and pacifism. His conclusion
about the bishops' letter should worry all
of us: "I believe their recommendations,
if pressed into operation, would weaken
the security of the United States and its
allies" (p. 145).
Another worthwhile essay in this book
comes from the M.I.T. economist Lester
71
�Thurow. Entitled "The Arms Race and
the Economic Order;' Thurow's piece
takes up the bishops' treatment of the interdependence of rich and poor nation,s:
The section of the bishops' pastoral
letter that is most directly relevant
to economics and the arms race is
entitled, "Interdependence: From
Fact to Policy" (III.B.3). Unfortunately, the section does not start
with "fact" and therefore does not
lead to "policy?' The essence of the
section is to be found in the second
half of the quotation from Vatican
II: "The arms race is one of the
greatest curses on the human race
and the harm that it inflicts upon
the poor is more than can be endured." The section essentially implies that poor countries are poor
(at least partially) because they have
been exploited by rich, militarily
powerful countries. [Catholics, p.
207.]
72
Of this claim -a claim that has become
the common coin -of today's politicalreligious rhetoric-Thurow says, "The
evidence for this assertion is lacking in the
bishops' letter and denied by historical
research'' (p. 207). He follows with his
own conclusion about the relationship of
arms to poverty: "There is no doubt that
the arms race hurts the poor, but the arms
race that impacts the poor is not that between the Soviet Union and the United
States but that among poor countries" (p.
208).
Serious criticism from the left comes
from the long-time pacifist Gordon Zahn,
who is disturbed by the bishops' reliance
on the just-war theory as their moral
framework but pleased with the bishops'
"recognition of evangelical pacifism as a
legitimate option for the Catholic"
(Catholics, p. 130). "It is time;' Zahn
believes, "to dismiss once and for all the
just-war formulations as irrelevant to the
realities of modern war" (p. 130).
Recognizing that the bishops are moving
to the left, Zahn gives them his partial approval, calling the letter "a slight turn in
the right direction" (p. 131).
The American Catholic bishops, to
their credit, have stimulated a new phase
in the forty-year-old national dialogue on
nuclear weapons. Whether their mixture
of religion and politics will be more
beneficial to the world than such mixtures
have been in past centuries remains to be
seen. So far one thing about The Challenge
of Peace is clear: the bishops, whatever they
have to teach, have a lot to learn about
nuclear weapons and U.S. defense policy.
Robert L. Spaeth
Robert L. Spaeth, former tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, is dean of the College of Arts and
Sciences at St. John's University, Collegeville, Minn.,
and the author of No Easy Answers: Chn"stians Debate
Nuclear Armr, recently published by Winston Press,
Minneapolis.
SPRING 1984
�Cumulative Index,
April 1969-Winter 1984
The last cumulative index, marking eight years of publication, appeared
in the July 1977 issue of The College. This spring, after fifteen years as first
The College (Apr 69-Jul 79); then The College/The St. John's Review Gan and
Jul 80); and now The St. John's Review (since the Winter 81 issue), it seems
appropriate to bring the index up to date.
The following list, arranged alphabetically by author, includes all material
published from April 1969 through Winter 1984. Photocopies of specific articles are available at $.20 a page, minimum order $2.00; requests should be
addressed to the managing editor in Annapolis.
Aldanov, Mark
The Holdup at Tiflis on June 26, 1907:
the "Exes" (from The Suicides), (trans.
Joel Carmichael_) ... Winter/Spring 83
Alexander, Sidney
The Rainfall in the Pine Grove;
The Mannequins;
The Donkey Rides the Man
(poems) ..... Autumn/Winter 82-3
Allanbrook, Douglas
The Spanish Civil War ........ Apr 72
Three Preludes for the Piano ... Jan 73
Power and Grace ............. Jan 77
Truth~Telling and the Iliad . Summer 83
Allanbrook, Wye Jamison
Dance, Gesture, and The Marriage
of Figaro . . . ................ Apr
Don Giovanni, or the Triviality of
Seduction . . . . . . . . .
. ...... Jul
Mozart's Cherubino ........ Winter
Ardrey, Daniel
My Memoir of Our
Revolution . .
. Winter/Spring
Aron, Raymond
For Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan
Soviet Hegemonism:
Year 1
. . . . . . . Summer
Bacon, Helen
The Contemporary Reader and
Robert Frost . . . . . . . . . . . . Summer
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
74
79
82
83
80
81
81
Barr, Stringfellow
Tribute to Robert M. Hutchins Oct 77
Bart, Robert S.
Hell: Paola and Francesca
Jul 71
Commencement Address,
Annapolis 1975 . .
Jul 75
Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial
Service . . . . . . . . . . .......... Jan 79
Barzun, Jacques
William James,
Moralist ...... Autumn/Winter 82-83
Baumann, Fred
R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography
(book review)
.... Jul 79
Affirmative Action and the Rights
of Man . . . . . . .
. .......... jul 80
Beall, James H.
Solstice on the First Watch; The
Horizon as the Last Ship Home
(poems) . . . . .
Summer 83
Bell, Charles G.
The Number of My Loves
(poem)
. . . .. .. .. ..
Jul 70
Two Sorts of Poetic Revision .... jul 73
Prodigal Father (narrative) ..... Jan 80
Five Translations (poems) ... Winter 82
Berns, Gisela
Schiller's Drama- Fulfillment of
History and Philosophy
in Poetry . . . .
. ..... Summer 82
Berns, Laurence
The College and the Underprivileged . . . . . .
Apr 69
Reasonable Politics and
Technology
Sep 70
Memorial to Leo Strauss . . . . Jan 74
Memorial for Simon Kaplan ... Jan 80
Blanton, Ted A.
High School Workshop . . . . . . . Jan 74
Memorial to Leo Strauss . . .
Jan 74
Blistein, Burton
Some Notes on the Lost Wax
Process
.. Apr 73
Blum, Etta
From The Hills as Waves
(poems) ............ .
Summer 81
Bolotin, David
On Sophocles' Ajax ...
..... Jul 80
Irwin's Plato's Moral Theory
(book review)
Winter 81
Bonfante, Guiliano
The Birth of a Literary
Language
. . . . . . . . . . . . Jan 80
Born, Timothy
Poisie, by Paul Valery
(translation)
..... Jul 73
Bosco, Joseph A.
Defeat in Vietnam, Norman
Podhoretz's Why ~ Were in Vietnam
(Review Essay) Autumn/Winter 82-83
Brann, Eva T. H.
A Reading of the Gettysburg
Address .................... Apr 69
The Venetian Phaedrus . .
. Jul 72
The Poet of the Odyssey . . . . . . Apr 74
Commencement Address,
Annapolis, 1974 ............. Jul 74
The Perfections of Jane Austen . Apr 75
Graduate Institute Commencement
Address, 1975
.. Jan 76
Concerning the Declaration of
Independence . . . . . . . . . .
J ul 76
On the Imag-ination ........... Jan 78
73
�Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial
Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan 79
For Bert Thoms . . . . . . . . . . . . Jul J9
Inner and Outer Freedom . . . . . Jul 79
Kant's Imperative . .
. ..... Jan ~0
"Plato's Theory of Ideas" . . . .
J ul 80
Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance" . . . . . . . . . . .
Summer 81
The Permanent Part of
Autumn 81
the College
Summer 83
Against Time
Winter 84
Intellect and Intuition
Bridgman, Laura
R. F. Christian, ed., Tolstoy's Letters.
(book review) . . . . . . . . .
. . Jul 79
Brown, Ford K.
Commencement Address,
Annapolis 1973
Jul 73
Bruell, Christopher
Summer 81
Thucydides and Perikles
Buchanan, Scott
The New Program at St. John's
College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oct 72
Bulkley, Honor
At Home and Abroad: Letter from
Nicaragua and Guatemala . Winter 81
Cantor, Paul
The Ground of Nature: Shakespeare,
Language, and Politics
Summer 83
Carey, James
Aristotle's Account of the
Intelligibility of Being ..... Winter 84
Carmichael, Joel
The Lost Continent, The
Conundrum of Christian
Origins . . . . .
Autumn/Winter 82-3
Collins, Arthur
Kant's Empiricism ............ Jul 79
The Scientific Background of
Descartes' Dualism·
..... Winter 81
Objectivity and Philosophical
Conversation: Philosophy and the
Mirror of Nature, by Richard
Rorty (Review Essay) ...... Winter 82
The Unity of Leibniz's Thought on
Contingency, Possibility, and
Freedom
Autumn/Winter 82-3
Ambiguities in Kant's Treatment of
Space
.......... Winter/Spring 83
Collins, Linda
Going to See the Leaves
Autumn 81
(narrative)
....... .
A Nighttime Story
(narrative)
.. Autumn/Winter 82-3
Comber, Geoffrey
Conversations with Graduate Institute
Alumni
Apr 73
Comenetz, Michael
Chaos, Gauss, and Order
Jul 78
Darkey, William A.
In Memory of Mark Van
Doren
.........
Apr 73
Franz Plunder . . . . . .
. .. Jul 74
In Memoriam of John Gaw Meem
1895-1983 . . . . . .
. .... Winter 84
Dawson, Grace
A St. Johnnie on the Job
Apr 73
Market ....
Dean, John
Talking with ~i~tu;,es: "Les
Bandes Dessmees ..
. .Jul 79
74
Deane, Stephen
At Home and Abroad: Letter from
Moscow
............
Jul 80
de Grazia, Margreta
Nominal Autobiography in Shakespeare's
Sonnets
. . . . . . . . . . . . Summer 83
Dennison, George
Family Pages, Little Facts:
October (narrative) ....... Winter 81
Shawno (narrative)
Winter 82
Diamond, Martin
On The Study Of Politics In A
Liberal Education
Dec 71
Dorfman, Alan
Freud's "Dora''
... Jul 78
Doskow, George
Leven's Creator (book review) .... Jul 80
Drake, Stillman
Scientific Discovery, Logic,
and Luck . . . . . . .
. . . J ul 80
Dry, Murray
The Supreme Court and School
Desegregation: Brown vs. Board of
Education Reconsidered
Summer 83
Dulich, Jean (pseud.)
Letter from Vietnam
.. Winter 82
Fehl, Philipp P.
Life Beyond the Reach of
Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....... Jan 80
Ferrero, Guglielmo and Mosca, Gaetano
Letters on
Legitimacy . . . .
Winter/Spring 83
Fisher, Howard
The Great Electrical
Philosopher . . . . . . . . .
Jul 79
Flaumenhaft, Harvey
Memorial for Simon Kaplan
Jan 80
Fontaine, John
Chameleons (poem) . .
Winter 84
Ginsburg, David
Ideals and Action: Commencement
Address, Santa Fe, 1974
Jul 74
Gold, Michael W.
A Preservationist Looks at
Housing . . .
. .. Jan 78
Goldsmith, William M.
An Open Letter to St. John's
Alumni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan 78
Goldwin, Robert A.
The First Annual Provocation
Address . . . . . . . . . .
. . . J ul 69
St. John's Asks John Locke Some
Questions . . .
Apr 71
Of Men and Angels: A Search for
Morality in the Constitution ... Jul 76
Gray, J. Glenn
The Sense of It All; Commencement
Address, Santa Fe 1977 ....... Jul 77
Griffin, Jonathan
Translation of Poetry (with Rim baud
translations)
.........
Apr 77
Guaspari, David
The Incompleteness Theory .. Autumn 81
Hadas, Rachel
Three Poems . .
Winter/Spring 83
Ham, Michael W.
Martin Duberman, Black Mountain
(book review) . . . . . . . .
Apr 73
Hazo, Robert G.
Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial
Service
........... Jan 79
Hilberg, Raul
At Home and Abroad: The Holocaust
Mission . . . . . . . Autumn/Winter 82-3
Himmelfarb, Gertrude
Adam Smith: Political Economy as
Moral Philosophy
Winter/Spring 83
Holmes, Stephen
Benjamin Constant on Ancient and
Modern Liberty .... Winter/Spring 83
Holt, Philip
Sophocles' Ajax and the Ajax
Summer 82
Myth
........ .
Hook, Sidney
Memories of John Dewey
Days ................ .
. Jan 80
Isaac, Rael Jean and Erich
The Media-Shield of the
Utopians . . . . . . . . . . Winter/Spring 83
Jacobsen, Bryce
"When is St. John's Going to
Resume Athletics?"
Apr 70
Jaffa, Harry V.
Inventing the Past . . . ... Autumn 81
Jenson, Kari
At Home and Abroad: Letter from
the Homefront: On
Marrying ...... Autumn/Winter 82-3
Jones, Gregory
On J ohnathan Schell's The Fate of the
Earth (Review Essay) . Winter/Spring 83
Josephs, Lawrence
Four Poems .............. Autumn 81
Io; Hephaestus (poems) .... Winter 82
Achilles; In Memoriam, John Downes
(poems) ....... Autumn/Winter 82-3
Kaplan, Simon
Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial
Service
.................. Jan 79
Kass, Amy Apfel
The Liberal Arts Movement: From
Ideas to Practice
Oct 73
Kieffer, John S.
Apr 69
A World I Never Made
lola Scofield, A Memorial
Jul 72
Klein, Jacob
Dec 69
The Problem of Freedom
A Giving of Accounts
Apr 70
(with Leo Strauss)
The Myth of Virgil's Aeneid
Dec 70
On Precision . . . .
Oct 71
Discussion As A Means Of Teaching
And Learning . . . . . . . . .
Dec 71
Speech, Its Strengths and Its
Weaknesses ....... .
Jul 73
Memorial to Leo Strauss
Jan 74
Plato's Phaedo ......... .
Jan 75
The Art of Questioning and the
Liberal Arts . . . . . . . . .
Jan 79
The Copernican Revolution .... Jan 79
On a Sixteenth Century
Algebraist
....... .
Jan 79
The World of Physics and the
Natural World (trans. and ed. D. R.
Lachterman) . . . .
Autumn 81
Kojeve, Alexandre
The Christian Origin of Modern Science
(trans. D. R. Lachterman) . Winter 84
Kuder, Samuel S.
Mathematics As A Liberal Art .. Jul 69
Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial
Service . . . . . . . . . . .
. .... Jan 79
SPRING 1984
�Laloy, Jean
John Paul II and the World of
Tomorrow
............. Jul 80,
Landau, Julie
Some Classical Poems of the T'ang
and Sung Dynasties . . . . . . . . . . J ul 79
Some Chinese Poems
Summer 82
Lazitch, Branko
Not Just Another Communist
Party: The Polish Communist
Party .......... Autumn/Winter 82-3
Lederer, Wolfgang
How Does One Cure A Soul? .. Apr 76
What Good and What Harm can
Psychoanalysis Do?
Winter 84
Le Gloannec, Anne-Marie
The Federal Republic of Germany:
Finlandization or
Germanization? ....... .
Winter 82
Levin, Michael
Autumn 81
"Sexism" is Meaningless
Liben, Meyer
Three (Short Stories) .....
Jul 80
The Streets on which Herman
Melville Was Born and Died
(narrative)
. . Winter 81
Not Quite Alone on the Telephone
Summer 81
(narrative) . .
New Year's Eve; Treasure Hunt;
Meetings, Recognitions
(narratives) . .
Autumn/Winter 82-3
Littleton, Michael S.
Prayers ....... .
Jul 70
Loewenberg, Robert
The Trivialization of the Holocaust
as an Aspect of Modern
Idolatry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Winter 82
That Graver Fire Bell: A
Reconsideration of the Debate over
Slavery from the Standpoint of
Lincoln
. . . . . . . . . . Summer 82
Marx's Sadism . . Autumn/Winter 82-3
Lund, Nelson
Guardian Politics in
The Deer Hunter . . . . . . . .
Winter 81
Sidney Hook, Philosophy and Public
Policy (book review)
Autumn 81
Macierowski, Edward M.
Truth and Rights ............. Jan 77
Mackey, Kimo
The Odyssey of the "Cresta"
Apr 75
Maschler, Chaninah
Gotthold Lessing: Ernst
and Falk, Conversations for
Freemasons
Autumn/Winter 82-3
Class Day Address 1983 ... Summer 83
McGrath, Hugh P.
An Address for the Rededication of
the Library
............... Dec 69
Michnik, Adam
Letter from a Polish
Prison . . . . .
Autumn/Winter 82-3
Mongardini, Carlo
Guglielmo Ferrero and
Legitimacy . . . . . . . . Winter/Spring 83
Montanelli, Indro
Kekkonen, the "Finlandizer"... Winter 82
Morrisey, Will
DeGaulle's Le fil de l'epie .... Winter 81
Mosca, Gaetano
(See Ferrero, Guglielmo)
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Mullen, William
Nietzsche and the Classic ... Winter 82
N avrozov, Lev
One Day in the Life of the New York
Times and Prava in the World: Which
is more Informative? ..... Autumn 81
A Dead Man's Knowledge;
Varlam Shalamov, Graphite
(book review) . . . .
Winter 82
Updike and Roth: Are They Writers?
(Review Essay)
. . Summer 82
Neidorf, Robert A.
Biological Explanation
Apr 70
The Ontological Argument
Apr 72
Old Wars: Commencement Address,
Annapolis, 1972 ............. Jul 72
Statement of Educational Policy
and Program . . . . . . . . . .
. . jul 77
O'Flynn, Janet Christhilf
For Bert Thoms
. Jul 79
O'Grady, William
The Power of the Word in
Oedipus at Colonus . . . . . . . . .
Apr 77
About Jacob Klein's Books About Plato:
A Commentary on Plato's Meno and
Plato's Trilogy ................ Jan 79
Odysseus Among the Phaiakians jul 79
Ossorgin, Michael
"How Was the Seminar?"
Apr 69
Two Writings in the Sand; Santa Fe
Baccalaureate Address
Jul 74
Platt, Michael
Aristotle Gazing . . . . . ........ Jan 80
Prevost, Gary
Carrillo and the Communist Party in
Spain (book review)
.. Jan 80
Raditsa, Leo
Thucydides, Aristotle's Politics, and the
Significance of the Peloponnesian
War ........................ Jul 75
Words to the Class of 1977; Class Day
Address, Annapolis
........ J ul 77
For Bert Thoms
. . . . . . . . J ul 79
The Collapse of Democracy at Athens
and the Trial of Socrates ...... Jul 79
At Home and Abroad: Letter from
Budapest and Pees
... Jan 80
Eyes of His Own -and Words: George
Dennison, Oilers and Sweepers and Other
Stories (book review) . . . . . . . . . . J ul 80
Recent Events in the West .. Winter 81
Afghanistan Fights: The Struggle for
Afghanistan, by N arrey Peabody Newell
and Richard S. Newell (Review
Essay) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Winter 82
Laos; Marie- Noele and Didier Sicard,
Au nom de Marx et de Bouddha, Revolution
au Laos; un peuple une culture
disparaissent ............... Winter 82
The Division of the West- and
Perception ......... Winter/Spring
Rangel, Carlos
The Latin-American Neurosis (trans.
Hugh P. McGrath, Leo
Raditsa) . . .
. . . . . . . . Winter
Roth, Robert
In the Audience (narrative) Summer
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Bach's Rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan
Profile of an Alumnus: David
Moss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Apr
83
81
81
75
76
Trial in Berlin . . . . . . .
Jan 77
German Resistance to Hitler: Elites and
Election
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . J ul 79
Student Rebellion and the Nazis: "The
White Rose" in Its Setting Winter 84
Sachs, Joe
Aristotle's Definition of Motion . Jan 76
An Outline of the Argument of
Aristotle's Metaphysics . . . . Summer 81
The Fury of Aeneas
Winter 82
Scofield, Richard
Dec 69
The Habit of Literature
Scolnicov, Samuel
Plato's Euthydemus
Jan 80
Simpson, Thomas K.
Faraday's Thoughts on Electromagnetism . . . .
Jul 70
Newton and the Liberal Arts ... Jan 76
"The Scientific Revolution Will Not
Take Place"
............ Jul 78
Prometheus Unbound
Jan 80
Slakey, Thomas J.
Sep 70
Personal Freedom
Toward Reading Thomas
Aquinas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summer 82
Smith, ]. Winfree
The Teaching of Theology to
Undergraduates
Jul69
Commencement Address,
Annapolis, 1970
Jul 70
Aristotle's Ethics
Jan 73
Memorial to Leo Strauss
Jan 74
Commencement Address,
Annapolis, 1976
jul 76
Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial
Service . . . . .
. .... Jan 79
Memorial for Simon Kaplan ... jan 80
St. John's under Barr and
Buchanan
. . . . . . . . . . Summer 82
Smith, Brother Robert
Excerpts from the History of the Desert
Fathers
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Apr 76
Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial
Service . . . . . . . . . . .
. . Jan 79
Proof and Pascal . .
Winter 82
Sonnesyn, Patricia
For Bert Thoms .
Jul 79
Spaeth, Robert L.
An Interview with Barbara
Leonard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oct 72
Alumni Profile: John Poundstone Jan 73
An Interview with Robert Bart Apr 73
An Interview with Alvin Fross and
Peter Weiss . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jul 73
Profile: Louis L. Snyder, '28 ... Jul 73
Sparrow, Edward G.
Apr 71
Logic and Reason
Noun and Verb . . . . .
. . Jul 71
A Reading of the Parable of the
Prodigal Son .......... .
Jul 78
Storing, Herbert J.
The Founders and Slavery ..... Jul 76
Strauss, Leo
A Giving of Accounts
(with Jacob Klein) . . .
. . Apr 70
What is a Liberal Education? .. Jan 74
An Unspoken Prologue to a Public
Lecture at St. John's
Jan 79
Tamny, Martin
Boyle, Galileo, and Manifest
Experience ......... .
Jan 80
75
�Thaw, Eugene V.
The Collection of Mr. and Mrs.
Eugene V. Thaw
Apr 76
Thompson, Homer A.
The Libraries of Ancient
Ath.ens
Winter
Tolbert, James M.
Remarks at Ford K. Brown Memorial
Service
Oct 7 7
Twenty Years in Retrospect
Sep 69
Twenty- Five Years in
Retrospect
Oct 74
Van Doren, Mark
How to Praise A World That May
Not Last
Dec 71
Venable, Bruce
Philosophy and Spirituality in
Plotinus
Autumn 81
Wasserman, Adam
V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
(book review) . .
Autumn 81
Webb, James
Mission over Hanoi (from A Country Such
as This) . .
Summer 83
Weigle, Mary Martha (Marta)
Brothers of Our Father Jesus-The
Penitentes of the Southwest .... Jul 75
Weigle, Richard D.
The Liberal Arts College: Anachronism
or Paradigm . .
. . . . . Sep 69
e1
76
Remarks at Ford K. Brown Memorial
Service
Oct 7 7
Report of the President
Sep 69, 70
Oct 71-80
Richard Daniel Weigle, Celebration
of an Anniversary . . . . . . . . . .. Jul 74
West, Thomas G.
Cicero's Teaching on Natural
Law . . . . . . . .
Summer 81
Williamson, Ray and Abigail
.... jul 74
Plastering Day
Wilson, Curtis A.
Reflection on the Idea of
Science
Dec 70
Apr 74
Jacob Klein at 75
Commencement Address,
Annapolis, 1977
Jul 77
Remarks at Ford K. Brown Memorial
Service
........ Oct 77
Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial
Service
... Jan 79
On the Discovery of Deductive
Science
Jan 80
Ancient Astronomy and Ptolemy's
"Crime" (book review) ........ Jan 80
Kepler and the Mode of Vision Jul 80
The Origins of Celestial Dynamics:
Kepler and Newton
Winter 81
Homo Loquens from a Biological
Standpoint
Summer 83
A Comment on Alexandre Kojfve's
"The Christian Origin of Modern
Science" . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Winter 84 ·
Winiarski, Barbara Dvorak
Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial
Service
Jan 79
Zelenka, Robert S.
The Ruin; Hommage a Dietrich
Buxtehude (poem) ........... Jan 75
BlackWf!ter (poem)
Summer 83
Zuckerman, Elliott
The Magic Fire and the Magic
Flute
........
Dec 69
What is the Question? . . . . .
Apr 73
Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial
Service
.................. Jan 79
Don Alfonso
(poem)
Autumn/Winter 82-3
Black and White;.Arriv.ll; Sixteen
Eighteen; With Orjan at the
Great Japan Exhibition
(poems) . . . . .
Winter/Spring 83
Beyond the First Hundred Years: Some
Remarks on the Significance of
TriStan
Winter 84
Cordelia (poem)
Winter 84
SPRING 1984
��The St. John's Review
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Non-profit Org.
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<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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thestjohnsreview
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1984-04
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Sterling, J. Walter
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Lord, Susan
Freis, S. Richard
Sachs, Joe
Stickney, Cary
Wilson, Curtis A.
Sachs, Joe
Allanbrook, Douglas
Brann, Eva T. H.
Berg, Gretchen
Berman, Ronald
Stephenson, David
Mensch, James
Flaumenhaft, Mera
Klein, Jacob
Spaeth, Robert L.
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Volume XXXV, number 2 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Spring 1984.
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The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_35_No_2_1984
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St. John's Review
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THE
StJohn's Review
Editor:
J. Walter Sterling
Contents
Managing Editor:
2
Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant:
Susan Lord
22
Editorial Board:
Eva Brann
S. Richard Freis,
Student Rebellion and the Nazis: "The White
Rose" in its Setting
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
The Christian Origin of Modern Science
Alexandre Kojeve
26 ..... . A Comment on Alexandre Kojeve's "The
Christian Origin of Modern Science"
Curtis Wil>on
Alumni representative
Joe Sachs
Cary Stickney
Curtis A. Wilson
30
Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems
are welcome, but should be accom~
panied by a stamped, self~addressed
envelope in each instance. Reasoned
comments are also welcome.
The St. John's Review (formerly The Callege) is published by the Office of the
Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis,
What Good and What Harm Can
Psychoanalysis Do?
TtOlfgang Lederer
39
Cordelia (Poem)
Elliott Zuckcrman
40
Aristotle's Account of the Intelligibility of Being
James Carey
51
Chameleons (Poem)
John Fontaine
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52
Intellect and Intuition
Eva Brann
Volume XXXV, Number 1
Winter 1984
59
Beyond the First Hundred Years: Some
Remarks on the Significance of Tristan
·Elliott Zuclrcrman
63
In Memoriam John Gaw Meem, 1895-1983
William A. Darkey
©
1984 St. John's College; All rights
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ISSN 0277-4720
Composition: Fishergate Publishing Co., Inc.
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ON THE COVER: Johannes Kepler; a portion of Kepler's Epitome of
Copernican Astronomy, translated by Charles Glenn Wallis; and an
image of the derivation of the number of the planets or orbits about
the sun from the five regular solid figures.
�ST. JoHN's REVIEW
Winter 1984
Student Rebellion and the Nazis:
"The White Rose" in Its Setting
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
I The Rise and Rule of Hitler
ere someone to ask why I am giving two
lectures in a row instead of the traditional
single lecture, I might give as a reason
an experience I had some two years ago.
It was in May 1970, just after the
American incursion into Cambodia, at a university
specializing in theology- one that had theology as one
of its three main divisions. There was student unrest all
over the country and talk of "revolution:' There was
something like that going on at that university on the
day I spoke there. My subject was the relationship of the
Nazis and the churches, a subject, I had been told, of
special interest to the people there.
But perhaps not on that disturbed day. The question
period was dismal; discussion impossible. One questioner
got up and asked: "What about student protest?" It was
not a sly question; it was quite innocent and proceeded
from pure ignorance, such ignorance as I was unprepared
for in a middle-aged questioner. So I gave a brief and
brutal answer on the history of student protest in Germany: that, indeed, loud and massive and effective protest existed in the period bifore the Nazis came to power,
and that the protesters Were Nazis, or at any rate militant nationalists, who exercised considerable pressure on
the academic establishment of the Weimar Republicand, incidentally, even more, on that of the Austrian
Republic; that once the Nazis were in power, there was
W
Beate Ruhm von Oppen is a tutor at St. Jolm's College, Annapolis. This article is a slightly revised version of two lectures given at Annapolis on February
18 and 25, 1972. Her publications include &li"gion and Resistance to Nazism,
(Princeton 1971); "Nazis and Christians" in "World Politics, vol. XXI, No. 3,
April 1969; and "Trial in Berlin" in The College, January 1977.
2
hardly any open protest; and that the first three of the
famous group of Munich students who protested in
"public" against the Nazi regime and its war were dead
within a few days of being caught, the rest following a
few months later.
A helpful colleague, a theologian and church
historian, then jumped into the breach and explained
that Nazi Germany was a police state- and what that
meant. I must confess I had taken that as read. But the
incident showed me that one cannot take it as read any
longer and that any description of resistance must start
with that which is resisted.
Also it could be that a term like "police state;' being
misused too much, has lost its meaning and like other
such terms ~'genocide;' for instance, or "fascism" or
"totalitarianism'~ no longer conveys anything precise or
distinct. But meanings and distinctions have to be kept
clear, or, if they have been blurred, have to be made clear
again, not just for love of pedantry, but for tbe sake of
liberty, perhaps of life itself.
Lies work best when there is a grain of truth in them.
The best precaution against being taken in is the cultivation of the habit of looking for tbat grain of truth and
trying to see what has been done with it. Denying or ignoring the grain of truth or the facts of a matter may
be magnificent ideology and rousing rhetoric, but that
is no defence against the better liar. And Hitler may have
been the best liar there ever was.
That is one reason why we are having two lectures,
the first on the police state or whatever other name one
may find more appropriate for Nazi Germany, and the
second on a group of students who opposed it and a professor who supported them and died with them.
I must take note of two elements of risk in offering
such lectures as these, here, at St. John's. Firstly, St. John's
does not do "history." It is not one of our liberal arts. We
WINTER 1984
�The ji'rst students to be executed. Lift
to right, Hans and Sophie Scholl,
Christoph Probst, july 1942.
read Homer and Herodotus and Thucydides; Virgil and
Tacitus; Plutarch and Gibbon; Tocqueville and Tolstoi
and Marx. We read quite a lot of political philosophy. We
read much that made history, from the Bible to the church
fathers to the reformers and debunkers; from Aristotle
to Rousseau and Kant to Hegel and Darwin to the
documents of American constitutional history. Yet we do
not have "history" as a subject, or a disipline.
The second risk is rather peculiar to our moment in
history, but here, at St. John's, it is probably the lesser
of the two risks. The temper of many of the more vocal,
more audible and visible of our contemporaries is ahistorical or anti-historical. There is no patience with
history. It is regarded as "irrelevanC-unless, of course,
disjointed bits of it can be used, torn from their context,
as ammunition in some campaign.
The two risks may, to some extent, cancel each other
out, although they may also reinforce each other. We
cultivate, perhaps over-cultivate, rationality here. By
"over-cultivate" I mean a development of the reasoning
faculty at the expense of other faculties. Here we stand
opposed to the temper of our time which is, increasingly,
anti-rational-a rebellion against the shallow "functional"
rationalism of the mechanised, mass-educating, manipulative age. Our rationalism here, at St. John's, is
different- more reflective and comprehensive- and
therefore few of us are driven into this reactive irrationalism, in fact most of us are quite good at resisting it.
But I often sense a divorce from reality, from human
reality; from psychological, political, historical reality. For
instance, seminar discussions of Thucydides on the
revolution in Corcyra and the attendant linguistic revolution in which "words had to change their usual meanings" tend to be perfunctory: a few contemporary examples of the misuse of words by dishonest politicians
or commercial salesmen will be mentioned, but the
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
discussion lacks feeling, passion -lacks, apparently, experience; I mean: lacks the qllfllity of talk about something
one has really experienced; it lacks the conviction that
this is something really evil and dangerous- and should
be resisted or counteracted to the best of our ability. The
raw material of experience abounds. But the mental, including the emotional, engagement rarely seems to take
place. I cannot here go into the question of what the
reasons for this inattention may be. Quantity of comment
on the phenomenon of misused language proves
nothing- certainly it does not prove a realization of the
seriousness of the matter.
Neither does a concern for the purity and impeccability of language necessarily ensure the best politics and
the most just and decent polity. But certain peccabilities
are more dangerous, more insidious in their effects, than
others. The more serious linguistic sins seem to me to
be very closely related to the subject at the core of these
two lectures: slavery and freedom, the manipulation of
men (and women, and children) and the resistance to
manipulation -a resistance that is needed at all times
and is always fraught with risks and renunciations, but
which in bad times may involve the readiness to stake
one's life.
fter this short introduction, let me begin in a most
simple way and speak of the ways in which politics began to impinge on me at the time when
things were bad and getting worse. For the students I
am going to talk about were roughly speaking my contemporaries, my vintage, belonging to the same "cohort;'
as I believe the trade now calls it. 1 We were born at the
end of the first World War and did our growing up in
Germany.
I cannot think back to a time when politics was not
in the air. I remember the evidence of food shortages in
A
3
�my kindergarten and elementary school days. I
remember the feeling of insecurity communicated by all
around me when the currency collapsed, that is, when
there was not just the sort of inflation we have now, but
something that galloped away in geometric or exponential progression, so that, for instance, a lawyer's or doctor's earnings of one day might not be enough to buy
a loaf of bread the next day.
Some time ago you could see, in the window of an
antique shop on our Main Street, an old German 50,000
Mark note, said to have been "used in Hitler's Germany."
Perhaps it was used as wall-paper. It might be more accurate to say that it was used- as monry- in pre- Hitler
Germany, though I'd hate to refer to tbe Weimar
Republic as just that. At any rate it was a specimen of
the kind of money that helped to bring about Hitler's
Germany.
50,000 Marks now would be worth about $13,000. In
"normal" times, 4 marks were a dollar. The date of issue
on that 50,000 Mark note was 19 November 1922. The
very fact that such a note was printed and put into circulation was, of course, a sign that inflation had got out
of hand. In the summer of 1922 the dollar was worth not
4 Marks, but over 100. The next S).lmmer it was worth
over 1 million. And by 15 November 1923 it was worth
4 trillion Marks ( 4,000,000,000,000). If my reckoning is
right- but you'd better check it-that 50,000 Mark note
issued November 1922 was worth one-eighty-millionth
of a dollar a year: $1/80,000,000 or 1/800,000 of a cent.
That was very cheap wallpaper. But expensive too.
What it all meant, among other things, was the
pauperization and demoralization of the middle class and
the partial destruction of the social fabric.
It was in November 1923 that Adolf Hitler, the leader
of a tiny party, staged his abortive putsch or coup d~tat in
Munich, when he tried for the first time, and failed, to
seize power. That year had also seen, in central Germany,
communist attempts to seize power; they too were unsuccessful. Hitler was sent to a comfortable prison for
a while and used his leisure to write his book, Mein Kampf.
When he got out again, he adopted a policy of legality
and with that he eventually prevailed.
By the time I entered elementary school, in 1924, a
new currency had been established and, though scarce,
money once more was money. But I noticed that my
teachers were not enthusiastic about the political system,
though we dutifully and decorously celebrated the 80th
birthday of our President. His name was Hindenburg
and he had been a famous field marshal in the world war,
halting the Russian advance in East Prussia. Being, as
it were, a personal link between the old, pre-war empire
and the new, post-war republic, and loyal to the new constitution, he was a national figure acceptable to the
moderate right and moderate left. And for a decade he
lasted as head of state, while chancellors, or heads of
government, succeeded each other at a breathtaking rate.
The country had many political parties and an election
system based on proportional representation, so that votes
were distributed across a wide spectrum and a large
number of parties; thus governments had to be formed
4
out of coalitions of several parties and were correspondingly shaky and shortlived. I also remember many elections during my school days and reports of violent
rhetoric from left and right, as well as physical violence,
street fights, murders, assassinations.
Then, after the Wall Street crash of 1929 with its
world-wide repercussions, there was another economic
crisis a mere- six years after the beginning of the recovery
from the earlier one, with a growing, an intolerable, rate
of unemployment. It grew from 1.3 million in September
1929 to 3 million a year later, to over 6 million in 1931.
With a total population of about 65 million, this meant
that one in every two families was hit; and unemployment pay was at starvation level. The extremist parties,
the communists and the Nazis, made great gains and
finally occupied more than half the seats in the national
parliament, where they were now able to paralyze the
democratic process. They also joined, for instance, in a
strike to paralyze the transport system of Berlin. Otherwise they could fight each other to the death, and did,
with casualties on both sides, despite the general strategy
of the communists at that time to treat the Social
Democrats -whom they called "social fascists" for the
purpose-as the enemy No. 1 and to flirt with the
possibility of a Nazi victory as a promising prelude to
a communist takover. Even a school girl couldn't help
noticing some of these things: the transport strike, the
posters, the polarization, the combination of both extremes against the middle, and the weakness and apparent helplessness of the middle.
When President Hindenburg appointed Hitler Reich
Chancellor on 30 January 1933, he was acting in accordance with the letter and perhaps even the spirit of the
constitution. Hitler's party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (or "Nazis" for short, to distinguish
them from the "Sozis;' or Social Democrats), was by then
the strongest party in the country, with about one-third
of the vote; tbe Social Democrats had only one-fifth; the
communists one-sixth; the Catholic Center Party,
together with its Bavarian affiliate, about tbe same. There
were many others, but not one of them had as much as
10% of the vote: the largest of them, the Nationalists,
8.8%. Hitler became the head of a coalition government.
I still remember seeing the faces of these gentlemen in
an evening paper that carried the announcement.
No one knew what it meant. I was somewhat scared,
for I had read Hitler's book. I had had to do it secretly,
at night, with a flashlight under the bedclothes, for my
parents, like many other respectable people, regarded it
as pornographic. It was very long; and that was probably
why very few people read it, though once its author had
become the ruler of the land, it was widely and
compulsorily distributed, for example, as a present to
newly-weds, bound like a bible. But that did not, of
;::ourse, ensure its perusal.
Life at school greatly changed in the seventeen
months before I left. There was much talk of national
solidarity and the Community of the People. There were
changes in personnel and in the curriculum. And there
was a dramatic rate of attrition. My own class was reduc-
WINTER t984
�ed by more than half- probably because girls (it was a
girls' school I went to) or their parents thought that since
the new regime had set its face against too much
academic education for women (who were not to exceed
10% of university enrollment), it was hardly worth struggling through more Latin and trigonometry and all that
up to the rather stiff final exam which was normally taken
at eighteen.
The teaching personnel changed in two ways: there
were a few dismissals, of] ews- there were very few Jews
at my school. Our English teacher, who was a Jew, was
at first said not to be subject to dismissal because he had
not only served in the war but had even been wounded
in the head; but eventually he left all the same and the
next English teacher was less good; and that one was in
due course replaced by an even worse one, a teacher
trainee. The other change among the teachers ·was a
change of tone and colour. A very few revealed themselves
as Nazis which, they said, they had been all along but
could only now, at last, openly avow to be. (On the whole
the school had been vaguely nationalistic, but far from
Nazi.) Others toed the new line as best they could and
exhibited varying degrees of cravenness or caution or
dignity, enthusiasm or moderation or reserve. Many new
things were required; the Hitler salute at the beginning
of classes, attendance at new national celebrations which
proliferated and at which one had, of course, to stand
at attention (with upraised arm) as the new national anthem was played and sung, the old marching song of the
Nazi movement, with text by one Horst Wessel, saying:
"Raise the flag, close the ranks, we stormtroopers march
in firm and steady tread. Comrades shot by the Reds
and Reactionaries are marching on in our ranks." It was
the battle song of the new revolution.
So there was all that. And there were changes in such
subjects as history and science. Let me take biology, for
that is where I had my brief hour of glory. I had not done
well with the dissection of tulips and the like. But I shone
once biology was converted into race biology. Not only
was there Mendel's law, about which my father had told
me before (only its implications and application were now
rather different from what I had gathered from him),
but, and this is where the real-if sinister- fun came
in, we now learnt about the German races ~'Aryan;' of
course, all of them. There were six, if I remember correctly, ranging in excellence from the Nordic to the East
Baltic. Nordic was the best because Nordic man had
created almost all the culture there was and he had qualities of leadership. The Mediterranean race was also quite
good (for after all there had been ancient Greeks and
Romans and there were modern Italians, good fascists,
full of leadership). The Mediterranean race could most
easily be memorized as a smaller, lightweight, and darker
version of the Nordic: what they had in common were
the proportions of their skulls and faces (long, narrow
skull, long face) and the characteristic way of standing
on one leg, with no weight on the other; one standing
and one playing leg, as a literal translation of the German names for them would have it. Such legs could be
seen in Greek statues and such were the legs of Nordic
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
man. The Falic race was the next best. It shared many
of the sterling qualities of the Nordic- highmindedness
and the rest- but could be distinguished from it by the
fact that it stood, squarely, on two legs. No playleg there.
Also its face was a bit broader. That race lacked,
somewhat, the fire of Nordic man, or let us say the thumos,
but made up for it by solidity and staying power. The
colour scheme was fairly nordic: blond hair, blue eyes.
So was that of the East Baltic race whose virtues were less
marked than those of the Nordic and the Falic and whose
features were less distinguished, including a broader skull
and a broadish nose. I could not quite make out the use
of this race, unless it was, perhaps, territorial, to keep
the Slavs out. The Slavs were not a German race. Then
there was a German race that looked, one might say, a
bit Jewish, or perhaps Armenian, but it was neither. It
was Dinaric and seemed to be much the same as What
earlier classifications had called Alpine. Indeed this race
dwelt in the mountains. It looked sturdy enough, but not
as prepossessing as the Nordic; and its head had awkward
measurements: Dinaric man had a prominent nose and
not much back to his head. But he had a redeeming
feature: he was musical.
Now all this, of course, was good clean fun and easy
to visualize and memorize. Indeed there were visual aids:
pictures of well-known personages to help recognition and
memorization: Hindenburg for the Falic race, somebody
like Haydn for the Dinaric, Caesar for the Mediterranean. Then there was a picture of Martin Luther, the
Great German Reformer; I forget what race he was said
to represent. To me he looked Slavic. But that, of course,
could not be. I suppose he was declared a darker type
of East Baltic or Falic. All this was child's play, and this
child played it with zest and success.
History was harder. One could not inwardly laugh
that off and outwardly play it as a parlor game. One had
to learn, or appear to learn; appear to make one's own- to
some extent, in some way, at least- one had to read, say,
and write the things that had been neglected or "falsified"
in the Weimar Republic of evil memory, under "the
System" ("in der Systemzeit/' as the Nazis referred to it).
New textbooks could not be brought out overnight. So
we were all given a short brochure on contemporary
history, the recent and most "relevant" period of German
and European and world history. It started with the German surrender at the end of the world war (there was
only one then, so it needed no number), a surrender
brought about by trickery abroad and treason at home,
by President Wilson's 14-point peace proposal and the
stab in the back of the undefeated German army, a piece
of treachery committed by Jews, Marxists, and
Catholics-feckless folk, with international ties. These
traitors then set up their system of abject surrender
abroad and iniquity and immorality at home. They accepted the shameful peace treaty of Versailles which not
only saddled Germany with sole responsibility for the
war (in Article 231, which Germans called the "war guilt
clause" or "war guilt lie") 2 but also provided for the
payment-virtually in perpetuity-of quite crippling
reparations. Germany was unilaterally disarmed (whereas
5
�Wilson had envisaged universal disarmament) and was
blockaded by the British- after the cessation of
hostilities-to enforce submission, and then, in 1923, invaded by the French, who marched into the Ruhr valley
to seize German coal and steel production as reparation
payments were in arrears. It was reparations that caused
the economic misery during the republican 14 years of
shame. Attempts to revise the reparations schedule to
make it more tolerable were fruitless and fraudulent. The
last revision provided for the spreading of payments until
1988 and the country was dying in the attempt to do the
victors' bidding. The nation would have to stand together
and rally round the FUhrer- or the "People's Chancellor;'
as he was then still called- to throw off the shackles of
Versailles. The cover of this brochure had a muscular
worker on it, stripped to the waist and bursting his chains.
We also learnt about the parts of Germany that had
been taken away by the Treaty of Versailles, that dictated
peace, and about the Germans who languished under
foreign domination. We learnt that German defencelessness was further aggravated by the geographic position
of the country: surrounded by hostile powers. Thus a
bombing plane could take off from France and fly right
across Germany and land in Czechoslovakia, without
refueling. The lesson was brought home by air raid exercises. They were not very realistic, but they served to
educate. I still remember leading my little troop of
classmates to their several homes, staying close to the
houses, as instructed, to avoid exposure to imagined falling shrapnel and flying glass. That was in the first year
or so of Hitler's power, five or six years before his war.
It was useless, of course, as an exercise in air raid precautions; but it was useful for fomenting fear and a spirit
of national defence. It also showed that the Czechoslovak
Republic, even if militarily it amounted to no more than
a well-defended aircraft base, was the power that enabled
France- or planes based in France- to bomb the whole
of Germany. And in addition- but this point was not
given too much prominence until four years later, in the
crisis leading up to the Munich settlement which began
the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia- in addition the
country was a political entity in which six-and-a-half
million Czechs held over three million Germans in subjection, as second-class citizens. Clearly the Sudeten
region had to be united with Germany.
So much for what was taught in class and done in
extra-curricular exercises under the responsibility of the
school. But there was one other thing I should mention.
Schools were obliged to take their pupils to certain films,
propaganda films that were being shown commercially.
So, obediently, our class went to see the movie "Bitlerjunge Quex;' the story of a Hitler Youth of the working
class whose father was a communist and whose mother
was long-suffering and tried to cope with conditions and
her husband, but in the end committed suicide, by gas,
from misery and despair. Quex (who was a very idealized version of an actual Hitler Youth who had been
killed) first joined a communist youth group, as was
natural in view of his home background. But soon, on
a camping excursion, he was so revolted by their beastly
6
ways, that he ran away, ran through the woods, and carne
upon the camp of a Nazi youth group which instantly
and deeply impressed him as his own and the country's
salvation. (It was a sunrise scene, to make sure we all
got the point.) Here were shining faces, clean limbs, real
comradeship, purpose, discipline, dedication, and hope.
So he joined the Hitler Youth and was active, devotedly
active, in the distribution ofleaflets and all that; mostly
in the poor parts of Berlin that were hard hit by
unemployment-as much as the boy's own father. One
day, at dawn, the communists took their revenge and his
particular personal enemy, a brute of a man, pursued
him through the deserted streets -also through the maze
of an amusement park, a very effective, macabre,
cinematic touch that, and long before The Third Manand finally caught up with him and knifed him. But Quex
died for the cause, and when his friends found him, on
the point of death, and propped him up, he raised his
right arm in a salute to the German future and the
camera swung up to the clouds and the sound track into
the marching song of Hitler Youth, with the lines "the
flag leads us into eternity, for the flag is more than death:'
The trouble was twofold: that the film was most effective and affecting (however corny it may sound as I
now tell it) and made with terrific competence and with
the participation of some very good actors; and secondly
that the school was under an obligation not only to take
us to it, but also to discuss it with us. So we had our
class discussion. I do not remember much about it except for the fact that I decided to play the part of aesthetic
and dramatic critic, arguing that, powerful though the
movie was, it could have been even better if it had been
less black and white (metaphorically speaking), if it had
had more nuances, more human diversity and
verisimilitude. Why did I take that line? In order not to
embarrass or endanger our teacher who was leading the
discussion, who, I had reason to believe, was very
unhappy about the Nazis, and who was a widow with
two children for whom she had to provide.
Then there was a film about Joan of Arc, replete with
horrors of the Hundred Years' War. It exposed the sadism
of the British and the brutality of the Catholic clergy.
On that occasion I objected to the screening of atrocities;
and that was about as far as one could go and get away
with it.
Soon after, in the second half of 1934, I got out of
the country and cannot speak any further from personal
experience about what subsequently became possible and
impossible.
Now "impossible" is a term that strictly speaking
brooks no comparison. So let us look at some of the laws
that existed and were passed later, which limited the
freedom of expression and of assembly and of organization and action. Whatever laws may exist, and be enforced, it is, of course, still possible to do some of the
things that are forbidden; but it becomes less likely that
people will do them when the penalties are painful.
In a police state they really are inflicted. Actually, Nazi
Germany became something even worse than a police
state; because Hitler's shock troops, the SS, not only
WINTER 1984
�permeated and took charge of the police, but came to
have a whole empire and fields of activity to themselves,
outside the reach and control of the police and the army. It was the SS that ran the concentration camps and
extermination camps and the campaign to improve the
health of the nation (or the national economy) by killing the incurable. They were not hampered by the law
but acted directly on the Fuhrer's Orders, something
beyond the law.
B
ut I am anticipating. Let me mention some of
the early laws that were passed and enforced.
The first and most fundamental of them was the
Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the
People and the State. It was promulgated on 28 February
1933, four weeks after Hitler had become Chancellor and
the day after the burning of the Reichstag building by
arson. A young-Dutch anarchist boasted of the deed and
was eventually sentenced to death by the Supreme Court.
Ostensibly the decree was directed against communist
acts of violence. In fact it was used against all who could
be said to be endangering the State, including, for instance, members of the clergy who made bold to continue to preach and practise Christianity. It not only
tightened up provisions or increased penalties under the
criminal code for such offences as treason, arson, the use
of explosives, and the taking of hostages. But it also
suspended "until further notice" a number of basic
rights -and it remained in effect until the end of Hitler's
rule.
Three weeks later, on 21 March 1933, there was a
Decree "for the defence of the government of national
resurgence [Erhebung] against malicious attacks:' 3
What the word Erhebung in the title meant and the
text of the decree spelt out was that this protection of
the law was not only for the government but also for the
"organizations supporting it:' It was the protection of
government and party organizations against "malice'~
and "malice" was construed to include factual statements
that were false or distorted. This decree was very effective in silencing criticism.
The Nazis even tried to silence foreign criticismand to some extent succeeded. They had means of
pressure and persuasion even abroad. They had hostages
at home- for instance the half million German Jews. The
one-day boycott ofJewish shops and businesses on 1 April
1933 was presented as an act of retaliation and warning
against Jewish-instigated atrocity propaganda abroadwhere sensationalism had, indeed, occasionally got the
better of factual reporting. (The more serious consequence of irresponsible reporting was that later true
reports of massive horrors met with disbelief.)
On 24 March 1933 there was the Enabling Bill, passed
by parliament and limiting its rights in favor of the executive. This was the "Law to alleviate the distress of the
People and the State:' I am translating the title of the
law as best I can- though the German word "Not,') here
rendered as "distress" or perhaps I should say "plight?",
is another of those many-facetted and multi-level German words, with meanings ranging from "misery" to
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
11
emergency." (I won't here go into Wagner's use of the
word.) This Behebung (literally: lifting; or alleviation)
Behebung der Not von Volk und Staat demanded strong
measures and the government's hand was to be
strengthened against potential paralysis by parliament.
There were still parties in that parliament, though the
communists, after having done quite well in the elections
of 5 March, were prevented from taking their seats. These
elections, now far from free though they were, still only
gave the Nazis 44% of the vote. But by mid ;July all other
parties were abolished. (It may have had symbolic
significance that the "Law against the formation of new
parties;' the law instituting the one-party state, was pro-
mulgated on 14 July 1933. On the same day there was
a law on plebiscites, which could now be coupled with
elections. The one-party rule was further buttressed by
a law, of 1 December 1933, "to safeguard the unity of
party and State:')
Meanwhile there were also certain administrative
measures and reorganizations. There was something
called Gleichschaltung-a term taken from mechanics or
electro-mechanics and meaning synchronization or co-
ordination, or bringing into line. Gleichschaltung was applied to constitutional and administrative streamlining,
as in the laws of March and April 1933, for the
Gleichschaltung der Lander mit dem Reich, that is, the coordination of the Liinder, or States, with the Reich, or
national government and administration. It was aimed
at centralization and the weakening or abolition of powers
enjoyed by the states constituting Bismarck's Reich and
the Weimar Republic.
Perhaps I should add another word to our glossary:
Reich. It means realm or kingdom or empire. The Holy
Roman Empire was, in German, Das Heil£ge ROmische
Reich. It was fmally and officially abolished by Napoleon,
in 1806. When Bismarck united Germany in 1871, he
founded the second German Reich, or empire. The official name of the Weimar Republic was also Deutsches
Reich, but the Nazis did not count that and adopted the
name Third Reich to describe their own- though not
officially- in _international discourse.
But Reich, as I said, could also mean "kingdom;' as
in Reich Gottes "the kingdom of God"-and it was this overtone that Hitler played on when, at his first big public
appearance after his inauguration as Reich Chancellor,
officially, in international discourse.
his faith in the German people and the resurrection of
the nation and "the new German Reich of greatness and
honour and power and glory and righteousness. Amen."4
Yes, he said: "Amen:' It was an allusion to, and a secular
usurpation of, the Prostestant ending of the Lord's
prayer. 5 Hitler, a lasped Catholic, probably thought
references to national resurrection and invocations of
power and glory (of the German Reich, not the Reich
Gottes) would appeal to the Protestant majority of the
country-which was much more nationalist than the
Catholics- and whose support he needed. In fact his
main support and electoral base was predominantly
Protestant.
But to return to Gleichschaltung for a moment: it was
7
�not only Liinder that were being coordinated with the
Reich, but other organizations were also brought into
line, and the term was also used for the change or alignment of orientation or thinking, certainly of all expression
of thinking (though this meaning was not in official use,
only unofficial; it often cropped up in private comment
by critics of the regime). Not only were laws passed for
the rigid control of all cultural activities and the press
and radio, not only was there a law against "malice;' but
all language became subject to "regulation'~ explicit in
the ministries and in instructions to editors, but conveyed
quite clearly by implication to the general public too. This
Sprachregelung was extremely effective and of a thoroughness now almost unimaginable. Even George Orwell can
hardly give one an idea of the pervasiveness of it or of
the feel of a linguistic universe in which things could no
longer be called by their proper names. This was why
all forms of non-verbal communication became so very
important. Let me give you two examples to illustrate
this.
Let us take the word "murder:' It was taboo for actions of the government. When, in the bloody purge of
the summer of 1934, the Nazis murdered Erich
Klausener, the Berlin head of Catholic Action, they announced it as suicide. (Mr. Klein recently gave me the
issue of the paper of the Diocese of Berlin reporting
Klausener's death. 6 He evidently got hold of it at the time
of those turbulent events and kept it for nearly half a century.) The front cover is occupied by Klausener's picture
under the title of the paper and the Diocesan emblem,
a lamb, with the inscription "Behold the Lamb of God;'
in Latin. On the next page there is the announcement
of his unexpected death on 30 June 1934 (and everyone
knew the meaning of that date), the requiem mass for
him in the presence of the Bishop and all the members
of the chapter of the Cathedral of St. Hedwig, an address by the Bishop, and the burial of the ashes(ashes)-with all liturgical observances, in consecrated
ground. The page after that carries the Bishop's last salute
to the deceased, and then there are five more pages of
obituaries. Not a word about murder. Not a word about
suicide. But the fact that the ashes-the Nazis had
evidently thought it wiser to cremate the body-were
given Christian burial and that the funeral was a great
event in the Catholic diaspora of Berlin, gave the lie to
the Nazi version of his death. But such publicity was not
to be possible much longer.
Ten years and many unnatural deaths later, after the
failure of the attempt of 20 July 1944 to kill Hitler and
oust the Nazis, there were several series of secret show
trials of the conspirators. This may be a contradiction
in terms, but I can explain: admission to the trials and
reports on them were completely controlled. The "show"
aspect is harder to explain, but it was real enough: those
trials were filmed and the film was intended to be shown
after suitable editing. Very little of it survives after editing
by Goebbels and the victorious Allies. The most moving moment in what those two sets of censors and the
vicissitudes of war have spared is almost, but not quite,
wordless. It comes in a sequence when one of the accused,
8
in order to explain why he took part in the conspiracy,
referred to "the many murders'!...-. only to be instantly interrupted in mid-sentence, by the presiding judge, yelling, with pretended incredulity (or perhaps he could
really not believe his ears); "Murders?", and then subjecting him to screaming abuse and asking whether he
was not breaking down under the weight of his villainy.
The accused, as far as I could tell from the film, wanted
to treat this as a rhetorical question; but when the judge
insisted on an answer, yes or no, paused for a moment
and then, quietly, said: "No:' After which there was further loud invective from the judge. 7 The defendant was
sentenced to death and hanged. Many were sentenced
to death in those trials. But very few were able to say
anything so clear and unsettling to the regime as this man
with his explicit mention of murders and his final No.
What gave it its force was the moment of reflection before.
It made his final, considered, monosyllabic rejection of
what he had staked his life to fight deliberate and
definitive.
Such, then, was this careful regulation of language,
in addition to the laws circumscribing people's freedom
of action and of expression.
All the laws I have mentioned were enacted in Hitler's
first year of power. I shall just mention a few that came
later. President Hindenburg finally died, having been
very doddery before, in early August 1934. On 1 August
1934, a law concerning the office of Head of State had
been adopted, uniting the offices of President and
Chancellor. Hitler now had them both. He instantly
ordered a new oath to be administered to the armed
forces, sworn personally to the new Commander-inChief, "the Fuhrer of the German Reich and People,
Adolf Hitler." In March 1935 there was an armed forces
law, introducing conscription. The Treaty Of Versailles
had limited the size ofthe German army to 100,000 men
and stipulated long periods of service in order to prevent the training oflarge numbers of short-term recruits.
It was that small and highly professional army which now
served as nucleus of the new.
In September of that same year, 1935, the so-called
Niirnberg Laws were passed by the Reichstag which was
meeting not in Berlin but in the city where the annual
party rallies were held. These laws, one relating to citizenship and one to the Protection of German Blood and
Honour (this was the wording of the title), deprived Jews
of certain civil and social rights, including the right to
marry anyone but Jews or to have extramarital intercourse with gentiles. Jews (and other undesirables) had
already been eliminated from the civil service by the law
for the "restoration of the professional civil service" passed
in April 1933. By the way: in 1935 it was still possible
for Jews to leave the country. But there was the problem
of where to go and how to find a livelihood. This may
illustrate it: the American immigration quota for Germany was not fully taken up until1938. After the pogrom
of November 1938, that German quota had a waiting
list. Professional discrimination and economic disabilities
had been increasing before, but it was only the excesses
of November 1938- staged after the fatal shooting of a
WINTER 1984
�German diplomat in Paris by a young Polish jew-that
made it clear that worse might be in store. There was
a policy of mounting discrimination, then of segregation
and spoliation, finally, during the war, of deportation to
the East, and of extermination. But that was not promulgated in a law. On the contrary, it was a state secret
and carried out administratively. Most of the victims of
that last phase were not German Jews, but Polish, Russian, and other ] ews from all over Hitler's Europe.
he expansion of the Reich began with the annexation of Austria in March 1938 and the law
bearing the curious title "Law on the Reunification of Austria with the Reich:' What was being united
was the country of Hitler's birth and the country he
adopted and which adopted him with such catastrophic
consequences for itself and for the world. Hitler actually became a German citizen less than a year before he
became German Chancellor. The dodge to get him naturalized was his appointment by some of his sympathizers and purely on paper, of course, as a civil servant of the little state of Brunswick, in order to enable
him to run in the Presidential election of March 1932,
a few days later. The American constitution seems a bit
more careful in that respect.
There were many Austrians and many Germans who
wanted the Anschluss, the joining of the two countries.
But the peace treaties after the world war forbade it.
Many liberals had wanted it; but perhaps the conditions
of 1938 were not the most propitious. Propitious or no,
they brought about the Greater German Reich (as
distinct from Bismarck's Lesser Germany that had excluded Austria) and a flanking threat to Czechoslovakia.
Indeed, that country was dismembered a few months
after.
All this happened in a state of peace. The state of
war did not come about until September 1939 when
Hitler, having made a pact with Stalin, marched into
Poland, without a declaration of war, but "returning
[Polish] fire;' as the official German communique had
it. Poland was subdued and partitioned between the Germans and the Russians. France fell the following summer, after neutral Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium,
and Luxembourg. That was the stage at which Hitler's
ally Mussolinijoined in. Hitler failed to invade Britain,
but instead invaded Russia in June 1941. Japan and
America enter the war in December of that year, over
two years after its beginning. It did not end in Europe
until the Americans and the Russians met in the middle
of Germany in May 1945, and in Asia until two atom
bombs had been dropped on Japan, in August 1945.
Hitler's strongest card had been the Treaty of Versailles. His initial strength and his support in the period
of consolidation of power came from the German sense
of national injury and the real grievances. So long as he
was juSt seen as the man who was working, by hook or
by crook, for the revision or abolition of that treaty, he
had support for his foreign policy far beyond the ranks
of his own party. People were willing to swallow some
of the more distasteful components of his domestic policy
T
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
for the sake of the liberation of the country from the
shackles of Versailles.
The first move in that direction came during Hitler's
first year in power, in October 1933, when he took Germany out of the League of Nations as a protest against
continued discrimination against Germany in the disarmament negotiations. He got this step endorsed by a
plebiscite combined with new elections- only one party
Eow to choose from- and the result was indeed more
favourable than the 44% of the previous March, more
than twice as good. Before the voting, to show the people and the world that Hitler had the backing of the
greatest sages in the land and of the academic establishment, there were declarations of support (entitled,
{'Bekenntnisse/J or confessions of faith) from representatives
of that establishment, including, for instance, the
theologian Hirsch at Gottingen and the philosopher
Heidegger at Freiburg, both Rectors of their universities. 8
The declarations were enthusiastic, bombastic, and
nauseating. The language in which they were couched
was very German and virtually untranslatable. It
represents the linguistic abdication of political responsibility and the intoxication with high-sounding and
meaningless words; the use of language not in an attempt
to get at the truth of a political matter, but to glorify the
winds of change or the march of history or the
peoplehood of a people or the leadership of such a leader.
Done by a Heidegger in quasi heideggerian German, it
is a bad thing.
But Heidegger soon relented; he may even have
repented. As Ernst Nolte, one of his students later turned
historian and a great authority on fascism, put it in an
essay on the types of behaviour among academic teachers
in the Third Reich: "It was not long before Heidegger,
with his turn to Holderlin, joined the widespread tenency to retreat from the National Socialist reality ... :' 9
Nolte, incidentally, does not think that Heidegger was
so lamentably subject to the prevailing mental climate
because of his philosophy. He does not consider the
possibility, which I regard as a probability, that Heidegger's lack of mental resistance may have been due to his
relationship with language. It is my feeling- however
paradoxical it may sound when it is said about a philosopher endowed with so subtle an ear for the vibrations
of words- that it must have been his politico-linguistic
tin ear that failed to warn him of people who spoke
Hitler's language. And he had not read Mein Kampf
And the students? One hesitates to generalize, but
they were, on the whole, well ahead of the general
development, in the vanguard. Nazi students had taken
the lead and won the votes in the elections to student
organizations long before Hitler seized power and Professor Heidegger said: "Let not theses and ideas be the
rules of your being! The Fuhrer himself and he alone
is the German reality and law, today and in the future:' 10
1b some extent it is true to say that 11 N ational Socialism
came to power as the party of youth." 11 But it is not the
whole truth.
For this Hirsch-Heidegger syndrome was, unfortunately, significant and fairly widespread. Yet Nazi stu-
9
�dent activism not only followed and accompanied, but
preceded it. Youth was in the vanguard of the Nazi movement and revolution. Also the average age of the representatives and leaders of that party was well below that of
other parties, a fact from which the Social Democrats,
in particular, suffered acutely. They lacked dynamism;
the Nazis had it.
II The Case of the White Rose
he student organizations were captured by Nazi
activists long before Hitler and his party captured
the chancellorship and command posts of the
country and established a police state, or rather something even beyond a police state. What I call the "HirschHeidegger syndrome;' was an intoxication, a passing intoxication, perhaps, certainly so in the case of Heidegger, but none the less real and productive of real consequences at tbe time. In Heidegger's case I have suggested
that the loss of sobriety may have been due to the patient's relationship with language, that is, not with his
philosophy, but with his failure to test words for their
meaning and implication when used in the political
context.
The appeals by prominent representatives of the
academic establishment to the German electorate to vote
for Hitler after his first significant step in foreign affairs,
leaving the League of Nations, were printed and
translated and also disseminated abroad as Bekenntnisse,
confessions of faith, in the new Germany and its leader
Adolf Hitler.
Let me quote you the official preface to this collection of "confessions" by leading academics. I shall quote
it in the official translation, for that, after all, was what
the wider world read. The translation is a bit funny, but
I shall then say roughly what it meant. It was headed
"An Appeal to the Intelligentsia of the World" 12 and it
began:
T
All science is inextricably linked with the mental character of
the nation whence it arises. The stipulation for the successful
scientific work, is, therefore, an unlimited scope of mental
development and the cultural freedom of the nations. Only
from the co-operation of the scientific culture of all nationssuch as is born from and peculiar to each individual nationthere will spring the nation-uniting power of science. Unlimited
mental development and cultural freedom of the nations can
only thrive on the basis of equal rights, equal honour, equal
political freedom, that is to say, in an atmosphere of genuine,
universal peace. On the basis of this conviction German science
appeals to the intelligentsia of the whole world to cede their
understanding to the striving German nation- united by Adolf
Hitler- for freedom, honour, justice and peace, to the same
extent as they would for their own. 1 3
There are troubles with the translation of this entire
document, of course. It is not very English. For "science;'
for instance, read scholarship, or learning. For other
words it is harder to substitute English equivalents, for
in some cases there are none. The German original of what
became the "mental character of the nation" was
10
something called "geistige Art des U!lk£s," and that bristles
with difficulties and booby-traps. Not only because the
word %lk" had on the one hand its denotation of "people"
(and there was and is no other word for that except in
a few contexts, such as U!lkslied, where "folk" will do),
on the other hand it had connotations of"race." But also
a once harmless word like ~~rt," meaning "kind" (or
perhaps even "character" as the official translation put
it) had ceased being harmless and now had a racial overtone as well, a matter later made quite clear in racial
legislation which used the term 1&rtfremd," or alien, to refer
to alien blood
But the gentle reader abroad could not know this and
was probably no more than slightly bemused by the
language served up to him in this document and others.
What did get across, though, was the plea for equal rights,
equal honour, equal freedom- that is: the plea for an end
to discrimination against Germany. (It was over the matter of persistent discrimination in the disarmament
negotiations that Hitler had taken Germany out of the
League of Nations.) This plea for "equality" had a tremendous effect abroad. It really did seem no more than fair,
and perhaps even aiming at a more properly balanced
international stability (the "genuine, universal peace" of
the translation).
But also equal rights, honour, and freedom meant
allowing Germany to conduct her domestic affairs her own
way. That, too, could be presented and seen as no more
than the right that either was or should be tbe right of
any country. The nation state wasJ after all- and still isthe effective political unit. And it was only a country constituted or re-constituted after the first world war, like
Poland, that had SJ;lecial clauses on the protection of
minorities, notably jews, written into its peace treaty. 14
But then Poland was a country witb a large Jewish population and a bad history of anti- Sernitism. Germany's
Jewish population was small and German anti-Semitism
probably no worse than many other people's- indeed until the 1920s Germany attracted Jews from Poland and
Russia, because it was such a civilised country.
Let me here interpolate something that is in a curious,
a mysterious way both central and peripheral to tbe story
of Nazi Germany: the part the Jews played in that story.
That it should have been peripheral may strike you as
odd. But on the practical plane it really was:
the otber nations did not go to war with Hitler or fight
the Germans to save the Jews. And it is a mistake, a
serious mistake, to concentrate on the fate of the Jews
in that drama to the exclusion of all else. It is an
understandable mistake, because regarded as a people the
Jews did have the heaviest losses proportionate to their
number. Even the Russians and Poles, whose losses were
stupendous, were "only':_ if that word can be permitted
-decimated. But of the roughly eleven million European Jews between four-and-a-half and six millionabout half-were done to death by the Nazis. 15 The exact figure is hard to establish. And it is not the thing that
matters most. What does matter is the Jewish experience
of forsakenness- and that can never be brought horne
to nonjews by numbers.
But neither must it be allowed to perpetuate Hitler's
WINTER 1984
�heresy. What was that heresy? That genealogy is the only
true theology: that it is by the blood of a "race" that we
are saved or damned.
That whole sad chapter of history has been vulgarized
·in a number of ways. The saddest of them is the
vulgarization that falls into Hitler's own trap, his own
way of publicly presenting or misrepresenting what he
was really after: the vulgarization that sees that conflict
as one of jews and gentiles, or '1\ryans" as the Nazis called
them; or as one ofJews and Christians. That last mistake
even the Nazis did not make: on the contrary, they were
so concerned to dechristianize the gentiles -with Hitler,
of course, as the new saviour of the gentiles- that one
of the forms their attack on Christianity took was to treat
it as a Jewish thing and therefore to be rejected by the
Germans.
One can even take this further. Hitler, the great
liberator, once said to one of his followers who later left
him, perhaps because of this dictum and all it stood for:
"Conscience is a Jewish invention?' 16 Hitler was out to
remove the invention and its inventors.
This makes it clear, or at least strongly suggests, that
behind the "racial" struggle stood a more fundamental
one: a war of religion: not of Christianity versus Judaism,
but of a new heathenism against the Jewish and Christian faith and tradition.
That was the central significance of the Jews in that
drama, as central as that of the relationship of Jews and
Christians; and of Christians- the nominal and the other
kind- to Christianity and to humanity.
I
t is dangerous and inadvisable to call any twentieth
century war a "crusade?' Yet there was the unmistake-
able element of godlessness in Hitler's Germany. And
perhaps crusaders were never totally innocent champions
of the faith. However just the cause, all war, especially
modern war, is fraught with guilt and at least incidental
injustice. The dilemma is inescapable. Nor do I think
pacifism a way out. Some wars have to be fought. But
those engaged in them should not lose all sense of the
limits of the necessary and the permissible.
In January 1943 Roosevelt and Churchill, meeting
in North Africa, announced the demand for unconditional surrender. It meant that they wanted to announce
to the world, and especially to their Soviet allies, that
they would not negotiate peace conditions, such as, for
instance, a cessation of hostilities in the West while Germany went on fighting on her Eastern front. I will not
here go into the wisdom of that proclamation or deal with
the clarification contained in Churchill's explanation two
years later of what it meant and what it did not mean. 17
The doctrine was delivered at a juncture in the war when
the German Africa Corps was at last being driven back,
West, from Egypt and the Suez Canal not to return again
but soon to surrender in Tunisia. Europe was groaning
under the German yoke and the Nazi policy of coercion
and extermination was in full swing. The British and
American air forces were bombing Germany very heavily.
The German advance in the East had been halted at Stalingrad and the remnants of the German Sixth Army were
to surrender there a few weeks later. The Russians were
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
still bearing the brunt of it, but the war was at last turning on its hinge of fate, to use Churchill's term.
It was after the Stalingrad surrender and, I think,
before that in Africa- though it may have been after that
too- that we who were engaged in what was grandly
called "political intelligence" in London heard of an event
in Germany that was as surprising as it was heartening.
(It was probably the beginning of my henceforth abiding,
some might say obsessive, interest in what enables people to resist pressures in our difficult century.)
A group of students in Munich had been executed
for anti-Nazi propaganda. Their death was very sad, of
course, but it also lifted our spirits. Here was a group
of young people who from childhood or adolescence up
had been subjected to Nazi conditioning, to Nazi education and organization; and yet they had turned against
the regime, knowing full well the risks involved. What
we learnt subsequently was that they had not just done
it when Germany seemed to be losing the war but had
started many months before. This group called itself "The
White Rose" and seemed at first to have sprung up out
of nowhere. But we soon learnt more. We even saw some
of their prose. One of their leaflets had been smuggled
out to neutral Sweden and from there conveyed to
England.
More details of the undertaking and end of these five
students and one professor reached us via Switzerland;
these reports were not always accurate. That is how
legends grow. The heart of the matter, however, was not
a legend but the encouraging truth that even in the most
oppressive circumstances the spirit of freedom and justice
may manifest itself- indeed that it bloweth where it
listeth.
Little by little, over the years, over the decades, the
facts were established. After the war the University of
Munich put up a memorial to its most intrepid professor
and students and gave their names- or the names of two
of them- to its Department of Political Science, and the
city named streets, squares, and schools after them. Both
Germanies put them on postage stamps.
Collectively they had adopted the mysterious name
of White Rose and headed the leaflets they printed and
distributed secretly "Leaflets of the White Rose;' Blatter
der Weissen Rose. The blooming of that Rose was brief:
its preparation long. As for its after-effects-who is to
say what they were or may be?
The one woman among those sentenced to deatha girl of 21, her name was Sophie Scholl- had a dream
the night before her execution and told it to her cell-mate:
On a sunny day I was carrying a little child in a long white
dress to be baptised. The way to the church led up a steep
mountain. But I held the child firmly and securely in my arms.
Suddenly there was a crevasse in front of me. I had just enough
time to lay the child down on the other side before I fell into
the abyss.
Sophie tried to explain this dream to her cell-mate: "The
child is our idea, which will prevail despite all obstacles.
We were allowed to prepare the way; but we must first
die for it:' 18
Willi Graf was the last of the six to die. 19 His sister
11
�in a diary her brother had kept in 1933- the first year
of Hitler's power, when Willi was fifteen-where it stood
suddenly, all by itself, in the midst of boyish descriptions
of youth group meetings and excursions: It was this
sentence: "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers
only."
She then goes on:
Ever since 1934 the conflict with National Socialism had been
a burning problem for Willi and his friends. The question
What should we do against it?' became the cardinal point of
their thinking. Even the question of tyrannicide was discussed
one night at their Easter meeting in 1934 ... .The friends were
agreed that it was not enough to be indignant in small closed
circles. ("They discuss;' she quotes Willi's comment on a visit
by relatives, "the usual stuff, see the dangers, but think they
have to stick it out;" and she then continues:) He wrestled with
these problems, just because he inclined far more to a contemplative life and habitually subordinated politics to metaphysical values. He was not a dynamic person; on the contrary, he liked to keep his reserve and loved order. But the constant occupation of his thoughts with "our situation" (as he
called the definition of his own and his friends' attitude to their
time) fmally put him on the path that seemed to him inevitable.
The determination to let his inner attitude result in action grew
slowly but steadily. When the war started, Willi said from the
outset that it must and that it would be lost. This conviction
separated him from many people, even from some of the friends
of his youth who believed they had to defend their fatherland
at all costs. His inner loneliness increased more and more, and
especially when he was drafted in January 1940 and started
training in a medical unit in Munich. 20
Sophie Scholl.
says that he ''was not a dynamic person." That is probably what makes him the most impressive of the six to
me. Let me give you her phrase in its context, and in
her words:
Willi was not a political type of person in the superficial sense.
He had no natural inclination to revolutionary action. But
when intellectual freedom of choice is not guaranteed, or
development in accordance with one's own inner law, or the
ability to be simply human; when a_ regime on the contrary
negates all this and enforces forms of thinking and of life which
keep violating human dignity most deeply: then a young person with sound instincts and a sense of watchfulness and faith
will rebel. If he is moreover plucky and prepared for a sacrifice
and is confirmed and encouraged by likeminded friends, then
he must actively resist such enslavement and finally become
an antagonist of the spirit of the times. Thus Willi was driven
to the role of having to rebel quite against his own disposition.
And then she quotes the sentence which stands as motto
over the whole short memoir of her brother. It is taken
from the First Epistle of James, verse 22. She found it
12
After his final arrest, Willi Graf himself was asked
by the Gestapo, the secret police, to give them an account
of his life. And this is what he told them:
He was born in 1918, in the Rhineland. In 1922 his
family moved to the Saar. His father became a manager
in a firm of wine wholesalers. Willi had two sisters. The
family led a comfortable, though frugal, life.
Religion was the center of the children's education
and they were taught to respect parents and superiors.
Willi's father was a man of probity in his professional and
private life and demanded the same of his children. He
was severe when Willi showed signs of dishonesty or disobedience. Willi's mother was affectionate and totally
dedicated to her children and the welfare of her family.
Willi was initiated into the observances and life of the
church at an early age, and the seasons were filled with
the spirit of religion. (By that, I suppose, he meant that
he experienced the seasons consciously as parts of the
church year.)
At the age of ten, Willi was sent to what the Germans call a humanistisches Gymnasium, that is, a high school
teaching Greek and Latin. His special interests were German literature, religion, and later Greek and music; also
geography and history. He liked to construct things in
his free time, worked on light and bell systems, and tried
to understand the mysteries of radio.
He liked to go walkiog, especially in the summer vacations, came to know and love his country, and became
a lover of nature. During his last years at school, he had
a chance to visit faraway places in Germany, Italy,
Yugoslavia, and he relished the experience of distant lands
WINTER 1984
�and of different people with other customs. The precious
memories of these walking tours would sustain him
throughout the rest of the year.
His mother opened the eyes of her children, when
they were still quite young, to the social and economic
sufferings of others. He was taught to do without certain things so that a poorer child could benefit. He occasionally accompanied his mother on charitable
missions. 2 1
The actual phrase Graf used in his draft autobiography for the Gestapo was: "Thus I learnt the significance of personal charity:' He was clearly trying to
stress the contrast to the political approach of the Nazis
to "the common good?' The document-his police autobiography- is characterized throughout by two things: the
judicious omission of certain incriminating features of
his biography of which I shall speak later; and the equally
judicious inclusion of statements .intended to educate his
enemies or at least to put on record the convictions that
animated him. By "omissions" I mean, for instance, the
discretion observed on the precise nature and circumstances of those walking-tours: they were undertaken-at some risk- by a very close-knit illegal youth
group. By the attempt to educate his enemies I mean
references to "personal charity;' or religion- even the appreciation of strange peoples and their ways.
This brief life then continues: Willi says of himself
Willi Graj in uniform.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
that he always had a great need for fellowship and had
close friendships with playmates and schoolmates. This
was what led him to join the Catholic youth organizations to which he belonged for many years and where
his interest in religious and literary questions was further developed by likeminded companions. His religious
and ('ideological" development was fairly unproblematic.
He grew from the childlike notions formed at home and
in his first religious instruction into the greater world
offaith, in whose doctrines he felt secure and protected.
Even violent and long discussions with boys who thought
differently could only endanger this security temporarily, but not in the long run. 22
Willi's (police) autobiography continues: In November 1937 he went to the University of Bonn to study
medicine. Since the summer of 1935 he had been determined to become a doctor, because, he said, he thought
that would give him the best opportunity to help others.
"This seemed .to me;' I am translating verbatim now, "the
most beautiful task, giving, as it does, a chance to put
into practice the commandment which to me is the most
compelling of all, to love my neighbor. But I also worked
on philosophical and literary questions in order to continue my intellectual education and to make firmer the
structure of my religious views."2 3
(Actually his sister says that if it had not been for the
Nazis, Willi would have gone into philosophy or theology,
not into medicine; and that he only chose that subject
of study because it was relatively free from ideological
interference; yet that does not make Willi's statement to
the Gestapo a lie; it was merely less than the whole truth;
and it gave him a chance to remind his captors of a commandment they also learnt as children, only perhaps less
well. Even the mention of the year 1935 as the year in
which he decided to study medicine in order to help his
fellow-men may have been deliberate: that was the year
in which the Saar territory, detached from Germany by
the Treaty of Versailles, had the plebiscite envisaged by
that treaty and voted to rejoin Germany. Willi and his
friends had observed developments in Germany with
growing alarm; but until 1935 they had been free from
the pressures to which the inhabitants, not to say the inmates, of the Reich were subjected.)
He read a lot, Willi continues in his official autobiography, especially modern German writers and theological and philosophical works. He had time for active
sports and the enjoyment of music.
I shall quote the end verbatim too: "During these years
I experienced the smaller and larger conflicts between
the church and offices of the state and party and could
not understand them, because no state can have permanence without religion .... All order is from God,
be it the family, the state, or the people:'24
This young man of twenty-five knew more clearly and
firmly what even the boy of fifteen had known when
Hitler began to destroy the old order to build his own
New Order, an order without God-but with the new
idols of race and people, and with the divine Fuhrer
himself something between prophet and deity. Lutherans
had greater trouble discerning and opposing the ungodly
nature of this new civil authority.
13
�But let us have a few more facts of Willi Grafs life.
They come from his surviving sister, from friends, from
letters and diaries. He belonged to a Catholic youth organization until it was suppressed, and then he belonged
to an illegal successor organization. He would not make
concessions to associates he considered faithless. When
he was fifteen, in 1933, he struck off from his address
book names of boys who had belonged to his group and
who were now in the Hitler Youth. He refused to join
the Hitler Youth, although he was threatened with nonadmission to the final school exam, the precondition of
university entrance, unless he became a member. An
early arrest in January 1938- there were numbers of arrests for activities in illegal youth groups-was terminated
by an amnesty to celebrate the annexation of Austria. 25
The autobiography he wrote for the Gestapo after
his later arrest was, of course, not only aimed at not in-
criminating himself, but also at not incriminating family
and friends. Those years of semi-illegality were a good
training in careful formulation. And his circumspection
was combined with fortitude. He was kept alive for
months after the execution of the others, because the investigating authorities hoped to get more facts and names
and leads from him by threats; he never obliged them.
So finally, on 12 October 1943, they beheaded him too.
He had been a careful reader and given to writing
things down that impressed him. With friends he trusted
he loved to discuss the most serious questions passionately
and thoroughly.
The legal and later illegal youth groups also had given
members much training in the endurance of physical
hardship and developed their resourcefulness and
stamina. In fact, Willi became exactly what Hitler wanted
his boys, the Hitler Youth, to be; the Fuhrer had put it
in winged words that Nazi youth leaders were forever
quoting: "Tough as leather, swift as greyhounds, hard as
steel:' (Well- Hitler actually said "Krupp steel.") But there
was one vital difference: Willi Graf combined these
qualities with a mind of his own and an unshakable faith.
A greyhound is a dog, though a very noble kind of
dog. You can condition the reflexes of a dog. You can
condition the reflexes of human beings too. But you
should not try to make men into nothing but conditioned
reflexes. And these are the chieflessons of the Nazi period
to me: how terribly manipulable people are, especially
in our twentieth century; but also that there are limits
to this manipulability. And there is a rider: we must help
to set the limits and defend them.
Back to Willi Graf, though. He began his medical
studies in 1937. In January 1940 he was called up and
trained in a medical unit in Munich. This transfer
separated him from his old friends. He. served in Germany, on the Channel Coast, in Belgium and France,
Croatia and Serbia; fmally in Poland and Russia.
In April 1942 he got study leave and returned to
Munich. Apart from his medical studies, he worked in
philosophy and theology and took an increasing interest
in liturgical questions and in psychology. When there was
time, he did some fencing. He joined the Bach Choir
and went to concerts whenever he could.
It was then, looking for new friends, that he got to
14
kuow a brother and sister, Hans and Sophie Scholl, and
their friends Christoph Probst and Alexander Schmorell.
With them- the men were all medical students on leave
from the army and Sophie a student of biology and
philosophy and musical psychology- he met Professor
Kurt Huber who taught philosophy and musical psychology. They were all agreed in their opposition to the
Nazis and shared many interests, chiefly in writing that
mattered; and- despite their different denominations- they were united by shared Christian convictions.
Jointly they came to the conclusion that they ought to
engage in active propaganda against the Nazis and that
this should first take the form of leaflets. 26
his may be the moment to describe the very different route by which Hans Scholl reached that
point. If the group had a ringleader, it was Hans
Scholl. He was what is described as a "dynamic" person.
Born in 1918, the same year as Willi Graf, he was
the son of a small town mayor. But later the family moved
to a bigger town, Ulm. They had three daughters and
T
two sons, of whom Hans was the elder. They were Pro-
testants, the Mother probably more pious than the father.
I am not sure what their politics were, only that the
father was opposed to the Nazis from the outset. Later
he also spent some time in jail for this opposition. I do
not know what form this opposition took. I only know
that he called Hitler "the scourge of God:' That may have
been what did it.
But it was long before, at the very beginning, that
Hans Scholl, finding his father's disapproval of this great
new Movement reactionary, decided to join the Hitler
Youth, and his broth:er and sisters followed him. 27
Ten years after Hitler had come to power, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, a Protestant theologian opposed to the
Nazis- he later died on the gallows- wrote of the great
masquerade of evil. He said: "For evil to appear disguised
as light, beneficence, historical necessity, and social
justice, is simply bewildering to anyone brought up in the
world of our traditional ethical concepts; but for the
Christian who bases his life on the Bible, it precisely confirms the radical malice of evil."28
It may seem strange now, but the masquerade was
very effective. And the younger Scholls were swept away
by the idea of a real people's community, the social justice
and equality promised by Hitler, and they joined the
march of history. In doing that, Hans Scholl was not
unlike many other young Germans opposing their hidebound parents.
It was not the Bible that showed Hans Scholl the error of his ways. To that he only came much later. What
first put him off was the fact that the fellowship of the
Hitler Youth had an element of regimentationsomething of the Gleichschaltung I mentioned before.
His surviving elder sister mentions an incident that
gave her-momentarily-to think; but the moment
passed. She writes:
We were taken seriously-taken seriously in a quite remarkable
way-and that aroused our enthusiasm. We felt we belonged
to a large, well-organized body that honoured and embraced
everyone, from the ten-year-old to the grown man. We sensed
WINTER 1984
�Ham Scholl.
that there was a role for us in the historic process, in a movement that was transforming the masses into a Volk. We believed that whatever bored us or gave us a feeling of distaste,
would disappear of itself. Once a fifteen-year-old girl, after we
had gone to lie down under the wide, starry sky at the end
of a long cycling tour, said, "Everything would be fine, but this
thing about the Jews I just can't stomach?' The troop leader
assured us that Hitler knew what he was doing and for the
sake of the greater good we would have to accept certain difficult and incomprehensible things. But the girl was not quite
satisfied with her answer. Others took her side, and suddenly
the attitudes in our varying home backgrounds were reflected
in the conversation. I spent a restless night in that tent, but
in the end we were just too tired, and the next day was indescribably splendid and filled with new experiences. The conversation of the night before was for the moment forgotten.
In our group there developed a sense of belonging that carried us safely through the difficulties and loneliness of
adolescence, or at least gave us that illusion. 29
One awkward feature about Inge Scholl's book, if I
may say so, is that she hardly ever gives a date for
anything. But this must have been an early incident,
earlier than the Niirnberg Laws-let alone the pogrom
of 1938 or the deportations that started in the war. It
probably took place about the time when nothing much
was being done yet about the Jews, apart from verbal and
pictorial vilification and the removal from the civil
service.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
But it is another matter she mentions as an early
cause of her brother's discontent. He liked to sing and
he sang to his troop, accompanying himself on the guitar.
What did he sing? The songs of the Hitler Youth. (I have
studied their official song book-edition of 1941-and
was amazed to find many good songs in it, and not the
bad one I was looking for, about 'jewish blood spurting
from the knife:') But Hans also sang foreign songsNorwegian or Russian, or something like that. His
leaders forbade it. He disregarded the prohibition. They
threatened punishment. He got. depressed.
But there was a great experience in store for him.
He was to be the flag bearer for his troop at the big annual Party Rally in Niirnberg. He went with high
hopes; and came back disillusioned. The full implications
of the regimentation-not only of the Hitler Youth, but
of the whole show, all of German life as the Party clearly
intended to form it in its own image -all this had now
come home to him.
And there was the occasional book his leaders would
not let him read, because the author was a Jew, or a
pacifist.
But the final break came after a promotion: Hans
now had the rank of Fiihnleinfohrer (which meant being
in charge of 150 or so boys.) His troop had designed and
made a banner for itself and showed up with it at a parade
before some higher-ups of the Hitler Youth. A boy of
twelve carried it. A superior Hitler Youth leader
demanded its surrender. There were to be no private flags
or emblems. The boy stood firm. He stood a bit less firm
when the surrender order was given for the third time.
Hans intervened. He stepped forward and slapped the
Hitler Youth superior. That was the end of his career in
the Hitler Youth. His subsequent membership in an illegal youth group ended in arrest and some weeks in jail.
But he too, like Willi Graf, benefited from the postArnchluss amnesty.
Gradually all the young Scholls heard of disturbing
events, of things happening to people they knew. They
now asked their father about the meaning of some of this
and it seems that old Scholl did call things by their proper names and even disabused his offspring of the
notion -very widespread in all those dreadful twelve
years-that whatever horrible things might be happening, they were the doing of wild or mean or sadistic subordinates or local potentates or toughs-and that the Fuhrer
did not know about them.
The father explained to his children that this really
was unlikely. Hitler knew. Their father also tried to explain how such a man could come to power. (I don't suppose he found it any easier than I do.) Finally it seems
that he told his children that he wanted them to be free
and upright, whatever the difficulties.
That, at last, bridged the generation gap whichlike many another gap- Hitler had exploited so skillfully.
It also sent Hans back to the sources, the foundations. Rilke was not much help, neither was Stefan
George, or another poet HOlderlin; nor was Nietzsche.
Hans finally found Plato and Socrates, the early Christian authors, Augustine and Pascal; and the Bible, whose
words, as his sister says, now acquired for him a new
15
�Professor Kurt Huber.
Christoph Probst.
and surprising significance, an overwhelming relevance
and immediacy, and an undreamt of splendour.
He was a student of medicine now. And the war came.
After a while he was drafted for a medical unit and served
in the French campaign. Then he was sent to Munich
as a soldier-student, a member of a military student unit.
It was a strange life, commuting between barracks and
the university and the clinic. And all this in a steadily
worsening political climate, with oppression growing
harsher every day, and more and more becoming
known-piecemeal and not always reliably-about the
crimes of the regime.
It was mimeographed copies of a sermon of the
Catholic Bishop of MUnster against "euthanasia;' the
secret killing of incurables-which, however, could not
be kept altogether secret, since it was carried on inside
Germany- it was Bishop Galen's public sermon about
this crime, his denunciation of it as not only immoral
but also illegal, a sermon preached in a remote part of
Germany, but disseminated throughout Germany in
typed and mimeographed copies- secretly, of coursethat made Hans Scholl think of leaflets as a possibility.
He was relieved that someone, at last, had spoken, openly.
And, it seemed, such open speech could be spread.
He was not alone. In particular, he had a fatherly
friend and mentor, Carl Muth, the former editor of a
Catholic monthly, Hochland, now suppressed -whom he
had met in an almost accidental way and whom he
thenceforth saw almost daily, learning all the while, and
growing clearer and stronger. There were others too. The
underground intellectuals of Munich- middle-aged or
older men most of them, whom the Nazis had eliminated from public life-were an impressive bunch. They
included such people as Theodor Haecker, author of a
book on Virgil and translator and exponent of Newman
and Kierkegaard. ''
16
Alexander Schmorell.
And there were friends among the students, especially
among the military-medical students. The closest among
them was Alexander Schmorell, son of a Russian mother
whom he lost as an infant and who was then brought
up by a Russian nurse after the family's flight to Germany, where his father married again and became a wellknown physician. Alex had a great and romantic love
for Russia, which he shared with his friends. Then there
was Christoph Probst, the only one of them to be married, a very young father of two children, with a third
on the way. Finally there was Willi Graf.
Sophie Scholl came to Munich to study biology and
philosophy in the spring of 1942, when she had just
turned 21. She was three years younger than her brother
Hans. She had had to do her labour and war service
before being allowed to become a student. Her philosophy
professor was the man mentioned earlier, Kurt Huber.
He was a somewhat strange man, but, as far as the Scholls
and their friends were concerned, the best man in the
university. They all went to his lectures on Leibniz and
his Theodicy. They got to know him better outside the
university, too; and he introduced them to other people.
They met for readings and discussions.
In the early summer of 1942 the first leaflets turned
up. Hans Scholl had started them, and he had been so
discreet that even his sister at first did not know he was
connected with them until she saw a marked passage in
a book he had. It was a passage in Schiller's essay on the
legislation of Lycurgus and Solon and was clearly the
source of part of the first leaflet. This had had long quotations from the essay and included a passage whose contemporary relevance was pretty plain. It described the
legislation of Lycurgus as a political and psychological
masterpiece, indeed admirable- unless looked at in
human terms. Its very perfection and durability then
became a matter for regret. The longer such a state exWINTER 1984
�isted, the more harm it did. It sacrificed all moral sensibilities and severed all human ties and did not just
countenance slavery but required its cruel enforcement.
The Spartan code abolished natural rights and morality
and treated men as means not ends. Such a republic
"could endure only if the mental development of the people was arrested, and thus it could maintain its existence
only if it failed to fulfill the highest and only true purpose of political government." 31
This first leaflet had begun with the words:
open and befouled the whole body. The majority of former
opponents went into hiding, the German intelligentsia fled to
a dark cellar, there, like night-shades away from light and sun,
gradually to choke to death. Now we stand at the end. Now
it is our task to find one another again, to enlighten each other,
never to forget and never to rest until even the last man is persuaded of the urgent need of his struggle against this system.
When thus a wave of rebellion goes through the land, when
'it is in the air; when many join the cause, then in a last mighty
effort this system can be shaken off. After all a terrible end
is preferable to an endless terror.
Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself
to be "governed" without opposition by an irresponsible clique
subject to base instincts. It is surely a fact that to-day every
honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among
us has any conception of the immensity of the shame that will
befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen
from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes- crimes that
infinitely exceed all measure-reach the light of day? If the
German people are already so corrupted and decayed in their
inmost being that they do not raise a hand and, frivolously
trusting in a questionable law of history, yield up man's highest
possession, that which raises man above all other creatures,
if they surrender free will, the freedom of man to seize and
turn the wheel of history in accordance with rational decisions;
if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so
far along the road toward becoming a spiritless and cowardly
mass-then, then indeed they deserve their downfall. 32
The leaflet went on to speak of the murder of
Jews-300,000 in Poland it said-and of Poles, and of
the need for more than compassion. Doing nothing constituted complicity. If they tolerated these things, Germans were guilty. Now that they had recognized the Nazis
in their true colours, Germans had the duty to destroy
them. 33
The third leaflet discussed forms of government and
utopias- the highest of them, it said, being the City of
God. The present state was a dictatorship of evil.
Something had to be done about it and cowardice must
not hide behind a cloud of prudence. Only passive
resistance could be offered, but that must be offered
wherever possible. It was not military victory over
Bolshevism that must be the prime concern of Germans,
but on the contrary the defeat of the Nazis. There were
suggestions for various forms of sabotage, though no
blueprint for general action could be given and everyone
should use what opportunities offered in whatever way
seemed best. This leaflet concluded with a quotation from
Aristotle's Politics, a passage on tyranny. 34
The fourth leaflet had an appeal to Christians to attack evil where it was strongest. It was strongest in the
power of Hitler. The leaflet had a quotation from Ecclesiastes and one from the German poet N oval is on
Christianity as the foundation of peace. It also had a
postscript, assuring the reader that the White Rose was
not in the pay of any foreign power, adding: "Though
we know that National Socialist power must be broken
by military means, we are trying to achieve a renewal
from within!'35
Then there was a long hiatus: for the men were sent
to Russia during the long vacations between semesters.
What they saw in the East confirmed them in their
resolve. Hans saw Jews in labour gangs. All saw the
miserable conditions prevailing in Poland. All fell in love
with the Russians.
When they returned to Munich in November, they
resumed their secret work with redoubled energy and
it became quite feverish. There were two more leaflets,
the last a special appeal to students. It began with the
shock produced by the staggering German defeat at Stalingrad. The students, the "intellectual workers;' should
not allow themselves to become the tools of the regime,
but put an end to it. A recent incident at Munich university had shown that the students could stand up to the
Party. The nation was looking to the students. It ended,
"Our people are rising up against the National Socialist
enslavement of Europe in a fervent new breakthrough
of freedom and honour:'36
The incident referred to had in fact been spectacular
There were six leaflets in all, in thousands of copies. They
were distributed anonymously and secretly. Those, many
of them, that were sent through the mails, were mostly
posted in the cities to which they were sent, in order to
avoid any hint to the police that Munich was the headquarters of this activity. Risky train journeys were undertaken by several members of the group to take leaflets
to cities like Stuttgart, Augsburg, Vienna, Salzburg. Willi
Graf even took a duplicating machine to a friend in the
West and recruited friends and sympathizers and collaborators where he could. Recipients were assured that
their names had simply been taken from telephone
directories- to free them of the fear that they might be
on some list and thus exposed to punishment.
The leaflets usually had quotations towards the end
of their text, as this first one had Schiller on the lawgivers.
The second leaflet began:
It is impossible to engage in intellectual discussion with National Socialism because there is nothing intellectual about it.
It is false to speak of a National Socialist philosophy
[Weltanschauung], for if there were such a thing, one would have
to try by means of analysis and discussion either to prove its
validity or to fight it. In reality, however, we have a totally different picture: even in its first beginnings this movement
depended on the deception of one's fellow man; even then it
was rotten to the core and could save itself only by constant
lies. After all, Hitler states in an early edition of ''his" book
(a book written in the worst German I have ever read, and
yet it has been elevated to the rank of a Bible in this nation
of poets and thinkers): 'It is unbelievable to what extent one
must deceive a people in order to rule it! If at the start this
cancerous growth in the nation was not too noticeable, it was
only because there were still enough forces at work that
operated for the good, so that it was kept at bay. As it grew
larger, however, and finally attained power ... the tumor broke
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
17
�and encouraging; but it had also been unique. The Nazis
saw to it that it remained unique.
At the 4 70th anniversary celebrations of the university, the Bavarian Gauleiter had addressed a crowd of
about 3,000 students, many of them in uniform, on the
meaning of the event and of the place of students in the
German struggle. As for women students, he had no objection to their occupying places at the university, but
he did not see why they should not present the Fuhrer
with children, for instance a son for every year at the
university; if they were not attractive enough to get a man
by their own efforts, he'd be glad to send one of his adjutants to each one of them and they could be assured
of an enjoyable experience.
At this there was unrest in the auditorium. Women
students in the gallery stood up, prepared to leave. They
were stopped. The other students, especially those in
uniform on the ground floor booed so much that the
Gauleiter had to interrupt his speech. Later he did speak
on, but the spell was broken and he kept being interrupted. He was furious and gave the order for the women
students to be held in custody. The leader of the Nazi
student organization demanded a voluntary identification of the women protesters upstairs. Twenty-four identified themselves and were arrested at once. The SS
pushed the other students out of the auditorium. When
they emerged from the building they found all the rest
of the men students standing outside, like a wall, giving
them an ovation. They had stood there for over an hour.
In groups they broke through the cordon, got inside,
seized the Nazi student leader, beat him up and held him
as hostage until the women were set free. At that moment the police arrived. The students also turned on the
police and fought their way through into the city. But
some of them were arrested. The atmosphere, however,
was electric. Students of the most diverse disciplines suddenly found themselves acting together. And suddenly
all were friends; and the population of Munich was on
their side.
The Gauleiter called another meeting a couple of
weeks later and threatened to close the university if peace
and order were not restored. The men would be sent to
the front, the women into the factories. But he also
apologized for his earlier speech. Those who had been
arrested had been set free. Clearly the students had won
this round. But it was to be the only round.
It may even have led to the end of the White Rose.
The Scholls and their friends were, of course, immensely
heartened by this experience of spontaneous solidarity
against a foulmouthed party functionary. But they may
have overestimated the permanent potential that could
be mobilized against the Party. In any case they now
became bolder. They wrote things on the walls of Munich
in the night: "Down with Hitler;' and "Freedom." They
managed not to get caught doing this. They were armed
to shoot their way out if necessary. 37
But on 18 February 1943 Hans and Sophie took a
suitcase full of copies of the last leaflet to the university,
spread them about in corridors and on the stairs while
lectures were in progress and doors closed, and finally
18
threw the rest down the centrallightshaft from an upper floor. The janitor saw them and took instant action
to apprehend them. They were arrested and taken away.
That was on a Thursday. Their trial, together with
that of Christoph Probst, was on the following Monday.
It was conducted by the People's Court and they were
sentenced to death and beheaded the same day. 38 There
were four days between their being caught and being
executed.
Graf, Schmorell, and Huber were also arrested and
tried, together with eleven others, in mid-April. The
sentences ranged from acquittal to death. Three women
students, for instance, got prison sentences for failing to
report treasonable activities. 39
Graf, Huber, and Schmorell were sentenced to death,
Huber having already been expelled from the Faculty
of the university by his colleagues. He had also been
deprived of his doctorate 40 In the case of the first three,
incidentally, the Scholls and Probst, there had been an
assembly of the student body, called by the Nazi student
organization, on the evening of the day on which the three
were executed, to denounce them and to declare the loyalty of the student body to the Fuhrer and the National
Socialist Movement. Attendance, again, at least according to the report of the District Student Leader, was
about 3,000.41
The parents of Graf and Schmorell asked for clemency. Hitler personally turned down the request. 42
Huber's publisher asked for a stay of execution, to enable
his author to finish his book on Leibniz, arguing .that
it would redound to the greater glory of German culture.
He was allowed to work on it in his prison cell until July,
but he did not finish his book before they took him to
the guillotine. 4 ' (There were about twenty of them in
use in Germany at that time.)
In attempts to get him to implicate a friend, Willi
Grafwas subjected to considerable pressure and threats
of a more painful death. He resisted to the end and was
the last to die, in October of that year. 44
Inspired by the example of the White Rose, othersin Munich, Hamburg, and elsewhere- tried to carry on
similiar activities. Eight more paid with their lives, in
1944 and 1945, out of more than sixty who were arrested
and imprisoned. About thirty were involved in Munich
and about fifty in Harnburg 45 The other groups were
more heterogeneous and seem to have lacked the Christian core and cohesion and fortitude of the White Rose. 46
should like to sum up in two sentences what the
story of these students seems to me to show: In
order to recognize manipulation and to think not
only analytically but also constructively about politics,
they needed Plato and Aristotle and suchlike authors.
To find the courage and strength needed to stand up to
the power of the manipulators, they needed faith. But here
is a postlude, on a matter closely connected with the subject of language, rhetoric, persuasion, and faith.
The five students of the White Rose all sang in the
Munich Bach Choir, until the end. One day I hope to
be able to find out what they sang. But I can imagine
I
WINTER 1984
�what kind of thing it was. It was not all Bach but it was
all serious music, I am sure, music whose words mattered.
What you let out of your mouth always matters, of
course. At a time when language has become debased,
corrupted, meaningless or prohibited, what you sing matters even more. It would be interesting to know what the
Nazis allowed to be sung. I know that Handel was
censored- some of Handel. Willi Graf went to two performances of Messiah in December 1942, his last advent
season. After the first occasion he wrote in his diary that
it was an indescribable experience. What impressed him
were the faith and piety behind the work. He went again,
though the second time there was standing room only.
Again he was deeply impressed, especially by the aria,
"I know that my Redeemer liveth:' He mentioned it again
in a letter to his sister- they had heard it together- his
last letter, dictated to the prison chaplain before his
execution. 47
But Bach is much more powerful with his words than
Handel, and I just wonder what the Nazis did with cantatas and motets,
or,
for that matter,
with the
Magnificat- music that, for instance, mentions God's servant Israel. Could they allow it to be sung when they
had decided to force every male Jew to have the middle
name "Israel" on his papers? This was for purposes of
identification and segregation, like the later edict forcing all Jews to wear the yellow Star of David on their
clothes. Could the Nazis allow choirs to sing "Sing unto
the Lord a new song, and his praise in the congregation
of saints. Let Israel rejoice in him that made him: let
the children of Zion be joyful in their King ... ?"That
is Psalm 149, verses 1 and 2, which Bach set in his motet
"Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied." Or could they permit,
even in Latin, the singing of Luke 1, v. 54-55: "He has
helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;
as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed
forever;' seeing how Bach hammers home the "Abraham"
in his Magnificat and spreads the seed throughout the
· ages? Could the Nazis allow such words to be sung,
especially when they were set in such persuasive and
memorable ways? Or did they insist that only songs to
the new lord or idol should be sung and those that did
not too explicitly conflict with the new idolatry?
I do not know all the relevant deliberations of the
Ministry of Propaganda or the Ministry of Education
or the Reich Chamber of Music. They were"the controlling bodies for that kind of thing. But I know, for instance,
that at one of his staff conferences in April 1942, Dr.
Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Popular Enlightenment
and Propaganda, explained that he prohibited a broadcast of the Mozart Requiem the previous December
because ((its very sombre and world-negating text would
have had a bad effect on morale in the exceptionally
serious situation then prevailing"; adding that this was,
however, an exceptional case. One could not, he said,
"destroy or regard as non-existent the earlier cultural
achievements of a people just because the content of these
cultural achievements" ran ((counter to a new ideology''
and he explained ('that a distinction must be made between a historical approach and enjoyment of the cultural
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
achievements of earlier periods on the one side and the
development of one's own ideology on the other."4B
The bodies charged with ideological control must have
weighed the risk of dangerous Christian indoctrination
on the one side against the risk, on the other side, not
only of jettisoning the German cultural heritage, but also
of making the anti-Christian character of the regime too
clear.
With the churches under pressure and severely circumscribed in what they were permitted to do and say,
and persecuted, and prosecuted, when they exceeded
those limits, concert halls and choral societies were obvious places where the old creed could still be fostered
surreptitiously.
Lest you think that I overestimate this factor, let me
give you three examples, two on the Christian side, one
on the Nazi side. A brother of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, not
a particularly churchy man, was in a Berlin jail under
sentence of death. When the only surviving brother who
was still at liberty (Dietrich, too, was in prison)
visited his brother Klaus and said how nice it was that
Klaus could hear, in his mind's ear, the music of the Matthew Passion when he read the score he had in his prison
cell, Klaus said: "But the words also! The words!"4 9
Willi Graf recorded in his diary on 7 December 1942
(the day, incidentally, after that first Messiah) that he spent
the first part of the evening singing in the Bach Choir.
He thought it went quite well and added: "The words
of the Christmas songs and of the Schutz motet have their
special meaning. It is good to be able to do such things:'50
Another thing he did right up to the end was to prepare
and perform church liturgies with his friends. 51 Despite
the soldiering and the medical studies and the secret
political work, he found time and clearly felt a need for it.
The Nazis, on the other hand, made children, and
grownups, sing songs for their Movement and for .Germany, and dinned into all the doctrine that there was
and would be no Germany but Hitler's Germany. And
the boys who had innumerable times sung the words
"Germany, here we are; we consecrate our death to thee
as our smallest deed; when death comes to our ranks,
we shall be the great seed;' were, of course, singing
something plagiarized from Tertullian, a perversion of
Tertullian, who said that the blood of the martyrs is the
seed of Christians. These child martyrs were sacrificed,
and sacrificed themselves, for the fatherland up to the last
minutes of the war, manning the anti-aircraft guns and
fighting the Russians at the approaches and in the streets
of Berlin- fifteen and sixteen year-olds formed into local
battalions. As a surviving female Hitler Youth leader put
it: ''They wanted to make true the vows of their songs?' 52
However relaxed Goebbels may have sounded in that
Propaganda Ministry conference in 1942, the internal
intelligence network of the SS never relaxed its vigilance
where the churches were concerned and kept complaining about "church music as a means of denominational
propaganda?' "Denominational" meant roughly what in
America is sometimes called "Sectarian." The word was
used instead of "Christian;' which was what was really
meant. The fiction, which was very strenuously main-
19
�tained, was that the Nazi Party and Movement- which
in its official Party Program, promulgated in 1922 and
never carried out, had subscribed to something nebulous
called "Positive Christianity" 53 (a matter I shall be glad
to enlarge upon if asked)- the fiction was that the Nazis
wanted above all to unite all Germans and therefore had
to fight the divisive activities of the Protestant and
Catholic "denominations." But in this Security Service
report from which I have quoted, as in others, it is crystal
clear that what they were in fact fighting was the Christian faith itself, and any attempt to foster it. This report,
in October 1940, complained of the systematic expansion of perfomances of church music all over the Reich,
both in churches and in concert halls. These events, the
report said, were of high quality and very popular, made
most effective propaganda for the churches, and were apt
to call forth ovations from the audiences that amounted
to demonstrations. 54
In April 1943, a long report on church influence on
the young had a special section on the dastardly use the
churches were making of singing as a vehicle of Christian education. 55 In January 1944, another long report
on liturgical reform and the extra-mural promotion of
church music mentioned the fact that in Alsace, for instance, the Protestant church was systematically replacing sentimental hymns of the 19th century by musically
more valuable chorales of the time of the Reformation.
Even brass music was being revived in the reform
movement. 56
All this caused great and, I think, justified concern
to the watchdogs of the regime. What they did not say,
perhaps did not even realize (like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear), 57 was that brass in church music did not
just add to the fun, but has a rousing and invigorating
effect; they may not have known that the chorales of the
time of the Reformation were not just musically superior
to the soppy stuff of the Romantic era, but textually too.
The Germans had begun before any other people to
sing hymns in their own language. When Luther came,
he not only translated the Bible, creating something that
is worthy to stand beside the English ''Authorized Version" (the American "King James Bible") but also, being
very musical, made the chorale into a most important
and powerful vehicle of the new persuasion, making congregations sing. He put a lot of Catholic Latin hymns
into German and wrote more himself. Since then the Protestants in Germany have always had the better hymns
than the Catholics- until both declined in the century
of Beethoven, Schubert, and Wagner. When the crucial
conflict with the neo-pagan movement approached and
during the crisis itself, most musical Christians, but
especially the Protestants, realized they needed more to
sustain them than the spineless songs of the nineteenth
century. They needed words and music that really meant
something. And whereas the Catholics were largely
preserved from apostasy by the clarity of their doctrine
and the prescribed observances of their faith, many Protestants may be said, I think, to have been pulled out
of their initial confusion not only by some of the more
clearheaded and courageous parsons and laymen and laywomen, but also by a return to the truths proclaimed in
20
Bible and Hymnal.
And perhaps even wordless music, provided it is pure,
has some such power. 5 8
Kurt Huber, this professor of philosophy, also
taught- and wrote on- music, both the physiology and
psychology of hearing and music, and, his special love,
folk music, the real rooted stuff- that was in fact being
rooted out, trampled underfoot, by "the march of history;'
by this mass movement that called itself"volkisch:' Though
physically somewhat handicapped- he had had infantile paralysis- he went to great lengths to hear and
preserve what still existed of such music. A companion
he once took on a musical mountain trip to a rather inaccessible part of the Bavarian Alps, to hear the yodeling of the dairymaids there, reports that when they had
left and had already gone a certain distance, these women
sent a kind of farewell yodel after them. Huber stopped
in his tracks, asked his companion for writing material,
and jotted down the yodel in figured bass notation. As
he did so, tears of emotion streamed down his face. 59 I
think I know what that emotion was. It was the emotion
that made Victor Zuckerkandl speak of "the miracle of
the octave" and on which, if I understand him aright,
St. Thomas Aquinas bases one of his proofs of God, the
one from "governance:' That may be an odd one to think
of when the world was-and still is-so visibly out of
joint. All the more moving, I would say, to hear or see
an example, a representation, or symbol of that governance, to hear the pre-established harmony.
1. See, for instance, Peter Loewenberg, ''The psychohistorical origins of the
Nazi youth cohort, The American Historical &view, volume 76, No. 5
(December 1971), pp 1457-1502.
2. The Treaty of Peace Between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany (with
amendments) and Other Treaty Engagements, signed at Versailles, June 28,
1919 . .. Part VIII was on Reparation. Its Section I (General Provisions)
started with Article 231 which read: "The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and
her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and
Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany
and her allies."
3. The word Erhebung, here translated as "resurgence:' can also mean uprising; other senses are uplift, elevation, elation. It is in this latter sense that
T. S. Eliot used it in 1935~unfortunately, I think-in the second movement of "Burnt Norton:' the first of his Four Quartets:
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination .
4. Max Domarus, ed., Hiller. Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945. Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen .... (Munich, 1965), p. 208.
5. Compare this tastelessness and blasphemy with the editing of a sentence
in John Kennedy's inaugural address, which went through many drafts.
The first draft had a sentence that ran: 'We celebrate today not a victory
of the party, but the sacrament of democracy." In the final text this became:
"We observe today not a victory of pai'ty but a celebration of freedom."
The blasphemy was edited out. (Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy [New
Yock, 1966], p. 271.)
6. Katholisches KirchenblattfUr das Bistum Berlin, XXX, No. 28 (15 July 1934).
WINTER 1984
�7. A copy of the film, what remains of it, can be seen and heard at the National Archives in Washington. A partial transcript of the trial also survived. For one relevant fragment, see Volksgerichtshofs-Prozesse zum 20, Juli
1944. Transkripte von Tonbandjunden. Herausgegeben vom Lautarchiv des
Deutsehen Rundfunks (April, 1961), p. 122; for another see Gert Buchheit,
Richter in roter Robe: Preisler, Priisidenl des Volksgerichts!wfes (Munich, 1968),
p. 247.
8. Bekenntnis der Professoren an den deutschen Universitiiten und Hochschulen zu Adolf
Hitler und dem nationalsozialistischen Staat. Uberreicht vom Nationalsozialistischen Lehrerbund Deutschland/Sachsen (Dresden, n.d.),
pp. 13-14 and 36-37 (Heidegger) and 15-17 and 38-40 (Hirsch).
9. Ernst Nolte, ~zur 'I)rpologie des Verhaltens der Hochschullehrcr im Dritten
Reich;' Aus Politik und Geschichte, Beilage zur Wochenzeitung "Das Parlament,"
B 46/65 (17 November 1965), p. 11; now reprinted in Ern~;t Nolte, Marxismus, Farchismus, &Iter Kn'eg, (Stuttgart, 1977) where the passage "Heidegger
als Paradigma'' comes on pp. 147-8; there is also a translation, by Lawrence
Krader: Marxism, Fascism, Cold Jililr (Atlantic Highlands, NJ., 1982) where
the article appears on pp. 106-120 under the title "Behavioral Patterns of
University Professors in the Third Reich" and "Hcidegger as Paradigm"
on pp. 116-7. For a series oflectures on the subject of the German universities in the Third Reich, given at the University ofMmllch, see Die deutsche
Universitiit im Dritten Reich. Acht Beitriige (Munich, 1966). Fritz Leist, one
of the contributors, who discusses possibilities and limits of resistance at
universities, knew Willi Graf well and helped him and the White Rose
group.
10. Karl Dietrich Bracher, The Gennan Dictatorship. The origins, structure, and
if.fects of National Socialism. Translated from the German by Jean
Steinberg.
.(New York, 1970), p. 268; it is a quotation from Heidegger's Rectoral Address, Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitiit (Breslau,
1934), pp. 22 ff.
11. Walter Z. Laqueur, Young Germany. A history of the German youth movement
(New York, 1962), p. 191.
12. The word "intelligentsia'' was a very odd one to usc in the context. It was
meant to translate "die Gebildeten" which has such presumptuous overtones
of educational elitism and self-satisfaction that it is hard to find a real
English equivalent for it. Funny, all the same, that the-linguistically
somewhat primitive-translators should opt for a word of Russian origin
which was at best a loan word in English and should have been anathema
to all good Nazis, on whom it was incumbent to despise intellectuals, but
to at least appear to look up to Bildung. Perhaps they thought that only
Germans had Bildung, others merely had intellect, that evil thing.
13. Sec Note 8.
14. Treaty of Peace between the United States of America, the British Empire, France, Italy and Japan, and Poland, signed at Versailles, June 28,
1919-especially Articles 2, 3, and 7-12. Also the letter, dated June 24,
1919, addressed to M. Paderewski by the President of the Conference
transmitting to him the Treaty to be signed by Poland under Article 93
of the Treaty of Peace with Germany.
15. For the most comprehem·ive treatment of the subject see Raul Hilberg,
The Destruction of the European Jews, (Chicago, 1961).
16. Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks. A Sen·es of Conversations with Adolf Hitler
on his &al Aims (London, 1939), p. 220. The quotation went on: "It is
a blCmish, like circumcision:' There is no need to rely on Rauschning
alone. In his table talk, too, Hitler presents himself as the great liberator
from the J udeo-Christian slave morality and as heir of the Roman Emperor
Julian (the Apostate), the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, of Voltaire and
Nietzsche.
17. Cf. Beate Ruhm von Oppen, ed., Documents on Germany Under Occupation
1945-1954 (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), pp. 1 and 31.
18. Inge Scholl, Die Weisse Rose (Frankfurt, 1955), pp. 101-102. For an American
version see Inge Scholl, Students Against 1jranny: The &sistance of the White
Rose, Munich, 1942-1943. Translated .
by Arthur R. Schultz (Middletown, Connecticut, 1970).
19. This account of his life is largely based on Gewalt und Gewissen. Willi Graf
und die "Weisse Rose." Eine Dokumentation von Klaus Viclhaber in Zusammcnarbeit mit Hubert Hanisch und Anneliese Knoop-Graf (Freiburg,
1964).
20. Ibid., pp. 24-25.
21. Ibid., pp. 37-38.
22. Ibid., p. 38.
23. Ibid., pp. 38-39.
24. Ibid., p. 39.
25. Ibid., pp. 18-19.
26. Ibid., pp. 25-27.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
27. What follows is largely based on the book by his surviving sister, Inge
Scholl, Die Weisse Rose (see note 18).
28. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Widersland und Ergebung. Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft.
Herausgegeben von Eberhard B.e_thge (Munich, 1964), p. 10. cf. Letters
and Papers from Prison. Revised editioll:-Edited by Eberhard Bcthgc (New
York, 1967), p. 2.
29. Scholl, pp. 15f.
30. Christian Petry, Studentcn aufs SchafotL Die WezSse Rose und ihr Scheitern
(Munich, 1968), pp. 36-42. For Haecker's observations on the war years
see Theodor Haecker, JD.g- und Nachtbiicher 1939-1945 (Munich, 1947).
There is an English translation by Alexander Dru: Journal in the Night (New
York, 1950).
31. Petry, pp. 153-155. Translation of Schiller taken from Frederick Ungar,
ed., Friedrich Schiller. An anthology for our Time. In new English translations and
t!te on'ginal German . . (New York, 1959), p. 219.
32. Petry, p. 153.
33. Ibid., pp. 156-158.
34. Ibid., pp. 159-161.
35. Ibid., pp. 162-164.
36. Ibid., pp. 164-167.
37. Ibid., pp. 98-101.
38. Ibzd., pp. 175-183 for text of indictment and press notice about trial and
execution. Also Students against ?Jranny (see note 18), pp. 105-118 and 148,
for translation of indictment, sentence, and press notice.
39. Ibid., pp. 119-137 and Petry (note 30), pp. 195-211 for text of sentence.
40. Ibid., pp. 219-220.
41. Ibid., pp. 220-221.
42. Ibid., p. 211.
43. Clara Huber, ed., Kurt Huber zum Gediic!ttnis. Bildn1S eines Menschen, Denkers
und Forschers, dargestellt von seinen Freunden (Regensburg, 1947), pp.
30-32.
44. Petry, p. 136.
45. Thorsten Miillcr, "Der Duft der Weissen Rose; die erste historisch-kritische
Untersuchung der Affiire Scholl: cin redlichcr Versuch" in Die Zeit, 14
March 1969.
46. Petry, p. 138.
47. Gewalt und Gewissen (see note 19), pp. 87, 89, and 123.
48. Willi A. Boelcke, ed., The Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels. The Nazi Propaganda War 1939-1-3. Translated ... by Ewald Osers (New York, 1970),
p. 234.
49. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonlwif/er, Man of Vision, Man of Courage.
Translated from the German by Eric Mosbacher, Peter and Betty Ross,
Frank Clarke, William Glen-Doepel. Under the editorship of Edwin
Roberston (New York, 1970), p. 832.
50. Gewalt und Gewissen (see note 19), p. 87.
51. Ibid., pp. 89-93 and 95.
52. Melita Maschmann, Fazit. Kein &chifertigungsversuch ... (Stuttgart, 1963),
p. 159.
53. Walther Hofer, ed., Der Nationalsozialismus. Dokumente 1933-1945. (Frankfmt,
1960), pp. 30-31.
54. Heinz Boberach, cd., Berichte des SD und der Gestapo iiber Kirchen und Kirchenvolk in Deutschland 1934-191-1- (Mainz, 1971), pp. 466-468.
55. Ibid., p. 801.
56. Ibid., pp. 877-880.
57. Psalm 58 (57), verse 4.
58. Willi Graf clearly felt something of the sort when he made the following
entry in his diary, on 21 January 1943, after hearing two cello suites by
Bach: "This music has a tremendous seriousness and with it a structure
of a kind rarely encountered elsewhere. It tells of an order of which at
one time a man was capable. We can only receive it for a future which
is going to be quite different." (Gewalt und GewzSsen-see note 19-p. 94.)
Compare what Stravinsky Wrote when he attacked the notion of music
as "expression": ''The phenomenon of music is given to us with the sole
purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly,
the coordination between man and time. To be put into practice, its indispensable and single requirement is construction. Construction once
completed, this order has been attained, and there is nothing more to be
said. It would be futile to look for, or expect, anything else from it. It
is precisely this construction, this achieved order, which produces in us
a unique emotion having nothing in common with our ordinary sensations and our responses to the impressions of daily life." (Igor Stravinsky,
An Autobiography (New York, 1962), p. 54.
59. Kurt Huber (sec note 43), p. 113.
21
�The Christian Origin of Modern Science
Alexandre Kojeve
Translated by David R. Lachterman
"The Earth is a noble star."
Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, II, 17
Translator's Preface
Alexandre Kojive (1902-1968) is probably best known to
the readers of The St. John's Review as the author of the influential book Introduction a la lecture de Hegel, Paris
194 7; 1968, 2 abridged English translation: Introduction to
the Reading of Hegel, trans. James H Nichols, Jr., New
York NY 1969,· of the essay, rrThe Emperor Julian and His
Art of Writing," in Ancients and Moderns. Essays on the
Tradition of Political Philosophy in Honor of Leo
Strauss, ed. Joseph Crospsey, New York 1964, pp. 95-113;
and of the section 117};ranny and Wisdom," in Leo Strauss, On
Tyranny, New York 1963,2 pp. 143-188. In addition he wrote
a three-volume study of the history of ancient philosophy, Essai
d'une histoire raisonnE:e de la philosophic paienne, Paris,
1968-1973, with a posthumously published sequel, Kant, Paris
1973. Most recently a manuscript dating from 1943 has been
published under the title Esquisse d'une phE:nomE:nologie du
droit. Expose provisioire, Paris 1981. The essay translated
below appeared in a two-volume collection celebrating the work
of his fellow-Russian and compatriot in exile, the d~'stinguiShed
historian of science Alexandre Kf!)Jri: Melanges Alexandre
Koyr€:, II: L'Aventure de !'esprit, Paris 1964, pp.
295-306.
The reader might be aware of KoJJve's gift for the "canularesque," a 1Jlut-on,'' as we might call it.
David R. Lachterman teaches philosophy at Vassar College. His translation
of Jacob Klein's The World of Plrysics and the "Natural" World appeared in the
Autumn '81 issue of The St. John's Review.
22
ew historical facts give rise to as much controversy as the connection between modern
science and technology, on the one hand, and
religion, namely, Christian theology, on the
other.
To be convinced of this we need only confirm that
the incredible strides m,ade by modern technology clearly
presuppose a theoretical science with a universal mission,
a science allowing the possibility of presenting all perceptible phenomena to the naked eye or to the armed [arme]
eye as visible manifestations of invisible relations and as
manifestations corresponding, in an absolutely rigorous
fashion, not to human speeches of any sort, but to
mathematical formulae or functions referring to these
phenomena in an exact way. We can, if we wish, call this
science "mathematical physics." However, it then becomes
important to make precise that this "physics" is not limited
to some part of the universe or to some of its particular
facets; supposedly, it must and can cover, without any
exception, everything which can be observed (that is, seen,
at least in the final analysis.)
No one will disagree that this mathematical physics
with its universal mission was born in western Europe
in the sixteenth century and that it cannot be found at
any other time or in any other place. No doubt, we can
find some small portion of it in our own day everywhere
in the world. However, it remains no less true that it is
only to be found when Christianity is present, if not as
a religion, then at least as the civilization we have no
reason not to call "Christian."
No doubt, it is not only the absence of baptism that
prevented and still prevents savages from devoting
themselves to mathematical physics. But what prevented
the subtle Chinese thinkers from doing so, the thinkers
who imposed upon enormous masses of people a highly
differentiated and extremely refined civilization? Why
F
WINTER 1984
�didn't the Indians, who benefitted from the Hellenistic
arts and sciences and in turn made many other peoples
the beneficiaries of those, why did they never try to surpass the exiguous limits of their heritage? How did it happen that many great Jewish thinkers, who very much
wanted Judaism to have a share in certain intellectual
efforts of the civilized pagans, never attempted to contribute anything at all to the development of those ideas
which could some day become a science in the strict
sense? And the Arabs- not prevented by Islam from actively contributing to the development and propagation
of the Hellenistic civilization they were the first to
renew-why didn't the Arabs try to mathematicize, for
example, the chemistry they discovered, instead of being content to assimilate and perfect only the pure or
celestial mathematics of the Ancients?
In short, no non-Christian people was able or wanted
to surpass the limits of Hellenic science. Now, the fact
is that the Greeks, who did not want or were not able
to pass beyond the limits of their own science, were all
pagans.
Since it is difficult to maintain that the Greeks were
pagans because they did not do mathematical physics, it
is necessary to suppose (unless we claim that civilization
is a chaos of completely unrelated elements) that they
were not able to work out such a physics because they
wanted to remain pagans (unless we admit, something
which would be perhaps misplaced in the present volume,
that Hellenic science and pagan theology are independent, but complementary, manifestations of one and the
same phenomenon, which would have a non-discursive
character since it would belong to the domain of action).
Now, in my opinion at least, this assertion is much
less of a put-on [canularesque] than it might seem at first
sight.
No doubt, in order to take this assertion completely
seriously, we would first have to agree about exactly what
"classical" Paganism is, or more precisely, about the
theology that served as the back-cloth to Greek philosophy
from Parmenides to Proclus and, hence, whether one
wishes it or not, to Hellenic science as .a whole. But, in
view of the clear impossibility of arriving at such an
agreement, I shall content myself with saying briefly what
Paganism would have to be for the assertion at issue to
be acceptable, if not accepted.
In opposition to Christian theology, 11classical" pagan
theology would have to be a theory of the double
transcendence of God. In other words, it is not enough
for the pagan, as it is for the Christian, to die (in certain
suitable conditions) in order to find himself face-to-face
with the Divinity. Even when he disencumbers himself
totally of his body (something of which the Christian,
moreover, has no need), the pagan is stopped in midcourse in his ascent towards God by a screen which, if
not opaque, is at least impassable, a screen, if one wishes,
which is ''divine" in the sense of trans-mundane or supraterrestrial, but in relation to which the god properly socalled is still and remains forever transcendent. The theos
of "classical" paganism is not only beyond the world where
the pagan lives. This theos is still irremediably beyond
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the 'Beyond' to which the pagan can eventually gain access after his death. By departing from the earth the pagan
is never on the path which could bring him close to his
God.
It matters little, moreover, whether this screen which
is thought to separate God from the world where the
pagans live and die is constituted, as it is for Plato, by
an ideal utopi~p_ Cosmos or, as it is for Aristotle, by the
ethereal heaven of the planets and the stars, a heaven
without any precise position in infinite, empty space, but
nonetheless itself quite spatial. What matters in both of
these cases is the absolute impossibility for the pagan as
well as for his god of breaking through this ideal or real
barrier. For, if the theory (contemplation) of the Platonic
cosmos noetos or the Aristotelian ouranos is a summit which
pagan man could not outstrip, neither in his lifetime nor
after his death, these same Ouranos and Cosmos are also
for him the extreme limit of the possible manifestations
or incarnations of his god. With the two exceptions of
what is in no place at all and what is in the heavens,
everything in the world of the classical pagans is everywhere
and always profane. Now, if the theos of classical theology
is the nunc stans of a point-like eternity or the uncountable, unique, all-embracing Whole, the transcendent
world where this theos manifests or incarnates itself cannot be other than a well-ordered ensemble of rigorous
relations, fixed from eternity among eternal and exact
numbers (it makes little difference whether these are the
ordinal numbers that Plato seems to assign to each of
the Ideas or the cardinal numbers which measure the
radii of the Celestial spheres in Eudoxian-Aristotelian
cosmology).* Inversely, in relation to this world which
is still, or already, divine, the profane world where we
live (it makes little difference whether it is the totality
of the cosmos or only the sublunary portion of the
cosmos) could not sustain truly mathematical or
mathematizable relations. Far from being one or formed
of orderable or denumberable unities, this profane world
is constituted by fluctuating elements, which, whether
they divide themselves incessantly in an indefinite manner or transform themselves insensibly everywhere and
always into their ''contraries;' are by definition purely
qualitative.
Thus from the point of view of classical pagan
theology, we can find "mathematical laws;' that is, precise
and eternal ratios, only where there is no matter at all,
or at the very least, where this matter is only a pure ether
inaccessible to the senses. From the point of view of this
theology it would be impious to search for such laws in
the gross and vulgar matter of the sort which constitutes
the living bodies which serve us temporarily as prisons.
And this is why for convinced pagans such as Plato and
Aristotle the search for a science such as modern mathematical physics would be not only a great folly, (as it
would be for all the civilized Greeks, who, because civilized, were predisposed to occupy themselves with the
*See Kojeve's Essai d'une histoire raisonnie de la philosophic patenne, Tome
II, pp. 96~ 100; 298-300 for further discussion of the character
of numbers in Plato and Aristotle.
23
�sciences,) but also a great scandal, exactly as it was for
the Hebrews.'
Let us admit that a believing or convioced pagan cannot do mathematical physics. Let us also admit that it
is not sufficient, in order to do mathematical physics, not
to be pagan or to stop being one, inasmuch as conversions of pagans to Buddhism, to Judaism, or to Islam
have not been very fruitful from the scientific point of
view. But is it really necessary to be or to become Chnstian in order to be able to devote oneself to mathematical
physics?
At first glance we would be tempted to answer "No."
On the one hand, for almost fifteen centuries Christian
civilization did very well without mathematical physics.
On the other hand, the promoters of modern science were
not, as a general rule, particularly well viewed by the
Church. However, these two arguments do not resist even
slight examination.
First of all, even if the fifteen centuries in question
were incontestably Christian, Christianity was far from
haviog penetrated all the regions of cultur~ in this epoch.
No doubt theology and, to a certain degree, morality (if
not law) were quite quickly Christianized (the Christianization of theology itself, besides, was by no means
complete). But, if we can see, for example in Gothic style,
the first specifically Christian art (because willfully contrary to the "nature" of wood and stone), we ought not
to forget that it took more than ten centuries before it
came about. As far as philosophy is concerned, the enormous effort of the entire Middle Ages had, if not as its
goal, at least as its result, to rediscover more or less
authentic (and therefore pagan) Platonism and then
Aristotelianism which the fathers of the Church were only
too ready to neglect in favor of their new, authentically
Christian theology, authentic, that is, for the most part
(at least if we abstract from the patently, if wellintentioned, N eo-platonic aberrations of an Origen or
a Marius Victorinus, and indeed, the put-ons which
Damascius published under the name of Dionysius the
Areopagite* * or the ironic writings of the classical
philosopher Clement of Alexandria). And the situation
was almost worse in regard to science properly so-called.
The Church, rightly and effectively preoccupied, before
everything else, with preserving the purity of the faith,
that is, the authenticity of Christian theological dogmas,
surveyed the sciences and philosophy with a rather
distracted (and often far from competent) eye, so that
paganism quickly came back into its own. This distraction of the responsible ecclesiastical authorities sometimes
went so far as to bring them to defend certain incontestably pagan philosophical and scientific theories against
apparently good Christians who wanted to Christianize
those theories.
Whether one likes it or not, the promoters of modern
science were neither pagans nor atheists, nor antiCatholics as a general rule (and they were the latter only
**See Essai d'une histoire, Tome III, pp. 526-527 for the attribution
of Pseudo-Dionysius' works to Damascius.
24
insofar as the Catholic Church seemed to them still
taioted with paganism). These savants were combatting
Scholasticism in its most developed form, namely, Aristotelianism restored to all of its pagan authenticity, whose
incompatibility with Christian theology was clearly seen
and clearly shown by the forerunners of the new philosophy (which, starting with Descartes, tried for the first
time to become Christian itself and which became so effectively by and for Kant.)
In short and at least in fact and for us, if not for these
forerunners themselves, it is because they, in th,eir quality
as Christians, fought against science insofar as it was
pagan that the various minor, mediocre, and great
('Galileos" were able to elaborate their new science, which
is still "modern" because it is our own.
Even while admitting that modern science was born
from a conscious and voluntary opposition to pagan
science and while affirming that an opposition of this sort
appeared only in the Christian world relatively late and
only in certain social milieus, we can ask ourselves what
particular dogma of Christian theology is, in the last
analysis, responsible for the (relative) mastery that Christian peoples (and they alone) exercise today on atomic
energy (a mastery, appearing in the period of the end
of history, which can contribute only to the prompt
reestablishment of paradise on earth, without ever doing any harm, physical harm at least, to anyone
whomsoever).
To answer this question, it seems enough to survey
rapidly the great Christian dogmas of the unicity of God,
creation ex n£h£lo, the Trinity, and the Incarnation, neglecting all the others (in any case, derivative or secondary and even reflecting, in certain cases, after-effects
[ sequelles] of Paganism).
Now, as for monotheism, its responsibility is clearly
irrelevant, since we find it in a pure state both among
developed pagans as well as among Jews and Moslems,
who are irremediably backward from the scientific point
of view. As for creationism, since we also find it in an
authentic form in judaism and in Islam, it is certainly
not responsible for modern science. Nor, moreover, is
the doctrine of the Trinity, of which pagan (N eo-)
platonism is far from being completely unaware and
which, even among Christians, is more an incitement
to "mystical" introspection or to "metaphysical" speculation than to the attentive observation of sensible, corporeal phenomena or to experiments with these. 2 There
remains the dogma of the Incarnation, which is, furthermore, the only one of the great dogmas of Christian
theology which is, from the point of view of historical
reality, at once authentically and specifically Christian,
that is, proper to all Christian thinking and to it alone.'
If, therefore, Christianity is responsible for modern
science, the Christian dogma of the Incarnation bears
exclusive responsibility for this.
Now, if this is truly the case, history or chrono-logy
are in perfect accord with "logic:'
In fact, what is the Incarnation, if not the possibility
that the eternal God can be really present in the temporal world where we ourselves live, without thereby los-
WINTER 1984
�ing any of His absolute perfection? But, if being present
in the sensible world does not lessen that perfection, the
reason is that this world itself is (or, has been or will be)
perfect, at least in a certain measure (a measure, furthermore, that nothing prevents us from establishing with
precision). If, as believing Christians affirm, a terrestrial
(human) body can be "at the same time" the body of God
and therefore a divine body and if, as the Greek savants
thought, the divine (celestial) bodies accurately reflect
eternal relations among mathematical entities, then
nothing any longer stands in the way of searching for
these relations in the world here below just as much as
in the Heavens. Now, it is precisely to such a search that
more and more Christians, beginning in the sixteenth
century, passionately devoted themselves, followed afterwards by some Jews, Moslems, and pagans. 4
But what exactly took place in the sixteenth century
in the domain of science?
Kant was probably the first to recognize the decisive
role played by the "Copernican Revolution'' in the genesis
of modern science. Now, what did Copernicus do besides
projecting the Earth where we live, together with everything found there, into the Aristotelian Heaven? It has
often been repeated that the Polish canon [Copernicus]
displaced the earth from the privileged position assigned
to it by pagan cosmology. People, however, have always
forgotten to specify that this position was only "privileged"
to the extent that it is thought to be the lowest thing in
the world (at least in the figurative sense of these words).
For all the pagans, just as for all the pre-Copernican
savants who claimed to be Christians, the Earth, with
all that is found there, was truly a "here-below;' in relation to which even the moon appears as something irremediably inaccessible and transcendent, as much in
virtue of the supposed "ethereal" perfection of everything
celestial as in virtue of the self-evident "heaviness" of
everything earthly. Now, this pagan way of viewing things
could not satisfy a man who, to be sure, wanted to do
science, but only on condition of remaining a canon and,
consequently, a Christian. However, it is not sufficient
not to be satisfied with all the ancient versions in order
to find a genuinely new way of seeing things. And if
Copernicus succeeded where many other good Christians
failed (without, to be sure, making any attempts to -succeed), it is because he displayed, not imagination, but
rather the enormous (intellectual) courage peculiar to
geniuses alone.
However that may be, it is Copernicus who eliminated from science every trace of"docetist" paganism,***
by having the resuscitated body of Christ followed into
Heaven by the totality of the terrestrial world where Jesus
died, after being born there. Now, whatever this Heaven
is for believing Christians, for all the savants of the era
it was a "mathematical" or mathematizable Heaven. To
project the Earth into such a Heaven is equivalent,
therefore, to inviting these savants to undertake without
***''Docetism" is the name given by some of the early Church Fathers
to the (heretical) doctrine that Christ's earthly and bodily career
was merely an appearance or semblance (OOx'l]at~).
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
delay the immense (but in no way infinite) task of working out mathematical physics. This is what Christian
savants did in fact. And since they did it in a world
already largely Christianized, they could do it without
raising too strong an outcry against madness or even
scandal.
Without a doubt, the mad Copernican projection of
our earth into the Aristotelian heavens provoked in the
latter a certain disorder which would have scandalized
a classical pagan. But truly Christian savants could not
take offense at this, nor did they. What was important
for them was, in effect, entirely preserved, namely, the
basic scientific identity of the earth and the heavens.
But, after a certain time, more exactly, after the time
when a certain tendency to become an atheist rather than
remain a Christian became manifest in the world (scientific and other), certain disquieting phenomena began
to appear in the unified terra-celestial universe (on the
high or low road towards becoming paradisical, without
waiting for a reconfirmation of its divin~ character).
This is because the multi-dimensional {{phase"
space, where the mathematical laws of modern quantitative and quantum physics necessarily apply even in
the smallest detail, resembles more and more the famous
Cosmos noetos which certain pagans qualified as transcendent and called utopian, because it was a place which
could not be situated, in relation to us, in any location.
Whereas, on the other hand, the world where the births,
the lives, and the deaths of men are situated in accessible and precise locations seems once again to be doomed
to the most complete disorder, rule by pure chance.
The atheistic savants of our day have thus witnessed
a sort of revenge of the ancient and pagan Plato ...
But, if this has been the case, this would be another
story altogether. A story, indeed, which would be all the
more different inasmuch as the {chance' brought once
again into the picture seems, in comparison with. chance
as the Ancients understood it, to be mathematizable itself,
or, indeed, divinized in the pagan sense of that term.
It is thought to be perfectly measurable and even- grosso
modo- precise, or in any case, eternal.
1. There is still, it is true, the Timaeus. However, I have excellent
reasons for believing (although I am probably the only one) that,
as in all of Plato's dialogues, the theories explicitly developed in
the Timaeus have nothing to do with the author's own ideas. In
his dialogues, Plato exhibits fashionable theories which he judges
erroneous and even pemicious, to which he is resolutely opposed,
where this opposition generally takes the form of a more or less
camouflaged persiflage, through which the theory being criticized is pushed to its absurd, even grotesque, consequences. (Cf.,
for example, Timaeus 91 d-e, where the famous "Darwinian" theory
of the origin of species which Timaeus expounds has birds descend from ... astronomers (of Eudoxus' type): ''As far as the race
of birds who have wings rather than hair, they arise, after a small
[sic] modification, from men without vvickedness, but light [legers],
who are preoccupied with celestial phenomena, but believe, in
25
�virtue of their simplicity, that the demonstrations one obtains of
these by sight are the most solid.") In the dialogue which now concerns us, Timaeus is none other than Eudoxus (who was commonly called "Endoxus," by reason of his great celebrity), who
irritated Plato enormously not only because he established a rival
school in Athens (where the Platonic theory of ideas was completely deformed with a view to a "physical" application and where
Plato himself was spitefully criticized for his lack of scientific
cultivation), but also and especially because the 'scientism' of the
Megarian-Eudoxian school so enormously impressed· the best
students of the Academy, Aristotle foremost among them. (Cf.
Philebus 62 a-d, where we can see what Plato really thought of
the sciences generally and of Eudoxian "mathematical physics"
in particular.) However this may be, the ironically inflated tirade
that ends the Timaeus and that Socrates listens to in silent reproof
(Timaeus 92 c), shows clearly what Plato does not accept in the
theory he is mocking. In and for this theory the world in which
we live is a sensible God (Theos aisth"etos), a contradiction in terms
for Plato, good pagan that he is, of the same kind as the pseudonotion of the squared circle. Now, if Plato says that according to
this theory the (sensible) world is divine, this is precisely because
it claims· to find in that world ratios, veritable mathematical entities. This is, therefore, the basic idea of mathematical physics,
namely, the Eudoxian attempt to find in sensible (spatia-temporal)
phenomena the precise ratios which subsist among ideal (eternal)
mathematical entities-and this is, for Plato, at once a scandal
and an act of folly. No doubt someone could say that Eudoxus
himself was a pagan as well. But, in the first place, nothing is
less certain, seeing that he could also have been an atheist. Secondly, what we know of his "mathematical physics" comes to us only
through Platds deliberately crack-brained mockery of it. Finally,
as others have quite rightly remarked, we have to wait for the sixteenth century to see the first attempt to give scientific coherence
to the ideas sketched in the Timaeus (if not by Plato ..--!'Socrates;'
at least by Eudoxus..--!'Timaeus"). Until that time, although generally taken quite seriously (with, however, laudable exceptions, including the philosophical Emperor Julian), the Timaeus only had
"mystical" or "magical" results (to say nothing of simple repetitions, whether ancient or modern, in which there is no attempt
at understanding the text). Furthermore, Democritus himself
could also have been an atheist. This does not stand in the way
of the fact that in a Democritean world one can only find room
for a pagan G~d, since God must necessarily be beyond, not only
sensible phenomena (purely "subjective" phenomena), but beyond
"atomic" (objective) reality as well.
2. Of course, the notion of the Christian trinity differs essentially
from the Nco-platonic trinitarian notion (which is, in fact, purely
Platonic in the sense that it can be traced back to Middle
Platonism, which is itself only a dogmatic version of authentic
Platonism) and the difference between these two notions has an
enormous philosophical (or, if one wants, "metaphysical") bearing. However, this difference is uniquely due to the fact of the
Incarnation of the Second Person. Now, it is evident that it is not
the dogma of the Incarnation that has been deduced from the
dogma of the Trinity. On the contrary, the Christian dogma of
the Trinity is a derived dogma, in the sense that Christianity
radically transformed the pagan trinitarian notion so as to make
it compatible with the fact of the Incarnation (as well as the fact
of the "gift" of the Holy Spirit, itself posterior to the Incarnation
and derivative from it).
3. What the Incarnation is for the Christian has nothing to do with
the self~styled "incarnations" which pagan myths or biblical tales
have in view: to become and to be a man is totally different from
taking on a human (or other) form (or appearance). Saint Augustine
saw this perfectly well and showed it dearly to the Christians (see,
for example, De Trinitate II, vii, 12 and IV, xxi, 31), while, on the
other hand, the adepts of Judaism never had any doubt about it.
4. Without a doubt the scientific consequences of the dogma of the
Incarnation were only drawn bit by bit (without, to be sure, any
appreciable help from the side of the Church). For example, scientific Paganism was able to preserve itself for so long a time in
the Christian world thanks to the preservation of the "Democritean'' distinction between "secondary'' and "primary" qualities,
which seemed an anodyne from the theological point of view. But,
the assertion that the color ofJesus' hair or the sound of his voice
are only "subjective" phenomena in fact amounts to the same
theological "Docetism" that the Church rigorously and effectively combatted as an obvious result of Paganism. It is no wonder,
then, that Christian science ended up by putting a stop to this
lamentable affair so that the responsible and competent ecclesiastical authorities did not have to intervene, at least not explicitly. Today, far from abstracting from "secondary qualities" on
the model of Detnocritus, who thought them despicable,
mathematical physics treats them with profound respect and seeks
to mathematize them; they have the same status as those entities
pagan sav;::nts judged to be noble, or even divine.
A Comment on Alexandre Kojeve's
"The Christian Origin of Modem Science''
Curtis Wilson
s this piece intended as an amusing joke, or should
we be profoundly edified? Even if it is less of a
canularesque or 'put-on' than may seem the case, as
Kojf:ve invites us to suppose, how are we to satisfy
ourselves that it is not appallingly irresponsible?
To be intellectually responsible, of course, is not the
easiest thing in the world, and I can only attempt to make
certain steps in that direction here. Let me confess at
I
Curtis Wilson is a tutor and former dean at St. John's College, Annapolis.
He has just completed a study of'Thc Great Inequality of jupiter and Saturn'
from Kepler to Laplace.
26
once that, when it comes to history, I am deeply
suspicious of the sort of intellectual operation in which
Kojeve engages: proposing single ideas as the causes of
complex, multi-faceted historical changes. Can Kojeve's
thesis, that Christianity is responsible for modern science,
and more specifically that the Christian dogma of the
Incarnation bears sole responsibility for the emergence
of that science, survive a serious examination in confrontation with detailed historical facts? Even if the answer
is 'yes: I think such examination will show that there are
meanings the thesis might easily be assumed to have
which are clearly false, and that it presupposes assump-
WINTER 1984
�tions that many of us do not share. Consider the following questions:
(1) Copernicus: Why did he hurl the Earth into the
heavens? Was this surprising act of thought connected
in some overt or covert way with the dogma of the Incarnation? That it was not so connected in an overt way
seems pretty clear. In his Commentariolus, written probably
as early as 1511-1513, Copernicus states his motives for
renovating astronomy in a clear and quite understandable
way:
the planetary theories of Ptolemy and most other
astronomers, although consistent with the numerical data,
seemed ... to present no small difficulty. For these theories
were not adequate unless certain equants were also conceived;
it then appeared that a planet moved with uniform velocity
neither on its deferent nor about the center of its epicycle.
Hence a system of this sort seemed neither sufficiently absolute
nor sufficiently pleasing to the mind.
Having become aware of these defects, I often considered
whether there could perhaps be found a more reasonable arrangement of circles, from which every apparent inequality
would be derived and in which everything would move uniformly about its proper center, as the rule of absolute motion
requires. After I had addressed myself to this very difficult and
almost insoluble problem, the suggestion at length came to me
how it could be solved with fewer and much simpler constructions than were formerly used, if some assumptions (which
are called axioms) were granted me. 1
Essentially the same view is stated in the Narratio pr£ma
of Rheticus, the pupil of Copernicus:
... [my teacher} is far from thinking that he should rashly
depart, in a lust for novelty, from the sound opinions of the
ancient philosophers, except for good reasons and when the
facts themselves coerce him. 2
Copernicus was a convert to the Renaissance ideal
of classicist renovatio, which means something quite different from 'innovation' in our sense: it means to go back
to first principles. And in the Renaissance it was the
fashion to believe that the ancients knew deep and important truths, which in the long 'middle age' (the term
was invented by Cusanus a little before Copernicus was
born) had been lost from sight. Copernicus does not question the first principle that had been adopted in ancient
mathematical astronomy; on the contrary, he insists on
its being quite rigorously applied. The apparent inequalities of the celestial motions must be accounted for
in terms of strictly uniform circular motions: how else
could these motions be perpetual? As he indicates in
Revolutions IV.2, it would be absurd to attempt to account
for the apparent inequalities by postulating real inequalities-which is what Ptolemy had done.
Here we have Copernicus' own understanding of why
he did what he did. It is with this understanding, I should
think, that historical investigation of the Copernican
revolution ought to begin.
Not for a moment would I deny that Copernicus'
Christianity makes a difference in his thinking about
astronomy, but the difference it makes, when we compare his thinking with Ptolemy's, is that he is a creationist
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and Ptolemy is not. Copernicus thinks of the world as
a machine designed by the best artisan of all:
... When I had long considered this lack of certitude in the
mathematical tradition concerning the composition of the motions of the spheres of the world, I began to be annoyed that
no more certain theory of the motions of the machine of the
world, which was created for us by the best and most orderly
of all artisans, had been established by the philosophers ... 3
According to Kojeve, 'truly Christian savants' could
not take offense at Copernican doctrine, "nor did they!'
Well, Luther in 1539 referred to Copernicus as 'der Nan'
(the fool), and added: "But I believe in Holy Scripture,
since Joshua ordered the Sun, not the Earth, to stand
still." Melancthon, Luther's deputy, commenting on "the
Polish astronomer who makes the Earth move and the
sun stand still;' said: "Really, wise governments ought to
repress impudence of mind:' J. C. Scaliger, Italo-French
physician and scholar, published a book in 155 7 in which
he put Copernicus' name in the margin alongside the
recommendation that certain ''writings should be expunged or their authors whipped:' Maurolicus, a Sicilian
mathematician (1494-15 75), said: "Nicholas Copernicus,
who maintained that the Sun is still and the Earth has
a circular motion, deserves a whip or a scourge rather
than a refutation." The Italian astronomer Magini said
that "Copernicus' hypotheses are attacked by nearly
everybody for being too far away from the truth and absurd:' Clavius, the Italian mathematician, said in 1570
that "Copernicus' idea conflicts with many aspects of experience and the common opinion of all philosophers and
astronomers:' Quotations from both Catholics and Protestants could be multiplied, and just about all of them
are to the same effect, that Copernicus' hypotheses are
absurd; and some add that these hypotheses are contrary
to Scripture.
I know of no reference in the Revolutions to the dogma
of the Incarnation. If this doctrine influenced Copernicus'
thinking about astronomy, the effect can only have been
a hidden one.
(2) Kepler, Galile0 Descartes, Newton: Here, among these
most famous of the founders of modern science, do we
find the dogma of the Incarnation showing itself as influential, as determining their theological and
metaphysical and scientific thought? If influential it was,
it did not show itself as such.
The divergences among these thinkers go pretty deep.
It is in Kepler that the theological motives are most evident: the original idea of his celestial dynamics seems
to have come out of the notion that the 'signature' of the
Trinity had been imprinted on the very structure ofthe
Cosmos, the Sun being the image of God the Father and
Creator, hence the exerciser of power, while the stars of
the starry sphere were the image of God the Son, and
the space between, in which light and motive power
travelled from center to periphery and were reflected back
again, was the image of the Holy Spirit. But I don't think
anyone besides Kepler put much stock in this charming
idea: Kepler's harmonies were the object of much ridicule.
27
�Nor do I think one can very well argue that the introduction of dynamics into the skies had to come by this peculiar and idiosyncratic route- granting that the idea of
forces acting on celestial bodies was a very unusual one
at the time. We should also note that Kepler, inspired
as he was by cosmic trinitarianism, was not less evidently
inspired by Platds Timaeus, with its notion of a playful
demiurge, faced with the 'ananke' of the Receptacle or
the recalcitrance of matter. Kepler was ever ready to
acknowledge that the instantiation of beautiful
geometrical patterns in the world could fail to be exact.
That seems to be a pagan idea, and I think one may
reasonably doubt that it is really at home in the setting
of Christian theology.
Galileo was another who came to consider the world
as mathematically describable, but the route by which
did he regard it as logically entailed by any theological
doctrine.
There is evidence to lead one to suppose that Galileo,
like other Florentines of his time, living under a bad,
tyrannical regime, but retaining family memories of the
better times of citizen rule under the Republic, turned
to a kind of compartmentalized way ofliving and thinking. Energies that in the old days would have gone into
citizen activity were devoted to private hobbies, although
the yearning for a public role remained. For a man of
Galileds italianate sophistication, good taste did not
countenance the notion that all one's ideas could or should
be fitted together into a single grand scheme. Galileo was
not a bookish man or a dreamer. He made some use (no
doubt illegitimate) of 'Platonic' recollection; there are indications he was influenced by Pyrrhonist scepticism
he came to this conclusion was not at all the same as
(notice how often he has Salviati insisting that 'I don't
Kepler's. There can be some uncertainty whether Galileds
famous statement in the Assayer is fundamentally
methodological or metaphysical, where he says that "the
book of the universe is written in the language of mathe-
know' is a good response to a question). But he is not
matics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other
geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it:' I would tend to
opt for the methodological emphasis.
In any case, Galileo does seem to have been the first
man we know of who set out consciously to discover sim-
ple mathematical laws through experiment. Stillman
Drake has suggested that an accidental discovery by
Vincenzo Galilei, Galileds father, may have had a great
influence here: Vincenzo found that when strings of equal
length are stretched by weights in such a way as to produce consonant intervals, the weights are as the squares
of small whole numbers, where the small whole numbers
are inversely as the string lengths that give the same consonant intervals when the strings are stretched by equal
weights. Vincenzo had been hoping to prove, in opposition to Zarlino, that small whole numbers have nothing
to do with consonance or with pleasant-sounding inter-
vals. The result surprised him. Perhaps the young Galileo
was surprised, too. It may have been this that precipitated
him into a search that led to the discovery of a series of
beautifully simple laws: the isochronism of pendulums,
the relation between pitch and frequency, the law of free
fall, and so on. On Drake's supposition, the series of
discoveries had been 'triggered.' A good many important
scientific discoveries seem to have been similarly
serendipitous.
Fortune favors the prepared mind, to be sure, but
Galileds overt preparation had a great deal to do with
a partisan of any philosophical sect or system. As
polemicist and rhetorician for the new science (his selfappointed role), he was willing to make use of anything
apropos that tradition offered.
And what about Descartes: what was his relation to
Christianity? It is only God that can know, of course,
but we should not fail to recognize how dreadfully upsetting to traditional Christian thought were the Cartesian
doctrines. The Principia philosophiae was condemned by
the doctors of the Holy Office in 1665 as incompatible
with the Eucharist, or the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Reconciling Christian orthodoxy to the new science does
not appear to have been an easy matter.
Descartes was .q.o doubt trying to reconcile the Sorbonne to his scientific enterprise in his Meditations on First
Philosophy. But the Cartesian proofs for the existence of
God and the separate existence of the human soul cannot have appeared as a godsend for the faithful: Descartes'
God is a philosopher's god, immutable, incomprehensible, unresponsive to the prayerful.
As to what Descartes really thought about the dogma
of the Incarnation, that must remain doubtful. In the
Discourse on Method he makes it clear to the reader that
while conducting the most radical inquiry into first principles it is important to follow sedulously the customs
of the country in which one finds oneself. And one cannot forget what Descartes as a young man wrote in his
journal: that when he entered upon the stage of the world,
he would do so 'masked.'
My guess is that the legitimation of algebra and the
overcoming of scepticism were more crucial to Descartes'
classical taste in music, painting, and the drama); and
attempt at a grounding of the scientific enterprise than
any Christian dogma.
And finally, what about Newton? In the early 1670s
Newton, faced with the prospect of having to take clerical
as far as one can discover, it had nothing at all to do with
theology or the dogma of the Incarnation. There is no
doubt that Ga!ileo considered himself a loyal son of the
Church, and was utterly taken aback when its doctors
study of the sources of Christian doctrine, and reached
the conclusion that Athanasius had hoaxed the Church
into accepting the doctrine of the Trinity, for political
Euclid, Archimedes, engineering, certain scholastic
studies, and the arts (for Galileo prided himself on his
came to treat him as a potential enemy, or at least as an
erring son. He did not suppose his science to be incom-
patible with Christian theology, but neither, I believe,
28
orders as a professor at Cambridge, made an intensive
reasons. Somehow a royal dispensation was gotten for
him, and so he was allowed to remain professor without
taking orders. In later life, as warden and then master
WINTER 1984
�of the Mint, he had to pretend to be an orthodox Christian, but on his death bed he refused the offices of the
priest of the Church of England. He did not believe in
the dogma of the Incarnation.
But now suppose the Kojevian says: All ofthis is irrelevant. The founders of modern science failed to recognize the hidden factor that permitted them to do what
they did. That was the dogma of the Incarnation, the
sole doctrine in the world that could overcome the double transcendence of God in paganism.
But here-setting aside the fact that the pagans did
have their mystery religions, and that many preChristians and later non-Christians have denied the double transcendence of God- I want to ask what sort of
historical explanations we are to consider possible and
reasonable. I am not an Hegelian in historical matters
(Kojeve in the piece before us appears to be doctrinairely
so); I do not believe it is reasonable to see the almost
endlessly complicated history of human thought and affairs as the realization of the Idea. In the unprecedented
intellectual upheaval of the 16th and 17th centuries, many
factors were in play: the religious revolt or reformation,
which had political and economic as well as doctrinal
roots; the discovery of the New World, and all it did to
shake up traditional views; the internal disintegration of
scholastic thought through its own self-criticism; the
discovery of antiquity in a new sense, as a source of
wisdom and esoteric doctrine; the effect on thought of
those signal inventions, the compass, gunpowder, and
printing, all of them imported from China; the impact
of the printing of books on learning generally, taking it
outside of the universities and turning it over to autodidacts; and so on, and so on. All this mad restlessness
is due to the dogma of the Incarnation? Or perhaps it
is to be attributed to the invention of the horse collar and
triple crop rotation, leading to the result, as Lynn White
puts it, that the Europeans were full of beans? It was a
time of intellectual, political, economic, and religious turmoil, and very strange notions came out of dark corners,
among them the altogether astonishing notion of
mathematical physics. No doubt Christian thought and
belief had much to do with this particular outcome. I
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
would not myself be willing to go further, unless we come
down to particular cases.
The most surprising and outrageous statement in
Kojeve's whole piece, in my opinion, is the aside about
the "mastery that Christian peoples (and they alone) exercise today on atomic energy (a mastery, appearing in
the period of the end of history, which can contribute
only to the prompt reestablishment of paradise on earth,
without ever doing any harm, physical harm at least, to
any whomsoever)." This was written, we note, in the
1960s, after Hiroshima.
It is the hope of most of us, parents in fact or parentsto-be or parents in spirit of those who will live after us,
that life on this planet can continue, and can continue
to be basically good (as our untutored animal faith affirms it to be). And most of us, confronted ever more
unavoidably by the evidence of how rapidly and irrevocably humankind is raping the Earth, find ourselves
shocked into grim silence. In as dark a time as ours,
Kojeve's optimism is either a bad joke or fatuous.
Hegel's phenomenology of spirit is a rich revelation
of the dialectical modes of working of the human mind,
in its ever renewed confrontation with the Other. We
would do poorly to reject it out of hand. Just as surely
we would be less than intelligent if we were to .accept uncritically Hegel's account of the factual history of the
human spirit: among some shrewd and bold strokes it
includes much that is fantasy, ungrounded in the sober
truths about the ways in which cultures have in fact interacted. As for Hegel's arrogant optimism about the
fmal, Germanic age of the Absolute, may I assume that
it would be laughed out of court today?
I confess that au fin du compte I do not understand
Kojeve's intention in his piece on the Christian origin
of modern science. I yield to a vague though deep suspicion when I say: Caveat lector!
1. E. Rosen, Three Copernican Treatises (3d ed., New York: Octagon Books, 1971),
57-58.
2. Ibid., 187.
3. Copernicus, &1Jo/utiom, Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul III.
29
�What Good and What Harm
Can Psychoanalysis Do?
Wolfgang Lederer, M.D.
is about seven years since I last had the honor
of appearing before you. On that occasion, as I
recall, I was sore perplexed by the topic your dean
had assigned me. And today, once again, I find
the very simplicity of my title troubling and deceptive. You are no doubt all familiar with that story about
a psychoanalyst who, having been greeted by a colleague
with a cheerful "Good morning!" then puzzles in his own
mind, thinking: "What did he mean by that?" And thus,
with professional distrust of the obvious, did I scrutinize
today's topic: "What good and what harm can
psychoanalysis do?" This is the theme your dean assigned me, but what did he mean by that? Is this truly a factual question? Is it not rather a challenge, a very gauntlet
thrown at my feet, a taunt which scornfully demands:
what good, if any, can psychoanalysis do?- and which
sneeringly suggests that the potential harm, lurking in
the obscurity all around the analytic couch, could well
devour whatever good might come of it?
I feel thrown on the defensive, and like any debater
under attack I shall now reach for that somewhat
disreputable but effective gambit of asking for a definition of terms: Will my honorable opponent kindly define
for me the meaning of "good?"
My opponent, refusing to be drawn into the mire of
the abstract, thereupon answers me with strict reference
to our context: "People come to psychoanalysis;' he says,
"because they feel in some manner maladjusted; the good
they expect, therefore, is a better adjustment."
I
t
''Very well;' say I, "and it follows that, the better and
Wolfgang Lederer is a psychiatrist who practices and teaches in the San Francisco area. This article was delivered as a lecture on May 13, 1983, in Annapolis.
30
more perfect the adjustment reached through therapy,
the greater the good?"
"It would seem so;' says he.
''And is not adjustment, as in a delicate mechanical
instrument, that state of meshing of gears and levers and
what not, which permits the total to run most smoothly,
with a minimum of friction, heat, or noise, such that no
component attracts attention to itself and no further improvements need to be made?"
"Indeed;' says he.
"Does it not follow then;' say I, "that the individual
perfectly adjusted to and within his society is one so
smoothly attuned to the existing order that he causes no
friction and no heat, attracts no attention, opposes
nothing, demands or effects no change, is in fact standardized and therefore amenable to unit replacement like
a mechanical component and, in short, may claim as his
greatest virtue a total lack of individuality?"
"I admit;' says he, "that such perfect adjustment, to
the extent to which it could ever be achieved, would be
good for the established order- at least in the short run;
but that it would be akin to death for the individual:'
''And if total adjustment is akin to death, then perhaps
total non-adjustment is the true good? Then perhaps the
ideal man goes his own way without regard to society,
custom, or law?"
"Surely;' says he, "such a one would quickly run afoul
of the social reality within which he exists, and would
suffer destruction:'
"Quite so;' say I. ''And it would seem that the good
lies somewhere between total adjustment and nonadjustment, and we are merely left with the question as
to where, between the extremes, the greatest good may
lie. But who should have the wisdom to tell us that?"
"Surely not the psychoanalyst;' says he.
"Then perhaps we must approach things differently;'
WINTER 1984
�say I. "People come to psychoanalysis because they feel
maladjusted; but how do they know about their
maladjustment?"
"Because they are in pain!'
''And so perhaps the good lies simply in the relief of
pain?"
"There can be no doubt;' says he, "that both chronic
and acute pain are bad, and quite possibly harmful, and
that the relief of pain, whether physical or psychic pain,
is considered a great boon."
"Let us consider then, if you will;' say I, "the pain
inflicted upon a man by his conscience, the pain of wrong-
doing which we call guilt. Supposing a man is tortured
by the memory of having killed an enemy in battle;
should we not, if we can find a way, try to diminish his
guilt over such a killing?"
"That;' says he, "would alleviate a grievous harm."
''But what if, by chance, we succeed too well, and the
man were so stripped of conscience and guilt that he considered killing permissible, under any circumstances?"
"That would be inflicting harm, both on society and
on the man himself."
"So it is true of the pain of guilt -and perhaps of any
kind of pain- that both the excess and the absence are
harmful, and that there is a necessary amount of pain
which is· required for survival, and therefore good?"
"That comes;' says he, "from engaging in a dialogue
with a psychoanalyst:'
''You do me wrong, my friend;' say I, "for I am not
even a psychoanalyst:'
"Then what, may I ask, are you doing here? Are you
not an impostor?"
N
ow, let me permit my interlocutor to go back to
the waiting room of my mind whence I have
called him. And let me admit to you quite simply
that I interpreted the term "psychoanalysis" in the title
of my talk as no more than a popular label for a great
variety of psychological therapies; for were I to guess,
I would say that psychoanalysis proper-orthodox,
classical psychoanalysis- constitutes today less than one
percent of all psychological treatment, and has become
mainly a valuable training device for future therapists
of analytical orientation; whereas many other techniques
are, and have been, practiced with varying success. Of
this, let me give you some examples.
We are told that in the year of grace 1584, on the
tenth day of April, there was presented to the Most Illustrious and Most Reverent Archbishop of Cambray,
Loys de Berlaymont, by Monsieur Francois Buisseret,
Doctor of Laws, Archdeacon of Cambray, one Soeur
Jeanne Fery, aged twenty-two years, a professed religious
of the convent of the Black Sisters of the town of Mons
in Hainaut, it having been found that she was proved
to be troubled and possessed by evil spirits, to the end
that it might please the aforesaid Lord Archbishop to
recognize the fact and to advise suitable means for her
deliverance.
Jeanne Fery, we hear, was born in 1559. Her childhood was unhappy, for her father was a violent man who
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
drank to excess. Jeanne herself was gifted with a very
quick understanding and a good mind, and had a tendency to hear and gladly to treat of great and high matters.
One day her father, returning from the tavern at 6 dciock
in the evening, met his wife who had come out to seek
him with her child in her arms and, being angry with
her, he wished that the devil might take the child. In virtue of which the Devil had power to beset and hover about
the aforesaid child until she reached the age of four, when
he tried to gain her consent to his being accepted and
acknowledged as her father. He presented himself to the
child as a handsome young man, gave her apples and
white bread, with which she was pleased, and, as she later
wrote: "Since then I regarded him as my father by reason
of the sweets he brought me; and he spoke to me in the
same way [sic] until I reached the age of 12 years; and
he protected me, so that I did not feel the blows that were
given me:'
Jeanne had been sent to a convent school, but at the
age of 12 was removed to the house of a dressmaker, there
to learn a trade. The devil urged her to take full advantage of her new liberty and reminded her that it behooved
her to obey him in all things. Otherwise, she writes, "he
would torture me in ways which he showed me: and that
each person lived in the manner he taught me, but that
they would not confess as much to each other ... I immediately submitted to all that he could ask!'
She was then made to sign a document with her own
blood, renouncing her baptism, her Christianity, and all
the ceremonies of the Church: "This pact being sealed,
the paper was folded very small and I was made to
swallow it with an orange, which tasted very sweet until
I came to the last morsel, and that was so bitter that I
scarce knew how to endure it. And since then I have
always had a great detestation of the Church ... and
have used many insults against her ... being inspired
in all things by malice and sin!'
She nevertheless re-entered the convent of the Black
Sisters at the age of 14, there to begin her novitiate. The
devils became ever more tyrannical, but allowed her to
act and to work modestly, so that she aroused no suspicion and at 16 was permitted to take her vows and thus
to become a nun.
The devils now deemed her worthy of parodying the
sacraments and o:r~e among them, Sanguinary, came and
desired from her "not a dead sacrifice, but living, and
of her own body!' She wrote later: "Hearing all this, I
at length gave way to their will. Immediately, this evil
spirit entered into my body, carrying with him a sharp
knife ... with great cries and pains he cut a piece of flesh
from ... my body and, having soaked it in my blood,
went and offered it to the evil spirit, Belial. ... They
made me offer this sacrifice many times:'
Henceforth the devils kept her in despair and tempted
her to take her life. Through fear of being disgraced and
perhaps put to death by a court of justice, she listened
to their promptings. She gave them her girdle that they
might strangle her, but being unable to do so, they urged
her to slit her throat. Each time she attempted this, an
invisible presence stopped her. The devils would say:
31
�"There is some wicked woman guarding her." The woman
was later identified as Saint Mary Magdalen.
Meanwhile,] eanne, drained of all energy and unable
to declare the cause of her obvious ill health, was visited
by a doctor who could make nothing of the case and
prescribed remedies that were of no avail. Both her health
devils, she was to be placed that day for care and nourishment in the hands of Loys de Berlaymont, Archbishop
of Cambray, in whatever place he is or will be throughout
his life; and that he was to instruct her in the praise of
God and to answer for her conscience before God. She
thus became the only nun to have an Archbishop for her
and, even more, her character deteriorated. She wrote
confessor.
later: "When the last days of Lent came, I was sent into
the church, where I blasphemed God and cursed my
father, my mother, and the hour of my birth. I thought
only of despair, or of drowning myself, if I could find
the means and the strength. The devils ... left my poor
body without any human nourishment, and the nuns had
great sympathy with me when they saw the color of my
face, for I looked more dead than alive:'
Two days after being presented to the Archbishop,
The Archbishop was a man of benign character.
When the possessed nun was first presented to him, he
greeted her kindly and blessed her, and thereafter had
Jeanne was admitted to exorcism, and many sessions were
held until November 12, 1585-a period of nineteen
months. Her treatment was characterized by many
dramatic events. Thus at one point the devils, "as much
by reason of old injuries which they had inflicted as
through new wounds which they made at their departure, cast forth great quantities of blood and putrid flesh."
She was told that her illness was mortal and incurable,
and it was expected that within the space of three or four
hours she would die. Through the invocation of Saint
Mary Magdalen, however, after the patient had passed
out of her body, with her urine, twenty pieces of putrid
flesh, which gave off a horrible stench, the vehemence
of her suffering was appeased. At other times she endured
agonies, spasms, convulsions, struggles for breath, epilep-
tic fits, and nightly ravings. In May 1585, when she was
being returned from the Archbishop's house to the convent against the express wish of her holy protectress, she
attacked the Archbishop and other ecclesiastics with blows
and kicks, delivered with such violence that they feared
for their lives.
Eventually the devils reduced her to a state of
childishness and babbling; she was unable to recognize
any person except the nun who watched over her ...
and she wept continually. She was afraid to renounce the
devil who had been her father, and when he was to be
expelled she begged the exorcist on her knees to leave
her at least this one devil so that she would not fall into
imbecility. To console her for the loss of him, the exorcist promised her that he would be a father to her. From
that moment she was reduced to complete childishness,
ignorant of all knowledge of God ... and unable to say
anything except ''Pere Jean" and "Belle Marie," the names
of her exorcist and of her holy protectress. A little later
she also spoke of "Grand Pere" and on questioning her
the exorcist understood that she had taken the Lord Archbishop for her grandfather.
Some time later, having been brought before the
Archbishop at her demand, and being blessed by him,
she recovered her speech. At that the intervention of Saint
Mary Magdalen became apparent by means of pieces
of paper which, closely folded, were discovered in the patient's mouth. The first of these demanded that, in order
to set free ] eanne Fery from the possession of all the
32
her deliverance very much at heart. His intervention was
often decisive. She was kept in his house even though
the prolonged stay of a young nun in the house of the
Archbishop could not fail to surprise people; but when
at length he decided to send her back to the convent,
] eanne immediately suffered a severe relapse and in an
ecstatic vision of Mary Magdalen was told that her grandfather, the Archbishop, had incurred the anger of God
by sending her back to the convent. She was to return
to his house for a year, after which time she would be
fully relieved. When the Archbishop, to convince himself
of her condition, visited her in her cell, "she was im-
mediately seized by such torment, and her whole appearance was so greatly changed by the vehemence of
her sufferings, that the Lord Archbishop, fearing that
she might die suddenly, was forced to lift her up from
her bed:' This event caused him to lodge her thereafter
in his house, where she recovered her senses, having no
recollection of what had occurred. On November 12,
1586, she took the Archbishop's hand and said: "Today
I am restored and returned to my sisters. As to my food,
you are discharged of obligation. Nevertheless, you will
have charge of my conscience for the rest of my life:'
W
ell now: unless we take the possession by devils
literally-and even at the time the ecclesiastics
were not quite sure that they should -what I
have just presented to you is an instance of the successful,
and purely psychological, treatment of what today we
would probably call a hysterical psychosis. Is it then the
Roman Catholic Church that really invented "psychoanalysis?" Or at least: psychotherapy? And how is it possible that unquestioned good came of it?
Let me hasten to state that, in my opinion, between
exorcism and psychotherapy as it is practiced today, there
are some considerable differences; but what these two·
techniques may have in common, and why both of them
can be effective, I should like to discuss after I have given
you some samples of methods which may be much older
even than the Church, and which have survived to this
day.
Thus, some tribes of the African Gold Coast firmly
believe that there are witches which fly by night to
assemblies in out-of-the way places, there to engage in
cannibalism. The belief cannot be disputed, for it is not
the real, material body of the witch that is supposed to
be flying to such gatherings: it is the witch's spirit, her,
or his, Susuma that is involved. Similarly, it is not the body
of the victim that is eaten, but the victim's vital essence,
his Kla. Although a person's Susuma may leave his body
WINTER 1984
�without ill effect, the Kla cannot leave without causing
illness or death. If the witches steal away a man's Kla
and cut it up, he becomes mortally sick. If, relenting,
they reassemble the parts and restore them to him, he
recovers. But an already eaten or mutilated part of the
Kla-say, its leg-cannot be restored, and the victim's
leg will be lost or rendered useless. What makes this whole
matter particularly sinister is that the witches exercise
their mischief not against enemies, but precisely against
those nearest and dearest to them- the members of their
own village or their own family.
To meet this danger, numerous shrines exist in the
forest, each in charge of a practitioner of skill and ·renown,
whither go patients of various kinds, seeking aid: some
are self-confessed witches, bemoaning the evil they have
,wrought; others are victims of bewitchment, presenting
such ills as sterility, blindness, aches and pains, and
assorted misfortunes. Perhaps the most striking of all are
those terrified, anxiety-ridden people who, while protesting that they have never done any harm, feel
themselves being converted into witches against their will
and suffer a sense of impending doom.
The practitioner receives these patients with much
ceremony and ritual, thus demonstrating his status and
competence. He then submits each one to a painstaking
interrogation, ferreting out envies, spites, rivalries,
marital troubles, and kinship disputes, laying bare all
secrets. And, indeed, astonishing tales of guilt and misdemeanor often emerge. Then he sums up the situation
as he sees it, announces who should confess and apologize
and to whom, and gives out advice and reprimand. Some
patients promptly recover, but others have to stay at the
forest compound for a lengthy course of daily therapy
and ritual, in the process of which they form an intense
relationship with the therapist. Let me present to you
one such case, as it has been reported by a highly
reputable European observer:
Kofi, a farmer, was received into a practitioner's com-
pound for long-term treatment. When first seen by the
Western observer he was miserably thin, terrified, and
haggard. His malady began, he said, with sleeplessness
and nightmares, during which his Susuma was drawn
unwillingly away to join a band of witches. He developed
daily periods of blindness and became unable to hear
anything except the urging voices of the witches. He also
had abdominal pains, and his belly was scarred where
he had made cuts to let out the evil. In despair he had
went home energetic and confident of his power to remain well.
This account was published in the British journal of
Mental Science in 1955. Comparative psychiatry has since
established that similar beliefs and practices are to be
found not only all over Africa and among African populations in the Caribbean and the Southern United States,
but also in South and Central America, as well as among
the shamanistic tribes of Asia. It is surely reasonable to
assume that a practice so widely spread, prevailing among
peoples of various races and religions who had little if
any contact with each other, must also be a very ancient
practice, corresponding and ministering to a very basic
human need.
W
hat, given the myriad variants of the method,
·are its essential elements? I will not fatigue you
with further examples, but will attempt to
derive the common denominators from the systems
already mentioned: those of the witch doctor, of the exorcist, and of the psychoanalyst.
In each instance, two individuals are involved with
each other. One of them is designated the patient, and
he is invariably anxious about something. He may think
he knows what he is anxious about, or he may not. He
may experience all of his anxiety as such, or he may be
more aware of related symptoms, such as guilt, or depression, or some physical complaint. But in any case he is
suffering in a way that seems to him both incomprehensible and abnormal or even unnatural, and he badly needs
to be relieved of this suffering.
The other member of the therapeutic couple is a person of high status and respect in his society, believed and
believing himself to be in possession of esoteric and
powerful techniques for dealing with anxiety or its
derivative symptoms. This person, the therapist, has often
once been a patient himself and has thus experienced
and learned his skill as it was once practiced on himself.
By virtue of this experience he is not only armed to do
combat with the demons besetting his patient, he is also
himself armored against their onslaught. He sees himself,
and is seen by the patient, as having authority, competence, and immunity.
Normally, this is how a parent appears to a small
child. And, indeed, so long as the parents can handle
themselves in the world and are not overcome by anx-
stay in the native practitioner's compound, with daily
ieties of their own, their child finds with them all the comfort, all the physical and psychological nurturance and
healing it may need. Ideally, the child will carry this sense
of security into adulthood, will inherit from the parents
ritual and psychotherapy, he recovered his sight and normal hearing, though he was still languid and spent, sitting about on the ground, afraid to go out of the practi-
the conviction that fate can be faced, come what may.
But in fact, fortune has so many slings and arrows in
store for us that even the best prepared, even the strongest
travelled to a coastal town to consult a European-trained
doctor, who had found nothing wrong. After a few weeks
tioner's sight. But in his presence, he felt a sense of safety
among us are likely, sooner or later, to find themselves
and the belief that he was to be rescued. He stayed about
a year and the observer saw him many times. He gradually grew fatter, lost his haunted look and gained the confidence to go out alone. At the end he was a different
in predicaments, under pressures and stresses, they do
not know how to handle. Our parents, as we grow up,
tend to lose the status of authority we once accorded
them: we are no longer so sure that their wisdom is
curative or even relevant to what ails us. Worse still, we
creature, with his normal loquacity and sense of fun. He
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
33
�now hesitate to consult them, or to confide in our friends,
not only because we question their competence, but also
their interest: family and friends have their own stake
in our lives, they are not impartial, not disinterested, and
we suspect that their counsel may have more to do with
their needs than with ours. And further, the more they
are devoted to us, the more our own anxiety is likely to
affect them, to infect them, so that, far from offering
reassurance, they are likely to create a feed-back of anxiety which beclouds what should be clarified, and far from
leading to calm may escalate to panic.
So there is a need for someone in whom one can safely
confide, to whom one can confess one's fears, one's guilt,
one's sorrow. Con-fide: from the Latin: con fide: "with
trust:' Trust is of the essence; hence the importance that
the therapist be a person of stature in his culture. For
trust is culture-bound: a religious culture, such as that
of France in the 16th century, trusts tl'i~·priest, trusts the
exorcist, presents its very anxieties in religious terms. A
magical society, a witchcraft society such as that of the
Gold Coast, trusts the witch-doctor, and brings to him
problems of bewitchment. A supposedly scientific society, such as ours- or at least such as ours tried to be during the first several decades of this century-trusts the
scientist, the learned man, the doctor- comes to the
psychiatrist, the academically trained, diploma'd
psychotherapist.
But is a man to be trusted just because he has a
diploma? True, the M.D., the Ph.D., the M.S.W. or whatever other imposing and dubious letter-combinations may
follow a fellow's name, mean something, designate some
sort of training and preparation, some degree of professionalism. So does membership in assorted professional
societies, so do books and papers published by the
therapist, lectures given, reputations widely praised ...
But still, asks the prospective patient: What do I really
know about this particular therapist I have, on good advice of friends and after much hesitation, just called, and
who, diffident and hesitant at the other end of the line,
finally agreed to give me an appointment two weeks
hence? Can this fellow really understand what I will have
to tell him? And understanding, can he tolerate it without
getting upset, without judging and despising me? Will
he attend to my needs, my utterly unique predicament,
and not go by the textbook, or grind his own axe? Has
he the warmth, the humanity, the wisdom I need him
to have? Will he not let me down, betray me, as I have
so often been let down and betrayed?
Indeed: Confession is risky, and trust is a precious
commodity that needs to be earned. Confidences emerge
only gradually, as confidence grows. In this unique relationship, where all the risks seem to be on one side, the
patient tests and tests, and does well to test. Facts, pertinent but innocuous, emerge first; pressing anxieties next
and behind them, half-admitted, doubts, self-doubts, impermissible feelings; and behind these: phantasies, seductive, frightening, shameful, and behind such phantasies,
who knows: how much which has never yet been admitted to awareness, sleeping monsters one should have let
lie, monsters that should never be permitted to trouble
34
the sleep of reason ... All this takes time- hence the
long, and frequent, and intimate association with
therapist-witchdoctor-exorcist-guru.
All this takes courage, for we all lie to ourselves, and
are afraid to face the truth. We lie to ourselves about our
own actions and motives, we lie about what we do to,
and want from, others. We lie above all about our own
fears. We clothe them in pretexts and excuses and false
assurances and truly fear nothing more than to have to
confront them. And yet that is just what the guruexorcist-witchdoctor-therapist expects and demands, implying that we can trust him and that he'll see us through
this journey across our own inferno. He has nerve!
And for what? What good is to come of it? What
reward for risking so much turmoil and pain?
Gnoti seauton! said the oracle; Know thyselfl But why?
What for?
et us return to Kofi, the farmer, who was afraid he
would become a witch. Witches eat the Kla of their
own tribesmen, their own family, thus causing illness and death. Witch doctors pry into kinship disputes
and marital troubles: What did Kofi confess? Could it
be that he hated and wished to kill a handsome youngster
he suspected of carrying on with his, Kofi's wife? Or that
he wished to kill his wife, for the same reason, his wife
whom he loved more than himself? Did Kofi, the farmer,
go blind so he would not see his wife's flirtations? Did
he go deaf so as not to hear the gossip of the village?
Or take another one: Kotzo, a village clerk, powerful because he could rei'd and write. His relatives, he said,
had long been trying to destroy him and had finally decided to make him a witch. They first took away, he said,
the use of his right hand, so he became a failure as a
clerk. His hand, we are told, trembled severely whenever
he talked about it, until, after months with the witch doctor, he was cured. Did Kotzo, the scribe, admit to himself
in the end how much he resented his own relatives, and
his wife's relatives, all of whom mooched on him, the provider? How sick he was of working for them? How sick
of their envy, of their ingratitude, of their accusations
against him of arrogance and superiority? Could he go
back to work because he now could admit his- tribally
inadmissible- anger against his kin, and could tell them
to see to their own living?
But perhaps you can follow me better if I tell you
about a former patient of mine, a no-longer-all-that-young
lawyer. He had graduated from his law school near the
top of his class, some ten years before he came to see
me. He explained that he was deeply depressed and
discouraged because he had failed in five state bar examinations and therefore, all these years, had had to work
as a paralegal assistant of other lawyers, some of whom
had graduated long after him. He was filled with shame,
and dreaded the prospect of having to attempt the bar
exam, in the near future, for the sixth time. He wasterrified that he might fail again.
We worked at understanding his problem, and it soon
became clear that he was not afraid of failure, but of success. This was the story: His father, now dead, had been
L
WINTER 1984
�a judge and, at home, a vicious despot. The son had lived
in dread of him, and the father had despised the son.
Once, in a fit of anger, the father had screamed at him:
"You will never, but never, amount to anything, much
less be a lawyer." Two days before my patient's first attempt at the bar exam the father had suddenly died. "I
consider the magical rituals foolish and incomprehensi-
ble and who would be turned off and turned away by
all he saw."
''And would not Kofi the farmer:' says he, "be disappointed by your lack of ritual and feel that you cannot
help him?"
know this sounds absurd;' the lawyer said to me, "but
"This is so!'
I felt that my father had died so that I would be too upset
to face the exam. Now that he was dead, he seemed to
hover about me like an angel with a flaming sword,
"And it follows that, just as the witch doctor could
threatening me and proclaiming: 'thou shalt not enter
here: The law was to be, for ever and ever, his domain,
and I was to stay out. I sat for the exam anyway, but
I could not think, and of course I flunked:' With this insight, and confident that by identifying the villain we had
banished him, he took the exam for the sixth time-and
failed again.
Obviously, we had not completed our job. So we
searched further, and this is what we found: His parents
had had a bad marriage. His mother, deprived and lonely,
had seduced him into a near-incestuous intimacy, induc-
ing him to side in all things with her and against her
husband. This was the cause of his father's contempt for
him as a "mama's boy" who would never be a man. And
he, fully aware of his connivance with his mother, felt
profound guilt at having betrayed his father.
This recognition changed the whole picture. Father,
it now became clear, had had cause to despise him. It
was his father who was the aggrieved party, and he himself
the offender. He took a new and searching look, and with
a, to him, surprising and new infusion of compassion
not treat the lawyer, you could not treat Kofi?"
"Indeed, that is likely."
''And the same would be true for the truly religious?"
"To this day:' say I, "the truly religious, if not actu-
ally mentally ill-meaning: psychotic-but troubled in
mind and spirit, by and large prefer to go to their priest,
or minister, or rabbi, and there seek and find help; and
they would benefit little, if at all, from coming to see me,
even if they were willing to do so."
''And so it would follow:' says he, "that you had rather
they did not come to you, and that you have a certain
professional hostility toward religion, because it renders
people unfit to be your patients?"
"Not at all;' say I. "First of all, I am willing to
recognize and to approve of any therapeutic method that
works, and religion has certainly worked as a therapy
for a long time, and still works for very many people;
secondly, I am quite willing to treat a religious patient
within the context and in the terminology of his faith,
provided he grants me the right to do so. But there is
he came to view his father no longer as an ogre, but as
another indispensable condition that must be met!'
''And what is that?"
"He must not have a religious expectation ofme, he
must not expect me to perform a miracle cure. Just as
a weak and impulse-driven man, deeply unhappy, a man
who had reacted to the failure of his marriage by conducting several scandalous affairs, thus progressively aggravating his estrangement from his wife. We now came
I cannot cure by magic, so I cannot cure by the laying
on of hands, or by bestowing an amulet, or a blessing.
In other words, the patient must not expect to be able
to sit or lie passively while I do something to fix things,
across a few fragmentary memories suggesting that his
but he must be prepared, with some counsel from me,
to take remedial and innovative action in the face of his
father had actually attempted to win the son's love but,
presumably feeling he did not deserve it, had eventually
anxiety. There is a saying that God helps those who help
given up on him. And so my patient came to understand
themselves, and that, if you forgive the comparison, is
that while he need not hate his father, he also owed him
no obedience. He now saw himself as the victim of parental discord, and he accepted and forgave himself for the
degree to which he had cooperated in it. His guilt, he
felt, had been adequately atoned for by his six failures
at the bar. He presented himself a seventh time, and
passed easily.
even more true of the therapist, for he can only help those
who are willing to help themselves:'
"And does it then follow that, if your patients are to
see the remedy of their ills in actions they themselves must
undertake, that they must in the first place consider their
ills as due to past actions of their own, that they must
A
t
this point my interlocutor re-emerges, a puz-
zled frown on his face.
"I am quite confused now:' says he. "You present
the story of an American lawyer, treated by you; and of
an African farmer and an African clerk, treated by a
witch doctor; and of a 16th century nun, treated by an
exorcist; and you seem to say they are all the same? In
that case, does it not follow that your training is irrele-
vant, and that your lawyer could have gone for help, and
could have been helped as much, by the witch doctor?"
to some extent at least feel responsible for their own
predicament?"
"Quite true. And so, if, for example, a person blames
all his ills on society, and expects society to bail him out,
then I cannot help him; and this would be true, for instance, for individuals who have been taken care of all
their lives, whether by welfare agencies or by a rich family,
who have never exercised their own will or their own skills
but expect whatever they need to be given to them:'
''Are you saying that you cannot treat either the very
poor or the very rich?"
"I am saying that I can only treat those willing to ex-
"This does not follow:' say I; "for the witch doctor is
ert themselves; and for the very poor and the very rich,
not an authority in the eyes of the lawyer, who would
therapy would have to have, as a first and often most dif-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
35
�ficult phase, a period during which these patients must
learn that money- the absence or the unlimited supply
of it- is not the problem and not the cure of the problem, but that they must discover and use their own personal resources?'
"You make therapy sound quite laborious:'
"It is that."
''And so, for you, the best patient would be a vigorous,
hence physically healthy and probably youngish person
of above average intellect and personal endowment, who
takes full responsibility for his life, who wants to understand where and what he has done wrong and who is
willing and courageous enough to effect changes, no matter how difficult this may be. In other words: the person
most deserving of your help is the one least likely to need
it?"
''I must admit this;' say I. "But even such a superior
individual may and often does encounter problematic
life situations which he does not know how to handle,
or in which he finds himself feeling and acting in ways
he does not understand and which'defeat him, and for
such a predicament he is likely to seek therapy. And so
I further admit, unblushingly, that my patients are by
and large quite superior individuals?'
"I am surprised;' says he, "to hear you engaging in
such snobbish value statements."
"And I am surprised;' say I, "that you should assume
a therapist has no values, or ought not to have a value
system of his own."
"But then you are like a priest, and have your own
faith, and your own ideas of what would constitute salvation for your patients, and no doubt you expect your patients to accept your notions and to seek their salvation
according to your creed?'
''You have hit upon a very troubling issue;' say I. "I
must admit that I do have a creed, and that I have a formulation for salvation. I have it straight from the mouth
of my own patron saint, Sigmund Freud, who, when
asked about the goals of therapy, said: "To enable a person to love and to work:' This nut-shell formulation is
surprisingly comprehensive and apt, for I find that it
covers, in a general way, almost all the complaints and
difficulties which bring patients into treatment. But when
brings the possibility of chosing and controlling in what
manner one may act differently in the future, and such
increased self-control is the essence of whatever freedom
we are capable of."
"In other words;' says he, "a well analyzed patient can
go out and feel free to do just as he pleases:'
"You are now baiting me;' say I, "but I shall use my
own freedom and choose to interpret your remark not
as hostile, but as conveying your concern that I might
confuse freedom and license. Rest assured that I do not.
Licentious behavior, as I understand it, satisfies, and is
often the slave of, such appetites as greed, sex, or power,
in a manner that does not care for the harm that could
be caused. i doubt that anyone who can love would be
without care. The freedom I have in mind is the freedom
to choose one's responsibilities and to assume them:'
"I wonder;' he says, "how many of your patients come
to you saying they want the freedom to assume
responsibilities:'
"Now you are making fun of me, and I am of a mind
to send you away again. Of course this is not what they
say they want, or what they complain of. They have their
own therapeutic goals- most often the relief of some emotional distress, or the achievement of some limited ob-
jective. And just as I must guard against imposing my
values on them, so I must be careful to accept their own
objectives- unless, of course, they are, to my understand-
ing, self-destructive. No, for the patient, the good to be
achieved in therapy usually has a very specific shapesuch as the passing of the bar exam- but to me as
therapist it always seems to be a step in the general direction of increased freedom to love and work."
"I am sorry if I offended you", says he, "I didn't mean
to do that. What I really had in mind is the approaching
end of your talk, and the fact that you are also supposed
to dicuss the harm analysis can do. And it seemed to me
that, if therapy had the power to free individuals to do
evil, this would constitute harm."
"Indeed it would;' say I. ''And the matter is of more
than academic importance, for there have lately sprung
up certain faddish therapies which encourage their patients to do just that, to 'put #1 first; to be unhesitatingly
selfish in the most narrow and unenlightened way; and
it comes to specifics, ethical and moral issues of great
to the extent to which these therapies manage to remove
complexity may arise, and there I have to try my best
old and admittedly blind constraints without replacing
them with new and enlightened ones, much harm is
caused, both to the patients and to those around them.
This kind of supposed liberation lays claim to being a
to see and understand a given situation in terms of the
patient's own standards, and not to impose mine on hiin.
This is not always easy or successful, but I am aided by
another basic principle enunciated by Freud when he
said, using his own technical terms, "where id was, ego
shall be''-which I interpret to mean, in a slightly expanded sense, that it is the task of the therapist to help the
patient toward a maximum of self-determination, of
choice, hence of freedom. This, in fact, is the only function of insight: behavior can be modified without insight,
revolution, or even a rebellion, against established standards; however, the truth is it merely constitutes a delinquent evasion of responsibilities."
"
A
nd may I ask;' says he, "before you make me
vanish again, whether that is the only harm that
could come from therapy? Or are there other
and often is; but in that case one driven, or fearconditioned, or other-directed behavior pattern is merely
dangers?"
replaced by another which may be equally driven, or fear-
case of the nun,] eanne Fery. You saw how she disavowed
conditioned, or other-directed; whereas insight, an
her parents, and took for father or grandfather first the
devil, then the exorcist, and then the Archbishop. She
understanding of why one felt and acted as one did,
36
"Indeed there are, and they may be illustrated by the
WINTER 1984
�transferred, you might say, her feelings about the evil,
non-attentive and non-giving father to another figure,
one who was also evil but who was attentive and giving:
the devil; and later she switched again, and transferred
her feelings to the archbishop, a man who was, to her
mind, as a father should be, ali-good, and whom she forced
to be very attentive to her for the rest of her life. This
'transference; if I may now use the technical term, though
it is in some measure essential to the cure, also has the
potential for harm- if it is misused by the patient or by
the therapist?'
"And how did she misuse it?"
"I should think that is obvious. First she used her illness itself, painful as it may have been for her, to get some
attention and care she would not otherwise have received.
Thus she became, for instance, the only nun to have
an archbishop for confessor. But in addition she then used
him-meaning his authority-for her own advantage in
dealing with others. Today, it is not uncommon to hear
people say something like: 'I am supposed to get angry
with you, my doctor says so; or: 'My shrink tells me I
don't have to do the dishes' or similar more or less serious
claims in which the therapist is, without his knowledge
or consent, used as ultimate authority concerning issues
he knows nothing about. Such gains begotten by ills are
of course ill-begotten gains and totally improper:'
"Is that all?"
"No, there is worse. Both Jeanne's affection for the
archbishop- she, after all, never had such a good
'father'-and the advantages she derived therefrom induced her to demand that she remain his 'patient' for
ever. Such a demand, today, is not likely to be voiced
quite so blatantly, but it may be acted on without ever
being verbalized. And it is not only the affection for the
therapist or some improper advantages extracted from
therapy which may induce a patient to want to continue
indefinitely; it is perhaps above all the refusal to get well,
because getting well means facing anxieties which the
patient would rather avoid, and therefore, getting well
takes courage. Think, for instance, of a person with a
highway and bridge phobia. No matter how helpful it
may be to understand the causes of such a fear, and to
learn that fear itself is not harmful- it still takes great
courage to test such understanding and to drive out onto
a seemingly exitless freeway or a seemingly endless
bridge. The fear of the fear-the fear that one may panic
after all- is still there and must be faced. The wish to
postpone the moment of truth is quite understandable,
but any therapist who, today, would be as indulgent as
the archbishop, would be harming the patient by permitting the ill to continue indefinitely. Therapy rarely
needs to be a rush-job, but it must be clear from the .
beginning and all along, that it will not go on for ever:'
"You speak of the affection of the patient for the
therapist;' says he. "Is that not a euphemism? Is it not
because he or she is helpful and relatively nonjudgmental, and possessed of an experience of life that
comes from having observed so many lives. But even this
liking is not essential, and therapy can be successful
without it. On the other hand, some patients do fall in
love, and in such cases the therapist must be quite firm-
kind but quite firm-in pointing out that such feelings
have nothing to do with him as a specific individual, but
that they are due to the transference and would have occurred in just about the same way had the patient seen
someone else. This is not always easy to do. When a
beautiful and seductive woman declares her love to aperhaps lonely and unhappy- therapist, he may have a
good deal of difficulty within himself, trying to keep in
mind for his own use the explanation he gives the patient."
"Are you then saying that therapy also entails some
dangers, and possible harm, for the therapist?"
"Indeed, this is so. In the situation just discussed, the
therapist must examine himself, and scrutinize his past
behavior with the patient, to detect in what way he may
have subtly encouraged his patient to fall in love, or to
what extent such a development coincides with his own
secret phantasies. And if that is the case, then he must
admit that he is no longer serving the patient, but abusing the patient to his own ends, to achieve his own
satisfactions. That surely is a betrayal of trust and one
of the worst things a therapist can do. He must find ways
of putting a stop to it as quickly as possible."
<1\nd if;' says he, "the love of patient and therapist
for each other is to be seen as unreal, as a transference-
mirage, so to speak, does this not also hold for attachments oflesser intensity, and must they not equally
be terminated?"
<'The answer to this is yes and no. Even lesser degrees
of attachment, such as for instance an affection spring-
ing from a long and intimate collaboration (from a feeling of mutual understanding and compatability), may
induce a patient to hold on to the therapist, or a therapist
to try and hold on to his patient. If this happens, it is
clearly detrimental. Do not forget that the therapist gets
paid, and his pay should be his only personal gain. That
of course is never quite true, for he also gains in experience, and from the pleasure of success with his patient, and from the opportunity to associate with the often
highly interesting and accomplished persons who become
his patients. But once the main purpose of therapy sessions lies in the enjoyment of pleasant company, therapy
has ceased and the integrity of the relationship is compromised. Once this is recognized, therapist and patient
should agree that the time has come to terminate:'
'~nd that is the end of it?"
"No, that is still not the end of it. There are two
phenomena which tend to occur and which continue the
bond. The first lies in this, that the patient commonly
takes the therapist with him, as it were. That is to say,
well known that patients fall in love with their therapists?"
the patient, now no longer in real and regular contact
"Like most things well known;' say I, "this one con-
with the therapist, tackles problems which may arise by
discussing them with the therapist- in his own head.
After all, when you have associated with a person for
months or even years, you know pretty well what he will
tains a grain of truth and a whole bucket full of exaggeration. By no means do all patients fall in love with
their therapists. Most patients come to like the therapist,
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
37
�say about a given matter, or in response to a certain question. Such inner conversations with the therapist may be
quite helpful and may actually advance the therapy
beyond the point it had reached at the time of formal
termination. The other phenomenon is the persistence
of a special intimacy between the now ex-therapist and
the ex-patient so that, if the need should arise, they can
always resume their work together, and pick up just where
they left off, quite as old friends, who, meeting after a
long separation, may feel as close as if they had seen each
other just the day before. Such lifelong, potential
availability of the therapist is a great comfort to the patient, and may be sufficiently reassuring to make actual
resumption of therapy unnecessary."
"If I understand you right;' says he, "it still is true
no matter how benignly you put it, that the patient remains tied to the therapist- in reality or in his headquite as a lifelong student to his teacher, or even as a
vassal to his master. And you call that a higher degree
of freedom?"
"Let me answer this by recalling something I have
read about the training of a Zen monk. In Zen, there
is the same close and lengthy association between a
student-patient and a- master which we have found in
other therapies. It may in fact go on longer than most
others-a matter of five to ten years. Now what happens
at the end? At the end, when the student has reached
satori, or enlightenment, he may slap his master's face,
and walk away for good. And the master? He laughs,
and is happy. He knows that, by means of this slap, the
student has symbolized his freedom from the authority
of and attachment to the master. But does that mean that
the student, now a master himself, will forget his mentor? That he will not still be influenced by what he has
learned from him? Compare this to a formulation a
young patient of mine came up with recently: "It all
depends;' he said, "on whds in charge?' This seemed to
him a great insight -and it was. All his life, up to this
time, he had been embroiled in a paradoxical enterprise,
namely, to win the approval of, but also constantly to
oppose, all those who were important to him: his parents,
his wife, and lately myself. In the process he neglected
his own goals and, as might be expected, all his efforts
turned out to be self-defeating. But now, he felt, it was
finally he who was in charge, in the sense that he was
no longer compelled, slavishly, to obey or to oppose what
others expected of him; he could weigh matters in his
own mind, and affirm or deny as he saw fit. He conveyed to me a great truth he had discovered: "If I ever;'
he said, "if I ever gave up all inner resistance, if I ever
told you without any hesitation all that is on my mind,
38
then I would not deserve to be here, there would be no
point in coming to therapy: for it would mean that I have
no self."
He was, at this point, discussing his termination of
therapy. He was ready to terminate because he had
discovered, and affirmed, the validity and independence
of his own self, a self he had never fully revealed, much
less surrendered, in therapy, a self which was now ready,
in light of all his experiences in life and in therapy, to
make its own decisions. Without having to obey or reject me or any other authority-figures that preceded me,
he was now ready to be his own authority, to be in charge.
Surely, that is the opposite of bondage, quite properly
one of the definitions of freedom, and a fitting goal of
therapy?'
"We seem to have reached;' says my interlocutor, "a
comforting and cheerful conclusion, and therefore the
proper moment for me -and you- to vanish from this
stage. I shall do so immediately. You perhaps should, as
is customary, end with some sort of summation?'
ar be it from me to disregard the advice of my
daimon ; so I shall summarize as follows: Psychotherapy is a journey which two individuals agree
to take together. One of them, the patient, is, for whatever
reason, anxious and feels lost. The other, the therapist,
is, due to his training and experience, much less anxious, and confident that he may find, together with and
for his patient, a way out of perplexity, out of fear and
constriction into a realm of greater. freedom and a fuller
life. The patient begins this journey with a cerfain
measure of trust in the therapist, a trust based on the
therapist's formal qualifications and on his reputationjust as a tourist looks with a degree of preliminary trust
at an official tour guide. This trust has a "let's wait and
see" quality, and must undergo considerable testing before
it gradually turns into the confidence that permits a genuine "confession;' an open avowal and discussion of
hitherto hidden feelings and thoughts. This process may
or may not produce a greater understanding of one's past
and present actions, but in any case has little curative
effect unless it leads to a change in actual behavior. Such
an attempt at changing the accustomed modus operandi
is always frightening, and requires great courage. The
benefit to be attained is a higher degree of freedom accompanied by a higher degree of responsibility. The harm
that may come of it.derives not from the process proper,
but only from its abuse. Given sufficient awareness of
such potential danger, the trip of psychotherapy is one
of the most exciting, rewarding, and safe journeys one
can possibly undertake.
F
WINTER 1984
�Cordelia
There is no cause for her to utter Nothing.
The court is scarce attending: only we
Were given notice that with sudden truth
She'd dare to disconcert the elderly.
Love hasn't yet acquired several senses:
As what is played for, when we do not play
For money; as the scoreless egg at tennis;
As diagnosis when sopranos die.
Her
Can
The
The
sisters know, can trace the naughty circle,
crack the crown, can set the wheels awhirldouble rounds of Fortune and of Fire,
planetary orbs of Fiend and Fool.
The moonish O's in Fool are central cyphers,
But Nature must annihilate extremes.
Invoked, she'll teach her son to nullify,
And help the hangman carry out her crimes.
He'll act it awkardly, for Nature's artless
When counting down the virgin sacrificeUnlike the daughter, who, unleashing monsters,
Enunciates with suicidal grace.
ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN
Poems by Elliott Zuckennan, a tutor at St. Jolm's College, Annapolis, appeared
in the Winter/Spring 1983 Review.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
39
�Aristotle's Account of the
Intelligibility of Being
James Carey
ristotle thinks human knowledge is possible
only insofar '!S things show us what they are.
The self-presentational character of Being,
its intrinsic intelligibility, is a theme Aristotle develops with a wide ranging investigation that runs through the better part of his corpus,
especially the logical writings, the Metaphysics, aod a group
of treatises on the soul and its functions. His argument
for the intelligibility of Being is complex and involves
many difficulties, but it can be made clear, at least in
outline, even if some of its finer shadings remain obscure.
By way of introduction to Aristotle's account, we
should consider briefly the problem of knowledge and
its object as he inherited it from his teacher. In the seventh
book of the Republic, Plato has Socrates speak at length
about the mathematical studies that have come to constitute tbe quadrivium of the liberal arts. Although they
are indeed learnable (as their very name- Ia mathematica-suggests), their objects do not occupy the topmost segment of the divided line, nor is the manner of
apprehending these objects the paradigm of knowing
(noesis)'. Socrates says to Glaucon:
A
Now with regard to ... [the arts] which we say reach some~
thing of what is, [namely] geometry and those following in train
with it, we see that they dream of what is, but that it is impossible for them to have a wakeful view of what is, as long
as they leave unchanged the hypotheses they use and are not
able to give an account of them. For if the starting point [or
principle-arch!!] is unknown and the middle and conclusion are
woven out of what is unknown, what contraption is ever going to change such [merely] consistent agreement [homologia]
into knowledge. 2
An expanded version of a lecture given at St. John's College, August 3, 1979.
Mr. Carey is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis.
40
To the extent that an argument is based on assumed
and unquestioned hypotheses, any conclusion reached
will be tainted by the assumptive character of the starting point. To be sure, this does not rule out the possibility
that consistency might reigu within the course of the argument. Assuming that we can state all the axioms and
rules of inference that govern the argument, we can say
that we know the premises imply the conclusions. Such
knowledge is not to be despised, aod this quite aside from
the fact that the Purest exemplars of these procedures, i.e.,
the mathematical disciplines, by infusing habits of precision and rigor can serve as preliminary training for
philosophy. Still, to arrive at insight into Being, into what
is fundamentally real, aod for Plato this is the eidi! in their
community with one another, the very direction, and consequendy the general style, of our thinking must undergo
a reversal. Socrates says that "by the power of dialectic,
discourse (logos) can reach up to the unhypothesized, the
arche of all that is:' 3 Logos makes this move by regarding
hypotheses not as principles of deduction but as something from which it can spring upward toward the arche.
Once this arche is reached, logos is able to proceed through
the domain of the intelligible "using eidi! themselves, moving through eide to eide, and ending in eidi!:'• For this to
happen the hypotheses as such must be "destroyed:''
Aristotle agrees with Plato that knowledge in the emphatic sense (noesis) cannot be realized by simply deducing what follows from assumptions. But Aristotle offers
a different solution to the problem of how one achieves
a knowledge that is not merely "hypothetical;' and this
difference in solution mirrors a difference in the evaluation of the "power of dialectic." Near the beginning of
Aristotle's treatise on dialectic, the Topics, we are told what
we can gain from a study of this art. 6 In the first place,
it is useful for training (gymnasia). 7 It enables us to have
more success in attacking a proposed subject for debate.
WINTER 1984
�In the second place, it is useful in general conversation,
for, having enumerated the opinions of the many, we are
said that some things are by nature known through them-
then able to converse with them on the grounds of what
they believe and to detect any misuse they might make
of the common opinions that guide their thinking. Finally,
and most importantly, we can employ dialectic in the
"philosophical sciences" to exhibit problems (aporiai) on
others are only known through other things. 13 Aristotle
calls the first principles immediate. What he means by
"immediacy" can be seen by attending briefly to a special
feature of his syllogistic theory. One type of syllogism
shows that A belongs to C because A belongs to B and
B belongs to C. We call B the middle or mediate term
because it is through B that we prove A belongs to C.
Hence we say that'~ belongs to C" is a mediate proposi-
both sides of a question, better enabling us to discern
what is true and what is false. In reading through the
Aristotelian corpus, we cannot help but be impressed by
the near ruthlessness with which Aristotle raises aporia
upon aporia not only against the positions he opposes to
his own but also against the very positions he intends
ultimately to advance as true. On the whole, he represents the positions of other thinkers with exemplary
fairness and often seems to have elevated distributive
justice to the rank of an intellectual virtue. The relentless
scrutinizing, the returning again and again to the beginning of a question, distinguishes Aristotle's attempt to
make Being come to life in logos as much as it does Platds.
On the basis of his acute sensitivity to the aporetic
in learning, it might be tempting to maintain that, for
Aristotle, dialectic and philosophy are somehow one, as
they at least appear to be for Plato. But this would be
an overstatement. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle contrasts
the philosopher with the dialectician and the sophist. The
dialectician differs specifically from the philosopher in
"the manner of his power . . . dialectic is tentative
(peirastike) concerning those things of which philosophy
is knowledgeable:'• This is emphasized in the Topics:
dialectic takes its point of departure not from what is
known to be true but only from commonly held beliefs,
out of which it develops distinctively dialectical syllogisms
as opposed to scientific demonstrations. 9 Its attempt to
selves (as we might say, they are "self-evident") whereas
tion. But if there were no mediate term "between" A and
C we would say that the proposition ''A belongs to C"
is an immediate proposition. Since syllogisms make use
of mediate terms to reach their conclusions, an immediate
proposition cannot be the conclusion of a demonstrative
syllogism. The immediacy of first principles, then, means
that they are necessarily indemonstrable and, conse-
quently, known only by virtue of their self-evidence.
That the principles on which a demonstration
depends must be (at least at the outset) better known than
the conclusions is cardinal to Aristotle's conception of
the nature of demonstrative science. It is true that he
sometimes speaks of "assuming" or even "believing'' the
first principles, but this occurs in special contexts, such
as when he is simply delineating the formal interrelationship of terms within a syllogism. In a number of places,
however, he insists that the archai must be knowable 14
A first principle is not, for Aristotle, something which
is merely probable; much less is it something arbitrarily
assumed for the sake of seeing what follows.
This unique status of the ultimate premises of reasoning requires that they be known in a peculiar and appropriately radical manner. Aristotle shows that no form of
circular reasoning can secure knowledge of them. 15 A
demonstrate first principles remains only that, an attempt
so-called circular demonstration would be a process both
(peira).' 0 In the last chapter of the Posterior Analytics, the
only passage of any length in Aristotle's works that is
focused exclusively on how we come to know the first
prior to the principle as conclusion-and posterior to it
principles of things, neither the term "dialectic" nor any
of its derivatives appears.
thing except in different senses. He also shows that the
form of a circular proof in its most general structure would
be the following, where "X" stands for the first principle
and ''Y" stands for the propositions that can be deduced
from it: Y follows from X, and X in turn follows from
hat makes it possible for us to know these.fi"rst
principles can best be answered by initially
considering what Aristotle means by this expression, "prOtai archai." He tells us that demonstrative
W
knowledge in the strict sense can emerge only when
dependent on principles which are first, true, immediate,
better known than, prior to, and causitive of the conclusions reached. 11 Without these conditions we can have
a syllogism, i.e., there may be a consistent interrelation
of reasons (syl-logismos), but not a demonstration, i.e.,
as starting point. And Aristotle takes it as obvious that
the same thing cannot be prior and posterior to the same
Y. But this is only a special case or, as modern logicians
· would say, a "substitution instance" of the transforma-
tion rule of hypothetical syllogism: "if Z follows from Y,
and Y follows from X, then Z follows from X:' All that
has been shown is that the initial proposition implies the
conclusion. In the substitution instance all we can infer
from '~ follows from x;' and "X follows from Y" is that
"X follows from X." We have established, at most, that
there will be no showing-from (apo-deixis), because there
will be nothing reliable from which such a showing could
be executed. The principles must be true because
knowledge can only be of the truth, 12 and they must be
first because, although what follows from them depends
on them, they cannot depend on anything else. All of
this is implied in the very sense of the word '&rche"-a
our first principle, X, implies itself. We have not shown
that X is true, but only that if X is true then X is true. Aristotle
observes that "it is easy to prove anything this way.' 16 Every
source or origin which does not simply initiate but
curiosity, an extreme case where, given six premises with
governs what follows from it. In the Prior Analytics it is
three terms all reciprocally predicated of one another,
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
proposition, whether tautological, contingent, or absurd,
implies itself, but the fact of this self implication
establishes nothing as to the truth of the proposition in
question taken by itself. Aristotle does show, as a logical
41
�we really have a circular proof. But this authentic sample of a circular proof is still based on assumptions that
are not necessarily known or, for that matter, knowable. 17
What Aristotle has shown in the opening chapters
of the Posterior Analytics is that the first principles of demonstrative science cannot themselves be demonstrated.
The foundations of reasoning cannot be reached by reasoning itself. As Aristotle says, to demand a demonstration of everything is the sign of a bad education. 18 But
this leads to scepticism only if one fails to realize that
he has at his disposal a means of knowing which is more
precise (akribesteron) and truer (alethesteron) than episteme
itself. 19 The first principles which this mode of knowledge
has as its object are divided into two categories, the archai that all the sciences share, namely axioms, and the
special archai employed by the particular sciences. These
principles are, in Aristotle's understanding, expressions
of the underlying order of what is. They are not simply
impositions of "mind" on data presented to, the subject
from an "exterior" world. Aristotle realizes that the problem of knowledge is best tackled by trying to determine
what accounts for the intelligibility of Being. It seems
that here Aristotle is in agreement with Plato. The one
dialogue devoted almost exclusively to the question, "what
is knowledge?''- the Theaetetus- tells us explicitly only
what knowledge is not. Being, as the community of eide,
hardly becomes a topic of thoroughgoing inquiry. Plato
seems to indicate that an answer to the question "what
is knowledge?" requires investigation into what it means
to be a knowable object.
In the Metaphysics Aristotle raises this question: does
it belong to the science Which studies Being to consider
the principles of demonstration? 2 0 This question is
answered in the course of the treatise. Since knowledge
is of what is, the problem of intelligibility is one with
the problem of Being. To understand what knowledge
is we have to ask the question, "What is Being?"
rom the start, it must be kept in mind that, according to Aristotle, Being is not a genus, a
"highest class" which somehow embraces members.
If Being were a genus it would have to be divisible into
subgenera which would be distinct from one another by
virtue of having unique "specific differences." For instance,
the definition of vertebrate is composed of the genus,
animal, plus the specific difference, having-a-spinalcolumn. A vertebrate is a kind of animal, but the specific
difference, having-a-spinal-column, is not a kind of
animal. The specific difference was brought in from "outside" the genus and was thus able to limit the genus to
give us the definition of vertebrate. In brief, the specific
difference is never a member of the genus that it limits,
although, of course, the sub-genus is. We should now
be able to see why Being cannot be a genus. If it were
divided into subgenera, the specific differences would
have to be brought in from "outside" the genus as it happens in every division. But in this case the genus is supposed to be Being itself. This means that the specific differences would have to be brought in from "outside" Being. But there is no region "outside" Being from which
F
42
specific differences could be retrieved to effect the division of this genus into sub-genera. If Being is a genus,
it is a genus unlike any other. 21 We shall shortly see
another, deeper reason why Being cannot be a genus in
any sense at all.
Aristotle tells us that Being or that which is (to on)
can be meant or expressed in many ways. 22 We can speak
of accidental being, of what just happens to be. For example, some child happens to be swimming. Aristotle
maintains that there can be no science of this sort of thing,
because such ways of being are not essential to what the
child fundamentally is, a human being. One does not
have to be swimming in order to be a human being. It
is obvious that there are art indeterminate number of such
accidental ways of being. Being can also be expressed
in terms of actuality (entelecheia) and potentiality (dynamis).
This child is potentially an adult-he is now in an incomplete way what he will later on be fully. But he is
not now just a potential being; he is now actually a child
but potentially an adult at the same time. Furthermore,
Being can be expressed according to the various categories
or modes of predication which answer such questions as:
what is it? of what sort is it? how much or many is it?
to what is it related? when is it? where is it? The child
is a human being, is blond, is three feet tall, is the son
0f a musician, is today at the beach, and tomorrow will
be at home. All of these ways of being are pertinent to
the child. But they are not all on the same footing. What
the child is is a different order of being than, say, the
size of the child. Still the size of the child, in some way,
is; the size of the child is not nothing.
To appreciate all of these distinctions for Aristotle's
understanding of Being, it is necessary to say soinething
about the ways in which different things can share the
same name. 23 Man and ox share the name "animal:'
Aristotle says that they are spoken of synonymously: neither
is more or less an animal than the other. A large box
and the bole of a tree share the name "trunk;' but are
spoken of homonymously: it is accidental that they are both
called "trunk!' Finally some things are spoken of
paronymously, such as a medical book, a medical prescription, a medical degree, and a medical instrument. It is
not by accident that these are called "medical;' nor are
they all called "medical" in the same way. They are called
"medical" because they bear a relationship to one thing
(pros hen) which is called medical in the preeminent sense,
namely, the medical art possessed by the physician. 24 Being, that which is, is also spoken of paronymously. All
things that in any sense are, quantities, qualities, relationships, places, times, etc., are always said to be with
reference to something which is, in a primary and dominant sense of "is;' what Aristotle calls '&usia." This term
has been variously translated: substance, essence, Entity, reality, being, real being, and beingness. None of
these is wholly adequate. r'Ousia" is derived from the
feminine present participle of the Greek word for "to be''
and seems to have had in customary usage the sense of
property, what is one's very own; and this sense of being
what is one's very own is preserved in an enhanced form
in Aristotle's employment of the term '&usia."We are go-
WINTER 1984
�ing to leave the word untranslated, in hopes that its meaning will become clearer in the course of our exposition.
Aristotle equates the question of Being, of what is
insofar as it is (on he on), with the question of ousia. 25
Unless one can gain some understanding of what it means
to be ousia, one can gain no insight into what it means
to be at all. But there is a special difficulty. Just as Being is spoken of paronymously, so also is ousia. In Book
Zeta of the Metaphysics, Aristotle designates several ways
one can speak of ousia. 26 Because ousia is the subject
(hypokeimenon) of predication, the underlying material
(hyle) which takes on different forms at different times
can be called ousia. But material is not the privileged
case of ousia. Material can be called (&usia" only because
it is an enduring fundament of change. From a piece of
marble a column can be formed and this column can
later be transformed into a statue. The form of the column disappears and in this disappearance of the form
is the disappearance of the column as such. But
throughout this, the underlying material, in this case the
marble, endures.
In another sense the sensible singular entity that is
a composite being, formed material, can be called ousiae.g. this horse I see standing in the meadow, this dappled gray thoroughbred, "this one right here" (tode ti),
I say, indicating it to someone standing beside me. In
the Categories, Aristotle says that such beings as these are
primary ousiai.2 7 But in the Metaphysics, after introducing the sensible singular composite as a candidate for
the title of (&usia'' in the primary sense, he says that such
things, those beings with which we are first familiar, "have
little or nothing of Being."" They lack the necessary
credentials. Ousia is primarily timeless Being, that which
has no history. It is what is under every condition, what
is simply changeless. It is that of which we cannot say
"it was not" or ''it will not be."
The argument of Books Zeta and Eta of the
Metaphysics leads to the conclusion that, among beings
composed of form (eidos) and material, that which most
deserves to be called "ousia)J is form. 29 That the eidos is
the fundamentally real, that which is primarily responsible for whatever Being and intelligibility are manifested
in the things that lie before our eyes, is a conception obviously of Platonic provenance. But Aristotle criticizes
the Platonic understanding of eidos, or, put more
moderately, the understanding of eidos holding sway in
the Academy. The eide cannot account for the Being of
things when they are separate from them, when they are
"yonder:' The eidos of a thing, of a tree, for example, must
somehow be in it. But this preposition "in" is somewhat
misleading. The eidos is not in the tree in the same way
the fibers of wood are in the tree. Its way of being in the
tree is analogous to the way a man's character can be
said to be manifested in his actions. His character both
governs his actions and reveals itself in them. The eidos
of the tree is similarly in the tree; making the tree what
it is and manifesting what it is. Because the eidos forms
the fryle into a sensible composite being, a tree, and at
the same time is that very being insofar as it is intelligible, the eidos is both the form of this tree and the species,
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tree. By translating the one word eidos sometimes as "form"
and sometimes as "species" we must keep in mind that
we are effecting a bifurcation of meaning that threatens
to render opaque the relationship of Being and intelligibility that Aristotle, just as Plato before him, is striving
to render transparent.
Let us consider again, for a moment, the relationship between the genus and species of which it is, as we
say, a member. The genus, animal, can be divided into
proximate subgenera, one of which is the sub-genus,
vertebrate. The sub-genus vertebrate becomes clear in
speech by a definition (horismos) in whch the relatively
indefinite (aoristos) genus, animal, is limited by the addition of the "specific" difference, having-a-spinal-column.
The resulting sub-genus is more definite (horistos) than
the genus, and its definition makes this explicit. By virtue of its relative indeterminancy, the genus is, in the
intelligible domain, material (hyle). And this is what
Aristotle says in the Metaphysics:
Concerning lryfe, some is intelligible (noCfe) and some is sensible (aisthCtC) and it is always the case in a logos [and a definition is a kind of logos] that one part is hyfe and one part is entrgeia
[being-at-work]. 30
and again:
Genus is spoken of ... as hylC, for that which has a differentia
... is the subject (hypokeimenon) which we call hy!C. 31
When Aristotle defines the technical expression
[to be or come] from something, he says:
'a tinos,"
The composite is from [or comes from] the sensible hyle, but
the eidos is from the hyiC of the eidos. 32
The hyle of the eidos when opposed to the hyle of the sensible ousia can only be the genus. Finally we have this
striking formulation:
If the genus does not exist without qualification apart from
the eidos, or, if it does, it does so as hylC ... it is evident that
the definition is a logos [made up] of differentiae. 33
This conception of the genus as intelligible material
should not be misunderstood. The genus shares with the
sensible hyle only the general trait of relative indeterminateness with respect to that of which it is the hyle. 34
By understanding the genus in this way, Aristotle is able
to solve a cluster of related aporiae.
In Book Beta of the Metaphysics, he argues that if the
archai are universals, they will not be ousiai, because each
ousia is "a this:' On the other hand, if the archai are particular (we might say individuals) there will be no
knowledge of them, because knowledge (episteme) is of
universals. This opposition suggests that knowledge of
ousia is impossible. 35 The solution to the aporia consists
in noting the precise relationship of the eidos to its
superordinate genera. Genera are divisible into subgenera and these are again divisible into sub-sub-genera
and so on. But this division, which is accomplished by
limiting the genus in question with a specific difference,
cannot go on forever. Eventually something is reached
which cannot be divided. What is reached is something
43
�entirely determinate-so determinate that it is an indivisible unity. Being devoid of all indeterminancy, it is in
no sense hyle, intelligible or otherwise. It is the eidos, or
as we say, the species. Let us say that the eidos we are
considering is the eidos, horse. We might think we could
continue dividing as follows: grey horse, grey horse
weighing fifteen hundred pounds, grey horse weighing
fifteen hundred pounds running through the meadow at
5:00 in the afternoon, etc. But these would be accidental divisions; other things besides horses can be grey, or
weigh fifteen hundred pounds, or run, or be in a meadow
at 5:00 in the afternoon, etc. So the eidos differs sharply
from the genus on the one hand and the composite beings that lie before our eyes on the other hand. Both the
intelligible genus and the sensible composite have
something indeterminate about them, and the root of
this indeterminancy is hyle, intelligible in the case of the
genus and sensible in the case of the sensible composite.
Consequently, although Aristotle often speaks of the particular composite "individual" as <tode tz/' at the heart of
the Metaphysics this expression is transferred to the eidos
which is then contrasted with the particular. 36 "Tade tz~ ''
a this, turns out to be a more appropriate designation
for the definite and unique eidos than for the particular
sensible composite. We are told at the end of Book Mu
that knowing the universal is knowing only potentially,
knowing something indefinite like hyle. 37 If I know only
that something I see is an animal, my knowing of it is
not fully actual. If I know that it is a horse and I know
what it means to be a horse, then I know the eidos, the
essence, a term frequently used in apposition with or as
a substitute for ousia. 38 The Greek expression for what
I am translating as "essence" is <to ti en einai»which means
roughly the what-its-very-Being-persistently-is, an expression that is never used of the hyle, the genus, or the sensible singular composite. When I know the essence of
what I encounter, I know the thing for what it is, I know
actually and not just potentially. The eidos is not a universal like other universals, i.e., a genus, a class under which
something is subsumed as a member. It is not an indefinite one over many, but a definite one within many.
On the other hand it is unlike the particular in that
whereas there are, for instance, indefinitely many horses
there is only one eidos, horse. Since then the eidos or
essence is the primary instance of ousia, at least among
beings composed of form and material, and ousia is the
primary instance of Being, it seems that the Being of a
thing and its eidos coincide. 39 The genus on the other
hand, as intelligible hyle, is nothing actual. This is the
second reason why Being cannot be understood as a
genus. According to Aristotle, Being, in the full sense,
is what is actual, not what is merely potential. 40
till, we have thus far left unclarified the mode of
our access to the eidos. What is first for us in the
order of cognition is, according to Aristotle, a sensory encounter with a multiplicity of particulars- namely .
perception (aisthesis). In what follows, I shall, to avoid
S
44
unnecessarily forced locutions, translate <&isthisiS"
sometimes as "perception" and sometimes as "sensation:'
There is no distinction between sensation and perception in Aristotle's treatment, nor do I intend one. 41
Aristotle says that perception is a kind of "being
moved and acted upon."4 2 Whatever there might be in
the soul or in the dispositiort of the sense organs that
would enable the subject to perceive, the act of perception itself is seen as the effect of something external to
the one who perceives. The perceptive faculty (to
aisthetikon) is itself a mere potentiality, 43 and Aristotle
argues that what is potential cannot actualize itself but
must be actualized by something else. There must be,
in what is perceived, something presenting itself, something which by moving or changing our perceptive faculty
and acting upon it brings perception into full actualization. Aristotle makes an analogy with fuel in this connection. Fuel cannot actualize its potentiality for burning by itself; what is needed is something else, namely
fire, actually at work. Aristotle accordingly tackles the
problem of perception by focussing on its object, what
so to speak "ignites" the perceptive faculty, namely the
perceptible eidos.
Now, though the sense of touch is the most fundamental form of specialized perception, at least in the sense
that all animals- all living things which perceive- have
it,44 sight is singled out as the sense which most of all
makes us become familiar (gnorizein) with things and
reveals differences among them. 45 It is true that hearing
plays a greater role in the attainment of practical wisdom
(phronesis), but its role is accidental (kala symbebekos)
because it is not discourse itself which is audible but
rather the words (otwmata) which are themselves only
symbols. 46 Furthermore we are told that it is sight which
is primarily responsible for the perception of the common sensibles- shape, motion, rest, number, size- those
sensibles which can be apprehended by more than one
sense. 47
In the De Anima, we are told that the object of sight
(apsis) is the visible (horaton). Aristotle then says that this
is color. •• But immediately afterwards he tells us that the
object of sight is what the color is upon, i.e., the body
itself. Aristotle is not maintaining that the color and the
body are two distinct objects of sight. The body is visible because it is colored. The colored body has, as Aristotle puts it with characteristic concentration, the cause
of its visibility in itself. 49 The body has its color, its color
belongs to it, and when its color is seen it is seen also.
The color and the body are not somehow stuck together.
We should understand the color along with the shape
as the visible presentation of the body. In fact we do not
depart from Aristotle's intention but only from his manner of expression if we say that the color is the body insofar as it is visible, i.e., the color is the body qua visible.
Aristotle argues that color brings about sight by effecting a movement in a transparent medium (air or
water) which forms a continuum between the surface of
the object and the eye. He says that it is the very nature
of color to set in motion the transparent and thus to bring
about vision (assuming that a being endowed with the
WINTER 1984
�capacity for sight is present). If there were no medium
but only a void between the body and the eye nothing
could be seen at all: color cannot set a void in motion.
It should be emphasized that, though it is the medium
which directly acts on the eye, it is the color which is
seen, and this is because the medium is transparent
(diaphanes) and cannot itself be seen but only seen
through. Furthermore the medium is not transparent except when light is present. Light is in fact defined as the
actuality (energeia) of the transparent qua transparent. 50
In the absence oflight the medium remains only potentially transparent. Light is furthermore said to be the
presence (parousia) of fire, the absence of fire being
darkness. We are also told that light is the color of the
transparent. This does not mean that the transparent has
a color proper to itself but only that, when lit up by the
presence of fire, it communicates to the eye the color of
the body seen through this medium. The essentials of
the treatment of sight in the De Anima can be condensed
into a single sentence: A body becomes actually visible
when a medium such as air or water between it and the
eye is made completely transparent by the presence of
fire and set in motion by the color of the body, i.e., by
the body itself qua visible.
It is striking that the treatment of sight in the De
Anima is focussed almost exclusively on the object of sight.
This is of course consistent with Aristotle's general procedure of understanding the subject, so to speak, in light
of the object. The soul as perceptive has no function of
its own other than to receive the sensible eide; taken by
itself the faculty of perception is nothing actual at all but
only a potential for such reception. 51
The treatment of color and transparency in the De
Sensu adds a few important observations to those of the
De Anima. Transparency is said to be common to bodies
and not just to the air or water between them. 52 When
the transparent is indeterminate ( aoristos) as in air or water
(as when one opens his eyes under water) then it is the
nature of light to reside in it. But this "same common
nature or potentiality;' i.e., the transparent, when it is
in determinate bodies has a limit. We thus arrive at a
refined definition of color: "the limit of the transparent
in a determinate body."53
That Aristotle says color is the boundary of the
transparent in the body and not the boundary of the body
itself is probably in order to distinguish the definition
of color from that of shape. 54 Nevertheless, since every
body has within it the transparent and this is not
separable from the body, 55 the boundary of the
transparent within the body, the color, would coincide
with the boundary of the body itself, the shape. For this
reason, color can be regarded (with shape) as constituting
the limit of the body. And since the eidos manifests itself
in the limit of a thing, in what differentiates it from other
things, we can regard color as part of the sensible eidos
of body. Obviously, if bodies lacked any color at all they
could not be distinguished from one another. Eidos, in
general, has the characteristic oflimiting a being so that
it is set off from what it is not and apprehended as what
it is.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
We have in this section limited our discussion to sight
as a paradigm of specialized perception. Much could be
said about hearing, smell, taste, and touch that is relevant to Aristotle's general theory of perception, but for
our purposes it is necessary only to call attention to two
important features which these senses share with sight.
In the first place, not only is the color of a body
treated as the body itself qua visible, but the sound of
the body is the body itself qua audible, the odour of the
body is the body itself qua object of smell, and the taste
of the body is the body itself qua object of taste. This
theoretical observation is supported by our normal
linguistic usage. We speak of hearing the sound of the
trumpet and of hearing the trumpet itself, of smelling
the fragrance of the rose and of smelling the rose itself,
of tasting the sweetness of the sugar and of tasting the
sugar itself. In none of these cases do we, at least at the
level of ordinary experience, suppose or intend to speak
as though we are perceiving two different objects, a sense
datum· and a body. Aristotle's account of specialized
perception gives a theoretical justification for this prescientific attitude. In the case of touch Aristotle tells us
that we experience the differentiae of body qua body. By
this he means the primary elements of which a body is
composed, earth, air, fire, and water, i.e., the various combination of hot and cold, dry and wet. 56 It is through
the sense of touch that we perceive the material out of
which the body is composed. This should not be taken
to mean that through touch nothing "eidetic" reveals itself.
Indeed earth, water, fire, and air can be differentiated
from one another only on the supposition of their possessing something {~idetic» of their own. The so-called "prime
matter" would not be any one of these, but rather what
they have in common as elements in spite of their specific
differences, and this has no existence independently of
these elements. 57 But if it did, which would contradict
Aristotle's general theory of hyle, it would not be accessible to perception because this is defined by Aristotle
as precisely the reception of perceptible form without
hyle. 58 The same holds true of touch as of the other senses:
in feeling the wetness and coldness of the ice, we feel the
ice itself; the wetness and coldness of the ice is the ice
itself qua tangible.
Secondly, not only sight but the other senses also apprehend their proper objects through a medium either
external, air for hearing and smelling, or internal, the
liquid on the tongue for tasting and flesh itself for
touching (because, as Aristotle says, the organ of touch
is not the flesh but is within it. )59 Aristotle maintains that
"we indeed perceive all things through a medium:'60
Perception is a mediated mode of apprehension. This does
not mean that the medium usually distorts the perception (though it may occasionally do this); rather, because
of the necessary presence of the medium for perception
to take place at all, 61 the soul is never, by mere perceiving, in immediate contact with the Being of things. And
this is of capital significance.
Of course, our experience is not limited exclusively
to present objects. We also have imagination. Although
nothing can possess imagination unless it already has
45
�perception, imagination can be called into play when we
are not actually perceiving, e.g., when we close our eyes
and imagine what we have just seen.
But imagination also differs from perception in the
degree of falsity which can pertain to it. Aristotle tells
us that "perceptions are always true but imaginings (phantasiai) are mostly false:' 6 2 One reason for this is that the
individual senses are naturally designed for the specialized function of apprehending their proper objects, and
error, when it occasionally occurs, is due to some accidental and unnatural flaw in the sense organ, either congenital or acquired. But error in the apprehension of the
common sensibles, on the other hand, occurs even when
the senses are functioning normally. Although what
Aristotle calls the "common sense" can directly (i.e., according to its own nature- kath' auto) apprehend the common sensibles, it necessarily operates in and through the
specialized senses. Because none of these senses is designed expressly and uniquely for the perception of the
common sensibles there is a proneness to error in the
common sense that is not found in specialized senses (i.e.,
when they are apprehending their proper objects). Since
"an image is an affection of the common sense faculty" 63
the proneness to error of this faculty would account for
some of the falsity that characterizes imagination.
But this would not justify Aristotle's contention that
"imaginings are mostly false." A further consideration is
that the exercise of imagination is "up to us whenever
we wish to do so!' This, according to Aristotle, distinguishes imagination from perception. 64 We can manipulate images in such a way that they bear little resemblance to the sensible objects which give rise to them.
Nonetheless, the most important reason why "imaginings are mostly false" consists in the fact that images must
differ from sensible objects. If we, through the exercise
of imagination in remembering something, were to have
before us an image completely true to a sensible object
we had previously experienced, the vividness of this image would block out, distort, or at least interfere with
our present perceiving. For an image to be regarded as
an image of some sensible object it must differ from it,
at least to the extent that we are able to recognize the
image as an image and not take it to be the sensible object itself. When images are so vivid that they are taken
for sensible objects, hallucination is the result; and Aristotle is aware of pathological states that are based on inability to recognize images for what they are. 65
There are then these three reasons why "imaginings
are mostly false:' In the first place images are affections
of common sense and this faculty is prone to error. In
the second place, we are free to distort our images (as
we say, "to fantasize") in a way that we cannot distort
the sensible objects that are present to us in perception.
Finally, because an image is only an image, it must differ somewhat from the sensible object that gives rise to
it, and this differing is necessarily a distortion (and hence
falsifying).
Aristotle raises the aporia of how it is possible to
remember something absent when what is present is only
46
an image and not the fact itself (to pragma) which gave
rise to it. 66 This affection (pathos) exists in the soul67 and
is a kind of picture (zographema ti), a kind of figure (typon
tis) of the object perceived. 68 How is the perceiving of
an affection present in the soul related to the remembering of something past and absent? Aristotle answers by
pointing out that the image can be regarded in one of
two ways. It can be focussed on within the soul and considered as an object of contemplation (theorema) in its own
right or it can be regarded as an image of something else.
In the latter case alone is it taken as a likeness (eikan) and
a memory aid (mnemoneuma).
It is to Aristotle's credit that he did not say that the
image is what we remember. On the contrary, it is by attending to the present image that we remember the absent
thing of which it is a likeness. Aristotle sees clearly that
in being aware of an image flS an image we remember the
thing itself. If we were to remember only present images
(whatever that might mean) and not their past originals,
we would have no way of knowing that the images remembered are indeed images of the originals. And so, for
Aristotle, remembering what is past is simply being aware
of present images of the past precisely as images of the past. 69
What perception and imagination (in the form of
memory) allow us to encounter are the perceptible eide
of things. But in the De Anima, Aristotle says that it is
one thing to encounter something perceptible, his example is water, and quite another to know its essence, what
it is to be water. 7 For this we need something more than
perception. The recognition of the intelligible eidos is a
function of what Aristotle calls nous. 71 The sensible eidos
is the thing insofar as it presents itself in the mediated
mode of apprehension that is perception, and perception is our first, and the lower animals' only, encounter
with Being. Images are stored in the soul and what they
contribute to intellectual insight (noesis), at least for us
mortals, cannot be minimized. "The soul never has intellectual insight without images ... the noetic faculty
(to noiftikon) knows the eide in the images:' 72 Nonetheless
nous, since it discerns a single eidos in a multiplicity of
particulars, operates on a different plane. When this insight occurs, the soul is in an £mmediate mode of apprehension. There is no medium, as there is in perception, between the knower and that which is known; they are
somehow one. 73 Noes£s is the only mode of apprehension
that Aristotle calls "being in contact" (thigein). 74
In speaking of the shift from the perceptual beholding
of an array of particulars to insight into the intelligible
e£dos at work in them, we should not overlook the nuanced
distinction between the shape or figure (schema) which
is but one among several common sensibles, and the
richer sense of shape connoted by the term «morphe."The
schema is only the visible or tactile limit of a thing. Considered in isolation from the thing of which it is the
schema, it becomes, when suitably purified by the
dianoetic activity of the mathematician, the subject matter of geometry. {'Morphe," on the other hand, a term often
used in apposition with or as a substitute for «e£dos" by
Aristotle, carries with it a sense not only of shape, but
°
WINTER 1984
�of shapeliness, comeliness. The term occurs as early as
the Odyssey, in the Phaiakian episode. In Book VIII
Odysseus speaking to Eurylaos says:
There is a certain kind of man less noted for beauty but the
god puts a comeliness [morphen] on his words and those who
look toward him are filled with joy at the sight, and he speaks
to them without faltering, in winning modesty, and shines
among those who are gathered and people look on him as a
god when he walks in the city.1 5
Later, in Book XI, Alkinoos tells Odysseus:
You have a grace (morpht) upon your words ... you have told
the story of the dismal sorrows befallen yourself and all of the
Argives. 76
"Morphe"is also a term that occurs frequently in biological
treatises. Aristotle uses it to designate the principle that
regulates a being in its wholeness. The schema is but the
surface evidence of the morphe. When the morphe is
discerned, one is no longer beholding the perceptible
eidos, the being insofar as it presents itself to the perceiving soul; one is in contact with the eidos in the full sense
of the word, the ti en einai. One is engaged in noesis. And
this is not an act of abstracting. The morphe can no more
be abstracted from what is seen than it can be abstracted
from a piece of poetry. This term, "abs~raction;' occurs
frequently in Aristotle's writings but it almost always
refers to the act in which we disregard what the things are,
and everything else about them except their quantitative
determinations. In abstraction, as opposed to noesis, Being is overlooked. The very expression, "things-byabstraction" (ta ex aphaireseOs), is Aristotle's abbreviation
for the objects of mathematics. 77 One is hard pressed to
find passages in his writings where the term refers to the
apprehension of an eidos, and the reason is simple: if the
eidos to be abstracted were not already ''seen" by nous in
the particulars, one would not know what to abstract, and
this "seeing" of the eidos renders a subsequent act of
abstracting superfluous. Furthermore, abstraction of the
eidos would turn it into something literally abstract,
something less real than the sensible composite, a product of an act of "constitution?' The mathematicals have
this character for Aristotle, though not for Plato. The
eide have this character for neither.
The eidos, in Aristotle's understanding, is then both
the essence of a thing, what it really is, and the presentational "expression" of the thing. The soul cannot force
things to display themselves to it. They are of their own
accord on display. If they did not have a principle of selfpresentation intrinsic to their very Being, if they were,
as is sometimes said, "really just matter;' it would be impossible to account for any experience of them at all. 78
But, according to Aristotle, not a single being, intelligible or sensible, is ')ust matter." The world around us is
saturated with eide, and Aristotle takes great pains to show
that its beauties are manifested in the most unlikely
regions of nature. 79 Aristotle cannot even playfully call
this world, as Socrates can, a "barbaric bog?' 80 It is, for
him, the cosmos. Even the motion of things is but an
THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW
effect of the radiance of the divine into the world, as
prime mover, final cause. And this motion can be made
intelligible by a science of nature, a physics, which he
argues is an impossibility for the Platonists. 81
We are now in a position to get at least a tentative
understanding of how the first principles are known. The
archai of the particular sciences, at least the definitions
they employ, are the results of the transfer of insights
gained by nous into the medium of logos. Since the eide
are unities, there is a problem as to how that kind of logos
which specifies what a thing is, a definition, is not a
"heap;' a pile of words. Aristotle holds that the definition is itself a unity, one part of which, as was mentioned
earlier, is hyle and one part of which is energeia. The genus
and the specific difference both together express what
the eidos in question is, both in its relation to other eide
and in its own uniqueness. Aristotle argues that only
when the definition is construed in this way can it be
seen that the integrity of the eidos is not ruptured in
speech. This unity is not a "sum" of genus ·and specific
difference quantitatively added together; it is a unity of
form and material, i.e., of form and formed. Definitions
articulate the interrelationship of ousiai, their community
in an intelligible cosmos. 82
The archai common to all the sciences, the axioms,
are also known by nous. The so-called "principle of noncontradictiOn" is expressed as an arche of being itself. "It
is impossible for the same thing both to be present in
and not be present in the same thing simultaneously and
in the same respect." 83 The basis for this assertion is the
clear insight into the determinateness of an eidos. At any
one moment of time, an eidos and its own privation cannot both unequivocally be present in an individual thing.
We see that this is so but we cannot demonstrate it,
because, Aristotle says, nothing is more certain than this.
We cannot even imagine it to be otherwise, for our images are formally governed by the very archai which govern
the sensible objects of which they are images. On the
other hand, if someone is willing to speak and denies this
principle, we can show bizzare consequences of his denial,
consequences he might not have anticipated. 84 And here,
incidentally, dialectic can be put to good use. Aristotle
argues that t\>is principle cannot be denied by anyone
who intends his discourse to exhibit a tincture of intelligibility and not dissolve into aberration. We can show
someone who denies this principle that both his speech
and his actions indicate that he does not believe what
he is saying, but we can do no more than this. And if
he chooses not to speak we can do nothing at all.
t this point we are faced with an obstacle which
is perhaps ultimately insurmountable. It may be
objected that Aristotle's theory does not adequately explain this shift from perception to noetic insight. What faculty do we have that permits an infallible insight into the way things are as opposed to a merely
empirical generalization? The objection is, in a sense,
A
47
�well taken. Aristotle's answer seems to be that this move-
perience, the temporal and labored discursiveness of most
ment is not entirely our own doing. He says in the De
Anima that the potential intellect is passive to an intellect
which is fully active, an intellect which makes all things. 85
It is the nature of a potential intellect, as it is the nature
of anything potential, that it cannot actualize itself. The
potential intellect, then, needs the active intellect to "actualize" it, to bring it to actual noesis. This active intellect
engages in insight (noei) without ceasing. We are certainly
not aware of continuous intellectual insight, and it is hard
to see how this most privileged mode of knowing could
be taking place within us "unconsciously" and yet
incessantly. 86 These considerations lead one to the suspicion that, in Aristotle's scheme of things, this active
intellect is God at work within our souls when our potential intellects have been properly made ready. The objection that this intellect is exclusively our own because
it is said to be active in our souls is somewhat lame. It
fails to take into account the fact that our souls are not
entirely spatial and that the divine intellect is entirely
non-spatial.
A real difficulty consists in determining the relationship of this active intellect to the divine intellect of Book
Lamda of the Metaphysics. There, he is said to have only
himself as object of his thought- he is insight into insight (noesis noi!seos). 87 This is a description of divinity
which those of us who admire Aristotle have trouble convincing others is not mysticism. It is difficult to see what
is so lovable about noesis noesios, such that it can be said
to be the ousia on which everything depends. 88 It sounds
too much like an indivisible point that is simply aware
of being an indivisible point, and so forever. And it is
hard to square this austere conception with other things
Aristotle says about divinity, namely that it is life, it experiences pleasure, it is entelecheia, it is good. Aristotle
suggests a way out of this aporia. Just a few sentences after
designating God as noesis noCseOs, he says that in things
which have no hyle, the knower and the known are the
same. 89 Now the eide are, considered by themselves,
without hyli!, and so is the divine intellect. In fact, both
the eide and God are called actuality. Accordingly, the
divine nous could know the eide, could indeed be the eide
as fully known, and thus be spoken of as only knowing
himself. If the objection is raised that he would then be
a plurality, the response would be that the eide constitute
a whole, a community (which would explain why they
animate a cosmos and not just a pile of things, unrelated
and spread out in space and time). Such a community
of eidi! would not be a simple unity, but neither would
it have to be a mere plurality. And if the community of
eidi! at its highest level of intelligibility is so organized
that, given a powerful enough intellect it could be apprehended not discursively but "at a glance;' it would not
be distinct from the intellect knowing it. This would be
an attractive solution if we could imagine the totality of
eide organized so comprehensively that "seen'' by a divine
intellect it would be "seen" as a unity. But we cannot.
In spite of the flashes of insight which light up our ex-
of our thinking itself prevents us from intuiting the whole
precisely as it is, and from imagining how an "all" could
be a "one."
Perhaps the most quoted passage from the Metaphysics
in recent times is the following:
48
And indeed in times of old as well as now and also forever,
what is enquired about and what forever causes perplexity is
[the question of] what Being is, that is, what is ousia? 90
If we realize that a comprehensive understanding of ousia
requires that we gain a clear insight into that which is
in the most unambiguous sense- eternal, changeless be-ing, actuality devoid of potentiality, God- then we see
that the question, "What is ousia?" is essentially an aporia
for us. Our noesis is, after all, dependent on images, and
there is no experience which could supply a store of images in which we would be able to discern the essence
of the divine. As we noted earlier, to know something
is (for Aristotle) to become one with it, and whatever
occasional share we have of divine activity, we certainly
do not in this world simply become one with God. 91 But
if we cannot adequately know the divine, and Being
without qualification is located only in the divine, it would
seem as though, however intelligible the beings in the
cosmos are to us (and their complete intelligibility
ultimately hinges on the intelligibility of all their causes,
including the final cause which moves the cosmos itself),
the intelligibility of Being in the unqualified sense cannot be maintained. Yet we must not overlook the fact that
the divine is, after all, luminously intelligent to itself. The
problem, then, lic;s not with the intelligibility of the
highest instance of Being, God, but with the intelligibility
of the whole of Being, God and cosmos. If God is not
intelligible to us, we surely do not know the whole; but,
by the same token, if the cosmos is not intelligible to God,
he does not know the whole either. We have considered
two ways of addressing this problem. The first would be
to argue for an identification of human nous in its active
mode of knowing the cosmos with divine nous. The second would be to argue that the divine nous in its simplicity could engage in a noesis of the multiplicity of eidi! which
organize the cosmos. The first way would entail the second, though the second way would not necessarily entail the first. There is evidence in the De Anima and the
Metaphysics that Aristotle is aware of both these "solutions"
(and their attendant aporiaz), but he explicitly embraces
neither.
In the Parts of Animals, Aristotle says that knowledge
of divine things is hard to come by and yet worth more
than knowledge of things around us, just as a "glimpse
of those we love is more pleasant than seeing other things
with precision:'92 In Book Lamda of the Metaphysics
Aristotle attempts to provide us with a glimpse of the
one who is loved, so to speak, "absolutely!' But the nature
of this Being and His curious relationship to the cosmos
in general and to man in particular remains, for us, an
aporia.
WINTER 1984
�1. In the sixth book of the Republic (509 ff.), Socrates makes use of a divided line to illustrate how the various grades of Being and awareness
are related to one another. For a fine discussion of the divided line analogy,
see Jacob Klein, A Commentary of Plato's Meno (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1965) pp. 115 ff.
2. Republic 533b.
3. Ibid. 511b.
4. Ibid. 511c.
5. Ibid. 533c. To my knowledge no one has ever made complete sense of
these mysterious passages. Aristotle would argue that the dialectical ascent Socrates describes must itself be guided by a pre-dialectical knowledge
(noesis) of the distinction between same and other, and he would wonder
about the origin of this pre-dialectical insight. For good accounts of the
koinonia tOn eidon as found in Plato's dialogues and in Aristotle's criticisms
of Plato and the Platonists, see Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematics and the Origin
of Algebra (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1968) pp. 61-100, A Commentary
on Plato's Meno (op cit.) pp. 122 ff., and Robert Williamson, "Eidos and
Agathon in Plato's Republic," in Essays in Honor ofJacob Klein (Annapolis:
St. John's College Press, 1976) pp. 171-187.
6. Topics 101a25-b4.
7. This term is frequently used in the Topics, rarely elsewhere. Politics
1297a17. See H. Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus, (Berlin, 1870), p. 163.
8. Metaph. 1004b25. ·
9. For a discussion of the change that dialectic undergoes at Aristotle's hands,
see Friedrich Solmsen, "Dialectic without the Forms," in Aristotle On Dialectic, ed. by E. G. L. Owen (Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1968).
10. Cf. Post. An. 79a29-35, Topics 101b2.
11. Post. An. 71b20; cf. Topics 100a29.
12. Cf. Metaph .. 1017a34, 1051b2.
13. Prior An. 64b35. Cf. Physics 184a17, Nic. Ethics 1095b3. If the "gnorimos"
in these last two 'passages means "known" or "familiar'' and not merely
"knowable" (cf. Lidell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, [Oxford at the
Clarendon Press, 1968] p. 355; but cf. Smythe, Greek Grammar, [Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1956,] p. 237, section 858.9), a curious
problem emerges. Granted that it is we who know that which is known
to us, who is it who knows that which is known without qualification (haplos)? cf. supra pp. 47,48.
14. Post. An. 71a1, 72a29, b5, b19, 99b16 ff.,Mataph. 997a6, 1005b11-17,
Nic. Ethics 1139b33.
15. Bk. I, ch. 3.
16. Post. An. 73a6.
17. Ibid. 73a8 ff. The proof is as follows:
1. AaB 4, 6
2. BaC 5, 4
3. CaA 6, 5
4. AaC 1, 2
5. BaA 2, 3
6. CaB 3, 1
Every line is justified as a consequence of two other lines (written to the
right of each line) by a syllogism in the first figure. The proof obviously
works only on the assumption that A, B, and C are reciprocally predicable
of one another.
18. Metaph. 1006a5, cf. 1005b2.
19. Post. An. 100h9-11.
20. Metaph. 995b7, 99626-997a16; cf. 1059a24, 1061b17.
21. Ibid. 998b22, cf. 1070b1; cf. Ernst Tugendhat TI KATA TINOS, Eine
Untersuchung Zur Struktur und U rsprung Aristotelischcr Grundbegriffe
(Freiburg/Muenchen, Karl Alber, 1958) p. 27 n. 24.
22. To on legetai pollachos- the opening clause of Book Zeta, Metaph. 1028a1 0;
cf. 1003a32 for a similar formulation.
23. Cat. 1a1-15.
24. Metaph. 1003a32-b19. Concerning the character of the pros hen equivocals,
see the invaluable book by Joseph Owens, The Doctrine OJ Being In The
Aristotlean 'M'etaphysics'(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies,
1951) pp. 107-135 and 259-287.
25. Metaph. 1028b4.
26. Ibid. 1028a30-1029a33.
27. Cat. 2all ff; cf. f.n. 29 infra.
28. Metaph. 1029b9: kai mikron C outhen lou ontos.
29. Though the eidos of a sensible thing is more worthy of being called ousia
than the sensible thing itself (the composite of eidos and kyle), the eidos
does not have all the marks of ousia mentioned in Book Zeta, ch. 1. It
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
is the "what-ness" (ti esti) of a thing, it is definite and, furthermore, it endures eternally. However, it is not separate (choristos) without qualification. The passage in Book Delta (1017b25) where the eidos is said to be
"separate" should probably be understood as provisional, for it is qualified
in Book Eta (1042a26) with the addition "in logos" (cf. Physics 193b4); see
W. D. Ross, Aristotle's Metaphysics Vol. I, (Oxford at the Clarendon Press,
1924) p. 311. Indeed, in the passage in Book Eta, Aristotle contrasts the
eidos which is chOristos en logoi with the composite which is chOristos haplos
(separate without qualification). The eidos of a sensible being, according
to Aristotle, is not separate or independent from the composite. Because
the composite can be said to be chon'stos haplos, it is in this respect, though
only in this respect, a better candidate for the title '&usia" than the eidos
(Metaph. 1028a24-35).
There is no contradiction in Aristotle's account of ousia. When it is
said in the Categon'es (2a10fl) that particular composites (Aristotle's examples
arc a man and a horse) are more truly ousiai than their eide, it must be
remembered that he is speaking from the standpoint of predication. The
eidos, the species "man," is predicated of a man, and this particular man
is choriston, in a way the eidos "man" is not. In the Metaphysics, on the other
hand, Aristotle is speaking from the standpoint of enduring being or
essence (to ti en einaz) and the eidos "man" endures in a way that the particular man does not. Cf Metaph. 1026a7 ff. Aristotle's account is not inconsistent. Rather, ousia itself, as it occurs in the physical realm, is found
partly in the composite, partly in the essence of the composite (i.e., the
eidos of the composite), and wholly in neither. The eidos and the composite
can each be called ousia, though for different reasons. Neither bears all
the features of ousia. But whereas composite beings are not identical with
their essences (1037b), Aristotle argues that simple beings, beings which
are not composed of form and material, arc identical with their essences.
Indeed, he says, it is for the sake of understandillg such "supersensible"
beings that the inquiry into sensible beings is undertaken (1037al4; cf
1041a8, 1076a13: Physics 192a35, 194b14). This is because such beings alone
are eternally subsisting, definite, "individual" (tode tz), indivisible, fully
actual (i.e. without hy!e) and at the saine time separate without qualification.
Each of these simple beings is wholly ousia. These ousiai are the umoved
movers of Book Lamda (cf. f.n.87 infra). The study of Being qua Being
comes to fulfillment in a philosophical theology (Metaph. 1026a20, 1064b2;
cf. 982b29-983a12).
Metaph. 1045a34. Cf 1036a10
Ibid. 1024b8.
Ibid. 1023b2.
Ibid. 1038a5.
The indeterminateness, the "un-formedness" of hyl~ (intelligible or sensiblephysical) makes it unknowable in virtue of itself' (ibid. 1036a9). The subordinate genera are more defmite, hence more knowable, than the superordinate, and the indivisible eidos is most defmite and most knowable of all.
The intelligible material within it (its superordinate universal or genus)
is completely determined by the specific difference. Aristotle develops his
notion of hyle, sensible-physical and intelligible, to account for indeterminateness and plurality both on the aesthetic plane and on the noetic.
Sensible lryle "individuates" composite ousiai and is responsible for what
is accidental in them. The genus, on the other hand, as noetic hyle, is
indeterminate and, as such, permits a multiplicy of different determinations or specifications. Aristotle's lryle is the counterpart to Plato's indeterminate dyad. Cf. Phys. 192a7. On the difference between the two "triads"
alluded to in this passage (Aristotle's: hyle and eidos/stercsis, Plato's great/small
and One) cf. H. Apostol, Aristotle's Physics (Indiana Univ. Press), p. 202,
f.n. 6 and f.n. 7. See also the works by Klein and Williamson cited in
footnote 5 supra. For the most penetrating study of how eidos, for Aristotle, is implicated in steresis (privation or, better, deprivation) in the realm
of plrysics (nature), cf. Martin Heidegger, "Vom Wesen und Begriff der
Physis~ Wegmarken (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klosterman, 1967), originally
published in Il Pensiero (Milan, III, 1958), pp. 364 ff. The "triad" of kyle
and eidoslsteresis constitutes the aesthetic-physical realm but not the noetic,
since sterl:sz's as it is defined in the Metaphysics (1022b22-1023a7) cannot
come into play among ousiai which are eternal (the eide of sensible composites or the simple supersensible ousiai of Book Lamda; cf. f.n. 29 supra).
One eidos can indeed be said to be "lacking'' in what another eidos has
(1023b3, Parts of Animals 642b21 ff.), but this is a derived sense of sterCSis
(Metaph. 1022b32). There is no place among what is eternal for what Aristotle calls the "'kath' auto me on" (Phys. 10lb5, cf 192a4) of steresis which is
involved in the coming to presence (parousia) of something in time (Metaph.
49
�1013bl2-16, 1032b3, 1055a35-b30, Phys. 191a5-15, 193b20, 195a10).
Metaph. 1003a6-17; cf, 1060b20.
Ibid. 1042a28; cf. l017b25 and f.n. 28 supra, also de Gen. et Cor. 318b33.
Metaph. 1087a8-25.
Ibid. 983a26, 988a35, 993al9, 1007a21, 1017b22. The thematic consideration of essence begins in Book Zeta, ch. 4.
39. Aristotle (unlike St. Thomas) makes no distinction between Being and
essence. The expression to einai with the dative of possession is an abbreviation for to ti en einai (Metaph. 1029bl ff. ). For the grammar and meaning
of this expression, see Owens, op. cit. pp. 180-188. The eidos of a composite being is its essence, but the two terms are not synonymous. Aristotle
speaks of the unmoved mover as essence (Meiaph. 1074a35) but never as
eidos, perhaps because he does not want his account to be confused with
that of the Platonists (sec Eugene Ryan, -"Pure Form in Aristotle," Phronesis,
Vol. XVIII, No. 3, 1973, pp. 209-224). Nonetheless, there arc several
passages where Aristotle uses eidos in ways that indicate he may not be
thinking of it as the eidos of a composite thing: Phys. 192a35, de An. 432a2,
Metaph. 1003b22.
40. Metaph., Book Theta; see especially ch. 8.
41. Certain later thinkers make a distinction between sensation and perception, the former regarded as mere reception of sense data, the latter alone
involving discrimination. Aristotle would not accept this distinction for
at least two reasons: 1) the soul docs not receive unformed sense data but
rather sensible eide (De Anima 424a18, b4; cf. 432a3-6), and 2) aistlmis
is always engaged in discrimination (ibid. , 428a4; cf. Post. An. 99b35 where
aisthesis is called an "innate critical capacity" of all animals).
42. de An. 416b33.
43. Ibid. 417a7.
44. Ibid. 413b5, 414b4.
45. Metaph. 980a23, de Sen. 437a6, de An. 429a4, Problems 8866b35.
46. de Sen. 437all, cf. De Interpretatione 16a4.
47. de Sen. 437a7.
48. de An. 418a24. Aristotle also mentions here what in a phosphorescent body
is similar to color.
49. Ibid. 418a30; cf. de Sen. 439a35.
50. de An. 418b19.
51. de An. 417a8. There arc also several passages where Aristotle questions
whether or not the perceptible qualities themselves exist apart from the
perception of them. At de An. 426a20-27, we are told that they have potential but not actual existence when they are not being perceived. (Sec,
however, Cat. 7b35 ff, where this distinction is not advanced). Aristotle
is perhaps speaking only of proper sensibles, such as color, and not common sensibles also (figure, size, motion, number, and unity). But atMetaph.
1036a7 and 1040a3, the independent existence of all sensible objects is
called into question. In the Physics, Aristotle says that number cannot exist apart from the soul (223a22), and that the same might be said of time
(223a25) which is defined as the "number of motion with respect to the
prior and posterior." He also questions whether motion itself can exist apart
from the soul (223a27). There is a subtle difference between the doubts
that Aristotle raises in thes~ passages and those that emerge for Descartes
and his heirs (cf. f.n. 78 infra). Aristotle is not calling into question the
independent existence of an external world deprived of "looks" (eide) but
rather the independent· existence of a world he understands to be constituted through and through by ''looks:'
To my knowledge, Martin Heidegger was the first modem thinker to
insist on the root sense of '/:idos" as "looks" (Ger. '(/as Ausschen"), Sein und
Zeit, 1927, eleventh edition, (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1967), p. 61.) For
his detailed treatment of Aristotle's understanding of 'hdos" as "looks" and
"'hyle" as "material" (Ger. "Strifffur") vs. "matter," see "Vom Wesen und Begriff
der Plrysics:' Wegmarken (op. cit.) pp. 343 II
52. de Sen. 439a20-bl9, Aristotle realizes that this account goes against the
sense ofthe word "transparent" (diaphanes); accordingly, he refers to this
"common nature or potency" as ''ho legomen diaphanes."
53. Ibid. 439b12.
54. cf. Plato: Meno 76a.
55. de Sen. 439a24.
56. de An. 423b26; cf. de Gen. et Cor. 329b6 ff.
57. de Gen. et Cor. 329a25 (note use of choriston here; cf. f.n. 29 supra). Material
deprived of eidos would be deprived of actuality (energeia), i.e., would not
actually exist. For this reason, "material" is a better translation for "lryle"
than "matter."
58. de An. 424al9; cf. de Gen. el Cor. 332a27.
59. de An. 423b23.
60. Ibid. 423b7.
35.
36.
37.
38.
50
Ibid. 419a16-22.
Ibid. 428a11.
de Mem. 450all.
de An. 417b25.
de Mem. 45la8. On recognizing images as images cf. Jacob Klein, Commentary on Plato's Meno (op. cit.) pp. 112-115, also Hans Jonas "Image Making and the Freedom of Man" in The Phenomenon of Life (New York, 1966)
pp. 159-165.
66. de Mem. 450a26.
67. Ibid. 450b10.
68. Ibid. 450a30-32.
69. It is sometimes asserted that we can only remember images since the mind
can only consider what is present to it. To the extent that this claim is
not a mere begging of the question ("the present alone can be an object
of'intending' because the mind can only focus on the present"), it is based on an ambiguity in the word "present." One can maintain with Aristotle, however, that the past can indeed become present to the soul, i.e.,
can be the focus of the "mental" act of remembering, without thereby
becoming temporally present in its full concreteness. Indeed, if we could
only focus our thought on the temporal present it is hard to see how we
could ever arrive at a conception of the past or future, or time itself, or,
for that matter, the temporal present. Aristotle realizes that we actually
remember the past and we do so by viewing images of the past as images
of the past. To have an image of the past or a memory is to remember
the past itself. And in remembering the past itslf we recognize that our
present images, which only assist in remembering the past, are incomplete
pictures of the past we are remembering. We are capable of remembering (past) images or memories, but rarely do so, preferring to remember
past "realities" instead.
70. de An. 429b11-24. Cf. f.n. 39 supra.
71. At the end of the Post An. (995b15 ff.), Aristotle addresses the question
of how the universal emerges from particulars, the one from the many.
We are given only a simile (though a remarkable one-100a12) for how
this happens. Aristotle argues, by process of elimination, that it must be
nous which knows the archai (100b12; cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1140b31-1141a8),
and that the ascent to this knowing is by_ way of induction (epagoge 100b4).
The discussion does not show how the particulars are so constituted that
the universal can be recognized in them, nor does it tell us why the insight of which nous is capable is precise (akpibes, 100b8) and true (alethes,
100b12). This account must be supplemented by what Aristotle says in
other places, esp. in the De Anima and Metaplrysics.
72. de An. 431b2.
73. Ibid. 431b17.
74. Aristotle uses lmptesthai and haphe for touching and touch as a type of aesth'
esis. Thigein is never used this way but rather as mere bodily contact or
as the direct encounter of nous with noeta (Metaph. 1051b20, 1072b22). See
H. Bonitz, Index Aristotelieus, p. 331, for citation of passages where the term
occurs.
75. Odyss9' VIII, 170. (Translation by Richmond Lattimore.)
76. Ibid., XI .367 cf. Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford at the
Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 1147.
77. See Owens op. cit. pp. 382-385.
78. When nature becomes mathematized in the 17th Century, eidos and morphe
are, in effect, reduced to schema or figure, which is itself a mere transient
feature of"cxtension." And since the comparatively clear and distinct notion of extension has no intrinsic connection with the self-presentation
of beings, our encounter with the world must be explained by considering the nature of the "subject" instead of the "object." The world deprived
.of eidos is no longer on display but shut up in itself, cxtemal, its very existence a philosophical problem. The subject is similarly shut up in himself,
an "ego" rather than the soul of a living body. This subject relates to the
world only through "ideas," which ideas are not, as they were for Plato,
the eide themselves, but part of the inventory of that closed domain of interiority that is the mind, "representing:' somehow, the world outside.
For those who maintain that the mind can only be aware of its own
inventmy, its ideas, there is the special problem of how it could recognize
the idea it has of an external world as the idea of an external world, or,
for that matter, how it could form the idea of an internal world as opposed to an external world, i.e., how it could fonn the idea of an internal
world at all. The thesis that the mind has awareness only of its own inner
content would, if true, be a thesis that could not occur to the mind.
79. Parts of Anifflals 644a21-645a36.
80. Republic 533. Alan Bloom's translation of "horborin: barharikoi. The Republic
of Plato (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1968), p. 212.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
WINTER 1984
�81. Metaph. 992b9.
82. f.n. 29 supra. Though the individual cannot be defined, its essence can
be. Metaph. 998b5, 1012a22, 1042a17; cf. Post An. 9620 ff. On the unity
of the definition, sec Metaph. 1037b11 ff (cf. 1041b11), 1043b24-1044a5,
1045a9-33).
83. Metaph. 1005b19, Another version is found at Post. An. 77a10. ''It is impossible to assent and deny simultaneously [one thing of another]." This
''logical" version derives its force from the "ontological" version in the
Metapfrysics. Taken by itself it is not even true, insofar as one can, as matter of fact, utter a frank contradiction. One cannot, of course, do so trutlifulry, for truthful utterance accords with Being. (cf. 1011b15-21 and 1051a35
ff.) That is why Aristotle argues that the axioms are the concern of First
Philosophy (Metaph. 1005a19-b18).
84. Metaph. 1006a2 ff.
85. de An. 430a15.
86. de An. 430a22; cf. Post. An. 99b27.
87. Metaph. 1074b28. How the unmoved mover ofthc sphere of the fixed stars
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
differs from the other forty-six or so unmoved movers that Aristotle has
to posit to account for the plurality of heavenly spheres (1074al5) is left
unanswered. They must be plural in number, and yet they arc not individuated by lryle. Perhaps they are to be thought of as distinct individual
essences (like St. Thomas' angels). But, then, does each engage in noesis?
in noesis noeseos? If so, it seems that they would all be gods, for they would
all have the same intrinsic activity (energeia) as the unmoved mover of the
outermost sphere. Yet how would they be individuated if neither by kyle
nor by energeia? There is a serious difficulty in reconciling Aristotle's ·
cosmology with his "ontology:'
Metaph. 1072b14; cf. 1003b17.
Ibid. 1075a4.
Ibid. 1028b4.
Cf. Metaph. 982b29-983a12, 1072b22-30, N.E. 1177a13-18,
1177b26-1178a8, 1141a21.
Parts of Animals 644a33.
Chameleons
My young life ended in a derelict house,
Overrun by chameleons.
I have squandered it among these;
In the rapt study of a grass-green one
Sunning on a white porch rail, throat bloated;
Watching a brown one skinking
Through interstices of sunlight
In the grey shade of ivy;
In the solitude of a sly one climbing
The amber sides of a whiskey glass;
And in the silence of a grey one
Become a branch, more than disguised,
Still, still as August air.
This all ended by the blunt intrusion of another.
And they were gone. I have not seen them again.
Exotic here, but local to my childhood.
JoHN FoNTAINE
An alumnus of St. John's, Annapolis, Mr. Fontaine is living and writing in the
Southeastern United States.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
51
�OccASIONAL DiscouRsEs
Winter 1984
Intellect and Intuition
Eva Brann
For the California Alumni
I
Y
ou .asked me to speak about "Intellect and
Intuition;' an enormous topic and yet an
intimate one- enormous because the title
encompasses the two most distinctively
human activities, and intimate because I
have, after all, no way to come to terms with it but to
look into myself. But it is a congenial inquiry you've
chosen and a congenial setting you've provided, because
I can speak my thoughts to you pretty nearly as I do to
myself. In fact most of what I will say now I thought to
myselflast summer wandering up and down among the
pinyons of Monte Sol.
As I tried to concentrate on the matter, one obtrusive
difficulty proved to be the very advantage we have in
common -an acquaintance with the texts which most enticingly shape the terms in question. My effort to think
would be again and again deflected by remembered formulations, resulting in a kind of short-circuiting of the
tension of perplexity. That tendency to be, off and on,
sucked into trusted formulations happens to be my
Charybdis of reflection. The opposing Scylla of brooding
consumes her victim with the need to revise and to
reconstrue things from sheer honest contrariness. I must
say that I am always fascinated by the fact that the world
submits to the latter treatment, which indeed seems to
yield very original notions; I guess this mode too catches
hold of an aspect of things.
I have tried, then, really to find out what I think
rather than to remember what has been thought.
Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis. Her essay, "Against
Time," appeared in the Summer 1983 issue of the Review.
52
Nonetheless the outcome, as you will recognize, is often
what a much-loved dean of our college used to call in
Russian English "discovering America;' namely coming
wide-eyed upon well-known worlds. In my case it means
arriving, after much casting about, at places opened to
us all as long as two-and-a-half millenia ago. Such forays
bring back no new product and cannot be made in behalf
of anyone else. But I think what holds us all together is
just this-that we think well of each other for undertaking these voyages and want to see each others' logs.
II
Well, to the beginning, which is to ask myself how
the title is meant. Is it intended to imply that intellect
and intuition are antagonists, that is, "intellect vs. intuition"? After all, if I come across one of those trite double headings like "The Individual and Society'' I know
perfectly well that the writer will not be celebrating a
harmonious fit. On the other hand, the two terms might
be meant to be joined on the same side; you will recall
that Kant directs his critique against a so-called "intellectual intuition;' by which he means a vision of thought.
He claims that there cannot be such a faculty because
thinking cannot confront or encompass thought itself;
it can only form and function over sense material. The
requirement behind this denial is that the relation of
thinking to its object must be firmly certified, and if
thinking the truth is beholding independent thoughtobjects; such certification becomes, Kant thinks,
unintelligible.
At this moment I have to observe that there seem to
be two kinds of starting points for any inquiry. Sometimes
I am oppressed by some vague unease- indeed it would
be more accurate to call it an uneasy vagueness- which
WINTER 1984
�eventually draws me to that first and most mystifying step
of cogitation: the coagulation of a question. But
neither was the interior image of the bare enunciation,
the two smaller squares constructed on the short sides
sometimes, as in our case, a problem about terms is put
of the right triangle and the large square on the
to me, and then I find myself, by a pretty firm intellectual habit, first of all collecting and inspecting in order
their corrupt, their trite, and their unfaded uses. (Incidentally, I feel entitled to use such a method for rightly directing the mind only because I try to remember how easily
it can turn into a routine for avoiding thought.)
hypotenuse, the revealing geometric intuition of the
theorem, for the imagination is scandalously unable to
I'll begin with intuition, because it is the word more
squashing half of each small square into a triangle and
pivoting that triangle into half of the adjoining parts of
the large square. When you saw that, you knew the truth
immediately and for good and without words- if I called
on you right now you could, no doubt, sketch it out. It
was that dynamically immobile image which was the intuitive object. The proof accomplished another purpose.
4. As a ground for all spatial and temporal imagining, Kant introduced a receptive faculty which he called
widely and commonly used. And right away I notice that
it sometimes means an activity and sometimes the ob-
ject of that activity- either the power or its product. Here
are i the uses I can distinguish.
1. We say of people- though I try not to- that they
and intuitive, and people say it to themselves. They apparently mean that they apprehend things directly
without belaboring them by analysis or even without accosting them with too close an inspection. There do seem
to be people who, from minimal observation and no articulable reflection, see what's up. I must say that in my
experience this gift is often accompanied by a royal obtuseness to those aspects of the world which are not immediately apprehensible, and that more often than not
"being intuitive" means just a will-less (of even willful)
habit of sticking with those feelings that accompanied
first impressions. Intuitive people often accuse their supposed opposites of "being so analytical;' and of course,
they have a point: there are people who pry things apart
with deft inaccuracy.
The object of intuition in this sense is often said to
be the ineffable, and it seems to be apprehended
preferably in fugue states.
2. Sometimes, again, what is meant is something
more delicate in the same line, what Pascal calls the esprit
de finesse and opposes to the mathematical mind. It is a
disposition to learn from a multitude of immediate
sources rather than to reason from a few remote
principles -what we might call quick sensitivity.
3. But mathematics itself also has an intuitive mode,
namely the ability to "see" mathematical objects and to
form conjectures of mathematical truths way ahead of
their deduction. I have heard that there are certain
mathematicians who are famous for their theorems and
notorious for their proofs. The object of mathematical
discern the equality of differently shaped areas or to sum
them. To see that the two smaller squares together are
equal to the larger one it was necessary to see Euclid's
construction at work: to view it as a kind of engine for
the intuition; a capacity for both receiving and forming
sensory material into ordered spatial and temporal structures. Hence for Kant all experience of the world is in
one aspect intuition. The pure objects of this faculty,
namely space and time themselves, he also called intuitions. I mention this use only because here the term
designates so stupendously original and influential a
concept.
5. The final meaning I can think of, most remote from
ordinary use and yet, I would guess, the spring of my
whole inquiry, is that very one intended by the phrase
I mentioned before, "intellectual intuition." The Greeks
had a single word for the capacity, noesis: they called the
corresponding object noetOn, meaning that which is for
the intuitive intellect.
But before describing- broadly-what it seems to me
the two Greeks whose works we have all read both meant
by nOesis, let me dispose of a more recent derivative use.
I say "dispose of'' because try as I will I cannot grasp it
in my thinking. Descartes in particular speaks of intuiting
propositions; people in general speak of intuitive concepts. They mean those elements and connections of
thinking which are clear and distinct to them. "Clear and
distinct" is a phase which seems to me primarily ap-
plicable to things seen, and might be used analogously
of some vision-like apprehension, but I have never held
and cannot think that I ever could hold in mind a pro-
intuition is particularly familiar to us in its imaginative
position which was so well illuminated and so incisively
geometric form, of which more in a moment. (Oddly
enough for the mathematical school specifically called
contoured as to be called intuitive. It is not only that I
"intuitionist;' the term intuition means just the opposite:
It is adopted from Kant and refers to the constructive
rules of temporal finite thinking.)
These objects of the geometric imagination are, I
would guess, those intuitions all of us here most ar-
ticulably share. For an example, let me quickly remind
you of that high-point of your freshman mathematics
tutorial, the penultimate proposition of Euclid's first book,
the Pythagorean theorem. The picture itself, as you prob-
have never met with a proposition that stayed evident
for more than a moment-Descartes' examples, such as
"I exist;' turn into enigmatic murk under the lightest
probing- but that propositional thinking seems to me
ipso facto incapable of immediate apprehension.
The ancient notion of nOesis arises from the sense that
appearances mask, or alternatively communicate, what
it is they are. While we can reach for this "whatness" and
circumscribe it with thinking we can also know it directly.
As I mentioned, it is such direct taking in of what things
tion: It was far too determinate in its blackboard place
are which is called noesis; what is thus intuitable is called
eidos, signifying that which is for the sight of the soul,
and far too inexact in its broomstick boundaries. But
that is to say, intuition.
ably brought out in your discussions, was not the intui-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
53
�In trying to make something of all these usages I must
remind myself that none ofthe several ways to go about
that business is innocuous and free of a heavy freight
of pre-judgements. For example, I can restrict myself to
following out a concatenation or a family of uses, refraining strictly from the supposition of a possible common
meaning; or I can analyze how expressions containing
the term are formed, attending to pre-set logical criteria
rather than to the speaker's intention; or I can look for
a common factor, positing that as the central meaning;
or I can rank the uses, attempting to reveal a primary
significance of which the others are analogies.
Now in the case of the term intuition, there is a common feature that jumps out, namely that of directness
and immediacy. Intuiting· is not laboriously temporal;
an intuition is effortlessly and instantaneously all there.
That is not to say that it may not take effortful time to
come up to the point of intuition or that I cannot dwell
on it and range over it and even play with it. But these
are preparations and reactions. The intuiting proper and
the intuition itself just take place.
III
But immediacy is only a relation, and a negative one
at that, namely the relation of coming before us without
anything intervening. Perhaps to get somewhat nearer
to intuition itself- and I now find myself supposing that
I do have that sort of apprehension- it would be best
to begin at the other end, to turn to the way of intervening steps and mediating words, which is usually called
discursive thinking, or just thinking. Reasonings, particularly proofs, are regarded as examples par excellence of this
mode.
Now just because it seems to me so unlikely and so
contrary to my experience that thinking should really be
preeminently reasoning, I want to begin by inspecting
the notion of proof-and why not use as example the one
that accompanies the Pythagorean theorem? I say "accompanies" for I have argued that the geometric truth
is in the picture.
The first thing about this or any proof is that it is
in words. I am indeed discovering America when it comes
to me that, above all, reasoning speaks. Now the proof
seems to speak out of both sides of the mouth. On one
side it only prompts me to look at the picture in a certain way. Here its words function to focus me on the
geometric situation, particularly to see the dispositions
of the construction we all know so well. On the other
side, the proof is not concerned with its matter as a
theorem to be seen but as a proposition to be positioned
in a system. In this aspect the proof is really a sequence
of validations which, in ensuring that the proposition has
legitimate antecedents, incidentally also shows what its
place in the system is.
It seems to me that in reflecting on this proof, I come
upon a curious discrepancy. On the one hand, the reasoning is about the picture, but in such a way that the "why
and the "that;' which are one and the same in intuition,
are now separated and strung out in a sequence. On the
54
other hand, this reasoned sequence is driven from enunciation to conclusion by a necessity quite apart from what
it is about. If all the words of the proof which direct me
to the picture were deprived of this reference- that is
to say, if they became mere symbols- the proof would
remain a structure of reason, although it would be about
nothing. In other words, it is possible for orderly thinking, which is about something, to turn itself into mere
reasoning, mere rationality. Such thinking is the last thing
I come to in life, and that is why I got it out of the way
first.
IV
There is then a primary thinking, it seems to me,
which begins long before it is time for reasoning and
proving. Searching, inquiring thinking is not like the
linear stepwise progression of proof. (I am somewhat
reluctant to say that, because so many people who despise
"linear thinking" appear to want to know nothing of the
effort needed for any other kind.) Thinking, once done,
can always be presented in reasoned form- though rarely
is its significance in the concluding line.
In fact, I now remember a very famous case in point
-the basic Aristotelian syllogism: All men are mortal;
Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal. As a way
to discovering the conclusion it is an absurdity. Whatever
effort there is goes into establishing the premise that "All
men are mortal;' and to do that I must surely already
know that we will all die, including Socrates- as indeed
he did, with great flair. Now Aristotle himself never meant
the syllogism to be taken as a deductive proof form, but
rather as a record of an illumination, the discovery of
the reason why we must die, namely as a consequence
of our human essence, because we are human beings,
because of the middle term, man. To know that is surely
to know something.
v
Working with and against these preceding examples
of thinking in extremis, so to speak, I want to make an
inventory of traits shown by living, inquiring, provisional
thought as I know it. I don't, by the way, suppose that
everyone does as I do- I do mean that they do what I
do, that we are about the same business even if the occasions of our perplexity, the tempo of our grappling and
the idiom of our articulations are very different. The
cavalier claim that "every one thinks differently" seems
to me based on willful inexperience. (And yet- I have
sometimes wondered whether some, a very few people,
might not have genuinely different thinking experiences.)
I will number my first observation, as mathematicians so nicely do, with the number zero.
0. Thinking is unmistakably done by me in a body,
but in a body set aside in the sense that it requires to
be at ease in a balmy or buoyant environment (Descartes
had an oven-heated room and I, to compare small with
great, have a hot bath), or independently occupied by
WINTER 1984
�rhythmic motion in monotonously beautiful surroundings, among sights pleasant to gaze at without real
looking. But there is also a stranger and somewhat
humiliating connection: Physical stimulants affect, or better, release thinking, and a cup of coffee can cause a
revelation.
1. My guess is that it is because of its bodily basis
that my thinking has a motoric and mechanical mode.
It can labor in low gear, lug in high gear, stall and idle-all
familiar thought-experiences. Of these, that thinking
which runs in neutral is the most disturbing but also illuminating phenomenon -when my mind babbles on by
itself, disengaged. It shows that real thinking requires
-a moment-to-moment effort to hold it to its matter, a
continual spontaneity. Accordingly, no truly-thought
thought seems to follow as a necessary effect from a
previous thought; each comes from a fresh effort to
understand. I do not mean to say that thoughts may not
have necessary connection- only that I myself must think
it. Indeed it now seems to me that thinking is largely
the effort to break out of motoric mentation.
And I also notice that as every instant thinking begins
anew, so it ends with a kind of click, and "aha'' of having
settled the matter (or alternatively, a pause of perplexity). Thinking appears to be in its step-wise way as discontinuous as intuition which is suddenly there and suddenly gone. So in that respect, at least, there is ultimately
no difference between them. I may go back and interpose ever more steps into my thought progress; I can include between any two steps the rules for inferring the
next step; in short I can make the argument as dense
as possible; it will still be discrete. And as the parts, so
the whole: the thought sequence ends with a mental click,
the sound of the proper seating of the thought, the mark
of a satisfaction which is like an assent, whose absence
arouses a fidgety agony of new trials. (This experience
of thinking incidentally seems to me to account for the
peculiar form of a Socratic conversation, in which
Socrates proposes thoughts while his interlocutor gets to
say only "Yes;' "How not?" "But Socrates .. :' It is the
internal activity of thinking distributed over two people.)
Another observation: Those people who advocate questioning for its own sake seem to regard thinking as a kind
of continuum, like a mood, which flows on until it fades
or is broken, while it seems to me that thinking is in its
very nature positive. As it is a series of small settlements,
so in the aggregate it aims to reach a position and rest.
2. Since thinking is continually effortful, and continually monitored, it must have something to do with
my willing and wanting-though I see that I shouldn't
confuse that inner monitor who is satisfied or uneasy with
my willing, since that monitor's business is not to force
but to follow thought. I, my willful self, ought to govern
my thought only insofar as I hold it to its business, and
even then my willing is rather a wanting which is more
exigent even than the desire for repose. What I want first
and last is to possess myself and my world- not in a mode
of domination but in a way of bringing out both of our
respective and related contours. When I leave an experience or a problem unthought-through there is an un-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
supportable sense that a fuzzy accretion is interposing
itself between me and my existence, that I am going to
be enveloped in dumb immediacy and my life will be
an unappropriated mess. I think that must be the sense
Socrates is expressing when he says that the unexamined
life is not to be lived ~'not to be lived" is what he literally says. I never could understand Wordsworth's "We
murder to dissect" complaint: The analysis of a thing or
an event, far from destroying its integrity, first gives it
not merely clarity but the possibility of presence itself;
We dissect to maintain life. That, it seems to me, is what
thinking does: It makes me try to get hold of things, so
that they are there for me. Of course, there is a kind of
analysis which with deadly inaccuracy pries things apart
in unnatural places and which forces affairs, particularly
human affairs, into crude and demeaning patterns; it does
indeed murder its matter. But that is not thinking. It is
functioning with theory-patterns, and it shows that not
only will but also willfulness can move thought. Truth
to tell, I know it as an all too familiar temptation- the
willful forcing of thought according to a pre-conceived
intention.
3. Thinking is speech, quite literally interior speaking, voiceless English utterance. That observed fact makes
me doubt the notion that speech is primarily or originally
a kind of social interaction. How can I think so when
I observe that ninety-nine out of a hundred words that
I speak every day are not meant to be heard, because
I speak to myself (from whom I can want nothing and
can hide nothing and with whom I don't much want to
play speech-solitaire) the same language as I talk with
my fellow humans with whom I am supposed to be playing language games or committing speech-acts? I am
surely glad that I can use language for communication,
that is, for alluding to something we humans have in common, but my sense is that my speech (once I have come
into it) can be used to communicate because I use it to
speak to myself, not the other way around.
Here is the old mystery on which I can scarcely get
a handle: There is admittedly thoughtless speech. Is there
perhaps also speechless thought? No matter how hard
I try, I cannot get hold of a thought without a word. There
may well be speechless apprehensions and they may well
be those very intuitions I am trying to distinguish. But
that time-taking effort I think of as thinking- can it be
anything distinguishable from the speech in which I do
it? Of course it cannot be speech in the merely linguistic
sense, since I could use another language like German,
and sometimes do. It must be (and here once again I
am discovering America) speech in the sense the Greeks
termed logos, which might be rendered by "thinkingspeech:' Logos has meaning, something more intimate
than significance, which latter is the relation of a sign
to its object. Thinking-speech is literally utterance, that
is "outerance;' the silently audible embodiment (which
my bodily being seems to require) of my inner activitynot its sign, but its expression.
It is just because speech has meaning in this sense,
because it is the external appearance of thinking, thatunless I am feeling mighty bloody-minded- I do not ask
55
�whether another speaker's statements mean anything or
not according to some pre-determined criterion of meaningfulness. Rather I ask first whether the speaker means
anything, that is, whether his words are expressions of
a thinking effort, and next what he means, that is, how
I can express his thinking as my own, and finally whether
I can give assent.
By saying that speech has meaning and is an expression of thinking I have tried to convey a strange apprehension, namely that it is nothing but uttered thinking; speech
does not "signify" thinking or thoughts or stand for them,
but it means them.
Now thinking and its words are of several sorts, it
seems. One sort of word intends something- I think and
speak of things. For example, the pronoun "I" has come
far too often into this speech. (I cannot tell, incidently,
why it is called a pro-noun since surely the name Eva
stands for it, and not the other way around). When I
say "I;' I am sure I intend something- though I should
probably not say "some thing:' What I do intend, it would
take a whole new talk to try to come near, but in any
case, it is that which feels my feelings, "has" my memories
and "does" my thinking. Or again, when -I say "Monte
Sol;' I intend a feature of the land, a mountain that,
although not clearly separate in stufffrom its surroundings, derives its intendabiliy from rising like a dark green
sun behind the campus in Santa Fe. Or ''pinyon;' which,
unlike the name "Monte Sol;' I can say of numerous appearances and in several ways at once- a capability expressed in the term, '1ogos" itself which has behind it the
sense of "gathering." (Now that I come to think of it, in
this gathering lies the power of the word over the world
of appearances- but then again, did the appearances not
allow themselves to be so gathered, thinking-speech would
come to nothing.) Accordingly, I can intend by the word
pinyon any one or all of a species of the genus pine, or
that kind of tree itself, or a sort of rooted censer from
which to pinch aromatic needles, or a rather ragged bush
which, when the rain paints its trunk black, suddenly
stands forth visibily as a tree. Words of a certain sort,
then, namely those called nouns, intend or reach for
objects.
I also observe that these intended things incite and
inhibit my thinking in revealing ways. For instance if I
try to think pinyon, I am almost irresistibly drawn on
to thinking tree, although the reverse is not as inevitable,
and that m'akes me say that pinyon "comes under" tree.
And although it seems to me as self-evident as anything
that whatever thought I can get hold of in speech at all
is a thought I can think, the things I think about do
evidently have the power to make some thoughts nearly
impossible: for instance a pinyon resists being thought
of as both being and not being such. If I think these
thoughts anyway, I have a lot of explaining to do to
myself, mostly concerned with the meaning of that word
"being."
But there are also words which intend no thing. Some
of these mean the directing gestures that thinking seems
to develop within itself as it runs, hesitates, jolts on,
doubles back. For example there is "but;' a hand held
56
up by thinking to itself to admit an opposing train of
thought; and there is "although;' which requires thinking to run on two tracks at once; and there is "therefore;'
which means home-free. In communicating-speech I use
th~se words to coax another's thinking into becoming like
mine.
The last use of speech is not so interesting as an accomplishment as it is fascinating as a possibility. I can
willfully disregard or abstract from any definite intention a word might have, and I have been taught to do
that by turning the words into symbols, say the letters
A and B. I can also overlook that most intimate striving
of thoughtful propositions to be about something (as
Euclid's forty-seventh is about right triangles), and I show
that further abstraction by using symbols like p and q.
Now I often put my propositions into a kind of wordharness, and above all the one called "if ... then:' I can
do that because the propositions are about things or
events, and these appear to have inner connection- call
them causal. So if it rains, then the ground will grow
red, the pinyons will show their shape and the air will
become aromatic. Now forget about that real connection of things which my thinking grasps and simply define
such a relation; call it implication and let its symbol be
a horseshoe on its side. By going on like this, one can
establish a kind of ghost-speech, a denatured logos which
is (oddly, it seems, to me) called symbolic logic. What
is fascinating is the way it is done- by glancing surreptitiously at living thinking and then deliberately formulating its ways as mock-arbitrary rules (equally oddly
called "axioms," a word which, as you know, originally
meant "notions deserving assent"). In my experience
logical thinking is both more difficult and less demanding than searching thinking and for one and the same
reason: because it is about nothing.
But it now comes to me that I have been carried too
far in my sense that the motions of thinking-speech, its
releases and restraints, are all derived from the way things
are, so that speech has no necessity of its own- for that
amounts to saying that there is no logic at all. Speech
does have a capability, and even one intention, which is
all its own: It can negate and it can literally intend
"nothing." Nowhere in the world or beyond it does negation show or is nothing present, and yet my thinking has
no definition at all unless I can say "no;' "not;' "none;'
"nothing:' I see that with this afterthought I have started
a topic too deep for present pursuit. It probably is the
topic of logic proper, of logos-logic.
4. And finally and above all, thinking is "about"
something. "Discursive thought'~that phrase literally
means thought that runs hither and thither, going about
its business. I can get hold of this best in a figure. When
I think about something I begin by focussing, by getting hold-I know not how-of an intending or reaching
word, which is why my first notes are usually just a list
of nouns. That intending, I see, reaches for the thing itself,
for this particular fragrant pinyon which grows on the
mountain, and also, strangely, for the one odorless but
definite species of the genus pine in which all pinyons
are gathered. But what the word reaches for is not what
WINTER 1984
�it gets. What I grasp in thinking-speech is not a full, present object in or out of the sensible world, but my own
impenetrably peripheral hold itself; I hold captive a mere
circumference. That I try to grasp firmly with one hand
of my mind (which is called conceiving) while with the
other I try to make out its compass, its contours, its
cracks, and its connections (which is called trying to
understand). That is why upon thinking my speech usually comes in sentences: subject-predicate- this is such.
But here is the point. The discoveries I make in the
course of these explorations are often satisfying and even
illuminating, yet they are not what I am really after, not
the true end of the effort, just because this thinking is
always thinking round about something. What I long for
in thinking is that I should not forever remain on the
surface and in the fissures of this or that matter, but
should penetrate within it and find the inner aspects and
coimections of that which has attracted and withstood
my thinking. Such penetration should, I suppose, be
called insight, and what I might find there is, I guess,
what philosophers call "being;' a word which stands, for
me at least, more for an. incitement than for an
expenence.
I appear, once again, to have discovered America.
It seems to be my favorite activity, in life and in thought.
VI
Now, after a brief review of the five traits of thinking which I have come upon, the moment will have arrived to formulate just how thinking is un-immediate.
That is, after all, what I wanted to find out, so that I
could tell better what intuition might be; for whatever
it may be, at least it seems always to be described as an
immediate mode of apprehension.
To the review then: 0. Thinking is closely connected
to the body and has a mechanical, even a motoric mode.
1. However, when it is a genuine effort ~t does not run
continuously but comes in ever-spontaneous starts and
settlements which are received or rejected by an inner
monitor, myself but not my will. 2. My will, however,
or rather, my need, is the source of the effort, and the
need is that of coming into my experience, of appropriating my life. 3. That effort appears to my inner
ear in unvoiced yet sensory utterance, and therefore this
thinking-speech "means" or expresses thinking. Some of
the words of this speech "intend" or reach for objects like
things or kinds of things, others express the motions of
my thinking, and yet others express the connections between the things that my thinking apprehends. These
last can be abstracted and reestablished in disassociation
from meaning. 4. And above all, thinking is "about"
something, which implies that as the thinking effort is
drawn to embrace being, so it is kept at its circumference.
I think I now understand wherein thinking is unimmediate. It has to do with the figures that come to
mind in the effort to describe it: the figures of hearing
(though in a sense that is no figure since in thinking I
literally talk to myself) and of touching and grasping.
The heard word which expresses thinking also muffles
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
it. Except for the trivial case of onomatopoeia, it has no
similarity, no reference at all, to what it says, nor does
it "stand for" anything; if there is one thing the word is
not, it is a sign or a symbol. Perhaps vocables, minimal
modulations of sound, were fitly elected to express our
effort to capture what is: Ampler sound can affect and
move us; a cry rouses attention, a music tunes the soul,
but the subdued word, unsignificant and unassimilable,
expression and screen at once, is the fitting form for the
sheer immaterial doing which thinking amounts to.
The same holds for the grasping phase of thinking.
To be sure, something is disclosed by the discursive form
"this is such;' but what the grasp of thinking holds it also
hides. Thinking is not insight. I think I have discovered the
human condition with respect to the desire to know: It
is to be kept from our end by our means.
Before returning to intuition let me apologize for
what I might, if I talked that way, call a terminological
shift. You probably noticed that I have substituted the
word "thinking" for the assigned term, "intellect." I had
to do that because "intellect" has connotations both too
low and too high for our purpose. For on the one hand,
from it is derived the name of those whose thinking
motors along in theory-patterns, the so-called "intellectuals;' while on the other hand the term "intellection"
serves to translate nOesis, the ancient name for thought
which sees, the grandest kind of intuition.
VII
By now you have probably forgotten the five uses of
intuition which I thought I could distinguish. But no matter, for several were only derivative and a manner of
speaking about cases where something was thought to
be known right off; what was interesting was only what
all the uses had in common, namely immediacy. So let
me, keeping in mind that features of thinking I have just
delineated, propose three possible kinds of intuitive activities and their objects.
1. I seem to have a world of appearance immediately
before me. (To be sure, the organs of sense are often considered as the instruments of its perception, but they are
not media in such a way as to drive me to say that they
intervene between me and the appearances; they are
means rather than media.) But now I see that I for one
would hardly want to call the world at large an intuition
(though some authors have done just that) if the term
is to have any definition at all. Just as thinking is concentrating, so also it seems to me intuiting must be a
kind of focussing, but while thinking is about the absent, intuition is of the present.
For example, in my wanderings in downtown Santa
Fe,_ I often stopped before a painting which seemed to
me the record of a perceptive intuition in this more
restricted sense. It was the very type of a Southwestern
landscape, and the Santa Feans among you know that
the curse of that genre lies in the natural histrionics of
Southwestern weather. In this painting three cottonwoods
by an arroyo, seen against a great, vibrantly slate-gray
storm sky, were lit up golden-chartreuse by a slanting
57
�sun-burst from beyond the frame. The magic of it was
solely that of a memory-prompt: I have seen such scenes,
briefly but, I would say, intuitively. The word is no longer
much used that way, but it once meant a glance of strong
regard, and also the sight which was its object. That is,
of course, what "intuition" literally says: at-sight. (This
ugly but accurate rendition is corroborated in the German version, familiar from Kant: An-schauung.) ''Atsight" is directed toward what is more than a mere halfapprehended surrounding, toward what is not only bifore
me, but for me, the significant presence beheld in active
seeing. I don't doubt that some people have a gift for such
quick salient sight.
2. So much the more will there be intuitions of the
imagination, at least if presence is an even deeper feature
of intuition than immediacy. For the imagination, insofar
as it is a capability for re-presenting perceptions, usually exercises its power for compacting or attenuating
them: It may concentrate the inner vision on the high
points of perceived scenes. That is why paintings and
memories so easily merge. Or again, it may abstract inessentials and rectifY irregularities so as to leave a clarified
schema of appearance. (Most thinking seems to take its
bearing from such residual perceptions.) Or finally, it
may produce its own intuitions, either rich sights never
before seen, imbued with inexpressible significance, or
the spare figures of geometry,· the intuitions most inviting
to thought. These diagram-sights are the intuitions which
words can most reliably call forth and can most satisfyingly be about.
3. And finally, there is the intuition of thought itself,
intellectual intuition. When I say "there is" I mean: there
might be, there must be, I wish there to be. Its object
is what thinking would be about: the fulfillment of its
grasp, the immediate presence of its end. It is what the
great Greeks call the noet6n, the object of thought. Of
58
course, I myself have never broken through thinking to
behold the object of thought, though thrice in a decade
for half a moment I have had the sense that but a little
was wanting. Could it be that I do see it whenever I really
perceive what appears around me? Could it be that what
appears and what I take in when I see is just what I think
about- that what I search for without and within coincides, so to speak, behind my back? It comes home to
me that it is the pursuit of those questions which is
primarily called philosophy.
VIII
Where am I then? I have discovered that thinking,
although it can hold and explore its objects, can never
penetrate them, can never have insight. And so it never
quite attains to "at-sight;' intuition, the direct beholding
of what it is about. In our best seeing and imagining we
have all experienced the felicity of such immediate
presence, but my thinking, at least, seems to be forever
about absence. My guess is that it holds for us all: Intuition is what we long for, thinking is what we can do.
What follows? An answer comes to my inner earpartly as the remembered sound of a passage that was
once read to me, partly as the recollected sense of a meaning that I then took to heart. Happily I know where to
find the text, so I can recite to you literally Socrates' passionately involved speech:
The other points I made in behalf of my argument I won't .fully
enforce. But that, in believing we need to search after whatever
one of us doesn't see, we will be better than if we believe that
what we don't know we can't discover and needn't search
after-that I will figlit for fully and to the end and for all I'm
worth, in speech and in action. (Meno 87 B-C)
Santa Fe, Summer 1983
WINTER 1984
�Beyond the First Hundred Years:
Some Remarks on the Significance of Tristan
Elliott Zuckerman
ince my name begins with the letter Z, I'm used
to being last. When I see myself listed at the
end of a series of lectures on a serious subject,
I imagine that I've been asked to provide the
analog of a satyr-play, as exordium to the drama
of the day. Today the drama has been particularly rich,
and the length has been such as to be thought sustainable
by only the most devoted of Wagnerians. I should, perhaps, have planned to end the day with some imitation
of a Verkliirung. But my powers are, to say the least, slimmer than those with which Wagner enabled Isolde to settle into her redemptive B major. Instead, what I have
in mind is a more modest Transfiguration. And for this
the analog of the satyr-play has some point. For although
I do not intend to be frivolous or parodistic, I do intend
to take us back to Ancient Greece.
A return to the ancient must seem especially misdirected, given the title of my talk. Beyond the First Hundred Years surely denotes the two decades and a half since
1959, or at least the eighteen years since the centennial
of the first performance. The present, not the past, was
to be my territory. But when I was asked to give this talk
I knew I wouldn't be able to do what was required of
me. At best, I could go Beyond a century of Tristan not
in the chronological sense but in another way, more theoretical, that is perhaps better suggested by the German
cognate jenseits.
There was a good reason for expecting me to bring
the history of the reception of Tristan up to date. Twenty
years ago I published a book that is now out of print but
still listed in bibliographies. The first two chapters dealt
S
Mr. Zuckerman gave this talk to the Wagner Society of New York on December
3, 1983. He was the last of six speakers, and the day also included a panel
discussion with the principal singers of the current Metropolitan Opera production of Tristan.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
with the inception and composition of Tristan, and with
the events that led up to the remarkable first performance
and its reverberations. But after that I chronicled almost
a century of the response to the work- an account that
was by no means complete, but selected. The criteria for
the selection had been set out for me by the man who
was in the course of his life Wagner's greatest enthusiast
and his profoundest critic. Indeed, before the chronicle
could get going, there had to be a chapter about that very
man. Since he himself had collected his animadversions
under the title Contra Wagner, I tagged my account with
the correlative emphasis, calling it 'Nietzsche Pro Tristan:
My theme in that chapter, put now a little too simply, was that Nietzsche remained infatuated with the
music of Tristan throughout his life. It was as late as the
last year of his sanity when Nietzsche wrote about the
'dangerous fascination' of Tristan. According to the
autobiographical Ecce Homo, the most notorious critic of
Wagner's music was still looking for a work 'of an equally
shivery and sweet infinity;' and he observed that the world
was poor for those who had never been sick enough for
its voluptuousness. It occurred to me to look for other
instances of an infatuation with the music of Tristan,
among people who were also worthy of interest for other
reasons. Not every one I investigated exhibited, as Nietzsche did, the need to pass judgment on his response.
Nor was every composer so obligingly vulnerable as the
young Guillaume Lekeu, whose motto was 'je veux ttre
emu' ("I wish to be moved"), and who, at a Bayreuth performance of Tristan, had to be carried out of the
Festspeilhaus in a faint-during the Prelude. Nor did all
the writers choose to advertise their membership by
writing a story, as Thomas Mann did, called 'Tristan;
and staging a Liebestod in a sanatorium. But in almost
every case there were biographical as well as artistic indications of that music's power- and there was sufficient
59
�evidence to warrant the composition of a history of what
I came to call, for short, 'Tristanism:
The ultimate source of my interest was, needless to
say, in my own less dramatic biography. I remember the
moment in my childhood when I heard the climactic
deceptive cadence on the radio, probably in one of the
Stokowski Symphonic Syntheses, significantly voiceless
and wordless. Whatever happened then was later reinforced by performances at the old Metropolitan, in the
Melchior-Traubel days, the tickets provided by a friend
of the family who loved Italian opera but disliked German. And so on Wagnerian Mondays I took the seat,
waiting there, enthralled, for my 'moments; and sheltered
from any premature exposure to the tunes of Verdi and
Puccini. At the same time, among high-school friends,
I defended a Dionysian Isolde against the only rival that
could be summoned up among the few recordings available to us- Marian Anderson singing the Alto Rhapsody,
which, despite its title, they took to be chaste and
Apollonian.
I was, in short, a 'Tristanite' before I ihvented the
awkward term, which I thought I needed in order to distinguish what I wished to study apart from the history
of social and literary Wagnerism. That history, as yet unwritten, would have to account for political and racial
ideas and programs for aesthetic reform which invoked
for their support half-truths about Wagner's music and
whole lies from his prose. It would be a history of doctrines and movements, such as Symbolism, Naturalism
and Aestheticism. Within that history, I thought Tristan
would have to be set apart. The political Wagnerites
seemed to me to have neglected the music-drama that
was least suited to the propagation of programs about
the Revolution, or evolutionary socialism, or the Folk.
Nor was there a special fondness for Tristan among the
doctrinaire literary Wagnerites. For the primacy of the
music tended to refute their favorite aesthetic, or
synaesthetic, doctrines.
In contrast to Wagnerism, what I chose to call
'Tristanism' began with a direct response to the music.
It was private rather than public, the result of a personal
infatuation rather than an ideological commitment. Its
history was not social but biographical. The Wagnerite
had to learn theories and cultivate habits. The Tristanite
had only to be overwhelmed. He could, to be sure, go
on to verbalize his experience in impressionistic prosepoetry, as d'Annunzio did, or the American, James
Huneker. Or he could, as a theorist, devote his energies
to analysis of the music. A composer like Chabrier or
Chausson could find the music uncomfortably recurring
in his own. And an infatuation with the music could lead
to a pondering of the myth -as when, in Mann, the
legend is ironically retold, enacted by characters for whom
the music is unwholesomely overpowering. In this respect
Mann was recapitulating the experience of Nietzsche,
who found the music more formidable than any variety
of ideological Wagernism.
As I recount the sharp distinctions I made more than
twenty years ago, I want to repudiate them as exaggerated
and fuzzy. If it were not presumptuous to do so, I would
60
quote from another repudiation, a great one, of a book
that is as deep as mine is shallow- the Attempt at a SelfCriticism that Nietzsche wrote in 1886 as a new Preface
to The Birth of a Tragedy, first published fourteen years
earlier. Let me instead remind you of two facts about
that book. First, that it was originally entitled The Birth
of Tragedy out of The Spirit of Music. Second, that the music
and the action that is described in detail- the music that
most fully represented the Dionysian force that would
save the culture from 'Socratic' opera- was that of Tristan
and Isolde. Nietzsche had not only furnished me with my
theme. He also provided the example of how one's
youthful work must be repudiated -when it is inspired
by the music of Tristan.
If I am unhappy about how I accounted for the first
hundred years, I can hardly be asked to push on to a
hundred and twenty-five. But I have another, preemptive, reason for not going on. It is the plain fact that
I haven't been keeping track. Before the book had been
published I had already moved to a province where we
don't pay proper attention to the passing scene. There
is a small college in Maryland where great books are read
as though they had just been written -which is to say
that they are studied without much help from the opinions of commentaries-and where the questions they
ask are thought of as perennial. Studying them myself,
and assisting in the intense discussions that bring them
to life- along with teaching such things as Greek and
ancient mathematics and, happily, some music theoryhave left me with less time than a chronicler should have
for keeping track of fresh views and new performances.
As a consequence of my isolation, there is probably
only one new thing that I can tell you about today's subject that you don't already know better than I. In the list
of the so-called Great Books one now can find Wagner's
Tristan and Isolde. It is 'read'- I should of course say
'heard~ in the seminars of the senior year, after weeks
of Hegel and weeks of Macx. Although many works, from
Chant to Webern, are studied in the music tutorials that
are required of all sophomores, the seminars on music
are rare events, for they average only one per year. The
others are the Matthew Passion, Don Giovanni, and,
sometimes, Verdi's Otello, on a double bill with the
Shakespearian original. Whether or not I'm teaching a
senior seminar, I encounter Tristan at least once a year,
for although we generally eschew preparatory lectures,
an exception is made in the case of me and Tristan, a combination that has, I suppose, become by now traditional.
I always set out to restrict my remarks to a simple account of Tristanesque chromaticism, with some examples
of the transformation ofleitmotives, and a sketch of the
structure of the acts. But after questions and other
promptings I must confess that I find myself holding forth
about motivations as well as motives, about love, sex,
honor, and death, and- dare I repeat it?-about my
favorite theory that although the death potion is indeed
poison, the love potion needs to be nothing stronger than
water, or, as a student once suggested, beer. Most important, I get to hear what the students think about these
matters, and to reaffirm for myself that for the young
WINTER 1984
�man or woman who is at all responsive to music, the
music of Tristan has lost none of its immediacy.
I can therefore report- and I do so to an audience
that will hardly consider it news-that well into its second century Tristan is still among the most powerful
works we have. It is still the case that it is our most telling story about the conflict between love and honor, and
about the intimacy of love and death; and in Wagner's
version that favorite theme of ours is, as Denis de Rougemont once put it, expressed in its fullest virulence. To
say that most of that power derives from the music itself
would be too repetitively obvious. So I11 risk here the
more daring opinion that the power is that of tonal music.
It is often pointed out that Wagner's chromaticism
foreshadowed what followed the tonal era. In Tristan, and
then again in Parsifal, there can he found, to take an easy
example, melodic lines that anticipate the equalizing{ almost want to say the democratizing- of the tones of
the chromatic scale. The bourgeois heirarchy of tonic and
dominant has been aufgehoben, and Tristan stands at the
threshold of the next spriritual stage, the only work more
World-Historical than the 'Eroica! Yet it seems to me that
the potency of Tristan lies not in the kind of music that
it may seem to predict, but in the effectiveness of the
musical language Wagner inherited. If the myth is in the
largest sense 'ours; the music is even more so: that of major and minor and the hierarchy of motions- drawn, I
believe, from the nature of the overtone .series- that is
one of the two or three great discoveries of European
man.
In the last paragraph there are subordinate clauses
that are Wagnerian in their grandiosity, and there is no
time here and now to substantiate them. Instead I ask
you to consider a related historical observation. It iS that
whereas most of art music has, in the twentieth century,
entered into regions beyond Wagnerian chromaticism,
indeed beyond tonal music itself, the language of popular
music- of Broadway and rock-and-roll, of country music
and the movies, even, to be sure, of most of the operas
that hold the stage- remains solidly tonal. Not often
enough is it observed that the difference between high
art and popular entertainment, which was, in the past,
a difference merely of style, is, in our time uniquely, a
difference of language.
One can sympathize with the effort to find a new
musical language. How many composers were there
whose early works were a perpetual Liebesnacht, or who
found themselves trapped on the gloomy shores of Kareol,
looking out over an empty sea? To use the only language
that was effective was to use the language whose effectiveness had already been maximally demonstrated. Tonal
music, in one sense still alive, was in another sense used
up. Beyond Tristan there lay the choice between nothing
and something new. But in another sense beyond Tristan
there lay -and there still lies- Tristan itself.
The enduring power of Tristan has, then, a two-fold
reference. There is the power of the work itself and there
is the power of the musical language in which that work
was culminatingly effective. It was this double force that
I was dealing with when I attempted to chronicle the first
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
century of Tristan's sway over sensitive souls; and it was,
perhaps, music itself, and not just an anti-Wagnerian prejudice, that prompted the later Nietzsche to judge his
fascination to be dangerous. Of the dozen or so greatest
philosophers, Nietzsche was, so far as I can tell, one of
the few who were responsive to music. Among the
moderns only Schopenhauer seems comparable in that
respect. If we go back through the centuries, we may not
stop until we get to Saint Augustine. And among the ancients, as music lover Plato stands pre-eminent.
Whomever I may have skipped in this millenial sweep,
you may notice that I hit upon two who moralized about
their musical responsiveness. One remembers Augustine
worrying about how the melisma of the chant distracted
him from the sacred words it was supposed to enhance,
and the recurrent ecclesiastical reform that dictated 'one
syllable one note! And one remembers how many modes
were banned from the ideal Republic as unsuitable for
the education of noble youth. How much, indeed, of
Homer himself would be banned, leaving a scant few of
the verses that surely represented what noble men, including Plato and Socrates themselves, must, when less
philosophically pure, have considered the most beautiful
music. But with these men a philosophical chastity seems
to have gone hand in hand with the extreme responsiveness to music. If I had known more when I chronicled
the ambivalence of the Tristanites, I would have recognized that they belong to a great tradition, not a hundred years old but twenty-five hundred. And it may very
well be that to moralize about our response, to judge its
effect upon us, to find the fascination dangerous, is the
highest tribute we can pay to the work that prompted
it. I find myself, in short, clinging to what most people
find moralistic in the full pejorative sense of the word.
But it seems to me to place a higher value on art when
we take it not simply as something to experience and admire and study but as something to judge, as we must
judge something formidable that works on the soul.
In my penultimate moments, let me give these sweeping statements a more specifically Wagnerian tum. There
is a short and very funny dialogue of Platds called the
Ion. The character Ion is a rhapsode-a reciter of epic
verse -who has won prizes for his ability to move audiences to laughter and to tears. On an unguarded day
he allows himself to be questioned by Socrates. It turns
out that there is scarcely a subject about which he knows
anything; he is ignorant both about the content of what
he recites and, except in the most limited practical way,
about the souls he can so adeptly move. Now we know
that not all actors are Ionic; there are performers-we've
met some today-who have an alert and articulate understanding of what they perform. But there are also those
who, like Ion, seem to be unable to say anything sensible about the very thoughts and feelings that they convey, with a power that therefore must be called mysterious. They are an easy target, and one wonders why Plato
should expend his satiric talents upon exposing them.
There are, however, strong hints in the dialogue that
Plato's target is a more important one, one which today
we probably consider the most important of all. For there
61
�is an analogy set out whereby we can see that as the rhapsode is to the poem he recites, so is the poet himself to
the source of his inspiration. And remember: it is no mere
versifier whose knowledge is doubted here. What Ion is
expert at reciting is nothing less than Homer, and what
is brought into question is nothing less than Homer's relation to his Goddess the Muse.
What could be a more terrible doubt to cast in an
age when poets had divine muses? And what could be
more uncomfortable than to engage in similar questioning in an age, like ours, when art seems again to be the
chief source of revelation?-art in general, but more
specifically music; and not just tonal music but that music
when it affects us most- in Wagner and, pointedly, in
Tristan. Nietzsche did such questioning, and he aimed
at what he loved most. It is well known that he accused
Wagner of being an actor, in some respects an Ion to
what he imitated, but that accusation seems relatively
petulant. But he also called Wagner a ventriloquist- the
ventriloquist, in fact, of God. What he had in mind was
something more, I think, than that Wagner gave words
and music to Wotan -and to Frau Minne. But what that
something more might be is hard to fathom in the work
of the man who also announced that God was dead.
You see how far one can go into the Beyond, when
encouraged by the loftiest of the ancient thinkers and the
wildest of the modern. To close harmoniously I must step
62
aside into the moderate and the measurable, and I can
do so only with the help of another ancient, Aristotle.
We are told in the Poetics that poetry-that is to say what
today we call art- is mimetic, and that men naturally
delight in imitation. The imitation meant here is nothing
mere, as it sometimes seems to be for Plato. Instead art
can imitate what really is, and that Aristotle thinks so
is, I believe, evident when of all the arts he calls music
the most mimetic. I take him to mean something like
this: that the rise and fall of the musical phrase expresses
the growth and decline of nature, of physis, itself.
Elsewhere he asserts something further that we also can
easily acknowledge: that music expresses character, ethos,
the motions and emotions of that most intimate manifestation of physis, the human soul.
This great and necessary mimesis is what Wagner
seemed pre-eminently able to do. He is the master of
the imitation of nature in its ordinary sense- of earth,
air, fire, and water, of forest murmurs and conflagrations
and the depths of the Rhine. But in Tristan quintessentially he showed his supreme mastery of the deeper
mimesis, that of our most elementary yet ungraspable
feelings. And he did so, I think, most marvelously in act
3, where the interweaving of thoughts, feelings, and
remembered motives leads Tristan, in his musical selfanalysis, to the conclusion that he brewed the love-potion
himself.
WINTER 1984
�In Memoriam John Gaw Meem,
1895-1983
William A. Darkey
t is an honour and a privilege for me to have this
opportunity to remember John Meem today here
in St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
I was personally honoured to have had his
friendship and almost equally so, as a member
of this faculty, to have shared his sustained and sustaining friendship for this college.
I may as well begin by saying the perfectly obvious
thing: that St. John's College would never have been here
at all so beautifully on this beautiful land but for the gift
of Mr. and Mrs. Meem; nor possibly would it have survived on this campus without their continued generous
support. To say this is to say very much. But in another
way it is to say very little; for this way of putting things
omits altogether the human gifts of friendship,
understanding, inlagination, tolerance, and conviction
that lie behind those other gifts and make them humanly
meaningful. It is about these latter that I should like to
try to speak.
In 1974John Meem was made a Fellow of St.John's
College, thereby joining a small and distinguished company that includes Mark Van Doren, poet and teacher;
Ralph Kirkpatrick, musician; Paul Mellon, philanthropist. When the college took this action everyone knew
that it was very right. I should like today to address that
rightness. In remembering the qualities of his friendship
for St.John's College I shall also be speaking of the nature
of John Meem's fellowship in the college.
Since Mr. Meem's death in August, I think that all
of us have felt his presence in ways that are new,
heightened, and sharpened for us ii!- our awareness of
I
John Gaw Meem and his wife, Faith, have been principal benefactors of St.
John's southwestem campus from its inception. Mr. Meem died last August.
William A. Darkey, tutor and former dean on the Santa Fe campus, delivered
these remarks at memorial' services at the college on 7 November 1983.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
his absence. One of these ways, for me, has been to see
again, with new eyes, the beautiful buildings which
realize his vision of the city and which we see as we go
about Santa Fe in the pursuit of our daily lives. For me
these principally have been the Presbyterian Church,
Christo Rey, the Berardinelli Building, the Courthouse,
St. Francis School, and most of all St. John's College
every day. These, and also the gracious private homes
that he designed, and the historic buildings that he helped
to preserve. His presence is everywhere in the heart of
Santa Fe.
It has come to me that these buildings are not merely
beautiful, though they are, but that they are also, and
more importantly, exp~essions and realizations of a vision of human civility. For most of human life is acted
out in buildings, public buildings and private buildings.
These were the two focuses of human life to which John
Meem devoted his gifts and his energies. On the one
hand, churches, government buildings, schools, colleges,
museums, universities, libraries, and on the other,
domestic dwellings. Public buildings and private
buildings together constituting the vision of a city.
John Meem had a marvelous sense of the public and
the private, and of the distinction between them. One
recognized in meeting him, that, although he gave of
himself most generously, he was a deeply private man.
And yet, if any one in Santa Fe had been asked to name
our outstanding public citizen, John Meem's name would
have been first on any lips. I think he knew deeply in
his nature that unless this distinction is firmly and
discriminatingly made, neither public or private life is
possible, and life itself becomes inhuman. His buildings
say this to us. I think they are meant to mediate between
the land and the community with its traditions, and its
necessary institutions on the one hand and the individual
living persons on the other.
63
�He understood well that buildings must accommodate to human needs. In the first year of this campus when the walkways were incomplete, the subject
human traditions in his speculation about his own art
came up between us, and he said, "I'm waiting to see
arts. For Architecture so conceived and so practiced is
where they go before I finish putting the walks in. It's
no use trying to force people to walk where you think
they should. They won't do it."
Or, you'll notice that wherever you walk on the campus, the buildings are set so that they shelter you from
the overwhelming space of New Mexican light and
distance; and yet they always let you look out into that
truly a liberal art. That is the rightness of John Meem
as a Fellow of this college. For the office of the Fellows
is to keep us mindful, in whatever ways they have, and
perhaps mainly by example, of what we ought to be, of
what we ought to be in practice in the world.
I should like now to return from these somewhat
abstract thoughts to the immediacies of the relationships
between John Meem and the college. He served on our
Board of Visitors and Governors. Whenever he could,
he attended college functions, including commencements, convocations, and community seminars of
which he was a most thoughtful member. He often
walked on the campus in the early morning with his dogs.
I have wondered what he actually thought of us, of this
actual incarnation of the idea, what he actually thought
of all of us here.
When I let my thoughts go in this direction, I am
amazed at the courage, the trust, and the generosity of
spirit out of which Mr. and Mrs. Meem proposed to put
this college literally in their own backyard, not just to
give us a plot of unoccupied land somewhere, but to invite us to be their neighbor and to share with us the very
piece of land on which they lived. i Que cosa!
I think Mr. Meem has taught us something about
neighborhood in a way wonderfully characteristic of him.
If you walk a hundred yards or so down the path behind
this building, you come to a fence and a gate between
college property and the Meems' property. The fence
is two strands of plain wire that you can step through
easily anywhere. The gate can be opened easily, and,
to judge by the footpath, it is opened fairly often; but
in my experience, it has always been closed again afterwards. I infer that a lesson has been taught and learnt
about the private and the public.
A verse from Isaiah says, ''Your old men dream
dreams and your young men see visions." John Meem
saw visions certainly, and he dreamt dreams about the
civility of human community. Those visions stand realized beautifully in Santa Fe and elsewhere in New Mexico. As it turned out, St. John's College was destined
to be a part of his dream. I am convinced that his dream
was in essence the same one that the architects of the
St. John's Program had dreamt in 1937. The dream is
that a well conceived program of liberal education,
soundly rooted in the past and thoughtfully directed to
the present, will lead young men and women to see visions of the good life, both private and public, and that
they will give their lives to working out their visions in
the world.
During the past few .weeks I have been reading the
Canterbury Tales with some Juniors and Seniors. Three
lines of Chaucer's incomparable verse insist that I say
them for John Meem.
distance.
One evening I was standing with Mr. Meem on the
terrace of his own beautiful home looking southward to
Sandia, and I made some remark, still with an unac-
commodated easterner's eye and soul, that I found the
land overwhelming and often frightening. He said
simply, still looking south, "I love it." And then, after
a pause, he said, "It gave me my life."
I felt that he had a deep sense of returning that gift
in his stewardship of this New Mexican land and its traditions. He liked to let the land lie and be what it would
of itself. I once remarked on some very large and undisturbed anthills in front of his house. He said, ''Yes,
aren't they lovely? They were there when we moved
here."
He made himself a part of this country in a most
thorough way. He knew the Indian culture and the
Spanish culture, not vaguely or sentimentally, but very
well, beginning from the precision of his profession, and
extending far beyond any narrow sense of architecture
into the culture of which that architecture is a manifestation. From his understanding of these New Mexico traditions and his sympathy with them, he developed his own
architectural style. His development of his own style unfolded from those traditions new possibilities for meeting
contemporary needs in ways which harmonize and join
with their living roots in the past.
I remember talking with Mr. Meem about Sir Basil
Spence's book, Phoenix at Coventry, which tells of the
building of the great new cathedral there after World
War II. As an epigraph to his book Spence quotes these
words of the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok:
Only a fool will build in defiance of the past. What is new
and significant always must be grafted to old roots, the truly
vital roots that are chosen with great care from the ones
that merely survive. And what a slow and delicate process
it is to distinguish radical vitality from the wastes of mere
survival, but that is the only way to achieve progress instead of disaster.
It has seemed to me that Bartok here expresses John
Meem's own sense of architecture as a human art that
assists us with our deepest human institutions. And I
have wondered whether it could have been this sense of
things that moved him to approve and to foster St. John's
College; in part simply as the gift outright of a college
to the State of New Mexico; but also as the very special
gift to a very special college whose professed goal is to
study the past, to find what is vital there and then to
build upon that in the present and into the future. I do
64
think that it may well have been this understanding of
that led him to foster the St. John's program of liberal
He nevere yet no vileinye ne sayde
In all his lyfe unto no maner wight.
He was a verray, parfit gentil knyght.
WINTER 1984
�
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Sterling, J. Walter
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Lord, Susan
Freis, S. Richard
Sachs, Joe
Stickney, Cary
Wilson, Curtis A.
Sachs, Joe
Brann, Eva T. H.
von Oppen, Beate Ruhm
Kojeve, Alexandre
Lederer, Wolfgang
Zuckerman, Elliott
Carey, James
Fontaine, John
Darkey, William A.
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�Editor:
]. Walter Sterling
Managing Editor:
Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant:
Susan Lord
Editorial Board:
Eva Brann
S. Richard Freis, Alumni Representative
Joe Sachs
Cary Stickney
Curtis A. Wilson
Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome,
but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also
welcome.
The St. John's Review (formerly The College) is published by
the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Samuel S. Kutler,
Dean. Published thrice yearly, in the autumn-winter, winterspring, and summer. For those not on the distribution list,
subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00
for three years, payable in advance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404.
Volume XXXIV
SUMMER 1983
Number 3
© 1983, St. John's College; "Mission over Hanoi," © 1983,
James Webb. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in
part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Cover: Randall Hall, from an etching by F. Town send Morgan.
Composition: Action Camp Co., Inc.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co.
�fhe St. John's Review, Summer 1983
3
Homo Loquens from a Biological Standpoint
Curtis A. Wilson
18
Solstice on the First Watch (poem) }. H. Beall
19
The Ground of Nature: Shakespeare,
Language, and Politics Paul A. Cantor
25
Nominal Autobiography in Shakespeare's Sonnets
Margreta de Grazia
32
Blackwater (poem) RobertS. Zelenka
33
Mission over Hanoi (narrative from A Country
Such as This) james Webb
41
Truth-Telling and the Iliad Douglas Allanbrook
51
The Supreme Court and School Desegregation:
Brown v. Board of Education Reconsidered
Murray Dry
63
OCCASIONAL DISCOURSES
Class Day Address 1983
Chaninah Maschler
64
The Horizon as the Last Ship Home (poem) }. H. Beall
65
Against Time Eva Brann
��Homo Loquens
from a
Biological Standpoint
Curtis A.Wilson
The words homo loquens, in the title I announced for
this lecture, mean speaking man, man the speaking one. As
a designation for the human species, homo loquens perhaps has an advantage over the official zoological designation, homo sapiens, man the sapient, wise, discerning one,
the one who savours the essences of things. The human
capacity for loquaciousness is somewhat more obviously
verifiable. But what has that capacity to do with things bio·
logical? This is a complicated and problematic topic. Forgive me if I first approach it by slow stages, then attempt a
gingerly step when the going becomes treacherous. I wish
to begin with a small technical matter, an aspect of the
physiology of speech-production.
Respiratory patterns in different species of air-breathing
vertebrates differ in many details. Different species have
special regulatory systems, adapted to special behavior
patterns. There is the panting of dogs, specially adapted
for cooling; birds, during flight, have the unique ability to
increase their intake of oxygen a hundredfold; the sperm
whale can go without breathing or dive for 90 minutes, the
beaver for 15, man for about 2 1/2; and so on. All these
differences are species-specific.
In a human being, the respiratory patterns during quiet
breathing and during speech are remarkably different (see
Table I). The volume of air inhaled, as shown in the first
item of the table, increases by a factor of 3 or 4 during
speech. The time of inspiration, as compared with the
A lecture delivered at Annapolis in September 1975.
In forthcoming issues the Review intends to publish Mr. Wilson's lectures, The Arcltimedean Point and the Liberal Arts (September 1958) and
Groups, Rings and Lattices (September 1959).
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
time for a complete cycle of inspiration plus expiration, decreases by a factor of 3. The number of breaths per minute
tends to decrease drastically. Expiration, which is smooth
during speechless breathing, is periodically interrupted
during speech, with a build-up of pressure under the glottis; it is during expiration that all normal human vocalization occurs. The patterns of electrical activity in expiratory and inspiratory muscles differ radically during quiet
breathing and during speech. Both chest and abdominal
musculature are utilized in breathing, but during speech
the abdominal musculature is less involved, and its contractions are no longer fully synchronized with those of
the chest musculature. In quiet breathing, one breathes
primarily through the nose; during speech, primarily
through the mouth.
More than you wanted to know, I'm sure. My point was
to show that breathing undergoes marked changes during
speech. And remarkably, humans can tolerate these modifications for almost unlimited periods of time without ex·
periencing respiratory distress; witness filibusters in the
U.S. Senate. Think now of other voluntary departures
from normal breathing patterns. If we deliberately decide
to breathe at some arbitrary rate, say, faster than ordinary
-please do not try it here-we quickly experience the
symptoms of hyperventilation: light-headedness, giddiness, and so on. Similar phenomena may occur when one
is learning to play a wind instrument or during singing instruction; training in proper breathing is requisite for
these undertakings. By contrast, talking a blue streak for
hours on end comes naturally to many a three-year-old.
The conclusion must be that there are sensitive controlling mechanisms that regulate ventilation in an autono·
mons way during speech. More generally, it is evident that
3
�we are endowed with special anatomical and physiological
adaptations that enable us to sustain speech for hours, on
exhaled air.
Do we speak the way we do because we happen to possess these special adaptations, or did these adaptations develop during evolution in response to the pressures of natural selection or the charms of sexual selection? I think
there is no way of answering these questions; it is difficult
enough when one can refer to skeletons, which fossilize;
behavioral traits do not. But whatever the answer, there is
still this further question, whether the genetic programming for speech extends beyond the mere provision of vocal apparatus? Might it not, in addition, determine the
make-up and structure of language in a more detailed and
intimate fashion?
Such a question runs counter to views that are widely
held. Is not language, after you have the voice to pronounce it with, fundamentally a psychological and cultural
fact, to which biological explanations would be largely irrelevant? Do not languages consist of arbitrary conventions, made up in the way we make up the rules of games?
Wittgenstein speaks of language as a word-game, thereby
likening it to tennis or poker. Is it not apparent that the
conventions of any particular language, like the rules of
tennis or poker, are transmitted from generation to generation by means of imitation, training, teaching, and learn~
ing? Are not these the important facts about language, the
facts that reveal to us its nature?
Until recently, students of linguistics and psychology
have tended uniformly to answer these questions in the
affirmative. To many, the extraordinary diversity of human tongues has seemed argumerit enough against any assumption of linguistic universals, that is, characteristics of
language imagined to be rooted in human nature. The reductio ad absurdum often mentioned is the attempt of the
Egyptian king Psammetichos to determine the original human language. As reported by Herodotus, Psammetichos
caused two children to be raised in such a way that they
would neither hear nor overhear human speech, the attendants being instructed meanwhile to listen out for their
first word. The report was, that it was Persian. The experiment is said to have been repeated in the 13th century by
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, and again around
1500 by James IV of Scotland, who was hoping that the
children would speak Hebrew, and thereby establish a biblical lineage for Scotland. No result was reported.
Stress on the arbitrariness of language has been enhanced by a coalition between linguistics and behaviorist
psychology. Behaviorist psychology is led, by its premisses, to the view that language is merely an arbitrary use to
which the human constitution, anatomical and physiological, can be put, just as a tool can be put to many arbitrary
uses by its manipulator. A recent account that views language in this way is the book Verbal Behavior by B. F. Skinner. Along with other behaviorist scientists, Skinner holds
that all learning can be explained by a few principles
4
which operate in all vertebrates and many invertebrates.
The process is called operant conditioning. Learning the
meaning of a word, Skinner holds, is like a rat's learning to
press a bar which will cause a buzzer to sound, announcing
"food pellets soon to come". Learning grammar, likewise,
is supposed to be like learning that event A is followed by
event B, which is in turn followed by event C. Many an
animal can be trained to acquire associations of this kind.
Skinner would hold that there is nothing involved in the
acquisition of language that is not involved in learning of
this kind.
Unquestionably, we would be mistaken to deny the importance or the power of the conditioned reflex, either in
language acquisition or in other learning. The experimental psychologists have recently announced that even the
visceral organs can be taught to do various things, on given
signals, with rewards provided immediately afterward to
reinforce the action. We are told that rats, with the reward
held out of another shot of electrical juice in a certain center of the brain, have been taught to alter their blood pressures or brain waves, or dilate the blood vessels in one ear
more than those in the other. Similar achievements in
operant conditioning are held out as a bright future hope
for humans. What rich experiences in self-operation are
not in store for us?
On the other hand, the successes of this technology do not
necessarily tell us much about the character of what it is that
is being conditioned. The behaviorist treats the organism as a
black box; he controls the inputs and records the outputs;
what goes on in the box is not, as he claims, an appropriate
concern of his. He cites the similar situation in quantum
physics. In the case of quantum phenomena, the physicist
cannot successfully describe what is there when he is not
looking, not using probes that interact with whatever it is.
But, between the situation in quantum physics and the situation in the study of animal behavior, there is this difference.
Animal behavior goes on, observably so, even when the ani-
mals are not being experimented on. May it not be important
to try to observe this behavior, before we set out to change it,
as we can, so frighteningly, do?
Those who study the behavior of animals in their natural habitats nowadays have a special name for their study,
Ethology. Long hours of patient observation, much of it
during the last 50 years, have demonstrated how intricate,
how unexpectedly adaptive, how downright peculiar, are
the patterns of behavior specific to particular species of
animals. Many of the patterns function as communica-
tion: the elaborate courtship rituals of birds, the less elaborate ones of butterflies and certain fish; the way in which
two dabbling ducks, on meeting, lower their bills into the
water and pretend to drink, as an indication of nonaggressiveness; and so on. Among these behaviors, there is one
that has been called truly symbolic. That is the dance of
the honeybee, the symbolism of which was first recognized and deciphered by Karl von Frisch in the 1940's. Let
me describe it briefly (see Figure l).
SUMMER 1983
�The dance that a forager bee performs in the dark hive
gives, by a special symbolism, the dista,nce and direction of
the food source she has found. If, for the Austrian variety
of bee, the food source is less than 80 meters away, she
performs a round dance, running rapidly around in a circle,
first to the left, then to the right. This in effect says to the
hive bees: "Fly out from the hive; close by in the neighborhood is food to be fetched."
If, on the other hand, the food source is more than 80
meters away, the forager will use the tail-wagging dance.
The rhythm of the dance tells the distance: the closer the
source, the more figure-of-eight cycles of the dance per ·
minute. The tail-wagging part of the dance, shown by the
middle wavy line in the diagram, tells the direction, in accordance with a curious rule. On the vertical honeycomb
in the hive, the direction up means towards the sun, and
the direction down means away from the sun. If the tailwagging run points 60° left of straight up, the food source
is 60° to the left of the sun, and so on. Directions with
respect to the sun have been transposed into directions
with respect to gravity, the directions are reported with errors of less than 3o.
This same dance is used in the springtime when half the
bees move out of the hive and form a swarm, seeking a
new nesting place. Scout bees fly out in all directions, then
return and dance to announce the location they have hit
on. It is important, of course, that the selected spot be
protected from winter, winds, and rough weather, and that
there be abundant feeding nearby. The surprising thing is
that not just one nesting place is announced, but several at
the same time. The dancing and the coming and going can
continue for days. By their dances the bees engage in mutual persuasion, inciting one another to inspect this site or
that site. The better the site, the longer and more vigorously the returning bee dances. The process continues until all the scout bees are dancing in the same direction and
at the same rate. Then the swarm arises and departs for
the homesite it has thus decided upon. Mistaken decisions
are few.
The dance of the honeybee is symbolic in a genetically
determined way. That human language is not genetically
determined in the same way is easy to show: the language
a child learns, whether Swahili, Cantonese, Urdu, or any
other, depends solely on the language of those by whom
he is brought up.
The vocabulary of a human language is not genetically
fixed. I do not believe, however, that the discussion of the
biological foundations oflanguage can properly end at this
point.
My reasons for saying this are two. In the first place,
there are certain features of human speech which are not
facts appear to be most easily accounted for by assuming
that there is such a foundation, forcing human speech to
be of a certain basic type.
Secondly, this same assumption receives support from
the study of primary language acquisition in children. It is
not that Psammetichos was right, or that children if left to
themselves would commence to speak proto-IndoEuropean or any language resembling an adult human language. All genetically determined traits depend for their
appearance, to a greater or lesser degree, on features of the
environment. The genes or genetic factors do not of themselves determine body parts or physiological or behavioral
traits. Rather, they determine developmental processes,
which normally succeed one another in a determinate
way, but can be profoundly affected by environmental influence. These facts point to the possibility that genetically determined traits might appear only in the course of
maturation, and then only in response to specific influences from outside the organism. Ethologists inform us of
many instances of species-specific, genetically based behavior that emerge only in this way. An example is imprinting. Thomas More described it in his Utopia. Chicks
or ducklings or goslings, a few hours or days after hatching,
enter a critical period. Whatever object they first encounter during this period, within certain limits of size, and
moving within appropriate limits of speed, they begin to
follow, and continue to follow through childhood. The object followed can be, and usually is, the mother; but it can
also be an ethologist like Konrad Korenz on his hands and
knees, or something stuffed at the end of a stick. Failure to
develop imprinted responses during infancy may cause behavioral abnormalities in the adult bird-abnormalities
that cannot be corrected by later training. Imprinting is
only one of many known species-specific characteristics or
behaviors that appear in the course of development, in response to what are sometimes called "releasers", environ-
mental stimuli of specified kinds. It will be my contention
that important features of human linguistic capacity are of
this kind.
After discussing these two points, I shall conclude with
certain reflections on what they might mean.
I begin, then, with three features of human speech that
do not appear to be found in the natural communication
systems of animals (see Table II):
l. Phonematization
2. Concatenation
3. Grammar
What is meant by phonematization? The vocalizations
heard in the human languages of the world are always
within fairly narrow limits of the total range of sounds that
humans can produce. We are able to imitate, for instance,
found in the natural communication systems of animals,
the vocalizations of mammals and birds with considerable
but which are found universally in all known human languages, present or past. The existence of these features is,
at the very least, consonant with the possibility that there
is a genetic foundation underlying human speech. The
accuracy, given a little training, but such direct imitations
never seem to be incorporated in the vocabularies of hu-
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
man languages. In all human languages, the meaningful
units, words, or more strictly speaking, morphemes, are di-
5
�visible into successive, shorter, meaningless sounds called
phonemes. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units
into which an utterance can be divided. A morpheme can
be a single word such as ' water"; it can be more than one
word as in "spick and span"; and it can be less than a single
word, as in the "er" in "whiter", which turns the adjective
1
"white" into a comparative. Phonemes are the meaning-
less sounds into which morphemes can be divided. A pho·
neme is not, strictly speaking, a single sound, but rather a
small class of sounds; it can be defined as the smallest distinctive unit functioning within the sound system of alanguage to make a difference. Refinements aside, the central
fact I wish to convey is this: in all languages, morphemes
are constituted by sequences of phonemes. This is a fact
that the inventors of the alphabet were probably about the
first to come to understand.
The fact could have been different. One can imagine a
language in which the symbol for a cat was a sound resembling a miaow; in which size was represented by loudness,
color by vowel quality, and hunger by a strident roar. Morphemes in such a language would not be analyzable into
phonemes.
All human languages are phonematized, but each language uses a somewhat different set of phonemes, in each
case a small set.
Parrots and mynah birds excel other animals in the imitation of human speech, but it is doubtful that they speak
in phonemes. The matter could be put to a test. A parrot
that had heard only Portuguese, and had acquired a good
repertory of Portuguese words and phrases, could be transferred into an environment where he would hear only English, and have the opportunity of repeating English exclamatory remarks. If these remarks emerged with a
Portuguese accent, then it would be clear that the parrot
had learned Portuguese phonemes, which he proceeded to
use in the vocalization of English words. In the opposite
case, we would conclude that the parrot had the capacity
to imitate sounds accurately, but had not acquired the
habit of using phonemes for the production of speech.
In the human child, speech by the same test would turn
out to be phonematized.
The second general characteristic of human speech I
have listed is concatenation. Human utterances seldom
consist of single morphemes in isolation; in no human
speech-community are utterances restricted to single morphemes; in all languages, morphemes are ordinarily strung
together into sequences. To be sure, the peoples of many,
perhaps most cultures, are less garrulous than we; they use
language only in certain circumstances and only somewhat sparingly, while we talk a good deal of the time. It is
nevertheless true that humans in all speech-communities
concatenate morphemes.
The third property presupposes concatenation; it is the
property of grammatical or syntactical structure. By
"structure" I am going to mean a set of relations that can
be diagrammed. In no language are morphemes strung to-
6
gether in purely random order. Native speakers of a language normally agree in rejecting certain utterances as ungrammatical, and in recognizing certain other utterances
as grammatical. According to Noam Chomsky, for instance, the sentence "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is grammatical, though meaningless or nearly so;
the concatenation "furiously sleep ideas green colorless",
the same words in reverse order, is ungrammatical. The
one concatenation admits of a syntactical diagram, the
other does not.
It is generally assumed in linguistics that the grammar of
a language is completely describable by means of a finite
and in fact small set of formal rules. For no natural language has such a description been achieved as yet, otherwise one could program a computer to utter the grammatical sentences in the language. Apparently the mechanism
involved in the grammar of a natural language is complex.
I shall return to this topic again; the point now is just the
universality of grammar-a relatively complex kind of system-as a feature of human languages.
All three properties I have described are, so far as the
available evidence indicates, without cultural histories.
Phonematization, concatenation, grammatical structure,
are features of all known human language, past or present.
And although languages are always in process of change, it
is not the case that these changes follow a general pattern
from a stage that can be called primitive to one that can be
called advanced. No known classification or analysis of human languages provides any basis for a theory of the development oflanguage from aphonemic, non-grammatical, or
simple imitative beginnings.
These facts are consonant with the hypothesis that
there is a genetic foundation underlying human speech,
forcing it to be of a certain basic type, and in particular, to
have the features I have just described. In support of this
hypothesis, I take up now the development of language in
the child.
The first sound a child makes is to cry. Immanuel Kant
says the birth cry
has not the tone of lamentation, but of indignation and of
aroused wrath; presumably because [the child} wants to
move, and feels his inability to do so as a fetter that deprives
him of his freedom.
More recently a psychoanalyst has written of the birthcry:
It is an expression of the infant's overwhelming sense of inferiority on thus suddenly being confronted by reality, without
ever having had to deal with its problems.
In view of the anatomical immaturity of the human brain
at birth, these adult interpretations are rather surprising.
No doubt the infant in being born undergoes a rude shock.
But crying is a mechanism with a number of important
functions; one of the earliest is clearing fluid out of the
SUMMER 1983
�middle ear, so that the child can begil) to hear. The mechanism is ready to operate at birth, and ,the infant puts it to
work. The sound made in crying changes slightly during
childhood, but otherwise does not mature or change during one's life. Crying is not a first step in the development
that leads to articulate speech; it involves no articulation;
the infant simply blows his horn without operating the
keys.
A quite distinct sort of vocalization begins at about the
6th or 8th week after birth: little cooing sounds that appear
to be elicited by a specific stimulus, a nodding object resembling a face in the baby's visual field. A clown's face
painted on cardboard, laughing or crying, will do for a
while. The response is first smiling, then cooing. After
about 13 weeks it is necessary that the face be a familiar
one to elicit the smiling and cooing. During cooing, some
articulatory organs are moving, in particular the tongue.
The cooing sounds, although tending to be vowel-like, are
not identical with any actual speech sounds. Gradually
they become differentiated. At 6 months they include vocalic and consonantal components, like /p/ and /b/. Cooing develops into babbling resembling one-syllable utterances, for instance /rna/, /mu/, Ida/, /di/. However, the
babbling sounds are still not those of adult speech.
The first strictly linguistic feature to emerge in a child's
vocalizations is contour of intonation. Before the sound sequences have determinable meaning or definite phonemic
structure, they come out with the recognizable intonation
of questions, exclamations, or affirmations. Linguistic de-
velopment begins not with the putting together of individual components, but rather with a whole tonal pattern.
Later, this whole becomes differentiated into component
parts. Differentiation of phonemes is only approximate at
first and has to be progressively refined. The child is gradually gaining control of the dozen or so adjustments in the
vocal organs that are required for adult speech. By 12
months he is replicating syllables, as in "mamma" and
"dada". By 18 months he will normally have a repertory of
three to 50 recognizable words.
I have described this development as though mothers
were not trying to teach, but of course they normally are.
It is nevertheless a striking fact that these stages emerge in
different cultures in the same sequence and at very nearly
the same ages, and in fairly strict correlation with other
motor achievements. Detailed studies have been made of
speech acquisition among the Zuni of New Mexico, the
Dani of Dutch New Guinea, the Bororo in central Brazil,
and children in urban U.S.A.; in all cases, intonation patterns become distinct at about the time that grasping between thumb and fingers develops; the first words appear
at about the time that walking is accomplished; and by the
time the child is able to jump, tiptoe, and walk backward,
he is talking a blue streak. Among children born deaf, the
development from cooing through spontaneous babbling
to well-articulated speech-sounds occurs as with normal
children, but of course the development cannot continue
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
onward into the stage at which adult words are learned
through hearing. Among the mentally retarded, these developments are chronologically delayed, but take place
with the same correlation between various motor achieve-
ments. Given the variety of environmental conditions in
these several cases, it seems plausible to attribute the
emergence of linguistic habits largely to maturational
changes within the growing child, rather than to particular
training procedures.
The specific neurophysiological correlates of speech are
little known, but that there are such correlates and that
they mature as speech develops is supported by much evidence. The human brain at birth has only 24% of its adult
weight; by contrast, the chimpanzee starts life with a brain
that already weighs 60% of its adult value. The human
brain takes longer to mature, and more happens as it matures, including principally a large increase in the number
of neuronal connections. A large part of the discernible anatomical maturation takes place in the first two years; the
process appears to be complete by about 14 years of age.
By this time the neurophysical basis of linguistic capacity
has become localized in one of the two cerebral hemispheres, usually the left. If by this time a first language has
not been learned, no language will ever be learned. Speech
defects due to injuries to the brain that occur before the
finallateralization of the speech-function are usually overcome; but if the injury comes after lateralization, the
speech defect will be permanent.
Capacity for speech does not correlate uniformly with
size of brain. There is a condition known as nanocephalic
dwarfism, in which humans appear reduced to fairy-tale
size; adult individuals attain a maximum height of between two and three feet (see Table III). Nanocephalic
dwarfs differ from other dwarfs in preserving the skeletal
and other bodily proportions of normal adults. Brain
weight in these dwarfs barely exceeds that of a normal
newborn infant. The brain weight of the nanocephalic
dwarf, given in the middle row, is only a little over a third
of that of a 2 !12 year old boy, but the ratio of body weight
to brain weight is equal to that of a 13 !12 year old boy.
These dwarfs show some retardation in intellectual
growth, and often do not surpass a mental age-level of 5 or
6 years. But all of them acquire the rudiments of language,
including speaking and understanding; they speak grammatically, and can manufacture sentences which are not
mere repetitions of sentences they have heard. The appropriate conclusion appears to be that the ability to acquire
language depends, not on any purely quantitative factor,
but on specific modes of organization of human neurophysiology.
One further point concerning the neurophysiological
basis of language. The main evidence here is provided by
aphasias (aphasis = " + </Java<, not + to speak). These are
failures in production or comprehension of language, re-
sulting from injuries to the brain. And this evidence argues, for one thing, against regarding language ability as
7
�being encoded simply in a spatial layout of some kind, say
a network of associations in the cerebral cortex. Subcortical areas are involved, as well as cortex. The aphasias most
frequently involve, not disruption of associations, but
rather disruption of temporal order, affecting either phonemes in the production of
words~
as in spoonerisms, or
words and phrases in the production of sentences. The patient is unable to control properly the temporal ordering of
these units, and as a consequence they tumble into the
production line uninhibited by higher syntactic principles.
In general, the symptom is lack of availability of the right
thing at the right time.
Language is through-and-through an affair of temporal
patterns and sequences. The neurophysiological organization required for this cannot be simply that of associations.
In the making of speech-sounds, for instance, certain mus-
cles have to contract, the efferent nerve fibers innervating
these muscles are of different lengths and diameters, and
as a consequence the times required for a nerve impulse to
tion, in which elements connected with one another are
separated temporally in the production line.
Let me return now to the description of stages in the
primary acquisition of language by a child.
At about the end of the first year of life, the child normally utters his first unmistakable word. For a number of
months, while the child is building up a repertory of about
50 words, he utters only single-word utterances. He frequently hears sentences like "Here is your milk", "Shall
daddy take you by-by?", and so on, but he will neither join
together any two words he knows nor can he be induced to
do so on request. Does he lack the memory or the vocalizing power to produce a two-word utterance? The evidence
is against these suppositions. Then, roughly between 18
and 24 months, he suddenly and spontaneously begins to
join words into two-element phrases: "up baby", "baby
highchair", "push car", and so on. What explains the shift?
An important observation at the one-word stage is that
these single words are given the intonations or pitch-con-
go from brain to muscle differ for different muscles.
Hence the nerve impulses for the production of a single
phoneme must be fired off from the brain at different
times, and the sequences of impulses for successive phonemes must overlap in complex ways. In the simplest sequential order of events, it thus appears that events are
tours of declarative, interrogative, or hortatory sentences.
The single-word utterances seem to function in meaning
selected, not in response to immediately prior events, but
single-word utterances, both "push" and "car" would have
primary stresses and terminal- intonation contours. But
in the same way as sentences will function later on: "Doggie" might mean, for instance, ~'There is a dog". When the
two-word construction ''push car" appears, it is not just
two single-word utterances spoken in a certain order. As
in accordance with a hierarchic plan that integrates the requirements for periods of time of several seconds' duration. All this patterning in time is thought to depend on a
physiological rhythm of about 6 cyles per second, in relation to which other events are timed. Arrangements of this
complexity do not come about by learning. The evidence
here, as well as the observations I have already described
as to the way voice-sounds develop in children, points to
the existence of an innate mechanism for the production
of phonemes, one which is activated by a specific input,
the appearance of the human face, and which matures in
stages.
Could anything similar be argued for competence in syntax, the ability to understand and produce grammatical sentences? Here you will undoubtedly be more doubtful, for
surely the grammars of different languages are different.
Please recall that the sets of phonemes used in different languages are also somewhat different. The universality of
phonematization is compatible with different languages
employing different subsets of the humanly possible phonemes. The claim for universality of grammar must be of
similar kind. The grammars of human languages are not of
just any imaginable kind of ordered concatenation of morphemes. Rather, they derive from a certain subclass of the
gressive differentiation of the parts of utterances on the
other.
Imitation plays a role in this process, but it is seldom
mere parroting. In Table IV I have listed some imitations
actually produced by two children, whom I shall call Adam
and Eve; both were about two years old.
First note that the imitations preserve the word order of
the model, even when not preserving all the words. This is
not a logical necessity; it is conceivable that the child
might reverse or scramble the order; that he does not suggests that he is processing the utterance as a whole. A second fact to notice is that, when the models increase in
length, the child's imitation is a reduction, and that the
imaginable orders, a subclass involving phrase structure and
selection of words is not random. The words retained are
what has been called "deep structure". The production of
grammatical sentences turns out to pose requirements simi-
generally nouns, verbs, and less often adjectives: words
sometimes called "contentives", because they have se-
lar to those necessary for the temporal ordering of pho-
mantic content; their main grammatical function lies in
nemes; a serial order in which one clement determines the
next is insufficient; there has to be hierarchical organiza-
their capacity to refer to things. The forms omitted are
what linguists call "functors", their grammatical functions
8
when they are two words programmed as a single utterance,
the primary stress and higher pitch come on "car"; and the
unity of the whole is indicated by the absence of a terminal
pitch contour between the words and the presence of such a
contour at the end of the sequence.
What appears to be happening is that the child is by
stages increasing his span, his ability to plan or program
longer utterances. Grammar is already present in embryo.
Further development will be a process of successive increases in span or integration, on the one hand, and pro-
SUMMER l983
�being more obvious than their semantic content. The
omission of the functors leads to a kind of telegraphic language, such as one uses in wiring home: ('Car broken
down; wallet stolen; send money American Express Baghdad". In the child's telegraphic utterances, how will the
appropriate functors come to be introduced?
While the child engages in imitating, with reductions,
the utterances of the mother, the mother frequently imitates, with expansion, the utterances of the child (see Table V). The mother's expansions, you will note, preserve
the word order of the child's sentences, she acts as if the
child meant everything he said, and more, and it is the
"more" that her additions articulate. She adds functors.
The functors have meaning, but it is meaning that accrues
to them in context rather than in isolation. The functors
tell the time of the action, whether it is ongoing or completed; they inform us of possession, and of relations such
as are indicated by prepositions like in, on, up, down; they
distinguish between a particular instance of a class as in
"the highchair", and an arbitrary instance of a class, as in
"a sandwich"; and so on.
How or to what extent these adult expansions of the
child's utterances help the child to learn grammatical usage is uncertain. It has been found that immediate imitations by the child of just uttered adult sentences are less
frequently well-formed than spontaneously produced utterances. The view that progress toward adult norms arises
merely from practice in overt imitation of adult sentences
is clearly wrong. The child rather appears to be elaborating
his own grammar, making use of adult models, but constantly analogizing to produce new and often mistaken
words or forms.
Take pluralization (see Table VI). In English there are a
few irregular plurals, as of mouse, foot, man. The child normally regularizes these plurals: mouses, foots, mans. Instead of foot vs. foots, some children give feet for the singular, feels for the plural. One does not get an initial
fluctuation between foot and feet, such as one would expect if only imitation of adult forms were at work.
Most English plurals are regular and follow certain formal rules. Thus we have mat vs. mats, but match vs.
matches. Words ending in sibilants, such as match, horse,
box, add a vowel before the s of the plural. Children have
difficulty with pluralizing these words, and tend at first to
use the singular form for both singular and plural. Sometimes a child will analogize in such a way as to remove the
sibilant, substituting for instance, for box vs. boxes, the singular-plural pair bok vs. boks. Then at some point the child
produces the regular plural of a sibilant word, say, boxes.
Frequently when this happens he may abandon temporarily the regular plural for non-sibilant words, so that one
gets foot vs. footses. What is happening? Overlaid on the
child's systematic analogic forms, there is a gradual accumulation of successful imitations which do not fit the
child's system. Eventually these result in a change in the
system, often with errors due to over-generalizing.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Consider also the past tense inflection, which in English
bears considerable similarity to the plural inflection (see
Table VI again). There are regular forms like walk-walked,
and irregular ones like go-went. Among the regular verbs,
the form of the past depends on the final phoneme of the
simple verb: so we have pack-packed and pat-patted. In the
case of past-tense inflection in contrast with pluralization,
however, the most frequently used forms are irregular, and
the curious fact is that the child often starts regularizing
these forms before having been heard to produce any
other past-tense forms. Thus goed, doed, corned appear
among the first past-tense forms produced. The analogizing tendency is evidently very strong.
The occurrence of certain kinds of errors on the level of
word construction thus reveals the child's effort to induce
regularities from the speech he is exposed to. When a child
says, "I buyed a fire car for a grillion dollars," he is not imitating in any strict sense of the term; he is constructing in
accordance with rules, rules which, in adult English, are in
part mistaken. At every stage, the child's linguistic competence extends beyond the sum total of the sentences he
has heard. He is able to understand and construct sentences which he cannot have heard before, but which are
well-formed in terms of general rules that are implicit in
the sentences he has heard. Somehow, genius that he is,
he induces from the speech to which he is exposed a latent
structure of rules. For the rest of his life, he will be spinning out the implications of this latent structure.
By way of illustration of this inductive process, and of a
further stage in the achievement of grammatical competence, let me indicate some aspects of the development of
the noun phrase in children's speech (see Table VII). A
noun phrase consists of a noun plus modifiers of some
kind, which together can be used in all the syntactic positions in which a single noun can be used: alone to name or
request something, or in a sentence as subject, object, or
predicate nominative. The table at the top gives a number
of noun phrases uttered by Adam or Eve at about two
years of age. Each noun phrase consists of one word from a
small class of modifiers, M, followed by one word from the
large class of nouns, N. The rule for generating these noun
phrases is given below in symbols: NP is generated by M
plus N.
The class M does not correspond to any single syntactic
class in adult English; it includes indefinite and definite
articles, a possessive pronoun, a demonstrative adjective, a
quantifier, a cardinal number, and some descriptive adjec-
tives. In adult English these words are of different syntactic classes because they have very different privileges of
occurrence in sentences. For the children, the words ap-
pear to belong to a single class because of their common
privilege of occurrence before nouns; the lack of distinction leads to ungrammatical combinations, which are
marked in the table by an asterisk. Thus the indefinite article should be used only with a common count noun in the
singular, as in ((a coat"; we do not say ('a celery", "a
9
�Becky", "a hands". The numeral two we use only with
count nouns in the plural; hence we do not say "two sock".
The word "more" we use before mass nouns in the singu~
lar, as in "more coffee", and before count nouns in the plural, as in "more nuts"; we would not say "more nut". To
avoid the errors, it is necessary not only that the privileges
of occurrence of words of the class M be differentiated,
but also that nouns be subdivided into singular and plural,
common and proper, count nouns and mass nouns.
Sixteen weeks after Time I, at Time II, Adam and Eve
were beginning to make some of these differentiations; articles and demonstrative pronouns were now distinguished
from other members of the class M. Articles now always appeared before descriptive or possessive adjectives, and demonstrative pronouns before articles or other modifiers.
Twenty-six weeks after Time I, the privileges of occurrence had become much more finely differentiated. Adam
was distinguishing descriptive adjectives and possessive
pronouns, as well as articles and demonstrative pronouns,
from the residual class M; Eve's classification was even
more complicated, though she was a bit younger. Also,
nouns were being differentiated by both children: proper
nouns were clearly distinct from common nouns; for Eve,
count nouns were distinct from mass nouns.
Simultaneously with these differentiations, further integrations were occurring: the noun phrases were beginning
to occur as constituents in longer sentences; the permissible combinations of modifiers and nouns were assuming
the combination privileges enjoyed by nouns in isolation.
Thus the noun phrase, for Adam and Eve, was coming to
have a psychological unity such as it has for adults. This
was indicated by instances in which a noun phrase was fitted between parts of a separable verb, as in "put the red
hat on". It was also indicated by substitution of pronouns
for noun phrases in sentences, often at first with the pronoun being followed by the noun phrase for which it was
to substitute, as in ((mommy get it my ladder", or ((I miss it
cowboy boot".
Whether any theory of learning at present known can
account for this sequence of differentiations and integrations is doubtful. The process is more reminiscent of the
development of an embryo than it is of the simple acquisition of conditioned reflexes or associations. What is
achieved is an open-ended competence to comprehend
sentences never before heard, in terms of a hierarchical
structure, that embeds structures within structures.
To illustrate, let me use, not a child's sentence, but an
example that Chomsky excerpts from the Port Royal
Grammar of 1660 (see Figure 2). The sentence is: "Invisible God created the visible world". The sentence may be
diagrammed as shown in the figure; Chomsky calls these
diagrams phrase markers. There is a phrase marker for
what he calls surface structure; this has the function of determining the phonetic shape and intonational contour of
the sentence. And there is a phrase marker for what he
calls deep structure; this shows how prior predications are
embedded in the sentence, and determine its meaning.
10
Are formal structures like the one indicated by this diagram really operative when linguistic competence is being
exercised? There are a number of indications that this is
so. One indication is the extent to which the understanding of language involves resolution of ambiguities, or disambiguation as it is sometimes massively put. Consider the
sentence "They are boring students" (see Figure 3). This
has two different interpretations, which are represented
by the diagrams of Figure 3. In interpretation A, the word
((boring" is linked with the word ((students"; the students
are thus characterized as boring. In interpretation B, the
word "boring" is linked with the word "are", which thus
becomes the auxiliary verb in the present progressive
tense of the verb "to bore", it is the students who are being
bored, by certain other persons designated by the pronoun
"they", but otherwise mercifully unidentified. In an actual
conversation, the context of meaning would have led us to
apply, as quick as a thought or perhaps more quickly, the
correct phrase marker to the interpretation of the sequence of uttered sounds.
Other examples show how deep structures are essential
to understanding (see Table VIII). Consider the two sentences:
John is eager to please.
John is easy to please.
These sentences have the same surface structure. But a
moment's thought shows that the word "john" has two
very different roles to play in the two sentences. john in
the first sentence is the person who is doing the pleasing;
in the second sentence he is the person who is being
pleased. John is the underlying subiect in the first case, and
the underlying obiect in the second case. Deep structure
or grammar is involved in understanding the difference in
meaning of the two sentences.
An opposite sort of case occurs when the surface grammars of two sentences are different, although the meaning
is essentially the same. Consider this sentence in the active mode: "Recently seventeen elephants trampled on
my summer home". Now consider the following sentence
in the passive mode: "My summer home was trampled on
recently by seventeen elephants." A native speaker of English feels that these sentences are related, that they have
the same or very similar meanings. Yet their surface structures are very different. Recognition that both sentences
are describing the same event presupposes that speaker
and hearer refer them both to a single deep structure embodying the single meaning. Something similar happens in
recognition of similarity between visual patterns, where
there is no point-to-point correspondence between them.
Now all of this is unlikely to seem astonishing, for it is
very familiar. You and I, like the bourgeois gentilhomme,
have been speaking and listening to more or less grammatical prose for a long time now. People living at the seashore
are said to grow so accustomed to the murmur of the
SUMMER 1983
�waves that they never hear it. Aspects of things that could
be important to us may be hidden by their familiarity. The
point I have been seeking to make is one that is due to
Noam Chomsky, a linguist I have been depending on
more than once this evening. The grammaticality of hu·
man languages involves properties that are in no sense necessary properties of a system that would fulfill the func·
of names automatically. Names, other than proper names,
refer to open and flexible classes, which are subject to ex·
tension and differentiation in the course of language us·
age. Categorization and naming involve relations between
categories; nothing ever resides in a single term; a means
nothing without b and probably c and d; b means nothing
without a and c and d. Children go about assimilating the
tions of human communication. A grammar, for instance,
relations that are embodied in language, not merely imita~
tively, but in an active, inventive, and critical way. They.
in which statements would be generated word-by-word,
from left to right, so to speak, so that any given morpheme
would determine the possible classes of morphemes that
might follow it, is a kind of grammar that might have been
used, but was not. Instead, human speech involves dependencies between non-adjacent elements, as in the sentence "Anyone who says that is lying", where there is a
dependency between the subject noun "anyone" and the
predicate phrase ''is lying". All operations in human languages, transforming, for instance, an active into a passive
sentence, or a declarative into an interrogative sentence,
operate on and take account of phrase structure. Example:
we form the interrogative of the English sentence, "Little
Mary lived in Princeton", by introducing an auxiliary to
the verb ("Little Mary did live in Princeton"), then inverting the order of the auxiliary and the noun-phrase which is
the subject, to get "Did Little Mary live in Princeton?" It
would be entirely possible to form interrogatives in a dif.
ferent way independently of phrase structure. There is no
a priori reason why human languages should make use ex·
elusively of structure-dependent operations. It is Chomsky's conclusion that such reliance on structure-dependent operations must be predetermined for the language
learner by a restrictive initial schematism of some sort,
given genetically, and directing the child's attempts to acquire linguistic competence. Put differently, one does not
so much teach a first language, as provide a thread along
which linguistic competence develops of its own accord,
by processes more like maturation than learning.
The Chomskian analysis requires that we take one more
step. The fact that deep structures figure in the understanding and use of language shows that grammar and
meaning necessarily interpenetrate. The child's grammatical competence matures only along with semantic compe-
tence, the organization of what can be talked about in
nameable categories and hierarchies of categories. This
process, like the development of grammatical compe·
tence, involves successive differentiations. Sensory data
are first grouped into as yet global classes of gross patterns,
and then subsequently differentiated into more specific
patterns. The infant who is given a word such as "daddy",
and has the task of finding the category labelled by this
word, does not start out with the working hypothesis that a
specific, concrete object, say his father, uniquely bears this
name. Rather, the word initially appears to be used as the
label of a general and open category, corresponding to the.
adult category of people or men. Infra-human animals are
taught with difficulty, if at all, to make the generalizations
involved in naming, whereas children fall in with the ways
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
are full of impossible questions:
"How did the sky happen? How did the sun happen? Why is
the moon so much like a lamp? Who makes bugs?"
At first, they are ultra-literal in their reactions to idioms
and metaphors. When grandmother said that winter was
coming soon, the grandchildren laughed and wanted to
know: "Do you mean that winter has legs?" And when a
lady said ''I'm dying to hear that concert", the child's sar·
castic response was, 11 Then why don't you die?" Some~
times reconciliation of adult requirements requires genius.
Chukovsky reports that a four-year-old Muscovite, influenced both by an atheist father and by a grandmother of
orthodox faith, was overheard to tell her playmate: "There
is a god, but, of course, I do not believe in him." The active
analogizing and generalizing of 4- and 5-year olds is dis·
cernible in the odd questions they can put:
"What is a knife-the fork's husband?"
"Isn't it wonderful? I drink milk, water, tea, and cocoa, but
out of me pours only tea."
"What does blue look like from behind?"
For a certain period, there is a special, heightened sensitiv~
ity to the strangeness of words and their meanings; by age
5 or 6 this talent begins to fade, and by 7 or 8 all traces of it
have disappeared. The need has passed; the basic princi·
pies of the child's native language have been mastered.
What is it that has in fact been gained? We say, knowl·
edge of a language. But what is a language, my language?
Thoughtfully considered, this is a well-nigh impossible
question, because a language is not a simple object, existing by itself and capable of being grasped in its totality. It
exists in the linguistic competence of its users; it is what
Aristotle would call an actuality of the second kind, like
the soul, or like knowing how to swim when you are not
swimming. Through it I constitute myself a first-person
singular subject, by using this short word"!", which every·
one uses, and which in each seems to refer to something
different, yet the same. And through it I am brought into
relation with others-the ubiquitous "you" -and with the
public thing that is there for both you and me, a treasury
of knowledge and value transmitted through and embedded in language.
11
�We hear language spoken of as "living language", and
there is evidence enough to make' it more than a metaphor. Language reproduces itself from generation to generation, remaining relatively constant, yet with small mu-
tations, enough in fact to account for its growing and
evolving, leaving vestiges and fossils behind, and undergoing speciation as a result of migrations, like Darwin's
finches on the Galapagos Islands. A change here provokes
an adjustment there, for the whole is a complex of relations, mediating between a world and human organisms
that are a part of it. The way a word is used this year is, in
biological lingo, its phenotype; the deep and more abiding
sense in it is its genotype.
It is we, of course, who are accomplishing all this; but we
do not know how we accomplish it. It is mostly a collective,
autonomic kind of doing, like the building activities of ants
and termites, or the decision-making of bees. It takes generation after generation, but we are part of it whenever
and however we utter words or follow them in the sentences that we hear or read, whether lazily or intently,
whether with habitual acceptance or active inquiry. Always the words are found for us, and fitted with meanings
for us, by agents in the brain over which we exercise no
direct control. We can either float with the stream, sometimes a muddy tide of slang and jargon and cliche, or strug-
virile but, staggeringly, to world, suggesting that man makes
himself and his world.
The dichotomy, the tension, emerges in the The ban cycle of myths (see Table X). Following a suggestion of LeviStrauss, I am listing elements of it in chronological order
from left to right and from the top downward, but in
columns, to show the repetition of similar elements. Cadmus is sent off to seek his sister; he kills a dragon, a
chthonic monster, that will not permit men to live, and
sows the teeth of the dragon in the earth; from the teeth
sprout up armed men who kill one another, all except five
who become the ancestors of the The bans. In column I are
listed events of the myth in which blood relations seem to
be given too much importance. In column II are listed
murders of brothers by brother, of a father by a son: here
blood relations are brutally disregarded. Column I is thus
opposed to column II. In column Ill, chthonic monsters
that were killing off humans are themselves killed by men;
we can interpret this as a denial of the autochthonous origin of man, an assertion that man has now become self-
ering what it is that we mean as we proceed. We "articulate"; the word once meant division into small joints, then,
by an effortless transition, the speaking of sentences.
There are unexpected outcomes. We may find that our ut-
sufficient, himself responsible for his continued existence.
In column IV are listed the meanings of the names of the
Labdacidae, including Oedipus; the etymologies all indicate difficulty in walking or in standing upright. In myths
throughout the world, this difficulty in walking or standing
is characteristic of the creature that has just emerged out
of the earth; the names given in column IV thus constitute
an assertion of the autochthonous origin of man. Column
IV contradicts column III, just as column I contradicts
column II. The myth deals with a difficulty of one sort, not
by resolving it, but by juxtaposing it to another, parallel
type of opposition. Neither man's rootedness in nature nor
terance is ungrammatical or illogical; or we may discover
his transcendence of nature is unproblematic.
that the connection of ideas leads in directions we had not
The study of language and its acquisition by children indicates that our language has genetic foundations or roots.
These, however, have their fruition only under appropriate conditions, only through culture. Man is by nature a
cultural animal. He does not fabricate his linguistic culture
out of whole cloth.
On the one hand, it becomes conceivable that a universal grammar and semantics might be formulated, describing the species-specific features and presuppositions that
characterize human linguistic behavior universally. On
the other hand, nature's gift of language brings with it an
apparent freedom from deterministic necessity not previ-
gle cross stream or upstream. Sometimes we can, sensing
the possible presence of a meaning, attempt a raid on the
inarticulate; we can launch ourselves into speech, discov-
previously considered. In any case, phonetic, syntactical,
and semantic structures are being actualized in time, with-
out our quite knowing how. Yet we can strive after that
lucidity and precision which, when achieved, make language seem transparent to what there is.
I have already been carried beyond the two propositions
I set out to defend, and in doing so, I have moved into a
region of ambiguity. The question as to what is determined by nature, independently of us, and what is manmade, is an ancient and disturbing question, embedded in
old etymologies and myths.
(See Table IX). In more than one language, the word
''man" is derived from ''earth". So it is in Hebrew: Adam,
Hman", comes from the word for "ground". As shown in the
upper diagram, the IndoEuropean root for "earth" gives us
''man" and "human" as well as "humus". The notion here
is that of the autochthonous origin of humans, their origination from the earth itself; it is a notion found in early cultures all over the world. An implication would seem to be
that man is like a plant in his naturalness. On the other
hand, as shown in the lower diagram, the IndoEuropean
root "wiros", "man" or "the strong one", leads not only to
12
ously present. Most of our sentences are quite new; it is
uncommon for one sentence to come out the same as an-
other, though the thoughts be the same. Our utterances
are free of the control of detectable stimuli. The number
of patterns underlying the normal use of language, according to Chomsky, is orders of magnitude greater than the
seconds in a lifetime, and so cannot have been acquired
simply ··by conditioning. While the laws of generation of
sentences remain fixed and invariant, the specific manner
in which they are applied remains unspecified, open to
choice. The application can be appropriate. Articulate,
SUMMER 1983
�structurally organized signals can be raised to an expression of thought.
Achievement here is subject to change and old laws, and
it depends on a sensitivity to old meanings as well as new
'
possibilities. It requires both strength and submission.
./"
/'"
/1
Tidal volume
Time of inspiration
Time of inspiration
+ expiration
500-600cm 3
about 0.4
During Speech
!500-2400cm 3
about 0.13
Breaths per minute
18-20
4-20
Expiration
Continuous &
unimpeded
Periodically interrupted, with
increase in subglottal pressure
Electrical activity
in expiratory
muscles
Nil or very low
Chest & abdom- Mainly chest; slight desynina!, closely syn- chronization between chest
chronized
and abdominal muscles
Airways
Primarily nasal
-..
--.
\
'J
I
\
(
'
I
"\
/
'-J/
?-
I
f
I
\
\
'
I
I
)
I
\
'
"
.....
./
Active in inspira- Active in inspiration & in extion & nil during piration till expiratory muscles
expiration
become active
Musculatures in·
valved
--
J', "\""-
I
I
/
-~-
Nil or very low at start of
phonation; then increases
rapidly and continues active
to end of expiration
Electrical activity
in inspiratory
muscles
/
)
I
Breathing
/'
"\
I
I
(
Respiratory Adaptation in Speech
Quietly
"'-
,.
-
TABLE I
-
Primarily oral
TAIL-WAGGING DANCE
TABLE II
Species-specific Features of Human Speech
1. Phonematization
''Morphemes":
the smallest meaningful units into which an
utterance can be divided.
Examples:
water
spick and span
"er" in "whiter", "taller", etc.
''Phoneme":
the smallest distinctive unit of sound functioning within the sound system of a language to
make a difference.
Examples:
/pi vs. /b/
/t/ vs. /d/
FIGURE 1
I
/
Phonematization: all morphemes in all natural human languages
are divisible into phonemes.
2. Concatenation:
\
single morphemes are strung together into
sequences, rather than being used in isolation.
3. Grammar or
in no human language are morphemes strung
together in purely random order.
Examples (Chomsky):
Grammatical: "colorless green ideas sleep
furiously"
Ungrammatical: "furiously sleep ideas green
colorless"
Syntactical
Structure:
ROUND DANCE
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
13
�TABLE III
TABLEV
Comparative Weights of Brain and Body in Humans,
Including Nanocephalic Dwarf, Chimpanzees,
and Monkeys
Adult Expansions of Child Pronouncements
Age
BodyWt. Brain Wt.
(kg)
(kg)
Human (male)
Human (male)
Human (male)
Nanocephalic
dwarf
2·112
IJ.)/2
18
12
J3.1/2
45
64
13·112
3
adult
12-l/2
47
3-l/2
12.3
34
47
34
yes
yes
yes
yes
34
no
no
no
1.100
1.350
1.350
0.400
Chimp (male)
Chimp (female)
Rhesus monkey
Speech
Acquisition
0.400
0.450
0.090
adult
104
40
Mother's Expansions
(Additions circled)
Baby highchair
Ratio
(Body:
Brain)
Utterances of Child
Baby(is in thCihighchair
Mommy eggnog
Mommy~eggnog
Eve lunch
Eve )is havingjlunch
Mommy sandwich
Mommy\'ll have :1\sandwich
~satlun thdwall
Sat wall
Throw Daddy
Throwlit toiDaddy
Pick glove
Pick~glove@ji]
TABLE IV
TABLE VI
Imitations by Adam and Eve, Two Years of Age
Plural Inflection
Model Utterance (Parent)
Child's Imitation
Tank car
Wait a minute
Tank car
Wait a minute
Daddy's brief case
Fraser will be unhappy
He's going out
That's an old-time train
It's not the same dog as Pepper
No, you can't write on Mr. Cromer's shoe
Daddy brief case
Fraser unhappy
He go out
Old-time train
Dog Pepper
Singular
mouse
foot
vs.
Plural
mouses
foots
or:
feet
man
feets
mans
Write Cromer shoe
Contentives
Nouns: Daddy, Fraser, Pepper, Cromer;
tank car, minute, brief case, train, dog, shoe
Verbs: wait, go, write
Adjectives: unhappy, old-time
Functors:
the
the
the
the
the
the
the
Regularization of irregular forms:
possessive inflection 's
modal auxiliary will
progressive inflection -ing
contraction of the auxiliary verb is
preposition on
articles the and an
modal auxi1iary can
Words ending in sibilants
First Stage:
Possible
Second Stage:
Third Stage:
box (as well as horse, match, judge, etc.) treated as both
singular and plural
bok vs. boks, in analogy with normal "s" pluralization,
replaces box vs. boxes
after box vs. boxes is produced, then we also get foot
vs.footses, hand vs. handses
Past Tense Inflection
-------------corned
----------gocd
go
come----------------------went
came
----------doed
do........______
........______did
14
---------- buyed
buy
------------bought
SUMMER 1983
�TABLE VII
TIME I:
FIGURE 2
Noun Phrases with Generative Rule
A coat
*A celery
That Adam
That knee
More coffee
*More nut
*Two sock
Two shoes
*Two tinker toy
*A Becky
*A hands
The top
My Mommy
My stool
Chomskian Phrase Markers
Big boot
Poor man
SURFACE STRUCTURE
Little top
Dirty knee
Sentence (S)
~
1\
Subject
Predicate
(NAse)
M
a, big, dirty, little, more, my, poor, that, the, two
Adjective
Noun
j
j
Invisible
N Adam, Becky, boot, coat, coffee, knee, man, Mommy, nut, sock,
God
stool, tinker toy, top, etc.
TIME II:
Subdivision of Modifier class with Generative Rules
A. Privileges peculiar to articles
Obtained
A blue flower
*A my pencil
Rule: NP-+Art
+M +N
(Not:
NP~M
Obtained
Not Obtained
*That a horse
*That a blue flower
*Ungrammatical in adult English
+N
the visible world
Sentence (S)
~
Predicate
Subject
~
God
~
S
Verb
Subject
Object
I~
I
Created
j
j
j
God
is
the world
invisible
S
~
Copula Pred. Adj.
Subject
j
the world
Pred. Adj.
Copula
*A that horse
*A that blue flower
*Blue a that flower
Rule: NP- Dem +Art+ M
j
created
+art+ N)
B. Privileges peculiar to demonstrative pronouns
Object
DEEP STRUCTURE
Not obtained
*Blue a flower
*Nice a nap
*Your a car
*My a pencil
A nice cap
*A your car
Verb
/
j
is
j
visible
FIGURE 3
"They are boring Students": Two Interpretations
INTERPRETATION
A
Sentence
~
Predicate
Subject
I
V~~tive
Pronoun
j
They
Copula
j
are
Adjective
j
boring
Noun
j
students
INTERPRETATION B
Sentence
~
Subject
I
Predicate
~ect~
Pronoun
Aux
I
I
They
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
are
Progressive
I
boring
Noun
\
students
15
�TABLE VIII
TABLE IX
Evidence for "Deep" Structure
Some Etymologies
guman
deep structure different:
Surface structures different,
deep structures the same:
{Germanic)
John is eager to please.
Surface structures the same,
[
John is easy to please.
Recently seventeen elephants
trampled on my summer house.
dhghem -------~~--- gumen
(IndoEuropean)
(Old English)
= "earth"
] ="man"
homo, humanitas-- human
(Latin)
(English)
My summer home was recently
[ trampled on by seventeen
elephants.
·
humus
humus
(Latin)
(English)
= "mould", "ground"
Visual patterns recognized as similar,
although no point-to-point correspondence exists between them.
chth6n -----chthonic----autochthonous
(Greek)
(English)
= "from the earth
= ''earth"
= "of the earth"
itself"
v i r - - - - - - - - virile
(Latin)
(English)
.
~="man"
WITOS~
(IndoEuropean)
"man"
~
~;rmanic, Old
~!n?.~~~", ~
"the strong
one"
alt,old~
weorold world
(AngloSaxon) (English)
= "age of man",
"world"
(AngloSaxon)
= "age"
16
SUMMER 1983
�TABLE X
II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
III
Blood rela-
Blood rela-
Chthonic
tions overemphasized
tions underemphasized
monsters that
would not
permit men to
live are slain
by men
IV
Difficulties in
walking
straight and
standing up-
right
Cadmus seeks
his sister
Europa, rav-
ished by Zeus
Cadmus kills
the dragon
The Sparti (the
sown dragon's
teeth) kill one
another
Labdacus
(Laius' father)
="lame"
Oedipus kills his
Laius (Oedipus'
father) ~ "left-
father, Laius
sided"
Oedipus kills
the Sphinx
Oedipus =
"swollen-foot"
Oedipus marries his mother,
Jocasta
Eteocles and
Polyneices,
brothers, kill
one another
Antigone buries
(In the preparation of this lecture I made use of the following books: the book by E. H. Lenneberg, as well as the
book edited by him, was particularly useful.)
Emile Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, Coral
Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1971.
Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, Mass.: M.LT. Press, 1965.
___, Cartesian Linguistics, New York: Harper & Row,
1966.
___ ,Language and Mind, New York: Harcourt, Brace,
and World, 1968.
David Crystal, Linguistics, Penguin, 1971.
Karl von Frisch, The Dance Language and Orientation of
Bees, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard,
1967.
Kurt Goldstein, Language and Language Disturbances,
New York, 1948.
E. H. Lenneberg, The Biological Foundations for Language, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967.
E. H. Lenneberg (ed.), New Directions in the Study of Language, Cambridge, Mass.: M.LT. Press, 1966.
Martin Lindauer, Communication Among Social Bees,
New Yark: Atheneum, 1967.
john Lyons, Noam Chomsky, New Yark: Viking Press,
1970.
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed.
Bally & Sechehaye; tr. Baskin; New York, 1959.
B. F. Skinner, Verbal Behavior, New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts, 1957.
her brother,
Polyneices, de-
spite prohibition
Column I : Column II : : Column IV : Column III
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
17
�SOLSTICE ON THE
FIRST WATCH
There is no magic. What we perceive
as lightning wending its electric way
along the surface of the skin
is only the silent, whispered dance
of chemicals and electric fields
that move like ocean waves through us
in our private sea.
Then those lights in the sky,
translucent curtains of fire
ice-green and red, resolve themselves
when we focus as abstractions
of the abstract impulse of nerve
on nerve in mindless dark.
Yet these movements sometimes
overwhelm our doubts with a heat,
shimmering in the way that light
walks on the surface of water
like the original solstice did,
When the doubting soldiers saw
something move with the dim hours
of the first watch along the edge
of the sea, then out on it, a figure
of a singular man walking, the image
Of water touching the feet. Rumours
floated lightly on the tongue and words
took root that something happened.
What they held as true was true,
But the nets of words cast along
some shore of meaning circumscribed,
And the road from there
leading into the endless stars
and the mountains
cast us into a land
not quite our own.
J.
H. BEALL
James H. Beall is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, Md.
18
SUMMER 1983
�The Ground of Nature:
Shakespeare, Language, and Politics
Paul A. Cantor
I
In recent years, several critics, myself included, have
been 'trying to call attention to the importance of politics
as a subject in Shakespeare's plays. 1 This attempt to expand the scope of Shakespeare criticism has met with
considerable resistance, Sceptics have argued that
Shakespeare was not at all interested in politics, he was interested only in character or psychology, or in presenting
certain religious beliefs, or in developing a tragic worldview, and so on, Generally the counterarguments have
taken the form: "Shakespeare was not interested in politics, he was interested in X," where X is some subject
thought of as excluding political concerns. But most recently a new challenge to a political approach to Shakespeare has begun to loom on the horizon. Instead of offering an alternative subject as the focus of Shakespeare's
interest, this approach denies that his plays are about anything at all, that is, about anything other than themselves.
Remaking Shakespeare on the model of twentieth-century
literature, this approach views his works as fundamentally
self-reflexive, not attempting to represent anything in the
real world but instead calling attention to their own fictiveness as works of art. According to this view, any attempt to
study politics as a subject in Shakespeare would be hopelessly naive, based as it is on an antiquated and outmoded
mimetic theory of art.
I am referring of course to the most fashionable of current schools of literary criticism, deconstruction. OrigiPaul Cantor is a member of the English faculty at the University of Virginia. His new book, Creature and Creator: Myth-making and English Romanticism, will be published by Cambridge University Press in March
1984.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
nally applied primarily to nineteenth- and twentiethcentury literature, this form of analysis is gradually being
extended to the interpretation of all historical periods,
including the Renaissance, According to this view,
Shakespeare's plays are written in language, and language
is a self-contained system, an endless play of signifiers,
Hence if Shakespeare's plays are about anything, they are
about language itself. As J- Hillis Miller writes of literature
in general:
If meaning in language rises not from the reference of signs to
something outside words but from differential relations
among words themselves, ... then the notion of a literary
text which is validated by its one-to-one correspondence to
some social, historical, or psychological reality can no longer
be taken for granted. No language is purely mimetic or referential, not even the most utilitarian speech. The specifically
literary form oflanguage, however, may be defined as a structure of words which in one way or another calls attention to
this fact, while at the same time allowing for its own inevitable misreading as a "mirroring of reality." 2
From the point of view of deconstruction, then, a political
reading of Shakespeare can only be a misreading. The
plays have no political meaning; indeed they have no determinate meaning at alL All the details that might cause
us to wonder-inconsistencies, contradictions, seeming
errors that call out for analysis to uncover some deeper significance-all these puzzling aspects of the plays merely
work to keep us from coming up with a coherent and univocal interpretation and thereby to preserve the work's indeterminacy of meaning.
Miller, for example, has written an elaborate analysis of
what most scholars have been content to dismiss as a
printer's error in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida: the
19
�appearance of the name Ariachne in one of Troilus'
speeches, which seems to be a conflation of two names
from Greek mythology, Ariadne and Arachne. The intrusive i provokes Miller into a frenzied fantasia of epistemological speculation:
Slip of the tongue or of the pen? Ignorance on Shakespeare's
part? Error of the scribe or of the typesetter who has put in
one letter too many? The extra i ... produce[s} a gap in the
meaning and call[s] attention to the material base of signs,
marks on the page which the eye interprets . ... The little i in
"Ariachnes" has the effect of a bit of sand in a salad or of a
random sound in a symphony, the flautist dropping his flute,
the snap of a breaking violin string. . . . The conflation in
"Ariachnes" of two myths which are and are not congruent is
precisely in agreement with what happens in Troilus' speech,
namely, an anguished confrontation with the subversive possibility of dialogue, reason divided hopelessly against itself . ... The principle of identity is the basic assumption of
monological metaphysics . ... The "whole shebang" of Occidental metaphysics is, the reader can see, brought into question in Troilus' experience and in his speech. 3
By the time Miller has finished deconstructing, the unity
of Shakespeare himself has disintegrated:
One ofthe certainties which dissolves with the undecidability
of context ... is the concept of authorizing authorship, or
indeed of selfhood generally in the sense of an ultimate generative source for any act of language. There is not any "Shakespeare himself." "Shakespeare" is an effect of the text, which
depersonalizes, disunifies . ... The works of Shakespeare are
so comprehensive and so profound an exploration of the possibilities inherent in the English language as it inherits the
concepts, figures, and stories of Occidental culture, that it
seems they must have been written by a committee of geniuses.4
Faced with the dissolution of Shakespeare himself, we can
hardly find time to mourn the loss of the mere meaning of
his plays.
One hopes that Miller is being playful in this particular
essay, turning in a virtuoso performance as he makes an
epistemological mountain out of a textual molehill. But
however playful the deconstructive approach to Shakespeare may be, it will have serious and lasting consequences if it succeeds in diverting us from the genuinely
challenging task of thinking through the authentic problems in Shakespeare's texts. We have not yet been flooded
with articles and books deconstructing Shakespeare, but
one senses that it is only a matter of time. To try to ward
off the damage that might be done we might consider
whether Shakespeare himself offers any thoughts on the
nature of language, thoughts which might well prove to be
a better guide to his plays than those of contemporary critics. Unfortunately, we have no theoretical writings of
Shakespeare to which we might refer to establish his own
view oflanguage or ofliterary meaning. When one turns to
the plays for a clue, one finds statements of precisely the
20
mimetic theory of art which contemporary critics despise.
Consider, for example, Hamlet's famous advice to the
players:
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this
special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of na·
ture: for any thing so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing,
whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as
'twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time
his form and pressure. 5
Hamlet's invocation of nature as a standard, his naive faith
that theatre has a purpose, his conventional use of the mirror metaphor for art, above all his idea that art must serve a
moral function, all of these attitudes would suggest to con·
temporary critics that Hamlet should have dropped out of
school at Wittenberg and headed off immediately with
Laertes to study in Paris. But we can never simply identify
Shakespeare with any of his characters, and thus even if
Hamlet may be an unreconstructed realist, we can say
nothing about the epistemology of his author.
Does language itself ever become thematic in Shakespeare? Normally his language seems transparent: we look
through the characters' words to what they are talking
about. But is there any place in which Shakespeare's language calls attention to itself, not as all great poetic language does through its beauty, but simply as language as
such? For language itself to become an object of our attention, it must get in our way, we must stumble over it on our
way to the things it normally represents. I will argue that
the most self-conscious use of language in Shakespeare is
to be found in one of his most political plays, Henry V.
What I have in mind is Act Ill, scene iv, of this play, the
central scene of its central act, a conversation between the
French princess Katherine and an old gentlewoman
named Alice. In one of the most peculiar scenes in all of
Shakespeare, we suddenly bump into the brute fact oflanguage. The scene is almost entirely in French. As such, it
violates one of the most basic linguistic conventions of
drama. When portraying foreigners on stage, dramatists
take the liberty of having them speak, not their native language, but the language of the play's audience. There are,
of course, variations of this convention. Sometimes more
or less awkward devices are used to supply translations.
But basically, even in today's science fiction films, Americans can timewarp to distant galaxies and still find twoheaded green insects speaking fluent twentieth-century
English. Even within Henry V, Shakespeare normally follows this convention of having aliens speak our language.
Act Ill, scene vii, takes place entirely among Frenchmen
and yet the conversation is conducted solely in flawless
English. We are in fact so accustomed to this dramatic
convention that we are hardly aware of its oddness.
If there is any scene in all of Shakespeare which calls
attention to the artificiality of dramatic representation, it
is, then, Act Ill, scene iv, of Henry V. By violating one of
SUMMER 1983
�the basic conventions of drama, it reminds us of how conventional drama is. Suddenly shopked by hearing the
French people we see on stage actually speakmg French,
we ought to reflect on how all our lives we have unthinkingly accepted foreigners speaking English in the theatre.
If that is not enough to qualify as a self-conscious use of
language, this scene is itself a little language lesson.
Katherine is trying to learn English from Alice, who has
been in England and can instruct the French princess in a
vocabulary she may soon need to know. In fact, this is the
only reason Shakespeare can get away with presenting an
entire scene in French. Katherine keeps pointing to vari~
ous parts of her body and asking Alice what they are called
in English. It should take an audience only a few moments
to catch on to what is transpiring, and indeed this scene
plays quite well in the theatre_ The basic trick is fairly obvious and the fact that Alice does manage to get out the
names for the various body parts in her broken English ensures that even the densest audience will not get lost.
Still, it is worth noting that in the one scene in which
Shakespeare most clearly calls attention to language as
such, he specifically calls attention to its referential aspect.
Act III, scene iv, works only because language is not a selfcontained system, but makes reference to an external
world. The naively mimetic act of pointing is at the center
of this scene. Shakespeare even seems to dwell on the one
quality of language most disputed by contemporary theorists: its translatibility. His characters make an easy transition from French to English because both languages refer
to the same world of nature. The entire language lesson
revolves around something quite ordinary and natural: the
parts of the human body. The point seems to be that the
body provides a natural common ground for human understanding. All human beings have basically the same
bodies: thus on the level of the body they can discourse
with one another smoothly, even moving from one set of
conventional names to another without misunderstandmg.
But Katherine's English lesson does not come off completely without a hitch. When she goes to learn the English word chin, she mispronounces it sin, and when she
hears Alice say the English words foot and gown, she mistakes them for two indecent words in French, in fact the
French equivalents of the two prime four-letter words in
English. Shakespeare evidently has no illusions about the
complete translatability of one language into another.
When one moves beyond the basic level of the body to
moral significances, things very quickly become more
complicated. Chin becomes sin: what is perfectly ordinary
and natural in one language can become distorted into
something objectionable in another. One language's propriety can become another language's profanity, as happens with Katherine's misunderstanding of the word
gown. Here what does the covering in English becomes in
French what is supposed to be covered up. The seen becomes the obscene.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
II
If my reading is correct, one may still wonder: what is a
scene about language doing in the middle of one of
Shakespeare's history plays? Henry Vis a play about a great
English monarch who tried to conquer France- With Act
III, scene iv, Shakespeare subtly suggests that the problem
of conquering France is ultimately a problem of language.
Henry wishes to unite the English and the French nations,
but considering the fact that they do not speak the same
language, that is not going to be an easy task_ On a very
low level-the level of the body-English and French do
translate easily into each other. That suggests that the English and the French could be united only on the basis of
the material concerns which all human beings share, the
concerns they all have by virtue of having the same bodies.
In Act III, scene iv, Katherine terminates her language lesson by saying (in French): "That's enough for one time;
let's go to dinner" (III.iv-61-62)- She turns quickly from
the strain of her intellectual pursuits to an activity which
can satisfy her body's needs rather than her mind's. As we
see, when Katherine tries to learn another language, her
enquiries center around the body and its basic needs: food,
clothing, sex. Languages translate easily into one another
only when they remain on the level of the lowest common
denominator of human needs. When Katherine moves beyond purely material concerns, and touches upon issues
like the profanity of language, blunders start to creep into
her translations. Human beings evidently are not as easily
united in their spiritual concerns as they are in their material.
Thus Act III, scene iv, portrays comically a very serious
problem facing Henry V_ In many respects, all men do categorize the world the same way, and the different names
they attach to things do not lead to misunderstandings_
But when men divide the world into categories which embody evaluations, such as the decent and the indecent or
the sacred and the profane, they often differ fundamentally as to where they draw the line. When Ancient Pistol
has a French soldier at his mercy, the frightened man calls
upon his deity: "0 Seigneur Dieu!" But Pistol thinks that
his opponent has merely introduced himself: "0 Signieur
Dew should be a gentleman" (IV_iv.6-7)_ Pistol unintentionally secularizes the French Dieu into the English Dew_
Once again, this seems to be merely a comic error, but it
does point to a deeper problem: the French and English
worship different gods. To be sure, on the surface they
share a common Christianity, but Shakespeare has gone
out of his way to differentiate the two regimes, even in
terms of their beliefs. The god of Henry V turns out to be a
"God of battles" (IV.i.289), providing him with the basis
for leading his citizen army into war. Judging by Act III,
scene vii, what the French worship is their horses and
their mistresses, and in precisely that order (IILvii.39-44).
The French in Henry V put their faith in chivalry, which
helps to explain why they are defeated by the more practi-
21
�cal and down-to-earth English. The misunderstandings
which occur when the French and English try to speak to
each other in Henry V are not merely the result of ignorance of each others' languages, for their languages embody basic disagreements in their values and beliefs.
These disagreements may well be what makes one people distinct from another, what gives them their national
character, and as such they are political disagreements. To
unite the French and the English, Henry V would thus
have to disregard everything that makes the French
French and the English English, in short everything
that makes either nation interesting as a people. When
Shakespeare finally shows Henry trying to unite the two
kingdoms in Act V, he presents the task concretely as a
problem of language. Henry must woo Katherine to be his
queen, and that requires learning her language: "It is as
easy for me, Kate, to conquer the kingdom as to speak so
much more French. I shall never move thee in French, unless it be to laugh at me" (V.ii.l84-87). The dialogue between the English king and the French princess does take
many comic turns because of the potential for misunderstanding as they grope for a linguistic common ground:
K. Hen. Fair Katherine, and most fair,
Will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms,
Such as will enter at a lady's ear,
And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?
Kath. Your Majesty shall mock at me, I cannot speak your
England.
K. Hen.
0 fair Katherine, if you will love me soundly with
your French heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with your English tongue. Do you like me, Kate?
Kath. Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell wat is "like me."
K. Hen. An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an angel.
[V.ii.98-ll0]
The result of this effort to span the two nations is a kind
of pidgin English and a pidgin French. Two of the richest
and most complex of languages must be radically reduced
and simplified for communication to take place between
Henry and Katherine. It is certainly unusual for Shakespeare to present a romantic dialogue between a king and
a future queen entirely in prose. And yet Shakespeare evidently realized that it is precisely the poetry of love that
would not survive the effort to move between two languages. Henry is a very prosaic suitor:
Henry is obviously no Romeo, and in wooing his Juliet his
linguistic resources seem meager indeed. And his love suit
ultimately elicits a kind of bastardized blend of English
and French:
K. Hen. Come, your answer in broken music; for thy voice is
music and thy English is broken; therefore, queen of all,
Katherine, break thy mind to me in broken English-wilt
thou have me?
Kath. Dat is as it shall please de roi mon pere.
[V.ii.243-47]
We see here in linguistic terms the futility of Henry's effort to bring France and England together. Henry is overreaching himself. He hopes for some kind of grand synthesis of England and France that will enable his dynasty to
conquer the world:
Shall not thou and I, between Saint Denis and Saint George,
compound a boy, half French, half English, that shall go to
Constantinople and take the Turk by the beard?
[V.ii.206-209]
But the practical result of Henry's efforts would be a bland
mixture of French and English characteristics, reduced to
the lowest common denominator and hence losing sight of
all the higher ideals of either nation. Even if Henry's early
death had not destroyed his hopes, Shakespeare suggests
that there was a basic flaw in Henry's plan for producing a
superkingdom out of two linguistically distinct nations.
Henry's experience in his own country should have
taught him the difficulties of spanning a linguistic gulf.
One measure of Henry's legitimate achievement is that
Shakespeare presents him as the king, not just of England,
but of Great Britain. One of the keys to his military success is that he is able to lead not just Englishmen against
the French, but Irish, Welsh, and Scottish troops as well,
soldiers from remote corners of his realm who seem to
have an almost pagan fierceness that gives the British
army its strength in battle. But the mixture of men Henry
leads is not wholly harmonious. They do not always speak
the same language, or at least they do not always speak it
with the same accent. This often leads to tension among
the troops. In Henry IV, Part One, Shakespeare suggests
the potential for disharmony among the nationalities that
go to make up Great Britain, and presents the problem in
terms of language. The rebel conspiracy almost falls apart
as the Englishman Hotspur and theW elshman Glen dower
question each other's linguistic competence:
I' faith, Kate, my wooing is fit for thy understanding. I am
glad thou canst speak no better English, for if thou couldst,
thou wouldst find me such a plain king that thou wouldst
think I had sold my farm to buy my crown. I know no ways to
mince it in love, but directly to say "I love you" . ... Marry, if
you would put me to verses ... Kate, why you undid me . ...
I speak to thee plain soldier. If thou canst love me for this,
take me! if not, to say to thee that I shall die, is true; but for
thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love thee too.
[V.ii.l22-27, 132-33, 149-52]
22
Hot.
Let me understand you then,
Speak it in Welsh.
Glend. I can speak English, lord, as well as you,
For I was train'd up in the English court,
Where being but young I framed to the harp
Many an English ditty lovely well,
And gave the tongue a helpful ornament,
A virtue that was never seen in you.
[Ill.i.ll7-l24]
SUMMER 1983
�As Glendower shows, the non-English members of the
British nation are very sensitive to the charge that they do
not know the English language, and feel constrained to
point out that they can in fact use it better than a native
speaker.
The same issue comes up in Henry V, in a scene in
which an Irishman, a Welshman, and a Scotsman quarrel
over the conduct of the wars in France. The Irishman will
not abide any ethnic slurs from a Welshman:
Fluellen. Captain Macmorris, I think, look you, under your
correction, there is not many of your nationMacmorris. Of my nation? What ish my nation? Ish a villain,
and a basterd, and a knave, and a rascal. What ish my nation? Who talks of my nation?
[III.ii.l20-24]
One of the political lessons of Henry V is that all the nationalities that go to make up Great Britain must learn to
put aside their linguistic differences and to recognize their
common interest. This is certainly the point of the humiliation of the Englishman, Ancient Pistol, at the hands of
the Welshman, Fluellen:
You thoUght, because he could not speak English in the native garb, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel.
You find it otherwise, and henceforth let a Welsh correction
teach you a good English condition.
[V.i.75-79]
Henry encourages this kind of linguistic peace among his
subjects. One aspect of his genius as a monarch is the way
he generally understands the connection between language and politics. He has made sure that he can speak the
language of all his people, and this ability stands him in
good stead when he needs to lead them in wartime. He can
deal with his troops on a man-to-man basis:
For forth he goes, and visits all his host,
Bids them good morrow with a modest smile,
And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen.
[IY.Cho.32-34]
Even as Prince Hal, Henry understood the importance
of language to a king. One of the reasons he offers for his
truancy from court is his desire to get out among his people and learn how they speak:
I have sounded the very base-string of humility. Sirrah, I am
sworn brother to a leash of drawers, and can call them all by
their christen names, as Tom, Dick, and Francis . ... They
call drinking deep, dyeing scarlet, and when you breathe in
your watering, they cry "hem!" and bid you play it off. To
conclude, I am so good a proficient in one quarter of an hour,
that I can drink with any tinker in his own language during
my life.
[II.iv.5-8, 15-20]
It may seem strange to hear a future king priding himself
on his knowledge of London slang. But Hal puts this
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
knowledge to good use once he becomes Henry V. He
might not have overestimated his ability to absorb France
into his kingdom if he had realized the implications of the
fact that he lacks such familiarity with the slang of the
Paris underworld. Henry has a difficult enough time making one nation out of people who speak the same language
with different accents. But to create one nation out of
men who do not even speak the same language is beyond
even Henry's political skill.
III
At first sight, Henry V seems to deal exclusively with political and military subject matter. But as we have seen,
language as a theme is surprisingly pervasive in the play.
The reason of course is that language itself turns out to be
a political theme. As Shakespeare shows in Act III, scene
iv, though language provides a natural common ground for
human beings, it also tends to reflect the conventional differences which separate them, differences rooted in the
different regimes under which they Jive and hence political differences. Language thus becomes a political problem, and any effective leader like Henry V must learn to
use language as a political tool. Falstaff's great contribution to Henry's education is to teach him the art of rhetoric, how to bend language to achieve a desired effect.
Henry V opens with the English court using all their linguistic skill to fabricate a pretext for invading France. By
an artful interpretation of the French Salic law, the English establish Henry's claim to the French throne. Still, language is not totally pliant, even in the hands of a master
rhetorician such as Henry V. Thus ultimately language
sets limits to politics, or at least one may say that a political
man can ignore linguistic problems only at the peril of his
political achievement.
If one asks why of all Shakespeare's plays, Henry V displays the greatest self-consciousness about language, the
answer seems to be that only in an environment of competing languages does one begin to notice the importance
oflanguage as such. With the clash of English and French,
or even the rivalry of various dialects of English within the
British nation, one starts to grasp the distinction between
nature and convention in language. As Act III, scene iv,
suggests, there could be no communication among human
beings if language were not somehow rooted in the world
of nature. Reference to the substratum of nature is what
makes possible translation from one language to another.
But free and perfect translation is not always possible, because language is not simply natural to man, the way animal cries are innate and species-specific. Men have to create their languages for themselves, and in the process end
up introducing conventional distinctions into their language systems. Unlike other beings we know, humans use
their languages to dispute; their languages convey not just
information and emotion, but opinion. Shakespeare seems
to set up Act Ill, scene iv, to move between the natural
23
�and conventional poles. of language. We travel from the
simplest act of naming things in nature to the complex cultural reaction of shame and indignation. As we see, m a
given language, the name for a perfectly natural bodily
function or organ can in fact become an obscenity.
Perhaps more than any other, the category of the obscene reveals what is distinctive about human language,
because it shows the link between language and social
mores. Good language can become a matter of good manners. Princess Katherine's reaction tu what she hears as
the prime curse words of her language shows her to be a
proper and well-bred child of her culture: "0 Lord, those
are bad words,, wicked, coarse, and immodest, and not
proper for ladies of honor to use. I wouldn't utter those
words before French gentlemen for all the world"
(IJJ.iv.52-56). For Katherine, the words are unacceptable
in French society, but English society is evidently another
matter and she goes on to repeat them as she reviews her
whole lesson. She derives her sense of linguistic propriety
from her own regime, and., strangely enough, her modesty
seems to cease at its borders. In general, human language
is bound up with human sociability. Men would not create
languages if they were not social beings and they constitute themselves as societies in part through !helf languages, embodying whatever is distinctive in the way they
view their world in the way they carve it up into linguistic
categories. That is why language is ultimately a political
phenomenon, and even something over which men might
go to war. 6
We obviously cannot expect to have exhausted the relation of politics and language in Shakespeare by examining
one scene or even one play. Still, I hope I have done
enough to suggest that in his view of language, Shakespeare is closer to Aristotle than to jacques Derrida. In
fact, the connection I have been trying to make between
language and politics is adumbrated by Aristotle in his Politics, when he establishes that political life is natural to
man l>y pointing to the fact of human speech:
Now, that man is more of a political animal than bees or any
other gregarious animals is evident. Nature, as we often say,
makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she
has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice
is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found
in other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of
pleasure and pain and the intimation of them to one another,
and no further), the power of speech is intended to set forth
24
the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the
just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he
alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and
the like, and the association of living beings who have this
sense makes a. family and a polisJ
Act III, scene iv, of Henry V calls attention to just this political aspect of language, the way it reflects the conventional distinctions which are the heart of a given polis or
regime. The fact that Shakespeare sets the one scene of
his which is most self-conscious about language in a larger
political context suggests that he shares Aristotle's view of
the bond between the fact that men are political animals
and the fact that tfuey speak the kind of languages they do.
Thus if anyone were to question a political approach to
Shakespeare by claiming that his plays are not about pohtics but about language, I think we could comfortably answer solely on the basis of Henry V: if Shakespeare's plays
are about language, then they are still about politics, because for Shakespeare language itself is political in nature.
At the very least, I hope I have shown that no abstract theory of language, least of all one which views language as a
self-contained or self-referential system, can serve for understanding Shakespeare's plays. Even when Shakespeare
calls attention to language as language, he does so in a living human context, one in which language plays a fundamental role in the complex interaction of man, society,
and the world of nature.
1. See, for example, the pioneering work by Allan Bloom and Harry Jaffa,
Shahespeare's Politics, New York: Basic Books, 1964. See aJso II_lY Shahespeare's R'ome: Republic and Empire, Ithaca: Cornell Umvers1ty Press,
1976 and the collection of essays edited by John Alvis and Thomas West,
Shakespeare as Political Thinker, Durham: Carolina Academic Press,
1981.
2. J. Hillis Miller, Charles Dichens and Georg~ Cru_ihshank, ~os ~ngeles:
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Umvers1ty of Cahforma, 1971,
pp. 1-2.
.
.
3. J. Hillis Miller, "Ariachne's Broken Woof," Georgw Rev~ew, 31, 1977,
pp. 45-47.
4. Miller, "Ariachne's Broken Woof," p. 59.
5. III.ii.17-24. All quotations from Shakespeare are taken from G. Blakemore Evans, ed., The Riverside Shakespeare, Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1974.
6. On the connection between war and language, see All's Well That
Ends Well, IV.i, where the enemy is seen as the barbarian, the man who
does not speak an intelligible language.
. .
.
7. Politics, 1253a7-20. Quoted in the translation of BenJamm Jowett m
Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle, New York: Random
House, 1941, p. 1129.
SUMMER 1983
�Nominal Autobiography
in Shakespeare's Sanne ts
Margreta de Grazia
Once upon a time, in the last decade 0f the eighteenth
century, there lived a reportedly lackluster young man,
named William-Henry Ireland, who repeatedly heard his
father say that he would' give half his substantial library for
the possession of a single signature by Shakespeare_ Eager
to please· his father, William-Henry began leafing through
16th century papers and documents but he could not, alas,
locate a Shakespeare signature. He consequently did the
next best thing: he made one himself He took a facsimile of
one of Shakespeare's signatures from a contemporary edition of Shakespeare and set about reproducing it on old
parchment with an ink concocted of three fluids which,
when held a few seconds before the fire, dried to look a
venerable 200 years old_
Thus begins the story of the most famous of Shakespearean forgers, who, incidentally, fired by this initial success,
when on to produce, or rather fraudulently reproduce,
promissory notes, a profession of faith, love verses to Anne
Hathaway, and most impressive of all a manuscript of
the complete King Lear-all in Shakespeare's own hand.
There is much of interest in this account: the dull youth's
pathetic need to impress his overbearing father, the eager
gullibility ofsuch eminent men of letters as Tames Boswell,
who kissed the forgeries and counted himself blessed to
have lived long enough to see them, and the bardolatry that
even today makes the William-Henry Ireland forgeries-almost as valuable as the Shakespearean originals would have
been-had they existed_ What is of interest to me here,
however, is only one particular of this account: the importance conferred upon Shakespeare's signature; the desire
Margreta de Grazia· received her doctorate from Princeton University
and teaches English at the University of Pennsylvania. Last year she was
a Fellow at the National Humanities Center working on her forthcoming
book on language, selfhood, and Shakespeare's Sonnets before and after
the eighteenth century.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
to possess Shakespeare's name written out in his own hand.
Why should Shakespeare's signature be relevant to a discussion of Shakespeare's autobiography? The answer is
quite simple: a signature is a form of self-representation, a
way of making oneself present in writing. So too is autobiography. Signatures and autobiographies are each forms of
writing in the first person. Curiously enough, the prizing of
signatures coincides with the emergence of the term autobiography: both take place in the decades around 1800.
(The OED credits Southey with the first use of the term in
English in 1809), When the way in which a man writes his
name (his signature) changes, so too does the way in which
he writes about himself (his autobiography). As I hope to
indicate, the way in which a man writes his name changes
after the sixteenth century and that change becomes visible by the end of the eighteenth century when Shakespeare's signature becomes a precious collector's item. And
the way a man writes about his life changes no less radically
after the sixteenth century as I hope to show in my discussion of the only work we have by Shakespeare written in
the first person: his Sonnets.
Shakespeare would have been utterly baffled by the coveting of his signature, the coveting that drove WilliamHenry into literary fraud. There is no evidence that Elizabethans were interested in signatures except for the
practical purpose of identifying oneself as the writer of a
message or of contracting oneself to the terms of a legal
document Independent of the letter or document on
which it appeared, independent of its personal, official, or
legal context, a signature had no importance. A signature
alone on a blank piece of paper would have been meaningless and worthless, no matter how illustrious the signator.
In fact, the name signed was not even necessarily written
by the bearer of the name. It was apparently common prac-
tice for one man to sign for another without acknowledging
the substitution. Secretaries, for example, often signed the
25
�names of their employers on both personal letters and official documents. Walsingham's secretary did, so did Lord
Grey's; a secretary signed Essex's name on confidential letters to the Queen. Nor were signatures on legal transactions necessarily authentic. A clerk taking down or copying
a deposition might himself sign it with the name of the
deponent. A witness to the making of a will might himself
sign it. in the name of the testator, without indicating that
he had done so. A man's signature then was not exclusively
in his own hand in the sixteenth century. In this respect, it
was transferrable, like that other mark by which a man of
means might identify himself: the signet or seal, the wax
impressed with an emblem or device. As Hamlet deftly illustrates when he affixes the royal seal to the orders for the
execution of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, one need not
be the owner of a seal to use it; so too, one did not need to
be the possessor of a signature in order to sign it.
Not only is there little concern about who signs one's
signature; there is also little concern about the style in
which it is signed. The several sixteenth century writing
manuals we possess, like Peter Bales' Writing Schoolmaster,
for example, and John Davies of Hereford's The Anatomy
ofFair Writing, give no special instructions on the writing
of signatures. In the forming and connecting of letters, a
writer has the same freedom in signing his name as he does
in writing anything. It is this freedom that makes it virtually
impossible for experts to attribute a work to an author on
the basis of paleographic evidence alone: attesting to the
difficulty is the controversy still raging after one hundred
years (among paleographers and editors, at least) over the
identification of the hands in the manuscript of the Play of
Sir Thomas More. A writer may use any of the six or seven
hands that writing masters of the period identify (Secretary, Bastard Secretary, Exchequer, set hand of the Chancery, etc.) or a combination of any of them.lt is not unusual
for the same writer to switch from one style to another in
the same manuscript, sometimes changing hands in midsentence, and then sign his name in still another, or tore-
vert to one of the hands he has already employed. The
same diversity that characterizes a writer's manuscript
then, characterizes his signature. To add to the diversity,
the spelling of his name regularly varies, often quite widely.
We have only six authenticated signatures by Shakespeare,
all taken from the last four years of his life, so we do not
know how many of the eighty-three documented variants
ture? How would it be recognized if it had no distinct form?
Would every variation be considered a signature so that a
man would have numerous signatures? What then would
constitute a forgery?
There may be only one signature that conforms to our
assumptions of what a signature is: Queen Elizabeth's.
Elizabeth's signature possesses the uniformity of spelling
and handwriting that we require. In each of the abundant
samples of her signature that we possess, the orthography
and calligraphy are stable from the time she ascended the
throne as a young woman to her dying day at the age of
seventy. In fact, it may be that in this period the word signature could only be properly applied to her signed name or
its official surrogates. All the instances I have seen indicate
that the word referred exclusively to the Queen's signature
or else to that of her notaries whom she authorized to extend her written power.
How are we to understand the Queen's possession of an
exceptionally stable signature in an age when signatures
were commonly unstable? I do not believe we should take
this to mean that only Elizabeth had a definite sense of self,
that only she was sufficiently conscious of her identity to
record and circulate it in a uniform and recognizable signa-
ture. I think a consideration of the problem might involve
determining in what respect Queen Elizabeth was different from her subjects. Perhaps it was not that she had a
more distinct sense of self but that she was a different kind
of self altogether. And indeed such a singular self was attributed to her by that very principle she referred to in ascending to the throne, the principle of the "King's Two
Bodies": "I am but one body, naturally considered," she
declared, "though by [God's] permission a Body Politic
also." Accordingly, Elizabeth had two selves, two bodies,
one natural and ephemeral like that of any person, the
other politic and continuing like that of no other person.
Perhaps it is in that unique capacity, as an embodiment of
state and church, that Elizabeth possessed a fixed signature. It would have reflected, then, not a distinct and individuated self, but rather a secular and religious corporation. Her signature was not a projection of selfhood, but
rather an extension of the power and authority invested in
her by her monarchal position, by her crown. When her
representatives signed their names on official documents,
their signatures took on like stability and uniformity. When
acting as Elizabeth's surrogates or delegates, as appendages
on his last name he used. The six we possess are written in
of her corporation or body politic, as it were, their names
six different scripts and in six different spellings, even
though three of them appear on the same document, the
document that is probably the most important a man signs
assumed the fixity of her own. This might explain what
in his lifetime: his will. Because the signatures are so varied
authenticity of even the authenticated signatures. If a
Queen's Privy Council, sign their names uniformly on
state papers but on their own personal correspondence
vary their signatures considerably.
To summarize, signatures in Shakespeare's time were
name may be signed an indefinite number of ways, what is
with one regal exception and attendant special cases not
to be used as the standard of authenticity? If a signature has
necessarily written in one's own hand and not orthograph-
no consistently recurring form, can it even be called a signa-
ically or paleographically consistent. The signator had no
in form and because Elizabethans did not necessarily sign
their own names, some paleographers have questioned the
26
appears a most curious phenomenon: that such statesmen
as Egerton, Cecil, and Walsingham, all members of the
SUMMER 1983
�inviolable personal or legal relation to his signature. His
signature had no fixed form making,possible its identifica·
tion with one particular individual. I think we would have
to say that in our sense of the word, 'there were no signa·
tures in Renaissance England. Names were written out,
sometimes by their bearer and sometimes not, and typi·
cally without respect to uniformity. They had a function
certainly, as when affixed to the bottom of a letter or on a
legal document, but no value apart from that supplied by
the context in which they appeared.
How then has it come about that a mere scrap of paper
with nothing on it except for Shakespeare's signature is
worth a fortune? (Even a spurious or doubtful signature
was estimated at a million dollars in 1971.) To answer that
would involve a consideration of a complex network of
eighteenth century developments that would include the
standardization of language, the rise of private bank ac·
counts, and the institution of laws governing copyrights
and power of attorney. More centrally, it would involve a
description of a changed notion of the self-of individuality, personality, and character, all three concepts which ac·
quire their present emphasis in the late eighteenth century. I will not pursue this matter here; but in passing let
me offer one or two observations which I think are illuminating. The eighteenth century began to posit and assume
a new relation between the signature and the signator. At
the same time that William-Henry Ireland risked simulating a Shakespearean signature, signatures of various men
of note started to be prized and collected. It is then that
the word autograph is used no longer exclusively to refer to
writing in one's own hand (a manuscript) but is used primarily to distinguish the writing of one's own name. And
of course, we in this country have no trouble recol1ecting
when its revolutionary synonym fohn Hancock became
to read them as autobiography. The nineteenth century
avoided reading them as such in order to avoid the disheartening conclusion that the greatest poet of the language was, by his own admission, an adulterer, sodomite,
and perjuror, that he was, as one Victorian critic chastely
put it, "not immaculate." A wide range of nineteenth century approaches to the Sonnets might be seen as moves to
clear Shakespeare of such charges. The Sonnets were writ-
ten not by Shakespeare but by another; or else only partly
written by Shakespeare (the offensive ones assigned to
other poets) or if written entirely by Shakespeare then
written on behalf of friends or clients, or if written on his
own behalf then not as any direct reflection of his own experience but rather as fictions, dramatizations 1 allegories,
bearing as remote and complicated a relation to his experience as the plays. The need to impersonalize the Sonnets
culminates at the turn of the century with an influential
discussion of them as insincere exercises in literary artifice
that could not be about Shakespeare-or about anything
else for that matter.
In this century, moral compunctions have ceased to determine readings of the Sonnets, at least in any obvious
way. We are free therefore to read the Sonnets as autobiography. And in recent decades, they have largely been read
as Shakespeare's account of himself, whether that account
is thought to consist of people, places, and events that constituted his outer life, or of the ideas, feelings, and beliefs
that animated him inwardly. Both historical and psychological approaches have their practitioners, though only
the most indomitable continue to dig and delve for facts
(for the precious little they uncover still needs to be verified from the very outside sources they seek to enlarge).
There is a much richer yield to be gotten by probing the
Sonnets for Shakespeare's inner workings. No extraneous
current in our English. Autographs became of value be-
considerations constrain such readings, not even struc-
cause they were seen to possess a personal and intimate
relation to the individual who wrote them. It is not long
tural considerations: since the 1609 ordering is not necessarily Shakespeare's, the Sonnets can be read as two units
divided at sonnet 126 where the subject appears to
until the science of graphology will emerge, the inference
of personal traits on the basis of handwriting, the analysis
of characters (in the Elizabethan sense of letters) to deter·
mine character (in our sense of personality).
Autographs are not the only form of personal writing
flourishing in the eighteenth century: collected letters,
journals, diaries, and autobiographies enjoy an unprece-
dented popularity on which book-sellers are quick to capitalize. Like these forms of writing, an autograph is a type
of self-representation that intimates or displays the private
and personal.
A signature can be seen as an abbreviated or cryptic auto-
biography; an autobiography can be seen as an expanded or
amplified signature. With an awareness that both forms of
first person writing underwent radical changes after the six-
teenth century, we finally reach my announced subject:
Shakespeare's Sonnets as autobiography.
The Sonnets are the only work we have that Shakespeare wrote in the first person, yet it has never been easy
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
change, as a collection of discrete or interconnected
groups variously demarcated, as 154 independent poems,
or as one integral sequence following either the 1609 order
or whatever order a reader prefers. A variable text coupled
with critical ingenuity is bound to yield prolifically, perhaps even inexhaustibly-were it not for interference
from the outside: from critical theory.
In the last decade, critical theory has made it difficult to
take any first person enunciation at face value. There is no
necessary relation between the historical author and the 'I'
of a work any more than there is between him and a char·
acter in a play or narrative: the first person thereby becomes simply another third. Post-structuralist theory goes
further still, cutting the tie between writing or speech and
its ostensible source, first person or otherwise. Its originthe speaking or writing subject-is dismissed as an acci-
dent of circumstance. Where the accidental aspect of that
accident of circumstance prevails, the 'Sonne,ts form a
27
�shimmering Derridean surface of free-floating signifiers;
where the circumstantial aspect dominates, the Sonnets
constitute a political, historical, and social artifact. As far as
I know, we don't yet have either a full reading of them en
abyme or as ~~cultural poetics." What we do have, however,
is not far from either in its deposition of the author:
Stephen Booth's 800 pages of extravagantly fine criticism
on the Sonnets that bring not a single comment to bear on
the man who wrote them. In one important respect we are
where moral compunctions left us at the turn of the century: dissociating the Sonnets from their author and concentrating on the impersonal features of poetic language.
In what is to follow, I would like to make it possible to
begin returning to the Sonnets as autobiography; as Shakespeare speaking about himself. But the self that is spoken
about is not a lover of acute sensitivity, a thinker of profound imaginative powers, a poet of heightened perception, or a craftsman of exceptional skill. The self of the
Sonnets is the self as a name. In speaking about that nominal self, the Sonnets do not represent it in the same way
that a self-portrait represents the artist, for that relation assumes a subject with an existence apart from the image
that portrays him. In the Sonnets the self cannot be separated from the speaking about the self; he exists as a name
coming into contact with other lexical units and occupying various syntactic positions.
I would like to look at the Sonnets as what the use of the
first person leads us to suspect they are: Shakespeare's
speaking about himself. But to do so, requires both a new
sense of self and a new sense of speaking, both of which
depend on a new sense of the workings of a proper name.
It is in the last line of sonnet 136 that Shakespeare announces his proper name: "my name is Will." And it is in
this sonnet that the subject most visibly functions as a
name whose actions are interactions with other words
within his own discourse. Each of the seven times the
word 'will' is repeated in the sonnet, 'Will' as the subject's
name cannot be distinguished from 'will's' various other
designations. The first time it is pronounced in the injunc-
tion, "Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy will," [I. 2] the
proper name 'Will' confuses our subject with other men:
the name might designate another man by that name~his
mistress's husband, for example, or another lover, not to
mention the several historical candidates scholars have
nominated. The proper name then is not proper to him; in
fact, it is not even exclusively proper. It is a common
name too, a synonym for desire or lust, common because
denoting a class or state of being, common also because
held in common by all men, more common still in vulgarly
referring to the organ (male or female) that is both instrument and object of lust. Not only does 'will' work as both
proper and common noun; it works too as verbal auxiliary
denoting future resolution, as in line 5: "Will will fulfill the
treasure of thy love." (The verbal form extends not only
the sound of the noun it follows~"Will will" ~but also its
sense, protracting it by projecting it into the future.) Son-
28
net 136 thus conflates personal and generic name, proper
and common noun, noun and verb. Will's name, rather
than distinguishing him, makes him indistinguishable not
only from other men who bear his name (his namesakes),
but also from other words that sound identical to it (homonyms).
We might say that as a sound~the sound wal~the subject Will remains at leastphonetically distinct from the different sounding words that surround his name. The difference, however, is only Phonetic, for every noun in the
sonnet that is not 'will' is a semantic substitute for will in
one of its several senses. Nouns work like pronouns, each
referring to the same subject rather than introducing a
new one. No special case has to be made for "love" in line
4 as, synonym for will as desire, nor for ulove-suit" as ex-
pression of that will; and it would take only some thumbing through Booth's commentary to identify the other
nouns with will as sexual part, male or female: "soul" [l. I]
refers to the sexual counterpart to the spiritual essence;
"things of great receipt" [l. 7], "store's account" [l. 10],
and "treasure of thy love" [I. 5] designate female sexual
capacity, the feminine empty, "nothing" [l. 12] or "none"
[l. 8] when not supplied by masculine "number" and
"one" [l. 10]. Verbs too relate to will, to acts of will:
"come"[!. I] refers to sexual climax, "check"'[!. I] to its
deferral; "knows" [l. 3], "proves" [I. 7], "reckoned" [l. 8]
to forms of carnal knowing; "fulfill" [I. 4] and "fill" [1. 6] to
sexual satisfying, "is admitted" [l. 3] and "hold" [l. II] to
female compliance. Adjectives modify sexual traits,
"sweet" [l. 4] and "great" [I. 7] are anatomical desirables,
"blind" [l. 2] applies to lack of sexual discernment; and
adverbs specify degrees of sexual penetration: "so near"
[l. l], "thus far" [I. 4], "with ease" [I. 7]. With the exception of conjunctions, prepositions, and articles, every word
in the sonnet is either a homonym or synonym for the subject's name, thereby literally verifying his admission in
sonnet 76: "every word doth almost tell my name" [I. 7]. A
language made up of homonyms and synonyms for his
name renders him anonymous. Among so many verbal
counterfeits, he can "pass untold" [I. 9] for without difference there can be no identity.
Such uniformity of vocabulary renders syntax purely
perfunctory or superficial. The word 'will' and its synonyms monopolize all grammatical positions. Phonetic repetitions make this abundantly audible in lines 5 and 6"Will will fulfill the treasure of thy love,/Ay fill it full with
wills, and my will one" ~but the same syntactic appropriation occurs in line 3's more varied syllables: "And will thy
soul knows is admitted there," which would lose nothing
in terms of sense if rendered, "And will thy will wills is
willed there"; even "thy" and "there" in this line can be
eliminated since the situation the sentence urges would
blur genetive distinctions, making his will hers, thereby
also doing away with the need for the spatial differentia tor
"there." Throughout 136, underlying the phonetic variables is the same semantic formula: "Will is will" or "Will
SUMMER 1983
�wills," a pure instance of the circular reasoninKthat Elizabethan logics identify with inordinate willfulness. The
couplet's fallacious syllogism follows the same tautology:
"Make but my name thy love, and love that still,/And then
thou lov'st me for my name is Will."
Sonnet 136 then looks like a supreme instance of willful
discourse. Will uses language to obtain his will, to prevail
rhetorically over his mistress' will so that he might have his
corporeal one. In doing so, he appropriates language, infusing its vocabulary, syntax, and logic with his likeness.
Or is it the other way around? Has he appropriated and
personalized the language or has it appropriated and verbalized him? Has it seized upon him as a name not of his
own choosing and locked him within a tight system of verbal interrelations from which he cannot emerge? The very
question brings to mind that one sense of will which the
sonnet conspicuously excludes from its homonymic ranging but which is central to any scheme even loosely Christian: will as choice, as free will. The sonnet, a petition to
his mistress, highly contrived and therefore seemingly
controlled, looks like an act of will, more so than other sonnets because of its excessive ingenuity. But if the will to
which it gives voice is lust, is Will speaking voluntarily? If
desire drives him to speak, he has not chosen to speak but
does so involuntarily, as an animal cries. Would this then
place him in the viciously inexorable cycle of sonnet !29's
"lust in action," caught up in a habitual and therefore involuntary routine of "had, having, and in quest to have,"
in this sonnet at the stage of "in quest to have" or "Mad in
pursuit"? Without any form of self-reference, 129 seems
the most impersonal sonnet of the collection; but it becomes singularly personal if we remember that Will makes
himself synonymous with lust, with involuntary will, so
that the battery of adjectival phrases in 129 ("perjured,
mur'drous, bloody, full of blame"} pertains to him as well
as to the abstraction he so knowingly and tellingly defines.
Even though his name is never spelled out in 129, it could
be said of this sonnet too that "every word doth almost tell
my name" (sonnet 76), especially when "Will" is heard in
the couplet, as phonologists lead us to believe it was in the
sixteenth century when 'well' and 'will' were pronounced
identically: "All this the world well knows, yet none knows
well." In sonnet 129, too,. the subject is present as a name,
either stated and. pronounced or implied and understood,
entangled in verbal relationships of sound and sense.
It is not only in sonnets like !29 and 136 that the subject's proper name surfaces. Through its homonyms and
synonyms, it presides over the entire collection. The first
verb in the sonnets is a synonym for will ("From fairest
creatures we desire increase") and the last two Anacreontic
sonnets concern the transformation of "hot desire" into
"holy fire of love." The youth's self-will thwarts the opening communal desire and Will's appetitive will frustrates
his final solitary desire. The first group of sonnets, the
procreation group, evolves around the idea of will as bequest "beauty's legacy" [sonnet 4], that would extend its
THE ST: JOHNS REVIEW
possessor into the future. The last two Anacreontics describe a therapeutic well that cures "men diseased" with
the exception of the subject who retreats back to the
chronic and pathological routine that admits of no change
of future. At both ends, the Sonnets are bracketed by synonymic and homonymic variants of the subject's proper
name.
Within those brackets, Will consistently emerges in a
state of incompleteness seeking to be made whole, seeking
the fulfillment that is happiness. Will exists in a state of
perpetual want that is at once lack and desire. The lack,
heightened by a consciousness of time and death, takes
the form of the multiple privative states that characterize
him: debt, poverty, sickness, loneliness, absence, lameness, bareness, pain. It seeks to complete itself through objects that would both contain him and make him content.
In the youth, in verse, in the mistress and in various combinations of the three, Wiil would be fulfilled (thereby deferring the "well-contended day" [sonnet 32], the consummation of death, with whose "fell arrest" all men must "be
contented" [sonnet 74]. In seeking fulfillment in another,
Will repeatedly attaches himself to versions of himself.
The youth is his "next self': in relationships personal and
grammatical the two are interchangeable. One mirrors the
other to such a degree that it is often assumed they share
the same name. The mistress too is a projection of himself,
of the desire by which he identifies himself, so that her
outer darkness figures forth his inner defects, her black
eyes reflect his blindness, a relation clenched verbally in
the sound "my mistress' eye" [sonnet 153] that designates
both her ocular (and sexual} eye and his pronomial I, recapitulating his self-gratifying conflation of her will with his
own. In loving either object, he falls into the same pattern
from which he tries to break the youth in the first seventeen sonnets: of self-love, "having traffic with thyself
alone" [sonnet 4], "self-willed" [sonnet 6]-the state fullblown in the monumentally monolithic sonnets of the
!20's that make ungrounded claims to self-sufficiency, as
in the supremely, in fact divinely, solipsistic, "I am that I
am." The tautology then of 136 is the collection's central
configuration: will desires will, the self seeks to complete
its wanting self in images of itselflargely of its own making,
a narcissistic and incestuous relationship that cannot be
separated from the homonymic and synonymic pleonasms
all generating from the subject's proper name.
In this paper I have been urging that the Sonnets be
read autobiographically in relation to their author, but not
in a relation to him as a particular individual experiencing
temporal and psychological events, but as a name functioning within discourse. We are accustomed to thinking
of a proper name as a social, political, and religious marker
that positions its bearer within his family, state, and
church; but it is crucial to see it also as situating its bearer
in language, as any name situates its referrent there.
If we resist having a proper name work like any other
word, it is because we tend to distinguish sharply between
29
�the names we use to identify people and the ones we use
to identify everything else. We set them apart from ordinary vocabulary by capitalizing them, and our dictionaries
omit them or relegate them to an appendix of their own.
Yet there is indication that our distinction between proper
and common was not so hard and fast for Elizabethans.
Proper names especially in manuscript were not always
capitalized, while common names in the arbitrary orthography of the day sometimes were. Nor was special attention given to their spelling. Shakespeare's last name, as I
have mentioned, received as least eighty-three different
spellings, spellings ranging from Shaftspere to Shaxbee to
Chacsper; it appears as Shagspere on his marriage bond
and as Shaxberd on a court record crediting him with
Comedy of Errors and Measure for Measure.
Just as no conventions of punctuation or spelling singled
out proper names, so too no lexicons excluded them from
the rest of the language. Though there were no comprehensive monolingual dictionaries in the sixteenth century,
there were hard word lists that defined proper names as
well as neologisms and technical vocabulary. Bilingual dictionaries too would often include Christian names among
their other entries. Of course proper names had the
unique function of designating an individual rather than a
class, of naming one single man named, for example, Will
rather than a collective general group named, for example,
man. But the frequent instances in which proper names
are used generically in contexts as diverse as proverbs and
Biblical glosses, suggests that the distinction was hardly inviolable. Will, as we have seen, referred not just to one
man but to all men; so did the name Jack as in the proverbial "Jack shall have Jill" repeated in Love's Labor's Lost; so
did Tom and Dick and Harry, though Harry IV wittily exempts himself from those generic catch-alls and substitutes Francis in his stead; so do Peter and John so that
New Testament commentaries explain that the name of
Peter belongs both to Simon and to all men that are faithful and John Donne explains that not just he alone but all
men are Johns, though not all may be true Johns.
There is more in the period that invites us to treat
proper names as if they were common. The original and
derivative forms of both proper and common names were
thought to provide access to the truth of what they named.
The tradition of Biblical exegesis that originated with the
Church Fathers (Origen, Jerome, and Augustine) examined the Hebrew forms of names for both people and
things in order to comprehend their true designations. Hebrew names were thought to be God-given and therefore
to retain vestiges of the original language that man, before
the Fall and Babel, had shared with God. By analyzing Hebrew names, exegetes sought to recover the relation between thing and sign that Adam had intuited when he assigned true names to the animals in Eden. Churchmen,
especially Protestants who preferred etymologies to catholicizing allegories, relied heavily on this form of philological investigation in order to move from sign to know!-
30
edge-of-the-thing-signified. In his sermons, John Donne
frequently acknowledges his indebtedness to this form of
inquiry, as in this injunction: "To know the nature of the
thing, look to the derivation, the extraction, the origination of a word." Launcelot Andrews too devotes long passages of his sermons to etymological excursions, sometimes devoting entire sermons to a single word, as he does
in one of his Nativity Sermons in which he celebrates the
birth of the Incarnational Word by concentrating on one
word that names him-lmmanuel. For such writers, no
form of human reasoning draws a mind so close to truth as
the investigation of the names God in the Old Testament
11
gives to both men and things: His nominals be reals."
Etymologizing was not, of course, limited to religious
studies or to the Hebrew language. It had precedents in
classical and medieval writing: Plato's Cratylus was seen to
recommend the same sort of investigation in respect to
Greek and Isidore of Seville was consulted for Latin derivations and developments. The dictum of the fifth century grammarian Servius was applied to words in all languages: "names are called names because by them things
are known." Elizabethan grammars were traditionally divided into two sections, etymology and syntax, and Elizabethan logics invariably included etymology or notatio as a
valid place from which to argue. Typically in this period,
the discussion of any subject will begin with a discussion
of its name. Thomas Eliot begins his Book of the Covernow with an exploration of the word republic; Thomas
Wilson introduces his logic, The Rule of Reason, with an
extended discussion of the words logic and reason, and
Thomas Morley in his Introduction to Practical Music prefaces his descriptions of various musical terms with their
derivation, explaining, for example, why motet derives
from motion. In discussing any type of subject matter, a
writer commonly begins by interpreting its name and proceeds by following the discursive lines emerging from this
interpretation.
It is my thesis that when that subject happens to be a
man, say William Shakespeare, the same practice is followed. His name, as I hope I succeeded in showing, provides the focus for the writing that is about him. John
Donne says of the names in the Bible-those of the children oflsrael for example-that it is not so much that the
names are in the history as that the history is in the names. I
think Shakespeare's history or story of himself, his autobiography, is also contained in his name-his proper name
and its common homonymic and synonymic cognates.
Since his name is given to him and not chosen by him, and
since the phonetic and semantic interrelations into which
it draws him are inscribed in language and not put there by
him, his writing can never be entirely his own. If he had
been given another given name, his autobiography would
look and sound quite different. It might, in fact, resemble
one of the at least forty other English sonnet collections
that remain from the 1590s and early 1600s.
These sonnet collections also tell the story of their writSUMMER 1983
�ers. A quick scanning of the major ones reveals immediately that Shakespeare was not alone in fashioning his sonnets around his name. Edmund Spenser's Amoretti tells
the story of Edmund, ed mundo; they'largely turn on his
repudiation of the mundane and worldly vanity that he
himself narcissistically reflects, as in the exceptional two
sonnets [35 and 83] that mirror or echo one another word
for word and conclude with the self-referrential: "All this
worlds glory seemeth vayne to me." Sir Phillip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella tells the story of Phillip, phil ippos, lover
of horses or the ((horse to love" he becomes in his own
emblematic allegory in which he is Cupid's horse [49];
though he euphemistically rechristens himself Astrophil,
lover of a star, he is not, as Stella well knows, aiming so
high. Fulke Greville's Caelica tells the story of Greville,
and "grief' and "ill," as he himself insists, "do best decipher'' [83] him in his protracted despair of skies both Caelican and celestial. Henry Constable's Diana tells the story
of Constable whose recurring motto "preserver ever," refers to his characterizing constancy which takes the form
of stubborn and relentless importunity. William Percy's
Coelia tells the story of another Will whose self-centered
self-love is doubly suggested by his name: once, by his
given name, Will, and again by his self-reflexive family
name, Percy, per se, for himself. Barnabe Barnes's
Parthenophil and Parthenope tells the story of Barnabe
Barnes; the echoing first syllables of his two names unite
to form the sound bar bar, the sound Greeks identified
with bar-barians, outsider or non-Greeks of unrefined
speech and unrefined manner; Barnabe Barnes's sonnets
are barbaric in both word and deed: their typically stuttering phrasing expressing desire that is anything but civilized culminates in the final poem-a reiterative sestina
describing the orgiastic rape of his mistress.
In each of these sonnet sequences, the writer's name
functions as a rubric that informs and shapes his self-presentation. His name, as both proper and common noun,
provides his entry into language and sets him in relation to
those terms that constitute the story that tells of him. In
describing it this way, I do not mean to suggest that the
name is prophetic or oracular, that it dictates or predicts
an inescapable course. Every name that I have mentioned
contains an option like that option present in Shakespeare's name. Just as his name, Will, refers to both voluntary choice and involuntary appetite, so too Edmund's
name contains two worlds (in alignment with Augustine's
two cities); Greville's holds two types of grieving, one amorous pining and the other penitential contrition: Phillip's
contains two types of loving horses, the horsemanship that
puts man properly in control of his horse or the horsemanship that inversely gives the horse free rein of him. Constable's presents two types of constancy, stiff-necked infatuation and right-hearted devotion. To be sure, the name is
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
given to the bearer, but the sense in which the name is
taken is of the bearer's own choosing. It is that choosing
between the options contained in the writer's name that
makes the sonnets autobiographical, that makes them
about one self rather than another. But because the options in each case are those every Christian man must
face, this form of sixteenth century autobiography can
hardly be said to individuate, to reveal an individual distinct in experience, thought, and feeling from all other
men.
I began this paper with a discussion of signatures as selfrepresentation and then proceeded to a reading of Shakespeare's Sonnets. as an autobiography centered on his
name, and have ended by suggesting that other Elizabethan sonnet sequences are autobiographical in the same
respect. Through the course of the paper, I have gradually
enlarged my focus: I have moved from signatures to a single Shakespearean sonnet, to Shakespeare's Sonnets in general, and finally expanded to include several Elizabethan
sonnet collections. In this final paragraph, I would like to
enlarge my scope still further, in fact, I will enlarge it about
as far as it can go.
My final words concern man and language in the sixteenth century. Although this paper has focused on a
rather small body of Elizabethan literature, its ultimate
aim is to challenge an assumption so prevalent that it is
rarely recognized as an assumption. Like all assumptions,
it has a beginning, and in time it will no doubt have
an ending too. It begins in 1860 with Jacob Burkhardt's
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy and perhaps
has in 1980 culminated with Stephen Greenblatt's highly
applauded book, Renaissance Self-Fashioning. Burkhardt proclaimed that the greatest achievement of the
Renaissance was the discovery of the individual; Greenblatt demonstrates through the study of six major Elizabethan figures how the Renaissance individual selfconsciously generated his own identity. Attending such an
assumption is the equally pervasive view that in a world of
emerging individuality, language is first and foremost selfexpression, a means of articulating, asserting, and projecting selfhood. In my discussion of one of the dominant
modes of first-person writing in the Renaissance, the sonnet sequence, I hope I have provoked a serious rethinking
of that two-fold assumption. No individual emerges from
the Sonnets, no individuated psychological and emotional
entity with personalized thoughts and desires. Insofar as a
self can be said to emerge, it is a self as a proper name, a
name which rather than singling out its bearer draws him
into a complicated network of verbal interrelations that
form the pattern of his experience. Though the central
terms may differ, other sonnet writers find themselves in
variations of the same pattern and so must have Shakespeare's original readers, whatever their names.
31
�BLACKWATER
The summer ends. The winds -of aurumn rise
Chilling the earth at evening. Darkness falls
Suddenly and early. In heavy skies
From north and west assemble geese, their cails
Drifting and tossing in uneasy air.
High clouds catch final sunlight, burst aflame,
Vanish. Circling above the water, where
Rushes and grasses wait, wild mallard home.
I have come here for refuge. In the night
Shapes of the sleeping birds merge with water;
At land's edge softly their muted cries touch
And interweave the lapping waves. A white
Moon hovers near the branches of a fir;
Ten thousand stars burn cold and out of reach.
ROBERT
S. ZELENKA
A former tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, Md., Robert Zelenka is a
teacher, poet, scholar.
32
SUMMER 1983
�Mission over Hanoi
From A Country Such as This
James Webb
A garbage detail was throwing trash off the fantail of the
U.S.S. Shiloh. Leftover food, bags upon bags of paper and
cans, large wall lockers, unidentifiable boxes, all bounced
and rolled in the white wake of the steaming ship, mixing
with the foam. Red Lesczynski could see pieces of garbage
for miles behind the ship, all the way to the horizon in the
late afternoon sun, as if the Shiloh were marking off a trail
on the otherwise amorphous reaches of the blue, unending South China Sea.
He and a dozen other pilots were shooting their .38-caliber survival pistols, using the trash as targets. Lesczynski
practiced often off the fantail, .although he did not know
many downed pilots who had either dared or had a useful
opportunity to fire the .38 at the North Vietnamese. When
you were hoping for rescue, you evaded, as silently as possible. When rescue was hopeless, you didn't commit suicide by firing your weapon at a people who outnumbered
you 17 million to I.
But it was a way to let off steam, to relieve the boredom
of shipboard life. Except for the combat missions, he
might have been a monk at a retreat alone in a midocean
cloister with the other members of his sect. It was flat, tedious, with a day's highlight being dinner in the wardroom
and the movie afterward, or perhaps a game of chess or
Go. That in itself heightened the tension of the missions,
rather than allowing one to gear up for them. There was so
little movement or variation on the ship, and yet three of
every four days the Shiloh was "on the line" he was flung
off the carrier deck two and sometimes three times a day
by a steam catapult, as if his F-4 Phantom were a pebble in
1
©1983 by James Webb. A Country Such as This is to be published this
Fall by Doubleday. James Webb graduated from the United States Naval
Academy in 1968. He chose the Marine Corps and served as an infantry
officer in Vietnam. Among other decorations he holds the Navy Cross
and the Silver Star. Mr. Webb has previously published Fields of Fire and
A Sense of Honor.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
a slingshot, to form an attack group over the sea and then
race through ground fire and missiles toward a bombing
target where for ninety seconds every fear in the world was
real, exploding all around him, calling for the most minute
recesses of his concentration. Then it would be over and
he would find the boat again, that square little speck in the
sea, and set the tail hook of his aircraft on top of a cable on
its angled deck, jerking to a violent stop. The whole thing
took little more than an hour, and he would again be surrounded by the tedious calm. It was the paradox that
taunted him, as if he were a lobster being dangled over a
boiling cookpot for a few seconds every -hour, only to be
returned to the tank. What would the lobster think, if it
could think, when it was again safe in the tank but knew it
would soon be once more dangled over the pot?
Salt air covered him like a scab; he loved the smell and
the taste. The snub-nosed pistol jerked in his hand as he
fired again and again at a five-gallon can that had once
held cooking oil. He couldn't tell whether he had hit the
can.lt bounced in the churning wake like a Ping-Pong ball,
and was soon out of range.
"Ah, the hell with it." He returned his weapon to the
chief petty officer in charge of the "famfire detail," and
left the open platform of the fantail, entering the bowels of
the aircraft carrier.
More men lived on the U.S.S. Shiloh than in Ford City.
And ali' of them had jobs. The huge Forrestal-class supercarrier was home to 4,100 men, and 80 aircraft. It weighed
76,000 tons, fully loaded. It was longer than three football
fields, and had four acres of flight deck. Its power plant
could summon 280,000 horsepower from four geared
steam turbines, enough to push the Shiloh through any
sea at 35 miles an hour. It carried more than 26 million
pounds of fuel in its hull. The Shiloh had deployed from
Alameda, California, just after Christmas 1965, and had
been operating as the center of a twelve-ship task force on
Yankee Station off the coast of Vietnam since mid-January
33
�1966. In its five months of Yankee Station duty, the Shiloh
had been to Subic Bay, Philippines; twice, for four days
each time, and to Yokosuka once, for three days. Other
than that, the Shiloh had been constantly "on the line." Its
pilots had flown 17,000 missions, and dropped 22 million
pounds of ordnance onto North Vietnamese targets.
Lousy targets, mostly. The wrong targets. Lesczynski exited a narrow, honeycombed passageway and began crossing the hangar deck. It was filled with aircraft undergoing
maintenance or being rearmed and refueled. A-4 Skyhawk
and A-6 Intruder attack craft, EA-6 Prowler electronic war·
fare planes, RA-5 Vigilante reconnaissance jets, S-2F antisubmarine planes, and SH-3 Sea King helicopters vari·
ously mixed with his own F-4 Phantom fighters across its
reaches. The hangar deck was long and wide and dark, its
bulkheads and deck a musty gray, like a basement. The
flight deck was two levels higher; planes moved up and
down on four huge elevators.
He was the executive officer of his squadron, and was
slated to take command of it within six months. He
stopped for a few minutes, chatting with crewmen who
were working on the F-4s, checking their efforts and assur·
ing them, with simple words, of the importance of their
jobs. Then he set out again, heading for the flight wardroom, for dinner.
In one corner of the hangar deck a group of sailors was
playing a fast game of basketball, shouting and running,
shirtless in the tropical heat. Across its middle, a line of
men extended from a ladder that went to the deck below,
waiting to enter the main galley and eat dinner. A few of
them wore the tight, multicolored shirts of flight deck personnel, but most of them were dressed in blue dungarees
and baseball caps. Many were reading from ever-present
paperback books that fit perfectly inside rear dungaree
pockets. Others conversed, clowning around and rau·
cously taunting each other. Many wore tattoos on their
forearms.
Lesczynski grinned blandly as he passed the different
groups of sailors, waving to a few of the men he recog·
nized. They were young and they all worked hard, twelve
hours a day for months on end, enduring cramped quar·
ters, long lines, and the lonely isolation of shipboard life.
They worked because they believed, or because it was a
job, or because it bought them liberty in arguably exotic
ports. Some worked because they didn't want to go to the
brig. It didn't matter. They kept the ship going twenty·
four hours a day, no matter what.
The 1-MC blared into every compartment, preceded by
a boatswain's eerie whistle. It was Big Brother. "Now hear
this. Now hear this. The smoking lamp is out, throughout
the ship, while handling ammunition. I say again, the smoking lamp is out, throughout the ship, while handling ammunition . .,
Lesczynski walked out the forward end of the hangar
deck, and climbed a ladder up to the "02" level, between
the hangar deck and the flight deck. The flight wardroom
34
was on the "02" level. It was less formal than the ship's
wardroom below, designed cafeteria-style to accommodate
the more fluid schedules of the pilots. In contrast to the
main wardroom, there were no Filipino stewards to hold a
tray of food in front of an officer, as if he were an aristocrat
dining downtown. No seating by rank. No careful conversation, designed to teach one the art of gentle avoidance.
Lesczynski liked the flight wardroom.
Commander Jimmy Maxwell was holding court with
two junior officers. Lesczynski's friend since his first days
of flight training was now the executive officer of the A-6
attack squadron, and like Lesczynski was on the "fleet up"
program, which would give both of them command within
a few months. Maxwell had gone spry and gray after fifteen years in the cockpit. Crow's-feet were etched deeply
into the corners of his eyes. His tight hawk's face was selfassured, and animated. Maxwell waved to Lesczynski, who
joined them. Then he smiled sardonically, without joy, his
leathered face emanating a resignation that might have
been anger, had he the luxury to question policy.
"They bagged another A-4 today."
"Over that Dong Khe site?"
"Yes, sir, old LBJ sure knows how to treat his boys. You
know why he calls us his boys, don't you? Son, I'm from
Mississippi, and I know what that means. It means he
thinks he owns us. What was it he said? The military can't
bomb a shithouse without his approval."
Lieutenant Nick Damsgard, new to the squadron and
on his first Western Pacific deployment, leaned forward,
his heavy brows furrowed earnestly. "If he'd let us go after
Dong Khe a month ago, we could have flattened it."
Maxwell feigned alarm. "You don't shoot up missile
sites before they're ready for you! They're not part of the
war until then. What do you want to do, win this god damn
thing?"
They all laughed, staring into their food, dry chortles
that indicated none of them really thought it was funny,
not when they were dangling their very lives over the
North every day in pursuit of a goal that Lyndon Johnson
had never made clear to himself, much less them. Maxwell
snorted again. "If Goldwater had won in '64, this war
would have been done with in a week, and there wouldn't
have been enough of North Vietnam left over to plant rice
on. "
Frank Salpas, also a new lieutenant, stroked his moustache, staring down into his food. 1'l'm not so sure, Com·
mander. This is a different kind of war. Johnson seems
pretty serious about doing the right thing. I mean, he's trying. He's putting at least a half-million ground troops in
the South."
Maxwell snorted again. The constant attrition of the air
war was getting to him, Lesczynski could tell. "It's not how
many troops he's got on the ground, any more than it's
how many goddamn bombs we're dropping. It's what
you're doing with them! You tell me what the hell it means
to fight a 'limited war,' all right? Do you think North VietSUMMER 1983
�nam is fighting a limited war? Shee-it. Do you feel like
you're a little bit at war when you're jinking up there,
dodging SAM missiles? Johnson won't let us knock out
SAM sites while they're being built. He won't let us take
out ships in Haiphong harbor that have SAMs visible on
their goddamn decks! He won't mine the harbor. He won't
let us go after operational MiG airfields. But we're 'his
boys' when we get our asses shot off! He must think this is
a god damn golf game or something, and he needs to give
the North Vietnamese some kind of handicap!"
Damsgard looked up from his tray, smiling ironically.
"He's stuck with a war that he doesn't know how to fight.
He just wishes it would all go away. This whole 'Rolling
Thunder' operation is a joke. Tell me how much we've disrupted the life of the North Vietnamese."
Maxwell nodded earnestly, agreeing. "Here we've got a
whole fleet of B-52 bombers that could put Hanoi back
into the Stone Age, and old LBJ sends them off to make
toothpicks out of trees on the Ho Chi Minh trail. And here
we've got light attack planes and precision fighters, and
the man sends us against the North day in and day out.
Not against targets that will hurt the North Vietnamese,
but against 'interdiction targets.' I don't know know many
pieces of railroad track I've blown away in the last five
months. But I can guarantee you that Russia and China
and the other communist countries have been replacing
them as fast as we've been blowing them away. The North
Vietnamese probably love what we're doing. It keeps their
people united. It doesn't really hurt them. And it keeps the
aid rolling in from the communist bloc."
"Can you imagine these sorts of restrictions during
World War II?" Lesczynski had listened quietly, eating his
food, but could no longer restrain his own frustration. "We
couldn't have hurt the Japanese by simply shooting down
the aircraft that attacked us. Hell, they'd still be regrouping, putting together fleets and forays! We went to their
hearts. We took the war to them. We blew away their
planes on the ground, we knocked out their industry. We
took out Tokyo." He pointed a fork, growing animated.
"Last week. Remember? Knock out the Sai Thon rail yard,
they say, but if one bomb hits the steel mill next door
you're iri deep shit!"
They all three watched him attentively. He did not often talk about the conduct of the war. For the most part,
he viewed it as unproductive, a negative morale factor for
the men who served under him. But tonight he felt unsettled, provoked. "This isn't going very well at all. Are we
going to say that the Japanese were more evil than the
North Vietnamese, and that they deserved more of our
wrath? Why? The North Vietnamese are clearly trying to
take over the South by military force. It's the North Vietnamese who have almost their entire army in the South
right now. We have stated to the world that the South
should not be subjugated against its will. If that's worth
fighting over, then it should be worth a serious, total effort. How long is it going to take Johnson to understand
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
that the North Vietnamese believe they're winning, and
that this sort of bombing reinforces that belief?"
He had grown his moustache back. His lips curled into a
whimsical smile underneath its thick red gash. 'Til tell you
the truth. I don't think McNamara has the guts, and I
don't think LBJ has the clarity of thought, to fight this war.
It's that simple."
Lieutenant Salpas grunted once, then nodded, a slow
cynical grin growing underneath his moustache. "Did you
hear about LBJ's big Silver Star for gallantry in action in
World War II? Went out on a reconnaissance flight as an
observer from Congress, and the plane got shot at. He sat
there in his seat and watched, and then decided that since
he didn't shit his pants, he deserved a medal. Take a look
at his pictures. He loves to wear the lapel pin."
Maxwell grunted back, a combative grin streaking his
narrow face. "Uh-huh. Well, if that's what it takes, he can
come out here and go on that Alpha Strike with us 'boys'
tomorrow, I can make sure he gets the goddamn Medal of
Honor."
•
•
•
The real question was why they kept doing it, so well
and with such precision, day after day, week after week, in
the face of a steady trickle of losses that had been deceptive at first, but eventually overwhelming. So many shipmates, so many planes, downed for the honor of interdicting a system that by the very nature of their bombing
would grow stronger with greater outside support.
Sitting in his stateroom after dinner, Red Lesczynski
scanned the classified briefsheets from the past few weeks'
activities, one of his prerequisites as squadron executive
officer.
June 12-19: Interdiction. 100 railroad cars damaged or
destroyed, Qui Vinh, Pho Can, and Nam Dinh rail yards
damaged extensively. 5 major highway bridges dropped.
Junks and barges "lucrative."
June 20-26: Interdiction. 40 trucks, 100 junks and barges
damaged or destroyed. Me Xa highway bridge, Mai Duong
railroad and highway bridge dropped, considered essential
to the Hanoi/Haiphong transportation system. Russian
SA-2 missile site damaged in conjunction with attack on
Mai Duong. Extensive damage to yards and facilities at
Qui Vinh, Sai Thon, and Van Coi.
June 27-July 2: Interdiction. 200 railroad cars, numerous
trucks and bridges damaged or destroyed. Major strikes
against Dong Khe SAM missile site, the Dong Can military area, and Bien Son barracks.
He tried to measure those frail statistics against the terror that produced them, and the loss:
June 14: A-3 lost over North Vietnam. Orange ball seen
by observers. Crew MIA.
June 15: F-4B hit during attack on PT boat. Pilot, RIO
eject over water, rescued by SH-3 helo.
June 15: A-4E downed by ground fire, North Vietnam.
Pilot ejects, is seen on ground. POW or MIA.
35
�June 17: A-4C hit by ground fire during pullout from
dive on Vinh railroad. Pilot ejects, radios from ground that
he is about to be captured. POW or MIA.
June 19: A-1 F crashes ahead of ship after night catapult
launch. Pilot missing.
June 20: A-lH crashes ahead of ship after night catapult
launch. Pilot not recovered.
June 21: RF-8A downed by antiaircraft fire. Good ejection. Enemy defenses prevent helicopter approach. MIA.
June 21: F-8 damaged by MiG-17, 4 F-8s respond. l F-8
downed. Good ejection observed. Another F-8 downs
MiG with Sidewinder missile. 1 MiG destroyed. 1 pilot
MIA.
June 25: A-4E hit by antiaircraft fire. Pilot ejects over
water, rescued by SH-3 helo.
June 25: A-6A lost directional control on bombing run.
Pilot and RIO eject. Pilot rescued by SH-3 helo. Chute of
RIO seen, but not located. RIO MIA.
June 27: A-4E crashed during borrib run on barges. No
ejection sighted. Pilot MIA.
June 27: A-4E caught fire en route to strike. Pilot
ejected, rescued by Air Force HH-43 helo.
July 1: A-4E hit by ground fire during withdrawal from
strike. Good chute sighted. Pilot not recovered. MIA.
Well, let's see. Two years of time and salary, minimum, to
get an adequate iet pilot to the fleet. A half a billion dollars,
I'd say, to build this carrier, equip it, and put it on the line.
Millions of dollars for every plane, and the load it carried.
The reputation of our country riding in every cockpit-its
military reputation, its sense of political wisdom. And people, count two weeks of them, lost blowing away railroad
tracks. Railroad tracks! Pissed down the tube, Lyndon Johnson, pissed down the tube.
The feeling had grown over the previous six months until, every time he read such statistics, Red Lesczynski felt
as if he were somewhere between a gladiator and a whore,
although he would never publicly relate this to his men.
There was something almost malevolent in the way Navy
further admonitions from Johnson and McNamara to his
."boys," rather than warnings to those supplying the com-
and Air Force pilots were being wasted, in the restrictions
things; bicycles, even cars. At home, Lesczynski's Satur-
forced on them. God forbid that they should go after the
enemy's political centers, even though the communists
had been killing government officials in the South for a
decade. There was something supposedly inhumane
about attacking any area where there might be civilians,
although no such inhumanity had been seen in any other
war, or even in the South in this one. They flew against
railroad yards and were not allowed to attack MiG training
bases. They could not attack Soviet missile sites until they
were operational, and then, of course, it was like walking
down the tube of a cannon. They had indeed, as Jimmy
Maxwell had lamented over dinner, produced photographs of ships unloading missiles at Haiphong harbor,
and were ordered to stay away. In fact, the North Vietnamese had protested before the International Control Commission a few weeks before that U.S. planes had made
day afternoons belonged to John and his tools. There
would be other times, and he dwelled on that, but he
would never be able to see his children through the same
lens as before.
He read several hours a day. That was the one salvation
of shipboard life. He had brought more than thirty books,
and would soon be finished with them all. He had made
meticulous notes. They were a mixed bag of classics and
military oddments. He was trying to understand this war,
the Pacific, Japan. Japan was the key, and always had been.
He pulled out an old, faded volume written in 1920 by a
Russian general, Nikolai N. Golovin, in collaboration with
Admiral A. D. Bubnov. The Problem of the Pacific in the
Twentieth Century. He had found it in a secondhand bookstore in Washington. Among other things, the book had
accurately predicted both the timing and the course of
World War II.
"provocations" against foreign ships at Haiphong, causing
36
munists.
When did a missile become a missile? When did a war
become a war? When did a military professional finally cry
"foul" to this commander in chief? At times Lesczynski
tried to emphathize with Admiral Kuribayashi, who had
commanded the Japanese defenses at Iwo Jima during the
Second World War, fully knowing that he would lose the
battle. Like the Japanese commander, who died in the battle, Red Lesczynski believed not in the specifics of what he
was doing, but in what his effort represented.
He thought a lot about Jerry Schmidt as he whiled away
his hours on the Shiloh, wondering how the intense CIA
agent was dealing with the similar botching of the war
down South. Johnson and Westmoreland were obsessed
with world opinion, on the one hand knowing that it
would take a half-million American soldiers to establish a
combat presence and the support functions it would need
in order to operate halfway around the world, and on the
other not wanting to appear to be the "aggressor" in the
war. The result was piecemeal escalation, with the North
Vietnamese controlling the pace and thus the entire initiative in the war. The units in the field were performing admirably, but the United States was continually reacting,
continually behind. It was not a happy time if you were a
believer.
Sophie wrote him every day. The letters came in
bunches, with the resupply. When he had been young, he
had believed that a man could get used to being away,
could program it into the other cycles in his life. But it had
gotten harder each time, .so that now, at thirty-seven, it
was as if he had split himself in two. So much of him was
left with her, and with the children. J.J. was starting high
school. How he longed to watch his son on the football
field. Katherine was going through puberty without her father's advice. There were so many questions about dating
that she would now throw at J.J. Little John liked to fix
SUMMER 1983
�He checked his notes:
p. 43: "Japanese imperialism is not a~ invention of a handful of politicians. It is the expression oLthe spirit of modern
Japan."
p. 81: "The motives that will prompt Japan to engage in
the struggle are so deep and so vast that not one but several
wars will have to be waged before a solution is reached."
p. 38: "When Europeans fight they always endeavor to set
their own strength against that of their opponent. The Japanese endeavor to use the opponent's strength against him. By
this method you add your opponent's strength to your own
and may therefore win in spite of being weaker."
He pondered the last paragraph for several minutes before opening up the book. It made him want to show it to
Kosaka. It represented a combination of those two favorite
Japanese games, jujitsu and Go. It also made him wonder,
in an oriental triple-thinking way, whether there was indeed some connection between what he was doing and Japan's growing strength. He didn't feel smart enough to figure that out, at least not yet.
He read carefully for an hour, marking the book and taking notes. The last paragraph of Russian wisdom that he
added to his thick three-hole binder stayed with him as he
left his small desk and climbed into his bed.
p. 153: "The realities of the Pacific include the necessity of
all international agreements being backed by actual force. We
may deplore this fact the more bitterly that mankind has but
recently suffered such heavy losses in blood and treasure, but
such is the present condition of the world, and the primary
principal of positive science in search of the truth."
*
*
*
"Now, pilots, man your planes. I say again, pilots, man
your planes."
In the gray sea dawn a stiff wind pushed into the Shiloh's prow, beating insistently against the faces and chest
of pilots and sailors who busied across the long, plane-cluttered flight deck. The aircraft carrier had turned north,
into the wind, and geared up to thirty-three knots for
launching. The steady wind across the deck would help lift
the aircraft by increasing their relative ground speed. In
minutes, thirty-two of them would scream off from three
different catapults of the Shiloh, each plane taking a small
dip in front of the bow as it shifted from the pull of the
catapult to its own power, and then disappear.
Red Lesczynski left the F-4 ready room with seven other
pilots and reached his aircraft. He did a quick but thorough preflight, walking around the sleek, long-nosed jet
alongside its blue-shirted plane captain, an act that had his
life in its hands, but one that had been done so many thousands of times that it was down to a series of quick looks
and jokes with the plane captain.
"All set, Christianson?"
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
The plane captain grinned through snaggled teeth. Underneath the tight cap and the Mickey Mouse sound attenuators was a boy hardly older than his son. "It'll get you
there, Commander. Big one today, huh, sir?"
It was indeed, one of the largest raids of the air war, and
one of the closest ever to downtown Hanoi. He checked
his payload. A cluster of Mark 82 five-hundred-pound
bombs hung close to each wing, above cylindrical pods
that would fire Zuni five-inch rockets. Four F-4s, including
his own, would go in first, taking out as many of the radarcontrolled antiaircraft guns and missile sites as possible.
Twelve A-6 and six A-4 attack planes would follow with
heavy bombloads, going after the Bac Giang petroleum
storage area outside of Hanoi. Four of his F-4s would hold
back as a RESCAP, to come to the aid of aircraft under
attack by MiGs or damaged by ground fire. Two A-3 tank·
ers would accompany the flight for emergency refueling.
Two "Shrikes," especially configured A-4s, would provide
immediate counter-battery fire to missile sites that locked
onto the group as they went toward the target. An EA-6
"Q" aircraft would fly at the head of the group with the
F-4s, in order to provide electronic jamming and surveillance. And finally, an RA-5 would follow up the strike,
making a photograph for damage assessment. Once Lesczynski's F-4 flight rolled in, it would only take ninety seconds for the whole strike to be done with.
"Now, pilots start your engines. I say again, pilots start
your engmes."
He checked his survival gear inside the cockpit. The kid
in the blue shirt gave him the signal and he fired it up. The
A-4s went off the forward catapults, followed by the A-6s.
The sun was burning a narrow streak across the sea to
their right, the east, where eight thousand miles away his
family was then finishing dinner and speaking sorrowfully
of his absence. It was the July 4 weekend and they were in
Ford City. The flight deck was filled with aircraft roaring
down catapults and others taxiing toward them, with thin
sailors dressed in colored jerseys, red and blue and white,
yellow and purple and green, each jersey indicating without words their jobs. He followed a series of yellow-shirted
men who looked like funny insects with their goggles and
bulbous sound attentuators, the men pointing forcefully at
him, ensuring they had eye contact with him, and then
pointing again to the next yellow shirt, who guided him
through an intricate maze of equipment and aircraft toward his launching catapult.
On the forward left catapult they hooked his Phantom
into its bridle. He spoke briefly with Ted Cunningham, his
back-seater, a young lieutenant (jg) on his first combat
cruise, ensuring all their gear was a "go." His thumb went
up and then he saluted, a signal to the NCO outside, and
suddenly he was being slung along a ramp toward the ravening, empty sea, all the while gunning his Phantom with
everything it had, going from a full stop to 240 miles an
hour in the time it took him to whisper "Please, God," and
then the jet gave a sighing dip just in front of the bow,
37
�down toward the waiting water, and after that he was free,
airborne, making a slow turn to the left, picking up the rendezvous TacAn: 335 degrees, 15 miles, 10,000 feet, circle
to your left
They gathered quickly, the A-6s below him at 9,000 feet,
the A-4s below that at 8,000, the "dogs and cats" below
that, all circling with undeniable beauty in the clear blue
sky. Each of the flight leaders checked in and he then
heard Maxwell, the strike commander, give the word back
to the ship.
"Combat this is Mad Dog One. All aboard. Departing
with thirty-two."
They flew in loose formation, the F-4s and the "Q" up
front, the others spread laterally behind them in four plane
flights. As they approached the coastline Maxwell checked
in with the airborne coordinator, a C-130 orbiting in a safe
area over Laos, giving him the on and off target times.
"Combat Nail this is Mad Dog One with thirty-two, estimated eight oh five with estimated eight oh seven, over."
"Roger, Made Dog One, you're clear. New time on target zero eight ten."
Lesczynski grinned nervously, imagining Maxwell's
curses as they pulled into a wide, five-minute circle. The
Air Force was hitting the southern outskirts of Hanoi from
bases in Thailand. They'd either been late or had a pilot
down.
Then it was their turn and they powered in hard and
low, just above the green as it slipped suddenly under
them. They were "feet dry" now, over hostile ground.
They jinked as they flew, moving suddenly left and right to
throw off SAM missile radar intercepts.
"Okay, let's go."
Lesczynski pitched up suddenly, moving almost vertically, as if rising from the green earth itself. The other
three F-4s followed close behind. He came down in a
straight line, directly toward the target. The attack aircraft
would come in afterward at various angles, avoiding a pat-
tern that might be picked up by North Vietnamese radar.
"Red One, inl"
He had seen the gun sites on the photos during the preflight briefing and they were clear now as he roared toward
them, their little puffs going off around him. His aircraft
unleashed a string of Zunis, their smoky trails impacting again and again, and then he pulled out of the dive,
away as the bombs fell behind him. It all happened in a
few seconds, and the Phantoms made their turn, heading
back toward the new rendezvous over the sea.
"Red One, off."
The A-4s were next "Blue One, in."
He could hear the chatter as they talked to one another,
quick instructions.
"Heads up!"
"Look out, John!"
"Go left, now."
((Blue One, off."
Here came the first flight of A-6s. "Hawk One, in."
38
It was all so sterile once you'd made it through.
"Hawk One, off."
It was almost over. "Mad Dog, in."
"Break break break, be advised Mad Dog One is down."
The mission, his obligations, the world, all changed in
five seconds. jimmy Maxwell had been bagged. Lesczynski
immediately began to turn his fighter around and return to
the site. He had no munitions left, but he could not bear
the thought of having to stand before Louise Maxwell and
not assure her that he had done everything in his power to
help her husband.
He heard Maxwell's wingman, speaking with a forced
calm. "Okay, we got two good chutes. I've got them in
sight" The wingman contacted the airborne coordinator.
"Combat Nail, this is Mad Dog, got a bird down just off
the target I see him on the ground. I'm over him. We got
two other birds out to tank, and they'll be back directly to
you."
"Roger, Mad Dog, we'll direct."
The fire from the petroleum tanks rose twenty thousand feet, red and orange with oily curls of smoke. Lesczynski jinked and zigged and zagged, changing altitude,
shaking radar scopes, moving back toward the target They
were too far inland for the Search and Rescue helicopters
that operated off forward destroyers. The only hope was
for a jolly Green Giant to come overland from Thailand.
That would take twenty minutes or so.
"They're locked onto us, Commander!" Lieutenant (jg)
Cunningham was a seatful of terror in back of him. Red
lights flashed on the instrument panel, indicating that a
SAM radar had indeed locked them into its sights. He
jinked several times. A missile flew past them. It looked
like a telephone pole as it raced toward the heavens.
"That was too close!"
Maxwell was talking on his "beeper" survival radio. He
was about a mile west of the target. The jolly Green was
on its way. Lesczynski could hear Combat Nail instructing
it. A group of enemy soldiers was moving across a wide
field, sweeping, looking for Maxwell and his bombardier. If
the soldiers got too close it was all over. Lesczynski dove at
them from the sky, thinking to pin them down, to distract
them. They wouldn't know he was out of ammunition.
The 85-millimeter battery was in a hidden emplacement, off to his left It puffed once and he saw it for the
first time, all six guns firing until his field of vision on that
side was loaded with its flashes. A dozen orange balls were
coming at him, drifting up into space with a filmic slowness, an unreality, and he knew he was bagged. A shell
ripped through his lower canopy as he tried to pull out of
the dive and the stick became uncontrollable, the aircraft
unresponding, a dead horse on which he was saddled, rolling slowly to the left In the space of a half second, the time
it took to let go of the stick and reach for the ejection lever,
he realized that both his legs were wounded, his oxygen
mask had been torn off by shrapnel, the oxygen bottle near
his feet had exploded and set the cockpit aflame, and he
SUMMER l98l
�was peering at the ground through a hole in the underside
of his Phantom, a mere thousand feet below. The ground,
Vietnam, death, was coming up to meet him. His Phantom
was still going five hundred miles an hour.
He pulled the ejection lever and nothing happened. He
pulled it again and he was propelled through the closed canopy, the jet now at five hundred feet. His chute opened just
enough to break his impact. He hit the ground at a fortyfive-degree angle and bounced into the air again, doing a
full, almost graceful loop and then landing on his knees and
forehead, a three-point thud.
making him fall. Both his legs were bleeding, the blood
gathering in the nonregulation, powder-blue socks Sophie
had sent him. He felt silly, as much as anything else, in his
white boxer undershorts and the funny socks.
Under a clump of trees a nurse dressed the cuts on his
head, ignoring his arm and legs. It grew quiet. Finally the
all-clear siren sounded over the ubiquitous loudspeakers
and they walked him to a dirt road, where he was loaded
into a green munitions truck. A blue uniformed commissar
met the truck in front of a small cluster of buildings. He
had a terse, bulbous face. He seemed amazed at Lesczynski's size. The commissar was the first person to speak
It was all so loud. That was his first, woozy thought as he
staggered to his knees and then tried to stand. In the cockpit it had been sterile, except for the radio chatter. Suddenly the world was swimming with roars and explosions;
missiles going off, the 85-millimeter battery pumping out
three shells a second at other aircraft overhead, bombs and
missiles coming back down from the covering jets, rifles
and pistols shooting into the air with futile pops. The petroleum storage area was a towering, crackling backdrop a
mile away, whose flames reached forever into the sky, as
high as Mount Everest.
The soldiers who had been searching for Maxwell were
now sweeping toward him instead, spread laterally across
the dry rice paddy, the AK-47s pointing at him. They filled
his vision as he tried to stand, thirty of them moving in a
half jog. He reached back to disconnect his parachute, an
automatic, unthinking move, but it wasn't coming off.
Then he looked down and noticed that his left arm was
hanging useless, unresponding but for little twitches, like a
chick trying helplessly to fly. The bone in his upper arm
had snapped completely in two, and the part still attached
to his shoulder was jiggling, causing the rest of the arm to
flail around.
He couldn't even surrender. He raised his right arm into
the air and they took it for a threat, half of them dropping
into firing positions and the other half rushing him. A soldier grabbed the dangling arm and twisted it behind him,
in a tight hammerlock that kept on going until his detached wrist was up behind his head. He hit the man unthinkingly, trying to stop the pain. The others charged
him, then noticed the arm was loose and merely beat him
up instead of shooting him.
They acted as if they had never seen zippers before.
They cut his flight suit off him, stripping him down to his
undershorts, and tied a rope around his neck. In the distance, he saw a Jolly Green Giant helicopter pop in just
over the trees where Maxwell had been and then disappear, under heavy air cover. He had seen nothing of Cunningham, his back-seater. They walked him across the dry
field. Loudspeakers were everywhere, blaring terse urgencies he did not understand. An old man tried to come at
him with a scythe, and the soldiers pushed him away. The
soldiers took a delight in suddenly yanking the rope and
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
directly to him. He closely examined Lesczynski's features, then made a judgment.
~<Russki?"
"Polski." He didn't know what else the man might have
meant. "American."
They took him into a large, bare room and made him sit
on the floor. People gathered at its open windows and
stared at him. Shortly, an officer in green clothes, wearing
a pith helmet, entered the room with three armed soldiers.
The officer's face was expressionless, but his eyes had the
frozen intensity of a professional killer. He stood in front
of Lesczynski and spoke in fluent English.
"] am going to ask you some questions. If you do not
answer you will be severely punished."
44
1 need a doctor."
HLater, if you demonstrate a proper understanding.
What is your name?"
"Stanislaus Lesczynski."
"What is your rank?"
"Commander, United States Navy."
"What ship did you take off from?"
"I can't answer that, according to the Geneva Agreements."
The officer issued a command in Vietnamese. Someone
behind Lesczynski kicked him hard in the head, knocking
him over. Two men grabbed him by the arms, dragging
him to the center of the room. His bad arm was up around
his head again and he screamed in agony. The crowd outside the room responded with a chant, louder and louder.
He felt alone, so alone. I'm going to die in the midst of
strangers who hate me.
They tied his ankles together, and then his wrists and
his elbows so that they touched, the ropes so tight that
they cut the blood off like tourniquets. It was done with
one rope, so that his back was arched and his frame was
immobile.
They kicked him and beat him and pinched his hands
and arms with pliers until the skin was completely numb
and the limbs were paralyzed, as if they did not exist. Each
time they asked the same question. Finally, awash with
guilt at such a small surrender, he relented.
"U.S.S. Shiloh."
"What squadron?"
The same routine. The three guards took turns to see
39
�who could hit his face the hardest. He began to realize that
he was in a small sense winning, because he was making
them pay for information they already had. Finally, he
could stand it no longer.
"VF-907."
"What kind of plane were you flying?"
"You ought to know. You shot it down."
"What was your target?"
Out of one window, past the hateful enjoying faces,
tongues of red flame still licked the noonday sky. "Where
all that fire is coming from."
The interrogator left the room for a few minutes. He returned with four photographers, who immediately began
taking pictures. He walked directly to Lesczynski and
shoved his head down to the floor. A soldier pointed an
SKS rifle into the back of Lesczynski' s head, and pulled
the trigger.
In the millisecond it took for the trigger to squeeze and
click, Lesczynski came to a sort of unrelenting peace with
his captivity. He was in such pain at that moment that he
welcomed any relief, even death. His mind went to other
things as he stared into the dirt floor. I wonder where they'll
bury me. I wonder how long it will take for Sophie to find
out. What is it like for a bullet to hit your head?
The trigger clicked. The firing pin hit an empty cham·
ber. The crowd outside taunted him. And he knew that,
for some perverse reason, they needed to use him more
than they needed to kill him.
They blindfolded him and loaded him into the bed of a
truck, and in twenty minutes he was in Hanoi.
self with that thought. And far away, in the corner of one
eye, he could see the petroleum plant still burning.
At the International House they kept him outside, in a
flower garden, for ten minutes. When the guard came to
guide him inside, he refused to move unless they gave him
water. He had asked before, and been denied. He had not
drunk anything since breakfast, a lifetime ago on the
South China Sea. Finally the guard relented, and gave him
two glasses of ice water. He knew he would pay for his obstinance, but it didn't matter. There would be so many
things to pay for that they would all blend in, anyway.
There were Caucasian reporters in the press room-; as
well as Asians. He did his best to march up to the podium,
and saluted when he reached it. In the Orient, the man
who shows no fear is king, that's what MacArthur had said,
but he was not really thinking about MacArthur at that
moment. He was remembering Crane Howell, the hobbled, irascible professor at the academy who had grown old
before his time, who had survived the work camps and the
beatings of the Japanese. If he was lucky, he would live to
be old and beaten also. There was no use hoping for more.
It was now his fate.
The reporters asked him no questions. He was merely
meant to be an object on display, like elephant tusks after a
safari. Afterward, the trucks drove him back to Hoa Lo
prison, better known among American fliers as the Hanoi
Hilton, through a different section of town, through same
groups of chanting people. And then the fun began.
For ten days they beat him. For ten days they did not let
him sleep. For ten days they asked him the same questions, over and over, slapping and punching, keeping him
*
*
*
"Put these on. You are going to a press conference."
The interrogator threw him a pair of oversized flight
boots and an Air Force flight suit, freshly washed. They
untied his hands. He had been sitting on a small stool in
the Hoa Lo prison's interrogation room for five hours, go-
ing through the same string of questions and beatings as
before. They had to help him into the clothes. One of the
guards fashioned a sling for his arm out of thin gauze.
They loaded him onto the back of a military truck and
made him stand at the front of the truck bed, holding onto
a bamboo pole. The truck lumbered through endless Hanoi
streets, another truck in front of it with a spotlight on him,
another one following, filled with journalists. Crowds
gathered on every street at the urgings of the Big Brother
loudspeakers, chanting at him and throwing things. Warm
urine covered one side of his face. Feces impacted on the
bamboo rail near his hand. The crowd periodically surged
against the truck, forced back by troops with bayonets. But
even Red Lesczynski could tell the whole thing was staged.
The demonstrators were somehow flat, mechanicaL They
looked sideways, for their controllers, as often as they did at
him. Wonderful stuff for pictures. Red Lesczynski on display.
Hanoi was actually a beautiful city. He preoccupied him-
40
in leg irons, laughing as he urinated and shit on himself.
For ten days they allowed his wounds to fester, until his
legs were swollen and the gashes had turned black, the blisters splitting and draining onto the floor, as if he were a
frankfurter on a spittle over a hot fire. For ten days they
worked the ropes, tightening them and loosening them to
regulate his pain, until he developed infected blisters that
would make permanent scars, his "varsity stripes" along
his wrists and upper arms. For ten days he saw no one but
the guards, heard no voices but Vietnamese, found himself locked inside a seven-foot-square repository of darkness and filth that made him wish over and over that he
could merely die and see the end of it.
And after ten days, he found himself writing with
numbed fingers the words that they dictated into his delirious, semideadness:
I. I condemn the United States Government for its aggressive war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
2. I have encroached upon the air space of the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam.
3. I am a war criminal.
4. I have received humane and lenient treatment from
the people and the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
SUMMER 1983
�Truth-Telling and the Iliad
Douglas Allanbrook
The terrible word truth implies a parity between what
we see and what we say. There are two books which most
vividly exhibit this quality of truth. These two books are
the Iliad and Thucydides' history. I sometimes think that
they are the only two that do so consistently. Both books
reflect in their words and accounts, speeches and stories,
the real that is in front of our eyes and that is so difficult to
own up to or to talk about. It would be too much to attempt to talk about both of these incomparable books, and
tonight I shall talk only about the Iliad. It would be too
much to attempt in an hour to talk with any kind of completeness about the Iliad, and I shall merely try to fix your
attention upon the salient features of the poem's words,
similes, Gods, and story. The thesis underlying the pointing out is the traditional one that the Iliad is the truest and
most famous poem because of its unvarying and harsh vision, its unwavering eye. The singer of the poem never
turns aside into the justification of Gods, cities, or individual men. He tells the truth as he see it. His poem is the
artifact of things as they are.
Everyone who talks about Homer is indebted to the po·
et's commentators throughout the ages. A lecture of)acob
Klein's focused my attention on the dimensions and passion of the story of Achilles and Zeus. I have also been influenced in what I have to say by two modern writers on
the Iliad, Redfield and Whitman, and have used certain of
their observations, though disagreeing with certain of
their conclusions. The writer who looms hugely on the horizon of any talk about Homer, and who is Homer's most
important critic, is Plato. This lecture certainly disagrees
with his criticisms, all the more so as it is clear that Plato
loved and revered the poem.
The beginning of the road through the poem will be to
look at words, at nouns which name things; then Homer's
similes will be examined; next proper names and lists and
Douglas Allanbrook is a composer and tutor at St. John's College, An":
napolis, Md. His most recent works arc a "Serenade for Piano and Orchestra" and a set of three "Love and Death Songs" for high voice and
chamber ensemble.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
catalogues; next the names of the Gods and what they illuminate; and finally the story itself as it illuminates the men
and gives them to us as models for our own looking in gen·
era!. There may be a certain madness in this method of
looking at things; generally when we talk about things we
argue about them, justify them, or attempt to shove them
into the artificial frame of a problem to be solved. Homer
is not rhetorical, and language talking about him should
not be either, although it is well nigh impossible to talk in
any way consonant with his purity and passion.
Homer names everything he sees and has lots of time at
his disposal. He has a lovely flexible hexameter to fit his
words into, and while his grammar is simple, his vocabulary is enormous. Everything to be seen is named specifically. Reading the poem at random one finds words for
yoke-rings for oxen, for two-handled goblets, and a word
for the tiller of a boat which is always in the plural because
the boats he talks about had two tillers. When Odysseus
sails back with Chryse in Book I, returning her to her father, all the details of the docking are spelled out:
But Odysseus
meanwhile drew near to Chryse conveying the sacred
hecatomb.
These when they were inside the many-hollowed harbor
took down and gathered the sails and stowed them in the
black ship,
let down mast by the forestays, and settled it in the mast
crutch
easily, and rowed her with oars to the mooring.
They threw over the anchor stones and made fast the sterncables.
[!, 430-436]
When Priam in Book XXIV comes to Achilles' shelter all
details of the wagon which will convey Hector's body back
to Troy are named:
... and they in terror at the old man's scolding
hauled out the easily running wagon for mules, a fine thing
new-fabricated, and fastened the carrying basket upon it.
41
�They took away from its peg the mule yoke made of
boxwood
with its massive knob, well fitted with guiding rings and
brought forth
the yoke lashing (together with the yoke itself) of nine
cubits
and snugged it well into place upon the smooth-polished
wagon-pole
at the foot of the beam, then slipped the ring over the peg,
and lashed it
with three turns on either side to the knob, and afterwards
fastened it all in order and secured it under a hooked guard.
carrion dogs see is a mystery. You recall the opening of the
poem:
[XXIV, 265-74]
[1, 1-7]
Achilles' shelter where the fateful meeting with Priam
takes place is described minutely:
It is not clear that birds and dogs see what we see, and for
us their sight seems pitiless. Certainly as the opening of
the poem sings, they are always present, looking from on
high as the vultures do, or circling the edges on ground
level like the dogs.
Nothing is said about these objects named; they are
named as what they are, and not so much written about as
presented. What is seen is named specifically as what it is
when it reveals itself to sight. It is not that a vase is twohandled, it's a two-handled vase; it is not that a cauldron is
unfired, it is an unfired cauldron; it is not that a chest is
made of cedar, it is a cedar chest. Even more clearly we
never see a sword, we see a bronze sword; we never see
red, we see a red fire. Direct perception is always correct, it
cannot lie. The stick seen under water does appear
crooked, and it would be false in this primary sense we are
talking about to say that it was straight. It is crooked to our
vision, and something would be wrong with the world if it
were not. Sentences that remain true to this firstness or
primacy of vision as imaged in a word are always indicative. Nouns in such sentences indicate things. They are
placed in their sentences in time as objects are in space.
This is language approaching the state of painting, while
simultaneously, in this poem, the words are being sung. A
painting argues nothing, proves no point. Music although
in time, and an aspect of language, argues nothing, proves
no points. Paintings and music see and hear for us. Similarly with so many of the words and sentences of the Iliad;
they argue nothing, they prove nothing, they say clearly
what is seen in a perpetual and vivid present, in moments
of firstness and primary sensing, moments that are the opposite of the infinite and the unbounded, that are crystallized facets in the eye of attention focused on each object.
There is no reality worth a damn unless it is attended to,
and attention must be fixed with a word that is an image.
The sentences in the Iliad are almost all indicative. The
sun is out, and there are no nebulous futures or contraryto-fact conditions. Nothing is hypothesized, nothing is abstracted, nothing needs to be proved, as there are no problems to be solved and there is no path of discourse which
leads from or goes under what is in front of us.
Certain special words in the Iliad occur over and over
... a towering
shelter the Myrmidons had built for their king, hewing
the timbers of pine, and they made a- roof of thatch above it
shaggy with grass that they had gathered out of the
meadows;
and around it made a great courtyard for their king, with
hedgepoles
set close together; the gate was secured by a single doorpiece
of pine, and three Achaians could ram it home in its socket
and three could pull back and open the huge door-bar;
three other
Achaians, that is, but Achilleus all by himself could close it.
[XXIV, 448-56]
After the death of Hector, when Achilles thinks of
"shameful treatment for glorious Hector", everything is
named:
In both of his feet at the back he made holes by the
tendons
in the space between ankle and heel, and drew thongs of
ox-hide through them,
and fastened them to the chariot so as to let the head drag.
[XXII, 396-98]
As we the listeners to the poem follow the action of the
story and listen to the words, it is as if we were looking
down on the plain in front ofTroy.lt is as if the names, the
nouns, the substantives, were glinting in the sunshine. All
the objects in the bright space between the blackhulled
boats and the Skaian Gates glitter and shine; they reveal
themselves to our eyes as if we were movie cameras or vultures or dogs. The art of Homer is like the movies; there is
the camera eye, the selection of objects to be photographed, the quick shifts of scene from the beach to the
interior of a house in Troy, the close-ups and the dialogue.
Strictly speaking, a camera sees nothing; it records for a
director who has a story to tell. What exactly vultures and
42
Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus
and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the
Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong
souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the wil1 of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus' son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus.
SUMMER 1983
�again. Each occurrence of the word is specific and apt in
its naming. But in its manifold occurrences the word casts
a web of meaning which links together all of the occurrences. The most notable of such w6rds is the word "fire."
In Book I the pyres of the dead Achaians consume the
bodies of those stricken of Apollo's plague. In Book V
when Diomedes begins his day of glory Pallas Athene
"made weariless fire blaze from his shield and helmet" (V,
4). Hector's funeral is conducted with quiet finality, and
his body burns accompanied by the proper lamentations
of his family and his city. Fire finally reaches the boats of
the Achaians and accomplishes the plan of Zeus for Achilles' glory. When Hector is dead on the ground, killed by
Achilles and the trickery of Athenc, the Achaians remember that fire:
And the other sons of the Achaians came running about
him,
and gazed upon the stature and on the imposing beauty
of Hektor; and none stood beside him who did not stab
him;
and thus they would speak one to another, each looking at
his neighbor:
"See now, Hektor is much softer to handle than he was
when he set the ships ablaze with the burning firebrand."
[XXII, 369-74]
Patroklos' body is consumed by fire together with the
bodies of the twelve young Trojans slaughtered by Achilles for the greater glory of his friend, and Achilles circles
the pyre dragging Hector's body by the heels. In the terrifying climax of the poem Achilles stands on the ditch and
bellows, his head encircled with a nimbus of fire. He
strikes terror into the hearts of the Trojans, who well sec in
it their own destruction. Achilles is like fire, short-lived, destructive, gleaming, and irresistible, a pile of ashes at the
end-"consumcd by that which it was nourished by," to
speak as our best poet speaks. Achilles also looks like fire.
In Book XXII, just before the end of Hector, Achilles
closes in on him "like the flare of blazing fire" (XXII, 13 5).
The word "fire" becomes more than the sum of its individual instances. It becomes part of the meaning of the
whole poem as we see the work of fire and the lives of the
heroes, and the heat of the battle, and the burning of
corpses, and the sacrifices to the gods, and the certain future fire which will consume Troy and finally cast young
Astyanax, Hector's son, to instant death over the walls.
The meaning of such a word is what we mean, I suppose,
by the word "symbolic." The word is in each specific instance precise, but in its many instances its meaning
spreads abroad to encompass a whole network of signification. We grasp the enormity of its meaning without demonstration or argument. It exhibits itself, and shines in our
eyes.
One word, according to authorities, is dangerous to utter. The first word of the poem, the subject of the poem in
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the objective case, is a special holy word, a "tabu." The
word is, of course, 1'-~""· the wrath of Achiles which will
bring manifold destruction, etc. It is a word that is reserved
for Achilles and the gods; it names a brooding and potential power. It always presages some terrifying future. It is
hardly adventitious that 1'-~"" is the first word in this poem
whose story has a tension and a resolution that is as clearly
aimed as the loosing of an arrow toward a target. In the
network of meaning in the poem it is clear that this sacred
"wrath" is like fire. Any ordinary wrath blazes up like a
fire, but this wrath is like a holy fire, which is not to be
gazed at any more than the head of a Gorgon is. Through
it the will of Zeus is accomplished, and many heroes
slaughtered. The word occurs very rarely in the poem,
while the word fire is ever-present in the fabric of the
story. The word is avoided, although one can circle around
it by talking of things that are like it or by finding circumlocutions that glance toward its meaning. The meaning of
the word is the story itself, as the poet clearly announces in
his invocation to the goddess.
Vision and the naming of things, or seeing and saying,
have yet another aspect which has been hidden and only
hinted at in what has been said so far about the Iliad. We
see only what we pay attention to, and the poet pays close
attention. We see a particular object only by coming to it
from something else or by going from it to something else.
The specialness of what we see is not only that it is a brazen sword with a golden handle, but that it is different
from anything else in its very particularity. It is also different from anything that is next to it, or indeed it could not
be seen. It may be like something, but must always remain
different. Words used truthfully reflect this, and that is
why Homer constantly uses similes and very rarely employs metaphors. It is, after all, a special kind of lie to say
that my love is a rose. She is a girl and she is like a rose, or
better like a red, red rose. Achilles is not a fire, he is like a
fire, and he docs not fight water, but battles with a special
river which runs along the edge of the battlefield and
which has one name which is employed by the gods, the
Xanthos, and another name, the Skamandros, which is
used by humans. It is clear that fire and water are antithetical, but it is in the samenesses and differences presented at
once in a simile that vision is both clarified and respected
for what it is. To be sure, there are a few metaphors in
Homer. People sleep "their brazen sleep," "night wraps
up their eyes," or someone is called "the scourge of Zeus."
Similes, however, are the ever-present figure of speech in
Homer, and they range from the simplest ones to comparisons of enormous complexity and irony. Simple similes
give flashes of vision as the images dart from like to like
while preserving the necessity of seeing things as separate.
Ajax carries his shield "like a wall." Athene and Hera walk
into battle eager to help the Achaians "like shivering
doves." Men attack "like lions"; their armor "glitters like
the thunder flash of Zeus."
Complicated similes reveal more, and Agamemnon is
43
�never seen more clearly than in the simile near the beginning of Book XI. Let us read it:
And as a lion seizes the innocent young of the running
deer, and easily crunches and breaks them caught in the
strong teeth
when he has invaded their lair, and rips out the soft heart
from them,
and even if the doe be very near, still she has no strength
to help, for the ghastly shivers of fear are upon her also
and suddenly she dashes away through the glades and the
timber
sweating in her speed away from the pounce of the strong
beast;
so there was no one of the Trojans who could save these
two
from death, but they themselves were running in fear from
the Argives.
[XI, 113-121]
Agamemnon has just killed and stripped Isos and Antiphos, two sons of Priam. Achilles had previously caught
them on the slopes of Mt. Ida and released them for ransom. This time Agamemnon struck Isos in the chest above
the nipple and hit Antiphos by the ear with the sword, and
eagerly stripped off their armor, which armor he had seen
before when Achilles had brought them in from Ida. Before this we have heard Agamemnon's fierce words in
Book VI when his brother Menelaos was moved to pity a
Trojan:
"Dear brother, o Menelaos, are you concerned so tenderly
with these people? Did you in your house get the best of
treatment
from the Trojans? No, let not one of them go free of sudden
death and our hands; not the young man child that the
mother carries
still in her body, not even he, but let all of Ilion's
people perish, utterly blotted out and unmourned for."
[VI, 55-60]
This side of Agamemnon was present to the listener before the simile in Book XI, but what the listener to the simile becomes startlingly aware of is a truth about Agamemnon as he is placed in juxtaposition with Achilles. What
was begun and seen in Book I when the two men stood
apart in their bitter quarrel is now made manifest. Agamemnon may be a bumbling king of kings, an unsure
leader of the host, too big for his boots, but for all that he is
a killer, like the lion of the simile. Earlier in Book XI you
will recall his shield with the face of the Gorgon upon it,
the symbol of fear and trembling and horror. We never
have physical description of the heroes in the Iliad; we
don't know the color of their eyes or of their hair. Only
ugly Thersites with his peculiar eggplant-shaped head is
described in physical detail. We know Achilles is beautiful,
44
and that Priam is so in another way. We envisage great
Ajax, the wall of the Achaians, and noble Diomedes. The
great, vacillating, and violent Agamemnon is always
present to our eyes after this simile, all the more so as he is
remembered by being placed in conjunction with Achilles,
who had spared the lives of the two boys that Agamemnon
is here shown slaughtering as a beast slaughters.
Ten books later Homer portrays Achilles slaughtering
yet another boy whom he had previously ransomed. This
is the near-monstrous book in which Achilles butchers
Trojans beside the river Skamandros and then launches
himself against the divine river itself. You recall what he
says to the boy before killing him:
"So, friend, you die also. Why all this clamour about it?
Patroklos also is dead, who was better by far than you are.
Do you not see what a man I am, how huge, how splendid
and born of a great father, and the mother who bore me
immortal?
Yet even I have also my death and my strong destiny,
and there shall be a dawn or an afternoon or a noontime
when some man in the fighting will take the life from me also
either with a spearcast or an arrow flown from the
bowstring.''
[XXI, 106-lll]
If we were to construct a simile ourselves it would not be a
bestial one; with all of our later stories in us we might well
liken Achilles to an Angel of Death, but we would never
liken him to a lion.
Let us now examine another simile earlier on in Book XI
than the one we just looked at. The two armies are facing
each other, drawn up in two lines:
And the men, like two lines of reapers who, facing each
other,
drive their course all down the field of wheat or of barley
for a man blessed in substance, and the cut swathes drop
showering,
so Trojans and Achaians driving in against one another
cut men down, nor did either side think of disastrous panic.
[XI, 67-71]
Here our seeing is wrenched from the world of war to the
world of peace. Reaping a harvest is the co-operative work
of a group of men, and the grain is a blessing, and bread is
life-giving and puts strength into the body, and the man
who owns the field is blessed in his substance. Two things
that look alike-the lopping-off of stalks of grain and the
cutting down of human bodies-are both hard work. The
result of one is fruit and nurture, and of the other desolation. We of course use Homer's simile constantly, but as a
metaphor. We speak of "death, the grim reaper," or of infantry soldiers being "mowed down" by machine~gun fire,
or even push our metaphorical perversity so far as to speak
of "body counts" as if we were numbering the stalks of
grain that fall or counting our merchandise. Metaphors
SUMMER 1983
�conceal the truth often, if they are not downright lying.
Men are not lions and bodies are nOt for counting. No man
is an anonymous unit to be counted. Agamemnon is like a
lion slaughtering a young deer, and foot soldiers killing
each other in facing lines are like reapers. The seeing of
one thing as like another thing to the eye but also as startlingly different to the intelligence reveals the character of
what is seen. In this grim poem of violence, wrath, and war
there is never a simile which lulls us into acceptance of war
as something ordinary, never a passage which lets us get
used to it. It is always seen for what it is, the field of hateful
Ares, not the field of peaceful harvest. The difference between the scenes of peace and the scenes of war make the
battlefield agonizingly clear. War is not excellent, although
heroes gain glory in it. The poem, in its truthfulness, never
suggests for a moment that we will ever be without war.
The famous simile at the end of Book VIII, so often
commented upon throughout the ages, accomplishes a
vaster kind of seeing by means of likeness and difference.
Book VIII, as you will recall, is where Zeus puts into play
his plan for Achilles' glory. The Achaians will be driven
back temporarily and Hector will be unleashed. Hector has
just boasted of what he has and will accomplish, and has
voiced the poignant and overweening wish:
"Oh, if I only
could be as this in all my days immortal and ageless
and be held in honour as Athene and Apollo are honoured
as surely as this oncoming day brings evil to the Argives."
[VIII, 538-41]
The first likeness and difference here is between stars and
fires; another likeness and difference arises as one gazes
upon the still moon-and-star-lit landscape and the thousand fires burning in the plain between the river and the
ships. Quiet and peace envelop both the plain and the
landscape. Stars and fires both glitter, and both seem uncountable in their numbers; there are a thousand fires and
each has fifty men, and who can count the stars. The
beauty and terror and quiet which are behind the truth of
the view come all from the awful differences. The landscape is a world of peace inhabited by a shepherd whose
heart is gladdened by the clarity of the night. The stars in
their purity and eternity, though shining, are the antithesis of the fires, which will be ashes as the day dawns and
destruction begins. We, the listeners, grasp the scene like
visitors from another realm, from another star-system,
knowing the past and the future; yet simultaneously we
are not from another realm or from another star-system,
but live on the plain, waiting anxiously for another dawn.
We are ourselves like a simile of sameness and difference
in our attending to the poem, as we are both like and unlike what we see.
A whole host of similes introduces the whole host of the
Achaians in Book II before the mighty catalogue unfolds
in all its specificity. First the gleam from their bronze dazzles the upper air as an obliterating fire lights up a vast
forest. Next, pouring from their ships and shelters with the
earth resounding under their feet and under the hooves of
their horses, they are likened to nations of birds, of geese,
of cranes, of swans settling in clashing swarms onto a water
meadow. The host takes position, thousands of armed
After this he sacrifices to the gods, but they "took no part
of it/ ... so hateful to them was sacred Ilion" (VIII, 55051). The simile is as follows:
So with hearts made high these sat night-long by the
outworks
of battle, and their watch fires blazed numerous about them.
As when in the sky the stars about the moon's shining
are seen in all their glory, when the air has fallen to stillness,
and all the high places of the hills are clear, and the shoulders
out-jutting,
and the deep ravines, as endless bright air spills from the
heavens
and all the stars are seen, to make glad the heart of the
shepherd;
such in their numbers blazed the watchfires the Trojans were
burning
between the waters of Xanthos and the ships, before Ilion.
A thousand fires were burning there in the plain, and beside
each
one sat fifty men in the flare of the blazing firelight.
And standing each beside his chariot, champing white barley
and oats, the horses waited for the dawn to mount to her high
place.
[VIII, 553-65]
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
men, as leaves and flowers appear in their season. Next
they stand in such numbers, their hearts burning to break
the Trojans, as multitudinous nations of swarming insects
which, avid for milk, drive hither and thither about the
sheepfolds in spring when the milk splashes in the milkpails. Only this last simile switches to the world of men
and peaceful human work. The order has been: obliterating forest fire, nations of birds, leaves and flowers in sea-
son, nations of insects about the stalls of shepherds. The
focus finally narrows down to the leaders of the host, and
last of all to the leader of the leaders, Agamemnon:
These, as men who are goatherds among the wide
goatflocks
easily separate them in order as they take to the pasture,
thus the leaders separated them this way and that way
toward the encounter, and among them powerful
Agamemnon,
with eyes and head like Zeus who delights in thunder,
like Ares for girth, and with the chest of Poseidon;
like some ox of the herd pre-eminent among the others,
a bull, who stands conspicuous in the huddling cattle.
[II, 474-81]
This whole great list of similes, with its carefully controlled
45
�order of seeing things, and all of the other similes we have
looked at, have one characteristic which is so simple that it
almost escapes notice. Everything is compared to something that is always as it is, whether the comparison is to
objects or animals, to activities or to landscapes, or to the
recurrence of spring: lions, reapers, goatherds at their
rounds, nations of birds and insects, forest fires, stars. The
great succession of similes just looked at in Book II has as
its function the focusing, the funneling of our attention to
the great list of proper names and place-names which follows in the Catalogue. Proper names, of course, are all
over the Iliad, not merely listed once in the Catalogue. No
one in this poem is anonymous, whether he be an
Achaian, a Trojan, or an outlander speaking some outlandish speech. No one in this poem dies without being
named, and his name is attached to where he came from.
In this the poem is true to all of us. We may not all be
brothers, but we all have names and parents and were born
someplace, and to ignore this is to lie in the blackest manner known to lying. No one is a number, and people are
not to be counted, they are to be named. There are many
warriors in this poem named at the moment of their death
who otherwise play no part in the story:
So Iphidamas fell there and went into the brazen slumber,
unhappy, who came to help his own people, and left his
young wife
a bride, and had known no delight from her yet, and given
much for her.
First he had given a hundred oxen, then promised a thousand
head of goats and sheep, which were herded for him in
abundance.
Now Agamemnon, son of Atreus, stripped him ...
[XI, 2 41-46]
Or consider poor Gorgythion, named by name and descent, and immortalized by a simile:
Gorgythion the blameless, hit in the chest by an arrow;
Gorgythion whose mother was lovely Kastianeira,
Priam's bride from Aisyme, with the form of a goddess.
He bent drooping his head to one side, as a garden poppy
bends beneath the weight of its yield and the rains of
springtime;
so his head bent slack to one side beneath the helm's weight.
[VIII, 303-308]
If I were to tell the truth about the war that I knew, it
would certainly not be an account of the so-called strategy
of the vain and posturing commanding general. Rather I
would tell of a boy from the tobacco-growing country of
the upper Connecticut river in Ivlassachusetts who married a young virgin from his own town a month before sailing, and who met his death quickly, shot from behind by a
German patrol.
The Catalogue in Book II is the very triumph of specific-
46
ity, a great parade of proper names and places drawn up in
the plain for the listener to hear about. The Muses themselves are invoked as being goddesses who know all things,
and who remember all those who came beneath Ilion. It is
as if I, in telling the terrible story of Gettysburg and Antietam, were to call on some recording angel to help me with
the resounding catalogue of names and places from Portland, Maine, to Chattanooga, Tennessee. The catalogue
has the endless fascination of an exhaustive list; the listener checks off every place he has ever head of, and learns
some new ones. A Canadian humorist once commented
that the Catalogue of Ships in Homer had all the dignity
and beauty of the New York Telephone Directory. To
which one can only reply that the Telephone Book is fascinating in its very specificity; it is better than imagination,
or rather it feeds the imagination, and fills the reader with
wonder and terror at the thought of all those names, nationalities, streets, and boroughs.
So far in this lecture tonight we have examined names
of objects, names of animals, names of artifacts. Certain
names such as <lfire" and <lwater" assumed a vaster meaning, even though each instance of their use was specific.
We talked finally of proper names, proper nouns, people
rescued from anonymity as they died and were named. We
have yet to see the truth of the named heroes, Achilles and
Hector and Ajax, the meaning their names assume for us,
although much was revealed about the name Agamemnon
by the lion simile. To some sceptics it may seem suspect to
talk about the name of Achilles as having meaning. Achilles' mother is a goddess, and most of the other heroes are
of divine descent. Is there any real referent for us in such
names? Was Achilles ever? He's not Alcibiades, or Caesar,
or General Patton. Can the name of a person which is not
linked to a real person have any relation to the truth? The
names of the gods disturb listeners more than the names
of the heroes. This may be more so nowadays that in previous ages, though no one was more upset by the names of
the gods than Socrates. What are the names of the gods
referring to? Are they merely allegorical names? Dare we
even give names to gods? The names of the gods must
have been like a thorn in the side of many of your thoughts
and discussions about Homer. By a kind of reversal of
meaning you may well have been put off by the fact that
the gods appear so real; they are married, they have domestic quarrels, brothers and sisters detest each other,
they have mansions, they eat together; goodness as such
seems to have little to do with them, though they certainly
exhibit specific excellences. Another knot to disentangle
in the Iliad is that great Zeus is so different from the other
gods. He stands apart from the other immortals with a divinity and power which Achilles' appears akin to. Zeus'
dire silence throughout the long tension of much of the
poem, until Achilles' day arrives and the plan of Zeus unfolds in its double-edged fulfillment, is the very will of the
poem, as the poet tells us in the opening lines. Even this
great mystery, Zeus, however, is hoodwinked by his wife,
SUMMER 1983
�and his threats to her and to the rest of his family are never
carried out. Another aspect of the g0ds which may disturb
our listening to the story as true may be best stated by remembering that Herodotus says that Homer and Hesiod
named and defined the gods. Certain listeners may be
used to considering the gods as formless, as Good, as not
being something that was written up by a poet; in other
words many listeners have been used to the gods as being
real by the very fact of their not being like anything we see
and by their not being embodied in a fiction. The gods are
called the "deathless" ones, the immortals, and it is by examining closely this name that I propose that we get closer
to the truth of their names. This real name, the "deathless
ones," is a name that speaks of a lack of something. They
don't die, and we do. It is not merely that they are bigger,
more beautiful, and more powerful than we are; most importantly they are other than mortal. In all of this the gods
are like similes, and our vision of ourselves and the world
as it is is sharpened by the presence of the gods. I am in no
way saying that they are similes, and God knows they are
not metaphors. They are like similes in that they sharpen
our attention to what lies around us. The fact that they are
without death but like us gives their actions at times a kind
of frivolity. War is a comedy for them; if Ares and Aphrodite are wounded in the battle before the walls of Ilion it is
only a kind of play which will be put right by their parents.
Artemis, the killer maiden, is spanked by her mother until
the deadly arrows fall out of her pockets.
The gods are like and unlike the listeners to the poem in
another way. They look down on the plain of Troy, and see
what goes on; they know the beginning, the middle, and
the end of the story, and enjoy it just as we do; and again
like us turn aside from it and go on about their own affairs.
They are the guarantors of the fiction. The difference
again is of course that they are "deathless," and their enjoyment is completely aesthetic, unsullied by suffering or
the approaching evening. The following short poem by
Emily Dickinson is not for them, though in some awful
way one suspects that they might appreciate it, as mere
aesthetes among us do:
I like a look of agony,
Because I know it's true;
Men do not sham convulsion,
Nor simulate a throe.
The eyes glaze once, and that is death.
Impossible to feign
The beads upon the forehead
By homely anguish strung.
The lives of the gods obviously can never be tragic; their
dangers and their wounds are only ripples on a surface.
Ichor runs in their veins, not blood, and they are nourished
with nectar and ambrosia. Their deathless light in the upper air makes the listener see more clearly the plain of
Troy and the slaughter and passion and travail which take
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
place there. They resemble the simile of the stars and the
campfires.
All seeing necessitates something different next to what
we see. We see a chair because it stops being a chair when
it is in place, and next to something else which is not a
chair, even if it be air. The limit of life is death, and we
apprehend mortality in the Iliad by watching the deathless
ones. We, the listeners, see what we are in the poem by
seeing what we are not, and the heroes of the poem itself
are always face to face with the deathless ones and with
death; they are descended from the deathless ones in half
their being, but receive no guarantees from their descent;
they have no insurance against the end of life. It is more
difficult to pin down what is revealed to us by the character of the gods. Ares may be the easiest one to talk about
first, even though he is related to no special hero in the
poem. He is sung of as despicable and quarrelsome, and he
changes sides from the Achaians to the Trojans. Athene in
Book V instructs Diomedes:
"Be not afraid of violent Ares,
that thing of fury, evil-wrought, that double-faced liar
who even now protested to Hera and me, promising
that he would fight against the Trojans and stand by the
Argives.
Now, all promises forgotten, he stands by the Trojans."
[V, 830-34]
He is accompanied by allegorical figures of Terror, Fear,
and Hate when we first meet him in Book IV, just before
Diomedes' great day. Zeus, his father, hates him. At the
end of Book V he says to his son:
"Do not sit beside me and whine, you double-faced liar.
To me you are most hateful of all gods who hold Olyrnpos.
Forever quarrelling is dear to your heart, wars and battles.
[V, 889-91]
In this poem where war is the daily doing of the heroes it is
a remarkable sign of the clear vision of the poet that the
god of war is associated with no single hero, and is shown
as a despicable, brazen, and howling youngster who bellows, and is worsted by his sister and hated by his father. It
cannot be merely that Ares represents one aspect of war,
defeat, and terror, as one noted commentator argues. Ares,
the god of war, is simply and clearly a vision of the nature
ofthe battlefield. No single hero is illuminated by him as is
Achilles by Zeus, or Paris by Aphrodite. This same vision
of war is present throughout Thucydides, and seems to
guide his hand as we watch the spectacle of barbarism unleashed upon Greece not by barbarians but by war. The
same vision enlivens the vivid scenes of the battle of Waterloo in Stendahl and the battle of Borodino in Tolstoy.
Ares has no favorites and takes no sides.
Apart from Ares, seeing what the gods are like means
looking harder at the person each is linked with. Helen is
not like Aphrodite when she says to her in Book III,
47
�'"Strange divinity! Why are you still so stubborn to beguile
me?"' (III, 399), and, later in the same speech:
"I am not going to him. It would be too shameful
I will not serve his bed, since the Trojan women hereafter
would laugh at me, all, and my heart even now is confused
with sorrows"
[III, 410-12]
Helen is humiliated by her goddess when she is told to repair to her chamber and Paris is scooped out of the battlefield and dumped into her bed. To the old men on the wall
she seems like a very goddess in her beauty, but within herself she is divided and at war with herself, and it takes Aphrodite's curses and anger to drive her to Paris' arms.
When Athene stays Achilles' hand in Book I at the
height of his murderous quarrel with Agamemnon, Achilles is already debating within his chest two courses. Again
the goddess is like and unlike him, and is seen by no other
man. She does not make him do what he does; she holds
him back from one course and points him to the other
course he had already been debating within.
Zeus and Achilles are alike in their loneliness, in their
withdrawal, and in their detachment and lucidity as they
view the plain and the battle. When Thetis comes to Olympos she finds Zeus apart from the others "retired at a distance" -a phrase used only of him and Achilles. The neardivine and excessive nature of Achilles' wrath is the blood
and heart of Zeus' plan, and Zeus, unlike Achilles, is the
mind of it; he is the guarantor of Achilles' glory. Zeus and
Achilles hold the tension of withdrawal throughout all the
mighty battles of the middle books. Only in furthering
Achilles' glory does Zeus stand apart from his family in
strife and threaten them, a parallel to Achilles' days in his
tent and his standing alone in his wrath even after the embassy of men closest to him. The difference between Zeus
and Achilles is the difference between the deathless one
and the death-haunted one. However alone Achilles is,
and however near to divinity he may be in his ruthlessness
and his wrath, he remains mortal. He is fallible at the moment of his greatest glory. The terror hidden behind Zeus'
nod of the head when he accedes to Thetis' petition, the
double-edged truth of his promise, lies all in Achilles' love
for Patroklos. The poet insists by the constant witness of
others on the lovable and gentle nature of Achilles' friend.
Briseis, the captured woman, bears most touching witness
to this in Book XIX. At the end of her lament for him she
says, "'Therefore I weep your death without ceasing. You
were kind always"' (XIX, 300). Greeks in a later age marvelled that Patroklos was older than Achilles, and yet so
beloved. Patroklos weeps for the fate of the other Achaians in front of Achilles, and Achilles' indecision in the face
of his friend leads him to give permission, the fatal permission to enter the battle, clad in the mighty armor of Achilles who loves him. This weakness of judgement is the beginning of the train of events which are sung of as the pit
48
of loneliness and detachment and ferocity. The irony of
his act is voiced by the poet in the unspeakable prayer of
Achilles to Zeus, Apollo, and Athene just before Patroklos'
departure:
"Father Zeus, Athene and Apollo, if only
not one of all the Trojans could escape destruction, not one
of the Argives, but you and I could emerge from the slaughter
so that we two alone could break Troy's hallowed coronal."
[XVI, 97-100]
Zeus has not tricked Achilles, he has stood behind and
deepened what was already present. Achilles is better and
deeper and more terrifying and monstrous than other men
just as Zeus is first among the gods. Achilles' wrath and his
pride go beyond the human range, but his everlasting
memory remains because of Patroklos, because he is, as
are other mortals, dependent upon another.
The gods, and especially Zeus, may indeed foresee what
they foresee, but all there is for them to foresee are men's
actions. Zeus foresees Patroklos' death, but Achilles'
judgement is responsible for it, and he is the fount of his
own suffering. The gods are the unchanging look of the
present state of affairs, which is the perpetual state of affairs.
The hardest pill of all to swallow in the poet's fiction is
the role of the gods in the deaths of Patroklos and Hector.
Theirs are the most important deaths to the story, and
they are the most touching and lovable of the heroes. Both
men are tricked by the gods, and at the end, defenseless,
they are slaughtered like pigs. Patroklos, dying, foresees
mighty Hector's death, and when that death comes in the
story the hero, again defenseless, tricked by Athene after
his nightmare run around the walls of Troy, falls. What is
the intent of the poet in presenting the deaths of these
two heroes in such a manner? The full weight of the meaning has to be faced and grappled with. The poem is peopled with heroes who gain their glory in battle and who
exhibit and are praised for their courage in mortal combat.
Their courage cannot consist in merely killing-that
would be bestial. Their excellence must consist in seeing
what death in battle is like and then facing it. The truth, as
presented by Homer in these scenes, with all the help of
the apparatus of Apollo's and Athcne's intervention, is
that the moment of defeat is the end of the story and the
story must end in defenselessness:
"No, deadly destiny, with the son of Leta, has killed me,
and of men it was Euphorbos; you are only my third slayer."
[XVI, 849-50]
says Patroklos to Hector. Hector, dying, says to Achilles:
"Be careful now; for I might be made into the god's curse
upon you on that day when Paris and Phoibos Apollo
destroy you in the Skaian gates, for all your valor."
[XXII, 358-60]
SUMMER 1983
�Achilles, the clearest seer of all, answers him:
'
"Die: and I will take my own death at whatever time
Zeus and the rest of the immortals choose to accomplish it."
is robbed by a small weakling, both should lie. Our ordinary daily life and our daily reading are enmeshed in a web
of rhetoric: our arguments, our constant justifications, the
man or of a cause. Aristotle in his book on rhetoric illus-
speeches we listen to, the sermons we attend to, the daily
editorial page, the puny talk of personalities that waver in
front of our eyes in the penumbra of our TV sets. As probable stories are the bread and butter of our daily existence,
Aristotle intends to exhibit a whole side of our being in his
rhetorical treatise. When in the Poetics he finds poetry
more philosophical than history, he intends to say that poetry is more general; but nearly in the same breath he observes that the poetic story must be probable, must be believable, or no one would be caught by it. We have insisted
that the Iliad is not rhetoric, but we must also insist that it
share with rhetoric the probability of its stories. Nothing
will work unless it appears probable. The enormous difference is that in the Iliad we begin with the story and end up
with the man, whereas in rhetoric we begin with the
man in the dock and then proceed to a probable story in
order to justify or accuse the prisoner. That is why it is possible to talk of an Achilles or an Ajax or of a David the
King, while it is so offensive to talk of a Napoleon or a
Michelangelo or an Alcibiades. Alcibiades and Napoleon
did particular things, and any historian who is not merely a
chronicler will argue about their doings after the fact of
the Battle of Waterloo or the Syracusan expedition, although he will falsify if he makes his account a necessary
and inevitable story. Waterloo could have been avoided,
and Alcibiades might well have taken Syracuse if he had
not gotten drunk on a certain evening in Athens. The poet
is under no such restraint. l-Ie tells stories that could happen, stories that arc truly probable and that unfold inexorably. Such a nexus of inevitability is the heart and soul of
fiction; it gives it its generality and its truth. It is like the
view of the gods from Olympos as they watch the plain of
Troy. It is what the word fate means in the poem. It is
what makes Homer's Iliad or true fiction in general applicable to the whole of things, and it is what takes such poems and books out the the realm of rhetoric and away from
the dreary round of one thing after another, and away
from the endless talk of justifying and accusing, buying
and selling, all under the whip of power and self-love.
Many have regarded the Iliad as if it were the Gorgon's
head~something too fraught with terror, too harsh and
grim, to be accepted as true and primary. It is easier to consider it merely as the first book to be met with, and to think
that later books will somehow deal with it, employing it as
the opening gambit in a long history of dialectical opposites, or to assume that somehow philosophy will have certain consolations which can soften or deal with the greatness and monstrosity of Achilles. I would propose, in
concluding this lecture, that we consider it both first and
primary among all books which the listener is acquainted
with. That Achilles is first and primary in the poem is reflected in the whole sophisticated structure of the work.
trates a side of this by noting that when a large, strong man
He is first in courage, truthfulness, strength, beauty, ter-
[XXII, 365-66]
Courage is defined by seeing and facing such moments in
the imagination, even before they happen, and understanding that the gods are no help at the end. When one
man kills another in battle, the one killed has nowhere to
turn; the end is slaughter. The gods at such a moment are
merely the bright noonday sun beating down upon the
deadly killing place in the space between the city and the
ships.
It is only at the end of this lecture that the most important and revealing aspects of the Iliad's truth-telling
emerge. An entry into this last consideration of the poem
will be to say what the poem is, and what the poem is not.
It is a story, but it is not rhetoric; no appearances are saved.
It is a fiction which exposes things, and its exposition is
never an apology or an argument or a hypothesis. Milton,
great arguer and lawyer, and also great poet, calls upon his
muse in these words:
... what is in me dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That, to the height of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
[Paradise Lost, I, 22-26]
Milton intends to be an advocate and to save his client by
means of his poem. There is nothing to be saved in the
Iliad, only something to be seen. Certainly we listeners
may argue for all generations about Achilles, but Homer
has done his job when he has told his story, and he is vastly
uninterested in dialectic.
The truth of the name Achilles is the story of Achilles,
and the story is not rhetorical. We don't see the heroes until they act, and they act in a story that is composed, that is
a fiction composed by Homer. The story of Achilles is not
like a story delivered in court by a lawyer in defense of his
client. Achilles is not on trial. The story is not a probable
fiction after the existent fact of Achilles sitting in the dock
of justice. It is not history either, although that the Trojan
war was fought and that Achilles may have been there
lends credibility to the fiction. In a trial both the prosecuting and the defense lawyers will try with all their art to tell
a probable story about the man in the dock, a story which
will support or lend credence to an action already committed. The man on trial is accused of some crime, and a probable story or account of his actions will give an appearance
of truth to his guilt or to his innocence. This is the essential use of rhetoric: to tell a probable story in defense of a
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
49
�ror, and friendship. He demands and receives more glory
than any other hero, and loses what· he cherishes most at
the moment that he is glorified by the gods. After Patroklos' death he is not present on the scene as other men
are. His loneliness and wrath then have a detachment and
ferocity beyond all ordinary human bounds. Yau will recall
what he says to the boy he slaughters by the river. After
Patroklos' death he eats no human food until he sups with
Priam in Book XXIV. He is both great and monstrous, a
disturbing fact which piety would have be otherwise. He
manages the funeral games with perspicuity and tact, seeing all the heroes for what they are, and even awarding
Agamemnon a prize while refraining from asking him to
compete. When he and Priam look at each other and admire each other, they both see things with a clarity born of
suffering and passion, and Priam kisses the man-killing
hands of Achilles, the hands that killed his son, and Achilles lifts the body of Hector into the smooth-rolling cart.
There is no conversion or turning around of Achilles in
Book XXIV; he quietly and simply sees steadily and truly
with no illusions. He will fight again and die, and so will
Priam, and the world is as it is, and nothing will change. He
sees as a god sees, but remains a mortal. At the same time,
Achilles' primacy in the poem in no way impugns the
other heroes; in particular the civilization of the poem
makes Hector and Priam figures that one cherishes, and
even loves. Both of them are men one would choose to live
with in a city, or in the arena of political life. There is no
Goliath or Satan or Turnus in this story. Ajax is a paradigm
of strength and courage and fidelity, and his name remains
with us as such. Odysseus is better at counsel than Achilles. Diomedes has his incomparable day of glory. Nestor's
loquaciousness is the virtue of his age, and there is wisdom
in stopping action to listen to the past, though it be tedious
at times.
The proposition that I proposed submits that the poem
50
itself has the same kind of primacy among all the books
you read that Achilles has in the poem. I do not intend this
merely historically, although it is perfectly clear that the
book has an enormous importance in its chronological
firstness. How marvelous it would be to have Alexander
the Great's copy of the Iliad as edited by his teacher Aristotle. Rome's greatest poet, Virgil, had to face the Iliad as
if it were the Gorgon's head. Plato had to tame Achilles,
and face down the truth of the poem and the power of its
beauty. Homer is like an ever-present star on the horizon
for Dante and Milton. All of the above mentioned facts
from the history of literature and philosophy are so, but
the primacy of the Iliad lies in its perennial freshness and
truth. It is about what impinges most importantly on anyone, if he will but look around. There are other books one
might choose if he were running a city, as one might prefer
Hector to Achilles in running a city hall or state. There are
other books which have the sagacity and lie-telling abilities
of Odysseus, and there are many Nestor-like books of prudence, full of memory. The Iliad does not eliminate these
books any more than Achilles blots out the greatness of the
other heroes. For us in this eccentric little college, it is
rightfully the first book. Philosophy must come after.
It may have seemed trivial in matters of such importance to have talked so long about nouns, proper names,
similes, and story telling, and it is probably not consistent
with the spirit and greatness of the Iliad to be arguing in its
behalf. Homer has no ax to grind, no thesis to prove, and
the thunder of Zeus would strike him dead if he tried to
solve any problems. He is like a roving camera eye or an
omnipresent eagle, and only Shakespeare can match his
impartiality. In his poem the sun is always high noon, and
the angle of its light is a right angle. The virtues commensurate with its seeing are courage and truth-telling, and the
primacy of the poem shows that these indeed are the true
human excellences.
SUMMER 1983
�The Supreme Court and School
Desegregation: Brown v. Board of
Education Reconsidered
Murray Dry
I
"We conclude that in the field of public education the
doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." So wrote Mr.
Chief Justice Earl Warren, for a unanimous court in Brown
v. Board of Education, 1 the school segregation case, which
was decided on May 17, 1954. In his definitive history of
this case, Richard Kluger explained that "all the Supreme
Court had truly and at long last granted to the black man
was simple justice."
Now the law says that, like them or not, white America may
not humiliate colored Americans by setting them apart. Now
the law says that black Americans must not be degraded by
the state and their degradation used as an excuse to drive
them further down. 2
This apparently simple case has been surrounded by notoriety and controversy from the day it was decided. james
Reston reacted to the Court's reliance on social science evidence to establish the inherent inequality of segregation
with a day-after column in The New York Times entitled,
"A Sociological Decision: Court Founded its Segregation
Ruling on Hearts and Minds rather than Laws." Reston
said of the Court's work that it read "more like an expert
paper on sociology than a Supreme Court opinion"; it "rejected history, philosophy, and custom as the major basis
Murray Dry teaches political philosophy, American constitutional law,
and American political thought at Middlebury College (Vermont), where
he is a professor in the Department of Political Science. He has published work on the separation of powers, Congress, and the congressional
veto.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
for its decision and accepted instead justice Benjamin N.
Cardoza[sic]'s test of contemporary social justice." 3 Over
the years the meaning of the case was extended far beyond
its original legal scope. The Times, in its editorial on the
tenth anniversary of Brown, described the decision as ''significantly broaden[ing] the role of the judiciary in the defense of human rights."
How swiftly will we complete the arsenal of laws required to
provide effective safeguards against racial discrimination?
And, more fundamentally still, how fully, how peacefully, and
how fast will be accomplished the transformation of attitudes
necessary to make equality real and in every community
North and South?4
The expanding expectation from school desegregation to
the elimination of all racial discrimination to a broader
transformation of attitudes was repeated in the Times in
its extensive reporting on the twentieth anniversary of
Brown, but this time with a note of scepticism.
The question is whether the momentum generated by the activities of the last twenty years has set in motion an irreversible process which will almost automatically lead to racial justice in this country, as some whites seem to think, or whether,
as most blacks hold, the largest and hardest job is yet to be
done, and whites have quit the game before the first quarter
has even ended. 5
Other twenty-year appraisals of Brown revealed disagreement on its accomplishments. A black dentist from
Mississippi was quoted as saying: "We have accomplished
things in the past few years that I thought it might take
decades to achieve. Some of this is a result of white recog-
51
�nition of black voting power, but a lot of white people here
have had a change of heart." Black leaders Bayard Rustin,
Robert S. Browne, and Roy Wilkins expressed concern
about the gap between educated and uneducated blacks
and emphasized the need for more political and economic
power.
By 1974, if not the most surprising, perhaps the most
disturbing result of the school desegregation decisions,
and one requiring most serious consideration, was the phe-
nomenon of ~(white flight" in Northern metropolitan
school districts. Kenneth Clark, the black psychologist
whose studies on black children's self perceptions were
used by the NAACP in its litigation, and which were cited
by the Supreme Court, said: "the whole morality issue of
the school desegregation issue disappeared when it moved
North,"6 meaning support for the decision eroded as its
consequences were felt by Northern whites. Another ex·
planation for the condition of Northern metropolitan
school systems referred to "the hard facts of demography,
ethnicity, and the inexorable flux of human migration." 7
Alexander Bickel, late constitutional law scholar and
professor at Yale Law School, who was involved in the
original Brown decision as a clerk for justice Frankfurter,
supported the latter view in the New Republic in 1970.
Distinguishing desegregation, as the dismantling of dual
school systems, from actual integration, Bickel explained
how the combination of private schools plus racially sepa·
"Schools are socializing institutions. They arc the only in·
stitutions where all children are required to do so [sic]. If
we cannot desegregate education, I don't think we can de·
segregate anything." On the other hand, Constance Baker
Motley, who represented )ames Meredith in his bid to de·
segregate the University of Mississippi and who was a fed·
era] judge in 1974, said:
It seems today Brown has little practical relevance to central
city blacks. Its psychological and legal relevance has already
had its effect. Central city blacks seem more concerned now
with the political and economic power accruing from the new
black concentrations than they do with busing to effect
school desegregation. 11
Whichever explanation of "white flight" is preferred
and however one views the educational results, the num-
bers show more black elementary and secondary school
pupils in majority white schools in the South than in the
North or the border states in 1974. In the District of Columbia, the school system had become virtually all black
and the brightest black students had also left the public
schools .I'
Meanwhile, as the Supreme Court decided its first met·
ropolitan school district implementation cases-Char·
lotte-Mecklenburg in North Carolina in 1971 and Denver,
Colorado, in 1973 13 -controversy over judicial power in-
areas permitted all but poor whites to flee from public
schools affected by court-ordered integration schemes. He
also noted that government and its intended beneficiaries
tensified. In the first case, the Court upheld a district
court order for dismantling a dual school system which in·
cluded busing pupils to approach a racial balance guideline. Because this decision disregarded the provision of ti·
tie IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act defining desegregation
were at cross purposes: while the court and HEW were re-
as the assignment of pupils without regard to race, and ex-
zoning and pairing Southern schools to integrate them,
black leaders in Northern cities were trying to decentralize
come racial imbalance, it produced numerous Congressio-
rated residential patterns in mainly northern metropolitan
plicitly prohibiting the assignment of students to over·
school systems to gain community control. 8
nal proposals to restrict the Supreme Court's jurisdiction
The U.S. Civil Rights Commission took a very different
view of the Brown mandate. In the conclusion to its 1976
Report, the Commission acknowledged no distinction be·
tween integration and desegregation, denied that the
courts were eliminating anything other than de jure segregation, denied that pupil assignment for racial balance had
become the Brown mandate, and simply affirmed the con·
stitutional right to equal educational opportunity. The dif·
ficulty with this formulation was that while it denied that
desegregation had become a mandate for racial balance in
the public schools, its only test of the extent of desegrega·
over school desegregation cases. In the second case, the
tion in the nation's schools was numerical.9
The different views about the Brown mandate in the
1970s reflected different views of education. The Coleman Report on Equal Educational Opportunity 10 ques·
tioned the link between integration and educational
achievement. The Civil Rights Commission and scholars
who rejected the Coleman Report viewed integrated
Supreme Court upheld a district court order to institute
a district-wide remedy-involving pupil assignment
throughout the district for racial balance-on the basis of a
finding of segregative intent by the school board in one
part of the district, notwithstanding the absence of any
history of a dual school system. This case produced the
first dissent, that by justice Rchnquist, and every major
desegregation case thereafter has produced a divided
Court.
As we approach the thirtieth anniversary of Brown v.
Board of Education, the confusion over its mandate and
the extent to which it has been fulfilled, controversy over
the actions of the Supreme Court and federal district
courts, and concerns over education have not abated. The
Supreme Court is still finding racially segregated systems
that have not been dismantled, the federal government is
still bringing suits for desegregation, and Congress is still
schooling as a socializing experience essential for racial
trying to restrict the courts' powers to order busing for ra-
harmony in the United States. The Supreme Court ex·
pressed this view in its Brown opinion, and the Staff Direc·
tor of the Civil Rights Commission reaffirmed it in 1974:
cial balance. In addition, the gap between the educational
52
achievements of blacks and whites has not been narrowed,
and the National Commission on Excellence in Education
SUMMER 1983
�has recently issued a report arguing that "the educational
foundations of our society arc presently being eroded by a
rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a
nation and a people." 14
To mark the upcoming thirtieth anniversary of Brown, I
propose a reconsideration of the Supreme Court's opinion
in the school desegregation cases. I do this for two related
reasons: the importance of the issues in the original cases
and the connection between the opinion handed down
and the subsequent controversy over the case. I shall argue
that Brown was a great but flawed judicial achievement
and that the flaws were avoidable and have made a great
political task even more difficult. The flaws concern the
following topics: (1) the exercise of judicial review, especially in light of problematic constitutional history and
precedents which must be overruled; (2) the distinction between de facto and de jure segregation and the importance
of the distinction for American government; and (3) the
meaning of education in America. My argument will show
that the treatment of precedents and principles was weak;
that the use of social science data unwittingly led to a confusion about the de facto/de jure distinction; and that the
Court accepted a flabby view of education which concealed different and often conflicting educational purposes. My reconsideration will proceed in the following order: the 14th amendment and the precedents, the cases
and the opinions, scholars' commentary, and finally a revised opinion.
II
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall
make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdic·
tion the equal protection of the law. [14th Amendment, section 1]
The 14th Amendment and the Precedents
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyers who represented the litigants in the segregation cases faced two constitutional challenges: first, nothing in the language of the
14th amendment clearly prohibited school segregation,
and study of the Congressional debates surrounding the
amendment's ratification revealed lack of clarity at best
and no intention to prohibit school segregation at worst;
second, in 1896, the Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson,
upheld a Louisiana statute providing "equal but separate"
accommodations on intrastate rail cars, on the grounds
that the law treated both races equally and the regulation
was reasonable in light of the customs of the people. The
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
alternative position was stated by the sole dissenter, Justice John Harlan, Sr., who argued that the intention of the
Civil War amendments was to remove the race line from
government. The most moving formulation of this position goes: "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither
knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of
civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law."l5 This
was an interpretation of the 13th and 14th amendments,
since the languages of the 13th was explicit only about
slavery or involuntary servitude-and it was stretching the
latter term to argue that segregation laws were includedand the 14th amendment made no reference to race. Still,
it was generally conceded that the purpose of the 14th
amendment was to protect the newly freed race against
discrimination in its civil rights. Furthermore, in an earlier
case, Strauder v. West Virginia, decided in 1880, the Supreme Court invalidated a law which excluded Negroes
from serving on juries in sweeping language which Harlan
was able to quote in support of his argument in Plessy.
The words of the amendment, it is true, are prohibitory, but
they contain a necessary implication of a positive immunity,
or right, to exemption from unfriendly legislation against
them distinctively as colored-exemption from legal discriminations, implying inferiority in civil society, lessening the se·
curity of their enjoyment of the rights which others enjoy,
and discriminations which are steps towards reducing them
to the condition of a subject race.l6
In the majority opinion in Plessy, Justice Brown narrowed the reach of the Strauder precedent by distinguishing between political and civil rights, which included the
right to serve on juries and, presumably, the right to vote
and the right to sue to make contracts, and social equality,
such as a right to be free from enforced segregation in
places of public accommodations. The Plessy majority's
position did have something in its favor, even though, as I
shall argue later, Justice Harlan's position stated the American standard and the deeper truth of the matter. Justice
Brown cited a Massachusetts case upholding segregated
schools and an Indiana case upholding laws forbidding intermarriage. While these cases were decided before the
14th amendment, it is doubtful that the framers of that
amendment intended their work to invalidate such laws.
Even the government's friend of the court brief in Brown,
which supported the litigants, acknowledged this:
In 1868 public schools had been hardly begun in many states
and were still in their infancy. School attendance was, as a
general matter, not compulsory. The Negroes had just been
released from bondage and were generally illiterate, poor and
retarded socially and culturally. To educate them in the same
classes and schools as white children may have been regarded
as entirely impracticable. 17
Stare decisis refers to the doctrine of following previous
decisions where the law is settled, in order to maintain stability and respect for the law. But this is not sufficient,
since the 14th amendment did intervene between the ear-
53
�lier state decisions and Plessy and the language did permit
the interpretation offered by the Court in Strauder and
urged by Harlan in dessent in Plessy.
A second defense of the Plessy opinion can be offered.
Given the deep-rooted prejudices of the whites, the recollections by the blacks of the injuries sustained, the natural
differences which a change of law does not eradicate, the
deep apprehension of Southern whites about racial comingling, as well as the actual condition of most of the newly
freed negroes, a case can surely be made for the reasonableness, apart from the wisdom, of enforced segregation
in public accommodations at that time. We shall return to
this topic,l8
The Court faced the following alternatives as it studied
the briefs and prepared for oral argument in Brown and
the companion cases: (1) to affirm the decisions of the
lower courts on the authority of Plessy; (2) to reverse the
lower courts without overturning Plessy, on the grounds
that the school conditions were not in fact equal and could
not be equalized with racial segregation; (3) to reverse the
lower courts and strike down segregation, by finding Plessy
no longer applicable in the field of education; or (4) toreverse the lower courts, strike down segregation, and repu·
diate Plessy as wrong then and wrong now.
Counsel for the states with segregated schools took the
first position; counsel for the challenging students and parents alternated between the second and the third positions; and the Supreme Court, in its first consideration of
the case, alternated between the first and third positions
and then, when it decided to overturn school segregation,
settled on the third position.l9
Two Supreme Court decisions involving segregation in
higher education had eroded the force of Plessy and also
permitted the NAACP lawyers and the government, in its
amicus brief, to argue that Plessy did not have to be overturned to invalidate school segregation. In Missouri ex rei.
Gaines v. Canada, decided in 1938, the Supreme Court invalidated a law which provided for state funding to send
qualified Negro law students to law schools in any neighboring state and ordered the petitioner admitted to the law
school at the State University of Missouri.
By the operation of the laws of Missouri a privilege has been
created for white law students which is denied to negroes by
reason of their race. The white resident is afforded legal education within the State; the negro resident having the same
qualifications is refused it there and must go outside the State
to obtain it. That is a denial of the equality oflegal right to the
enjoyment of the privilege which the State has set up, and the
provision for the payment of tuition fees in another State
does not remove the discrimination.20
Oklahoma had a similar law which was challenged by a Negro who had applied to the state's university for a doctorate in education. After the Gaines decision, Oklahoma
amended its statute to provide for admission of Negroes to
the university, but on a segregated basis. This meant sit-
54
ting at a special desk in a designated area, in classes, in the
library and in the cafeteria. In McLaurin v. Oklahoma
State Regents, 21 decided in 1950, the Supreme Court
found such state-imposed restrictions productive of inequality of educational opportunity and hence a violation
of equal protection of the laws. In a third related case, decided the same day as McLaurin, the Supreme Court invalidated Texas's provision for a separate in-state law school
for Negroes and ordered petitioner admitted to the University of Texas law school, to which he had applied for
admission. In Sweatt v. Painter, the Court took note of the
inequality in number of faculty, variety of courses, etc.
when comparing the University of Texas law school with
Texas State University for Negroes, and then it added:
What is more important, the University of Texas law school
possesses to a far greater degree those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law schooL Such qualities, to name but a few,
include reputation of the faculty, experience of the administration, position and influence of the alumni, standing in the
community, traditions and prestige.22
Hence both the Court's previous cases and its hesitancy to
argue that the South had been acting unconstitutionally
for nearly sixty years led it to address the constitutional
question presented by Brown in terms of the effect of segregation itself on public education.
The Cases and the Arguments
The Brown cases were five in number and they were divided into the state cases, which came from Kansas, South
Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware, and the federal case,
from the District of Columbia. The cases were first argued
in December 1952 and then, when reargument was called
for-ostensibly to hear more about the 14th amendment
but also to give justive Frankfurter time to get a unanimous Court decision against segregation 23 -they were reargued in December 1954. Two separate unanimous opinions of the Court were handed down on May 17, 1954:
Brown v. Board of Education et al., which included all four
state cases, and Bolling v. Sharpe, which covered the District of Columbia. The constitutional issue was the same
in all cases and the lower court treatments had all followed
Plessy. In the South Carolina (Briggs v. Elliott) and Virginia
(Davis v. County School Board) cases, the three-judge district courts found inequality in facilities but sustained the
state provisions for segregation and ordered equalization.
In Delaware (Gebhard v. Belton), the Delaware Court of
Chancery found inequality and ordered the plaintiffs admitted to the previously all-white schools, but indicated
that the State could obtain a modification of the order after equalization. In Brown, the Kansas case, the three
judge district court denied relief since the facilities were
equal, but it did find that "segregation in public education
SUMMER 1983
�has a detrimental effect upon Negro children."24 In the
District of Columbia (Bolling v. Sharpe), the district court
dismissed the complaint. 25
The two opinions, Brown and Bolling, came to the same
result in different ways. This may have been due, in part,
to the different lawyers arguing the cases for the plain·
tiffs 26 and, in part, to the different constitutional provisions. The state cases involved the 14th amendment's
equal protection clauses; the federal case came under the
5th amendment, which addresses Congress and has no
equal protection clause. Since it was not surprising to have
the same result for the District as for the state, it was not
surprising for the Court to use the due process clause,
which is also in the 14th amendment, to fashion the same
result as it did with the equal protection clause. Yet the
argument in Bolling was not only different, it was closer to
Harlan's Plessy dissent, it did not rely on social science
data, and it would not have lent itself to expansion the way
the Brown decision did. I shall first examine the major
Brown opinion, noting the sources of controversy and confusion; then I shall turn to Bolling v. Sharpe.
The order of topics in this brief opinion is: the intention
of the framers of the 14th amendment; the relevant prece·
dents since Plessy; the importance of education today; the
reason why segregation on the basis of race in public
schools is necessarily unequal; the conclusion, or holding,
that the plaintiffs and others who were similarly situated
are denied equal protection of the laws; and, finally, a call
for reargument on the implementation question, so that
the Court "may have the full assistance of the parties in
formulating decrees."27
On the first point, the Court argued that study of the
ratification of the 14th amendment yielded inconclusive
results for the question of school segregation. It buttressed
this contention with the reminder that free public educa·
tion was just beginning in 1868. While the school case
precedents, discussed above, had not overturned Plessy,
they did permit the Court to argue that equal protection
of the laws involved more than the tangible factors of
education, such as classroom facilities and number of
teachers. 28
The Court proceeded to describe education in 1954 as
"perhaps the most important function of state and local
governments," as ''the very foundation of good citizenship," and as "a principal instrument in awakening the
child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to
his environment." With that out of the way, the Court
asked: "Does segregation of children in public schools
solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facili·
ties and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, deprive the
children of the minority group of equal educational oppor·
tunity?" Its immediate answer, and it was only here in the
reading of the opinion that Chief Justice Warren tipped
his hand and let the participants and spectators know what
the Court had decided, was: "We believe that it does."29
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
The critical argument concerning the effect of segrega·
lion on education is first stated by the Court in its own
words and then the words of the lower court in the Kansas
case.
To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their
hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The
effect of this separation on their educational opportunities
was well stated by a finding in the Kansas case by a court
which nevertheless felt compelled to rule against the Negro
plaintiffs:
~<Segregation of white and colored children in public
schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children.
The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for
the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with
the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the
educational and mental development of negro children and
to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in
a racialQy] integrated school system."lO
The argument is in two steps: first, racial segregation
generates a feeling of inferiority; and, second, this will af·
feet the hearts and minds of the Negro children in a man·
ner that will significantly impair their ability to learn.
In the first sentence, the infinitive "to separate" is the
subject, and it clearly refers to a separating agent, i.e., the
school board on the direction of the state legislature. In
the passage quoted from the district court, however, segre·
galion is said to have a greater impact when it has the force
of law. This implies, however, that it has some impact, and
a harmful one, in terms of feelings of self-worth and hence
motivation to learn, even without the force of law. This
must refer to de facto, or actual, segregation. This is the
basis, in the Brown opinion, for the extension of the Brown
holding from the prohibition of de iure segregation to the
prohibition of de facto segregation.
People have disagreed on what Brown required and
whether its mandate has been carried out because the core
holding, or rule of law, outlawed de iure segregation, but
the dicta implicated de facto segregation. The debate over
busing is a debate over whether Brown and the subsequent
cases stand for the proposition that schools should be de·
segregated, that is, made free of positive acts of segregation by public officials, or whether schools should be
integrated, regardless of what the cause of the actual segre·
galion may be.
The Supreme Court supported its argument by asserting that notwithstanding the extent of psychological
knowledge at the time of Plessy, its finding was "amply
supported by modern authority." Its citationll began with
the work of Dr. Kenneth Clark, who had conducted atti·
tude tests on Negro children using black and white dolls;
he testified at the trial in the South Carolina case. NAACP
55
�lawyer Jack Greenberg was quoted as saying that "the
main function of the social science testimony was to help
the courts~and especially the Supreme Court~convey
the confidence of its common sense perceptions of what
the nation knew about right and wrong in this regard."l2
The inclusion of Clark's doll studies reveals that modern
social science is not always a sound vehicle for proving the
soundness of common sense knowledge. Clark's studies
have been subject to extensive criticism, covering the ef
feet of the interview situation on the children and the lim·
ited number of cases. In addition, the one test which com·
pared responses from Northern and Southern negro
children, and hence had some direct applicability to school
segregation, conflicted with the intended thesis. There
were eight questions to the test; one asked the children to
pick the doll which resembled them. The Northern Negro
children identified themselves with the white doll m
greater proportion than the Southern children, 39% to
29%. 33 This hardly proved the psychological harm of
school segregation.
Even if the dubious Clark tests are omitted, however, it
does seem odd that psychological findings should be the
basis for striking down a Supreme Court precedent and
establishing a new constitutional right, that of equal educational opportunity. Suppose subsequent perception
tests revealed, as some did, 34 that Negro children suffered
from greater doubts about their own worth in integrated
schools? One can well imagine how, under certain circum-
stances, this could occur; would that justify segregation?
The social scientists were not altogether responsible for
the extensiveness of the Court's findings, however. The
Supreme Court apparently accepted uncritically the finding of fact of district judge Walter A. Huxman, a finding
that changed the emphasis from the original formulation
presented by the expert witness in his court. Huxrnan
started with the finding that segregation had a detrimental
effect on Negro children; then he found that detrimental
effect to be greater when it had the sanction of law. The
source of this finding was the testimony of Louise
Pinkham Holt, an assistant professor in the psychology de-
parison to private discrimination and turned it into a major
premise. I do not wish to suggest that a more accurate
treatment of the expert testimony in the Kansas case
would have made all the difference for the development of
the Brown mandate and the popular acceptance of the decision, but the extended claim, unsupported by evidence
and not nearly so common-sensical as the case against government-enforced segregation, surely lent itself to confusion over the meaning of desegregation and charges of bad
faith.
Let us return to the second school desegregation opinion, Bolling v. Sharpe. Chief Justice Warren began by noting that equal protection and due process, while not identical, both stem "from our ideal of fairness." Arguing that
some discrimination "may be so unjustifiable as to be vio-
lative of due process," Warren proceeded to attack ra.cial
classifications as "contrary to our traditions" and hence
"constitutionally suspect." This put the burden of proof
on the government to justify the regulation, as opposed to
making the complaining party prove that a constitutional
right had been violated. The meaning of "liberty" in the
due process clause was defined as extending to "the full
range of conduct which the individual is free to pursue,"
which cannot be restricted without a proper governmental
objective. Warren then concluded, again for a unanimous
Court, that usegregation in public education is not reason-
ably related to any proper governmental objective, and
thus it imposed on Negro children of the District of Columbia a burden that constitutes an arbitrary deprivation
of their liberty in violation of the Due Process Clause."36
This argument focuses on the government's action and is,
therefore, applicable to government-enforced segregation
only.
The line of argument in Bolling v. Sharpe has been used
in subsequent cases involving race classification; a suspect
classification, such as race, alienage, or national origin,
triggers a strict scrutinizing of the governmental action.
While it resembles Harlan's argument that the Constitution is color-blind, it does not rule out the possibility of justifying racial classifications in special circumstances, such
partment at Kansas University. In answer to the question,
as, for example, affirmative action. It has not been promi-
"[D]oes enforced legal separation have any adverse effect
upon the personality development of the Negro child?"
she replied.
nent in subsequent school desegregation cases, however,
where the focus has been on the dismantling of dual
school systems and the determination of a segregative act
on the part of a school board, even where segregation was
The fact that it is enforced, that it is legal, I think, has more
importance than the mere fact of segregation by itself does
because this gives legal and official sanction to a policy which
is inevitably interpreted both by white people and by Negroes
as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group. Were it not for
the sense that one group is inferior to the other, there would
be no basis-and I am not granting that this is a rational basis-for such segregation.35
The fact is that the expert witness was focusing on state
enforced segregation; the judge picked up a casual com-
56
not required by state law, as it was in the Southern states.
Scholars' Commentary
Criticism of the Court's opinion focused on the intention of the 14th amendment, the principle of stare decisis,
and the dubious character of the social science evidence.
In his famous critique, Herbert Wechsler argued that
while school segregation was wrong and it was desirable to
end it, the constitutional basis for the Supreme Court's
SUMMER l983
�taking the initiative in the matter was dubious 37 Wechsler
found the social science argument unimpressive and
doubted that the Court's judgment truly rested on that basis. He thought the judgment "must have rested on the
view that racial segregation is, in principle, a denial of
equality to the minority against whom it is directed; that is,
the group that is not dominant politically and, therefore,
does not make the choice involved." But he found this argument inadequate as the basis for a decision based on
"neutral principles/' that is, "based on reasons that in
their generality and their neutrality transcend any immediate result that is involved." It seemed to him to "involve
an inquiry into the motive of the legislature, which is generally foreclosed to the courts." He thought there was
something to the Court's Plessy statement that, since the
law spoke of equality, the badge of inferiority was in the
eye of the beholder. To Wechsler, the issue in the case was
not equal protection, but freedom to associate under the
due process clause, and the challenge was to explain why
one desire for association should overrule another desire
for disassociation.
Wechsler was not satisfied with the reason he attributed
to the Supreme Court, because he regarded it as "a choice
among competing values or desires," which lay in the
realm of mere fiat and was, therefore, inappropriate for a
judicial argument. The only exceptions to this position
were "values that can reasonably be asserted to have constitutional dimension";3 8 what they are Wechsler did not
say, and if asked why they do not include prohibition
on race classification, he probably would have referred to
history.
The responses to Wechsler's challenge to justify the
constitutional basis for the Brown opinion have tended to
reaffirm the inappropriateness of race classifications or to
specify what jim Crow legislation meant in fact. Both
Louis Pollack and Charles Black cited C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow to the effect that
such laws "were constantly pushing the Negro further
down." On the question whether "separate but equal" can
really be equal, Pollack concluded "that the constitutional
doubts instantly generated by statutes drawing racial lines
have not been allayed."l9 And Black, whose treatment of
historical examples is fuller, responded this way:
Equality, like all general concepts, has marginal areas where
philosophic difficulties are encountered. But if a whole race
of people finds itself confined within a system which is set up
and continued for the very purpose of keeping it in an inferior
station and if the question is then solemnly propounded
whether such a race is being treated 'equally,' I think we
ought to exercise one of the sovereign premgatives of philosophers-that of laughter40
Both scholars may be right, but neither presents a full argument in support of his position.
A further defense of Brown comes from Alexander
Bickel, who took issue with Wechsler's claim that courts
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
should not attempt to settle value questions. Drawing on
his study of Lincoln, Bickel argued that "the constitutional function of the Court is to define values and proclaim principles," and "it is at the heart of the utility of
such a process to proclaim the absolute principle that race
is not an allowable criterion for legislative classification." 41
For the source of that principle, we need to consider his
discussion of judicial review. In the first chapter of The
Least Dangerous Branch, Bickel makes the distinction,
which is not explained, between "immediate material
needs" and "certain enduring values." Then, he says that
"our system ... like all secular systems, calls for the evolution of principle in novel circumstances," and he continues by asserting that the most fundamental principle of
American government is the rule of the people 42 It seems
that for Bickel the character of our democratic government is very much open to chance, that is, to the changing
needs of a persistent majority. If that is the case, it is very
hard to understand how the Supreme Court, which possesses only the judicial power, should be permitted to take
the lead, as it did, in the matter of school segregation.
Bickel's explicit justification for this action reflects his
notion of a Constitution whose very principles, and not
merely their application, evolve. This notion is worthy of
consideration not only for its own merits, but because it
forms a part of Bickel's defense of Brown, and this defense
is based on a study which assisted the Supreme Court in
its deliberations. As one of justice Frankfurter's law clerks
during the 1952 term, Bickel was asked to study the history
of the 14th amendment in order to determine the lawmakers' intent on the school segregation issue. Frankfurter circulated the memo which resulted from Bickel's
year-long study to the other )ustices 43 Bickel later published a revised version of this memo in the Harvard Law
Review in 1955. In that article, Bickel concluded that while
a general grant of legislative authority would not have
passed Congress, and hence one cannot say that the framers intended to outlaw segregation, still:
May it not be that the Ivloderates and the Radicals reached a
compromise permitting them to go to the country with language which they could, where necessary, defend against
damaging alarms raised by the opposition, but which at the
same time was sufficiently elastic to permit reasonable future
advances?
Acknowledging that the framers of the 14th amendment
did not compare to the framers of the Constitution, Bickel
nonetheless attributed to them "an awareness ... that it
was a constitution they were writing, which led to a choice
of language capable of growth." 44 We learn from Kluger
that Bickel acknowledged in his notes to Frankfurter that
such was a "charitable view of the sloppy draftsmen of the
Fourteenth Amendment." 45
Bickel's view of constitutional construction was shared
by Frankfurter and possibly by other members of the
Court. To some extent it follows Chief justice john Mar-
57
�shall's famous account of constitutional construction in
McCulloch v. Maryland, but with 'a substantial revision.
Faced with the question whether Congress should insti·
tute a bank, notwithstanding the absence of any specific
authorization in the Constitution's enumeration oflegisla·
tive powers, Marshall distinguished constitutions from
statutes. Because a legal code is prolix and a constitution,
which is to be understood by the public, only marks great
outlines, ''we must never forget that it is a constitution we
Negro slaves in the Southern states, but it was not incon·
sistent with the Declaration of Independence.
Second, American government was understood to be re-
The place to start is with Harlan's argument that the
Constitution is color-blind. While he may have been
publican, as distinct from the limited monarchy of Great
Britain. The framers' views on qualifications for voting
and office-holding reflected support for popular govern·
ment. Consequently, we can conclude that any legally·
based class structure, while not necessarily inconsistent
with natural right, was not consistent with the form of gov·
ernment appropriate for America. Therefore, there can
only be one class of citizenship recognized by American
law. How could America move from a condition of slavery
in the land of freedom to equal citizenship for the newly
freed race? The task seemed impossible to Tocqueville,
when he observed the condition of the races in America in
the 1830s49 After the Civil War, however, colonization
was out, and the only question was, how to bring the newly
freed race up to full citizenship. We are now at the prob·
!em of Plessy v. Ferguson. In light of what has been said,
the issue in the case may be described as follows: which is
the best way to achieve full civil equality for blacks,
through stages of development and accommodation, or all
at once; and, even if all at once is preferred or regarded as
the sounder choice, is a political choice for gradualism so
wrong in the narrow legal sense, since neither the original
unreasonable as to require constitutional condemnation?
Constitution nor the 14th amendment made this principle
explicit, he nonetheless stated the higher truth of the
American Constitution. Why is that? The explanation
needs both to take note of the natural right teaching of the
Declaration of Independence, which articulates the most
fundamental principles of American government, and
then to consider the application of those principles to the
American political community. We must answer three
questions: (l) What is the teaching of the Declaration of
Independence? (2) What application does it have to Amer·
ican government in general? (3) What application does it
have to the distinctive condition of chattel slavery in the
land of freedom, reinforced by racial difference, which is
then eliminated, first as a result of military and political
necessity, and then through constitutional amendment?
First, according to the self-evident truth of the Declaration
of Independence, all men are naturally equal in their rights
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights
are universal but pre-political; they apply to all men as
men, but they have nothing to do with citizenship in any
political community. Because the rights are not secured by
To argue that full civil equality is incompatible with Jim
Crow legislation does not deny the existence of the social
sphere, which the Plessy opinion distinguishes from politi·
cal and civil rights. I take issue with the Plessy argument
on the relationship between law and the social sphere. To
the extent that we can distinguish the social from the po·
litical (including the civil), the former refers to the volun·
are expounding."46 But Marshall never meant, as Bickel,
following Holmes and Brandeis before him, did, that the
fundamental principles of the Constitution are themselves
open to change over time. 47
Is it possible to provide an interpretation of the issues in
the school segregation cases which does justice to Plessy,
reaches the same result as Brown, and does not rely on a
view of the Constitution and the judicial function according to which the most important principle is the rule of the
majority and all else is subject to changing needs?
A Revised Brown Opinion
nature, men consent to form governments. If government
is to be based on consent and limited to the securing of
rights, the resulting community would seem to need the
support of self-love or interest. No one has a natural right
to join any given political community. It was on this basis
that Jefferson proposed emancipation and colonization of
the slaves in Virginia in 1783 and Lincoln opposed slavery
as morally wrong and in opposition to the Declaration,
without advocating political equality48 A colonization pol·
icy may never have been practical, given the number of
58
tary actions of individuals and private associations; their
decisions regarding association and disassociation consti-
tute action in the social rather than the political sphere.
Then we must distinguish the social sphere, as liable to
government regulation, from the purely private sphere,
which is not. Congress may be justified in prohibiting cer·
tain forms of racial discrimination in the social sphere, on
the authority of the commerce clause, as it did in the 1964
Civil Rights Act, but neither Congress nor the state may
tell anyone whom to invite to dinner. Furthermore, the
civil rights legislation reflects a concrete and healthy con·
sent-giving, which distinguishes it from judicial interven·
tion in the social sphere. Finally, what distinguishes the
legislative action in· Plessy from the legislative action of
1964 is that the former, by legally enforcing a dual citizen·
ship, is inconsistent with our republican form of government, as discussed above, while the latter is consistent
with it.
The distinction between commercial activity and social
activity in the narrow sense of socializing is important for
understanding the best case ever made for the gradualism
approach to full citizenship for Negroes. In his Atlanta Ex·
position Address of 1895, one year before Plessy, Booker
T. Washington emphasized vocational education for
SUMMER 1983
�blacks as a way of their attaining self-sufficiency. He argued from expediency as well as principle for racial coop-
derives its importance from our form of government, or, to
eration in commercial matters, and he was willing to let
social association wait. In a sentence which appears to an-
form of government is instituted to secure. Ours is a gov-
ticipate Plessy and which puts it in its best light, he said:
"In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as
the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to
mutual progress." According to Washington, "No race
that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world
is long in any degree ostracized."' 0
This position was vigorously criticized by W. E. B. DuBois, on the grounds that it distorted half-truths about the
Negro and his position and that it had the effect of getting
both races to accept the Negro's subordinate position as
permanent. 51 It is not easy to decide who was right at the
time. Surely commercial success and education seem to
depend on civil and political rights and higher education;
on the other hand, Washington was, as DuBois acknowledged, the most influential black leader of his time among
both races and the blacks surely needed the assistance of
the white majority. But it is not necessary to settle that
debate in order to say that to the extent that Plessy ever
was a legitimate decision, it was within the context of a
gradualist approach to bringing full civil rights to the
newly freed race. If 1896 was arguably too soon after slavery to accomplish this, especially in light of an appraisal of
hatreds and fears and the actual condition of the black
race, surely by 1954 it was easy to review the history of Jim
Crow legislation and pronounce that the South had not
proceeded in good faith, that Harlan was right about the
consequences of judicially validating Jim Crow legislation,
and that the practice was in violation of the Constitution
because it implied second class citizenship. Plessy then
turns out to be no longer valid, not simply because we wish
to change a practice which a current majority of the country abhors, but also because the only defensible grounds
for the decision implied a timetable for transformation
which had long since expired.
III
Conclusion
This treatment of Brown has intended to show that the
Supreme Court's achievement was substantial but flawed,
and that the flaws involved (l) the exercise of judicial review, especially as it concerns the overturning of the Plessy
precedent, (2) the distinction between de facto and de jure
segregation, and (3) the meaning of education in American political life. The first topic has been treated above; it
remains to show the connection between the Court's
treatment of the other two topics in its Brown opinion and
the subsequent problems in connection with the implementation of Brown.
The distinction between de facto and de jure segregation
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
be more precise, from the way of life which our republican
ernment which is instituted to secure rights but which
refuses to take note of their right exercise. It is a government which looks up to an individual's right to pursue happiness without defining the content of that happiness.
Ours is therefore necessarily a limited government if we
consider the things it can legitimately require of its citizens. Because rights or individual claims take precedence
over duties, or obligations of citizens, American political
life necessarily knows and respects a private sphere. Our
form of government is similar to Plato's account of democracy in that we tend to regard all desires as equal; it differs
from that account, and hence from a pure democracy, in
its attempt to avoid the excesses of democratic license.
Our way of doing that, however, in contrast to that of
Plato's account of the best regime, is mainly through institutional checks and balances and a strict scrutiny of governmental powers rather than education as a means of
cultivating human excellence, moral or intellectual. Consequently, certain democratic vices, associated with the
emancipation of our desires and passions, are tolerated so
long as the resulting activity does not harm another in life
or limb. Love of one's own is generally more powerful than
love of community; in American government, or in any liberal democracy, the political constraints on self-interest, as
Tocqueville called them, are minimal. 52
And now we come to race differences and the problem
of slavery in the land of freedom.sl The severity of the
problem of reconciling individualism with racial harmony
was discussed by Tocqueville, Jefferson, Lincoln, and
W. E. B. DuBois. The transformation of the former slave
race into black Americans presents such difficulties because no government, and certainly no liberal government, can eradicate prejudice, which is a reflex of self-
love, and the natural racial difference makes it impossible
to eradicate race prejudice. On the other hand, eradication is not only not necessary, it is not appropriate. The
limited objectives of liberal government make it possible
for government to treat its citizens equally under the law
and for individuals to associate in distinctive groupings
and even take pride in their differences. This is precisely
what W. E. B. DuBois discovered and advocated in 1897.
If we carefully consider what race prejudice really is, we find
it, historically, to be nothing but the friction between different groups of people; it is the difference in aim, in feelings, in
ideals of two different races; if, now, this difference exists
touching territory, laws, language, or even religion, it is manifest that these people cannot live in the same territory without fatal collision; but if, on the other hand, there is substantial agreement in laws, language and religion, if there is a
satisfactory adjustment of economic life, then there is no reason why, in the same country and on the same street, two or
three great national ideals might not thrive and develop, that
men of different races might not strive together for their race
ideals as well, perhaps even better, than in isolation. 54
59
�More recent expressions of the same thought, if not as
comprehensive, can be found in Malcolm X's Black Nationalism and in Black Power. 55
If there is a range of legitimate associations and disassociations, regarding religious and ethnic background and
economic status as well as race, then the rules for such
as~
sociation should be minimal and, generally, should proceed from a government authority which reflects the consent of the governed. Thirty years after the Brown decision
we note that the federal government and especially the
federal courts are still involved in the administration of
school systems. To a large extent, this is because the implications of the Brown opinion, regarding equal educational
opportunity, made it difficult for the courts to recognize
the limits of legitimate court intervention.
This became clear when the desegregation suits
reached metropolitan school districts, starting in North
Carolina and then reaching Denver, Detroit, Columbus,
and Dayton, which cover the major Supreme Court decisions of the 1970s. The problem is this: once the clear cut
cases of dual school systems are eliminated, what is the
test to distinguish a school board's disciminatory act of
segregation from racially neutral actions and individual
choices, including where to live and whether to go to a private school? The Supreme Court has not yet thrown out
the distinction between government-enforced and adventitious segregation-for it would be difficult if not impossible to justify such judicial action; but it has not come up
with any clear principle or test for distinguishing racial imbalance that results from a segregative act from racial imbalance that is adventitious.
The lower federal courts, which have the responsibility
for implementing Brown, have tended to view racial imbalance as presumptively illegal, the result of a segregative
act; often that act is no more than the failure to draw lines
or construct new schools in ways that would have increased the actual racial balance, regardless of neighborhoods. With some exceptions the majority of the Supreme
Court has tended to follow the lower courts on this. The
decisions in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Denver
cases 56 approached the position that the Constitution required metropolitan communities to fashion plans to eliminate racial isolation in the public schools, even if it required system-wide transportation of students. In the
former case, the Court justified its decision by linking all
the racial imbalance to the condition of the dual school
system in 1954, a doubtful assumption; in the latter case, a
narrow and limited finding of segregative intent reversed
the presumption for the entire district and this led to the
system-wide judicial remedy. The majority did pull back,
in the Detroit case in 1974,57 from upholding a lower
court's inter-district metropolitan remedy, on the grounds
that there was no evidence of inter-district segregation.
The dissent pointed out that very little actual integration
was possible within the Detroit school system by itself and
the state was responsible for education. But was the politi-
60
cal process required by the Constitution to give racial balance precedence over community control and neighbor-
hood schools?
Then in two cases decided the same day in 1979,58 the
Supreme Court upheld system-wide remedies, following
the reasoning of the lower courts (in one case the trial
court and in another the court of appeals, which reversed
the trial court) that the existing racial imbalance was, in
each case, a remnant from 1954, when even though it was
not officially sanctioned, there was in fact a dual school
system. Of course such arguments have some plausibility,
since the very distinction between de facto and de jure is, at
the boundary, a fiction. Clearly, public authorities follow
private wishes, and there was indirect government in-
volvement in housing discrimination in 1954; hence it had
an effect, indirectly on the school system. But the connec·
lion between that discrimination and school attendance
patterns 25 years later is nebulous. The Court seems to be
driving the mathematical principle of racial balance to the
limits of its logic, with no good results to show for it. In the
name of equal educational opportunity, it is sanctioning
lower court ordered plans which consider nothing but racial balance. This has produced, or accentuated, "white
flight" and it has not improved anyone's education.
The most instructive judicial reflections on the Court's
dilemma come from Justice Powell, whose cautious attitude toward judicial power resembles Frankfurter's. In his
opinion in the Denver case, justice Powell described the
Brown mandate as having evolved from neutral desegregation to "an affirmative duty to desegregate." He went on
to question the continuing utility of the de facto/ de jure
distinction.
In imposing on metropolitan southern school districts an af.
firrnative duty entailing large scale transportation of pupils, to
eliminate segregation in the schools, the Court required these
districts to alleviate conditions which in large part did not
result from historic, state-imposed de jure segregation.
Rather, the familiar root cause of segregated schools in all the
biracial metropolitan areas of our country is essentially the
same: one of segregated residential and migratory patterns
the impact of which on the racial composition of the schools
was often perpetuated and rarely ameliorated by action of
public school authorities. This is a national, not a southern
phenomenon. And it is largely unrelated to whether a particular state had or did not have segregative school laws. 59
Powell proposed that in place of scrutinizing the actions
of the school board for "segregative intent," the Court
hold the states responsible for operating "integrated
school systems" and examine their actions (such as location of new facilities, attendance zones, etc.) with a view
toward their general integrative effect. Powell did not discuss the busing question, nor did he indicate whether he
thought the Court's role would be reduced as a result of
his proposal. He apparently abandoned his argument for
abandoning the de facto/ de jure distinction, for in his disSUMMER 1983
�sent in the 1979 Columbus case, he noted that it was impossible to expect school boards to bring about desirable
racial balance and that judicial mandates would probably
generate further white flight and resegregation. In other
words, he came to see that desegregation would not produce an integrated school system, unless the courts were
willing to sustain racial balance as a constitutional imperative. Even then, to succeed the courts would have to insist
on consolidated school districts and eliminate private
schools.
We turn, finally, to the Supreme Court's view of education. Justice Warren called it "the very foundation of good
citizenship" and "a principal instrument in awakening the
child to cultural values."60 This formulation conceals two
problems or complications. The first is that education as
socialization is problematic, however necessary it may be.
Numerous Supreme Court cases indicate that there is a
fine line between illegal indoctrination and permissible inculcation of habits of citizenship; quite understandably,
the individualistic bent of the first amendment freedoms
frequently limits this form of education. The freedom involved here is not only one of association, but it includes
conceptions of racial identification. In Brown the Supreme Court accepted the racial amalgamation view of integration as if it were the only valid formulation. It ignored
the view of integration which emphasizes a substantial
separation within the larger integrated society. This view
was prominently stated by Black Power and Black Nationalism advocates in the late 1960s, but it was more fully
stated much earlier by DuBois, as we have already noted.
Certain kinds of "freedom of choice" are much more likely
to succeed than a judicially enforced uniformity. One
man's consent may be another man's prejudice, but if
community control, in the form of residential schools and
local school boards, has any validity, it must apply to communities which are largely white as well as to those which
are largely black.
Second, the Supreme Court must understand that education involves more than mere socialization. It should not
say, as it did in a 1969 case upholding a student's right to
wear an armband expressing opposition to the Vietnam
War in class: "The principal use to which the schools are
dedicated is to accommodate students during prescribed
hours for the purpose of certain types of activities. Among
the activities is intercommunication among the students."61 Here the Court unwittingly likens secondary
school education to the operation of a day care center.
And even when it prudently permits race to be taken into
account in a complex admissions process for higher educa-
tion, as it did in the famous Bakke case, it should not lend
its support to a statement which confuses academic
achievement and intellectual powers with minimal aca-
demic competency. Justice Powell, whose vote and opinion were decisive in Bakke, cited with approval and then
appended to his opinion the Harvard College Admissions
affirmative action statement; it said that "the number of
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
applicants who are deemed to be 'not qualified' is comparatively small."6 2 If these statements truly reflect the authoritative view of education in America, it's no wonder
that we have become "a nation at risk."
The great achievement of Brown v. Board of Education
was that it struck down the Plessy doctrine of "separate
but equal," which eventually, and necessarily, led to the
complete elimination of state-enforced racial segregation_63 The single opinion which accompanied the unanimous decision in Brown was an important part of the
Court's achievement; it facilitated the dismantling of genuine dual school systems. Neither the unanimity nor the
accommodating spirit of the Brown II implementation decision in 1955, which called for desegregation "with all deliberate speed," could prevent substantial Southern resistance for a decade. While I have criticized the Court's
opinion and offered a fuller and, in my opinion, sounder
argument for the decision, not even a perfect opinion ac-
companying the Court's unanimity would have eradicated
racial prejudice or actual inequality in American life. I
have argued that the eradication of either is beyond the
limited powers of a liberal democratic government. I do
think that if the Court's opinion had presented a sounder
treatment of the ordered liberty that we can reasonably expect from our government, it would have prevented the
numerous judicially ordered pupil assignment plans which
enforce racial balance in the public schools and do nothing
more than drive students desirous of education, white and
black, out of the public schools. And, if the Court's opinion had presented a sounder view of education than the
amalgamation view of integration, we would have more re-
spect for the variety of legitimate views on racial identification and less confusion about education as training and
habituation versus education as intellectual development.
]. 347
u.s. 483, 495 (1954).
2. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black
America's Struggle for Equality, New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 1976, pp.
710, 747.
3. The New York Times, May 18, 1954, p. 14.
4. Times, May 17, 1964, p. IDe.
5. Roger Wilkins, "The Sound of One Hand Clapping: Twenty years After Brown; Negro Progress and Black Rage," in Times Magazine, May 12,
1974, p. 43.
6. Ji'or the passage quoted from the dentist and statements by Rustin and
Wilkins, see U.S. News 6 World Report, May 20, 1974, "After 20 Years:
New Turn in Black Revolution," pp. 24ff; for the Browne interview, see
Roger Wilkins, op. cit.; for the Clark quote, see Times, May 12, 1974, p.
42.
7. Times, May 12, 1974.
8. "Desegregation: Where Do We Go From Here?" The New Republic,
February 7, 1970.
9. Fulfilling the Letter and the Spirit of the Law: Desegregation of the Nation's Public Schools, Report of the United States Commission on Civil
Rights, August, 1976; see summary and conclusion, pp. 293-313, including table 4.1, p. 296.
10. James S. Coleman, Equality of Educational Opportunity, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1966; the Report and its findings
were briefly discussed in William Chapman's newspaper article, "Key As-
61
�sumptions of Desegregation Under Challenge," in the Washington Post,
May 12, 1974, "Outlook," pp. C.2ff.
11. Both quotations come from the Times story of May 12, 1974,
p. 42.
12. See Washington Post, May 12, 1974, "Outlook," p. c.lff.
13. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1
(1971); Keys v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado, 413 U.S. 189
(1973).
14. The basis for the first statement is the gap between the Scholastic
Apptitude Test scores of Negroes and whites, which was over 100 points,
on the 200 to 800 scale, for both the verbal and math sections in 1981. See
The New York Times, January 14, 1983, p. 1la. The test results accompa·
nied an article on the NCAA proposal to require college freshmen to
have a minimum combined SAT score of 700 (out of 1600) in order to be
eligible to compete in interscholastic athletics. The Commission's Re·
port, entitled "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative of Educational Re·
form," was published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 4, 1983.
15. !63 u.s. 537.
16. 100 U.S. 303, 307-08 (1880). This was cited by Harlan in Plessy at 163
u.s. 537, 556.
17. Quoted by Kluger at p. 652. All the briefs and oral arguments in the
case can be found in Landmark Briefs and Arguments of the Supreme
Court of the United States: Constitutional Law, ed. by Philip B. Kurland
and Gerhard Casper, Arlington, Va.; University Publications of America,
Inc.; 1975, volumes 49 and 49a.
18. These remarks go beyond the argument of the opinion of the Court.
They draw on the reflections of Jefferson, Tocqueville, and Lincoln,
which will be discussed below.
19. For as full an account of the Supreme Court's deliberations as is possible, including the distinctive contributions of Justice Frankfurter and
the significance of Chief Justice Vinson's death, after the first oral argu·
ment, and his replacement by Chief Justice Warren, see Kluger, chapters
22-25.
20. 305 u.s. 337, 349-50.
21. 339 u.s. 637.
22. 339 u.s. 629, 634.
23. See Kluger, pp. 614-616.
24. See 354 U.S. 483, 487, note I.
25. 354 u.s. 397, 398.
26. This may have been due, in part, to the different lawyers. See Klu·
ger's account of James Nabritt, who argued the District of Columbia case
at p. 521. op. cit. From the very outset of the litigation, in 1951, Nabritt
challenged the race classification for public schools.
27. 347 U.S. 483, 495. The original implementation decision, known as
Brown II, was decided in 1955. The cases were remanded to the lower
courts to enter orders and decrees "as are necessary and proper to admit
to public schools on a racially non-discriminatory basis with all deliberate
speed the parties to these cases." 394 U.S. 294, 30l.
28. Pp. 491-2.
29. P. 493.
30. P. 494.
31. P. 494, note II.
32. Kluger, p. 439.
33. The study which the Court cited, "Effect of Prejudice and Discrimination on Personality Development," Midcentury White House Conference, 1950, did not involve North-South comparisons. The study which
did, "Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children," was writ·
ten by Clark and his wife, Mamie. It compared the responses from chil·
dren in Massachusetts with children in Arkansas. The work was originally
published in Newcomb and Hartley, eel., Readings in Social Psychology,
New York: Holt; 1947; it was included in the third edition, published in
1958, at pp. 602-611. Table 4 makes the North-South comparisons. Kluger gives a full account of Clark and his tests and the varied reactions of
the NAACP lawyers and other scholars; see chapter 14, and pp. 353-6,
498, and other references under the index heading, "Clark," "tests." The
problem with Clark's tests was first brought to my attention by Hadley
Arkes, in his essay, "The Problem of Kenneth Clark," in Commentary,
November, 1974.
62
34. See Chapman's discussion of the Coleman Report and later studies,
in the Washington Post, note 10 above, and David Armor's "The Evidence of Busing," in The Public Interest, Summer, 1972.
35. Kluger, p. 421.
36. 347 u.s. 497, 499-500.
37. See Kluger, chapter 23, for a discussion of the Justices' deliberations.
38. "Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law," in 73 Harvard
Law Review 1, November, 1959, pp. 33, 19, 33, 34, 15, 16.
39. "Racial Discrimination and Judicial Integrity: A Reply to Professor
Wechsler," in 108 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1 (1959); re·
printed in Selected Essays in Constitutional Law, 1938-1962, edited by
Edward L. Barrett, Jr., et al., St. Paul: West Publishing Co.; 1963, p. 819;
the quotation is from p. 839.
40. "The Lawfulness of the Segregation Decisions," in 69 Yale Law Jour·
nal421 (1960); reprinted in Selected Essays in Constitutional Law, p. 844;
the quotation is from p. 847.
41. The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Poli·
tics, Indianapolis: Babbs Merrill Company; 1962, p. 69.
42. Ibid, pp. 24 (see also 27), 25, 28.
43. See Kluger, pp. 653-655.
44. "The Original Understanding of the Segregation Decision," 69 Har·
vardLaw Review 1, November, 1955, pp. 61, 63.
45. Kluger, p. 655.
46. 4 Wheaton 316, 407(1819).
47. See The Least Dangerous Branch, pp. 106-7, where Bickel mistakenly
likens Marshall's to Brandeis' view of the Constitution as a "living organism."
48. For Jefferson, see Notes on Virginia, Query XIII; for Lincoln, see his
Peoria Speech, October 16, 1854, as well as the Lincoln-Douglas De·
bates.
49. See Democracy in America, Vol. I, Part II, chapter 10, edited by J.P.
Mayer, Garden City, New York: Anchor Books; 1969.
50. "Atlanta Exposition Address," in Herbert J. Storing, ed., What Coun·
try Have I? Political Writings by Black Americans, New York: St. Martins;
1970, p. 61. Washington gave his address in 1895. Nowhere in his autobiography, Up From Slavery, where he includes the text and discusses the
reaction to the speech, does he refer to the Louisiana law of 1890, which
was challenged in Plessy v. Ferguson. However, in 1915, he wrote an essay
in The New Republic arguing forcefully against segregation laws in terms
of both expediency and morality. See "My View of Segregation Laws," in
The New Republic, December 4, 1915, pp. ll3-1l4.
51. See "Of Booker T. Washington and Others," in Storing, op. cit., pp.
92-102, especially pp. 97-101.
52. This argument draws on Leo Strauss' discussion of natural right in
ancient and modern political philosophy. See Natural Right and History,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1953, and the title essay in What is
Political Philosophy?, Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press; 1959.
53. For this formulation and the subsequent argument I am indebted to
Herbert}. Storing, whose essay "The Founders and Slavery," was given
at St. John's College on March 5, 1976, published in the bicentennial is·
sue of The College (pp. 17-25), and subsequently reprinted in Robert H.
Horwitz, The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, Charlottes·
ville, Va.: University of Virginia Press; 1976.
54. In Storing, What Country Have I?, p. 82.
55. See Malcolm X, "The Ballot or the Bullet," and Stokeley Carmichael
and Charles Hamilton, "Black Power: Its Need and Substance," in Star·
ing, op. cit., pp. 146-163; !65-181.
56. For the citations, see note 13.
57. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717.
58. Columbua Board of Education v. Penick, 443 U.S. 449; Dayton Board
of Education v. Brinkman, 443 U.S. 526.
59. 413 u.s. 189,220-222, 222-223 (1973).
60. 347 u.s. 483, 493.
61. Tinker v. Des Moines School District, 393 U.S. 503, 512 (1969).
62. University of California Reb'ents v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 321 (1978).
63. When Virginia's anti-miscegination law was invalidated in 1967 (Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1) all Jim Crow legislation had been eradicated.
SUMMER 1983
�OccASIONAL DiscouRsEs
Class Day Address
1983
Chaninah Maschler
In the year of the chartering of St. John's College1784-Kant published a little essay whose opening sentences might serve as a statement of the moral aim of a
liberal arts education. The essay is called What is Enlightenment? and it begins roughly as follows:
Enlightenment is man's exodus from self-incurred minority.
To be a minor means, not to be able to use one's reason except as directed by someone else. Such minority is selfincurred when it is not due to lack of rational competence but
to lack of resolve and courage. Sapere aude, Dare to know!
Have the courage to use your understanding. That is the
motto of enlightenment.
Laziness and cowardice are to blame for the fact that so large
a portion of mankind, after nature has long discharged them
from tutelage and promoted them to adult estate, nevertheless gladly stay minors all their life and why it is so easy for
others to set themselves up as their guardians. It's much more
comfortable not to be of age: If I have a book that understands for me, a pastor, rabbi, priest who serves as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, I need not trouble myself_ Why think if I have the money to pay others to
take care of the irksome chore for me?
That it takes effort, continual downing of lassitude, to
be or become free needs no elaboration. But why does it
take courage, more courage, perhaps, today, or courage of
a different sort, than in 1784? If courage is called for, there
must be something dangerous, or at least frightening in
the offing.
Many of us~ tutors and students~ precisely if we are or
have been happy at this institution of learning, describe
our St. John's experience on the model of Anderson's fairy
A tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, Md., Chaninah Maschler previously published a translation of Lessing's Ernst and Falk: Conversations
for Free Masons (Autumn/Winter 82-83) St. John's Review.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
tale of the ugly duckling: You remember, in high school or
at Columbia or Yale or Princeton, we didn't fit; we were
lonely; doubted ourselves and our competence. Then,
upon coming here, and learning to trust and act on continual Kantian invitations to self-reliance, we found ourselves
flourishing amongst our own kind. We concluded: We are
swans really! Our egg got mislaid with duck parents and
duck schools!
But I don't see anything frightening in the fact that you
turn out to be a swan rather than a duck. Anderson's is a
self-indulgent, sentimental, self-congratulating tale, with
which we ought to be done. That we should "find ourselves" as noble swans is not the import of Kant's sermon.
So I want to tell a different parable, though upon reflection you will recognize a formal likeness between the story
I ask you to junk and that which I ask you to live with.
Before turning to the story, let's reminisce:
Do you remember the innocent days of Euclid proposition I 27? It gave us confidence that the local condition of
equality of alternate angles would guarantee that, no matter how far the straight lines making those angles with a
transverse be extended, the straight lines would never
meet (dfn 23, P- 190 Heath). I can still hear the voice of the
student at the board who showed that, supposing the condition of equality of alternate angles met but the attribute
of parallelism denied of the lines, one and the same angle
AEF would have to be both greater than and equal to the
angle EFG_ Reaching the crucial step of the argument,
she could not contain herself and shouted: "Oedipus
Schmoedipus, he can't marry his mother."
What she meant was, of course, that though tragic individuals may find themselves burdened with incompatible
roles, mathematical individuals~angles, lines, figureswhile normally playing different roles in the course of a
demonstration-else the demonstration would not work,
63
�wouldn't have a "middle term" to link the "extremes" of
the enunciation-mathematical individuals, I say, are utterly secure from conflation of incompossible roles.
Some of us thought that what Socrates taught in theRepublic is that we should live in admiration of those serene
mathematical individuals who are utterly free of faction.
(Cf Rep. VI, 500C; IX, 582; X, 606)
Should we?
Every time I read the fable of the wolf and the lamb and
hear the voice of reason weakly bleating ". . . et que par
consequent en aucune {aeon je ne puis troubler sa boisson"
(" ... from which it follows, by rational necessity, that I
cannot have muddied His Majesty's waters") I think on
the freshman mathematics tutorial and that Euclidean
clincher-atopon, impossible, ridiculous-which, La Fontaine reminds us, proves impotent when reasoning with
wolves.
That men might, by redesigning and reassigning power,
be prevented from becoming wolves to men was the great
hope of the philosophers of the enlightenment. We still
live in that hope. But we must persevere in it without the
prop and sop of grand theories of history's "tending" that
way-the way of the sweetly reasonable lamb.
And why is that? Because of a story told by those who
taught Aesop himself, a story perhaps told again by the
poet who sang Songs of Innocence and of Experience; I
mean William Blake. Here is the story:
Once upon a time there was a tiger cub who was being
raised by a herd of goats. He learned their language,
adapted his voice to their gentle way of bleating, and
though his teeth were pointy and made for tearing, he nibbled grass goat-fashion. One night the herd was attacked
by a fierce full-grown tiger. The goats scattered but the
cub stayed. He was amazed at the sight of the tiger, but
not afraid. He let out a bleat and began to tear up some
grass. The great tiger roared at him: "Why do you make
that silly sound? And what are you chewing there?" He
grabbed the cub, carried him off to his den, and there ordered him to get his teeth into a bloody raw piece of meat
left over from a previous foray. The cub shuddered. The
old one force-fed him. just as the cub was about to spit out
the morsel he began to taste the blood. Overcome, he
smacked his lips and licked his jowls, rose up, opened his
mouth. Stretching and arching, lashing his tail, there suddenly came from his throat a great roar. His teacher asked:
"Now do you know who you are?" (Adapted from
Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies ofindia, New York: Meridian Books, Inc., 1956.)
Sri Ramakrishna told the ancient story in answer to
Kant's question, "What is enlightenment?" and I pass it on
to you to counterpoise the tale of the lamb which, though
greatly consoling, and true, is also false: The wolf is not
just the other fellow: The i-sounds of Blake's tiger poem
and the -am's of the song of the lamb rhyme out I AM.
THE HORIZON AS THE
LAST SHIP HOME
On a diagonal of light,
the world hinges. The sea
slants blue miles away
to the horizon. At that
edge, the air is burning
like the wreck
of the last ship home.
J.
64
H. BEALL
SUMMER 1983
�Against Time*
Eva Brann
*Given as two Friday Night Lectures at St. John's College in Annapolis on February 18 and 25, 1983.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
65
�Contents
I. Approaches to the Inquiry
I.
2.
3.
4.
5.
67
Time Language
Time Puzzles
Time in Science
Temporal Sensibility
The Philosophers
II. Aristotle: Time as the Number of Motion
73
I. Time and its Measures
2. The Now
3. Memory
III. Augustine: Time as the "Distention" of the Soul . . . . . . . . . . . .
Husser!: The Phenomenology of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
78
80
I. Retention
2. The Diagram of Time
IV. Kant: Time as Inner Sense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I.
2.
3.
4.
5.
82
Inner Sense
Understanding
Imagination
Time and Space
Temporal Thinking
V. Heidegger: Temporality as the Meaning of Existence
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I. Ecstatic Temporality
2. Difficulties
VI. Time and Imagination
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I. The Non·Being of Time
2. Time as Noticed Passage
3. The Phases of Time
a.
b.
c.
d.
The
The
The
The
Present
Past
Future
Past as Paramount Phase
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l 00
I.
II.
Ill.
IV.
Main Texts
Supplementary Texts, Studies, Commentaries
Collections
Time in Science
Notes l-37 ................................................ 101
�Against Time
That time has no being and no power, that the past is
most to be cherished by those who have least taste for bygones, that our own temporality is the work of the imagination-these are the reflections that I want to articulate and
confirm in the following inquiry, for I believe and hope to
show that opinions of this sort are necessary for thinking
of ourselves as free and for filling our lives with substance.
I. APPROACHES TO THE INQUIRY*
Given this purpose, the first question is where to begin
an inquiry whose object appears to be both ubiquitous and
nowhere. There seem to be so many likely approaches to
the topic of time: through attention to our all-pervading
talk of time in ordinary life and through the neat enigmas
which even the lightest musing upon time generates,
through the science of nature which claims to determine
its concept, and through the observations of poets, novelists, and psychologists concerning our temporal sensibilities. All these efforts provide necessary grist to the mill of
reflection, but Time itself does not seem to be revealed in
or through them, and the very profusion of speculation
bears witness to its elusiveness. There remains the way
through philosophy, where time is treated in conjunction
with the question of being-and particularly of human being. Here the nature of time becomes at last a direct
theme. I shall, therefore, after a brief review of the other
approaches, devote the middle section of this study to an
interpretation of the five philosophers who seem to me to
have given the most coherent and pregnant answers to the
question What is Time?, and conclude with a section of my
own thoughts on, or rather against, time.
1. TIME LANGUAGE
The first and obvious way to get to the nature of time
might seem to be through examining the mentions of time
in ordinary language, through attending to what everyday
speech says of time, for example: My watch tells the time,
and I can give you the time. Do you have the time to give
*All references are to books listed in the Bibliography.
Eva Brann recently published Paradoxes of Education in a Republic'{Unlversity of Chicago Press, 1979).
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
me some time? I am wasting my time, while having the
time of my life. Time is money, and the times are bad. At
this point in time he has no comment, but time will tell.
Time heals and at the same time, time destroys. The time
is coming; the time is now; the time is past. We live in time
and through times, are on time, race against time, kill time,
donate time, are true to the end of time, and imagine once
upon a time.
Now the very profusion of usages, although it is an index of the great frequency of our references to time 1,
seems to me to preclude the discovery of a central meaning without our falling into the error of decreeing which of
these usages is canonically ordinary. Certainly, how time
occurs in daily speech is suggestive: Augustine, for instance, begins his inquiry by asking how it is that we can
speak of time as long or short (XI 15), and Heidegger refers
to the observation that we speak of time as passing away
and not as coming into being ( Logik, par. 20). It turns out,
however, that both authors, far from being guided by what
is said, conclude that ordinary speech obscures the nature
of time.
It seems, all in all, that from listening to the use of the
term time one, but only one, crucial conclusion can be
reached: Time is always spoken of metaphorically or figuratively. It may be treated as a spatial dimension with
length and points, or as a possession to have and to give, or
in a personification, as an agent of multifarious potency.
Its power is sometimes benign but far more often hurtful,
as in the insistently grim time-figures of the Shakespearean Sonnets: devouring Time, confounding Time, decaying Time, swift-footed Time, sluttish Time, Time's injurious hand, Time's fell hand (19, 55, 63-65).
Most time references are well-worn and mean little; they
are time-honored phrases, once perhaps heartfelt, for disposing of the mysteries of change. When we talk of time as
healing we consign to a hackneyed phrase the miraculous
restorative power of nature and the blessed oblivion of
which memory is capable. Poets, on the other hand, tend
to give time injurious epithets, because, I think, they speak
more often and more accurately of the high, intense, and
vulnerable configurations of life than we do in ordinary
speech.
The word "time" is not, of course, remotely all that language says of time. All our sentences require tensed verbs,
particularly "is," "was," and "shall be." But can their use
tell us their meaning? Or must we not rather know what is
meant by present, past, and future, the three phases of
time, to understand the use of aspects and tenses?
67
�2. TIME PUZZLES
'
A second start might be made from the puzzles about
time which can be so copiously and near-spontaneously
generated. For example, why does time seem to have a forward arrow and a leading edge? 2 Does it progress in a continuous flux or in atomic jerks? Is it within or outside of us,
in the soul or in the world? What is the "now" in which
alone things are present and which reason reduces to a
point between past and future? And above all, how is it
possible that anything be in that past which is no longer, or
in the future which is not yet? There are many more such
problems, even excluding those concerning temporal con-
tinuity, which belong primarily to mathematics.
Such conundrums are easily disposed of by the positivist, who obviates them by pointing out that in ordinary life,
before the onset of a philosophical seizure, no one is at all
inconvenienced by them, so why concoct enigrnas? 3 To be
more than idle puzzles they must arise in the context of a
well-grounded inquiry into time itself. They are not its beginning but its by-products.
acute literature about the philosophical implications of
time in nature, or more accurately, in the science of na-
ture. (For all references see Sec. IV of the Bibliography.)
Three branches of physics seem to be especially amenable
to philosophical interpretation: Thermodynamics seems
to have implications about the forward motion, the socalled "arrow" of time and its irreversibility. Relativity theory appears to have exploded the common sense notion of
universal time or the simultaneity of the present moment
throughout space. Quantum theory throws in doubt the
continuity of time.
But intriguing as such theories are, because they are
bent on interpreting with ingenuity and vigour the unignorable discoveries of physics, they help only incidentally
and negatively with the question: What is time? For in
these theories time is invariably understood as a privileged
process or motion, either a macro-motion or an atomic vi-
bration; the temporality of these timing-motions is itself
left unexplained-as indeed it should be since such an explanation would no longer be amenable to verification by
observation. The implication is that time really is an aspect
of motion to be got at only in telling time. But time-telling
is commonly taken to be a three-cornered affair, involving
an observable event, a timing device, and an observer who
3. TIME IN SCIENCE
In view of the fact that time is the basic independent
variable of all the physics accessible to laymen, it would
seem reasonable to turn first to the science of nature, that
is, to physics, for help in the search for the nature of time.
Reflective physicists and philosophers of physics have, accordingly, propounded powerful theories of time. At the
very beginning of the science of dynamics stands the most
extreme theory of the reality of time, Newton's self-subsisting, equably flowing, absolute world time-and its
equally extreme opponent, Leibniz's relative time, a mere
order of phenomenal succession. 4 Newton's theory of an
absolute temporal flux may well be integral to the theological purposes of the Principia, but it does not seem to be
operational within its physics. It is a philosophical rather
than a physical requirement. In contrast, the plain statement by a great physicist of the most minimal notion of
time conceivable is fairly recent, namely Einstein's wholly
operational or instrumental definition of local time as "the
position of the small hand of my watch" (p. 39; an instrumental definition is one in which the term is defined
through the instrument and the operation which measures its magnitude). Although it may seem strange at first
that after two and a half millenia of arduous exploration of
the question "What is time?'' the outcome should be that
time is what the clock tells, one soon sees that this definition is the cleanest and clearest reflection on time that a
physicist can give. For in physics time must be positive,
that is to say, it should be no more than an observable
quantity the method of whose measurement is defined.
There is then an enormous and intellectually most
68
can distinguish and relate the two and communicate his
findings. And though a physical theory may include the
observer with respect to his relative motion or his unavoid-
able interference with the observation, it is regarded as the
part of psychology to deal with the distinguishing and relating itself, that is, with the internal observer. In sum, in
physics time itself is the name of a fundamental motion,
while the telling of time is not ultimately explicable in
physical terms.
Furthermore the philosophical interpretation of physical time is by no means univocal, any more than are those
of philosophy in the wider sense, with which the philosophy of physics does, after all, eventually merge. Therefore,
through this approach a clarification of the concepts of
time implicit in various physical theories is the most that
can be expected.
Let me give very brief versions of three accessible cases
in point.
I. Eddington introduced the phrase "Time's Arrow" to
sum up the observations of thermodynamics. Let there be
a partitioned container, isolated from outside influences,
and let one part be filled with air, the other empty. Now
remove the partition, and the molecules of air in their individual random motions will over time spreed through the
whole vessel (while the probability that they will ever again
simultaneously collect at one end is so vanishingly small as
to make the case practically impossible). The aggregate of
molecules as a whole will then have less organization and
will be said to show increasing "disorder," by which is
meant here a certain kind of homogeneity. Its measure is
called "entropy." The large-scale phenomenal effects of
this statistical law of nature are quite familiar in life:
SUMMER 1983
�Things left to their own devices tend to fall into sprawling
disorder.
Now Eddington interprets this irreversible process of
nature as an intrinsic forward tendency of time itself. If he
is right, physics is indeed capable of revealing the nature
of time. There are, however, many and much debated difficulties, for example, whether the universe is an isolated
system, whether a probable event and a process subject to
fluctuations can be imputed to the steady underlying
action of time, whether to show that time is "anisotropic,"
that is, directed, is necessarily to show that it advances,
whether the physical law applies as well to life. But the
most telling difficulty for present purposes is this: An observer can assert that time is reversible, for example, that if
the time coordinate were imagined as reversed the planets
would exactly retrace their orbits, only if he also imagines
his own time as maintaining its direction so that he can
compare the two successive motions. Would notthe same
hold for an observer of irreversible processes, so that he
would have to say not that physical time itself was advancing, but that "disorder" was irreversibly increasing with
time, namely his psychological observer's time the question of whose advance is no longer a matter for physics?
There is a counterargument, to be sure, namely that human memory itself, the condition of time-telling, is an entropic process since it has an entropic physical basis. But
that leaves us with the question, certainly no longer in the
realm of physics, whether the human observer of nature
can logically himself be subject to its law (Eddington, Ch.
IV; Gruenbaum, Chps. 8, 9; Schlegel, pp. 55 ff.; Whitrow,
Ch. IV 3, 4).
2. Einstein begins his 1905 paper, which sets forth the
special theory of relativity, by defining what the common
place far off it will be said to occur at the same time or
simultaneously, with our clock-time for the arrival of its
signal. Further, clocks which are synchronized with a third
are said to be synchronized with each other. Therefore
simultaneity is not universal "nowness" but merely what it
is defined to be by the synchronizing process.
Next Einstein lays down two fundamental axioms. The
first of these is the principle of relativity itself, which says
that the laws of physics governing a system are not affected if the whole is put into uniform rectilinear motion.
The second is that the speed of light is absolute, namely
the same whether the light is emitted from a stationary or
a moving source. Within a page Einstein has shown that
two clocks which are affixed to the ends of a moving rod
and which have been separately synchronized with a clock
in the stationary system, and so with each other from the
point of view of the stationary observer, will not appear to
meet the criteria of synchronicity from the point of view
of the moving observers. What the stationary observer sees
as simultaneous the moving observers do not. That means
that what one observer takes to be the same moment
comes apart for another observer into different moments.
There is no absolute signification to the concept of simultaneity. The now is not universal.
This result is usually interpreted as confuting the common sense notion of a universal contemporaneity, the feeling we have in ordinary circumstances that our now is ev-
eryone's now. But I wonder if that follows. The theory
means by <(the same time here and there" an operation
definable in terms of observations, namely, the relating of
clocks by a signal which takes time to travel back and forth.
The speed of the signal, namely the speed of light, is the
crucial element in the formula which shows that events
sense of mankind had so far taken as a natural given,
simultaneous in one system will not be so in another rela-
namely what it means to say that it is the same time at
places very far apart. His need to do so follows immediately from his definition of local time as what the clock
tells, and that, in turn, embodies a deep reflection on the
nature of physical knowledge. For nothing is to be counted
as scientific theory which does not ultimately refer to possible sensory events. So to tell what time it is at a fixed
place somewhere far off we must have a clock and an observer there and sensible signalling between him and us.
Now even the fastest signal, light, takes time to go there
and to be reflected back; we all know that the light from
the star we now see is not the light being emitted by the
star now. That means that a procedure for synchronizing
both clocks must be established so that we here can say
what time it is there now.
Einstein defines such a procedure. The time for the
light signal to come and go is taken to be equal by defini-
tively moving one. If that signalling speed were to be increased beyond all bounds, an impossibility in physical
theory to be sure, simultaneity would be reinstated.5
But are we in our thinking and imagining bound by the
physicist's requirements? Can we not in our thoughtswhich are as swift as the ships of Homer's Phaeacians,
namely instantaneous-extend ourselves over all space at
once? If our thinking were in principle incapable of coming under the requirements of science we might well imagine any number of friendly extra-terrestrials, moving and
stationary, all thinking of us and of each other simultane-
tion. We signal our time to the remote observer who sets
his clock by it just as he reflects the signal. Upon receiving
it we set our clock to a time exactly half way between our
sending and receiving the signal. The two clocks are thus
said to be synchronized, and when an event occurs at the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ously, now. A concord of consciousnesses is not inconceiv-
able. I cannot think that the deep-seated human sense of a
universal now can be confuted by a definition of time and
a canon of knowledge not its own (Einstein, I 1-2; Reichenbach, par. 19; Dingle, pp. 460 ff.).
3. In Plato's Sophist the debate between the proponents
of being and becoming is called the Battle of Gods and Giants. This battle rages between interpreters of relativity
theory and furnishes my last example of the difficulty of
extracting a clear philosophical interpretation from physical theory. The argument arises over the interpretation of
69
�the Minkowski diagram, which is a geometric representation of a world in which the space coordinates are interdependent with the time coordinates. A number of authors
claim that the relativization of simultaneity and the involvement or covariance of space and time so spoil the objectivity of the temporal order, that is, the unambiguous
and universal separation of past and future, that one can
no longer speak of becoming in the world. The world is a
four-dimensional continuum of three spatial and one "spa·
tializing" time coordinate, spatializing in the sense that in
this geometric diagram the motion of any substantial point
is represented by a stationary curve. This world is already
"written." It is and does not become, though it appears to
us successively, like a prepared cartoon strip we read by
moving our eyes. Thus the only change is that in the per·
ceiving consciousness of the observer, and if there is real
time it is only his psychological time.
The defenders of becoming argue, on the other hand,
that the perturbations of time pointed to by proponents of
being do not occur for causally related events, whose succession is preserved in all frames of reference; only the succession of causally unrelated and of simultaneous events is
relativized. So nothing, they claim, stands in the way of
positing real, that is, causally conditioned, becoming.
Aside from self-contradictory use of the term "being" to
mean static appearance and the too-narrow use of the
term becoming for causally related succession, the difficulty in drawing philosophical conclusions about time and
the world, even supposing the physicists came to terms,
seems to me to be that the interpretation really concerns
only the representation of the theory, that is, a model of its
world, not the world itself (Frazer, pp. 415 ff.; Whitrow,
pp. 227-228; Gruenbaum, Basic Issues, 195-228).
It seems that while the study of physical theory is indispensable to an understanding of process and motion, it
can be no more than suggestive with respect to time. But
that really implies that time properly speaking must belong not to nature but to the observer.
4. TEMPORAL SENSIBILITY
Sometimes it is the matter itself which arouses wonder
and perplexity, while sometimes the world's preoccupation with it excites curiosity and concern. In the case of
time the two motives for starting a study seem to me to
coincide.
There is certainly plenty of external evidence for our
world's pervasive fascination with time. In the decades
close to us there is no getting away from observations to
the effect that the rate of change of the human environment has increased stupendously, and this increase is usually expressed as a speeding up of time itself. "Innovation"
is the incantatory term which people feel they must utter
to keep time from outrunning them. Complementing this
70
general sense of the urgency of our situation there is also a
flood of scientific work on time; for example, intriguing biGllogical experiments on the temporal rhythms of animals
and jet-setters, psychological studies of time perception
and estimation, sociological accounts of time management
in different cultures (e.g., Zerubavel).
But this overwrought sense of time's power did not arise
only after the First World War. It had been in the offing,
one might say, for two millenia, but it first broke out
acutely almost two centuries ago, in Hegel's writings. It infected common opinion with the notion that the times are
informed by a supraindividual force whose laws human
science can divine and with whose ends human beings
must, on pain of merciless punishment, cooperate. There
was the widespread sense that this movement of time was
coming to a culmination, either in an earthly paradise or in
a man-made apocalypse. There was a passionate elevation
of personal time in its vitality over space in its dead externality (Bergson, Note 27, 3). There were discoveries of the
interdependence of space and time (Einstein, Alexander,
Note 6). And, as was to be expected, an irritated reaction
against this "time-mind" soon followed (Lewis, Note 7).
But most weightily, there was the claim that the philosophical situation of our time forces us to view the ground
of human being itself as temporal (Heidegger, Logik
p. 267).
Although cataloguing the elements and sources of what
everyone is saying is a dry and dubious business, I cannot
help speculating, or rather summarizing the speculation of
others, on how time, having been dethroned from its
mythical majesty by Aristotle, returned as the demon
force of modernity.
Four root references seem to me discernible, four
causes to which the temporal preoccupation oflate modernity is referrable.
First and fundamentally this preoccupation is the secular residue of Christianity. Christian time has a beginning,
an end, and an internal epoch. These are the Creation, the
Final judgment, and the birth of God as man. Our otherwise apostate world retains a secularized sense of impending doom, of a man-made catastrophe (which long antecedes the concrete fear of nuclear annihilation), and,
alternately, of coming salvation through progress toward a
divinization of mankind or a return to an original creaturely equality in a terrestrial paradise.
A second cause is the simple fact that we come late in
history, not in the sense in which Greek philosophers posited innumerably repeated cycles of the discovery and loss
of art and wisdom (Note 13), but because we have behind
us a minutely documented civilization, classical antiquity,
uniquely brilliant and irrevocably bygone, to which we
have a peculiar relation. For modernity begins with a selfconscious, systematic transformation of the classical categories of thought and conduct. Hence the shape of modern preoccupations is not quite intelligible without
reference to their ancient origins. At the same time we
SUMMER 1983
�seem to have every reason for forgetting those origins as
being superseded. For we have more power over nature
and are, in the modern West, better governed than were
our intellectual ancestors. Such forgetfulness, however, in·
duces a vague feeling of discontinuity and leaves us with
the contradiction of a chronic sense that our situation is
utterly new.
Third is the temporal effect that goes with the sheer
massiveness of modernity, its human numbers, informa·
tion, organizations, wars, crimes, and instruments of plea-
sure. The motion of magnitudes so far beyond human per·
spective appears to us to be attributable to an agency less
than divine and yet suprahuman; we call it time and con·
sider its effects inevitable.
Finally, and most to my purpose, is the special modern
propensity for a kind of psychological introspection which,
in contrast to philosophical self-knowledge, consists of a
prolonged pursuit of intimate affective subtleties. It seems
to me to stem from two sources coincidentally: from that
secularization of the anxious Christian interest in the salvation of one's soul which motivates Augustine's Confessions, and from that sophisticated reaction against the
early modern view that human subjectivity is ultimately
rational which is called romanticism and whose founding
work is Rousseau's Confessions (Note 7).
Naturally such introspection-it is really an ingenious
kind of musing-is especially rich in observations about
the sense of time and ready to luxuriate in the aroma of
temporality. Those of us who were born in the first third of
this century participate in these affects by birthright. For
then a sense of decadence and fin de siecle, climaxed by
the First World War which realized all the worst forebodings and indeed closed an era in civilization, had worked
the temporal sensibility into an acute state, which was the
psychological complement of the new interest in the physical time.
Three novelistic masterworks of the early century
which, although demandingly voluminous, found avid
readers, are at once a sign and a source of this sensibility:
The first is Proust's novel, literally entitled Toward a
Search for Lost Times. It is an account of the ennuiinfected author's quest for the catalyst of his art, which he
finds in the last part of the novel, Time Retrieved; it comes
in the form of an instantaneous, time-annihilating recovery of certain paradisical childhood moments. The second
is Mann's Magic Mountain. It is a book described by its author as intended to induce in the reader that same "subli-
learnedly interweaves mythical, historical, personal time;
the book is a recollection of European civilization.
•
•
•
Let me describe some of these experiences of temporality-a mere personal sample of temporal affections indicative of our time-under the interlaced rubrics of pacing,
routine, and skewing.
l. By "pacing" I mean the phenomenon that our internal time seems to undergo drastic shifts in tempo. We
moderns are so acutely subject to these, it seems to me,
because the rhythms of modern life are not long-breathed
natural periods, punctuated by public ritual, but tightly
scheduled stretches interrupted by private vacations. The
characteristically modern art forms, like the novel and
symphonic music, seem to me peculiarly expressive of our
habituation to sharp changes in pace. We moderns arealmost congenitally expert in the central temporal experience of the Magic Mountain-the periods of apathy, surfeit, distraction, and boredom which are long to live
through but vanishingly brief in retrospect, "wastes" of
time, poor in feature and welded in memory; they alternate with times of intense eventfulness, accomplished at
breakneck speed, while depositing memories so closepacked and vivid, that today seems aeons from yesterday.
A similar experience is that haunting sense of its expanded
or contracted availability which makes time seem like
money to be prodigally spent in one phase and anxiously
hoarded in another, always with a guilty sense that one's
lifetime is being mismanaged. Again there is that peculiarly modern drivenness which prevents us from ever
"having" time-and its complementary lethargy when the
possession of no amount of ''free" time avails: our time
devils either ride or bind us. There are, similarly, those occasions of wild anticipation when the present moment,
overburdened with the concentrated desire that time
should pass, stalls in a bad imitation of the "standing now"
of eternity, and will not give way to the next second. Then
again, though, time suddenly takes off and shimmies away,
as in periods of nervous distraction. Perhaps the latter affections are not peculiar to our time, but here is one that
surely is, the strangest and most characteristic of modern
time experiences: our watchful subjection to that ubiquitous little face on the wrist which, through all internal
tempi, equably shows the time. It is somehow, I suspect,
the cause of our loss of temporal equanimity.
mation of time," a warping of the sense of time in accor-
2. Next, ''routine": Routine is that organization of our
dance with the intensity of life, experienced by its solidly
bourgeois yet physically tainted young hero. The book
contains several phenomenological expositions of time, including a whole "Digression on the Time Sense." Finally
there is joyce's Ulysses, an Irish odyssey, whose hero is a
jew, an ordinary man and an outsider, who enacts within
one Dublin day the adventurous Mediterranean voyage
performed over a decade by his Homeric original. joyce
time economy which causes periods of time to be endlessly reflected as in facing mirrors, so that our memory
can scarcely discern whether it contains an infinity of
times or just one moment. Almost everyone who works in
the modern mode, according to a nonseasonal repeating
schedule, has some sense of the enigma of the timeconstrained round. How are such calendar days additive?
What memorable difference could be powerful enough to
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
71
�distinguish each of the ten-thousand times of hastening up
these particular brownstone stairs at the sound of the bell
from every other? The memory is curiously cavalier about
the routines of life. It abstracts one event and remembers
that schema, modified by the mere knowledge of its multitudinous recurrence, its mere temporal heaping. The duties of each day, when done in the present, at the front of
time~ as it were, are vivid and absorbing enough, but when
we turn around to face the past an enigma stares back:
There has certainly been living but has there been a life,
that complete shape which the Greeks call bios, as distinct
from mere vital process, zoe? Can a temporally bureau era~
tized life become a whole unless the routine is no more
than the thorough-bass of some atemporal melody? Again,
the complement of clock-bound business is the vacation, a
vacancy of time, l{free" time, and this whole temporal con~
figuration of engaged and disengaged periods is subject to
a curious inversion of background and foreground, as in
certain optical illusions, such that work time, in which
life's energy is, after all, primarily invested, feels like the
mere backdrop to the periods of "off' time. No matter
how contentedly we are enmeshed in the cocoon of daily
absorption, let there be a break in busyness, and the inertia
which is strong in the scheduled spirit exerts itself to resist
not only all duties but all actions, and the released soul
drinks deep draughts of diversion.
3. uSkewing" is my term for the overpowering sense
which befalls us moderns especially in historical settings,
the sense that space and time can be at cross purposes. I
have been in Athens, at a place where my path crossed
that of Socrates, not conjecturally but precisely, since archaeology, that quintessentially modern discipline, has
fixed the exact location, for instance, of the court where
he was tried. Nor was I on the spot in plane coordinates
only, for again archaeology, which brings back the past by
digging down, had laid bare the level of his time. I was,
then, correctly located in all three spatial dimensions. I
was in the right place but at the wrong time. That melancholic sense of the irreparable loss of what we have never
had which is induced by written histories of bygone splendours-for histories induce memories of the never-experienced~that
temporal nostalgia, is many times intensified
when no space intervenes to compound the temporal distance, when here and now are directly at odds. It is, after
all, to bask in such melancholy that we visit "historic
spots."
The apprehension of this skewing of space and time invites much rumination. Take, for instance, the common
inverse experience of the case above: being contempora-
neous, even precisely simultaneous, with another cherished human being, but apart in space. How does the case
of spatial distance differ from temporal separation? Apparently by the fact that the latter seems to be remediable; by
an investing of available time in transversing space I can
come again into the other's presence~incidentally itself
the strangest business, this going into and out of another's
72
now! But is being in the same place at the same time so
certain a remedy for remoteness? Can it not equally be its
cause? Cannot the absent soul be more vividly a presence
than the present body? One writer on time illustrates the
common claim, that the feature which most distinguishes
present from past is vividness, by referring to his colleague
X who is, he asserts, more acutely there than Plato. I wonder, or rather I doubt it. On the other hand, there does
seem to be a special bond of awareness~ if only of disillusioned awareness~that links not only those who live in
neighbourly contiguity but also those who coexist in spatially distant contemporaneity.
To extend the speculation from spatial to temporal relocation: If it is sometimes, though perhaps rarely, possible
to go back to former places and presences, and to reenter
their continuity, why should it be an interdicted purpose-as the common opinion of our age considers it-to
go back to former times by internal recovery and an external reconstruction? Such a collective return, or rather re-
trieval, such a going back which means a bringing back,
has, after all, been attempted, and always these renaissance times are also the newest of times. Similarly, why
should not individual retrievals of our private lost times be
a possibility? That is, after all, Proust's project~just as the
Renaissance revives antiquity in grand vignettes, so Proust
relives his childhood in paradisical tableaus. Could it be,
indeed, that such retrievals of time, public or private, are
the modern replacements for the ancient periodic ritual
enactments of mythical moments~these being the respective modes of bringing the then and there into the
here and now and of undoing the skewing of time and
place?
I have only described some time affections which seem
to me particularly acute in modern life. But such diverse
musings while expressing the mood and providing the material for the inquiry into time have no end and lead to no
resolutions.
5. THE PHILOSOPHERS
What is left, in the end, for someone anxious to clarify
and test certain intimations about time, is the way through
the philosophers. It is, after all, their proper and specific
business to ask boldly and set out coherently what Time
itself is. The five writers I have chosen are those who seem
to me to present the most deep-reaching, well-grounded,
and mutually responsive thematic treatment of time.
Aristotle defines time as the number of motion. His is
the first thematic treatment in the West, unsurpassibly
comprehensive and therefore the natural reference for all
subsequent expositions.
Augustine, in his effort to comprehend the temporal
creature's relation to his eternal God and Creator, discovers time as the "distension" or worldly dimension of the
soul. His ardent and original inquiry first establishes temporality as at the root of human existence.
SUMMER 1983
�On this Augustinian discovery Huss.erl bases a phenomenology, namely a description, as presuppositionless as
possible, of the internal appearances of time, that is, of
time-consciousness.
·
Kant finds time to be the "inner sense," the sense in
which the self becomes an appearance to itself; here time,
as the form of human sensibility, is of the soul without belonging to the ultimate subject, the self.
Heidegger understands the very ground of human existence as temporality, inverting Kant's relation of the self to
time and driving the notion of time to its most extreme
distance from Aristotle.
There are, of course, other writers on time who are of
g<e><t stature. Of these my chief omission is Hegel, whose
writings, (except for the paragraphs on time in nature,
Note 27, 2) are just not capable of a dissevered thematic
treatment of time. For his system is the account of the
spirit in its necessary appearances which is Time. 8
Plotinus (20), Leibniz and Newton (4), Locke (24),
Nietzsche (13), Bergson (27, 3) and Whitehead (16 and 32)
are briefly treated in the Notes indicated. As for the absence of Plato, it is not really an omission because there is
no extended treatment of time in the Dialogues except in
myths (See Notes 12 and !3) and, significantly, none of
these are told by Socrates himself-whose images are reserved for the atemporal.
Finally, I should say that it is not so much the gist of the
theories here presented that is instructive for my purpose
but the exposition of their motives and principles, the tracing of their explicit and implicit consequences, and the
formulation of those oppositions and analogies which
mark them as belonging to one tradition. Using the texts in
that way, I shall in the last section (VI) try to formulate my
suspicions against time.
II. ARISTOTLE: TIME AS THE NUMBER OF MOTION
Time, Ghronos, is endowed among the Greeks with vividly various shapes and widely diverse, even opposite,
powers; he is monster, god, and heaven itself, all-seeing,
healing, and all-destroying9 Sophocles, for example, says
onoe that ".omnipotent time" confounds and destroys all,
and then again he calls him "a gentle god" (Oed. Col. 609,
Electra 179). Time's attributes are evidently fluid, but he is
always a potent being.
In the fourth book of the Physics, the first extensive thematic treatment of time, Aristotle suddenly and drastically
reduces it to the lowest possible status. This epoch-making
triumph of thinking over myth-making has not prevailed.
Indeed, the dethroned god has been resurrected as God
himself by Aristotle's modern counterpart, Hegel. So
much the more, it seems to me, should the overthrow accomplished by Aristotle be recalled.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
L TIME AND ITS MEASURES*
Aristotle begins with the suspicion that time is "either
wholly not, or scarcely and obscurely" (217 b 34). For many
perplexities arise if being is ascribed to time, chief of
which is that some of it is gone and is no longer, some of it
is to come and is not yet, while the now is no part of time
at all.
He resolves the difficulty like this: Time is a mere affection or aspect (pathos, hexis, 223 a 19) of motion: "Time is
the number of motion with respect to before and after" (220
a 25).
The Loeb translators comment that Aristotle "enters
into no profound metaphysical speculation as to its essential nature" (I, 378). But the profundity of his speculation
lies precisely in his showing that time has no essential nature; an interpretation of his treatment ought to show
what the deep-lying reasons for this determined trivialization of time are.
Not only is time a mere aspect of motion for Aristotleit is not even a necessary aspect, since not all motions are
temporal. Two kinds of motion at least are prior to time.
They are the motions at the two limits of the natural
world, so to speak, and they are timeless because they are
themselves the source and principle of time. The first is
the ultimate, primary rotational motion of the heavens,
the second is the motion of the soul apprehending time. I
shall say more of these later, but I must mention right now
that to identify these motions as pretemporal is by no
means to say that they cannot be timed. We can clock the
heavens and we can time our cogitations-but we have
clocks only because of the regular continuous motions of
the heavens, and we can tell time only because of the
counting motion of our soul. Time is the measure of motion, and therefore motion can in turn measure time (220 b
24).
Up to the last book the Physics is about inner-worldly
motions and these alone are the motions affected with
time, the number of motion according to before and after.
Where there is no physical body, there is no time (On the
Heavens 279 a 16). Motion (kinesis) includes every kind of
change (metabole) of quantity, quality, place, and the process of becoming (2!8 b 21, though not becoming as simple coming into being, Met. 1067 b 32). How can motion
possess number, that is, come in ordered units?
Motion has a quantitative aspect; it is a magnitude; we
may say that it has extension. Motion derives its sequential
extended character of before-and-after from this aspect
which is merely a property in the motion although separable in thought (2!9 a 22; see Loeb I p. 384, n.b.). (Strictly
speaking, as we shall see, the motion derives its magnitudinal property from the thing moved, the mobile.) In other
*The section on Aristotle was worked out during a year of learning with
and from Anderson Weekes, then a senior at St. John's College, Annapolis, who during that time developed a coherent and illuminating account
of Aristotle's theory of cognition.
73
�words, the category of continuous quantity is predicated
which includes them (Met. 1078 a 12); therefore physics is
of motion.IO
a subordinate science, and not Science simply, as it is with
To say that time moves is meaningless; rather motion is
temporal, and from motion time derives all its properties
and problems. As motion is continuous, so is time, and all
the problems continuity offers to reason, time does likewise. First among these is its relation to the now, which is
analogous to that of a point to its line. More of that later. A
second difficulty is that since motion is continuous, so is
us.
Locomotion, then, is prior in all ways to the other motions. Of locomotions, rotary motion alone is continuous
in all senses: It has no beginning and it does not end
through having completed its process, nor does it abruptly
double back on itself; it can be regular, smooth, uninterrupted, and eternal (Phys. VIII 8-9).
The first heavenly sphere is the uniquely perfect embodiment of such rotary motion. It comes as close to being
at rest as a mobile can be, since every point in a circular
motion is equally a beginning, middle, and end, so that in a
certain sense it has no before-and-after (265 b 1). It is in
motion, but not toward an end; its movement is rather a
steady state which imitates in its regularity the pure activity of completely fulfilled being, God (Met. XII 7). This is
the motion which is the cause of all other inner-worldly
motions, and so, indirectly, of time (Phys. VIII 9). 12 Beyond
the heavens there is no time (On the Heavens 279 a 15).
The continual character of time, its endlessness and its
uninterruptedness, is therefore derived from that of the
ultimate motion. Because of the heavenly motion, time is
one and the same throughout the world (Phys. 218 b 14).
The discontinuous motions of the terrestrial world, which
come to an end with the reaching of their goal, are all fit-
time: Whence, then, come the unit measures, the periods,
through which time can become the number of motions?
Time, therefore, pertains to motion insofar as motion
is a continuous quality or quantity, which always has a
before-and-after. The primary before-and-after, according
to Aristotle, is that of place (219 a 16), and therefore locomotion is in all ways the primary motion: It is the condition of all other motions, and it is the motion of a completed being, and it is temporally prior to other motions
since it initiates them (VIII, 7). But it would be false to conclude that motion is continuous because it is spatial, as if it
were the covering of extended space by an indifferent
point-mobile. That would be an importation of the modern physical view that a motion is sufficiently understood
through its "quantity," which is called momentum and defined as the measure of the mass multiplied by the velocity
of the moving body. Aristotle rejects the possibility of a
motion indifferent to the nature of the mobile and its
proper places.l 1 Indeed, as was said, motion itself is defined in terms of the mobile, as its state. He says clearly
that motion is continuous because the thing moved is continuous and not because that in which it is moved is so
(Coming to Be 337 a 27). He does not, of course, mean the
continuity of the present extent of the thing, for example,
its length, but rather that continuity which a mobile has by
reason of possessing a matter which remains continuous
through change, the substrate or subject of the motion
(Met. 1042 a 32, 1044 b 7). The magnitude of motion,
and derivatively of time, is an affection of a divisible subject which is not the momentary present movable thing
itself but "what was moved" (Met. 1020 a 32), which must
mean the mobile in its progressive changes of place. In this
continuing-through-its-phases the mobile displays that extension which is reflected in the motion and which, when
counted, is called temporal durations. In brief: what is
countable in motion is its continuously phased development, its "before-and-after."
It should be noted here that, accurately speaking, the
magnitudinal affections are so-called "proper affections";
they belong to the mobile not essentially but yet necessarily, just as a human being is not essentially either a male or
a female and yet is necessarily one of these. Temporal duration is therefore not of the essence of the mobile. From
this fact follows the crucial distinction between Aristotelian and modern physics: To Aristotle the science that
leaves out motion and magnitude is closer to essences,
more intelligible, and therefore more accurate than that
74
ted into continuous cosmic time. And since everything
within the world is mobile and subject to timing, time is in
everything (223 a 17).
As the heavens are the source of temporal continualness, so they provide the measure of time. The cycle of
rotation is the best unit of time, because it is easiest to
count (223 b 19)-a continuous quantity must have a unit
measure in order to be countable.
The unit measures of time in the terrestrial world of becoming are provided by the sun's oblique motion along the
ecliptic. just as the movement of the whole heaven is responsible for the continuity of motion and time, so the
sun, the "generator," by its approaches and withdrawals
causes each life to have its span: "Every life and time is
measured by a period, though not the same for all .... For
some the measure is a year, for some a greater and for oth-
ers a lesser period" (On Coming to Be 336 b 13 ff.). Hence
the period or cycle is the natural time unit (Phys. 223 b 28).
God has made this somewhat irregular but uninterrupted
cycle of becoming perpetual so that it may come as near as
possible to eternal being (3 36 b 35); becoming approaches
being in a kind of Eternal Return.l 3 To tell continuous
time over such annual cycles it would seem necessary that
each cycle should differ somewhat from the next, as, because of the accidents of matter, it certainly will be.
Time, then, belongs, strictly speaking, only to the sublunar world of change, of becoming and of linearly advancing motion in which before and after are distinguishable.
Such motion, defined in Physics III (201 a 11), 14 is to be
understood through Aristotle's two fundamental terms,
SUMMER 1983
�potentiality or capability for being (dynamis) and actuality,
activity, or being-at-work (energeia; also' entelecheia, fulfillment). Motion, then, is the fulfillment of a capability; it is
the actual exercise of the potentiality that the mobile has
for being what it was meant to be, for achieving its full
form (eidos). Each motion is a unity, governed by its own
end and ceasing when that end has been fulfilled. Its time
is just the measured course of this activity of approaching
full being. Since a terrestrial mobile, unlike the heavens
(On the Heavens I, 3), has a corruptible material substrate
and is subject to accidents, it cannot hold its perfected
state. If it is an animal it will instead have generated a new
animal, different in number but the same with itself in
form. And so as a member of the species it will participate
in eternity, in spite of the temporary life of each generation (On the Soul 415 b 4). Such generating is the terrestrial complement to the work of the generating sun: "Man
is begotten by man and by the sun" (Phys. 194 b 13). The
father as progenitor comes before the child in time, but
because he contributes the form toward which the child is
moving he is prior not only in time but also in being.
That toward which as an end the motion is, the actuality, is prior in dignity (Met. 1050 a). This priority is timeless. When a moving thing has come to the state of beingat-its-own-end or fulfillment it straightaway cuts out of the
continuum of time and becomes, with respect to its being,
timeless. What is actual, fully in being, is present (hypdrchon, 1048 a 32), in a state imaginable as a kind of motionless vibrancy. One must say of it that it has been and is at
once (1048 b 24); it is not temporally determinable or articulable. But just as for pure eternal objects "to be while
time is is not the same as to be in time" (Phys. 221 a 19), so
worldly things which are composites of form and material
can have temporal duration in their actuality. For their
having come into their own form does not preclude their
informed material from being in time. Thus the men of
Troy cannot be said to be either before or after us with
respect to their form, and yet the Trojan War in which
they served certainly occurred long before our day (Problemata 916 a 18 ff.).IS
It is just because every motion is one and terminates in
its own end that time is powerless as a cause. For this end
is always discontinuous with the motion that leads up to it.
Aristotle separates the concluding moment as no longer
belonging to the motion but to its completion and fulfillment (Phys. 263 b 15). So while a motion and its time are
yet in process, none of the moments of this continuous
span is determinate or complete enough to be the sufficient cause of the next moment. When mere time intervenes between a cause and its end, that is, when the mo~
lion is not a completed unity, the end is merely contingent
(Post. An. II 12). Thus, while a cause may be in time, it can
never act through mere time: That means that there is no
mechanical causation, which is a causation where each
momentary state fully determines the next. Furthermore,
Aristotle notes that the mere lapse of time is never responTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
sible for a thing being made new or beautiful. If anything,
we say that time destroys, but only because motion itself
is, from one perspective, "ekstatic" (a word Heidegger will
raise to central importance), that is to say, it is a destabilization and a "standing forth" from the status quo (Phys. 221
b 1; 222 b 17).
Time is but the number of motion-the objective number, the countable parts themselves (219 b 9). Motion is
potentially numerable, but it has an actual number or becomes temporal only when it is actually counted.
It is the soul that counts motion. How? By noting
change, of course. When we have no awareness of change,
as during sleep, we say that no time has passed, for we fit
the earlier directly onto the later now (218 b 26). (Because
of the continuity of motion the opposite case, that there
should be no change to perceive, is apparently impossible.)
So time depends on distinguishing nows.
2. THE NOW
If time is thought of on the analogy of a continuous directed line whose parts have an intrinsic order (though of
position rather than of before-and-after, Cat. 5 a 30), the
now corresponds to a Euclidean point, namely a point
which is not a constituent element of a line but merely lies
upon it (Elements, Def. 4). For the now, Aristotle is at
pains to show, is not a part of time but its very Hcontinuity" (220 a 19, 222 a 10), at once the pivotal link of beforeand-after and the possibility of temporal division. This
mathematized now reproduces whatever perplexities a
mathematical point raises, and so, since time depends on
motion and motion on the continuous magnitude of the
mobile (219 a 12), time shares all the problems of geometric continuity. For example, the nows are the limits of segments of time without belonging to time and are therefore
not attainable by dividing time, just as the point is a partless element which indefinite divisions of a line approach
but do not reach. Further, the now is always the same in
function but never in "position" (219 b 16), just as any
point which produces a cut in the line is indistinguishable
from another except by location; similarly, as a point divides a line everywhere potentially, but actually only when
a cut is made, so the now does not divide time actually
until a temporal cut is made.
How is that temporal cut made? As time accompanies
motion, so the now hovers, as it were, over the moving
thing (219 b 24 ff.) It is by the now alighting on an object
that before-and-after in motion are first distinguished, for
"the now is most apprehensible." We conclude that the
now must be the presentness of the perception 16 of a moving thing, and that the cut in time is made by the act of
perceptual attention to a moving object: "Perception is
necessarily of a this and a where and a now" (Post. An. 87 b
30). Perception is "an innate distinguishing power" (99 b
36) which is actualized by the external and the particular
75
�(On th~ Soul417 b 21), and the now-cut in time is actualized with it
But, on the other hand, how can there be perception of
the point-now? If perception itself takes time, then how
can it cut time except in time, which means, not at a now.
But if, on the other hand, perception as the activity of the
faculty of sensation (On the Soul II 5,12) is, like all actuality, essentially not in time (though it can be accompanied
by time), then what does it have to do with the now which
makes the temporal cut? What Aristotle says of the activity
of pleasure exemplifies this problem: "It is a kind of whole
in the now" (Nic. Eth. 1174 b 9; a !4)l7 Is this psychic now
which is capable of atemporal substantial fulness formally
identical with the now of physical time? Similarly for perception: What is perceived in the soul's now is the atemporal actuality of the object-the soul perceives its form
through the sensing of its shape. How then can the soul
simultaneously perceive the partless point-now of the mobile's temporal extension? Aristotle does not say. He does
indeed try to make provision for the perception of lengths
of time (see below, 3). But even then it will not be clear
how the soul cuts time, and this is a crucial difficulty since
"time is what is determined by the now" (Phys. 219 a 30). It
is this difficulty which later philosophers solve by taking
time into the soul so that the now becomes identical with
its noting.
When the soul has pronounced "now" twice (however it
does so), namely before and after a motion-stretch, we say
that a certain time has passed (2!9 a 28). Since time is that
by which motion has number, it must be possible to count
the stretch between the termini, which requires reference
to a standard measure. We have, as was shown, such uni-
versal measures given us by the heavenly spheres: days by
the revolution of the starry sphere, years and seasons by
the sun, months by the moon. With these natural passages
and their more minute subdivisions we compare the
stretch of time and, counting the bounding nows-for the
now corresponds to the unit in number (221 a 16)-we
count the substretches which they mark off.
There is no time without soul, for time arises where
countable motion is actually counted, and only a soul, by
means of the perceptive intellect (nous) can count (223 a
23 ff.). What, then, is counting?
We must cast loose completely from latter-day Kantian
notion that counting is the articulation of an inner stream
of consciousness, an internal time-flux. The soul, for Aris-
totle, has no original psychic time because it has no one
continuous underlying flow or motion; nor does thought
run through or touch on a continuum as it counts: "The
motion of reason is not a continuum and in an underlying
matter, as is that of a moving thing" (On Invisible Lines
969 a 32). When the soul thinks time it does not actually
run through the temporal continuum but takes its sections
atomically, as it thinks its successive thoughts discretely,
like numbers (On the Soul430 b 7, 407 a 9).
The soul, locomotive, affective, or rational, cannot well
be said to be in physical motion (408 a 34 ff.)lS But in some
76
other manner, never quite defined, it must be spoken of as
moving. For example, thinking is motion for "without continuity and time it is impossible for us to think even those
things which are not in time" (On Memory 450 a 8). Coming to know is a motion for it requires experience, repeated
and remembered perceptions through which the universal
is suddenly established (Post. An. !00 a 3 ff.). The attaining
of a good condition takes time, for the human intellect,
being composite, needs a continuous approach to perfec-
tion (Met. 1075 a 9). So there are psychic motions, but they
are discontinuous, in fact in two ways: Motion is not al-
ways present and each motion proceeds discretely. I think
it can be shown that the human soul does have an everpresentness, namely its first actuality, analogous to the unintermittent thought of the pure intellect, but it is not the
continuity of an ever-advancing, ever-incomplete homoge-
neous flux. The continuity of time is entirely external and
physical. Its source is the heavenly local motion with
which the intermittent inner motion of the soul has only
this in common-that it, too, must be in a strict sense ach-
ronic; for how, without infinite regress, will the soul count
its own counting? 19
3. MEMORY
Without the now, then, there is no time, and no time
without a now (2!9 b 34), but as we have seen, the now is
not a part of time. Indeed its mode of being is quite different from that of time, which is to say that it comes under a
different category. Time belong, to the category of "how
great" or quantity; the now belongs to the category of
"when" (Cat. 2 a 2, 11 b 12) along with "yesterday" and
~~tomorrow." Except for an isolated chapter on the usage
of ''when" words, nothing is said of this latter category in
the Physics nor is it elucidated in the Categories. This most
significant and strange disjunction of time and the now is
implied by Aristotle's problematic theory of the role duration plays in perception and perceptible being: The perceptive intellect comes into contact with the continuously
moving physical world always at a here and a now; the here
may stay put, but the now passes orr along with the motion, and from that, derivatively, arises the perception of
time. But the now has another relation to time besides
generating its perception: Each present now forms an im-
penetrable limit between all the nows that have passed
and all the nows that are to come (234 a 1). Or perhaps
since there are, strictly speaking, no past and future nows,
one should say that the now separates time before from
time after.
Therefore there is a past-or rather, we humans have a
past (as do certain animals, On Mem. 450 a 15). The inanimate physical world has no past or future, although it has a
before-and-after, which simply means that it is in a prior or
a posterior phase of its approach to being. Nor has God a
past, for having no sensory perception he has no now.
How then is it possible for us to have a past, that is to
SUMMER 1983
�say, passed nows? Aristotle deals with this most humanly
interesting of temporal problems, the triune character of
the category "when," in the brilliant little essay On Memory and Recollection. We know even beforehand that we
must have a capacity for retaining nows drained of present
perception. Without such an ability we could not tell time,
since we could not interpret what we had counted up. Nor
could we learn, since we could accumulate no experience.
For it is many memories which make one experience, and
memory is of past perception (Post. An. 100 a 4).
About the three "whens" Aristotle says succinctly: "Of
what is present, there is perception, of what is to come,
expectation, of what has been, memory" (On Mem. 449 b
28).
The present (paron, being-at-hand) is the perceptionfilled now. It is immediate: Of the now in the now there
can be no memory (449 b 26). Enough has been said of it.
Heidegger will subject it to a fundamental critique.
It is. the imagination which makes the two non-present
phases of time possible. The future arises when the soul,
in present deliberation about what is to be, projects images
(On the Sou/431 b 8). Aristotle observes that we appear to
face into the future since the before of the past is more
remote from the now than the after, while the before of
the future is closer (Phys. 223 a 9). But beyond that he
treats the future mostly from the logical point of view, asking what it might mean to speak now the truth about what
will be. For if futural assertions are always either true or
false, just like assertions about past and present, then contingency and chance are excluded-the future is determinate. But that cannot be, since both human choice and the
vagaries of matter work to make future events contingent.
So while it is certainly necessary that tomorrow there must
be a seafight or not, it is impossible to say which ofthese is
the case (On Interp. 9). Therefore, in order to judge of future propositions, one must know which things will be by
necessity (either because they are part of a necessary cycle
of becoming, Post. An. 95 b 38 ff., or because they are always or never), and what things are within human choice.
Then one can say either "it will be" or "it is expected" (to
esti, to mellon, Coming to Be 337 b 3 ff.), knowing that
these sentences really refer to two different futures-the
foreknown and the merely anticipated.
But Aristotle never intimates that there is anything in
the future as future, some innovation or fulfillment to be
credited to mere futurity. What will be necessarily in the
future is what has already always been (Note 13). Even human affairs run in cycles: "It is likely that art and philosophy have often been discovered as far as possible and perished again" (Met. 1074 b II). So the future is of no great
interest to him. It will be otherwise with Augustine to
whom prophecy, as the foreknowledge of the apparently
contingent, is a serious matter, and with Heidegger for
whom the future will become the spring of time itself.
It is the past which Aristotle treats most significantly.
There is a past because there is memory and memory is a
mode of the imagination. There is a kind of motion in the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
soul, resulting from the activity of perception, by which
we have images (On the Sou/429 a 3). No human being, as
a composite of matter and form, can think without images;
for example, one cannot do geometry without at least internal diagrams. For the image is an accommodation of
material objects to the thinking soul, a holding of their
form and their continuity without their matter; the human
intellect needs this form to go to work (On Mem. 450 b 31
ff.).
Memory and imagination, then, both belong to the
same part of the soul, that "primary organ" of perception
which receives deliverances incidental and common to all
the senses, namely magnitude, motion, and, consequently,
time (450 a 8 ff., On the Sou/425 a 14 ff.). Memory is the
affection of this power when time has gone by (On Mem.
449 b 26), a kind of perception perpetuated past its cause.
All things imaginable can be remembered (450 a 24); indeed it is hard to think what sense-derived image would
not be, strictly speaking, a memory, since all images arise
from perception as soon as the actual sensing in the sense
organ has ceased.
Only what is no longer present can be remembered. But
how is that possible? Aristotle never tells haws imagining
works, except by analogy. He likens a memory-image to a
seal impression, a simile which expresses the crux of his
difficulty: Imaging compounds the mystery of perception:
how can a material somatic organ receive the physical object extendedly and yet immaterially (On the Soul424 a 18
ff., 427 b 29 ff.)-and then hold it through time ready for
recovery?
But he does tell what it means to be an image. The memory recovers the perceptual trace or memory-image in the
soul. However it is not the image we remember but the
thing itself, and therein lies a problem. Aristotle resolves it
by pointing out that that is just what it means to be an
image: to be all in one an affection present in the soul and
a likeness of an object, just as a picture is before us both as
a physical object and as a likeness of a person. Aristotle is
here prefiguring one of Husserl's central conceptions, that
of "intentionality," which is the defining characteristic of
consciousness as always consciousness of something.
We have a past, then, by virture of memory, and we
have memory by virtue of our threefold receptive power.
These are its facets: I. perception (aisthesis), which is responsible for the actual present sensory event; 2. imagina-
tion (phantasia), which is the capability of being affected
by the continuities of place and motion abstracted from
their matter; and 3. memory (mneme), which permits retention of images and their revival together with an awareness of the time elapsed since perception (452 b 23). Aristotle supplies a not quite intelligible explanation of how
such elapsed times are gauged (452 b 7 ff.): Just as one estimates a great external object not by actually reaching for it
but by representing it in a proportionate figure in the field
of the imagination, so one does not actually go back a long
time to estimate the age of a memory-image, but one represents it proportionately in a speeded-up motion-for ex-
77
�ample, by running through a decade in a second. What is
hard to see is how such a scaling of time can given more
than a very impressionistic comparative judgement of its
length, since temporal extent cannot be panoramically surveyed in the imagination-for it does not appear-so as to
give some sense of a scaling factor. As I have said, the chief
difficulty in Aristotle's account of time is his insistence
that duration itself can be perceived and imaged.
Aristotle, nonetheless, summarizes: "Only those animate beings who perceive time remember, and by that
part by which they perceive time" (449 b 29). This might
seem to be a circular outcome: We have a past, because we
have memory and memory because we have a sense of
passed time. Yet with all its difficulties it sets the terms for
future debate-the past can be only for animate beings
who have an imagination with a temporal dimension, that
is, memory.
What is entirely missing in Aristotle's founding account
is any sense that our triple temporality is humanly significant. The reason for this omission is that not time but
timeless actuality is life in the full sense. This view is
plainly expressed in this passage from the Nichomachean
Ethics, which may serve as an epigraph:
Pleasant is the activity of the present, the hope of what is to
come, the memory of what has been. But what is truly pleasant and lovable in these is their being in the way of actuality.
[IX 1168 a 13]
*
*
*
The vulnerable places in this magnificently detailed and
dovetailed theory of time which can be culled from Aristotle's various works are patent. They occur, I have argued, at its outer and its inner termini: the continuous ce-
lestial revolution which is the cause of all motion and the
perceptual now, which is the point of tangency of natural
motion and the soul. Happily the central thesis, the reduction of time to an affection of motion, is not, I think, exclusively bound into Aristotle's terms. (See Sec. VI 2.)
Before going on to Augustine, who fully makes good
Aristotle's lack of temporal pathos, let me at least refer to
the intervening grand psycho-cosmological theory of the
Neoplatonist Plotinus. (It is briefly sketched in No~e 20.).
Ill. AUGUSTINE:
TIME AS THE ''DISTENTION''
OF THE SOUL
Time and the soul's temporality is transfigured in acreated world. Augustine burns with curiosity, expressed in
ardent language, to know how the temporal human creature can reach beyond creation to the creator so as to find
God's will "before" the world. He begins by throwing out
78
an impetuous barrage of time quandaries and reflections
(Confessions, XI 14-19). What is time? How can there be a
•past when what is gone is now no longer and what will be is
not yet? And yet, did the present not pass, it would be eternity. Again, how can I say that is, whose cause of being is
that it shall be? And how can I measure times when those
gone are no longer and those to come are not yet available?
If! do it, it must be while it is passing. But then what of the
Hthree times"-how can I preserve them concurrently?
Augustine thus begins, in some faith of getting satisfaction, with just those questions which Aristotle cites as perplexities arising from the error of giving time substantial
being. In the course of his passionate inquiry some truths
do come clear to Augustine. He thinks he can affirm boldly
that if nothing were passing there would be no past time; if
nothing were coming, no future; if nothing were, no
present. So there must be a motion of the world; God's
creation has passage. Further he sees that he always faces
time: It does not come up from behind and out of the past,
and he cannot, like Aristotle, go along with it, but 1it comes
toward him from the future. As Aristotle, in Greek, calls
the past "that which has become" (gen6menon), so Augustine calls it what has gone by (praeteritum). For there is a
real future, not merely a necessitating cyclical return, but
events-to-be, contingent to human apprehension, yet revealed to the prophets through God's omniscience. A real
future is the human consequence of God's foreknowledge.
However he approaches the perplexity, Augustine is
sure of this-and here begin his wonderful resolutionsthat past, present, and future, wherever they are to be
found, are only as present (20). There are not, properly
speaking, three times (Aristotle's "whens") called past,
present, and future. Rather there is Ha present of what is
past, a present of what is present, and a present of the future."
Such three are indeed in our soul (anima) and elsewhere I do
not see them. The present of what has gone by is memory,
the present of what is present, eyewitness (contuitus), the
present of what is future, expectation. [20]
Augustine is not describing an Aristotelian faculty for
sensing what is before us, for reviving images with their
accrued times and for projecting them in planning. He is
speaking of time itself, and he is placing it within the human soul.
The problem of measuring this psychic time leads him
on (21-22). His mind "is set afire" by it, by the burning
perplexity of the dispersal of time into its three phaseshow to lay them together for comparison, in what space, in
what dimension to do the measuring. For time is not the
measure of a motion but what is itself to be measured:
While the sun stood still, time yet went on for Joshua.
'jNew," he exclaims, "is the discovery of these things!"
The discovery is this: "In you, my mind (animus), do I measure my times" (27). Times can be measured in the mind
SUMMER 1983
�because they are co-present there, and hence comparable.
Thus is resolved the great puzzle of primary time measurement: unlike a length of space whose rigid measure can be
transported intact and made congruent with another
Expectation
(Future)
length, times and their measures flow away and are incapa~
Eyewitness
(<Present)
ble of superimposition. (One must keep in mind that
clocks measure and compare times only derivatively,
through motion.): But in the soul times do coexist.
The soul's collection of all times into its present proceeds, I infer, as follows. Worldly motion passes, so to
speak, under the attentively apprehending soul. The soul
perceives each moment as it goes past and absorbs it into
its own temporal dimension, its memory. Thus the now
remains fixed in its context but sinks ever further down as
<t - - - - - - - ....-------~motion
~o<:-
..,e~"'
~+
Past
(memory)
new moments of motion are perceived. At the same time
that the soul remembers, and at the same juncture of the
world's motion and the soul's present, it also expects. The
difference between remembering and expecting is only
this, that whereas present moments drop into memory, future moments drop, as it were, out of the dimension of expectation into the world.
The future, therefore, is not a long time, for it is not, but the
long future time is merely a long expectation of the future.
Nor is the time past a long time, for it is not; but a long past
time is merely a long memory of past time. (28]
Augustine has referred to this co-temporaneity of the
times as being in the mind. But now he goes further. Time
is the dimension of the soul. Here is how Augustine puts it:
" ... It seems to me that time is nothing else but a stretching out in length," [distentio is his word] "but of what I
know not, and I marvel if it be not of the very mind" (26).
Note that here time is not in the mind but it is the mind, or
rather the dimension of the mind: The soul is the "space
of time," that is to say it is drawn out into a temporal longitude along which memories, perception, and expectations
are copresently arrayed.
This "distention" can therefore be visualized as a kind
World 1 s
indeed implicit in Augustine's understanding that the external creation has events but no temporal succession; it is
the world as God sees it, all at once. It is the "standing
now" (11) which becomes fluid only to the finite creature:
Whatever God doth, it shall be forever .... That which hath
been is now, and what is to be hath already been, and God
requireth what is to be. [Ecclesiastes iii 14-15)
Second is the real futurity of the projections and previsions of the expectation segment; prophesies, as Godgiven visions of what is to be, meet their own realizations
in the world, when the moment of their juncture with it
arrives.
Finally, the diagram points to the plenitude of memory
for Augustine. He has indeed already devoted a most beautiful book (X) to its power, its "ample and infinite inwardness (penetrale)," its "fields and spacious palaces," whence
he can make present to himself by their images things he
has seen and learned, including himself as he was, and
which he traverses to come to God (8, 9, 17, 25).
hori~
Augustine's passionate interest in temporality has its
zontal axis represents the world's motion coming from the
reason in his faith. He wants to discover the condition under which a temporally dispersed being can approach
union with God. Having collected time from what might
be called its horizontal extension into the vertical dimension representing the cotemporaneity of the phases of
time, he has achieved a human present which is analogous
to God's "standing now." But he prays further that his
of vertical elongation, an ordinate in a diagram. The
future towards the soul's "eyewitness." That moment is
the origin, the perceptual present, where the soul's "distention" intersects, or sits astride, the world's motion and
turns its sensation~events into memory images. These con-
tinually drop down, preserving the order of entry, into the
memory segment of the soul's distention, falling deeper
with every passing moment. At the same juncture expecta-
tion or foreknowledge is drawn down from the upper segment to meet the real moment, to become realized in a
perceptual present. The whole ordinate, the expectation
and memory segment joined in the point of perception,
constitutes the soul's triune present.
The diagram expresses three significant elements of
Augustine's temporality. First, since time is the soul's vertical dimension, the world's horizontal axis is timeless. It is
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
soul's stretching apart, its "distention"-William Watt's
vivid translation of 1631 says "distraction" (Loeb)-should
be gathered in, so that he might be not stretched apart in
time (distentus) but stretched forth (extentus), not in distraction (secundum distentionem) but in concentration (secundum intentionem) toward the delights of the eternal father "which are neither to come nor to pass away" (29).
This "extention" out of and beyond the world is represented by the third dimension in the diagram.
79
�Temporality, then,· is the wordly dimension of the created soul, namely its capacity fm taking in and containing
the world, that is, was, and will be. And so time is also the
soul's ~~distraction."
HUSSERL: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF
TIME
Husserl's abstruse, intricate, and subtle description of
the sense of time, The Phenomenology of Internal TimeConsciousness, begins with the praise of Augustine as the
unsurpassed master of the problem of time. Indeed,
Augustine's "distention" furnishes Husserl with his guiding schema, and Husserl may be regarded as Augustine's
expositor, with this difference: Husserl's analysis is intended to require no act of faith or philosophical thesis at
all since he aims to write a phenomenology, a presuppositionless description of the phenomena of temporality·and
of temporal appearances. He therefore requires a rigorous
"abstention" from all substantializing assumptions.· He
suppresses what might be called ontological greed, not in
order to gaze about aesthetically, but to develop a penetrating analytic insight into the deep constituting structures of phenomena seen as phenomena, namely as they
appear to consciousness. To put time before oneself
strictly as a phenomenon hence requires the exclusion of
objective or world time insofar as its existence is posited,
and a transfer of attention to the fundamental phenomenon of immanent time, the flow of consciousness from
now to now. This flow is the "temporally constitutive
flux," the "originary" stream, in which temporal phenomena and, remarkably, the consciousness of time itself are
simultaneously constituted (par. 39). In the end, to be sure,
this flux is interpreted as consciousness itself, as absolute
subjectivity or self (36). But that is a leap beyond simple
phenomenology, forced by the irrepressible human need
for more than merely descriptive accounts.
The early section, entitled "The Analysis of TimeConsciousness," is, however, rigorously phenomenological, and from it I shall sketch some findings: apt new coinages, illuminating discriminations, and, as the centerpiece,
a diagrammatic synthesis of the elements found in the
analysis.
which Aristotle had left unresolved, namely how anything
can be perceived in the partless point-now, the so-called
"specious present," an unintelligible notion of a finite, en-
during now, had been introduced, 21 but Husserl admits no
such constructs.) How is an appearance, say of a melody,
which develops over time as a unified object, to be understood?
The term "intentionality" was mentioned in reference
to Aristotle's understanding of the memory-image as an
image of a thing. Husserl develops intentionality into an
indispensable element in the description of consciousness.
Consciousness is always also consciousness of something:
it is always intentional. "Truly . . . it pertains to the essence of the intuition of time that in every point of its duration ... it is consciousness of what has iust been and not
mere consciousness of the now-point of the objective
thing ... " (12). Every now-consciousness is also a yetConsciousness, like a comet's tail of a previous perception.
Thus besides the veritable perception, the content present
in consciousness in its own right, there is also a consciousness of the time gone by-not a faded perception but
something quite different: a past tone present as a past
tone. This mode is distinct from ordinary memory, and
Husserl calls it retention, or primary memory. It is the consciousness in the present of what has just been, discovered
through the analysis of the phenomenal fact that an experience has duration within the immediately superseded
now. Every present impressional consciousness ''shades
off" into an everfresh retentional consciousness of the
temporal object's immediate past. But when the spring of
tonal impressions gives out, the melody is over and sinks
back to a vanishing point, p;:tssing into ordinary, or secondary, memory.
Secondary memory is distinguished from primary, or retentive, memory by these features: Perception has the distinguishing character of ''self-givenness" which means
that it stands there, uncalled-for, in its own right. So too is
"originary" time-consciousness self-given, for one cannot
inhibit time's running-off. What we can do is to re-produce
or re-present sections of temporal experience. Husser! em-
ploys the term "representification" (Vergegenwaertigung),
"making present again" (Appendix II). Retention, then,
yields the immediate past which is present; memory yields
the remoter past which must be made present again. Husserl makes numerous other acute observations about
memory phenomena (See Note 22).
Memory is a mode which posits, that is to say, requires, a
1. RETENTION
Although each now is a source of fresh perception and
the spring of the living present, temporally enduring objects are not perceived in a pointillistic mode, but in longer
presences. This is a fact of temporal phenomena seen as
phenomena. They have enduring presence, even though
the flux of time has an instantaneous leading edge. (To
overcome the perplexity associated with this observation,
80
previous perception. The intentional reaching for the past
is fulfilled in the presentification of a perception which is
no longer self-given. The phenomenon of memory as a
whole is precisely that of a present givenness of the past as
past -but it is no longer a question for phenomenology
how the past can be.
Thus the present is characterized by perception, the
past by an ''intention" or a reaching for a previous perception, and the future by a ''protention," that is, an expectaSUMMER 1983
�tion of fulfillment in a perception to come. Protention is
therefore inverted memory: Perception, succeeds pro ten·
tion but precedes memory (24-28).
The vertical axis F'EP'O' stands for Augustine's "distention" of the mind, namely present consciousness encompassing perception, memories, and expectation. Into
2. THE DIAGRAM OF TIME
Husserl's famous "Diagram of Time" (10) displays the
phenomena of these three phases of time in their conjunction with the phenomenon of the "running off" or cours-
ing of time in a coordinate schema which had been suggested by William James (Ch. XVII, end). One might say
that it accomplishes the junction of Aristotle's two distinct
categories of "when" and of ~jhow much," or duration.
Husser! is careful to state that the diagram is not a representation of objects as they appear in time, that is, of temporal appearances, but rather of the phenomenon of temporality itself.
Here is an elaborated composite version of Husserl's
schemata:
+r•
1
1\
' '\
\
''
and 0 as the perception-filled now has advanced to E. The
line FF' represents a protention to be fulfilled in a coming
perception at F.
'
'E
' r
--~~----~~~----- -"r--
- -
I
I
'
it flow the oblique parallel memory and protention lines
which fix past events and future expectations into the
memory and expectation order of the present. The
present therefore contains a continuous and unperturbable time-order; the latter feature is schematically guaranteed by the parallelism of the oblique lines. EP' is the
present retentional memory of the temporal event-object
which occurred over PE. The triangle PEP' is the whole
melodic episode in its "double continuity": the horizontal
line represents the continuous flux of ever new perceptual
nows, while the broadening triangular surface composed
of parallel paths which fall out, as it were, from the flux,
stands for the continuous memory lines of past nows feed·
ing into the present memory.
The horizontal through P marks a variable threshold between retention and secondary memory, below which the
melody would have outlasted the retentional span of that
consciousness and would cease to be a unified temporal
object. When F is now, the melody will have to be deliberately or spontaneously recalled, being by then a secondary
memory at P.
Husserl's diagram differs from the schema I have drawn
for Augustine in that the horizontal axis of the former
stands for the internal temporal flux rather than for the
external motion of the world. Husser! regards that inner
flux as the fundamental temporal phenomenon; an external time-consciousness would be for him a contradiction
in terms, because to be conscious of a phenomenon tem-
porally is just to constitute the temporal flux in consciousness. Therefore Husserl uses one time coordinate to repre-
'
'
sent the simultaneous presence of all the phases of time in
consciousness and another to stand for the advancing tem\
poral flux whose front is the now-consciousness. But
\
\
I
\
I
whether this flux is really a primary phenomenon is just
the question. (See Sec. VI I.)
\;, P"
I
I
I
•
•
•
Aristotle's understanding of time as the number of motion counted by the soul follows from his theory of motion
The horizontal axis represents the originary flux of now
as actualization. Augustine's view of time as the dimen-
points in consciousness. E is the now. PE is the span of the
temporal flux of one temporally perceived object, for example, a melody, and it is therefore one retentional episode whose beginning was at P. 0 is some now before the
initial now of the melody and belongs to the time of an
event now past. F is a future now.
The oblique lines PP ', 00' represent the "shading off"
or "sinking away/} into memory of the consciousness of P
sionality of the soul follows from his desire to relate the
three phases of human temporality to the eternity of the
Creator. Kant's theory of time will serve to ground the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
new science of dynamics, particularly its causal relations.
Insofar as the temporal relations of nature are contributed
by a faculty of the soul, its formative sensibility, Kant is
Angustine's heir, but it will be more interesting to see his
theory in terms of an antithesis to Aristotle.
81
�IV. KANT: TIME AS INNER SENSE
1. INNER SENSE
The first and all-determining discovery Kant presents in
the Critique of Pure Reason is a truly revolutionary understanding of what it means to sense ("Transcendental Aesthetic"). Recall that Aristotle had said that time is sensed,
or better, perceived, in the primary sensory organ, because
whatever is sensible also has duration. Now Kant claims
that time is not sensed but is the form of sense. That means
that the sensibility is not only a receptive but also a formative faculty; and the first form it gives sensation is temporal form.
What is behind this claim? The immediate purpose of
the Critique is the grounding of the knowledge of nature,
above all of the new science of motion, Newtonian physics. "Grounding" means setting out the conditions of possibility of such a science, which guarantee its necessity and
its universality-which make it certain. Aristotelian physics was the science of individual motions by which an indeterminate material, which is only potentially, is formed
into an independent, fully actual, natural substance. Newtonian science, in stark contrast, studies the motion of a
system of bodies homogeneously constituted of massy
matter and moving inertially through space unless deflected by interactions with other masses, interactions
which are governed by universal mathematical laws of
force. For the former, time was the counting of the actualizing motion, for the latter it is the independent variable in
the expression of natural laws.
Kant assumes that knowledge of this system of nature
requires the cooperation of two faculties. One is active,
law-giving, spontaneous (which means that it originates
with the human subject itself); it is the thinking function,
and the faculty is called the understanding. The other is a
receptive power which must be affected by something
given to it from outside; it is the sensibility. The latter is
needed because human thinking is for Kant purely formal,
that is to say, it has a merely rule-supplying function.
Therefore it is incapable of conceiving its own objects of
thought without being supplied with matter; for it to try to
do so would be like a hand grasping its own grasp-less
than an empty form. Therefore, thinking requires that a
material be given to it, and the faculty in which such
givens are received as representations-since Kant con~
siders everything before consciousness at all a representation-is precisely the sensibility (B 33). Kant also calls this
receptive faculty the intuition, and he applies that same
term to the original pure content which he ascribes to it
and into which sensory affection is received.
Now all physical experience in fact occurs in terms of
space and time, and these are understood to be the primary dimensions of physics. Therefore, if it is to be a certain science, there must be neither absolute, independent,
82
external substances in space nor adventitious developments through time. For both of these could be known
only after the fact of experience, and that means they
could not be known necessarily or universally. The only
knowledge which can be certain is that which is conditioned from the beginning through the observer himselfwhich is, in Kant's term, a priori.
Therefore, not only the conceptual side of physics but
also the invariable components of its sensory aspect,
namely space and time, must proceed from the knower.
Accordingly Kant assigns to him an original formative receptivity-on the face of it a contradiction in terms, but an
unavoidable one. This actively receptive capacity is Janusfaced. One face is turned outward and shapes sense material into spatial configurations; the other looks inward and
forms what it receives into temporal sequences. The sensibility, then, is dual; it has an inner and an outer sense.
Kant presents the outer sense first, significantly, as it
turns out. This sense receives in the mode of outsideness,
in two meanings of the word. First it receives those sensations which are alien and adventitious, which come to us
as they will from outside ourselves. But then it also receives them in the mode of outsideness, of externality,
namely as spatially extensive. The outer sense is therefore
the reason why external sensations always assume spatial
form. Furthermore, because the spatial form has inherent
formative characteristics, namely those of Euclidean geometry, spatial appearances are certain to be amenable to
geometric treatment. Hence the outer sense guarantees
the applicability of mathematics to science.
The inner sense, on the other hand, faces toward the
innermost parts, the very subject or referrent of all representations, the Self. The inner sense receives the self as if
it too were a given, namely as it presents itself to its own
intuition. Within the inner sense the subject itself becomes, by definition, an appearance, for whatever the sensibility receives and forms is called an appearance. The inner sense is called time.Jt is not that time is an inner sense,
but that the inner sense, and the self appearing within it,
are temporal in character. In so presenting inner sense
Kant is therefore not saying what time is but only why it is
the inevitable form every appearance takes. Nevertheless,
a new understanding of the nature of time will come out of
Kant's discovery, one aspect of which has already
emerged: Contrary to Aristotle, for whom time is not an
affection of motion, Kant will argue that motion itself is
possible only under the form of inner sense. Indeed it is
only under the form of temporality that motion is even
conceivable for Kant, since it is only the succession of time
which fluidifies the law of contradiction so that opposite
predicates can, at different times, belong to the same object-that being the much reduced post-Aristotelian concept of motion (B 48).
But why is the inner sense given the name of time? And
what does it mean to say that the self appears within it?
The paradoxical fact that the self, the ultimate subject of
SUMMER 1983
�representations, is somehow also an appearance to itself is
taken as given, and, Kant says, is equally a mystery in all
theories (B 68, 152). But to learn how it'happens we go to
that part of the Critique which deals with thinking ("Tran·
scendental Deduction").
2. UNDERSTANDING
All conceiving is steadfastly accompanied by an "I
think," a kind of pervasive prefix to all thinking, which is,
however, purely formal in that it adds nothing to what I
think. Furthermore, the prefix tells me at most that I am
but never what I am (B 157). Kant calls this consciousness
"apperception," a term that had previously meant selfconsciousness. He, however, indicates by the term not
self-knowing but only the inmost subject or self of a rational being, the ultimate knower. The apperception is
"transendental," which in Kantian terminology means
that it is a faculty, not an object.
So Kant does not mean that the self is self-conscious in
the sense of having itself as an object; it is not, like Aristotle's pure intellect, thought thinking itself. Nor is the self
my self; indeed its self-hood is not in the ordinary sense
personal. The self might as well be an "it" (B 404), for it is
simply the hidden subject underlying all thinking functions. (Heidegger will criticize the lack of "my-ownness" in
the Kantian self.) Moreover, the transcendental subject
cannot be known to itself, because its strictly formal, that
is, rule-giving thinking functions cannot, by their very
character, become objects of thought to themselves (A
402).
Collectively these conceiving functions (the word "function" is taken statically, as in mathematics) are called the
understanding, which is therefore the self as it is diversified
into certain definite enumerable functions or 11 Categories.H
Each of these accomplishes certain syntheses or unifications proper to itself. Besides these operations the categories are nothing and mean nothing. What do they synthesize?
Sensible givenness is assumed to be in its very nature
manifold, spread out, various. Accordingly, the sensibility
must be capable of receiving such a manifold. In the case
of the outer sense there must be ready a transcendental
space for its reception. This sense therefore contains a
Objects represented in the sensibility and unified by the
understanding are called phenomena or appearances (A
429 ff.). Kant claims that when the pure content of inner
sense is determined by thinking, the resulting appearance
is that of the apperceiving subject itself. Kant takes the
word appearance seriously-only that which is not itself on
the scene can have appearances. So the self, which cannot
know itself in itself, appears in the inner sense, and since
every appearance is an appearance for the subject, the self
appears to itself. The primary example of self-appearance is
the act of attention, in which thinking, having determined
the inner sense according to laws of connection contained
in the categories, appears as a succession of moments
(B 155)-our ordinary awareness of the now-succession.
The transcendental self, then, the inaccessible rational
source of thinking, can determine another part of the soul,
and though it cannot know itself, it can at least represent
itself to itself as an appearance. Note, however, that the
situation is peculiar in that the self can hardly be said to
affect the sensibility as sensory material could affect it: it
cannot materially fill but only determine or unify the inner
sense.
The motive for establishing an inner sense is, on the
face of it, to ground the temporal or causal dimension of
physics, but its deeper role is that of providing for selfappearance. The reason why this sense, or rather its content, is identified with time now emerges. This content is
the steady, unceasing, underlying flow which we always
come to in self-inspection: "Time does not pass away but
in it passes the existence of what is changeable." Time itself is unchangeable and permanent (B 183), for it is the
original flux-content of the inner sense itself; it is this fluxcontent which our thinking determines and structures.
The thought-determined inner sense is consciousness,
but it is emphatically not self-consciousness in the sense of
self-knowledge, since the self has not affected the inner
self so as to produce the kind of real knowledge Kant calls
experience. For experience requires more than that the
subject should work on itself: it requires a material object
(where "material" refers not to physical matter but to a
real sensory content).
3. IMAGINATION
{(pure manifold," the pure intuition mentioned above,
which is the form-giving content affected by sensationthe pure space of geometry itself. The nature of this pure
content of inner sense will be addressed presently.
It is this pure content of the sensibility that is unified, or
determined, or structured by the understanding in definite ways, as many ways as there are concept·categories.
What the understanding determines first is the content
closest to it, so to speak, namely that of the inner sense.
That is how the thinking functions first obtain their required object, although a pure, not a sensory one.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
The configurations to which thinking determines the
inner sense are the work of that most central power, "an
art hidden in the depth of the human soul" (B 181), the
imagination. For Aristotle, the activity of the imagination,
identical with that of the primary sensorium, is not hidden
in the depth at all; it is, in fact, on the interface of soul and
nature and has a physical base. Kant rightly considers his
discovery of the original contribution of the transcendental imagination quite new (A 120 n.). For him thinking and
sensing are too heterogeneous to come together without
83
�some intermediate agency; it is the imagination which is
the meeting ground of the two.
It performs what Kant calls a "figurative" synthesis (B
154), which produces schemata through which thinking
can determine sense and accomplish the mystery of
empty, meaningless thought interpenetrating with pure
inner flux. The schemata are essentially rules for sensual·
izing concepts or, equally, conceptualizing sense content.
The imagination makes time thinkable or, as we have
seen, conscious. But much more importantly, it does the
inverse: it makes thought temporal.
Here are just two examples of the schemata which are
the work of the imagination. (Oddly, and significantly, this
work is always presented as picture or figure-making, al·
though it is supposed to be primarily temporal.)
1. The inner flux, the pure intuition of time, is, as was
said, assumed to be an even, primary flow. (Recalling that
Kant's project is the grounding of Newtonian physics we
can recognize in this flux the internalization of Newton's
equably flowing absolute world time.) Kant calls it the pure
picture of quantity, applicable to all objects in general.
The first schema or conceptualization of this continuous
forward flow of inner quantity is number. Number is the
imaginative scheme of a countable succession of units,
that is, of articulated, measured internal duration. In
counting, the understanding is continually unifying the
undifferentiatedly fluid manifold of pure Time, and generating pure, conscious, temporal succession, or the pure
sense of passing: counting is not so different from the pulsing of mere consciousness itself. (The spatial analogue
to the difference between Time as flux and conceptdetermined time would be that between Space as a whole
and measured space.)
2. Another imaginative configuration brings together
pure inner intuition with the concept of necessary connection in the schema of before-and-aftu. Thus is added to
conscious advancing time a necessary, unperturbable
time-order, the ground, for Kant, of the principle of cause
and effect in nature.
All the schemata together-there are as many as the
understanding has concepts-circumscribe thoughtinformed temporal flux, or speaking more familiarly, temporal thinking. It was, after all, to be expected that when
the rational self cast itself into inner sense to become an
appearance the result should be thinking in time. What are
its features?
4. TIME AND SPACE
For Aristotle, the external world with its continuity of
places defined by movable substances is clearly prior to
being in time, which is merely the countable aspect of motion.
Kant, on the other hand, at first, at least, presents time
as the sense of senses, the first formal condition of all ap-
84
pearing objects in general, both self and nature. Time receives all representations, everything which is there for
consciousness at all; it is the ultimate relating receptacle
and the condition of all connectedness. Space, on the
other hand, is the condition of outer appearance, namely
of nature, only (A 99, B 177). The reason is that time belongs immediately to the soul and is the place of consciousness itself, while space must wait to receive material from
the outside.
But then, in a crucial section added to the second edition of the Critique, the "Refutation of Idealism" (B 274279), Kant totally inverts his new order in a doctrine surprising in the context but also quite unavoidable. Space is
again the condition of temporal experience.
In the "Refutation" Kant explicitly aims to prove that
mere consciousness of one's own existence-thoughtdetermined inner sense-proves, in being affected by
outer sense, the real existence of external objects in space.
Implicitly, however, he shows that objects in space are the
necessary condition of self-experience.
The internal flux of unfocussed attention, he argues, is
absolutely featureless, indeterminate, a mere fugitiveness.
To determine time and give it steadiness it must he projected on something permanent; it must be represented in
terms of perceived permanence in space. Spatial appearances seem to stay put while time has no aspect that
stands but its flux itself. Time supports only the alteration
of determinations, but no determinate steady object; in
the soul "everything is in continual flux" (A 381). Therefore the representation of time is always spatial; if time is
to appear at all it must be in a spatial form, most appropriately as a one-dimensional straight line (B 156): Time appears as space reduced by two dimensions. It is now also
clear why the self cannot really properly appear in time.
The inner intuition admits no material affection except
through space. (Indeed, it is only this geometrization of appearing time which makes possible the primary measurement of physical motion, namely velocity. For velocity is
conceivable only as a ratio of homogeneous magnitudes,
namely space lengths and time lengths. But as I said, that
means that time, insofar as it is apprehensible at all, which
is to say, insofar as it is representable, is only a dimension
abstracted from space: Bergson has a point when he accuses Kant of confusing time with space (Essay, "Conclu.
SIOn ") .
Yet more follows: There can be no full consciousness
without the appearances of three-dimensional externality.
For the linear representation of the determinate inner
sense, while it may be formally adequate, is also utterly
poverty-stricken and unrevealing (Foundations of the Metaphysics of Nature, Preface). To appear to itself, the self
must put the inner sense in the way of spatial appearances
which then represent to it its own formative powers and
that of its sensibility. The system of such revealing
thought-informed spatia-temporal appearances Kant calls
nature and its science is Newtonian physics.
SUMMER 1983
�Inner experience is, then, only mediately possible
through space. That is why, I think, space is treated before
time in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" and why the imag·
ination is fundamentally figurative. Time began as the formal (or better, formative) condition of all appearance what·
soever, but space turns out to be the condition of the
appearance of time. A self having only an inner sense
would have no representations of itself at all. If it were conscious it would be conscious of nothing; it would be at
most a forever-idle capability of a possible experience.
5. TEMPORAL THINKING
To recapitulate: I. Self-consciousness: Of the self which
underlies all thinking and sensing there is no knowledge.
There is no immediate representation of it; it cannot become an object to itself beyond the indication given in the
universal prefix "I think." There is therefore no selfconsciousness in the sense of reflective self-knowledge. (It
is one of the mysteries of the Critique how any of the reflective terms necessary to critical analysis of the self obtain their meaning.) 2. Consciousness: Consciousness,
awareness, belongs to the thought-determined inner
sense, or better, is identical with it. That time is in the soul
and that the soul is in time are converse propositions (A
362). Both claims mean that the self is ready and able to
receive an external material. But to be merely aware in this
way is no more to know oneself than it is actually to experience an external object. Time, even when determined by
thought, yields no formed object but merely the schemata
of relations of possible representations within the soul (B
50). It is the mere capacity for thinking objects. 3. Selfexperience: If self-knowledge in the reflective sense is impossible to the self, it can yet experience itself, that is, its
own powers, in inner sense~ but only if that sense is spatially represented and determined by real objects. Then
the self can appear to itself as a temporally thinking subject and behold its formative faculties constituting nature.
Self-experience begins 23 when temporal thinking, namely
the time-informed categories, such as number, permanence, and causality, is exercised on spatial material.
A great question arises. The explicit motive of the Critique was to find what the human constitution must be if
physics is to be a science. From this point of view the temporal sense was established primarily to secure the causal
ordering of motion. But is it plausible that Kant's view of
the soul should be so altogether a mere consequence of
this motive? Indeed, there might well be other ways to
ground physical causality than by means of the original
flux which, as has been shown, is in itself insufficient to
account for self-conscious thought24 A deeper reason,
namely Kant's thinking about thought itself, seems to me
to be at work. It is best phrased in terms of the consequences following from his very modern rejection of Aristotle.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
For Aristotle knowing is a motion of the soul, an actualization, which achieves actuality as the intellect achieves
its end and becomes the thing thought. That final activity
is true life. For Kant, knowing, as the conceiving of material objects, cannot be such a motion, since motion is itself
generated by thinking, when it determines space through
time (B 155, note). Nor can it be an activity, for thought is
not fulfilled in its object: It simply determines or unifies
the manifold and, so to speak, fits itself about the object
and constitutes it. Truth is no longer the simple luminous
identity of the intellect with its intelligible object, but
rather the "adequation" of thought with the material object (B 82). 25 Therefore Kant's thinking has neither motion
nor life; it has no actuating principle.
The pure flux of inner sense can now be seen in the
light of a deep though inexplicit need. Time is needed to
float thought, as it were. It gives thinking a spurious kind of
motion, a pseudo-activity. In themselves the thinking
functions are merely empty, static forms; cast on the
stream of inner sense they assume fluidity. Time is the animating principle of that kind of thinking which has no end
in itself, and the Kantian temporality is the substitute for
the lost life of thought.
*
*
*
Kant's treatment of time is the focus of Heidegger' s
deep, engaged, but also strained reading of the first Critique. Heidegger calls this kind of interpretative reading a
"recovery" or "repetition" (Wiederholung). It is meant to
bring to light the unspoken, and for the author unspeakable, implications of the text. It attempts to reveal not
what the author meant and failed to say-an author worth
"repeating" is quite able to express himself-but rather
the inexorable ultimate outcome implicit in his thought.
This interpretation yields very striking-if not quite persuasive-results especially with respect to an aspect of
time markedly missing from Kant's account, namely its
three phases. Heidegger reconstructs these from the first,
superseded version of the Transcendental Deduction.
(See Note 26 for a summary of Kant's text with reference
to Heidegger's interpretation.)
I have just argued that Kant has deep reasons for making time the primary sense, namely to vivify the inert functions of his concepts, but that his almost inadvertent, yet
inescapable tendency is the spatialization of time. However, Heidegger, who sees in Kant his predecessor, views
the whole critical enterprise as centered on the unexpressed fundamental temporality of the human being.
Heidegger understands that hidden art of the imagination,
to which Kant assigns the function of temporalizing thinking (or, equivalently, of thought-determining time) as the
"temporalizing," the time-origination which is the being
of human existence. Kant drew back, as it were, from an
opportunity he was not ready for, the possibility of seeing
the imagination not as a third and mediating faculty, the
85
�meeting ground of thought and sense, but as the common
root of both. He could not yet abstract from its figurative
character to see it as transcendental temporality simply.
Kant's failure to explain the "my-ownness" of the self, together with his inability to see the imagination, the meeting ground of self and time, as anything but a mystery are
Heidegger's clues to a new understanding of human existence.
Heidegger owes debts also to Hegel and Bergson (see
Note 27), and most certainly to Augustine (paras. 9, 81
end), who anticipates him in the essential temporality of
the human being and in the primacy of the future among
the time phases-indeed one might almost call Heidegger
a godless Augustine. But he goes beyond all of them, as far
as one can go, I think, in the exaltation of time. If for Kant
the inner sense is a mysterious mirror for the unknowable
self, for Heidegger time will be the very meaning of being
human. The answer to the question "What is time?'' will
fall out of the analysis of human existence.
Care has a threefold constitution: 1. The being that
cares, understands. Understanding-sharply distinguished
from theoretical knowing-is its ability to project before
itself its own possibilities. It is aware of being able to be
(not that it has that possibility but that it is that possibility).
The being that exists is always "ahead of itself." For what
it is, its essence, is just that it exists, that it understands
itself as a being that is able to be.
2. This being, Dasein, also has moods, "existential
moods," which are the ground of ordinary, familiar moodiness. These moods are testimony to the condition in
which it already finds itself (Befindlichkeit). They attest to
its "facticity," to the bald fact that it always finds itself already cast or thrown into an alien world. Heidegger calls
the existential condition of existing always already in the
world, uthrownness."
3. In this world Dasein is always already preoccupied
with what it finds there, alongside itself, namely other existences and things. It is its lot to sink into a state of selfforgetfulness or "fallenness" as it busily "takes care" of
this world. This state of "inauthenticity," literally: "unone's-ownness," is as genuine a possibility of existence as
V. HElD EGGER: TEMPORALITY AS THE MEANING
OF EXISTENCE
1. ECSTATIC TEMPORALITY
Heidegger's starting point in Being and Time is the old
question concerning Being. However, he does not ask:
What is Being?, since he considers that question a fateful
wrong turn into metaphysics. He rather asks: What is the
meaning of being?, What makes a being possible?, What is
the being (Sein) of Being (Seiendes)? Assuming that there
are different beings, he chooses to pursue the question by
analyzing the being most expressive of the inquiry itself,
the being that exists. To exist means to position oneself
beyond oneself so as to understand one's own being. The
being that so exists is also the being that is there, that finds
itself involved in the world, not merely present in it. It is,
further, that being which is in each case mine, which has
"each·his·ownness," in contrast to the unowned Kantian
subject. Heidegger names it by the ordinary German
term for existence, Dasein, uthere·being." It is the human
being.
The larger first part of the book is devoted to an "existential analysis," an interpretative description of the phenomena of existence which will reveal its basic structure.
These original modes are called "existentials," and the
structure so revealed is called "care." The
~~meaning"
of
care, that is to say, that which makes it possible, will be
temporality.
In the following abbreviated account of "care," the prodigious originality and ingeniousness of Heidegger's analysis will perforce be blunted.
86
its opposite, authenticity; Heidegger disclaims any invidious connotation in these terms.
In sum, then, the being that cares is a being ahead of
itself in projecting its own possibilities, which finds itself
involved in a world along with other existences and entities, and which can lose itself in being busy about them.
Now Heidegger asks what it means for Daesin to be in
this way. This question belongs to a deeper, that is, an ontological, level of analysis, for here is discovered the meaning of care, namely the condition of its possibility. The answer is: temporality (Second Part, Chps. 3-6).
The existent being is one about whom there is always
something yet outstanding, something still to come, namely
its death. So also is it an "ecstatic" being. ~~Ecstatic" is a word
used by Aristotle in his chapters on time (Phys. 222 b 17) to
describe the self-unsettling of motion. Heidegger uses if for
the primordial "being out of itself" of Dasein, namely its
temporality (par. 65). 28 The word has, of course, the connotation of being transported and rapt away.
Dasein is "out of itself" in three ecstatic phases, each of
which accounts primarily but not exclusively for one of
the aspects of care in either its inauthentic or its authentic
version. Hence the ontological analysis covers a large number of combinations, of which I shall sketch only the primary ones, reversing Heidegger's order so as to begin with
the ecstasis to which Heidegger assigns the least standing
(par. 68).
1. The self-forgetfulness of fallenness is in its nature always inauthentic. It is the mode of-note well-actuality,
of fact, of mere presentness and nowness, greedy for satisfactions which hold no further possibilities. The ontological ground of this existential mode is the ectasis of the
present.
Heidegger understands the present not in the tradiSUMMER 1983
�tiona! way as the phase of perceptual vividness, but as a
derivative mode, abstracted from living involvement-the
mode of "presentification," the grasping attempt to turn
the possibilities of existence into present actualities. The
ecstasis which yields the present, the phase which is traditionally the front or fulcrum of time, is the one most
dependent on the other phases for its authentic version
(68 c).
2. Just as in English there is a periphrastic past perfect
"I am gone," so in German one says ul am having been"
(Ich bin gewesen). Human existence always is as having
been, for it always finds itself already cast into the alien
world. It is this fact which makes it moody. An existential
mood is a condition in which Dasein finds itself coming
back to or brought before the mere fact of its own existence.29 Heidegger gives as a cardinal example the authentic mood which he calls dread or anxiety (Angst; the inauthentic counterpart is ordinary fear). In anxiety Dasein
discovers the world into which it has been thrown as uncanny, unhomy, unmeaning, unamenable to being taken
care of. Anxiety brings Dasein back to the fact of its own
isolated thrownness, and this "being brought back to itself" apprises it that it can return to itself; that it has the
possibility of "recovering" or "repeating" itself. What ac-
counts for the possibility human existence has of finding
itself already in a state of mind or mood and what brings it
face to face with its own recoverableness (Wiederholbarkeit; sometimes translated "repeatability") is the ecstasis of
the past, in which Dasein goes out of itself to be as having
been (68 b). Through this ecstasis human existence comes
back to itself as an ever-antecedent fact whose possibilities
can always be repeated. Therewith is also revealed the possibility of authentic existence. It demands the introduction of a future element into the repetition of its past.
3. Therefore the primary ecstasis of primordial authentic temporality is the future (65). This future is not an indeterminate "not yet." It is, as the German Zu-kunft suggests to Heidegger, that toward which Dasein goes, but it
is also the terminus from which Dasein comes back into
the situation in which it finds itself, to face the present
resolutely. The future thus comprehends and makes possible the other two ecstases. Futurity accounts for the aspect of care called understanding, since to understand
means to project one's own possibilities. Future means anticipation; rather than being propelled by present urgencies that need to be taken care of, futural Dasein cares authentically: It lets its own possibilities for being come
toward itself. The future, too, enables the human being to
repossess its past properly; it is in facing its possibilities
that Dasein is brought back to what it already was. The
futural ecstasis of coming toward oneself accounts for authentic existence (69 a).
The dominant case of authentic futurity, understood as
resolute anticipation, is Dasein's facing of its own death
(46-63). The human being is that being which lives as a
being which is going to die. Dasein discovers among its exTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
istential possibilities the ultimate one of not being, and
this discovery makes it focus on the wholeness of its existence. Death is what it escapes from in the inauthentic
present; death is what it is already inescapably saddled
with; death is what it resolutely anticipates. Death therefore has the threefold structure exhibited by care and
time, and conversely. The inference follows that our temporality is finite and that primordial existential time comes
to an end.
What then of ordinary time, the common time human
beings have, spend, puzzle about? Heidegger undertakes
to show that, strange though it seems, time is temporal,
namely that ordinary time falls out of primordial temporality (79-82).
Dasein finds itself in the world, and it is in dealing with
its "gear" or "equipment" (Zeug), in circumspectly taking
care of its affairs, that ordinary time shows itself. Affairs in
the world can be dated: uLater, when . .. " or "now,
that. .. " or "formerly, when ... "-that is the language of
worldly management. This datability of the world is derived from ecstatic temporality because "later, when" can
be said only on the condition that there is possibility,
"now, that" only if there is presentification, and "formerly, when" only if there is repeatability. So Heidegger
has grounded anticipation, presence, and memory-for that
is what he is talking about-in the primordial temporality
which is human existence.
Precise public datability must refer to universal occurrences, originally to the sun's rising and setting. People
say, for instance, "now, that" the sun has set it is time to
turn in. This public reference enables people to make and
set clocks, and thence "vulgar," worldly time comes to be
what the clock tells. What the clock shows is a perfectly
levelled and indifferent equable succession of jerks called
nows, going forward from what is no longer to what is not
yet, and spawning many puzzles. Such time passes rather
than arises; the very use of clocks is witness to the attempt
to hold on to the not-yets and the no-longers by making
them all in turn present, as the clock's hands are followed
while they tick off the nows. What is worst of all for
Heidegger is that this meaningless derivative clock time is
theoretically infinite: It is the time of fallen, inauthentic
humanity because it masks the radical finitude of mortal
human existence. 30
2. DIFFICULTIES
Here is the extreme of opposition to Aristotle. Actuality,
fulfilled presence, is interpreted as human fallenness. Possibility, a notion even less determinate than potentiality
(which is always a specific "potentiality for") is raised to
being human existence itself. Time, which was for Aristotle merely the measurable aspect of a being's actualization, is for Heidegger the very meaning of existence. And,
87
�finally, time ends in actuality for Aristotle, but for Heidegger, in death.
Being and Time, in its potent and coherent originality
(though originality in the pursuit of being may well be a
disability) deserves at least the tribute of not being treated
like a lending library of terms and notions; one must enter
its world or stay out-the latter I think. The reasons are
sketched below.
I. The first is a mere intimation of a possible argument:
That actualizing motion has temporal duration which is
measurable by the soul, or that time is a dimension of the
created mind, or that the lawful causality of nature has a.
ground in the observer's temporality-these theories of
Aristotle, Augustine, and Kant respectively can be apprehended and judged directly, although their context illuminates their motive. It is otherwise with Heidegger's understanding of time, which is more inextricably and originally
implicated in his approaches: in the problematic formulation of the question concerning the "meaning of being,"
in the doubtful insistence that the human being is the being of choice for such an inquiry, in the interpretation of
human being as existence, in its analysis in terms of care,
and in the grounding of care in temporality. The doubts
one might have about any of these elements or about their
concatenation would make questionable the notion of a
primordial ecstatic temporality.
2. The interpretation of human existence as the being
which is its possibilities leads to its essential futurity, the
ecstasis which accounts for living in possibility. Dasein's
ultimate possibility is that of being able not to be: it is
death (50), the extreme possibility. In requiring of the human being that it face at every moment this end as its own,
Heidegger deprecates-I am disregarding the pretense
that these are not terms of judgement-as inauthentic and
fallen the perennial wisdom of humankind that the dread
of death must not dominate life. The question arises
whether the stark and unspecific resolution to face one's
own death can at all be the basis of public decency and
even inner dignity. I shall argue that the future is of the
three phases the most impotent for human action and that
our death should be allowed to exert its power only as a
remote and indefinite limit of life.
3. The greatest problem and the one with most bearing
on the final section of my inquiry has to do with Heidegger's treatment of the past Human existence has a certain
self-antecedence which is grounded in the ecstases of "being as having been." The defining characteristic of this
mode is that it brings Dasein back to the "repetition" of its
own possibilities and to authentic being. This ecstasis naturally plays the chief role in the constitution of "historicality" -although the most fundamental role is still played by
the future. For true historicality ultimately arises from a
repetition of the past which is motivated by the resolute
projection of a life span dominated by "being-unto-death."
Dasein can explicitly repeat possibilities of existence
that have been handed down. Such repeating "is explicit
88
tradition, that is to say, the going back into a Dasein that
has been there." Authentic repetition means that "Dasein
chooses for itself its hero" on the basis of an anticipatory
resolution. What Dasein thus recovers is a possibility, not a
state (74).
Dasein takes over such possibilities as its heritage. How?
Heidegger begins his analysis of the historical past with a
discussion of real antiquities, the objects of archaeology.
These are things which were once "to hand," by which
Heidegger means functional, in a world that is gone. They
are now present in our world. They are not genuinely but
only secondarily historical because insofar as they are
"equipment" they are not in the past but in this world. As
the being of their own world was wholly conditional on
that of a past Dasein, so its passing is wholly a matter of
human temporality.
Now here is the difficulty: If Dasein is to recover its heritage, the possibilities of an existence that has been, it must
do so by way of the surviving "equipment" of the past,
through ruins, pots and manuscripts. Heidegger suggests
no other way (73).
But how does it recognize these as testimony of antecedent existence? The ecstasis of the past was formulated
in terms of the indivual, unique, and separate being. What
can it mean to recognize in the stuff "to hand" in the
present world the possibilities of other, past existences,
not to speak of making them one's own?
The problem points to what seems to me a crucial lacuna in Heidegger's account of the past The ecstasis may
be the necessary condition of ordinary temporality but it
does not seem to be a sufficient condition. The "ontic"
consequences, namely human beings with their past, do
not immediately fall out of the "ontological" ground of
past being. To lay down that Dasein must have a past because it is in its being temporalizing does not tell how the
individual human being comes back to itself, that is, remembers. And yet, the additional element that is needed
to complete the account, namely what is ordinarily called
memory, may change the whole complexion of the account.
Since Heidegger considers existence to be possibility he
cannot ascribe a nature or faculties to human beings. Indeed, in his "recovery" of Kant he had suppressed the figurative, primarily spatial, imagination, Kant's faculty for
having objects without their presence. But how is the reconstruction or recovery of one's own possibilities, or of
the possibilities of the past world of historical remains, to
take place without such a faculty for reconstituting remembrance of the past, personal, or historical?
One final point: Repetition, the authentic appropriation
of past possibilities, seems to be most practicable for written works, records of past thought The mode of resolute
purpose, however, in which such a recovery is to be carried
on seems to invite a certain wilfulness of interpretation
which leads to highly pointed constructive readings. Such
repetition may be incomparably more serious than a hisSUMMER 1983
�toricistic approach, but it is also very constricted, since, being grounded in the stark mood of the past ecstasis, it excludes less harsh modes of pastness. In particular, there is
no authentic mode of panoramic revery or imaginative
contemplation, 31 though these, I shall argue, are of primary importance in human temporality.
*
*
•
So I now come to some reflections of my own about
time. Naturally, I shall draw on the philosophers just studied for the terms of the inquiry, for insight into the contexts implied in certain answers, and for examples of what
seem to me fertile errors. Since I shall argue that time has
no being and that to think otherwise has harmful consequences, I should not attempt to present a theory of what
time is, but rather an intimation of what it is that induces
the illusion of temporal being. And, of course, I should explain why, for all that, I think of the past as the prime
phase of time.
try to capture its being, though time-terms there are
aplenty. For, I claim, time as a distinct object of inquiry, or
rather our sense of its being one, comes about when we
block our usual mental activity and try to concentrate on
time itself:
Die Ziet
Es gibt ein sehr probates Mittel,
die Zeit zu halten am Schlawittel:
Man nimmt die Taschenuhr zur Hand
und folgt dem Zeiger unverwandt.
Sie geht so Iangsam dann, so brav
als wie ein wohlgezogen Schaf,
setzt Fuss vor Fuss so voll Manier
als wie ein Fraulein von Saint-Cyr.
Jedoch vertraumst du dich ein Weilchen,
so ri.ickt das ziichtigliche Veilchen
mit Beinen wie der Vogel Strauss
und heimlich wie ein Puma aus.
VI. TIME AND THE IMAGINATION
Und wieder siehst du auf sie nieder;
ha, Elende!-Doch was ist das?
!. THE NON-BEING OF TIME
The beloved text of writers on time is Augustine, Confessions, XI 14:
For what is time? Who is able easily and briefly to explain
that? Who is able so much in thought to comprehend it as to
bring forth something in words? Although what do we more
familiarly and knowingly mention in speaking than time? And
we understand surely when we speak of it; we also understand
when we hear someone else speaking of it. What then is time?
If no one asks it of me, I know; if I want to explain it to the
one that is asking, I do not know.
At first thought, Augustine's observation seems to be no
more true of time than of any other matter: Questioning
always makes the familiar strange and precipitates perplexity. Yet there is this difference: Though we sometimes
quarrel about the management and the worth of time, we
deal with its ubiquitous appearances not only with perfect,
practical aplomb but also without anxiety to defend a doctrine concerning its being. I think that is because we have
an intimation that our dealing with temporal affairs and
our speaking in temporal terms has, as it were, nothing to
it, no object of inquiry whose name is time. We sense that
the bold question "What is Time?'' itself drives the answer
implied in our unimpeded behavior out of sight.
But from another aspect, what Augustine says seems
not quite right. We really do not know what time is when
we are not asked; we only know how to live familiarly with
watches and words and our sense of time. And therefore
we do not know it less when we ask ourselves about it. On
the contrary, there is not even any Time to know until we
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Unschuldig Iachelnd macht sie wieder
die zierlichsten Sekunden-Pas.
Christian Morgenstern, Zeitgedichte
Time
There is a good and proven way
To strongarm Time and make it stay.
just take your wrist-watch by the band
And concentrate upon her hand.
Then she goes slow enough to keep
The pace, as of a well bred sheepGoes step by step, as mannerly
As any high-bred miss could be.
But if you daydream for a while
The shrinking violet with guile
Makes off on legs of ostrich length
And with a puma's stealthy strength.
Now you look down just as beforecurious chance!
With guiless smile she steps once more
The very daintiest second-dlmce.
a wretched watch! 0
E. B.
What we find when we concentrate on the passage of
time is the repeatedly frustrated impulse of our intention to perceive time, indeed an iteration of attempts,
orchestrated by the beating of our hearts and the
coursing of our blood-a kind of internal perception
89
�called by psychologists prioperception, self-perception.
As soon as we leave off trying to find in ourselves
empty time we see images of spatial passage. Indeed
even Kant finally admits that inner sense, to be actually
affected, needs spatial appearance. The pure underlying
flux seems to me, therefore, a philosophical construction which is the result of ulterior motives, and a phenomenon which is the effect of self-interference. So
when Husser! claims such a flux for the first phenomenon of time-consciousness he is observing accuratelyhis own observing. Internal time flux is the first effect
of attempting a phenomenology of time-consciousness.
What of external time? Newton is alone in positing a
genuine external time flux, absolute, equable time antecedent to all motion, physical, yet not apparent~a notion whose motives are as understandable as the concept is confusing. All the others who appear to believe
in physical time turn out always to mean either some
designated physical process or the "passage of nature"
as a whole. 32 It seems to be impossible for them to
point to time itself or to refer to it except by spatial
metaphors.
From the physical point of view, time appears with
as many natures as there are motions and ways of
studying them: It is a discrete quantity for quantized
micro-motions, a covariant of space for remote places,
an anisotropic progress for irreversible processes, an independent continuum for the local motions of bodies,
and a numerable dimension for motions which are developments. I do not think it is possible to decide
which of these conceptions should primarily determine
our understanding of motion and thus time. It may just
be impossible to give a single account of physical time,
and therefore it may be best to say that various kinds
of time seem to occur in the world, depending on
where our attention is fixed, whether on the statistical
conceptions of aggregates, or on signaling to remote
clocks, or on watching the formation of completed beings,
or on the comprehension of human affairs.
This last perspective raises yet another possibility.
What if time were worldly but not of the world, not
one of its physical dimensions, but rather the very life
and moving principle of the world? Such a doctrine
makes the appearances coherent, as the monolithic
grandeur of Hegel's System shows, but so thoroughly
coherent as to put an end to human freedom understood as our possibility of thinking and choosing independently of our situation in time. It seems to me pernicious.
The claim is that the appearances of nature as well
as of human thought and action are manifestations of
the substance of Time. Now the chief property of appearances is usually thought to be that they are a becoming: variable in themselves, perspectival for us, in
alterable passage, contingent. If, then, the being behind
them and expressed in them is itself a primordial be-
90
coming such as Time must be, the variability of appearances must be governed by that deeper becoming,
T1me; appearance is the manifestation of the logic of
becoming. But that means that we must give up the
thought of a loose connection, of room for play between the world and its grounds, which supports our efforts at independent thought and free action, and submit to our time-determined fate. Human beings and
nations must fulfill the historical role assigned by their
time or be consigned to parochial impotence. Time is a
tyrant, and the philosophy of time is a tool for tyrants:
our time has seen the consequences.
These, in sum, then, are the charges against Time:
As an internal flux it is a philosophical or psychological
illusion, as an external elapsing it is no more than the
measure of motion, and as the fated logic of becoming
it is a coercive myth.
Aristotle, who first wrote a sustained exposition of
time, also introduced its most radical de-substantialization, more complete even than that of the later great
relativist of time, Leibniz, for whom time is at least an
idea in the mind of God (Note 4). In that dethronement of time, in the claim that time is only the
counted measure of motion, it seems to me that Aristotle was simply right. But why, we must ask ourselves, if
there is time neither within nor without, it is so copious a topic of talk, and whence comes our ever-fertile
feeling about time?
The related words time, tide, and German Zeit, appear not to be specifically temporal in their etymological
origin. They are connected with Greek daiomai, "I
divide or distribute," which has to do with all sorts of
divisions, like that of the people, demos, and the portioned meal, dais. Originally "time" seems to refer
quite neutrally to the dividing of certain passages of nature into stretches, just as Aristotle says. The timefigures of poetry and ordinary speech, on the other
hand, are usually strongly affective. Let me take as examples two complexes of time figures which seem to
me best to reveal why we speak of time with feeling.
First, phrases like "the womb of time," "the ripeness
of time," "the fullness of time." The Greeks have a
word, kair6s, which although sometimes used interchangeably with chr6nos, has the specific meaning of a
special, critical, or opportune moment.3 3 There was a
famous statue by Lysippus, showing Kairos with a long
lock over his brow and the back of his head shaved, as
a figure for the fact that foresight is needed to seize
opportunity by the forelock and that once gone it cannot be pulled back. In the New Testament the word has
assumed great theological gravity; it means both the individual time for turning or doing the appointed deed,
and the day of judgement: "The kairos is near," the fulness of time is at hand, John says in the opening of his
Revelation (1,3). Leaving aside theological elaborations,
what do such phrases betoken? They seem to me a!-
SUMMER 1983
�ways to mean at bottom this: We feel that there is
something in the world's becoming ,which peculiarly
concerns us, that something is in the offing, something
to monitor, to watch, to prepare for.
The second example is quite opposite in flavor,
namely, the image of time as a tread-mill or a conveyorbelt on which we plod or are wafted willy-nilly past
scheduled events and holidays to an unscheduled but
sure cessation. For terrestrial beings this coursing of
time has what biologists call a "circadian" rhythm, the
natural twenty-four hour periodicity of the sun's circuit,
imaged on the faces of our watches and iterated by the
predesigned routines of our business lives. It is the pathos of the daily round-no matter whether it whirrs or
grinds-that makes us time-conscious, conscious, that
is, of a fleeting stillness in the countable accretion of
our accomplished motions, of a flux that stays while it
flows, since it ever bears the same event. Were our
lives either totally mutable or totally monotonous we
would, I imagine, attain neither to a sense of time nor
to intimations of timelessness. The tread-mill figure of
time, at any rate, expresses the mood in which the passage of life seems at once inexorable and aimless, fugitive
and onerous.
Time, these figures show, is our word-and this is
the meaning elaborated by Heidegger-for the world's
passages insofar as we care. We speak of time often, because the world continually concerns us; we speak of it
variously, because our mood or concern shifts; and we
speak of it always in figures because there is no other
way to give shape to our sense of the world.
2. TIME AS NOTICED PASSAGE
Time, I say, is noticed passage-besides that it has no
being of its own. Perhaps I might have said that time is our
noticing of passage, but it seems to me better to locate our
sense of time where we feel it, in the changing world itself.
But what is this "passage"? When we speak of the passage of time we cannot mean (although we say) that time
passes, but rather that something, something primarily
spatial, is going on. Indeed, passage is not, to begin with, a
temporal word. It means a passing, a going from here to
11
there, as in pacing"; there even seems to be an etymological connection to "space." It has a meaning similar to, but
even wider than, Aristotle's "change," kinesis, which is it-
self a wider term than locomotion, while preserving its spatial undertone. I am using the term to express my understanding that appearances in their variability, however
caused and however regulated, are as appearances spatial.
Two views of motion seem to me paramount: Aristotelian motion, which is the actualization of the thing moved,
and Newtonian motion, which is characterized by the
time rate of change of a body with respect to space. For
Aristotle the individual mobile is everything-the substrate
1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
which undergoes the motion and the substance which is
the aim and completion of the motion. For Newton the
mobile is qualitatively indifferent to the motion it undergoes, though as a mass it figures at once as the cause of
change in other bodies and as the cause of resistence to
change in itself. Thus for both motion is dynamic, that is,
it is regarded in terms of an indwelling cause: form for
Aristotle, force for Newton.
But consider that there are, to human discernment, apparently aimless motions which, like motes in sunlight,
show some pattern only in the aggregate, and also that it is
possible to regard bodies as moving not because of their
own inertia or gravity but by reason of their location in a
force field. In some of its appearances, motion is neither
compellingly Aristotelian or Newtonian. So as a kind of exercise, let me try a wider view of passage and of time, a
view less focussed on mobile and cause and more on field
and configuration, a spatial view.
By space I here mean not the abstracted infinite continuum of geometry but our extended human environment,
ground and figures equally. I think of it as just that which
is such as to be capable of being passed through and of
containing passages. But even before it is the scene of passages, it is the opening, the room for appearances, the
place for patency, what Keats calls "the World or Elemental Space." The Greek word for the appearances, phenomena, means what shines out, and the appearances seem to
me to have these four connected characteristics: They
shine out, they spread out, they vary and they are for us.
Patency, extendedness, multifariousness, and perceptibility-that is what makes space. The spatial scene is in its
very nature variable, and variable in the nth degree. Its
spread-out, variegated conformations themselves vary
variably or differentially-and those are the passages of
space. Some passages are lawfully developing fulfillments,
some negotiations of distance, some random dancesthese are the varieties of the variation of spatial variableness. It is not becoming that causes this display but just its
remaining what it is-various; and our discerning and noticing only make it more so.
We commonly think of the present configuration of
space as being an aggregate result, the outcome of many
separate paths of becoming. The world is full of forms
which seem explicable by their genesis. Space and its figures, appearing space, seems to be the frontal face of becoming, the advancing surface, so to speak, of the temporal succession.
But now let us cut the world in another way, as it were,
across the line of advance rather than lengthwise along
the lines of its genesis. Then the passage of time no longer
appears responsible for the configuration of space nor is its
history what makes the world appear, but space with its
present and passing appearances lies fully there and
openly displayed before us, in all its immediacy, a panorama which is not the result but the scene of time. I mean
that the appearances are not apprehended as the current
91
�state of temporal becoming, but the reverse-that the
world appears as a space, a room, a theatre of events and
happenings. These goings-on may be recurrent or continuous or periodically culminating, fascinatingly lawful or astoundingly unique. But the study of these passages tells us
only the route, not the reason for the panorama of appearances and directs us only to its elements and not to its integral sum. Let the contemplation of the world in this mode
(which is analogous to the field notions of physics) be, to
begin with, an exercise of the imagination in concentrat-
ing on the phenomenology of spatial passage.
Accordingly I describe motion-passage now more particularly as discerned variation. I do not figure such motion to
myself as being borne forward by time. By "being borne
forward by time" I mean the sense we allow ourselves to
entertain that each and all motions ride on some primary
vehicle (describable, to be sure, only by spatial metaphors
such as the flow of a river) which, when related to space by
a ratio, yields their rate of change or velocity, for example
55 miles per hour. In such a rate we normally take time as
the independent variable, precisely because we think of it
as the steady ubiquitous reference-spatial location varies
in three dimensions and two directions, while time only
advances. But to the time-disencumbered eye, motion is
not through space in time, but time, no longer equably universal, arises in different places and tempos as this or that
passage is noticed: felt in the observer or referred to other
motions, for instance to that of our natural clock, the sun.
A passage can be noticed by us, in the sense that we care
about it, when a distinguishable variation has been discerned within the variegated field of appearance. Such discerned variation, or perhaps better, differential variation,
of course always requires that the observer be himself in
the picture, 34 an appearance among appearances. Consequently certain kinds of passage arise from the relation of
the observer himself to the appearances. For example, he
can stay still and concentratedly look into the field, search
it by scanning, or himself bodily pass through it to obtain
varying perspectives. So, for example, little children sometimes gaze into the world pressed up against their grownup and sometimes run out to circulate and inspect.
The world, on its side, also offers to observation various
configurations of motion: There are distinct and isolated
motions that occur against a still background: runners running along a ridge. There is the scene which vibrates
everywhere with localized variation: the town-square on
market day. And then is the still center of an indifferently
varying field: the cynosure of one's eye in a crowded room.
We are moving or still figures in a still or moving landscape of appearance, and all passages can be distinguished
in terms of the various combinations between the discerning viewer and the passing scene, and, if we wish, timed by
means of some designated accompanying motion.
This primarily spatial way seems to me a particularly apt
way to come upon the world. To begin with, there is the
evidence of a common experience, namely that temporally
92
extended acquaintance dims vision, while sudden, panoramic sights make for poignant perception.
Then there is the unfailing testimony of our spatial
time-language. A ~~moment" of time is really a ''movement," as of the clock; the "passing" of time is a "pacing";
the ''space of time" is never converted into the "time of
space," and the words 11 time," "past," "present," "future,"
themselves all have spatially interpretable etymologies.
Again, we have external organs for sensing all sorts of
spatial motion, sights, sounds (which come out of space),
and internal organs for sensing our own spatial position,
and we have a capability for perceiving perspectival transformations. But we have no discernible organ or power for
perceiving the mere elapsing of time. Our estimate of time
depends on the spatial passages from light to dark, from
fresh to worn, from full to empty, and if we are deprived of
their sensory evidence our sense of time becomes totally
confused.
Moreover, time is somehow more accessible than space.
We can "spend time" to gain space. Time serves to pass
through space:
Now when Joseph had named his underworld name to the
Ismaelite, and had indicated to him what he wished to be
called in Egyptland, these people trekked on, some days, several and many days, at an indescribably comfortable pace and
full of serenity concerning time, which would one day, they
knew, manage to overcome space, if one cooperated but a little-and would do this most surely if one didn't fuss but just
gave in to its progress, each of whose advances might be of no
account but which would, quite incidentally, run up a large
sum, if only once carried on and reasonably maintained one's
direction. [Thomas Mann, Joseph in Egypt]
One may even recover, in some sense, one's former place
in space. But it is only in a figurative way that one can regain lost times by going down through space, as in archaeological exposure of earlier levels of life. Then, too, time's
effects can be fugitive-a moment of bliss can sometimes
obliterate a season of suffering, but a ravaged place cannot
be healed without the investment of laborious motion. In
brief, spaces and places contain the passages that concern
us, that is, they contain time, but not the reverse.
I take all that as suggestive, though of course merely circumstantial, evidence that time is not even coordinate
with space, as a form of appearances, not to speak of being
prior. Proof of such an assertion there cannot be beyond
its possibly convincing consequences. But I can, at least, in
concluding my brief collection of the evidence against
time and for space try to invalidate the chief presumptive
mark of their separate and coordinate standing. That is the
supposed difference between the here and the now: The
here, it is said, is repeatable; the now is not.
The claim certainly holds for the mathematical representation of space and time, though merely by definition.
In a graphic coordinate system with a time-axis the space
coordinates can return as often as you please, while the
SUMMER 1983
�able that we might, by a slightly different route, come back
to the same moment. For if events had the cyclicality of a
circle, as Nietsche claims (Note 13), every now would be
antecedent to itself and to all others, and if events moved
as in a figure eight, the same now would be on different
approaches. Whether we then said that it was the same
present floating out of the mists of time gone into the
murk of time to come. It seems to me that the world so
purged of time is a more patent world. In it shapes pass by
us, but also we, at will, pass by them. Sometimes it is in our
power to recognize appearances; we are able to turn back,
to revisit the scene, to follow its figures as they pass by or
to ascend to a higher viewpoint so as to survey the whole
panorama simultaneously. Appearances which carry that
possibility we call spatial. Some variations, however, we
can only remember; they go past us and are beyond perceptual recovery. They back out of our sight, so to speak, by
changing not so much their place as themselves, so that we
now because its perceptual content was the same, or a dif-
can no longer train our sensory vision on them at will. So
ferent now because it had different antecedents, would
depend on our desire to make the configurations of the
world tell time or to make the advance of time distinguish
its configurations. In principle and in imagination a pas·
sage which is an extended causa sui is not impossible, and
therefore neither is the return of a now. I leave out of account here that unmodern "defence against Time"
(Eiiade) constituted by the celebration of the timeless,
original, and ever-repeatable moments of myth.
Similarly, as far as the here is concerned, is it so obvious
that we can always come back to it? It seems to me that
there are three kinds of here: There is the local mathematical point given by an origin and three coordinates, which is
exactly repeatable but is only the abstraction of a here.
There is the physical situation determined by reference to
a system of moving bodies which can be only relatively recovered as one system moves with respect to its next larger
containing system (as does the cluster of people on the
boat on the ocean in the solar system, and so ad infinitum).
And finally, there is the human place of our lives which
probably cannot in effect be regained because, no matter
how stable, the world's passing affects its colorations
and conformations, as well as the mood of the returning
the golden solids oflate afternoon plane out into the dusky
silhouettes of early evening, and no one can hold them.
Such perceptually irrecoverable passings are usually accompanied for us by a sense of loss or relief or, at least, of
watchfulness. These we call temporal. But if we do not
care enough about their passing, not even enough to
glance at a watch, then, there being no one to feel or tell
time, the passages remain untimed. Of course, to attempt
to imagine this untimed world is a contradictory undertaking, that of trying to attend while not attending.
Nonetheless, we could try to reach untimed passage. It
would amount to thinking about appearance in its variability as distinct from being involved in it. It would mean being on the approaches of the mystery of Appearance.
Here, it seems to me, would start the real pursuit: What
appears? What principles of self-sameness and everotherness can account for the determinate shapes appearance manifests in its endlessly varying variety? Must appearance be perceived to appear? Is it nothing or
something in itself? And what is perception? What is
space, that field and frame in which, or perhaps, as which,
appearance shows itself? What rules, causes, ends govern
that distinguishable variation of appearance called motion
or passage?-This is the great battle ground to which leads
the skirmish against time.
time coordinates must increase monotonically. But is it so
plain in life that the now never returns? Is it so certain that
a deja vue is always a pathological incident? But even if, in
publicly corroborable fact, no now is indeed ever repeated
because chances are overwhelmingly against the world's
passages ever returning to the same state, yet it is imagin-
perceiver.
Therefore it seems to me that, insofar as they are separable notions at all, the now can be as repeatable as the here
and the here as irrecoverable as the now-which is to
say that time and space are not distinguishable, at least by
that mark. That melancholy of the missed rendevous described above (Sec. I 4), when we come to the right place at
the wrong time, is, then, not the unavoidable consequence
of the inherent skewness of space and time, but rather a
temporal affection, a mood of diminution, the ebb tide of
our awareness, when we can take notice of nothing which
does not flaunt itself in front of our eyes. For if time is
noticed passage, the vitality of our sense of time and of our
sense for times past and times future will depend on the
scope of our receptivity.
The object of the foregoing exercise in suppressing our
image of time as bearing onward the shapes of space was
to quell our propensity for insinuating time into our
speech as an occult nature and into our lives as a flux bear-
ing us from oblivion to oblivion on the narrow raft of a
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
The results of a substancial reflection are sometimes a
bit bizarre, and their justification lies in their intention.
Mine is to give an account of the three phases of time
which lend to human life much of its pathos.
3. THE PHASES OF TIME
Let me begin by readmitting the absurdly unavoidable
thought which I had earlier proscribed: that if things had
not come to the present juncture they would not be here.
Sequences of appearances commonly seem to have, if no
humanly ascertainable drift or even much recollectable
continuity, at least a certain longitudinal connectedness.
But how do we know of that connection? Space lies open
before us in brilliant extendedness. It has no before and
after, being, all that there is of it, there. How can it also
display the past variety of its passages? How, in short, does
93
�the present world bear witness to those of its states that
have passed, to its past? What lets us interpret a fossil as
testimony of life's evolution? What compels us to ascribe a
tender babyhood even to the most desiccated adult? What
makes a place revisited a place almost regained? What reconstitutes the sherd at the bottom of a Greek well into a
goblet from a world gone by?
The answer is that we do it, we give the world its past
because we have the power of memory. For itself the
grandest mountain range, which to us expresses in its ma-
jestic presence the dignity of having been shaped by the
passage of aeons, has no past and no world, and neither
does the little loom-weight which once put tension on the
warp of Penelope's loom. The depth of space is ours because we have memory. It makes time and its phases possible. Not as the poet says:
How the imaginaiion (and thus the memory) might do
its work is a question Aristotle tacitly sets aside and Kant
answers by saying that it is a mysterious power hidden in
the depth of the soul. It seems to me of all philosophical
questions the most engaging, but for another occasion.
(See Note 35 for a formulation of its aspects.) In the mean·
while I will mention one-most crucial-feature of its
work: In holding objects without their presence it is always
intentional, for the retained form is an image of, or intends, the once present thing, and therein precisely lies its
memorial power, its ability to re-present, to present the absent. (There may indeed be moments when remembering
passes into reliving, when the memory-image intends its
object not as an object that was, but as a present object,
but such states are, like hallucinations, extraordinary.)
How does the memory-imagination bring about the
three temporal phases or present, past, and future?
... only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.
T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton" I,
from Four Quartets
but the opposite: the moments of memory first constitute
past and future.
What is memory? The past-making memory is of the
imagination. (I omit consideration of rote, short-term, motor, and verbal memory, and of those electronically stimulated, hallucination-like replays of the "memory-tape"
which attest to the physical basis of the human activity of
remembering.) The imagination I understand to be in the
first instance the power for absorbing the world's variety
into assorted shapes and coherent processes, a discerning
receptivity not at that point distinguishable from the
power of perception. It is, in this aspect, a faculty universally and subconsciously exercised. (Kant, in his own context, calls it the productive imagination because it first produces those unities of thought and sense which he calls
"phenomena.") Secondly and properly speaking, it is a ca·
pacity for holding the form of things without their matter,
as Aristotle says, or the object without its presence, in
Kant's terms; both formulations come to the same thing
when one recalls that for Aristotle the material is a required element of the substantial presence of a physical
object. Its dematerializing power is indeed what makes its
holding capacity plausible. For one psychic space (leaving
aside the physical basis of memory) seems able to contain
myriads of memories. I am not speaking of psychic space
altogether figuratively but describing the interior experience of imagining which seems to be primarily visual, or
better, pseudovisual, presumably because sight is the
sense most adequate to the extendedness of space (cf.
Note 35). And although images are extended, they do not
seem necessarily to displace or occlude one another; images are, so to speak, transparent to images.
94
a. The Present
The now is also called the present, and nowness is associated with presence. A "presence" (Greek: parousia)
means a being that is by us, a confronting being which is
immediately there. Let us call it perceived being, leaving
out of account here the whole problem of perception itself. In this phase the imagination works as the involuntary
power described above, which shapes sensory material
into perceived appearances, though some argue that the
world itself delivers fully shaped appearances (Gibson).
People whose imaginative power is exhausted in this first
function accordingly live in the present and prefer adventitious stimulation to memories and projects. It is this nowpresent which Heidegger combats.
Being perceptible defines what is in the present, but I
think its marks are not those usually stated: vividness, selfgivenness, uniqueness. For the present can be dim and
dreary, like a city parking lot on Sunday; and sights of
things by no means present can come to us unbidden and
adventitiously as do phantasms and hallucinations; and
many a present scene is worn out with repetition.
What is peculiar to the present, then, is that it is perceived,
that it declares itself to us through the conduits of sensation
with a normally bland-though sometimes stunningimmediacy. Indeed, it is one of the mysteries of perception
that our intermediary senses can leave us with so strong a
sense of the immediacy of appearance. Besides being characterized by being right there, before us, perception also
promises a certain completeness of perspective and detailing. The present picnic includes those garbage cans behind the bushes and the proverbial ants on the blanket
which the past idyll has simply occulted.
If the present is defined by the immediate presence of
appearances and their passages, we should speak of the
now not as an ever-new moment, but rather as the unvary-
ing condition of being and having a present. This now is
SUMMER 1983
�our ability to be in and with the world. That ever-other,
ever-same now of the time-flow which is thought of as be·
ing at once the leading edge of time and also the cut be·
tween past and future arises when we stop the passages of
appearance to take notice of our relation to their passing.
The present becomes a flux-now when reflection brings
the world up short-the now arises from self-interruption.
This is the now which our mathematical reason is com·
pelled to whittle down to an unextended point. Percep·
tion, on the other hand, insists on its elongation. From this
conflict arises the bastard notion of the "specious
present": When we consciously represent our timeconsciousness, we do it by means of a line which underlies
a set of dimensionless points, while we observe that our
actual perceived present is an extended "space" of time,
composed of a braid of retentions of just-passed passages.
(That the actual present "takes time" accords with common experiences, for example the curious exchanges of
present and past at the moment of receiving sudden bad
news; the shocked consciousness oscillates for a while between the apprised now of the present and the yet unsuspecting now of the immediate past.)
In sum, when left to its own devices, the present is not
now but always, or better: It is always the present. This
ever-present present acts nonetheless as a pivot between
the two other phases of time because through it come the
images which stock the memory, although the memory itself integrates and frames the scene. All that we have there
by way of distinct forms came first through the senses. (Or
perhaps not everything: Augustine regards the memory as
a space furnished not only with likenesses of all the world,
but also inhabited by imageless memories of intelligible
objects. The question really comes to this: which domain
is the larger, imagination or memory? All images, it seems
to me, are at least in their elements memories, but Augustine must argue that some memories are not image-like,
namely those belonging to intellectual learning. It seems
to me a question not here soluble whether such learning is
essentially memorial and I have therefore left it out of
account.)
In going on to the past, let me say something concerning
the relation of flux-time and phase-time. Flux-time, current time, whose being independent of our attention to
passage I am denying, is precisely not, and for just that reason has no power to bear off lapsed passages into nowhere,
it flows not into the past but into oblivion. Instead, phasetime supervenes: As soon as passages are beyond percep-
tion and out of sight, they come to a standstill, so to speak;
they are laid away and accumulate as the permanent stock
of the memory-imagination, available for recovery, and the
more readily available the more we cared at the time. The
hidden work of their consignment to this permanent
mode, called ((consolidation," seems to demand the inter-
vention of other passages, that is, it seems to take some
time, apparently for physiological reasons. Consequently
the recent past i~ often inchoate compared to more reTiffi ST. JOHNS REVIEW
mote events, especially if it has been a monotony of minute differences. What, then, accounts for the being of
past passages, for a passing that has ceased to pass?
b. The Past
The past is the work of the imagination proper. Had we
no such power we would have no past-there would be no
past. It is what Kant calls the "reproductive" imagination.
It makes a world of re-presentations, of secondary occurrences, which are distinguished from perceptions first of
all in this: We move and have our place within the world of
perception, but the world of the imagination is felt to take
place within us. (Though there are memories which approach the sense of presence of a perception; they are usually triggered by one of the two contact senses, smell and
touch, whose deliverances, as it happens, are also hardest
to make into memory-images.)
Aristotle thinks that we sense time, and therefore that
the imagination, which holds memories, also holds their
times. The difficulties of this view seem to me insuperable. (See Sec. II 3). For first, it is hard to conceive what
such a time storage might mean. Does it mean that to
reach a memory we must recount the time back to it, so
that to remember a childhood scene we must reproduce
the intervening decades? That would make remembering
in principle impossible, because while we were working
our way back into memory, the present would carry us forward at a clip equal but opposite. Does it mean that we
have, as Aristotle claims, an internal time-scaling capacity,
a kind of speeding up of the inner temporal flux with an
index of its ratio to the actual time? Not only is there, I
have argued, no such flux, but pure time (as distinct from
its count) is, unlike space, incapable of proportionality because its stretches cannot be compared to each other by
congruence. Precisely that mysterious property of the
memory-imagination which makes it capable of containing
the world, namely that its spaces can, so to speak, continually be rescaled, that very property makes it incapable of
containing the world's time, which cannot be scaled.
Besides, the phenomena of memory are all against a
temporally flowing memory medium. Memory is notoriously discrete. The forgettable, a mere temporal stretching, is forgotten. Memory-images float up or flash on in
isolation, and time is remembered, if at all, not by being
condensed but by being excerpted. At any rate, although
the physiological basis for recalling every instance of our
life may exist, it would not only be impossible in principle,
as I argued above, to recover the continuum of our lifetime, but it would be in practice a waste of our present to
try to recover even parts of our past temporally. Indeed, I
think it is plain impossible to remember the passage of
time through time.
Consequently, the time-keeping performance of memory is, in fact, quite unreliable. Between the first and the
95
�final instance of a daily routine we merge the recurrent
events into one schema; it is that summary foreshortening
of an orderly life which is the source of so much distress
and so much comfort. We lose days from our calendar, but
we also multiply moments and think that we did often and
long what we did skimpily and briefly-exercises, for instance. The shades of the remembered dead are nearer
than the persons of the unregarded living, and in old age
our childhood is closer than our middle age. By the public
clock our unchecked memories can be relied on neither
for the length or the continuity or the unperturbed succession of time.
How then do we through memory constitute our past?
Primarily the past is, I think, a series of timeless scenes,
obtained by eyewitness or borrowed, acquired immediately by our own perception or through material images,
for instance, pictures of historical events. These inner, im-
material sights, animated perhaps by unheard sounds, are
marked as memory-images by our awareness that they are
of a once present perceived passage, which has done what
passages do-gone by. That is why memories, unless we
deliberately mobilize them by passing them before our inner vision, have a certain immobility. What T. S. Eliot says
of history holds a fortiori for memory: It is "a pattern of
timeless moments." We remember not the coming and go-
ing of a motion but a representative frame-it might be
called its configura] gist, something like in feeling to pictorial representation of motion by means of flow lines.
Memory-images do possess, secondarily, succession, and
duration, which are therefore characteristics of the past.
Memories have succession because passages leave various,
usually discrete, traces, which we retain in their context.
Certainly not every memory is well and accurately fixed,
and its relations are subject to outside correction by those
who have better recorded, more coherent, memories. But
by and large memories lead into each other or hang together. It is this context character which makes recollection possible. Aristotle in On Memory and Recollection distinguishes between this methodical recovery of a memory
and remembering itself, which is conspicuously capricious, illuminating and occluding scenes uncontrollably.
Remembering seems to be dependent on fortuitous associative triggers (once much studied by Humean psychologists); the most famous literary example of such a memory
trigger is Proust's taste of a tea cake dipped in a tisane
which retrieves for him the bliss of childhood.
The second temporal effect of memory is that of duration, which it achieves by means, so to speak, of its thickness, its lamination. This way of marking a long or a short
time is, of course, highly deceptive by the clock, sincethis is the time theme of The Magic Mountain-full and
eventful but fast passages leave thickly layered images,
while passages long drawn out but eventless leave only
sparse scenes. Of course, the order and the measure of
memory time is subject to correction by correlation with
external clock movements and with others' memories. But
96
the pacing of the original past, our past, can be made equable only by extrapolation and abstraction, since it is constituted in the most inhomogeneous of spaces, our imagination. (I want to add that the reason certain animals show
very precisely paced behavior seems to be not that they
have, any more than we do, an original sense of time but
that they are themselves clocks.)
The memory-imagination, then, is what is alone respon-
sible for the past, for the past as a whole is what is potentially remembered, what the soul has noticed and could recall. The memory-imagination is where the world's
passages find permanence and whence the present can
learn of its own perpetuity; through the memory, space
can testify to time. But even if space were devastated, if
the accumated treasury of civilization were annihilated, if
the present were a void-as long as human memory survived the past would exist.
It should be clear that to say that the past is our doing by
no means implies that it is our invention, to be manipulated for pleasant or pernicious ends. What is our doing is
that there is a past, not what is past. The above-mentioned
intentional character of the memory makes that distinction
possible. A memory-image intends that thing or event of
which it is the memory. What our memorial capacity contains is in one sense something of our own, namely insofar
as it is simply a memory, but in another sense it belongs to
the object remembered, namely insofar as it is a memory
of the object. This double-sided character of memory is
just what makes possible-and therefore obligatory-the
effort to remember truthfully, an effort which feels, at
least, like trying to pass through the memory to its intended object. Something similar holds for that reconstitution of public memory called history. Historical truthfulness seems to me to consist of scrupulously using the
evidence to construct a history-image which is compellingly of something, namely of the way it was. An analogous effort, finally, seems to play a part even in poetry, for
memory is said to be the mother of the Muses.
Before I conclude by arguing that the past is the most
humanly defining and consequential of the three phases
of time, let me dispose of the future.
c. The Future
The future is said to come toward us, and we are supposed to face it. This seems to me to be a misleading figure
of speech. Wherever we face, we confront the present, and
nothing is coming at us or by us but that.
The future, I say, is entirely derivative from the past.
Husser] describes it formally as the inverse of memory.
The future is that mode of the memory in which the image anticipates a perception, whereas in the past it follows.
The future is projected memory. How is that meant?
There are, it seems to me, at least four ways to think of
the future. The first defines the future as the realm of conSUMMER 1983
�tingency. On the hypothesis that there "are" indetermi·
nate events, the future is that part of the world about
which it is in principle impossible to make true-or-false
statements. This is the future understood in terms of the
use, in the present, of the future tense. (If, however, the
future is supposed to be predetermined, that is to say, if all
passages have an absolutely tight nexus, then future and
past are indistinguishable: It is in principle possible to
make true statements about either and in fact extremely
difficult.) The second way is that the future is an image·
But if they are held desirously and vividly enough, they
immediately go over into projects: Every real action in the
world, no matter how modest, has as its formal and its final
cause an image, and those actions are most felicitous
whose projected image is at home in a Golden Age. A
small but apt example is the making of a garden-every
garden is conceived as a corner in the Garden of Eden,
though its beginning be with the loan of a pickaxe. (I might
add here that it is a blessing for us that every terrestrial
less, calculated projection of present trends, a way as nec-
into the taunting melancholy of the completely fulfilled
imagination.)
One more observation about a projected image which
seems to be kind of a limit of our living future and which
essary as it is fatal to bureaucratic planning; this future is
the present elongated according to rules of conjecture.
The third is the "futuristic" future. Its imagery bears the
marks of a forced attempt to represent the never-yet-seen,
the absolutely novel. This future, which comes out of a
wilful subversion of the past, is usually antiseptically inhuman and terrifyingly technical. (Note, for example, that re·
cent futuristic space movies, like Star Wars and Star Trek,
tend to be humanly hollow and visually weird, while space
movies in a contemporary setting like Close Encounters,
E. T., and the Superman series are suffused with nostalgi·
cally homey, lovingly comic, all-American romance.)
All these futures are, of course, present thoughts and
images marked, as it were, with a future index. I cannot
even conceive what it might mean literally to think future
things, that is, to be with one's thoughts in the future.
There is a fourth future, our lived human future. It is
the projected past, and thus also the past as a project. This
future is always a possible image-not an image of possibilities, for that is an impossibly indeterminate notion; nor a
formulation of possibilities, for that is merely a logical ex·
ercise; nor even a prospectus of possible images, for that is
conjecture and contingency planning. The actual future
with which we live is a settled envisioning of a scene we
deem the world capable of harboring. Such a scene always
comes from memory, not only because without memory
there is no experience with which to judge what visions
are capable of realization, but also because memory is the
space in which diverse perceptions are first transformed
into coherent patterns. For it is from memory-images that
we shape our aim-images. Indeed, Bergson claims that
memory is primarily action-oriented, though that "to call
up the past in the form of an image, we must be able to
withdraw ourselves from the action of the moment, we
must have the power to value the useless, we must have
the will to dream." However, I hope to show that memory
has even deeper work than future-dreaming.
Such memory-projections may come to nothing and return to memory, closed out and abandoned:
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
T. S. Eliot "Burnt Norton", I
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
paradise requires continual maintenance or we would fall
concerns the one event sure of realization, our death. We
come on our death, it seems to me, in various ways, for
example, as a shapeless terror before an unimaginable termination or as an imagined scene in which we are called
on to play a leading role. That ultimate image will be and
ought to be the occasional subject of meditation. But why
should we, as Heidegger demands, face resolutely, at every
moment, the fact of our own death, understood as the possibility of our not-being, in order for our existence to be
authentic? That death is the end of our being is a mere
surmise, and it is an open question whether the
imagina~
lion, which like Dante's journeys in the middle of this life
to bring back visions of the next, is, delivering phantasies or
memories. Be that as it may, the aspect of the great futural
fact of our death which is most effective in life seems to
me to be that notorious gift of Prometheus, namely our
blindness concerning its exact date, and that is how our
end governs our future. For death has us on an elastic
tether, with give enough, we may always hope, for the
well-paced play necessary to the perfection of any project,
and with tautness enough to snap us eventually back from
diversion to work.
Before proceeding to the past, I want to forestall an objection which might be raised-that in considering the future as projected past I am attributing the order of my
awareness to the order of worldly becoming, with the antic
result that things receive their futurity from my projection, for instance that an old place to which I now first envision visiting is therefore a place of the future. But it is
not the sequence of knowing and being that, as I argue,
makes the future, but my present apprehension of a sequence of modes of awareness: I call future what I expect
to perceive. This view, to be sure, detracts from the pathos
of futurity, from both its inexhorableness and its contingency and implies precisely that there is no future-being.
Indeed such being is an unintelligible notion, for what will
be is not. By being in the future can be meant no more
than this: that the image is posited as coming before the
perception, where "before" is not a temporal relation at
all, for the "coming before" is now; it is in my present "expectation':.
To give the future no being is, however, not to deny that
97
�"shall" and "will" have a strongly effective meaning. To
resolve that "it shall be" is now to recover in the imagination an image-appearance, perhaps to modify it, and to will
to bring it to perception by the proper action. When the
perception becomes actual it is future no longer but
present. To prognosticate that "it will be" is now to anticipate an external appearance and to have well-grounded expectation for perceiving it. We are warranted in such anticipations because the passages of the world usually show
a certain symmetry about the pivotal present, a symmetry
we establish by attending to each memory specifically as a
by-gone present. The shape of ordinary passages, we then
conclude, is distorted very slowly about the perceived
present. In fact, most passages which are important to us
are either cyclical or monotonic, and therefore continuously predictable. There are, or course, moments of crisis,
catastrophic discontinuities which teach us that every
"logic of becoming" so far discovered is unreliable. But it
stands to reason that were the variations of appearance either totally monotonous or totally multifarious, we would
have no sense of a coherent future at all.
What room, one might ask, does this view of the lived
future as projected past leave for newness? The present is
in a superficial sense always novel, because no matter how
accurately it was foreseen or how effectively it was
planned, the world's passages will bring out in us and will
bring before us the unexpected and the adventitious. The
question really concerns a deeper newness: not whether
human beings can put into the world what has merely
never been before, but whether they can establish a wellfounded new way, a novus ordo seclorum. The vision behind such an epoch cannot help but come from the imagination. (I leave out the element of thought because it is so
doubtful that thought is rooted in the phases of time at all.)
The imagination finds the materials for such a vision in
the storehouse of memory, but its affective shaping seems
to come from the power of phantasy. Now both aspects of
the imagination, memory and phantasy, are past-oriented.
The memory is the very source of the past, while phantasy
characteristically works-as a matter of observation-in
the mode of Hance upon a time," of primeval, ancient patterns. Therefore genuinely imagined new beginnings, as
distinct from those that are light-headedly contrived, usually take the form of a rectification, renewal, rebirth-in
sum, of a return to "that time" (illo tempore) which is to be
recovered in a new paradise, a new Golden Age, a New
Jerusalem.
d. The Past as Paramount Phase
Memory-image and phantasy-image, the image arising
from perception and the image made in the imagination,
are distinguished from each other by certain marks. The
intentionality of memory is that of being of an original perception of which it is precisely the memory. A phantasy-
98
image lays no claim to being the memory of a once-present
scene except in play, in the well-circumscribed space,
whose proper phase, I have claimed, is the past, of "once
upon a time." (This distinction between the reality claims
of phantasy and memory can, of course, be confounded in
very fascinating ways.) Consequently memories have a
fairly fixed temporal context, while phantasy and fairy
tales take place in a floating time frame.
But in certain fundamental characteristics, memory and
phantasy are the same: Both are representations without
the material presence of the world and subject to the same
transmutations that such absence sanctions. With that
deep bond between the realm of phantasy and of the past
in mind, let me now enumerate reasons why the past, constituted in memory, is the humanly preponderant of the
three phases of time.
First, the past is, of necessity, thicker in texture and
longer in extent and therefore weightier for us than our
immediate present. For while we have indeed always a
present, not everything that we have is always present.
Why then should we be willing, having put ourselves to
the trouble of living, to lose our life to oblivion? Even
more, the past contains not only all our own accomplished
passages but is indefinitely extended by the memories we
absorb from the common store, from that derivative memory called history. The past can be an ever-widening panorama, so capacious and so vivid that it may sometimes
seem as if it were, after all, not within us but as if we wandered in it, as in our own interior space. That is how
Augustine speaks of it:
I come into the fields and spacious palaces of my memory,
where are the treasures of innumerable images drawn from
things of whatever sort by the senses .... And yet do not the
things themselves enter the memory; only the images perceived by the senses are ready there at hand .. .. For there I
have in readiness the heaven, the earth, the sea, and whatever
I could perceive in them. [X 8]
Whether we think of our memory-past as an increasing
freight or a widening space, it must inform our life in
action and conversation. The past is present as those select memories which the present has called up to comfort,
goad, or illuminate it. From these memories are distilled
not only the projects of the future but that experience
which enables us to envision the transformation a project
will undergo in the course of realization and its unintended
consequences: most unsound judgement is, after all, a failure of the latter aspect of the projective imagination.
Besides being the source of experience, memory-past
has secondly a clarifying and shaping power. It is often said
that the present is fact, the future possibility, and the past
is necessity. Presence may be called bald fact, though what
the fact is, is rarely known in the present. The future may
be thought as possibility, but it is lived as a vivid picture.
And the past may be in certain gross features unalterable,
but the inner sense of passages is revealed as memory proSUMMER 1983
�gressively revives and reviews them; just as in space proximate objects are invisible until we have gained perspective
on them through distance. So if the past is the necessary,
meaning that of which memory cannot be otherwise (for
we cannot say that past things are necessary, since they are
not at all, being gone), it is so first of all insofar as it has
been laid to rest, as when we say, "let bygones be bygones." Indeed it is yet another power of memory, to forget the best-forgotten, and the price for not exercising it is
the paralyzing repetition of a worn-out present. (I do not
mean that we can expunge the brute fact but that we can
deprive it of its effectiveness. The religious term for that
effort when it concerns our own deeds, is ((repentance/'
which "seeks to annul an actuality," Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, "Interlude 3, The Past.") And secondly, the past is necessary as far as the grossly designatable events and their calendar dates are concerned: for
example I believe it was Clemenceau who observed concerning the shifting interpretations of the Great War, that
whatever is said, no one will ever claim that on August 4,
1914, Belgium invaded Germany. With respect to such
brute facts, memory merely records.
But for most past passages, memory, when it is called
upon, shows itself to have been active. It has purified the
once-present of its obscuring passions and clarified its patterns. It is this shaped and rectified past which most
strongly colors and directs the present. It is what the poet
means when he speaks of
1
Time which takes away
And taking leaves all things in their right place
An image of forever
One and whole.
Edwin Muir, "I have been taught"
It is our frequent experience that we do not realize what
is going on before our eyes, that the present is shapeless
and imperfect, that appearances must reappear in memory to show what they were meant to be. What is ongoing
has presence merely, but what is past shows its essence.
Third, the panoramic, projective, and purgative capacities of the memory-imagination make it the great propaedeutic power for philosophy. For example, out of its store
are fashioned those cosmic visions which complete the arguments of reason, as do the myths in the Platonic dialogues. Again as the room which holds the world without
its material presence, it provides the field of a first encounter with immaterial form. And further, because of its rectifying, schematizing, canonizing tendency, the memory ac·
quaints us with ideality, whether in the schemata of
geometry or in the types of excellence. Finally, the memory is a training ground for philosophizing, because concentratedly pursued remembering, or recollection, has features analogous to searching thought.
Fourth and last, the memory-past has a power of transfiguration, of enchantment. Its force is such that those under its spell may melt with nostalgia even for hell on earth.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
In this mode memory saturates with feeling what it has
purged of passion. Now its scenes float up fragrant with an
illumination of inexpressibly familiar mystery and its set·
tings are suffused by an enigmatically musical aura. Proust
describes these atmospheric colorations as turning the
memory-world into a hieroglyphic of happiness whose decipherment is an enthrallingly exigent task.
Proust is both the painstaking initiate and the exploiting
connoisseur of the magic of memory. His acute temporal
sensibility presents him with an absorbing problem: He
has discovered that on the one hand, "the true paradises
are the paradises we have lost," while on the other, only
the immediacy of perception can add the last perfection,
that of real existence, to these paradisical memories. He
finds that he can succeed in his search for lost time only
when a sensory trigger perceived in the present, and iden·
tical with some element of the past such as that taste of
the teacake, revivifies his memory. Then past and present
become one and the past is literally relived. This fusion of
temporal phases he calls "pure time."
There is something fascinating and something repellent
in Proust's self-immured pursuit of the past not as a template for the future but as means to momentary bliss.
What he describes is, as it happens, the most magical of
temporal experiences-when the past lies upon the
present as a luminous transparency, or behind it like a vibrant backdrop, or within it like animating music. In spite
of, or better, precisely for the sake of, the magic, it seems
to me sounder not to importune the past for golden moments but to let them come as they will, and when they
come to let them do their proper work, which is not only to
bring delight but also to be the source of ardour for a
worldly project.
So profiting by Proust's case, we should probably avoid
too direct a preoccupation with our paradise-producing
power. Otherwise much more might be said, particularly
about its close relation to music. For music is the most memorial of arts. It occurs only minimally in the present and
the whole burden of its being is on memory, since the apprehension of a musical whole depends on retention, as
Husserl has named the quasi-perception of passages just
now past, while the recognition of its intention depends
on the memory of all the music heard before. But most to
my point here, music is the art which best aids and intensifies the significance-producing function of our memoryimagination because, as can no other art, it suffuses space
with feeling and vivifies it with intimations of schemata of
the body which stand for gestures of the souJ.l6 But of
such musings there is no end.
*
*
*
To conclude: The soundness and the fulness of our existence seems to me to begin with a right relation to the
three phases of time. Of these the present with its passions
is loud enough in its own behalf, and when it is dimmed it
99
�is very often because of our improvident preoccupation
with the future. Here I have brought forward the past and
its images not only because it is the forgotten phase of our
time,l7 but because I really think that it has the dignity I
have ascribed to it: It is the depth of the present and the
shape of the future.
The wholeness of life and half of its happiness comesand its coming depends on good fortune and work, and
above all, on single-minded desire-when the present
world is perceived against a deep, luminous background of
memory, which is at once also a prospect into the future
and a project. That temporal whole (it cannot rightly be
called a present and I have no name for it) will sometimes-not often-submit itself to thought and invite contemplation. That is, I think, the complement of temporal
completeness and a consummation of human happiness.
Let my witness be, one last time, Aristotle, speaking of
that human being-perhaps a little beyond our meanswho will be the best friend and live the happiest life (Nic.
Eth. IX, on friendship, 1166 a 14 ff.):
He is in harmony with himself and has the same desires
throughout his whole soul ... Such a one wants to be in his
own company since he makes it pleasant for himself. For he
has delightful memories of what he has done and good hopes
for what is to come, and finally, his mind abounds in objects
of contemplation.
Santa Fe, Summer 1982
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1787) B 46-72:
"Transcendental Aesthetic: Of Time"; A 98-110: the
three syntheses; B 150-159: "Of the Application of the
Categories to the Objects of the Senses in General"; B
176-187: "Of the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of
the Understanding"; B 274-279: "Refutation of Idealism"; B 399-432; A 341-405: "Of the Paralogisms of
Pure Reason."
II. SUPPORTING TEXTS, STUDIES, COMMENTARIES
Samuel Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1916-1918),
London 1920, Bk. I, i-iv.
Staffan Bersten, Time and Eternity, A Study in the Structure and Symbolism ofT. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, New
Yark 1973, Ill iii.
Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will, English version of An
Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (1889),
F. L. Pogson, trans., New Yark 1960, Ch. II and Conclusion.
Otto F. Bollnow, Das Wesen der Stimmungen, Frankfurt
a.M. 1968, Chps. IV, XII.
Albert Einstein, and others, "On the Electrodynamics of
Moving Bodies" (1905), The Principle of Relativity,
Dover 1952, par. I
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries (1957), P.
Mairet, trans., New York 1975, Ch. I: "The Myths of the
Modern World."
I. MAIN TEXTS
J. N. Findlay, "Time: A Treatment of Some Puzzles,"
Aristotle, Physics IV 10-14 (time); III 1-3 (motion); VIII
(primary motion); On Memory and Recollection I (phases
of time); On Coming to Be and Passing Away II 10-ll
(cyclical time). Also: Metaphysics IX, XII; On the Soul
Ill; Posterior Analytics II 12; On Interpretation 9. (4th
cent. B.C.).
Augustine, Confessions (c. 400 A.D.) X 8-26 (memory); XI
10-31 (time).
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1927), John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, trans., New York 1962, First
Part, Second Section, paras. 65, 68-69, 79-82.
Edmund Husser!, The Phenomenology of Internal TimeConsciousness (1905), Martin Heidegger, ed., James S.
Churchill, trans., Bloomington 1964, Sec. II "The Analysis of Time-Consciousness"; III "The Levels of Constitution of Time and Temporal Objects."
100
Logic and Language, Garden City 1965, pp. 40-59.
Michael Gelven, A Commentary on Heidegger's "Being
and Time," New York 1970.
James J. Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, Boston 1966.
John G. Gunnell, Political Philosophy and Time, Middletown 1968, Conclusion.
G. W. F. Hegel, Encyclopedia: Philosophy of Nature (1827)
paras. 257-260; Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807), Preface.
Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics
(1934), James S. Churchill, trans., Bloomington 1962;
Logik (1925-26), Gesammtausgabe, Bd. 21, Frankfurt
a.M. 1976, Sec. C.
SUMMER 1983
�William James, Psychology, Ch. XVII: "The Sense of
Time."
Phenomenology of Memory, The Third Lexington Conference on Pure and Applied Phenomenology, E. W.
Straus and R. M. Griffith, eds., Pittsburgh 1970.
G. W. Leibniz, "Reply to Bayle's Reflections on the System of Preestablished Harmony" (1702); Third and Seventh Letter to Clarke (1716).
The Problem of Time, Berkeley 1935.
Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man (1927), Boston
1957.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1690), Bk. II 14-15.
The Study of Time, Proceedings of the First Conference of
the International Society for the Study of Time, VoL I,
1969, Springer 1972, and subsequent volumes.
Time and its Mysteries, New Yark 1962.
The Voices of Time, J. T. Frazer, ed., New York 1966.
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (1924, begun 1912),
Ch. 4, 2; "Introduction to The Magic Mountain," Princeton Lecture (1939), (Preface to Fisher edition, 1950).
IV. TIME IN SCIENCE
M. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception
(1945), Colin Smith, trans., London 1962, Part III 2.
Sir Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World
(1928), London 1947, Chps. III-IV.
Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687), Scholium to the Definitions.
Adolf Gruenbaum, Philosophical Problems of Space and
Time, Boston 1973, Chps. 8-9, 12.
Plato, Timaeus 37-39.
Hans Reichenbach, The Philosophy of Space and Time
(1927), New Yark 1958, Chps. II, IlL
Plotinus, Ennead III 7 (3rd cent. A.D.): Plotin ueber
Ewigkeit and Zeit, Werner Beierwaltes, trans. and ed.,
Frankfurt a.M. 1967.
G. J. Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time, New York
1963.
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1926),
Time Retrieved Ch. 3.
W. D. Ross, Aristotle's Physics, Text, Introduction, Commentary, Oxford 1955.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943), Pt. II 2-3.
Most of the collections contain articles on time in science. In particular, Voices of Time: H. Dingle, "Time in
Relativity Theory: Measurement or Coordinate?", p. 455
ff.; 0. C. de Beauregard, "Time in Relativity Theory: Arguments for a Philosophy of Being," p. 417 ff.; M. Capek,
"Time in Relativity Theory: Arguments for a Philosophy
of Becoming," p. 4 34 ff.; R. Schlegel, "Time and Thermodynamics," p. 500 ff.
Charles M. Sherover, Heidegger, Kant, and Time,
Bloomington 197 L
Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, H. Diels,
ed., Berlin 1895, pp. 829-832.
Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (1920),
Ann Arbor 1957, Ch. IlL
Eviator Zerubavel, Hidden Rhythms, Schedules and Calendars in Social Life, Chicago 1981.
IlL
COllECTIONS
Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Time, E. Freeman and
W. Sellars, eds., LaSalle 1971.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
1. A supporting curiosity: the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations reveals a
24: l ratio of time to space sayings. (Study of Time I; p. 313).
2. Merleau-Ponty (p. 411) presents an analysis of the puzzle. If time were
like a river it would indeed appear, on its own, to flow from the past into
the future, namely from the source toward the distant mouth, in the direction a twig floats. But a river unobserved really has no events or temporal direction, for these require an onlooker's perspective: "Time presupposes a view of time." So no unwatched river can represent time.
Now introduce an observer, and the "motion" of time is straightaway
reversed: The waters flow from the source at the observer and pass him,
so that time comes toward him as he expects it and passes out of sight,
that is, it flows from future to past.
3. Findlay, p. 41
4. Newton distinguishes "absolute, true, and mathematical time," which
is a condition of motion, from relative or apparent time, which is the
common time measured by motion. His physical motive for positing absolute time appears to be his belief that rotary motion is absolute, an assumption criticized by Leibniz in De Motu.
Leibniz speaks of mathematical time as "ideal." It is nothing in itself
101
�but an idea in the mind of God (Seventh Letter to Clarke), namely that of
the order of mutually inconsistent possibilities (as space is the order of
possible coexistences); it expresses the order-relations of phenomena
which cannot be simultaneous but are connected-note well, the rela·
tions of phenomena, not of the substances themselves. His chief reason
for objecting to absolute time is the principle that contingent truths, i.e.,
truths of fact, must have a sufficient reason. Now if time were absolute
and instants existed in themselves, one might reasonably ask why God
did not create the world a year sooner, and claim that by choosing this
particular beginning he acted without reason, arbitrarily. But if time is a
mere relation of phenomena, the world made a year sooner is in every
respect in discernibly different from the later world, and the question is
obviated (Third Letter to Clarke).
Augustine partly anticipates this argument: If any giddy brain should
ask why God forbore creating the world for innumerable ages, the answer
is, God does not in time precede time (XI 13). Time arises simultaneously
with the creation, or better, with the creature. Sec Sec. III.
5. Of course, physically speaking, to ignore the finiteness of the speed of
light reduces relative to classical kinematics.
6. Alexander's work, Space, Time and Deity, a very large book of lectures
given from 1916-1918, has as its beginning thesis the interdependence of
space and time: "There is not an instant in time without a position in
space and no point of space without an instant of time." (1, p. 48). Although Alexander had read of relativity theory, his treatment, which is
purely philosophical, is quite independently conceived.
7. Wyndham Lewis interprets the preoccupation with time in all departments of human activity as a romantic reaction; he understands by romanticism a fluid, indeterminate, sensation-seeking, sophisticated rebellion against distinctly formed reality (Ch. 1).
8. Phenomenology, Preface, par. 45 (Miller, trans.). In the passage Hegel
draws attention to the fact that there is no temporal counterpart to geometry. Space is the existence into which the Concept writes its distinctions
as into an empty, dead element. Time, on the other hand, is the pure
unrest of life, absolute differentiation and negativity.
9. See "Chronos," Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopaedie. Cronos, the father
of Zeus who devoured and later disgorged his own children, was sometimes identified with Chronos, Time.
10. Simplicius is right when he shows at length that time does not move,
but mistaken when he gives that as the reason why Aristotle does not
include time among the categories in which motion occurs (on Phys. 225
b 5). Aristotle does in fact include the category of "how much" or quantity, in which time, as it happens, belongs. What he omits is "when,"
which is the category not of time but of timing-of which more below.
ll. Aristotle discusses his analogue to space, i.e., "void" just before motion (213 b ff.). He regards its pure infinite dimensionality as a physical
absurdity in which all motion becomes impossible for lack of any natural
direction toward a place. For Aristotle things are contained in demarcated places, not spread out over a continuous substrate of infinite extension.
12. When Timaeus-not Socrates-tells how time arose, simultaneously
with the heavens, as a moved image of "eternity" (a-ion, the un-going), a
"likeness of the ungoing, going according to number," he, is giving the
mythological anticedent of Aristotle's treatment of time in terms of the
number of motion and of the heavenly motion as providing the measures
of time.
13. The logical possibility of Such necessary cycles is given iri. Post. An. (11
12). Those cycles of becoming are non-contingent whose events imply
each other.
Aristotle's cyclicalit'y is indeed a forerunner of Nietzsche's "Eternal
Return:" "That everything returns is the most extreme approach of a
world of becoming to a world of being: Summit of the inquiry" (Will to
Power, no. 617). In the Eternal Return the impossible is accomplishedto be in the same now twice and so to be causa sui (if causation is temporal). Consequently every moment is, so to speak, a discrete eternity, composed of all the previous identical moments, and the future comes at the
now out of the past. The difference from Aristotle's theory is that this
cycle is not conceived as an approach to God and has no final cause beyond itself, but is intrinsically necessitated.
In the Statesman (269 ff.) Plato lets the Eleatic Stranger tell of a yet
102
more curious cyclical sequence. It is a time· fable playing on the possibilities of time reversal. In the primary age Cronos, i.e., Time (see Note 9),
takes the tiller of the world. Human beings spring grey-haired from the
earth and grow into childhood, fruit ripens without culture; animals are
tame and human beings understand their language; there are no families
and no cities. In our present age the god has let go and the world unwinds
itself. We are no longer the wards of the god, but are humanly generated,
meagre, and exposed. Prometheus and Athena have given us arts and
wisdom to make this life bearable. The Stranger declines to decide which
age is happier since he does not know what was the disposition of the
Cronians with respect to knowledge and philosophy. The fable means
that the era of human independence is more diverse and more difficult
than the cycle guided by the god and that its temporality is, as it were,
fallen and inverted since the phases of imperfection are prior to the states
of perfection. Yet the fable also implies that in the Cronian age philosophy may be an unwanted superfluity, while in the human age it is an
ineradicable need.
A story of immense cycles, repeated through an "infinity" of time, a
serial sequence of development and destruction in human affairs is told
by the Athenian in Laws (676 ff.)
14. For a fine exposition of Aristotle's definition of motion see Joe Sachs,
"Aristotle's Definition of Motion," The College, Jan. 1976, pp. 12-18.
15. Gunnell, p. 232
16. I use the term perception to distinguish the work of the faculty of
sensation from that of the sense organs. As Aristotle does implicitly, so
Whitehead explicitly distinguishes between the point-now which he calls
"moment" and the duration yielded by sense perception. The "moment"
is defined in terms of "abstractive sets" of duration. An abstractive set is
all the nested durations converging to the same limit, and a moment is
defined as the class of all such sets converging to the same limit, each set
being a different "route of approximation" to the same moment (pp. 5762).
17. The relation between time and eternity is similarly quasi-contemporaneous; in distinction from the temporality of human thought, divine
thought is the same with itself through the "whole" of eternity (Met. 1075
a 11).
The scholiast on Nic. Eth. 1174 b 9 wrongly but understandably speaks
of the now as an "atom of time," that is, a minimal of time, a moment.
This is a notion Aristotle takes pains to reject (Phys. 220 a 27), though he
does speak of the limiting point of a period of time as "indivisible" (223 b
34).
18. Aristotle refers to motion "in" the soul in the absence of sensation
(Phys. 219 a 6), to imagination and opinion as "a certain kind of motion"
(254 a 30), and to "changes" of mind (218 b 21).
19. Interestingly enough, such double consciousness is just what Husser\
observes in that internal time flux which seems to him the basic temporal
phenonmenon (par. 39): While we are conscious of the passing of a temporal object like a melody we are also conscious of the time flow itself.
20. Taking his clue from Plato's Timaeus, the Neoplatonic Plotinus elaborates a grand ontological cosmology in which time plays a role quite the
opposite from that in Aristotle (Enneads III 7).
The two relevant elements from the Timaeus arc these: The cosmos is
an image of being and the soul encompasses it.
Time, says Plotinus, "fell out of eternity" (11, 7) because of an original
flaw in the soul, a kind of grasping busyness which keeps the soul from
abiding in self-sufficient quiet and causes it always to look to the next
thing, to something beyond the present. for the soul is itself a variable
and discursive image of the intellect (Beierwaltes, p. 54). Hence it falls
into a sort of motion, a kind of self-displacement. As it accomplishes a
stretch of its journey, time is produced as an image of eternity. Speaking
less metaphorically, the soul "temporalizes" itself (echr6nesen, 11, 30),
making time instead of eternity. Within time it produces the place of variability, namely the sensible world as an image of eternity. Therefore the
world, which moves within the soul, is, not altogether metaphorically, in
time and serves time. Time, in opposition to Aristotle, is not the number
of motion but that in which and by which motion is possible (8; 9, 4).
Since time comes from a kind of greed for continual self-exceeding, it is
in its very essence futural; the soul looks ahead and draws the future
through the now, which by nature always goes out of itself, into the past;
SUMMER 1983
�it is continually cancelling the now. This passage defines time: Time is
the life (zoe) of the soul in a transitive motion from one life-phase (bios) to
another(!!, 44). But as time is only an image of eternity, so temporal life
is merely homonymous with the eternal life of the_ intellect (ll, 49). The
time of the world soul and world time are the same; and since all souls are
one, the same time also appears in each human soul (B, 67).
The first question about time must be: Is it of the soul or of the world,
is its source consciousness or reality? Plotinus' grand scheme, in making
time the life of the soul and making the soul the animating generator of
the world, collapses this distinction: It is precisely in being of the soul
that time is in the world.
21.. Whitrow, pp. 78 ff.
22. For example: that we can reach a memory, either randomly, by a
"glancing ray," or systematically, by a process of attention (a distinction
roughly the same as that made by Aristotle between remembering and
recollecting, On Memory and Recollection II); that the clarity of a presentified object is distinguishable from the clarity of the presentification;
that there are memories of memories, and also memories of objects we
have never perceived such as historical scenes; that every memory is
fixed in an unalterable temporal environment even as it runs off from the
present; that the perception of time and the time of perception correspond; that memory is distinguished from phantasy by a factor of "positing," i.e., by being given a definite temporal position with respect to the
present.
23. I have omitted in this account that connecting of concepts called
judging, which is required to complete experience (B 187 ff.).
24. Locke, for example, presents a theory of time in which there is succession without an underlying flux. Our mind contains a "train of ideas,"
a succession of objects of thinking, from which we derive our idea of duration by reflection. Duration is "fleeting extension," the perpetually
perishing part of succession (Essay II 14, 1). The theory neatly takes a
middle ground between Aristotle's psychic counting of external motion
and Kant's original, undifferentiated inner flux.
25. Aristotle distinguishes, under somewhat shifting terminology, between thought or intellection (nOesis) which is the immediate apprehension of form, and discursive thinking (diclnoia, e.g., Met. 1027 b 25). In a
comparison with the Kantian faculties, pure intellect (nous) would be
contrasted with the transcendental apperception or pure reason, human
noesis with conceiving or understanding, and dianoia with judging.
26. In the original Transcendental Deduction (A 98-102) Kant distinguishes three phases of the unifying synthesis performed by the apperception and assigns to each a faculty: I. The synthesis of apfJrehension in
intuition, an original taking-up into awareness and temporal ordering of
the manifold of sensation. 2. A synthesis of reproduction in the imagination, an original associating or connecting of representations of objects in
their absence which makes remembering possible. 3. A synthesis of recognition in a concept, by which what is successively sensed and then remembered is recognized and united in one concept.
On the face of it the distinctive temporal phase-if the syntheses are
indeed to be temporally interpreted-would seem to be the past: cumulative apprehension, reproduction, re-cognition. Nonetheless Heidegger
makes a fascinating case that Kant has implicitly prefigured his own account of the origin of all three phases in the future by showing that the
syntheses correspond exactly to his three temporalizing ecstases of human existence: The apprehensive synthesis corresponds to "originary
presentification," the reproductive synthesis to "repetition" of what has
been, and the synthesis of recognition to the "anticipation" of understanding (Kant and Metaphysics par. 33; Sherover, pp. 186 ff.; for Heidegger's reinterpretation of the imagination as understood in the Critique
see Sherover, pp. 142, 150).
27. l. Plotinus anticipates Heideggcr in the central notion of the selftemporalization of the soul, and in regarding the future as the essence of
time (See Note 20).
2. Hegel's abstruse dialectical exposition of time in the Philosophy of
Nature (paras. 257-260) is meticulously but critically interpreted by
Heidegger (Logik, par. 20; Being and Time, par. 82 a). Its gist is as follows.
In his dictum that "the truth of space is time," i.e., that space in being
thought reveals itself as time, Hegel is opposing the commonsense apprehension of their disjunction. Space, for Hegel, is the indifferent mutual
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
externality of the manifold of points: "Space is punctuality." Each point
in this manifold is a negation insofar as it discriminates a difference in
space, although the point is not distinguishable from space. That is how
space represents itself to us, to begin with.
Now when the point-space is subjected to thought, when it is not
merely represented but actually conceived, that is to say, when its truth is
brought out, the point, or rather each point, is determined. For thinking
is determination, i.e., delimitation and distinction. So each point is distinguished from the manifold and set for itself: It is this point, not that
point. Hence negativity, space, has in turn been negated. This negated
negativity is the "twth" of space, namely the point conceived, and it is
time. For in being so determined for itself, the point's indifference with
respect to other points is cancelled; it steps out of its own indifferent
condition, although it maintains its indifference to its neighbors. Thus it
no longer lies in a paralyzed quietus of space but, so to speak, gets a move
on, rears itself up, outdoes or succeeds itself: It becomes a now. And the
successive determination of this now and that now, the continual negating of spatial negativity, that is time. "In time the point has actuality,"
namely as now. The complementary positive concept of time is "intuited
becoming," by which Hegel means the disappearance of specifically experienced nows.
Heidegger is critical of Hegel's understanding of time as the mere nowsequence of which his own work is a critique. (See Sec. V 1). He does note
that time as negating negativity is formally identified by Hegel with subjectivity (self-overcoming), but he fails to mention at all in the Logik, what
in Being and Time (omitting reference to the later lectures on the Phenomenology,) he discounts as a mere formality, namely that in the Philosophy of Spirit, which goes beyond the physical time of the Philosophy of
Nature, this identification raises time to an all-encompassing stature:
Time is the existent Spirit itself, the Spirit externalized. Here time is no
longer a mere succession of nows; indeed, the notion that time is subjectivity is at least a way station to Heidegger's temporality as the ground of
human existence.
3. Bergson gets short shrift (Logik, par. 21), but he too anticipates
Heidegger in certain elements: A first such anticipation is Bergson's emphasis on the essential temporality of human life which is in accord with
his understanding of time as a vital, non-discrete, non-numerable qualitative and interpenetrative heterogeneity called "duration proper." A second -is in Bergson's understanding of the origin of quantified, countable
time as externalization, that is to say as a spatialization of true duration,
brought about when consciousness introduces succession into the dead
simultaneity of spatial phenomena. (Spatial phenomena, even when so
modified have no vitality of their own; they only have an unaccountable
property of presenting to consciousness change at successive moments.)
But above all, Bergson precedes Heidegger in the notion of an externalized variant of life which is permitted to unfold in space outside rather
than in time within, and in which "we speak rather than think, we are
enacted rather than ourselves act" (Essay, Conclusion). This externalization of time is surely an anticipation of "inauthenticity."
4. Because of the complex transformation of the meanings I merely
mention Kierkegaard's theological terms "repetition" and "the moment." (For Heidegger's acknowledgement of the latter see Being and
Time II 4, n. iii.)
28. Plotinus, who has a way with words not unlike Heidegger's, uses the
word dicistasis~distance-as a designation precisely of that quantitatively apprehensible succession of time through which its qualitative nature, the unity of its phases, is also displayed as the future continually
passes into the present and the present into the past (Beierwaltes, p. 65).
In the word ecstasis Heisfegger expresses the denial of this diastatic or
sequential unity; for him there is no temporal continuum since past and
present both come directly from the future, though of course not
through a temporal succession but through an ontological derivation.
29. Bollnow (Ch. IV) criticizes Heidegger's existential interpretation of
mood because it posits the "depressed" moods as exemplary and takes no
account of the elevated moods. He seems to me to be right, because the
understanding of "moodiness' (Stimmung) as a disclosure of "having
been" is entirely derived from the interpretation of anxiety as a being
brought back to one's thrownness. But why should the other moods be
similarly grounded in the ecstasis of the past?
103
�30. Heidegger claims that the concept of this vulgar, infinite now-time
which he has established is nothing but the existential-ontological inter·
pretation of Aristotle's definition of time (par. 81). This critique gives no
weight to the fact that this countable continuum is for Aristotle only an
aspect of motion understood as the actualization of being and that its in·
finity and its now-present are precisely regarded as expressing the ap·
proach of becoming to being, to its eternity and its presentness.
31. The lack of an imaginative mode shows up especially in Heidegger's
discussion of the relation of practice to theory (paras. 15, 69 a, b). Each
has its own temporality, but that of the latter is entirely secondary to the
former. Dasein finds itself always already involved in the world and
bound into a context of instrumentality, of "equipment," which is "ready
to hand" for use. Heidegger gives the example of a hammer: The less the
hammer-thing is merely gaped at, the more Dasein seizes hold of it in a
primordial relation much more revealing of its being than any contempla·
tion would be. Only later, usually when some deficiency is encountered
in the tool, does that speculative stance arise, in which Dasein "presentifies" objects to itself as things independent of their use, so that they are
merely "present at hand." Recall that the present is the least prestigious
of the ecstases. Thus practice is a more primordial mode than contempla·
tive theory.
The phenomena seem to me to be misobserved here. From the wideopen receptivity of a baby's eyes to the slow contemplative inspection
which precedes any proper tool-using, every appearance of satisfying human activity seems to begin with imaginative viewing.
32. Whitrow, a very perspicacious writer on natural time, concludes that
from the viewpoint of natural science time is real (pp. 288-290) on the
grounds that the past is determinate, that the present is the moment of
determination or becoming, and that the future is a mathematical construction subject to correction by observation. Then "time is the mediator between the possible and the actual." However, I cannot see why this
mediating power is called time, rather than, for instance, becoming or the
passage of nature (See Sec. VI 2). Whitrow himself names numerous writers among scientists who deny the reality of time. The general difficulty
is that in most of these treatments time is either already defined so as to
enter the discussion as real or that the issue of its reality is not even
raised.
Whitehead, on the other hand, is careful to refrain from using the word
time for his "fundamental fact," the "passages of nature," which includes spatial as well as temporal transitions. The passing of a temporal
duration is an "exhibition" of this passage of nature, which is also responsible for the uniqueness of each act of perception and for the terminus,
i.e., its object (pp. 54-55).
33. The etymology of chr6nos is unfortunately obscure. Both Greek
words for time are masculine, and so, naturally, are the representations.
In English, time, perhaps under the influence of feminine German Zeit,
is sometimes given female attributes: "the womb of time," "sluttish
time" (Sonnet 55), though we also speak of "Father Time."
104
34. A difficulty about making perceived motion precede time might
seem to be raised by the well-known discovery in the physiology of per·
ception that there are quanta of perception, i.e., minimal times, below
which events remain unregistered or subliminal, and threshold speeds
above which the individual position of a mobile cannot be discriminated
and its path appears as a streak. These temporal effects might seem to
imply that time underlies them and is their condition of possibility, were
it not for the fact that this time is itself measured by micro-motions observable to artificially refined perception.
35. The literature concerning the imagination, physiological, psychological, and philosophical, in this century is enormous. Of the last the most
interesting writings seem to me to be those of the phenomenologists.
They take their departure from Husserl's Ideas (1913, especially par. Ill).
The fullest and most original treatment is Sartre's Imagination (1936).
The chief and most absorbing questions about the imagination are: Is
it a faculty? How can it hold sensory objects without a material substrate?
Are images likenesses? Whence comes their special affectivity? What is
spatiality such that we can have an inner space-consciousness? Why are
images primarily spatial and visual? What is the relation of voluntary to
involuntary memory-images? And above all, how is the imagination related to thought: as object, product, instigator?
36. For a lovely study of the dance types of music and how they convey
bodily schemata which in turn express the soul, see Wye Jamison Allanbrook, "Dance, Gesture and The Marriage of Figaro," The College XXIV,
no. l (Aprill974), pp. 13-21.
37. The past is not given priority, at least not by any philosophical writers on time that I know of. For Nietzsche it is the future with its possibili·
ties that conditions the present, since out of it come all valuations, including the true as that which is destined to be. So also it is in the future
that Heidegger grounds authentic human existence. However, for the
most part some kind of present is favored. For example, Sartre transforms
Heidegger's analysis so as to place the ontolo·gical present at the center.
He understands it as the phase in which consciousness makes itself
present to all non-conscious beings, thus originally uniting them as copresent in a world (Being and Nothingness II l b). Hume gives primary
place to the vivid presence of sense impressions, of which memory and
imagination are but pale residues (Enquiry II).
As for the ancients, Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine, they honor an
a temporal present, and of them Aristotle with the most authoritative ex·
plicitness: Speaking of the divine intellect he says (Met. 1072 b 14-18):
Its way of life is like the best we have for a brief time. For that being is
always in this state (which is impossible for us), since its actuality is
also a pleasure. And because of that, wakefulness, perception, intel·
lection are most pleasant, and because of these, hopes and memories.
This view of the phases of time as reflecting divine eternity is of course
compatible with the claim that the past is primary in human life.
SUMMER 1983
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Sterling, J. Walter
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Lord, Susan
Fried, S. Richard
Sachs, Joe
Stickney, Cary
Wilson, Curtis A.
Sachs, Joe
Allanbrook, Douglas
Brann, Eva T. H.
Beall, J. H.
Cantor, Paul A.
de Grazia, Margreta
Zelenka, Robert S.
Webb, James
Dry, Murray
Macshler, Chaninah
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�Editor:
Leo Raditsa
FROM OUR READERS
ON MARRYING
Managing Editor:
To the Editor the St. John's Review:
Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant:
Susan Lord
Consulting Editors:
David Bolotin
Eva Brann
Curtis A. Wilson
Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome,
but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also
welcome.
THESTjOHNSREVIEW (formerly The College) is published by
the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland
21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Samuel S. Kutler, Dean.
Published thrice yearly, in the autumn-winter, winter-spring,
and summer. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions:
$12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three years,
payable in advance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's
Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404.
Volume XXXIV
WINTER/SPRING 1983
Number 2
© 1983, St. John's College; "Adam Smith: Political Economy as
Moral Philosophy," © 1983, Gertrude Himmelfarb; "The Media-Shield of the Utopians," © 1983, Rae! jean Isaac and Erich
Isaac; "Benjamin Constant on Ancient and Modern Liberty,"
© 1983 Stephen Holmes. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Cover: Left: Americans advancing for attack on Hindenburg Line, 1918,
superimposed on American flag girl, Cambridge, Mass., 1977,
by Dimitri Fotos (with homage to Delacroix). Right, upper: Joseph
Dzhugashvili, police photographs, 1908; Right, lower: Benjamin Con·
stant, silhouette, 1792.
Composition: Action Camp Co., Inc.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co.
I find two things fuildamenta11y wrong with Ms. Jenson's essay
"On Marrying" (Autumn/Winter 1982-83).
One is what she has chosen to ignore. While she deplores the
ease and rapidity with which unmarried relationships dissolve,
she has ignored completely the very high divorce rate. Currently,
for every lOO people who marry, 50 are divorced. To acknowl·
edge this fact is to take away the basis for her argument that marriage makes love permanent.
In fact, few things last very long in this age. As a society, we
take for granted the ability to move around at great speeds; we
expect to change careers at least once in our lives; we hold jobs,
on the average, for just two years; and we fully expect the various
cars, computers, telephones, and other machines we use every
day to be outmoded in less than a decade. It shouldn't be surprising to note that our love relationships~ whether married or unmarried-partake of the same speed and impermanence that in·
forms everything else we do.
So there is something very much beside the point about Ms.
Jenson's focus on marriage as the salvation of love and permanence in human relations. I might argue for people to plan never
to marry if they would like to stay together, but it would seem a
little irrelevant. When there are structural problems in the
house, it's foolish to argue over what wallpaper to buy.
The second point is somewhat smaller, but still disturbing. Ms.
Jenson does not acknowledge the desire for long-term relation·
ships between homosexuals. Many gay men and women would
like to be married to their partners, but few religious authorities
will perform such a ceremony, and no legal authorities recognize
it. Does this mean all gay love relationships are doomed to impermanence? I don't believe Ms. Jenson cares less about this significant minority than she does about heterosexuals, but she fails to
mention them or the unique problem they face as people who
might wish to marry, but cannot. If she really believes that marriage is what makes love last, it is strange that she doesn't advocate the availability of marriage for gay men and women.
Successful long-term love relationships I'm familiar with are
the result of the individuals' emotional maturity and strength,
and having nothing to do with whether or not the parties involved have cleared their union with the authorities.
jOAN KOCSIS '78
Jamaica Plain, MA
Kari Jenson replies:
I wrote, precisely, to address Ms. Koscis's "structural prob·
lems." I cannot share the seeming equanimity with which she
lumps "love relationships" together with cars and computers. It
is one thing to expect my telephone to be outdated in five years,
quite another to expect the same of my lover. When we use peo-
�'HESTJOHNSREVIEWWINTERSPRING 1983
3
Adam Smith: Political Economy as Moral Philosophy
Gertrude Himme!farb
15
Ambiguities in Kant's Treatment of Space Arthur Collins
34
Black and White (poem) Elliott Zuckerman
35
The Media-Shield of the Utopians
Rae/ jean Isaac and Erich Isaac
50
Arrival (poem)
51
Benjamin Constant on Ancient and Modern Liberty
Stephen Holmes
64
65
Sixteen Eighteen (poem) Elliott Zuckerman
Elliott Zuckerman
The Holdup at Tiflis on June 26, 1907: the "Exes"
Mark Aldanov
77
Poems
81
Letters on Legitimacy
87
Guglielmo Ferrero and Legitimacy
93
My Memoir of Our Revolution
Rachel Hadas
Guglielmo Ferrero-Gaetano Mosca
Carlo Mongardini
Daniel Ardrey
110
With Orjan at the GreatJapan Exhibition (poem)
Elliott Zuckerman
111
The Division of the West-and Perception Leo F. Raditsa
REVIEW ESSAY
140
On Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth
review essay by Gregory S. jones
Inside front cover:
FROM OUR READERS
On Marrying joan Kocsis
�ple in the same way that we use machines, when we regard others as means towards our gratificatio,il, rather than as ends in
themselves, we are indeed in trouble. I intended to sort out a few
of the problems we have with commitment to another human
being, and to learn both what prevents us from forming such a
commitment and, in part, what breaks the tie once formed.
Our high divorce rate is part of the general problem. For the
same reasons that we are so reluctant to marry in the first place,
marriage itself is no longer seen as irrevocable. (Now when we
marry we make financial plans in case of divorce. Even more
laughably, many of us conveniently change the marriage vows to
specify faithfulness "until love ends," rather than "until death
parts us.") When marriage is not understood as a binding institution, as a promise which means something, it must lose much of
its effect.
Only a fool would claim that marriage automatically makes love
permanent. But marriage provides those conditions essential to
love's growth, and without which love will almost surely die. That
the couple who has decided to make their love permanent must
work constantly, and like crazy, goes without saying. Even if I
divorced my husband tomorrow, it would say little about the truth
of my argument, only that I had failed in practice.
I suspect homosexual relationships are in fact more difficult to
sustain for many reasons-among them, the absence oflegal recognition. Homosexual and heterosexual relationships, however,
strike me as essentially different.
2
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�Adam Smith: Political Economy as
Moral Philosophy
Gertrude Himmelfarb
If there was a "chasm" in the history of social thought,
as R. H. Tawney held-a chasm between a moral society
and an immoral one, between one organized on the principle of the common good and another one on the principle
of self-interest-it must surely, one would think, be attributed to Adam Smith. John Ruskin called Smith that "halfbred and half-witted Scotchman," who deliberately perpetrated the blasphemy, "Thou shalt hate the Lord thy God,
damn His laws, and covet thy neighbour's goods." 1 It cannot have been an accident that the publication of Smith's
heretical work coincided with two major revolutions: the
American Revolution which professed to speak in the
name of a new Hscience of politics," and the ulndustrial
Revolution" which created the material conditions for both
the new political science and the new political economy.
This theory invites the obvious demurral, that the
Wealth of Nations was not all that revolutionary, either in
its ideas or in its effects. Even the distinctive terms associated with it antedated it by many years. "Political economy" made its appearance as early as 1615 in Antoyne de
Montchretien's Traictii de l'oeconomie politique. The term
was introduced into England by William Petty later that
century, and received wide currency with the publication,
almost a decade before the Wealth of Nations, of James
Steuart's Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy.
Another French import was ulaissez faire," which goes
back at least to the time of Louis XIV, when a merchant is
reported to have pleaded with the king's minister, Colbert,
Distinguished Professor at the Graduate School of the City University of
New York, Gertrude Himmelfarb has written On Liberty and Liberalism:
The Case oflohn Stuart Mill (1974), Victorian Minds (1968), Darwin and
the Darwinian Revolution (1959) and Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience
and Politics (1952).
The above essay comes from a forthcoming book, The Idea of Poverty:
England in the Early-Industrial Age (Knopf, falll983).
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
"Laissez nous faire." The phrase was later popularized by
the French Physiocrats in their struggle against the highly
regulated economy of the old regime. Petty preferred the
Latin version, Vadere sicut vult. 2 Smith himself used nei-·
ther the French nor the Latin phrase in the Wealth of Nations. Nor, more surprisingly, did Malthus or Ricardo, although the phrase had come into general usage by their
time. It is ironic that this doctrine, which is thought of as
distinctively English, should have retained its French form
and that to this day there should be no satisfactory English
equivalent. (Neither free trade" nor jjindividualism" expresses quite the same idea.)
The "division of labor," which Smith did use frequently-which was, in fact, the keystone of his workwas adopted, complete with the famous pin-factory illustration (and with the same eighteen operations), from the
Encyclopiidie, the latter probably inspired by the account
of the same manufacturing process (this time in twentyfive operations) in Chambers' Cyclopaedia, published almost three decades before the Encyclopiidie and almost
five before the Wealth of Nations. One historian, claiming
Plato as the source of the idea, pointed out that Smith's
library contained three complete sets of the Dialogues. 3
But Smith could as well have come upon the concept in
Thucydides or Aristotle, or in the work of his own friend
Adam Ferguson, whose Essay on the History of Civil Society appeared in 1767. Every manufacturer, Ferguson casually remarked, knew that "the more he can subdivide the
tasks of his workmen, and the more hands he can employ
on separate articles, the more are his expenses diminished,
and his profits increased."4
The question of originality had been anticipated by
Smith himself. In 1755, before the publication of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and long before the Wealth of Nations, he wrote a paper claiming priority for some of the
leading ideas of both works, including the principle (al11
3
�though not the phrase) of laissez faire. This and other of
his ideas, he pointed out, had been. the subject of his lectures in 1750, his last year at the University of Edinburgh,
and in the dozen years (1752-64) during which he occupied the chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of
Glasgow. The lectures had been written out by his clerk in
Edinburgh, and he could "adduce innumerable witnesses,
both from that place and from this, who will ascertain
them sufficiently to be mine."5 If Smith's claim was unduly proprietary (and uncharacteristically immodest), it
had objective merit. While specific ideas in the Wealth of
Nations were not entirely novel, the implications of the
work as a whole were. Walter Bagehot put the matter well
when he said that the doctrine of free trade was indeed "in
the air," but it was not accepted or established; "on the
contrary, it was a tenet against which a respectable parent
would probably caution his son; still it was known as a
tempting heresy and one against which a warning was
needed." 6 What Smith did-and this was his historic
achievement-was to convert a minor heresy into a new
and powerful orthodoxy.*
Another kind of priority raises more serious questions.
Was it the intellectual revolution wrought by the Wealth of
Nations (assuming there was such a revolution) that was
decisive, or the industrial revolution presumably reflected
in that work? What in fact was the relation between the
two? It is interesting that after several decades during
which the expression "industrial revolution" fell into disrepute, it has recently been revived and is now used less
apologetically. The timing has been somewhat changed,
the preferred date today being 1780 rather than 1760,
which was the date assigned it by Arnold Toynbee when
he popularized the term a century ago.B The chronology
points to the problem. According to Smith himself the basic thesis of the Wealth of Nations had been conceived as
early as 1750, which suggests that it anticipated the industrial revolution, at least as that revolution is commonly defined (not, to be sure, the division of labor or factories,
both of which existed at the time). Most economic historians, acutely aware of the chronology of technological and
economic developments, tend to minimize the connection
*Joseph Schumpeter was far harsher in his judgment. The Wealth of Nations, he said, contained not a "single analytic idea, principle, or method
that was entirely new in 1776," nothing that would entitle it to rank with
Newton's Principia or Darwin's Origin as an "intellectual achievement."
Conceding that it was nonetheless a "great performance" deserving of its
success, he then went on to explain that this success was due to Smith's
limitations.
Had he been more brilliant, he would not have been taken so seriously. Had he dug more deeply, had he unearthed more recondite
truth, had he used difficult and ingenious methods, he would not
have been understood. But he had no such ambitions; in fact he disliked whatever went beyond plain common sense. He never moved
above the heads of even the dullest readers . ... And it was Adam
Smith's good fortune that he was thoroughly in sympathy with the
humors of his time. l-Ie advocated the things that were in the offing,
and he made his analysis serve them.7
4
between the industrial revolution and the new political
economy. Intellectual historians, on the other hand, seeking to ground ideas in sOcial and economic history, use
such words as <~insight" and <~foresight" to signify some
kind of connection, however tenuous.9
Whatever the resolution of this debate-whether it was
from <~ideas" or "reality" that Smith drew his inspiration,
whether the Wealth of Nations was primarily prescriptive
or descriptive-the effect of Smith's work was to give
technology and industry a new and decisive role, not only
in the ·economy but in society. The division of labor (if
only the relatively primitive kind found in a pin factory)
became the harbinger of a social revolution as momentous
as anything dreamed of by political reformers and revolutionaries. It is in this sense that the book was genuinely
revolutionary, in creating a political economy that made
the wealth and welfare of the people dependent on a
highly developed, expanding, industrial economy and on a
self-regulating "system of natural liberty."
Perhaps it was because this revolutionary thesis
emerged so naturally in the course of the book, starting
with the homely illustration of the pin factory, that it was
accepted so readily. Some of Smith's friends were afraid
that the book was too formidable to have any immediate
impact. David Hume consoled Smith that while it required too close a reading to become quickly popular,
eventually, by its "depth and solidity and acuteness" as
well as its "curious facts," it would "at last take the public
attention." 10 In fact, in spite of its forbidding appearance
(two large volumes, a total of eleven hundred pages), the
work achieved a considerable measure of popularity, and
sooner than Hume had anticipated. Within a month of its
publication, the publisher reported that sales were better
than might have been expected of a book requiring so
much thought and reflection, qualities, he regrett~d, that
<~do not abound among modern readers." 11 The first edition sold out in six months, a second appeared early in
1778, and three others followed in the dozen years before
Smith's death. It was translated into French, German, Italian, Danish, and Spanish, and received the ultimate mark
of success in the form of a lengthy abridgement. Smith's
first biographer, writing three years after his death, was
pleased to report that Smith had had the satisfaction of
seeing his principles widely accepted during his lifetime
and witnessing their application to the commercial policy
of England.
There were some critics, to be sure: the economist and
agriculturist Arthur Young, who thought the book full of
((poisonous errors," and the Whig leader Charles James
Fox, who said that he had never read it (although he cited
it in a debate in parliament) and claimed not to understand
the subject but was certain that he heartily despised it. 12
But even the radicals offered little serious objection to it,
some (Thomas Paine and Richard Price, for example) actually declaring themselves admirers of Smith. For a short
time after his death, when anti-French feelings ran high,
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�the charge was heard that his teachings were hostile to
government and therefore subversive. Apart from that
brief period, the prevailing attitude was overwhelmingly
favorable, with some of the most prominent men of the
time-Hume, Burke, Gibbon, Pitt, Lansdowne, Northproudly proclaiming themselves his disciples.
The ultimate accolade, the comparison of Smith with
Newton, 13 recalls the reception given to that other latterday Newton, Charles Darwin. Indeed, the Wealth of Nations and the Origin of Species had much in common: Both
were classics in their own time, and for some of the same
reasons. Each had been amply prepared for by the reputation of its author, by the importance he himself attached
to it and the many years he devoted to it, and by tantalizing previews in the form of conversations, letters, and lec-
tures. And each announced itself, by the boldness of its
thesis, its comprehensiveness, and its imposing title, as a
major intellectual event. Whatever questions might be
raised about its originality or validity, its importance and
influence are hardly in dispute. For good or ill, An Inquiry
into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations heralded the beginning of "political economy" as that term
was generally understood at the time-"classical economics" as a later generation was to know it.
The basic themes of the Wealth of Nations are too familiar to need elaboration: the division oflabor making for increased productivity and thus the increased "opulence" of
all of society; the fundamental facts of human natureself-interest (or "self-love") and the "propensity to truck,
barter, and exchange" -which were the generating force
of the economic process; the "invisible hand" (a metaphor
used only once but implied throughout) which made the
individual's interest an instrument for the general good;
and the "system of natural liberty" which was the only certain means to achieve both the wealth of nations and the
welfare of individuals.l 4 The argument was worked out in
great detail under such headings as money, trade, value,
labor, capital, rent.
One subject that did not appear in the chapter titles or
sub-heads was poverty. Yet this was as much a theme of
the book as wealth itself. Indeed, it may be argued that if
the Wealth of Nations was less than novel in its theories of
money, trade, or value, it was genuinely revolutionary in
its view of poverty and its attitude toward the poor.
It was not, however, revolutionary in the sense which is
often supposed: the demoralization of the economy resulting from the doctrine oflaissez faire, the demoralization of
man implied in the image of "economic man," and the de-
moralization of the poor who found themselves at the
mercy of forces over which they had no control-over
which, according to the new political economy, no one
had any cpntroJ.15 This is a common reading of the Wealth
of Nations, but not a just one. For it supposes that Smith's
idea of a market economy was devoid of moral purpose,
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
that his concept of human nature was mechanistic andreductivist, and that his attitude towards the poor was indifferent or callous. Above all it fails to take account of the
fact that Smith was a moral philosopher, by conviction as
well as profession. As the Professor of Moral Philosophy at
the University of Glasgow and the celebrated author of
The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he could hardly have
thought it his mission to preside over the dissolution of
moral philosophy.
Published in 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments went
through four editions before the Wealth of Nations appeared, and another edition a few years later. Its three
French translations made Smith almost as well known
among the philosophes as Hume was. Today Smith's fame
rests so completely upon the Wealth of Nations one might
be tempted to dismiss the earlier work as just that, an early
work that was overshadowed and superseded by his later,
major work. In his own time, however, his reputation de-
rived at least as much from the earlier book, and this even
after the publication of the Wealth of Nations. (In the
Memoir of Smith written three years after his death, Dugald Steward devoted twenty-six pages, one-third of the
whole, to Moral Sentiments and only seventeen pages to
the Wealth of Nations.) Smith had always planned to revise
Moral Sentiments, and the last year of his life was devoted
entirely to that task. The new edition expanded upon, but
did not substantively alter, the thesis of the original. The
most important change was the addition of a chapter, the
title of which testifies to his abiding concern: "Of the Corruption of Our Moral Sentiments, Which is Occasioned by
this Disposition to Admire the Rich and the Great, and to Despise or Neglect Persons of Poor and Mean Condition." 16
A major theme of controversy among Smith scholars
has been Das Adam Smith-Problem, as a German commentator portentously labelled it-the question of the
congruence of Moral Sentiments with the Wealth of Nations.l7 About the doctrine of Moral Sentiments itself there
is little dispute. The operative word in that book was "sympathy." Sympathy was presumed to be as much a principle
of human nature as self-interest; indeed it informed selfinterest since it was one of the pleasures experienced by
the individual when he contemplated or contributed to
the good of another. "To feel much for others and little for
ourselves, ... to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human
nature; and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consists their
whole grace and propriety." Smith distinguished his idea
of sympathy from Hutcheson's "moral sense," which was
so radically at variance with self-interest that it supposed
virtue to reside in the denial of one's interest and the defiance of one's nature. But Hutcheson's doctrine, Smith ar-
gued, at least had the merit of maintaining a distinction
between virtue and vice, in contrast to the "wholly pernicious," "licentious system" of Mandeville, which made no
such distinction and recognized no motive, no principle of
5
�conduct, other than self-interest.l 8* Unlike Mandeville or
Bentham, Smith was able to credit such sentiments and to
use unapologetically such words as sympathy, beneficence, virtue, humanity, love of others. There were occasions, he insisted, when the interests of the individual had
to make way for the interests of others, and this regardless
of any calculations of utility.
One individual must never prefer himself so much even to
any other individual, as to hurt or injure that other, in order to
in the charges of "impertinent jealousy/' "mean rapacity,"
umean and malignant expedients," "sneaking arts," "interesting sophistry," "interested falsehood."24 One of
Smith's main criticisms of the mercantile system was that
it encouraged merchants and manufacturers to be selfish
and duplicitous.
Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of
the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby
lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They
benefit himself, though the benefit to the one should be
say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are
much greater than the hurt or injury to the other.20
silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains.
The wise and virtuous man is at all times willing that his
own private interest should be sacrificed to the public interest
of his own particular order or society. He is at all times willing,
too, that the interest of this order or society should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the state or sovereignty, of
which it is only a subordinate part. He should, therefore, be
equa1ly willing that all those inferior interests should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the universe.21
The argument of Moral Sentiments is subtle, complicated, and not without difficulties, but even the barest
statement of it is enough to demonstrate that Smith was
hardly the ruthless individualist or amoralist he is sometimes made out to be. Whatever difficulties there may be
in the reconciliation of Moral Sentiments with the Wealth
of Nations, it is clear enough that Smith intended both as
part of his grand "design", that he had the Wealth of Nations in mind even before he wrote Moral Sentiments, and
that he remained committed to Moral Sentiments, reissuing and revising it long after the Wealth of Nations was
published.22
A close reading of the Wealth of Nations itself suggests
that political economy as Smith understood it was part of a
larger moral philosophy, a new kind of moral economy.
Schumpeter complained that Smith was so steeped in the
tradition of moral philosophy derived from scholasticism
and natural law that he could not conceive of economics
per se, an economics divorced from ethics and politics.2l
The point is well taken, although not necessarily in criticism. The bias and the rhetoric of the moral philosopher
crop up again and again in the Wealth of Nations: in the
condemnation of the "vile maxim," "All for themselves
and nothing for other people"; in the proposition that the
trade of the nation should be conducted on the same principles that govern private affairs; in the denunciations of
manufacturers and merchants who were all too willing to
sacrifice the public interest for their private interests and
were prepared to use any strategem to achieve their ends;
7
*By the same token Smith would have rejected the kind of utilitarianism
espoused by Jeremy Bentham, who said that he could not conceive of a
human being "in whose instance any public interest he can have had, will
not, insofar as it depends upon himself, have been sacrificed to his own
personal interest." In fact, Bentham did conceive of one such human
being-himself, whom he once described as "the most philanthropic of the
philanthropic: philanthropy the end and instrument of his ambition." !9
6
They complain only of those of other people.
The clamour and sophistry of merchants and manufacturers easily persuade them that the private interest of a part,
and of a subordinate part of the society, is the general interest
of the whole.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for
merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise
prices.
The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce
which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to
with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after
having been long and carefully examined, not only with the
most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It
comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly
the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.
It is the industry which is carried on for the benefit of the
rich and powerful, that is principally encouraged by our mercantile system. That which is carried on for the benefit of the
poor and the indigent, is too often, either neglected, or oppressed.25
These attacks on "private interests" that were in conflict with the "public interest," especially with the interests of the "poor and indigent," may seem difficult to reconcile with the famous dictum: "It is not from the
benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that
we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own
interest." 26 But this principle of self-interest was predicated on certain conditions: that the butcher, brewer, and
baker not take unfair advantage of others, that they abide
by the rules of the free market, that they not "conspire,"
"deceive," and "oppress." Under these conditions self-interest was itself a moral principle-not as lofty as altruism,
but, in the mundane affairs of life (the provision of "dinner"), more reliable and effective.
Hovering over these individual interests, ensuring that
they work together for the greater good of the whole, the
Hpublic interest," was the benevolent, ubiquitous uinvisible hand." 27 The "invisible hand" has been much criticized. If only, it has been said, Smith had not introduced
that unfortunate metaphor with its teleological overtones,
if only he had confined himself to the austere language of
mechanics and nature, he would have avoided much misWINTER/SPRING 1983
�understanding. There is some justice in this complaint.
The invisible hand was indeed invisible; the genius of the
system of 11 naturalliberty" was that it required no 11 hand,"
no intervention, direction, or regulatiori to bring about the
general good. But the metaphor served the important purpose of keeping the reader mindful of the purpose of that
system. It was by means of the invisible hand that the individual was led "to promote an end which was no part of his
intention"; "by pursuing his own interest he frequently
promotes that of society more effectually than when he
really intends to promote it." zs Without that metaphor the
weight of the argument might have rested with the individual's interests. The invisible hand shifted the emphasis
to the public interest. If the metaphor was unfortunate, it
was not for the reason that it was teleological; on the contrary, its utility and justification lay in the fact that it
clearly expressed the teleological cast of the argument.
The general interest that emerged from Smith's system
was '1general" in the Rousseauan or Hegelian sense of a
general interest more elevated than the sum of individual
interests-Hegelian perhaps more than Rousseauan, the
"invisible hand" resembling Hegel's "cunning of reason"
which contrived to make the interests and passions of individuals serve a larger purpose of which the individuals
themselves were unaware.* It was also ~~general" in the pe-
destrian, utilitarian sense of the totality of interests of all
the members of society. This second sense pointed to the
importance of the "people" and the "poor" in Smith's theory. The "wealth of nations" of the title referred not to the
nation in the mercantilist sense-the nation-state whose
wealth was a measure of the power it could exercise vis-avis other states-but to the people comprising the nation.
And "people" not in the political sense of those having a
voice and active part in the political process, but in the
social and economic sense, those working and living in so-
ciety, of whom the largest part were the "lower ranks" or
"poor."
The concern with the people emerged early in the book
in the discussion of the division of labor, when it appeared
that the great advantage of that mode of production was
the "universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest
ranks of the people ... , a general plenty [which] diffuses
itself through all the different ranks of the society." 29 Addressing the ucommon complaint" that since luxuries had
become available to the poor they were no longer content
with the humble food, clothing, and lodging that had once
been their lot, Smith put the question: "Is this improve*There is no suggestion that the "cunning of reason," as it appeared in
Hegel's Philosophy of History, was inspired by Smith's "invisible hand."
But Hegel had read Smith (as well as other political economists, including
Say and Ricardo), and there are distinct echoes of Smith's "market place"
in the Philosophy of Right, especially in the concept of "civil society," the
realm intermediate between the individual and the state in which individuals pursue their private interests.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ment in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people
to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to
the society?" His answer was unequivocal.
Servants, labourers and workmen of different kinds, make
up the far greater part of every great political society. But
what improves the circumstances of the greater part can
never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far
greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but
equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the
whole body of the people, should have such a share of the
produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well
fed, clothed and lodged30
The condition of the poor was decisive, Smith reasoned,
partly by sheer force of numbers; being the largest part of
society, their condition necessarily determined the condition of society as a whole. In part it was a matter of "equity"; as producers of the goods enjoyed by the rest of society, they were entitled to a fair share of those goods. They
also had a special claim to Smith's attention because they
were one of the two orders of society-laborers and landlords-whose interests were "connected with the general
interest of society," in contrast to the third, merchants and
manufacturers, whose interests were often at variance
with it.3I Yet the laborers were at the greatest disadvantage: as consumers they were ill-served by a mercantilist
system that promoted high prices and discouraged imports; and as producers by a system that permitted their
employers, by fair means or foul, to keep wages low and
prices high. The poor, in short, were the chief victims of
the existing system-and would be the chief beneficiaries
of the "natural" system proposed by Smith.
Smith's critique of mercantilism is generally read as an
attack on government regulation and a plea for laissez
faire. But it was much more than that, as contemporaries
were aware. Among other things it WRS a criticism of the
prevailing theory of wages. While Smith was not the first
to question the expediency or desirability of low wages, he
was the first to offer a systematic, comprehensive rationale
for high wages. The consensus at the time was that low
wages were both natural and economically necessary: natural because the poor would not work except out of dire
need, and necessary if the nation were to enjoy a favorable
balance of trade. This was the view of Hume, who explained that in years of scarcity when wages were low, "the
poor labour more, and really live better, than in years of
great plenty, when they indulge themselves in idleness
and riot."3Z Arthur Young put it more succinctly: "Every
one but an idiot knows, that the lower classes must be kept
poor, or they will never be industrious."33 Both admitted
that excessively low wages would provide no incentive to
work. "Two shillings and sixpence a day." Young remarked, "will undoubtedly tempt some to work, who
would not touch a tool for one shilling." 34 But this was an
argument for subsistence wages, not for high wages.
7
�It remained for Smith to defend high wages, the "liberal
reward of labour.''
The liberal reward of labour, as it encourages the propagation so it increases the industry of the common people. The
wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which,
like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the
encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases
the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope
of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in
ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the
utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always
find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than
where they are low: in England, for example, than in Scotland; in the neighbourhood of great towns, than in remote
country places.35
Smith granted that some workers, if they earned enough
in four days to keep them for a week, would be tdle the
other days; but these were a minority. Most workers, he
was convinced, were given to the opposite failing: if they
were well paid by the piece they would so overwork them·
selves as to impair their health. It may have been with
Hume in mind (and out of courtesy to his friend that he
did not quote him to this effect) that Smith disputed the
conventional view. "That men in general should work bet·
ter when they are ill fed than when they are well fed, when
they are disheartened than when they are in good spirits,
when they are frequently sick than when they are gener·
ally in good health, seems not very probable." 36
The doctrine of high wages was a corollary of Smith's
conception of a uprogressive" economy. Since high wages
were the result of increasing wealth and at the same time
the cause of increasing population, only in an expanding
economy, where the demand for labor kept abreast of the
supply, could real wages remain high. "It is in the progres·
sive state, while the society is advancing to the further ac·
quisition, rather than when it has acquired its full complement of riches, that the condition of the labouring poor, of
the great body of the people, seems to be the happiest and
the most comfortable." In a "stationary" state, on the
other hand, the condition of the poor was "dull" and
"hard," and in a a declining" state it was "miserable" and
"melancholy."l7 The division of labor was crucial for the
same reason, because it made for greater productivity and
thus for an expanding, progressive economy where in~
creased wealth could extend to the "lowest ranks of the
people." 38
The idea of a progressive economy places Smith in the
ranks of the "optimists." It may also be his chief claim to
originality. Unlike previous economists for whom one
good could be purchased only at the expense of anotherthe national interest at the expense of individual interests,
agriculture at the expense of industry, the power of the
nation at the expense of the liberty of its citizens, the pro·
8
ductivity of labor at the expense of the happiness of the
laborer-Smith envisioned an economy in which most
goods and interests were compatible and complementary.
Free trade would enhance both freedom and wealth; htgh
wages would ensure productivity and well-being; the self·
interest of the individual would promote, however unw1t·
tingly, the public interest. It was a prescription for a liber·
ating, expanding, prospering, progressive economy m
which all the legitimate values and interests of society sup·
ported and reenforced each other: liberty and prosperity,
the individual and society, industry and agnculture, capi·
tal and labor, wealth and well-being.
This optimistic view of the economy presupposed an
optimistic view of human nature. It is the French philo·
sophes who are usually credited with such a view. But theu
optimism, based upon the potentiality ~nd potency of rea·
son, was not a conspicuously democratic doctnne, at least
not at a time when the mass of the people were unedu·
cated and illiterate. Because reason was so precious, and
because the ordinary people were presumed to be not yet
capable of exercising the degree of reason required for a
truly rational order, most of the philosophes looked to en·
lightened rulers, "benevolent despots," to do for society
what the people could not do for themselves..
.
To Smith (and the Scottish Enlightenment m general) It
was not reason that defined human nature so much as m~
terests, passions, sentiments, sympathies. These were
qualities shared by all people, not in some remote future
but in the present. No enlightened despot was reqmred to
activate those interests, no Benthamite legislator to bring
about a harmony of interests. All that was necessary was to
free people-all people, in all ranks and callings-:--so that
they could act on their interests. From these md1~1dually
motivated freely inspired achons, the general mterest
would ern'erge without any intervention, regulation, or
coercion.
In a sense Smith's was a more modest-"lower," one
might say-view of human nature, and by that token a
more democratic one. If people differed, as they patently
did it was not because of any innate differences but be·
ca~se the qualities common to all had been developed in
them in different degrees. On the nature-nurture tssue, as
we now know it, Smith was unequivocally on the nurture
side.
The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the. very different
genius which appears to disting~ish !llen of different professions when grown up to matunty, IS not upon many occasions' so much the cause, as the effect of the division of labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters,
between a philosopher and a common street porter, for exa~
ple, seems to ~rise not so much from natu:e, as fro~ hab~t,
custom, and education . ... By nature a philosopher IS not m
genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as
a mastiff is from a greyhound. 39
WINTER/ SPRING 1983
�The idea that differences were less the "cause" than the
"effect" of the division of labor radically differentiates
Smith from other philosophers-Plato, most notablywho had used the concept of the division of labor. While
some of Smith's illustrations and "stages of historyn were
reminiscent of Plato, the heart of his thesis could not have
been more dissimilar. Indeed, given Smith's respect for
classical philosophy, and for Plato especially, one may take
his spirited denial of any difference in "nature" between
the philosopher and the street porter as an implicit rebuke
to Plato. To Plato natural differences were precisely the
"cause" rather than the "effect" of the division of labor:
the division of labor reflected the innate differences
among people, and permitted people of essentially different natures to cooperate for the common good. The only
innate quality mentioned by Smith, and the only one necessary to his system, was the jjpropensity to truck, barter,
and exchange." 40 This propensity was shared by porter
and philosopher alike; it was the common denominator
that made it possible for everyone to participate in the division of labor and for everyone to profit from that division. It was also the common denominator that united the
highest and lowest ranks in a single human species, a species in which the varieties were not half so different as
mastiff and greyhound.
Just as the differences among individuals were functional rather than organic, so the differences among the
orders of society were functional rather than hierarchic.
Those three orders were defined by the nature of their income-rent, wages, and profits-not by their position in a
hierarchy-upper, middle, and lower. In fact wage-earners, or laborers, constituted the "second order." 41 Else~
where Smith did use the terms current at the time, "lower
ranks" or "lower classes," to describe the laborers. What
was important about them, however, was not that they
were of the lower classes but that they received their income in the form of wages rather than rent or profit. In
this respect the laborer was a partner in the economic enterprise, the most important partner, Smith sometimes
gave the impression, since it was his labor that was the
source of value. And labor, like rent and profit, was a "patrimony," a form of property entitled to the same consideration as any other kind of property.
The patrimony which every man has in his own labour, as it
is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the
most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies
in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him
from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner
he thinks proper without injury to his neighbour is a plain
violation of this most sacred property.42
There was, however, one point at which this optimistic
vision failed Smith, failed him so seriously, in the opinion
of some recent commentators, as to make him a prophet of
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
doom, a critic of capitalism on the order of Marx-indeed
a precursor of Marx in exposing that fatal flaw of capitalism, the "alienation" of the working class.43
If Smith did anticipate something like Marx's theory of
alienation, as Marx himself intimated, it must also be said
that he avoided the ambiguity that appeared in Marx's
own discussion of that subject as well as in recent Marxist
thought.44 For Smith clearly located the source of alienation (if it may be called that) not in capitalism as such but
in industrialism, and more specifically in the division oflabor that was the peculiar character and the special
strength of modern industry. The poignancy of Smith's argument comes from the paradox that the division oflabor,
which provided the momentum for the progressive economy that was the only hope for the laboring classes, was
also the probable cause of the mental, spiritual, even physical deterioration of those classes.
In the progress of the division oflabour, the employment of
the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is of the
great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very
simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by
their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is
spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the ef-
fects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the
same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the
habit of such exertions, and generally becomes as stupid and
ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The
torpor of his mind renders him, not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any general, noble, or tender sentiments, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even
of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging; and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his
country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally
corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with
abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a
soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders
him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance, in any other employment than that to which he has
been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in
this manner, to be acquired at the expence of his intellectual,
social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor,
that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it. 45
This passage is sufficiently powerful in itself, and sufficiently problematic in the context of Smith's work, to
stand on its own without being assimilated to the Marxist
idea of alienation and without taking on all the difficulties
associated with that idea. There were, one might argue,
two different Marxist ideas: that of the "early Marx,"
where alienation arose in the earliest stages of society as a
9
�result of the separation from physical nature and the division of labor in the family; and that of the "mature Marx,"
where it was attributed to the worker's divorce from the
ownership of the means of production and from the products of his own labour. Neither of these ideas corresponds
to Smith's. For Smith the question of ownership was as
irrelevant as the question of nature or the family. His only
concern was the debilitating effect of the division of labor
in the industrial process. In this respect the factory worker
in a socialist regime~ or in any other form of cooperative or
public enterprise, would suffer just as grievously as the factory worker under capitalism.
That Smith held industrialism rather than capitalism at
fault is apparent from the only other passage in the Wealth
ofNations bearing upon this subject. Here Smith compared
the industrial worker with the agricultural laborer, to the
disadvantage of the former. Husbandry, he argued, required a greater degree of knowledge and experience, judgment and discretion than most industrial trades. The ordi.
nary ploughman might be deficient in the arts of "social
intercourse," his voice and language uncouth by the standards of the townsman, but his "understanding," sharpened by the variety of tasks which he had to perform, was
superior to the mechanic occupied with one or two simple
operations. "How much," Smith concluded,
14
the lower
ranks of people in the country are really superior to those of
the town, is well known to every man whom either business
or curiosity has led to converse much with both."46
If the problem was not alienation in the Marxist sense, it
was in its own terms serious enough, serious not only for
Smith himself, who wrote of it with great passion, but for
the reader who may find it a grave flaw in the argument of
the Wealth of Nations. How can one reconcile this dismal
portrait of the industrial worker reduced to a state of tor-
These discordant images are not reconcilable. What can
be said, however, is that the dominant image, that which
informs by far the largest part of the book and which bears
the largest weight of the argument, is the "optimistic"
one: the image of an active, intelligent, industrious worker,
receiving good wages, constantly bettering himself, and
sharing in the ~~universal opulence" created by the division
of labor and the expansion of industry. It was this scenario
that impressed itself on Smith's readers in his own time
and for generations afterwards. Although Marx, in Capital,
quoted the passage describing the worker stupefied by the
division oflabor, it was not until the "early Marx" and the
idea of alienation came into fashion after World War II
that this passage became the subject of serious attention
and that the vision of
~~another"
Smith, a "pessimistic"
Smith began to emerge.*
It is also important to recall the context in which Smith
praised the farm laborer at the expense of the industrial
worker. The first passage appeared in the midst of his denunciation of the scheming merchants and manufacturers
who "seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against
the public." It was then that Smith put in a good word for
the agricultural classes-laborers as well as farmers-who
were not in the habit of conspiring together and who deserved to be defended against those "very contemptible
authors" who spoke of them so contemptuously.5 2 The
second passage appeared towards the end of the work in a
discussion of the functions of government. Of all these
functions-defense, justice, public works, the support of
the sovereign-the subject to which Smith devoted far the
most space was education. After a lengthy account of the
por, stupidity, and ignorance, lacking in judgment, initiative, courage, or any "intellectual, social, and martial vir-
tues" -all this because of the division oflabor-with the
earlier image of the "hearty," "cheerful" worker who, as a
result of the same division of labor, received a "plentiful
subsistence," enjoyed "bodily strength," was "active, dili-
gent, and expeditious," and looked forward to the "comfortable hope of bettering his condition" and ending his
days in ease and plenty"?47 How can one reconcile the
favorable view of the agricultural laborer, who acquired
"judgment and discretion" because he had to deal with so
many different tasks, with an earlier image of the same laborer who, precisely because he went from one activity to
another, developed the habit of "sauntering," became "in11
dolent," "careless," "slouthful and lazy," incapable of any
vigorous application even on the most pressing occasions"? In that earlier passage Smith contrasted the dilatory farm laborer to the factory boy whose task was the
opening and shutting of a valve, and who was inspired, by
boredom itself, to invent a labor-saving device which was
"one of the greatest improvements" made on the steamengine.48
10
*The two Smiths appear most dramatically in the work of Robert
Heilbroner. His influential history of economic thought, The Worldly Philosophers (1953), presented the conventional optimistic Smith. His recent
work introduces a "deeply pessimistic" Smith, this based not only on the
so-called "alienation" passage, which Heilbroner now emphasizes to the
point where it seems to dominate the Wealth of Nations, but on a reinterpretation of Smith's economic theory. So far from positing a "progressive," expanding economy, Smith is seen as predicting decline and decay:
"material decline awaiting at the terminus of the economic journey,
moral decay suffered by society in the course of its journeying."49 This
argument depends on ascribing to Smith something like a Malthusian
theory, in which higher wages lead to an increase of population, an eventual decline of wages, and thus a stagnant and "stationary" economy. But
Smith had anticipated this argument and had refuted it, at least for the
foreseeable future. So long, he reasoned, as the division of labor continued (the division of labor serving as a metaphor for the process of mechanization and invention), the economy would be able to absorb the higher
wages and remain in a progressive, expanding state.50
When John Stuart Mill, almost three-quarters of a century later, argued
for the desirability as well as the inevitability of a "stationary state," it was
under the influence of Malthus and Ricardo rather than Smith, and on
moral and esthetic as well as economic grounds. Finding competitiveness
and material acquisitiveness disagreeable, he preferred a society in
which, "while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer."51
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�history of educational institutions, he posed the question
of the state's role in education. Should, the "public" -the
Hstate, 11 in the marginal notes-pay attention to the
"edu~
cation of the people," and if so, how should this be done
for the "different orders of the people"? It was at this
point that Smith inserted the dramatic warning about the
dire effects of the division of labor. And it was to forestall
those effects, to prevent the "corruption and degeneracy"
of the laboring people, that he then went on to develop an
elaborate scheme of public education.53
The proposal was simple and bold. The "common peo·
pie," including those "bred to the lowest occupation,"
were to be required to master the essential ingredients of
education-reading, writing, and arithmetic. To this end
the state was to establish a school in every district, charg·
ing a fee so modest that even the common laborer could
afford it, the major cost being borne by the government.
Although the schools themselves would not be compul·
sory, some form of schooling would be. To enforce this
provision, Smith suggested that an examination in the
"three R' s" be required before anyone could enter a guild
or set up in a trade. 54
In one sense the proposal was not remarkable. Smith
was simply drawing upon the experience of Scotland
where the parish schools had taught, as he said, "almost
the whole common people" to read and a great proportion
of them to write and reckon.55 In another sense, however,
it was extraordinary, not only because he proposed to ex·
tend to England a state system of education that had never
existed there and that was bound to incur (as it did even a
century later) a great deal of hostility, but because it went
against the grain of his own doctrine. Having spent the bet·
ter part of two volumes arguing against government regula·
tion, he now advanced a scheme requiring a greater mea~
sure of government involvement than anything that had
ever existed before. In the same chapter in which
he made this proposal he criticized the principle of en·
dowments for schools and colleges on the ground that
they gave the institutions an assured income and relieved
them from the necessity of proving their merit; for the
same reason he opposed salaries for university teachers,
preferring fees paid by individual students to individual in·
structors. Yet here, for the "common people," he urged
the establishment of a state-administered, state-supported,
state-enforced system of education with only token fees to
be paid by the parents-enough to give them a stake in the
education of their children but not enough to cover the
cost of education. Perhaps it was to justify this large depar·
ture from his general principle that he painted so dramatic
a picture of the industrial worker whose degeneracy could
only be arrested by a compulsory system of education.
Having made out so strong a case for public education,
Smith went on to extol the virtues of education as such.
"A man without the proper use of the intellectual faculties
of a man, is, if possible, more contemptible than even a
coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in a still
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
more essential part of the character of human nature."
Even if the state were to derive no practical benefit from
the education of the lower orders, that education would
still warrant its active concern. In fact the state would ben·
efit from it indirectly: a better instructed people were less
inclined to the disorders that came from "delusions of en·
thusiasm and superstition"; they were more likely to be
"decent and orderly"; feeling "respectable" themselves,
they would be respected by others and be respectful of
others; they would not be easily taken in by "faction and
sedition"; and in a free country, where it was important
that the government have the "favourable judgment" of
the people, it was also important that the people should
not judge the government "rashly or capriciously."56
One commentator has described this view of education
as an "unformulated theory of 'social contro\."'57 If this is
so, any idea of education which is more than purely vocational, which attributes to it any effect on character, sensibility, intelligence, and behavior, falls under the same re·
proach. Moreover, any alternative would be similarly suspect. What kind of education could Smith have pro·
posed which would not have been an instrument of social
control? Had he taken the obvious laissez faire position of
denying to the state any role in education (as his contemporary Frederick Eden, for example, did) would this not
have exposed him to the charge of being unconcerned
with the plight of the lower classes, unwilling to exert himself (and the state) in an effort to improve their condition,
perhaps deliberately keeping them in a state of ignorance
so that they would remain docile and subservient? Or if he
had recommended the kind of education Hannah More favored, reading, but not writing or arithmetic, on the assumption that reading alone was necessary to inculcate
the precepts of religion and the "habits of industry and virtue," was this, too, not an obvious exercise of social con·
troJ?58 And all the voluntary schools of the time-charity
schools, Sunday schools, night schools, industry schools,
schools connected with workhouses and poorhouseswhich provided the rudiments of literacy for large numbers of people who would otherwise have been totally illit·
erate, were these reprehensible for the same reason, or
were they in any way preferable to Smith's plan?
It might be said that it is not Smith's proposal for a comprehensive, state-supported system of education that is
suspect, but the specific moral purpose he attached to it,
this being all the more ominous in view of the role of the
state. Or perhaps the objection is not so much to the exercise of "social control" as to the violation of the "indigenous" culture of the poor, the imposition upon them of
alien "middle-class values." Again, this is to ignore the contemporary context. Smith was not arguing against latter·
day romantics who idealize illiteracy as part of a natural,
superior, folk culture. He was arguing, at least implicitly,
against those of his contemporaries who denied to the
poor the capacity and opportunity to achieve those "middle-class values," who thought that no amount of educa-
11
�tion could civilize, socialize, and moralize them, or who
worried that an educated populace would be restless, demanding, discontent. When Smith urged that the poor be
educated so that they would become better citizens, better
workers, and better human beings, he was not demeaning
the poor but crediting them with the virtues ("values," in
modern parlance) he himself held in such high esteem.
In a brilliant commentary on Smith, Joseph Cropsey has
argued that the dual purpose of his political economy was
to make freedom possible and to make of freedom a form
of virtue. 59 This was also, one might say, the purpose of his
system of education. Just as the laborer, by dint of his labor, was to be a free and full participant in the economy, so
by dint of his education, he was to be a free and full participant in society. For Smith freedom was itself a virtue and
the precondition of all other virtues. It was this cardinal
virtue that he wanted to make available to the "common
people," even to those "bred to the lowest occupation."
If Smith's political economy was not the amoral, asocial
doctrine it has sometimes been made out to be, neither
was it as dogmatically, rigorously laissez faire as had been
thought. 60 His plan of education was only one of several
instances in which he departed from the strict construction of laissez faire, and not unwittingly but deliberately.
He did so when he proposed a law to limit the freedom of
bankers to issue notes, and when he advocated retaining
the law against usury. He also did so when he implicitly
sanctioned the poor laws.
Smith's position on the poor laws has been generally ignored or misunderstood. Because he was so forthright in
criticizing the Act of Settlement of 1662, it is sometimes
assumed that he was also opposed to the poor laws.61 It is
significant, however, that while he did attack the Settlement Act (and the Statute of Apprentices as well), he did
not attack the poor laws. Moreover, his criticism of the
Settlement Act had nothing to do with the giving of relief
but only with limiting the mobility of labor and violating
the liberty of the poor.
To remove a man who has committed no misdemeanour
from the parish where he chooses to reside, is an evident violation of natural liberty and justice . ... There is scarce a poor
man in England of forty years of age, I will venture to say, who
has not in some part of his life felt himself most cruelly oppressed by this i1l-contrived law of settlements.62
This passage was much quoted (and disputed) at the time,
and Smith was credited with helping bring about the reform of the laws of settlement in 1795. What Smith conspicuously did not do was to challenge the poor law itself,
the obligation to provide relief for those who could not
provide for themselves. Nor was he one of those who, in
the years following the publication of the Wealth of Nations, expressed anxiety about the mounting costs of relief.
He died before the movement to restrict relief reached its
12
peak, but not before Joseph Townsend and others had
raised the alarm and urged the drastic reform, if not the
abolition, of the poor laws.
On the subject of taxation Smith exhibited the same
pragmatic, humane temper and the same concern for the
poor. His first principle was that taxes be levied "in proportion" to the ability to pay; and the corollary was that they
be levied only on "luxuries" rather than "necessaries." He
went on to define ~~necessaries" as "not only the commodi-
ties which are indispensably necessary for the support of
life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to
be without" -linen shirts and leather shoes, for example.
In the same spirit he recommended that highway tolls on
"carriages of luxury" (coaches, postchaises) should be
higher than on "carriages of necessary use" (carts, wagons), so that "the indolence and vanity of the rich is made
to contribute in a very easy manner to the relief of the
poor."63 Today, when it is taken for granted that necessity
and luxury are relative terms, Smith's ideas on the subject
may seem unremarkable. In his own time, when many of
his contemporaries were bitterly complaining about the
"luxuries of the poor," and when the low-wage theorists
were using the evidence of such luxuries-and precisely
linen shirts and leather shoes-as an argument against
higher wages, Smith's views were notably progressive.
So, too, were his views on mercantilisin. Among his
other objections to mercantilist regulations was the fact
that they were generally in the interests of the merchants
and manufacturers and against the interests of the workers. Indeed on the few occasions when they were otherwise, he favored retaining them, even at the expense of
the principle of free trade.
Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are
always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is
sometimes otherwise when it is in favour of the masters.64
Thus he disapproved of the regulation of wages-which
established not a minimum but a maximum rate of
wages-and supported the law requiring employers to pay
their workers in money rather than in goods. "This law
(payment in money] is in favour of the workmen; but the
8th of George [the fixing of wages] is in favour of the masters." For the same reasons he protested against the injustice of permitting masters to combine while forbidding
workers to do so. 65
More important than the effect of this or that policy on
the poor was the image of the poor implicit in these policies. These were the "creditable people, even of the lowest
order" who deserved more than the bare necessities of life,
the '(sober and industrious poor" who were the proper
beneficiaries of a proportionate system of taxation, the
"lowest ranks of the people" who would become more, not
less, industrious as a result of high wages and who would
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�benefit, morally and materially, from a progressive economy. That Smith, like most of his countrymen, thought it
just to devise policies that would favor the "sober and industrious poor" rather than the "dissolute and disorderly"
is not surprising. What is more interesting is his confident
assumption that the overwhelming number of the poor
were sober and industrious. It was this assumption that
permitted him to "connect" the interests of the "labouring poor" with the "general interest" of society. And not
only their interests but their natures. It was because the
poor were presumed to have the same virtues and passions
as everyone else, because there were no innate differences
separating them from the other classes, that they were capable of working within the "system of natural liberty"
and profiting from it as much as everyone else. These
"creditable" poor were capable and desirous of bettering
themselves, capable and desirous of exercising the virtues
inherent in human nature, capable and desirous of the liberty that was their right as responsible individuals.66
This is not the doctrine cynically described by Anatole
France: "The law is equal for all; rich and poor alike are
free to sleep under a bridge." Smith did not pretend that
the "formal" equality of the law, even the "natural" equality of the laws of political economy, could be applied to all
indiscriminately. This is why he devised a state system of
education specifically intended for the poor, why he proposed the kinds of taxes he did, why he did not object to
poor relief, why he supported regulations favoring workers, why he based his system on a policy of high wages and
an expanding economy. He did not shrink from the facts
of inequality or deny the need for correctives and palliatives. But neither did he retreat from his basic assumption:
that the poor, as much as the rich, were free, responsible,
moral agents. Later, this ideal of moral responsibility was
to be turned against the poor, used to justify the denial of
poor relief and the opposition to such protective ("paternalistic," as was said pejoratively) measures as factory acts.
To Smith the idea of moral responsibility had quite the
opposite function: to establish the claim of the poor to
higher wages, a higher standard of living, a higher rank in
life-to whatever goods might accrue to them as a result of
a free, expanding economy.
Between the old "moral economy" and Smith's political
economy there was a gulf-a chasm, some would say. The
former depended, at least in principle, on a system of regulations derived from equity, tradition, and law, a system
prescribing fair prices, just wages, customary rights, corporative rules, paternalistic obligations, hierarchical relationships-all of which were intended to produce a structured,
harmonious, stable, secure, organic order. By contrast, the
"system of natural liberty" prided itself on being open,
mobile, changeable, individualistic, with all the risks but
also all the opportunities associated with freedom. The
contrast is to a certain extent artificial, the old moral economy having been much attenuated in the century before
Smith, and the new political economy having its own
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
moral imperatives and constraints. For Smith political
economy was not an end in itself but a means to an end,
that end being the wealth and well-being, moral and material, of the "people," of whom the "laboring poor" were
the largest part. And the poor themselves had a moral status in that economy-not the special moral status they enjoyed in a fixed, hierarchic order, but that which adhered
to them as individuals in a free society sharing a common
human, which is to say, moral, nature.
1. John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of
Great Britain (1876), in Works, ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, London 1907, XXVIII, 516,764.
2. On the early history of the expression "laissez faire," see Dugald
Stewart, Biogrdbhical Memoir of Adam Smith, New York 1966 (1st ed.,
1793), 93, n.1; August Oncken, Die Maxime Laissez-faire et laissez-passer,
Bern 1886; Edward R. Kittrell," 'Laissez Faire' in English Classical Economics," Journal of the History of Ideas, 1966, 610-20; Guy Routh, The
Origin of Economic Ideas, New York 1977,44-45.
.
3. Vernard Foley, "The Division of Labor in Plato and Smith," History of
Political Economy, 1974,242. In his edition of the Wealth of Nations London 1904, Edwin Cannan cited Mandeville as the source of the expression (3). But the passage quoted does not contain that phrase, and the
illustration was watch-making rather than pin-making. In this general
sense dozens of other writers might be credited with it.
4. Adam Ferguson, Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Duncan
Forbes, Edinbmgh 1966 (1st ed., 1767), 181.
5. Stewart, 68. In Smith's first year at Glasgow, 1751-52, he was Professor of Logic. His lectures on moral philosophy started in 1752 when he
was transferred to that chair.
6. Walter Bagehot, "Adam Smith as a Person" (1876), Collected Works,
Camb., Mass. 1968, III, 93.
7, Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, ed. Elizabeth Boody
Schumpeter, New York 1974 (Is! ed., 1954),184-86.
8. Arnold Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England,
London 1884 (delivered as lectures in 1881). G. N. Clark traces the association of "industrial" and "revolution" to the early 1800s in France and
the phrase itself to the French economist Jer6me-Adolphe Blanqui (not
to be confused with the revolutionist Louis-August Blanqu~ in 1838,
Friedrich Engels in 1845 (Condition of the Working Class in England),
and John Stuart Mill in 1848 (Principles of Political Economy). But it was
Toynbee's work that popularized both the term and the idea. (Clark, The
Idea of the Industrial Revolution, Glasgow 1953).
9. The best summary of this debate is C. P. Kindleberger, "The Historical Background: Adam Smith and the Industrial Revolution," in The Market and the State: Essays in Honor of Adam Smith, ed. Thomas Wilson
and AndrewS. Skinner, Oxf. 1976, 1-25. See the comments on this paper
by Asa Briggs (25-33) and R. M. Hartwell (33-41).
10. Stewart, 52.
II. John Rae, Life of Adam Smith, London 1895, 286.
12. Jacob H. Hollander, "The Founder of a School," in Adam Smith,
1776-1926: Lectures to Commemorate the Sesquicentennial of the Publication of"The Wealth ofNations", New York 1966 (1st ed., 1928), 25; Rae,
Life, 288-90.
13. John Millar in 1786, quoted by Asa Briggs in The Market and the
State, 28.
14. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan, New York 1937, 11-14, 423, 651. The "invisible hand" metaphor also appears in a different context in the Theory of
Moral Sentiments, 7th ed., London 1792 (lst ed., 1759), I, 464.
15. One of the most effective statements of this view is Karl Polanyi, The
Great Transformation, Boston 1957 (lst ed., 1944). A more sophisticated
version has been advanced by E. P. Thompson, who describes the Wealth
of Nations as an "anti-model" rather than a new model, the negation of
the older paternalist model. The new political economy, he argues, was
13
�"disinfested of intrusive moral imperatives" not because Smith and his
colleagues were immoral or unconcerned with the public good, but objectively, regardless of their moral intentions. ("The Moral Economy of
the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century," Past and Present, 1971,
89-90.)
16. Moral Sentiments, I, 146 ff.
17. August Oncken, "Das Adam Smith-Problem," Zeitschrift- fUr So-
zialwissenschaft, 1898. For recent statements and reevaluations of this
problem, see Ralph Anspach, "The Implications of the Theory of Moral
Sentiments for Adam Smith's Economic Thought," History of Political
Economy, 1972; Joseph Cropsey, "Adam Smith and Political Philosophy," in Essays on Adam Smith, ed. Andrew S. Skinner and Thomas
Wilson, Oxf. 1975; D. D. Raphael, "The Impartial Spectator," ibid.;
Thomas Wilson, "Sympathy and Self·Interest," in The Market and the
State; Joseph Cropsey, "The Invisible Hand: Moral and Political Considerations," in Adam Smith and Modem Political Economy, ed. Gerald P.
O'Driscoll, Jr., Ames, Iowa 1979; Richard Teichgraeber III, "Rethinking
Das Adam Smith Problem," Journal of British Studies, 1981.
18. Moral Sentiments. l, 47; ll, 300, 305.
19. Jeremy Bentham, The Handbook of Political Fallacies, ed. Harold A.
Larrabee, New York 1962 (1sted.,l824), p. 230; Works, ed. John Bowring,
London 1838-43, XI, 72.
20. Moral Sentiments, I, 339.
21. Sentiments, II, 115.
22. The "design," as Smith described it in the seventh edition of Moral
Sentiments, included his moral philosophy, political economy, and theory of jurisprudence. (I, vi-vii.)
23. Schumpeter. !41, 182, 185.
24. Wealth of Nations. 388-89. 424, 460, 463, 577.
25. Wealth, 98, 128, 250, 609.
26. Wealth, 14.
27. Wealth, 423.
28. Wealth, 423.
29. Wealth, !!.
30. Wealth, 78-79.
3!. Wealth, 248.
32. A. W. Coats, "Changing Attitudes to Labour in the Mid-Eighteenth
Century," Economic History Review, 1958, 39 (quoting Hume's Political
Discourses of 1752).
33. Arthur Young, The Farmer's Tour through the East of England, Lon·
don l77l,IV, 36!.
34. Young, A Six Month's Tour through the North of England, London
!770, I, 196.
35. Wealth, 8!.
36. Wealth, 82-83.
37. Wealth, 8!.
38. Wealth, ll.
39. Wealth, 15-16.
40. Wealth, !3.
4!. Wealth, 248-49.
42. Wealth, !2!-22.
43. For differing views of this subject, see Nathan Rosenberg, "Adam
Smith on the Division of Labor: Two Views or One?" Economica, 1965;
E. G. West, "The Political Economy of Alienation: Karl Marx and Adam
Smith," OxfordEcon~mic Papers, 1969; Robert L. Heilbroner, "The Paradox of Progress: Decline a'nd Decay in the Wealth of Nations," Journal of
the History ofldeas,1973 (i:eprinted in Essays on Adam Smith, ed. Andrew
S. Skinner and Thomas Wilson, Oxf. 1975); Robert Lamb, "Adam
Smith's Concept of Alienation," Oxford Economic Papers, 1973; E. G.
14
West, "Adam Smith and Alienation: A Rejoinder," ibid., 1975.
44. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, ed. Frederick
Engels, rev. Ernest Untermann, New York 1936, 397-98.
45. Wealth, 734.
46. Wealth, 126-27
47. Wealth, 8!.
48. Wealth, 8-9.
49. Heilbroner, "The Paradox of Progress," Journal of the History of
Ideas, 1973, 243.
50. Donald Winch, Adam Smith's Politics: An Essay in Historiographic
Revision, Camb.1978, 143-44.
51. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, ed.J. M. Robson, Toronto 1965,
II, 754.
52. Wealth,
53. Wealth,
54. Wealth.
55. Wealth.
56. Wealth,
126-28.
734.
736-38.
737.
740.
57. Mark Blaug, "The Economics of Education in English Classical Po·
litical Economy: A Re-Examination," in Essays on Adam Smith, 572.
Blaug does not, however, attach to "social control" the usual invidious
implications.
58. M. G. Jones, The Charity School Movement: A Study of Eighteenth
Century Puritanism in Action, Camb. 1938, 159.
59. Joseph Cropsey, Polity and Economy: An Interpretation of the Princi·
pies of Adam Smith, The Hague 1957; Cropsey, "Adam Smith," in His·
tory of Political Philosophy, ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, Chicago
1963. See also essays cited in footnote 17.
60. The modification of the laissez-faire stereotype goes back at least to
Jacob Viner, "Adam Smith and Laissez-Faire," Journal of Political Economy, 1927. Among the more notable contributions to this revisionist interpretation are: Lionel Robbins, The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy, London 1952; L. R. Sorenson, "Some
Classical Economists, Laissez Faire, and the Factory Acts," Journal
of Economic History, 1952; S. G. Checkland, "The Prescriptions of the
Classical Economists," Economica, 1953; A. W. Coats, "Economic
Thought and Poor Law Policy in the Eighteenth Century," Economic
History Review; Coats, "The Classical Economists and the Labourer," in
Land, Labour and Population, ed. E. L. Jones and G. E. Mingay, London
1967; Coats (ed.), The Classical Economists and Economic Policy, London
1971; Thomas Sowell, Classical Economists Reconsidered, Princeton
1974; Nathan Rosenberg, "Adam Smith and Laissez-Faire Revisited," in
Adam Smith and Modern Political Economy.
61. E.g., Mark Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect, Homewood, Ill.
1968 (1st ed., 1962), p. 51. Blaug's claim that Smith condemned the "Poor
Laws in general'' may rest on Smith's criticisms of trade corporations and
assemblies, in the course of which he also criticized those regulations
which made such assemblies necessary-the regulation, for example,
"which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves in order to pro·
vide for their poor, their sick, their widows and orphans, [which] by giv·
ing them a common interest to manage, renders such assemblies nee·
essary." (Wealth of Nations, 129). But the poor rates were levied by the
parish rather than by trades, and therefore did not come under Smith's
stricture.
62. Wealth, !4!.
63. Wealth, 777. 821. 683.
64. Wealth, !42.
65. Wealth. !42. 66-67.
66. Wealth. 823, 248, 740.
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�A.mbiguities in Kant's Treatment of Space
Arthur Collins
One of the sources of persistent obscurity in the philosophy of Kant is the fact that he introduces a double standard for dealing with questions about what there is. In the
Critique of Pure Reason, this appears first in the culminating assertion of the Transcendental Aesthetic: the assertion ofthe "empirical reality and transcendental ideality of
space and time." To say that space and time are empiri~
cally real means that the things that figure in our experience are spatia-temporal things. These are the things
found in the common-sense world of perception and the
things that make up the subject matter of all scientific investigation. All of these empirical realities exist in space
and time. But, to say that space and time are transcendentally ideal means that they do not characterize things as
they are in themselves, as opposed to things as they appear
in our experience. Things apart from our experience and
independent of our mental activities are not spatia-temporal things. Vis-a-vis things as they are in themselves, space
and time are not anything real at all. They are merely ideas.
In the realm of things as they are nothing corresponds to
our ideas of space and time and these realities do not exist
in space and time. "It is solely from the human standpoint
that we can speak of space, of extended things, etc." (A 26,
B 42). Time, " ... in itself, apart from the subject, is nothing" (A 35, B 51).
One may suspect atl:he outset that the device that Kant
introduces here for treating questions about what there is
may be too powerful for any legitimate use. It looks as
though Kant avails himself of a means for having it both
A frequent contributor on the history of philosophy, Arthur Collins
teaches philosophy at the City University of New York. His last discussion of Kant, "Kant's Empiricism," appeared in the July 1979 issue of the
St. John's Review.
Quotations from the Critique of Pure Reason are from the translation of
Norman Kemp Smith; those from Kant's "Inaugural Dissertation" are
from the translation of G. B. Kerferd.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ways at crucial junctures. Faced with the destructive
claims of sceptics and idealists, Kant is a staunch realist.
The objects of perception are real things. They constitute
a causally connected, spatia-temporal system of material
objects which Kant calls "nature" and our knowledge of
these objects is objective knowledge. When he is pursuing
this realism, Kant likes to label entities envisioned by others that fall outside the sphere of possible experience mere
''Hirngespinsf' and uGedankendingen." But when Kant's
thoughts of human morality and freedom seem to be
threatened by this all-too-causal empirical reality, he is prepared to downgrade it, to emphasize that these empirical
0bjects" are only appearances, to reprimand "stubborn
insistence" on their reality (A 537, B 565), and to rest his
conception of man and the human situation on a further reality that underlies and is more fundamental than
appearance.
As a parallel for "the empirical world" of things we can
perceive and study scientifically, Kant uses the expression
"the intelligible world" for the realm of things in themselves. But in the Critique and all later works Kant consistently asserts that we cannot know anything whatever
about the intelligible world-an odd sort of intelligibility!
Before the Critique, in his Inaugural Dissertation, for example, Kant accepted a traditional concept of an intelligible world as opposed to a world of perception and he believed, in the spirit of Plato and the rationalists, that we
could have knowledge of nonsensible reality. In his mature
writing Kant repudiated the claim to know the nonsensible while retaining the designation "intelligible," although
it is only fitting in the context of the earlier view. The single surviving theme from his earlier position is Kant's occasional speculative suggestion that a creature whose intuition (mode of receptivity) is nonsensible might actually
know things in themselves and that God may know things
in themselves without anything like sense experience.
11
15
�Two kinds of reality: empirical and transcendental, risk
generating two systems of truths, one for each reality. Our
complete and permanent ignorance of things in them·
selves, in Kant's thinking, conveniently avoids the possibil·
ity of conflict between these two systems of truths. The
unknowability of transcendental reality "makes room for
faith" in Kant's own words. But in this connection, too,
the duality of the empirical and the transcendental, or
knowable and unknowable reality, seems too convenient
to be legitimate. An unfriendly critic can read Kant's doc·
trine as an admission that the faith that defends "God,
Freedom, and Immortality," operates only by relegating
them to a region where nothing can tend against them
since nothing can be known at all. At the same time, the
seeming robustness of empirical realism also relies on the
utter unknowability of things in themselves in the sense
that, if we could know anything at all about things in them·
selves, we would immediately recognize their ontological
primacy and the derivative and figmentary status of appearances. The veil of appearances seems to be more than
that in Kant's system, one might argue, only because it is
all that we can know.
Should we reject the dual standard of reality, the merely
empirical reality of objects of experience, and the unknowability of things as they are apart from how they appear to
us? Or is there some fundamental truth in Kant's realism
which is not hopelessly undercut by his transcendental
idealism? These questions go to the heart of Kant's system. In trying to answer them, we will find that the concept of space plays a particularly prominent role.
1 Outer Sense and Idealism
Kant's efforts to distinguish his views from the ideas of
earlier thinkers such as Descartes or Hume bring his conception of outer sense to the fore. Kant often relies entirely on the fact that he endorses both inner and outer
receptivity, while the "problematic and dogmatic idealists," as he classifies them, accept inner receptivity but not
outer. In the beginning of the Aesthetic, he defines outer
intuition or outer sense as a capacity "to represent to our~
selves objects as outside us and all without exception in
space" (A 22, B 37). In contrast, in inner intuition, the
mind "intuits itself or its inner state" (A 23, B 37). Here
Kant quite plainly thinks that "outside us," where we locate what is available to outer sense, means outside the
mind, where located things will not be mental things. Inner sense, just as plainly, has only mental things like
thoughts and ideas for its objects.
Kant thinks that the Cartesian ordering of these matters, inherited by the empiricists, involves a reduction of
receptivity to inner sense alone.
They have no expectaton of being able to prove apodeictically the absolute reality of space; for they are confronted by
16
idealism, which teaches that the reality of outer objects does
not allow of strict proof. On the other hand, the reality of the
object of our inner sense (the reality of myself and my state)
is, [they argue,] immediately evident through consciousness.
[A 38, B 55]
Kant goes on to say that the Cartesian-empiricist fails to
note that the object of outer sense in space is just as accessible to us as the object of inner sense.
In his interpretation of the tradition preceding him, Kant
is surely right. For Descartes, spatial reality, the realm of
extended substance, contrasts at the most fundamental
level possible with the realm of mental things. Extension
does not think and the mind is not extended. To this distinction Descartes very definitely adds the view that spatial reality is never given. It is not, as Kant would put it, intuited. In
Descartes' system, space is identical with matter. The existence of a spatial realm is the existence of extended substance. This existence is viewed by Descartes as something
that must be argued for. Descartes never contemplates arguing for the existence of our own conscious states,
thoughts, and ideas. The point of the cogito in this context is
precisely to show the impossibility of thinking of my own
mental states as something for which I could stand in need
of an argument. Stated in terms of "intuition", for Descartes the mental and inner is intuited, while the nonmental, outer, and spatial is not intuited, but is a matter of a
relatively tenuous hypothesis. For Hume, too, "impressions
and ideas," both of which are mental things, are the only
things "really present with the mind" (Treatise, I, ii, 6), while
the existence of extended bodily things is only recognized
with the help of naturally implanted though rationally unsupported beliefs. In the case of Berkeley, the given does
not include anything outside the mind for, indeed, there are
no extra-mental realities at all.
Thus, the Cartesian-empiricist's conception of consciousness is pretty much what Kant calls just inner sense.
Kant gives us a whole mental faculty, namely, outer sense,
beyond any cognitive equipment assigned us by the idealist tradition. The outer in Kant's system is given in intuition just as the inner is given in intuition. And the outer is
not the mental.
_
It is -not surprising that Kant thinks that his acceptance
of outer sense sufficiently distinguishes his view from any
form of idealism. His theory of outer intuition also explains why he is so unconcerned about egocentric and
sceptical problems which inevitably make up the first order of business from the Cartesian viewpoint. These problems will not arise if we find nonmental objects in space
among what is immediately given. In the Cartesian-empiricist tradition, we can say that the problem of outer reality
is the problem of the existence of spatial things to correspond to our ideas of spatial things, ideas which are not
themselves spatial things. "The problem of the external
world" means the world of spatially locatable things all of
which are, unlike any idea, external to the mind. In Kant's
scheme spatial things are given. They are given to outer
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�sense so that the problem of the exte,nal world cannot be
put in the usual way at all. Kant's empirical realism is the
assertion that objects in space are given.
Sometimes Kant calls the opposed vi'ew "empirical idealism." Just as transcendental idealism means that spatial
things are only ideas and nothing real in the sphere of
things as they are in themselves, empirical idealism means
that contents of our conscious experience of spatial things
consist merely in ideas of spatial things and offer nothing
at all in the way of actually existing spatial objects. The
idealist view that objects of experience are nothing real in
space is "problematic" in Hume, in that Hume thinks that
there may be outer objects as well as ideas, and dogmatic
in Berkeley, who thinks that there cannot possibly be outer
objects as well as ideas. In Kant's thinking, we are not limited to a foundation of ideas of spatial things any more
than we are limited to a foundation of ideas of mental
things. Both are present to us as immediately as anything
can be. Naturally, Kant found it hard to accept early criticisms that bracketed his theory with Berkeley's. Berkeley
denies more explicitly than anyone else the immediacy of
spatial things outside the mind, and then he goes on to
deny the existence of spatial things outside the mind.
Upon the least examination, however, Kant's empirical
realism turns out to be a fragile thing. Although outer
sense represents things "as outside us and all without exception in space," Kant says, again and again, throughout
the Critique, that space exists only "in us," that, like time,
space would be nothing apart from the human cognitive
constitution. Spatial appearances exist only "in the faculty
of representations," (A 104) and "all objects with which we
can occupy ourselves, are one and all in me ... " (A 129).
The mind absorbs spatial objects in this prominent Kantian claim. The innerness and mind-dependence of all objects seems to set at nothing the thought that Kant has
distinguished his position from that of the Cartesianempiricist. When we have come a good way into the Critique, to the Paralogisms wherein Kant explains the illusions to which rationalist philosophy of mind is susceptible, he says
The expression "outside us" is unavoidably ambiguous in
meaning, sometimes signifying what as a thing in itself exists
apart from us, and sometimes what belongs solely to outer ex-
perience. [A 373]
The view so clearly put here contradicts the claim that the
theory of outer sense separates Kant's philosophy from all
the forms of idealism that Descartes' account of mind and
perception generates. Kant tells us here that outer appearances do not exist uapart from us." What can this mean if
not that they do not exist outside our minds and thoughts?
The relevant problem that the Cartesian tradition seemed
to face might be put in the question, "Are there spatial
things which exist apart from us, that is, apart from
our thoughts and representations of spatial things?" Of
course, Descartes, Berkeley, and Hume all know that,
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
within our thought, we find ideas of spatial things and that
these ideas differ from ideas of things which are not spatial. In mounting a proof of the existence of extended reality Descartes is responding to the fact that ideas of spatial
things do not exist apart from us, while spatial things, if
any there be, do exist apart from us.
The whole Kantian theory asserting the necessary existence (if experience is to be possible) of causally connected
and enduring empirical objects, the theory secured with
such energy and subtlety in the Analytic half of the Critique, seems to be thrown away here when Kant says that
none of these realities are anything at all outside our own
thinking. This collapse of the pretensions of outer sense
reminds us that Kant sometimes confines his opposition to
idealism to a very different line of thought. This alternative opposition merely stresses that Kant accepts, while
idealists deny or doubt, the existence of things as they are
in themselves in addition to appearances or objects of experience. Arguing in this vein, Kant places no weight at all
on outer sense, as though he realizes that, in his system,
outer sense is simply not outer enough to reach any nonmental realities that may exist apart from us.
In the section of the Critique entitled, "The Ground of
the Distinction of All Objects in General into Phenomena
and Noumena," that is, into appearances and things as
they are in themselves, Kant goes so far as to reduce the
concept of a reality beyond that of appearances to the status of a "merely negative concept" (A 254, B 309). By this
he means that the idea of noumena is simply the idea of
realities that are not known in experience. Since objects of
experience are all the objects of which we can have any
knowledge, noumena, if there are any, are just objects of
which we have no knowledge. Kant goes on to call the very
concept of such further, wholly unknown, realities a
"problematic concept" and a "limiting concept" (A 255,
B 3ll) and he seems to imply that we cannot get quite as
far as the unqualified assertion that there are any such
noumena. The concept of a further kind of being beyond
appearances only clearly marks the end of the realm of objects of whose existence we are sure, namely, the minddependent objects constituting the empirical world. Kant
is saying that we think of mind-dependent realities as appearances of real entities other than themselves but that,
perhaps, there is no other reality, in which case appearances are not really appearances but, instead, they are the
only kinds of things that there are apart from the minds
which intuit these things. Is this not exactly Berkeley's
view? The idea that, for the things immediately present to
the mind, esse is percipi is the idea that we have no right to
think of these things as appearances. Berkeley's ontology
is limited to the ideas present to minds and the minds to
which those ideas are present. If we are forced to interpret
Kant as surrendering the true outerness of appearances in
favor of a counterfeit outerness of space which exists only
in our minds, then his whole metaphysics must appear an
enormous disappointment and all of the famous and diffi-
17
�cult arguments of the first half of the Critique must seem a
waste of effort.
2 Transcendental Aesthetic
In the hope of salvaging as much as possible from this
threatening disappointment let us examine in more detail
the main doctrines of the Transcendental Aesthetic which
I identify as follows: (a) the metaphysical expositions of
space and time, (b) the transcendental expositions, (c) the
view that space and time are forms of outer and inner
sense respectively, and (d) their asserted transcendental
ideality.
The opening section of the Aesthetic is concerned with
the definition of "intuition" (Anschauung) and related
concepts that underlie Kant's controlling distinction between receptivity and spontaneity, that is, between the
functions of intuition and those of understanding and reason. There follow immediately separate and parallel discussions of space and time. In each case a four~point meta~
physical exposition of the concept is supposed to be
followed by a transcendental exposition, but the passages
are marred by Kant's curious failure to adhere to the distinction between these two points of view, even though
the distinction seems to have been invented by him precisely for the purpose of facilitating this very discussion.
The four metaphysical points are that space, or time, is
(1) not an empirical concept, (2) an a priori and necessary
concept, (3) a singular rather than a discursive concept,
and (4) a concept of something infinite.
The expository confusion in both discussions consists in
Kant's inserting the transcendental considerations between the second and third metaphysical points and then
only partially correcting the disorder in passages that follow and in changes in the second edition. The actual reason for this, I believe, is that Kant wants to make the transcendental points in the context of the premises relevant
to them. These premises are the first two metaphysical
points and only those two. In a later passage Kant himself
explains the arrangement saying that he wanted to save
space. But the confused ordering does not save any space
unless Kant means that, with any other organization, he
would have had to restate the needed metaphysical views
in order to connect them with the transcendental exposition which would be separated from them.
In the instances of both space and time, the four metaphysical points are assertions for which no arguments are
given. Perhaps by a metaphysical exposition Kant means
an account that ought to be accessible to any highly intelligent and philosophically mature common sense. He seems
to expect that the statement of the claims will suffice for
their acceptance. This is not entirely unreasonable in that
there is much to be said for the four points.
The first point, considering only space for the moment,
is that space is not an empirical concept. Kant says that the
18
concept of space is presupposed for rather than derived
from experience. To see what Kant has in mind it is useful
to refer to another similar point that Kant often makes
later in the Critique. Unlike ordinary empirical objects,
space is not itself perceived. So space is not a concept like
the concept ocean or box. These are empirical concepts
which we possess because we encounter such things as
oceans and boxes in our perceptual experience. Of course,
space might be an empirical concept, although not an object of perception, if it figured in hypotheses belonging to
an explanatory theory, in the way in which the concept of
a gravitational field figures in theories that explain the perceived motion of objects. Kant's second metaphysical
point rules out this kind of theoretical status for the concept of space. Space is necessary for any outer experience
at all, while theoretical objects are doubly contingent and
never necessary. Theoretical objects are contingent, first,
because the facts which they are introduced to explain are
contingent facts. But theoretical objects have a second
kind of contingency beyond the contingency of the facts
they explain. For theoretical objects may always be repudiated in favor of other theoretical commitments that explain the same facts even better. The status of space is
nothing like this because, according to Kant, there could
not be any facts of outer intuition without space.
Kant expresses the necessity of space saying that we can
think space empty but we cannot think it away. The inhibition on thinking space away is related to the fact that space
is not something we detect by perceiving it or experiencing it. Things that we do detect by perceiving them, things
like oceans and boxes, we can think of as empty (oceans
empty of fish, and boxes empty of apples, respectively) and
we can also think such things away, that is, think a universe without oceans or boxes among its constituents.
Now thinking space empty is simply thinking away all of
the constituents of the outer universe. 'Since space is not
one of these, we have nothing to bring under the heading
of thinking away space itself. There is nothing else that
might disappear from the outer beyond the things that appear in it, and space is not one of these things. Kant reads
the fact that we perceive things in space and that space is
not threatened by disappearance as the necessity of space.
The two other metaphysical points are of less importance to our present interests. That space is not a discur~
sive concept, as the concepts ocean and box are, means
that it is the idea of an individual. There is just one space
in which all outer things are located. The plural "spaces"
indicates only parts of space and not instances of space,
while oceans and boxes are instances, not parts. This is a
very important assertion since it is the foundation of the
unity and uniqueness of the spatia-temporal universe and,
thus, of the connectability in principle of all objects of possible experience. The final claim, the infinity of space, we
can pass over without comment here.
The metaphysical expositions are reflections on the
concepts of space and time which do not depend on any
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�special commitments, nor on any ch')racteristically Kantian critical or transcendental argume.nts. The transcendental expositions, which are loosely derived from the
metaphysical, plunge us at once into specifically Kantian
doctrine as well as into considerable obscurity. From the
nonempirical yet necessary status of space and time, the
transcendental expositions purport to explain how it is
that we possess knowledge in geometry (in the case of
space) and knowledge of a much more vaguely indicated
body of more or less mathematical doctrine (in the case of
time.) The explanation is more implied than stated, and it
makes minimal sense only in the context of views about
necessary truth, mathematics, and experience which are
not themselves discussed in the Aesthetic, although they
have been sketched in the Introduction to the Critique.
The root idea is that no necessary truth can be justified
on a foundation of empirical evidence. Kant takes this to
have been established definitively by Hume. If we learned
about space empirically, as we learn about boxes and
oceans, no knowledge of space could amount to necessary
truth. But knowledge of space is geometry and geometry is
a body of necessary truth. The discussion here in the Aesthetic makes no effort to explain how truths about space
are actually reached but rests content with the general
thought that, since our idea of space is not derived empirically, propositions about the structure of space can also be
expected to be nonempirical. Kant always takes it for
granted that we do possess knowledge in mathematics and
that the mathematical propositions we know are synthetic
(rather than analytic), and necessary (which requires that
they be a priori.) The tenor of Kant's thought is illuminated by a comment he makes on Hume's view that belief
in strictly universal and necessary propositions is not rationally justifiable: "[Hume] ... would never have been
guilty of this statement so destructive of pure philosophy,
for he would have recognized that according to his arguments pure mathematics would also not be possible; and
from such an assertion his good sense would have saved
him" (B 20). Here Kant shows his conviction that we must
find some explanation for necessity in mathematical
knowledge since we do possess such knowledge, and he
also reveals his rather sketchy knowledge of Hume's opinions. For, concerning geometry, Hume did extend his
scepticism to mathematics in the Treatise of Human Nature, and he said that theorems of geometry are only approximations: "As the ultimate standard of these figures is
derived from nothing but the senses and imagination, 'tis
absurd to speak of any perfection beyond what these faculties can judge of; since the true perfection of anything
consists in its conformity to its standard" (I, ii, 4).
The transcendental expositions of space and time constitute an answer early in the Critique to one form of the
great motivating question, ((How is synthetic a priori
knowledge possible?" The answer that explains how synthetic a priori mathematical knowledge is possible is, however, only a sketch or a promise of an answer the full verTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
sion of which depends not only on the thought that space
and time are necessary and a priori concepts but also on
the claim that there are what Kant calls "a priori manifolds" of space and time and "a priori syntheses" of these
manifolds in the course of which the objects of mathematical truths are "constructed," in Kant's terminology.
It is only because space and time are recognizable as
forms of outer and inner sense that Kant is able to assert
their transcendental ideality. For this ideality means that
things as they are in themselves are not spatia-temporal
things. On the surface of it, such a claim contradicts the
general impossibility of knowledge of things as they are in
themselves. In the absence of the identification of space
and time as forms, Kant could at best assert that we do not
know whether or not things as they are in themselves are
characterizable in spatial or temporal terms. The relevance of the formal status of space can be illustrated in
analogies. Imagine an illiterate who learns to read only
telegrams. At one stage he has come to understand that
the words printed on the telegram make up a verbal message received somehow from a distant person. But at this
stage he interprets every word on the form as part of the
message, including, for example, the words "Western
Union." He will have to learn that these words are imposed by the form and are not part of the content. It would
be absurd for this reader to wonder, after learning the status of "Western Union," whether there might be another
"Western Union" which is part of the content of every
message as it is in itself Of course, we might think that
anything might be part of the hidden content of a message. But no part of the content can have just the role and
meaning that the words "Western Union" have on the
telegram blank because that meaning and role contrast
with content by definition.
Such an analogy is imperfect in that "Western Union" is
part of the telegram form on which the matter is organized, but it is not a necessary part, while, according to
Kant, space and time are necessary forms for the organiza-
tion of the matter that we receive in intuition. The essential contrast of form and content is preserved in the analogy. Once we have identified space and time as forms, it is
absurd to suppose that these concepts might also characterize the unknown source of intuitive inputs. Therefore,
this identification of space and time relieves the appearance of contradiction in the assertion that unknowable
things in themselves are not in space and time.
All of this depends on understanding in what sense we
might think of space and time as forms. The word "form",
which is the same in Kant's German discussion, appeals to
the contrast between matter and form that goes back to
Greek thought. Kant says that space is "nothing other
than simply the form of all appearances of outer sense."
The traditional contrast is filled out when Kant identifies
sensation as the matter of such appearances. According to
the traditional distinction, an individual existing thing has
to have both form and matter. Matter cannot exist without
19
�form, that is, without being anything in particular, and
form cannot exist, Platonism apar'\, without being the
form of some matter. Kant's conception of an appearance
conforms, at least superficially, to this pattern. As far as
outer sense is concerned, the matter of an appearance con~
sists of sensible qualities such as color and texture, which
fill formal elements such as surfaces and volumes and so
constitute perceivable objects of some magnitude.
We saw that the pretension of Kant's empirical realism
seems to collapse with the absorbtion of space by the
mind. This absorption, in turn, is clearly traceable to the
claims of the Aesthetic. Space is identified as the form of
outer sense and, furthermore, as a form imposed by us.
This identification "internalizes" space and it is necessary
for the transcendental exposition. This understanding of
space is required for Kant's explanation of our possession
of synthetic a priori knowledge in geometry. Therefore,
space, the imposed form of outer things, cannot be used to
secure the distinction between Kant's views and the ideal·
ists'. We shall now consider the possibility that the matter
of outer sense might play this role.
-
3 The Construction of Spatial Objects
In expressing his opposition to idealism, Kant's appeal
to the accessibility of objects of outer sense is so clear and
emphatic that it is hard to think of it as simply a mistake.
No doubt the force of the Cartesian contrast between the
spatial, extended, and material world and the conscious
unextended mind inclines him to express his thought
about the nonmental outer in terms of spatiality. There is
certainly something wrong with this mode of expression.
Kant, however, did not simply fail to notice that the mind·
imposed status of space is incompatible with the employment of space as the mark of the nonmental existence of
things apart from us. Is it possible that he rests his rejection
of idealism, not on the form of objects of outer sense, but
on their matter; not on space, but on sensation?
The matter of outer appearance is its sensuous aspect.
This is what Kant calls sensation (Empfindung). Sensation
makes up the stuff of which spatial organization is the required form. This statement has to be replaced by a much
more theoretical understanding of sensations and their relationship to perceivable objects. Our receptive faculty
gives sensations a spatial location. But we cannot think of
this receptivity as literally operating on received sensible
qualities. We cannot suppose, for example, that it is a feature of our receptivity to assign a color sensation to a place
because Kant states very clearly that, prior to any synthesizing activity, individual sensations do not have any
ex~
tension at all. Sensible qualities such as color are the sorts
of things of which we can be conscious as the perceivable
features of an object, as the color of a surface, for example.
As such, sensible features themselves are the product of
synthesis, in this case, of a kind of aggregating activity op·
20
erating on unextended sensations which have been located in the same region. Only the resulting aggregate deserves to be described in color language. The unextended
content of a single sensation is located but is not perceivable. This is the claim of the Axioms of Intuition according
to which all objects of experience are extended magnitudes and, therefore, aggregates, the least constituents of
which are not perceivable.
We are treating a major side of Kant's thinking which
has come to be an embarrassment to modern admirers of
Kant. The machinery of the mind, the transcendental psychology, in which Kant tries to depict the actual procedures whereby raw materials are transformed into a world
of experience is a "wholly fictional subject matter," as
P. F. Strawson described it. If anything is acceptable in
this Kantian enterprise it will certainly have to be drastically redescribed in some way that gets away from the idiom of quasimechanical speculation. At the same time,
however little is retained of this account of the mind making nature, no understanding of what is best in Kant's
thought is possible if these speculations are simply ignored. Neglect encourages, in particular, a mistaken interpretation of the terms of Kant's theories which tends to
place them in a spuriously direct relationship to common
sense concepts.
According to Kant, unknown things as they are in themselves affect us and unextended sensations are engendered
as a consequence. In the process our receptive constitu~
tion deploys these sensations in space. The various combinatory powers that Kant ascribes to the human mind under the title of powers of synthesis survey these located
sensations and assemble objects from them. These are perceivable objects and they, rather than their theoretical
constituent sensations, are the first items accessible to
consciousness. There are no objects of consciousness
more primitive than perceivable objects. Many of the important claims of the Analytic come from the idea that any
conscious experience at all, and any self-consciousness, is
conditioned by the completion of this mental construction
of objects of perception. The ultimate constituents for the
construction of objects with perceivable features are sensations, but they do not have perceivable features. The
term "sensation" in eighteenth century philosophical parlance is ordinarily used for qualities apprehended, such as
heat and color. Kant's constituents are called sensations
only in virtue of the extended perceivable things which
have sensible qualities and which are supposed to be made
out of sensations.
This style of thought, prominent throughout the Critique, becomes easier to understand when we see it in the
context of the thought of Leibniz, who exerted a decisive
influence on Kant in just these theories of mental construction. The whole format for the construction of a scientific world of phenomena out of elements of which we
are not conscious is taken over from Leibniz's account of
apperception. Conscious experience results, for Leibniz,
WIN1ER/SPRING 1983
�from the aggregation of innumerable unconscious petites
perceptions. The motion of the sea is perceived as a roar
only because the mind must aggregate the infinite events
which make up the motion of the water, each one of which
is itself silent, and the mind perceives only the aggregate
(confusedly, without distinguishing the constituent events)
as sound. For Leibniz the spatia-temporal character of
things is phenomenal, that is, it reflects not the reality of
the things experienced but the conditions the mind imposes in the process of experiencing anything at all. So underlying realities are unextended but, to be perceived,
they are represented in aggregates that produce the perspectival spatia-temporal subject matter of human experience and knowledge. So for Leibniz, phenomenal reality is
not a valueless illusion. Phenomena be_ne fundata offer a
kind of surrogate for metaphysical reality and truth. As in
Kant, phenomena are the locus of all scientific thought.
The elements wfiich ai-erelated in our best thought do correspond globally to reality although there is no one-to-one
correspondence of appearance and reality. The ambiguous evaluation of phenomenal reality in Kant's system and
the theory of transcendental ideality have their roots in
Leibniz' s thinking.
We have sketched Kant's idea of the construction of empirical objects out of sensations. We are now in a position
to address Kant's idea of the constructions the mind
makes in the pure or a priori manifolds of space and time.
Kant says that "transcendental logic" differs from ordinary
or general logic, in that it has its own subject matter, an a
priori subject matter, to which the basic combinatory
forms of general logic are applied. The a priori manifolds
of space and time make up this self-contained field of application for transcendental logic (A 55, B 79).
The concept of these a priori manifolds can be understood in terms of what we have said about sensation. Kant
says that our receptivity includes a location-assigning procedure which places sensations in space where they are
ready for synthesis into perceivable spatial objects. Pure
space, or the a priori manifold of outer sense, is just the
idea of the system of locations by themselves, without any
sensations assigned to them. Perhaps there is a big difference between a location-assigning system, and a system of
locations to which things can·be assigned. In virtue of the
former Kant speaks of space as the form of outer intuition,
while only in virtue of the latter can he speak of space itself as an intuition, and an a priori intuition at that. Kant
plainly believes that he is entitled to the transition from
the former to the latter, but there is little or no mention of
this issue in the Critique.
Here we should see the Kantian position as an attempt
at a compromise between the conceptions of space defended by Leibniz and by Newton. Newton insisted on an
absolute container space which would exist whether or not
there were any spatial things to be found anywhere in
space. In the Correspondence with Clarke, Leibniz repudiated this on roughly verificationist grounds and he asTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
serted that space is a system of relations between coexistent entities. There would be no space were there to be no
things spatially related. Kant was attracted by the Leibnizean account but he remained convinced that something
like absolute space is conceptually indispensable because
of a curious argument about incongruent counterparts.
Congruent objects are those that have the same shape and
the same dimensions. Two such figures can occupy the
same space. When superimposed they fit each other exactly. Two gloves of a pair are close to congruence but they
cannot occupy the same space because of the left-hand
orientation of the one and the right-hand orientation of
the other. Since the internal spatial relations of the parts
of each glove are the same, it appears that, were Leibniz
right about space, there would be no difference at all between a universe consisting only of a left-hand glove and a
universe consisting of a right-hand glove of the same dimensions. All relations between coexisting things would
be the same in each universe. Kant is intuitively convinced
that Leibniz's theory of space makes it impossible to represent a difference that would be real here. The problem is
solved by the existence of absolute space, since the two
gloves would have different relations to absolute space and
would necessarily fill different regions of it.
In Kant's system, the whole discussion of the status of
space is brought within the domain of appearances.
Things located in space are, first, sensations, and second,
material objects. Is there space in the absence of spatial
things? There is not in the sense that space is transcendentally ideal and does not exist apart from the outer sense
which is a component of our cognitive constitution. But
space does exist apart from spatial things in the sense in
which outer sense offers a system of places which is independent of the fact that sensations are arranged in that
system. This means that the impossibility of thinking
space away carries an implication for the thing-like character of space itself which goes beyond the metaphysical exposition, which is compatible with Leibniz's theory. Newton thought that we need an absolute container space in
order to distinguish absolute and relative motion. Analogously, Kant thinks that we require such a space in order
to solve the problem of incongruent counterparts. Therefore, although he makes space phenomenal as Leibniz did,
Kant's a priori space with neither sensations nor objects in
it functions as absolute space, within Kant's thinking, just
as absolute space outside the mind functions in Newton's.
This commitment to absolute space allows Kant to
think of the location-assigning aspect of outer sense as an a
priori system of locations. "[S]pace and time are represented a priori not merely as forms of sensible intuition,
but as themselves intuitions which contain a manifold ... "
(B 160). We can think of pure space as something like an
armature on which sensations are organized. The chief
doctrines of the transcendental logic and, prominently,
the Principles, result from the consideration of the powers
of combination that men possess applied to these empty
21
�but a priori manifolds. The Axioms, Anticipations, Analo·
gies, and Postulates are said to be a'priori laws of nature.
They are supposed to hold for the empirical realm because
empirical objects are the result of applying the very same
constructive powers to the same manifolds of space and
time, but when these manifolds are filled with sensation.
The structural laws which result from the application of
combinatory creativity to empty space are true of the
empty proto-objects constructed of empty locations.
Therefore, they are also automatically true when these locations are assigned sensations with the combining procedures unchanged.
In the simplest case, that is, the Axioms of Intuition, we
are to understand that the laws of extended magnitude are
generated along with the extended objects of which they
are true. This is achieved when the pure manifold of nonempirical space is synthesized so that empty points are assembled into empty regions, surfaces, and volumes. Since
the empirical manifold results simply from filling the same
locations with sensation, the same geometrical laws will
hold for empirical and pure space. Geometrically describable objects arise from the aggregation oflocations. This is
the detailed story that lies behind the transcendental exposition of space in the Aesthetic. Whether the constructed
objects are empirically full or empty makes no difference
to their geometrical properties.
4 Sensation and the Objectivity of
Outer Sense
We saw that space, as ithe region of outer things, collapsed back into the mind because space is only a mindimposed form and spatiality does not characterize things
as they are in themselves or even sensations, apart from
the location-assigning propensities of our own minds.
Since the outerness of space is all in the mind, Kant's system seems to be no improvement on the perennial idealistic weaknesses of the Cartesian-empiricist outlook. But we
have raised the question whether Kant intended spatiality
to be the aspect of outer appearances that carried the crucial burden of realism. We have examined Kant's conception of sensation, space, and objects with a view to determining whether or not sensation, the matter of outer
objects, might be the needed support for Kant's anti-idealist assertions. Kant never says that sensation is imposed by
us, or that the mind makes sensations. If he meant sensation to carry the burden of realism, it would be understandable that Kant should frequently assert, as he does,
both that outer sense refutes idealism and that space exists
only in us, and that he should assert both in the same context of discussion. There is much in favor of this interpretation although, as we shall see, it cannot be the whole of
his thought about the connection of outer sense and mindindependent reality.
In a revealing passage just prior to the Transcendental
Deduction of the Categories Kant says
1
22
There are only two possible ways in which synthetic representations and their objects can establish connection, obtain necessary relation to one another, and, as it were, meet one another. Either the object alone must make the representation
possible, or the representation alone must make the object
possible. In the former case, the relation is only empirical, and
the representation is never possible a priori. This is true of
appearances, as regards that element in them which belongs
to sensation. In the latter case 1 representation itself does not
produce its object in so far as existence is concerned 1 for we
are not speaking here of its causality by means of the will.
Nonetheless the representation is a priori determinant of the
object, if it be the case that only through the representation is
1
it possible to know anything as an object. [A 92]
This passage has implications for the meaning of Kant's
entire transcendental philosophy. According to the Cartesian-empiricist way of thinking, our knowledge of external
things, if we have any, is based on the fact that those external things cause our representations. Kant would say that,
within that framework of metaphysical thought, these
philosophers have supposed that spatially extended objects are mind-independent entities that "make possible"
our representations. The revolutionary character of his
thought is that Kant will say that sometimes the dependence runs the other way so that our representation makes
possible the object. At its most idealistic, this amounts to a
reductive phenomenalism in the manner of Berkeley. The
idea of empirical objects of perception is simply the idea of
groups and patterns among transient subjective experiences. But in the passage just quoted Kant expresses a far
less idealistic view and expressly denies the reduction of
objects to representations.
Within the passage there are two themes that we will
consider separately. First Kant says that the empirical part
of representation that is sensation is "made possible'' by
the object. In other words, with respect to sensation,
Kant's view resembles the Cartesian-empiricist line of
thought. Something outside the mind is responsible for
the sensation. The object in question is certainly the thing
in itself. This is the mind-independent reality that affects
us and engenders sensations. The sensation is a representation and as such, it is called a "modification of our receptive faculty" and it is, in consequence, also something
in us and in the mind. But these original representations
are not the product of our own creative faculties. They are
received. They would not exist at all were it not for things
as they are in themselves. We will treat this relation between sensations and reality immediately in assessing the
appeal to sensation as the chief support of realism.
The second theme of the quoted passage will become
important at the end of our discussion. This is Kant's statement that even in those contexts where it is right to say
that the representation makes possible its object, we
should not think that this means that representatioBs •produce objects in point of existence (dem Dasein nach), but
only that the representation makes it possible for us to
know realities as objects. In other words, Kant repudiates
1
1
1
1
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�any scheme which would try to reduce objects of representations to representations themselves, a~ radical phenomenalism, for example, reduces material objects to sense
data. We are never to say that an object of knowledge is
nothing more than our representations and the patterns
detectable among them. Kant's phenomenalism does not
account for the existence of objects known but only for
their objecthood in our knowledge. In other words, we are
constitutionally disposed to represent realities independent of our minds as objects of perception. All of the characteristics of objects of perception have an irreducible
mind-dependence. But it is still independent reality that
has become an object for us. The scheme of representation does not create the object that it represents. In the
last analysis, it is things as they are in themselves that are
represented in experience of spatial objects. In experience, independent reality is represented as a system of stable objects of perception in causal interconnection with
one another. There are a great many passages in which
Kant expresses a phenomenalism far more radical than
this. For the present let us return to the more limited claim
about the character of sensation.
How should we understand the question, "Does the object make the representation possible, or does the representation make the object possible?" Let us call this the
priority question. In itself it seems to presuppose a distinction between representations and objects, while this presupposition is one of the things at issue in the confrontation of realism and idealism. Kant's term "Vorstellung" is
broader than anything the English word "representation"
naturally suggests. It is meant to cover not only perceptual
contents but also all intuitions, pure and empirical. Elementary sensations which are not conscious contents are
nonetheless representations. Furthermore, all concepts,
pure and empirical, are representations. Even concepts
which are defective precisely in failing to represent anything, such as the Ideas of Reason, are representations. It
is important to appreciate the abstractness of Kant's usage
here because it reveals his willingness to speak of representations whether or not they represent anything and
whether or not they are conscious items that represent
something to anyone. In the context of the priority question, Kant is thinking of representations as contents of
perceptual experience like the ideas of Locke, Berkeley,
and Hume, but he is also including elementary unextended sensations which are not conscious and have no
role at all in the empiricist tradition. These, as we said,
come into Kant's picture from Leibniz's concept of petites
perceptions.
Kant means us to think that it is idealists like Berkeley
who hold that representations make possible objects.
Berkeley says that an object like a cherry is a bundle of
ideas of sense, including some red ideas, some round ideas,
and some sweet ideas. There are cherries only in that we
have such ideas in such bundles. When Kant addresses the
priority question himself, his thinking focuses on elemenTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
tary sensations and their origin because even red ideas are
a product of synthetic activity. Elementary sensations are
the ones which objects plainly make possible. What objects? Here Kant must mean the things in themselves that
engender sensations by affecting us. So it is, indeed,
Kant's doctrine of sensation and not his theory of spatiality that opposes idealism.
The obscurity that darkens this opinion comes from the
fact that Kant thinks that these very same sensations do
make possible objects, namely, empirical objects. The procedures of combinatory synthesis which we have sketched
operate by assembling perceivable objects out of elementary sensations. So sensations both make possible objects
and are made possible by objects and, in different contexts, Kant gives both answers to the priority question.
We confront here one of the confusions in Kant's
thought that comes from his dual standard for questions
about reality. There are empirical objects and transcendental things in themselves. Sensations are made possible
by things in themselves, and sensations make possible empirical objects. At times, Kant encourages us to think of
things in space as the locus of nonmental being, and he
defines inner sense as access to mental things. This is Descartes' opinion but, if it is also Kant's, then his theory
seems to coincide with idealism. The allegedly nonmental
spatial world is a construct from representations (sensations.) When he asserts his realism, Kant forgets or repudiates the suggestion that spatial things are nonmental and
he counts objects in space as representations along with
sensations. They are all mind-dependent realities and
Kant asks of this whole class of things, Do they make possible mind-independent objects? He decides for realism in
answering this question. Of course, sensations make objects of perception in space possible, but then they are just
appearances. As appearances, they represent realities
which are not just appearances. In our spatial representations, realities which are not representations or appearances become objects for us. "Through the representation
it is possible to know anything as an object."
The underlying difficulty of the dual realities is compounded by ambiguities in the concept of representation.
Consider again Berkeley's understanding of the nature of
a cherry. We should not really describe Berkeley's bundle
theory of perceived objects as the view that representations make possible (or make) objects. The term "representation" is out of place in this description. An element in a
bundle does not represent the bundle anymore than a brick
represents a wall of which it is an element. The idealist
theory really amounts to a renunciation of urepresenta~
tion" as a concept suitable for ideas of sense. The point of
idealism is that there is nothing nonmental for mental
items to represent. An analogous but restricted point holds
for Kant's phenomenalism. The construction of perceivable objects out of spatially deployed sensations by our faculties does not generate an account of objects of perception within which we can say that sensations represent
23
�perceived objects in space. But KaJ!t does like to say that
"we represent objects as outside us ')nd all without exception in space." Using such phrases he allows himself to
think of representations as items having spatial objects
which they represent. But Kant constructs spatial objects
out of elements found in the manifold of outer sense. So it
is quite misleading for him to suggest that those elements
represent spatial objects. In the history of reductive phenomenalism, this illicit use of "representation" frequently
lends plausibility to otherwise unpalatable accounts. As
long as the concept of representation is illicitly retained,
the harshness of the reduction is softened. For the concept implies that there is still a difference between representations and objects of just the sort that the reduction
intends to deny.
We have sa!d~ihat representations make possible empirical objects and are made possible by transcendental ob·
jects. If we delete the implication, which Kant frequently
allows himself, that inner elements represent constructed
objects in space, on the ground that this is an illicit use of
"represenf', a univocal and relatively clear anti-idealist
line of thought emerges and it is, I believe, a major part of
what Kant did want to say on this topic.
What the Cartesian-empiricist tradition calls objects in
space are simply complex representations according to Kant.
The processes envisioned in the Analytic try to describe how
we form such representations. If we ask how it is that spatial
things have the status of representations of anything, we
must say, in Kant's thought, that they inherit this status from
their constituent sensations. So the representational charac·
ter of perceptual experience is traceable to sensation. Sensa·
tion is the proper foundation for realism.
This way of reading Kant's treatment of the priority
question may seem to fall short of his expressed views in
two ways. First, Kant habitually speaks of perceived ob·
jects in space as obiects and seldom as representations, and
much of the Analytic itself is dominated by a usage of "ob·
ject" in which it is obviously spatial things that are objects
and not things in themselves. Second, the priority question, we said, presupposes a distinction between represen-
tations and objects. If we interpret the objects of which
the priority question inquires as transcendental objects,
Kant's ignorabimus will imply that we have no means at all
for making good this distinction. If spatial objects are just
representations we have no further objects to play the role
of things represented.
Concerning the first of these reservations, Kant is cer-
tainly entitled to speak of objects of perception, and em·
pirical objects and objects in space. We could not plausibly
propose that he should only speak of empirical, perceptual, and spatial representations. But all these things are objects only because we think about them, and make judgments about them, and investigate them scientifically.
Conscious contents involve objects and not merely representations because these contents figure as the subject
matter of thought.
24
Objects are given to us by means of sensibility; they are
thought through the understanding. . . . But all thought
must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility [sensible representations], because in no other way can
an object be given to us. [A 19, B 33)
In other words, mind-independent reality becomes an ob·
ject for us by engendering sensations and thence empirical
representations. Then these representations also become
objects of thought and thought about them is thought
about reality precisely because it is traceable to these
sensations.
Reflection on the second reservation bears out this un·
derstanding. Since Kant holds that we can know nothing
about things in themselves (and sometimes goes so far as
to put in doubt the thought that there are any), we are
tempted to think, and Kant is also tempted to think, that
he means that empirical realities are the only ones that can
figure at all in our philosophical account of things. There
is no question, for Kant, of getting beyond the empirical
object. This "going beyond appearance" is the issue for
the old Cartesian-empiricist outlook. Mathematical characterizations, for example, manage to penetrate to things
as they are apart from our experience. Mathematical
thinking, it seems, enables us to get at, and not merely to
represent, reality. But this is no part of Kant's scheme. For
Kant, getting at reality is representing it. We cannot make a
comparison of represented and unrepresented reality. In
consequence, we should not interpret the priority question as presupposing that we can make such a comparison.
Unrepresented reality cannot be compared with anything
because being represented is the condition for figuring in
any comparison we can make.
In his relationship to the idealist problems generated by
the Cartesian philosophy of mind, Kant is actually the
champion of the concept of representation. The idealist
renounces representation by denying reality to anything
but the mental content itself. There is nothing to be represented. The nonidealist within the Cartesian tradition also
rejects the idea of representation in his aspiration to get
beyond appearances so as to compare unrepresented reality with our ideas of it. The great Cartesian question of the
"resemblance" of ideas and their objects expresses this aspiration. This dream survives in Kant's conviction that
God knows reality without representing it, without being
affected by it, and without experiencing it. In the case of
men, Kant grasps, at least most of the time, the thought
that representation is the vehicle of knowledge of the represented, not a barrier which once interposed makes possible only knowledge of the representation itself.
Kant wants to allow space to be absorbed by the mind
and, at the same time, to single out outer sense as the
un~
compromised connection with things that exist apart from
us. Inner sense involves an element of sensation too, but
there is no mind-independent entity represented here, because inner sense is the mind's receptivity to itself. If we
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�construe inner sense as the mind, as thing in itself, affecting itself and giving rise to appearances of itself and its
state, we remain in the realm of the mental. Outer sense
starts outside the mental, not because ifs representations
are spatial, but because sensations of outer sense have
their origin in nonmental independent reality.
That sensation is the essential link to the extra-mental
explains Kant's statement in the Schematism: "Reality, in
the pure concept of understanding is that which corresponds to sensation in general ... " (A 143, B 182). And in
the Paralogisms, Kant can say, in the context of the asser-
atory benefit of the post-renaissance view. The aspect of
our representations that accept mathematical representa·
tion become transcendentally ideal for Kant. Spatial characteristics: figure, magnitude, and motion, are no longer
attributes of mind-independent reality for Kant. They exist only from our point of view. The sensuous component,
ception exhibits the reality of something in space, and in
in contrast, downgraded by the tradition, is the indispensable link to things that affect us in Kant's account.
Each component of this reversal of the evaluation of the
sensible and the mathematical has to be qualified. Kant
offers a new security for extension-dependent qualities
which remain the locus of mathematical description for
him. But the new security is an a priori foundation depen-
the absence of perception no power of imagination can in-
dent on our cognitive constitution. Numerical and
vent and produce that something. It is sensation, therefore, that indicates a reality in space or time, according as
it is related to the one or to the other mode of sensible
intuition" (A 373-4). And a few lines later, "Space is the
metrical representation ceases to be thought of as intellectual penetration that gets beyond appearance. Since
things in themselves are not spatio-temporal, mathematical propositions do not fit them. On the side of the sensible, Kant continues to think of sensation as an effect in us
and does not assert any resemblance between inner and
outer in terms of sensible features. But sensations are the
foundation of objectivity in the sense that they are the
matter of all objects for us, and they would not exist but
for the influence of things outside us. No such claim is
made for the mathematical aspect of representations. So
Kant is able to say that space represents only "possible coexistence" while perception does represent reality be-
tion that sensation is the sole input for perception, 11 Per-
representation of a mere possibility of coexistence, per-
ception is the representation of a reality" (A 374).
5 Primary and Secondary Qualities
Kant's distinction between the formal and material ingredients of empirical intuition is his inventive reworking
of the traditional distinction between primary and secondary qualities. One of the reasons for which it is hard to appreciate Kant's reliance on sensation rather than space for
the basic connection of thinking to the nonmental is that
Kant reverses the traditional evaluation of primary and
secondary. Primary qualities, for the tradition initiated by
Galileo and perfected in the articulation of Locke's Essay,
are those which accept mathematical and prominently geometrical or spatial characterization. It is in respect of primary qualities that our ideas resemble things and correctly
represent a mind-independent reality. Our ideas of secondary qualities involve sensible characteristics like color
and heat. These are literally features of our ideas, that is,
of mental things, but they have no footing at all in nonmental outer reality.
The distinction between primary and secondary qualities is at the core of post-renaissance philosophy because it
explains the success of mathematical science and the failure of the earlier scholastic-Aristotelian program which relied upon a relatively naive interpretation of perceptual experience. The demotion of the sensuous to the status of
wholly subjective appearance fitted the growing understanding of the physics and physiology of perception. The
objectivity assigned to the mathematically representable
side of experience fitted the notion that mathematics is
the "language of the book of nature," with the help of
which we penetrate the veil of misleading sensuous representation to a true conception of outer reality. When Kant
trades this distinction between qualities for a distinction
between form and matter, he discards much of the explanTilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
geo~
cause perception contains empirical intuition or sensation
(A 374). We can say, then, that the synthesized, nonempirical, proto-objects, the geometrical objects of the Axioms of
Intuition, are not representations of anything. But empirical appearances are representations that must have their
object. They derive this status from sensation.
One can recognize patterns of thought from both Descartes and Leibniz subjected to imaginative permutations
by Kant in this context. According to Descartes' conception of "confused" as opposed to
~~distinct"
ideas, we are
disposed to mistake the sensuous mental effect for the extended outer cause. Thus we project sensuous content,
which is immediately intuited but not extended, onto
space, which is extended but not intuited. Descartes
thinks this projection is an understandable human error.
He explains-our disposition to this error saying that we use
the sensuous qualities as clues to the harmfulness and utility of things in the spatial environment. This disposition
contributes to self-preservation and its effect is enhanced
by the fact that we think of the clues as features of, and
not merely effects of, the objects. In this, Descartes supposes, as Kant does, that essentially unextended things
(Descartes' sensuous ideas and Kant's sensations) are projected into space by us, and then thought by us to characterize regions and surfaces. The great difference lies not in
the concept of the projection of the unextended into
space but only in the legitimacy of the projection. Descartes and any other subjectivist on secondary qualities
must say that color characterizes nothing that is actually
25
�extended, since the locus of color is, the mind where there
is nothing extended. For Kant, the same projection is not
an error but an aspect of cognitive functioning which is·
sues in a constructed perceivable object.
Like Kant, Leibniz, too, has it that an essentially non·
spatial reality is represented spatially by the human mind.
Reality is itself not spatial in two senses for Leibniz. First,
space is only a system of relations and never anything like
a container for things, and, second, this system of relations
belongs only to representations or phenomena and not to
things independently of the fact that they are mentally
represented. Leibniz was never attracted at all by the Cartesian method of doubt and the solipsistic starting point
that it fosters. He refuses to enter upon the epistemological enterprise on which Descartes wagers everything. Instead Leibniz offers an overall metaphysical account
which is to be accepted if it does justice to all of our experience and thought. He does not try to show how this account might be reached by any reflective man in the face
of the most extreme scepticism.
Within Leibniz' s account, the ultimate explanation for
the fittingness of our thought to reality is pre-established
harmony. Everyone finds this unsatisfying and Kant expresses his dissatisfaction, saying that Leibniz "intellectualized the senses." Perception is just confused thought for
Leibniz, and all thought is a self-contained activity of the
mind. There is no original input traceable to our being affected by things, because in the last analysis we are not
affected by anything, according to Leibniz, but only programmed in advance to have the mental contents that we
do have.
No doubt Kant inherits from Leibniz a starting point
alien from the Cartesian-empiricist egocentrism and solipsism. It is no part of Kant's plan to doubt whether representations are really representations and then to overcome
this doubt. Kant's acceptance of the Cartesian view that
we are affected by the things that we represent is a repudiation of Leibniz's reliance on harmony as the ultimate
foundation of knowledge. Like Leibniz, Kant understands
the spatial images of conscious perception as the aggregation by the mind of items which are not themselves extended. But like Descartes, Kant thinks that these items
are effects of outer realities. Against Descartes, with
whom he shares the notion of perceptual images as effects
of outer realities, Kant thinks that our idea of color requires that extended things be colored things. Mere ideas
will never make color intelligible without receptivity. Only
because spatial things can actually have sensible features
is it the case that "Perception exhibits the reality of something in space, and, in the absence of perception, no
power of imagination can invent or produce that something." This is related to the view that Hume expressed
saying that all ideas are copies of impressions. Though it is
found in spatial things, color is subjective, in Kant's view,
as it is for the standard theory of secondary qualities.
In this setting of the views of predecessors Kant's rear-
26
dering emerges naturally. There is some objective influence on our faculty or receptivity that is responsible for
the existence and representational character of outer intuitions. In order to think of outer reality consciously we
make spatial pictures by assembling essentially unextended sensations which have been assigned places in the
mind-imposed system of locations. These pictures, in virtue of their empirical content (sensation), represent reality
outside the mind as objects in space. Spatial pictures as
assembled objects really have surfaces and their surfaces
are really colored. Color is an emergent feature which
arises in the synthesis of a multitude of sensations which
have been assigned to locations near one another. Thus,
color stands for, and represents, the outer thing without
resembling it, while the spatial features neither stand for
nor resemble any reality. In some ways this concept of
space is like the psychological concept of a visual field. Geometrical features of things come from the features of
mind-imposed space and play no part in the relation of objects of perception to things outside the mind. This fits
nicely Kant's claim that geometry is necessary and a priori,
and yet geometrical truths are true of empirical objects.
Space is the region of all possible objects ("possible coexistence") and when space is filled with sensation, synthesis
generates apprehendable structures (empirical objects) out
of deployed sensations. That these representations represent the nonmental is due entirely to the contained sensations. The mathematical knowledge we have of such objects is, as Kant says, only a question of getting out what
we have put in ourselves. It is secondary qualities that are
responsible for the fact that experience reaches beyond
merely mental realities, while primary qualities betoken
nothing mind-independent.
6 The Spatial and the Temporal
Were sensation all there is to connection with things
outside the mind, space would be just as mental as time is.
Spatial things would be mental representations of nonmental realities, and temporal things would be mental representations of mental realities. This pleasant symmetry is
not tenable. It is contradicted by the fact that Kant clearly
requires that spatial representations be subjected to time in
order to become participants in the activities of the mind.
Some of the essential doctrines of the Critique depend,
first, on the thought that spatiality per se makes representations unfit for mental status, and, second, it is precisely
the spatiality of spatial representations that renders them
fit vehicles for securing the concept of anything enduring
at all, even of minds as enduring conscious subjects.
Kant segregates the spatial and the temporal with startling rigor. All readers follow him easily when he confines
inner mental objects to a temporal order and allows spatial
distinctions no footing in the mind. This satisfies a widely
shared intuitive conviction that thoughts are not located
WINTER/SPRJNG 1983
�(B)
(A)
(C)
(D)
/
anywhere and that ideas do not displace any spatial occupant Kant's confinement of the mental to time is part of
the common ground of his inner sense and Cartesian consciousness. But Kant's exclusion of time from the objects
of outer sense, which are subjected to space and space
alone, is not attuned to any widely shared philosophical
presumption. As a result, readers of Kant sometimes suppose that he does not mean to exclude temporality from
the outer. It is often said that Kant means to say that all
inner things are subject to time and all outer things to
space and time. And this seems a needed reading lest Kant
be thought to leave no conceptual room for change in the
outer world at aiL Such an understanding, however, conflicts with very simple and clear statements in the Critique
such as this one: "Time cannot be outwardly intuited anymore than space can be intuited as something in us" (A 23,
B 37). Can one hope that even such direct assertions are
open to interpretation or overridden by other considerations? We certainly must say that Kant's ultimate view is
that material objects both fill space and endure in time. In
his thinking, then, the spatial and the temporal are wedded. The point, however, is that they need to be wedded.
No object of outer intuition, considered in itself, is something that exists in time.
As a first approximation for the understanding of this
perplexing view, we can point out that time is not essential
in the realm of the extended, whether or not time, as a
matter of fact, applies to things in that realm. The fact is
that as conscious subjects we confront an outer world in
which there is change. Since this is so, we have to deploy
temporal concepts in describing that world. But this is an
empirical fact It is conceivable that we might have found
an outer reality in which there is no change whatever. Under such circumstances, change would be confined to the
domain of our conscious survey of this wholly static reality. It would not be necessary to ascribe time to both the
inner and the outer. Our first thought, then, is that time is
not absolutely necessary for the very idea of the outer, as
space is absolutely necessary.
The thought of a changeless spatial world leads to a further speculation, and one that is a lot closer to Kant's actual view of space and time. It seems theoretically possible
to deny that there is any change in the actual world and to
assert that the spatial world we do experience is a static
world. All the apparent temporal distinctions in the outer
world will have to be recast as temporal distinctions that
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
apply only in the mental world of experiences. For example, we may think of the sequence of images A-D, in the
figure 1 as the content of consecutive visual experiences of
a subject The natural interpretation of such a sequence
assigns change, and therefore time, to both the outer and
the inner. The subject's inner experience changes as the
outer car passes the tree. But we are not forced to interpret A-D as consecutive viewings of the same outer re~
gion, namely, one in which changes are taking place. We
could think of it instead as consecutive viewings of four
different regions of a wholly static space. If we think of the
images A-D as consecutive frames of a motion picture
film, then the viewing of the film realizes the possibility of
the second interpretation, that is, consecutive experiences
of four different static arrays. This analogy ignores the real
motion involved in the manipulation of the film. When we
view a film we create the illusion of change in the object
by arranging to witness related but unchanging objects in
a special temporal order. In principle, we could think of
our ordinary experience of the world as conforming to this
pattern. Therefore, the ascription of time to the outer is an
expendable convenience.
We made informal use here of the distinction between
the thing seen and the visual experience of that thing.
Kant, too, recognizes such a distinction. He frequently
says that apprehension of the manifold of intuition is always successive, whether or not the manifold itself is successive (inner) or simultaneous (outer). The perception of
a line, however short, (an example Kant likes) involves a
synthesis which is necessarily successive. The allusion to
synthesis in this opinion reminds us that outer sense does
not reveal a world in which the question, "Are there really
changes here, or not?" naturally arises. Due to outer sense
we have a range of intuitions. These are a multiplicity of
individual representations of outer things. For the description of these representations spatial terms are needed and
temporal terms are not Nothing happens in one representation. The ordinary world is not something simply given
to outer sense. The world is constructed by our synthetic
powers (the understanding) operating on material provided by receptivity. In Kant's terms the restriction of temporality to the inner means that all the temporal distinctions used in thinking of the ordinary world are traceable
to synthesis and none to outer receptivity.
Kant often speaks of the products of the synthetic
powers of the mind as objects of outer sense. For example,
27
�a line is an object of outer intuition. This seems unproblematic because a line is a static thing. Its synthesis, how·
ever, is successive and involves time. Strictly speaking,
nothing complex is merely intuited. Even the least com·
plexity is ascribed to synthesis. Combinatory activity-as·
sembling, integrating, collating, comparing, retaining, re·
trieving, reproducing, and, in general, synthesizing-is all
mental activity. Kant often says that we are not conscious
of these operations and some are even "concealed in the
depths of the soul," but this merely emphasizes that he
does think of them as mental processes. No one thinks oth·
erwise. It is inevitable, in Kant's system, that these activi·
ties be temporal activities and any materials involved in
these activities must be in time in order to be accessible for
synthesis.
It is for this reason that Kant confines the Schematism
to consideration of the temporality of intuition. The job of
the schematism is to bridge the gulf between the Catego·
ries as pure concepts of understanding and the empirical
sensibility that offers human beings matter for experience.
The Categories are developed from the forms of judgment
identified in formal logic. Although the transcendental deduction of the Categories is supposed to guarantee that
any reality we are able to experience will conform to these
pure concepts, the deduction does not reduce the merely
formal and logical significance of the Categories. Any ra·
tiona! creature will have experience in conformity with
just these twelve Categories, in Kant's view, but this might
have a wholly different meaning for creatures whose re·
ceptivity is not spatial and temporal as our receptivity is.
So the Schematism interprets the Categories for beings
with sensible and spatio-temporal intuitions. But Kant
seems to ignore the spatial altogether so that, in the Sche·
matism, as he describes it, the Categories are subjected to
a temporal condition. Some readers have supposed that he
might have offered a spatial as well as a temporal Sche·
matism for the Categories. This is not correct. The Gate·
gories are the pure forms that are available for the combination of materials provided by receptivity. Combination
is not intelligible without time. As Kant says, synthesis is
always successive, whether or not the manifold is succes·
sive or simultaneous. Thus Kant calls time the form of all
appearances whether inner or outer. In this view, Kant dis·
tinguishes appearances, which presuppose synthesis, from
intuitions, which do not. Outer intuitions have to be
re~represented as mental experiences in order to enter into
any combinatory activity. For example, the apprehension
of a cube offers an object of outer sense that has spatial
features such as being cube-shaped and no temporal fea·
tures. It is the visual experience of the cube and not the
cube itself that enters into mental activities. When spatial
things are re-represented they trade in their spatial charac·
ter for a new mental character. The visual experience of a
cube is not a cube-shaped experience. It is a datable event
related in time to all other events in the mind.
If outer sense is not directly available for synthesis, this
28
is just another way of saying that we cannot have any im·
mediate or non-inferential knowledge of outer things. The
raw materials of knowledge all have to be representations
in inner sense. But if this is so then in what sense are there
any data of outer sense at all? It seems that Kant's outer
sense has become something like the outer world for the
Cartesian-empiricist. It is a hypothetical source of some of
the data we really do have, namely, the things present to
the mind and available for synthesis. How else can we in·
terpret the fact that in Kant's scheme items that actually
possess spatial features cannot enter into mental processes
or consciousness. They have to be subjected to time. Kant
has internalized the problem of the external world. In or·
der to figure in mental activities, representations must be
temporal representations. When it comes to the supposed
data of outer sense, so often touted as immediate, it turns
out that subjection to time amounts to re-representation.
As Kemp-Smith put it, appearances in space are not really
representations at all, "They are objects of representation,
not representation itself" (Commentary, 295).
No spatial thing can exist as a subjective state. At most a
representation of a spatial thing, a representation which
does not itself have spatial features, can truly exist in the
mind. But the great problem with this is that the spatial is
now cut off from both the inner and mental and from the
metaphysically outer. From the perspective of the inner,
spatial representations are objects that have to be re-repre·
sented in time in order to belong to thought and to the
empirical world the mind constructs. From the perspective of things as they are in themselves, spatial representations are mere appearances. Spatial reality threatens to be·
come empirically ideal as well as being transcendentally ideal.
This instability in the status of the spatial sheds light on
some difficulties in interpreting Kant. Faced with the demand for a distinction between the subjective and the ob·
jective, Kant repeatedly formulates distinctions that seem
to fall entirely on the subjective side. For example, his con·
trast between judgments of perception and judgments of
experience, drawn in the Prolegomena, operates in a realm
that is all appearance. In the Analogies, he purports to dis·
tinguish the temporal order of our experience and the
temporal order in the object. But the only object under
consideration is outer appearance and not
mind~indepen~
dent reality. Such passages result from the fact that Kant
treats outer intuition as a source of input for inner intui~
tion. Then, relative to inner representations, the outer be-
comes a system of represented objects. Thus he is able to
treat outer appearances as if they offered independent objects about which a world of facts could be ascertained.
When he is thinking this way, Kant's conception of the
mind retreats to inner sense, to the traditional Cartesian
consciousness which has to develop knowledge of spatial
things through immediate contact with inner representa·
tions (ideas) of spatial objects. This thought contradicts
the claim on which much depends, in the Paralogisms, for
example, that inner and outer sense are symmetrical, and
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�both are immediate, and objects are given to both. In a
footnote which strengthens the newly composed "Refuta·
tion of Idealism," the Preface to the second edition of the
Critique explicitly asserts that the "permanent" which
must be found in perception "Cannot be an intuition in
me" (B xxxix) for intuitions in me have only the status of
ephemeral representations. Here Kant seems to promote
the object of outer sense, the object of perception, to
mind·independent reality, and simultaneously to reduce
our knowledge of it from the direct intuition claimed ear·
lier to something mediated and inferential.
We will miss what is important for Kant's thought here
if we treat these passages as mere slips into the Cartesian
point of view. The thought that what is permanent "can·
not be an intuition in me" points to an entirely different
significance for the inaccessibility of representations of
outer sense to both consciousness and synthesis. Why is it
that the permanent cannot be identified with any intui·
tion? Plainly, the answer is that anything truly mental, any
subjective state, is essentially transient. The fact that time
is the form of the mental guarantees that everything
purely mental has, as Hume expressed it, "a perishing exis-
tence." Nothing mental could possibly be permanent be·
cause impermanence is the form of mental things. Mere
temporal existence is impermanence.
We have now discovered the deeper Kantian motivation
for the sharp segregation of the temporal and the spa·
tial. Kant's thought of the outer has to satisfy two de·
mands that seem to conflict with one another. On the one
hand, he would like the outer to be intuited and thus im·
mediately accessible like any other intuition. And this is
required for the transcendental ideality of space. On the
other hand, he wants the outer as merely spatial, to be ex·
empted from the ever·vanishing essence of inner things
and mental things, even though the price of this exemp·
tion is separation from mental activities and consciousness. The inaccessibility of the spatial and its tendency to
become something independent of the mind is a conse·
quence of a powerful demand of Kant's theory and is no
mere slip. The defect of the Cartesian·empiricist perspec·
tive is that it envisions a starting point for philosophical
reflection consisting of a conscious mind confronted by
data all of which are perishing mental contents. Some·
thing outside the destructive scope of temporality must be
provided in order to account for the idea of the subject
himself. No concept of consciousness is intelligible which
starts from a framework limited to mental things.
The demand for something not subject to the ravages of
time, and therefore not mental, is the point of Kant's cen·
tral argument concerning apperception and personal iden·
tity. Any conception of mental activity presupposes that
the materials involved be accessible to one subject of con·
sciousness. The possibility of learning, discriminating, recognizing, remembering, and forming concepts requires
that the data be subject to one subject. But inner sense
does not reveal any such "abiding self."
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Berkeley earlier noted that we have no idea of the sub·
ject of experience, and he provided the "notion" of a spirit
to make up for the missing idea. Hume, too, recognized
that we have no experience of the self. Refusing to intra·
duce an ad hoc surrogate like Berkeley's spirit, Hume tried
to reduce the subject of experience to the content of expe·
rience in his bundle theory of the subject. This amounted
to an extension to mental substances of Berkeley's bundle
theory of spatial substances. This is the gist of the history
of the problem of the unity of apperception up to Kant.
Kant takes the bundle theory of personal identity to be the
reductio ad absurdum of the Cartesian·empiricist program
which tries to derive everything from the purely mental,
purely inner, and purely temporal.
Kant insists on a substantial foundation for the unity of
the subject of experience outside the various experiences
of that subject. The great Kantian contribution here is the
recognition that the subject could not possibly be given in
experience. Hume said that when he looked within in or·
der to find himself he found instead only another percep·
tion (perishing mental content). Kant understands that
this is inevitable. Suppose we found a common element in
all our conscious experience and we inclined to think of
this ubiquitous element as our own abiding self. This
would have to be an error. Kant sees that no such element
in experience could be the foundation of the connected·
ness of experiences that makes them all contents for one
subject. On the contrary, experiences stand in just the
same need of connectedness to one another and presence
to a common subject whether or not they have a common
element of any kind. The very idea that I could note a
common element in my experiences presupposes that I, as
a single subject, have all those different experiences, so
that I might note a common element among them. The
common element, if there were one, could not be the rea·
son for the fact that all the experiences containing the com·
man element are mine. We have to look outside the realm of
conscious contents to find a foundation for the unity of
consciousness.
The nontemporal spatial object of outer sense offers a
foundation for permanence because it is not an essentially
perishing object. Of course, the spatial object is not the
sought.for subject of experience. But the nontemporal
outer object provides the minimal conceptual framework
for the idea of the endurance of the subject. Enduring
things in space introduce the "determinate time" within
which the endurance of the subject can be thought.
For in what we entitle "soul" everything is in continual flux
and there is nothing abiding except (if we must so express
ourselves) the "I", which is simple solely because its representation has no content .... [A 381]
So long, therefore, as we do not go beyond mere thinking we
are without the necessary condition for applying the concept
of substance, that is, of a self-subsistent subject, to the self as
a thinking being. [B 413]
29
�Now consciousness [of my existence] in time is necessarily
bound up with consciousness of the '[condition of the] possibility of this time determination; and it is therefore necessarily bound up with the existence of things outside me, as the
condition of the time determination. [B 276]
Endurance does not contradict the essential character of
things that are outside thought. This is the positive benefit
of the Kantian treatment of space as inaccessible to immediate consciousness. The subject cannot be intuited, nor
can it be constructed out of the flux of intuited contents.
It has a stability borrowed from the endurance of outer
things.
A natural objection to Kant's circuitous reasoning about
the subject of experience might run as follows: Consciousness, he says, reveals no enduring substantial subject. It
also reveals no enduring substantial object. The given,
construed as the totality of materials that the mind does
have to work with, entirely consists of perishing contents.
When Kant claims that the outer enduring object is required for the possibility of an inner enduring subject, it
seems that he merely assumes the possibility of the one in
order to provide a conceptual foundation for the other.
Why does he not just assume the existence of the substantial subject and confess that his procedure is really no
more realistic than that of Berkeley?
The essential difference between the inner and the
outer is supposed to furnish the Kantian response to this
objection. For no assumption that Kant could make within
an ontology limited to inner objects could possibly be efficacious just because it is the essence of the inner to be
perishing and insubstantial. Nothing mental endures because time is the form of the mental. So there can be no
question of assuming the endurance of something mental.
Furthermore, this opinion is not an arbitrary dogma. That
the contents of consciousness are essentially transient is
indisputable phenomenology.
The temporal is the realm of all contents of consciousness, so it looks as if we have to posit something nontemporal in order to introduce the least stability in our
thought of ourselves and the world. But Kant would like to
say that we do not have to posit anything because perception acquaints us with the spatial and with things that
have permanent existence in space. The first Analogy of
Experience asserts that our experience is necessarily of en-
during substances. To the extent that the discussion is not
entirely phenomenalistic and reductive, Kant seems to
identify the enduring component of what is perceived
with matter and to assimilate the assertion of the Analogy
to the conservation of matter. This is explicitly Kant's view
in the parallel discussion of the Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde. But there is another side of the idea of permanence that is less theoretical and sweeping and, perhaps,
more attractive.
Permanence requires, at a minimum, that the temporal
parameters of the object perceived be extended beyond
those of the perception of the object. Thus, the idea of
30
permanence is the idea of the existence of objects unperceived. It is this conception of permanence that furthers
Kant's realism. Commitment to permanence in perception is the idea that our perceptions are of relatively stable
objects which endure through gaps in our episodic experiences. Permanence expresses categorical opposition to the
thesis that esse is percipi.
We have seen that the very advantage of nontemporality carries with it the disadvantage of separation from consciousness and the need for re-representation. If we forget
about this problem for the moment, as Kant seems to, the
prospects for his theory are good. Time comes into the picture of spatial reality only via experience. As a re-representation, an experience of a spatial thing has a date, that is a
place in the sequence of all mental contents of a subject.
Nothing merely conceptual obstructs the possibility that
an identical outer thing could be experienced at two different times. This is just what cannot happen with inner objects. I can experience again today the object that I experienced yesterday, but I cannot have the experience I had
yesterday again today. At best, I can have a qualitatively
identical experience, never the numerically identical experience. For objects of inner sense, the date, that is, place in
temporal sequence, is part of the principle of individuation. Therefore, if experiences have different dates, they
are, ipso facto, different experiences. The enduring existence of things in space does not contradict the very essence of spatial existence, while to speak of the enduring
existence of things that exist only in time does contradict
the essence of such temporal things.
Once concepts of spatial enduring objects are given
footing, we are able to speak, as Kant says, of''determinate
time." The outer object exists when we perceive it. It endures between our perceptions of it. A clock is a reperceivable object with the help of which the time between
perceptual experiences is measured. The whole spatial
world is a generalized clock. It makes time determinate in
the sense that it makes it possible to say at just what time
our inner experiences occur. The endurance of the self
that must accompany all experiences is registered in the
objective temporal order of outer things. The dates of objects, clock time, place the whole inner sequence of experiences of objects in an objective context. This is Kant's
completion of his argument on apperception. Outer
things are essential for the temporal continuity of the subject of experience.
This argument appears in various relatively obscure formulations in the Transcendental Deduction, in the Paralogisms, and in the Refutation of Idealism. I have rehearsed
it here in order to emphasize the strategic importance for
Kant of the inaccessibility of the spatial from immediate
consciousness. Immediately accessible contents are essen-
tially transient. In Kant's most theoretical thinking, transience, like permanence, is pressed to the limit. Permanence means conservation of matter forever, and transience means that mental things are all new at each instant.
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�The least endurance that goes beyond the instantaneous
depends upon the powers of synthesis' ,and entails a mode
of existence that is not possible within the mind itself. Perhaps these extremes of permanence and transience are
not necessary for Kant's objectives. They seem to come
from a Leibnizean style of thinking about parts and wholes
and infinites that is familiar in the "Inaugural Dissertation" and in the Antinomies. In any case, the general line
of thought is crucial to Kant's philosophy as a whole. To
say this is not to say that he offers a consistent account of
the inner and the outer, the spatial and the mental, so that
his main contentions can be contemplated within the
equilibrium of a coherent and plausible system of concepts. There are inconsistencies which cannot be removed
while remaining faithful to Kant's overall thought because
they lie too deep and Kant's awareness of them is too
slight. Nonetheless, the basis of a generally Kantian reconstruction of most of what he says does seem to be possible.
7 A Sketch for the Consistent Kantian
We saw at the beginning of this essay that spatiality
seems to be equivalent to the locus of extra-mental existence in Kant's initial definition of outer sense in the Aesthetic. This interpretation gave way to an inner and mental status for space in light of the asserted transcendental
ideality of space and the idealist tendency of the claim that
space is only in us. The complete collapse of Kantian realism then seemed to be avoidable only if we could understand outer sensation rather than spatiality as the irreducible connection with mind-independent things. Whether
or not sensation supplies an adequate foundation for
Kant's realism, however, it is clear that the main argu~
ments of the Critique of Pure Reason require that spatiality carry with it an immunity from the transience of all
things of which time is the form. This brings to the fore
once again the identification of space with the region of
nonmental existence.
Failure to resolve strains here leaves Kant seeming to
assert that space is neither the metaphysically outer, since
it is only appearance, nor mental, since it is not subject to
the form of time. A satisfactory reconstruction must start
from the fact that this pressure for an intermediate status
that will bridge the gulf between the mind and the world
arises quite naturally. Some such bridge is, indeed, just
what is needed to overcome the solipsistic viewpoint and
attendant scepticism and idealism. At the same time we
obviously cannot leave space in an entirely unprovided-for
limbo between appearance and reality.
The concept of representation must do most of the gapclosing work. Although he is the champion of representation against the challenge of idealist reductions, Kant frequently yields to the idealist thought that representations
amount to a sort of impregnable epistemological shield
that perfectly protects an ever-virginal reality from the as·
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
saults of enquirers. Every passionate investigation is re-
pelled coldly and all aspiring lovers of truth only get to
know their own fantasies. There is something wrong here.
Representations are involved in all efforts to know anything. But this does not mean that representations block
knowledge from the outset by substituting a surrogate object. The idealist line about representation can be combated, in part, by shifting to use of the verb instead of the
noun. We represent reality as a stable system of relatively
stable material objects. It is reality that we thus represent.
We do not represent our own representations as such a sys·
tern. And, in any case, our representations certainly do not
compose such a system. Our representation of the world
is, itself, a thing of the mind and it has concepts and propositions and images for constituents, not relatively stable
material objects in space. If we resolve to defend Kant's
philosophy and we are asked, "Is reality spatia-temporal?"
we should not answer, as Kant himself often answers,
"Empirical reality is spatia-temporal, but mind-independent reality is not." That reply goes with the idea that our
representations are spatia-temporal and all we know about
are our representations. The right answer should be, "We
represent reality as a spatia-temporal system." This answer
does not change the subject and insist on speaking only
about representations. It is a guarded answer, but not a
negative answer about mind-independent reality. For the
question, "Is reality spatia-temporal?" the answer, "So we
represent it," is a form of affirmative answer. Its force is
very close to that of, "We certainly think so."
If we accept this reading of the relationship between
representation and reality, what are we to make of Kant's
claims that space is only an imposed form, and that space
is transcendentally ideal? The idea that space is a form
comes from Leibniz's analysis rejecting thinghood for
space. Formal status makes space a principle for the organization of simultaneous existants and denies that space
would be anything were there no such existants to be organized. This much does not impair the objectivity of
space. If space is a system of relationships among simultaneously existing outer things then spatial representation is
representation of the outer. Spatial things will be outer
things though space itself is not one of them. This seemed
to be Kant's view in the Metaphysical Exposition of space.
It is only because Kant also thinks of space as a form imposed by us that the spatial tends to become subjective and
ideal.
Why does Kant think that space is imposed by us and is
not a system of relations in which things would stand even
if we did not represent them at all? There are two reasons
for this. First, this conception enables him to explain some
synthetic a priori knowledge, as we saw in discussion of the
Transcendental Exposition. I will simply pass over this
presumed benefit of the ideality of space and will not consider here whether anything of that benefit could be retained if space were not regarded as an imposed system of
relations. However this is decided, we cannot suppose that
31
�Kant flatly asserts that space is imposed simply because
that will enable him to explain our knowledge of geometry
and its application to the world. He must have reasons for
thinking that this status is independently plausible. I want
to call attention to a set of convictions that operate in the
background of Kant's thinking, and sometimes in the fore·
ground. For example,
Those who take space and time for some real and absolutely
necessary fastening as it were of all possible substances and
states do not think that anything else is required in order to
conceive how to a number of existing things there applies a
certain original relation as the primitive condition of possible
influxes and the principle of the essential form of the universe. [Even if we grant it as much reality and necessity as we
can, space] . .. only represents the intuitively given possibility
of universal coordination. [The question remains] ... what is
the principle upon which this relation of all substances rests,
a relation which when seen intuitively is called space. (Inaug.
Diss., 16]
Here Kant is saying that we cannot simply accept space as
the order in which simultaneous existents stand. That ex·
istents stand in any order, that they are related to one an·
other in any way, requires an explanation beyond their
mere existence. "Simply because of their subsistence they
are not necessarily related to anything else ... " (Ibid., 17).
Things must already form a whole or a universe in order to
stand in any relations, even spatial relations. The imposed
character of space comes out of these thoughts without
reference to the explanatory fruitfulness of the idea of
mind imposed space vis-a-vis geometrical knowledge.
To give as much definition as possible to these elusive
thoughts, let us consider reality without worrying at all
about representation or knowledge for the moment. We
can conveniently take God's point of view, remembering
that it is one with which Leibniz and Kant sometimes
seem to have a certain familiarity. Suppose God creates a
planet. It will have all the contents and characteristics that
he has put into it. There will already be spatial relation·
ships between the parts of the planet, but the planet itself
will not be anywhere in space, for there is nothing with
which it is coordinated. Now let God create another
planet. He need not first create more space so that there
will be room for another planet. The fact that it does not
need creating is a reflection of the nonthing-like status of
space, and of its necessary availability. Let us imagine that
God makes the second planet larger and warmer than the
first. As soon as there is more than one thing, in addition
to the properties that each thing has, there will also be a
multiplicity of relations between things. All the relations
seem to have a secondary significance from the point of
view of ontology and creation. They do not place any de·
mands on the creative powers of God at all. A planet will
not have the features it does have unless God actively puts
those features into it in his creation of it. But the relations
do not require anything beyond the creation of the indi-
32
viduals with their features. In creating the second planet,
God does exactly what he would have done had he created
it first. And then it is, automatically, so to speak, some·
where with respect to the first planet, larger than the first,
and warmer than the first. The thought that relations obtain without being created is part of the Leibnizean claim
that relations are not real.
In order to connect this with our reconstruction of
Kant's thinking, we have to add the thought that relations,
and the ones constituting space in particular, have their
existence only in representation. To illustrate this we can
pursue our story of creation. In what sense is one planet
larger than the other, or located somewhere with respect
to the other? Each planet is itself. It has all its properties. It
exists exactly as it would if the other planet did not exist at
all, ignoring some physics. From the point of view of the
planet in itself, if we could speak of such a thing, "larger
than" or "located ... with respect to" do not enter into its
existence at all. Of course, God will know that one planet
has a certain size and the other a certain size. God will
know that one of these is greater than the other. This is
because the planets are assembled into a universe in God's
thought. That they manage to stand as constituents of
anything is mediated by thought.
·
The idea that relations are imposed is the idea that they
only obtain in the context of a surveying intellect or con·
sciousness which provides a connection between things
that would otherwise simply not stand in any relations at
all, even though the several things were to exist. This pat·
tern of thought is clearly visible in Kant's transcendental
psychology. In the absence of a mind whose survey relates
them planets would stand in unrelated isolation much like
the isolation and wholesale disconnectedness that Kant as·
cribes to elements of the unsynthesized manifolds of intui·
tion. Kant's demand for synthesis is not a matter of sup·
posing that the mind will not appreciate the relationships
between spatial things (that they form a triangle, for exam·
pie) without synthesis. On the contrary, they do not form a
triangle or anything else until they are synthesized, al·
though receptivity alone assigns them location. Unsynthe·
sized elements of intuition are simply not related to one
another at all, apart from the fact that synthesis can relate
them. The perceivable features that they have as geomet·
rica! configurations have being as a consequence of syn·
sis. In this context, in the transcendental psychology, Kant
is thinking of both elementary intuitions that need to be
related and of complex intuitions that represent related
things as mental items and not outer realities. But this
thought clearly instantiates the pattern that relativizes re·
lations to a surveying mind.
Quite apart from the issue of the mental status of spatial
things that Kant asserts in his theory of the mental con·
struction of spatial objects out of located but unextended
sensations, his claim that the several constituents of a spa·
tial thing only stand in spatial relations as a consequence
of synthesis is not valid within the terms of Kant's own
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�discussion. The fact that things are in space at all is as·
cribed to receptivity which gives a locati.on to the original
intuitions of outer sense. Kant says that all magnitude
comes from synthesis. But the mere concept of location
cannot be divorced from that of spatial relations in the way
in which Kant requires. We may think with Kant that no
ultimate original sensation is colored or otherwise sensu·
ous, and that the perceivability of the sensuous element in
perception comes from a mental aggregation of many unperceived constituents. We cannot, however, altogether
abandon the idea that the locations to which sensations
are assigned in receptivity are near and remote from one
another prior to synthesis. To withdraw this idea is to
drain the meaning from "location" altogether. Plainly a
certain manifold can be synthesized and perceived as a yellow surface only because many sensations with locations
near one another have similar representational character,
even though we are not conscious of that character on a
sensation-by-sensation basis. The whole doctrine that
traces geometry to receptivity would be lost if we could
not say that the results of a synthesis were significantly determined in advance by the relations between the locations to which the several synthesized sensations are assigned. There is, then, a plain sense in which synthesis
does not create objects with geometrical features out of
mere collections of unrelated sensations. At most, synthesis discovers the geometrical features of pre-existing systems of sensations. Borrowing Kant's own phrase, we
should say that the spatial object is not produced by the
synthesis in so far as its existence is concerned ("dem Dasein nach," A 92) but that the function of synthesis is only
to make it possible for us to know spatial things as objects.
Once we give up the idea that space is imposed by us we
can restate the main themes of Kant while allowing that
spatial things are independent of the mind. The mind contains only representations of spatial things. This is not a
disaster now that we have got clear of the thought that
knowledge by means of representations must be just
knowledge of those representations. Our representations
embrace our thought of the universe as a system of spatia-
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
temporal, causally interconnected, material objects whose
existence does not depend on our thought. Kant surely
wants to make available the anti-idealist result of this externalization of the spatial. In the Paralogisms, for example, Kant says that each subject has his own private time
and that private times are only commensurable with one
another through the public time of spatial existence. Were
space mental, it would be as private as time and would offer no exit from egocentrism. The crucial arguments of the
Critique that we have outlined will be rescued by this understanding, since those arguments require that space be
nonmental while our spatial representations have their
place in the sequence of subjective states.
Whether this reconstruction involves the retraction of
the familiar Kantian claim that things in themselves are
unknown is still not clear, but perhaps it now seems far less
important. Our perceptual knowledge is all conditioned by
complex relationships that obtain between ourselves and
the things we perceive. As empiricists we believe that all
our knowledge is based on perceptual knowledge. If we
mean by knowledge of things in themselves, knowledge
that does not depend on any relations in which we stand to
what we know, then we have no knowledge of things in
themselves. Is there something from which we are, therefore, barred?
What are atomic theory, molecular biology, and radio astronomy telling us, if not about how things are in themselves, as opposed to how things appear? If this sort of
thing is not knowledge of things in themselves, then the
demand for such knowledge seems like the demand to
know what things would look like if there were no creatures with eyes. There may survive enough of a feeling
that there could be some kind of divine, wholly nonrelational grasp of reality to support the idea that there is
something that we cannot know in principle, because our
knowledge depends on relations. But I prefer Kant's
thought that the concept of a noumenon is only a negative
and limiting concept and not the concept of an unknowable reality at all.
33
�BLACK AND WHITE
The right hand of Rachmaninoff, in plaster,
Poses on the piano, exemplifying
Perpetual grasp of the imaginary
Orange. Above, the photograph of Chopin
Wearing his overcoat indoors, the face
Framed in protective jet, the nose connecting,
Like a phrase, the puzzled eyes and lips.
Hands are relaxed in power, but cuff conceals
That all of art's controlled by how you hold
The wrist. Witness another picture, where
With wrists exposed, white beauty and two Jews,
Subalterns on the strings, imparadise
Queen Carmen Sylva of Roumania.
They cut Tchaikovsky's coda, for the dirge
Was deemed indecorous at court. Her reign
Is now, the chaste survivor of the trio,
Retained to touch me weekly with her touch.
Aristocratic still at the piano,
Her fingers knotted, but her thumbs are spades
Or sugar spoons pressing upon my back
To plant the tones that only ghosts require
Of music eaten brown by Brazilian beetles.
I memorize the pulse. Repeated octaves
Refuse admission to the Fourth Ballade,
While in the kitchen, waiting as reward,
Kulitch that must be deftly sawn, not sliced,
And tea from the electric samovar.
ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN
Elliott Zuckerman is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis.
34
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�The Media-Shield of the Utopians
RaelJean Isaac and Erich Isaac
Why are the media so susceptible to the views of groups,
whose assumption, often unstated, is that a perfect society
can be created? These are groups out of sympathy with
one or more of the traditional values of American society,
who, however, couch their appeals in terms of values that
Americans share and purposes they desire, to their credit,
to achieve: social justice, peace, a pollution-free and safe
environment, equality between races and sexes, the reduction of risk, greater control of the individual over the decisions that affect his life.
We call these groups utopians. Let it be said immediately, they are not a cabal of conspirators parcelling out
areas of action to different groups in a coordinated onslaught on American institutions. They come from diverse
backgrounds and traditions. Who are these utopians?
They are the leadership and professional staff of the
mainline Protestant denominations and their related organizations, including the National Council of Churches,
the umbrella body representing thirty-two Protestant and
Eastern Orthodox churches. They include the leaders of
almost all the peace groups, including the pacifist ones,
like the War Resisters League and the American Friends
Service Committee and those that, while not opposing all
forms of violence in principle, seek to reduce the risks of
war, like SANE, Clergy and Laity Concerned, Physicians
for Social Responsibility, etc. They are the intellectuals in
Rael Tean Isaac has written Israel Divided, Ideological Politics in the Jewish
State (Johns Hopkins University Press 1976) and Party Politics in Israel
(Longman 1981). She recently published an article, "Do You Know
Where Your Church Offerings Go?" in the Reader's Digest (January
1983). Erich Isaac teaches geography at the City College of the City University of New York.
The above article is adapted from a book, The Coercive Utopians, that
Regnery Gateway will publish in the fall.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
a number of institutes and think tanks that have flourished
in the soil of so-called "revisionist history" which places
the blame for world tensions after World War II primarily
on the United States. They are found in a series of community action organizations like ACORN and National
Peoples Action. They are in government bureaucracies,
and have been especially attracted to agencies like the Department of Education, ACTION (in the Carter years) and
the now defunct Community Services Administration,
most of whose personnel have been transferred to other
agencies. They are prominent in the legally independent
but wholly government-funded Legal Services Corporation and in the similarly constituted Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They are found in the environmental
movement, especially in newer national organizations like
Friends of the Earth and Environmental Action, and in
the host of local environmental groups which, spurred by
the issue of nuclear energy, have burgeoned around the
country. They are found in the consumer organizations established by Ralph Nader. They are found in the colleges,
and are particularly prominent in the law and social science faculties of elite universities.
These movements-if not the specific organizationsare familiar to the reader, for they are the daily fare of
press and television. Yet much of what they say in their
own publications would be surprising, even shocking to
the general reader. But the media have acted as a filter,
screening out most of the information that could damage
the utopians in the public view.
There are a number of factors that explain why the media, instead of providing the public with some perspective
on the utopians, have made themselves a sounding board
for them, absorbing and transmitting their perspective on
crucial issues as objective "truth." The most important is
that journalists have a broadly similar perspective on the
major issues the utopians address. Journalist Robert Novak
35
�(of the Evans and Novak column) has called the media the
setting where journalists, regardless of background, are
welded into one homogeneous ideological mold.l Thomas
Shepard, the publisher of Look Magazine until it folded in
1971, noted that with only a handful of exceptions the
men and women who produced Look "detested big business" and "worshipped the ecological and consumerism
reformers. " 2
While these observations are impressionistic, they are
confirmed by surveys of the media elite. Two political scientists, S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman, in 1979
and 1980 interviewed 240 journalists and broadcasters of
the most influential media outlets. The survey found the
media elite were markedly to the left of the American electorate as a whole. For example, over a sixteen-year period
less than twenty percent of the media elite had supported
any Republican Presidential candidate. Their views on issues were in striking agreement with utopian articles of
faith. For example, fifty-six percent of the media elite
agreed that the U.S. exploits the Third World and is the
cause of its poverty.l
The media also have an ambition to hold sway over society in common with the utopians. In response to questions
from Lichter and Rothman, both the media elite and a
comparative sample of the business elite had a very similar
perception of the actual power of different groups in society, seeing the media, business, and unions as those with
the greatest influence. But asked how they would prefer to
see power distributed, the media elite put themselves at
the top, followed by consumer groups, intellectuals, and
blacks. 4
In part the media elite sympathize with the utopians because they define their role in much the same way. Walter
Cronkite is said to have asserted that journalists identify
with humanity rather than with institutions or with authority.s Similarly Julius Duscha, a reporter who became
director of the Washington Journalism Center, said "Reporters are frustrated reformers ... they look upon themselves almost with reverence, like they are protecting the
world against the forces of eviJ."6
For all their cynicism concerning tile motives of busi~
nessmen and politicians, the media elite readily succumb
to hero worship. Ralph Nader was the journalist's image of
his highest self: his own man, in the pay of no institution,
he acted without reference to financial self-interest. Nader
was the true outsider, an almost monastic figure, with his
spare single room lodgings, his bachelorhood and abstemious way oflife. No single figure has captured the imagination of journalists in quite the same way, but the utopians
as a whole benefit from being viewed by journalists as people like themselves, representatives of all the people.
In the case of some of the media elite more than sympathy is involved. Some are utopians, sharing fully their perspective on events. Larry Stern, in a key position as national news editor of the country's second most influential
paper, the Washington Post, shared their attitudes. This
36
emerged, surprisingly, at his funeral, following his sudden
death in 1980 at the age of fifty of a heart attack. He was
eulogized by left-wing journalist I. F. Stone, who praised
Stern as a friend of Palestine and Nicaragua (i.e. the PLO
and the Sandinistas) and for hating "those huge mindless
institutions that devour our substance and corrupt our
fundamental ideals, like the Pentagon and the CIA."7
(More remarkably, Stern was also eulogized by Teofilo
Acosta, head of the Cuban interests section in Washington, identified by intelligence expert Robert Moss as station chief of the DGI, the Cuban intelligence service.
Stern was apparently a friend of Castro's Cuba as well.)
Journalist Les Whitten, who worked with Jack Anderson
on the popular column, seems to have derived his political
philosophy directly from Ralph Nader. He warned a high
school graduating class in Maryland of the "great piratelike corporations that swallow up the blood of the people"
and informed the class that if you lined up the presidents
of thirty big banks and thirty bank robbers you would have
fifty-eight criminals and the only difference was that one
kind did it with a gun quickly while the bank presidents
did it "at eighteen percent a year without a gun." 8
Many in the media-including some of the elite-actually learned their craft in utopian training-grounds. A huge
((underground," later called ualternative" press, bur·
geoned in the late 1960s, its theme that America (often
spelled with a "k" wrapped in a swastika) was a fascist
country. A number of jounalists from these papers subsequently moved into the straight press. The best-selling
novel The Spike described the odyssey of a reporter for
Barricades (an obvious takeoff on the "alternative" journal
Ramparts), whose sensational scoop exposing the CIA
earns him a place on the New York World (clearly the New
York Times). The Spike's hero Robert Hackney was pre·
sumably modelled on New York Times star reporter Seymour Hersh, who wrote for Ramparts before coming to the
New York Times and made his name exposing the CIA. To
be sure, only the first part of Hersh's career paralleled that
of the fictional Hackney, for while Hackney woke up to
the role he was playing on behalf of Soviet disinformation
efforts, there is no evidence that Hersh's utopian perspective has changed.
Even journalists who do not start out as utopians may be
drawn to them because their concerns make good copy.
Utopians are endless sources of the kind of stories that sell
papers. Our tuna is poisoned; the nuclear plant near our
city is in danger of meltdown; nuclear bombs will destroy
all life from ground zero, which is in our backyard. In addition to the inherent drama of scare stories, these stories
have, as the utopians present them, an appealing clarity.
There are good guys and bad guys, victimizers and victims.
This is much more dramatic stuff than cost benefit analyses, probability studies, and theories of deterrence necessary to refute these stories. Moreover, the utopians have
solutions: shut down nuclear power plants, eliminate all
pesticides, rely on the sun, endorse a nuclear freeze.
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�If stories told according to utopian formula make good
copy for the press, they are even bett~r suited for documentaries, television's method of exploring issues indepth. Why this is so can be seen from .a candid look into
the documentary producer's world offered in 1978 by Martin Carr, a veteran in producing documentaries for all
three networks. Carr noted that the producer's first step
was to "arrive at a point of view." His goal was to make the
viewer feel as he felt: "If you walk away feeling differently,
I failed somehow." Carr noted the obligation to provide
"balance," but explained that this had to be done carefully, so as not to disturb the documentary's emotional impact. He described a documentary he had made on migrant workers in which, for balance, he had interviewed
the biggest grower in F1orida. But he was a charming man
who could have tipped the emotional balance of the documentary in favor of his position. So he found another
grower whose point of view was the same, but whose personality would alienate the viewer and put him on instead.
As a result Carr reports: "One could only feel a particular
way at the end of the film ... the way I felt about it." 9 The
utopian point of view on most stories shapes visually striking, emotionally compelling documentaries: the good
farmworker against the bad grower; the victims of disease
versus the large corporation; the peasant guerilla against
government-backed exploiters, etc.
On major topics such as the environment, defense, intelligence, and foreign policy, the media serve as a vast
sounding board for the utopians, while at the same time
suppressing sounds the utopians prefer not to hear. Suppression is especially important, for while there is dispute
on how effective the media are in making the public think
the way journalists do (after all, the public does not vote
like the media elite), there is little dispute that the media
determine what it is that the public thinks about. An article in The Journalism Quarterly points out: "If newsmen
share a pattern of preference as to what is newsworthy,
and that pattern does not represent reality, they will
present a distorted image of the world which may contribute to inappropriate decisions and policies."lO
Nowhere are distortions in coverage more evident than
in coverage of environmental issues, particularly nuclear
energy, the issue on which the utopians have expended
their greatest efforts. The impact of the utopian campaign
against nuclear energy on the media is apparent from two
systematic studies, one by the Battelle Center and one by
the Media Center. The Battelle Center study covered four
national periodicals, including the New York Times, from
1972 to 1976 and found that while in 1972 there were more
positive than negative statements on nuclear energy, by
1976 negative outnumbered positive statements by two to
one.ll (This, it must be remembered, was three years prior
to Three Mile Island.) The Media Institute study focussed
on ten years of television evening news coverage, from Au-
gust 4, 1968 to March 27, 1979 (Just prior to Three Mile
Island). Its most telling finding concerned the "experts"
,TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
used by the networks on nuclear energy. Of the top ten
sources used over the years, seven were opposed to nuclear power. The source most frequently used was the
antinuclear Union of Concerned Scientists, the second
Ralph Nader. 12 After Three Mile Island earlier tendencies
became even more marked. Psychiatrist Robert DuPont
examined 13 hours of videotapes of news coverage on nuclear energy and found that fear was the leitmotif of the
stories. Reporters continually examined what DuPont
called jjwhat if, worst case" scenarios. He found almost no
mention of the risks posed by other energy sources or of
the need to balance risks.ll
·
By 1982 the pattern of media coverage had produced serious misconceptions in the American public concerning
the balance of opinion among scientists on nuclear energy.
A Roper poll found that almost one in four Americans believed that a majority of scientists "who are energy experts" opposed the further development of nuclear energy. One in three members of the public believed that
solar energy could make a large contribution to meeting
energy needs within the next twenty years.l 4 An actual
survey of energy experts, however, showed that only five
percent wanted to halt further development of nuclear energy (among those with specific expertise in the nuclear
area none wanted to halt further development). No more
than two percent of energy experts saw any form of solar
energy making a substantial contribution to energy needs
in the next twenty years.l5
The distortions in perception can be explained by the
views of science jounalists, who are far more sceptical of
nuclear energy than scientists. A survey by Lichter and
Rothman of science journalists at major national media
outlets found there was a fascinating, though scarcely surprising, connection between attitudes toward nuclear energy and political ideology. The more liberal the journalist,
the more likely he was to oppose nuclear energy. Indeed
Rothman and Lichter found they could define the issue
more precisely. "We asked them a large number of social
and political questions. The best predictor of opposition to
nuclear energy is the belief that American society is unjust."l6 Moreover, Lichter and Rothman found that television reporters and producers were even more hostile to nuclear energy than print journalists.
The extensive use, especially by television, of the Union
of Concerned Scientists was presumably a major factor in
explaining the discrepancy between what scientists think
and what the public thinks they think. The public, because of its name, perceived this as an organization of sci-
entists. But as Samuel McCracken points out in The War
Against the Atom, its membership is obtained through direct mail solicitation of the public and the only qualification for belonging is a contribution of $15. Its executive
directors in recent years have not been scientists_17 How
many members of the Union of Concerned Scientists are
in fact scientists? The organization keeps silent, but a random sample of 7,741 scientists turned up only one who
37
�was affiliated with the Union of Concerned Scientists. On
that basis Lichter and Rothman estimate that fewer than
200 scientists among the 130,000 listed in American Men
and Women of Science are affiliated with the Union of
Concerned Scientists. IS Little wonder that the organization refused Lichter and Rothman information needed to
poll its membership!
McCracken observes that anyone would see the fraud if
a general membership organization composed almost entirely of laymen and concerned principally with supporting bans on prayer in the schools were to call itself the
Union of Concerned Clergymen_l9 Yet the media persist in
using this organization of utopians, which misuses data as
it misuses the title of "scientist," as its chief authority on
nuclear energy. The media rarely call upon Scientists and
Engineers for Secure Energy, although this is an organization whose members are genuine experts on nuclear en·
ergy and includes seven nobel laureates in physics. Presumably this is because it does not spread the utopian's
message, endorsed by so many in the media, that nuclear
power is immensely dangerous and the authorities are deceiving the public.
Another interesting insight into the weight of sentiment
against nuclear power in the media comes from a Public
Broadcasting Company spokesman who was castigated for
the uniform imbalance of the PBC's programs. He explained that it would be difficult even to find a producer
prepared to do a pro-nuclear film. zo
On questions of defense, the media elite have also supported utopian assumptions. Walter Cronkite summed up
the media perspective in the 1970s in 1974: "There arealways groups in Washington expressing views of alarm over
the state of our defenses. We don't carry those stories. The
story is that there are those who want to cut defense
spending." 21 The American Security Council, which during the 1970s issued reports and ran a series of conferences
and seminars featuring defense experts who warned of the
disrepair of the American military and the massive Soviet
military buildup then going on, became convinced that
there was some unwritten rule in the media not to cover
their activities. But for the media, as a group advocating
increased defense expenditures the American Security
Council was simply not unews.n
Survey results indicate how pervasively media coverage
reflected utopian attitudes. Ernest Lefever, before starting
his own Ethics and Public Policy Center, led a study team
for the Institute for American Strategy which examined
CBS News coverage of national defense for 1972 and
1973. The study showed that during that two-year period
the viewer saw only one minute on the "CBS Evening
News" dealing with the comparative military strength of
the U.S. and U.S.S.R. 22 The study found that 1,400 presentations on the subject of national defense tended to
support the view that threats to our security were less serious than the government thought while only seventy-nine
contradicted that position.
38
With Reagan's victory, the views of those who argued
for more defense spending could no longer be ignored, for
those views represented administration policy. In response, CBS entered the debate with a massive documentary designed to counter the administration position in
June 1981. Described by its anchorman, Dan Rather, as
"the most important documentary project of the decade,"
the five-hour series, "The Defense of the United States,"
was hailed by the Washington Post as the "first documentary epic in TV history." Its theme was that "the United
States is not threatened by any external enemy, but rather
by the tragic propensity of the two superpowers each to
see in the other a mirror reflection of its own fears and
hostilities." Joshua Muravchik and John E. Haynes noted
that in the five hours devoted to examining plans for a
U.S. military build-up, "there was not mention-none-of
the Soviet build-up which precipitated it."2l
Although the public had no way of knowing it, the program's arguments, experts, even its vocabulary were de·
rived from the utopian organizations. To testify that current defense spending was already excessive the program
used "experts" Jack Geiger and Kosta Tsipis. Tsipis is a
member of the board of directors of SANE and Geiger is a
leader of both Physicians for Social Responsibility and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
(in which Soviet physicians join with American physicians
to emphasize the need for the U.S. to disarm). Geiger was
identified only as professor of medicine at the City University of New York and Tsipis as professor of physics at
MIT. 24 The viewer was not informed that they were peace
movement activists.
To show that Soviet influence was already on the decline (and increased defense expenditures, presumably, superfluous), CBS drew on the Center for Defense Information that had issued a report in 1980 purporting to show
that Soviet influence in the world had reached an all-time
low. After Defense Secretary Weinberger spoke of the
need for a strong defense, Walter Cronkite undercut his
statement: "Since 1960, the Soviet influence around the
world actually has declined. Their so-called gains like Afghanistan and Angola take on a different perspective, particularly when measured against losses, like Egypt and
China." CBS then offered a closeup of two lists of twelve
nations, one showing Soviet gains and the other Soviet
losses since 1960. The lists were erroneous but repeated
the errors in the lists published by the Center for Defense
Information.25 The voice of the Center for Defense Information had been transformed into the voice of CBS.
The very vocabulary of the program was derived from
the utopians. The process of arms procurement was referred to as "The Iron Triangle," after the title of a book
recently released by the utopian Council on Economic Priorities. Its author, Gordon Adams, was president of the
Corporate Data Exchange, a new-left research organization started by the Institute for Policy Studies. The book
had been financed, among others, by the IPS mainstay,
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�the Samuel Rubin Foundation. The importance of a term
like "The Iron Triangle" is that it not only conveys a
meaning but an emotional impact. "The Iron Triangle" is
bad. It links the government, the armed forces, and industries that produce military equipment in a closed bond of
steel and. mutual interest against the rest of us.
The utopian campaign•against the intelligence agencies
depended heavily on the media for its success. 11he ·campaign began in the .Jate 1960s, when a series of'books and
articles began to appear, many of them financed 'by the
FuNd for Investigative journalism. The Fund was established by Philip M. Stern, whose 'Stern Fund is a major
furrder of utOpian:projects.' But it scored its first major success when:the NewWork Times• ran a series of articles by
Seymour' Hersh in December 1974 exposing CIA involve.ment in illegal tlornestic surveillance of the anti-war movement. Thisrprecipitated a series of investigations by the
'5\J<fcially appointed Rockefeller Commission and the Sen~te,•·which resulted in "reforms" that went far beyond correction of abuses. The CIA's ability to function in crucial
areas was imperiled. At one point eight committees of
Congress, the armed services, foreign relations, appr<Jpiiations and intelligence committees of both houses, had 'to
be informed of every major CIA operation, which, given
the all-but-certainty ofleaks by staff, meant there could be
no such operations.
The U.S. intelligence agencies were a legitimate subject
of media interest. The problem, however, was that in true
utopian fashion the media were interested only in stories
that revealed intelligence activities as illegal or immoral.
Reports that the intelligence services were failing to perform their task of protecting U.S. citizens were not news.
The major media ignored a conference called "Our Domestic Intelligence Crisis," held by the Coalition for Peace
through Strength in March 1979. There were revelations
at this conference that the public might have thought dramatic. For instance, the Secret Service only received one
fourth of the intelligence it received before the media-assisted llreforms" of intelligence agencies discouraged in·
formants who feared Freed om of Information requests
would expose their identities. It thus had to recommend
that the President not visit certain cities in the United
States. The conference also disclosed that the Federal Employment Security program had been undone: members
of the Communist Party or even of the Weather Underground were no longer barred from federal employment,
even in sensitive positions.Z6 The media showed no interest in informing the public about the necessary services
intelligence agencies provide or about the consequences
of dismantling security protections.
With all the popularity of documentaries about the malfeasances of the CIA and FBI, the networks produced
nothing comparable on the KGB. This was not because
the topic could not be handled. A Canadian team did an
absorbing documentary called "The KGB Connections"
based largely on the testimony of KGB defectors. A great
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
critical success in Canada and Europe, it was turned down
by all three networks, including ABC which had invested
in its production. Challenged for its failure to show the
documentary, ABC countered that it would shortly be
showing its own documentary on the KGB but at this writ;ing, a year later, ABC has not done so. The failure to exam'ine KGB activities by both TV and print media meant, as
James Tyson points out in Target America, that the CIA
seemed to shadow-box against a non-existent enemy. The
utopian contention that covert intelligence activities were
the product of deviant psychologic~] needs of those who
manned corrupt American institutions was reinforced.
Foreign policy, particularly as it touches •0TI human
rights, is yet another area in which the media .alm0st uniformly presents the utopian perspective. Thereason'is not
simply that journalists share that perspective, although
doubtless many do. Covering human rights violations in
totalitarian "socialist" aollntries :is <lifticult, if not impossible, for journalists. S1i1dh·cotnitriies, •when they do not bar
jounmalists :alt0gether, <Control their movements. This
-meams •that information has to come from people outside
'the·coutitry. Information was available on the Cambodian
genocide very early from people who had escaped over the
border. By 1977 Reader's Digest editors John Barron and
Anthony Paul had produced a book Murder of a Gentle
Land which, based on the eye-witness accounts of hundreds of escapees, estimated that between April 17, 1975
and the end of 1976, at least 1.2 million people had died as
a result of the policies of the Cambodian government.
Yet press coverage of events unprecedented in horror
since the Nazi destruction of six million Jews was minimal.
In 1976, the year in which Barron and Paul conducted
their interviews, television network evening news programs mentioned events in Cambodia only three times.
NBC never mentioned them at all. The country's two
most influential papers, the Times and the Washington
Post, together mentioned the subject a total of 13 times.27
In 1977, when what was happening was even clearer, the
three networks had a combined total of two stories. That
contrasted with !59 human rights-related stories on the
networks on South Africa. 28 While the New York Times
did better in 1977, referring to the Cambodian genocide
34 times, this still contrasted sharply with 291 stories of
human rights violations in South Africa. The Washington
Post ran ten items on Cambodia. It had thirty items just on
the death of Steve Biko, the black leader who died under
suspicious circumstances in a South African jail. 29 In 1978
the American Security Council made things convenient
for the press corps by arranging a press conference in
Washington D.C., addressed by Pin Yathay, a civil engineer who had escaped after 26 months in Communist
Cambodia. Yathay reported losing 18 members of his family and provided an eye-witness account of desperation
and cruelty:
And there were many macabre incidents ... the starving peo-
ple who ate the flesh of dead bodies during this acute famine.
39
�I will now tell you a story that I lived myself ... a teacher who
ate the flesh of her own sister. She was later caught, she was
beaten from morning to night until she died, under the rain,
in front of the whole village as an example, and her child was
crying beside her, and the mother died at the evening. 30
A dramatic story. But not one of the networks sent a representative. The Washington Post sent a reporter, but the paper never carried a story.
Hedrick Smith, a one-time Moscow correspondent of
the New York Times and then chief correspondent of the
Washington Bureau, has cast light on why the coverage
was so poor. He noted that the Times-the "bible" of the
other media, in the words of a news executive, was not in~
dined to do stories on foreign countries written outside
them.ll Soviet dissidents in the Soviet Union were the sub·
ject of many stories. Once the same people had found ref·
uge in the United States, they found the press uninterested in their accounts of human rights violations. When
leading figures in the Soviet human rights movement like
Vladimir Bukovsky and Alexander Ginzburg participated
in two days of International Sakharov Hearings in 1979
that brought sixty witnesses to Washington to testify, their
efforts were virtually ignored by the press. The Washington Post ran a story in the "Style" section called "Remembering Russia." That was scarcely the point of the hearings. Similarly, when testimony on conditions in Vietnam
was given before a House subcommittee in June 1977, including eyewitness reports of a Vietnamese imprisoned in
a series of "reeducation camps," the major newspapers
carried nothing.l2
The end result is gross distortion in coverage of human
rights problems. In 1977 the New York Times carried fortyeight items on human rights violations in South Korea and
none on North Korea.ll More than that, as Reed Irvine,
head of the media watchdog group, Accuracy in Media, has
pointed out, a kind of collaboration emerges between the
U.S. media and the countries that most systematically violate human rights.l4.
There may have been an additional reason for the reluctance of the media to report more fully on Cambodia and
Southeast Asia. In the last years of the Vietnam War the
press was an adversary of the war and they were at first
unwilling to believe, later to acknowledge, that the American departure did not lead to an improved life for the people
of that area. For example, New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, urging a cutoff of American aid on March 17,
1975, wrote: "Whatfuture possibility could be more terrible
than the reality of what is happening to Cambodia now?"
The possibilities were beyond anything of which Anthony
Lewis dreamed. New York Times columnist Tom Wicker in
the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War was glad to
give the press credit for forcing the U.S. out of the region.
Once, however, there were boat people and millions of
murdered victims in Cambodia, the press did not want to be
reminded of its role. The violent reaction of CBS newsman
40
Morley Safer to an article by Robert Elegant in Encounter in
August 1981 is revealing. Once himself a journalist in Vietnam, Elegant laid bare the shabbiness of the reporting, not
exempting himself from the criticism. Safer devoted a radio
segment to denouncing Elegant, whose article almost none
of his listeners could have seen, as worthy of the mantle of
Joseph Goebbels.l5 The entire subject obviously irritated
media nerves.
Coverage of human rights thus adhered to the utopian
perspective according to which the world's worst human
rights violator was the Union of South Africa, followed by
third world countries friendly to the United States, espe·
dally those in Latin America. As countries came under at·
tack from internal subversion backed directly or indirectly
by the Soviet Union, media focus, in true utopian fashion,
was on the injustices that lead people to revolt rather than
the predictable consequences of these "wars of liberation"
in inaugurating much more repressive regimes. Karen de
Young, now foreign editor of the Washington Post, who
from Nicaragua provided warm coverage of the Sandinistas
in Somoza's last period, admitted: "Most journalists now,
most Western journalists at least, are very eager to seek out
guerrilla groups, leftist groups, because you assume they
must be the good guys. 36 Walter Cronkite, speaking in Portland, said the U.S. should help countries such as El Salvador
"achieve their goals even if it means interim steps of social~
ism and communism."l7 (As Reed Irvine pointed out, communism has yet to serve as an "interim step.")
With rare exceptions-NBC in the fall of 1982 produced
a film "What Ever Happened to El Salvador" that accompanied a Salvadoran army unit on patrol rather than the guerrillas-network documentaries have been hostile to the
government of El Salvador. In September 1982, a CBS documentary focussed on the inevitability of revolution in
Guatemala as a response to tyranny backed by the United
States on behalf of our exploitative business interests. Television journalists, however, bend over backwards in their
efforts to understand the difficulties of the Nicaraguan government. A segment on ABC's "20/20" aired in June 1980
had David Marash make the patently false declaration:
uNicaragua's revolutionary justice system has been given
near unanimous international praise."
The utopian influence on public television is even
greater than on the networks. On public television they
often write and produce the documentaries. For example,
Philip Agee was part owner of an anti-CIA three-hour docu·
mentary "On Company Business" broadcast in May 1980.
The fund-raising prospectus sent out by the producers prior
to the actual filming promised that the documentary would
"show the broken lives, hatred, cruelty, cynicism, and despair which result from U.S.-CIA policy" and that it would
record "the story of 30 years of CIA subversion, murder,
bribery, and torture as told by an insider and documented
with newsreel film of actual events."l8
The "insider" who served as the documentary's central
figure and moral hero was Agee, identified for the viewer
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�only as someone who had worked for the CIA between 1959
and 1969. There was no mention of Agee's role in exposing
the identities of U.S. agents worldwide or of his expulsion
from the Netherlands, France, and England. Intelligence
expert Robert Moss has revealed Agee was found to have
met with the Cuban intelligence station chief in London at
least 30 times before he was expelled from England. If the
viewer had known of Agee's record, he might have discounted everything Agee said. The documentary's solution
was to keep silence. Despite this, Public Broadcasting's director of current affairs programming Barry Chase de·
scribed the program in a memo to all public broadcasting
stations as "a highly responsible overview of the CIA's his·
tory." 39 (Chase clearly did not feel inhibited by the law es·
tablishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that
stipulates programs funded by it must be objective and bal·
anced if they deal with controversial issues.)
The Institute for Policy Studies' Saul Landau has written
films for public television of a similar calibre. "Paul Jacobs
and the Nuclear Gang" (with part of its seed money from
the Samuel Rubin Foundation and Obie Benz, one of the
wealthy young creators of the Robin Hood was Right spe·
cies of foundations 40 ) was a polemic against nuclear energy
and nuclear weapons, relying primarily on emotionally
charged interviews with cancer victims who believed their
disease had been caused by radiation and with the members
of their families. Landau also wrote "From the Ashes ...
Nicaragua," directed by Helena Solberg Ladd, who had
been a lecturer at IPS. William Bennett, Head of the National Endowment for the Humanities which had chan·
neled funds for the film's production under its previous
head, on seeing the film remarked that he was "shocked,
appalled, disgusted" by such an example of "unabashed
socialist-realism propaganda." 41 Author Midge Deeter, ex·
ecutive director of the Committee for a Free World, found
this description too mild: "We almost no longer have a
working vocabulary to cover phenomena like Ms. Ladd's
film."42
Many of the documentaries that appear on public television endorse utopian themes far more overtly than would
be possible on the networks. Public Broadcasting presented
a film on North Korea that could have received the imprimatur of its dictator Kim 11 Sung; a hymn to Cuba called
"Cuba: Sports and Revolution;" two films on China, "The
Children of China" good enough propaganda to win the
praise of the Chinese Central Broadcasting Administration for helping American People "understand the New
China," and "China Memoir" produced by Shirley MacLaine, which even Ralph Rogers, then chairman of the
Public Broadcasting Corporation, admitted was "pure
propaganda."4l Boston Public Television's WGBH funded
a film called "Blacks' Britannica" on British racism, which
won the prize at the Leipzig Film Festival in East Germany.
This was too much even for the producer at WGBH who
complained of the film's "endorsement of a Marxist point
of view."44 When he sought to edit out some of the most
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
blatant segments, the maker of the film brought suit and
the U.S. Communist Party front, the National Alliance
Against Racist and Political Repression, petitioned to join
the suit.45 In the end four minutes of the film were removed, but its Marxist message remained unmistakable.
Another utopian theme-hostility against corporations-is also reflected in the media. A Louis Harris poll in
the fall of 1982 found that an "overwhelming seventy-six
percent" of high level executives believed business and financial coverage on TV news was prejudiced against business.46 The hostility is most pervasive in a surprising areaentertainment programming. A Media Institute study
"Crooks, Conmen and Clowns" found that the image of
businessmen on TV series was overwhelmingly negative,
with two out of three businessmen on two hundred prime
time episodes shown as foolish, greedy, or criminal. While
on occasion a small businessman was shown in a favorable
light, those running big businesses were for the most part
depicted as actual criminals.47
While it might be argued that the businessman simply
offers a convenient "heavy" in plot development, Ben
Stein, in The View from Sunset Boulevard, shows that
there is an excellent fit between the opinions of TV writers and producers and the shows they create. Stein interviewed forty writers and producers of the major adventure
shows and situation-comedies and found that even those
worth millions of dollars considered themselves workers
opposed to an "exploiting class." A typical flippant-serious
comment was made by Bob Schiller, who wrote for Lucille
Ball for 13 years and produced "Maud." He said of businessmen, "I don't judge. I think there are good lepers and
bad lepers."48 Producer Stanley Kramer told Stein: Everything that has to do with our lives is contaminated. The
air, the streams, the food-everything is ruined." 49 That
big business was responsible was self-evident to most TV
writers.
To the media the utopians are inherently more believable than those who oppose them. Cynical about human
motives, journalists seem unable to conceive that "public
interest" spokesmen act from anything but selfless devotion to the public good. Abbie Hoffman could enlighten
them: "There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your all, and
winning."50 Peter Metzger has pointed out another motivation that also has to do with heightening the individual's
sense of power and self-worth. With only a few exceptions
the experts cited by the utopians never made genuine scientific contributions and thus were denied the reward
of recognition by their peers.5 1 They have achieved the
fame and status their scientific work could not gain for
them through serving the utopians' need for men with
credentials.
Mesmerized by the utopians' simple-minded reading of
human nature, journalists are quick to denigrate critics of
utopian orthodoxies. For example, CBS produced a documentary attacking cereal-makers for the high sugar con-
41
�tent of many of their products. (Dan Rather asked a General Foods vice-president if he could sleep at night, given
the damage he was doing to the children of America.) In
pursuit of the requisite "balance" the program interviewed a leading professor of nutrition at Harvard, who denied the cereals did the harm alleged in the rest of the program. The camera simply zoomed in on a plaque on a
Harvard building which indicated that it had been built
through a donation by General Foods.5 2 However effective the visual in undercutting the professor's statement, a
faulty understanding of the reward system in science was
revealed. For scientists, the most important factor in determining career opportunities is the judgment of their
peers, not the approval of company executives who make
charitable contributions to universities.
Journalists are ready to believe the most improbable
charges against institutions they distrust. In January 1982
the New York Times featured a lengthy story by Raymond
Bonner concerning events~ alleged to have taken place a
year earlier: American military advisers in El Salvador had
observed a torture training session for the El Salvadoran
military in which a seventeen-year-old boy and a thirteenyear-old girl had their bones broken prior to being killed.
Bonner's sole source for the story was a deserter from the
Salvadoran army. The narrative that in its original form
claimed that the American advisers were teaching the torture session, had appeared in a leftist Mexican paper but
was such obvious Communist atrocity propaganda that it
took eight months after the original publication before a
taker was found among American journalists, Mr. Bonner,
who offered a ((sanitized" version in the Times. 53
Such credulity leaves the media open to being taken in
by the grossest "disinformation" forgeries. F1ora Lewis, at
the top of her profession as a columnist for the New York
Times, accepted uncritically a supposed State Department
"dissent document," distributed to newsmen by the
Council on Hemispheric Affairs, one of the utopian think
tanks devoted to Latin America, and co-founded by Orlando Letelier, probably "an agent of influence" for the
Cuban government. While the State Department does indeed have a "dissent channel" permitting members in disagreement with policy to have their objections heard at
the highest level of the department, the document F1ora
Lewis accepted as authentic bore the name of a non-existent State Department task force. Lewis devoted her
column of March 6, 1981, to the document that attacked
U.S. government policy in El Salvador. Asserting it had
been "drawn up by people from the National Security
Council, the State and Defense Departments, and the
CIA," she praised the report's "solid facts and cool analysis" and closed by telling the Reagan administration that it
would "do well to listen to the paper's authors before the
chance for talks is lost."
At this point the State Department came out with a detailed report on the forgery that the Times carried as a
news story and F1ora Lewis, her face plentifully covered
42
with egg, wrote an apology in her March 9 column. Similarly, journalist Claudia Wright published an article in November 1982 charging that UN Ambassador Jeane J.
KirkpatEiclt had received a "birthday gift" from the Union
of South Afriea. The basis was a letter from the information counselor at the South African embassy, a crude forgery replete with errors in spelling. 54 (Since Miss Wright is
herself a utopian journalist, the question as to whether she
was herself taken in must remain open.)
Media elite instantly distrust government assertions
that contradict utopian views with which they identify. A
storm broke over the Washington Post and the Wall Street
Journal when it became know that the journalists of both
had relied upon Philip Agee as a source for articles they
wrote attacking a February 1981 U.S. White Paper "Communist Interference in El Salvador." The White Paper
summarized findings from captured documents of the El
Salvador guerrillas, showing the extent of clandestine military support given by the Soviet Union and Cuba to the
guerrillas beginning in 1979. As a result of the furor, even
how the articles came to be written became public knowledge. The Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Kwitny told his
editor of his immediate "skepticism over news accounts of
the white paper."55 The Washington Post's Robert Kaiser
said that he had immediately been eager to explore possible deficiencies in the White Paper and so was pleased
when the Post's national editor, Peter Osnos, asked him to
look into the matter. And Peter Osnos revealed that he
had assigned Kaiser after a call from free-lance writer Jeffrey Stein who said: "Look, I can't understand how you all
have let that White Paper hang out there without a look. 56
(Stein was a former fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, suggesting that the utopian grape vine operates
quickly to encourage attacks on anything the utopians
consider damaging to them.) For the utopians it was crucial to discredit the White Paper, since if the American
public recognized the Soviet-Cuban role in El Salvador,
the carefully fostered image of the guerrillas as indigenous
liberal reformers might be undermined.
Philip Agee, according to Arnaud de Borchgrave helped
by his "Cuban friends," provided a forty-six page attack on
the White Paper which was distributed in April by the
Covert Action Information Bulletin. This publication was
started after an internal factional split at CounterSpy, the
magazine that named U.S. agents abroad, with Agee becoming associated with the new magazine. Both the Post's
Kaiser and the Journal's Kwitny obtained copies. Kaiser
subsequently claimed that in an early draft of his article he
had mentioned Agee as a source, but that his editor at the
Post suggested dropping the reference as "unnecessary."57
Confronted with his failure to credit Agee's paper as a
source in this Wall Street Journal story Kwitny was taken
aback: "I was totally unaware that it had any distribution,
except to a few of his friends here." 58 He insisted that
while he had read Agee's paper: "There was nothing I was
drawing from him or anyone else ... I can't really rememWINTER/SPRING 1983
�ber what was in the Agee piece." In a line by line comparison, Human Events reporter Cliff Kincaid showed, however, that not only did Kwitny's criticisms closely parallel
those of Agee, but that Kwitny even repeated a specific
Agee error: he referred to "labor unions" (Agee said "trade
unions") when the document being analyzed was talking
about the Communist Party. 59
Perhaps the most interesting revelations showed the
wide use by journalists of the Agee apparatus and the igno·
rance of those in executive positions on major papers of
the web of utopian organizations. Frederick Taylor, executive editor of the Wall Street Journal, came to the defense of his reporter in a long article on the editorial page
entitled "TheEl Salvador 'White Paper."' The Wall Street
Journal had been accused "at the least of being the dupe of
Soviet disinformation, and at the worst of taking the work
of a discredited left-winger and passing it off as its own."
"It isn't so." As proof, Taylor repeated Kwitny's own
words:
The article originated in my own skepticism over news ac~
counts ofthe white paper in February. It sprouted because of
two events in April. First, having been asked to sort the files
of my recently deceased Journal colleague, Jerry Landauer, I
called someone who had been a longstanding source of Jerry's
on intelligence matters . ... This source, John Kelly, edits a
magazine, Counterspy, which also printed a critique of the
white paper. Kelly supplied me with some leads and documents. 50
To defend the Journal from charges of being a dupe of disinformation and of passing off the charges of a discredited
left-winger as its own by transferring responsibility from
Agee to CounterSpy and to inform the Wall Street Journal's
readers thatthey had all along been kept informed on intelligence matters by CounterSpy, was, to say the least, a remarkable editorial defense.
Apparently there was a similar gap between editors and
reporters at the Washington Post. When a Washington Post
editorial condemned CounterSpy's clone, the Covert
Action Information Bulletin, as "contemptible" and suggested its editors were less than honorable journalists, they
lashed back:
Your diatribe only highlights the gap betwen the editorial offices and the reporters, for your people are among the large
number of working journalists from virtually all the major
printed and electronic media in the country who call upon us
daily for help, research, and of all things, names of intelligence
operatives in connection with articles they are writing.6I
The difficulty journalists have in believing anything the
government says that interferes with their prejudices, no
matter how overwhelming the evidence, has become obvious to government officials. Admiral Bobby Inman, on retiring as deputy director of the CIA, spoke of his frustration
at trying to convince the public of the peril of the Soviet
military build-up when the press would not even believe
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
U.S. intelligence reports that included spy satellite pictures. Inman described an intelligence briefing for the press
on the Soviet and Cuban-backed military build-up in Nicaragua in which reporters were shown photos of Soviet-type
military garrison arrangements, deployed Soviet T-55
tanks, etc. Newspaper accounts the following day used the
word "alleged" to describe the intelligence findings, suggesting that the reporters did not believe them. 62 .
The media do more than believe the utopians. They protect them. News that could prove embarrassing to the utopians is often simply not reported. Reed Irvine has christened this "the Pinsky Principle" after North Carolina
journalist Walter Pinsky, who described his approach in the
Columbia Journalism Review in 1976. "If my research and
journalistic instincts tell me one thing, my political instincts
another ... I won't fudge it, I won't bend it, but I won't
write it "63 Pinsky gave as an example what he called the
great untold story ofthe trial of)oan Little in his home state.
Joan Little was an imprisoned black woman who had killed
her guard and defended herself on the grounds that he had
tried to assault her sexually. Her story was widely reported
nationally. Pinsky explained that he meant that reporters
never reported the role of the Communist Party, working
through its front, the National Alliance Against Racist and
Political Repression, in controlling the entire political
movement surrounding the case. Pinsky says that journalists kept silent "out of concern that the information might
be used in red-baiting anyone associated with the case who
did not belong to the (Communist) party."64
ABC newsman Geraldo Rivera in an interview with Playboy confessed to practicing the Pinsky Principle in his reporting from Panama. When the Panamanian National
Guard was guilty of violence at the time of the Senate vote
on the Canal Treaties, "We downplayed the whole incident That was the day I decided that I had to be very careful about what was said, because I could defeat the very
thing (passage of the Treaty) that I wanted to achieve."65
An interesting example of the Pinsky Principle was the
failure of CBS in its two-part docudrama, "Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones," to say a word concerning
Jones as a Communist Jones had broken with the U.S.
Communist Party, according to his own account, because it
had turned against Stalin and "I loved Stalin." Nonetheless,
his feelings toward the party had clearly mellowed, for his
will provided that in the absence of immediate surviving
family, his estate should go to the U.S. Communist Party.
Jones had also ordered that $7 million belonging to the People's Temple be transferred to the Soviet Union. When the
script's author Ernest Tidyman was asked about the omission he said he did not believe Jones was a Communist.
Asked what Jones's political views were, Tidyman replied:
"None, particularly. He was very liberal, very progressive,
very community conscious." 66 Presumably, for Tidyman,
giving the facts abcrutJones's Communism would interfere
with the image he wanted to convey of) ones as an idealistic
community-builder gone awry.
43
�More recently the Pinsky Principle has been at work in
the refusal of the media to examine the utopian roots of the
peace movement and its links to the international Soviet
front, the World Peace Council. With rare exceptions, nota·
blythe Wall Street Journal and the Reader's Digest, the mass
media have portrayed the freeze as a spontaneous out·
growth of grass roots Middle America. Even when the orga·
nizations that created and promoted the freeze are credited
as in a Newsweek article of April26, 1982, the identifications
are superficial, giving no hint of the agenda of these organi·
zations. For example, although Clergy and Laity Con·
cerned is described as "a powerful force in the disarmament
movement," it is identified only as a group "begun in 1965
to mobilize the religious community against the Vietnam
War." There is an element oflaziness in this: it is easier to
ask a group about itself over the phone than to acquire its
literature which would explain that CALC sees its task to be
joining together those who "hate the corporate power
which the United States presently represents .... "
But more importantly there is unwillingness to transmit
facts that might put the utopians in an unfavorable light.
Eileen Shanahan, assistant managing editor of the Pitts·
burgh Post-Gazette, observed: "I saw it at the Washington
Star and I'm seeing it here. The present 28-35 news room
set is antiwar to a significant degree and also antinuke."67
When President Regan or members of Congress made any
reference to the credentials of the groups behind the
freeze, the prestige media lashed out. A New York Times
editorial on October 6, 1982, labelled all reference to such
matters an "indecent debate." A Washington Post editorial
on the same date said that to bring up such topics was a
Smear."
Probably the most widespread application of the Pinsky
Principle is the failure to identify utopian sources. Identifi·
cation is a crucial service the media offer the viewer or
reader, for without it he has no way of evaluating the infor·
mation offered to him. For example, the New York Times
reported that a National Lawyers Guild delegation to the
Middle East "came away convinced that the Israeli govern·
ment implements a policy of torture for the annexation of
the occupied areas." Since the National Lawyers Guild, the
major organization of radical lawyers, was identified only as
"a group of American lawyers," the reader was not helped
to be properly sceptical of this information.68 Similarly, the
New York Times, which between 1979 and 1981 carried
essays by Fellows of the Institute for Policy Studies on its
Op-Ed page with more than twice the frequency of any
other think tank, including much bigger and better known
ones, identified the Institute in each case only as "an independent research organization in Washington, D.C." The
suggestion was that the reader was being exposed to "independent" thought, not the radical left perspective invariably provided by Institute Fellows.
A particularly dramatic example of misrepresentation
through failure of identification is the media's treatment of
Wilfred Burchett. Burchett is an Australian journalist. As
41
44
far back as 1967 The Reporter, a liberal magazine of the
period, published an article by fellow Australian Denis
Warner which summed up Burchett's history up to that
point:
Stripped of his Australian passport by Canberra in 1955 and
denied Australian citizenship for his three children by a sec·
ond marriage-one born in Hanoi, one in Peking, and one in
Moscow-Burchett is regarded by those responsible for Australian security as a communist and a traitor who ought to
stand trial for his role in the Korean war . ... 69
Burchett was accused by American POWs returning
from Korea of involvement in obtaining phony confessions
from them about America's alleged use of germ warfare.
Burchett showed up again during the Vietnam war. Senator Jeremiah Denton described being interviewed by Burchett while he was a prisoner in North Vietnam. In his book
When Hell Was in Session he says that Burchett lost his cool
"when I implied that he was a cheap traitor who knew in his
heart that he was prostituting his talents for money in a
cause that he knew was false." 70
In these years Burchett's articles occasionally appeared
in U.S. papers, but he was properly identified. For example,
the Chicago Tribune carried an essay on June 5, 1966, with
the following description of Burchett: "An Australian Communist writer, Wilfred Burchett has travelled frequently to
North Vietnam. He wrote this article after returning to his
Cambodian home from his latest trip. It gives a communist
view ofthe war and its effects and it should be read as such."
But starting in the late 1970s Burchett's essays began to
be printed without any identification that could alert the
reader. The New York Times published his essays on the
Op-Ed page, identifying him only as "a left-wing journalist
living in Paris." After Reed Irvine complained to Times
publisher Arthur Sulzberger that this was an inadequate
identification-and Sulzberger agreed-the Times Op-Ed
page, in the following year, identified him as "a journalist
living in Paris." Harper's published a review by Burchett of a
book attacking the CIA, identifying him only as "a left-wing
journalist" and "a personal friend of Ho Chi Minh." The
same Chicago Tribune that had fully identified Burchett in
1966 introduced him to its readers quite differently on August 6, 1982: "A man whose business is informing the world
is an Australian expatriate journalist, Wilfred Burchett,
now living in Paris."
Burchett's autobiography was published in 1981 by the
New York Times Book Company with an introduction by
long-time Times correspondent Harrison Salisbury, who
concluded that Burchett was radical "because he believes
in the underdog whatever the continent, whatever the
color, whatever the creed." 71 Laudatory reviews in the prestige press evaded or glossed over the subject of Burchett's
service to Communist regimes. The New York Times reviewer wrote: "His (Burchett's) uncommon honesty-he is
honest most of the time, if not quite all of the time-give his
WINTER/ SPRING 1983
�memoirs a degree of intellectual tensioi). •>72 (The reviewer
is not clear as to why he thinks being honest "most of the
time" is uncommon honesty. Is "common honesty" to be
dishonest most of the time?) According to the Washington
Post's reviewer, Burchett's story is that of a man "who early
in his life identified what he saw as the forces of decency
and justice and determined to march with them ... if ...
he has on occasion been forced into self-censorship and
compromises, they have been compromises of a nature
known, whatever they may say, to journalists of all political
colors." 73 The most remarkable review of all was by former
New York Times obituary editor Alden Whitman in the Boston Globe. Whitman described Burchett as one of those
rare journalists "who are distinguished for their primary
allegiance to their readers and to the cause of human betterment . ... He seems to wear no one's collar but his own." As
for Burchett's Communism: "Because Burchett so often
reported uncomfortable truths and because so much of his
work was done in China, North Vietnam, and Kampuchea,
word was put out that he was a communist."74
What is involved here is more than "failure to identify."
Implicit is a rewriting of political history. This is a major
utopian target which the media abet. Communists are
transformed into "liberals." For example, Joseph Barnes,
foreign editor of the former New York Herald Tribune, who
was exposed as a Communist by a series of his former colleagues who broke with the party, started to be referred to
in the press as a "liberal" in the late 1970s. The Rosenberg
case has been transmogrified. In 1978, on the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the execution of the Rosen bergs for treason,
Public Television served up a four-year-old documentary
with a new introduction and epilogue, "The RosenbergSobell Case Revisited." Atom spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were portrayed as individuals singled out for their political beliefs by a malignant government. When Accuracy
in Media wrote to the President of the Public Broadcasting
System to complain about the film's gross distortion of history, the reply came from the program's producer. Ignoring
the long list of factual criticisms AIM had submitted, he
announced loftily that the suggestion the program embodied Communist propaganda reflected discredit on
AJM75.
In 1982 Telefrance USA, which says that its programs
reach 10 million U.S. homes, broadcast a four-part Frenchmade documentary on the Rosenberg case with the emotional title, "The Rosenbergs Must Not Die." They were
portrayed as innocents railroaded by a corrupt government.
Dorothy Rabinowitz in a Wall Street Journal essay noted
that "no more malevolent band of fascists, scoundrels, cynics and thugs" had ever appeared on a screen than the "assortment of characters supposedly representing an American Supreme Court, an American judge and prosecutor
and members of the FBJ."76 The New York Times reviewer
at least dismissed the program. Cablevision Magazine, however, allowed that there was the "recurring paradox of how
a foreigner-an outsider-may have a fuller perspective on
TifE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
a situation, political or otherwise, than someone more directly involved."77
Misidentification and the rewriting of political history
produce reporting that inhibits, rather than helps, public
understanding of political developments. For example,
press coverage of Kathy Boudin, the Weather Underground leader captured during the Brink's robbery in
Nyack, depicted her-to quote from a typical account in
the Boston Globe-as a "child of privilege," "a brainy, popular tomboy who graduated with honors from the 'right'
schools, the type of girl that people once described as allAmerican." But Kathy Boudin was a red-diaper baby, the
child of radical lawyer, Leonard Boudin. The circle of her
father's friends was largely made up of Communists and
those sympathetic to Communism. (The Globe story itself
bore this out by listing some of the individuals she would
have encountered at her parents' dining table, but did not
identify them either). Kathy Boudin's political development would have become considerably less mysterious if
the media had not concealed relevant information.
Journalistic practices like the Pinsky Principle have
grown common as journalists have changed their view of
their proper role. "Advocacy," "participatory," and "activist" journalism have created new models. To some extent
the ((new journalism," as it is sometimes called, has developed because its literary techniques produce more dramatic copy at a time of intense competition from television, with its strong visual imagery. A "composite"
prostitute (and why confuse the reader by identifying her
as such) can offer a more interesting biography than any
single individual. Similarly, a report that suggests the
writer is directly privy to the thoughts and beliefs of his
subject has more impact than an article with tiresome inserts like "A neighbor said that" or "The defendant's lawyer claims that. ... "
The new journalism is also a reflection of the changing
aspirations of journalists. Journalists are now in a position
to set the policies of papers. They were not in an earlier
era, when conservative owners set their stamp upon their
property. With many more years of education than they
used to have, with higher status in society, journalists are
dissatisfied with a role that limits them simply to chronicling what happens. As lawyer Max Kampelman noted in a
1978 essay in Policy Review:
It is understandable that a significant segment of the media
has become impatient with its limited information dissemination role. It is not easy and frequently not exciting for an intelligent person simply to report events. The tendency, therefore, has been for imaginative and socially dedicated journalists to go beyond normal reporting in order to seek fuller expression of their talents or social values. 78
Joseph Kraft notes: "Not only have we traded objectivity for bias, but we have also abandoned a place on the
sidelines for a piece of the action."79 Jim Bormann, a pio-
45
�neer in broadcast news, described. listening to journalist
Alex Kendrick telling a CBS news affiliate session that a
good reporter should not be afraid, while covering a riot, to
throw a few bricks himself. Kendrick urged the contemporary newsman to get involved and then report what he felt
"inside."8 Kraft and Borman are critical of what hapP<;ned. Most influential journalists, however, are pleased
w1th the new role they have assumed. David Broder of the
Washington Post has praised television's Bill Moyers as a
politician "of the most serious sort'' who "is consciously
engaged in the struggle to reshape the future of public policy."81 John Oakes of the New York Times reports the comment of an approving Swiss journalist who told him the
mass media in the United States were "the only real opposition in the country."82
"Facts" are seen in a fresh light by the new journalism.
As writer Naomi Munson pointed out in Commentary,
while reporters had seen their job as sniffing out facts
" more and more these days they have come to regard'
themselves, instead, in a grander light, as bloodhounds of
the 'truth."' 83 The problem with this is that facts then become at best a tool for revealing the truth. At worst facts
become an impediment to the "truth" which must be
sloughed off, ignored, buried, so as not to interfere with
the public's ability to perceive what in a "higher sense" is
true. Gay Talese, a writer who was godfather to the new
journalism, said its techniques allowed the presentation of
"a larger truth than is possible through rigid adherence" to
normal newspaper standards.84
One result of the new journalism was to create a scandal
like the one that erupted over Janet Cooke and the nonexistent eight-year-old heroin addict "Jimmy." After the
Washington Post was forced to return the Pulitzer Prize
which the story had won, it tried to pass off what had happened as the victimization of a newspaper by one of its
reporters. According to the Post's published account, no
editor anywhere was safe from the machinations of a determined liar.
It was not so simple. Newspapers, the Post among them,
had developed a pattern of shutting their eyes to the fictional aspects of the new journalism. When the Daily
News accepted the resignation of its prize-winning journalist Michael Daley a month after the Cooke scandal-he
was accused of manufacturing material for an article on
British Army brutality in Northern Ireland-Daley remarked that he had used pseudonyms and reconstructions
on many of his 300 columns and "no one has ever said anything."85 In the case of Janet Cooke, Vivian AplinBrownlee, Cooke's editor on the District Weekly, to which
she had been assigned in her first year at the Post, claimed
that she did not believe the story from the beginning and
said so to the city editor."
°
I knew her so well and the depth of her. In her eagerness to
make a name she would write farther than the truth would
allow. When challenged on facts in other stories, Janet would
46
reverse herself, but without any dismay or consternation with
herself86
What this meant was that Janet Cooke was repeatedly
caught in misstatements of fact while she worked for the
Post, but the editors, instead of firing her, had promoted
her.
Despite what the Post's ombudsman Bill Green later admitted were "rumblings" in the newsroom, the Post made
no attempt to check the story or even to ask to see Jane
Cooke's tapes or notes. A few days after the story was published, Post reporter Courtland Milloy drove Janet Cooke
through the neighborhood where she claimed Jimmy lived
and he could see she did not know the area. He reported
his doubts to the city editor, but the editor, as he later confessed, thought Milloy was motivated by jealousy.87 The
mayor and police officials asked the Post to disclose the
identity of the child so he could be helped. Presumably the
life of an eight-year-old boy hung in the balance, but the
Post merely launched into high-flown rhetoric on confidentiality, leaving the police to launch an intensive, expensive, and naturally vain search.
The Post's ombudsman, Green, whose task it is to monitor the paper's performance, wrote a column replete with
utopian cliches, without himself bothering to make any investigation into the story:
Jimmy probably doesn't know many of the promises that have
been made to him. There was the Great Society and the war on
poverty. There are police who promise to uphold the law.
There are schools that promise that everybody will be given a
fair start, a chance to make it. There are the agencies that
promise if you get into trouble, you can get help. Beyond this,
there is the country's glittering promise that things will be bet.
ter if you work. 88
Green promised ringingly that Jimmy could be assured that
at least the Post's promise to him of anonymity would be
kept.
Since the police search was finally abandoned, Janet
Cooke would have been safe had she not lied about her
academic credentials. The Post released biographical data
on their prizewinning reporter. Cooke's claim to a Vassar
B.A. she did not have led to the unravelling of the whole
fabric of invention.
The media's reaction to charges of bias is one of genuine
outrage. Irving Kristol has pointed out that "the television
networks and national newspapers are sincerely convinced
that a liberal bias is proof of journalistic integrity."89 CBS
News President Richard Salant retorted indignantly to suggestions of bias: :"Our reporters do not cover stories from
their point of view. They are representing them from nobody's point of view."90 An interviewer asked Washington
Post editor Benjamin Bradlee:
Are you suggesting that it is untrue ... that you have a cadre of
highly motivated, intelligent, skillful, young liberal reporters
WINTER/SPRING
1983
�who tend to slant their stories toward D~mocrats, liberals, as
they write for the news pages?"
He replied: I am very definitely denying that."9l
At the very time Bradlee was saying this, in the spring of
1972, a ucounter~convention" of American journalists,
sponsored by the journalism review More, was being attended by over 2,000 journalists, including such media
"stars" as Dan Rather, Tom Wicker, David Halberstam,
and Murray Kempton. In an article describing the purpose
of the meeting, More explained: "A growing number of
people who put out the nation's newspapers and magazines and splice together the nightly news are no longer
going to accept the old ways of doing things." The "new"
journalists, said More, were ((sensitive" people who turned
"their attention to the kind of journalism that might help
improve the quality of life rather than objectively recording its decline.''92
How do journalists manage to believe they maintain the
professional journalistic creed of objectivity at the same
time that they transmit, as we have seen, the utopian
world view? Many journalists seem to mistake a sense of
superiority for objectivity. In the fifth and final segment of
CBS's series on defense, President Reagan and Chairman
Brezhnev were shown making speeches denouncing each
other. Cronkite then appeared, like the patient parent of
quarreling children, to lament that from both the Kremlin
and the White House came "angry words." Presenting the
United States and the Soviet Union as mirror-image societies seems to constitute self-evident proof of objectivity
to Cronkite and the media elite. Journalists from the prestige media in England revealed a similar concept of objectivity as "a plague on both your houses" during the
Falkland war. They used the term "the British" rather
than "we," outraging much of the public.
Convinced of their own objectivity, the media are arrogant and dismissive when criticized. Reed Irvine notes
that when he and a group of friends who belonged to the
McDowell luncheon group decided in 1969 to start Accu·
racy in Media, they were convinced that if they did research on cases of media inaccuracy, those responsible
would have no choice but to admit they were wrong, issue
corrections, and be more careful in the future. Irvine
laughs ruefully as he recalls: "We soon found out it really
did not work that way."93
The arrogance is sometimes breathtaking, as the media
unhesitatingly ignore in their own case the demands they
make of others. For example, CBS has been the most aggressive of the networks in claiming for television cameras
the right to cover imy event open to the print media. Yet
when CBS held its annual meeting in Aprill980, the press
was admitted, but television cameras were barred. William
Paley, long-time chairman of CBS, declared they would be
disruptive to the audience. Reed Irvine asked whether he
would recommend that Congress adopt the same policy.
The following colloquy ensued:
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Paley: I would not.
Irvine: Just CBS.
Paley: We have adopted the policy, for the time being
anyway, which has been clearly enunciated today.
That's all I can say about it.94
One journalist remarked that it was like distillers holding a
meeting and barring booze.
After CBS aired a documentary in January 1982 that
charged General William Westmoreland with leading a
conspiracy to deceive President Johnson as to the strength
of enemy forces in Vietnam, revelations in a TV Guide article "Anatomy of a Smear" of what the authors called "inaccuracies, distortions, and violations of journalistic stan-
dards" by CBS led the network to commission its own
study. But CBS then kept the report secret, presumably
because it was damaging to the network. It is not hard to
imagine the reaction of CBS if a branch of government had
kept a report secret in comparable circumstances. (Eventually CBS was forced by the courts to release the report.)
The reaction to criticism is sometimes vituperative. Responding to an issue of AIM Report that clearly touched a
nerve, the Post's editor Benjamin Bradlee wrote to Irvine:
"You have revealed yourself as a miserable, carping, retromingent vigilante, and I for one am sick of wasting my
time in communicating with you." 95 After looking up "retromingent/' which means "urinating backward," Irvine
framed the letter and hung it in the office.
All the sins of advocacy journalism, the fictions supporting a "higher truth," the selective coverage, the attacks on
what are perceived as "the bad buys" and whitewashing of
the "good guys" came together in a media crusade against
Israel during its war against the PLO in Lebanon in 1982.
In a major study for Policy Review, Joshua Muravchik has
provided the fullest account of media distortion on a single
topic since Peter Braestrup's two-volume analysis of the
media's coverage of the Tet offensive in Vietnam. Muravchik found variations in culpability: the Washington Post
was much worse than the New York Times; NBC was
worse than ABC which was worse than CBS; Time and
Newsweek, on the other hand, turned in equally abysmal
performances. But all the media were involved in tendentious and inaccurate reporting with one target-to make
Israel look bad.96
Muravchik piles high the examples of media misstatement of fact. For example, wildly exaggerated casualty reports, falsely attributed to the internationally respected
Red Cross (in fact they came from the nonrelated Red
Crescent, an arm of the PLO run by Arafat's brother), continued to be cited repeatedly after the Red Cross had formally repudiated them. These were soon accompanied by
equally inflated portraits of destruction from supposed
eye-witness journalists in Beirut. While all the media were
guilty of this, the prize may well have belonged to ABC
which, in June, before the Israelis had launched any serious bombing of the city, described Beirut as a result of Israeli shelling, as resembling a some ancient ruin."
47
�Symptomatic of the pervasive dishonesty was a photo
distributed by United Press International with a caption
which said it showed a seven-month-old baby who had lost
both arms in an Israeli raid. Secretary of State George
Shultz, in a statement meant to be critical of Israel, said
"the symbol of this war is a baby with its arms shot off." It
was a symbol not of the war, but of the media's coverage of
it. Subsequent investigation showed that the baby had not
been badly hurt -both its arms were intact. And while civilians, including children, were obviously hit by Israeli
bombs, it so happened that in this case the time, place, and
direction of bombing made it clear that the baby had been
hit by PLO shelling, which the media rarely mentioned,
but which was also a feature of the war.
Verbal attacks on Israel were the staple fare of journalists. CBS' Bill Moyers accused her of waging "total war;"
NBC's John Chancellor talked of an "imperial Israel" and
oflsrael as "a warrior state;" ABC's Threlkeld said she was
"the neighborhood bully." Time and Newsweek referred to
Israel's leaders as "stubborn," "outrageous," and utrouble~
some." Even Israel's release of captured PLO documents,
revealing the extent of Soviet involvement in training of
the international terrorist network, surely of interest to the
West, was dismissed as part of Israel's ((propaganda war.n
Muravchik notes that ABC's Steve Mallory developed a
regular routine of arriving at an area after it was hit by Israeli bombs or shells and announcing, usually wrongly,
that there was no military target there.
The stories the media failed to tell were equally important. Except for the Times, the media had almost nothing
to say of the welcome the Israelis received in Southern
Lebanon by Christians and Moslems delighted to be rid of
thePLO.
But perhaps the media bias was best revealed by the television networks' attacks on Israel for censorship. (The
PLO's censorship, exercised by guns directed against unwelcome TV cameras, was never mentioned.) When ABC
broke Israel's censorship by broadcasting an interview
with Arafat that had been disallowed by the censor, Israel
punished the network by temporarily refusing it access to
Israeli television facilities. ABC accused Israel on the air of
"an intolerable act of political censorship." Israel explained that while it exercised only military censorship on
reports from Israel's side of the battle line, its extension of
its facilities for reports from the enemy's side was a favor
to journalists that it would not allow to be used for the
PLO's political advantage. ABC had agreed to the rules
and then broken them. As Israel saw it, it was as if Britain
had been held responsible for "intolerable censorship" for
failing to channel propaganda speeches by Goebbels from
Germany during World War II if German transmission facilities were not working. But as Muravchik notes, while
Israel's position was one with which the public might or
might not have sympathized, they never heard Israel's side
of the story because the networks would not report it.
They were thus as guilty of "censorship" of information
48
possibly detrimental to them as Israel was. The other networks repeatedly showed black screens on which were
superimposed statements like "22 Seconds Deleted by
Israeli Censors" or "Pictures Censored." NBC set a rec~
ord of sorts when in a single news story on June 5 the
network managed to refer four separate times to Israeli
censorship.
Yet IsraeYs censorship-in wartime-was far less restrictive than that of most other countries at any time and compared very favorably with the censorship of other Middle
Eastern countries. Moreover, while dispatches from other
Middle Eastern countries were censored, the networks
only flashed on the screen references to Israeli censorship.
Eventually NBC began to flash on the screen "Cleared by
Syrian censors," and CBS several weeks later followed
suit. But by the end of August ABC, although it often
broadcast from Syria, still made no reference to Syrian
censorship while routinely using "Cleared by Israeli censors." (Ironically if Israel had kept out all foreign journalists, she would presumably have fared much better at their
hands. This is what the British did during their war with
Argentina over the Falklands that was going on simultaneously, and the media kept silent about "censorship.")
Why should Israel specifically have become a target of
the accumulated vices of advocacy journalism? Robert
Elegant, in the 1981 Encounter essay on media performance in Vietnam that Morley Safer found so offensive,
went to the heart of the problem. Elegant in effect prophesied the media's behavior in arguing that the adversary
stance of the press during Vietnam was prototypical of
what the reaction of the Western press was likely to be to
any war: the press, he wrote, serves as multiplier of the
prejudices of the western intelligentsia whose tender conscience moves it to condemn actions by its own side while
condoning those of its enemies.97 Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz noted an additional factor: Israel refuted
all the lessons of Vietnam, showing that military force
could be necessary, even beneficial, and that a Soviet client could be defeated by an American ally. Podhoretz saw
the attacks on Israel as a cover for the loss of American
nerve, acquiescence in terrorism, and appeasement of to-
talitarianism.98 In Muravchik's view the most important
single factor in the anti-Israel bias was that the war violated the precept that "violence never solves anything."
This was the media's adaptation of the utopian perspective which could more accurately be summed up as "Violence from the left is the only violence that solves anything." Muravchik notes that it is ironic that the belief that
violence solves nothing should have become ascendant in
the media under the impact of the war in Vietnam, for at
the end of that war "violence solved everything-to the
satisfaction of the communists."
Given the extraordinary depths to which the media sank
in the reporting on Lebanon, the analysis of the Columbia
Journalism Review on media reporting of the war is interesting. It concluded that American journalism
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�reported what it saw for the most par~ fairly and accurately
and sometimes brilliantly, provided balanced comment, and
provoked and absorbed controversy. For performance under
fire, readers and viewers could have ask~d for little more. 99
Except for the remark that the coverage "provoked and
absorbed controversy," which was certainly true, this
could scarcely have been further from the mark. But it
does underscore the extent to which the major journalism
reviews, of which Columbia's is probably the most influen·
tial, have themselves become exponents of advocacy journalism. If the press is going to change its ways, it will not
be because of monitoring by the major journalism reviews.
Media needs and attitudes and utopian goals dovetail
nicely. From the point of view of the utopians, stories that
the media may like because of their inherent drama break
down faith in authority. When ABC launched "20/20" to
compete with CBS's highly successful "60 Minutes," the
program was known around the studio as the "cancer scare
of the week." While ABC may have pursued ratings, for
the utopians the programs reveal the wickedness or incapacity of government and corporations, which deny thereality of the dangers or fail to meet them. The media rarely
report human rights violations in totalitarian societies because they cannot gain access to them. For the utopians
these are stories that should be ignored, for they might interfere with their effort to mobilize public opinion against
non-Communist countries threatened by those whose aim
is to establish regimes of the sort that already exist in Cuba
and North Vietnam.
While in theory the fondness for scare stories could
make reports on the Soviet military build-up and Soviet
intelligence agencies appealing, here pervasive liberal orthodoxy among journalists comes into play. It leads them
to downgrade the notion that there is such a thing as a
genuine Soviet threat. It also leads them to automatic sympathy with proposals that come from disarmament groups,
which they become extremely reluctant to report on fully
for fear the effect would be to "unmask" them. This prevents the public from developing scepticism about the
programs of these groups. The media's portrait enforces
the utopian view of the world and makes the calls of the
utopians for "de·industrialization," "decentralization of
industry," solar roof collectors instead of central power stations, seem safer to try than they otherwise would. The
utopian agenda becomes more plausible and attractive as
our familiar world is seen to be threatened only by the callousness and rapacity of our own institutions.
1. Quoted in TV and National Defense: An Analysis of CBS News 19721973, Ernest W. Lefever ed., Institute for American Strategy Press, Boston, Va.l974, 14.
2. Melvin G. Grayson and Thomas R Shepard, The Disaster Lobby, Chicago: Follett Publishing Co., 1973, 266.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
3. S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman "Media and Business Elites,"
Public Opinion, Oct./Nov. 1981, 42-44.
4. Lichter and Rothman, Public Opinion, Oct./Nov. 1981, 59-60.
5. Robert J. Lowenberg, "Journalism and 'Free Speech' as' Political
Power," Scholastic, Dec. 1982, 12.
6. Quoted by Joseph Kraft, "The Imperial Media," Commentary, May
1981.
7. AIM Report, (I) September l, 1979.
8. AIM Report, (I) june 1977.
9. AIM Report, (I) Oct. 1979.
10. Sophia Peterson, "Foreign News Gatekeepers and Criteria of Newsworthiness," Journalism Quarterly, Spring 1979, 116.
11. Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter, "The Nuclear Energy Debate: Scientists, the Media and the Public," Public Opinion, Aug./Sept.
1982, 51.
12. Rothman and Lichter, Public Opinion, Aug./Sept. 1982, 52.
13. Robert DuPont, Nuclear Phobia, The Media Institute.
14. Rothman and Lichter, Public Opinion, Aug./Sept. 1982,47.
15. Rothman and Lichter, Public Opinion, Aug./Sept.1982, 49.
16. Rothman and Lichter, Public Opinion, Aug./Sept. 1982, 51
17. Samuel McCracken, The War Against the Atom, New York: Basic
Books, 1982, 108.
18. Rothman and Lichter, Public Opinion, Aug./Sept. 1982, 52.
19. Samuel McCracken, War, New York 1982, 108.
20. AIM Report, (II) March 1979.
21. Interview with Walter Cronkite, Utica (N.Y.) Press, November 13,
1974. quoted in TV and National Defense, Boston, Va., 1974 Frontispiece.
22. TV and National Defense, Boston, Va. 1974, 37.
23. Joshua Muravchik and John E. Haynes, "CBS vs. Defense," Commentary September 1981,46.
24. Muravchik and Haynes, Commentary, September 1981, 45.
25. Muravchik and Haynes, Commentary, September 1981, 48-49.
26. AIM Report, (I) Aprill979.
27. AIM Report, (II) May 1978.
28. AIM Report, (I) February 1979.
29. AIM Report, (I) February 1979.
30. AIM Report, (II) March 1978.
31. AIM Report, (II) Oct. 1979.
32. AIM Report, (I) july 1977.
33. AIM Report, (I) Feb. 1979.
34. AIM Report, (II) Oct. 1979.
35. Contentions, newsletter of the Committee for the Free World, December 1981.
36. AIM Report, (II) May 1980.
37. AIM Report, (I) june 1982.
38. AIM Report, (II) june 1980.
39. AIM Report, (II) june 1980.
40. AIM Report, (I) March 1979.
41. Human Events, Apri124,1982: New York Times April9, 1982.
42. Contentions, Committee for the Free World, April-May 1982.
43. AIM Report, (I) Sept. 1977.
44. Guild Notes, publication of the National Lawyers Guild, April, 1980.
45. Guild Notes, April, 1980.
46. Business Week, October 18, 1982.
47. Crooks, Conmen and Clowns, Media Institute, Washington D.C.
1981, ix-x.
48. Ben Stein, The View from Sunset Boulevard, New York: Basic Books
1979, 20.
49. Sunset, New York 1979, 33.
50. AIM Report, (II) Sept. 1980.
51. Interview with Peter Metzger, January 29, 1982.
52. AIM Report, May, 1978.
53. AIM Report, (II) july 1982.
54. New York Times, November 12, 1982.
55. Wall Street Journal, August 21, 1981.
56. Human Events, july 11, 1981.
57. Human Ev.ents, July 11, 1981.
49
�58. Human Events, July II, 1981.
59. Human Events, July II, 1981.
60. Wall Street Journal, August 21, 1981.
61. Human Events, Sept. 26, 1981.
62. Daily News, May 12, 1982.
63. AIM Report, (I) Aprill978.
64. AIM Report, (I) April1978.
65. AIM Report, (I) July 1979.
66. AIM Report, (I) May 1980.
67. Bob Schulman, The Bulletin, American Society of Newspaper Editors, October 1982.
68. New York Times, August 2, 1977.
69. Quoted in Review of the News, September 8, 1982, 37.
70. Jeremiah A. Denton Jr., When Hell Was in Session, So. Carolina:
Robert E. Hopper & Assoc., 1982, Chapter 11.
71. Wilfred Burchett, At the Barricades, New York: Times Books, 1981,
viii.
72. Quoted in AIM Report, (II) September 1981.
73. AIM Report, (II) September 1981.
74. AIM Report, (II) September 1981.
75. AIM Report, (I) September 1978.
76. Wall Street Journal, November 16, 1982.
77. Cablevision Magazine, October 25, 1982.
78. Max Kampehnan, "The Power of the Press," Policy Review, Fall,
1978, 18.
79. Joseph Kraft, "The Imperial Media," Commentary, May,l981.
80. Jim Bormann, "Honesty, Fairness and Real Objectivity-Keys to
Journalistic Credibility," Keynote address to Radio and Film News Directors Association, September 29, 1971.
81. AIM Report, (II) June 1982; Human Events September 4, 1982.
82. AIM Report, (II) May 1982.
83. Naomi Munson, "The Case of Janet Cooke," Commentary, August
1981,49.
84. New York Times, May 25, 1981.
85. New York Times, May 25, 1981.
86. AIM Report, (I) May 1981.
87. AIM Report, (I) May 1981.
88. AIM Report, (I) May 198 I.
89. Wall Street Journal, October 14, 1982.
90. TV and National Defense, Boston, Va., 11.
91. Grayson and Shepard, Lobby, Chicago 1973, 255.
92. Lobby, Chicago, 255-56
93. Interview with Reed Irvine, October 24, 1982.
94. AIM Report, (I) May 1980.
95. AIM Report, (II) June 1978.
96, Joshua Muravchik, "Misreporting Lebanon," Policy Review, Winter
1983.
97. Robert Elegant, "How to Lose a War," Encounter August 1981, p. 88.
98. Norman Podhoretz, 'TAccuse," Commentary, September 1982, pp.
30-31.
99. Roger Morris, "Beirut-and the Press-Under Siege," Columbia
Journalism Review Nov./Dec. 1982, 33.
ARRIVAL
The orchid waited eons for the ape.
With seasonal reserve, the old magnolia
Seduced the dragonfly. Unpressed,
The olive and the grape
Lingered in indigo or green,
Too pointedly perceived when not
By simian lens. The field, busy with discharge,
Was barren of delight.
Let ape appear: then fruit and fern, weary
Of insect assiduity, will wink
For recognition, oil and wine
Seek flask and cruet. As we,
No longer naked, know, not to be seen
Too close shows sensibility.
ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN
50
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�Benjamin Constant on Ancient
and Modern Liberty
Stephen Holmes
Progressives ritually deplore not only the low level of
popular participation in politics, but also its characteristic
lack of intensity. Conservatives reply that the feverish involvement of ordinarily apathetic citizens can destabilize
and even topple a democratic regime. Benjamin Constant
attempted to combine these two one-sided ideas, ideas that
are conventionally kept at an aseptic distance from one another. In modern societies, he asserted, political tyranny
may be closely associated with attempts to reglorify the
public realm. But tyranny can also be encouraged and sustained by excessive privatization. Too much and too little
civic spirit are equally dangerous. This double claim forms
the theoretical core of Constant's l819lecture on "Ancient
and Modern Liberty." 1
Precursors
The "quarrel between the ancients and the moderns"
which flourished in France toward the end of the seventeenth century was not merely a dispute about poetry. It
reflected a cultural cleavage between religious conservatives who viewed history as a process of degeneration and
advanced thinkers who exalted the refinements of modern
politesse over the crudities of the barbaric polis. 2 Defenders of "the moderns" hoped that a liberation of literature
from unsurpassable classical models would accompany the
gradual emancipation of science from the authority of ArisStephen Holmes teaches political philosophy at Harvard University.
The above essay comes from a book, Boundaries of the Political: the Sceptical Liberalism of Benjamin Constant, that Yale University Press will
publish in 1984.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
totelianism. Constant's vindication of liberal democracy
against the would-be imitators of classical democracy was
certainly influenced by these literary and scientific contests. Constant1 however, drew more heavily on a narrower
tradition of political theory.l
The proximate and primary source for Constant's dichotomy between two kinds of liberty was Montesquieu.
Among its other achievements, De !'esprit des lois drew universal attention to the astonishing differences between
modern England and ancient Sparta. 4 Although he never
used the phrase "modern liberty," Montesquieu had a
clear enough conception of it. In modern societies such as
England, he argued, the essence ofliberty was security. 5 In
Europe, security was notably threatened when nobles were
excessively independent and engaged in anarchic self-help
(as in Poland) and also when monarchs (as in Richelieu's
France) gathered too much power into their own hands. 6 In
either case men feared one another and the calculability of
life was drastically reduced. "In order for men to have this
[modern] liberty, the government must be such that a citizen cannot fear another citizen. 11 7
Constitutionalism, including the separation of powers,
was meant to arrest the seesaw of anarchy and despotism,
to introduce a salutary predictability into civic life. Protection from both baronial reprisals and lettres de cachet was
the essence of English liberty. Men knew that if they did
not break the law neither the police nor marauding private
armies would harass them. Security made it possible to
plan one's life and to enter into long-term cooperative ventures with one's neighbors. A state based on this modern
conception ofliberty enables its citizens to engage in a promiscuous variety of actions and lives. All citizens may contribute to a common pattern, but only as "dissonances in
music agree in the concord of the whole." 8
51
�The compatibility of the moderl)c constitutional state
with unregimented human diversity is one key to Montesquieu's contrast between modern England and ancient
Sparta. He called Sparta free (that is, free from foreign
domination), but he quickly added that "the only advantage of its liberty was glory."9 It was a small "society of
athletes and combatants," 10 where money was proscribed,11 where men were made cruel by harsh disciplinel2 and always ready to immolate their private lives for
the sake of their patrie. Sparta represented the apogee of
politics based on virtue.ll Motivated exclusively by virtue,
Spartans subordinated themselves unflinchingly to a single
overriding purpose: to live and die for the glory of their
state.l 4 They participated in public life, but only in the
sense that they played their parts; they certainly did not
influence" the course of deliberation in personal, idiosyncratic ways. In this 'warrior's guild," 15 in fact, collective
deliberation was less important than gymnastics.
Montesquieu could compare Sparta to a monastery that,
paradoxically enough, secured the undivided loyalty of its
inmates by starving them of all human possibilities except
those associated with the official functions of the group. 16
A modern state could never expect such extraordinary devotion from its citizens precisely because it is too munificent: it lavishes so many extrapolitical possibilities on the
individual that he feels "he can be happy without his patrie." 17 Intense politics based on virtue is thus out of place
in the modern state. Personal honor or avarice may motivate modern citizens; but self-abnegating patriotism cannot. That the English revolutionary attempt to resurrect a
polity based on virtue in the seventeenth century would
collapse in ridiculous hypocrisy was perfectly predictable. IS
Montesquieu's striking counterposition of England and
Sparta had a decisive impact on numerous writers besides
Rousseau.l9 Jean-louis de Lolme was typical. Writing in
the 1780s, he reformulated Montesquieu's contrast as a
distinction between private independence and political
influence:
44
4
To concur by one's suffrage in enacting laws is to enjoy a
share, whatever it may be, of power; to live in a state where the
laws are equal for all and sure to be executed (whatever may be
the means by which these advantages are attained), is to be
free. 20
Passages registering an analogous distinction between
sharing in legislative power and protection from the arbitrary acts of political officials can be found in the eighteenth-century works of Joseph Priestly, Adam Ferguson,
Jean-Charles Sismondi, and others.21 All these writers had a
clear awareness of what Constant would later describe as
the difference between ancient and modern liberty. Nevertheless, the claims to originality advanced at the beginning
of "De Ia liberte des anciens comparee d celle des modernes"
were not entirely unjustified. 22 The abstract dichotomy between ancient and modern liberty was not unprecedented,
but Constant used it in ways that were new.
52
Two Concepts of Liberty
Ancient liberty, Constant wrote, was "active and continuous participation in the exercise of collective power." 23
Modern liberty, by contrast, is "the peaceful enjoyment of
individual or private independence." 24 A hedonistic slide
from "exercise" to "enjoy" signaled the humanly debilitating consequences of modernization. Indeed, Constant's
distinction between ancient and modern liberty cannot be
studied apart from the notion, also inherited from Montesquieu, that European history is a curious blend of progress
and decay. He made remarkable assumptions about the human consequences of modernization:
The liberty of ancient times was whatever assured citizens the
largest share in exercising social power. The liberty of modern
times is whatever guarantees the independence of citizens
from their government. As a result of their character,_the ancients had an overriding need for action; and the need for
action is easily reconciled with a vast increase in social authority. The moderns need peace and enjoyment. Peace can be
found only in a limited number of laws that prevent citizens
from being harassed. Enjoyments are secured by a wide margin of individual liberty_ Any legislation requiring the sacrifice
of these enjoyments is incompatible with the present condition of mankind. 25
Because of the common but erroneous belief that negation
implies deprivation, "negative freedom" 26 is a misleading
translation of Ia liberte chez les modernes. Modern liberty,
as Constant conceived it, is as much a capacity for positive
action as ancient liberty had been.27 The difference only
lies in the character of the action and the field in which it
unfolds. Moreover, Constant distinguished between two
types of freedom in order to investigate the various relations between them, the ways in which they are not only
combinable but even mutually enhancing.
Not merely conceptual, Constant's distinction was initially historical. Each type of liberty, he urged, was originally bound to the institutions and life of a specific society.
Ancient liberty, in its unalloyed form, was only possible in a
sparsely populated, territorially compact, religiously homogeneous and slave-holding warrior's republic. 28 Modern
liberty is the innovation of large-scale, caste-free, internationally open, religiously pluralistic, and intensively commercial societies.29
Although intrigued by the contrast between public participation and private security, Constant did not allow it to
obscure the radically progressive content of modern liberty. In antiquity, "freedom" was a privileged status from
which men could be excluded by the chance of birth. Essential to modern liberalism, by contrast, is the demand
that freedom be distributed to all individuals regardless of
family origin. The relative importance which Constant ascribed to public and private spheres within modern liberty
was a direct function of the modern demand of citizenship
for all.
WINTER/SPRJNG 1983
�Constant's emphasis on a linkage between political
ideals and social contexts was not merely a subsidiary feature of his theory. In explicit contrast to the natural law and
contractarian traditions, he did not attempt to justify his
commitment to the liberal state by adducing ahistorical
traits of human nature. Once again following Montesquieu
and other eighteenth-century (particularly Scottish) examples, he deliberately supplanted the contract myth with a
theory of social change. 30 The liberal state is desirable not
because it mirrors human nature or respects eternal human
rights, but because it is the political arrangement most
adequate to solving the problems of European society
in its current state of economic, scientific, and moral
development.
Constant's conception of social change was also vital to
another striking thesis of the 1819 lecture, an idea elaborated at greater length in De !'esprit de conquete et de !'usurpation dans leurs rapports avec Ia civilisation europeenne of
1814: the modern appeal to classical republican ideals is an
anachronism that can serve only as a rhetorical justification
and partial concealment of political fanaticism and terror. 31
A similar thesis had been propounded by C.F. de Volney
in 1794. Volney too lamented that "we have fallen into a
superstitious adoration of the Greeks and Romans." 32
Cults of antiquity which sprang up during the Revolution
and glorified selfless, Brutus-like tyrannicide suggested this
insight to many observers.ll The myth of ancient republics, Constant agreed, lent a deceptive aura oflegitimacy to
the abusive acts of the Committee of Public Safety: "it is in
the name of liberty that we have been given prisons, scaffolds and countless harassments." 34 The enormous power
of government over society was justified by an ideology
that, invoking ancient community, denied the modern distinction between state and society. During the Revolution,
in other words, the ideal of ancient liberty was a pretext for
oppression.l5 Constant conceded that many of the wouldbe "imitators of ancient republics" were propelled by generous motives.J6 They meant to abolish arbitrary government, seigneurial privileges, and the abuses of the Church.
Their tragic mistake was to have chosen the classical city as
an image unifying their diverse complaints against the ancien regime.
The French Revolution was not the first occasion on
which anticlerical and anti-aristocratic activists appealed to
classical republican ideals:
Since the renaissance of letters, most of those who attempted
to rescue man from the degradation into which he had been
plunged by the double curse of superstition and conquest [Roman Catholicism and aristocracy], believed it necessary to borrow institutions and customs favorable to liberty from the
ancients. 37
Though the image of classical republican freedom may
have been a useful rebuke to the old regime, it was not an
adequate guide to the future. The myth of the ancient city
could serve as a weapon in the assault on Catholicism and
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the inequality of ranks, but it could furnish no clue about
how to replace them.JS Necessarily, attempts to resurrect
anachronistic forms of liberty were political hoaxes on a
grand scale.
The Problem
In modern times, Constant wrote, citizens can no longer
experience political participation as an intrinsically rewarding form of action.l9 But he also said that his contemporaries must learn to couple political participation, which he
described as a path to self-perfection, with individual privacy and independence.40 Which statement are we to believe? Was Constant simply being incoherent? Our perplexity is justified. But it can be dispelled if we examine
how the distinction between ancient and modern liberty
was used during two separate phases of Constant's career.
The 1819lecture contains long sections authored twenty
years earlier in response to exceptional political events. By
1819, the political scene had radically changed. Constant's
former left-wing enemies had vanished, only to be replaced
by equally intractable right-wing foes. In response to this
altered landscape, Constant reelaborated his distinction in
a new direction. No longer threatened by pseudo-democratic fraud, he turned sharply against the civic passivity
that served the interests of the ultras.41 But he left the
passages written years earlier untouched. No wonder
present-day readers feel off balance! Despite these findings, we cannot dismiss the 1819lecture as a jumble of conflicting insights. Constant was right to cling tenaciously to
both sides of his polemic: the atrophy of political life can be
just as perilous as a total repoliticization of society. Constant was struggling to understand the complexities of politics after the Revolution.
The Original Formulation
of the Distinction
A good deal has been written about the two concepts of
freedom and the corresponding democratic traditions.42
What has perhaps been neglected is the history of the distinction itself, especially the context in which it was originally elaborated and the problems to which it was initially
meant as a practical response.
The original version of the "Ancient and Modern Liberty" lecture can be found in Chapter Three of Mme de
Stael's Circonstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer Ia revolution, a manuscript which was heavily influenced and
perhaps co-authored by Constant around 1798. Constant
and Mme de Stael wanted to convince the Directory that,
instead of merely playing off the Right against the Left, it
should appeal directly to a constituency of its own.
In times of political uproar, civic privatism can prevent
53
�individuals from assuming uncompromising postures associated with !'esprit de parti. The Directory never totally
succeeded in its attempt to arrest the. civil war. Thus, from
1793 until 1799, active participation in French politics
meant being drawn pell-mell into the fratricidal battle:
Even the slightest objection inspires hatred in the exalted par-
ties. This hatred compels every man to ally himself with a
number of his fellows and, just as men travel only in caravans
in places infested with brigands, so in countries where hatreds are unleashed, they align themselves with a party in order to have defenders.43
Constant's vindication of political absenteeism was intended as a reply to Rousseau's glorification of political
participation. He lauded citizen withdrawal and indifference in situations of civil war when participation was
largely a vehicle for partisan hatred and revenge. Civil war
had demonstrated the value of apolitical behavior in a
country "where two opposed parties combat each other
with furor." 44
Constant and Mme de Stael urged the Directory to
draw electoral support from just those individuals who had
remained aloof from the fighting in the years before. The
"inert" and '''{immobile" masses of the nation had views
that were admirably moderate because deeply apathetic_45
They were indifferent to royalty, but not enthusiastic
enough about the Republic to want it to disrupt the nation's tranquillity.46 They were unconcerned about the
fate of the ci-devant privileged caste, but they did not detest the old nobles intensely enough to wish to see them
persecuted_47 They knew that the persecution of even a
few embroils everyone, not merely the persecutors and the
persecuted.48
This majority "wants nothing but its own well-being."49
The desire for peace and prosperity may have signaled a
descent from the heights of antique virtue. But it had politically beneficial side-effects. Moreover, a commitment
to peace was exactly what one would have expected from
most Frenchmen.
Party spirit alm0st -1ilever exists except among individuals
thrown outside lthe.Cirde of domestic life. And two-thirds of
the population df France and of.all,the countries of Europe
are composed of men·.Who.-are·occupied solely with their pecuniary fortune. 50
In order to win the loyalty of these survival-minded
masses, the Directoire should respect their indifference to
politics. It must "never count, in such a nation, on the sort
of patriotism that propelled the ancient republics." 51 Instead of trying to win electoral support by stirring up enthusiasm, by asking citizens for heroic sacrifices of their
particular interests to the general good, the Directory
must acquiesce in individual contrariness. "Liberty today
is everything that guarantees the independence of citizens
from the power of the government." 52 To syphon away
54
votes from royalists and Jacobins, the Directory must offer
private security to its citizens.
De Stael's and Constant's aim in 1798 was to convince
the Directory that the stability of the Republic required an
abandonment of all the enthusiasm-promoting techniques
employed earlier by the clubs, the militant sectionnaires,
and the Convention:
Among the ancients ... in order to capture public opinion, it
was necessary to rouse the soul, to excite patriotism by conquest, by triumphs, by factions, even by troubles that nourished every passion. National spirit must no doubt be cultivated as much as possible within France. But we must not
lose sight of the fact that public opinion is based on a love of
peace, on the desire to acquire wealth and the need to conserve it and that we will always be more interested in administrative ideas than in political questions, because these touch
our private lives more directly_ 53
The majority of the French can have a moderating influence because they are largely indifferent to citizenship
and distracted from public affairs. Justly wary of the intoxicating effect of patriotism, the Directors should heed the
following maxim: "The sphere of each individual must always be respected." 54 To politicize modern individuals in
a total manner is next to impossible, and would be a mistake in any case. In 1798, distinguishing between ancient
and modern liberty meant praising apoliticism and urging
the government to hon<>r the primacy of private life.
The Lecture of 1819
Twenty years later, in 1819, Constant delivered his lecture at the Paris Atheneum. With the shift in the political
situation, the argumentative thrust of his distinction between ancient and modern liberty also changed. In the
France of 1819, there was no cult of.Sparta which Constant might have felt compelled to discredit. 55 There was
simply no threat of a resurgent Jacobinism by this time.
Constant's distinction between ancient and modern liberty has often been distorted by being mislocated exclusively in the context of 1793-1794. The Terror-which
Constant had not witnessed first-hand, for he only returned to France in 1795-provided an important motive
for his rethinking of eighteenth-century liberalism. But
the Directory, the Empire and the ultra-dominated Restoration all influenced his thought in decisive ways. The Directory taught him the insufficiency of "limited" gov.ennment, while Napoleon and the Bourbons helped revi¥eh's
underlyil)g rr~pul:ilicariism, temporarily suspended in the
convulsions of civil strife between 1793 and 1799. By 1819,
Constant had long broken with Guizot and other moderates, and he sat on the far left of the Chamber. Needless to
say, his ultraroyalist enemies never celebrated Rousseau
as a prophet of unlimited popular sovereignty; and as
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1983
�Catholics, they liad·only the faintests)>mpatl!ty, £mr. pagan
antiquity.
•
Constant began his lecture with a "demonstration," following Montesquieu and Rousseau, that the representative system was
discovery of the moderns." 56 He used
the contrast with the direct self-government of the classical city to highlight the uniqueness of representative government. But he did not reduce the modern rupture with
the past to this contrast.
At the opening of the lecture, in a section that did not
appear before 1819, he opposed representation to oligarchic usurpation, not to democratic participation. The representative system was a discovery of the moderns: it was a
technique invented by the Third Estate for putting limits
on that "oligarchy whiclr is the same throughout the centuries."57 At the time, Constant's assertion that representative government is the "only system" that allows modern
men to attain freedom and social peace was immediately
understood as an argument against the ultra program to
reverse the relatively liberal Electoral Law of 1817.
Reminiscent of the regime of the ancient Gauls, the system the ultras wished to impose on modern France also
resembled the constitution of ancient Sparta. A small elite,
the Ephors of Sparta, possessed religious as well as political functions. They had powers to check and limit
the kings. But they also enjoyed executive authority.
They could easily become threats instead of restraints.
They were, in fact, not democratic representatives at all,
"not ... men invested with a mission comparable to that
which election today confers on the defenders of our freedoms." 58 The feudal aristocracy of priests and warriors
idealized by the ultras resembled the Ephors in many respects. Under the ancien regime, "the nobility possessed
privileges that were both insolent and oppressive. And the
people were without rights or guarantees." 59
Shrewdly structured, this argument was calculated simultaneously to entice and to befuddle the antidemocratic sentiments of the French Right. Every royalist had
to applaud the concession that modern France could
never be governed by direct popular self.rule. But the reason why the government established by the Charte 60 was
unlike that of the turbulent classical republics was also the
reason why it was distinct from the Catholic, monarchical,
and aristocratic system of the old regime.
Constant shrewdly replaced Montesquieu's contrast between modern monarchies and ancient republics by a new
contrast, discomfiting to the ultras, between representative and nonrepresentative regimes. Such a contrast had
the embarrassing effect of aligning the Catholic Bonald
with the most radical proponents of pagan democracy.
Taunting the Right, Constant juxtaposed absolute democracy with absolute monarchy.
The parallel drawn between the organization of the ancient city and the social program of the ultras was not
merely negative. More was involved than a shared denial
of the modern principle of representation. In both cases,
"a
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Constant discerned a bias against voluntariness, against
entrusting social choices to unsupervised individuals.
With one eye fixed on the Catholic ultraroyalists, Constant mentioned the power of ancient Roman authorities
to meddle in matters of divorce and marriage. Reflecting
on the ultra education program,, he also remarked that
modern theocrats agreed with ancient republicans: a government should "take possessi<m of the generations being
born" and shape them to. its• own pleasure.6l When he said
(also about Rome) that "les lois reglent les moeurs," 62
his real target was the ultra-not merely Jacobin-idea
that the state should assume the duty of policing private
morality.
In mounting his attack on the French Right, Constant
also focused on religious toleration. There were obvious
differences between ancient civic religions and the modern alliance between throne and altar. Both could, however, be contrasted with a liberal decision to make religion
a private matter: "the ability to choose one's own cult, an
ability that we regard as one of our most precious rights,
would have seemed a crime and a sacrilege to the ancients."63 Distant from antiquity and inhospitable to the
vision of the Social Contract, modern Frenchmen cannot
reconcile themselves to the regimental designs of the theocratic Right. It is not altogether surprising that "the gallant
defenders of doctrinal unity cite the laws of the ancients
against foreign gods and support the rights. of the Catholic
Church with the example of the Atheuians."M These and
other parallels between the ancieNts and' the lilltras were
innovations of 1819. They did not appear in Constant's
earlier discussions of the distinction between ancient and
modern liberty. They betray the immediate;;political objectives of his lecture.
In their interpretations of the Revoluti<m,.Jacobins and
royalists agreed that the Terror had been'necessary to the
demolition of the old regime. Ever since his early pam·
phlet, Effets de Ia terreur (1798),65 Constant had rejected
this shared premise of the Left and Right. He had sought
to disconnect liberty from an incriminating association
with bureaucratic murder. An obvious way to disjoin freedom from the Terror was to split "freedom" in two. One
form (call it ancient liberty) could be found guilty, while
the other (call it modern) would come out innocent. Con·
stant had this strategy in mind in the Circonstances actuelles of 1798 where, together with Mme de Stael, he initially worked out the distinction between ancient and
modern liberty. Throughout the Restoration, moreover,
Constant's need to outmaneuver the ultras led him to
stress the politically harmless aspects of modern freedom. ·
He often wrote of "Ia liberte legale," "Ia liberte constitutionnelle," and "Ia liberte reguliere."66 He tended to discuss freedom in minimalist terms: by liberty he meant the
strict execution of the Charte. 67
But, although Constant no longer felt threatened by the
Jacobins in 1819, he was becoming increasingly exasperated wittin the: ultras. His desire to appease their fears was
55
�evaporating quickly. This turn of events helps explain his
new insistence that freedom from pditics, even if it never
functioned as a pretext for revoluticmary tyranny, was by
no means harmless.
By 1819, in fact, the distinction between ancient and
modern liberty had become Constant's way of exposing
the dangers inherent in his own commitment to civic pri·
vatism. His initial intention may have been to describe
modern liberty as innocent: it had had no role in inspiring
the Terror. But, at the end of his 1819lecture, his theoretical instincts and a changing political scene drew him toward criticizing modern liberty precisely because of its en·
couragement of apathy. Thus, the concluding thesis of the
1819 lecture was this: "Because we are more distracted
from political liberty than [the ancients] were able to be,
and in our ordinary condition less passionate about it, it
can happen that we sometimes neglect too much, and al·
ways mistakenly, the guarantees that it ensures us."68
Constant's Cautious Renewal
of the Appeal to Antiquity
The final section of "Ancient and Modern Liberty"
comes as a surprise. After having devoted twenty dense
pages to his claim that modern peoples are exclusively at·
tuned to private independence and freedom from politics,
after having said that "nous ne pouvons plus jouir de Ia liberte des anciens," 69 and that "the liberty suitable to the
moderns is different from that which was suitable to the
ancients," 70 after all this, Constant abruptly changed his
emphasis: "So, Gentlemen, far from renouncing either of
the two types of freedom about which I have been speaking to you, we must, as I have demonstrated, learn to com·
bine the one with the other." 71
In the body of the lecture, composed in previous years
and geared to different situations, Constant made clear
that "the perpetual exercise of political rights" and "the
daily discussion of the affairs of state" offer "only trouble
and fatigue" to modern nations.72 But in the conclusion,
written in or around 1819, he wrote:
Political liberty, granted to all citizens without exception, al·
lows them to examine and study their most sacred interests,
enlarges their spirits, ennobles their thoughts and establishes
between them a sort of intellectual equality that makes up the
glory and power of a people. 73
The citizenship being praised in the concluding section of
the lecture is only a part-time affair. Nevertheless, we can·
not escape the impression that we are witnessing a dra·
matic alteration in Constanfs tone as well as a reversal in
his theoretical stance. Here, his endorsement of civic in·
volvement is unmistakable. That Constant, at the end of
his lecture, did not denigrate or repudiate political partici·
pation is obviously pertinent to the question of how anti-
56
democratic was his liberalism. But it is not easy to integrate these final pages with the earlier part of his
argument.
On closer inspection, it turns out that two distinct para·
doxes preside over the jolting conclusion of "Ancient and
Modern Liberty." First, there is an inconsistency between
Constant's pessimistic and his optimistic assessments of
popular influence on the government in a modern state.
Modern citizens are said to have no influence on their gov·
ernments. But their active participation is also described
as decisive. Second, there is a flat contradiction between
Constant's claims that: (i) in modern societies, political lib·
erty is a means, while civil liberty is the end, that is, participation is valuable only as a guarantee to ensure private security from government harassment (this distinguishes
modern from ancient participation); and (ii) active civic in·
volvement is valuable in itself; it is an opportunity for soar·
ing above petty individual concerns and furthering self.
perfection.
Viewed separately, both paradoxes seem quite baffling.
Taken together, however, each not only illuminates the
other but also helps explain the structure of the lecture's
conclusion.
Consider the contrast between the pessimistic and the
optimistic assessments of popular influence on modern
governments. Constant's pessimism here echoes Rous·
seau's remark74 that the English are free only once every
several years and solely during the few minutes it takes to
vote; otherwise they are slaves:
Among the moderns ... even in the states which are most
free, the individual, although independent in private life, is
not sovereign except in appearance. His sovereignty is restrained, almost always suspended; and if he exercises this
sovereignty at fixed but infrequent intervals, during which
time he is still surrounded by precautions and obstacles, it is
only to abdicate it75
Constant accepted Rousseau's claim that democratic selfgovernment is impossible in a large country. But he
refused to imitate Rousseau's wholesale rejection of repre·
sentative government on the British model.
Constant decided to adapt himself, without undue ag·
ony, to the new political and extrapolitical possibilities
available in a society incapable of direct democracy. From
a realistic point of view, the marginal contribution of the
average modern individual to any political outcome is
close to zero: "the individual's influence ... is lost in a
multitude of influences." 76 Hence, we should expect most
men to turn their backs on citizenship and devote them·
selves to more rewarding, creative and enjoyable forms of
conflict or cooperation. From Constant's perspective in
1819, however, there was a serious flaw in a way of think·
ing that encouraged men to channel all their energies into
private life. French history had by that time unambigu·
ously demonstrated that civic absenteeism can serve the
cause of tyrants and oppressors. What had been thrown
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�into question was the standard liberal argument that commercial life provides an effective counterweight to excessive political authority. "The progress of industry ... creates for each individual a sphere within which are
concentrated all his interests; and, if the individual looks
outside this sphere, it is only by accident." 77 But when
modern citizens become too absorbed in their private financial business and fail to keep watch over the political
scene, the ambitious few will amass uncontrollable quantities of power.78 Once this has happened, private wealth
will itself be insecure.
Constant believed that economic independence was a
precondition for political influence. Political liberty presupposed civil liberty. He also affirmed the inverse claim:
without effective political influence, economic independence and decentralization cannot be guaranteed. This
second proposition cannot be called a political argument
against capitalism, but it is an insight into the troublesome
political consequences of business-mindedness and the
spirit of commerce.
The historical experiences behind this liberal distrust of
apoliticism were manifold. Just as important to Constant
as the ultra program to limit the franchise was the atrophy
of political life under the Empire. Napoleon had encouraged a withering away of active citizenship in order to consolidate his power.79 He had initially gained popular support for his coup d'etat because many citizens were weary
of the pseudo-republican antics of the Directory. 80 Thus,
the post-revolutionary urge to escape from politics and to
delimit the political sphere had nourished an invasive dictatorship. Constant experienced the pang of enforced depoliticization in his own person when he was ejected from
the Tribunat in 1802. It is inconceivable that, having suffered this humiliation, he would have afterwards viewed
privatization as simply and exclusively a public good.
Constant's argument here might be interpreted as a
democratic rethinking of a dilemma faced earlier by
French aristocrats. In the eighteenth century, the "resurgent nobility" realized they had made a poor bargain when
they sacrificed their political power to Richelieu and Louis
XIV for the sake of cozy privileges and immunities. Without power, their new rights were insecure. 81 Private independence can only be guaranteed by political responsibility. Constant echoed this point, with one major difference.
He wished political rights distributed "to all citizens without exception." 82
To provide his argument with a form more arresting to
modern readers, Constant resorted to a financial comparison. 83 A rich man may, in order to gain time for other
activities hire a manager to handle his fiscal affairs. In
any such' arrangement there comes a point when asaving
time" will be carried too far. A manager left completely
unsupervised may defraud the owner. In the long run, delegating one's power is not necessarily an efficient way to
save time. Like businessmen, citizens must keep themselves carefully informed in order to judge whether their
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
delegated business is being handled honestly and intelligently:
The peoples who recur to the representative system in order
to enjoy the liberty that is suitable to them must exercise a
constant and active surveillance over their representatives.
They must reserve to periods which are not separated by long
intervals the right to dismiss these representatives if they
have betrayed their vows and to revoke any powers they have
abused. 84
Not so enjoyable as the first-hand despoiling, exiling, imprisoning, and executing available to the ancient citizen,
this dismissing and revoking preserved some of the responsibilities of ancient citizens within modern constitutional
government.
From an individual's viewpoint, the importance of his
own civic participation seems negligible and almost imaginary. In the aggregate, however, a participating and well
informed citizen body can certainly prevent the return of
a Napoleon or, more likely in 1819, the gradual confiscation of all political power by the ultras.
There may be no contradiction in Constant's argument.
But there is a problem. The liberal dilemma was how to
motivate individuals to participate, how to galvanize them
into civic activism, given the scant rewards each individual
might expect from time expended on political affairs: "the
danger of modern liberty is that, absorbed in the enjoyment of our private independence and in the pursuit of
our particular interests, we will renounce too easily our
right to share in political power." 85 Civic privatism is a
danger because individuals will be more impressed by the
shorter-term gains than by the longer-term dangers of
apoliticism. Rational calculation leads citizens to see that
they can personally have no "real influence" on political
events,86 and thus may inadvertently encourage them to
expose their polity to dictatorship.
Constant understood that his instrumental argument
for civic involvement (that private rights can only be guaranteed by popular power, that independence will only be
ensured by participation) was not sufficient to rouse men
from the civic sedation administered first by Napoleon
and more recently by the ultra party. Partly because of his
recognition of the insufficiency of the instrumental argument for civic involvement, Constant overturned the previously worked-out logic of his lecture (a logic reflecting his
radically different concerns of 1798) and introduced an
Aristotelian and almost romantic justification of participation. Even apart from its terrible consequences, Constant
concluded, privatism cannot satisfy individuals, even if it
might make them happy. Men could reach bonheur simply
by abandoning their strenuous ideals and sinking into passivity. But happiness was not enough:
No, Gentlemen, I call to witness this better part of our nature,
the noble restlessness that pursues and torments us, this ardor to extend our understanding and develop our faculties.
57
�Our destiny does not call us to!ha)lplness<,:\Jt:>n€,chlill' to'silfperfecbon; and political liberty• isi t!Te< trtosttpoWefhll anti<the
most energetic means of self-J:l'effecHon :'granted us ;.by
heaven. 87
;
Except for "torment" and ainquietude," this passage carefully echoes classical arguments according to which man is
a fundamentally political animal. In radical contrast to the
body of the lecture, it implies that the more time modern
citizens spend on public affairs, the more free they will
feel.
In 1798, when the distinction between ancient and
modern liberty was first elaborated, Constant was still
haunted by the experience of the Revolution and ,espeCially by the idea that political participatimrumeamhnvolvement in plots for Tevenge. He thus viewed patriotic fer·
mentation with a nervous eye. In 1819, by contrast, the
ultra threat caused Constant and his liberal allies to re·
verse their earlier position and speak warmly of "pure, pro·
found, and sincere patriotism," a sentiment capable of en·
nobling the spirits of "tous les citoyens, sans exception." 88
Not merely a means to civil liberty, political liberty was
also seen as an mtegral part of civil liberty. Constant con·
eluded by suggesting that "the greatest possible number of
citizens" must be given influence over public affairs and
admitted to important political functions. Inclusion in
such tasks will give citizens "both the desire and the capac·
ity to perform them." 89 This is the sort of thinking which
~ve!'tually led to the acceptance of universal suffrage as an
mdispensable baSlS for representative government.
The strikingly democratic conclusion to "Ancient and
Modern Liberty" remains puzzling until we understand
how the underlying logic of the argument of 1798 was
adapted to meet the demands of Restoration politics. The
lecture is a palimpsest. It is so complex because it was composed twice, the second version superimposed on the first
after an interval of twenty years. By 1819, Constant's origi·
nal fear of convulsive patriotism had had to make room for
his hope that enhanced civic participation might advance
hberal causes or at least keep the ultras in check.
Civic Privatism and its Problems
The foregoing analysis of the two layers of "Ancient and
Modern Liberty" fails to do justice to the theoretical con·
tent of the lecture. After all, it was Constant's conscious
decision to weave his new and old concerns into a single
pattern of thought. "Ancient and Modern Liberty" gains
its importance from his crucial insight that both the loss of
civic spirit and the revival of civic spirit contain a potential
for tyranny. The right to be distracted from politics is pre·
ClOUS, b!-'t it iS not harmless. 0verprivatization and overpohbCiZahon are symmetncal dangers. The pluralistic and
voluntary pattern oflife to which modern citizens have become accustomed makes us intolerant of societies in
58
which• there are no sharply-etched limits to the political.
Butc·every time we draw such boundaries;-we' seal off im<poltanliiiteasofsotiallife from respiill!iible pi'.blic surveillance and coilttol.-:NaP<?-[eon- craftily used civic privatism
to escape accountability:9° 'The' liberal boundaries of the
political are simultaneously indispensable and fraught
with risk.
This idea is not a palinode or sign of Constant's irresolute _vacillation. It is an insight into the complexity of polihcs m France after the Revolubon. Ultimately, Constant's
success at keeping such ostensibly conflicting ideas simultaneously alive is what makes his thought about •this period so fascinating.
Unusable and even dangerous as a •constructive principle, ancient liberty is helpful as a reminder oflthe central
peril of modern liberty. His sense of this periiJmlly well• be
why Constant was so careful to label participation in-sovereignty a form ofliberty in the first place. Morlll'!squieu'l'iatl
warned against confounding the sovereign 'tptl\iver'\ 6fc•a
people with its '1iberty," and de Lolme adopted thiN·:nne
distinction between freedom and power.9l
Cons_tant's decision to deviate from those who defined
liberty by contrasting it with the exercise of sovereignty
was not casual. He insisted from the start that the influence of citizens on legislation was a form of freedom. He
did not allow active political rights to stand on the sidelines
as a mere alternative to freedom. This refusal to set popular power aside may also illuminate the ending of the 1819
lecture, the apparent contradiction between the notion
that political liberty is exclusively a guarantee and the idea
that it is also a vehicle for self-perfection. By calling popular power a form of freedom, Constant prepared the way
for his conclusion: freedom from politics is not coextensive with liberty. True liberty is an "optimal mix" of public
and private, participation and nonparticipation, citizenship and mdependence, activism and distraction, cooperation and eccentricity. 92
Those who accept Isaiah Berlin's portrait of a privacyaddicted Constant cannot explain why he devoted the last
fifteen years of his life to public service. To be sure the
politics to which he gave himself unstintingly was ~ot a
town-meeting sort of communalism. It was a radical reformist activism. If it was politics with the aim of limlting
politics, it was politics nonetheless. The price of modern
liberty is eternal vigilance. Anti-utopian but reformminded participation was crucial for Constant. In the
Commentaire sur l'ouvrage de Filangieri of 1822, he was
unrelenting about the importance of political citizenship.
In explaining why England was a powerful nation despite
its absurd commercial law, he wrote:
The political institutions, the parliamentary discussions, the
liberty of the press which [England] has enjoyed without interruption for one hundred and twenty-six years have counteracted the vices of its laws and its governments. Its inhabitants maintain their energy of character because they have not
been disinherited of their participation in the administration
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�of public affairs. This participation, while it is almost imaginary, gives the citizens a feeling of their importance that fosters their activity.93
Spain, by contrast, reveals the dismal fate of a country
where individuals lose interest in themselves because they
are deprived of any chance to influence their own fate:
Spain's "decadence dates from the destruction of its political liberty and the suppression of the cortes."94
Participation in politics, as advocated by the later Constant, was not limited to the periodic surveillance and
controle of the legislators by the electors. It cannot be reduced to a means by which private citizens could defend
their security, goods and jouissances. 95 Constant argued
that concern for the public good was also creative of energetic characters and even national identity. For him, poli- ·
tics was an engrossing passion. He merely wanted to make
sure that it was voluntary, not obligatory. A voluntary politics of reform (based on ideals of civilized humanity) is certainly one of the central possibilities made available by
modern liberty.
We should not, however, allow Constant to give a more
glamorous portrait of the ancient component in modern
liberty than he gave of ancient liberty itself. Constant admitted that he was sometimes bored with public service,
and he never gave flattering accounts of his reasons for
persisting in office. In a revealing letter written in 1800,
when he was first appointed to the Tribunal, he distinguished sharply between happiness and self-perfection,
just as he was to do at the conclusion of "Ancient and
Modern Liberty." He had pursued a political career, he
said:
not as a pleasure-is there any such thing in life?-but as a
task, as an opportunity to fulfill a duty, which is the only thing
able to lift the burden of doubt, of memory, of unrest-the
eternal lot of our transitory nature. Those for whom pleasure
has charms, for whom novelty still exists, and who have preserved the happy faculty of enjoyment, do not need a vocation; but those who have lost their physical and moral youth
must have a distinct mission to do good in order not to sink
into discouragement and apathy. 96
Constant was only thirty-three when he wrote this letter.
Decrepitude was his society's, not his personal, plight. Victimized by an excess of civilization, modern men are incapable of bonheur. The best they can hope for is to quell
their nagging inquietude. Living in a disillusioned age,
Constant decided to call such escapism by the name of
"self-perfection." Idealizing politics was politically useful
in his battle against the ultras.
Modern Imitators of Ancient Republics
Taine, heir to the counterrevolutionary tradition, argued that the Terror was a logical consequence of Enlightenment thought.97 This conservative thesis has been so
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
widely influential that its implausible character is often
lost from sight: if eighteenth-century liberalism leads necessarily to revolutionary dictatorship and murder, then
only the illiberalism of the old regime can sustain social
freedom.
Constant had a different view. The Terror, he thought,
did not result from an excess of freedom. On the contrary,
"the evils of the Revolution stemmed precisely from the
Revolution's having suspended allliberty."98 The liberty
suspended during the Terror had little or no resemblance
to the old aristocratic freedoms which had been sharply
curtailed during the consolidation of French absolutism.
The liberty violated by the Terror was a constitutionally
regulated liberty. It included civil rights, religious tolerance, legal equality, and the political influence of the
Third Estate. Unlike Taine, in other words, Constant saw
no difficulty in criticizing the Terror with categories inherited from the Enlightenment. The 1793-1794 phase of the
Revolution was marked by intolerant fanaticism, secular
priest-craft, and a conflation of the social and the political.
The Jacobins claimed to be establishing a new republic
based on virtue; but they actually recreated a despotism
based, as Montesquieu said all despotisms were, on fear.
Constant never accused the Terrorists of an overexuberant commitment to reason and equality. Rather than
pointing an accusing finger at the Enlightenment, he focused on the revolutionary appeal to classical republican
ideals,99 an appeal that served as a pretext for oppression,
misleading the public and to some extent deluding the oppressors. In so doing he relied explicitly on an Enlightenment mistrust of political recidivism. I00
Robespierre and Saint-Just, who in the crisis of 1793 had
resurrected the Roman institution of emergency dictatorship, were the most notorious modern imitators of ancient
republics. They were not squeamish about using violence
against their real or imagined enemies:
These men thought they could exercise political power as it
had been exercised in the free states of antiquity. They believed that even today everything must yield to the collective
authority and that private morality must fall silent before the
public interest. 101
Robespierre's addiction to Plutarch and Rousseau should
not be overestimated. But his admiration for the ancients
certainly contributed to his self-image as a great moral legislator and founder of a new order.IOZ The classical tradition of civic virtue provided a language in which he could
misdescribe the Revolution and stress the paramount
need for self-sacrifice on the part of all citizens. One of
his favorite exhortations was: "evelons nos ames it Ia hauteur des vertus republicaines et des examples antiques." 103
"Sparta," he rapturously remarked, "shines like a lightning
flash in the immense darkness." 104 "! speak of public virtue," he added in yet another speech, "which worked such
wonders in Greece and Rome and must produce even
more astonishing good in republican France."IOS
59
�Characteristic of the ancient city, according to Constant, was the absence of inalienable rights.l 06 Rights were
not absolute but contingent upon service to the community. They could be legally revoked by the assembled populace.107 In search of justifications for the flagrant violations of judicial procedure involved in revolutionary
justice, the Jacobins were understandably attracted to this
ancient model for the morally impeccable revocation of
rights. Fot similar reasons, "the Spartans of the Convention"108 followed Rousseau in praising the absence of partial associations within the ancient city. Loyalty to family
or Church should never interfere with allegiante to the patrie. Robespierre could encourage the denunciation of
family members for uncivic attitudes and chide wives
whose husbands had been guillotined for harboring unpatriotic feelings. 109 Frenchmen should be exclusively political animals, at least so long as revolutionary government
was in effect. The Law of Suspects defined "treason" so
vaguely as to include boredom and indifference as crimes
against the state.llO Likewise, attendance at local assemblies and the assumption of public office was obligatory,
not voluntary. If you married a foreigner, said "monsieur"
instead of "citoyen/' or went to Church, some zealot
might accuse you of having harmed the public good.lll
This fervid assimilation of the social to the political and
the private to the public was justified by appeals to the
ancient city in which no line had been drawn between
state and society.
Citizenship, for Robespierre, had to be total: "love of
the patrie ... presupposes a preference for the public interest over all private interests." 112 But Robespierre did
not merely denounce conflicting interests. He refused to
admit the legitimacy of conflicting opinions about the
common good. He remarked that there are only two parties in the Convention, the pure and the corrupt.l13 A
crude dichotomy between base self-interest and noble virtue dominated the Robespierrist vision of political life. Patriots, he notoriously suggested, should be concerned with
virtue, not with material well-being.l 14 The same simplistic
dualism supported his near-hysterical attacks on the single
vast conspiracy of the egoistical and demon-driven aligned
against the Revolution.II5 It also underlay his project for
the reeducation of Frenchmen deformed by centuries of
superstition and oppression.l 16 Like a good Plutarchan legislator, ll7 Robespierre was less concerned about granting a
share of legislative authority to the people than with restoring their moral health: "the Legislator's first duty is to
form and preserve public morality."IIB His central aim was
to instill purity of soul into citizens by means of the Revolution: "We want an order in which all low and cruel passion shall be repressed and in which laws shall awaken all
the benevolent and generous passions."ll 9 Men can be inwardly refashioned by governmental edict. Vice can be
legislated out of existence.
For Constant, Robespierre had an absurdly exaggerated
idea of the capacity oflaw to make men morally pure. Con-
60
stant admired the American revolutionaries who were satisfied with a system in which ambition counteracted ambition. Robespierre, by contrast, aspired to create an order
"in which the only ambition is to deserve fame and serve
the country." 120 Instead of rechanneling private vice for
public benefit, he wished to eradicate vice and enthrone
virtue in its stead.
According to Constant, it was this unbelievable attempt
to "improve" men against their will and to resurrect a vir~
tue-based polity on the ancient model that produced the
most gruesome atrocities of the Terror: "The partisans of
ancient liberty became furious when modern individuals
did not wish to be free according to their method. They
redoubled the torments, the people redoubled its resistance, and crimes followed upon errors." 121 The gravest error of the Jacobins was not to have adapted themselves to
the general spirit 122 of the age:
When punishments that reason reserves for great crimes are
applied to actions that some members of society consider a
duty, and that the most honest of the contrary party regard as
indifferent or excusable, the legislator is obliged, in order to
sustain his first iniquity, to multiply indefinitely secondary
wrongs. In order to have a single tyrannical law executed, he
must compile an entire code of proscriptions and blood.123
Robespierre was simply out of touch with the realities of
modern France.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the most common complaint against the old regime was that it was a
holdover from a bygone age. At mid-century, the word
"revolution" had already begun to change its meaning
from going back to going forward. 124 As the Revolution got
underway, the attack on the old regime was conducted less
in the name of an ancient constitution and more in the
name of a desirable future. In this context, it was a skillful
coup de theatre to stamp the most progressive party with
the epithet "anachronism." Indeed, Constant's diagnosis
of the Revolution was part of his strategy of tarring the two
extremes of French politics with the same brush, and thus
of staking out a broad middle position for himself and his
allies. It also allowed him to attack the Terror without
abandoning the liberalism of the philosophes.
The Psychology of Revolution
Constant's most penetrating insight into the leaders of
the French Revolution was that their Rousseauism went
deeper than it first seemed. Rousseau admired Sparta but
was pessimistic about the chances for reviving ancient frugality and virtue in a corrupt modern world. Robespierre is
sometimes depicted as an optimist who tried to do what
Rousseau had declared impossible. But in fact Rousseauist
pessimism permeated the speeches of Robespierre from
1792 until his execution in 1794. 125 His last speech conWlNTER/SPRJNG
1983
�eluded with a typical suggestion that the Republic of Virtue is too good for this world: "The time has not yet come
when men of good will can serve their country unmolested."126 This half-admission that his own goals were impossible to achieve is the most Rousseauist element in
Robespierre's writings. Such a half-consciously perceived
discrepancy between extravagant goals and modest historical possibilities is what Constant had in mind in this sardonic commentary:
Nothing is stranger to observe than the speeches of the
French demagogues. Saint~Just 1 the cleverest among them,
composed all his speeches in short, compact sentences,
meant to jolt awake worn~out minds. Thus, while he appeared
to believe the nation capable of making the most agonizing
sacrifices, he recognized by his very style that it was incapable
even of paying attention.l27
In diagnosing the Revolution, Constant regularly returned
to this dedoublement revolutionnaire. Saint-Just's audience
was not asleep; it was frazzled and distracted. It suffered
from l'arriere pensee and other signs of excessive civilization which Constant later explored in his novel, Adolphe
(1816). Recall this warning of Adolphe: "woe to the man
who in the arms of the mistress he has just possessed, conserves a fatal prescience and foresees that he can abandon
her."l28 Adolphe's torment stemmed partly from his inability to throw himself into any action with complete
abandon. His painful lack of illusions was startlingly mirrored in a psychological portrait Constant painted of the
revolutionary crowd. Although modern individuals can become enthused about certain abstract ideas, they are unfitted for feeling enthusiasm toward particular men.
Adolphe and the French people share "une deplorable
prevoyance'':
The French Revolution was most remarkable in this respect.
Whatever has been said about the inconstancy of the people
in ancient republics, nothing equals the mobility we have wit-
nessed. If, during the outbreak of even the best-prepared upheaval, you watch carefully the obscure ranks of the blind and
subjugated populace, you will see that the people (even as it
follows its leaders) casts its glance ahead to the moment when
these leaders will fall. And you will discern within its artificial
exaltation, a strange combination of analysis and mockery.
The people will seem to mistrust their own convictions. They
will try to delude themselves by their own acclamations and
to reinvigorate themselves by jaunty raillery. They foresee! so
to speak, the moment when the glamor of it all will pass. 29
Constant attributed the savagery and violence of the Revolution to just this lack of conviction, to just this mobility:
"Insurrections among the ancients were much more sin-
cere than among ourselves."ll0 Bloodshed was a tactic
used by eviscerated men to compensate for a deficit of
powerful passions:
An artificial and contrived insurrection requires, apart from
the violence of the insurrection itself, the extra violence
TilE ST. JOHNS REVJEW
needed to set it in motion . ... During the Revolution, I saw
men organizing sham insurrections who proposed massacres
in order-as they put it-to give events a popular and national air.l 31
Void of conviction, but unable to tolerate a rudderless
state of mind, modern men become "pretendus republicains,"ll2 pseudo-zealots more odious and frenzied than
authentic zealots. Their hypocrisy was repellent:
Great sacrifices, acts of devotion, victories won by patriotism
over natural affections in Greece and Rome served among us
as pretexts for the most unbridled outbursts of individual passions. Noble examples were parodied in a miserable fashion.
Because, in earlier times, inexorable but just fathers had condemned their criminal children, modern imitators put their
own quite innocent enemies to death.133
Constant's general understanding of modern European
societies influenced and was influenced by his analysis of
the Revolution. Although he considered the Revolution
an episode in the moral advance toward legal equality, he
never neglected its chilling cruelty. And while he focused
intently on modern misuses of communitarian rhetoric, he
never denied the genuinely progressive outcome of the
Revolution. He thought that the disaster of the Jacobin experiment at legislating public morality revealed the utter
futility of trying to reverse. the course of social change.
The morals and manners of a skeptical, secular, and commercial society leave much to be desired. Legislative command cannot, however, recreate otiose forms of civic vir-
tue and communal belonging.
Because Constant wished to counter Rousseau's pernicious influence on the revolutionary generation and to deromanticize the classical city, he often emphasized the
brutal features of ancient liberty. Despite this tendency,
he was careful to say that the Greeks and the Romans provided the most stunning examples in human history of political freedom. Ancient republicanism, while harsh, was
not despotic. It is only in modern society that ancient freedom becomes a ploy for justifying oppression.l 34 Because
there were no significant boundaries of the political in the
ancient city, total citizenship was not experienced as a violation of the individual or as a restriction on his chances in
life. During the Revolution, by contrast, the ludicrous demand for certificats de civisme revealed how threatened authorities felt by the lukewarm commitment of citizens to
civic life.m Political absenteeism was perceived as treason, as an illicit evasion of the molding-power of a self.
appointed Legislative elite. The pluralism of modern society, including the "line" between state and society, first
made the ideal of ancient liberty into a possible pretext for
political tyranny.
1. "De la liberte des anciens comparee a celle des modemes," delivered
at the Paris Atheneum in 1819 and reprinted in Cours de politique consti·
tutionelle ou collection des ouvrages publies sur le gouvernement represen-
61
�tatif, edited by Eduoard Laboulaye, Paris 1872, val. 2, 539-560. Besides
this lecture, the basic texts in which Constant discusses the distinction
between ancient and modem liberty are Chilpters 6 through 8 of De
!'usurpation of 1814, reprinted in Cours de politique, val. 2, 204-217, and,
most important of all, Book 16 of the recently published manuscript, originally composed between 1802 and 1804, Les "Principes de politique" de
Benjamin Constant, edited by Etienne Hofmann, Geneva 1980, 419-45 5.
This early sketch of Constant's argument is itself a rewritten and expanded version of Chapter 3 of Mme de Stael's Des circonsfunces actuelles qui peuvent terminer la revolution, Geneva 1979, 106-112, a work
written around 1798, but left unpublished until the twentieth century.
We know that Constant actively collaborated on this manuscript. He was
certainly involved with the initial conception of the chapter in question
and can probably be considered its co-author. The actual degree of Constant's collaboration on Circonstances actuelles, however, will always remain a matter of dispute. Since Constant took whole sentences from the
book and simply transplanted them unrevised into his own published
works, we can assume he felt a proprietary attitude toward the manuscript of 1798. The relevant chapter also has a kind of Constantian ring
discordant with de Stael's ordinary tone. But there is room for legitimate
disagreement on this question. The answer to it is also of limited impor·
tance.
2. J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress, New Yark 1932, 78-97; Antoine Adam,
Grandeur and Illusion. French Literature and Society 1600-1715, New
York 1972, 142-164.
3. See Thomas Hobbes's dismissal of ancient liberty, Leviathan, Part
Two, ch. 21, Oxford 1965, 165; and David Hume, "Of the Populousness
of Ancient Nations," Essays. Moral, Political and Literary, Oxford 1963,
381-451. Cf. also Alexander Hamilton: "The industrious habits of the
people of the present day, absorbed in the pursuits of gain and devoted to
the improvements of agriculture and commerce, are incompatible with
the condition of a nation of soldiers, which was the true condition of the
people of those [ancient] republics." The Federalist Papers, New York
1961,69.
4. Compare the virtue-based ancient republic (discussed in Books IIVIII of De l'esprit des lois) with the English mixed regime (discussed
chiefly in Books XI and XII).
5. Montesquieu, De l'esprit des lois, in Oeuvres completes, Paris 1951,
val. 2, 431 (Xll, 2).
6. Montesquieu, Esprit, 396 (XI, 5) and 354 (Vlll, 6).
7. Montesquieu, Esprit, 397 (XI, 6).
8. Montesquieu, Causes de la Grandeur des Romains, in Oeuvres completes, 119.
9. Montesquieu, Esprit, 363 (Vlll, 16).
10. Montesquieu, Esprit, 272 (1V, 8).
11. Montesquieu, Esprit, 269 (IV, 6).
12. Montesquieu, Esprit, 273 (1V, 8).
13. Montesquieu, Esprit, 252 (III, 3): "Les politiques grecs, qui vivoient
dans le gouvernement populaire, ne reconnoissient d'autre force qui pUt
les soutenir que celle de la vertu."
14. Montesquieu, Esprit, 303 (V, 19).
15. Max Weber, The City, New York 1958,220.
16. Montesquieu, Esprit, 274 (V, 2).
17. Montesquieu, Esprit, 362 (VIll, 16).
18. Montesquieu, Esprit, 252 (III, 3).
19. Montesquieu's definition of freedom as personal security (with no
reference to self-government or the satisfactions afforded participants in
a common endeavor) was echoed in Jaucourt's article on political liberty
in the Encyclopedie: "La liberte politique du citoyen est cette tranquillite
d'esprit que procede de I' opinion que chacun a de sa sfirete, & pour
qu'on ait cette sfirete, il faut que le gouvernement soit tel, qu'un citoyen
ne puisse pas craindre un citoyen." Encyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire
raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers, val. 9, Neufchastel1765, 472.
20. Jean-Louis de Lolme, The Constitution of England, London 1807,
246.
21. Joseph Priestly, An Essay on the First Principles of Government and of
the Nature of Political, Civil and Religious Liberty, London 1768, 12-13,
62
54; Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, London
1767, 92; Jean-Charles-Leonard Sismondi, Histoire des republiques italiennes du moyen-age, Paris 1809, val. 4, 369-370. These texts are all cited
in Guy Dodge, Benjamin Constant's Philosophy of Liberalism, Chapel
Hill1980, 43-44.
22. Cours de Politique, vol. 2, 539.
23. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 547.
24. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 547.
25. Les "Principes de politique" de Benjamin Constant, 432.
26. Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," in Four Essays on Liberty,
Oxford 1969, 118-172.
27. Some radically ascetic "noes" may not entail any "yeses," but this is
not the case with modem liberty.
28. "Principes de politique," 421-424.
29. Cours de Politique, val. 2, 556-557.
30. For this point I am indebted to Larry Siedentop, "Two Liberal Traditions" (in The Idea of Freedom, edited by Alan Ryan, Oxford 1979, 153174), though his contrast between French and British liberalism is uncon·
vincing because it requires the expulsion of Adam Smith from the British
tradition.
31. Cours de politique, val. 2, 213-217.
32. Constantin Franyois de Volney, Lecons d'histoire, in Oeuvres com·
pletes, Paris 1846, 592.
33. Robert L. Herbert, David, Brutus, Voltaire and the French Revolution, New York 1972.
34. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 217.
35. Constant's analysis of the masks worn by "modem imitators of ancient republics" was echoed thirty-five years later in Karl Marx's discussion of the role played by Roman costumes and Roman phrases in the
great French Revolution. (Karl Marx, ''Der achtzehnte Brumaire de
Louis Bonaparte," Marx-Engels Werke, Berlin 1978, val. 8, 116.) Curiously
enough, in the very same passage where Marx tacitly repeated Constant,
he explicitly said that Constant was another bourgeois propagandist unaware that "ghosts from the days of Rome'' had watched over the demoli·
tion of feudalism in France. Marx's principal point, in any case, was that
history had instructed the French Revolutionaries to create bourgeois society, and that they had to drug themselves to the banality of their task.
They mouthed public-spirited slogans and struck patriotic poses borrowed from ancient citizens. Marx went on to predict that the proletarian
revolution would be quite different. It would be truly heroic, neither re·
quiring nor admitting any form of self-deception. Unlike Marx, Constant
did not believe the emergence of revolutionary cults of antiquity could
be traced to the cunning of reason. He thought that the Jacobin fixation
on classical virtue was a contingent fact: it was caused by the classical
education of middle class French elites and especially by the paucity of
alternative languages available for attacking royalism and religious orthodoxy.
36. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 548-549.
37. "Principes de politique," 420.
38. Cf. Judith Shklar, Men and Citizens. A Study of Rousseau's Social
Theory, Cambridge 1969.
39. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 555.
40. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 559-560.
41. The ultraroyalists or extreme reactionary party already began to
make fierce recriminations against Louis XVIII for his concessions to
constitutional government in 1814. They were Constant's principal adversaries for the last fifteen years of his life.
42. Cf. George Sabine, "Two Democratic Traditions," Philosophical Re·
view, 61, October 1952,451-474.
43. Mme de Stael, Circonstances actuelles, 106.
44. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 106.
45. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 106.
46. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, l 07.
47. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 107.
48. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 107.
49. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 108.
50. Mme de Stael, Circonstances. 109.
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 110.
Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 111.
Mme de Stael. Circonstances, 111.
Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 111.
John Plamenatz, The Revolutionary Movement in France 1815-71,
London 1952, 21-22.
56. Cours de politique, val.
57. Cours de politique, val.
58. Cours de politique, val.
59. Cours de politique, val.
2, 540.
2, 540.
2, 540.
2, 540.
60. The new constitution of 1814, regally "granted" to the nation by
Louis XVIII, retained the Civil Code, and recognized legal equality, religious toleration, and the right of purchasers of "national lands" to keep
their property. To understand the liberal-ultra battles of the Restoration,
it is important to note that the Charter was a blatantly ambiguous document which, for instance, did not make clear how power was to be apportioned between the king and the Chambers. Guillaume de Bertier de
Sauvigny, The Bourbon Restoration, Philadelphia 1966,65-72.
61. Cours de politique, val. 2, 554.
62. Cours de politique, val. 2, 542.
63. Cours de politique, val. 2, 542.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
Cours de politique, vol. 2, 553.
Reprinted in Cours de politique, val. 2, 53-69.
Cours de politique, vol. I, 17, 180.
Cours de politique, val. l, 173.
Cours de politique, val. 2, 556.
Cours de politique, vol. 2, 547.
Cours de politique, vol. 2, 556; see also 557.
Cours de politique, val. 2, 560.
Cours de politique, vol. 2, 545-546.
Cours de politique, vol. 2, 559.
Rousseau, Oeuvres completes, edited by Bernard Gagne bin et Marcel
Raymond, Paris 1964, vol. 3, 430.
75. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 542.
76. Cours de politique, val. 2, 553.
77. Benjamin Constant, Commentaire sur l'ouvrage cfe Fi[angieri, Paris
1824, vol. 2, 182-183.
78. Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests. Political Argu, ments for Capitalism before its Triumph, Princeton 1977, 123-124.
79. Louis Bergeron, France under Napoleon, Princeton 1981,87.
80. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 552.
81. Franklin Ford, Robe and Sword. The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy after Louis XN, New York 1965, 19.
82. Cours de politique, val. 2, 559.
83. Cours de politique, val. 2, 558.
84. Cours de politique, val. 2, 558.
85. Cours de politique, val. 2, 558.
86. Cours de politique, val. 2, 547.
87. Cours de politique, val. 2, 559.
88. Cours de politique, val. 2, 559.
89. Cours de politique, val. 2, 560.
90. In the manuscripts of 1802-1804, written under the shadow of Napoleon, we find: "lorsqu'il n'y a dans un pays libre ni liberte de la presse, ni
droits politiques,le peuple se detache entierement des affaires publiques.
Toute communication est rompue entre les gouvernants et le gouvernes.
L'autorite, pendant quelque temps, et les partisans de l'autorite peuvent
regarder cela comme un avantage. Le gouvernement ne rencontre point
des obstacles. Rien ne le contrarie. II agit librement mais c'est que lui seul
est vivant et que la nation est morte." Les "Principes de politique" de Ben·
jamin Constant, 137. The liberal constitutionalism Constant advocated
was obviously not intended to detach citizens entirely from public affairs.
91. Jean-Louis de Lolme, The Constitution of England, London 1807,
245. Referring specifically to the French revolutionaries and their followers, Edmund Burke employed a similar distinction: he wrote that "the
right of the people is almost always confounded with their power." Reflections on the Revolution in France, London 1969, 153.
92. Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Cambridge, Mass. 1970,
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
30-43. Constant, however, was thinking of "interdependence" rather
than a mere "mixture."
93. Commentaire, Paris 1822, vol. 1, 73.
94. Commentaire, vol. 1, 72.
95. According to Isaiah Berlin, Constant defended democratic selfgovernment "only for the reason ... that without it negative liberty may
be too easily crushed." Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford 1969, xlvii.
96. Letter to Mme de Nassau, 20 January 1800, cited and translated by
Elizabeth Schermerhorn, Benjamin Constant, New York 1970, 183.
97. Hippolyte Taine, The Ancient Regime, New York 1876.
98. Melanges de litterature et de politique, Brussels 1829, vol. 1, 68.
99. As Gay and others have stressed, the appeal to antiquity was only one
aspect of the Enlightenment tradition; and it was counterbalanced by a
belief that, in many domains, the moderns had outstripped the ancients.
100. In his essay "Of Refinement in the Arts," Hume wrote: "To declaim against present times, and magnify the virtue of remote ancestors,
is a propensity almost inherent in the human mind." Essays, Oxford
1963, 285.
101. "Principes de politique," 438.
102. "During a conversation in which [Robespierre] attacked the representative system, it is reported that, asked what he would put in its place,
he replied, 'Celui de Lycurge.' " Alfred Cobban, "The_ Political Ideas of
Robespierre during the Convention," Aspects of the French Revolution,
New York 1968, 186; consider also R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Demo·
cratic Revolution, Princeton 1964, val. 2, 124.
103. Oeuvres de Maximilien Robespierre, edited by Laponneraye, New
York 1970, vol. 3, 518.
104. Robespierre, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 608; but also see vol. 3, 194, where Ro·
bespierre notes of Sparta that "this nation of austere republicans has
nothing in common with a nation of 25 million men." Robespierre was
flexible enough that, in order to attack the sectionnaires and the Commune, he often reversed himself and denounced urban self-government
on the ancient model.
105. Robespierre, Oeuvres, 3, 544.
106. This thesis has found a subtle defender in Michel Villey, Leqons
d'histoire de Ia philosophie du droit, Paris 1962, 221-250.
107. According to Moses Finley, "Classical Greeks and Republican Romans possessed a considerable measure of freedom, in speech, in political debate, in their business activities, even in religion. However, they
lacked, and would have been appalled by, inalienable rights. There were
no theoretical limits to the power of the state, no activity, no sphere of
human behavior in which the state could not legitimately intervene provided the decision was properly taken for any reason that was held to be
valid by a legitimate authority." The Ancient Economy, London 1973,
154-155.
108. Melanges de litterature et de politique, vol. 1, 68.
109. Norman Hampson, The Social History of the French Revolution, To·
ronto 1965, 223.
110. "Suspicion was directed not only towards probable authors of acts
already committed, on grounds of definite circumstances susceptible of
discussion and of proof, but also towards the possible perpetrators of
eventual crimes, who were believed capable of them because of their
opinions or even their real or simulated indifference." George Lefebvre,
The French Revolution, London 1968, vol. 2, 118.
111. Fran~ois Furet and Denis Richet, The French Revolution, New
York 1970, 188-189.
112. Robespierre, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 514.
113. Robespierre, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 698 and 612.
114. Norman Hampson, The Life and Opinions of Maximilien Robespierre, London 1974, 139 and 173.
115. Robespierre, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 551.
116. On the execution of Louis XVI as an attempt to furnish a republican re-education for the miseducated French nation, see Michael
Walzer, Regicide and Revolution, Cambridge 1974, 1-89.
117. According to Plutarch, Lycurgus "bred up his citizens in such a way
that they neither would nor could live by themselves; they were to make
themselves one with the public good, and, clustering like bees around
63
�their commander, be by their zeal and public spirit carried all but out of
themselves, and devoted wholly to their country." The Lives of the Noble
Grecians and Romans, New York n.d., 69. ·
118. Robespierre, Oeuvres, voL 1, 156.
119. Robespierre, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 541.
120. Robespierre, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 541.
121. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 213.
122. For Montesquieu's idea of the "general spirit" of a country or age,
see De l'esprit des lois, Book XIX, chapters four and five.
123. Des Suites de Ia contre-revolution de 1660 en Angleterre, 56-57.
124. Consider the two uses of the word "revolution" at the beginning of
Turgot's "A Philosophical Review of the Successive Advances of the Human Mind," On Progress, Sociology and Economics, edited by R. L. Meek,
Cambridge 1973,41-42. See also Felix Gilbert, "Revolution," Dictionary
of the History of Ideas, New York 1973, vol. 4, 152-163.
125.
126.
127.
128.
129.
130.
131.
132.
Hampson, The Life and Opinions of Maximilien Robespierre, 13 3-134.
Robespierre, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 736.
Les "Principes de politique" de Benjamin Constant, 432.
Adolphe in Oeuvres, edited by Alfred Roulin, Paris, 1964, 32.
"Principes de politique," 434.
"Principes de politique," 620.
"Principes de politique," 620.
"Principes de politique," 86.
133. "Principes de politique," 438.
134. This caveat distinguishes Constant's position from the views ad·
vanced by Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, 2 vols., Princeton
1966.
135. M. J. Sydenham, The French Revolution, New York 1966, p. 178;
Hampson, The Life and Opinions of Maximilien Robespierre, 198.
SIXTEEN EIGHTEEN
'Why do these gentlemen wish to throw me out
Of the window?' asked an obscure Bohemian secretary
Before he was unexpectedly exfenestrated and miraculously saved
By a pile of castleyard rubbish or an angel of God.
Thus he was flung into History, and with his fall
Introduced three decades of winter, delusion and warThe occasional Adam, perplexed and resurrected, to remind us
That the innocent often are incidentally in castles.
ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN
64
WIN1ER/SPRING 1983
�Mark Aldanov
The Holdup at Tiflis on June 26, 1907:
the ''Exes ''
from The Suicides
translated by Joel Carmichael
The following section comes from Mark Aldanov's last novel,
The Suicides, that appeared in Russian in Western Europe in 1958
after his death in 1957-but has never been published in English.
Bom in 1886 in Kiev, Mark Alexandrovich Landau (Aldanov was
his pen name) won prizes in secondary school for his accomplish~
ments in Greek and Latin. By 1910 he had earned degrees in law
and natural sciences from the University of Kiev and published a
monograph in organic chemistry. Untill917 he lived in St. Petersburg. In some sense the Bolshevik seizure of power in October
made him into an artist and a Russian: he began to write journalism and then novels after he left Russia forever in March 1919. He
wrote first of all in the Russian language press abroad for the more
than two million Russians in exile by 1922. But his novels and
essays also won a wide audience in Europe except the Soviet Union
and the United States. Throughout much of his life he continued
his scientific work. In exile he lived mostly in France but also in
Berlin for a few years and during the Second World War in New
York. He was, he used to say, the only Russian writer abroad who
managed to live from his pen-with difficulty. The following novels of Aldanov have appeared in English: The Ninth Thermidor
(1923); The Devil's Bridge (1925); Saint Helena, Little Island;
The Escape (1932); For Thee the Best (1940); Before the Deluge
(1950); To Live as We Wish (1952); Nightmare and Dawn (1957),
For Aldanov see C. Nicholas Lee, The Novels of Mark Alexandrovich Aldanov, The Hague, Mouton 1968; "Mark Aldanov: Russia, Jewry, and the World," Midstream, March 1981, 41-46.
The Suicides begins with the Social Democratic Congress in
Joel Carmichael translated the memoirs ofN. N. Sukhanov (The Russian
Revolution 1917, Oxford 1952), the only full-length eyewitness account
of the February and October events in Russia in 1917. His essay, "The
Lost Continent, the Conundrum of Christian Origins," appeared in the
Autumn-Winter 1982-83 issue of the St. John's Review.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Brussels in 1903 and ends in 1923. In the manner of Tolstoy (on
whom Aldanov had published a critical work in 1915), itportrays
historical personages as well as private individuals. There are accurate, carefully researched portraits of Mussolini, Wilhelm II, Franz
Joseph, Witte, Lenin, Stalin. The most brilliant is perhaps of Witte.
The portrait of Lenin is superior to its only rival, Solzhenitsyn's in
Lenin in Zurich-in part because Aldanov unlike Solzhenitsyn
knew many men who had known Lenin. Here is one of many characterizations of Lenin:
His favourites of not long before, Zinoviev and Kamenev, were
holding things up. They did not want an uprising. Lenin began
to hate them ferociously. Not, to be sure, for long. In complete
contrast to Stalin he was never rancorous, and was always ready
to come to a friendly accord with any of the people whom he
referred to and considered "scoundrels" and "sons-of-bitches,"
as long as they submitted to him completely. Robespierre could
not talk for two minutes without saying something about ''vertu."
Lenin would never even have pronounced the word, not only
because the world had undergone a c lumge in literary sty I.e. He
simply did not understand just that "virtue" was, and what its
point was if it existed. Surely, it was impossible to make a revolution without scoundrels?
A meditation, born of decades of recollection, study and reflection, on the Europe that was to destroy itself in the First World
War, The Suicides contains many stunning historical judgements-iudgements of simplicity and depth rarely found in academic historians. Aldanov understood the interrelation of events
throughout Europe because he had an uncanny sense-that betrayed itself in the resiliency of his narrative-of the relation of
public events to private lives, especially to private bafflement, incapacity and self-ignorance.
65
�Here is one of many remarks on the outbreak of the First World
War:
According to all profound sociological :theories the assassination
of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand was only the occasion of the
World War. The real causes were quite different: "Anglo-German economic rivalry," "struggle for markets," "internal contradictions of the capitalist order," etc. But the reading of the
simple-minded correspondence of the contemporary statesmen
thrusts another conclusion forward: The assassination in Sarajevo was not an occasion, it was just this that launched the catastrophe. They never wrote or spoke about "the struggle for
markets" or about "the internal contradictions of the capitalist
order" and they had never heard about them. It may well be they
were not even acquainted with the words.
The following section tells the story of perhaps the most famous
Bolshevik holdup. It also represents a turning point in the life of
one of the main characters in the novel, Jambul, who after the robbery leaves the terrorists forever to return to the land and the religion of his fathers in Turkey.
Dzhugashvili is the name Stalin bore at his birth, Koba his nickname. Krupskaya was Lenin's wife. L. R
The Tillis terrorists usually assembled in the same restaurant, the Tilipuchuri. This had nothing to do with conspiracy; they knew that the local police were very inefficient, and would not be too zealous in arresting them. At
that time a policeman's trade, especially in the Caucasus,
was just as daD.gerous as a terrorist's.
The Caucasian Deputy Police Commissioner, Count
Vorontsov-Dashkov, was a man of liberal views. He was
fond of the Caucasians, as all Russians have been, with a
slight touch of benevolent disdain for the Caucasian
accent. In his youth he himself had fought against the
mountaineers for three years, and recalled that there was
never the slightest hostility to them in the army at the time
and that in Russian literature, from Pushkin and Lermontov to Tolstoy, there was scarcely a single unsympathetic
Caucasian. The war had long since been over, but in a confused and almost unconscious way the Commissioner re-
garded the terrorists of the Twentieth Century as a somewhat inferior repetition of Shamil's mountaineers.*
He did not, of course, consort with the terrorists, but he
attempted to maintain human relations somehow with the
leaders of moderate Socialism. They sometimes made private pacts which, however, instantly became public. For
instance, when the Armenians and the Tatars fell out, he
handed the Social-Democratic Party five hundred rifles in
order to arm the working-class guards who were maintaining order, on the word of honor of the Menshevik,
Ramishvili, that the rifles would be returned to the author-
*For Shamil's mountaineers see Leo Tolstoy's short story, A Prisoner in
the Caucasus (1872). L.R.
66
ities as soon as the emergency was over. Before the expected arrival of the Tsar in the Caucasus, he secured the
revolutionaries' word of honor that no attempts at assassination would be made. He did not think such an agreement completely assured the Tsar's safety, but in the
Caucasus, in his opinion, it was a better guarantee than
any police measures. Vorontzov-Dashkov was opposed to
execution; he thought that no matter what you did you
couldn't frighten a Chechen or Ingush with the gallows. In
addition he had almost become a fatalist after the assassination of Alexander II-you can't escape fate.
He had been a favorite of three Tsars. Hence the Government disliked him intensely. The Count's ancient
name, however, his enormous wealth, his independence as
a man who needed no one, even his seignorial appearance
and his manner of talking to everyone in the same way,
and most of all his personal intimacy with the Tsar made
the Government wary. It interfered as little as possible
with his administrative methods in the Caucasus. The
Commissioner's views may have been reflected a little
even in the activities of the police. But even out of simple
caution police agents tried to avoid looking into places like
the Tilipuchuri restaurant unless it was absolutely unavoidable. Everyone in the Caucasus carried cold steel, a
great many were revolutionists, and there were more than
a few primitive bombs being made. "Absolutely every
child is capable of taking a sardine-tin and some drugstore
articles and making a shell that's fit to blow up his nursemaid-," wrote a contemporary.
It is likely that even at that time the Police Department
knew that the "expropriations" were being conducted
from afar by Lenin himself. It may also have known that
for this purpose the Central Committee of the Party had
formed a small, still more central committee, which was so
secret that for a long time the most eminent Social-Democrats never even knew of its existence.
There were only two men on this committee besides
Lenin: Krasin, alias Nikitich, alias Winter, alias-for some
reason-the Horse, and Bogdanov, who had half a dozen
pseudonyms: Maximov, Verner, Rakhmetov, Sysoika,
Reinert, Ryadovey. The members of the Police Department were not particularly interested in the spiritual qualities of the revolutionaries: "They're all swine!" (Some
might have added "including ourselves"). But it was just
these two Bolsheviks whom it was difficult to suspect of
terrorism: one was busy either with philosophy, science, or
heaven knows what; the other was a prominent engineer
who had amassed some money in business and was by no
means a "horse" but an extremely able and skilful activist.
But the people they had assigned as deputies in immediate
charge of terroristic activities in the Caucasus were known
to the police-Koba or Dzhugashvili, and Kamo.
There were fables and anecdotes about Kamo in the
Caucasus. But not even the revolutionists knew much
about Dzhugashvili. They spoke about him even less. Incomprehensibly this man, who was passionately in love
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�with self-advertisement, which he later devoted himself to
with a success unheard of in history, in his youth told almost nothing about himself even to his close comrades:
doubtless he suspected them all of being provocateurs. For
still far more incomprehensible reasons he almost never
spoke about his doings in the Caucasus even later on,
when he could have without the slightest danger.
It was already dusk when )ambul hurried to the restaurant. He glanced into the open window. No guards were
there. Where can they be today? he wondered. He knew
that no one should stay home alone that night-unless
Koba, perhaps-he has no nerves at all, thought )ambul.
He walked on further. After convincing himself that
there were no suspicious-looking people about, he turned
back. Time to eat, he thought, I haven't had a thing since
morning.
Early that morning, after taking the best horse out of the
stable, he had ridden far out of the city and had practiced
with his revolver in a secluded spot in the woods. Even
years earlier he had been able to hit a hull's eye at fifteen
paces. He had stuck a sheet of paper about three times as
large as a playing card on to a tree and missed it twice in a
row. This annoyed him very much, though not much accuracy was needed for the business on the following day.
Lack of sleep, of course! he thought angrily. But what
about it, I don't think it's the first time I've gone into a
dangerous business. Before I used to sleep perfectly well.
He took himself in hand and began shooting better. Before
his last shot he made a bet with himself; if I miss it means
we'll have a fiasco. He had made bets with himself at home
too, with both cards and coins: he got different results, but
even without the cards one thing was clear: whatever happened it was already impossible to withdraw. It would have
meant dishonoring oneself.
Sometimes it seemed to him that he should actually
make bets about something else too: was the whole thing
necessary? He had had doubts for a long time, and they had
recently been growing stronger and stronger. Occasionally
he even asked himself whether they weren't to be explained by his fear of death. His friends said he was absolutely fearless-he simply didn't understand what fear
was. Such remarks got back to him and pleased him. Nevertheless, he thought them exaggerated: people who had
never been afraid didn't exist. Sokolov and Kamo are
braver than anyone I've ever seen, but they must have
been afraid, too.
At last he hit the sheet of paper, actually right in the
center, and he stopped practicing. He had taken along only
one reserve box of bullets, and it was bad luck to take thirteen shots before an action. Seven hits out of twelve, he
thought, not bad, but before I would have done better.
Before, whenever he came to the Caucasus, even from
Paris, he always became lively and merry. Now it was difTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ferent. His usual gaiety had almost left him. He was serious-minded, somewhat solemn. Yes, it's quite possible I'll
be killed. Well, so I'll be killed, there'll just be one )ambul
less, that's all ... I thought the time had gone by when I
would draw up a balance-sheet of my life before a dangerous action; it seems it hasn't quite, he said to himself. He
thought about his aging father: how would this make him
feel?
He thought about Lyuda too, sometimes. He had pleasant memories of her. He didn't know just what she was
doing. At their parting in Petersburg she hadn't asked him
to write (she had simply forgotten). This hurt him. Nevertheless, he sent her a letter from Tiflis. To avoid causing
her any trouble he sent it without a signature, in an assumed handwriting, and without any indication of a return address. There could be no reply. But she probably
wouldn't have answered anyhow, out of pride, he thought.
He didn't write again. It must have been for the first time
since he was fourteen years old that a woman was on his
mind. In general he thought about women very seldom.
The restaurant was empty and stifling, with a smell of
fried onions and freshly ground coffee, each a smell he
liked. Kamo sat at the end of the room. He had evidently
just arrived. There was nothing to eat or drink on the little
table in front of him. He's got himself all dressed up, the
jackass! thought )ambul. The cutthroat was wearing a
dark-red Circassian tunic, a white silk Caucasian coat, and
Moroccan soft-soled boots; the scabbards of the sabre and
the dagger were thickly adorned with turquoise, silver, and
ivory. A white Caucasian fur-cap was laying on the chair.
Thank God he hasn't put on a felt cloak and hood, in June!
)ambul thought. Can he have the bombs on him, too? No,
for the time being Koba's taken the bombs away from
them. Koba may be anything you like, he's not a fool!
After glancing around once more quickly, almost imperceptibly, he greeted Kamo, and sat down opposite him at
the little table.
"Look here, don't sit that way with your back to the wall.
How will you fight if the cops jump in?" asked Kamo. His
Russian sounded almost like a caricature of the Caucasian
accent used for jokes. There was no other language they
had in common. Both spoke Tatar badly.
"Why should we sit side by side at such a small table? If
the cops come in please inform me."
"When should I inform you? A cop runs quickly. Lose
half a second, you're through. Impossible to lose half a second," said Kama, who never understood jokes.
"All right then, I'll know soon enough. There's a backentrance behind you. A cop likes to run through backentrances, too. Hadn't you guessed?"
HNo/' admitted Kama, astonished.
Jambullooked at him, as always, with tender curiosity. It
was only with him that he spoke jocularly now. He knew of
his exploits, which usually succeeded, and he couldn't understand why or how they had succeeded. He doesn't even
understand what a conspiracy is! Jambul thought. He obvi-
67
�ously only has instincts instead of a mind, like a wolf or
1
tiger.
Jambul knew a great many terrorists. He considered So·
kolov the most remarkable of them', and was a little sorry
the executed man hadn't been a Caucasian. The affair in
Tiflis was going to be the work of Caucasians only. All of
them reckless and foolhardy. All of them much cleverer
than Kamo, thought Jambul. Nevertheless he's going to
have the chief role, maybe that's right after all.
"Have you had any vodka?"
uNo."
"Will you have some with me? It may be the last one
we'll have."
"Are both of them watching out for the cashier?"
"Both of them are watching out for the cashier."
"Who's going to be carrying the money?"
"Two will carry money. The cashier and the accountant."
"Are they young? Family men?"
"I don't know."
~~what
are their names?"
"The cashier is Kurdyumov. The accountant is Golov·
nya."
11
ls there lots of money?"
"Annette Sulakhvelidze says-a million. Patsiya
Galdava says three hundred thousand."
"Old wives' tales! Are they going in a carriage?"
"Maybe," said Kamo indifferently. "I'll drink one glass,
no more, before tomorrow morning. I'll drink milk. I won't
drink wine."
"Why not? Did Koba give you orders? Lenin himself
drinks a little. They say he likes Italian wines."
"He doesn't. I brought wine once to Kuokal. A whole
wineskin from the Caucasus I brought. At that time I was
an aide·de.camp. I rode in first class. He thanked me.
Lenin doesn't like wine. But Bogdanov likes wine. He was
so happy! And Lenin gave me bombs, Krasin made them. I
also made them. He knows chemistry. I helped. Good
"They are going in a phaeton."
"What's the guard?"
"Another phaeton."
"But it's not the phaeton itself that's going to do the
guarding. Who's going to be in it?"
"Five men with guns. Caldava says-always five men
with guns."
Don't tell me there isn't going to be a Cossack convoy?"
"There will be a Cossack convoy. It will be behind. It
bombs."
"Many Cossacks. I don't know how many."
"Oh, we'll do away with quite a few people if we're not
finished off first. They have wives, children ... Does that
mean the women couldn't find out anything else?"
uStolypins?"
"Stolypins," Kamo nodded. This was the name for a
new type of bomb, which had been tried out first on Ap·
tekar Island.
"So . . . D'you want something to eat? D'you like
shashlyk?"
"I like shashlyk. I like almond pastry. Are you paying
with your own mon'ey? Not Party money-if it's Party
money I'll have cheese."
"My own, my own. I've never had any Party money and
never will. Tomorrow, too, if it comes off, I won't take any·
thing for myself."
"Will I? You are a fool!"
"But maybe others will, eh?"
"Listen, you want me to kill?"
"No. Of course our own people won't. I know, they're
almost all good fellows, but the others have stolen. What
will you eat with the vodka? I'll pay, I get some from my
father, today there's no sense worrying about money.
What zakuski d'you like?"
"I like everything. Just a little bit. Some cheese ... "
Jambul called over the owner and after some reflection
ordered a lavish dinner (perhaps the last we'll ever have,
he thought); smoked sturgeon, caviar, cheese, shashlyk,
almond pastry, a carafe of vodka, a bottle of the best
Kakhetin wine.
"Now tell me, just don't shout," he said in a low voice,
after the owner had gone away. "Have you seen Patsiya?"
Tve seen Patsiya/' answered Kama, who whenever it
was possible preferred to give answers in the wording of
the question. "I've seen Annette, too."
1
68
11
will be in front, too."
"Many Cossacks?,
"The women couldn't, and you and I couldn't."
"Are there any changes in the plans?"
"Why changes? It's a good plan."
"What does your Koba think?"
"Koba gives the orders, and what he thinks, who
knows?"
11
That's so. He's always lying."
uDon't dare say Koba lies!"
"But in his whole life he never said a word of truth: he's
simply incapable of it."
"Listen. D'you want me to kill you!" said Kamo, and his
face began to flush scarlet. "Lenin-here!" And he raised
his hand high above his head. "Then comes Nikitich." He
lowered his hand. "Then Koba." His hand went down an·
other little bit. "And then you, me, everyone." He placed
his hand on the table.
"Thank you. But your Koba, after all, used to be a Men·
shevik, though he hides it carefully."
"No more Bolshevik, Menshevik. In Stockholm Lenin
got united."
uHe 1ll soon be disunited. 11
"He will not be disunited. But Koba was never a Men·
shevik. Always Bolshevik."
"He was a Menshevik, he was. In the Caucasus we all
were," protested Jambul, who liked to tease him.
"You lie! I kill!".
"No, please, don't kill me. Kill someone else instead. By
the way, do you always carry your Mauser on you?"
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�"Always. Never without."
"Well, another fool," said Jambul, though he was never
separated from his revolver either. "What else did you talk
about with Lenin?"
"Provocateurs we talked about. Lenin thinks provoca·
teurs. Krasin also thinks so. I suggested a plan. I go to all
the comrades. I take three men, good ones, I take along a
stake. A big one. I ask: 'Are you a provocateur?' If he's a
provocateur, we stick him on stake right away. If he gets
scared, it means he's also a provocateur. A good Bolshevik
never gets scared. Lenin didn't want it. Krasin didn't either. He cursed. Cursed a lot. He said, 'You are a savage
and an idiot.' Lenin laughed. It means it's true. I know I
have no culture . . . Do I talk Russian well?"
l'Magnificently.''
"I don't know grammar. I don't know anything. I can't
write. In Georgian and Armenian I can. Badly. I can't do
arithmetic at all," said Kamo with a sigh. "No culture. A
savage. My grandfather was a scholar. A priest."
"Really? A priest?"
"A good man, a scholar. I myself was a believer, oh, what
a believer I was! I prayed a lot. Then I stopped, the comrades taught me. Koba taught me. He taught me every·
thing. Grateful. But I learned badly. My father was a
drunkard. He's alive, but he kicked me out a long time
ago. Because of him I have no culture ... Well, let's talk
business."
"Well, tell me everything."
They went over what was to be done the next day.
There really were no changes in the plan.
" ... We start off at Sumbatov's house."
"But who is finally going to throw the first bomb from the
roof? That's the only thing that still hasn't been decided."
"None of your business, who throws it. Koba knows who
throws it. Not you."
"He'll tell me today, no later. It's just as much 'my business' as his," said Jambul angrily. HI'm risking more than
he is."
"Not more than he. You're not necessary, either. Koba
is necessary."
"I have a different opinion ... But tell me, is it true they
once hanged you?"
"They hanged me. The swine hanged everyone they
caught right off. I stuck my chin into the rope. They didn't
notice. They were drunk. It was disgusting. The swine
went away. I untied myself. Ran away. They didn't hang
me. My chin was sore a month."
"Have you got a pure-blooded horse ready for tomor·
row?"
"Don't say pure-blooded. Say thoroughbred. A Russian
officer told me that. A dragoon. Stationed here. You say
pure-blooded, they see immediately you're not a Russian
officer," explained Kamo with satisfaction.
"So they'll see it immediately, will they? And of course
you're a typical Moscow hussar ... Well anyhow, try not to
get in the way of the bomb on your thoroughbred. It would
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
be a pity about the horse. Does it mean you're going to be
in uniform tomorrow, too?"
"In uniform."
"More fool you. I'm afraid you're going to mess things
up. It would be better if you gave me your part."
1 won't give it to you. You're the fool now."
"And where did you get that medal you've stuck on?
Did you buy it in the Armenian Bazaar?"
"I bought it in the Armenian Bazaar."
"You should have bought a St. Andrew First Class," ad.
vised Jambul, but caught himself up, thinking, he'll do it
too!
"Not St. Andrew First Class. Koba said: 'Stanislas Third
Class with crossed swords and a ribbon!' If anyone was in
two battles in the Japanese war then it's a Stanislas Third
Class with crossed swords and a ribbon. You don't know.
Koba knows."
"Koba knows everything. And what is he going to do to.
morrow himself? Is he also going to shoot from the
Square?"
"He's not going to shoot from the Square. If he's killed,
who'll be left?"
"Of course, of course. Is he excited?"
"He's not excited."
"Is it true he's as evil as the devil?"
"Evil," agreed Kamo, after thinking. "But not like the
devil. His wife died."
"I know. Is it true that she was a believer and couldn't
endure Socialists? Did he love her?"
41
"He loved her so much, so much."
"And I never believed he could love anyone. Iremashvili
told me he was at the cemetery. He himself and Soso-he
calls Koba 'Soso' for old times' sake. They were friends.
Anyhow Dzhugashvili told him, putting his hand over his
heart: 'Only she could soften my heart of stone. Now, I
hate everyone! It's so empty, so unspeakably empty!' I
questioned him over and over. He swore it was exactly that
way! So Koba can't shoot from the Square? Are you worried about him."
"I'm not worried about you. I'm not worried about my·
self. I'm worried about Koba."
"Right," said Jambul. It's really impossible even to get
angry with him, he thought, looking squarely at Kamo. Ka·
rna's eyes were in some incomprehensible way kind, soft,
sad. "Well, fine, but when you grab the sack in the Square
whom will you give it to?"
"I'll give it to Koba. I'll give it to Lenin. I'll give it to
Krasin."
"They're all right. It's true that Dzhugashvili doesn't
care about money. But where can it be held for the time
being? It's not so easy after all to get it across the border."
"None of your business."
"Koba had a good idea. He told me about it. He wants to
hide it in the Tiflis Observatory. He worked there once, I
think, didn't he? He knows every nook and cranny there.
He wants to put it in the Director's sofa. Clever! Clever!"
69
�~~Ask Koba."
"It's clever," repeated Jambul. He' liked the idea primarily because of its originality: the Obs\'rvatory! He thought
with a smile that Koba wouldn't entrust the money to one
man alone. Either he'd take it himself or send a few people, so that it'll be more difficult to steal it. "I would still
like to see him before the action. Will you come with me?"
"I won't come. And I won't give you the address."
"I know the address without you anyhow," said Jambul.
He said good-bye to Kama and went out of the restaurant, once again looking around in all directions. He did
not feel like going home. It was really too late to see Koba,
and actually there was no point to it. He wouldn't have to
spend the night at home, he thought. For that matter,
fate's fate. Anyhow, I won't surrender alive. . . What's
Lenin going to spend the money on? The little periodicals?lf so what a fine thing to go into an action like this for!
Tomorrow I may very well be dead-would it be worth it?
Suddenly he recalled the explosion on Aptekar Island.
He had read the newspaper accounts with even more eagerness than Lyuda, or anyone else; from the very first moment he understood whose handiwork it had been, and
knew all the participants. Now, and not for the first time,
he imagined these unknown, speechless young people, almost just as devoted to Cain as the Klimova girl, going in a
landau to Aptekarsky Street from the Morskaya, how methodically they noted the turns-two more? no, threehow they studied the names of the streets, the house numbers, how they counted the minutes of life left to them.
How for the last time, in front of the villa, they looked at
the earth, the sky, the people, the cab-driver, who had also
been condemned to death by them.
No, I couldn't have done that! thought Jambul with a
shudder. There's a great difference between a death that's
possible and one that's certain, without the slightest, the
most infinitesimal hope of rescue! He thought about the
arrest and execution of Cain. How could he have failed to
commit suicide at the last moment? He couldn't do it in
time, that Hercules! And what if I don't either? ... Nevertheless there's some hope, and there's some sense in this,
too. We'll lay our hands on a million, there'll be an uprising
and the Caucasus will free itself. That's the one thing that
distinguishes our operation from an ordinary armed hold-up,
but that one thing is enough ... Yet, if I'm killed life will
go on exactly as it always has, it's just that I won't know
anything about it. And people won't remember, I'll never
go down in history. Will anyone ever recall anything about
Sokolov? Who, with all his recklessness and heartlessness,
was a super-hero, a match for all the Lenins and
Plekhanovs?
At this late hour Erivan Square was deserted. He looked
at the house from the roof of which some man he didn't
know was supposed to throw the first bomb the next day.
Three princesses, well-known in Tiflis society, lived on the
top floor; good-natured anecdotes used to circulate about
them. Could he be up there already? That would be more
70
reasonable than lifting himself up there in the morning
light. He guessed that the man would mount from the
courtyard by the staircase or the pipes.
He walked up to the gates and tried them. They were
unlocked. Jambullooked around and peered into the feebly lit courtyard. Two men were standing with their backs
to him looking at the roof. One was in a Russian shirt and
sandals. He looked to Jambullike Koba. Really, how can I
possibly work together with such a man! he thought. It was
as though the sight of Koba brought to a head in a flash all
those doubts that had been brewing in him for days and
months.
Tiflis was under martial law. Cossacks rode constantly
about the streets of the city. The policemen stationed at
the Police Commissioner's palace were armed with rifles.
Patrols were stationed at every intersection. Dozens of
people were participating in the preparation and execution of the expropriation. As usually happens in such circumstances, confused rumors about the forthcoming action had reached the authorities. Later the Tiflis prosecutor was to accuse the police chief of lightmindedness. The
police chief, to justify himself, would make some unflattering references to the ideas of the prosecutor.
The "theoreticians" of the expropriations preferred to
call them "engagements in the civil war." They were fond
of military vocabulary. Some of them may have recalled,
from War and Peace, or from the countless newspaper quotations such as "Die erste Kolonne marschiert," the "dispositions" taken by Weihrother before Austerlitz. But it is
possible that in spite of Tolstoy they thought that battles
actually did take place as a result of just such "dispositions." In any case they had carefully worked out a detailed plan of action at Erivan Square: Chiabrishvili, Ekbakidze, Shishmanov, Kalaniadze, Chichiashvili and Ebralidze were going to attack the phaetons carrying the
money that was surrounded by the convoy, Dalakishvili
and Kakriashvili the police detachment near the Town
Council, Lominadze and Lemidze the patrol at the Velyaminovskaya, and so on.
But expropriations are really not like battles. They do
not last for a whole day, or even for several hours, but
barely three or four minutes, and in any case there is certainly no science about them in existence. The Correla~
tion of forces" could not be known to the expropriators,
since at any given moment a patrol of five or ten or even
twenty Cossacks might turn up on the Square. Erivan
Square itself was actually the least appropriate place in
Tiflis for an expropriation. It was crowded, central, and
close to the Police Commissioner's palace. Cossack pa·
trois, heavily reinforced, kept riding across it during those
days almost uninterruptedly. Army and police posts were
permanently stationed near the district headquarters, the
44
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�banks, and at the corners of every one. of the streets giving
into the Square.
The leaders of the enterprise, whose regard for the lives
of others, or for that matter their own, :was not excessive,
had decided to take measures this time to cut down the
number of victims: from early morning on Kama, in an
army uniform, and with a wild look, had been walking
around the Square and in a low voice, interlarding his pe·
culiar Russian with "adroit mysterious remarks," had advised passers-by to get out as fast as possible. This device
was rather senseless: one passer-by was constantly being
replaced by another. In the nature of things, this strange
officer ought to have instantly aroused the strongest suspicions of even the stupidest policeman. He aroused no suspicions at all. He left safely before the start of the action
and took his place in a drozhky harnessed to the thoroughbred. He himself drove standing up (also hardly ever done
by officers).
Some post office official had informed the terrorists
that on june 13th, at 10 o'clock, the cashier of the Tiflis
branch of the State Bank, Kurdyumov, and the accountant, Golovnya, would be receiving a large sum of money
at the Postal Telegraph Office and would then take it to
the bank, in Baronsky Street, past Pushkin Square, across
Erivan Square and on along Sololaksky Street. The official
could hardly have been bribed or frightened by the terrorists, who didn't do things that way. They never promised
anyone money, and unlike many other expropriators did
not even take any money for themselves. They gave everything to the Party. Probably the official also sympathized
with the Party, or else hated the Government like much of
the population of Russia.
Kurdyumov and Golovnya went to the post office on
foot. This was a routine affair for them: money from the
capital arrived in Tiflis often. It would have been impossible to reproach the heads of the bank with lightmindedness: the cashier and accountant had been assigned a
guard, Zhilyaev, and a fairly large detachment of soldiers
and Cossacks.
Probably for reasons of economy, the phaetons were
hired only at the post office. Kurdyumov and Golovnya received the money without counting it. That would have
been dangerous, and for that matter needless: it was sealed
in two huge packages, of 170 thousand and 80 thousand.
In addition the cashier was given another 465 rubles that
weren't sealed. Kurdyumov counted these and put them
in a side-pocket of his jacket. He hid the packages in a sack,
drew a leather band tightly around the neck and carefully
carried it out to the phaetons, accompanied by the accountant, the guard, and some soldiers. The Cossacks
were waiting in the street. Kurdyumov and Golovnya got
into the first phaeton, putting the sack on the rug at their
feet. Zhilyaev and two soldiers were in the second phaeton.
1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
There were another five soldiers in the third. The Cossacks
divided up; some of them galloped on ahead of the phaetons,
some of them behind; there was one Cossack alongside the
first phaeton, near one of the little doors.
Probably one of the expropriators had been keeping the
cashier under observation at the post office, too. In any
case observers were waiting for them in various places
along the road. At Pushkin Place Patsiya Galdava signaled
Stepka lntsirkveli the approach of the Cossacks; he passed
it on to Annette Sulakhvelidze, who was promenading about
in front of the staff building; she made a sign to Bachua
Kuprashvili, who was running along the square with an unfolded newspaper (which was the last general signal). In a
moment he joined the expropriators who were running towards the phaetons.
The first bomb was thrown from the roof of the house at
the corner of the Square and Sololaksky Street. It was followed by others thrown from various angles, and then instantly by a desperate burst of revolver shot. Chaos supervened. There was no question of "disposition." Because of
the smoke almost nothing was visible. People scattered to
all sides as best they could.
Kama's drozhky whirled into the Square from Ganovsky
Street. The reins in his left hand he stood on the footboard
shooting his revolver off in all directions and yelling out
fearful curses. According to the "dispositions" he was supposed to seize the sack with the money in the first phaeton. But it wasn't easy even to find the phaeton that
strangely enough had remained undamaged. The cashier
and accountant had been thrown into the street by the
force of the explosion, and a Cossack killed.
Kama had almost never lost control of himself in his life
and was actually incapable of losing his head whenever he
was carrying out some definite order. He had never felt the
slightest doubts either before the explosion or after it:
Lenin ordered, Nikitich assisted, Koba organized-so
what was there to brood about? Thinking wasn't his business. Now in the Square he acted almost exclusively by
instinct. He may have been the only one who was completely calm, in spite of the din of the bombs, the shooting,
and the savage outcries. He was yelling and cursing desperately not because of anger or excitement, but simply because yelling and cursing were part of the technique of
such actions, as in the old days the cavalry sprang to the
attack with howls and roars.
Bachua Kuprashvili jumped out of a cloud of smoke at
the right and ran off down Sololaksky Street. For a second
a phaeton appeared to be outlined in the cloud, but just
then another bomb crashed and smoke swallowed up the
phaeton again. Bachua's fallen! thought Kama. He's killed!
But the sack, where's the sack! And in that same second
he saw Chiabrashvili, holding the sack in his hand, running towards Velyaminovsky Street, where there was less
smoke, with extraordinary, unnatural, super~human
speed. This was definitely an out-and-out disregard of orders. Kama swiftly wheeled his drozhky around and hur-
71
�tied after him. The thought flashed through his mind that
Bachua might have only been wounded, but it was impossible to return in the drozhky-let the others get him!
It took him a moment to snatch the sack from Chiabrashvili and to rush off again to the conspirators' apartment. A number of the other expropriators were already
there. He took them in with a glance, flung the sack on the
floor and shouted violently:
'Where's Bachua?"
uKilled! ... " "He'll be here soon! ... " "Wounded! ... "
44
0on't know! ... "answered voices panting. The disposi~
tions" hadn't reviewed the question: which was more im·
11
portant-the sack or a comrade? But it was clear enough
that the sack was far more important. But Kama's face
flushed scarlet; he heaped frenzied curses on his comrades. Suddenly the door opened and Bachua, a bloodstained hand to his head, appeared on the threshold.
Kamo, against all rules of conspiracy, yelled something in a
wild voice and flung himself suddenly into a dance. Bachua, barely able to control his panting, explained that he
had lost consciousness on the street only for half a minute,
then jumped up and run on there. No one listened much.
They all talked at once of what they had just done and
lived through. At the top of their lungs they shouted that
they had to speak in low voices: people on the street might
overhear them. Kamo yelled out something, and went on
dancing. Someone picked up the sack, put it on the table
and started loosening the collar. In a flash Kamo bounded
over to the table like a cat. He trusted comrades, and knew
there was not a single thief among them, but Koba had
ordered the packages to be brought sealed: Dzhugashvili
trusted the comrades less.
However, the figures were written on the covers:
"170,000" and "80,000." Not letting the packages out of
his hands, Kamo read them off. He tried to add them in his
head, others helping him: "250,000." The enthusiasm was
general, though a few of them had expected it to be a million. Kamo started dancing about again, holding a package
in each hand over his head. ~'It's done!" "The revolu·
tion! ... " "Now we'll be free! ... " they said. One of the
expropriators said everything had gone offlike clockwork.
That was how they all spoke in Tiflis that day, some with
delight, others with rage. A day later every newspaper in
Russia wrote the same.
Jambul couldn't remember all the details of the action in
Erivan Square, the most terrifying of his life. These lapses
in memory happened to him occasionally when he had
drunk two or three bottles of wine after dinner. In practical matters they had never happened to him before.
The plan had been for him to shoot a policeman standing at the door of the Commercial Bank; he had chosen
this himself; he didn't want to shoot the cashier or the accountant, though he didn't tell his comrades. And just as
soon as he saw Kuprashvili running along with the opened
newspaper he took his revolver out of his pocket and went
over without haste to the bank. The policeman, a beard-
72
Jess young blond, obviously a Russian from the north, was
standing half-turned toward him, gazing curiously at the
approaching convoy. Jambul remembered shooting immediately after the first bomb exploded, even before smoke
hid the carriage-and he didn't understand what had happened. He was incapable, simply incapable, of not hitting a
man six or seven paces from him. He recalled aiming at his
head: a Mauser bullet was supposed to kill outright. The
policeman, completely unharmed, shouted desperately,
turned around and snatched at his own revolver. It was
just at this second that the chaos in the square began. And
without being able to remember how, Jambul found himself some thirty paces from the bank doors, behind the
newspaper kiosk.
He recalled shooting twice more into the pall around the
phaeton, also probably without killing anyone. He remembered later that he didn't want to be killed either. He remembered that for a few seconds he stared brainlessly at
the newspapers hanging on the wall: the Voice of the Caucasus, the Tiflis Gazette . .. Suddenly he saw a Cossack on
a big bay galloping at him whirling his lash. In a flash Jam·
bul's self-possession came back to him. He bounded a few
paces forward and fired. The horse reared up, hit by a bullet in its throat. He stopped. Just then a second bomb burst
and deafened him. Someone ran past him, clutching his
side and yelling something, with a contorted face. The
Cossack wasn't getting up. The phaeton is supposed to go
back along the Sololaksky, Jambul remembered, and ran
off that way. No, the phaeton's smashed now, of course.
What should I do now? For a moment he stood there motionless, still half stunned. Then he rushed off, over to the
kiosk. The Cossack was gone. The big bay horse, expiring,
was writhing convulsively on its side in a pool of blood. His
whole life he would remember its brown eyes with their
distended whites. Then there was a gap in his memory. He
tried and failed to recall how much longer he stayed in the
Square and just what he was doing there.
He came to himself in a broad side-street. People were
running in the street screaming in fear and shoving each
other. He didn't think it proper to run, and walked along
on the pavement at an ordinary, scarcely hurried pace. He
thought he would have to turn off to the right further on,
and that the conspiratorial apartment was very close. I
didn't want to kill it. Why did it have to rear up? I killed it
for the sake of Lenin's little periodicals ... Dozens of people must have been killed ... But not by me ... How could
I have missed that policeman? Suddenly everyone leapt
off the street on to the sidewalks and into the entry-ways: a
squadron of dragoons was hurtling towards them on their
way to the Square. Oh, what horses! thought Jambul ...
Why did it have to rear up? ...
No more shots could be heard, but from the direction of
the square a confused roaring could be heard. The street
was almost empty. Jambul turned off to the right and came
to the conspiratorial apartment. Though the windows
were closed he could hear shouts, clamor, laughter. What's
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�the matter with them, he thought, have they gone out of
their senses? At some other time he might have liked the
Caucasian boldness and contempt for danger, but now he
listened for a moment and passed on. ·
A little further on he came across a wretched-looking bistro. In the doorway the proprietor, pale and excited, was
evidently about to shut down. He glanced suspiciously at
Jambul, and almost refused to let him in, but he did. He
said something quickly and evasively. Fifty? thought Jambul: impossible! There couldn't have been fifty casualties!
Unwilling to talk, Jambul asked for more vodka, and
tossed off a few glasses one after another at the counter. In
a languid way he thought this might arouse suspicion: in
the morning no one gulps down vodka that way ...
"Is there any cognac?" he asked, and on being told there
was only Russian Shustovsky, but that it was good, he ordered some, not in a mug but in a tea-glass. He tossed it off
at one gulp. The owner looked at him in alarm. Jambul
paid and, shaking even more than before, went out. Yes,
yes ... Not very pretty ... Not a cavalry charge in goldembroidered uniforms. . . All for Lenin's little periodicals ... Not pure blood, but mixed with dirt. .. Much
more than in war. .. Perhaps all oflife is a mistake ... Perhaps, yes, it may very well be ... he muttered to himself in
the street.
For the first few days after the expropriation Jambul
didn't see any of the terrorists. He read the newspapers
and drank a great deal, though he had already calmed
down. He had noticed no traces he had left behind and
thought with even more conviction than before that the
Russian police were very bad and in addition were frightened to death, especially in the Caucasus.
Money and another letter arrived from his father in Turkey, at his temporary agreed-on address. The old man
asked his son more insistently than usual to come home;
he also complained about his health more than usual, said
that he wanted to see him once more without fail, and
mentioned the necessity of putting his inheritance in order. Jambul had received such invitations before, too, and
had always declined them. He likes to complain, like all old
people, he thought. Perhaps he's heard something, and is
worried. They seldom corresponded. The old man could
hardly have known with certainty just what his son was
doing. Jambul had said vaguely that he was taking part in
the struggle for Caucasian independence. His father was
able to understand this and even ought to sympathize.
He dined in the restaurants in the center of the city, and
each time made a point of going to Erivan Square. He
could not get the blood-bespattered bay horse, and its eyes
with their distended whites, out of his head. After going
home he read on into the late night. He had gone out to
the Golovin Prospekt and bought some books at random: a
thick Petersburg review, Shakespeare in Russian, To!THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
stoy' s Resurrection. He felt he absolutely had to leave for a
visit to his father. It was possible to leave legally, his passport was perfectly trustworthy. He loved his father but had
always told himself that he was incapable of watching anyone "grow old." But nevertheless he never used to write
about himself so alarmingly. Surely he's not going to die!
I'll be left alone in the world like a splinter ...
That evening he went to bed early and set out on the
wide bed the three books he had bought. At first he did not
read. He thought of his father. He thought of the action in
Erivan Square. He thought of Lenin. He's going to be
overjoyed, manna from heaven ... he said to himself, and
frowned still more severely: the words 'from heaven'
seemed far from apt. He couldn't fall asleep, in spite of the
huge amount of wine he had drunk. He never took sleeping pills, for some reason he was afraid of them. He
opened Shakespeare's plays at random, at the boring play
Cymbeline. He picked up the review. He noticed with irritation that the news-vendor had slipped him an old shopworn issue.
In the news-column he learned that 73 3 people had
been killed that year in Russia, 215 hanged, 341 shot by
order of a court martial, and in only a month and a half 221
had been executed by the new emergency court martial.
Perhaps there'll soon be not 215, but 216 hanged, he
thought, and again said to himself: one Jambul more or
less, isn't it all the same? He often spoke to himself that
way, but knew he was speaking insincerely: this particular
''one" had a certain importance for him. In the news story
some more figures were given of those called "representa·
lives of the authorities" who had been killed-the number
was just as large. Three days ago I didn't make a single addition to this statistic, thank God!
He also read in the review something long and boring
about a "Party of Democratic Reforms," about a Professor
Maxim Kovalevsky, and about a lawyer called Spasovich
who had recently died. "Public morals are becoming more
and more savage," Vladimir Danilovich had recently written from Warsaw: "Bomb explosionS1 shootings, looting,
and assassination take place every blessed day even in the
street." Words like this would once have evoked in Jambul
nothing but a sneer: he disliked liberals. They've had a
good time of it all their lives, he would have thought,
they've never once risked their precious existence. Now
he thought nothing of the kind. He put the paper aside
and opened Resurrection.
He read it until far into the night. He liked Tolstoy as an
artist, but had an even more scornful attitude towards his
ideas than he had towards those of the liberals: Just the
feeble-mindedness of old age, he thought. He found the
scene of the church service in the prison extremely annoying. No, really, it's just blasphemy after all. He didn't have
the right to make fun of other people's faith and he himself doesn't have any: a believer could never have written
that way about church ceremonies. But what oppressive,
terrifying language! he thought as he fell asleep.
73
�And at once the various figures which had been passing
through his mind during the past fe~ days and hours were
all jumbled together, spinning about and springing up into
the most senseless life. Lenin had written a little article on
blood-stained assignations. His father, with a sick, emaciated face, was lying in bed waiting for a doctor who never
came. A blood-bespattered bay horse galloped into his uncle's orchard, drenched in sunlight, and explained hoarsely
that it could no longer serve since it had been killed by a
bullet in the throat from )ambul. Dimitri Nekhlyudov explained to it that there must have been some juridical error: )ambul never killed horses and never would. In the
Tiflis Gazette Spasovich proposed to defend Kate Maslov
for a thousand rubles: "There are only ten Kates in all," he
said, "while a great deal more was taken from Kurdyumov." Lenin tore himself away from his little articles and
said mockingly that he wouldn't give a single ruble, not a
penny for any uprising, everything was needed for the little periodicals, and a fig to all the comrades ...
He was awakened by a knock at the door. It took him a
moment to come to himself. A young chambermaid came
into his room, smiled at him, and respectfully reported
that he was being asked for on the 'phone by His Most
Serene Highness Prince Dadiani. )ambul, tearing himself
away from the warm pillow, looked at her for a moment
agog. Then he remembered that this was the name Kama
wasliving under in Tiflis.
"Please te!Ihim I'll be right down," he said. The chambermaid smiled at him sweetly and went out. He put on a
splendid silken dressing gown he had bought in Paris at
the Place Vendome, and thought of Lyuda, who had been
particularly fond of it. Is it all right to go downstairs in a
dressing gown? He thought, it doesn't matter, it's early,
there'll be no one there. Actually, it was not even eight.
The fool might have rung later, he thought.
HGood morning, your Highness," he said. HWhat's hap~
pened? A very early call."
Kama replied that someone wanted to see him at ten
o'clock. Koba, of course, )ambul guessed.
"At his place," said Kama and hung up without waiting
for an answer, just as though there couldn't be the slightest doubt of )ambul's agreeing. )ambul shrugged his shoulders. I'll come late just for spite!
But it wasn't right to be late in their work, and he arrived
on the stroke of ten, leaving the carriage driver far from
the house Dzhugashvili was living in. The boss, quite
calm, met him with his usual sneer. How I hate the sight of
him! thought )ambul.
He had known this man for a long time. He could not
endure him. Whenever they met he would have an obscure feeling as though he were in the company of a real
evildoer. He never mentioned this about Koba to anyone
and even reproached himself for a baseless and consequently unfair judgment: he knew a good deal about
Dzhugashvili, but still not the sort of thing that would
have justified considering him a malefactor, or "the worst
74
of good-for-nothings." It sometimes seemed to him that
others who knew Koba well had the same feeling about
him and said nothing about it either: something in his very
looks made people wary. Well, in any case I'm not afraid of
him! thought )ambul. His irritation and spite were heightened immediately.
In the room there were Kama, in the same uniform with
the same dark-red embroidered decoration, and a woman
in a cheap, dirty white dress. )anbul remembered that her
name was Mara Bocharidze and that in the band she
worked at the role of a Tiflis house-wife. He greeted her
politely. Koba looked at him with a sneer and carelessly
extended his hand.
"Hello, bicho," he said. This word, which meant "old
boy" or something like it, and was a special little sneer of
Koba's, irritated )ambul still more: It meant, "You're all
just a lot of runts, and I'm a great big fellow." And all the
while, with all his wiliness and boldness, he was a very grey,
coarse fellow, rather shabby looking, with both an innate
and played-up coarseness. He thinks that has an effect on
everyone, thought )ambul: it doesn't on me, but he won't
be coarse with me, he knows it wouldn't be safe.
"Very glad to see you too, bicho," )ambul replied. Koba
turned away from him at once and started talking to
Kama, who was looking at him enraptured. Mara also
looked into his eyes, more in fear than in rapture. Koba
spoke Russian considerably better than Kama, considerably worse than )ambul.
<(That's a matter of course and you do it," he ordered.
)ambul's suggestion was confirmed: Dzhugashvili was assigning them both to take the money over to the Observatory: it was sewn into a large new mattress that was lying
on the floor in Koba's room.
"Yau go with Mara in one carriage, and he'll follow you
in another. Why did you have to be so stupid as to dress up
like an officer! Carrying a mattress! Change your clothes
immediately!"
Timidly deferential, Kama explained, partly in Russian,
partly in Georgian, that he hadn't known about the forthcoming transfer of the mattress. He also expressed the
opinion that it would be better to transfer it in the evening, after dusk.
''I'm not asking you for an opinion! Do as I say!" cried
Koba. Kama nodded instantly. Mara also nodded her head
in fright. Jambul interrupted: "Any street hawker could
move the mattress," he said mildly, as though addressing
no one in particular. "An outsider wouldn't be in any danger. In case of arrest he could explain that he had been
hired, and could prove his alibi. But if they catch Kama
they'll hang him. It's true that a street hawker might give
away the address of the apartment he'd gotten the mattress from," he added, as though naively. A gleam of spite
flashed through Koba's eyes. He stored up )ambul's words
in his memory, but he restrained himself and sketching
out on his face an extremely improbable looking goodnatured smile, said: "I shall ask you to follow them in anWINTER/SPRING 1983
�other carriage. Have you got a revolver on you?"
"I have, bicho. Very well, I'll follow them. Very closely,
of course, else they might be able to drag out the money
and scuttle off," said Jambul imperturbably.
Kamo' s face suddenly turned bestial. "Listen!" he
snarled.
Koba interrupted him instantly and started laughing,
just as good-naturedly. "He is, of course, joking. Now look,
these orders of mine are easy to understand. You and she
will take the mattress to the director. Then you'll go down
into the big hall. At eleven o'clock some astronomer is going to show the yokels all sorts of nonsense. Listen to it; go
together with the crowd, and also go out when the crowd
does. You won't be noticed. If on the way to the Observatory the police attack, start shooting, to the last cartridge,
naturally. And run to the apartment on Mikhailovsky
Street. With the mattress, naturally!" he said impressively.
"And on the way back, Maro, you little ninny, you come back
on foot alone. You have no revolver, you'll get off without
going to gaol. And you two can do as you please, shoot or
don't as you please. You, Kamo, no matter what happens,
you can't escape hanging. For old sins. But as for you," he
said, turning to Jambul, "there's no evidence of anything
against you. For carrying a revolver it'll be a lot if they send
you off to hard labor. Never mind, daddy will wait for you in
Turkey," said Koba, and a little sneer appeared on his face
once again. Jambul flared up. He knows about father too! he
thought: he keeps a check on the comrades!
"And how d'you know whom there's evidence against
and whom there's not?"
"A little magpie had it on its tail, as Lenin said in Tammerfors," said Dzhugashvili. He was very proud of having
spoken to Lenin, and of having, as it seemed to him, made
a strong impression on him. "For the Erivan affair there
can't be evidence of anything against anybody, so there
won't be any against you, either."
'I'll go to the Observatory, but I won't take the money to
Finland."
"And I'm not ordering you to," said Koba. He had long
since decided that Kamo would take it there alone; he
trusted him.
liNor can you order me to do anything!"
Without answering Koba turned to Kamo again. He repeated his orders tersely and clearly; he knew Kamo didn't
understand the first time.
Yes, he knows his business, it's true. But in all my life
I've never seen anyone so repugnant to me, thought Jambul, listening attentively. After finishing his explanation
Koba stood up. The audience is over! thought Jambul.
Kamo and Maro stood up at once, too.
The astronomer, a graybeard in a silken jacket, was
showing the Observatory to a small group of visitors and
wearily making the usual explanations:
THE ST. JOHNS REVJEW
"The man whose portrait you see hanging on this wall
was the great astronomer Nicholas Copernicus. He was
born in 1473 and died in 1543. For a long time he was
thought to be a German, but that was incorrect. Copernicus was a Pole. He discovered that it was not the sun that
rotated around the earth, but the earth that rotated
around the sun. He worked with the aid of a parallactic
instrument consisting of three little pieces of wood with
three degrees. Later on these little stumps of wood passed
into the possession of another famous astronomer, Tycho
Brahe, who treasured them as a sacrosanct relic of the history of science, and wrote verses about them. In these he
said that the earth produced a man like that once in a
thousand years: he stopped the sun and started the earth
moving. For a long time Copernicus couldn't make up his
mind to publish his discovery: he was afraid of being persecuted by the Catholic Church and even more afraid of being laughed at by everyone. It was not until shortly before
his death that he published his immortal work. He dedicated it to Pope Paulus Ill, but it was included by the Congregation in the notorious Index as heresy. Though this
great man was a believer, it may well be that only a miracle
saved him from the stake," said the astronomer, who evidently disliked the Catholic Church. "His work of genius
is entitled De revolutionibus orbium caelestium. There is
a monument to Copernicus in Warsaw, the work of
Thorwaldsen ... "
The word "revolutionibus" caught Jambul's attention.
So there's some kind of a revolution there, too, he
thought, though not the same one. He glanced at the
gaunt, harassed face with the tufts of hair falling on both
sides of the head. Yes, that's not like Koba's face ... Who
knows what sort of a man he was and what he thought
about life? ... So he was a believer? But could he have believed in everything? Did he believe in an afterlife? But
surely he was more intelligent than I, with Kamo and
Koba, even with Lenin thrown in!. If I had any real faith in
me I wouldn't choose such a life for myself. But then what
would I do? The little stumps of wood with degrees are not
for me. I have no gifts at all. But when, why, and what for,
did I ever choose such an inhuman existence? Caucasian
independence? But it's only various Kobas that are probably going to run it after all, and what's the use of hiding from myself that they're a hundred times worse than
the Voronov-Dashkovs. And people like Tsintsadze or
Ramishvili are basically the same liberals as the Spasoviches and Kovalevskys, they can hardly be told apart.
They'll hardly be the ones to come to power, if there's a
revolution, any more than the Kovalevskys will come to
power in Russia. And that's just the reason they won't, because they're civilized, and not wild beasts! he thought, astonished himself at the swiftness with which his attitude
towards the revolution had changed. Nevertheless, he
thought, it's not just because of that bay horse!
The astronomer announced that the tour was over. The
visitors started out. At the exit Jambullooked around again
75
�and went into Erivan Square still at the same artificially
unhurried pace with which he now walked around the
city. His body was alert and tensed in case of an unexpected onslaught. Since the expropriation he had not been
separated from his revolver, though this had no point;
there really was no evidence against him, and if arrested he
would in all likelihood not be hanged.
A few people were standing in the street at the same
spot where the first bomb had fallen. One of them was explaining something, pointing at the jumbled stones. Jam·
bullistened in. Yes, that's probably a blood-stain. Here is
where that Cossack fell who was leaping around the phaeton. But I didn't kill him. Except for the horse, I didn't kill
anyone. He walked on to the newspaper kiosk, stopped
where he had stood then, and again saw the Tiflis Gazette.
He took a few more steps, looked at the place-and suddenly felt sick.
In the Annona restaurant, where there were always a
great many people and there was no chance of arrest, he
sat down for a breathing-spell. He could hardly eat, but he
drank some wine, and listened to the string orchestra. At
the little tables around him people were discussing their
affairs. "We'll have to think all that through and through,"
one of them said.
Yes, and I'll have to think things through and through.
Perhaps I've thought about life, about the most important
things, very little. Now it's too late. Though why is it too
late? There's no one to talk about it with. Koba's a beast.
Kamo's a hero. Everyone claims he's kindhearted, and
here he was getting ready to impale people on a stake!
How strange he used to be religious! Now of course he
makes fun of faith: Koba taught him that. .. Yes, I'm get·
ting old and didn't notice ... I'll have to go see father as
quickly as possible. Thoughts flashed incoherently
through his mind.
On the way home he went in to see the men whose address he used for letters. There was only a telegram from
76
Turkey. He hastily tore it open, ripping the end off the
envelope. It was from an old friend telling that his father
has passed away that night in his sleep, painlessly.
It was evident that the director of the Observatory sym·
pathized with the expropriators. It was, however, possible,
though unlikely, that he didn't know what there was in the
new mattress on his divan. In a short while Dzhugashvili
had drawn everything out of the mattress, and Kamo had
carried it to Lenin in Kuakalla. This time he no longer traveled first-class but second, and was not a Wing Adjutant,
but a mere junior officer.
Krupskaya and Bogdanova sewed the money in the
quilted waistcoat of their comrade, Lyadov. "It sat on me
very skilfully," wrote Lyadov, "and the money was carried
across the border illegally without any trouble."
At the State Bank, however, the numbers of the stolen
five-hundred-ruble notes had been recorded, and they
were wired instantly to every police department in Europe. The five-hundred-ruble notes were exchanged in
batches in various West European banks. In trying to convert them Litvinov, Semashko, Ravich, and a few other
Bolsheviks were arrested. In this way the smaller Central
Committee, that is, Lenin, Krasin, and Bogianov, lost a
small part of the money.
Aside from this there was some unpleasantness with the
Mensheviks, who launched an "agitation," that it was im·
proper having anything in common with "rogues." They
abused Lenin and Kamo in the most horrifying language.
But Lenin was not too vexed by the unpleasantness. At his
dictation Krupskaya added the following to a personal let·
ter of his about this affair: "The Mensheviks have already
started the vilest brawl. They're doing such vile things it's
hard to believe ... What sons-of-bitches! ... "
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�SUMMER
The thrushes' voices, liquid every evening.
Whole hours pass
Soundless but for the rustling
Of maple trees whose leaves,
Flake upon flake of dusky turquoise,
Encrust some liquid inner richness. Summer.
Summer! Unnumbered days pace through a desert
Empty of landmarks, colored scratchy gold.
But the whole mirage
Dappled with havens for birds to perch in
Will have vanished by October
No matter how passionately put together.
Country created root and branch,
Whose every pod and blossom,
Hayfield, hilltop, cloud
Have come to tingle with mythology ...
A tall white horse bridled in green
Passes and repasses on a carousel
That whisks repeatedly out of reach.
Under the pine trees trails make soft
Chiasmuses. This has all
Been marked long since on his chart by the master
Of subterranean bonds. Inside the house
A room at the top of the stairs
Smells of old puppets, contains a twangy piano
Kin to the sea-clogged one that you remember.
Outdoors as well are portents to be noted.
The way the light falls;
One particular maple, lightning-lopped,
Motionless and imposing
As a statue in the meadow;
A dead elm's gesture
Past boggy grass to where the woods begin;
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
77
�Caw of a crow, hawk hovering
Over the line that separates sun from shadow.
What will you do with your life?
Long interlude. The elm and maple wait.
Slats of light
Lean down on you pacing
Through gawky trees that strain for their share of sky,
Teabrown swampjuice slurping underfoot.
The years till now:
This rusty leafchoked bucket once held sap.
Into the trackless competitive hardwood
Dip till the dimness sends you back uphill,
Daylight returning at the top of the rise.
House in a hollow,
Smoke dissolving into early evening,
Somebody playing that piano,
Face or phantom at the attic window:
Benevolent and tiny, it all
Happened repeatedly but long ago.
To an accumulated depth of water
Plummets the pebble thrown, and ripples spread.
The whole of summer will have been one long day.
MAGNOLIAS IN PRINCETON
in memory of Sidonie M. Clauss
Puppies run around the pool
outside the Woodrow Wilson School.
On a bench I try to read,
magnolias dropping overhead,
lavish lacy opening
in the clinging sheath of spring.
Petals milky·pinky pale
slather whiteness like a veil
over the grey branches' bone,
over smudges of light green.
On a sunny afternoon
gorgeous garlands bloom and preen.
78
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�Yet a single wintry breath
dooms this Rubens world to death.
Half an hour of cold's enough
to wrinkle creamy rose to rough
russet, parch the baby cheek
and shrink it to a shrivelled scrape
rustling along the stones,
silken skin to rattling bones.
Cold can cut the flowering short.
So can changes in the light.
Take that radiant bridal air
fresh magnolia blossoms wear:
one dark cloud blots out the sun,
all the joyful glow is gone.
Quenched and drawn, they shrink to white,
livid, glaring, harshly bright.
Where then can I look for stable
radiance: perhaps the marble
neoclassically flashing
columns of the Wilson School,
or the snowy puppies dashing
round the azure of the pool,
or the court's blond travertine,
or the trees' faint new green?
None of these. It's going to rain.
Plum-dark clouds come like a stain.
Damp wind ruffles pages, hair,
piled dry petals, and the air.
To avoid the looming cloud,
I prepare to join the crowd
moving up the temple stair.
Petals twitch and stir and fall
as slowly up the scholars file;
the magnolia bank springs leaks
through which distant thunder speaks.
Wait. A tiny ruffling tap.
Here's a petal in my lap,
newly fallen from a branch
as I got up from the bench,
longer than my finger, fresh,
plump, and fragrant, bruised like flesh.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
79
�Slowly I shut my book on this bookmark,
this touch of perfect color blown
undramatically down,
its pink and white already edged with dark.
THE SERVICE FOR SIDONIE
May 3 1980
The rain it raineth every day.
Not this one.
Our fumbling gestures sketching out your loss
preserved as if in amber by May sun.
The dreadful hole no sooner dug than spring
gently conspired to fill it. The two babies'
babbling purled, a rhythmic little brook,
under and through the ceremony's broken
flow (the hushed voices, bubbles burst in weeping).
Inflamed, turned inward, all our eyes were dazzled
at the chapel door by a great blaze of noon
and when we left the porch and stood in the sun
birds embroidered the quiet
with brilliant stitches of incessant song.
Ironic, tender-natural renewal,
brimming with green abundance, speaks of cycle.
But for us mourning you no rhythm softens
today's shared truth. This thing the grace of season
so gently twines its tendrils round remains
a terrible cessation-opening blossom,
richly unfolding, ruthlessly cut off.
RACHEL HADAS
Rachel Hadas published her first book of poems, Starting from Troy, in
1975 (Godine). Her second, Slow Transparency, will appear in September
1983 (Wesleyan University Press). She teaches English at Rutgers University in Newark.
80
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�Letters on Legitimacy
Guglielmo Ferrero-Gaetano Mosca
A Note on Guglielmo Ferrero-and his Friendship with
Gaetano Mosca
From 1896 to the end of their lives, a few months apart, at the
end of 1941 and in the middle of 1942, Gaetano Mosca (18581941) and Guglielmo Ferrero (1871-1942) carried on frequent correspondence. Two hundred and twenty-five Letters survive, probably less than a third of the total. In 1896 Ferrero was twenty-five
years old and at work on his first book to win wide recognition,
L' Europa giovane (1897)-the fruit of three years of study and
travel throughout Europe. Thirty-eight years old, Mosca had iust
won the chair of constitutional law at Turin and published the first
edition of Elementi di Scienza Politica-a work that achieved
something of the status of a classic. (A later edition was translated
into English with the title The Ruling Class, New York 1939).
Mosca appreciated the importance of Ferrero's work almost from
the beginning with an essay II fenomeno Ferrero (1897), published
long before Ferrero won international status.
Their correspondence is an extension of their work. Often on almost a day-to-day basis, it discusses the major events of twentieth
century history, the reasons for decadence in Europe, and especially
in Italy, before the First World War, the First World War and the
crisis that came of it, the coming of Fascism in 1922, and Ferrero's
and Mosca's struggle against it within Italy until1925 when open
opposition became impossible, and finally, the dark years that
made the Second World War inescapable. Throughout these letters
the ideas that are to play an important part in their thinking take
shape and modify.
Both Mosca and Ferrero took direct part in political life, Mosca as
a deputy in Parliament from 1908 to 1919 and Senator after 1919,
Ferrero as a frequent political commentator. This involvement in
actual political life lent their work a straightforward and practical
cast that, in their instances, made for a deeper grasp, rather than an
These four letters come from a collection of the surviving FerreroMosca correspondence edited by C. Mongardini, Gaetano Mosca- Guglielmo Ferrero. Carteggio (1896-1934), Milan 1980.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
evasion, of the underlying problems. Both men knew, and in many
instances were intimate with, the leading men of their times. They
had the best information at their disposal, and had read enough of
the right kind of old books to know its limitations. In some sense
the clarity of their view of the public affairs of Italy and Europe,
and of their grasp of the crisis of the twentieth century, testifies to
the depth of their friendship. For them the understanding of public
events, especially the events of crisis, were not an evasion of private
life, but an understanding of the place of their lives in their country
and time, and finally in the whole history of the West. Each of
them was happy enough to be able to grasp the symptoms of the
catastrophe, long before it occurred, that threatened to sweep away
all they loved.
Besides Elementi di Scienza Politica, the only other major work
of Mosca's translated into English is Storia delle dottrine pelitiche
(Bari 1937), A Short History of Political Philosophy (New York
1972). Most of Ferrero's work is translated into English and the
other major languages of Europe.
In his early and middle thirties in 1902-1906, Ferrero published
an account of the self-destruction of the Roman republic and the
settlement of Augustus in five volumes, The Greatness and Decline of Rome. Written in simple narrative style the work is overwhelming in its capacity to evoke and to understand, in its appetite
for life and intelligence. It won Ferrero a world-wide audience, an
audience that made it possible for Ferrero's voice to be heard
throughout the West, even after Fascist censorship prevented publication of his words within Italy after 1925. The work caused an
uproar in the academic world of Italy.
Throughout his life Ferrero wrote weekly columns and monthly
articles that appeared in the major newspapers and magazines of
the world. Some of these articles were collected into books and published every few years: Militarism (London 1902); Europe's Fateful Hour (New York 1911, 1918); Between the Old World and the
New (New York 1914); Ancient Rome and Modern America (New
York 1914); Four Years of Fascism (London 1924); Words to the
Deaf (London 1926); The Unity of the World (London 1931).
In the twenties Ferrero dedicated himself to a cycle of novelsunder the general title La Terza Roma: Le due verita (Milan
81
�1926); La rivolta del figlio (Milan 1927); Gli ultimi barbari, sud ore
e sangue (Milan 1930); Liberazione (Lugano 1936)-that told the
story of Italy since its unification, a subject whose evasion up to
then, in Ferrero's judgement, contributed importantly to the collapse of the Italian government after the First World War. Of all
Ferrero's works, his novels were least read.
Under constant police surveillance after 1926, Ferrero left Italy,
it turned out forever, in 1930-with the help of Mosca who inter·
vened with the Minister of Foreign Affairs to get him a passport.
The University of Geneva and the Institut Universitaire des
Hautes Etudes Intemationales had offered him a chair in modem
history-his first university position. At about sixty he entered into
one of the most courageous and creative periods of historical study
in his life. At the university for more than ten years he gave a
weekly lecture on the history of the French Revolution and Napo·
leon and the consequences of misunderstanding these events in the
nineteenth century-a lecture that was an event in the town as well
as at the university. At the institute Ferrero dedicated himself to
the study of the differences between war in the eighteenth century
and the unlimited total war of Napoleon-a study that led him to
the rediscovery ofVattel, the author of the eighteenth century clas·
sic of international law, Le droit des gens, ou principe de la loi
naturelle, appliquee a la conduite et aux affaires des nations et
des souverains (Leyden 1758).
One of the most important of Ferrero's little books, Peace and
War (London 1933) came out of this study of war. He argued that
part of the catastrophe of 1914-1917 came because statesmen and
generals were ignorant of the character of the war they were fighting and above all had misunderstood the meaning of Napoleon.
His lectures at the university led to four volumes on the French
Revolution and the crisis it brought Europe and the world: The
Two French Revolutions 1789-1796 (posthumously published,
New York 1968); The Gamble, Bonaparte in Italy, 1796-1797
(London 1939); The Reconstruction of Europe, Talleyrand and
the Congress of Vienna, (New York 1941); The Principles of
Power (New York 1942).
In all his historical work Ferrero studied the past in order to discover the present-the opposite of studying the past because one
thinks one understands the present, which often leads to a politicization of the past in the service of present prejudices. Ferrero had
no favourite ages. His grasp of human character and the common
sense that comes of it was too strong for such infatuation. He did
not idealize any times-which meant he did not flinch before tragedy and outrage but still kept a remarkable love of life. He suffered
much, but his work never betrays resignation and depression.
For Mosca, see James H. Meisel, The Myth of the Ruling Class
(Ann Arbor 1958). The Istituto de Studi Storico-Politici of the Uni·
versity of Rome is bringing out his complete works. For a preliminary bibliography of Ferrero's writings, see Guglielmo Ferrero, histoire et politique au vingtif:me siecle, Geneva 1966. For an
account of the surveillance of Ferrero under Fascism, based on police archives, see Helmut Goetz "Guglielmo Ferrero, Ein Exampel
totalitaerer Verfolgung," Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 61, Tuebingen 1981, 248-304,
which should be compared to Leo Ferrero, Diario di un privilegiato
sotto il fascismo, Turin 1946. L.R.
82
1920
Mosca to Ferrero
Turin, January 28, 1920 Corso Umberto 45
Dear Ferrero,
I received with the usual delay your card of the 18th,
which avoided the postal strike only to fall into the railway·
men's strike. I had previously received the Memorie e con·
fessioni di un sovrano deposto, * which I have already read
and am turning over in my mind.
In the first part it seems to me that, among the many
original ideas, two stand out. The first concerns the great
French Revolution which, while purporting to bring liberty, equality, etc., gave the people instead military con·
scription (timidly already begun by absolute governments
here and there) and a world of taxes and constraints. The
second concerns the Holy Alliance, which you say was
more equitable than the victors in the recent war, and
would have been more able to develop Wilson's idea of a
League of Nations and which, as you rightly observe, even
if it did not give us perpetual peace, at least assured peace
for the span of a generation.
In regard to this second idea, I think that you are indis·
putably right. The principle of legitimacy that guided the
Allies of 1815 produced less injustices and exercised less
coercion on the will of peoples than the victors of the
present day, attempting to organize Europe on the princi·
pie of nationality and the so-called self-determination of
nations. The sovereigns of 1815 were more generous and
moderate toward the defeated. They had more sense of
measure than the leaders of the democracies of today.
They were more consistent in applying the principle they
said inspired them. Now, instead, the principle of self·
determination has been applied in such a way that the
peace treaties prevent the German provinces of Austria
from joining Germany. An enormous-and shamefulinconsistency.
As for the first idea, I still hesitate to say that you are
entirely right. Yes, the revolution did much harm, but it
also did much good. Perhaps almost all the good could
have been achieved without almost all the harm or, at
least, without a great part of it. But you, who are a real
historian, know how difficult it is to reconstruct history on
the basis of an hypothesis, how difficult it is to know what
would have happened if, at a given moment, events had
*Memorie e confessioni di un sovrano deposto (Memoirs and Confessions
of a Deposed Sovereign), Milan 1920. Ferrero called this book "a summary of the history of the nineteenth century" inspired by the memoirs
ofTalleyrand and his principle of legitimacy. Cf. B. Raditsa, Colloqui con
Guglielmo Ferrero, Lugano 1939,73-74.
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�developed in a different way from how they did develop. I
remember that Louis XVIII, to whose /TIOderation and political views you rightly pay tribute, used to say that we
couldn't speak ill of the Revolution because it had done so
much good and we couldn't speak well of it because it had
done so much harm. I very nearly agree with him. And let
us go on to the second part where there seem to be two
basic ideas: (!) that Germany should have won the war
and instead she lost it, or, at least, that she lost where she
deserved to win; and (2) that Germany was, in a way,
forced to make war by the atmosphere that took hold of
Europe in the ten or twenty years before the war.
Never mind about whether Germany deserved to win. I
admit that, if the sacrifices Germany made and the terrible
sufferings she inflicted on herself and on her adversaries
entitled her to win, then she deserved it. But . . . after
America entered the war, she was the weaker. She could
hope only in some striking bit of good luck, which did not
occur, or in the cowardice of her enemies, who were not
free to be cowards. The governments of the Entente could
not present themselves as defeated before peoples of
whom they had asked such great sacrifices. Besides, the
abyss of revolution was behind them if they stepped backwards. Perhaps one of them will fall into it anyhow-but
victory was the only hope of salvation. And Germany, as
the weaker, behaved like a gambler who has little money.
She took the greatest risks. Once they failed, she was done
for.
As for the causes of the war and the responsibilities for
its unleashing, I agree with you that certainly not all the
fault is Germany's and the Kaiser's. For ten years and
more the European bourgeoisies had been more or less afflicted with imperialism, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps
in order to take people's minds off socialism. This created
the atmosphere in which the appalling war could break
out. Part of the responsibiiity lies also with the diplomatic
encirclement which England practiced against Germany.
Germany, however, was responsible for provoking the incident which provoked the explosion. As a result that good
part of the world that doesn't see beyond its nose believed
and believes that the entire fault was hers.
And now that Satan, as you say, has finished the job,
what is this poor tortured and suffering world to do?
If you are right, salvation could come from a restoration
of the principle of authority, from rulers with enough
moral prestige not to have to rely exclusively on brute
force. But is this possible in a democratic regime, where
the best way to rise is to humiliate oneself before the
crowd, to flatter it indecently?
Neither of us knows whether or not the world will overcome the present crisis and if present institutions can endure. If they don't, we shall, for sure, fall under demagogic
tyranny, or under bureaucratic and military tyranny or,
worse still, under both together. And Italy, closest to the
looming danger, is not yet aware of it!
I'll come to see you in the spring and we'll talk. I hope to
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
publish a review of your book. Its main points will be those
I have just made.
My family is well. My respects to Mrs. Ferrero. Greetings to Leo.
I am most affectionately,
G. Mosca.
P.S. Please send me the exact address of your brother, the
doctor, who is in Ancona. I should perhaps write to him.
Ferrero to Mosca
(F1orence), January 31, 1920
Dear Gaetano,
Thanks for your letter. My brother's address is: Dr.
Giuseppe Ferrero, Via Montirozzo 59, Ancona.
To understand the book you have to proceed a bit by
deduction, since the writer's real ideas are hidden behind
the ideas-thesis and antithesis-attributed to the supposed author, to keep him in character. What you say
about the Holy Alliance is exactly what I think; it stands
out more in the second than in the first part since in the
first part the sovereign accuses the Holy Alliance of having
been too pacifist, traditionalist, classical, and Catholic, in
spirit if not in religion.
· It is not the same thing with the French Revolution. I
didn't try to decide whether the Revolution was a good
thing or a bad, whether it did more good than harm,
whether it could have done the good that it did without
doing so much harm. These are insoluble problems, because there is no way of measuring exactly the good and
the harm that it did and to make a comparison between
them. My idea-which I meant to have come out of the
thesis and antithesis-is this. In the French Revolution
there is a contradiction among the formulas, the programs,
the doctrines, and the results. This contradiction, disguised during the whole nineteenth century and up to the
World War with a host of devices and compromises, has
now broken quite out of control. The doctrines promised
men liberty, equality, and brotherhood, but events have
yielded a discipline far more demanding, heavy, and oppressive than that exercised by former governments. They
brought up governments harsher and more violent because they are at the same time stronger and less authoritative, governments that now are all turning into tyrannies
based on money and brute force. And all this happened
because the French Revolution undermined all the principles of authority, with their religious basis, of the old regimes and put in their place a new principle, the will or
sovereignty of the people, which doesn't work because it is
based only on a function and can give rise only to electoral
machines. On this point I have come to embrace totally
83
�your ideas, over which I was for a long time hesitant. For
many years I thought that the sovereignty of the people
was a serious principle of authority and could serve as the
basis of a juster, less oppressive, milder, and more human
political and social order than the one that went before.
Deeper study of the nineteenth century, a hard look at reality and longer reflection have persuaded me that you
were right.
Hence I don't doubt that the present order of things
is fated to crumble more or less everywhere and to be
replaced by a militaristic and demagogic tyranny, as arbitrary, capricious, oppressive and cruel as the worst despo·
tisms of the past. What is said on pages 289* and 311 represents my thinking.** I am so persuaded of these things
that already I am preparing myself for this unsparing, bestial despotism by, among other things, cutting down my
needs, luxuries, and expenses, because I am sure it will
leave me only my eyes to weep. Never mind, as long as it
leaves me a pen to write! As for the rebirth of the principle
of authority, to which there is reference on page 311, I believe it is inevitable but in the distant future. We shan't
live to see it. Probably this new principle of authority will
take shape around the persons, institutions, and doctrines
which will defend men against this horrid tyranny.
In short, I think that the movement that began in the
eighteenth century for the liberation of man has come to a
dreadful tyranny and a reign of force: a formidable contradiction from which there must come a political, moral, and
intellectual crisis of vast proportions of the sort that occurred at the end of the Middle Ages, when the Church
became the negation in practice of every principle of the
Gospel. We are in a situation which, in certain regards, recalls the one that gave rise to the explosion of the Reformation and the wars of religion.
As for the pages in which the deposed sovereign says
that Germany should have won the war, it seems to me
that you attribute to them a conclusive value whereas, to
me, they are of only passing importance. The second part
of the book was conceived as a medley of fragments written in accordance with tormenting changes of thought
and feeling under the impact of a blow of misfortune.
Hence there are contradictions, successive stages, jumps.
*The passage referred to runs:
"Men have deposed God and overturned all the idols they had tried to
build on his profaned altars: Science, Liberty, Democracy, Progress, Civilization. All authorities have collapsed. Therefore, force alone rules the
world. Force alone and naked, or barely covered with a red rag or a tatter
of a national flag. It rules the world as it can, with excesses and stops and
starts, without discernment, and tears it apart, for force is so weak when
alone and naked. 0 men, do not harbour illusions: in Europe the only
authority that remains is gold and iron."
**"Slowly and cautiously throughout all of Western civilization, the Revolution has done its work, the work it botched brutally in an hour in
France. Undoing the sacred legitimacy of all authorities, it has left men
no other government than force. From one end of Europe to the other,
force and need are the only authorities-both fake-men still obey."
84
The sovereign says, in his first notes, that Germany should
have won the war but, further on, he realizes that Germany was destroyed by its own strength, that it was defeated because it was too strong and had wanted to be too
strong. My real opinion on this point is expressed on pages
216-217: "Germany had to lose, because it was the
stronger ... n
~~we
wanted to be too strong ... "
This second part of the fifth chapter on confessionspages 212-223-is extremely important, because it contains the development of one of the book's most important
ideas. The first part of the chapter has a purely artistic reason for being, expressing thoughts which, in the second
part, are confuted. At bottom it serves to recall, in fitting
summary manner, the history of the war and Germany's
formidable effort. It is a warning to the states and statesmen of the Entente, who delude themselves that they defeated Germany with the power of the spirit when they
did it with the power of matter. In short, the three ideas
that I wanted to stress with the thesis and antithesis and
that are like Ariadne's thread through the labyrinth are the
following:
a) The French Revolution began a struggle between
the old principles of authority and its own principles. For
the reasons I have explained above, this struggle ended in
the ruin of all principles, old and new. As a result, Europe
after hoping for freedom for a century, has fallen under
brute force-anarchy or tyranny.
b) The world war is not the usual war won by the best
army or the army used the best. It is the bizarre, incoherent, chaotic catastrophe of a political and military system.
In this catastrophe all states exceeded the measure of
force granted human organizations. Institutions absurd in
their principles and dangerous in their exaggeration,
above all conscription armies as they developed after 1870,
were the means of this excess.
c) The responsibilities of Germany, enormous as they
are, are only partial, because from 1789 on all of Europe is
responsible. The World War is the final outcome of the
entire history of the nineteenth century-with the exception of the period from 1815 to 1848. The whole history of
Europe flowed toward this outlet. The whole history of
Europe has been an uninterrupted preparation of this catastrophe-except for the attempt of the old dynasties between 1815 and 1848 to move against the stream. That period from 1815 to 1848 strikes me as the only period when
Europe was governed with real political wisdom. Despite
its faults it would deserve rehabilitation.
If you want to write a review, these elucidations may be
useful to you. My wife holds it against me that I have written a book that is something of a riddle. I must help my
friends unravel it.
Warmest greetings,
yours Guglielmo
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�1923
Ferrero to Mosca
F1orence, May 6, 1923, 7, Viale Machiavelli
Dear Gaetano,
I have read the Elementi.* I am happy, above all, at the
freshness of your thirty-year old book. Except for a few unimportant points it could have been written today. The
outlook on the world, the spirit of the research have not
aged at all, so that reading it, one has no impression of go·
ing back a whole generation. This means that your book
has deep, vital roots. When a book stands up against the
passage of thirty years it has passed the hardest test, and
may endure for three hundred, because it is endowed with
eternal elements.
The new part completes, or rather, develops the old, by
introducing into the synthetic vision the new events and
phenomena of the last thirty years, and your further expe·
riences. You have made two books written with thirty
years between them into one book, without changing or
rewriting the first. This is a rare, perhaps unique, occurrence, and worthy of note.
What I like best in the book is what I might call its ancient spirit, that psychological realism whose origin lies in a
deep, because long thought-out, knowledge of the human
soul, a knowledge that is the necessary basis of politics,
since politics is only psychology in action. I say that your
book is soaked in the spirit of the ancients, because they
had in high degree the same deep-seated realism. You referred in the preface to Aristotle's Politics, and rightly, because your book has an honorable place in the same family. How different from the nebulous ideological fantasies
in which so many political writers are lost today!
This is the most serious, thoughtful, mature, profound
book on politics to appear in Europe in recent years. It
comes at a time at which it is most needed to lead bewildered minds back to the eternal reality of human affairs, in
which alone lies the secret of the good fortune and pros.
perity of nations. Let's hope that it is read and meditated
upon to the extent it deserves. For my part I'll do my best.
I must voice two objections or reservations of a general
character. It seems to me that you don't give sufficient importance to what you call the political formula and I call
the principle of legitimacy of governments. You seem still
to consider it a sort of pia fraus or conventional lie, useful
for justifying governmental power above all in the eyes of
the ignorant masses. I am increasingly persuaded that it is
*Elementi di Scienza Politica, Turin 1896; second edition (here referred
to), Turin 1923. English translation, The Ruling Class, New York and
London 1939.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the essential part of government and that force is only a
subordinate element, which has no true effectiveness unless it is based on the first. A government is not the real
thing unless it has persuaded all those who obey it that it
has a right to command. This is the test of all governments,
not the collecting of policemen and soldiers for the purpose of beating up recalcitrants, a police operation in
which even a Lenin, a Mussolini, and similar revolutionary
bunglers can succeed. And periods in which the right of
the government to command is uncertain and insecure are
always troubled, even if the government has great force at
its disposal.
The other reservation is this. I don't think you have
gauged the true importance of the upheaval that took
place in European civilization in the nineteenth century.
You seem to consider it a normal development of civilization, along familiar lines. But I don't see it that way.
There was a break, an overturning, a violent interruption
of the line, an attempt to overthrow some of the principles
on which all civilizations rested until the eighteenth century. To me this is a point of capital importance. Almost all
the objections which I should make to points of detail
stem from this different way of looking at the nineteenth
century.
I find, here and there, a few unimportant errors. StoJy.
pin** was not killed with bombs but with a revolver shot at
him by a student when he was sitting in a theater. Augustus did not frequently renew the Senate because the nationalistic reaction which, after Actium, brought him to
the presidency and kept him there all his life, did not allow
him or his successors to introduce many new senators.
The first to conduct an operation of this kind was Vespasian, who did not take the new families from Italy, as you
say, but from the western provinces-Cisalpine Gau~
Gaul, above all Spain, and from North Africa. Under Vespasian the Senate, which was what we might call centralItalian, became Euro-Africanl To my knowledge, under
Vespasian and in the second century, there were not many
oriental members. The East was always unwilling to accept Roman political ideas-aristocratic and republican up
to the end of the third century-that instead spread widely
among the Romanized and civilized barbarians of the
West. The East remained faithful to absolute monarchy.
This explains why the West and not the East replenished
the Roman Senate, up to the collapse of the system in the
third century.
I'm getting ready to write about your book. Greetings to
your family.
Yours
Guglielmo Ferrero
**Peter Arcadievich Stolypin {1862-1911), Russian statesman. Prime
minister in 1906, he fought revolutionary ferment with reforms, among
them agrarian reform that dissolved the mir and allowed the peasants to
own property.
85
�1934
Ferrero to Mosca
Geneva, February 17, 1934
Dear Gaetano,
I've read the book of your lessons.* It's rich, substantial,
clear, full of ideas and briskly written, apt for pleasant and
quick reading. I hope it finds many readers. Italy would
need to read books like yours.
The exposition of the doctrines of yours I know seems
precise and exact. And so I extend the same judgment to
those that are new to me. If I have any reservations, it's
about the overly intellectualizing tendency of the book. It
seems to me that you lend too much importance to ideas
as inspiring events. Ideas, in my opinion, are often the
horse-flies of history.
Rousseau, for in-stance. 1 believe that Rousseau's influence on the French Revolution has been enormously exaggerated. In the course on the Revolution that I gave here
three years ago, I maintained that Rousseau didn't make
the Revolution but that the Revolution created Rousseau.** Rousseau's books had made a certain dent but
only on a small number of people who, later, for the most
part, were against the Revolution. But when the Convention found itself isolated and without other support than
assemblage of forces amid a France in ruins, it needed, at
least, a theory to justify its power. It latched onto The Social Contract, glorifying it and making it into a sort of Bible
of democracy.
As for what you say about socialism, I think it isn't at all
exact to say that political equality makes for economic
equality. This is an argument conservatives have abused
for the last hundred years but which seems to me unfounded. The old regime was founded on political and economic inequality; the rich had all the power. I don't believe it's possible to return to this state of affairs, which
collapsed because it was excessive. Equality, economic
and political together, is impossible unless we crystallize
labor into absurd forms. I believe, therefore, that, after
many convulsions and oscillations, the world will adapt to
a state of political equality and economic inequality, such
as a number of countries have already reached. Political
equality will compensate for economic inequality, to the
advantage of the poor. Socialism has, in fact, been more
successful in countries where the government had an oligarchic and aristocratic character and there was still considerable political inequality-Russia, Germany, Austria,
Italy-than in countries where economic inequalities are
great but political equality is ensured by democratic institutions-such as the United States and England before
1914.
The theory of the political formula seems to me also to
need reenforcement. I should substitute this somewhat
neutral phrase with another, more vigorous: principle of legitimacy. Among African blacks or barbarians facts and
rights may coincide: whoever possesses the material instruments of power is thought to have the right to command. Little by little, as a country becomes more civilized,
the fact of possessing the instruments of power no longer
suffices. These instruments must have been acquired with
the observance of certain rules and principles which confer the right, recognized by all, to govern. Outside these
principles there is no longer a legitimate government;
there is usurpation. Whereas you seem to consider the political formula as a sort of plaything or game, which serves,
at best, to moderate the rulers, it seems to me that the
principle of legitimacy is a matter of the utmost seriousness, solemnity, and necessity. It is the very essence of civilization. A civilized people that falls from a legitimate government to a government of usurpation becomes infantile
again. Today, alas, two-thirds of the world's governments
are illegitimate usurpations. During the last twenty years
the world has precipitated into barbarism, just because a
large number of old legitimate governments have fallen
and made way for usurpations. For how long?! That's the
great question.
But we would need to talk all this over face to face. Cordial greetings and good wishesG. F.
Translated by Frances Frenaye
*Mosca's Lezioni di storia delle dottrine e delle instituzioni politiche,
Rome 1932.
**The last version of this course, given at the University of Geneva in
1940-1942 was published almost ten years after Ferrero's death in 1942:
Les deux revolutions francaises, 1789-1796, Neuchatel 1951. English
translation, G. Ferrero, The Two French Revolutions 1789-1796, New
York 1968.
86
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�Guglielmo Ferrero and Legitimacy
Carlo Mongardini
Guglielmo Ferrero understood that in our century the
fundamental question for politicians and statesmen was
no longer the exercise of power by an organized minority,
but how to build legitimacy from below. Gaetano Mosca
and Vilfredo Pareto also knew this was the problem.
Mosca opened the academic year of 1902-03 at the University of Turin with a lecture, "The Aristocratic and
Democratic Principle in the Past and Future." 1 In 1920
Pareto wrote a series of articles in the Rivista di Milano on
the transformation of democracy. 2 But neither Mosca nor
Pareto were up to dealing with this in part new subject
because each conceived the structure of power to hinge
on elites and the substitution of one elite for another (Mosca's "circulation of elites"). Ferrero, instead, made legiti~
macy the central question in interpreting contemporary
history and saw it as the key to understanding the crisis of
the modern world.
Ferrero did not think of himself as a professional historian.3 He turned to history in the spirit of Taine,4 one of
his models, uin order to recover, in the comparison of past
and present, the today almost completely lost awareness of
certain rules of life that cannot be transgressed without
running into the reason of things." 5 His avowed desire to
"divide the study of history not into epochs ... but by
types of phenomena";6 his conception of the study of history not as an "effort to recall the past," but as "an exercise
in recognizing the differences and similarities between
past and present," show his concentration on understand·
ing the changes taking place in the society of his day. This
meant-as in the instance of Taine-a new kind of history, not political history, but the history of civil society or
rather of the changes in civil society. The orientation on
Carlo Mongardini is professor of political science at the polytechnic in
Milan. He recently edited the surviving correspondence of Gaetano
Mosca and Guglielmo Ferrero, Gaetano Mosca-Guglielmo Ferrero. Car-
teggio (1896-1934), Milan 1980.
The above article was read at a congress on Ferrero, "Guglielmo Ferrero,
tra societa e politica," at the University of Genova on October 4-5, 1982.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
society allows the application of the categories employed
in studying and interpreting the present to the past (in the
case of Ferrero to ancient Rome) .. In another sense, Ferrero simply pursues the comparison of present and past,
Hthe differences and similarities."
Ferrero was, above all, a student of society, or, as he put
it, a student of "some problems of individual and collective
life."7 We should not be surprised that such study turned
out largely political. By nature and almost by historical necessity, the study of society in Italy is political. 8 Like Mosca's theory of the political class, Ferrero's concern with legitimacy had clearly contemporary relevance. In 1923
Ferrero wrote Mosca of the significance of the principle of
legitimacy:
A government is not the real thing unless it has persuaded all
those who obey it that it has the right to command. This is the
test of all governments. Not the recruitment of a few policemen and soldiers to beat up recalcitrants-a police operation
in which even a Lenin, a Mussolini and other such Revolutionary bunglers can succeed. And times in which the right of
the government to command is uncertain and insecure are
always troubled, even if the government has great forces at its
disposal 9
To understand Ferrero's total concentration on the
principles of legitimacy, we have to recall his experience
under Fascism-clearly revealed in his correspondence,
especially in his letters to Mosca. Mosca's theory of the political class had been an argument against the corruption
of parliamentary democracy; Ferrero's concept of legitimacy was an intellectual weapon against Fascism's violence. In search of a principle oflegitimacy to give stability
to the rule and structures' of representative government,
old Europe flounders between varieties of dictatorship or
"caesarism" and the. threa~ of revolutions that, for their
part, offer no solutions,.capable of substantially modifying
the course of history.
The subject of legitimacy marks our century, especially
after the First World War. Foretold.in the works of SaintSimon, the theory of political class and elites is essentially
87
�an inheritance from the nineteenth century. New subjects
for political thought introduce the 'new century: the new
feudalism, representation, legitimacy, consent. To give
these subjects-whose pertinency is now unmistakabletheir full weight was one of Ferrero's great intuitions.
LEGITIMACY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS
The inspiration of these themes by the struggle with
events tends to confirm that Ferrero did not, as has been
written, come upon the idea of legitimacy in Geneva in
1930 while preparing a course on the French Revolution
and Napoleon, lO but more than ten years earlier, as he says
himself. In Principles of Power, he tells how in 1918 a few
pages ofTalleyrand gave him the key to the understanding
of the history of Europe since the French Revolution:
It took ... a universal catastrophe and a few pages from an
old forgotten book before I became aware of the existence of
the mysterious Genii that were helping and persecuting me
without my knowledge .... The World War was just coming
to an end, and the thrones of Europe were falling one on top
of the other with a deafening clatter. To while away the
hours, I started reading some ancient and forgotten tomes
which were somewhat in the spirit of the times. One day,
while reading Talleyrand's Memoirs, I came across seven
pages in the second volume that revealed to me the principles
oflegitimacy. The revelation was momentous. From then on
I began to see clearly in the history of mankind and in my own
destiny. 11
Legitimacy completed a theory of power that Ferrero
first began to elaborate in the early years of the century.
To undo fear, that primordial condition of human nature,
and to create artificial conditions of stability and security,
man fashions power in the same way he organizes social
life and makes civilization. But power performs its task of
dispelling insecurity only to the extent that it draws upon
an objective idea that legitimates it and lends legality to its
actions. "Power can attain its proper perfection, legitimacy, only through a sort of unwritten contract." This
contract grounds power in the reciprocal promise of the
ruled to obey and the rulers to observe certain rules and
pursue certain ends. In every society legitimacy sanctions
the exercise of power. "As soon as the two parties no
longer respect this contract, the principle of legitimacy
loses its strength. Fear returns." 12 Primordial fear returns-but within society. The ruled fear the force avail·
able to the rulers, the rulers' rebellion, and the frailty of
consent on which they can rely. Power can guarantee "the
rules of the game" of living together only to the extent
that it serves the principles that give a society its direction.
Once the ties of the principles of legitimacy loosen, mistrust invades rulers and ruled: insecurity and fear slowly
88
overcome the human soul. An instrument made to combat
fear, power can incite it, both active and passive, when uit
violates the principle of legitimacy that has up to then jus·
tified it."ll The primordial condition of man, Hobbes's
state of nature, is overcome by the institution and religion
of legitimacy, power. 14 But this religion cannot do without
a rational creed, without rulers with authority and without
the consent of the governed. The principle of legitimacy
ties everything together. It is the actual living constitution
of its group. Power, however, cannot rest on an unequivo-
cal relation between rulers and governed. Like any other
institution, it has to come to terms with the basic contradiction "between human liberty and the social necessity
for reactions that can be foreseen." 15 At the basis of power
there is ambivalence, the same ambivalence that Freud
found in the same years at the foundations of civiliza.
tion, !6 and that the Berlin sociologist, Georg Simmel,
thinks accompanies all subordinationP
The principles of legitimacy attenuate this ambiva·
lence. Because they objectify the idea that endows the organization of society from below and above with meaning,
they serve to preserve subordination from abuse. Govern·
ment and the governed both submit to the idea that underlies the institution. From this idea all members of the
group draw the assurance of the obiectivity of the exercise
of power, which is intimately connected to the idea of legitimacy. Ferrero spoke of "the invisible genii of the city."
Again we are surprised by an analogy with Georg Simmel,
who speaks of the "characteristic and deeply rooted capac·
ity of both individuals and groups to draw new strength
from things whose energy stems from them." The ancient
Greeks, says Simmel, created gods "by sublimating their
own qualities" and then expected the gods to give them a
morality and the strength to practice it.lB
Ferrero's principles of legitimacy are modern gods that
men fashion then to draw from them the rules of political
conduct. These gods must remain inviolate in their sanctuaries, because, "every true authority is divine, and no
material force can violate it." 19 uMen will never acknowl-
edge other men's right to command them unless by a feeling of mystical origin which the intellect cannot explain .... A secular state is an impossible contradiction,
and the authority of the state, like that of a father or
mother, is either by nature hieratic, even when stripped of
rites, or apocryphaJ."20 Men's readiness to hold the principles of legitimacy sacred accounts for the religious dimension in politics. The religious dimension comes not only
because politics was born in temples. It inheres in the nature of political things. 21
Because of this religious dimension, the principles of legitimacy make up the actual living constitution in its organization of a group of men from above and below. They
justify power, the power to command and to rule. "Of all
the inequalities among men none has such telling conse·
quences and, therefore, such a need for justification as the
inequality that comes of power. With rare exceptions one
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�man is as good as another. Why should, one have the right
to command and the rest the duty to obey? The answer
lies in the principles of legitimacy!' 22 They make possible
"tacit agreement between rulers and ruled about the specific laws and rules that determine the conferment and
limits of power." This implicit understanding frees government "from the fear of revolt ever present in the enforced obedience of its subjects." And the subjects no
longer "fear and distrust power." 23 Legitimacy becomes a
complex mechanism which includes a choice of purposes
that must win the assent of all; means of achieving them,
clearly identifiable in institutions; a set of capable men, a
political class, with an effective, and not only formal, mandate to represent the people.
This complex picture of political realities shows the
great intuitive understanding and relevance of Ferrero's
contribution to political thought. Power amounts no
longer to the power of the elitists, to a simple matter of
fact that an organized minority conquers and wields. The
problem of power is intimately tied to legitimacy. Power
must be understood as a circular process. Through consent,24 identification, and representation, 25}egitimacy rises
from below, while power comes down from above in the
actions of the political class that exercises it.26 A more
complex conception has overcome the one-sided vision of
the elitists. The principles of legitimacy work as the invisible "genii of the city."
Through the principles of legitimacy the prevailing
needs of society find realization in an idea that underlies
the formation and guides the actions of a group. This idea
makes up, to speak in juridical terms, the actual constitution of every organization 27 It balances the force available
to the government, which achieves its objectivity through
this idea, and the consent that rises from below. With the
disappearance of this idea consent breaks up and the force
power exercises grows more pronounced and subjective in
its exercise. Mistrust and fear increase. jjNo government
can endure if it is not upheld by a certain force. But woe to
the government that wants to do and command too much!
Some force is necessary, too much is harmful. A government needs authority, prestige, respect. A government
can never have too much authority. The state is authority,
not force." 28 "The principles oflegitimacy have the task of
freeing rulers and ruled from their mutual fears. They increasingly substitute consent for coercion in their relation.
They are, therefore, the pillars of civilization. For men's
effort to free themselves from the fears that torment them
is civilization." 29
The elitists had, however, taught Ferrero that political
conflict cannot be reduced to a conflict of principles:
No principle of legitimacy can thrust itself upon a nation
solely by its own power; in the beginning every principle is
imposed by an organized minority that attempts to overcome
the repugnance and incomprehension of those who are
bound to obey 30
THE ST, JOHNS REVIEW
The time described in these lines is the time of the rise
of a new principle, the phase of prelegitimacy. For principles oflegitimacy "are born, grow, age and die. Sometimes
they differ and collide. Their life cycles and their struggles
make up the invisible web of history."l 1 Prelegitimacy involves the minority that assumes the role of introducing
the new principles. Legitimacy, in contrast, implies all the
forces at work in the political sphere, above all majority
and opposition. The opposition cannot be suppressed
without damage. "Whatever the nature of the suffrage by
which sovereign people express themselves ... , it is obvious that its will cannot be identified with either the will of
the majority or with the will of the minority, that each is a
different section of the unique sovereign will and that the
latter is to be found in the juxtaposition of the two willsmajority and minority. It is therefore impossible to suppress the will of either one without mutilating the sovereign will and drying up the source of legitimacy." 32 In a
system of solid political liberties the opposition must be
free to perform its task. "For the minority to be able to
offer a serious and fruitful opposition it requires a firmly
established system ... so that the will of the people may
not be falsified by coercion, intimidation, or corruption.
But a false majority, which would only be a disguised minority, would always be too frightened of the opposition to
allow it to make loyal use of the political freedom it needs,
or to respect the freedom of suffrage sincerely." 33 Such
conditions of "false majority" foreshadow a crisis oflegitimacy, the outbreak of force and fear on the political stage.
Anarchy spreads. And power threatened threatens in return even to the point of a recourse to a "policy of assassination," a policy that begins in the modern world with the
rise of Napoleon.l4 The break-up of legitimacy means
a return to the original condition of insecurity and precariousness. The mechanisms of defense and aggression that
men had thought laid aside forever come to life again, now
magnified by power. A power that feels threatened and attacks nascent rebellion, and, thereby, excites new and
fiercer violence.
That political struggle cannot be understood entirely in
terms of principles of legitimacy does not mean that Ferrero considers principles oflegitimacy instruments of justification in the hands of the minority that holds power.
This refusal to reduce principles of legitimacy to mere instruments of justification, distinguishes Ferrero's princi~
pies of legitimacy from the political formula of Gaetano
Mosca, at least in its early elaborations.* The principle of
legitimacy also includes the political formula but is not
equivalent to it. The two expressions, legitimacy and polit*In the last chapter of Storia delle dottrine politiche, Bari 1933, Mosca
describes the political formula (the entire chapter is translated in J. H.
Meisel, The Myth of the Ruling Class, Ann Arbor, Mich. 1958, 382-391):
One of the first results of the new method was the notion of what,
since 1883, has been known as the political formula, meaning that in all
societies, be their level ever so mediocre, the ruling class will justify its
89
�ical formula are, in fact, only in appearance similar.l5 Like
power, the political formula comes' from above. The prin·
ciple of legitimacy, however, involyes all participants in
the political process, for it provides the basis for the tacit
contract that institutes rule. The difference between legitimacy and the political formula may be subtle. In my judgment, 'however, it shows the difference in perspective
from which Mosca and Ferrero viewed the role of legitimacy in the dynamics of politics. Upon the reading of the
just published second edition of Elementi di scienza Politica in 1923, Ferrero wrote Mosca in a letter already
quoted in part:
It seems to me that you still don't give sufficient impor-
tance to what you call the political formula and I call the principle of legitimacy of governments. You seem still to consider
it a sort of pia fraus or conventional lie, useful for justifying
governmental power, above all in the eyes of the ignorant
masses. I am increasingly persuaded that it is the essential
part of government and that force is only a subordinate element, which has no true efficacy unless it is based on the first.
A government is not the real thing unless it has persuaded all
those who obey it that it has a right to command.36
As I remarked at the beginning, legitimacy had contemporary relevance for Ferrero. Ferrero wanted to understand the political crisis of his own times. He concluded
that absence or insufficiency of a principle of legitimacy
had allowed the history of modern Europe continually to
oscillate between varieties of dictatorships or Caesarism
that surreptitiously seek to restore the old principles of legitimacy and revolutions that vainly try to impose with
force new principles of legitimacy that have no place in a
quantitative civilization. The democratic principle based
on universal suffrage is too frail to sustain rule. It comes
down to number simply, to an electoral machine. It has
lost all metaphysical and moral significance.J7 It has corrupted representation. For the most part, it came from
above: "Universal suffrage was everywhere thrust upon
the masses by a minority recruited from the upper class
and supported by a few popular groups. It came from
above exactly like monarchic power. And it descended
from above because the government, after admitting that
the will of the people was alone or in part the source of
legitimate authority, was unable to stop in midstride for
power by appealing to some sentiment or credence generally accepted in
that period and by that society, such as the presumed Popular or Divine
Will, the notion of a distinct nationality or Chosen People, traditional
loyalty toward a dynasty, or confidence in a man of exceptional qualities.
Of course, every political formula must reflect the specific intellectual
and moral maturity of the people and the epoch in which it is adopted. It
must closely correspond to the particular conception of the world prevailing at that time in that particular society, in order to cement the moral
unity of all the individuals who compose it.
Any indication that a political formula has become "dated," that the
faith in its principles has become shaky, that the ardent sentiments
which once inspired it have begun to cool down is a sign that serious
transformations of the ruling class are imminent.
90
very long at arbitrary distinctions that restricted sovereign
rights to a part of the nation. The people means everyone.
A simple irresistible solution." 38 Universal suffrage also
failed to endow the collectivity with the mystery of value.
The consequences were profound: "the collapse of all
authority":
The ruin of all principles of authority in which Western civilisation believed is the greatest destruction caused by the
war. . . . All authority has collapsed. Sheer force rules the
world, force alone, stark naked, or covered up with red rags or
the torn shred of a national flag. Force governs as best it can,
with excesses and sudden starts, without discernment. It tears
the world apart. For force is so weak when it is naked and
alone. 39
With the collapse of all authority after the First World
War, Europe on the one hand entrusted itself to the myth
of "regenerative violence" that has not and never will prevail and which has only spawned various madness:
The Revolution has not won and could not win because it did
not give birth to a new principle of authority. Universal suffrage is not a principle of authority, but an electoral machine
for collecting votes and putting together assemblies, large and
small. When has the world ever been governed by a machine?
A government is eyes, arms, brains, thought, and will. A machine is a piece of blind inanimate matter, moved by external
force. 40
On the other hand, everyone in Europe called loudly for a
"strong government". But governments of that time were
a strange mixture of strength and weakness, "immense
force bolstered by tottering authority."41 All this resulted
in a series of dictatorships that could not justify their
power and sought to revive as much as possible the old
monarchial power42 Dictatorships and revolutions appealed to each other and justified each other in a vicious
cycle that kept out the crucial problem: the not merely formal, but the actual legitimacy of power. After 1930, Ferrero wrote, "The confusion becomes general. We must go
to the bottom of the problem; distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate governments by means of definitions that go to the root of the problem; study intermediate forms and drive out the mental chaos of our wandering
by the effort to understand it."43
What did Ferrero think would become of the principle
of legitimacy? Its future depended on overcoming this period of transition in which men believed they could build a
civilization solely on quantity. "The world," Ferrero said
to Bogdan Raditsa in 1939,
will not recover order, peace, and freedom to live and think
until the day it rediscovers the eternal ~rinciples of any civilisation: quality, limits, and legitimacy. 4
Mankind, or at any rate its elite, now faces a decisive turning
point: it has become too well informed, too sure of itself, too
skeptical to believe in a principle of legitimacy as a religious
WINTER/SPRJNG 1983
�absolute without wanting to know why. It wants to reason
everything out, even principles of legitimacy. Therefore it
must not remain content to reason only to the point where
every principle of legitimacy appears a'!:>surd or unjust. It
must go beyond that to the very bottom of the problem. It
must discover the nature and the task of principles of legitimacy, so that from them it may deduce rules for a rational
ethics of authority that will transform the former mystical
veneration of government into a widespread knowledge and
sentiment of respective duties: those of the government toward its subjects and those of the subjects toward the government. There is no other solution. The problem of government today looms before the West like an enormous and
precipitous mountain, full of crevasses, glaciers, and ava-
lanches, that bars the path to all mankind.45
An Augustus who could restore the state "beginning at the
beginning with the legitimacy of the government" is called
for-not a Caesar. "We shall sink deeper and deeper into
disorder until we constitute a government whose credentials are in order, whose legitimacy, or right to govern, is
unarguable before the conscience of the nation". 46
INTUITION AND LIMITATIONS IN
FERRERO'S THINKING
Ferrero's identification of several crucial elements in
the crisis in the relation of individual to society brings his
work close to us. In the context of individual and society,
the problem of legitimacy is not only a political but also a
social problem. Social life is founded on dimensions at the
same time objective and subjective. The principles of legitimacy, in Ferrero's meaning, make sense just because
they at the same time embody the objective dimension of
collective life and the subjective assent to it through identification with the institutions that carry out the principles
of legitimacy.
Principles of!egitimacy can only rise from a balance between the objective and subjective dimensions of life. But
Ferrero deals with the sames problems that Simmel
treated in his analysis of the money economy, that Max
Weber saw in terms of formal rationality, that Freud described as civilization's discontent. 48 But Ferrero concentrates his attention chiefly on the political consequences
of the crisis in legitimacy-and on the succession and alternation of varieties of anarchy and totalitarianism that
justify and reinforce each other.
The end result of doctrines that promised men liberty,
equality, and fraternity, Ferrero wrote to Mosca in 1920,
has been the coming of governments "harder and more
violent, because stronger but less authoritative ... that today are all turning into tyrannies based on money and
force .... As for the rebirth of the principle of authority, I
believe that it is inevitable but that it will come about
slowly, in a distant future. We shall not live to see it. Probably the new principle of authority will take shape around
persons, institutions, and doctrines that will defend men
against this dreadful tyranny."49
Ferrero did not mean to write political theory. From the
point of view of theory, there are, in fact, many things to
criticize: his too formalistic and sometimes too abstract exposition of legitimacy that is more bound to principles
and, therefore, to the images of legitimacy, than to the
mechanisms of consent and of identification that bring legitimacy; the consequent impression of neglect of daily realities, of the relations and interaction of social life that
produce power and legitimation; and finally his recourse
to language that too often resorts to emotion rather than
proof.
Ferrero has, however, at least two great merits. He went
beyond the power theory of the elitists. And with the theory of legitimacy he made a notable advance on the theory
of ideology and upon Mosca's political formula. Many of
Ferrero's books and many of his views show the marks of
time. I believe, however, that these two themes could provide the beginning of a new chapter in political analysis. In
Italy, Ferrero wrote, at least, the introductory paragraph of
that chapter.
Translated by Frances Frenaye
modern culture, in Ferrero's view, founded on quantity,
on the increase of numbers, on progress defined in terms
of production, on a money economy, has provoked a crisis
in the subjective dimension of social life. Faced with the
increase of complexity and at the same time with the
fragmentation of social life, with role conflicts and manifold expectations that sweep him up, the individual, as
Simmel observed, defends himself with indifference and
gives up identifications that might disturb the unity of his
mental life. 47 The impossibility of striking a balance between the objective and subjective dimensions of life is
the crisis in legitimacy. It was in its capacity to balance between subjective and objective life that Ferrero found the
"religious" implication of the principles of legitimacy.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
l. Later reprinted in Gaetano Mosca, Partiti e sinddcati nella crisi del regime parlamentare, Bari 1949.
2. Vilfredo Pareto, Trasformazione della democrazia, Milano 1921.
3. Bogdan Raditsa, Colloqui con Guglielmo Ferrero, Lugano 1939, 63.
4. Ferrero came to Taine through Cesare Lombroso, who also considered him one of his teachers. His way of conceiving and approaching history is certainly very similar to Taine's. Both men had the idea of studying the past in order to understand the reasons for a contemporary crisis,
whether in France after 1870 or in Italy at the turn of the century. It may
well be that Ferrero's sensitivity to the problem of the legitimacy of
power came also from Taine. For the relationship of Taine, Lombroso,
and Ferrero, see M. Simonetti, "Georges Sorel e Guglielmo Ferrero fra
"cesarismo" borghese e socialismo" (with 27 unpublished letters from
Sorel to Ferrero 1896~1921), Il Pensiero Politico, 5, l. On Taine, C.
Mongardini, Storia e sociologia nell'operra di H. Taine, Milan 1965.
91
�5. Guglielmo Ferrero, Lavecchia Europa e_ Ia nuova. Saggi e discorsi, Mi·
lan 1918, 36.
•
6. Guglielmo Ferrero, Storia e filosofia della storia, Nuova Antologia, November 1, 1910. Reprinted in B. Raditsa, Colloqui, Lugano 1939, 100.
7. B. Raditsa, Colloqui, Lugano 1939, 63-64~
8. Cf. C. Mongardini, Profili della sociologia italianc1, Rome 1982.
9. C. Mongardini ed., Gaetano Mosca-Guglielmo Ferrero. Carteggio
(1896-1934), Milan 1980, 331. A translation of the entire letter of May 5,
1923, appears in "Letters on Legitimacy" in this issue of the St. John's
Review.
10. Cf. N. Bobbio, "II potere e il diritto," Nuovo Antologia, Aprill982.
The exact date is important. Because if we date the idea from the course
given in Geneva in 1930, we must recall that Max Weber's Wirtschaft und
Gesellschaft, posthumously published in 1921, contains a famous characterization of the forms oflegitimate power. Actually, Ferrero had amply
developed his idea of legitimacy in Memorie e confessioni di un sovrano
<kposto, Milan 1920.
11. G. Ferrero, Principles of Power, New York 1942, 18-19. This book
first appeared in an edition (published by Brentano's) in French, the Ian·
guage of its writing, in New York in 1942.
12. G. Ferrero, Power, New York 1942, 42.
13. G. Ferrero, Power, New York 1942, 42.
14. There are, however, important "differences between Ferrero and
Hobbes, Cf. D. Settembrini, "Riscopriamo Guglielmo Ferrero," Tempo
Presente, June 1982.
15. G. Ferrero, The Reconstruction of Europe, New York 1941, 32.
16. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, first published in
German at the end of 1929.
17. Georg Simmel, "Ober und Unterordnung" in Soziologie, Untersu·
chungen iiber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung, Berlin 1908. Translation
in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited and translated by Kurt H.
Wolff, New York 1950, 181-306, 193:
Man has an intimate dual relation to the principle of subordination.
On the one hand, he wants to be dominated. The majority of men not
only cannot exist without leadership; they also feel that they cannot;
they seek the higher power which relieves them of responsibility; they
seek a restrictive, regulatory rigor which protects them not only
against the outside world but also against themselves. But no less do
they need opposition to the leading power, which only through this
opposition, through move and countermove, as it were, attains the
right place in the life pattern of those who obey it.
18. Cf. G. Simmel, "Comment les formes sociales se maintiennent,"
L'annee sociologique, 1897. Also, in a later, longer draft, "Die Selbsterhaltung der sozialen Gruppe" in Soziologie, Untersuchungen tiber die
Formen der Vergesellschaftung, 3 Leipzig 1923, 375-459. English translation of the earlier draft, "The Persistence of Social Groups," American
Journal of Sociology 5, March 1898, 662-698; 6, May 1898, 829-836; 4,
july 1898, 35-50.
19. G. Ferrero, Memorie e confessioni di un sovrano deposto, Milan 1920.
On the nature of principles of legitimacy, cf. also, L. Pellicani, "Rivoluzione e totalitarismo," Controcorrente, October-December 1974.
20. G. Ferrero, Memorie, Milan 1920, 280. Because of their sacred char·
acter all principles of legitimacy, even originally partly rational, "can be·
come absurd in their application." The rational element in principles of
legitimacy "is accidental, external and unsubstantial" (G. Ferrero, Power,
New York 1942, 25). Moreoever, the rationality of a principle of legiti·
macy remains internal to the principle itself (117).
21. Cf. Georges Burdeau, La politique au pays des merveilles, Paris 1979,
6 ff.
92
22. G. Ferrero, Power, New York 1942,22-23.
23. G. Ferrero, Power, New York 1942,281.
24. Ferrero showed unusual foresight in distinguishing between types of
consent, especially between active and passive content. For instance,
Power, New York 1942,40-41,278,293. On types of consent, C. Mongar·
dini, Le condizioni del consenso, Rome 1980.
25. Political representation is, in Ferrero, the "supporting structure of
the democratic system" but it does not imply a close relationship between representatives and represented. The relationship passes through
the principles of legitimacy just as every action of the government
passes through them. Cf. Pier Paolo Portinaro, "Democrazia e dittatura
in Guglielmo Ferrero," Comunitd, 33, 181, October 1979.
26. Power, New York 1942, 171.
·
27. Ferrero's recall in Power (132) of Hans Kelsen, "one of the greatest
exponents of constitutional and international law of our time," is not ac·
cidental. A little further on (143-144), he seems to subtly argue with him:
Efficacy has a role in the eternal drama of legitimacy, but a different
role from that assigned to it by contemporary thought. Though attached to it, legitimacy never depends directly on the efficacy of gov·
emment, which may increase or diminish over a long period of time
without affecting legitimacy.
28. G. Ferrero, Memorie, Milan 1920, 292-293.
29. G. Ferrero, Power, New York 1942, 48.
30. Power, 169.
31. Power, 49.
32. Power, 173-174.
33. Power, 175.
34. Power, 201-203.
35. N. Bobbio ("II potere e il diritto," Nuova Antologia, April 1982)
seems, instead, to lend them the same meaning.
36. See the discussions between Mosca and Ferrero on "political for·
mula" and "principles oflegitimacy" in Gaetano Mosca-Guglielmo Fer·
rero. Carteggio (1896-1934), Milan 1980, 330-332 and 453-55. Transla·
tions of both these letters (May 6, 1923 and February 17, 1934) appear in
"Letters on Legitimacy" in this issue of the St. John's Review.
37. G. Ferrero, Power, 53.
38. Power, 182-183.
39. G. Ferrero, Memorie, Milan 1920, 289 and 295.
40. G. Ferrero, Memorie, Milan 1920, 285-286.
41. G. Ferrero, Words to the Deaf, New York 1925, 71.
42. G. Ferrero, "Reflexions sur une agonie," L'illustration, April 21,
1928.
43. G. Ferrero, Power, 130.
44. B. Raditsa, Colloqui, Lugano 1939, 83.
45. Power, 283-284.
46. G. Ferrero, La democrazia in Italia. Studi e precisioni, Milan 1925,
107.
47. G. Simmel, "Die Grossstadte und das Geistesleben" in Die Grasstadt, Dresden 1903, 185-206. English translation, "The Metropolis and
Mental Life," in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, New York 1950, 409424.
48. Ferrero uses the concept of identification in much the same way as
Freud, and gives it much the same importance in the interpretation of
modem society. Cf. G. Ferrero, Power, 35-36,48. For Freud, Civilization
and its Discontents (1929).
49. Mosca-Ferrero. Carteggio, Milan 1980, 295-297. A translation of this
letter of January 31, 1920 appears in "Letters on Legitimacy" in this issue
of the St. John's Review.
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�My Memoir of Our Revolution
from City of Ends
Daniel Ardrey
That morning his picture appeared on the wall-and on
all the walls all over the city. I saw from my window a small
crowd looking up at it-! went down to look myself. We
studied it in silence. He was a handsome man-no doubt
about it-and fair with his blond hair combed back en
brosse. Though the picture was a grainy black and white
snapshot you could see his eyes were blue-either that or
pale brown. Written beneath it were simple wordsBROTHERS AND SISTERS
UNITE
FOR
VICTORY
AND
THE
REvOLUTION!
They sent a shiver through us like a small shock-it was
the first time he was to speak to us and we weren't used to it
yet. Nor were we used to reading: our lips moved as we
read and our heads jerked on from word to word. As we
stood there looking up we all knew that this was our expec·
tation and our fulfillment. I looked around and saw tears in
some of the women's eyes-Marissa was there and snif·
fling into a much worn hankerchief. My reaction was one
of enormous relief as though a huge burden had been
lifted from my shoulders. My back straightened involun-
Daniel Ardrey lives in Boston.
The above selection comes from an unpublished novel, City of Ends.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
tarily and I raised my chin. Marissa came over to me-her
eyes were reddened.
Isn't it too wonderful?
she asked.
Yes, it is
I answered-it was trueIt's what we all hoped for.
I patted her on the shoulder-! wanted to console her
though there was nothing to be sad about. His picture
alone had given us new meaning.
The rest of the day I saw small groups of people clustered in front of it speculating.
What's he like? Will we ever see him? Where' s he
from? Look at those eyes. And the chin. And the
hair. What'll he do?
And so on. The kinds of questions people asked to flesh
out their initial excitement. Because above all we wanted
to think of him as a man. There was something about his
face-perhaps the jutting of his chin, perhaps his piercing
eyes-that inspired confidence and respect. And, of
course, we saw him as the personification of our Revolution. From now on it was going to cease to be amorphous
and confusing. We were like those wakened from a deep
and troubled sleep-to see in his face that which we'd
dreamt and forgotten, or never known. I went about my
business as usual-though nothing was as usual then. It
was before and after, light and dark-a total change and so
clearly defined. If our Revolution was to have a human
face, his, it was also going to take on a personality, also his.
That would make it so much easier to understand, I
thought-no longer were we going to be perplexed and
baffled and because of it always afraid. No, this was itand the act of reading his words gave me a feeling of intimate relation to him. Although he was addressing us as
brothers and sisters we couldn't be that-we would have
to be children and led. Not that we'd mind-it was only
93
�logical. The Revolution had made us all children anyway.
Though some of us were older than others, the Revolution
had led us into a world that was fresh and clean and beautiful-like a child's. There was also the unknown-so much
of it I couldn't say-that's where he came in. Like a father
he'd tell us what was and what wasn't. That is to say, define our beliefs and behavior. We all had a sense of this-in
some way or another-and if we were discussing the color
of his eyes or hair we were also thinking of these other
things.
I went about my business humming, arranging things on
my shelves. The shutter to my shop was half up and while
my back was turned Roderigo came in. I heard his voice
behind me and knew who it was.
Well, what do you think?
What?
Is he for real? Or is it a plot? Somebody out to get
us.
I was so startled I dropped what I had in my hand. I had to
bend down to pick it up before I turned to him. I saw he
was serious.
How can you think that?
I said.
It wouldn't make sense.
Maybe not. Or maybe not now, maybe later.
Roderigo shrugged with his face, his shoulders didn't
move, and sat down on an orange crate. He took a toothpick from his coat pocket and began to pick at his teeth.
We'd be fools to fall for it if it weren't for real,
wouldn't we?
he went on.
I suppose so,
I said. I sat down on something and scratched the side of
my forehead-it was to give me time to think. He was
studying me with great care.
You know,
he beganWe all think we're so clever. I mean that we know
how to get by. And we do. Look at us.
He moved his hand palm upward in a half circle.
But what else do we know?
Pause. He answered his own question.
Not much, maybe nothing. We don't have the
faintest idea what we're getting into, do we?
Maybe not,
I said thinking how best to phrase itBut everyone was thinking the same thing at the
same time. It was like we all knew what was going
to happen and didn't know what it was.
My turn to pause.
That means something, you can't deny it.
I don't.
He took the toothpick and balanced it on his forefinger.
He studied it for a momentIt's his face that frightens me. Maybe any face
would, but this one more than most.
94
I don't feel it,
I said-
Nobody else did, you'll get used to it. Maybe you'll
even trust him.
Maybe.
He wiped the toothpick on his sleeve and put it back in his
pocket. It was going to be one of those conversations without an end. He got up, looked over my shelves and
shrugged-this time with his shoulders and not his face.
Then he went out without a word. Roderigo was one of
those people who made you feel like you'd made another
mistake-and that you'd go on making them. Usually he
did it with a laugh-this time he didn't. I didn't care. It was
his problem, not mine. I never like to convince someone of
anything-my convictions were for myself. I didn't even
think much about them. I thought that I was born with
them. And that we all were. I believed that the Revolution
was a victory for all of us-whether or not we believed
in it.
It was the kind of day I kept trying to remember something I wasn't trying to forget. All day it was there. Like a
little particle of sand irritating the tissue around it. By the
time I lay down and fell asleep I'd been exhilarated so long
I was exhausted. It was then I realized-almost dreaming
it -that it was in fact the Anniversary of our Revolution.
How amazing he should've appeared then!
His name was Kamal. It was one of many things we were
soon to find out about him. After the first wall poster there
were many others-each one with his picture at the top
like an emblem. Or like his signature-in this case its position reversed-as if he'd signed his statement at the beginning to ensure its authenticity. That way we were to know
what followed was genuine and to be believed in. Each
morning I looked down at the wall from my window-the
shutters now left open day and night-and saw there was
another poster up. I threw on my clothes and raced downstairs. Others on the street did likewise-some of us stood
still buttoning our shirts or still combing our hair. We soon
got better at reading-our lips moved less-though there
was still a murmuring as we read. It was communal: we did
it together and enjoyed it. We didn't even notice that for
the first time we were together and that it was through and
because of him.
He told us a great deal about himself-his life history as
it were-but always in passing. His main subject was-as it
had to be-the Revolution. But we knew about that-or
thought we did-so it was him we were curious about. He
seemed to realize this. At the end of a short textWINTER/SPRING 1983
�THE REVOLUTION MUST GO ON, DO NOT
BETRAY IT, YOU ARE THE BYES AND
EARS, BEUEVE IN THE REVOLUTION AND
IT WILL BEUEVE IN YOU
and so on-were a few lines about himself. It was these we
read and reread until each of us knew his life history by
heart. His poor parents and their harassment by the tax
collectors of the Old Regime. How his brother had died as
a child from starvation. How his mother had wept and carried the body for days even though it was lifeless. How his
father had worked twelve and fourteen and sixteen hours a
day for a pittance. How he-Kamal-had had to work as
hard as a child-and how he'd begun to read. His reading
fascinated us-we did little of it ourselves and thought
that a man of action would do likewise. No, in his youth he
was almost scholarly. He'd gone to a seminary, then to a
university on scholarship, and then on to do post graduate
work abroad-all this while he worked nights as a sole support of his family. His father had become a cripple-victimized by a work accident that twisted his back and for
which there was no compensation. His mother had great
difficulty breathing-from the noxious fumes she'd had to
inhale at her factory. It was almost a blessing when she'd
died-for her last years were spent gasping for breath like
a fish out of water. We read in awe of someone who could
transform himself from such a background to a life of
scholarship-and then out of nowhere to become the embodiment of the Revolution.
The wall posters became a vital part of our lives. You
saw parents taking children down to read them-then children saying them to themselves as they walked home. The
wall posters were not easy to read-they were pasted one
on top of the next and the wall itself was often pitted and
cracked to begin with. So reading one wall poster was a
reminder-admittedly subconscious-of all the others you
had read that were under it. In this way, the Revolution
that often seemed to have little or no history began to take
on a collective past for us. There was another problem
with them-their printing. We had little experience of it
and whoever was doing it was learning his craft as he went.
There were differently shaped letters in the same word,
smeared ink that ran in the rain, and lines of printing that
went up to edge of the poster and off it -so between that
and the line below was a gap of meaning our reading had
to leap over. We learned to interpret these signs as we
learned to read-they made the text all the more intriguing. At the bottom of each poster was an imprimatur in
tiny letters-Errico studio, it said. We wondered where
that was-we never knew. What an honor to be the first
among us to read his thoughts-like walking up to him and
shaking his hand.
At this point there were those who had doubts. About
him. About the course of the Revolution itself. As days
went by and summer began I heard more and more people
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
whispering. I thought of Roderigo. I hadn't seen him since
he'd confided in me. I was sure I had doubts myself-to
have seen Kamal in person would've dispelled them for
me. And for most of us. But he didn't appear. We weren't
dealing with an ordinary man. He knew of our doubts as I
was sure he knew of everything in our minds. I always got
the feeling he could read them-the same way we read his
through the wall posters. Before long we read there would
be a sign-one that would show each of us that he was real
and the real extent of his powers.
THERE IS GOOD AND THERE IS EVIL IN
THE WORLD. THE REVOLUTION IS GOOD.
ALL ELSE IS EVIL.
It was simple-we understood.
THERE IS ONE TRUTH AND THAT IS THE
TRUTH OF THE REVOLUTION. IT IS UKE
LIGHT. WITH IT YOU CAN SEE AND WITHOUT IT YOU ARE LOST IN THE DARK.
BROTHERS AND SISTERS, BELIEVE!
We wondered what that sign was going to be. There was all
sorts of speculation. People spoke of a trembling of the
ground or other kinds of apparently natural phenomena.
Perhaps we got a little too metaphysical in our enthusiasm.
When his sign came it was as striking as it was appropriate
and all the more convincing for us.
It was late one evening and I was in my room sitting by
myself in the dark. I heard a scratching at the door. It was
Oggi-who else? He was among the sceptical but I sensed
in him someone waiting to believe. I let him in and he
dropped his weapons in the corner with a clunk. I made
some coffee and we sat sipping it. The windows were open
and there was a pleasant breeze blowing the curtains back
and forth. They brushed against my arm from time to
time-for a moment I thought I'd been touched by some
hands. It sent a sensation through me I wasn't sure of. It
was as we sat there-the two of us not talking-that we
began to see it happening. The city was lighting up. Bit by
bit. The area by the marina went on. Then that near the
National Museum. Then near the foot hills. Oggi and I put
down our mugs as one and stood up to lean out. We still
didn't speak but our shoulders rested against each other.
Then my own room lit up and it became as bright as day.
Brighter. It was blinding. We turned from the window to
try and look. I shielded my eyes. There were flashes that
seemed to go off in my head. I blinked a few times and
began to see. There was a single light bulb hanging from
the ceiling by a cord-l'd long ago forgotten about it. And
there it was on again. I laughed. Spasmodic. Nervousness
mostly. And the expression in Oggi's face was miraculous.
A cross between anger and being hurt. Then amazement.
95
�He went up to the bulb and touched it with his finger. He
jerked it back and brought it to his ,mouth. It was already
too hot. He was shaking his head back and forth. Of course
he knew what it was-we all did-but electricity was so
strange for us. To have been without it for so long and
then to have it again-that was ridiculous. There was a
switch on the wall that'd been there all the time-! went
over to it and moved it down. The bulb went out. I moved
it up and the bulb went on again. Oggi laughed and put
out his finger to touch it-then stopped. He smiled at me
and shook his head. Then he went to the switch and
flicked it back and forth several times. The light went on
and off again. Each time we laughed and louder. And
harder. Soon we were laughing so hard Oggi got the hiccups. I slapped him on the back and he stood hiccuping
and shaking his head.
Unbelievable!
he gaspedUnbelievable!
I couldn't have agreed more though the strange thing was
that we did believe. And we knew we owed it all to Kamal.
That summer was so mild. The breezes came off the sea
and kept the city cool and temperate. It was so pleasurable.
We felt a new and assured sense of security.
It was a time for hard work and no play-Kamal told us so
and we believed.
THE REVOLUTION WANTS YOUR SPIRIT
AND YOUR HANDS
we read-and all of us wanted to join in. Oggi came bythis time his hands were empty and he carried no
weapons.
I buried them,
he answered my inquiring lookI'm not going to be needing them.
And he was gone-in search of a trowel or some digging
implement. Such was our confidence! In ourselves. In Kamal. I walked wherever I pleased and in the middle of the
street. All over I saw groups of children and young
adults-they were picking up bricks, one by one, and setting them in piles. For so long the city had been a place
caught in mid-movement-it was the Revolution that had
stopped it like that. I passed a bank where the construction
looked like it was still going on. The hoists were in place,
mortar had hardened on the trowels, the ladders still led
up from floor to floor. It was these things we thought we
could get going again. Everywhere there were people
96
clearing and scraping and washing off. When I walked past
they looked up and waved-then went back to their work.
There was a sense of camaraderie-to be out and working
together felt so good. Because it was for us-and for him.
I had my problems-that is, my business. There were so
many things I'd saved up that were all of a sudden of no
use-most obviously, candles. I was loathe to throw them
away so I simply stuck them in the back of my shop. You
could never tell, I told myself-how often I'd predicted
one thing only to have another happen. My motto was to
keep it -whatever it was-even if at the time it made no
sense. I had to find new things-and fast-so I was out
looking around the city for one thing in particular. Light
bulbs. I'd had to wade through piles of junk to get my
hands on one of seventy-five or a hundred watts. For me it
was a new technology-to survive I had to adapt to it.
Wherever I found one I unscrewed it from the socket and
wrapped it in tissue paper. Light bulbs were so fragile unlike most of what I carried-candles were a lot easier to
take care of but then no one was going to want them. I
spent my days walking all over the city looking for light
bulbs-and I found them. Where I expected-where
they'd been left-in apartments and offices long since
abandoned. To me they were small and precious and delicate. And it wouldn't be long before everyone else thought
so too. We were so excited by the electricity that we left
our lights burning day and night. You'd see people switching them on and off for the sheer fun of it-like Oggi and
me. When it was dark and I was walking around I could
look in and see the bulbs burning. People were gathered
under them and looking up. No one drew their shades or
closed their shutters-at night we had no sense of our own
exposure. It was still so new to us. But I knew that sooner
or later the bulbs we had were going to go out-and others
would be in demand. I was trying to get my hands on every
last bulb I could find-to be ready for that time.
I had always to be one step ahead-if not I'd never make
it. The Revolution was carrying me and everyone else
along with it-that is, we never knew what was going to
come next. Everything-whether living or not-was part
of it-light bulbs as much as the rest. So meaning was
everywhere. If I had one ability above all it was my apprehension of this. It was easy to see that people were part of
the Revolution-even a child knew that-but many of us
never knew that things were also a part of it. Perhaps what
gave me so much confidence in Kamal was my sense that
he understood this too.
THE REVOLUTION IS IN YOUR HANDS. WASH
THEM! THEY MUST BE CLEAN!
EACH THING YOU TOUCH IS THE REVOLUTION.
IT IS THERE BEFORE YOU. IT IS THERE
AFTER YOU. REMEMBER YOU ARE NEVER
ALONE!
WINTER/SPRJNG 1983
�The most evident thing about his writings was his fondness for exclamation marks. I'd forgotten at first what they
were for-someone reading a wall poster next to me had
told me. Then I'd understood. How mcire than anything
else they conveyed his sense of urgency and emotion. It
was strange for us to think of him as emotional-the Revolution as we'd understood it had no room for that. It was
Kamal who showed us how mistaken we were. He made it
come to life for us.
THE REVOLUTION IS YOU. IT LIVES IN
YOUR HEART. IT BREATHES AS YOU
BREATHE. BELIEVE IN IT AND YOU WILL
UVE FOREVER!
Perhaps that's why we were no longer afraid of it-to be in
fear of yourself wasn't the same thing as to be in fear of the
unknown. Kamal made the Revolution familiar to us all.
He made us see it was something to feel for and even to
love.
Love wasn't too strong a word. We had no word that
meant the same thing all the time-or even for very long.
Love came closest to that. It wasn't a word I'd have used
for someone else-not for Oggi, much as I cared for him.
Nor for my mother, though you were supposed to love
your mother. She had made that relationship one that
couldn't be expressed by a word. The Revolution was different-it was in direct contact with each of us. It was Kamal who showed us what that meant.
LOVE THE REVOLUTION AND IT WILL LOVE
YOU BACK!
To us it was true and like so many things he showed us we
saw it as if for the first time. I always thought he could read
our minds but was more than that, he knew what we were
going to think before we thought it. In that sense all time
was present to him at all times-while we kept living our
day to day lives. When we read
THE REVOLUTION MAKES YOU JOYOUS
TODAY. YOU WILL BE SADDENED TOMORROW.
it was so. The next day our mood changed. We were subdued-some of us cried. I was ashamed of myself. Marissa
came by. I gave her what she wanted and asked for nothing
in return. She was part of us and understood. Her eyes
were wet and she reached up and touched me on the
cheek. Then shook her head.
I don't know
she said! don't know. I feel sort of sick like something's
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
gone out of me. I've lost something and I don't
know what.
I felt that way. I didn't say it. I helped her out of my shop
and down the street. I felt saddened by the rocking of her
limp against me. That mood didn't last.
THE REVOLUTION IS PEACE. PEACE BEYOND WORDS. As THE REVOLUTION IS
BEYOND WORDS. PEACE BE WITH YOU!
We felt better. There was Kamal again-penetrating into
each of our hearts and minds. Holding us. Gentle. Reassuring. For Oggi-for me-for everyone-he was more than a
father. He was fatherhood, too. Imagine-then-what it
was like to hear his voice for the first time!
It was late summer-hot, not unbearable. I sat in my
room wondering what to do next. I'd sold all my light
bulbs. They'd gone in a flash when their true value became apparent. Once the old light bulbs had all gone out.
There were no more to be had. I'd gone through more
piles of junk looking for them-no luck, they weren't
there. Much to my amazement I'd begun to start selling
candles again. That's what I meant about my business being unpredictable. Now the problem was what I was going
to live on next. That's what I was thinking about when I
heard it. A rumbling. Like distant thunder. I brushed the
curtains aside-there were no clouds. I listened some
more. It was continuous. I went down into the street. Everyone else was there-including Roderigo and Old Jubal.
I hadn't seen either in a long time. Roderigo winked at me.
Old Jubal adjusted his canes and waved with one handthe same gesture as if he'd opened a door. The rumbling
was there and getting louder. All of us were looking up at
it. There was a small black box-some form of loud
speaker, I supposed-affixed high up on a building. The
rumbling was coming from it-not continuous as I'd first
thought. Spaced. In a monotone.
OmOmOm
Pause
OmOmOm
Pause again.
Om Om Om
I felt like I was looking into something-there was movement and getting closer. My head began to ache some.
Then a crackle. High pitched. So piercing our first reflex
was to clap our hands over our ears-the crackle came
through them-through flesh as through stone. So when
97
�the voice began there was relief and a collective sigh. For a
few moments our ears kept ringing. I wasn't sure what I
heard. The words seemed to have echoes to them. It was a
man's voice-curiously shrill and feminine and sounding
none too cheerful. It took us a while to figure out whose it
was-though there was no one else's it could've been. I
was standing behind Old Jubal and saw him stroking the
grey stubble on his chin. Then his hand came out to mehis canes moved and he came closer.
It's him
he whispered. I didn't hear him. I was straining to hear the
voice from the black box.
It's him! Kamal!
This time I heard. There was a rustling among usRoderigo was nodding his head beside me. I realized it
too-how strange! We hadn't thought of him having a
voice-much less a voice like this one. It was so unpleas·
ant-like a querulous school teacher we'd long ago forgotten. Then there it was again. We were face to face with
it-and with him. Kamal. A real person, voice and all,
when we'd gotten used to him as a manifesto on a wall.
He knew this. He was still reading our minds:
Some of you may not like my voice, I don't like it
either. In fact, I don't think of it as my voice. It's
too harsh. It's not how I think of myself. It hap·
pened to me under torture. It was the torturers of
the Old Regime, they did it to me. You don't
know what it is, torture. I hope you never find out.
It destroys your body and your mind, one through
the other. The people who do this to other people
are no longer people.
Pause. There was some static. Kamal went on.
I lived through it somehow. You can if you believe
each day is your last, if you're willing to give it up,
all of it. I was. I didn't know what this meant. You
can't know while it happens to you, no one can.
Afterwards my voice was never the same.
Another pause. None of us moved. We stood with our eyes
fixed on the black box.
It took me a long time to get used to it. I'd stand in
front of a mirror and practice saying words. None
of them sounded right to me. I hated them. I
hated those who'd done this to me. Then one day
I realized something. I don't know how we find
out such things, they come to us from elsewhere,
as though there is another presence in us at that
time. What had happened was that my voice was
no longer mine alone. It was mine and that of the
Revolution. The Revolution was going to speak
through me. It was the pain and screaming that
took my own voice from me. It was the Revolution
that gave it back to me with a meaning. That is
why I wanted you to hear me. Some of you will be
disappointed. Then you will hear me again and
again. You won't notice it any more. It'll be the
most natural thing in the world. Like your own
98
voices that you hear every day. Because it is not
me you are listening but yourselves. There is one
voice for all of us. I listen. I look. I can even look
· into you. I know what it is you need, I know you as
I know myself. We are all children of the Revolution. That is why we are brothers and sisters. It is
the Revolution that gives life, life and meaning. It
is as close to truth as we can get. Without it we are
lost. So I say to you, believe in the Revolution, believe in its truth. If anyone tells you otherwise,
they lie.
There was the crackle again. Then
OmOmOm
and silence. It hung in the air around us. We were stunned
and didn't move. I wanted to cry like a little boy. I felt Old
Jubal reach out and touch me. I looked down at him. His
whole face was shades of grey, his skin, his stubble, his
hair. It was his eyes that were so striking-they too were
grey and flecked with something that sometimes shone.
Like now.
Well, my friend, we've heard him
he whispered
Let's go home.
I didn't know where his was or if he had one-I assumed
he meant mine. He got his canes moving and we moved
off-! was behind him. I didn't want to go-I felt I was
tearing myself away. There was something about the place
where I'd stood as I listened. There was something about
his voice. It was hard to get used to and hard to forget. It
was from then that we truly began to believe in Kamal. I
supposed it was because his voice was so unexpected. It
was the unexpected in the Revolution that always convinced us because it had no precedent.
What do you think of him?
I meant Kamal. This time I saw his head shift and even in
the dark I saw a kind of sparkle in his grey eyes.
We need him
Old Jubal saidWe need him as much as he needs us. Without us
he's nothing. And he knows it.
That was his answer-all of it. I waited for more-there
wasn't any. Old Jubal was that way-cryptic-enigmaticsometimes illusive. Questions weren't much help-he
talked about what he wanted to talk about. Often his
dreamsThey are as life
he saidOnly more so.
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�I didn't know much about dreams-I 4sually couldn't tell
if I had any. Old Jubal said he remembered each one.
I had five last night
he went on.
Let me tell you some, my friend. In one I was a
little boy again with my feet. I was playing football. Dribbling. I must've been a center forward. I
was dribbling back and forth from one goal to the
other. No one could catch me. The players on
both teams tried to catch me. They couldn't.
They couldn't get near the ball. I kept it. It danced
from my feet as through on a string. Then they
got me cornered. All of them. Like dogs. I began
bouncing it on my head. They were jumping up
and down around me trying to get it. They wanted
to reach out and grab it with their hands. They
couldn't, they couldn't touch it.
He paused.
My friend, I am always afraid. You should be too.
I shrugged. I wasn't-for the time being.
Not now
I said.
You should be, you must be.
He answered.
The Revolution needs people. It feeds on them. I
go all over. I see things other people don't see.
There are so many parts of the city, large parts,
with no one there. I ask myself where they are.
Can you tell me where they are, my friend?
I didn't know-! didn't say.
I'll tell you. They've been eaten!
What? Eaten? Ridiculous! How? Why?
He was thinking. I was too. What did he mean? I couldn't
say it was nonsense-Old Jubal wasn't like that-! had to
figure out what he meant. It was dark now. The candle
flickered and went out. There was a faint glow from the
city's lights-whitish. The stars again looked brighter now
that the lights were less.
It's simple. You won't like it, my friend. The Revo·
lution is hungry all the time, starving. It doesn't
like dogs and cats. If it did there aren't enough of
them anyway. And they're scrawny. So what's it
going to live off? The answer's obvious.
Pause.
Us! Look how nice and plump we are. Even when
we don't eat much. Not you so much. Not me. The
others. I'm old and I stink. After my good meal of
beans and hot sauce I might taste good. I doubt it.
But think of all the boys and girls out there. And
they're so young and tender. All that meat! Do you
think the Revolution can resist?
You don't really believe this?
I exclaimedIt isn't possible.
It is, my friend, it is. What I mean is this. The Revolution is living off us, it has nothing else to live on.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
And when we are gone it will go too.
I heard the clatter as he bent and picked up his canes. It was
so dark I couldn't see his face-there was some light on the
table beween us.
I'm old
he said
And I don't taste good. It doesn't matter much to
me. It's all the others I'm afraid for. And that
means you. Think about it.
Pause.
Now it's time to sleep and dream.
We did. That night I dreamt for the first time I could
remember.
We got up and set off down the street. It was then that
we heard the
Om Om Om
and the crackle that followed it. There wasn't anyone else
under the black box above us so we stopped by ourselves.
Brothers and sisters
it began-it was Kamal, of course-by now we knew his
voice by heart.
I must be honest with you. I have bad news. The
Revolution is in danger. What I can't say at this
time. Believe me it is. I will reveal it in due course.
It is a danger to all of us. It comes from within and
without. We must be vigilant.
He paused and there was a coughing. The first time I'd
heard him cough-strange to hear. Oggi looked over at
me-l shrugged. Kamal went on-the first few words halt·
ing as if to catch his breath.
The Revolution is a living thing. We must never
forget that. Like any thing that lives it can be
threatened. A threat to it is a threat to all of us. And
a threat doesn't always look like what it is. We must
learn to look for it. Look for anything that doesn't
fit in. Anything strange, anything unknown. You
know the Revolution. It is yours. Look for things
you don't know.
He paused again. I thought I heard music in the background like a band on parade. He coughed some and muffled it with his hand over his mouth. Much as we thought of
him as the embodiment of the Revolution, I didn't think
we thought of him as a man like other men. Even his shrill
voice made him distinct. His coughing had the opposite
effect. It sounded all too human. We waited and he went
on.
To conclude. There is a clear and present danger.
There are always others who would take my place.
99
�You will not know them. They will not know you as
I do. They haven't my face 'or my voice. Beware of
them. I will be among you ..
There was the crackle and the Om sound and Oggi and I
stood looking up at the black box expecting more. I felt he
was talking to each of us-as if he were present in the box
and looking down at us. Kamal was so enigmatic-we could
never be sure what he meant. There was danger, yes, but
what kind? how to look for it? and how for him to be among
us? The idea of his walking around shaking hands seemed
preposterous. That clearly wasn't what he meant. But we
were learning-always-to wait and watch. The Revolu·
lion had so much to teach us. I felt a little like a child who
had still to learn not to touch what was hot because it
burned.
the morning at the same time I opened my shutter-then
someone would come along and raise it. Like Marissa or
Roderigo. They'd sayThese are really worth twice as much
once they bought it After they left I doubled the price. By
midday I might've gone up two or three times-particu·
larly if it was something people really wanted-like ice on a
hot day in summer. Or in late spring as it then was. Ice was
a marvelous commodity because it melted and was so per·
ishable. I kept it buried in sawdust in the basement and
brought little chunks of it up-gradually at first, then to·
ward the end of the summer all at once. My timing had to
be so precise. If I waited one day too long by then it was
worthless. That's what had happened to Kamal's coins.
They shrank in value day by day. What was more amazing
they shrank in size too. They got lighter. His image on them
got blurred. And the metal itself changed color. It got redder, then turned bluish and finally went green. I asked for
more and more of them in exchange for less. A pack of
cigarettes, for example-especially good American ones
like Viceroys or L and Ms. These went from a handful of
coins to a bagful in the space of a few days. As always
Marissa caught on fast-she started buying cigarettes
when I'd thought she didn't smoke. It wasn't the cigarettes
she was after-it was the coins she wanted to avoid.
How to read the Revolution: that was the trick. It wasn't
simply a question of reading the wall posters-by now
these appeared with monotonous regularity and were read
and as soon forgotten. Nor did we pay that much attention
to his voice-it still came on at all times of the day or night
and we listened while doing something else. Having heard
his story the first time the retelling of it held no great inter·
est for us. His voice we got used to also-the shrillness of it
we came to think of as artifact of the broadcast itself. When
he told us to be on the alert we paid attention-for a timethen our attention lagged. Perhaps we already recognized
that the Revolution would go its own way-not that he,
Kamal, would lead it. He never appeared to us in personwe began again to doubt his existence-in spite of the elec·
tricity and the coins. We might have thought differently
had we to approach him on bended knee or grovelling on
our stomachs. Then we would've thought of him as a
God-but we didn't. I didn't know how it happened: how
we came to think of him as simply another image-as de·
based in time as the coinage on which his face appeared.
That was of more interest to us. The reading of it for a
while was a great skill like divination. Particularly to me in
my business-the coins even without any denomination
were as tricky as the Revolution itself. I'd learned to accept
them-take them as money-when I no longer cared much
about money. I took them in lieu of things. I'd fix a price in
100
The Revolution played such games with us. We were
children to it-the city and all of it our playground. We got
used to this or thought we did-it was all a game, we
thought. Perhaps that's why the real children were so good
at it. They caught on fast. They didn't have a sense of time
to hold them back. And that's why we thought so little of
the past, if at all. It was an impediment to us, a dangerous
one. To get rid of it-to forget-was to be ready for what
came next. I wasn't. I was waiting for her to come back.
This time I hadn't forgotten.
Old Jubal paused and ran his right forefinger along his lips.
I knew the sign-it meant a story.
When I was a student,
he began,
I wasn't very good, as a student. I'm always forget·
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�ting things-simple things. Like how to multiply
and how to spell and each subject we get to I think,
"This is the hardest subject. I'll be so glad to get
through it." But, no, my friend, it wasn't. There
were harder subjects. And harder teachers to go
with them. I had to learn algebra and trigonometry
from an Egyptian. And chemistry and physics
from a Greek.
Pause.
I never get over it. When I think it's going to get
easier it doesn't. So I leave.
I quit school. I never go back. Maybe I join the
army-maybe I drive a taxi. It doesn't matter. I
don't remember. I forget it with all the things I
studied. All I learned is this-to give thanks for
the present. So simple, eh?
He raised an eyebrow.
You know what I mean?
I nodded. Old Jubal sometimes took a long time to get to
the point. He jabbed his finger at me.
No, you don't. If you did you wouldn't be here.
I looked down at my feet. I didn't want to say anything to
offend him. I let him go on for a while-I wasn't paying
much attention. I thought of Lelia for a bit-then of what
I had to get done that day. Suddenly his canes were moving and he propelled himself over and against where I sat.
My friend, suppose I tell you that in days all of this
will be gone. Poof. Like that.
He made a gesture with his left hand as he said it -the
fingers shot out from his closed fist and then closed again.
Gone. Like you're in a desert and dying of thirstyour lips are swollen and black. You stink like I
stink.
I raised my hand to say no-to say I didn't mind. He
brushed it aside and went on.
Eh? what does it matter? You see palm trees,
some silver water below them. So you run. You
can't breathe but you run. You get there. And
what do you find? Eh? Surprise. No surprise.
More sand. Nothing but sand.
He paused.
It's like that, you know. To me this Revolution is a
living thing. It needs to eat and drink. Nobody
sees this now. They will. It's going to get thirsty.
It's going to suck up everything in sight. And all
the things you can't see. You and me with it.
Nothing is ever going to be the same-except
worse.
He was sweating-he wiped the sweat from his forehead
with the back of his hand. I don't know what I'd expected
him to say. I believed him-why not? It was always that I
didn't know what it meant. I got up to get him another
cigarette-the air was thick with smoke-! smelt it all over
myself. He didn't want it-he waved me to sit down. His
eyes fixed me.
You still don't know what I mean.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
It wasn't a question.
I don't know myself. What it means for all of us. If
I did I wouldn't be here.
We sat. I thought of Lelia. She didn't belong in our company-the city wasn't a place for her. It was better for
those like Old Jubal and me-those who didn't expect
much-those who didn't care much when they didn't get
it. That was the Revolution again-doing things to timegetting rid of the past and the future. To leave us with a
present that had so few references to it. I should've left
then-! should've listened-! should've known. I didn't. I
had a sense of fear.· That should've been enough. I
should've taken her and gotten out. It wasn't going to be
like that though.
Somehow we'll manage. I always seem to get by,
I said and I left it at that. He scowled at me and opened his
mouth. I saw the gold filling flash.
What about her?
he asked and got up and got his canes moving. He brushed
past me and was gone. It was then it struck me-l didn't
know whom he'd meant. I hadn't told him about Lelial'd never mentioned my mother. With Old Jubal that
didn't matter-he knew there was someone else.
It was Oggi who told me-although I could've found out
from anyone. He came early-I heard his scratching at the
door and let him in. It was drizzling and his face and matted hair glistened with it. He was bursting to tell me-but
wouldn't until I'd asked him over and over. Then it came
out-there were rumors throughout the city that Kamal
was gone.
See!
he smirked! told you so! Didn't I tell you? I knew it.
And then-spitting out his contemptWhat else could you expect from someone like
that?
I didn't answer-there wasn't one. We knew something
had happened-it took us time to find out what. There
was a great surge of happiness, almost elation. And there
was also a sense ofloss. No one knew what to do next. Now
everything seemed possible. Oggi and I headed out into
the street to see what was going on. All sorts of rumors
were on everyone's lips. There was a rustle among people
like dried leaves-on each face, expectancy. As the day
went on we got more and more excited-by the sense of
ourselves and the Revolution. The drizzle stopped. The
clouds broke up and moved west. The sun shone brightly
on streets that were slick and wet. Oggi and I walked aim-
101
�lessly. I wished Lelia were with us-that would've made
the day perfect. I intended to go and get her. I didn't. Per·
haps because I didn't like to think of her as part of the Revolution. To me she was something secret and private-and
all the more precious for being so.
Oggi got more impetuous. He dragged me along behind
him when I wanted to stop and chat. There were rumors
flying all over-that Kamal had fled by boat or by land or
that he'd been picked up by plane. That he'd taken hundreds of suitcases with him containing the sum total of our
wealth. That he was limping and coughing as he went and
hadn't long to live. Strangely we didn't care why. We
pushed and jostled each other in the streets-we slapped
each other on the back and clasped hands. There was a
great feeling of togetherness and moment like swallows
out at sunset and circling. We all felt part of the great undertaking that was our Revolution. No longer was it personified by a man. It was greater than any of us, no matter
how great he might seem. With Oggi that afternoon I felt a
great sense of clarity and companionship. The high purpose of the Revolution was raising us above ourselves. It
was such a great feeling-it was all over so soon. Amazingly, we never knew we were a city under siege until it
was over. We went back to our rooms and slept that night
and dreamt of the Revolution in myriad forms-and while
we did so it ended.
Like that.
Or so it seemed.
The following morning we found out what had taken
place without our knowledge. Oggi and I were hanging out
the window. The air was crisp and the sun bright. He was
humming to h1mself.l was scratching my head-! always
had this itch there when I woke. Then both of us stopped
what we were doing.
What's that?
he said. I looked out and saw it too. For there it was-a
small dark figure at the far end of the street-looking like
anyone else walking down it. Except it wasn't. We knew at
once it wasn't. It got closer-it turned out to be a boyabout Oggi's age or a little older. He was walking nonchalantly down the middle of the street-as if he knew it well
or didn't care. He wasn't one of us-that was for sure. He
was dressed in black and wore a soft hat. His chest was
crisscrossed with bandoliers and there were weapons over
his shoulders and in each hand. It was most of all his face
that was different. More angular than one of ours and
much darker. As he got closer we saw it was leathery as if
endlessly burned by the sun. We saw him look up and see
us-sort of. There was no reaction beyond the flicker of
his eyes.
He went on and many others like him followed. We saw
them filling the end of the street. They made it black with
their bodies. They moved down it until there was nothing
but blackness in it. They weren't all the same. Some were
older. Many were younger and no more than children.
Some had armbands that showed authority. They were all
102
heavily armed-like walking arsenals, I thought. And their
faces all looked hard and leathery, no matter how young
they looked. By now the windows all along the street were
filled with us looking down. You could sense the questions
on everyone's lips. Who were they? Where did they come
from? What was happening? I looked over at Oggi-his
lips were moving as if he meant to speak and didn't know
what to say. The presense of obviously superior beings
filled us with fear and trembling.
A little later we heard the first sounds of the cars and
trucks-the grating of gears and the revving of engines.
The air began to fill with the smell of gasoline. Smoke and
fumes hung in a grey brown cloud over the city in that
direction and drifted to cover the rest of it. And the cars
and trucks were coming out from under the cloud and
roaring down the street. And all the streets all over the
city. The cars and trucks were of all sizes and shapes and
descriptions. Each was jammed full of heavily armed men
also dressed in black. They were in jallopies and in the
backs of roadsters, on dump trucks and pickup trucks, in
jeeps and station wagons. It was awesome. The air was
thick with smoke and fumes. We were soon coughing and
wheezing and gasping for breath. We weren't used to the
smell of gasoline nor to the exhaust-it made us dizzy.
The noise of the engines was deafening-we covered our
ears with our hands. It was no use-the sound went
through walls as easily as through flesh. We were overwhelmed by it. I felt too tired to move, even to hold up my
hands. They fell to my sides. There was a great fatigue
over all of us. Our euphoria of the day before was dead and
gone. None of us had the faintest idea what was going on.
We waited to be told.
The cars and trucks came to a stop all over the city with
their engines still running. The fumes rose from them and
made our eyes water. It was as if we were crying and many
of us were. Men with megaphones soon appeared in the
streets. Their voices boomed off the buildings and echoed
in our rooms. There was nowhere they couldn't be heard.
Citizens,
they saidDon't be afraid. We have come to help you, to liberate you from your oppressors, to give you back
your freedom. You have only to follow instructions and no harm will come to you. Stay inside
and don't come out.
So we did-for days.
To pass the time Oggi and I played games. All kinds of
games-tic-tac-toe, blind man's bluff, jacks, charades, pin
the tail on the donkey-anything to try and take our minds
off what was happening. Or had happened. Soon we began to get used to it-as did all of us-and we saw that, no,
this wasn't the end of the Revolution. It wasn't over. What
had happened to it we didn't know. There was no way to
tell. Each of us was alone with our fears and doubts. The
Revolution remained. It was the one thing we had that was
permanent. More so than buildings or streets, certainly
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�more so than ourselves. The Revolution was like nature to
us-if everything else were taken away '\t remained. So we
sat in our rooms~ each of us alone, no matter how accompanied. For us the Revolution was our greatest
consolation.
It never ceased to dumbfound me that when change
took place it was either so slow it never occurred to us or it
was so fast it was over before we had any awareness of it.
Instead we had to get used to it-as if it was a state of
things that'd always been-when the youngest of us
could've remembered a time when it wasn't. To have done
so would've meant great peril-this above all was an ac·
cepted fact. That's why remembrance for us was so much
a process of selectively forgetting. To start over each day
with new relationships-between people and between
things-and to accept them as givens. It was a criterion of
life for us-the one that mattered if all others didn't. And
so often they were in doubt-how could they not be? It
was hard, if not impossible, to know what was constant in
ourselves when we had so little to measure it against. For
me that was what made Lelia so remarkable-though she
herself didn't think so. In that sense I supposed I was like
every romantic who had ever been. I thought of her as a
North Star or a Southern Cross-to navigate by across
endless dark wastes. Not surprisingly, then, as soon as we
could go out, I did-to her.
She was sitting mending while her old aunt snoozed.
She let me in, gave me a kiss on the cheek and went back
to her mending. That was her livelihood. People brought
her shirts that were torn, dresses that'd been ripped, socks
with gaping holes in them-for we had always to make do
with what we had. I sat across from her and watched-she
was wearing a denim skirt and a white cotton blouse with
her hair in a pony tail. To me she looked like a little girleven though she was almost as old as I. That didn't matter-however she looked I worshipped her. And I worried.
How she was? Was she afraid? Hungry? Lonely? She was
all of these-and quite happy too. I never got over that
either: how anyone could be happy and mean it. But she
was and she did. Her happiness was infectious. I got it by
being near her. I'd smile-to myself at first-then outwardly. I'd get up and go look in the mirror-she used it for
fittings-and see the smile on my face, to make sure it was
there. It was. I saw it. Then I'd go sit next to her and hold
her hand. We'd sit there quietly-her hands still-she
wasn't doing anything-and I thought of us as sharing her
happiness-which was becoming mine too. Extraordinary!
That I was so happy-when all around-the whole city in
fact-was in such a state of turmoil and doubt. It was simTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ply that she seemed more real than anything else. I'd
watch her fingers making the intricate patterns of stitch or
weave and I could've sat there all day as though I were
watching bees building a honeycomb-driven to it by the
geometry in their minds. If I wanted to hold her hand
she'd let me for a while-she knew what it meant to me
and she liked it. Then she'd slide her fingers out of mine
and say
I have to go back to work.
It was all she had-I couldn't say no. It was still more than
anyone else had that I knew of.
Reassured she was all right, I soon left. Something was
bothering me-that is, everything. I wanted to walk and
have my own sense of what was happening. Because the
Revolution had taught me to use my eyes and all of my
senses-and to try and believe them. So as I walked I saw
the city getting used to its occupation. The cars and trucks
that so awed us were everywhere-as were the men in
black who were so heavily armed. They were ominous. But
they did nothing. They stood chatting in groups or sat in
their trucks oiling their weapons. They nodded as I passed
yet made no movement to stop and search me.
I saw Marissa limping along a street-she saw me at the
same time and her face lit up. She had some shopping bags
with her and asked when I was going to open. I told her the
truth. That I had nothing to sell. I promised to let her
know when I did. Many of us were out in the streets trying
to figure out what was going to happen next. There were
as many rumors as people and most of them were about
them. Our guardians, our protectors-whatever they
called themselves. We weren't sure. None of us talked to
them and they made no effort to talk to us. That was how
we referred to them-not knowing otherwise how to call
them. At that point they seemed quite peaceful-in spite
of their appearance. The smell of the gasoline was the
most striking sign of the occupation. It pervaded the city
with its sweetish odor, actually quite pleasant at times. But
there were also the fumes of the cars and trucks when they
were running. These made us short of breath and our eyes
watery. We saw everything through their grey brown haze.
The colors of the city were made dull and flat, from what
they were. In that sense the occupation didn't feel threatening to us-it was more like a change in the weather. And
the weather was strange. It drizzled off and on for days. A
warm drizzle, it was still late summer. There was a greenish mildew on things and their surfaces stayed moist and
slippery. All this time we thought we were getting used to
it. Kamal and what he represented was long gone and forgotten. Then there was the most surprising reminderlike a voice from the dead-in the form of a wall posterobviously his last.
BROTHERS AND SISTERS,
it read-
103
�I BESEECH YOU TO LISTEN TO ME ONE LAST
TIME. I WILL NEVER BE WUH YOU AGAIN
AND I MUST ASK YOUR PARDON FOR MY ERRORS.
FOR ME THE REVOLUTION WILL ALWAYS BE THE
GREATEST THING IN MY LIFE-AS YOU ARE
BECAUSE WE ARE ALL PART OF IT. I AM
GOING NOW-MY EYES WILL CLOSE AND I
WILL CROSS MY ARMS ACROSS MY CHEST. YOU
WILL BE WITH ME ALWAYS. I WILL NOT DIE
ALONE. I WILL THINK OF EACH OF YOU.
I WILL ASK PARDON OF EACH OF YOU. I
KNOW YOU BETTER THAN YOU CAN KNOW. FOR
ME THE FUTURE IS A BLESSING BECAUSE THE
REVOLUTION ALWAYS HAS A FUTURE. I
THINK OF EACH OF YOU FACING IT AND I SAY
BE BRAVE! COURAGE!
IT IS WHAT KEEPS US TOGETHER. WE WILL
ALWAYS HAVE IT AS LONG AS WE LOVE THE
REVOLUTION ABOVE ALL. FAREWELL, AND BLESS
YOU, MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS!
He was gone. We knew that..Not how. Not why. Kamal
never meant so much to us before. We realized that he had
seen what we hadn't. Now we were truly alone. We would
try to forget him because we had to. We knew that much.
But in forgetting him there would be a void where he had
been.
Fortunately Oggi was fascinated by spare parts and all
things automotive. He wasn't doing anything else so I had
him go out and scavenge the city looking for them. He'd
come back with the distributor caps and the oil filtersand all sorts of others I'd never heard of. He was getting
older and more responsible-I told him to keep them and
see what he could do with them. He was mesmerized by
the New Regime-or rather by its most obvious signs-the
cars and trucks roaring up and down the esplanades and
the avenues. To him they were a source of incredible
power-almost magical-yet I also knew how he hated the
New Regime. Most of us did-perhaps all of us-and for
no particularly good reason-beyond that it had so little to
104
do with our lives. And that it was different. Whatever the
reason our hatred of it was always unstated. No one gave a
sign of it-not as such-it was there in the flicker of an
eyebrow or the running of a finger across the bridge of the
nose. You had to know it was there to see it-once you saw
it there was hatred everywhere. It was directed most of all
toward a single enigmatic figure-or rather his name.
7Carlos7. The two things for us were the same.
For us he was a protean figure-a chimera of sortsthat we knew and didn't-all the more horrible for our ig·
norance of him. His image-of which there was nonewas the heart and soul of the Occupation. He came with
them-apparently he was their leader. So it was natural to
compare him with Kamal and the comparison was striking.
Because we never saw him-actually we never saw either
of them-but we never even saw a picture of7Carlos7 nor
heard his voice. He was there all the more so in his name.
To many of us it was the most horrible thing-some
wouldn't say it-if they did they spat it out. They weren't
supposed to, though. There was a way to pronounce itmeasured and without intonation. And we had to make
our peace with it. His name was an ominipresent sign of
the Occupation. Of course the Occupation wasn't what
they called it-to them it was still the Revolution. We got
used to their terms-we had to-and those who didn't
trembled as they spoke. As always your own language was
the fastest way to betray yourself. To whom? Not to usalthough us was less and less definable. They made their
presence merge with ours. Some of us became them. As
time went by what we might've once said to anyone we
would soon say only to ourselves or to loved ones. By then
they could be anyone. They made friends easily-a pack of
cigarettes or a stick of gum would do the trick. Before long
you were saying things you shouldn't. Or maybe you in·
tended to. This whispering went on all the time all over
the city-like a gentle breeze in early summer. In fact, it
was that time of year. The city had never been so beautiful. The trees had rich green growth on them. Flowers
were blooming in all the gardens. Or where gardens had
once been, in piles of rubble in the streets or out of the
cracks of walls. The city took on a festive air. There were
gay colors everywhere-bright blues and pinks, the reds of
roses and poppies, the oranges and yellows oflillies. When
Lelia and I went walking-we did so each evening arm in
arm-she loved to gather them and make a bouquet. She
set one in my room and one in hers-so even when she
wasn't with me I smelt the rich perfume of her flowers that
she was smelling, too. I'd gotten somewhat used to hershe more so to me-though at times I still moved too
abruptly and startled her. One of the joys of being with her
was the chance I got to forget myself.
I seemed a part of her-as did everything else. To me
even the Revolution paled beside her-she was gentle,
yes, she was also more vivid. I loved to watch her do
things-as much as I was coming to love her at rest. To
watch her make a pot of tea. It was such fun. Who
W!NfER/SPRING 1983
�would've believed it? Of course the pot was a can and the
strainer was a linen bag and the tea was a fine black substance like dark sand that the strainer never kept out.
There I was picking the tea from between my teeth with
the tip of a toothpick-the tip of my penknife. Still, I loved
to watch her making it-for me a ritual of great beauty and
meaning. Perhaps that's why I loved her. She illumined
everything she touched.
I couldn't fail to be aware of the incongruities of our relationship-there were so many. I to her. She to me. Both
of us to each other. Both of us to the Revolution. And to
the city. And to the Occupation. And to 7Carlos7. Whoever and whatever he was. We didn't discuss it. It was so
obvious because we lived there. Each of us wanted to find
something beyond what we had-and we had. We cherished it-yet we were afraid. That in spite of ali-or the
little-we could do something would happen to destroy it.
Which was why we never mentioned to each other any of
these things. Because any of them could. There was between us a conspiracy of silence and blindness-not to acknowledge what was there at every hand. At every word.
Whether they were there or not. The Revolution was in
language and thought-as was the occupation. As was
7Carlos7.
He wasn't something you could shut out. He was there
as we spoke between ourselves. He was there to me as I
thought. I thought of him as a mastermind that got into
each of our heads and spread like a bacillus. Yet to all intents and purposes there were no signs of it. Or him. Except in the oblique ways we learned to recognize. I always
thought two tenses belonged particularly to him-the pas-
Because no matter how many times you'd said it, as long as
you hated him-and by inference them-there was the
distinct possibility you would gag on it. As though swallowing gasoline. To mumble, to stutter, to pause in your enunciation-incredible-these were all life threatening acts.
Acts of insurrection they were called. No wonder we practiced his name so much. And the more we practiced the
more we got used to it. Our hatred submerged into ourselves. And we might just as well have hated ourselves.
Maybe we did. Hatred was such a mutable thing for us. We
didn't feel it. Then we were called upon to say his name.
And we did. No emotion-then a flicker of it-his name
spoken evoked it in us. It was then we were truly in danger.
Perhaps we got away with it that time. Perhaps we didn't.
It was so hard to tell. All we knew was that some of us disappeared-as though bodily sucked out of our lives. To
our friends and our relations there was no trace. We were
gone as if we'd evaporated. We knew speech had something to do with it. We knew the Occupation and 7Carlos7
obviously did. But the disappearances were as enigmatic
as his name. They happened. To some of us-to many.
There was no explanation. It was no wonder, then, that we
felt as if we were living on the edge of something at all
times. One false step and we'd be over the edge and gone.
To Lelia and me in love each day was an end in itself.
sive and the imperative. As in
That should be done,
and
Do it!
Incredible that so much power should be concealed in
such little phrases. And not just power-hatred-on our
part. As we recognized the source of that power. It was
insidious-we were made aware of it at all times-even
the most private. Because there was no privacy-as a concept it was dead and gone. There was a sense of concealment, of something to be hidden, not of something that
belonged to us. 7Carlos7 was the manifestation of this
awareness. I never knew for sure if he was a man or not. I
assumed so-it wouldn't have been the first time I was
wrong. He was definitely a presence.-One that spoke to
us in the passive and the imperative. A voice, without a
face, without a voice, nonetheless, a voice. Lelia didn't like
to say his name even to me. It made her uneasy, at times,
nauseous. I couldn't blame her-but we had to learn how
to say it as naturally as saying our own. I made her practice-! practiced myself. To say a name that was the object
of hatred without intonation was the hardest thing for
us-for anyone. That's why it was so revealing-that's
why they made us do it. We had to. It came up all the time.
Every time you said it there was the threat of revelation.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
I couldn't see the point of anything. The Occupation
had been going on for so long we thought it'd always been
there. It settled on us like the clouds of dark exhaust and
haze. We coughed all the time and spat blood and mucous.
The sun moved across the sky like a greyish orange ball.
Seen through the grey haze. The sunsets were fantastic
colors of purple and red. It was hot and muggy that summer. Moving my body and all the spare parts took all my
strength and some I didn't have. And there were times
when Oggi wouldn't do anything-he'd curl up on a pile
of spare parts, pick one up and oil and grease it for hours.
He was blacker than I was, pitch black. His eyes stood out
white in contrast. And he'd lie there for hours rubbing the
part back and forth whistling. The whistling got on my
nerves. When I asked him to stop he shrugged. And
stopped. A little later he started again. It wasn't the two of
us-it was everything. The heat. The air-or what was
now air. The furtiveness that had come over us. 7Carlos7.
And fear.
There was so much of it-all different kinds. There
were more fears than we ever had words for, all of them
would have made our language nothing but synonyms for
fear. Myriad ones. Because it was everywhere and in every-
105
�thing. Most of all it was the fear of disappearance-that
we'd wake one morning and be gone. So many had. Fear
abstract and fear particulate. In contrast the spare parts
business had become a tired joke to me. I'd gotten into it! didn't want to think about it anymore. I wanted-if want
was the word-to sit in my room and be alone with my
fear. To be with someone else was to see fear in them.
With Oggi the fear took the form of whistling and rubbing.
With someone else it was a cough or running a hand back
and forth over the walls or floor. It was a fear of themthey like everything else were now signs of the Occupa·
tion. Fear of cars and trucks. Fear of them as people. Fear
of the little man who came to my shop. Fear of myself.
Fear of giving myself away. Fear of speech. A name-his
name. So many specific fears-fear of each object we
came in contact with-each fear a little different from the
others. To anyone not living as we were such fears
would've seemed unbelievable. Fantastic. Like a chi!·
dren's story of ogres and giants and princesses carried
away from them by princes on the wind. To us it was the
most natural thing in the world. Fear had always been part
of the Revolution-now it was more so-taking a new
form with new objects. Whatever was part of the New Re·
gime was part of fear. Those of us who weren't-that
meant all of us-had it in our blood. Like water we drank it
in and it came out like urine. It passed through us-we
were where it was for a time-then on-through us over
and over-the process repeating itself-endless.
There it was again-the face-or part of it. I saw it for
an instant-then my food came through and the panel
closed. That was it-my contact with the outside worldthat and my bit of blue sky-or whatever color it was. I'd
thought I could get used to anything-the Revolution
made us that way-adaptable or not at all. As always there
was something else-something we didn't expect because
we'd never thought of it. In one sense I'd disappeared. To
everyone I'd known I was gone-ceasing to exist. Yet to
myself-the one person that really mattered-! was very
much there-all the more so because so much else was
gone. The face was the only thing human around-it
peered through the panel in the door-if I didn't move it
studied me. The eyes staring-the ears and chin cut off by
106
the door-that made the face disembodied. In spite of that
it was companionship of sorts. I called to it-it never an·
swered. Or its answer was my food-on the floor~ I didn't
get there in time to catch it. Splot. I had to scoop it up with
the side of my hand and lick it off. It tasted of the floor and
the fungus that grew there. A grey green fungus that flour·
ished because the floor was moist and cold. That was my
vegetation-my flora. And my fauna was a small bug about
the size of my thumbnail that crawled over the walls. I got
used to it-it was the first thing I looked for each daythough I no longer thought of them as days. There was
light-there was dark-there was a sense of alternation
back and forth between them. That was what my calendar
had been reduced to. Each day I got up and washed my
face at the pipe in the corner-! then squatted over the
hole..:.. I balanced myself with my hands against the wall.
That was perhaps the pleasantest experience of the daymy bowel movement. I looked forward to it. Afterwards I
felt relief. Almost composed. My body felt in a state of
equilibrium-I'd gotten rid of what I'd eaten and my
waste. I felt a need to be only myself-and no more. I felt
no suffering as such-~he only thing that bothered me was
the bed springs. They squeaked and rattled when I moved
on them. I never got used to the sound. It woke me at
night-over and over-which is why I had no nightmares.
I woke before they could form. Which is why I was always
so tired. Exhausted. There was no way to get relief from
the things in my mind. They kept piling up-all the things
I didn't think of. And kept forgetting. They were there and
had weight-getting heavier and heavier the more I
couldn't sleep. I tried to sleep on the floor. The cold and
moisture and slime of the fungus were worse than the bed
springs-they made my skin creep. So I went back to
sleeping on the bed-bad as it was it wasn't the worst.
Nothing seemed so bad to me that in time wasn't ordi·
nary. I looked for the bug and saw where he was-! waited
for the face to appear and thought of it as my face. The
eyes staring at me through the panel were the only reflec·
tion of myself I had. I wondered about all the things that
didn't happen. They would've been explanations of what I
was in for. There weren't any and I never knew. Not at
that point. There was no questioning and no duress. At
times I thought I heard cries in the distance. No one ever
came for me. Maybe they weren't cries but doors closing. I
had nothing to go by. Beyond the face, or the part of the
face, which in itself told me nothing. Except that it was
part of something human-that I too was part of. But the
humanity of it was less than I was used to. And I wasn't
used to much. I had nothing to do and nothing to think of.
I lay on the bed and tried not to move. That became a skill
in itself. To alter my weight so the bedsprings wouldn't
squeak. Because it was all I had I became more and more
aware of my body. Preoccupied with it, in fact. I studied
my hands and the way they moved. I spent hours bringing
my thumb across to touch my little finger-or closing my
fingers into my palm to make a fist. Each motion that
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�seemed simple enough in itself got increasingly complex
when looked at in detail. I tried to move my fingers so
slowly I couldn't see them move. As if I were a creature
that was going to live forever and had all the time in the
world to do whatever it wanted.
Before I did anything I thought about it to decide if it
was worthwhile. That is, if it had a purpose. Most things
didn't. So I eliminated them-in the same way I got rid of
waste with my bowel movement every day. I wanted to get
by on less and less. To be like the bug on the wall that took
all day to get from one point to another. He too had all the
time in the world to go back. There was a lot to learn from
him. Somehow I'd decided he was a he. And I studied his
movements with the same intensity that the face studied
me. Eyes staring, lids unblinking. The bug made me care·
ful of where I stepped and how I moved. The last thing I
wanted to do was to crush the bug inadvertently. I was
concerned for him. When he didn't move for an unusual
length of time I got up, ever so slowly so the bedsprings
rustled but didn't squeak, and went over to take a look.
Perhaps I saw his antennae quiver or one of his wings was
raised-his wings weren't much-stumps more like. What·
ever it was adequate-my companionship remained as~
sured. I went back to bed as slowly as I'd moved from it.
One thing above all never ceased to amaze me each time I
lay down-its length. Because it was mine. My feet
touched one end and my head the other-the bed itself
didn't seem accidental. That is, it seemed part of a greater
plan, one that in time might be revealed to me. Not that I
was unhappy with where I was. I felt more secure than I
might've felt elsewhere. But that peace of mind was an ar·
tifact, as was my bodily composure. I had only to think of
her, any part of her, an ear, a little finger, a lower lip-and
my body began to shake as from a fever. The bedsprings
squeaked. The walls appeared to vibrate in time. My heart
pounded and my skin prickled. It was the obverse oflovefear. The thought of her-any thought of her-triggered
it-and cast my whole being into doubt. I shuddered. The
bedsprings rattled. I didn't know what was happening to
me. I held onto the bedframe for dear life. And this didn't
happen once-it was over and over. I couldn't stop myself.
She was so dear to me that all else was at risk. I tried to
steady my mind-to look for the bug-to count the days.
It helped a bit. Afterwards I lay gasping for breath. Each
move I made was tentative.
One of those days was the Anniversary of the Revolu·
tion-I didn't know which.
I didn't mean to get angry-it happened like that-like a
light had gone off in my head-or I saw a flash and that
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
was the stimulus for it. Whatever the cause the transition
was so fast I wasn't aware of it. There I was not angrythere I was very much so. Pounding the door. Kicking it.
Not feeling the pain in my feet. No sensation, in fact. The
anger had taken me over as if it were another life form. I
was screaming-or shouting-whatever it was it was loud.
I heard my own voice so much magnified it wasn't mine.
My hands and feet seemed to be on their own too. It didn't
last very long. I hadn't the strength for it. It was there in a
short burst of tremendous energy. It was as soon spent.
Gone. I went back to nonanger, my muscles flaccid, my
skin sensitive again. It amazed me that I'd even been able
to get angry. There was nothing to get angry at. The face
wasn't there. The bug was high up and out of sight, the
blue sky was still blue sky. My anger-or any other emo.
tion I might've had-was incongruous. It had no purpose.
It didn't belong there. Without it I lapsed back onto the
bed. In time the face appeared in the door, my food came
through and the bug showed up on the wall not far over
my head.
I felt ashamed of myself. In relation to everything else
my anger was such a pettiness. I went and scooped up my
food. I ate. I was so used to the fungus I didn't taste it. If
the food smelled to me it was simply the smell of it. Not
bad. Not good. A characteristic of existence without crite.
rion. I began to identify with the bug. I thought of myself
looking down at myself on the bed. Larger and whiter than
necessary. And curious too. Why all the moving about?
And the noise? And the huffing and puffing? Imagine!
There was no sense of real economy about it. Truly the
whole thing was an enormous waste. It was so much better
to be so much smaller again I had the sense of going into
myself and looking out. In my head, I'd become as small as
the bug-the rest of my body was an enormous encum·
brance. I stopped eating. The food piled up in front of the
door in a little mound. It began to stink-not its own smell
anymore. Worse. Much worse. A smell with color-a
greenish orange. I became aware of the face looking in at
me more and more. I looked back as if from beyond. I no
longer thought it could see me. I saw a finger appear and
scratch the side of the nose on the face. And the expres·
sion-or that part of it I was exposed too-didn't stare as
much. I saw the face turn sideways. There was an ear and
hair. I heard a voice from very far off, like an echo. Or the
echo of an echo. Like a scraping. There was an intonation
to it so I took it to be a voice. It amazed me how much
better I began to feel. Lighter. Buoyant. The carcass I'd
been carrying around all these years was finally getting
manageable. I lay on the bed and had no need to think of
the springs and not moving. They squeaked, if at all, very
faintly. It was at this point I thought of my disappearance
as taking place. Not their disappearance of me. That had
already happened. This was mine of myself-as if bit by
bit I were withdrawing from my own existence. It was a
feeling most pleasant-not unlike that at the end of my
bowel movement. After much pushing and squeezing I
107
�was left with a sense of self and a relief from waste. I felt an
obvious lightness-not giddy-I remained clear-eyed and
stable. Things seemed far away and distant and had no
·
hold on me.
It was in this state I saw the door open and a man come
in. He had a stool under his arm and he set it on the floor
and sat on it. He looked very small-no larger than my
hand-the stool was small too. The size a child might have
for its dolls. He said nothing. He watched me and I
watched back. Then with alarm I realized he was getting
larger-or my sense of him was. I tried to hold myself back,
to keep away; I couldn't. I kept coming closer, as he did,
getting larger. I felt myself getting heavier and weighed
down, dense. It was his being there that'd done it to me. I
knew that much. And as he got larger his appearance took
on more detail. He was dressed as an officer of some sort.
There were epaulettes on his shoulders and gold braid
hung down from them. His uniform was a dark green and
creased so sharply there were angles to it. At some point I
was aware again I was my normal size. I saw his forefinger
tapping on his knee. What he thought of me I couldn't
know. His face-it wasn't the face in the door-was without emotion, though not without interest. I propped my·
self up in bed. The springs squeaked. I saw how close he
was, the dark color of his uniform filled my field of vision.
His hand reached into his pocket, took out a cigarette and
reached across and put it between my lips. The smell of
the tobacco, rank and acrid, and the dryness of its taste
against the tip of my tongue was a shock to me. The sec·
ond shock was when he lit it. The flame from his lighter
flared in my face and I jerked my head back. Then there
was the smoke from the cigarette itself. I puffed. It filled
my head and made me dizzy. I gagged on it. I coughed. I
felt the cigarette slipping from my lips. It did, onto my
chest, I watched it burn a small hole in me. I meant to
reach forward and grab it, but I couldn't move my arms or
my hands. My body twitched. There was the pain of the
burning, intense, pointing into me. Then his hand came
over and took it off and put it back in my mouth and held it
there. I puffed again. The smoke made me giddy. It filled
the room. It clouded over his face. It made my eyes water.
They closed. There was the burning pain in my chest,
though the cigarette was between my lips. I had to finish. I
knew that. I puffed and puffed. My head felt full of the
smoke. It also began to feel composed. Relaxed. My hands
didn't move but my fingers opened out from my palms. I
looked up at him, he must've seen it in my eyes. I was
grateful. He smiled, a narrow smile, no creasing of his
cheeks. Nonetheless a smile. I tried to smile back. I
thought I did. He took the end of the cigarette from be·
tween my lips and threw it in the corner.
That's better? No?
he said.
Mundt's the name. Pleased to meet you.
Pause.
How are you feeling today?
108
I meant to answer. I tried to. I opened my lips in an 0 to
speak. I thought of what I was going to say. Something in·
nocuous like fine or OK. Instead I said nothing. I mouthed
my answer. I knew I was saying nothing. I didn't know
why. He must've understood-this Mundt. He nodded
and his hand came forward and patted mine. It was then I
saw how huge his was. How hairy at the knuckles. How
large the knuckles were in relation to the rest of the finger.
There was something strange about them too. There was
an extra joint and the tips of the nails buried themselves in
the flesh at the tip of the fingei. I was more impressed with
his hands than with his uniform. I watched them as he
spoke.
Even if we don't expect you to be happy here, it's
not that bad is it?
Pause.
Food every day. Drink. Time to think things over,
no?
His forefinger pressed against his thumb-they flattened
out and the forefinger of the other hand came over to
stroke them.
Not at all what you expected, eh? A bit of a surprise?
I looked up-there was a twinkle in his eye. He settled
back on the stool.
You know we don't want anything from you. I
mean we're not going to torture you or anything
like that. I bet you've heard stories about interro·
gations. Electrodes to the genitals. All night beat·
ings on the soles of the feet. Maybe someone told
you about being hung upside down from a bar?
He sighed. His lips were large like his fingers. I nodded and
kept nodding. He seemed to expect it.
I thought so. It doesn't happen here. I don't know
where people get such ideas. They make them up
and then they believe them. There's nothing to be
afraid of. It's only natural to be like that, people
are. So what? It means nothing.
I looked down and saw the tips of his fingers come to·
gether to form a point. He looked down at it -then ·at me.
You can't help what you are, we know that. Nor
can anybody else. I mean if you're a petty bourgois that's what you are, no?
I nodded.
So we don't care about your little tricks. They
don't make any difference to us.
His voice was guttural and flat -as if he were resigned and
had said it many times before. A strange fellow this
Mundt-nice enough. I nodded as much as I could with·
out overdoing it. I wanted him to see I agreed with every·
thing he said.
If you hoard or steal or fabricate we don't care.
People don't believe it but we don't. If you call
yourself an entrepreneur that's your business.
He paused. His hand came up to the side of his face and
he ran his forefinger along his nose. My eyes moved up
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�with it and I found myself looking into his. I didn't mean
to. It happened without my awareness of it. They were
dark grey-the color of slate. I looked down as fast as I
could. I didn't want him to get upset. He licked his lips and
continued.
You know this place isn't so bad. There are lots of
people like you here. Well meaning. They don't
think they've done anything. I mean you don't
think you've done anything, do you?
I didn't nod. I shook my head. I'd almost nodded. I caught
myself in time. My mouth opened to speak, to say something, to explain. I didn't. I couldn't.
Everyone's the same.
He sighed.
That's why interrogations are useless. So we get
you to confess, then what? The next day you don't
remember any of it. If we want you to remember
we have to keep telling you. Day after day. It's
useless for everyone. Besides, there's nothing you
know that we need to. The whole thing is a waste.
He looked down at his feet. His fingers were twisting together so I couldn't tell his hands apart. I'd stopped nodding-! didn't know what to agree to. He shrugged and
looked up. I looked down. I'd been watching him with my
head down with the upper part of my eyes.
You didn't expect me to come, did you?
I shook my head. I nodded. I wasn't sure which I meant.
No one does. You know people think we don't
know.
He looked sad as he said it.
That your life here, or out there for that matterhe waved his hand toward the bit of blue skyGoes on and nobody sees what you're doing. It's
not so. We know. Because you don't know don't
think we don't. Maybe we miss something once in
a while, a little thing here or there, not much. But
we know enough to know.
Pause. He looked toward the window, some light from it lit
his face and made it lighter.
You know there are a lot of things in life people
don't figure out. They get older and they die and
they never know. I think we're all that way somehow, no?
He said it softly, as if to himself. I nodded, not so much to
him: I felt that way too.
Well, I'll tell you one thinghe turned and looked down at me. The light was gone
from his face.
You're better off here than anywhere else.
His thumbs came out of his belt and he pointed a forefinger at my head.
Right here. Now.
Pause.
You know what I mean?
I thought I did. Yes. I nodded. He turned away slightly; he
started to say something and stopped, as if to rephrase it.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Let me put it this way,
he went on.
You live here. You grow up. You get old. All the
time you get by. Maybe better. Maybe worse. You
think you've got it all figured out. In your business
maybe your're putting something aside for your
old age?
He turned back as he said it. Abruptly he sat down on the
bed. The springs didn't squeak then. They went baing,
boing, baing. The room reverberated with the sound of his
sitting. I felt his immensity loom over me. There was no
defense. I was helpless like a newborn baby. All the while I
felt frail and ancient. He spat out his next words as if he
were mad and I tried to shrink back into the bed.
Don't bother. There isn't anything to figure out
anymore. You'll never see it again whatever it was.
His forefinger came down stiff in the middle of my forehead.
You've had it. You know it. I know it. Life isn't
what it used to be. Don't forget that.
Pause.
You can't go back to your little village and grow
corn. If you had such a village. There aren't any
more.
His forefinger lifted off and hung over my head-suspended.
There's a lesson in all of this, no? So what if you
learn itshrugit won't do any good.
He put his hands on his thighs-about to get up. He licked
his lips. They were moist and glistening.
Maybe we should have many lives? To come back
and next time try what didn't work out this time.
Amusing. People in villages think like that. Except
they're all dead and they don't come back.
He got up. I followed him with my eyes to his full height.
I say good-by now. You enjoyed my visit? Interesting, eh?
I nodded for the last time.
It makes for a change, I know. We all need a little
change now and then. Make the best of it, I tell
you. It1l turn out all right.
He was looking straight at me, his forehead furrowed.
There were beads of sweat on it.
If you have nothing and you want nothing, what's
to lose? Eh, nothing.
That was it. He didn't say anything else. He looked down
at me for a bit, pensive, abstracted. Then he turned and
left. The door shut behind him with a thank. The face appeared in it, looked at me and left. I was alone again-except now I had the vivid impression of this Mundt's presence. He loomed in the air around me even after he'd
gone. I didn't think why he'd come or what he'd meant. I
knew what I'd understood-what I knew. I agreed with it
all. I really thought I had nothing left to lose.
109
�WITH 0RJAN AT THE GREAT JAPAN EXHIBITION
Someone in Stockholm counted out the skins
And told you how many golden buckToothed beavers had been killed to make
The coat. And yet it's not the coat that draws
Astonished glances from these Portuguese
With their ungainly noses.
They recognize in cheek and forehead, frozen
To silence by the snow, then quick
As evergreens released to freshness,In lips configuring a phrase
Of sleek imbalance, molded by chosen
Vowels lifted to sadness in a lilt
And overheard as music-in these
They feel what I, when thunderstruck, had felt:
That the same fancy etched your look
As prompted the master of the brush
To practise for a lifetime his bamboo
And then exhaust it in a single stroke.
Only the tiger is unsurprised,
Alone in the cold salon.
His liquid stripes are yours, his curvings yours,
And with a bounding your seraphic shadow
Impresses strangeness onto silk,
Enshrines a celebration in a screen.
ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN
110
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�The Division of the West-and Perception
Leo Raditsa
Introduction
We live in a divided world. This is a common phrase that
statesmen repeat, and their audiences ignore and forget.
And that nobody much understands: it is too obvious.
This division is not only a "political" fact-Churchill's
"Iron Curtain" -but the most fundamental fact of our
lives. It reaches every aspect of our living our art, our
thinking, and our perception. It involves most of the nations of the world and all areas of life. Its main characteristic is a capacity to spread and to touch everything. Because
it is at once so close and so remote, it is at the same time
obvious and incomprehensible. We call this division "total
1
war" -and that name haunts our imagination.
This division has in fact replaced the devil, who-many
thought-had been done away with. But with the withering of religion, or at least of the readiness to cope with neither its presence nor its absence, the devil has not been
known as such. Somewhere the free nations sense they
face evil, but are embarrassed to know it. Knowing it unflinchingly stinks somehow of a relapse into superstition.
There is no devil. But we believe men can be angels. The
greatest murder in this century has come in the name of the
greatest aspirations; aspirations that many dare not deny,
lest they lose the good opinions of their neighbors; aspira-
Leo Raditsa has recently published Some Sense about Wilhelm Reich
(New York 1978), "Augustus' Legislation Concerning Marriage, Procre-
ation, Love Affairs and Adultery" (in Aufstieg und Niedergang der
Roemischen Welt, Berlin 1980, 13,2), "Iranians in Asia Minor" (in The
Cambridge History of Iran, Cambridge 1983, 3,1), ''The Source of World
Terrorism," (Midstream, December 1981) and "Why Were We in Vietnam?" (Midstream, June-July 1982).
The above essay comes from an unpublished book, Rationality and
the Perception of Depth, and the Division of the West in the Twentieth
Century.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
tions that paralyze those incapable of living them and
which, therefore, can be exploited to excite guilt. The totalitarian regimes parrot our ideals of "self-determination of nations, or of "peace" back to us.
Such divisions are not common. But they have occurred
before. During the Peloponnesian War, during the Reformation, and in the Wars after the French Revolution,
which began the crises we continue to live. 1 The characteristic of such wars is that they spread, that they increase
on what they feed, that they are always world wars. They
touch everybody and everything. And they cannot be
stopped except by men who understand them, because
they are about things men do not understand. Hitler said
men will only die for things they cannot comprehend 2
The division of the West first occurred in 1914. It has
continuously intensified and spread not only on battlefields, but in the minds and hearts of men. In the aftermath of the Second World War, especially in 1947-48, it
grew deep and unmistakable. Until the sixties and the Indochina War few could deny it-although many, in order
to find the strength for the next step, chose at times to
ignore it. Like the violence after the First World War, the
renewal and intensification of the division after 1945 surprised many and disappointed all who had endured the
carnage in the promise that it would bring about a new
world, with a living peace and tangible concord. But these
disappointments are the very stuff of the war that has
brought about the division of the West, for it continually
excites expectations in order to disappoint them.
The First World War was a conventional war that surprised a world that took itself to be deeply at peace, and
baffled it, for it had no idea what the war was about. In the
inebriation of the expectation of a new world that overtook
the world in 1917, the war destroyed many major govern-
111
�ments and constitutions, above all in Russia and Germany,
Austria, and a few years later in Ihlly. This destruction of
governments and the exultation at their destruction, which
found expression in the myth of "revolution", in the myth
that a spontaneous upheaval of the people swept away the
governments, became the most telling characteristic of this
continuous war that has brought about the division of the
West, and that continues to deepen it.
This division spreads through polarization. Polarization
divides the world into two attitudes (ideologies) that over·
come a world made of states of various size. In its final effects polarization takes place in people's minds. It func·
tions on the assumption that before you can destroy
people and the governments that protect them, you must
destroy their capacity to reason, to perceive the difference
between freedom and slavery, between the constructive
and the destructive. The ultimate model of this polarization for international relations is civil war or sedition. This
is now called, with the ignorance of the educated, "revolution" and "class war." The characteristic of civil war 1 ac·
cording to both Thucydides and Hobbes, is precisely that
it spreads, that it is unstoppable, and that it reaches men's
minds themselves, their perception. That it alters their
perception. The struggle centers on perception, the very
perception that has been the battleground of Western phi·
losophy since at least the seventeenth century. But now
ceaseless war for more than two generations has turned
the questioning of philosophers into a matter of life and
death for everyone. For those who cannot see will neither
live nor survive.
On its deepest level this division and polarization of the
world functions to prevent contact, that is, perception in
depth-the world seems flat to our eyes-and its equiva·
lent in the mind and heart, the experience of rationality
and the self-evident. It tends to divide and to polarize qualities such as freedom and authority, and distort them into
shadows or dim reflections of themselves. In the instance
of freedom, into license; in the instance of authority, into
authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Once so distorted,
these qualities tend to define each other in their hatred
and in their destruction of each other, rather than in an
aggressive dialogue. Such a dialogue would be the true
Aristotelian mean, the mean in depth, not the mean of
compromise. Because it cripples rationality and the
strength, confidence, and courage that come with it, polar-
destruction of forms in the name of freedom, there is a
yearning for their restoration that has something of the
straightforwardness of the eighteenth century about it;
but more assurance, resilience, and sobriety-and more in·
nocence and wisdom, the innocence and wisdom that
comes after suffering. 3 Constitution and form generally
provide the test of content, of the readiness to act on what
one says. They allow us to tell the difference between acts
and propaganda, between feeling and impulse. In contrast
to this is the attitude, typically communist, that the end
justifies the means, that content-good intentions and
promises of a radiant future-authorizes the destruction
of forms, of law, and constitutions.
Finally, this polarization tends to make us perceive ourselves as indistinguishable from our enemies, in the illusion that not telling our differences might make for our
survival It makes us feel as destructive and self-destructive
as those who want to destroy us. The Soviet attempt to
dominate the world feeds on this self-hatred. This polarization spreads largely because of unacknowledged fear of
the actual military dangers that threaten us. Who looks at a
map?
I have been writing as if the division between the free
countries and totalitarianism were fundamental But the
real division occurred before there was any totalitarianism.
Totalitarianism is a consequence of the division and the
incapacity to cope with it, not its cause. The division in its
starkest, unadulterated form took shape during, and especially after, the First World War. That war that nobody really understood started out between different peoples, not
between freedom and slavery. In 1914, at the start of the
war, one could still speak of freedom without equating it
with democracy. The world was bigger than democracy,
and politics was much less important, and life more easily
distinguished from it.
The division of the West, and the disturbances in perception I have mentioned, betray themselves most strikingly in art. Nobody can see the world whole; except-and
this is crucial~the words that are written in Russia but
published in the West. Western painting has tended more
and more toward a form with content, without a recognizable world, while painting in the totalitarian world pretended to see a world it could not perceive.
ization fashions an immobilizing situation. Force, rather
than strength, appears to be decisive. And is often in fact.
The division of the West also shows itself in a separation
of form and content, especially in politics. In the free West
we are impatient with the safeguards and the indirectness,
the due process of representative and parliamentary democracy. We do not understand representation. We want
to seize on problems directly, and, therefore, take political
demonstrations, which intimidate thought, words and
action, for granted. In the East of Europe and in China,
where people have known the murder that comes of the
112
1 The Division since 1945-and Stagnation
since 1917
The division of the West shows itself most obviously in
the division of Germany, a subject so obvious that nobody
pays much attention to it, and also in the division of Korea,
and China-with Taiwan-and, of course, until 1975, of
Vietnam. The division of Germany also means the diviWINTER/SPRING 1983
�sion of Europe. Without the division ,of Germany there
would be no division of Europe, or of the rest of the world.
The division of Germany never intended by the free
West exists because there is no peace 'treaty. The nonexistence of a peace treaty is not some unimportant formality for just the same reason that marriage is not merely
a piece of paper. The lack of a peace treaty means we did
not know how to settle the Second World War despite victory and the apparent cessation of the fighting in Europe.
It meant the war had not ended, or that it had ended in a
mere truce.4 A formal treaty would have required the removal of all Soviet troops not only from Germany but
from all of what has come to be called Eastern Europe
since the War. The absence of a peace treaty meant the
war continued, no matter how fervently we wished to
deny it.
Our incapacity to restore full sovereignty to Germany
and to force the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Europe
may mean that we did not have the confidence to risk full
sovereignty in Europe again, even if we had know how to
restore it. That we preferred to bring totalitarianism and
the Soviets into the middle of Europe rather than to face a
full-fledged restoration, or attempt at restoration-and restoration in all cases meant creation of legitimate governments, a process that receives its first real test with the passage of a generation. Somewhere in the first volume of his
memoirs, Kissinger says as much. He admits that the
spread of totalitarianism, and the consequent division of
much of the world between free countries and totalitarian,
has given the world a kind of stability it did not have before. I think this dreadfully wrong. I think that the war has
gone on more intensely, first of all with the Soviet seizure
of half of Europe without having to fight us or the rest of
Europe for it. Only it has gone on without direct fighting,
in Europe, between the free countries and the Soviets.
But whether it is wrong or not, dreadful or not, is not the
real question. There is no way of settling a war one does
not understand. And unless you can settle it you are probably condemned to eventual undoing in war-in battle or
not-for the incapacity to bring victories into settlements
turns them into mere incidents in a war that cannot be
stopped.
Nineteen forty-five complicated the situation for free
countries whose constitutions, especially if they are inherited, presuppose a capacity to distinguish between war and
peace. It forced nations to carry on wars, and pretend they
were at peace-a situation that tied the tongues ofleaders in
free countries, and forced them into something like totalitarian hypocrisy, for they could act but could not explain
why they acted, which meant that eventually they could not
act at all and lost the confidence of their electors.
Because the division of Germany and Europe and the
consequent antagonism between the Soviet Union and
the United States means that the war is not over, the
United States and the free countries must go along with
the Soviet Union in its passionate profession of hatred of
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
nazism and fascism, a hatred that seems to increase with
the passage of time. Until recently this going along meant
"no enemies on the left"; for the left was portrayed as the
only sure antidote to fascism and nazism. Stalin at Yalta
had infuriated Churchill by calling any government that
was anti-fascist, democratic.5 In his footsteps, the Soviet
Union continues to equate a democracy" with antifascism
and antinazism, and to call any country it desires to undo
"fascist." Since 1967, at least, it has used the word to
smear Israel, whose capacity to defend itself stirs Soviet
hatred and keeps it from seizing the Middle East. 6 In
much of the West, perhaps most obviously in Italy, until a
few years ago, when it became apparent to many that the
most organized and deadly terrorism came from left, it was
enough to call anything "fascist" to discredit it without
further discussion.
The power of this little word "fascism" must come from
somewhere. It cannot come from the fearful memory of
the past, especially in a time that shows itself most in its
forgetfulness. Its power comes from the past's persistence
in the present, from the continuation of the war in the
present, and the refusal to see it. But at the same time this
little word masks the way the war continues in the present,
for it pretends the danger from nazi Germany persists. In
fact the same danger does persist but it does not come
from the same regime.
The Soviet Union and China continue nazi Germany's
War. This exploitation of the memory of a fear, which is in
some way comfortable because safe, to distract from actual terror and murder going on daily before our eyes, is
only possible because of the incapacity to end the war
which shows itself in the division of Germany. The division of Germany, and the division of the West that comes
from it, continue the war and at the same time make it
impossible to face our past and resolve Germany's future.
This evasion of the past means that we must keep its memory alive artificially, especially the memory of past hatreds,
the main drive of Soviet propaganda. It makes it impossible to acknowledge that the defeated were not entirely
wrong, the victors not entirely right. A peace treaty, a real
peace treaty, would have meant acknowledging that nobody was entirely right. To know that neither side was entirely right, is to know our tragedy for what it is, to recognize that something was destroyed in those wars that was
valuable and that it is not going to be easy to recreate, restore or refashion. To know the tragedy of our times for
what they are, would mean facing present danger instead
of seeking relief from it in the horror of a past whose horror people did not recognize at the time.
The insistence that the Allies, who included the Soviet
Union, were entirely right, and the Axis entirely wrong
made it impossible to tell the Soviet Union to withdraw its
troops from Eastern Europe immediately after the war, for
those who are entirely right can do no wrong. The concentration on the myth of the past is a way of avoiding the
present, especially the continuance of the past in the
113
�present. Acknowledging we were not entirely right or
wrong would make the world whole again. It would make a
tougher, more straightforward, more painful-and much
less dangerous place. Until we understand that peace is
much harder than war, the war that calls itself peace will
continue-which means it will spread. The politicization
of all areas of life, which is the first sign of its advance, will
also spread.
This insistence of being wholly right has made our cen·
tury incapable of distinguishing real greatness, whose de·
fects are obvious, from the parody of it by little weak men
who might have been great. No time since the time of the
Trojan war has been so niggardly in the recognition of
greatness, and, therefore, such a patsy to thugs and mur·
derers. Like Hitler and Stalin, whom it adores when they
are alive, hates after their death. This hatred after adora·
tion amounts to disowning your own life after living it.
And it goes on. You only have to read the unbridled-and
never convincing-hymns of praise to Chou En·Lai and
Mao Tse·Tung and North Vietnamese party men in Kis·
singer's memoirs to see it. This fascination with these little
men who seem all powerful but whose apparent omnipo·
tence is only made of weakness is a fascination with mur·
der.
At the end of the Second World War, before the distor·
tions that pass for memory-like the myth that only the
Communists resisted Hitler-that prolong the Second
World War took hold, men like James Forrestal and Walter
Lippmann knew the importance of the future of Ger·
many, not only for Germany, but for all of Europe and,
therefore, for the whole world.? And they did not hesitate
to speak of it openly, in a way that appears unabashed
now. The sacrifice of Poland, and the public denial of it in
the final communique at Yalta, made it impossible for the
British and the United States to do much more than
weakly insist on German unity at Potsdam. The loss of Po·
land, which had been the subject of torturous negotiations
throughout 1944 that Churchill had stated repeatedly
would decide the peace, made it impossible to settle Ger·
many. It set the terms of the struggle we have lived with
ever since without, for the most part, understanding it in
any terms that allow a mastery of it. Instead, with the doc·
trine of containment we accepted the Soviet terms of the
struggle without realizing that the readiness to go along
without a settlement meant continuing the war.
This evasiveness about Germany, and the obsession
with the Second World War that has come with it, has had
its consequences. It was Germany, in an effort to deal with
its future on its own, not the United States, that initiated
the policy of "detente" in 1967-as Kissinger admits in his
memoirs. The United States acquiesced to German "Ost·
politik" because it did not dare oppose it. This policy has
drawn Europe away from the United States without
strengthening it. In the years after the war men foresaw
these consequences of going along with the actual division
of Germany, and insisted on its unity more clearly than
114
they do now that the consequences are here for all to see:
"Certainly we cannot default Europe to Russia" -to do so
would be to invite attack "within the next two decades" by a
totalitarian land colossus armed with all the sea and air power
which the whole of Europe could, under authoritarian management, produce.
. .. "As you know, I hold that world stability will not be re·
stored until the vacuum created by the destruction of German power and the weakening of the power of Western Europe has been filled-in other words, until a balance of power
has been restored in Europe." Such a balance of power would
include military strength, but "I believe that economic stabil-
ity, political stability and military stability must develop in
about that order.''s
In an important book in 1968, The Discipline of Power,
George Ball tried to recall the importance of Germany.
But his words even then sounded quaint and old fash·
ioned:
For the future of Gerrriany after two wars is a riddle we must
solve with care. It lies at the heart of the relations between
East and West. It is in many ways the most intractable and
quite likely the most important problem we face. 9
The absence of a peace treaty meant in the most spe·
cific terms that the fighting on the European fronts had
come to a halt but that the war had not ended, because
there were no coherent terms for ending it. There is no
way of ending a war you do not understand. The U.N.,
which had served as a distraction from the discussions for
the future of Poland at Yalta, substituted the aspiration for
peace in the future for actual negotiations for a peace
treaty that made some sense of the world in the present. It
served also to blind people to the startling fact that the
United States and Britain had thought little in concrete
terms about settling the war, that they did not know what
to do with victory in a war that had been forced upon
them-and that they had brought upon themselves.
25 Aprill947 ... At the conclusion I said it was manifest that
American diplomatic planning of the peace was far below the
quality of the planning that went into the conduct of the war.
We regarded the war, broadly speaking, as a ball game which
we had to finish as quickly as possible, but in doing so there
was comparatively little thought as to the relationships between nations which would exist after Germany and Japan
were destroyed. The United Nations was oversold; sound in
concept and certainly the only hope for improvement in the
world order, it was built up over-extravagantly as the solution
to international frictions that had existed for centuries. Now
there is a danger of its being cast aside by the American public in a mood of frustration and disappointment. 10
A few months later, on July 26, Robert Lovett, the Un·
der Secretary of State, deepened Forrestal's analysis:
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�... He spoke of the lack of planning fqr peace in the State
Department and the casual and off~the-cuff decisions of the
late President, and referred to Churchill's remark that at
Yalta he had been dealing with the "shell of a man" and not
the man himself. Lovett added that the great political error in
the postwar period was the failure to insist upon the writing
of peace treaties while our troops and military power were
still evident in Europe. Nothing, he said, could have stopped
the American forces which were at that time deployed in Germany. II
Probably nothing betrays more the confusion and the
desperation of statesmen after the war than the occurrence of meetings like Yalta and Potsdam, the first of
many summit meetings that have never brought agree·
ment. They were born of a desperate notion that a few
"great" men could make peace on the strength of their
"personal" friendship. And that is part of the reason why
"friendship" has become a word we blush to use. They
substituted talk for negotiation. At Yalta Churchill spoke
often as if he were in Parliament-but there was no one to
listen. Roosevelt was exhausted unto death-and Stalin
had no use for words except as traps for those who spoke
them. And by pretending to hear them in private, he kept
Churchill from speaking them in public where they might
have really counted. In some sense Yalta and Potsdamand not the U.N.-were the first to substitute the aspira·
tion for peace in the future for the actual negotiation of
peace in the present. And the substitution of aspiration for
the action of actual agreement was just what Stalin
wanted, for he knew the cultivation of aspiration you had
no intention of fulfilling weakened and, eventually, undid
men.
The policy of unconditional surrender made the conclusion of a peace treaty difficult, for it destroyed German
sovereignty and no peace treaty could be concluded with·
out Germany's consent. Conclusion of a peace treaty re-
quired the restoration of, or at very least the agreement to
restore, German sovereignty. And the restoration of sover-
eignty or its creation-for it amounts to the same thingas the whole history since the First World War shows, is
extremely difficult, and in any case requires much more
than a generation. Rousseau thought it impossible. Cer·
tainly, it is impossible unless the victors realize its difficulty. Neither to restore it entirely or to destroy it
entirely-the situation of Germany since 1945-means
threatening the sovereignty of the victors and all their al·
lies whose assurance of sovereignty depends on them, especially when there are regimes like the Soviet that feed
on the destruction of sovereignty, for whom war called
"revolution" and "peace" means the destruction of sover-
eignty. And without the recognition of sovereignty, there
can be no experience of reality, of the difference between
life and death, war and peace. Without it all nations invite
questioning not only with words, but with acts that aim to
destroy any people or nation not strong enough to resist.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
The most obvious consequence of the absence of a
peace treaty, the division of Germany, is an extreme exam-
ple of the communist technique which threatens many nations called independent but actually struggling for sovereignty and legitimacy. This technique splits countries
against themselves under the cover of a supposedly spontaneous civil war that is actually aggression from the outside. In the extreme instance of Germany, the defense of
West Germany might mean the destruction of all of Germany in the actual outbreak of war. To defend itself Ger.
many must risk its destruction. This contradiction that defense would bring destruction is at the center of the peace
movement, which started in the Federal Republic in response to the decision of Italy, Germany, and Britain to
accept the Pershing II and cruise missiles at the end of
1979.
The division of the West that dwarfs the relations between nations also reproduces itself within the free nations through polarization in thinking to the point that in·
dividuals of the "Left" and the "Right" experience
different meanings for same words. Thucydides gave this
incapacity to experience the same meaning for the same
words classic expression in his description of the civil war
in Corcyra-a description that is at the heart of Hobbes's
thinking, and, therefore, of our political understanding of
domestic political life.
The received value of names imposed for signification of
things, was changed into arbitrary. For inconsiderate boldness, was counted true-hearted manliness: provident deliberation, a handsome fear: modesty, the cloak of cowardice: to be
wise in every thing, to be lazy in every thing. A furious suddenness was reputed a point of valour. To re-advise for the
better security, was held for a fair pretext of tergiversation.
He that was fierce, was always trusty; and he that contraried
such a one, was suspected. He that did insidiate, if it took, was
a wise man; but he that could smell out a trap laid, a more
dangerous man than he. But he that had been so provident as
not to need to do the one or the other, was said to be a dissolver of society, and one that stood in fear of his adversary.
In brief, he that could outstrip another in the doing of an evil
act, or that could persuade another thereto that never meant
it, was commended.
Hobbes, however, was little concerned with war from
abroad, and especially with war from abroad that calls itself
sedition. He saw the threat to civil life as coming mainly
from within, and not from the exploitation of domestic discord as a cover for aggressive war. War from abroad that
wins an unwilling consent by calling itself sedition is something the twentieth century's incapacity to perceive events
has brought upon a world too unsure of itself to distinguish
the new from the merely self-destructive.
In contrast to the Peloponnesian War and Corcyra, however, the polarization today in free countries comes not
primarily from actual violence within the country but occurs in men's minds in response to war masking as civil
115
�violence elsewhere in the world, often in places no one
ever thought of much, before the ohset of fighting.
The division and polarization shOjVS itself not only be·
tween individuals but within them-' individuals who feel
torn between, in appearance, mutually exclusive interpre~
tations of all events. One man's hero is another's murderer.
Because we fear the responsibility of choosing, such a
division and polarization brings paralysis. And paralysis is
often a prelude to violence-or to helplessness in the face
of violence. Aristotle meant something like paralysis when
he used the word stasis for events which until recently
many called "revolution" in the illusion that their violence
brings movement and change instead of springing from
the incapacity for change.
This polarization in thinking would not work its way
into men's reasoning without the fear of the Soviet Union
and Communist China, mostly unacknowledged, behind
it. Lately, too, the Soviet Union has openly excited fear
with its threats of nuclear war, and, before that, with its
sponsorship of supposedly indigenous terrorists throughout the world-a sponsorship that governments even now,
with the exception of Italy and Israel, do not take seriously
because their awareness of it influences neither their
words nor their actions. 12 This open resort to terror is in
fact an attempt to bring the fear that reigns in totalitarian
count!ies to the whole world.
Propaganda always feeds on suppressed anger and fear.
Once people face the facts that inspire this unacknowledged fear, for instance the extermination in Afghanistan
and the use of gas in Afghanistan, Laos, and Cambodia,
the propaganda loses its grip-and men return to their
senses. Individuals and newspapers like the Wall Street
Journal, L'express, II Giornale Nuovo have driven governments to at least acknowledge Soviet sponsorship of terrorism, manipulation of the peace movements, use of gas in
Afghanistan, Laos, and Cambodia. In the face of sceptical
hostile journalists' questions about terrorism, the then
Secretary of State, Alexander M. Haig, referred to the
work of one private journalist, Claire Sterling. But especially in foreign affairs, governments are supposed to bring
men to their senses-not men their governments. We are
already in a situation that calls upon individuals to say
things their governments dare not acknowledge-the situation of individuals in totalitarian countries.
The last presidential election somewhat undid this tendency to polarization in thinking in the United Statesand also in free Europe-because it showed the capacity
of millions of individuals to come to their own conclusions,
to think with their own heads, despite the pounding and
manipulation of almost all major media. It made facts self- ·
evident that men had hardly dared mention in public a few
years before. There was, however, an immediate attempt
to reintroduce ideological stereotypes, like a drug that
some men, and especially some men who have come to
speak for the Democratic Party, could not get along with-
116
out. In somewhat veiled terms, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. recently pleaded openly for this kind of polarization, even as
he scornfully admitted that Reagan's election has reasserted common sense perception and the meaning of
words enough to weaken the ideological rigidity that had
intensified polarization during the long years of South
Vietnam's and the United States' fight to save Indochina.
In the attempt to reintroduce this polarization, exploitation of the yearning for peace and the terror before nuclear death plays an important role, a role similar to the
"anti-war" movements more than ten years ago:
In foreign policy the administration has presided over the re-
militarization of the Cold War. [Soviet propaganda characterizes any Western attempt to defend itself as a reintroduction
of the Cold War.] It has conveyed the distinct impression that
it regards nuclear weapons as usable and nuclear war as winnable. Far from regarding the nuclear arms race as a threat to
the future of humanity, the administration appears to regard
it as the great means for doing the Soviets in.13
The government appears tongue-tied before this attempt to rewaken ideological thinking. It avoids straightforward facts and telling details and resorts to platitudes
that are barely distinguishable from ideology, and betrays
something approaching inverted agreement with those
who wish to undo it. This evasiveness bespeaks fear and
stirs the suspicion it would dispell. For instance, President
Reagan in his address on March 8, 1983, and on other occasions, exaggerated the effective exercise of American
strength in the years immediately after the Second World
War-the years that, unwittingly, made for the continuation of the war they meant to end, and thereby, increased
the chances for the collapse of the West that has to some
extent occurred.
The absence of a coherent peace, and the consequent
unacknowledged continuation of the war, meant we knew
what we were against but not what we were for. It meant
containment-the resignation to the perpetuation of the
division in the hope that it would end. The truth of the
matter is probably that nobody at the end of the War really
expected peace. For otherwise they would have thought
seriously about it. Because they did not expect it, they
asked only to be allowed to aspire to it.
The paralysis that first betrayed itself in this resignation
shows itself not only within countries but in the general
stagnation in international relations which some take for
"stability" -which, in turn, fosters stagnation in attitudes
that prevent the perception of facts, and their significance, at the moment of their occurrence.
Soviet propaganda speaks as if the truce in Europe and
the far East in 1945 had just occurred. And in some sense,
that is true-in the psychological sense. In the free countries the same old arguments are repeated from generation
to generation, but always as if they were new, the same
illusions reappear and must be dispelled. This repetition of
the same arguments responds unawares to the rigidity of
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�Communist propaganda-and sometimes is actually occasioned and manipulated by Communist disinformation.l4
At the time of the Soviet attack on Afghanistan in December 1979, George Kennan explained Soviet aggression in
much the same terms that Forrestal in 1944 said hampered
American perception of Soviet aggression:
After a Socialist woman's attempt on Lenin's life on August 28, 1918, Radek, the Bolshevists' star writer, quoted
Lenin's ''winged words'' in Izvestia:
Even if ninety percent of the people perish, what matter if
the other ten percent live to see the revolution become universal?18
I find that whenever any American suggests that we act in
accordance with the needs of our own security he is apt to be
called a god-damned fascist or imperialist, while if Uncle Joe
suggests that he needs the Baltic Provinces, half of Poland, all
of Bessarabia and access to the Mediterranean, all hands
agree that he is a fine, frank, candid and generally delightful
fellow who is very easy to deal with because he is so explicit in
what he wants.l5
In a world that thinks of itself as constantly on the move,
little changes-in perception and understanding. Again,
Forrestal in 1947 could be describing the situation today:
A few pages later in a somewhat different context Melgounov comments:
Not for nothing do the three capital letters which stand for
the title of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, of the
Che-Ka, stand also for the three Russian words which denote
"Death to every man." 19
In Afghanistan a few years ago, to the ignorance of almost all Western newspapers, an Afghan Communist in
charge of a prison echoed the Soviet words of 1918:
It looks to me as if the world were going to try to turn conservative but the difficulty is that between Hitler, your friends to
the east, and the intellectual muddlers who have had the
throttle for the last ten years, the practical people are going to
have a hell of a time getting the world out of receivership, and
when the miracles are not produced the crackpots may demand another chance in which to really finish the job. At that
time it will be of greatest importance that the Democratic
Party speaks for the liberals, but not for the revolutionaries. 16
But stagnation does not mean "stability"-it means drift
towards totalitarianism, drift for the most part unperceived.
And the stagnation does not go back to 1945 only. It
reaches back to 1917. Soviet actions to the world have not
changed since 1917 and early 1918. They are only an extension of the terror that began in 1917 and 1918 in Russia
to as much of the world as will not resist the methodical
resort to terror, sometimes not even disguised with hon-
eyed overtures of peace in the name of a spontaneous uprising for freedom. lri 1923 Guglielmo Ferrero said that
Russia had in four years suffered the distintegration that
had taken the ancient world four centuriesY In 1925 the
Russian historian, educated and trained in the world of
Nicholas II, Sergey Petrovich Melgounov, published The
Red Terror in Russia, in the major languages of Europe,
that described the atrocities of the Bolsheviks without uttering the word Marxist. But all that has been forgotten.
And because it has been forgotten we recall anything that
happens with difficulty.
The man who will read Melgounov will see the stagnation that surrounds him. He will see that the generations
have come and gone and that little has changed in Bolshevik practice since 1917, the practice that instructed Hitler
and showed him the world would ignore, and forget what
it did not ignore. The practice of getting others to do the
murdering for them, and still others to justify and exult in
it. The practice of blaming others for the murder they did
themselves: uThe Terror was forced upon us."
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Their commander-in-chief was one Sayyed Abdollah. With
my own ears I heard him say: "A million Afghans only must
remain alive: we only need a million Communists: the others,
we don't need them, we will liquidate them.'' 20
Nothing has changed. The children shot today in Afghanistan are the descendants of the children shot in Russia in 1917-1918.21 The murder that went after almost
every person of noticeable energy and independence in
the countryside in South Vietnam by 1965-information
available in a book published in the United States in the
same year-went on in Russia beginning in 1917.22 There
was nothing spontaneous even then: it was cold and methodical. And why is it that murder, as long as it is spontaneous, seems alright to forget? The terror that wracked
Germany in the last years, and-almost unnoticed by the
rest of the world-wracks Italy now, that threatens the life
of every judge who dares condemn a terrorist, of every
courageous journalist, of the wives and children of prison
guards and wardens who do not cooperate-all that started
in 1917 in Russia with the seizure of wives and children as
hostages for shooting. And yet we, and our newspapers,
treat murder in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cambodia, or Italy,
when it is noticed at all, as if it had not happened before.
Neither are peace overtures at the moment of murder
anything new. For instance, the present Soviet peace overtures to Europe-together with threats of nuclear annihilation-meant to stop the American defense of Europe
with Pershing II and cruise missiles at the moment that
men and women drown in excrement and are buried alive
in Afghanistan.2l In 1917 and 1918 in Russia the shootings
never stopped on the nights before amnesties, the most
dreaded nights. And the greatest murder in Russia in 1917
and 1918 came with the aboliton of the death penalty.
When I think how few of these occurrences that ought
to be the currency of our thinking about the war called
peace figure in our memories, and contrast it with the hor-
117
�ror that grows with the years at thepmrder of five million
Jews and unumbered millions of others, I conclude that
only the destruction of fascism and nazism in war allows us
to experience its horrors after (and almost because) we can
do nothing about them. But we ignore the present murder, and the murder that preceded it, because we can do
something about it-if only not ignore it.
The resentment and hatred in much of the world at Israel's courage-that makes others perceive their cowardice-bespeaks a certain disingenousness in this horror at
past murders we can no longer do anything about. A disingenousness that serves to distract from present murder
and present cowardice and that shows itself nakedly in the
current Soviet and Arab propaganda that compares Israel
to the Nazis. Israel is one of the few nations in the world
that stands up to murderers, and takes words seriously,
that has learned the lessons of World War 11-the war that
does not cease.
But although the Communists have not changed since
1917, they have renewed themselves. They have returned
to their source as Machiavelli (Discourses 1, 3) said all republics and sects must. (But a regime that finds itself in
undermining the governments of the world, let alone its
endurance and renewal, was more than Machiavelli could
imagine.) First with the seizure of half of Europe and
China after the Second World War, and then with the
theft of Cuba-while the world wondered whether Castro
was really a "Communist"-and most lately with the undoing of many helpless and unwilling countries after the
fall of Saigon in April 1975: Cambodia, Laos, South
Yemen (in 1968), Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua. And Grenada in 1979. I almost forgot little Grenada
which lies on the oil routes through the Caribbean and
whose youths now go to Cuba six months every year for
indoctrination. The Communists helped precipitate the
destruction of the government of Lebanon in 1975 and of
the government of Persia in 1978. They are now fighting
to seize El Salvador and Afghanistan. And with each successive conquest there is less information and more lies.
And the world watches as if in a dream. It has been a rough
"short course" in the geography not learned in our renowned universities.
Each new conquest means a return to 1917-1918, and
reconfirms its lessons. To talk of the weakening of ideology in these circumstances is nonsense. Each conquest
strengthens it. Violence undoes the illusions and the beliefs of victims-but spreads the fear that makes for illusion and the lip-service to ideology in the rest of the world.
We are not getting farther away from 1917 as the years
pass on: it is approaching us. That is what I mean by stagnation-and what the Communists mean with their talk of
the inevitability of history.
Nineteen seventeen is nearer, because we cannot re~
member it, because we have less conception of what happened than men did in the early twenties. I do not mean
only the atrocities, but the simple facts. We still mindlessly
118
call October a Hrevolution", as if it were some popular up~
rising, instead of a few organized armed men's seizure of
a state. There is little understanding that the war, and the
collapse of the army in the face of peace propaganda, were
the decisive events-propaganda for peace, intenser and
more dangerous, but otherwise not unlike the outcry in the
United States and Europe during the Vietnam War.24
All the endless talk for more than two generations about
Hclass warfare," "the masses," "alienation," usocialism,"
the division of many intellectuals outside Russia into "Stalinists" and "Trotskyists", all this talk, this supposedly
"passionate" talk, that takes itself for philosophy, but is actually only verbiage, serves to obliterate the perception
and remembrance of these few fearful facts. And this incapacity to know the facts of the twentieth century reflects
itself also in a general incapacity to tell the story of our
times, to write simple narrative history in which living
statesmen count, and there is a reality to cope with. 25
And this incapacity to remember and see the facts leads
us to speak and even act as if we had adversaries worthy of
respect, as if they were partly right. We let communist regimes get away with murder. We do not even remind them
of it, and do not distinguish between these regimes and
their peoples. And the more they get away with murder,
the more they return to 1917, the more they can ignore
the nagging emptiness within. The force of this emptiness, and its fragility, shows itself in their denial of rejection, especially of the rejection of their agents and party
men:
My career in the KGB was developing successfully, and it
promised to be even better in the future. But my KGB and
party superiors did not know that for many years I was devel-
oping dissatisfaction with and finally total resentment of the
Soviet socialist system. When I was a university student I had
the chance to learn about the night~marish cruelty and atrocities of the Stalin regime which slaughtered up to 20 million
Soviet citizens. After graduating from the university and being transferred from one Central Committee, Communist
Party, Soviet Union affiliated organization to another, I wit·
nessed firsthand the fact that the Soviet socialist system was
not working for the good of its citizens. I came to the understanding that it is a totally corrupt dictatorship-type regime
with rotten moral standards. Most of the slogans put forward
by the Kremlin leaders I came to understand are aimed at de-
ceiving peoples of the U.S.S.R. and of the world. And I clearly
understand that Marxism-Leninism is actually a perverted
type of religion imposed on millions of people.
Over the past 3 years the Soviet authorities are progressively
using all ruthless and, even by Soviet law, illegal means to
force and blackmail my family to cooperate with them. The
main reason for the indescribable torture of my family by the
Soviet authorities is that the KGB is obviously under pressure to
present the Soviet Politburo with "proof' that the reasons for
my defection to the United States were not political. They cannot admit that a major in Soviet intelligence could possibly be a
hidden dissident.
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�Speaking about the Soviet Union, they have a problem, because my file in the KGB does not lead them to find anything
bad about me because there is nothing-it is impossible for
them. It is against the Soviet Communist rzature to admit that
a KGB major defected for political reasons. It just cannot happen by their ideas-they know that it can, but they cannot tell
that to the Politburo or the Russian people. (My emphasis)26
Tolstoy describes this emptiness in Napoleon, and the
dependence of its persistence on the approval of much of
the world. At Borodino for once the suffering of battle
breaks through to him. But he cannot yield to his feelings,
because of the praise of half the world. He orders the continuation of fire that he does not desire against Russians
who will not give way, because he thinks the world expects
it of him:
This day the horrible appearance of the battlefield overcame
that strength of mind which he thought constituted his merit
and his greatness . ... With painful dejection he awaited the
end of this action, in which he regarded himself as a participant and which he was unable to arrest. A personal, human
feeling for a brief moment got the better of the artificial phantasm of life he had served so long. He felt in his own person the
sufferings and death he had witnessed on the battlefield. The
heaviness of his head and chest reminded him of the possibil-
ity of suffering and death for himself. ...
Even before he gave that order the thing he did not desire,
and for which he gave the order only because he thought it was
expected of him, was being done. And he fell back in that artificial realm of imaginary greatness, and again-as a horse walking a treadmill thinks it is doing something for itself-he submissively fulfilled the cruel, sad, gloomy, and inhuman role
predestined for him.
And not for the day and hour alone were the mind and conscience darkened of this man on whom the responsibility for
what was happening lay more than on all the others who took
part in it. Never to the end of his life could he understand
goodness and truth, too remote from everything human, for
him ever to be able to grasp their meaning. He could not disavow his actions, belauded as they were by half the world, and
so he had to repudiate truth, goodness, and all humanity.
(Emphasis mine)27
But the victory over Napoleon brought Europe a hundred years of stability because Talleyrand understood that
only the removal of Napoleon could dispel! the "artificial
phantasm" that was destroying the life of Europe in the
name of improving it, and persuaded Alexander I of it28 In
contrast, the First World War precipitated totalitarianism
in much of Europe, and the Second World War, dedicated
to its destruction, ended with its greatest advance. In contrast to the French revolution, which brought war to all of
Europe in the name of freedom, the First World War
brought totalitarianism in its aftermath.
There is in recent history a specific date for the renewal
of this emptiness' attack on the truth that began in 1917,
and for the West's collaboration with it, a date that showed
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
that the capacity to tell the truth-without which no free
country could survive-was at the center of the struggle.
On April 16, 1943, the government of Poland in London
announced the discovery of bodies of "many thousands"
of Polish officers they suspected the Soviets had murdered
near Smolensk in the forest of Katyn. 29 Instead of supporting the Polish government which was eventually to have
ten divisions fighting in the West, the British and American governments tried to silence it. Stalin broke diplomatic relations with the government of Poland and started
the long diplomatic struggle for Poland that went on
throughout 1944 and which Churchill knew would decide
the fate of Germany and Europe, and, therefore, of the
peace.
A Hungarian Stalinist until he joined the uprising in
1956 that brought him his death, Miklos Gimlas described
this process of throttling the capacity to say, and understand, the obvious that has threatened many of the governments and newspapers of the world since 1917, and
that made a decisive advance in the long years of the war
for Indochina. Because they succumbed to, and even in
some instances encouraged, the frenzy in the United
States and Europe that took itself for passion that undid
that war, their words now ring hollow-the so-called "credibility gap":
Slowly we had come to believe ... that there are two kinds of
truth ... that truth of the Party and the people can be different and can be more important than the objective truth and
that truth and political expediency are in fact identical . ...
And so we arrived at the outlook ... which poisoned our
whole public life, penetrated the remotest corners of our
thinking, obscured our vision, paralysed our critical faculties
and finally rendered many of us incapable of simply sensing
or apprehending truth. This is how it was, it is no use denying
it.30
In just those years of the Indochina war the first authentic voices since 1917 from within Russia broke upon the
world, and showed its startled eyes that the capacity to tell
the truth, which had made Russian art one of the centers
of Europe in the nineteenth century, had survived the socalled Russian revolution, that Russia still lived, that
things were at the same time worse than we had known,
and better than we had imagined in that abandoned country. At the same time that the West succumbed to an onslaught of lies, voices in the east dismissed them with a
sureness that made us blush at the obvious we desired to
deny-and did deny. Loudly, because we knew it to be undeniable. But the Indochina war ended with the first major Soviet advances throughout the world since the seizure
of eastern Europe in 1945.
These voices embarrass much of the West because they
remind it of its evasiveness and willing blindness. Almost a
generation ago, Michael Polanyi described this incapacity
to face simple facts, and draw their consequences, in
words that tell even more today:
119
�Many academic experts will refuse'· to recognize today that
mere thirst for truth and justice has 1 caused the revolts now
transforming the Soviet Countries. They are not Marxists,
but their views are akin to Marxism in Claiming that the scien·
tific explanation of history must be based on more tangible
forces than the fact that people change their minds3l
This incapacity to cope with the truth, and tell it, makes
it difficult for free governments to explain their policies
and even sometimes to enjoy the confidence of their
actions. There is no way to act effectively in free countries
without straightforward explanation of actions. For action
needs the test of public explanation to win natural assurance. During the war in Vietnam, the United States did
much of what was necessary, but did not dare justify it or
say it openly, did not dare know what it was doing. The
government was simply not able to find the words to ex·
plain its actions. This incapacity to explain its actions
amounted almost to acting publicly in secret. This evasiveness not only bred suspicion, but undid confidence both in
the government and finally in the people, who for many
years lent the government a confidence it turned out not
to have. It also kept the government from realizing that it
did not have a strategy for winning. That even today the
word Winning" sounds uncomfortable is a measure of our
past evasiveness. The government lost the war with words,
not on the battlefield, because it did not understand its
actions enough to explain them. A Soviet commentator, in
contrast, understood its actions very well, precisely because he did not have to suffer the test of public explanation:
11
I really tore the stupid Americans to shreds this morning ... I
held them up to shame for escalating the War in Vietnam.
What idiots they are in Washington! Rotten humanists in
white gloves! They want to hold Communism back, the fools.
But it doesn't have to be stopped; it needs to be squashed.
But they don't understand, not a damned thing! The only fellow they ever had who understood what a cowardly bunch of
jackals all these Stalins and Khrushchevs and Maos and Hos are
was John Foster Dulles, may his soul rest in peace. He knew
you can talk with Communists pleasantly and politely, just
as long as you hold a gun to their heads. Then they are quiet
and peaceful, as smooth as can be. But any other approach is
useless ...
I read all these people like Alsop, Lippmann, and Pearson,
and not one of these pundits is smart enough to say straight
out: Tell the Russians to go to hell and get on with the job in
Vietnam. The Russians won't dare to raise a finger against
you. They're scared to death. And the Chinese won't touch
you either. But they'll make a terrible lot of noise. All you
have to do is snap back at them properly and quietly, as
Dulles did, and they'll shut up. They'll be begging for peace
themselves. How stupid life is. We can't write what we think
but they can't do what we think either. They are afraid of their
own left-wingers. I've been there, I know. (My emphasis)32
This incapacity to explain action publicly, and, therefore, more often than not, to understand it privately with
120
any confidence, leads to an incapacity to understand the
significance of action. To understand the importance of
acts, especially in a situation where the threat of total war
is constant and, therefore, unreal, and "little" wars continue regardless-and where the fighting is far away and
engages only the Soviets or their proxies directly-you
have to go to the books about the camps. They are the only
books of manners, of diplomacy, we have-our Odyssey.
The first rule of the camps is, pay attention to actions, not
words-one's own actions and the actions of others:
Only dimly at first, but with ever greater clarity, did I also
come to see that soon how a man acts can alter what he is.
Those who stood up well in the camps became better men,
those who acted badly soon became bad men; and this, or at
least so it seemed, independent of their past life history and
their former personality make-up or at least those aspects of
personality that seemed significant in psychoanalytic thinking. 33
Diplomats should now go to the books on the camps to
learn what they are up against in dealing with totalitarian
regimes. For our world no longer has any strangers, or,
at least, no longer knows how to recognize and greet a
stranger. And in the camps there are no strangers-and
everybody knows it unmistakably.
In their concentration camps totalitarian regimes betray
the desperation that possesses them, and that informs
their actions among the nations: in their readiness to allow
criminals to victimize the innocent captives, in their resort
to terror, including threats to relatives and friends still outside, to make men do anything to survive, above all in their
effort to prove there is no such thing as courage, that life is
merely existence, to destroy men without directly killing
them, to make them scared of the breath they breathe.
And all this not swiftly but in a long drawn-out cunning
cat-and-mouse game that raises expectations and crushes
them, that exploits the yearning to survive (at the price of
betraying all one is), and the illusion that one might just be
different from the dead and dying, to turn a man into an
apparently willing victim, because his will-and his lifehave shrunk almost beyond his experience. Melgounov
was already clear in 1925 about this slowness:
Besides, the policy of the Soviet Government is a policy capa·
ble always of postponing its wreakings of revenge, so that persons may "disappear", may be sent into exile, or thrown in
gaol, long after they have been granted official guarantees of
immunity. 34
Melgounov mentions no countries-in addition to individ-
uals-because he did not imagine that the violence consuming Russia might spread to the world. All this slowness, especially the exploitation of the wish to survive at
almost any cost, has betrayed itself in the fear of war that
has obsessed the West since 1917. More than twenty years
passed before the Communists finally struck South Vietnam openly.
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�Terror and destruction appear to wprk. Few can cope
with them without wreaking equal destruction-Indochina was an important exception-in return, destruction
that usually works to the advantage of tfuose who want to
destroy.
The camps teach that there is no "negotiation" without
hard-headed courage, and the strength that comes of it,
that does not lead to irremediable surrender in which the
victim, individual or country, is made to consent to his
own destruction, which wants to change man, to reach his
core, but which destroys many, and discovers unexpected
strength in some.
Who knows whether it is not in man's lack of an internal core
that the mysterious success of the New Faith and its charm
for the intellectual lie? By subjecting man to pressure, the
New Faith creates this core, or in any case the feeling that it
exists. Fear of freedom is nothing more than fear of the void.
"There is nothing in man," said a friend of mine, a dialecti~
cian. "He will never extract anything out of himself, because
there is nothing there. You can't leave the people and write in
a wilderness. Remember that man is a function of social
forces. Whoever wants to be alone will perish." This is proba-
bly true, but I doubt if it can be called anything more than the
law for our times. Feeling that there was nothing in him,
Dante could not have written his Divine Comedy or Montaigne his Essays, nor could Chardin have painted a single
still-life. Today man believes there is nothing in him, so he
accepts anything, even if he knows it to be bad, in order to
find himself at one with others, in order not to be alone. As
long as he believes this, there is little one can reproach in his
behaviour. 35
The emptiness Milosz means is Baudelaire's ennui. It
means not being able to taste life, not feeling alive, not being alive. "Whoever wants to be alone will perish." But
whoever does not stand alone will not live. People who
cannot feel life, whose words have no meaning, feel that
there is a wall between them and life, that there is no core.
The incapacity to experience life, to feel alive, makes people feel as miserable as poverty-and, ashamed. They
wince in envy at individuals who can feel these things. In
free countries envy tortures all the more, because it is clear
that nothing keeps one from life except oneself: there is
nobody to blame.
Totalitarian ideology promises to dispel such emptiness,
but totalitarian states simply crush anything that is not
empty. They murder and persecute individuals not possessed by it. It is the insistence on this emptiness, on proving that there is nothing else, nothing that can stand up to
it, that drives totalitarian regimes to expand. For free
countries excite murderous envy, because they remind totalitarian regimes that everyone might not be empty, that
there might be men who can say "no," who might love life
enough not to do anything to survive. But baffled by their
freedom that mercilessly drives them to experience their
incapacity to live, the free countries, for the most part,
cannot conceive that anybody could envy them:
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
... very many people: living in totalitarian countries, having
survived terror and been brainwashed by propaganda, are not
only genuinely content with their position, but virtually consider themselves to be the happiest people on earth. This,
however, engenders an inferiority complex vis-3.-vis the democracies, so that the inhabitants of totalitarian countries often turn into implacable enemies of freedom, ready and willing to destroy everything that reminds them of the free will
they have lost. This also applies in many respects to the intellectuals of those countries, who often display a pathological
fear of freedom.
A man who has been accustomed to breathing fresh air all his
life does not notice it, and never realizes what a blessing it is.
He thinks of it only occasionally when entering a stuffy room,
but knows that he need only open the window for the air to
become fresh again. A man who has grown up in a democratic
society and who takes the basic freedoms as much for granted
as the air he breathes is in much the same position. People
who have grown up under democracy do not value it highly
enough. Yet there are weighty reasons for their dissatisfaction with this society .... 36
This reluctance to take their own measure that makes it
difficult for the free countries to realize that the totalitarian regimes are murderously envious of their freedom-in
some sense experience it more deeply than the free countries because they have deprived themselves of it-makes
it difficult for them to experience communist hypocrisy
and duplicity. At the end of the war some experienced the
West's incapacity to perceive Communist duplicity more
vividly than now:
The sheer duplicity of the Soviets during these negotiations is
beyond the experience of the experts in the State Department, with the result that any future promise made by the
Soviets is to be evaluated with great caution. It appears that
they do not mind lying or even our knowing that they lie, as
long as it is for the benefit of the state_37
Perception of totalitarian duplicity would lead to awareness that the Communist regimes speak in a different dimension, that the same words mean different things to
them, in the precise sense that the same words meant different things at Corcyra. This double vision in which the
relation to world and self, and of language to truth, is at
stake, is precisely the disturbance in perception that I
mentioned in the introduction which betrays itself in the
division of the West and feeds upon it-and makes it difficult for us to distinguish between our friends and enemies:
30 Aprill947 Jimmy Byrnes came in this morning and in talking about the Russians he said they are "stubborn, obstinate
and they don't scare." I reminded him of our conversation
about two years ago when he chided me for being too extreme in my views about the Russians when I told him that
[when] he harbored the illusion that he could talk in the same
fashion with the Russians that he could with the Republican
opposition in the Senate he was very much mistaken. At that
time I told him that when he spoke so to speak, using language
121
�in a third dimension, the Russians spoke in a fourth, and there
1
was no stairway. 38
The dissociation of words from facts, which makes it impossible to grasp the meaning of events until afterwards,
when nothing can be done about them, results from not
perceiving totalitarian duplicity, and the incommensurability of vision that comes with it. Such dissociation and
double vision makes people helpless before aggression.
Brezhnev in 1973 meant just this dissociation when he
called for "cooperation" between the two sides despite
their incapacity to talk to each other-as if they were interchangeable, and the truth did not separate them:
For years we have been piling up arms without interruption.
Until now we can destroy each other many times over, not
simply once. Why not persuade our people to work together,
even if we hold ideological positions, we will perhaps never be
able to reconciliate?39
One of the New York Times correspondents in Indochina, Sydney Schanberg, experienced this double vision
in his own flesh when he could not recognize the revolution of his dreams in the murder before his eyes, patients
left to die on the operating table and the rest, in Cambodia
in the spring of 1975 after the fall of Saigon:
... In almost every situation we encountered during the
more than two weeks we were under Communist control,
there was a sense of split vision~ whether to look at events
through Western eyes or through what we thought might be
Cambodian revolutionary eyes.
Brutality or Necessity?
Was this just cold brutality, a cruel and sadistic imposition of
the law of the jungle, in which only the fittest will survive? Or
is it possible that, seen through the eyes of the peasant soldiers and revolutionaries, the forced evacuation of the cities is
a harsh necessity? Perhaps they are convinced that there is no
way to build a new society for the benefit of the ordinary
man, hitherto exploited, without literally starting from the beginning; in such an unbending view people who represent the
old ways and those considered weak or unfit would be ex-
pendable and would be weeded out. Or was the policy both
cruel and ideological? (My emphasis)40
Because totalitarian leaders see the freedom of the West
with more clarity than much of the West, they desire to
undermine and destroy it with the free West's involuntary
cooperation and consent-to exploit the West's fear of its
own self-destructiveness, that showed itself in the First
World War and in the decade before the Second World
War, to turn it against itself. To win this unwilling cooperation they exploit the West's unacknowledge guilt at going
along with the cat-and-mouse game of murderers ever
since 1917.
The United States now goes along with this cat-andmouse game in El Salvador. Intelligent and honest journalists, who do not know much history, observe rightly that
122
the United States contributes to the polarization it might
have prevented with the swiftness of confidence-which
they do not, however, call for:
It was certainly possible to describe some members of the
armed opposition, as Deane Hinton had, as "out-and-out
Marxists/' but it was equally possible to describe other members of the opposition, as the embassy had at the inception of
the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FOR) in April of 1980,
as "a broad-based coalition of moderate and center left
groups." The right in El Salvador never made this distinction:
to the right, anyone in the opposition was a communist, along
with most of the American press, the Catholic church, and, as
time went by, all Salvadoran citizens not of the right. In other
words there remained a certain ambiguity about political
terms as they were understood in the United States and in El
Salvador, where "left" may mean, in the beginning, only a resistance to seeing one's family killed or disappeared. That it
comes eventually to mean something else may be, to the extent that the United States has supported the increasing polarization in El Salvador, the procustean bed we made ourselves.41
Violence, in appearance random, in which, in contrast
to outright war, you never really know who you are fighting, makes for the "ambiguity of political terms" that Joan
Didion talks of. Because the United States will neither pull
out entirely or move decisively, the violence goes on and
on, and the propaganda war spreads throughout the world
in the doubts of men. To prolong means to lose, because it
means to prolong uncertainty and to increase the "mixed
signals" from the United States the El Salvadorans complain of, rightly. The continuation of violence means that
men, especially men outside the country ofviolence, will
want most of all an end to it. It means victory for the few,
weaker and more violent, who will destroy freedom in El
Salvador. The focus on El Salvador that comes of going
along with this cat-and-mouse game also keeps the United
States from lifting its eyes to the real threat and instigator,
Cuba, and to the danger to Mexico-from seeing the
whole situation in the Caribbean, and in the world.
The cat-and-mouse game feeds off dread of the "Right,"
of fascism and nazism. But it may actually in the slow unceasing course of defeat provoke the brutality it dreadsas a young writer observed in profound criticism of the
President of Yale's recent outburst against the "Moral Majority":
Neither your Address, nor any other manifestations of liberal
Democrat culture take notice of the real dangers to the
United States, such as the latest measures of Soviet militarization, like the abolition of military draft deferment for college
students or the creation of military bases in Afghanistan for
advancing further into the Middle East. But these real dangers exist, they will really grow, they will produce real fear,
and on this fear real fascists or Nazis will capitalize. 42
And this may be just what Soviet policy wants-in spite of
itself.
WJNTER/SPRING 1983
�2 The Roots of the Division in the Past
I have described how the division betrays itself in politics since 1945, in the division of the world, in the division
of Germany and of countries like Korea, and in the polarization of thinking, and the excitation of irreconcilable factions within free countries, and within individuals within
those countries, and of the workings of this division, of
how it turns countries against themselves and individuals
against themselves, of how it increases the forces within
an individual that paralyze him in the name of freeing him
from them.
But this division that shows itself most startlingly in politics since 1945, goes much deeper than politics. It tends to
politicize all life. Even in Italian elementary schools and
high schools factionalism that calls itself "Left" and
"Right" holds sway-a telling indication of the adults' incapacity to speak to each other. 43
The politicization shows itself most tellingly in the politicization of freedom, in its equation with democracy, in
the incapacity to conceive of democratic constitutions
springing from freedom, rather than freedom springing
from democratic constitutions. The astonishing, fairly current, assertion that the greatest achievements in art, philosophy, and the writing of history have occurred in democracies shows this parochialism in its nakedness.
In the paradox of contradiction, the war now abroad
means to destroy constitutions in the name of directly realizing this freedom that politicization devours. For it hates
democratic constitutions for their modesty, for their readiness to build on this freedom, and yet measure their distance from it. For these constitutions with their checks
and balances, their respect for opposition, their due process, their dedication to law and justice above all expediency, express both our yearning for freedom and our inca-
pacity for realizing it, directly. In its genius the American
constitution bases its confidence in men on a distrust of
their natures, and, therefore, distinguishes what men do
from what they think, say, and desire. It, therefore, makes
men experience their disatisfaction with themselves-the
difference between their good opinion of themselves and
their actual self.
Art and philosophy and the writing of history, when
they are not propaganda masquerading as art, have always
been greater than politics and free constitutions, have always shown their foundation in nature and in living man,
in the freedom that is greater than constitutions and underlies them. In this sense art and philosophy and history
are silent. They do not incite to action, but allow one to
experience the springs of action, life itself, in another dimension of make believe and recall.
The shrinking of freedom within political bounds that
corresponds to its containment within the frontiers of a
few countries, shows itself in unmistakable terms in the
emptiness of much of what passes for art, philosophy, and
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
history-and in its unacknowledged politicization, and in
the public's fascination with it and incapacity to distinguish it from actual art. Substitute the word "communism" for "sex" in many novels written today, and they
will betray the yearning to incite to action, with the most
powerful stimulants, characteristic of propaganda, the
ideological drive to obliterate the obvious, the self-evident,
the lovely plainness of the day-as Lev Navrozov has observed.
In contrast our great art-and we have some-is above
all unassuming, unassuming enough to undo pretension
and masks, and make you blush. The plainness of our
humdrum existences which leaves little space for anything
but life, whether lived or not, escapes and baffles like a
new Circe everything but this unassumingness which
bears no pretence and makes no show, and seems, and in
some sense is, effortless-which does not mean it comes
without struggle. Above all it knows that the most important things come unasked. I am thinking, for example, of
Montale, Morandi, the Grass of Onkel, Onkel, Godard,
and Truffaut. In Sinyavsky's A Voice from the Chorus it
moves even in the camps, for the book is made up of the
author's letters from the camps-in a world that, at least in
the West, writes few letters for other than official purposes. In some sense no real story can now be told on the
unmistakable level of art without this unassumingness
that recalls the simplicity of nature, and is the only
strength we have that is undeniable. Nadezhda Mandelstarn in Hope against Hope showed Stalin's unmistakable
smell for this unassumingness, and his refusal to give up
the scent until he destroyed it.
Besides showing itself in art, philosophy, and the writing
of history, the mirrors of the soul, this freedom greater
than democracy lives in individuals, in the lives they lead,
in the language they speak, which bears all history in it,
which is always greater than the meanings it shows, which
always shows life rediscovering its meanings, and, therefore, always surprises-all living that in happy times goes
on untouched by politics. Because this freedom lives in individuals, and in some sense begins with them, the war
now going on aims at destroying all individuals capable of
experiencing freedom and, therefore, nature to some extent. Igor Shafarevich meant this destruction when he
wrote " ... socialist ideals must (bring) . . . the withering
away of all mankind, and its death.":
... the economic and social demands of socialism are the
means for the attainment of its basic aim, the destruction of
individuality.
... Such a revolution would amount to the destruction of
Man, at least in the sense that has hitherto been contained in
this concept. And not just an abstract destruction of the concept, but a real one toa.44
To the extent that the world-wide war to destroy freedom has made freedom smaller than democracy, which
123
�can only spring from it and realize it within limitations,
and allow individuals to realize it, but which cannot create
it, for it already lives, and we know its presence even in its
partial absence, totalitarianism has already succeeded.
Because individuals realize the attack is against them,
and that their governments are in some sense complicit
with it, just as they themselves are complicit with it, they
tend to be distrustful rather than critical of their democratic governments and of themselves-a distrust that like
the shrinking of freedom shows the success of totalitarianism has no geographical frontiers, because it has no sovereignty, because it subdues all life within its own frontiers
and, therefore, must feed on life without.
But this struggle against totalitarianism that has subordinated freedom to politics, and threatens the individual, is
in a sense simply a byproduct of the First World War and
of the incapacity to understand and end it. Unlike the wars
of Napoleon whose armies attempted to bring the French
Revolution to all of Europe, the First World War did not
begin as a total revolutionary war. It began as a conventional war which surprised everybody.lt turned into a total
war because nobody understood it. And its very uncontrollability, which came of this incapacity to understand it,
and which betrayed itself in enormous casualties, turned it
into a revolutionary war in 1917, for the betterment of humanity, to justify those casualties. In 1917 to keep its soldiers in the trenches, the Italian government promised
them a new world. 45 1917 also brought the Fourteen
Points, and the veneration of Wilson's picture almost like
an icon in much of Europe. The First World War was not
born of the revolution. It unleashed it.
The men who defeated Napoleon did not only know
what they were against. They knew what they were for.
They knew concretely enough what they were for, for Talleyrand to explain to Alexander I that there could be no
peace without the removal of Napoleon from power, and
restoration of monarchy in France. In contrast, the men of
1914 so little understood what they were about that they
allowed a war they had not understood to turn into a total
war against all governments-that is, into a war against
themselves.
Because revolution, the war against governments that
sets individuals against each other and against themselves,
came after and as a result of the First World War, became
the content of the First World War after the fighting on
the fronts ceased, because the war produced revolutions,
and not the revolutions the war, the division of the West
precedes the struggle against totalitarianism, and underlies it, and is deeper than it.
In 1918 in a remarkable work, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, Thomas Mann clearly grasped the underlying
meaning of the struggle that had rent Europe, and sensed
that the incapacity to grasp it, that betrayed itself in 1918
in the flight into principles that masked disrespect for the
defeated in their desire to change them, would also make
it impossible to experience the tragedy that gripped Eu-
124
rope, both victors and defeated, and, therefore, to end the
war in peace:
... Berufen sein, sei es zu einem Wissen oder einer Tat, zu
der man nicht geboren ist, das schien mir immer der Sinn der
Tragischen-und wo Tragik ist, darf Liebe sein. 46
The First World War represented a renewal of Rome's
struggle against the world in antiquity and in the sixteenth
century which Germany had resisted:
Der lmperialismus der Zivilisation ist die letzte Form des
roemischen Vereinigungsgedankens, gegen den Deutschland
protestiert . .. 47
For Thomas Mann in 1918 it was clear that the accidental war had been about something real and almost palpable, his own living and all the world he had known-and
that because it had been about something real, neither the
defeated not the victors could be entirely right.
Mann saw the First World War as a struggle between
France and Germany, between France that embodied the
principles of the French Revolution, and Germany and
the German-speaking world, and probably also Russia
(which an accident of diplomacy had put on the side of the
Allies). He understood that total war had distorted France
as much as Germany, for total war tends to obliterate the
differences between victors and defeated.
Germany stood for art as opposed to "literature"-the
novels that led Madame Bovary to destruction-for work
in distinction to employment, for culture as opposed to
civilization, for authority as opposed to liberty, which he
distinguished from freedom, for feeling as opposed to principle, for philosophy, for freedom as opposed to democracy, which tended to spread politics everywhere, and after the French Revolution, had brought war to all of
Europe. By art as opposed to "literature," he meant an art
that was greater than politics, and which taught its readers
the limits of politics. He dared even to write that he had
hoped Germany would win the war.
But the greatness of Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen
comes in the awareness that breathes throughout it that
this world is gone forever, and that its disappearance will
have consequences. It is a book full of the sense of loss,
and, therefore, full of sorrow and depth, a warm depth
whose profoundity does not frighten. Betrachtungen eines
Unpolitischen is as much a farewell to Germany as Buddenbrooks was a farewell to his parents and his family, and
Lubeck and the world of the Hanseatic cites. From now on
he would be on his own without a past in a world that was
on its own.
The time of wandering in which all were homeless had
begun-the time in which men no longer knew how to
greet a stranger, and, therefore tell the difference between
a stranger and friend, in which men no longer wrote letters, in which all knew the devastating loneliness of losing
oneself in a crowd, in which a great deal of cash no longer
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�meant wealth, in which great cities assured anonymity,
and the elites of the world lived as if in villages, in which
the country of the homeless would inherit the defense of
what was left of a Europe that could not defend itself, in
which love would be called sex, and blushes feared, in
which egalitarianism was taken for the simplicity of nature, in which any difference smote the heart with something like the pangs of unrequited love, in which envy
would be taken for enthusiasm, in which few could conceive less was more 1 in which you wrote books because you
feared to speak your mind to your neighbour, in which
plain good sense would be taken for untutored naivete, in
which gradually artists disappeared and all men became
"artists," in which everything had to be learned in school,
in which men thought they were the first in history to
make love, in which men protested against death, in which
shame's place in nature was beyond imagination.
1918 was probably the last year Mann could have written such a book Later he praised democracy, because it
was all that was left, and never with anything like the
depth of his farewell to the world of his youth. For after
1918 you could no longer address individuals without exciting crowds, without inspiring the passions that made
things worse in the name of making them better, without
provoking the politics that seduced individuals to their
death by promising to do for them what they could not do
for themselves.
You had to get along with what was left-that is what
Mann's farewell meant. But getting along with what was
left meant knowing the consequences of destruction. It
meant that in the future Europe would live only in individuals wandering and alone throughout the world in a silence that told of embarrassment at great works and at
greatness itself, and that took any inadvertent sign of lifefrom which all art springs-as something untoward:
... Ich sprach von europaeischer Verhunzung: Und wirklich,
unserer Zeit gelang es, so vieles zu verhunzen: Das Nationale,
den Sozialismus-den Mythos, die Lebensphilsophie, das Irrationale, den Glauben, die Jugend, die Revolution und was
nicht noch alles. Nun denn, sie brachte uns auch die Verhunzung des grossen Mannes. Wir muessen uns mit dem historischen Lose abfinden, das Genie auf dieser Stufe seiner Offenbarungs-moeglichkeit zu erleben_48
About twenty years after Mann's Betrachtungen, Kafka
understood clearly that the separation of feelings from understanding that the principles of the victors had helped
bring about-and against which Thomas Mann had said
Germany had always protested-had brought about the
demonization of feelings that might destroy the very
things they would have preserved when not divorced from
understanding. By feelings Kafka meant, I think, the wild,
and quite passionless, indignation that drove political
propaganda, and threatened to undermine the little authority that remained in government and individuals.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
... One ought not to provoke people. We live in an age which
is so possessed by demons, that soon we shall only be able to
do goodness and justice in the deepest secrecy, as if it were a
crime. War and revolution haven't ceased to rage. On the
contrary. The freeing of our feelings stokes their fires.49
Mann knew that something real had been destroyed.
And because something real had been destroyed, and because men did not realize it had been destroyed, the destruction, the war, would continue, even as the protests of
desperation against it increased. This destruction pretended to free the core of man, that showed itself in the
capacity to say "yes" or uno," but actually it sought to de~
stray this core, to paralyze the capacity to say "yes" or
"no," to destroy the living, the capacity to live. It did this
by turning life itself into politics, into propaganda that
drove people into ecstasy with its promises to change human nature.
When Mann realized that there could be no peace after
1917 because neither defeated nor victors could admit
they had been both right and wrong in the traditions of
eighteenth century law, he meant the disappearance of
doubt in international relations, the doubt that finds remarkable description in the late Richard Hofstadter's
sketch of the qualities that make for art and philosophy:
It is, in fact, the ability to comprehend and express not only
different but opposing points of view, to identify imaginatively with or even to embrace within oneself contrary feelings and ideas that gives rise to first~rate work in all areas of
humanistic expression and in many fields of inquiry.50
The democracies recognized this doubt, that is ultimately
the doubt, and the questioning that comes of it, of Socrates, in their recognition of opposition and criticism in their
domestic life. But after 1917 it no longer held any sway in
international life where victors and defeated could no
longer admit they were both right and wrong. Instead they
wanted a rigidity they took for assurance-a rigidity which
robbed them of confidence and made them fear themselves, and which made them weak in peace and harsh in
war, and which finally obliterated the distinction between
peace and war.
But this rigidity in international relations which brings
with it the destruction of traditional international law (ius
gentium)-the Germans were not even invited to the
peace negotiations after the First World War-cannot but
slowly paralyze the doubt within the domestic life of free
countries. It shows its stiffening effect in the spread of ideologies, and the polarization they bring, within free countries. For this doubt to live within countries, it must also
show itself outside of them in the recognition of the uncertainty of relations between nations, which allows the continuation of present friendships, because it recognizes that
the friends of today might be the enemies of tomorrowand the enemies of today, the friends of tomorrow. 51 This
recognition of uncertainty means the recognition of the
125
�differences between nations, which, in turn, brings the
recognition that freedom is bigger than constitutions, and,
therefore, does not require similar constitutions everywhere, that some peoples can live' in freedom without
spelling their freedom out in written documents, that freedom is old, slavery new. In his characteristically sententious remark at Yalta that the wars of the twentieth century unlike other wars allowed the victors to impose their
political systems on the defeated, Stalin meant the opposite of living with this uncertainty. 52 But this uncertainty
inspired the traditional law of nations (ius gentium), which
is older than almost all nations now living, and which knew
it lived precisely because it sought its assurance, not in the
written guarantee of treaties, but in the threat of war for
violation of traditional practice-for instance, the seizure
of ambassadors, something the Persians did at their peril
in the nineteenth century.
The incapacity to settle the war with a real peace, which
brought the defeated as well as the victors to the peace
table, blurred the distinction between victors and defeated, precisely because a real peace would have meant
recognizing their differences, and the differences in their
political traditions. It would have meant not destroying
the institution of the Kaiser, or at least realizing the serious consequences of its destruction. It would have meant
understanding the risks involved in undoing the empires.
It took more than a generation and much disaster to make
the world understand that the destruction of governments
prolongs a war instead of ending it, because legitimate governments do not grow up overnight:
July 29, 1945 ... He (Ernest Bevin, Foreign Minister of Great
Britain) then made a rather surprising statement-for a liberal and a labor leader: "It might have been far bett~r for all of
us not to have destroyed the institution of the Kaise.~after the
last war; we might not have had this one if we hadn't 'done so.
It might have been far better to have guided the Germans to a
constitutional monarchy rather than leaving them without a
symbol and therefore opening the psychological doors to a
man like Hitler . .. " 53
The blurring of the distinction between victors and defeated showed itself in the collapse of governments among
both the defeated and victorious. For Italy, which Mussolini seized by bluff in 1922, and Russia, at least until
Kerensky, had been victors in the war with Germany. And
the collapse of France in 1941, in face of the might that
came of the collapse of the democracy that defeat had imposed on Germany, should also probably be included in
this list. This collapse of governments among both defeated and victors shows the war had overwhelmed both.
In a sense the story of the two decades between the wars
is the story of how victors and defeated undid each other
in unwilling cooperation. Defeat is a serious business. It
should teach the victors modesty of aims. The extent that
the war had overcome both defeated and victors showed
itself also in the victors' blindness to the significance of the
126
failure of democracy in Italy, and then in Germany. Nations who had persuaded themselves they had fought the
war for democracy ought to have been profoundly alarmed
at the collapse of these governments-not to speak of the
collapse of the Tsar, and a few months later, of the justborn democracy in Russia in 1917. Blindness to the significance of the failure of democracy in Italy, and later in Germany, led to complicity with the regimes that replaced
them. And this sense of complicity paralyzed the democracies in the face of their aggressions. In some sense nazism
and fascism and communism were the creatures of the victors who had not known the responsibilities of victory:
If the realists had wanted to train up a generation of
Englishmen and Englishwomen expressly as the potential
dupes of every adventurer in morals or politics, commerce or
religion, who would appeal to their emotions and promise
them private gains which he neither could procure them nor
even meant to procure them, no better way of doing it could
have been discovered.
... The British government, behind all its disguises, had dedared itself a partisan of Fascist dictatorship.
... I am writing a description of the way in which those
events (the English government's unstated policy of undermining the government of the Republic of Spain and the governments of Abyssinia and Czechoslovakia) impinged upon
myself and broke up my pose of detached professional
thinker. I know now that the minute philosophers of my
youth, for all their profession of a purely scientific detachment from practical affairs, were the propagandists of a coming Fascism. I know that Fascism means the end of dear
thinking and the triumph of irrationalism. I know that all my
life I have been engaged unawares in a political struggle,
fighting against these things in the dark. Henceforth I shall
fight in the daylight. 54
Those are famous words of Collingwood's in 1939. But
governments had started teaching this confusion to their
citizens long before. In a letter on February 15, 1918,
Robert Lansing, Secretary of State, argued strongly
against giving money to the Bolsheviks in an assessment
that even to today sounds raw and outspoken because of
its accuracy:
.. . Mr. Walling had a keen appreciation of the forces which
are menacing the present social order in nearly every European country and which may have to be reckoned with even
in this country. It is really a remarkable analysis of the dangerous elements which are coming to the surface and which are
in many ways more to be dreaded than autocracy; the latter is
despotism but an intelligent despotism, while the former is a
despotism of ignorance. One at least has the virtue of order,
while the other is productive of disorder and anarchy. It is a
condition which cannot but arouse the deepest concern. 55
Despite this advice, a few days later on March 11, 1918,
Woodrow Wilson, unwilling or unable to distinguish the
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�violence in Russia from his own promises of democracy to
the world-promises made in 1917 to give the fighting
meaning-wrote encouraging words to the Soviet Congress:
... The whole heart of the people of the United States is with
the people of Russia in the attempt to free themselves forever
from autocratic government and become the masters of their
own life. 56
Wilson's measureless aspirations wished to dispell the
memory of the hatreds shown the world in allied wartime
propaganda. But they matched this hatred in fierceness.
Their measurelessness also made them difficult to distinguish from the measureless aspirations of those out to destroy all government that continued the hatred of the war
in the ostensible repudiation of it. Both the builders and
destroyers of governments meant to repudiate the past, including the immediate past of the Great War. There were
to be new times-times the world had never seen before.
They repudiated the past because the past embarassed
them. But this embarassment measured only their shame
for the present. They shrunk from the past, because they
would not know they were ashamed of the present. Underneath this measurelessness that came of shame for a
present that was beyond coping, and that was so difficult
to distinguish from "revolutionary" fervour, and was in
some sense its complement, there was always fear of war,
and the suspicion of governments that comes of the fear of
war-enough combined to weaken any government.
It was almost as if the world no longer knew how to
mourn the dead only to forget them. It did not realize that
continuing the war in the measurelessness of aspirations
meant not mourning, not feeling sorrow. And that not sorrowing meant forever the leaden guilt at so much massacre whose incomprehensibility had undermined the confidence of statesmen everywhere, made them incapable of
concluding an effective peace, and undone the word courage-a guilt that no amount of freneticizing about the future would dispel. There has been perhaps no time with
greater cause for sorrow that sorrowed less. The past
stopped in 1917.
But the appeal to measureless aspiration to give meaning to the slaughter did not only bring the past to a stop. It
nourished the suspicion that violence brought progress,
made the world better, that it might be the only way to
change things. For the measureless aspiration for peace
and a new world meant man had changed, and the only
change that men knew had come of violence, now called
"revolution" instead of war, because the word "revolu-
tion" excited hope, war dread. And it tells something
a bout these measureless aspirations that almost every
country that totalitarianism seized first went through democracy.
The belief that violence brought progress made the suspicion that men had done intolerable damage to themselves intolerable. It banished prudence, common-sense,
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
sobriety, and most of all pessimism, all words hardly anyone dared show in public, whose meaning men no longer
knew-or dared conceive-except darkly, and in the silence of their own minds, a silence that the deafening roar
of aspiration in all public places made men fearful of trusting. Everything, but above all disaster, became the occasion for exuberance that men mistook for hope-just as
they took their sentimentality, especially the sentimental
whining for peace, for goodwill. But unlike hope and sorrow and goodwill, this exuberance and sentimentality despite its illusion of energy made men helpless in the face of
those who used the same exuberence and sentimentality
to undo them. Because of its measurelessness it made it
hard to grasp obstacles that would have shown their aspirations their limitations and, therefore, increased the responsibilities of the victors by facing them with the choice
between what they might do-and what they could not.
But the very measurelessness of the aspirations that increased because they did not face these obstacles made for
the assumption hardly anyone dared question in public,
that men had actually changed, rather than simply destroyed ages of inheritance.
In this unwillingness even to ask whether destruction
might not have made things worse, our time contrasts with
Rome in her civil wars. Open almost any page of Cicero, of
Sallust and even some of Caesar, and you will see there a
confidence we cannot conceive that their words will live
forever because they tell of men who had destroyed themselves and their freedom, and had little illusion that it
would not be forever, and that nothing would come of it,
except sorrow for the loss they could not help. And so it, in
fact, turned out, only much more slowly than now, because they recognized the loss-preferred sight to the exuberance of willing blindness, and did not deny the dullness
that had overcome them.
The readiness to justify events after their occurrence in
order to find a meaning for a war that nobody understood-except the totalitarians, who confused their confidence that destruction ignored had irremediable consequences with understanding-which showed itself in the
resort to aspirations for a new world in 1917, put free governments behind events. Between the wars, the complicity
that came of not grasping the significance of the collapses
of democracy in various countries increased their slowness
in grasping events and responding. It made them helpless
in the face of the continuation of the war until it was too
late. And in the Second World War, the depth of their unacknowledged sense of responsibility for the disaster made
them merciless in their self-justification, and incapable of
respecting their enemies, and blind to the consequences
of an alliance, born of necessity, with a totalitarian regime
worse than nazism and fascism, that had to some extent
inspired them. Towards the end, Hitler remarked that he
was the amateur, Stalin, the pro.
The situation of the free countries behind events has
persisted until the present-with the exception of the
127
�swift confidence of the beginning of the Korean War. But
even the Korean war ended not in a settlement, but in a
battle truce between commanders that reinstituted the division of the country that precipitated the war. The
United States remained in the situation of response-not
mastery.
To remain behind events weakens confidence in governments, for it shows them not enough on top of events
to understand them. And understanding, in our situation
of neither war nor peace, where many states are illegitimate and others lack the confidence of legitimacy, is crucial. In a normal situation of balance of power, such as prevailed in the nineteenth century or in the eighteenth, not
haunted by the fear of war, and where subversion is not
prevalent, response may be enough-not in ours.
The situation after the First World War allowed little
room for error. It called for more honesty, more straightforward practicality, for more courage than war itself. But
the war had consumed courage. Even the world that had
yielded so much death embarassed people. It was too serious to bear mention. The destruction of the First World
War meant human nature was on its own everywhere.
People felt the demands of truth, and knew they had to be
met, unflinchingly. All the art between the two wars tells
that, and shows that bravery-and, for the most part, it
moves as if there were no longer any history, or govern·
ments worthy of notice-as if the world lived only in private life and private sensation. But it was not easy to face
human nature. The whole period between the wars is
driven by the conflict between the necessity of facing human nature, and the unreadiness to face it. F1ight into aspiration relieved the conflict-but it did not restore confidence. It devoured it.
More than governments, people realized they were on
their own, in something like the state of nature, not of
choice as the excitation of aspiration pretended, but of necessity-of the necessity of past events, of destruction and
of the incapacity of settlement -a necessity that totalitarians called "the inevitibility of history," because they
counted on individuals' incapacity to cope with it.
The yearning for total freedom that took flight into aspiration, and that in the unrecognized desolation appeared
like necessity itself, did not amount to a capacity for it.
Precisely because the war had subordinated freedom to
politics-and made freedom the stuff of international relations-and in order to subordinate it to politics, dismembered it, politics tended to devour everything before it in
the search for a freedom greater than itself that would
show it its limits. These limits live in individuals' capacity
enough to distinguish between "yes" and "no."57 Hitler
came to office legally, and Mussolini also. The combination of a yearning, and incapacity, for measureless free~
dom that was taken to allow everything exposed men to
the most ruthless among them, to men like criminals, in
their incapacity to yield to natural law, to use Hobbes's
words that mean the words nature speaks to those who listen to it, in their thwarted genius. The incapacity to distinguish actual genius and nature from its distortions and parodies led to fascination and admiration for criminality-a
fascination that has again betrayed itself in the last twenty
years, and which paralyzes.
And the tragedy is that in its attack on nature, and its
attempt to destroy it, totalitarianism also uncovered nature, but only in war for it knows only war, which it cannot
distinguish from revenge or defense, and unmistakably reminded of its presence. In the midst of the "insane gran·
deur" of the Second World War, Milovan Djilas realized
that the fighting, after bringing his hardness out, also softened him, for a moment that disappeared until words recalled it to him a generation later:
Then, unobtrusively yet insistently, various thoughts came to
my mind concerning the Germans, the Partisans, and ideology. Why were doctors from Berlin and professors from Heidelberg killing off Balkan peasants and students in these ra-
vines? Hatred for Communism was not sufficient. Some
other terrible and implacable force was driving them to insane death and shame. And driving us, too, to resist them and
pay them back . ... This passion, this endurance which lost
sight of suffering and death, this struggle for one's manhood
and nationality in the face of one's own death ... this had
nothing to do with ideology or with Marx and Lenin. When
the sun rose, I suppressed these abysmal thoughts, for I
sensed how destructive they were for the ideas and organization to which I had given myself. But I never forgot those
thoughts ... 58
Nazism and fascism and communism were a vengeance,
and an exploitation, of 1914-1917, a vengeance and exploitation not only of the defeated upon themselves, but also a
vengeance and exploitation of the victors upon them·
selves-for why else did they tolerate the spread of these
destructive movements?-for principles they could not
live up to, that made them unrecognizable to themselves,
that made them feel like liars when they spoke and defenseless in the face of their enemies, now at home as well
as abroad, and more insidious than soldiers on a battlefield. For it turned out that they were not able to act in
accordance with what they had said in 1917, most obviously when Hitler seized the Rhineland in March, 1936:
to say uno," that is, in nature. And totalitarianism, in the
name of freeing this nature, attacked this capacity to say
"no" directly in each individual-with the argument that
it embodied the truth, and the truth could not be resisted.
It attacked nature itself, as if there had never been any
governments. And it discovered, to almost everybody's
amazement, that many individuals did not have resilience
128
-Maison aurait pu arreter Hitler sans risque de guerre quand il
a occupe la Rhenanie en 36?
-Sans aucun risque. On le sait. Aucun. Hitler avait donne
l'ordre a Ia Bundeswehr d'entrer en Rhenanie, avec une reserve imposee par le haut commandement. Si les troupes
franc;aises avanc;aient, les troupes allemandes se retiraient.
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�On le sait aujourd'hui. On sait que, en mars 1936, on aurait
pu changer le cours de l'histoire. Cela fait partie de rna philosophie de l'histoire. C'est une date, une date fondamentale,
oil il suffisait de Iuddite et d'un peu de courage pour changer
le cours de l'histoire. Mais, malheureusement, Hitler avait raison. II n'y avait aucune chance de trouver en France un
gouvernement pour prendre cette decision. 59
Nazism and fascism reached deep yearnings, yearnings
for authority and its reassurance, not only in Italy and Germany but throughout the West-so that the world not unfortunate enough to continue them draws its breath interror at their memory, and shades its eyes from them even as
it feels driven to look, and is dull, with few important exceptions, to their continuation in the present, and the
widespread sympathy for them, in their denial in communism. Nazism and fascism arose in deeply traditional countries whose traditions war had partly destroyed and repudiated almost entirely-but which individuals could not
relinquish even if they would. (For politics is swifter than
character, and in the twentieth century risks uncontrollability because it does not acknowledge its conflicts with
character. No time's politics has denied obvious things
more, feelings, and common sense that comes of feeling.
For the political exploitation of aspiration is the greatest
underminer of feeling.) Nazism and fascism exploited the
yearning for the old values, destroyed in the First World
War, mercilessly: self-respect, duty, respect for accomplishment, the yearning for civil order, the compatibility of
freedom with obedience, the yearning for deserved deference, for meaningful life, for glory-and above all for courage. But they knew their murderousness, and did not hesitate to display it. Mussolini took responsibility for the
murder of a member of parliament, Matteotti, which had
aroused the greatest public outcry Italy had ever known, in
parliament in 1924. Communism, in contrast, with its
promise of a new world with new values without the harshness, cruelty of the old values denies its murderousness,
and, therefore, its hypocrisy is more seductive. For Djilas,
the murderousness of Communism is only a question:
"Killing is a function of war and revolution or could it be
the other way around?"
The blindness that came of the public exploitation of
aspiration to deny private experience tended to make the
world unrecognizable to those who lived in it. This blindness to world and self, this incapacity to see the world,
which led to the insistence on facts without understanding
or on understanding without facts-and, thereby, increased the susceptibility to propaganda-is the disturbance of perception that led after the Second World War
to actual political division of the West and the war that
progresses by dividing the rest of the world and individuals
against themselves.
The wars set what we would like to be against what we
actually were, in a way that made it difficult to experience
what we were, and to distinguish it from what we yearn to
be. Most simply, by setting liberty, the liberty of principle,
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
against authority that springs from some contact with nature, the wars rendered difficult the growth of liberty and
authority in each other's presence. Without both liberty
and authority the experience of freedom in the actual living of individuals, from which the liberty in constitutions
springs, cannot live. Instead the separation of both liberty
and authority, and the setting of each against the other,
tends to provoke the distortion of their extremes, permissiveness, license, and weakness on one side, and cruel and
stifling authoritarianism on the other (whether from the
"left" or "right" matters little).
Liberty and authority are not the only qualities set
against each other in this conflict. The World War that has
not ceased deepens the division between form (principles)
and content, between will and desire. With the result that
these qualities are often experienced as antithetical, and
distorted in that experience. For instance, will into the
cruel rigidity of totalitarian dogma that cannot respond to
questioning, and desire into mere wish and arbitrary fancy
that cannot stand up to anything, and for instance, imagines it can get peace by demanding it, merely.
This division and polarization of qualities that can only
flourish in the give-and-take of each other's presence-a
give-and-take that is the ground in nature of the dialogue
between government and opposition in free democracies-hampers perception of political reality. After 1917,
and even more, after 1945 when the rigidity of the situation grew more obvious, and the force of that rigidity began to make itself felt throughout the world, this trouble in
perception has hampered fitting, effective negotiation and
action. Most simply, it attempts to undermine the capacity
of individuals (and also of governments) to distinguish between actual freedom and slavery that masks as greater
freedom. The struggle against totalitarianism goes on first
of all in the heart's mind. For without clarity of mind
among those for the moment spared violence, there can be
no resolute action against actual violence that takes place,
for the most part, not on battlefields, but at the will of often few well-trained and supplied men who strike at random, and who know that prolonged violence works to their
advantage both within the country they desire to seize,
and in the world elsewhere.
The inability to grasp what goes on before one's eyes, to
feel and to understand, instead of feeling in order not to
understand, or understanding in order not to feel, the incapacity to see, and to acknowledge that one does not see, is
the disturbance of perception that lies at the center of the
division of the West, and is increased by it. This dissociation is the driving force behind the division of the West. It
shows itself most dramatically in painting that like all art
often betrays the deepest capacities for living of an epoch.
129
�Perception
'
A little after 1945, first in America and then throughout
the Free World, painting that could see neither the world
nor man but that, until its collapse into emptiness in the
sixties, somehow expressed the anguish of the inability to
see, without acknowledging it, won public acceptance.
This painting shows perhaps more dramatically than anything else the incapacity to perceive and understand that
finds its general expression in the division of the West, and
in the drift and stagnation-and violence that involves
everybody-that has come of it after 1945. Significantly,
this painting also betrays the flattening and affectlessness
that comes of polarization: it has no depth, no world to see
and touch. For depth comes only within the give-and-take
of freedom and authority-and not when they are set
against each other and driven into the distortion of their
extremes. At most this painting betrays anxiety-the anxiety that comes of the inability to see, and increases it.
The process that culminated in painting that saw neither world nor man had started long before 1945, in fact
almost immediately after the impressionists, and well before the First World War brought the division that showed,
at the same time that it increased, the difficulties of perception and understanding, of apprehending world and
self that the West has struggled with since the destruction
of antiquity-and which have put the disappearance of antiquity at the center of its awareness and its language, and
its thought and art.
In the decades just before the First World War, a deepening division first appeared that grew into open opposition between form and content that distorts each and dims
the sight of the world and self. In Picasso's work a sharp
break occurs several years before the First World War between the paintings of the Blue and the Rose periods,
which still strive for feeling and vision-or, at least, openly
face the inability to feel in their risk of sentimentalityand the pre-cubist paintings like Les Demoiselles
d'Avignon (1907) whose intellectual brilliance blinds one
momentarily to their deadness of feeling. In contrast in
the German-speaking area there occurs especially in the
work of Munch and Kokoschka an over-concentration of
feeling, at times frightening, because without the assurance of vision, without a sense that the picture actually
shows the living world-that there is a world to distinguish
from a rising dream.
To put it crudely, painters in the world that was to become the allied sphere tended to formalism without feeling and in the German-speaking sphere to feeling which
because unsure in form became difficult to distinguish
from nightmare, and, at its weakest, daydream. Much of
this work in either sphere does not reflect the world and
the experience of beauty but, with differences in intensity,
the inability to see it. It often leads one further from the
world-and into a self that recognizes itself in its isolation
130
from the world, a self that cannot get out of itself, and,
therefore, suffers the temptation to narcissism. In either
sphere, painters appear to struggle against something, a
transparent mirror that throws their self back at them,
against a transparent wall that impedes vision, even as it
allows them to catch sight of the world they strive to see
and touch, just beyond reach. Already also, depth begins
to fade into flatness.
This transparent wall that gets in the way of their eyes'
reaching and, therefore, turns the world into something
recognizable, but at the same time incomprehensible,
sometimes into the very opposite of what the mind and
common-sense know to be out there, is the source of the
division of the West that hardened, and, thereby, provoked the violence that could destroy it in 1917, to spread
it after 1945. The iron curtain, too, is a transparent mirror
that baffles the eyes with the image of the self it throws
back-and, thereby, makes narcissism and spurious intimacy meant to exorcise danger without acknowledging it,
and the sense of entrapment that comes of them, the way
to self-enslavement and destruction.
Since depth and a strong sense of the whole composition appeared in painting in Italy from 1200 to 1600 for the
first time since antiquity, this transparent wall made itself
felt despite, and because of, the lucidity of vision and
depth that came with it. In painting in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries in Spain and the Low-lands, it almost disappeared entirely except for a certain stiffness, for
an incapacity to allow movement, for a tendency to freeze
movement like a snapshot. (This holding still distinguishes
painting since the Renaissance from the ancient art that
inspired it, for ancient art moved freely, especially obviously, in Greek vase painting and Etruscan frescoes.) Even
when it appears to disappear altogether, this stiffness, the
transparent wall, betrays itself in the awareness that the
painting is a painting, in the awareness of the eyes of the
painter, and of the hindrances that keep them from losing
themselves in their seeing.
This painting from 1200 to 1600 in Italy, and afterwards
throughout Europe, realized the reciprocal relation between sight and understanding, and, ultimately, between
seeing and rationality, but always at a certain distance
from nature, which lent it the stiffness I have described. It
depicted nature as well as men and history but it always
subordinated nature, even in the North in the seventeenth
century, to man and memory-to the recall of the past.
Some of the paintings of Durer and of Rembrandt are perhaps exceptions. In artists like Leonardo or Rembrandt
drawing was knowing. They could not see without understanding what actually lay before their eyes. In our words,
Leonardo and Machelangelo were researchers. With this
one overwhelming difference, they did not fear wholes,
that is, important conclusions. (Machiavelli, at the beginning of his Discourses, remarks that artists had been the
first to dare to learn from antiquity. And daring to look at
antiquity meant looking at your own world, without flinchWINTER/SPRING 1983
�ing, as Machiavelli's own work showed.) And everything
about this art bespeaks confidence, and awareness and
confidence in the face of tragedy. The whole sense of !tal·
ian painting in this time is of overwhelming lucidity, of a
world pressing in upon the eyes, of joy and fearlessness in
sight. They are wild in their beholding. The same seeing of
this many citied world-as many citied as Ancient
Greece-showed itself in the individuals who dared look
again openly at the sky-and to understand the great
works of antiquity, to look history in the face. After
Caravaggio, who reaches an unbelievable unity of depth,
shape, and movement, seeing and knowing again suffer
separation in Italy. In subsequent years there is much ges·
turing, there are dramatic, highly brainy compositionsbut there is little sight, sense of the whole, except as design, or depth. This gradual withering of contact becomes
apparent soon after the burning of Giordano Bruno in
1600. Such things are not done with impunity. But in the
North sight and understanding found a new softness in
their relation, and a lucidity more distinguishable from
clarity of mind than in Italian painting-and, therefore,
less easily capable of giving an account of itself in words,
but for all that not less explicit and meaningful.
The tradition of painting in the West since 1200 which
could see both men and events, could both remember and
know, at the expense, however, of a certain remoteness
from nature, found breathtaking renewal in the work of
Delacroix and Manet, just before the impressionists drew
upon it to abandon it, and to yield to nature directly.
In the half century or so before the Great War, Turner,
the impressionists and post-impressionists saw into the
quick of nature, and in that sight knew themselves a part
of it-without sentimentality or self-consciousness, and, in
contrast, for instance, to the woodenness of Claude Lor·
raine, with an easy sweetness still sets the world moving.
Even in Cezanne, whom we all too often see with Cubist
eyes, there is little separation between form and content,
between what is seen and how it is seen. Everywhere, perhaps most startlingly in Seurat and his associates, there is
an unassuming confidence that what is seen will gather
shape of its own. Many of these painters do not distinguish
shape from intensity (energy). They often do not sharply
define edges or outlines which arise, instead, of them·
selves, unexpectedly, in their work. For a whole world has
its parts. They distinguish but do not separate earth and
sky. Both throb with movement in their works, which har·
bour no empty spaces. They distinguish trees, plants, and
earth from the space and air around them. They do not
separate them from it. Their space is not empty, but vibrant and full and soft like the trees, plants, and flowers
reaching or showering or bursting into it. In Turner light
softly pulsates, in Vincent the sky glows and pulsates,
sometimes almost harshly:
The sacrifice of the sharp outline of objects shows that the
vision of the painter is focused not upon the objects but upon
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the space itself. ... Above all, in the use of the divided touch,
the painter conveys to the painting and through the painting
to the observer the vibrating, pulsating quality of the atmosphere ...
One of the results of this technique is to give to their paintings (the paintings of Monet, Renoir, Pisarro) a depth offield,
a sense of profoundness, a three-dimensional quality that
other paintings suggest but do not fully achieve. The impressionists accomplish this by making us aware of the space, not
simply as the coordinate of objects and events, but as an objective reality itself.60
In the brief moment of the impressionists the transpar·
ent wall, the stiffness, did in fact entirely disappear, and
movement reappeared unequivocally for the first time
since antiquity, but at the cost of seeing human beings:
men and women more or less disappeared from the can·
vas. To live on, the open embrace of nature of the impres·
sionists had somehow to come to see man, to remember
and to know, as well as to see nature as if there were no
man. Otherwise it would turn to mere evasion in the fa].
lowing generations:
Before the impressionist impulse disappeared in the morass
of twentieth century political thinking, it found expression in
the work of two men (Gauguin and Van Gogh) whose lives
dramatized the final struggle.6l
In the general streaming, sometimes harsh, especially of
Vincent's last pictures, only the men and women suffer an
emaciated, almost leaden holding-still, quiet and resigned,
but nevertheless forced enough to make you sense the
bound writhing in their bodies-the characteristic expres·
sian of Christian Europe. They bear the haggard and
pinned-down-in-the-chest look of helplessness, the cutting
and cynical knowing sensitivity that knows everything but
can do little, so full of pity and hate, yet also at the quick of
love, which, despite the blurring of postwar prosperity and
its convention of goodwill, still makes its presence felt.
Vincent wanted to discover the streaming outside man
within him also. He betrayed man's unwitting unwilling·
ness to yield to it:
Beyond the head ... I paint infinity. I make a simple background out of the richest, most intense blue I can contrive,
and by the simple conjunction the blonde head is lit up by the
rich blue background and acquires a mysterious effect like
that of a star on the deep azure.62
The tragedy Gauguin and Van Gogh lived came because they attempted to see nature in man as well outside
of him. For the seeing of the impressionists to live on they
knew they had somehow to transform and to renew the
tradition of Manet and Delacroix that the impressionists
had abandoned to yield to nature.
Renewing the tradition that had culminated in Manet
and Delacroix meant rediscovering the rational. It meant
experiencing the reciprocal relation between sight and un·
131
�derstanding, and finally between genitality and rationality.
It meant seeing man. Seeing man meant recognizing the
irrationality that separated nature outside of him from nature inside him, and kept him from both. It meant keeping
up the impressionists' contact with depth despite the superficial hardness of man, and the fragility that rendered
many men fearful of depth. It meant rediscovering the rational without abandoning nature, rediscovering it in nature. Otherwise renewal would be mere wooden repetition. In the failure of the successors of the impressionists
to see the world whole, the division of the West first
showed itself in acute form.
In this shorter perspective, the incapacity of painting to
see the world and human beings in this century, which led
it to turn the transparent wall itself into the subject of
painting, at the cost of the whole and depth, and finally, of
the obliteration of world and even self, simply represents a
breakdown in the capacity to maintain and expand the
contact with life of the impressionists, to deal with its contradictions, with the contrast between the impressionists
daring in touching nature and their corresponding incapacity to remember men and events, to experience both
the public world and the private, and their relation, to
combine seeing and knowing. The contact with nature
could not go on without resolving this contradiction, without undoing man's self-exile from nature.
Until the impressionists, painting coped with this transparent wall by actually seeing it, and, therefore, acknowledging it and keeping it distinct from the painting, at the
same time that it made you aware inescapably that the
painting was a painting. The impressionists dissolved the
transparent wall and its stiffness.
Unable to maintain the contact with nature of the Impressionists, and no longer able to work in the service of
religion, which in previous centuries, with its mediation
between the desire, and the incapacity, to experience nature, had kept art from yielding to despair, contemporary
art cannot but serve, often unawares, propagandistic purposes. It weakens those who attend to it. It steals courage
away from them. Instead of reflecting nature, it makes
mock theological, demagogic-and, therefore, unwittingly
political statements. It betrays a world grown flat and,
therefore, largely the creature of wish, of wish that takes
itself for desire, but dreads will.
The breakdown in seeing after the impressionists, and
the unacknowledged fixation in it that lends a frantic impatience to much art, in the midst of stagnation, closely
parallels the incapacity to grasp the meaning of events
and, thereby, to master them, in politics of this century.
Here, too, as in painting, man destroys world and self because he cannot maintain real contact with life in himself
and outside of himself, because he cannot stand living,
its rough disappointments, its joys, its depths and its
heights-and yearns for it more desperately, the more he
deprives himself of it, and, therefore, succumbs to increasing alternations of violence, in the name of discovering
132
and changing the nature of man, and negotiations to put
an end to that violence that turn out simply to tighten and
spread its hold on men.
Another example of the division and opposition between form and content that shows itself in painting in
this century appears in the contrast between the programmatic "internationalism" that blurs the distinction between peoples, and, thereby, puts the past beyond the
reach of memory, of the Allies and the frightening discoveries in the German-speaking countries, beginning at the
end of the nineteenth century, that man was often not capable of distinguishing between rationality and irrationality, that the rational in appearance often masked the irrational that in crucial moments betrayed itself in undoing
it, that freedom was more than many could stand. I mean
psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis took seriously the truth
that individuals had to come apart, had to know their helplessness, before they could experience their strength, and
discover their wholeness, that "nothing can be sole or
whole that has not been rent". Not explicitly a response to
the war's destroying that would not cease, it knew how to
start at the beginning with individuals-with the existence
that yearned for life which had survived the destruction
that still threatened it. Like Socrates and his ignorance, it
nurtured the confidence that the rational, once freed of
the irrational that drained its energy, might spring up of its
own strength.
Psychoanalysis did not aim directly at the truth, but at
the distortions that obstructed the truth. But it made it
possible again to experience the unwitting presence of the
truth, for it uncovered the quick of life moving at its own
sweet will-and the fearfulness that kept individuals from
it, a fearfulness that individuals took for fear of destruction, but which numbed them to the rational fear of the
destruction that actually threatened them. Because of its
simplicity, stubborn enough always to threaten it with reductionisms, and because of its refusal to indulge in assurances-for it knew it could not know what would become
of it-it provoked much hatred and resentment. Hatred
and resentment that otherwise sought disguise in political
exhilaration that was nothing but forgetfulness.
But psychoanalysis had its limitations-above all in its
incapacity to know its limitations. Others might have
shown it its limitations, but unfortunately the strength of
its truth drove those that denied it, to deny it entirely, and
those that accepted it, to accept it entirely. With such
friends it hardly needed enemies. Both friends and enemies in unwitting cooperation perpetrated the divisions
psychoanalysis meant to overcome, especially a resignation to, and even an exultation, in the irrational psychoanalysis meant to expose in order to overcome. To some
extent the attempt to undo the irrational, in order to free
the rational, spread the irrational, and lent it something
approaching social acceptance. Social acceptance meant
taking the irrational for inevitable-instead of struggling
against it to undo it. It meant turning the popular misunWINI'ER/SPRING 1983
�derstanding of psychoanalysis against psychoanalysis in
the pretense of accepting it.
The weaknesses and limitations of psychoanalysis came
of its strengths. Superb in its grasp of'the present, it is
weak in its comprehension of the past and its life, except
as it continues like a foreign body unassimilated in the
present. It is weak, too, in conceiving of the future except
in the shape of the irrational distortions of the present.
Breathtaking in its comprehension of individuals, and in
its resilient affirmation of feeling and nature, psychoanalysis cannot conceive of society as more than a crowd of solitary individuals. It explains institutions too exclusively in
terms of the necessity of curbing irrational secondary
drives. It does not conceive of rational disagreement and
conflict. It cannot explain why people speak except to
lie-as Otto Rank put it. It takes the rational in history for
nothing more than a cover for the irrational. Despite its
destruction history knows creation also. Creation that
could not live without institutions and rulers and men, ca·
pable of some direct contact with rationality and, there·
fore, nature. For only direct contact with rationality can
withstand irrationality. Direct contact with rationality
means understanding that the irrational arises from a distortion of the rational, that the rational can be discovered
in the irrational. Psychoanalysis instead assumes that the
rational arises in history only in response to irrational
actions and desires which it secretly wishes, but does not
dare to imitate-and that therefore, because of this inverted agreement, almost always succumbs to them directly, or to a severity in repressing them that reaches the
corresponding extreme of irrationality, as if there were no
mean.
This pessimism that at its worst turns to resignation
comes of not recognizing the limitations of psychoanalysis. It can undo the irrational. But it leaves the affirmation
of the rational to itself. This readiness to leave the rational
on its own comes in part of the rational realization that
rationality, unlike irrationality, is unpredictable, that ra·
tionality cannot be foreseen until it arises of itself, that the
truths of one generation are the lies of the next. But it also
arises from an irrational antagonism to philosophy that it
takes not for the thought that comes after the dissolution
of the irrational, but for mere rationalization of the irratio·
nal. Because it does not acknowledge it has no use for
thought, it is unwittingly materialistic, even though it has
made possible the rediscovery of the soul-a grotesque
phrase that tells something of our plight. Because psycho·
analysis does not acknowledge it cannot take responsibility
for its discoveries, it tends to forget that the world is bigger
and older than its discoveries.
This contrast between the desire to apprehend a reality
beyond politics and the sensitivity to nature and feeling in
the defeated German-speaking empires and the principled
world of the Allies with its chiliastic declarations and its
yearning for the observance of treaties and covenants it
did not have strength of heart to enforce is another exam1HE ST. JOHNS REVJEW
pie-similar to the division in painting-of the distinction
between form and content turned under the stress of unlimited war into opposition in which each distorts the
other, so that content and feeling turn to phantasy and
dream, form to propaganda. Ultimately this opposition
leads to a world in which the democracies insist on limits
without conviction, and the totalitarian regimes pretend
to conviction without limits, a world in which individuals
and nations say one thing, do another, and neither know
what they do, nor believe what they say, and will not distinguish between words and actions. In the twenties and
thirties the democracies trusted the honeyed words of tyrants rather than their own eyes witnessing outrage because they could not draw this distinction between words
and actions. In the same years Wilhelm Reich discovered
that the actions of patients, the way they held their hands
and heads, how they sat and so on told more than, and
sometimes the opposite, of the words they spoke6l
This reluctance in distinguishing between words and
actions shows itself now in the unwillingness to declare Poland and other countries in eastern Europe in default on
their debts even after their refusal to pay interest on them.
This reluctance threatens the international western monetary system, and to some extent domestic currencies, for it
shows that in the name of avoiding a debt crisis actually
already upon them-and us-Western bankers and their
governments will not insist on obligations that make for
the trust that gives money much of its value. This tendency to take words for action shows itself even more in
the codification of traditional practices of international
law (ius gentium) in international treaties that imply an unwillingness to defend these practices except with words.
For these treaties wish away the distinction between the
enforcement oflaws within nations and the state of nature
between them, where only the threat of war guarantees
traditional practice. Would the Soviet Union use gas so
blatantly in Afghanistan and Laos had it not signed international treaties that assured it that nations with a voice
would disapprove but not act to stop them?
The struggle of painting with reality, and its awareness
of its incapacity to yield to sight, until its collapse into
something of blindness in this century, has a close parallel
to philosophy's struggle to understand man's relation to
the outer world since at least the seventeenth century.
The impressions of Hume, and the difficulty of their relation to world, and the appearances of Kant that are entirely within the individual, and yet have some exteriority,
for the space, without which their appearance would be
impossible, is both within the mind and in some sense outside it, are both attempts to cope with the transparent mirror of the painters. In its sense of the presence of this barrier, and of its incapacity entirely to cope with it, to rid
itself of it or to live within it, philosophy since the seventeenth century like painting since the thirteenth distinguishes itself from philosophy in antiquity, which encompassed both nature and man, and nature in man, because
133
�it was ready to suffer tragedy rather than submit to it, unawares. For the ancients the barriers that kept man from
nature in himself and outside of him, that changed emotions like love into lust, anger into hatred, courage into ar·
rogance, rationality into ideology, aspiration into self destruction, energy into frenzy, and so on, were within man,
a stiffness he himself maintained, and, therefore, could
dissolve into softness, rather than between man and the
world. They appeared like barriers between man and the
world only because man did not realize they were within
him. Because ancient thinkers realized that the barriers
were within man, and not outside of him, they pursued
the dissolution of distortions that showed themselves in
thinking, rather than accommodating themselves to them.
These distortions that keep man from world and self are
also always distortions in seeing.
The discovery of rationality in antiquity amounted to a
rediscovery of nature. The discovery of rationality in nature made it self-evident that evil destroyed life within
man as well as outside of him, and that politics, unless it
distinguished rational from irrational, would degenerate
into the destructiveness of irrationality in the name of the
rational, that politics betrayed the self that was really no
self at all, but mere distortion, of men who did not dare
know themselves, and, therefore, hated nature and themselves. In contrast, much of philosophy since the seventeenth century attempted to accommodate to these distortions, to live within them, and, therefore, has been more or
less unable, with the exception of Hobbes with Thucydides as his teacher, to comprehend violence from without
that attempts to destroy the barriers that occasion these
distortions, but actually only increases them. The uneasiness of this accommodation to distortion shows itself in
the extraordinary effort of many of these philosophers
who begin with the doubt of world and self to complement
their thinking about knowing with political philosophy
that, however, begins with the assumption that men cannot perceive the world directly, or know themselves. In
some sense they sensed that politics might attempt to
undo their accommodation to distortion, which was to
lead to an unprecedented mastery of nature but which,
however, at the same time that it demanded an experience
of nature made it all the more difficult. This effort to find a
way for men to rule themselves without knowing themselves, for unlike antiquity that only yielded to the nature
it understood, modern thought had mastered some nature
before understanding it, has worked to an extraordinary
extent, but it is aiso extraordinarily weak in the face of
men who think they know no doubt, because they cannot
distinguish dogma from truth. The attempt to apply the
doubt that in its accommodation to distortion had yielded
the assurance to master nature-without understanding it
entirely-to politics led inadvertently to a situation that
demanded the rediscovery of the doubt of Socrates,
which, in contrast to the doubt of philosophy since the
seventeenth century, had led to the experience of nature,
134
to the quick of life and, thereby, of rationality, but not to
the mastery of nature. I say, inadvertently, because these
philosophers had tried to fashion systems in politics that
with their emphasis on written and designed constitutions, on what people did rather than what they thought,
on procedure rather than content, in some sense asserted
there were no answers, and, thereby only questions without answers. The doubt of Socrates, in contrast, suggested
that you had to get along without the answers, not that
there were none, but that the answers would come of
themselves with the dissolution of distortion, that the answers were living itself.
This thinking could deal even brilliantly with public domestic life. For in domestic life it was possible to live as if
there were no public answers. But international affairs
were another matter. For constitutions did not regulate international affairs. In some sense the wisdom of the new
philosophers discovered its limitations, and its greatest
challenge, at the frontiers. For beyond the frontiers, in the
life between nations, you had to get along without the answers in order to discover the truths specific occasions de-
manded. In the life among nations you could not live as if
there were no answers. Yau had to live without the answers. The struggle that culminated with the impressionists, and collapsed after them, was an attempt to turn the
doubt of the new philosophers, which resigned itself to a
certain isolation from the world and self in order to master
them, into the doubt of Socrates that allowed the world
and self to live, and, thereby, to resolve the contradictions
and separation, but not the distinction, between domestic
public life and life between the nations. For art has no
country except in the eyes of the beholder. International
affairs demanded more than the assurance that comes of
recognizing distortion without dissolving it. There could
be no science of international affairs, only the truth discovered in specific circumstances. Only the readiness to live
without the answers could lead to the discovery of those
truths which did not yield to science.
Conclusion
I have written of difficulties in perception, and in thinking that distinct from perception cannot, however, win re-
silience and lucidity without lucidity in perception which
is the perception of life and of life perceiving itself. For
there cannot be thought, distinct from brooding and ideology, without perception, without apprehending the world
and events upon their occurrence, without the experience
of beauty without which confidence in the truth cannot
live. For truth is the perception of nature, of beauty moving in individuals at its own sweet will. It is nature perceiving itself, and, therefore, naming itself. But that the lucidity of thought follows upon the lucidity of perception does
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�not mean it is the same thing as perception. Quite the contrary. The lucidity of perception makes it possible to distinguish thought from perception, to know thought's independence from perception, to know th~t man is a bit of
nature, but a bit of nature that names himself and the
world. For it is man that thinks, not nature. But man can
think only when the nature within him moves freely
enough to perceive nature outside him, for the thoughts
he thinks are nature's.
This disturbance in perception precedes and underlies
the political crisis. At the same time the political crisis increases and deepens it. The incapacity to turn victory into
peace, into coherent peace, that marks almost all the wars
of this century, which is really an incapacity to foresee the
consequences of victory, to master events, indicates that
there is something in events that men cannot grasp and,
therefore, prevent.
Since the events of 1914, governments have been forever behind events. They have not overtaken events;
events have overtaken them. Understanding comes after,
not. during or before events. With the result that the understanding that comes after events seeks almost always to
make up for past defeats and disasters. In its anxiety to
make up for the past it often misreads the present, and, is
thereby, drawn into repeating the past, just because of the
urgency of its wish to avoid its errors. Events fool this
belated understanding. The very attempt to anticipate
events because of past slowness impedes the perception of
events unfolding in the present, which in turn further saps
the confidence anticipation meant to restore. The war in
Indochina did not so much undo the lessons of Munich as
show that they had not been profoundly enough learnt to
rediscover them in a war of disguised aggression.
The attempt to justify present judgment solely on precedent serves to obscure ambivalence, the ambivalence
that impedes the straightforward-and fearful-assessment of present events. This ambivalence showed itself
during the war for Indochina in the collapse of much of
the establishment in agreement with the protesters without even, for the most part, defending its policies. The protesters were not mistaken in their perception of hollowness in the establishment. In some sense each generation
has to rediscover the truths of the past generations on its
own. The recall of the past is indispensable just because it
teaches that it cannot substitute for present judgment.
But too ready recourse to the past for justification rather
than instruction betrays evasiveness in the present. The
gift that comes of recalling the past is the realization that
you are on your own in the present.
In the two World Wars, whose destructiveness showed
itself in the incapacity to turn victory into peace and,
therefore, in simplifications that told themselves they
came to terms with fundamentals-as if the uncontrollability of destructiveness showed men their true face, and
not the face they drew up against the truth, to deny the
truth-something essential was destroyed. I mean the
THE ST. JOHNS REVlEW
readiness to experience reality, the consequences of action, character, the courage of sight and pleasure except as
a matter of principle or propaganda, the plain light of the
day that fills up the day and which had moved the brushes
of the impressionists. I mean finally the capacity to distinguish one thing and another, and especially rational from
irrational. Men would believe anything and nothing. And
it did not seem to make much difference, whether they
believed something or nothing.
In either instance the force of aspiration impeded the
experience of actual strength. This incapacity to distinguish the irrational from the rational shows itself in disturbances in sight, in the incapacity to see wholes. Because of
this disturbance in perception little is self-evident, for the
self-evidence is in some sense a whole. And this in countries whose constitutions depend upon self-evidence, and
the experience of good will that comes of it. Amidst the
simplifications, the simple became embarassing like blushing,-and complexity became the refuge of bafflement
that would not experience itself. The irrationality in the
simplifications shows itself in its unwillingness to stand
questioning and outright opposition-and in the attempt
to suppress it outright, and in the willingness to foster, and
often to finance, all sorts of spurious opposition, which is
in more or less inverted agreement with what it ostensibly
opposes. This fostering of spurious opposition, besides
clouding obvious facts-for obvious facts are also
wholes-in doubt, fosters a bizarre combination of recklessness of speech-obvious but unnoticed in the "op-ed"
pages of newspapers with large circulation-and flattery.
Few societies in the past have betrayed such a hunger in
their fear of straightforwardness and goodwill for both servility and the intimidation of insult, for the qualities they
claim most to despise. The fear of straightforwardness
shows itself in the involuntary and overwhelming condescension that meets the words of those like Solzehnitsyn
who do speak their minds unflinchingly, a condescension
that imbues the truth with the stink of its own rot.
Like sight, and because of the difficulties of sight, of recognizing the obvious, feeling too is more difficult-seems
about to disappear entirely into emptiness. In this confusion of rational and irrational, artificially provoked by tales
of atrocity and the like, and in the consequent attempt to
suppress them indiscriminately, which leads to a despairing emptiness, Baudelaire's ennui, a person in genuine an~
ger or in love will feel outrageous-like what he imagines a
Nazi to have been. Feeling-and not pornography-feels
pornographic and often stirs in those who witness it, envy
and hatred. We barely recognize ourselves.
The present division of the West serves to blur the
memory of this destruction. No time has been so obsessed
with its unwilling destructiveness, so fearful of it as to be
unable to distinguish it from rational self-defense. But the
memory will not go away. It lives on in the suspicion of the
incapacity to distinguish irrational and rational that gnaws
at our confidence and makes us unceasingly uneasy. This
135
�lack of confidence shows itself in our readiness to ridicule
the past and its confidence, and to' exaggerate its failures.
There is much contactlessness in the West, and brutally
cruel, distorted contact in the East: where the flesh itself
turns wooden but where also life stirs in the destruction,
after the destruction, where almost the only unmistakable
voices we hear find words~ voices that arouse contempt
that is only a defense against fear, shame, and embarassment-the embarassment and fear of Adam and Eve after
eating the apple.
The ambivalence that shows itself in the fear of distinguishing rational and irrational induces paralysis. Paralysis
leads to drift. Drift in turn makes for the spread of the irrational-of subversion, sedition, terrorism, above all for the
spread of the ideological and propagandistic stereotyping
of events, and for the sense of helplessness that comes of
not perceiving the significance of events. All these hinder,
and prevent swift and effective-the two are almost synonymous-action.
The indecision that comes of this paralysis finds it most
openly cruel expression in the precarious balance the two
"superpowers" hold between life and death-a balance
that tests the love of life-and which at the same time that
it points to the difficulty of choice, insists on its necessity
in the starkest terms. Were people, and especially governments, capable of choice in the less overwhelming matters
of their lives, for instance, capable of outspoken support of
the Israeli measures to restore sovereignty, and to undo
the international terrorist bases in Lebanon, it would not
come to such a harrowing choice. But drift and its paralysis
often leads governments, and others whose work calls for a
rational response to irrational challenges, to connive with
this irrationality-because of a perverse unacknowledged
admiration for it. If the coming negotiations with the Soviet Union will bring no sensible advantage to the West
and no relief to the East European nations-as in view of
the current crackdown in Poland and within the Soviet
Union appears unlikely-they will turn into creatures of
this murderous fascination with the irrational.
Successful coherent peace-in contrast to the exploitation of the yearning for peace to undo the readiness of selfdefence-requires choosing freely to face harsh dangerous
realities in the absence of the overwhelming necessity of
battle. In some sense it requires more courage than battle.
It requires unevasive words. For evasive words can be
worse than bullets. " 'Bullets kill. Words prolong the death
by giving false hope. It is worse to prolong.' "64
At stake in unevasive words is the truth which alone can
give the political systems that seek to protect its stirring
the strength to act effectively to avoid the large scale wars
their dread of war may otherwise bring upon them. For
the truth alone is bigger than these constitutions which
cannot live, and, therefore, survive without it. It is the air
they breathe.
The truth means distinguishing between irrational and
rational, the only distinction that can bring the willing con-
136
sent without which freedom cannot live. Distinguishing
between rational and irrational means distinguishing between authority and authoritarianism, between genitality
and secondary desires which often seek refuge in either
totalitarian asceticism or license, between love and pornography, between self-defense and murder. It means taking risks-and distinguishing between passivity and apathy and safety. The incapacity to take these risks, and to
make these distinctions, shows itself in an indiscriminate
dread of all feeling-and in the resort to collective indignation and ideology to still the uneasiness of its absence-the
absence of life itself moving at its own sweet will. Without
the flow of feeling there can be no experience of rationality, no experience of affirmation and denial, without
which the distinctions between self-defense and killing,
love and pornography, genitality and secondary desires. In
each of these distinctions the difference the perception of
which makes the distinction possible is between actual
feeling moving of its own sweet will and the yearning for it
which makes people susceptible to ideology which often
brings the opposite of what it promises, death instead of
life. Only the flow of actual feeling-in distinction to the
yearning for it that shows itself in sentimentality and cruelty-can distinguish between strength and force, between consent and manipulation, between rational defiance and stubborness and spite, the defiance that
preserves rather than the revolt that destroys, and names it
freedom.
In some sense totalitarianism has done nothing but call
our bluff, our incapacity to live up to our ideals, to feel the
freedom that is actually ours, that is all about us but which
few experience in themselves, that is, the contrast between the knowledge that there is nothing outside stopping us and an inner sense of the constriction which keeps
us from moving. I mean the yearning for the simplicity of
nature, for its spontaneity, for its strength, for its openess-and also the dread of it and the disgust with it which
unlike the nineteenth century we cannot experience with
any forthrightness.
The nineteenth century could live somehow with the
sense that man was not entirely himself. It could perceive
still, somehow, its limitations at the same time that it knew
these limitations were somehow self-imposed and artificial. At the same time, however, it realized with clarity that
all that most inspired it wished those limitations away, and
might one day destroy them, although for the most part it
enjoyed still enough of the modesty of nature to understand that destroying these limitations would only spread
and intensify the paralysis they actually served to limit and
define.
Until the First World War destroyed the delicate balance between what it wanted and what it saw it was, the
nineteenth century was happy, because confident enough
to live within these contradictions. And this capacity to
live within them without denying them lent it the boldness of clarity so that its words sparkled and did not dread
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�warmth and courage in peacetime, and could tell outrage
without hesitation. And it could suffer, and, therefore,
events did not make it suffer. And it knew the meaning of
chance and that there was nothing inevitable in events,
that nothing that happened had to happen. It knew that
you could not explain what happened if you assumed it
had to happen. Because it knew that nothing was inevita·
ble, it knew responsibility, it knew it made events-it did
not entertain the conceit that events happened to it-that
is, it knew how to suffer, how to sorrow, how to feel com·
passion instead of murderous pity that betrays itself in a
swift look of the eyes that acknowledges everything to
deny it. It also knew how to tell outrage without hesitation,
that is, it could stand self.criticism and distinguish it from
self-hatred. Because it knew real indignation and, thereby,
real self-love and courage-and something of the taste of
life-it knew how to prevent the exploitation of its guilt
for the purposes of nourishing complicity with actual outrage, complicity that shows itself, gives itself away, by its
indulgence in worked-up indignation against largely imaginary outrages, for instance, the world~wide "uproar" about
American "atrocities" in Vietnam which were exceptions,
and of greater rarity than in most wars, and the eerie passivity that meets the murder in Afghanistan, in Cambodia:
it took the New York Times two years to pick up the story,
and then only after the New York Review of Books reviewed a French book about it. (People in the Soviet Union probably know more details about the murder in Cambodia than Americans.)
In some sense more ambitious for the truth than the
nineteenth century, that is, less capable of putting up with
even the mere appearance of hypocrisy, we end up more
oblique than the nineteenth century. Because we will not
know this hypocrisy, the plain straightforwardness of the
nineteenth century, and its readiness to acknowledge matters it could not cope with, embarrass us. We take our hypocrisy for the truth itself. And so things that were plain as
the day a generation ago, are now obscure; for instance,
that George Orwell wrote 1984 against Stalinism, not
against Hitler and nazism. And we barely notice lying in
politics, the lying that took George Orwell's breath away,
as Joseph Adelson remarked recently. For instance, the
major newspapers take Andropov's calling the President of
the United States a liar more or less for granted.
This greater obliquity, greater because unacknowledged, and, therefore, not experienced as obliquity, but as
a kind of disingenous straightforwardness or naivete,
comes from the inability either to stand the truth-or to
get along without it. With the result that we are uneasymore uneasy, the more we protest against uneasiness.
Much of what we take for boldness amounts merely to unacknowledged timorousness, for instance, the suspicious-
ness of all authority, especially government, of the media-which makes for the excitement of the denial of
common sense in the hope of, thereby, reaching depth, as
if the denial of the obvious amounted to getting at the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
heart of things, when in fact the simplicity of the obvious
overwhelms with its lucidity only with the perception of
depth. Otherwise the obvious appears fragile, brittle, ungiving, dead, dull, unpalatable, and boring.
Totalitarianism, unlike the despotism that existed before Napoleon, and which Montesquieu described, parodies our ideals and exploits our incapacity to live up to
them entirely-an incapacity which shows itself in our
readiness to take freedom for granted, and in our unwillingness to conceive that others envy it, and desire to undo
it.
The division of the West intensifies this division and
ambivalence within individuals, and to some extent
springs from it. A whole world means whole people, it
means people and societies capable of distinguishing between truth and lies, and knowing that the truth lives. It
means distinguishing between love oflife and resentment
and self.hatred, between freedom and license.
Like battle the balance of terror attempts to force this
wholeness on individuals at the same time that it threatens
to intensify the division that undoes this wholeness by inviting people and nations to yield to this terror instead of
facing up to it. Yielding to this terror will not bring peace
but only an intensification of war, and the further spread
of totalitarianism, which is a kind of continuous war of in-
dividuals against each other and against themselves, unceasing and apparently impossible to undo from the inside
without support from outside, support that must take
risks, including the risk of conflict, to be meaningful. And
not to resist means to yield. Even the leaders of many of
the peace movements will now upon questioning admit
that peace means yielding to totalitarian violence in the
name of undoing the much greater daily "violence" in life
under "capitalism".65 They are not after peace at all but
after intensification of violence which kills without knowing it, their kind of violence, which, like totalitarian violence, does not distinguish between peace and war. Totalitarianism dreads this wholeness more than anything, for
only this wholeness can see through it and dispel it. The
spread of totalitarianism roots in our own indecisiveness,
in our own paralysis, in our own incapacity to see what is
going on. And this procrastination prolongs and thereby
increases cruelty, and involves almost everybody in it. For
short wars are much more merciful than unending wars as
Lebanon should have showed Vietnam had taught usbut did not.
1. Cf. Guglielmo Ferrero, The Two French Revolutions, New York 1968.
2. Quoted in Theodore Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality, New
York 1950: Man kann nur fuer eine Idee sterben die man nicht versteht.
3. Cf. Vladimir Bukovsky, To Build A Castle-My Life as a Dissenter,
New York 1979; Adam Michnik, L'eglise et la gauche, Paris 1979. For
China, the writing of Wei Jingsheng, introduced by Simon Ley, "La lutte
pour la liberte en Chine," Commentaire 7, Autumn 1979, 353-360. In his
most recent book, Cette lanc;inante douleur de la liberte (Paris l98l), Bu.
kovsky betrays startling silliness in making sense of his experience of life
in the West since he left Russia.
137
�4. Cf. Brian Crozier, Strategy of Survival, London 1978; Leo Raditsa,
"The Present Danger," Midstream, February 1979, 59-70.
5. Foreign Relations of the United States (Conference Series), Washington, D.C. 1945, I 850-855 and elsewhere.
6. For the background of this propaganda, Bernard Lewis, "The AntiZionist Resolution," Foreign Affairs, October 1976, 54-64.
7. Walter Lippmann, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy, New
York 1947. Lippmann's remarkable book shows deep mastery oflessons
G. Ferrero had drawn from the Congress of Vienna (G. Ferrero, TheReconstruction of Europe, New York 1941; cf. G. Ferrero, La fin des aventures, guerre et paix, Paris 1931).
8. Letter of James Forrestal to Chan Gurney, Chairman of the Senate
Armed Services Committee, December 8, 1947. The Forrestal Diaries,
edited by Walter Millis, New York 1951,349-350.
9. George Ball, The Discipline of Power, Boston 1968, 151, cf. 149-168.
10. ForrestalDiaries, New York 1951,265-266.
11. Forrestal Diaries, New York 1951,296-297.
12. For Soviet thinking about nuclear war, see Joseph D. Douglass, Jr.
and Amoretta Roeber, Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War, Stanford, Ca.
1979. For Soviet involvement in terrorism, Stefan T. Possony and L.
Francis Bouchey, International Terrorism-The Communist Connection,
Washington, D.C. 1978; Claire Sterling, The Terror Network, The Secret
War of International Terrorism, New York 1981. See also, Leo Raditsa,
"The Source of World Terrorism," Midstream, December 1981, 42-49.
13. The Wall Street Journal, December 7,1982.
14. For Soviet disinformation, see Soviet Active Measures, Hearings before the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House of Representatives, July 13-14, 1982, Washington, D.C. 1982, especially the testimony of Stanislave Levchenko, 137-169. See also the testimony of
Ladislav Bittman in Soviet Covert Action (The Forgery Offensive), Hearings before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, Senate, February 19, 1980, Washington,
D.C. 1980. In 1968, the year of the beginning of detente in Europe, and
of increased Soviet involvement in terrorism, the head of the KGB's Disinformation Directorate, described the duplicity of disinformation (testimony of Arnaud de Borchgrave to the Senate Subcommittee on Security
and Terrorism, April24, 1981):
... our friends must always be encouraged to write or say precisely
the opposite of our real objectives. Conflict between East and West is
a permanent premise of Soviet thought-until the final demise of
capitalist power in the West. But this must be constantly dismissed
and ridiculed as rightist cold-war thinking.
Except for scope and boldness, disinformation has changed little since
the end of the war. Cf. the testimony of Bogdan Raditsa. May 11, 1949,
Communist Activities among Aliens and National Groups. Hearings before the Special Subcommittee to Investigate Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, Senate, Washington, D.C.,
1949.
15. Letter to Palmer Hoyt, September 2, 1944. Forrestal Diaries, New
Ymk 1951, 14.
16. Letter to Stanton Griffis, United States Ambassador to Poland, October 31, 1947. Forrestal Diaries, New York 1951, 335.
17. Quoted by Caetano Mosca, Elementi di Scienza Politica 2, Turin
1923,450.
18. Sergey Petrovich Melgounov, The Red Terror in Russia, London
1925, 33.
19. Melgounov, Red Terror, London 1925, 41.
20. The words are Dr. Abdallah Osman's who was arrested toward the
end of 1978 for his western education. Quoted in the important article by
Michael Barry, "Afghanistan-Another Cambodia?," Commentary, August 1982, 29-37, 32. See also, Leo Raditsa, "Afghanistan Fights," St.
John's Review, Winter 1982, 90-98.
21. For one instance of the shooting of children, The Washington Post,
February 7, 1980.
22. For South Vietnam, Douglas Pike, Vietcong, The Organization and
Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, Cambddge, Mass. 1966, 249.
138
23. Michael Barry, "Afghanistan-Another Cambodia?," Commentary,
August 1982, 29-37.
24. This ignorance showed itself dramatically in the movie Reds that did
not even distinguish between the February revolution to establish democracy and the October seizure of power, and barely mentioned the
war. In this movie American mindlessness led to distortions that Soviet
schoolbooks, which mention that the Bolshevik minority destroyed all
democratic institutions, do not dream of. And except for an important
essay by Joel Carmichael ("Warren Beatty's Bolsheviks," Midstream,
March 1982, 43-48) and a letter of Lev Navrozov (Commentary, June
1982) nobody noticed. In fact one critic called the movie gently "condemnatory"-as if condemning was more important than telling what happened, and letting the condemnation take care of itself.
25. For this tendency, see the brilliant esSay by Jacques Barzun, Clio and
the Doctors: History, Psycho-History and Quanta-History, Chicago 1974.
26. Testimony of Stanislav Levchenko, July 14, 1982, in Soviet Active
Measures, Washington, D.C., 144, 145, 156.
27. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, translated by Louise and Aylmer
Maude, New York 1942, 10, 38.
28. Cf. G. Ferrero, The Reconstruction of Europe, New York 1941; also
The Gamble, Bonaparte in Iwly, 1796-1797, London 1939.
29. See the statement of Lieutenant General Marian Kukiel, Polish Minister of National Defense, in Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, The Rape of Poland,
New York 1948,29-30. The Soviet regime had about 14,500 Polish officers murdered near Smolensk and other places in Western Russia in
1940. In an article showing the Soviet and Polish regime's aggressive persistence in denying responsibility for the massacres, Nicholas Bethell
("Katyn and the Little Conifers, Encounter, May 1977, 86-90) quotes an
official diplomatic report of May 24, 1943, from the British Ambassador
to the Polish government-in-exile in London, that did not flinch in description of the, in its judgement, necessary evasiveness of Churchill's
government:
In handling the publicity side of the Katyn affair we have been constrained by the urgent need for cordial relations with the Soviet government to appear to appraise the evidence with more hesitation and
lenience than we should do in forming a common sense judgment on
events occurring in normal times or in the ordinary course of our private lives; we have been obliged to appear to distort the normal and
healthy operation of our intellectual and moral judgments; we have
been obliged to give undue prominence to the tactlessness or impulsiveness of Poles, to restrain the Poles from putting their case clearly
before the public, to discourage any attempt by the public and the
press to probe the ugly story to the bottom. In general we have been
obliged to deflect attention from possibilities which in the ordinary
affairs of life would cry to high heaven for elucidation, and to withhold the full measure of solicitude which, in other circumstances,
would be shown to acquaintances situated as a large number of Poles
now are. We have in fact perforce used the good name of England like
the murderers used the little conifers to cover up a massacre.
30. Quoted in Michael Polanyi, "Beyond Nihilism" in Knowing and Being, London 1969, 20.
31. Michael Polanyi, "The Message of the Hungarian Revolution" in
Knowing and Being, London 1969, 28.
32. Leonid Vladimirov, The Russians, New York 1968, 101-102.
33. Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart, Autonomy in a Mass Age,
New York 1971,24.
34. S. P. Melgounov, The Red Terror, London 1925,97.
35. Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind, New York 1953,72.
36. Mikhail Agursky, "Contemporary Socioeconomic Systems and their
Future Prospects" in Alexander Solzhenitsyn ed., From Under the Rubble, New Ymk 1976,78,74-75.
37. Forrestal Diaries, New York 1951,482.
38. Forrestal Diaries, New York 1951,262-263.
39. Giuseppe Josca, Carriere della Sera, April27, 1973.
40. New York Times, May 9, 1975.
41. Joan Didion, "El Salvador, the Bad Dream," New York Review of
Books, December 2, 1982.
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�42. Andrei Navrozov, "Letter to A. Bartlett Giamatti," The Yale Free
Press, October 14, 1982.
43. Cf. Vittoria Ronchey, Figlioli Miei, Marxisti IJtmaginari, Milan 1975.
44. Igor Shafarevich, "Socialism in Our Past and Future" in From Under
the Rubble, New York 1976, 58-59.
·
45. For a fine account of the first appearance of this propaganda in 1917,
especially in Italy but with general reference to the whole West, see Ro"
berto Vivarelli, 1l dopoguerra in Italia e l'avvento del fascismo (1918-1922),
Naples 1967, especially 1-114.
46. Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, Berlin 1922 (first
published 1918), 130.
47. Mann, Betrachtungen, Berlin 1922,47.
48. Thomas Mann, "Bruder Hitler," (1939), Gesammelte Schriften, Ham·
bmg 1960, 12, 852.
49. Gustav Janouch, "Conversations with Kafka," Encounter, August
1971, 15-27.
50. Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, New York
1962, 32.
51. The" .. , and hold them (our British brethren) as we hold the rest of
mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends!" of the Declaration of Independence.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
52. Foreign Relations of the United States (Conference Series), Washington, D.C. 1945, I.
53. Forrestal Diaries, New York 1951, 80.
54. R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography, Oxford 1939,44-52 and 147167. Quotations from 48-49, 163-64, 167.
55. Quoted in George F. Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, Princeton, N.J.
1956, 272-273.
56. Quoted in Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, Princeton, N.J. 1956, 511.
57. For a classic description and analysis, Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psy·
chology of Fascism, New York 1946 (first edition 1933).
58. Milovan Djilas, Wartime, New York 1977, 285.
59. Raymond Aron, Le spectateur engage, entretiens avec Jean-Louis Missika et Dominique Walton, Paris 1981,62.
60. Alexander Lowen, "The Impressionists and Orgone Energy," Orgone Energy Bulletin, 1, 1944, 169-183, 173.
61. Lowen, "The Impressionists," OEB, l, 1944, 178.
62. Vincent Van Gogh in his description of his "Portrait of the Painter
Bosch". Quoted in Lowen, "The Impressionists," 181.
63. W. Reich, Character Analysis\ New York 1949.
64. James Webb, Fields of Fire, New York (Bantam edition) 1979, 182.
65. Rael Jean Isaac and Erich Isaac, "The Peacemaking Utopians" in
The Coercive Utopians, Chicago 1983, forthcoming.
139
�REvmw EssAY
On Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth*
GREGORY S. )ONES
The editor of The New Yorker magazine, William
Shawn, has described Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the
Earth as a work that "may someday be looked back upon as
a crucial event in the history of human thought." 1 This is
extremely unlikely. Schell's main conclusion, that calls for
radical changes in the world's political structure, is based
on a fallacious quasi-mathematical argument. Apart from
this argument, Schell's understanding amounts to a wish
for a world where people could live in peace. Schell does
not explain how we can construct a more peaceful world.
Schell's main argument hinges on the possibility that an
all-out nuclear war could lead to human extinction:
To say that human extinction is a certainty would, of course,
be a misrepresentation-just as it would be a misrepresentation to say that extinction can be ruled out. To begin with, we
know that a holocaust may not occur at all. If one does occur,
the adversaries may not use all their weapons. If they do use
all their weapons, the global effects, in the ozone and elsewhere, may be moderate. And if the effects are not moderate
but extreme, the ecosphere may prove resilient enough to
withstand them without breaking down catastrophically.
These are all substantial reasons for supposing that mankind
will not be extinguished in a nuclear holocaust, or even that
extinction in a holocaust is unlikely, and they tend to calm
our fear and to reduce our sense of urgency. Yet at the same
time we are compelled to admit that there may be a holocaust, that the adversaries may use all their weapons, that the
global effects, including effects of which we are as yet unaware, may be severe, that the ecosphere may suffer catastrophic breakdown, and that our species may be extinguished. (Emphasis in original.)
Schell then puts argument in mathematical form:
To employ a mathematical analogy, we can say that although
the risk of extinction may be fractional, the stake is, humanly
speaking, infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still infinity. In
Gregory S. Jones is a senior policy analyst at Pan Heuristics, a Los
Angeles research firm. With Albert Wohlstetter he wrote Swords from
Plowshares: The Military Potential of Civilian Nuclear Energy (University
of Chicago Press 1978).
140
other words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the
game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever
get another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking, there is all the difference in the world between the mere
possibility that a holocaust will bring about extinction and the
certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no
choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons as though
we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end to our
species. (Emphasis in original.)
A small probability of an infinite harm (in this case, human extinction in large-scale nuclear war) has to be treated
the same as if the probability of this harm were a certainty.
To reduce the probability of nuclear war to zero, Schell
argues for complete nuclear and conventional disarmament worldwide. He also wants to change the world's political structure to "create a political means by which the
world can arrive at the decisions that sovereign states previously arrived at through war." In the near term he supports a nuclear freeze, talks between the nuclear powers to
reduce the probability of accidental nuclear war, and
George Kennan's proposal for halving the nuclear arsenals
of the superpowers.
Schell argues against unnamed (and, to me, unknown)
people who might think that the human extinction is not
all that bad. If only we would recognize the seriousness of
the situation, we would create this new world order.
The real problem, however, is Schell's argument that a
finite probability of an infinite harm can be treated as if
the harm were a certainty-and not that people do not
take human extinction seriously. This argument's total indifference to the actual probability of a catastrophic nuclear war is the trouble. For as long as there is a chance of a
catastrophic nuclear war, the argument does not change.
To halve the current probability of a catastrophic nuclear
war does no good; to double the current probability of catastrophic nuclear war does no harm. Any world with some
chance of catastrophic nuclear war is equivalent.
*Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth, Alfred A. Knopf, New York,
1982.
WINTER/SPRING 1983
�The logic of this argument should lead Schell to reject
half-measures like a nuclear freeze, etc.,(even if a nuclear
freeze lessened the chance of nuclear war). For such measures will not eliminate catastrophic nu.clear war. A nuclear freeze will, in fact, increase the chance of nuclear war
since it will prevent improvements in the safety, security,
and survivability of our nuclear systems and impede the
development of precise forms of nonnuclear attack with
the potential to replace nuclear weapons for many missions. Even in a totally disarmed world with a new political
order, as Schell admits, the political order could break
down, a war could break out, and with nuclear weapons
reconstructed, a nuclear catastrophe could occur:
In a disarmed world, we would not have eliminated the peril
of human extinction from the human scene-it is not in our
power to do so-but we would at least have pitted our whole
strength against it. The inconsistency of threatening to perpetrate extinction in order to escape extinction would be removed. The nuclei of atoms would still contain vast energy,
and we would still know how to extinguish ourselves by releasing that energy in chain reactions, but we would not be
lifting a finger to do it. There would be no complicity in mass
murder, no billions of dollars spent on the machinery of annihilation, no preparations to snuff out the future generations,
no hair-raising lunges toward the abyss.
All this is very well. But the logic of the argument yields
no reason to prefer Schell's totally disarmed world to our
current one.
The probability of nuclear war is quite important and it
is vital that we keep this probability as low as we can. To
reduce the overall risk to ourselves and at the same time
improve the quality of our lives it is, however, important to
use our resources proportionately to our actual needs and
risks. For example, at any second (to use some of Schell's
frenzied prose) the earth could be struck by an asteroid
large enough to have catastrophic consequences to the
earth's biosphere leading to human extinction. There is
substantial evidence of such collisions in the past. (Some
hold such a collision led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.)
Telescopes to scan the skies for such asteroids and stocks
of large nuclear armed missiles (the size of our Saturn
moon rockets) ready to intercept and blow up these asteroids would reduce the risks of such collisions. We do not
man such telescopes and missiles because the risk (once
every hundred million years or so) does not warrant the
relatively modest expenditure.
The risk of nuclear war is greater than the risk of large
asteroid collisions. But the price of trying absolutely to
avoid nuclear war is also unacceptably high, because it
would cost us more than just money. Schell chides us for
continuing to cling to our current system of nation states
which we use to support what he calls "our transient aims
and fallible convictions." These include such trivialities as
liberty and justice.Z The logic of Schell's beliefs and of
much that is current in the antinuclear movement would
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
lead one to do almost anything to avoid a nuclear holocaust.
Surrender to the Soviets would be the easiest way, especially if one is willing to give up liberty and justice. How to
be neither red nor dead, however, is our real problem.
Schell's argument has so little content that it can be
used to support anything or nothing. Pierre Gallois and
Raymond Aron used the vacuous argument of a finite
chance of an infinite harm that Schell uses to argue for
world disarmament and a new world order, to advocate
spreading nuclear weapons to a very large number of
coun'tries.l They held such distribution would make for a
very peaceful earth because nuclear weapons would enable every country to deter an attack. This would be true
even for very small countries, since there would always be
a slight chance that their nuclear weapons would survive
an enemy surprise attack and do the enemy's cities enormous damage. Gallois and Aron argued that even a very
small possibility of this enormous harm would deter an
enemy.
Of the two notions that comprise his solution, total disarmament and a new world political order without war,
Schell correctly takes the new world order for the primary
requirement, for once achieved it would make disarmament easy. It is striking that Schell has no idea what this
new world political order would look like nor how to bring
it about. He leaves these tasks to his reader:
In this book, I have not sought to define a political solution to
the nuclear predicament-either to embark on the full-scale reexamination of the foundations of political thought which
must be undertaken if the world's political institutions are to be
made consonant with the global reality in which they operate
or to work out the practical steps by which mankind, acting for
the first time in history as a single entity, can reorganize its political life. I have left to others those awesome, urgent tasks,
which, imposed on us by history, constitute the political work
of our age.
There is nothing new or original in the thought that it
would be nice to have a world where people settle their
political differences peacefully. There are problems, however, not amenable to easy solution-questions like who
should rule the Falkland Islands, where should the Palestinians live, how to bring liberty and justice to people living in totalitarian countries as well as improving the quality of government in our own country. People have
worked and will continue to work hard to solve these and
the many other political problems in the world today.
They do not need Jonathan Schell to tell them how serious
and important this work is. But finding solutions has not
been and will not be easy and there's nothing in Schell's
frantic book that will make this task any easier.
1Quoted in Newsweek, March 14, 1983, 67.
Schell complains that the nuclear powers "put a higher value
on national sovereignty than they do on human survival."
3 Pierre Gallais, The Balance ofTerror(with Foreword by Raymond Aron),
Boston 1961, 129 ix. I am indebted to Albert Wohlstetter for pointing out
this connection.
2 Elsewhere
141
�The St. John's Review
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<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Office of the Dean
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St. John's College
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ISSN 0277-4720
thestjohnsreview
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141 pages
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The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Winter/Spring 1983
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1983-01
1983-04
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Radista, Leo
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Lord, Susan
Bolotin, David
Wilson, Curtis A.
Sachs, Joe
Aldanov, Mark
Carmichael, Joel
Brann, Eva T. H.
Himmelfarb, Gertrude
Collins, Arthur
Zuckerman, Elliott
Isaac, Rael-Jean and Erich
Holmes, Stephen
Hadas, Rachel
Ferrero, Guiglielmo
Mosca, Gaetano
Mongardini, Carlo
Ardrey, Daniel
Jones, Gregory S.
Kocsis, Joan
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Volume XXXIV, Number 2 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Winter/Spring 1983.
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ISSN 0277-4720
The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_34_No_2_1983
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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English
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St. John's Review
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THESTJOHNSREVIEWAUTU:
NWINTER198283THESTJOHl
SREVIEWAUTUMNWINTERl
8283THESTJOHNSREVIEWAl
TUMNWINTER 198283 THEST
OHNSREVIEWAUTUMNWI!'
TER198283THESTJOHNSREV
•
�Editor:
FROM OUR READERS
Leo Raditsa
THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES
Managing Editor:
Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant:
David Carnes
Consulting Editors:
David Bolotin
Eva Brann
Curtis A. Wilson
To the Editor of the St. John's Review:
Why, I wonder, would you or your editor deliberately choose to
send me an issue of your magazine calling my attention to a review (of Updike) [Lev Navrozov, "Updike and Roth: Are They
Writers?", St. John's Review, Summer 1982] that is so gratuitously,
exaggeratedly, insulting? Is this meant to be provocative behavior?
Cute behavior? Am I supposed to have a passionate intellectual
curiosity about what the St. John's Review thinks of our books?
I don't bother to reply out of anger or resentment; only to express my astonishment at what people with some pretension to
professionalism think is appropriate; I won't bother opening another issue.
ROBERT GOTTLIEB
Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome,
but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also
welcome.
THESTJOHNSREVIEW (formerly The College) is published by
the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland
21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, SamuelS. Kutler, Dean. Pub·
lished thrice yearly, in the autumn~winter, winter-spring, and
summer. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions: $12.00
yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three years, payable in
advance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's Review,
St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404.
Volume XXXIV
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
Number I
©1983, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Cover: Arch of Titus. The triumphal parade in Rome of the spoils from
the Temple of Jerusalem. Built in 80-85 A.D., almost half a generation
after the end of the Jewish War (70 A.D.), the Arch of Titus rises on the
Via Sacra in the Roman Forum-part of the triumphal route.
William James, by Alice Boughton, 1907.
Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz, by Andreas Scheits, 1704, Florence, Uffizi.
Composition: Britton Composition Co.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co.
The writer is president and editor-in-chief of Alfred A. Knopf, publisher of
John Updike.
Lev Navrozov replies:
I have received over 500 responses like Mr. Robert Gottlieb's
letter to my reviews of "great works of literature" and of their reviews in the New York Times and the New York Review of Books.
So I can establish a certain general pattern. A respondee wants
to show that he despises my review so deeply that no response is
appropriate except icy silence, so that his response should not
really be regarded as any response at all. This approach saves the
respondee from any dangerous attempt to discuss my review, to
argue, or to present his view.
The respondee also says or ifDp]ies that his response is provoked not by insecurity, or any Other such ignoble feelings, but
by the loftx emotions of a gentleman and an artist, duty bound to
express his civic or artistic scorn. Whereupon a respondee lets it
be known that any other response is beneath his dignity and
makes what seems to him an epistolary door-banging exit.
Let me now note that a Russian emigre monthly, Literary
Courier, has translated the review in question into the Russian
and published it in the magazine's latest issue. According to its
editor in his letter to me, it "has caused great interest, much
praise, and this we owe to you."
So evidently the issue is not between just Mr. Gottlieb and me.
The issue is rather between his milieu and mine. What Mr. Gottlieb's milieu regards as "great novels," or "outstanding poetry,"
my milieu does not view as literature.
I come from a family of a writer and lived since childhood in
the literary milieu of the poet Pasternak and the novelist Platonov
(I give these two names as known in the West). I also grew up on
Western, and in particular American, literature.
Even if I had read Mr. Updike's novel at the age of 16, I (and
my milieu) would have said that this is not literature.
(continued on page 2)
�HESTJOHNSREVIEWAUTUMNWINTER198283
3
William James, Moralist jacques Barzun
13
Treasure Hunt (narrative) Meyer Liben
22
Don Alfonso (poem) Elliott Zuckerman
23
The Unity of Leibniz's Thought on Contingency, Possibility, and Freedom
Arthur Collins
46
Letter from a Polish Prison Adam Michnik
51
Not Just Another Communist Party: The Polish Communist Party
Branko Lazitch
54
A Nighttime Story (narrative) Linda Collins
57
Marx's Sadism Robert]. Loewenberg
68
Meetings, Recognitions (narrative) Meyer Liben
72
Two Poems
73
The Lost Continent, the Conundrum of Christian Origins joel Carmichael
84
New Year's Eve (narrative) Meyer Liben
85
Ernst and Falk: Conversations for Freemasons Gotthold Lessing
translation and notes by Chaninah Maschler
97
The Rainfall in the Pine Grove, after Gabriele D'Annunzio,
"La pioggia nel pineto," and two poems Sidney Alexander
Laurence Josephs
REVIEW ESSAY
100
Defeat in Vietnam, Norman Podhoretz's Why We Were in Vietnam
review essay by joseph A. Bosco
AT HOME AND ABROAD
103
Letter from the Homefront: On Marrying Kari]enson
105
The Holocaust Mission, July 29 to August 12, 1979 Raul Hilberg
Inside front cover:
FROM OUR READERS:
The Emperor's New Clothes Robert Gottlieb
Editorial Policy Nancy de Grummond, Charles Kluth, Kurt Schuler
�I realize that to say that the naked Emperor wears no clothes may seem "gratuitously, exaggeratedly, insulting" to those
tailors who spun the fictitious clothes and
the courtiers who support their pretense.
But what am I supposed to do? To pretend
that Mr. Updike wears luxurious literary
vestments?
Ironically, the parents or grandparents of
many of those who belong to Mr. Gottlieb's milieu came from Russia too. Yet by
the time we came they had created a selfcontained cultural monopoly which keeps
out all critics, whether riative Americans or
late-comers like myself.
Only in a culturally self-contained mutual admiration society which has insulated
itself against all outside literary criticism,
amateur monstrosities like Rabbit is Rich
may be proudly published and showered
with rave reviews and prizes.
Members of this monopoly can well ignore its critics who can only publish in offmonopoly periodicals which can be easily
passed over in silence. Yet for all their
power they cannot afford any dialogue or
debate with their critics.
EDITORIAL POLICY
To the Editor of the St. John's Review:
Please enter my subscription to the St.
John's Review in accordance with your policy about new subscribers. I have had occasion to see the magazine from time to time
over the past two years when it was passed
on to me by a friend and was first of all attracted by articles in my own field of art
history and archaeology written by eminent scholars like Philipp Fehl and Homer
Thompson. It was refreshing to find their
ideas and opinions presented in a much
broader context than is possible in the standard specialist journals. The magazine is to
be praised especially for not suppressing
feeling in its contributors, who are allowed
to bring up issues relating to strong, basic
emotions about fear and love and living
and dying. Lev Navrozov is permitted to
say true things he could not have said in
the Soviet Union, and Michael Levin may
publish his own very personal, highly debatable views on the sexes. In the case of
the latter, even the outrageous title of his
2
article, "'Sexism' is Meaningless," (St.
John's Review Autumn 1981) allowed for
expression and reaction. The resulting section of Letters to the Editor was lively and
splendid. Congratulations to the Editor,
whom I respect immensely for publishing
writings that help to create dialogue and
bring into focus significant thought and
feeling.
males; it is no more worthy as ·an end in itself than is machismo.
CHARLES KLUTH
'52
Baltimore, MD
To the Editor of the St. John's Review:
An Open Letter To The
Instruction Committee
NANCY T. de GRUMMOND
Associate Professor
Department of Classics
Florida State University
To the Editor of the St. John's Review:
As an alumnus of St. John's, I think you
are to be commended for printing the article "'Sexism' is Meaningless" (St. John's
Review Autumn 1981), especially because
you must have known that to do so was to
invite a great deal of criticism. But I was
distressed to find that some graduates of
St. John's appear to have adopted the jesuitical doctrine that "error has no rights" and
complain not merely of the opinions expressed in the article but even of your having printed it and Your motives in so doing;
it would appear that there is free speech
only for those who hold "correct" opinions.
It is my opinion that the most recent
work in anthropology and the physiology of
the brain, as well the practical experience
of the Army and the Marine Corps, indicate strongly that the traditional understanding of men and women as equal but
complementary remains true. The obvious
difficulty with this formulation has been
that it has too often been used to exclude
women from fields of endeavor to which
they were perfectly well suited, not to mention other abuses; hence the knee-jerk reaction of the feminist to any comparison
which goes beyond the "gross biological
features" (to quote one of your correspondents). But the application of so gross a
standard has led us to such obvious absurdities as quotas for 1OOlb. beat patrolmen.
It will not be easy, as it never is, to be
both fair and reasonable but, if there is to
be a restoration of common sense, we had
better start trying. In the meantime, we
needn't, and shouldn't, equate feminism
with anything beyond the concerns of fe-
I am disturbed by the statement of editorial policy you recently adopted for the St.
John's Review . ..
The statement emphasizes that contributors to the Review should be familiar with
the St. John's program (first paragraph), will
probably be tutors, alumni, or visiting lecturers, and will write mainly about books
and issues within the program (fourth paragraph). I presume that you find such a
statement necessary because you are dissastisfied with the editorial practices the
Review has been following for the last several issues, and I infer from the paragraphs
I cited that you don't think the Review has
been sufficiently concerned with the program. Apparently, you want to narrow drastically the range of topics the Review covers.
That is a bad mistake.
The Review is the only tangible intellectual contact that many alumni and many
outsiders have with the college. Consequently, I think that the Review should
make a strong effort to appeal to them, by
including articles about subjects that are of
immediate interest to them. One must remember that the world of learning is wider
than the St. John's program; one must also
remember that most of the general public
(and, after a few years away from St.
John's, most alumni) have intellectual interests different from those of students and
tutors at St. John's. If the Review wishes to
address that public, it cannot stick its head
in the sand and pretend it does not see that
more people want to read about the informativeness of the New York Times versus
that of Pravda than about spirituality in the
philosophy of Plotinus, for example.
Let me relate to you my own experience
with the Review. The articles in it that I
always read first are those not explicitly
connected with the program. My friends,
whether alumni of St. John's or of other
(continued on page 112)
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�William James, Moralist
Jacques Barzun
James's long discussions in youth with Wendell Holmes
and the great essay-review of Spencer's Psychology in 1878
were his first attempts to vindicate the character of the
moral life. It had to be done because the phrase "in an age
of science" was already taking on the implication that
everything in human life had changed and must be reexamined before its license to exist could be renewed.
For James as a naturalist, the double question was: how
to establish the reality of moral choice as part of nature;
and how to show that this choice was a free individual act,
not a resultant of extraneous "forces." The evidence
James begins with is the root phenomenon of the reflex
arc: a sensory stimulus affects the brain, and its result is
some form of action. All action is reaction upon the outer
world. 'The current of life which runs in at our eyes and
ears is meant to run out at our hands, feet, or lips. The only
use of the thoughts which it occasions while inside is to
determine its direction to whichever of these shall, under
the circumstances actually present, act in the way most
propitious to our welfare.'
What James saw and said a hundred years ago is that reflex action is not like stepping on one end of a see-saw and
getting hit in the face by the other. Between stimulus and
action comes response and which response it is to be is by
no means always automatic. Whatever may be the link between brain and mind, we experience the stimulus. Except
in the simple cases of touching a hot stove or a sharp
blade, response varies widely. The mind interposes at the
midpoint of the arc its peculiar and complex individual
characteristics.
This interlude of response may seem a slender support
A leading man of letters, Jacques Barzun has recently published Critical
Questions, Selected Essays 1940-1980 (University of Chicago Press,
1982). The above essay comes from A Stroll with William James, a book
meant to mark a life-long debt, to be published early in 1983 {Harper and
. Row).
Quotations from James are in single quotes.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
for the moral world, but it is the same support that holds
up and indeed constitutes the whole of our conscious life,
with which moral judgment and choice are intertwined.
The important point is to recognize preference as a given
element and one that is inescapably individual. It is that ·
"taking" (or unique perception and perspective) which is
central to the Jamesian conception of reality.
In one of his most charming essays, "On a Certain
Blindness in Human Beings," James relates a picturesque
incident of his driving with a North Carolina farmer
through a remote valley recently opened to cultivation.
James was appalled at the devastation-beautiful trees
felled, then charred stumps bearing witness to the struggle for level ground; great gashes in the greenery and
patches of corn and other plantings irregularly scattered,
like the pigs and chickens, among the miserable log cabins, across what mus't have been an enchanted vale. 'The
forest had been destroyed; and what had "improved" it
out of existence was hideous, a sort of ulcer without a single element of artificial grace to make up for the loss of Nature's beauty.' James put a tactful question to his driver,
whose reply changed the whole scene: "Why, we ain't
happy here, unless we're getting one of these coves under
cultivation." 'I instantly felt,' James goes on, 'that I had
been losing the whole inward significance of the situation.
Because.to me the clearings spoke of naught but denudation, I thought they could tell no other story. But when
they looked on the hideous stumps, what they thought of
was personal victory, of honest sweat, persistent toil, and
final reward. The cabin was a warrant of safety for self and
wife and babes. The clearing was a symbol redolent with
moral memories of duty, struggle, and success.'
Preferences, then, the ends that we pursue, 'do not exist
at all in the world of impressions we receive by way of our
senses, but are set by our emotional and practical subjectivity altogether. Destroy the volitional nature, the definite
subjective purposes, preferences, fondnesses for certain
effects, forms, orders, and not the slightest motive would
3
�remain for the brute order of our experience to be remodelled at all.'
It is our desires, our "fondnesses" as James calls them,
that underlie the state of mind in which we say "this is
good, this is bad; that is better and this worse." Or we imply these judgments by a taking or a rejecting, instinctive
or deliberate. Desires are of course not limited to bodily
need. Man has developed a want for the superfluous,
which is infinite and includes those satisfactions termed
moral satisfactions. The moral order, in other words, turns
out to be the meaning attached to experience by every being who thinks while he feels.
But this conclusion is only the threshold of the higher
moral questions. Thoughtful people wonder about the
status of ethical ideas strictly so called, the meaning of the
terms right and wrong, duty and conscience, and the
standards that they comply with. In ordinary speech,
<~ethics" means not cheating or stealing, "morals" means
sexual propriety; and the "decline of moral standards" so
frequently discussed turns on how much there is of the
one and how little of the other. "Wider moral issues" occupy writers and preachers and even politicians: what is a
just society? Is equality of opportunity enough to ensure
it? Is the .criminal reared in poverty responsible for his
acts? Does the right to life begin in the embryo? And in
comparing groups or individuals, the question is asked,
What "values" has she, he, they got? Tell us your "priorities." "Lifestyles" themselves, voguish and vaguish as the
term is, embody the kind of judgment called moral, and
the same estimating of worth comes into play in every
realm of thought and action: art, science, philosophy, and
religion are equally exposed to moral judgment; they form
part of the moral life of man.
Its difficulty is that because it relies on estimates, because it arises from our different perspectives, certainty
and agreement are not to be had, even with the aid of a
particular religious revelation. And supposing that revelation brought about unity, the multiplicity of creeds at variance on moral questions would still leave the philosopher
having to choose among revelations. He wants a prescrip~
tion to. fit all mankind if he can discover it. What can he
turn to?
In answering the challenge, James gives in passing some
credit to the Utilitarians, who ascribe good and bad to associations with pleasure and pain. Association does train
us morally, but only up to a point. As James's Psychology
makes clear, there are tendencies of the human mind that
are "born in the house" and not developed by utility.
'Take the love of drunkenness; take bashfulness, the terror of high places, the susceptibility to musical sounds;
take the emotion of the comical, the passion for poetry,
for mathematics, or for metaphysics-no one of these
things can be wholly explained by either association or
utility. A vast number of our moral perceptions deal with
directly felt fitnesses between things and fly in the teeth
of all the prepossessions of habit and presumptions of uti!-
4
ity. The moment you get beyond the coarser moral maxims, the Decalogues and Poor Richard's Almanacs, you
fall into schemes and positions which to the eye of common sense seem fantastic and overstrained. The sense for
abstract justice, which some persons have, is as eccentric
a variation as is the passion for music. The feeling of the
inward dignity of certain spiritual attitudes, as peace, serenity, simplicity, veracity; and of the essential vulgarity
of others, as querulousness, anxiety, egoistic fussiness are
quite inexplicable except by an innate preference of the
moral ideal attitude.'
Since these attitudes are individual facts and unevenly
distributed among mankind, it follows that 'there is no
such thing possible as an ethical philosophy dogmatically
made up in advance. We all help to determine the content
of ethical philosophy so far as we contribute to the race's
moral life. In other words, there can be no final truth in
ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had
his experience and said his say.' This is what we should
expect in a universe that is inherently pluralistic and
unfinished.
Are there then no such things as moral principles? Is it
meaningless to speak of principled action, of a man, a
woman of principle? For if all these are empty words, how
can moral behavior be taught and misbehavior reproved?
The demand for a common standard is as strong a feeling
as that of wanting justice in our special case. We ask incessantly, What is the law? the entrance requirements? the
speed limit? We need yardsticks to set our minds at rest
and bring others to book-the phrase is literal: the book is
the record of accepted measures for ordinary thought and
action. Bence the similar call for principles in the cloudier
sphere of moral judgment.
But the word principle, with its aura of personal merit
and firmness in a shaky world, is ambiguous. To the absolutist a principle is a teaching fixed for all time and good
on all occasions, a dogma. One should not be afraid of the
word, "dogma/' for it conveys the advantage that princi~
pies have when proclaimed with authority as "indelible
moral truths, not mere opinion." In that guise principle
seems to possess an inherent compelling force-no need
of the police behind it. At the same time, dogma has acquired its unwelcome ~ound because it claims universal
sway, while modern liberal constitutions require the peaceful coexistence of several conflicting dogmas. So the very
general demand for principles and men of principle comes
down to asking that everyone have "some principle or
other.'' And diversity is back to plague us as before.
A further difficulty with principles is that they clash
among themselves, even within the same system of morality. Albert Schweitzer, for instance, preached "Reverence for Life" and got the reputation of a saint. But what
pragmatic contents does the formula cover? If it means no
vivisection, more hun1ane slaughter~houses, forbidding
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�blood-sports-even if it means vegetarianism, Schweitzer's
injunction can at least be debated. But as a universal rule
it is mere concept-worship. Schweitzer must have daily
flouted his own law. If his hospital at Lambarene was even
moderately aseptic, many living crawling creatures had to
be denied reverence. The tape worm and tse-tse fly could
bear witness to his unprincipled behavior, and he was
ruthless to cancer cells, which are also a form of life. "Oh,
but that's not what he meant!" What then did he mean?
An absolute rule is literal or it is nothing. Here the nothing is a pompous echo of a general tendency already wellrooted in our mores.
Schweitzer was too intelligent a man not to see the objection and he made some verbal gestures to gloss it over:
good sense should govern the application of principle.
That saving clause, expressed or not, seems to go with
every ideal when one begins to analyze it It enables the
absolutist to pass for a moral champion and sensible as
well: proclaim the principle inviolable, denounce as unprincipled-as pragmatists-those who question the heroics of absolutes, then reserve the right to do quietly what
the "unprincipled" say has to be done.*
In the last half-century the game has been played with
this same "sanctity oflife" to bring about the widespread
abolition of capital punishment; it now goes on about legalized abortion. "The state should not commit-or abetmurder." The noble rhetoric blankets the varieties of
experience and flouts the proper use of words: a judicial
execution or a legal operation is not murder. And other
considerations than the life of the criminal or the fetus
have relevance. To name but two, the sanctity of life is
hardly honored by incarceration for years in the prisons
we have. Nor is it reasonable to prohibit abortion and permit all persons and powers in society, whether through
high literature or low advertising, to solicit the eye and the
imagination with ubiquitous incitements to sexual activity.
In a word, principles are at best short-hand summaries
of what civilized life requires in general, in ordinary relations, in open-and-shut situations: do not lie, steal, or kill.
But the pure imperative gives no guidance whatever in
difficult cases. Universal lying would be dreadful, but you
do not tell the truth to the madman armed with a knife
who asks which way his intended victim went And even
routinely, you lie to spare the feelings of the hostess who
apologizes for her spoiled dinner or dull company. The
police shoot in hot pursuit and sometimes kill the innocent bystander, just as they would, and do, to quell a riot
The very right of self-defense works for and against the
sanctity of life. And whether or not the unborn have a
"right to life" from the moment of conception, it would
be morally monstrous to force the victim of incest or rape
*The love of abstraction and hatred of usefulness go so far in certain
moralists as to make them affirm that it would be better for morality if
honesty were not the best policy. In other words, the right is what people ought to do with no reason given, except that they ought to because
it is right. Imperatives satisfy, even vicariously, the imperial emotions.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
(especially if accompanied by venereal disease) to bear her
child. The child itself might come to wish it had never
been born and curse the blinkered moralist
Every human situation being a tangle of facts and meanings and possible consequences, moral judgment consists
in deciding how much evil may be averted and the good
sustained or extracted. Sometimes the complication is
tragic, as in the case that E.M. Forster discussed at the
outbreak of the Second World War: "Should I betray my
country or my friend?" The dilemma may have seemed improbable at the time; it no longer looks it after the revelations of high-minded spying and treason. And the moralist
is no nearer a solution than Antigone was two thousand
years ago when she had to choose whether to obey the law
of the gods commanding her to bury her brother or the
law of the state forbidding her to do it because he was a
rebel.
If these various degrees of uncertainty and horror do
characterize the life of man precisely because he is a
moral being, what help can thinking about it abstractly
provide? James has but two generalities to offer, but they
are comprehensive. The first is that 'there is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek
incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to act as to bring
about the very largest total universe of good that we can
see. Abstract rules indeed can help; but they help less in
proportion as our intuitions are more piercing and our vo-
cation the stronger for the moral life. For every dilemma is
in literal strictness a unique situation; and the exact com-
bination of ideals realized and ideals disappointed which
each decision creates is always a universe without precedent and for which no adequate previous rule exists. The
philosopher, then, qua philosopher, is no better able to determine the best universe in the concrete emergency than
other men. He sees, indeed, somewhat better than most
men what the question always is-not a question of this
good or that good simply taken, but of the two universes
with which these goods respectively belong.'
"Not this good, or that good" -it is the whole tangle
that must be resolved, just as it is from the new emergencies that moral habits grow more delicate. If we no longer
make fun of the insane, abuse the crippled, or beat the
abc's into little children, it is because individuals with
"piercing intuitions" have persuaded society that their
sensibility to others' pain implied a moral duty to stop inflicting it But short of such great reforms, what moral
contribution can the morally alive person make? Start, as
James always tells us to do, with the idea of a tangible result 'If one ideal judgment be objectively better than another, that betterness must be made flesh by being lodged
concretely in someone' s actual perception. It cannot float
in the atmosphere, for it is not a sort of meteorological
phenomenon like the aurora borealis.' ·
The second general principle as to the question what
ought to be done, what one's duty is in the circumstances,
what the ground of our obligation is, brings us to the pas-
5
�sibly surprising conclusion 'thatwithout a claim actually
made by some concrete person there can be no obligation,
and that there is some obligation wherever there is a
claim. Our ordinary attitude of regarding ourselves as subject to an overarching system of moral relations true "in
themselves" is therefore either an out-and-out supersti·
tion, or else it must be treated as a merely provisional ab·
straction from that real Thinker in whose actual demand
obligation must be ultimately based.' James, being a natu·
ralist, does not posit such a Thinker; he is only showing
those who do that their traditional religious morality im·
plies a claimant. It follows that in a world which acknowledges no God-or not everywhere the same one-the
claim must come from the beings whose existence we do
acknowledge.
James knows the strangeness of thinking that every claim
imposes a duty. With our habit of always wanting a backing
to reality, we look for some sign of "validity" behind the
claim to turn it into an obligation, something beyond,
which 'rains down upon the claim from some sublime di·
mension of being which the moral law inhabits. But how
can such an inorganic abstract character of imperative~
ness, additional to the imperativeness which is the con·
crete claim itself, exist? Take any demand, however slight,
which any creature, however weak, may make. Ought it
not, for its own sole sake, to be satisfied? If not, prove why
not. The only possible kind of proof would be the exhibition of another creature who should make a demand that
ran the other way.'
So here we are, each of us, at the center of the conflict·
ing claims that assail us. They may come from animals or
infants or strangers: the range of claims we are subjected
to depends on the degree of our awareness; the extent of
our moral effect on the world depends on our ability to
sort and fulfill them.
I confess that when I first read James on "The Moral
Philosopher and the Moral Life," I was struck by a sense
of helplessness about carrying out his injunction. But af·
ter reflection, when I had grasped his extraordinary idea, I
felt the sudden release from interminable shilly-shallying:
X has asked me to do this for him. Perhaps I should. But I
don't really like X, so why should I? But it's absurd to
decide on mere dislike. Why not do what he asks if I can
without too much trouble? Yes, but he probably won't
return the favor. Surely, that's no reason for not doing
it-and so on. The amount of inner wear and tear saved
by the Jamesian redefinition of duty can be very great.
Our modern cant phrases-to sort out one's priorities, to
stick to one's values-hardly help in comparison with
James's simple idea that the burden of proof in our moral
relations is always on the negative: given a claim con·
cretely presented, why should I not satisfy it? The search
for a "why should I" is futile see-sawing or a grudging sur·
render to the "superstitious abstraction."
The result of honoring as many claims as possible is to
raise the amount of satisfaction in the world, increase the
6
sum of good, and thereby umoralize" the universe more
than it is already. For if reducing cruelty to animals makes
for a universe better than it Was before, so does giving our
claimants more of what they assert to be their good. Su·
perficially, the judgment may look like the Utilitarian's
"greatest good of the greatest number"; actually, it differs
in having nothing to do with legislating the good of society at large or with the wishes of a majority. It is a con·
crete relation between persons.
That relation may even be what is meant by the uto·
pian commandment that we should love one another. At
the same time, the requirement of an existing, live claim
prevents intrusive do-goodism under the cloak of love.
But what if the claimants misjudge and call good what is
bad-ask for drugs or the means of harming others? In
such cases there is obviously a counterclaim which nullifies theirs, the claim of their kindred or of the rest of society. Besides, claims of this sort fall within the circle of
mores and laws about which the moral person has long
since settled his doubts. One is not bound to be perplexed
and imagine a dilemma every time a choice has to be
made. A great deal of the present century's feelings of
guilt are the result not so much of moral conscience as of
the self-conscious ego. Its feelings are not insincere, but
they are more about the status of the self in its own eyes
than about the object of its concern. Thus Mrs. J
ellyby in
Dickens, who neglected her children in her zeal for the
natives of Borrioboola-Gha.
To respond to all possible claims, one must begin look·
ing for them in one's own immediate sphere of knowledge. One must recognize the limits of one's power, but
with a resolve to act. Indignation about this bad world is
cheaply come by and morally worthless. As Robert Frost
once recounted, he gave up reading Lincoln Steffens on
the plight of cities, because as a poet he knew he could
not go and help. Self-acceptance strengthens the moral
judgment in an essential way, for in deciding which claims
to fulfill there are times when the claims of the self must
be counted. The traditional self-sacrifice of a grown child
to an aged parent, for example, must be weighed against
its possibly immoral results-domestic tyranny and emo·
tiona! blackmail, on one side, gradually creating embit·
tered hostility toward the whole world, on the other.
As always, it is easier to dispose of such questions from
the distance of the writer's desk or the philosopher's lectern. The great merit of James's view of obligation is that
its concreteness and perception of the unique warn us
against the errors of casuistry. The word has acquired the
sense of deviousness only because in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries the religious casuists tried to foresee
and rule on all conceivable predicaments in advance, in a
"case book." On paper their solutions sounded contempt·
ible. Moral dilemmas, like experience itself, exceed all imag·
inings, as is shown by our innumerable books of casuistry
-our novels. They lead us to admire or despise the same
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�acts, doubtless because these only look the same, or because disparate moral truths are invoked.*
Imbued with the tragic view of life, James was certain
that moral action often demands the sacrifice of self; duty
is hard; it entails pain and sometimes death. For evil is real
and must be fought, repeatedly, endlessly, at great risk.
Not only is there no guaranty that one's moral decision is
right; there is not even any assurance that the fulfilled
claim will not turn from a good to an evil. James's knowledge of history brought enough instances to his mind to
leave no doubt.**
To speak of moral decisions implies that human beings
faced with a moral choice are free to do one thing or another. This privilege is denied by thinkers who believe in
determinism. They may belong to either camp of James's
opponents; they may be idealists or materialists. Both
accept the fact of volition: you can raise your arm if so
minded or refuse to if you choose. But that choice is not
really yours nor is it decided on at the moment; everything
in the past has been interlinked in a chain of causes and
effects, of which your present act is but the latest link to
the next. We see here the block universe of the Absolute
or of blind matter, either of which locks all things in a
tight network for all eternity.
The battle over free will is ancient and neither side can
win, because satisfactory evidence on the subject can
never be found. The definition of "free" is itself a source
of disagreement. Those who say that man acts for a reason
and not from a cause are told that reasons too are foregone. The thorny notion of cause and effect divides even
scientists, though most prefer determinism as more con~
venient to work with. This state of affairs leaves belief in
free will as itself something to choose or reject. James was
brought to see this option by the French philosopher
Renouvier and like him he chose free will, on moral
grounds. He pointed out at the same time that the determinists also choose-the opposite. Let them have their
way, says James, it then follows that 'you and I have been
foredoomed to the error of continuing to believe in liberty. It is fortunate for the winding up of controversy that
in every discussion with determinism this argumentum ad
hominem can be its adversary's last word.'
But this debonair taunt and argument are not enough.
In "The Dilemma of Determinism" James shows what follows his choosing and what he means by its moral
grounds. Take any deplorable event (his example is a bru*For a vivid contrast, take our modern scorn for the medieval trial by
combat or by ordeal to determine guilt. In an age of belief in a divine
providence that governs every event, it was a most moral and logical procedure, and our method of trusting in the doubtful word of mortal witnesses would have seemed reckless and absurd.
**A striking one has emerged since his death: the benevolent, liberal,
highly moral treaty that Great Britain made after the Boer War saddled
South Africa with a regime based on the continuance of race oppression.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
tal murder, then recent) and see the difficulties that arise
if a determinist regrets its occurrence. 'Are we to say,
though it couldn't be, yet it would have been a better universe with something different from this Brockton
murder in it? Calling a thing bad means that the thing
ought not to be, that something else ought to be in its
place. Determinism [thus] virtually defines the universe as
a place in which what ought to be is impossible.' And
'what about the judgments of regret themselves? If they
are wrong, other judgments, of approval presumably,
ought to be in their place. But as they are necessitated,
nothing else can be in their place; and the universe is what
it was before-a place where what ought to be appears impossible. We have got one foot out of the pessimistic bog,
but the other sinks all the deeper. We have rescued our actions from the bonds of evil, but our judgments are now
held fast. When murders and treacheries cease to be sins,
regrets are theoretic absurdities and errors.'
In other words, under determinism there can be no
clear and consistent meaning in the terms moral life,
moral judgment, moral action.
Freedom thus regained does not mean "deuces wild"everybody free every instant to will what he or she pleases.
There are networks of compulsion-instinct, habit, bodily
makeup-and it is as clear to indeterminists as to others
that one can predict fairly well what someone else will do
when one knows the doer's character and the constraints
he works under. Determinists seem to fear that the cosmos will fall apart if free will is permitted to exist. 'It is as
likely (according to McTaggart) that a majority of Londoners will burn themselves tomorrow as that they will partake of food; as likely that I shall be hanged for brushing
my hair as for committing murder, and so forth.' Clearly,
the dispute itself is very free; it suffers no constraints from
common sense. But in James's universe things are not totally loose and disjointed. All kinds of unities and relations
among things and among ideas coerce. The one permanent
avenue of freedom, however narrow, is that 'in an activity
situation, what happens is not pure repetition; novelty is
perpetually entering the world.'*
One might have expected that James's large definition
of duty and his solid reasoning in favor of free will would
satisfy the moralist "in an age of science." But they do not,
because James's maxim requires that an action for good
shall be related to the entire present situation, which he
says is new and cannot be judged by previous rule. But
morality is the right and James's precept looks like the expedient, the changeful. A moralist may admit the changing
character of truth, because he has accomodated himself
to "progress" in science, but this concession probably
*The full technical argument is given in Chapter VI of Essays in Radical
Empiricism, "The Experience of Activity;" and again at greater length
in the last five chapters of Some Problems of Philosophy.
7
�makes him all the more unbending about the "right." He
is sure that the pragmatic imagination playing upon context and consequence can only make for uncertainty in
human relations, set people adrift and helpless amid temptations, in short replace Right absolute by Relativism.
This argument is so familiar that it is often accepted by
those against whom it is directed, as if they lived indeed
by a lower grade of ethics but could do no better. Nor is it
noticed that the attack brings together two different sets
of facts. One is the diversity of existing moralities, each of
them absolute to some tribe or nation; the other, the diversity of individuals within tribe or nation.
When Europe discovered the new world in early modern times it was seen that peoples lived by different rules.
Montaigne pointed out that cannibals were not immoral
at home though they were abominable murderers in Europe. By the next century Pascal notes that even in Europe
moral truth is one thing on this side of the Pyrenees and
another on the other side.
This being the state of affairs from time immemorial, it
seems rather egotistical to proclaim any one set of commandments the sole morality, and somewhat fanciful to
speak of "indelible moral truths implanted in the human
heart." Is it moral or immoral for the Mohammedan to
have four wives? Or the African chief to have forty, each
worth so many head of cattle? A worldly Pope recently declared that to look with lust upon one's wife was tantamount to adultery. If this is morality for Catholic believers,
is it incumbent upon their neighbors on the same street?
In many parts of the world, a gift of value for doing business, giving justice, or performing a helpful official act is
only courtesy; in the West it is bribery, immoral and criminal. Murder in early medieval England was paid for by a
fine-that is the original meaning of the word murder;
later it was paid for by one's life; now, in this country, the
penalty is a life sentence, and the meaning of that is seven
years in jail. (If life is sacred, by the way, the Eskimos' law
is the most moral: the murderer is told to go away and join
another tribe.)
Like it or not, humanity is radically diverse. It is only by
successive abstractions that we come to conceive of a single "human nature." If you take away one by one heredity,
education, the social forces of the time and the place, you
can arrive at the essential human being, the forked radish
with four limbs, needing food and shelter, and who will
surely die. But having defined him-or it, rather-no specimen of the kind can be found; like an average prescription
for eyeglasses, the definition doesn't fit anybody.
It is at this point that the second and different target of
the foe of Relativism comes into view. Actual life is lived
by a collection of somebodies and they are no more alike
among themselves than are the groups to which they belong. Ascetics and Lotharios, extroverts and introverts,
the pensive and the gregarious, the poet and the athlete,
and many other varieties and subvarieties breathe and
move under the same customs and costume. If the moral-
8
ist perforce tolerates different national and tribal ethics,
why the indignation at internal diversity?-unless it is
such as to disturb the peace, which is a political, not a
moral reason. In advanced civilizations the idea occurs to
very moral persons that different types of character are
entitled to different treatment.* Since 1914, for example,
we recognize the conscientious objector. As Shaw pointed
out even earlier, to do unto others as we would have them
do unto us may be unjust: they are not us and their tastes
may differ. It is precisely the social behaviorist's mistake
to suppose that the same lure and the same whip will work
on all alike. It is also the error of the speculative reformer;
Utopias are invariably made for one type.
The anti-relativist of today, with his high ideal of inflexibility, needs to see that without the acceptance of different ethical norms we should never have got away from
those of the cave man. The refinement of feeling and conduct that moralists pride themselves on comes from
change, not fixity. The law of an eye for an eye, a tooth for
a tooth gets outgrown, but at first it necessarily appears as a
violation of principle. The fear that if one rule is altered,
then "anything goes" is the fallacy of all or none. "Things"
could hardly "go" farther than we see them doing at present, yet our age is extremely moralistic, if not moral; it
lacks "morals" in the vulgar sense but it is full of moral
scruples and it labors under innumerable codes aimed at
giving equal treatment and protecting the helpless. We
have come so far as to cherish even "endangered species"
-small, unknown, speechless claimants such as the snail
darter, which now arouse widespread moral passions.**
Indeed, our moralism is one cause of the perpetual anger
at society: why isn't it perfect?
Since )ames's moral philosophy follows the pragmatic
pattern of considering outcome as well as antecedents, it
is clear that his relativism, far from being footloose, is held
fast by as many demands and duties as the moral agent
can think of. His relativism relates, and widely. It would be
better named Relationism. In thus relating one's decision
or conduct to several needs and ideals, one gives the observer as many chances to criticize, whereas the absolutist
relates his act to only one thing: the fine abstraction that
*Contrary to common opinion, it is in governing and administering that
rules should be rigid. If well drawn, they save time and preclude indecision. In the life of institutions good fixed rules are the prime producers
of efficiency and fairness. To be sure, such grooves for sensible action
must be redrawn as often as necessary. The complicated work of civilization today is chaotic because of antiquated procedures. Everybody
"makes policy" and leaves action to chance or precedent. But this failure due to scarcity of administrative genius is aggravated by false notions
of "flexibility," "compassion,'' and other forms of muddling inequity. In
the struggle with the bureaucracies of business and government and
education, what makes the public hate "the system" is that it is not a
system.
**UNESCO has adopted a Declaration of the Universal Rights of Animals, but it has not helped the goats of San Clemente Island, which
were liquidated for endangering several species of plants and the habitats of other, less common creatures. Ah, principle! (New York Times, August 19, 1979).
AU1UMNIW1NTER 1982-83
�his God or his grandfather once uttered emphatically. In
other words, James insists as usual that theory be given
concrete, namable contents. Those are the "objective val·
ues" that moralists preach, though what they rant about is
but a formula, a form of words.*
The Jamesian obligation to connect the moral judgment
not to 'this good or that good simply taken but to the uni·
verse with which they belong' also clears up the common
confusion about morals in politics and foreign affairs. Lin·
coin's struggle with his followers' narrow absolutes may
serve to illustrate. In 1863, when summoned to change
leaders in troubled Missouri, he gave a reply that should
be read as a textbook case in political morality: "We are in
Civil War. In such cases, there is always the main ques·
tion; but in this case that question is a perplexing com·
pound-Union and Slavery. It thus becomes a question
not of two sides merely, but of at least four sides even
among those who are for the Union .... Thus, those who
are for the Union with, but not without slavery-those for
it with or without, but prefer it with-and those for it with
or without, but prefer it without. Among these again, is a
subdivision of those who are for immediate, but not grad·
ual extinction of slavery." To each party, each of the six
choices was the only moral goal, as Lincoln knew: "all
11
these shades of opinion and even more" are entertained
by honest and truthful men .... Yet all being for the
Union, by reason of these differences each will prefer a
different way of sustaining the Union. At once sincerity is
questioned·, and motives are assailed. Actual war coming,
blood grows hot, and blood is spilled. Thought is forced
from old channels into confusion. Deception breeds and
thrives. Confidence dies, and universal suspicion reigns.
Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he be
first killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all
this, as before said, may be among honest men only." It is
as Dorothy Sayers told us: the first thing a principle does
is to kill somebody.
The statesman thus appears as something greater and
wiser and more tragic than the image of "the man of principle," who follows the rule by rote and lets the heavens
fall. He is actually one who says: "Gentlemen, I beg you to
rise above principle" and who persuades the everwarring
factions of his party and his nation to give up their abso·
lutes and be guided by his superior pragmatism. In the
murderous battle of principles, he keeps in view the aim
and end of moral action. The end is the test, justifying
him when the story is over.
But even before, along the way, the end is the standard
for judging which principle is to be followed and which
must be waived. Hear Lincoln before his presidency, dur·
ing the debates with Douglas: "Much as I hate slavery, I
would consent to the extension of it rather than see the
Union dissolved, just as I would consent to any great evil,
to avoid a greater one. But when I go to Union saving, I
must believe, at least, that the means I employ has some
adaptation to the end. To my mind Nebraska has no such
adaptation."
Here with the word means Lincoln introduces the last
component of moral conduct: besides the variety of claims
and ends to be weighed and combined, there is the mode
of action to be chosen. No man was more dedicated to
freedom than Lincoln, but as Chief Executive he restricted
freedom of speech, suspended habeas corpus, and used
the army to enforce the draft against rioters-with regret,
no doubt, but without compunction.
Does this not mean that the end justifies the means?
Yes. Horrors! No formula arouses greater indignation in
moralists; it is the mark of the Evil One; it is the reason
given for regarding avowed pragmatists as suspect. Any·
body who subscribes to the wicked notion in so many
words has to explain himself, offer some excuse. Well, for
a start, everyone without exception acts on it in ordinary
life. For instance: a man takes a sharp knife and slashes a
child. He is a brute, a monster. But just a minute! The
man is Dr. X, about to remove the inflamed appendix. Immediately the cut in the abdomen becomes desirable,
praiseworthy, highly paid. The end-and nothing elsehas changed the moral standing of the violent act. The
end justifies the means.
Again, we take that same child, we take all children,
and, at an age when they are bundles of energy bent only
on running and playing and shouting we coop them up for
four hours, six hours a day, and compel them without due
process of law to struggle over tasks they do not care for
and see no point in. It is called Education. We piously
plead: the end justifies the means. Similarly, the ends jus·
tify monogamous marriage, imprisonment by law, monastic retreat from the world, and its seeming opposite: society
itself. For as Rousseau and Freud pointed out, to live in
society is a harsh, unnatural discipline justifiable only by
the ends of relative safety for continuous toil.
The modern state particularly is built on the ends-andmeans formula so hastily condemned. From compulsory
vaccination and seizing land for public use to the control
of a thousand normal acts-eating and drinking, teaching
and learning, traveling and importing-our laws and administrative rules interfere hourly with harmless human
purposes.
We tell ourselves that the end-the common welfarejustifies. The same maxim is also blessed by one ancient
church that guides the conduct of millions. It teaches, on
the basis of scriptures even older than itself, that procrea·
tion in wedlock is the sole justification of sexual intercourse.
The end apparently justifies the otherwise reprehensible
means. On occasions less intimate and recurrent anybody
would behave in the same spirit: we would not hesitate to
knock down man, woman, or child to save any of them, on
*Looking at the sum of moral ends achieved permits moralities and cultures-whatever anthropologists may say-to be adjudged better or worse.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the instant, from being run over or burned to death by
clothing on fire.
9
�The bugbear phrase is evidently a misnomer for something else; and cleansing it of odium is not a merely verbal
matter, for its present use is to distort the actual relation
of ends to means and discredit pragmatic moral judgments.
What needs to be embodied in a formula is a distinct
situation, that in which the means corrupt the end-or destroy it, as would happen, for example, if one should drug a
child to stop it from crying. Weak minds are often tempted
to use such means, which in effect covertly substitute one
end for another; the true one is a child at peace and not
crying; the false is a child merely silenced by a dose of
pmson.
Besides, this reductivism works both ways. 'If William's
religious melancholy is due to bad digestion, scientific
theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are.' James called such interpretation
"medical materialism" and saw in it sheer intellectual arrogance. He resented the trick that transformed useful
discoveries (his own included) about the dependence of
mental upon bodily states into a gratuitous identification
of the two. It is a permanent temptation, as the poet and
scholar Joy Gresham, who became Mrs. C. S. Lewis, confessed about her youthful views: "Men," I said, "are only
apes. Love, art, altruism are only sex. The universe is only
matter. Matter is only energy. I forget what I said energy
was only."
To speak of moral intuition and believe in free will on
moral grounds, as we have seen James doing, argues the
valuing of belief itself as a human activity. To accept
equality or any other "moral truth" for its good consequences is an act of faith and therefore a risk. But as early
as the 1870s and '80s, when James was discussing these
questions, faith had become a privative concept which
meant: unscientific, illusory, antiquated nonsense, prob-
ably of religious origin.
Those who took this attitude generally called themselves
Positivists, after the name given by Auguste Comte to his
philosophy of knowledge. In effect it admitted as knowledge only what science had certified-positive(ly) knowledge. Toward everything else these minds were skeptical;
toward religion specifically, or anything called spiritual,
they declared themselves "agnostic"-Huxley's bad coinage for one who says: HI don't know."
The purpose embodied in this then-new word is important; it was to teach the lesson of withholding belief. The
agnostic does not deny divinity like the atheist; he waits
for evidence one way or the other. Such a position sounds
worthy beyond cavil, but its balancing act between Yea
and Nay rarely proves stable. Most positivists were assertive materialists, and James found himself obliged to rr\eet
their hidden metaphysics head on. 'Science, these positivists say, has proved that personality, so far from being an
elementary force in nature, is but a passive resultant of
the really elementary forces, physical, chemical, physiological, and psycho-physical, which are all impersonal and
general in character. Nothing individual accomplishes
anything in the universe save insofar as it obeys and exemplifies some universal law.' Thus-and this was the analogy that Taine made famous in the preface to his History
of English Literature (1864)-"Vice and virtue are products like vitriol and sugar." James shows that the argument rests on the genetic fallacy. Treating moral facts like
so many chemicals is 'as if the same breath which should
succeed in explaining their origin would simultaneously
explain away their significance.' And he adds that he feels
'impatience at the somewhat ridiculous swagger of the
program, in view of what the authors are actually able to
perform.'
10
By the time one does get to energy, amid the elementary particles of physics, which exist for us only as traces
on film and which are identical within their kinds, it is evident that something must be added to them before they
can become even the ape that we say we are. Yet when one
makes this simple reflection one is suspected of "smuggling in" something illicit into the universe. The word
''mysticism" is murmured and one is accused of being
"against Science," or just too stupid to see how, for the
enlightened, science has become "a Way of life."
Science can be no such thing, since it begins by excluding what it cannot measure or classify. No scientist has
ever chosen a wife or bought a house by scientific methods,
nor does he laugh, or applaud a musical work, on scientific
grounds. Two-thirds of his life is totally remote from science. Therefore to speak of belief, free will, or faith of any
kind as "smuggled in" would mean that natural science offered a complete account of experience. What it offerstoo readily-is the claim to do so in the future, coupled
with the command to sit and wait. Huxley, again, gave the
fGrmula: "To rest in comfortable illusion when scientific
truth is conceivably within reach is to desecrate oneself
and the universe."
Some writers of our time, though eager to vindicate the
moral life, have accepted the premise that science legitimately occupies all the land, but hope that it might be induced to lease some untilled portion for non-scientific use.
When James met the claim of total ownership he took a
different and intellectually sounder line. The opportunity
was given him by a statement in which the English mathematician W. K. Clifford, who was also Jame's friend and fellow psychologist, summed up the new orthodoxy: believe
nothing without sUfficient evidence-it is a sin: '"Whoso
would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard
the purity of his belief with a very fanaticism of jealous
care .... If a belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence (even though the belief be true, as Clifford on the
same page explains) the pleasure is a stolen one. It is sinful
because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind .... It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." '
On this text James wrote a closely reasoned essay which
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�he called "The Will to Believe." The title has passed into
common usage with (as usual) the erroneous meaning of
"believe what you please." Seeing this, James regretted
the phrase and thought he should have said "the right to
believe." In fact, the demonstration is about the right and
the will to believe, each restricted to precisely stated conditions.
Clifford's preachment 'with somewhat too much ro·
bustious pathos in the voice' is self-refuting on the face of
it. Clifford, like everybody else, believed thousands of
things on no evidence at all-for example, whatever he
knew, or thought he knew about his family and friends;
and he acted on faith whenever he said with no quiver of
doubt: "I'll see you next Monday."
It is such facts of belief and their source in experience
that James begins by examining. 'We find ourselves believing, we hardly know how or why. We all of us believe
in molecules and the conservation of energy, in democ~
racy and necessary progress, in Protestant Christianity
and the duty of fighting for "the doctrine of the immortal
Monroe" -all for no reasons worthy of the name. We see
into these matters with no more inner clearness, and prob~
ably with much less, than any disbeliever in them might
possess. His unconventionality would probably have some
grounds to show for its conclusions; but for us, not insight, but the prestige of the opinions, is what makes the
spark shoot from them that lights up our sleeping magazines of faith. Our faith is faith in someone else's faith,
and in the greatest matters this is most the case. Our belief in truth itself is that· there is a truth and that our
minds and it are made for each other.'
Our thoughts are energized by feelings of all kinds, and
it is the varied origins, character, and intensity of feeling
that pose the problem of which ideas to trust. 'Our next
duty, having recognized this mixed-up state of affairs, is to
ask whether it be simply reprehensible and pathological,
or whether, on the contrary, we must treat it as a normal
element in making up our minds.'
To help settle the question James defines a few terms.
Call hypothesis anything proposed to our belief and see if
it seems to us live or dead. A live hypothesis is one that the
individual finds believable, credible. To an atheist, the reincarnation of souls is not a live hypothesis, but "medical
materialism" might be. He could in the end reject it, but it
was not "unthinkable" like the other. If one thinks one
might take action there is some degree of "liveness" in the
hypothesis: 'there is some believing tendency wherever
there is willingness to act at all.' ("Act" here would include
re~arranging
one's other opinions and altering one's
vocabulary).
The choice between hypotheses James calls an option
and he classifies options as living or dead, forced or avoidable, momentous or trivial. What he goes on to state applies
only to an option that is forced, living, and momentous. It
is only within these narrow limits and only when no empirical evidence is to be had, that James finds the right
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
and the will to believe legitimate. Belief under these conditions is no frolic when teacher's back is turned; it has a
reason to exist, which is: that not deciding is a form of decision. Thus for most people free will is a tenable idea-it
is live, which makes the option living, and it is certainly
not trivial; it is forced, because there is no third possibility.
So in the absence of evidence one has the right to believe
in free will, for not deciding would be to decide against it.
These safeguards against credulity have been so regularly overlooked in discussions of James's essay that they
bear restating in his own words: *'Our passional nature
not only may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its
nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say under such circumstances, "Do not decide but leave the
question open," is itself a passional decision and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.' ,
So much for the right to believe. The will to do so is a related subject, but its limiting conditions are different.
First, willing is not mere wishing or "velleity," as it is ca11ed.
"I wish I were a millionaire" and "Everybody falls in love
with me" are not forms of the will to believe; they are
commonplace fantasies. Not the superficial wish but the
deep-seated will is a strenuous expression of the self.
When Walter Scott, caught as partner in the bankruptcy
of his publishing firm, decided for his honor to pay all its
debts by writing novels, essays, biographies indefatigably,
he noted in his journal: "] must not doubt. To doubt is to
lose." That resolve was his will to believe-in his own
powers, in his eventual success.
But belief is a far from simple thing. One often hears
the strong beliefs of others explained away: "He thinks so
because he wants to so much." But try, yourself, to believe that you are younger, or a better dancer, than you actually are; the probability is that you cannot, no matter
how much you want to. Peter the apostle wanted to walk
on the waters of the stormy lake; his life depended on it,
but he could not will it. The test of willing, as usual, is action. Every great artist starts out unknown, uncalled for,
but possessed of a belief in himself and of the will to make
it true. His periods of discouragement show that it is will
which is at work in periods of production.
These facts define the situation in which the will to
believe is legitimate and, what is more, "creative": 'There
are cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming. And where faith in a fact
can help create the fact, that would be an insane logic
which would say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is "the lowest kind of immorality." Yet such is the
logic by which our scientific absolutists pretend to regu*One exception must be noted: Edwin L. Clarke, in a modest textbook
entitled The Art of Straight Thinking (New York 1929), devotes half a
page to explaining that James carefully limits the domain in which belief
without evidence has its rights. Professor Clarke-may have been annoyed
by the ubiquitous will to misunderstand on the part of other scholars.
11
�late our lives!' James then gives a physical example to make
vivid a type of predicament that orie meets more often in
social or emotional life: 'Suppose that you are climbing a
mountain, and have worked yourself into a position from
which the only escape is a terrible leap. Have faith that
you can successfully make it, and your feet are nerved to
its accomplishment. But mistrust yourself, and think of all
the sweet things you have heard scientists say of maybes,
and you will hesitate so long that, at last, all unstrung and
trembling, and launching yourself in a moment of despair,
you roll into the abyss.'
Life being full of "maybes," it forces every conscious
being to act a thousand times on the strength of the will to
believe. The will functions without our knowing it as
such, or appreciating the philosophic and psychological
reasons for its reality, as against the unlifelike view of the
Cliffords and the Huxleys. But any initial doubt or faith
has the interesting aspect that everyone can prove himself
right: 'Refuse to believe, and you shall indeed be right, for
you shall irretrievably perish. But believe, and again you
shall be right, for you shall save yourself. You make one or
the other of two possible universes true by your trust or
mistrust-both universes having been only maybes in this
particular, before you contributed your act.'*
One very ordinary situation in which belief contributes
to making itself true is that in which trust, candor, courtesy,
or love produces the same pleasant attitudes in return.
And so with their opposites; the grouchy and suspicious
generally find their worst expectations come true. In bodily
matters, the placebo effect, long used by physicians, is of
the same kind: give a sugar pill to a patient with the will to
cure himself and he may do as well as the truly drugged one.
This peculiarity of the body and the mind, though not
uniform in its action, is so noticeable that it has inspired
more than one cult of self-help: to double your energy and
succeed in all things, repeat three cheerful slogans before
breakfast. That is a caricature of the will to believe, but
caricature implies a real original.
'Our willing nature,' as James calls it, is normally re·
strained; it needs favoring conditions before it can act to
our benefit. The common belief of those around us is one
enabling cause. A vivid imagination is another, but it must
summon emotional force behind its image and keep it at
the forefront of consciousness. The will to believe is the
will to attend; that is why we say of genius that it is ob·
sessed. As Hemingway puts it somewhere: "It was not just
something he believed. It was his belief."
The distinction points to a generally neglected factthe gradations of belief, the various shades of our several
beliefs. Think of them in this light and the shadings ap·
pear indeed infinite. We believe the broadcast report of a
catastrophe; we believe more strongly when the details
*Thanks to the currency of the phrase "self-fulfilling prophecy," the
the
public is now familiar with
workings of the negative will: predict that
your wedding will not take place and make it so by not showing up for it.
12
are told in the next day's paper; we believe to the full
when not merely a witness but a friend saw it happen.
There is even a step beyond, which is faith, or belief un·
conscious of itself. One senses the difference between
believing that something exists and believing in the thing
itself. People are chock-full of beliefs, but life is lived on
faith-a buried assumption on which one acts; for exam·
pie, that the shopkeeper will give you change for your ten·
dollar bill and not say it was a five, as he could safely do if
he were in bad faith. When any deep trust has to be put
into words we discover that belief-its statement-is the
interruption of faith. One used to have unthinking faith
in the safety of the streets; now one at best believes that
the stranger coming along will not assault one. Common
speech records the shifting emphasis when it uses "I be·
lieve so" to mean "I am not sure."
If in order to leap the mountain chasm it was necessary
to overcome "The fear that kills," it is.no less important to
remember the poet's next line: "And hope unwilling to be
fed." For despite the derivation of the word, it is a mistake
to suppose that everybody wants to believe what is agree·
able.** Many prefer the worst; to them news or ideas feel
true because they are gloomy. When Freud said that
science was the conquest of will over the pleasure princi·
pie, he evidently felt that the truths of science robbed him
of pleasure, and he rejoiced. But it is just as reasonable to
say that scientific work is the expression of man's free will
invading the realm of necessity, in which case science is
one form of the pursuit of happiness.
These opposed views are doubtless never to be reconciled, but they illustrate a main contradiction of our century. The age cries out for all the freedoms-the free will of
individual self-determination, the free choice of social and
cultural pluralism, the right to free beliefs and utterance,
the free access to good things that equality affords. But it
also believes in the material, medical, subpsychical determinism of all acts and thoughts, and it turns its back upon
risk, which is the necessary companion of free will as well as
of the right and will to believe. So while half our energy
goes to freeing, the other half is spent on trying to make
safe, to control, to predetermine by means akin to the behaviorist's conditioning or the poll-taker's way of freezing
the future. Our worship of science springs from the same
passion for certainty (plus the hold it gives on other's opinions) rather than from intellectual pleasure and admiration. Similarly, because they are risky and disturbing,
heroism and ambition are thought wrong and ridiculous;
tests, statistics, diets, charts tell everybody "This is what
you ought to be-indeed, whether you know it or not, this
is what you are.'' And with that denial of freedom and risk,
anxious guilt replaces the sense of accomplishment.
**"Belief' seems to have a two-pronged etymology: be-lief means be-glad,
as in "I'd just as lief," lief being related to love; belief is also connected
with leave in the sense of allow. Our belief is thus what we should be
glad to think when it is allowable to do so: exactly James's position.
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�Treasure Hunt
Meyer Liben
It was one of those lovely New England days late in
August which our great authors of the early and middle
nineteenth century have described for us so easily, so extensively. When a region has achieved a given importance
-political, cultural, whatsoever-the climate and terrain
take on an added significance. How much more so if the
beauty is there to begin with!
I am poor at natural description, I find it difficult to portray what is, whatever exists, in distinction, I mean, to
what is happening (I add that as a kind of self-pleading, to
hide a deficiency). I am plainly insensitive to natural beauty
(a great deal is happening there) having a poor sense for
color, space, and relationship.
Lake, mountain, and cloud blended. The predominant
colors were green, blue, and brown, the dusty brown of
road. A few clouds wandered aimlessly in a sky otherwise
absolutely clear. I mention the aimlessness of the clouds
because that contrasts so strongly with the decisive, the
volitional nature of the event now ready to begin, I mean
the Treasure Hunt in the annual Blue and Gold color
competition in the summer camp set in a terrain which
has been so closely and charmingly, so easily and extensively described by our great authors of the early and middle nineteenth century.
A word in passing about this Color War, a phenomenon
requiring explanation for those unfamiliar with the customs of the summer camps of the late 1920s and the early
1930s. The competitive element was strong, mirroring
that of the Great Society. There was no particular effort
made to disguise or soften the competitive instincts.
Everyone in camp, counsellor and camper alike-with exceptions to be mentioned-was on the Blue or the Gold
team engaging in every variety of sport, in dramatics, and
in any other kind of activity which lent itself to competition. Our Blue and Gold lasted for only five days. There
were some camps at the time which were divided on the
very first day, even on the bus or train carrying them all
out of the city, and the struggle for points, for victory,
went on all during the summer! That was obviously exaggerating, rather than mirroring, the world round about,
and then there were camps coming into existence which
discouraged, even forbade this type of competition, trying
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
to create an atmosphere different from that of the society.
The competition in these camps was of a low-pressure
sort; in some cases the element of cooperation was definitely encouraged.
But our camp stood in the middle between those which
were competition-crazy and those which were competitionshy-we had our five days of Blue and Gold rivalry (deeper
thinkers amongst us referred to it as an attenuated hangover of the War Between the States) and we were now on
our fourth day of that rivalry, with the issue in doubt, and
an important 25 points to be awarded to the team (this
was a Senior Division event) winning the Treasure Hunt.
There were three on a team. On the Blue team were
Larry Altman, Dick Gordon, and Dave Crown. On the
Gold team were Marv Woolman, Jackie Lesser, and Ben
Semmel. This game-finding a written clue on the basis
of a written clue, and so to the final treasure, usually a
prize, in this case the 25 points-requires intelligence and
speed. There is hardly a game that doesn't. Now Larry
and Marv were very intelligent (both, as it happened, from
Townsend Harris Hall), while Dick and Jackie were very
fast, ran neck and neck in the sprints, and both murder at
laying down a bunt and beating it to first. That left Dave
and Ben to represent sagacity, the guiding hand, even
what we in our camp called "character,n a quality for
which medals were awarded at the reunion held in midwinter. "Character" meant a certain stability; often times
the awards were made to those who seemed most reserved
and didn't particularly shine in one sport or another. The
stability didn't seem to jibe altogether with the sagacity,
but that was part of the confusion of this particular area
of choice.
The contestants were gathered around the flagpole, situated on the parade grounds which overlooked the lake.
The Grand Isle seemed very close, the brilliant clarity of
that August day acting as a kind of telescope. Down at the
waterfront the sophomores were starting their swimming
meet, and the points to be won here, tho not crucial, were
bound to be important.
Above the cries and splashes of the sophs one of the
judges, head of the Senior Division, laid down the rules. A
word about these judges. The Head Counsellor and the
13
�camp Doctor were kind of ex-officio judges-they might
be used if a shortage or an emerge'ncy developed. The active judges were usually counsellors chosen for their noncombative natures. They came most from the intellectuals,
those (often, of course mistakenly) thought to be the least
interested in victory and therefore, by a curious twist in
logic, the most judicious. If a counsellor went to an Ivy
League school, or planned to do medical research, he was
pretty sure to be chosen for a judge. So do the men of the
world underrate the fierce rivalry of mind and spirit.
"The boundaries," said the head of the Senior Division,
"are the backstop of the baseball field (not into the woods),
the beginning of the girls' camp (not into the girls' camp),
the parents' Social Hall, and the lake (not into the lake).
And remember, no conversation with anyone not on your
team."
This last warning was given because (as this judge had
heard) there had been a scandal a number of years back,
years after the Black Sox scandal, in which spies were used
to report the discoveries of the opposing team. These spies
would follow the enemy, see where the clue was replaced,
and report accordingly. That episode almost disrupted the
Color War, but then it came back stronger than ever.
I'd like to sketch in a little of the background of this
Head Senior Counsellor, while he is laying down the law in
his rather pedantic manner, tho shot through with flashes
of wit which were swiftly reabsorbed into the pedantry,
only to reappear again, for he was bright and nimble, really
assumed a pedantic style to cover an extreme restlessness,
a power of imagination.
His name is jules Kurtin, he has just finished his senior
year (on scholarship) at Yale, and will enter Law School in
the falL He is a kind of solitary, friendly with both the eggheads and the athletes, tho belonging to neither group, and
naturally incurring the suspicion of both. Since he had no
girl friend, there were rumors that he was a homosexual,
but that was wrong, it was just that he had no girl friend.
Rumors of sexual deviations and difficulties were not uncommon-it was an easy way of getting back at someone
who seemed superior or odd. He had no camp experience
before this year, and had no particular interest in going to
the camp. His sister, however, had a boy and a girl of camp
age, and she insisted that her brother be included in the
kind of package deal which was usual then, and probably
still is, in the summer camps. So, since he had nothing
better to do for the summer, he found himself at camp.
Then he was made head of the Senior Division because
the man who had been hired for that job gave it up at the
last minute for a better-paying job in the Poconos. Thereluctance of the other Senior counsellors (who had been to
the camp before and wished to continue for themselves
the benefits of its traditio!"! as a "Counsellor's Paradise")
propelled Jules into this position, in which, after an unshaky start, he managed quite adequately. In view of his
college, his temperament, and consequent reputation in
the camp community, it was only natural that he should
have been chosen as one of the judges. No one could
14
imagine jules taking sides in this war. No one thought that
he would fight over a close decision at home or threaten
to leave the camp unless the broad jumper on the other
team was disqualified for a foot fault. It was the felt absence of this combative edge which disqualified jules from
being chosen for the Blue and Gold.
So jules, in spite of his comparative unfamiliarity with
the ins and outs of the camp (for many of the counsellors
had been there, beginning as campers, for as long as ten
years) had been given the task of working out the route and
writing the clues for the Treasure Hunt. He at first approached this as a rather pedestrian task, but as he began
to work on it, one night at a writing table in the parents'
lodge, his interest was aroused. The game took on the profound meaning which all games, sufficiently examined,
will bring to light, every game being a deposit, so to say, of
man's history and ·forgotten behavior. jules began to see
this game as a kind of allegory of life's pursuits, of all the
goods (and evils) which we are forever seeking. He saw the
Treasure not only as money-he thought of the Holy Grail,
the Golden Fleece, of the brawling and curiously honest
madness of California in 1848.
Then he jotted down, as they came to mind, some of
man's pursuits: Fame, Love, Money, P.ower, God, Happi·
ness, Truth, justice, Security, Failure, Status, Understanding the Origins of the Universe.
These were some of the pursuits from which he decided
to make his choice for the game. And because he realized
that so many people do not know what it is they are pursuing, indeed are seeking something to pursue, he added
Ideals to his list.
And what about the randomness and mystification in
life? He grinned at the thought of his favorite line from
Ring Lardner. Lost, at the wheel of a car, close to home,
our author asks a policeman for instructions. Advised to
take the Boston Post, Ring replies: "I have already subscribed to one out-of-town paper".
So, out of the joy of play and amateur mystification, he
included this last sentence as one of the clues. Does this
sound as tho it would be too esoteric an allusion for the
hunters? Not at alL For, as it happened, there was a counsellor from Boston, who received, every day, precisely the
Boston newspaper in question, which he spread out,
weather permitting, on the parade grounds, during free
time, rest hour, or whatever other time he could snatch
from duties not very arduous to begin with.
But now the clues are finished, and the hunt has started.
Each side is given the first clue. They study it anxiously,
eagerly, wanting to get the head start. It was the famous
quotation from Socrates about the worthlessness of
the unexamined life.
Now in these summer camps, in these close social con-
glomerations, there is a high level of interpersonal knowledge, there is endless joking and jibing about oddities of
behavior, an intricate and ever-changing web of friend and
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�enemy, there is a great deal of sadistic gossip (as well as
friendly gossip, boasts of the merits and achievements of
those on your side), there is a great deal of the hostile interest of the young, part of the pattern of what we today
call "putting one down".
The point of these clues in the Treasure Hunt is that a
given word, or phrase, will, through free·associational
routes, rational analysis, or luck, yield up the material leading the hunters to a given person, or a given place. So
these paragraphs, these lines, sentences, and clauses are
studied with the care and intensity that the New Critics
give to a line of verse.
Obviously the key word in this first clue was the word
"unexamined". Now there was a youth in the camp, whose
name was Jordan Kustler, who refused to be examined by
the camp nurse. On the occasions when these examina-
tions were necessary (the nurse sometimes doubling for the
doctor, or assisting him in these mass prophylaphtic orgies)
Jordan would disappear-into the woods surrounding the
camp, down to the lake and under a war canoe, anywheres
where he thought he'd be safe from the examination
(mostly throat) of our attractive nurse.
This clue, therefore, was not the most difficult of clues.
Larry and Marv (the smart ones, you recall) hit on the answer at about the same time, and the teams, with Dick and
Jackie in the lead (the fast ones, you recall) sped towards
the bunk and the bed ofJordan Kustler, twelve years old, a
Junior. The two speedsters arrived in a dead heat (the distance from pole to bunk being very short) but Jackie found
the slip, which was under Jordan's pillow, and, according
to the rules, his team, assembled, had one minute to read
and analyze the clue before handing it over to the foe, or,
in the absence of the foe, to replace it exactly where found.
To enforce these rules, the judges were spread out at the
different discovery spots, moving ahead with the progress
of the game. This, of course, was to prevent the discoverer
of the slip from hiding it in a place absolutely unrelated to
the sense of the previous clue. It is an example of the imperfectibility of man. So the Gold team examined the new
clue, and then, at the word of the judge, handed it to the
Blue team, and tore off in the direction of home plate.
Look homeward, angel,
Milton's line, Wolfe's title, was the second clue.
When writing down this clue, Jules was thinking of
man's role in the world, that he must seek to prove himself in the great outside, and then return to the ease and
safety of home (the way Shakespeare did), tho, as with
Ulysses, the trials on the way home were not the least hazardous. To the Blues and the Golds the line meant only
one thing: Home Plate on the baseball field. The Blues
reached the plate just as the Golds were streaking off.
On the ball field, the Juniors were in the midst of a game
worth 50 points, and these could prove to be important,
if not absolutely crucial in the final tally.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
"What's the idea?" asked the catcher on the Gold team
as Dick went for the home plate. "How are you supposed to
play a ball game with an army tearing around home plate?"
But he had not objected when the Gold team had looked
for and found the clue buried und<;r the plate.
"Don't hold him back," said the judge, "let him look."
And then Dick triumphantly came up with the slip of paper, and discussed it with Larry and Dave, who had by now
appeared on the scene.
That third clue was not an easy one, it certainly puzzled
the Blues, who stood discussing and analyzing it, at the
edge of the field, not far off from the Gold team, which
was similarly stymied.
This clue read:
Luck is a fool's name for fate,
and it was an expression of the sort that sometimes gains
currency in this kind of social organization, makes the
rounds, is on everyone's tongue and then is swiftly forgotten. Both teams now tried to remember who it was that
had coined the phrase, or introduced the phrase, or made
the phrase popular, thereby associating himself indissolubly
with that phrase. Marv Woolman was sure that the expression had originated with Boris Melkin, a somewhat bizarre Junior Counsellor (that is, a younger fellow, a J.C. not
a counsellor in the Junior Division) who put on Hamletish
manners, roaming the camp grounds, quoting tag-ends of
verse and wisdom. 'Tm pretty sure" said Marv, "that he
started that saying" and off went the Gold team towards
the bunk and bed of Boris Melnick. But Larry Altman had
another thought, it was a kind of free-wheeling inspirational thought, one of those flashes into the outer darkness that lights up precisely the object lost or hidden.
"Let's go" he said, "to the horseshoe that's hanging on the
Social Hall door." So, without question-one can run as
fast puzzled as clear-headed-off sped the Blues, with
Dick in the lead, and reaching that spot, he sure enough
found the fourth clue tied onto that horseshoe. They read
it swiftly and dashed away from the Social Hall, trying, unsuccessfully, not to be seen by the Gold team. Frustrated
in their search in Boris Melkin's bed and bunk (to say
nothing of his trunk and personal belongings) that bunk,
as it happened, being at the end of the line and so having
a view of the Social Hall, the Gold team (it was actually
Ben Semmel, to give credit where credit is due) noted the
surreptitious departure of the Blues-they left like scouts
at dusk-and began a swift examination of the Social Hall.
Finally, they hit on the horseshoe, without any association
coming to mind, but by that time the Blues had a lead of
about five minutes, by no means commanding at this stage
of the game, but fairly significant, and were far away from
the Social Hall, while the Golds stood around and puzzled
over the fourth clue.
That fourth clue was the line from Shelley:
Fa me is love disguised,
15
�and this one, too, proved somewhat of a puzzler for the
contending teams. These clues (the analysis of whose
structure is long overdue, quite perfect for a doctoral the·
sis straddling sociology and literature) often depend on as·
sociations of an eccentric sort or on puns of a sometimes
ghastly sort. In this fourth clue, for example, both teams
spent time on the word 'is', for it seemed at first glance to
offer the most likely possibilities, considered that one of
the counsellors was called Iz, and so both teams went into a
swift breakdown of his life, loves, and habits, but couldn't
somehow come up with enough to go on, enough to make
them move in a given direction, so they looked further into
the mystery hidden in this short line. What follows is surely
too gross a generalization, but it sometimes happens when
those of roughly similar backgrounds are engaged in the
same problem, that they will sometimes see the answer at
about the same time. This of course is running down the
importance of individual difference. Nevertheless, the two
sides suddenly remembered the play (written by the dra·
matics counsellor) in which the actor, wearing a mask of
wordly power, suddenly throws off that mask, reveals a
face desperately alone, and pronounces the name buried
in his heart. It was a memorable moment, both teams remembered it, and the Golds rushed back into the Social
Hall, followed soon after by the Blues, who had not gone
too far off for their deliberations. The six of them milled
around on the stage, seeking the· clue which had to be
there. It was there, worked into the folds of the curtain,
and fell when the curtain was shaken in a moment of random despair. Dick and Ben touched the paper at the same
time (so said the judges, after a disputation) and both
teams looked together at the fifth clue, the one already
mentioned:
I have all ready subscribed to one out of town paper,
and that turned out to be a pretty easy clue. The contenders lit out for the Bostonian's bunk, but there was no clue
there, no object left untouched, no possible hiding place
passed over, and then they all went, as the Irish say, after
himself. He was officiating as one of the judges at the
Sophomore swimming meet. In no time at all he was surrounded by the six youths, and paid them as little mind as
he could, considering the circumstances, the sixth clue
folded and protruding from the coin pocket of his swimming trunks. Dave Crown of the Blues spotted the piece
of paper and grabbed it. That gave his team the minute's
edge to analyze that clue and reflect on it.
The sixth clue was the statement from Laotse, which
had impressed Jules, as an amateur cosmogonist (who is
not an amateur cosmogonist?):
All of a sudden, nothing came into being.
Larry, Dick, and Dave looked incredulously at this sentence, and then incredulously at one another. So did the
16
Gold team (at sentence and one another) when the paper
came into their hands.
"This is a reallulu.
"What is this supposed to mean?''
"That Jules is off his rocker, bats in his belfry."
"What does nothing come from?"
''What does it mean?''
These were some of the comments made and some of
the questions raised by members of both teams. They
were on the shore, a little ways off from the dock, and
were pretty close to one another. It looked almost as tho
the difficulty of the clue had brought them together. But
then they moved apart and began a closer examination of
the text.
There was a freshman in the camp by the name of Lee
Soden.
"SuddenLee, suddenly, Lee Soden" said Marv excitedly,
and off went the Golds on a wild goose-chase. It was a genuine wrong number.
The Blues recalled that one of the counsellors, Bob
Kamin, was very fond of the expression: "Nothing to it".
He used it on every conceivable occasion, preferably when
it sounded quite senseless. Apparently he liked the sound
of it, or preferred to stop conversations. Or it might just
have been a kind of habit, the way some couldn't help
spitting, or winking an eye. So off dashed the Blues on as
wild a goose chase as the enemy.
Both possibilities, of course, were genuine, they deserved exploration. They were only wrong, and after the
teams had proved to themselves, by the most exhaustive
search, that this was the case, they continued to study the
sentence written by the Chinese philosopher, desperately
seeking the word, the sound, that would send them off in
the right direction.
After a while someohe (Ben Semmel, as it happened)
saw the word being (which should have been existence,
but Jules remembered it as being) as beeing, and that led
the Gold team to the place where the bee-hive had recently been discovered and soon destroyed-after a series
of swift, high-level discussions, the final one on the spot.
Here, sure enough, the Golds found the seventh clue, and
so went back into their early lead. And this turned out to
be a fairly substantial lead, for it was a good ten minutes
before the Blues, after excluding one possibility and another, picked up the right word play.
Now it somewhat threw Jules that these sentiments,
which he had chosen with a certain amount of care, with
some thought, should have to be read as semantic puzzles,
interpreted on the basis of these puns, these sophomoric
plays on words. But that was the tradition in which the
game had come to be played, and to change the tradition
in the middle of the game, he thought, is a way of spoiling
the game. So was the content overlooked, the allegory
grounded. But the sentiments had to be read nevertheless, and the kids might feel some sense of the over-all ...
Jules's thoughts were checked, as he approached the
scene of the seventh clue, by the sight of Georgie Lessing,
11
AUTIJMN /WINTER 1982-83
�a senior. Jules grinned at the sight of the boy sitting on the
steps of his bunk. He was the only kio in the camp who
had stayed out of the Blue and Gold competition. He did
it as a matter of principle. "If you want me to compete,"
he said, "I'll go home." And that, of course, would have
opened up the problem of a return on the camp fee, if indeed that fee had been paid in full, to say nothing of his
two cousins in the girls' camp. All manners of pressure
were brought on the boy, but he was adamant. "It's all
madness," he said, "creating a phony rivalry, fighting
where there are no real issues." So he sulked in his cabin,
or, as now, sat on the steps of his bunk, reading "War and
Peace" or one of the "Baseball Joe" series, for that was the
style of his eclecticism.
"Where are they looking now?" asked Georgie. "At the
bottom of the lake?"
"If you only knew," said Jules.
He hesitated and then decided it wouldn't be cricket to
tell Georgie about this next clue, which was a really corny
one. The thought of it always made him a bit hysterical,
being so obviously ridiculous, so outlandish, so idiotic. In
order to make use of this clue, he had had to get the permission of a counsellor called Wilfred Thar.
The clue, of course, was:
There's gold in them thar hills.
Thar had a mouthful of gold fillings. Between two of the
teeth so filled there was a slit, formed, no doubt, by the
slow drift of the lower teeth, and after a fairly lengthy discussion (Thar being a rather finicky chap) Jules convinced
him that this slit formed by the drifting of the teeth would
be the perfect place to hide a clue, which had to be written, of course, in very small script on a very small piece of
paper.
"Now don't swallow it," Jules had said, and they both
laughed, Jules giddily, Wilfred in a rather pained manner.
Well, it didn't need Intelligence, Character, or Speed to
figure out where that clue was. Thar made no effort to
hide-he sat on the steps of his bunk, watching the runners as they streaked by in the early stages of the game,
waiting for the moment he did not exactly relish, tho having made his promise, he was determined to stay with it.
Now and then he felt with his tongue to feel whether the
slip of paper was in its proper place.
Well, the reader can well imagine the jollification, the
addlement which then surrounded the person and place
of Wilfred Thar. The Gold team, with its ten minute edge,
was down at the bunk in a flash and were rather thrown
by Thar' s manner, which seemed a little more hostile than
the occasion warranted. They even felt for a moment that
they were on the wrong track. There was a confused huddle, during which the three team mates reassured one another, and then they started on the search. They did a
thorough dismantling job on the bunk, on the suspect's
bed, and when it became clear that there was no clue inside, they approached the counsellor. He sat in a species
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
of horrified resignation; the fact is that he was very sanitation-minded, suffered on occasion from fears of contagious diseases, and looked forward with some apprehension
at the prospect of six youths poking around in his mouth
in search of a small piece of paper. In the summer his fear
of contagion was related to tropical diseases, such as
typhoid and yellow fever, diseases quite unknown in New
England at the time. He had an opportunity, while waiting, to think of the medical backgrounds of the six boys,
and was disturbed at the remembered knowledge that
Dick Gordon's brother had been in a New York hospital
for a reason which Wilfred had never thought to ask
about. Thar was wearing a T shirt, a pair of bathing trunks,
and sandals.
"Wauld you mind taking off your T shirt and sandals?"
asked Ben Semmel.
The Golds had decided that it would be best if Ben, as a
Character winner, should approach Wilfred along these
lines.
Without a word, the counsellor removed his shirt and
sandals. Both were carefully examined and returned.
"Do you mind," asked Ben, "if we looked in the pockets·
of your trunks?"
"Not at all," said Thar, ~~help yourself."
So they searched and again found nothing.
"This sounds stupid" said Ben. "but we'd like to take a
quick look into your mouth."
Wilfred opened his mouth without much interest and
smiled without much joy when Ben pulled the paper out.
The Golds quickly jotted down the eighth clue and Ben
started to replace the piece of paper.
"Never mind," said Wilfred, "I'll handle that," and he
carefully replaced the clue just as the Blue team hove into
sight.
Now the Blues did not bother with bed and bunk. One
of them had heard from a kid in Thar's bunk about the
unusual amount of gold in his counsellor's mouth, and
with hardly a word of apology they went straight for that
area. The counsellor winced when Dick pulled out the
paper.
The Blues had picked up five minutes on the Golds,
with five clues to go.
The eighth clue, before being approved by the camp
authorities, required a certain amount of discussion, some
dispute. A quotation relating to Noah, and reinforced by
mention of a youth nicknamed Arky, clearly led to the Ark
in which, of course, was enclosed the Torah, used in the
Social Hall on the rainy Sabbaths, for when the sky was
clear, the Services were held outdoors, on the parade
grounds over the lake.
In this high-level discussion about the use of the Ark,
there was, at first, a general demurrer at the notion of using it in any way in this game. The word "sacrilegious"
was used. But Jules explained the way in which he had
planned the Treasure Hunt and his arguments, with their
educational cast, softened the opposition.
"This relates to the search for God," explained Jules.
17
�"How can we possibly exclude this search from the game?
Is it less important than the search' for money and power,
than the search for love and justice?"
Presented this way, the argument was irresistible. But
jules's desire to put the clue inside the Ark was turned
down decisively, nor would the judges accept the idea of
pinning the clue on the curtain covering the Ark. They finally decided to put the clue on a bench in front of the
Ark, and that was fairly easy for both sides, so the Gold
team maintained its five minute lead.
In composing the ninth clue, Jules used the expression
the Pursuit of Failure.
That in fact was the clue. He had heard it used by one
friend about another friend. jules remembered the phrase
tho he himself was very little preoccupied with failure, being young, healthy, ambitious, and hopeful. But he was
aware of the Freudian implications of the statement. Some
seek their own destruction, feel they deserve their own
destruction because the early murderous impulses had
never been properly abreacted (a word he sometimes
thought of, but never used), because the impulses were
stronger than the usual, or the provocations greater, or
the character structure weaker. No doubt there are other
possibilities-it is even conceivable that one has done
something for which he feels he deserves punishment.
And a kind of punishment is apparently the pursuit of failure-the fact that this behavior can be pleasurable only
adds to the punishment when the pursuer comes to un·
derstand that the pleasure is a trick, a device to keep him
on this pursuit of failure, for what is the point of pursuing
failure if there is nothing in it at all?
This clue, too, was based on an outrageous pun. There
was a counsellor (one of the counsellors for the freshmen,
kids about six or seven years old) who, early in the summer, had fallen desperately in love with a girl counsellor
called-yes, yes, this is her name, unbelievable as it
sounds-Phalia. Her name was Phalia. She was most attractive, flashing eyes and all, and it was not surprising
that Fred Angst (the freshman counsellor) should have
fallen in love with her. She was apparently a living example of his type, and who, all things being equal, will not fall
in love with a living example of his type? The fact that she
did not respond in kind was part of the over-all situation in
which Fred found himself. He was a serious chap who liked
to win as much as the next one, and found that he was not
sleeping as well as one would expect in this cold, bracing,
New England night air. He was almost always up an hour
or two before reveille, t.hinking of what he had said, or
should have said, of what she had said, of what he wished
she would say, thinking of how she looked, imagining moments of a deeper intimacy than they had so far enjoyed.
The fact is that Phalia did not respond in kind, she being
entranced in another direction. It was happening all over
18
the place, but Fred was more insistent in his pursuit than
most of the others, he did not drift easily to other faces,
other bodies. His difficulties became known the way difficulties become known when people are looking to see the
triumphs and difficulties of others. Furthermore, in the
words of George Herbert, "Love and a cough cannot be
hid." Fred's situation, known to the counsellors, became
known to the campers (who is not interested in abiding,
unrequited love?) and Fred Angst was known as the one
who carried the brightest of all torches.
But it was a rough clue, the pun was beyond limits, and
both teams puzzled over the four words, saying them over
and over again, saying them backwards, forwards, and
sideways, turning the phrase round and round. Really it
shouldn't have been that hard because the New York way
of pronouncing "failure" is precisely Phalia and finally,
Larry Altman hit on the connection.
"Down to the freshman bunk" he cried, and as they
ran, he quickly explained his thought. Dick Gordon sped
ahead, easily outdistancing his team mates, for the frosh
bunk was at the other side of the camp, and Dick had the
tenth clue by the time Larry and Dave arrived. It was
pasted on Fred Angst's trunk, more or less disguised as a
Railway Express ticket. About five minutes later (for love
and a cough cannot be hid), the Gold team arrived, and
decided to check first the person of Fred. (Spur of the moment luck had taken Dick into the bunk). Fred allowed
the search, tho it was disconcerting, for the freshman
were involved in their own aspect of the color war-they
were in the midst of a potato race, which Fred was umpiring, or overseeing, or whatever it is one does with seven
year old kids involved in a game which they have just
learned, involving a set of rules and swift movement. The
competitive excitement of the Blue and Gold had pene'trated the somewhat isolated life of these youngsters (for
they were off from the main camp, going to bed earlier)
and the ten points picked up by the winner of the Potato
race might easily prove of crucial importance. There was
indeed a case, known to the old rememberers, of a color
competition decided by the five points given for greater
silence at the dinner table.
Finding nothing on Fred's person, the Golds went into
the bunk, and of course they found the clue, but by that
time they were about ten minutes behind, and streaked
off with the tenth clue in mind. That clue was probably
the easiest of all the clues, being the statement from
Isaiah (2.8) that
Everyone worshippeth the work of his own hands,
and that could lead only to one place, which must be the
Arts & Crafts hut.
We leave our contestants for the moment to record a
conversation between one of the judges, stationed near
this hut (to be in front of it might be a give-away) and the
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�camp chef. The kitchen staff was not involved in the Blue
and Gold. The waiters were not invdlved, but being old
campers or would-be counsellors, they generally took sides,
while the kitchen workers, older, and often without camp
experience (coming from the city employment agencies)
found it difficult to understand what was going on. They
were amazed, for example, by the silence at table. The
chef was baffled by the fierceness of this rivalry, did not
understand that he was witnessing a pure, or abstract,
struggle for victory, on the basis of an artificial division,
and that the winner wins precisely nothing but the victory, and the right to assume a superior stance as against
the losers.
"Why," said the judge, to the incredulous chef, "there
was a case, a few years ago, not in this camp, where the
color war started at the bus terminal, the teams traveling
on separate buses-to learn songs and cheers, plan strategy, etc. Well, the bus drivers were carried away by the
spirit of the event, by the excitement of the songs and
cheers, and decided to make a race of reaching the camp,
tho there were no points awarded (so they say, but who
knows?). Well, one of the buses got into an accident, luckily no one was hurt, just a few kids shaken up, and that's
how that camp season started."
"What is it again they win?" asked the chef.
"Only the satisfaction of winning," said the judge, who,
with more knowledge, was less astounded than disturbed
by this abstract lust for victory.
But then the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of Dick Gordon, headed for the Arts and Crafts
hut, on a hint from Isaiah.
Now Jules would have the boys understand the prophet's
meaning, that it was wrong to worship the work of one's
hands, that this leads to idolatry, the worship of made objects, and can lead even to self-idolatry. "See this wondrous object I have made. Therefore am I superior, more
noble, etc." The painter says to himself: "What a wondrous thing I have created," but such a work merely goes
into the world and takes its place amongst the other
created objects.
Nor is it to be implied (Jules would like the boys to think
of this too) that the work of other hands ought to be worshipped, but only the living invisible God, who inspires
creation, this foray into the thinly-domesticated mystery,
this salvage out of chaos.
But mostly
the work of his own hands
and that work will be worshipped by the maker only if it is
not in use. Man worships what he makes and hides, the
way a miser worships gold (late at night, when there are no
distractions) but once he sends that object into the world,
why it is no longer his. He will not worship what is being
used day by day, even being used up (for no such created
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
object lasts forever). There is no secrecy, no idolatry or
shame, it is only what man has made with his own hands
(sometimes amazing, but never to be worshipped) to take
its rightful place in the circulation of created things, rivalling the objects that came into the world, nor must these
objects be worshipped, being merely signs of the inexplicable Creation, the mystery of the making of worlds.
Ideally speaking, Jules would have liked the boys to
think of these matters, as they schemed for their points in
the Blue and Gold. But he knew how fierce competition
will sometimes destroy thought, knew the chasm that lay
between victory and ideality.
"But something will rub off" he thought, as he watched
the other Blues enter the Arts & Crafts hut.
In that hut were objects in various stages of completion.
There were more objects of utility than objects of art, in
line with the predilection of the counsellor in charge and
a certain sense-mostlY unconscious-of the injunction
against the making of graven images. There were wooden
boxes, of various shapes, meant f6r various uses, and in
one of these boxes was the eleventh clue. That made the
discovery pretty routine, for what boys, seeking a hidden
slip of paper in a room full of empty boxes, would not
open those boxes, first off? So the Blues found this clue,
and, ten minutes later, the Golds found the clue, and off
they were, on the next to the last lap.
This eleventh clue was more difficult than others:
I have always known
That at last I would
Take this road, but yesterday
I did not know that it would be today.
Narihira (translated by Kenneth Rexroth)
When the Golds found this clue, the Blues were still
puzzling over it. They did not know in which direction to
move, trying desperately to decipher the lines before the
Golds picked up the clue, for they feared the keen mind
of Marv Woolman, remembering (all of a sudden) that he
had won a high school poetry prize. So the Blues studied
the document, the way one studies the missing word in
the crossword puzzle-time and the unconscious sometimes succeed, activated by the reason, and activating in
turn that reason, and in the interplay the missing word appears, the puzzle is solved. And then the Golds were in
the same boat. Both teams studied the text. What road
was meant? What kind of yesterday, what kind of today?
And yet the answer was not so terribly difficult-one
only had to hit on the fitting event, and then all fell into
place.
What event was this? Now there had been a boy in
Jules's bunk, a boy of twelve, called Sandy, a very engaging and ingenious child, very spirited, very poignant, a
child who could easily win one's heart, the way he won
Jules's heart. Towards the end of July, Jules received a rush
19
�summons from the camp director. It was in the late after·
noon, in the pleasant interlude between the end of the
afternoon swim and dinner time. All moved at their ease (I
say all, but there are always some so dispirited that even
this pleasant interlude had no effect), discussed the high
spots of the day, hungry after much activity and sure that
food would be forthcoming. The head counsellor and the
doctor were seated with the director, who handed Jules a
telegram. This telegram announced the death of Sandy's
father. Jules looked at the message blankly. The dead
stranger slowly disappeared, and the problem remained of
breaking the news to the child. We may worship the dead,
but we must take care of the living.
"We thought," said the director, "that it would be best
if you told the boy, you're pretty close to him."
Jules nodded. He thought of a book by Mrs. Ward (was
that her name? what was her first name again?) in which a
character is faced with the problem of breaking such news.
It is a universal situation, but each event has its unique
approach.
"You'll understand how to break it to him," said the di·
rector, "gradually."
~~Yes/' said Jules.
He was rather proud that he had been chosen for so delicate and difficult a task. Why not the director, the head
counsellor, the head of the Junior Division? He wondered
why the doctor was at this meeting? Why a doctor at the
news of the death of a distant stranger? A kind of rever·
sian, he thought, to the ancient medicine man, the witch
doctor, the man of magic summoned at the moment of awe
and loss. Then, of course, before one dies, he most gener·
ally is sick, and so the doctor is summoned when he dies.
There was so little left for any of them to say at this conference, it all seemed quite unreal, except for the reality
of telling the child. If the child didn't have to be told (but
those were not the instructions) why then the matter would
slowly have disappeared amongst all this social happiness,
the way a wisp of cloud will disappear in a joyful sky of
blue. There would have been no high-level conference.
But the man was dead, and the child had to be told, he
had to be sent home, to be at his dead father's side, and
walking down to the camp (the meeting was in the parents'
lodge) during the interlude, the free play, Jules thought of
what it was he had to do.
He had to be serious with the child, until the child realized that his counsellor was serious, and then the child
would begin to expect an explanation of this seriousness,
for this seriousness had to be maintained beyond the usual range. That was all that had to be done-a certain seriousness had to create a certain expectancy, and that
expectancy had to create a given anxiety, and then the
anxiety had to be met.
So Jules was serious in the bunk, serious to all the kids
in the bunk, but particularly to Sandy. And the child grew
serious, expectant, and anxious, for this was an unex~
pected style of behavior on the counsellor's part. But Jules
20
decided that he would not break the news till the next
morning. Should I trouble his sleep even more? thought
Jules, and he decided that the best time to break bad news
is in the morning, when one is least tired, but would the
anxiety interfere with the child's sleep?
That night, after dinner, the Juniors had camp fire, they
sat around, sang, listened to stories, roasted marshmallows, put out the fire in the immemorial way of boys. The
songs floated in the air, the stories flooded the stillness,
the voids of expectancy, the fire died in the solemn hiss.
\Then, when the kids turned in for the night, Jules sat on
Sandy's bed, spoke to him about the city, about his life at
home, enquired about his mother, about his father, about
his sister, and then again about his father, created an air of
seriousness, of anxiety. And the child was confused,
troubled, fell asleep after an active day in which he had
played his part. Hadn't he doubled in the ninth, and then
come home with the winning run?
The next day, after breakfast, Jules took the child for a
walk, down to the lake. That was an unusual act.
"But what about inspection?" asked Sandy, for after
breakfast the bunks were inspected, for poorly-made beds,
spider-webs on the ceiling, dirt in the corners, and each
week a banner was awarded to the cleanest bunk in the
division.
"We'll be back in time" said Jules, and they walked
slowly along the shore. The lake was absolutely calm, the
sky clear, the visibility perfect. Jules asked about the boy's
school life, about his street life, about his grandfather,
about his father, about his teachers, about his friends,
about his father. The child was uneasy, worried, wondered about this walk, about this conversation, began to
expect what he did not want to hear, and then heard it,
slowly and conclusively. The lad was silent, he threw a
rock into the lake, and both watched the widening ripples.
Jules put his arm around the boy's shoulder. They walked
together along the lake-shore.
"Your mother wants you to go home today," said Jules.
"It didn't have to happen," asked Sandy, "did it?"
He looked up trustingly at his counsellor.
"It happened," said Jules, "that's how it is. Now you
must go back, out of respect to your father, to remember
him, and to help your mother."
He felt a bit foolish mouthing these platitudes, but was
not sorry that he said them. What else is there to say? he
thought. Is silence better?
Sandy seemed, on the surface, to be wondering more
than suffering, wondering why this had happened, won·
dering why it happened to him. There was an indication
of anger, that this had happened to him, an indication of
resentment, that this had happened to him, and not to the
others, rather than to the others. He listened to the camp
cries, to the early-morning hum. Then his jaw hardened,
he stoically accepted the inevitable, the mystery and the
disappearance. He acted the man who silently sorrows,
buriesgrief and suffering, and continues his day's work,
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�his life's work. Then the boy's lips trembled, and he burst
into tears, with the awful sense of absolute loss.
So it was only a matter of time before one player or another, one team or another, would stumble on the meaning of the lines of the Japanese poet, would come to think
of one who amongst all having to leave, left earlier than
expected, on the road he would have had to take.
The Gold team picked up the clue first. Far from Marv
Woolman, it was Jackie Lesser, the speedster, who hit on
it. His nimbleness was apparently displaced upwards, and
a certain sympathy, a feelingful note, triumphed over
cleverness and character.
"It's Sandy," cried Jackie. "He left before the season
ended, he took the road home before he was supposed to
take the road home."
Marv and Ben looked at him with an amazement compounded with surprise, even anger, for how come that
Jackie, picked for speed, should have come up with an answer that made immediate sense? But their feelings quickly
disappeared into the competitive crucible, and the three
minds worked as one in trying to figure out just where they
were supposed to look. Would it be in Sandy's old bunk?
But there was clearly a road involved. What road? The road
home, of course. That road started at the top of the hill, it
was the beginning of the country road which led to the
town road, which led to the main road, which led to the
railroad station. So up they-sped to the beginning of that
country road, where stood a great oak tree and thru the
branches of that oak peeped a sheet of paper. It was the
clue, tied around a twig. They read and copied the clue,
looking around all the time to see whether the Blues had
picked up the trail. There was no one in sight. Then one
of the judges appeared from his hiding place, and tied the
paper back on the same twig. Off went the Gold team, not
down the path they had come up on, where they might be
observed by their rivals, but singly the back way, behind the
bunks, to meet near the Nature hut where they read, again,
the lines of Keats which made up the final clue:
Young men and maidens at each other gazed
With hands held back, and motionless, amazed
To see the brightness in each other's eyes
As they were examining these lines, leading to a place,
the Blue team was desperately reading over and over
again the lines of the Japanese poet until they too, by a
process of elimination and association~ came to remember
Sandy and his sudden departure home, and that led them
to the oak tree and the final clue. That clue, those lines
from Keats, were swiftly fathomed by Larry Altman, and
he and his teammates rushed down to the parade grounds
for this was where the boys and girls came together for the
Sabbath services and on all other ceremonial occasions.
(It was quite amazing that the Gold team had so much
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
trouble with these lines, they were so accurate a description of the meetings between brother and sister camps.
The three teammates, standing in front of the Nature
hut-a random meetingplace, away from the oak-were
in full view of the parade grounds, but looked past those
grounds in a kind of panic which sometimes occurs when
the victory is in sight. How else is it possible to explain
their overlooking these meetings, climax of the week, the
girls dressed in their whites [to welcome the Queen of the
Sabbath], the boys scrubbed and combed, in their sailor
ducks and sport shirts, waiting~ in the dusk-for this or
that familiar face, for the figure actively sought out, or flirtatiously avoided, for the figure warm or indifferent?)
A little down the way from the flagpole, Jules waited
with the other judges. He looked out at the lake, on whose
quiet surface, way out in the distance, the boats of strangers were faintly seen. He felt, for a moment,. a curious
sense of power, as one who created movement in others,
even choosing the direction in which they moved. But he
did not like that feeling, and it faded. He wondered whether
he had left out any important pursuits. Of course he hadthere was the search for identity, later to become a rather
fashionable problem, namely, Who am I? or Who am I
really? But he had excluded that pursuit on purpose-he
believed that one found himself (is everybody lost?) not by
looking for one's self, but by struggle in the outside world,
the world of struggle, the world of ideas (a kind of struggle),
of love (a kind of struggle) and so on.
Then the Blues appeared at the parade grounds (with
Dick Gordon, or course, in the lead) and quickly sized up
the situation. There was only the flagpole, and Dave
Crown was the first to look up (character pays) and there,
three-quarters of the way up the pole, the tell-tale piece of
paper was taped.
"There it is" shouted Dave, and then Dick-who was
nimble as well as fast-started to shinny up the pole. This
brought the Gold team out, wondering what connection
the lines of the poet had with the flag, which was swaying
in the slight breeze. Then Ben Semmel understood the
sense of the lines, saw the parade grounds filled with boys
and girls
.. . amazed
to see the brightness in each other's eyes,
saw the paper on the flag pole, but by that time Dick was
up there, pulled off the tape, and swiftly brought to the
ground the paper which read:
TREASURE HUNT WINNER!
and that was certified by the judges who appeared from
their vantage point and made official the victory of the
Blues.
21
�Don Alfonso
In this harmonious villa
Where oboes serenade
And lovesick tenors croon
Of constancy among the sycamores
I think of two old men who closed their eyes
And recollected what they owed.
The one considered wise
As ice crept up his thighs
Settled a rooster on the demigod
Who cured him of becoming.
The other fellow, fat but not a fool
Also perplexed his school
With chatter of a debt to Justice ShallowSuddenly chilled
When to be king his Prince banished the world.
This morning in the coffee house I heard
The fresh Ferrando trill of Phoenixes.
His friend, a baritone but still a boy
Joined him in sixths to idolize
Some lily of allegiance.
I hate a warm duet.
Too arrogant for owing, I'll enjoy
A bet. Adept at recollecting, I'll
Collect, moved not by eros but
Experience. No instant chill
Nor gradual welcome gelidness
But icy from the ages, I'm compelled
By one goad only: to instruct
Exasperating innocence.
Leaving the losers to their wry quartet
I'll shape my cadence to the sages' tune,
A philanthropic glee
Contrived for three:
Midwife to wind·eggs and the source of wit
And I, who knew Giovanni.
ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN
Elliott Zuckerman is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis.
22
AUTUMN/WINI'ER 1982-83
�The Unity of Leibniz's Thought on
Contingency, Possibility, and Freedom
Arthur Collins
1 The Defects of Cartesian Physics
That it fails to accommodate force is Leibniz's fundamental criticism of Descartes' physics. Descartes tried to
reduce physics to geometry. A conceptual scheme restricted to geometrical concepts lacks resources adequate
for the representation of physical forces. In the context
that is best known and most often discussed by Leibniz,
he attacks Descartes' conception of the conservation of
the "quantity of motion," and he substitutes the idea of
the conservation of vis viva, or active power, which is what
we would call the conservation of energy_I
When we try to state the issues here in up-to-date terms,
at least in the terms of modern classical physics, it can appear that Leibniz is insisting on the conservation of the
product of mass and velocity-squared, while Descartes
calls for the conservation of the product of mass and
velocity. Since mv2 (kinetic energy) and mv (momentum)
are both conserved, some commentators say that Descartes and Leibniz are both right and that debate is out of
place.'
This conciliation is not satisfactory. Nothing like the
modern concept of mass is actually employed by Descartes. Were we to try to introduce umassn where he speaks
of "quantity of matter," we would have to make amendments in his thinking along the very lines which Leibniz
requires. Mass eludes any merely geometrical description
and the shortfall is only made up by appeal, in one way or
another, to something like force. Furthermore, Descartes
actually thinks in terms of what we might call "speed",
that is, motion along any path, straight or curved, while
Professor of philosophy at the City University of New York, Arthur Collins has published articles in many philosophical journals. He last contributed "Objectivity and Philosophical Conversation, Richard Rorty's
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" to the St. John's Review (Winter
1982).
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the conservation laws only hold for rectilinear speed. This
distinction becomes significant in Descartes' metaphysics
when he tries to reconcile mind-body interaction with the
thoroughgoing mechanical determinism that he supposes
to rule the material world. Descartes' idea of conservation
and his laws of impact express this determinism. The
problematic mind-body interaction takes place, Descartes
hopes, when purely mental influences manage to "deflect"
the subtlest material particles of the animal spirits in the
pineal gland. Such deflection is supposed to change the
direction but not the quantity of motion of particles affected.' In the parlance of classical physics, this solution
fails because it violates the principle of the conservation
of energy. The deflection of a particle would constitute a
change of velocity (though not necessarily of speed) and,
therefore, a change of energy. This addition or subtraction
of energy would not be charged to any account in the material world. Leibniz makes this point.4
These faults in Descartes' ideas are not just details on
which he remains at an unsatisfactory and preliminary
level, relative to later science. On the contrary, the difficulties spring from views which are among Descartes' most
important and best insights. The claim, "My physics is
nothing but geometry," 5 is widely recognized as the expression of his deepest inspiration in science, but this
view is also, as Leibniz thought, responsible for the most
obvious defects in Descartes' physics. Why are we supposed to agree that physics is just geometry? In part, this
is supposed to follow from the fact that nothing sensuous
is allowed to characterize (touter," spatial, material reality
by Descartes' epistemological analysis. All sensuous characteristics like color, sound, and heat, that is, all the socalled secondary qualities,6 are not really out there. They
exist only in the play of mental states and perceptions in
our minds. Contact with outer things is causally responsible for the generation of ideas with sensuous features, but
material things do not have such features themselves.' On
23
�reflection, it appears that nothing is left with which we
can rightly describe the nonmental 'space-filling world except nonsensuous concepts like figure, magnitude, and
motion.
When sensuous distinctions are no longer thought to distinguish different regions of space, we are reduced to a defoliated universe of moving particles having geometrical
features only. To Descartes this seems a great intellectual
advantage and a trustworthy sign of the correctness of his
epistemology. In fact, it would be better to say that his epistemology is motivated in major part by his scientific objectives. He intends to filter away the sensuous so that a
mathematically suitable subject matter will be left for scientific theory. His epistemology provides just the interpretation of reality needed by Descartes and others who
were convinced that scientific understanding becomes possible only when we manage to delete the unmanageable,
subjective, sensuous aspect of things and to characterize
the subject matter of science exclusively in the vocabulary
of abstract mathematics. In the argument of Descartes'
Meditations and in the Principles of Philosophy, the proof
for the existence of an external world of material things is
simply a proof that the abstract mathematical and geometrical truths, which we are able to appreciate in pure
thought, do have a subject matter outside of our thought
which they fit and describe. This subject matter is res extensa, that is, space, as an existing manifold or entity.
Descartes does not confine his purification of our conception of the material world to the purge of sensuous
characteristics. The prevailing scholastic-Aristotelian tradition was dominated by biological and psychological paradigms for the explanation of change. Within this tradition,
as Descartes read it, the understanding of physical phenomena involved projecting into the physical realm various soul-like agencies and, in particular, the substantial
forms of the scholastics. Descartes' reduction of physics
to geometry means the elimination of this psychologism
and teleological thinking from the scientific explanation
of the motions of bodies. The material universe which survives the elimination of both the sensuous surface and the
inner determinants of motion is Descartes' plenum of indefinitely subdivisible particles, all of whose motions are
determined by collisions that conserve an initial sum of
motion given to the system at the beginning of things by
God.8 Matter itself contains no principle of action nor disposition to move or not to move. All concepts of determinants of motions residing in material things are e1iminated
in Descartes' rejection of the animism of the scholasticAristotelian tradition.'
At a level near common sense we can represent the shortcomings of the Cartesian identification of space and matter
and the resulting purely geometrical physics as follows. A
theory in physical science has to provide concepts with the
help of which we are able to see what happens as the instantiation of clear regularities. Motions observed in ordinary experience are usually too complicated for analysis,
24
but, at least for the scientific explanation of motion, rules
should be formulable that cover very simple artificial or
imaginary ideal cases. Descartes himself thinks of the obligation of scientific theory in this way and he formulates
seven laws of which ideal cases of impacts of particles are
supposed to be the instances. 10 If such laws are satisfactory
they will enable us to predict what will happen when situations fitting the conditions specified (here the specification
of simple collisions) are realized. This elementary reflection
is usually summed up by saying that a scientific theory generates predictions when initial conditions are satisfied.
Now Leibniz's critique of Descartes' physics can be stated
as the thought that no such predictive validity is accessible
to a physics framed with Descartes' attentuated concepts.
Using a priori arguments, Leibniz is able to show that the
specific laws Descartes presents are incoherent and could
not possibly be empirically adequate.n But the larger point
is that no laws based on Descartes' concepts can succeed.
Leibniz sees this permanent inadequacy in the fact that
Descartes has no conceptual means for distinguishing between instantaneous motion and instantaneous rest. 12
Suppose we are going to predict the future position of
bodies in the solar system. In order to do this we need rules
expressing the patterns of mofion which they instantiate
and we need initial conditions in the form of specifications of the positions, velocities, and accelerations of the
various heavenly bodies at some particular time. But geometrical concepts only yield determinations of position at
a particular time, that is, at an instant. Descartes' purification of the concept of matter has left him nothing with
which to express the difference between a moving body
and a stationary body at one moment and he has no reason for thinking that there is any intrinsic difference. The
obstacle to predictive success within Descartes' conceptual scheme can now be put very simply. Initial conditions
that characterize material things at one moment of time
accessible to Cartesian physics will give the positions of
particles only. But the future development of a system of
bodies depends upon velocity and acceleration, and not
merely on position. So the Cartesian scientist will inevitably find different developments arising out of what he
sees as identical conditions. If the conditions are identical,
however, the very idea of scientific regularity requires
identical predictions. So predictive success cannot be
forthcoming. Ad hoc efforts to generate predictions conformable to experience must result in laws which are arbitrary and incoherent, as Leibniz finds that the Cartesian
laws of impact are in fact.
The characterizations that successfully distinguish motion and rest at an instant are just those that are accessible
to the infinite mathematical methods of the calculus
which Leibniz himself developed. Leibniz thinks of Descartes' "matter" as incomplete. It is a mistake to think that
merely space-filling stuff could constitute a substance.B In
this there is the influence of Aristotelian conceptions of
matter and form which Leibniz does not repudiate. NeiAUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�ther matter nor form, by itself, can constitute an existing
thing. But Leibniz' s view is also determined by his under·
standing of the irreducible status of force in physics. In his
thinking, momentary material existence is an abstraction
from the reality of temporally extended things. Substances
are not constituted of densely laminated temporal slices
which are their constituent realities as the cards are the
constituents of the deck. Substances, rather, correspond
to functions with values extended in time. Thus, the monad contains all its temporal states as the values of a function are contained in the law which is the function itself.
The fundamental metaphysical description of the world
must be in terms of such functions. Such a description
can never be reached by aggregating consecutive momentary distributions of merely space-filling stuff. In contrast,
time does not enter into Descartes' characterization of res
extensa at alJ.l 4 So, in Cartesian physics, moving bodies
have to be constructed out of momentary stationary bodies.
Descartes did attempt to present a theory of motion in
his laws of impact. Furthermore, his scientific writings
present an enormous number of explanations of various
phenomena most of which are now merely picturesque
relics. Some of his explanations are reasonable and correct. On the whole, however, it seems to me that Descartes
was never entirely clear about the appropriate expecta·
tions for scientific explanation, once the field had been
cleared by his elimination of both sensuous qualities and
occult inner determinants of change.
No one emphasized the role of mathematics in science
more than Descartes. Yet he seems to have had very little
confidence in the possibility of really detailed mathematical explanations of real events, and he did not foresee anything like the kind of success mathematical physics was to
attain, so soon after his lifetime, in the work of Newton.
Sometimes Descartes writes as though the chief intellectual job of science is completed when substantial forms
and teleological explanations have been dropped so that
the material world can be understood to be a matter of
moving and colliding particles.
The explanations that Descartes actually gives of particular phenomena are usually very much like ad hoc scholastic explanations in their ambitions and their explanatory
horizons, however unlike scholastic explanations they are
in content. Like the scholastics, Descartes offers imaginative stories that are plainly without predictive force or intent. They are broad ways of seeing the phenomenon in
question within the framework of a geometrical particle
universe.
In a remarkable passage, Descartes says that, since he
came to appreciate the real character of physical reality,
that is, that it is a spatial manifold of particles, and since he
came to appreciate the nature of physical events, that is,
that they are collisions of particles, he has found that he
can solve any problem of science that is proposed or that
occurs to him in a very short time. 15 This is not so much an
outrageous boast as it is an illuminating indication of what
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Descartes expects from explanation in physics. The solutions to problems which he can produce so promptly are
obviously merely broad hypotheses providing, with the
help of humble empirical analogies, a way of seeing this or
that event as a particular form of particle motion. So the
phenomenon of planetary motion is explained when we
see that an ocean of particles might carry suns and planets
in vortices, as a whirling eddy of water carries a leaf in a
closed path. Magnetic phenomena are explained by the
imaginative hypothesis, again based on the observable
world of everyday objects, that there are screw-shaped
pores in bodies, which impede but do not prevent the passage of screwshaped particles, just as the threaded nut impedes but does not prevent the passage of the threaded
bolt. Combustion is explained to the same limited degree
as the progressive destabilization of the structure of a
burning object by a storm of fast moving particles. And
the refraction of light is supposed to be intelligible on the
model of tennis balls deflected from their path when they
encounter the light resistance of a thin veil. In sum, explanation does not go beyond the provision of a hypothesis
that makes it reasonable that the phenomenon in question is observed even though the world is just a plenum of
moving particles. Particular explanations rely on a rough
empirical analogy to show how such particle collisions
could constitute the phenomenon in question. It is only
such hypotheses, dependent upon empirical analogy, that
Descartes was able to think of in a short time, and that is
what he means by "solving" the problems that come to his
attention. Given this conception of explanation it is quite
understandable that Cartesian physics should tolerate divergent developments from initial conditions that are identical when described in the terms that Cartesian science
permits.
Near the end of the Principles of Philosophy, Descartes
quite explicitly expresses his conception of the irreducibly
conjectural character of theoretical explanations. He recognizes that accounts in terms of particle motions involve
positing events (the particular particle motions and collisions) which are not accessible to the senses. Then, in
Principle CCIV of Part IV, Descartes tells us
That touching the things which our senses do not perceive, it
is sufficient to explain what the possibilities are about the nature of their existence, though perhaps they are not what we
describe them to be and this is all that Aristotle has tried to do. 16
In the following passages, Descartes says that we would not
find his individual explanations compelling if we considered them independently of one another. The real support
for his system is that so many explanations are generated
from so few ideas (namely, those that go into the scheme
of a plenum of particles), yielding a simple coherent picture of the worldY
If we look at Leibniz's critique in the context of Descartes' repudiation of teleology and his reduction of nature
to a wholly mechanical system of particles in motion, we
25
�find that Leibniz urges the rehabilitation of teleology and
is prepared to reinstate the Aristotelian biological paradigm for all substances complete with the entelechies and
substantial forms that were so deliberately expunged from
the physical world in Descartes' ·thought. This must appear to us as a considerable step backward. A number of
Leibniz's prominent excesses such as his panpsychism, his
denial of the reality of death, his theoretical assimilation
of all causes of change to a more-or-less mental "appetition", and his ubiquitous teleology are all of them regressions in comparison with the conceptual restraint achieved
by Descartes. Leibniz only manages to preserve any plausible and recognizably scientific perspective at all by segregating teleological and mechanical explanations and
holding that everything that happens in the physical world
can be explained mechanically, without invoking the
agency of any entelechy or deploying any teleological pattern of explanation.18 Teleological thinking is conveniently
allocated to a higher metaphysical level. Teleological understanding, in the form, for example, of least action principles, guides our discovery of mechanical laws without
introducing a teleological aspect into those laws themselves. Leibniz says, for example, that the thought that
light always takes the shortest path operates essentially in
the understanding that led to the discovery of Snell's law .I'
I do not want to give the impression that Leibniz's defense of teleology is entirely inappropriate. Leibniz did not
simply slump back into already discredited styles of
thought. On the contrary, his insistence that reason-giving
explanation must be reconciled with a mechanical universe and his idea that the two patterns of explanation operate at different levels embody important truths.
2 Nature Itself
Attempting to delete spurious psychologism and teleology, Descartes eliminates all activity from the material
world and paves the way for an Occasionalist philosophy in
which God is directly responsible for each thing th.at happens. The ultimate passivity of material substance is expressed in Descartes' thought that matter does not even
contain any principle sufficient for its own continued existence into the next instant of time. All temporal continuity of existence depends on God's continual recreation
of things. 20 How could a particle, unable to struggle though
a second of continued existence without help from God,
have any continued and independent effect on things
other than itself? Furthermore, the Cartesian exclusion of
every means for distinguishing one region of space (which
is matter) from another undercuts the very idea of occurrences in the material world. At each moment, every region
of space or matter exactly resembles every other region. It
follows that at every moment the structure of the whole of
space or matter is exactly what it is at every other moment.
The universe is at every moment a plenum of indefinitely
26
divisible particles. Then anything that happens will leave
things exactly as they were: a plenum of indefinitely divisible particles,'~ If, somehow, we could attach meaning to
motion in this universe, we would still be unable to make
sense of Descartes' idea that God has caused an initial motion of particles and ordained the subsequent conservation of that motion. For Descartes' conceptual parsimony
leaves us no way to grasp how it is that motion might continue without the continued action of God.
At first impression, we are apt to think that Descartes
can reasonably propose that God has created an essentially
inert, wholly passive, and motionless universe, which he
then sets in motion at the beginning of time. We will have
in mind analogies like the initial winding of a motionless
clock which creates a motion that endures in the clock
without our continual intervention. Leibniz sees that this
understanding of motion in nature cannot survive close
inspection, if we are thinking in terms of Descartes' physical concepts. Clocks can be wound so that they will run
continuously precisely because of the nongeometrical features of bodily existence on which Leibniz insists. The
compression of the mainspring of the clock represents a
force, an inner determinant of future motion. This intrinsic potential cannot be represented as a particular arrangement of particles. Within Descartes' framework of
ideas, the compression of the spting would bode nothing
for future motion. A mere arrangement of space-filling
particles will not induce any further changes. A further rearrangement will need an external cause. Ultimately, God
will have to move the hands of the clock himself. This is
the prospect for "the new philosophy which maintains
the inertness and deadness of things." 22
Leibniz mounts such criticisms in his 1698 essay, "On
Nature Itself."23 If we are to imagine that God has arranged things to conserve the initial motion that he has
caused in matter, we must suppose that he has imparted
to material a foundation for continued motion that is intrinsic to that reality.
For since this command [calling for conservation of motion
after the initial motion was imparted] . .. no longer exists at
present, it can accomplish nothing unless it has left some subsistent effect behind which has lasted and operated until now,
and whoever thinks otherwise renounces any distinct explanation of things, if I am any judge, for if that which is remote
in time and space can operate here and now without any intermediary, anything can be said to follow from anything else
with equal right.24
and
... if things have been so formed by the command that they
are made capable of fulfilling the will of him who commanded
them, then it must be granted that there is certain efficacy residing in things, a form or force such as we usually designate
by the name of nature, from which the series of phenomena
follows according to the prescription of the first command.25
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�In other words, no matter what role we assign to God, we
must impute active powers to nature if we are to formulate
intelligible explanations.
"On Nature Itself' is Leibniz's contribution to a German debate occasioned by Robert Boyle's contention that
appeals to "Nature" should be deleted from science. 26 For
Boyle, the repudiation of Nature meant the rejection of
scholasticism and scholastic forms. In this, Boyle is following Descartes. For the specious concept (<Nature", Boyle
wants to substitute "mechanism" as the foundation of all
explanations in the material world. The German Cartesian
point of view supported Boyle's claim and reasserted the
essential passivity of material substance. 27
Leibniz does not argue against Boyle's mechanism, nor
does he claim here that mechanical explanations ought to
be supplemented by teleological explanations, though this
is certainly his view. In this context, it is the Cartesian
concept of mechanical explanation that Leibniz finds defective as a consequence of the limitations of Descartes'
concept of material substance." Descartes tries to exclude
ad hoc psychologism and teleology." But the resulting
conceptual platform is so feeble that no explanations at all
can be mounted on it. Then God's ad hoc intervention is
required at every point. If that is so, then it turns out that
the only explanatory pattern that finds any application in
Descartes' material world will be the teleological pattern
of intended purposeful behavior. God causes each and every thing that happens for his good reasons. Then all explanations are psychologistic, the very thing Descartes
sought to eliminate completely. Although Leibniz is rightly
known as the defender of teleology, his insistence here
that activity be ascribed to nature itself is founded on the
claim that, failing an active nature, each and every mechanical event in the universe would have to be understood
as an intended action on the part of God.
Perhaps the most interesting idea of "On Nature Itself'
is Leibniz's thought that we should bring under a single
philosophical perspective both the mechanical events
studied and explained by physicists and the free actions of
men. Leibniz sees that the independence of the human will
and the independence of mechanical forces from God's
actions are parallel requirements if we are to understand
human responsibility and the motions of bodies respectively. The passivity of created substance finds expression
in the Cartesian doctrine "that things do not act but that
God acts in the presence of things and according to the fitness of things." Natural application of this to the mental
realm of thinking and willing would mean reassignment of
the cause of the sequence of our thoughts and desires and
resolutions from us to God. The Occasionalists such as
Malebranche who seem to espouse such a view have not
really established it and do not appreciate its destructive
implications. We must believe in our own spontaneity.
To doubt this would be to deny human freedom and to thrust
the cause of evil back into God, but also to contradict the tes-
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
timony of our internal experience and consciousness by which
we feel that what these opponents have transferred to God
without even the appearance of reason belongs to ourselves.30
Furthermore, the very idea of an independent substance is
wrapped up with action so that, were actions all assigned
to God,
God would be the_ nature and substance of all things-a doctrine of most evil repute, which a writer who was subtle indeed but irreligious, in recent years imposed upon the world,
or at least revived. 31
Equally appropriate to mechanical causality and free
action, these ideas show us what is best in Leibniz's
thought about teleology without the encumbering metaphysics and theology with which his insights are ordinarily
accompanied.
What is at stake in the dispute over active powers as far
as mechanical explanation is concerned? Consider a simple
example. The wind blows dead leaves from the branches
of trees in the autumn. Leibniz's intuition is that our science must offer a mechanical understanding that really
succeeds in attributing the detachment of the leaves to
the force of the wind. Of course, Leibniz thinks that God
has arranged the laws of nature and that these laws are as
contingent as the particular events that obey them. 32 But
to say that is not to say that God really removes each leaf,
that God twirls it in the air for a while, and that God then
deposits it on the ground. On the contrary, things are so
ordered that the wind removes the leaves and no action of
God's is present or required. To assume that God knows
just how each leaf will move is to assert the infinity of his
understanding but not the ubiquity of his will. To think
otherwise is to destroy the idea of "laws of nature" and to
replace them with mere generalizations the truth of which
is only a consequence of the consistency of God's actions.
Therefore, our mechanical conceptions must be rich
enough to capture causal action in relationships that obtain between natural events. Descartes has produced a
physics that is too weak for this job.
Turning to voluntary human behavior, Leibniz finds the
same pattern in a setting of very different philosophical issues. When we raise the question which preoccupied Leibniz throughout his career, that is, the question of God's
responsibility for the failings and evils of human conduct,
we are asking whether or not human beings are truly active
in the world. Of course, Leibniz thinks that men are created by God and that, in his creation, God fully appreciates the powers, limitations, and liabilities of his creatures.
Moreover, being omniscient, he knows exactly what circumstances they will face and how they will act. This
much is parallel to the fact that God makes the things of
the material world and the laws of nature and he knows in
advance just what will happen. But to say that men have
any powers at all implies that, when those powers are exercised, it is men who act and not God. When I vote it is
27
�not God who casts a ballot, any more than it is God that
tears the leaf from the wind-whipped branch. No doubt we
would not hold a man responsible for his actions if he
were a mechanism like a clock or if his "acts 11 were caused
by the wind. So there is more to responsibility and free
agency than independence of God. In "On Nature Itself",
however, Leibniz sees the common ground of mechanism
and volition. In understanding we have to make fundamental explanatory appeal to the human agent. In understanding mechanical events we must make fundamental
appeal to physical determinants of change. The creativity
of God no more constrains physical forces than it does human actions.
This line of thought also clarifies Leibniz's oftenexpressed view that there is a mechanical explanation for
everything that happens in the world while, at the same
time, teleological explanations have their own validity
within the same world of events.33 The physical world is
not a continuous sequence of miracles, as it would be if
active powers were excluded from nature. The physical
world is ordered by the intentions and creativity of God.
But to say that is to say that he has created a mechanically
functioning system wherein what happens is explained by
physical causes for motions and not by the will of God.
The wisdom of this conception is partially concealed
from us by the theological trappings of Leibniz' s customary discussions. It becomes correspondingly clearer when
we translate the conceptual relationships envisioned by
Leibniz back to the level of human purposeful action in a
mechical world. What is required for the simplest selfconsciously purposive action by a human agent? Suppose,
for example, a man drives a nail into a wall in order to
hang a picture. The format that Leibniz proposes urges us
not to confuse the aptness of the teleological explanation,
"He put the nail into the wall in order to hang the
picture," with a mechanical explanation of the motion of
the nail: "The force imparted by collisions with the hammerhead caused the relatively rigid nail to penetrate the
relatively fixed waiL" We should not think that the mechanical explanation competes with or rules out accounts
that cite purposes and reasons. Thus, Leibniz says that
there is a mechanical explanation for all motions. The mechanical explanation is not merely compatible with a
reason-giving explanation. Leibniz is asserting that a mechanical explanation is required if the reason-giving explanation is to be intelligible. We could not act as we do,
when we want pictures hung, were it not for the fact that
nails are mechanically caused to move by collisions with
hammerheads. Leibniz appeals to a notion of levels of explanation saying that there are mechanical explanations
for everything which are not teleological, and that there
are also teleological explanations applicable to the same
reality which are correct explanations.
Leibniz thus stands against all reductive programs that
would try to convert teleological explanations into mechanical explanations. Such a reduction is the common aspira-
28
tion of Hobbes's conception of the material embodiment
of deliberation and wilL of Descartes' theory of deflections of particles in the pineal gland, and of contemporary
mind-brain materialism applied to action and motivation.34
In Leibniz' s view mechanical causes are organized as they
are as a consequence of God's intentions. But it is physical
forces that explain what happens mechanically, and God's
intentions are not physical forces. The same pattern of relationships holds for human purpose-fulfilling actions. Human intentions have a secure explanatory role. But this
never removes the need for a mechanical explanation for
the motions of things. Human intentions are not mechanical causes any more than divine intentions are mechani~
cal causes.
In his theological presentations we can all understand
with Leibniz, although perhaps few of us will agree with
him, the thought that the laws -of nature are instituted by
God in the course of bringing into existence the kind of
world he wants. But in understanding just this much,
Leibniz shows that we must be envisioning two kinds of
explanation which are correlative and not in conflict with
one another. We are supposing that God sets up the world
and its laws with a purpose and to fulfill his plans and intentions. This is a reason-giving explanation belonging to
the general teleological pattern. But this idea would not
be intelligible at all, and explanations would collapse into
the assertion of sequences of miracles, if we did not also
suppose that the arrangements God makes give scope to
another very different kind of explanation, namely, the
mechanical explanations of the motions of things that appeal to physical powers and forces in nature rather than
God. In the absence of an explanatory role for natural
forces, appeals to God's ordinances reduce to the Occasionalist's attribution of each and every event to the direct
intervention of God's will. Following the same pattern,
while deleting the theological context, we can understand
a purpose-oriented explanation of human behavior, but
we would not be able to understand it, for it would mean
nothing if it were supposed to rule out or to compete with
mechanical explanation of what happens. If it were supposed to rule out a mechanical account, a reason-giving
explanation would have to assert that the will moves objects directly. But we neither understand nor have any use
for this efficacy of the will. We do understand that someone has arranged matters to realize his objective just insofar as we also understand that there are mechanical causal
relations which he has foreseen and wittingly exploited in
his action. If we thought that teleology eliminates mechanism, we would convert every purposeful act into a manmade miracle.
The idea of purposive action in a mechanical world has
seemed to many philosophers to require a gap in the mechanical order of things through which the will can find
expression in what happens. Leibniz' s insight here shows
us that the envisioned gap could serve no useful purpose.
A motion that is not mechanically explicable would not be
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�graspable as a purposeful act but, instead, this uncaused
motion would belong to the realm of the miraculous, as
though our every action involved a kind of levitation.
We tend to credit the question, "How can my reasons
have anything to do with what happens if there are mechanical causes for all motions?" This natural-sounding
complaint implies that my reasons could be relevant if
only some events were not determined by any mechanical
cause. Then those things at least might be determined by
"my reasons." But this line of thought is hopeless. If my
reasons could produce some motion in things, this will be
either an unintelligible miracle and, thus, no explanation,
or, "my reasons" will just be an expression for some fur·
ther mechanical cause, as both seventeenth century and
twentieth century reductions will have it. But if appeal to
reasons is actually only appeal to mechanical causes, then
purposes, objectives, that is, true reasons, drop out alto·
gether and explanation operates merely by appeal to sufficient prior determinants of motion.
Without the cloud of dust that philosophical reflection
about causality and freedom inevitably raises, I do not
think we would find an apparent inconsistency or any
other problem in the fact that the force of hammer blows
moves a nail, and that I, at the same time, claim to have a
reason for its being in the wall. Only a philosopher would
ever think that the correctness of the reason-giving ac·
count implies that I must have moved something "with
my will" so that either my will is also a physical cause, or
the mind can mysteriously intervene in the physical order
and violate conservation laws in the process. In Leibniz's
thinking the choice between these unpromising options is
not forced upon us. Teleology is not mechanism and it
does not presuppose a gap in the mechanical order. Quite
the reverse is the case. Leibniz shows that if the relevant
motions are not explicable mechanically, the teleological
explanations will not get any explaining done. This is the
most profound message of the understanding of activity
and explanation presented in "On Nature Itself."
Our thinking about action is often beset by another
speculative temptation. We are willing to allow that the
mechanical force of hammer blows surely accounts for the
motion of the nail head. But then we simply want to look
further back in the physical and physiological chain of
events for the point at which appeal to reasons and purposes finds its real footing. Of course, I did not simply will
the hammer to move any more than Jj.;imply willed the nail
into the wall. I picked up the haii}I'fler and that means, inter alia, that forces applied to the hammer by my hand explain its motion. Could it be that the will only produces its
own nonmechanical effects when applied to parts of my
own body? This would enable me to orchestrate the mechanical relationships of things in the world beyond my
body so as to achieve desired objectives. This attractive
thought comes to a dead end with the appreciation that
the motions of bodily parts are not in any relevant way different from the motions of external objects. Conservation
TI!E ST. JOHNS REVIEW
laws alone mean that there must be mechanical explanations for motions of protoplasm as well as for motions of
rocks. There are known physiological-mechanical (speaking loosely) explanations for the motions of my hand, of
my muscles, and, no doubt, there are as yet undiscovered
explanations for all the subtle electro-chemical goings-on
within the muscles, the nerves, and the brain. Should we
not suppose that my control of my body, to the extent that
I have such control, presupposes and exploits just these
mechanical relationships? To think otherwise will be
merely to project the miracle of willed motions into some
physiological recess where our scientific understanding is
presently incomplete and does not as yet, therefore, make
such willing as unintelligible as the idea of willing a hammer to move. Willing things to change and move is really a
concept with no more application within the body than
without. And voluntarily moving things that we can move
does not imply that no mechanical account of their motion
is correct.35 Leibniz's view that purpose explanations do
not replace or conflict with mechanical explanations appears to be the only defensible understanding.
This conclusion does not mean that Leibniz provides
any philosophical analysis that removes the feeling of incompatibility that surrounds the issue of freedom and causality. The understanding of teleological explanation and
its relation to efficient causality or mechanism remains to
be achieved.36 Leibniz's view of the distinctness and the
interdependence of these explanatory patterns is both
subtler and more promising than many approaches that
are still defended. This Leibnizean view, as I have1ried to
show, is independent of theological commitments and of
Leibniz' s too-bold opinion that there is a teleological explanation for everything that happens.
3 Analyticity
All the events and actions that are explained either mechanically or teleologically are contingent according to
Leibniz. True propositions asserting such occurrences are
contingent truths. By a contingent truth Leibniz means a
truth of which the denial expresses something possible and
is not inconceivable or contradictory. I want to emphasize
Leibniz's assertion of the contingency of all of these
subject matters because there is an intefpretation of his
thought, and it is the dominant interpretation now, according to which he does not really think that any of these
matters are contingent. On this, the dominant understanding of Leibniz, he takes all truths to be analytic
truths, and, as everyone agrees, no analytic truth can be
contingent. It is an obvious and essential feature of analytic
truths that their denials are contradictory. So in saying
that Leibniz thinks that all truths are analytic, supporters
of this interpretation assert that he cannot really distinguish between the class of truths whose denials are contradictions and any other class of truths whatsoever. So
29
�his real opinion is supposed to be th~t there are no contingent truths at all and that everything true is necessarily
true.
In considering this contention we have, first, to note
that there is a sense in which all these contingent truths
are also necessary. They are "hypothetically necessary" in
Leibniz's customary terminology. 37 By this he means that
there is a coercive reason why this event or action occurs
rather than some alternative to it. Thus, given the laws of
nature and the relevant circumstances preceding a mechanically caused event, that event must follow. This is
entailed by the presumed universality of natural laws.
Leibniz recognizes that the conditional statement that expresses hypothetical necessity is itself logically necessary
or, as he expresses it, metaphysically necessary and absolutely necessary. It is a feature of any absolutely or logically
necessary truth that its denial is a contradictory statement.
Therefore, in saying that an event is hypothetically necessary, Leibniz is associating that event with a conditional
statement that is absolutely necessary.
This is not an extreme view of Leibniz's, nor one that
we should think of as expressing a characteristically rationalist perspective. An ideally simple schema can bring out
the points in a way that makes them noncontroversial, or
nearly so. Suppose that the only law relevant to the occurrence of the event E is the simply conditional: "If circumstance C obtains then event E follows." E is shown to be
hypothetically necessary by adverting to this law together
with the fact that the circumstance C did obtain in the actual context of the occurrence of E. This can be summed
up in the logically necessary conditional:
If it is the case that the law: if circumstance C then event E,
holds; and if circumstance C does obtain, then event E follows.
All those philosophers of science who envision a deductive
relationship between scientific laws, initial conditions and
statements asserting the occurrence of explained events
are committed to this Leibnizean viewpoint. Most empiricists adopt this view. That the relationship of the explanans
to the explanandum is deductive is just another way of
saying that propositions with the above form, and those
with much more complicated laws and instantiating conditions, are logically true. Leibniz once asserted, "As for
eternal truths, we must observe that at bottom they are all
conditional, and say, in fact, such a thing posited, such another thing is."38
The necessity of conditional statements connecting laws
and conditions with explained events is all that Leibniz
means by "hypothetical necessity" in the sphere of mechanical explanation. Such hypothetical necessity leaves
open the possibility that some other event might have occurred, rather than the actual event, had the laws and initial conditions been different. For factual circumstances,
and the laws of nature, are themselves contingent according to Leibniz. 39 Thus~ the denial of the occurrence of a
hypothetically necessary event is not contradictory.
30
Parallel points are to be made in understanding Leibniz's
conception of the contingency of free actions. Leibniz
consistently rejects what he calls "the freedom of indifference." By this he means to exclude choices which are entirely arbitrary and motivated by nothing but the disposition
to choose. Freedom, for Leibniz, never eliminates the
need for a reason for what is done which distinguishes it
in some intelligible way from all alternative actions and
makes clear why it was chosen over alternatives. To suppose that a man could actually make a random or arbitrary
choice between alternatives would be to allow an element
of unintelligibility into our idea of reality. A single inexplicable node in the causal network of things would infect
the whole scheme of an explicable world.
The vulnerability of this conception is revealed in exchanges with Samuel Clarke, who points out, among other
things, that Leibniz must rule against the very possibility
that God, or a man, could ever be faced with equally desirable means to some desired end.40 In the manner of the
problem of Buridan's ass, the value-equivalence of the
means would prevent selecting either of them, on Leibniz' s principles, no matter how urgently desired the end.
In spite of such penetrating criticisms, we should bear
in mind that the idea that everything that happens is explicable is not merely a rationalist dogma. It seems to be a
presumption of all investigations of things and one that is
extremely difficult to set aside.
For better or worse, Leibniz's view is that an agent must
always have a definite reason for choosing the action he
does perform from the alternative courses available to him.
The reason is coercive in the sense that, once an agent determines what course he prefers, which Leibniz expresses
as "what course appears best to him," he will inevitably
adopt that course. He likes to compare deliberation with
weighing things in a balance. The very idea that a man
could act in the absence of a determining reason is, for
Leibniz, like the idea that a balance might incline to one
side although there is no greater weight in that side than
in the other.41
The principle: men always choose the course that appears best to them, is the analog of a scientific law, and the
particular assessment preceding an action will be the ana·
log of prior circumstances. Again, conditionals of the following type can be formed:
If a man is choosing for the best, and if A appears better than
any other option that he recognizes, then he will do A.
This pattern fits the actions of God as well as of finite
agents with the difference that God's infinite power enforces his choice and to God's infinite wisdom what appears best is best.42 In both the divine and the human case,
the absolute necessity of conditional statements of this
form never means that other actions could not possibly
have been performed. On the contrary, it is an ineliminable
part of the idea of action that all of the alternative actions
AUTIJMN/WINTER 1982-83
�could be performed by the agent. This is the minimum
meaning of calling them alternative courses of action. The
question of choice only arises on the. irreducible assump·
tion that an agent could do more than one thing. Only
then does the question of preference, the best, the appar·
ent best, and assessment become relevant. Therefore, ac·
tions themselves, although hypothetically necessary, are
never absolutely necessary. Other preferences and princi·
pies of action might have issued in other actions. The denial
that a particular action was done is never a contradiction.
The contingency of mechanically explicable motions
and the contingency of motivated actions is essentialto
Leibniz's thinking about these matters. If it were abso·
lutely impossible for a particular motion not to occur, if its
nonoccurrence were inconceivable and contradictory, and
the assertion of its occurrence, thus, metaphysically nee·
essary, then talk about mechanical causes would be as in·
appropriate in physics as it is in geometry. If a man's
behavior were absolutely necessary, the desirability of an
action would be as irrelevant as the desirability ofa theo·
rem in pure mathematics. Then, as Leibniz says, it would
be as easy to be a prophet as to be a geometer.43 Like geo·
metrical proofs, scientific explanations and explanations
of actions can be expressed in deductive arguments. The
crucial difference is that the premises of mathematical de·
ductions are themselves necessary truths while the prem·
ises from which actions and events can be deduced are
contingent.
Apart from God, the existence of all material things and
all human agents is contingent. Thus all statements that
describe finite existences and say what happens to them
and what they do are contingent truths, if they are true
statements.44 Plainly all statements about mechanically
caused events involving bodies and all statements about
the free actions of human agents will fall into the class of
contingent statements.
The popular idea that Leibniz makes all truths analytic45
is certainly wrong. It flies in the face of his frequent and
careful statements on these issues. It makes nonsense of
his most important views and of his philosophy as a whole.
It imputes logical inconsistencies to a great logician that
are so obvious that no beginning student could miss them.
There is just no question of testing this proposed under·
standing of Leibniz against his writings in order to see
whether it may be an adequate or an unavoidable expres·
sion of his real opinion. The only interesting question is
how it can have happened that this reading has managed
to gain, not merely currency, but ascendancy in the views
of so many who study Leibniz's philosophy.
First, we need a rough review of the concept of analytic
truth that is used in this bad interpretation of Leibniz.
The roughness of our treatment here intentionally avoids
twentieth century controversies over analyticity46 and
avoids all of the niceties concerning logical form that
would require attention in a scrupulous discussion of ana·
lyticity per se. In particular, we shall largely ignore the fact
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
that all propositions are not of subject-predicate form, as
Leibniz himself largely ignores it. None of these matters
have any relevance to the claim that Leibniz thought that
truths are all of them analytic. An exposition of analyticity
that fits in with Leibniz' s expressed views about truth and
that makes sense in the context of examples of truths like
Leibniz's examples will suffice' for our purposes.
Propositions are analytic whose truth depends upon and
only upon the meaning of the terms they contain. Gener·
ally the meanings of terms are complex. In order to make
meanings fully explicit reformulation of sentences is gen·
erally required. Such reformulations substitute something
like definitions for terms that have complex meanings. In
the case of analytic propositions, this analysis via articulation of meanings ultimately makes the truth evident, dis·
playing it, for example, as resting on an identity the denial
of which would be patently contradictory.
In an illustration that has become standard in modern
discussions, the articulated meaning or definition: "things
that are both men and unmarried" replaces the complex
term "bachelors" in analyzing the proposition,
(I) All bachelors are unmarried,
yielding,
(2) All things that are both men and unmarried are un·
married,
which rests on the identity,
(3) What is unmarried is unmarried,
in the sense that to say that (2) is false is to assert that
something is both unmarried and not unmarried, which
denies (3) and is, therefore, contradictory."
Leibniz never uses the word ''analytic 11 in this sense. As
everyone knows, the word ''analytic" was first given the
sense just sketched by Kant. At the same time, Leibniz
certainly does say that there are truths which reduce to or
rest on identities. He also often points out that this foun·
dation of such truths is not always evident and that it re·
quires analysis of the terms of a proposition to display the
underlying identity.48 Perhaps his thinking in such pas·
sages is so close to our concept of analyticity that we can
properly say that he is talking about the analyticity of
propositions in our sense, although he does not use the
word as we do. But just this much, far from showing that
Leibniz takes all truths to be analytic, seems to establish
the opposite. For Leibniz always very clearly distinguishes
between truths that rely on the law of contradiction from
other truths which need a further foundation and whose
denials are possible and not at all contradictory. The con·
sistency of Leibniz's distinction on this point is one of the
reasons for which it is odd that many readers are satisfied
to say that he makes all truths analytic.49 The following is
a particularly clear statement of Leibniz' s. It is one of a
number of statements with similar force:
31
�Omnes Existentiae excepta solius Dei Existentia sunt con tingentes. Causa au tern cur res aliqua corltingens [prae alia] existat,
non petitur ex [sola] eius definitiOne ..... Cum enim infinita
sint possibilia, quae tamen non existunt, ideo cur haec potius
quam ilia existant, ratio peti debet non ex definitione alioqui
non existere implicaret contradictionem, et alia non essent
possibilia ....
All existences excepting only the existence of God are contingent. The reason why something contingent exists [rather
than another thing] is not to be sought in its definition
[alone] . ... Since there are infinite possibilities which, nonetheless, do not exist, the reason why this rather than that does
exist ought not to be sought from definitions, otherwise not
existing would impl~ a contradiction, and other things would
not be possible. . . . 0
It is worth noting that, in Kant's initiating discussions
and in all philosophical usage since Kant, "analytic" is essentially a contrastive concept and the point of calling a
proposition analytic is not fully intelligible without the
correlative concept of "synthetic" propositions. Neither
Kant nor any post-Kantian philosopher who uses the concepts, analytic and synthetic, has said that all truths are
analytic. The contrast is always the basis for a dichotomous
classification of truths. There are philosophical controversies concerning the viability of the analytic-synthetic distinction altogether, though philosophers do, for the most
part, accept the distinction." There are none who accept
the distinction and then find that all true propositions fall
into just one of the two available classes.
It is this extravagant opinion, that no philosopher would
dream of holding himself, that is so commonly assigned to
Leibniz. This reading of Leibniz requires, then, that we
retrospectively apply to his thought an essentially contrastive concept that was introduced long after his death by
Kant and, at the same time, it requires us to suppose that
Leibniz uses this contrastive concept noncontrastively
and that he puts all truths on one side, though no other
philosopher would do that. Once this interpretation is introduced, it turns out to be incompatible with almost
everything that Leibniz said. This circumstance, instead
of leading to the prompt rejection of the interpretation, or
even to suspicions about it, has spawned various ingenious
efforts to deal with the Leibniz' s inconsistencies, namely
those that the interpretation itself creates. The most outrageous plan for resolving these created difficulties is
surely Russell's. Russell supposes that though Leibniz says
that there are contingent truths he does not believe that
there are any, since Leibniz really thinks that all truths are
analytic and therefore, necessary. Russell finds that Leibniz
was a fellow of poor character, lacking "moral elevation" 52
so he basely concealed his true views after discovering
that they did not please Antoine Arnauld in 1686.53 If Russell were right, we should have to think that Leibniz went
on, after 1686, to write huge books and endless letters and
articles, and thousands of fragments that no one saw but
himself, in all of which he insincerely asserted that there
32
are contingent truths only because he thought that this
opinion would more appealing to his royal patrons and religious authorities than his real belief that everything is
necessary.
Other critics have not followed Russell in these accusations, but neither have they rejected the idea that, for
Leibniz, all truths are analytic. Why not? One obvious reason hinges on the word "contains." Leibniz states in many
places that if any proposition is true then the predicate is
contained in the subject of that proposition, or the subject
contains the predicate. Furthermore, it is quite possible
that Kant had in mind just this Leibnizean use of "contains" when he introduced the distinction between analytic and synthetic truths by saying that the predicate is
contained in the subject of analytic truths, while it is not
contained in the subject of synthetic truths which add
something, as Kant puts it, that is not already thought in
the subject concept. So we have two suggestive facts:
First, Leibniz said that in all truths the predicate is contained in the subject, and, second, Kant said that, if the
predicate is contained in the subject, you have an analytic
truth. Combining these we can get: Leibniz finds that all
truths are analytic.
But this requires the additional premise that Leibniz
and Kant mean the same thing when they speak of the
predicate being contained in the subject of a proposition.
How can that possibly be when Leibniz makes it clear,
again and again, that his "containment of the predicate in
the subject" is compatible with the contingent status of a
proposition? In the essay "On Necessary and Contingent
Truths," Leibniz says
Verum est affirmatum, cuius praedicatum inest subjecto,
itaque in omni Propositione vera affirmativa, necessaria vel
contingente, universa1i vel singulari, notio praedicati aliquo
modo continetur in notione subjecti; . ...
Assertions are true of which the predicate is in the subject, so
that in all true affirmative propositions, whether necessary
or contingent, universal or singular, the notion of the predicate is contained in some way in the notion of the subject; . ... 54
Again, this citation is selected from a number of discussions which have the same force. I have added the emphasis, "aliquo modo continetur," that is, ''contained in some
way." What are the different ways in which the predicate
might be contained? Leibniz clearly envisions two possibilities. In the case of necessary truths, containment of
the predicate in the subject is a matter of meaning, that is,
containment is shown "ex definitione" of "per analysin
terminorum." Only in these cases is the reason for the
containment a "necessitating reason." 55 In the case of
contingent propositions Leibniz says that there is no necessitating reason but only an "inclining reason" for the
presence of the predicate in the notion of the subject.56
Again, Leibniz distinguishes between predicates that are
part of the essence of the subject and predicates that
AUTIJMN/WINTER 1982-83
�are in the subject but not part of the essence of the subject. Only propositions that ascribe essential predicates
are necessary.
It seems to me beyond dispute that, were Leibniz informed of Kant's conception of analytic and synthetic
propositions, he would not say that he finds all truths analytic. His stated distinctions prepare for a much more
plausible response. Analytic truths are those for which
there is a necessitating reason for the inclusion of the
predicate in the subject. These are propositions true by
definition. They ascribe essential predicates. The denials
of these are contradictory. There are other propositions
which are synthetic. They are contingent propositions
where the reason for the subject's containment of the
predicate is not a necessitating reason. They are not
shown true by appeal to the meanings of terms. They do
not involve essential predicates of their subjects. And
their denials are not contradictory.
That Kant's analytic statements are all necessary is a
logical point at the most elementary level. Leibniz, who
was, after all, a great logician, could not fail to notice that
where the subject contains the predicate in Kant's sense,
a proposition will be necessary and its denial a contradiction. But in all the passages wherein he asserts his containment thesis, Leibniz also asserts that there are contingent
as well as necessary propositions, and these differ "toto
genere."57 In one passage Leibniz actually seems to antici·
pate and reject the idea that his conception of contingent
truths might, somehow, make them necessary along with
ordinary necessities:
Si omnes propositiones etiam contingentes resolvuntur in
propositiones identicas, an non omnes necessariae sunt?
Respondeo, non sane.
If all propositions, even contingencies, are to be resolved into
identical propositions, can we not conclude that they are all
necessary? I answer, Not soundly.
Leibniz then explains that propositions of fact are all about
existing things. What exists, a consequence of God's creation, is always an alternative to other possible existences.
So there is a reason for what exists, but that something exists is not necessary. And he concludes:
... dicendumque est in contingentibus non quidem demonstrari praedicatum ex notione subjecti; sed tantum eius rationem reddi, quae non necessitet sed inclinet.
It must be said that in contingencies the predicate is by no
means to be demonstrated from the notion of the subject; but
rather a reason for it is given which does not necessitate but
inclines. 58
Furthermore, in many presentations of the contain~
ment thesis about all truths it is plain that Leibniz does
not think he is asserting something controversial or even
original in the least way. He intends this claim, rather, as
an expression of a conception of truth shared by most
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
philosophers." He thinks it is Aristotle's conception of
truth, as well as that of ail the leading scholastics he can
think of. But Leibniz does not propose that Aristotle and
most scholastics held that ail truths are necessary and that
they can all be established from the analysis of meanings.
Leibniz would recognize that as an extreme and unfamiliar
view, while his containment thesis is presumably familiar
and innocuous. In one passage, Leibniz says, "[In a true
proposition, the predicate is contained in the subject] or I
do not know what truth is."60 This is just hyperbolic rhet·
oric for expressing the noncontroversial status of the containment thesis as Leibniz understands it.
It is not hard to state just what the containment thesis
does mean as Leibniz intends it. It asserts only what might
be expressed as follows: If'S is P' is true, then, of course, P
must actually qualify the subject S. That is, P must be a
feature of that subject, for that is just what the sentence
states. In other words, a list of all of the features of the
subject S would contain the predicate P, for if P were not
on that list, it could hardly be true to say'S is P.'
Leibniz's thinking is also influenced by a conception
which is now known as the "timelessness of truth." If an
individual has some feature at some time, then the statement, 'S is P' which expresses that fact, is timelessly true.
The statement does not become true when the individual
comes to have the feature. This is not a mysterious doc·
trine if we think of the temporal qualification as tacitly included in the predicate. Then we get propositions such as
"Reagan is elected in 1980" which is always true, and not
just in 1980. But consider "Reagan is re-elected in 1984."
If this is true, it is now and at all times true, although we
do not now know that it is true. If it is true, then Leibniz
will say that Reagan (now and always) has the feature of
being elected in 1984 although we are not smart enough
to know that in advance. Further, reelection in '84, like
election in '80, is not an essential feature of Reagan, if it is
a feature. That means that, if he is going to be reelected,
that is not a necessary truth, though it is, now, a truth.
Understood in this way, the containment thesis is as uncontroversial as Leibniz expects it to be. The containment
thesis actually provides no support whatever for the idea
that Leibniz takes all truths to be analytic truths.
In addition to his views about containment of predicates in subjects, there are four Leibnizean doctrines that
seem to press readers to the interpretation we are considering. These are (I) that for every truth an a priori proof is
available in principle; (2) That God is able, because his
mental powers are infinite, to reduce contingent propositions to identities and thus appreciate their truth, while,
for mentally weaker men, a posteriori experience is the only
source of knowledge of contingencies; (3) There is a complete concept for every individual so that one who knows
the concept would know everything that was, is, or will be
true of that individual; and (4) An individual is a species infima, that is, a minimal species.
(1) In many passages and in various contexts Leibniz
33
�says that there is an a priori proof for all true propositions,
although we are often unable to produce that a priori
proof. Now, most philosophers of the twentieth century
think that the feasibility of a priori proof is equivalent to,
or is certainly a reliable mark of, necessary status. To prove
some proposition a priori means, for us, to prove it without any appeal to the facts of the world, which are only
discoverable a posteriori, or by experience. Again, we are
now inclined to think that if a proof does not need any appeal to the facts it must rely wholly on analysis of concepts
and meanings. That means, for us, that a proposition provable a priori will be an analytic truth and, therefore,
necessary.
In considering Leibniz's ideas, however, this line of
thought must be wholly set aside. It is simply an error to
project into Leibniz's thought any restriction of a priori
status to propositions that are necessary or defensible by
appeal to meanings alone. God's policy of action: selection of the best, and man's policy: selection of the apparent best, are premises that Leibniz plainly admits in a priori
proofs, but he regards these as contingent premises and
their contingency will be inherited by whatever is proved
with their help. In fact, the contingency of all created existence alone guarantees the contingency of all matters of
fact even though a sufficient intelligence would be able to
predict them, using God's selection of the best as a premise. Leibniz says,
Principium primum circa existentia est propositio haec: Deus
vult eligere perfectissimum. Haec propositio demonstrari non
potest; est omnium propositionum facti prima, seu origo omnis existentiae contingentiae.
The first principle concerning existence is this proposition:
God wants to choose the best. This proposition cannot be
demonstrated; it is first of all propositions of fact; or the
source of all contingent existence.61
The confinement of a priori to analytic truth is plainly
wrong even for thinking about Kant, as his fundamental
concept, synthetic a priori truth, testifies.
(2) Obviously we do not and cannot produce apy of the
a priori proofs for contingent facts that Leibniz says are
possibile in principle. The reason he gives for our failure is
that the world is infinitely complicated and each thing in
it is related to everything else. An a priori proof of anything will have, as a consequence, to be an a priori proof of
everything. It will have to take an infinity of factors into
consideration. Our minds are clearly not up to such proofs.
But an infinite mind, the mind of God, and only such a
mind, could actually frame and grasp such proofs. This
strand of speculation occurs frequently in Leibniz's writings and it has contributed to the idea that Leibniz thinks
that all truths are analytic although we finite minds cannot appreciate the analyticity of what we discover through
experience. Therefore we call these "contingent truths".
Only God can understand these truths as analytic truths,
but such they surely are.62
34
Leibniz frequently alludes to infinite analysis in mathematics. He likes to say that he appreciated the true character of contingencies when he placed them in the context
of infinite mathematic~] analysis. Infinite analysis is the
"radix contingentiae": the root of contingency. Again, he
says that it takes a little flair for mathematics to grasp the
nature of contingent truths which are only resolvable, in
some sense, at infinity, as curves meet their asymptotes at
infinity, and an infinite-sided polygon becomes a circle.
Contingent truths are often said to be like incommensurable ratios whose exact value is the sum of an infinite series of factors. And Leibniz actually seems insecure in this
analogy because we finite minds are capable of summing
such infinite series.63
Many of those who say that Leibniz makes all truth analytic are most encouraged by this appeal to infinite analysis. My guess is that such readers think that Leibniz means
that we treat propositions as contingent because we cannot understand their necessity. These readers rightly note
something that Leibniz surely does mean, namely, that
what is only a posteriori to a finite mind may be a priori to
an infinite one. They go on to the plausible but faulty extension: What is contingent to a finite mind may be necessary to an infinite one, and what is synthetic for us may be
analytic for God. These extensions would only be legitimate if we could say that the infinite understanding that
God is capable of is an understanding of meanings and
definitions. Why should we think that? Of course, Leibniz
does mean that an infinite analysis would be required to
find all the predicates contained in a given substancesubject. But we have seen that the reasons for containment
do not all give rise to necessary truths or analytic propositions. There is nothing in the idea of an infinity of predicates that tends to make them all essential predicates.
Leibniz sometimes says explicitly that infinite analysis
of which only God is capable is needed to reduce contingent truths to identities. Can't we say that all identities
are necessary? Identities come into the picture only via
the notion of containment. If P is contained in S then the
identity underlying'S is P' is expressible as'S (which hasP
in it) is P', the identical part of which is 'What is Pis P.'
Let us agree that this is a necessary truth if anything is.
What follows? If P is a contingent feature of S, then the
identity is also statable as 'What is contingently P is contingently P.' But to point out that this identity, like all
identities, is necessary does not in any way undercut the
contingency of 'S is P'.
At times, Leibniz did worry lest his view that all truths
rest on identities make them all necessary. In a passage already quoted he asks, "If true propositions all reduce to
identities are they not all necessary?" He then tries to dispel the appearance of necessity in a manner much like
that I have just proposed. To say that there is an underlying identity only means that the predicate is contained in
the subject. But the truth in question is necessary only if
the containment is essential"ex notione subjecti" and not
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�if there is a merely inclining reason for the containment, a
reason "quae non necessitet."64 The Same understandable
worry sometimes leads Leibniz to d~ny that contingent
propositions really reduce to identities at all:
... ita in contingentibus datur connexio [relatioque] termi~
norum sive veritas, etsi ea ad principium contradictionis sive
necessitatis per analysin in identicas reduci nequeat.
-. .. accordingly, in the case of contingencies, a connection
[and relation] of terms is given, though it cannot be reduced
to the principle of contradiction or necessity through analysis
into identitiesP
But in this very passage Leibniz reasserts his idea that
God's infinite analysis gives him a view of contingencies
that we cannot share. It is, then, only a priori knowledge
and not necessity or analyticity that infinite analysis yields.
It is likely that the same reflections underly Leibniz's
misgivings about necessity in this passage:
... non intelligentem quomodo praedicatum subjecto inesse
posset, nee tamen fieret necessaria.
... I did not understand in what way the predicate can be
contained in the subject1 and yet not make the proposition
necessary.66
Leibniz did not forget his distinction between necessitat·
ing and inclining reasons here. It is just because the containment thesis will always generate an identity that it so
strongly suggests the necessity of the analyzed proposi·
tion to Leibniz and his readers. But, as we have seen,
Leibniz would rather abandon the claim that an identity
underlies every contingent truth than regard such truths
as necessary.
The best support for the idea that Leibniz makes even
contingent truths analytic may come from passages like
this one:
Verum est vel necessarium vel contingens. Verum necessarium sciri potest per finitam seriem substitutionum seu per
coincidentia commensurabilia1 verum contingens per infinitam1 seu per coincidentia incommensurabilia. Verum necessaria est cujus veritas est explicabilis; contingens cujus veritas
est inexplicabilis. Probatio a priori seu [demonstratio] Apodixis
est explicatio veritas.
Truth is either necessary or contingent. Necessary truth can
be known through a finite series of substitutions or through a
commensurable coincidence [resolution to identity] 1 contingent truth by infinite analysis 1 or through incommensurable
coincidence. Necessary truth is that of which the truth is explicable; contingent1 that of which the truth is inexplicable. A
priori or apodictic demonstration is explication of truth.67
Leibniz never makes it entirely clear in just what way appeal to infinity is supposed to help us to understand contingency. In spite of the large number of passages in which
he makes use of the analogy of incommensurability, he
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
never makes it clear just how this analogy is to be under·
stood either. Furthermore, his appeal to "substitutions"
in passages like the one just cited sounds menacingly necessitarian. Be this as it may, we can be sure that Leibniz
did not think that these analogies go to show that contin·
gent propositions are really analytic. He surely does mean
that we cannot complete son;te kind of analysis which God
can complete, and this because the analysis in question is
infinite. But to make a proposition analytic, Leibniz would
have to say not only that its full analysis requires an infi·
nite mind, but also that that analysis is wholly conceptual
and that the substitutions employed in the analysis are all
of them definitional substitutions. Mere assertion that
analyses are infinite does not imply that they are confined
to conceptual matters. On the contrary, what God discovers through his infinite analysis is what we have to learn
through experience. This prominently includes knowledge
of causes of events and of free decisions, that is, of contingencies. In countless passages, including those we discussed in the first two parts of this essay, Leibniz makes it
clear that God's foreknowledge is foreknowledge of contingent facts, of mechanically caused events, and of freely
chosen actions. The a prioricity of God's foreknowledge is
always distinguished from the necessity of what he knows.
God cannot reduce actions and causes to definitions because they are not matters of definition.
Leibniz usually, perhaps invariably, combines his idea
that God can make infinite analyses with the thought that
God can know contingent truths a priori. The above passage ends saying that contingent truths are inexplicable
by men and that by explicability is meant demonstrability
a priori. This is the mystery about contingent truths that
infinite analysis is to make intelligible. God's powers enable him to prove contingent propositions a priori, but
that does not convert contingent truths into necessary or
analytic propositions.
Here is what Leibniz really has in mind in his discussion
of infinite analysis that makes possible a priori knowledge
of facts. We men have enough understanding of the world
to predict a few things like eclipses and next month's tides.
The more knowledgeable and brilliant we are the more we.
can predict. Some of our predictions depend on our knowledge of our own future actions. We can predict that we
will not run out of gas on a long trip because we know that
we will stop and refuel when we run low. In these ways,
God is like us but infinitely wiser and more powerful. He
has been able to predict everything from the beginning.
"Everything" includes an infinite complexity of mechanically caused events and freely undertaken actions and
these are all contingent.68 God knows all the contingent
effects of mechanical causes and all the free decisions that
agents will ever take. Everything is connected with every·
thing else, so that the infinite truth of the world appears,
from a particular point of view, in the complete truth
about any individual. But this enormous truth contains a
great deal that is irreducibly contingent.
35
�God's knowledge is wholly a priori ,since he knows everything before he creates the world of which he has knowledge. He knows that this is the way things will turn out, if
he creates just such individuals subject to just such natural
laws, and also creates such free men acting on such principles. That all this is knowledge of the actual world is a consequence of God's decision to create this "series of things."
Here again we have a contingency. He creates as he does
in light of a mental comparison with other possibilities
each of which is also infinitely complex. ·God might have
created another world, or none. That would not be contradictory. But his creative action is contingent and a great
many of the things that happen in the world he created
happen contingently. Perhaps we can say that for Leibniz
anything that could be said to "happen" is contingent.
For he describes necessary and essential truths about the
world as conditional."
(3) Leibniz regularly says that every individual has a
"complete concept" and that all the truths, past, present
and future, about an individual could be read off from the
complete concept. This gives rise to the thought that
truths about individuals are conceptual truths, for does he
not say expressly that they can be got out of concepts? Beyond this, Leibniz is a metaphysical individualist. The
universe consists wholly of a multiplicity of entities that
Leibniz calls substances. These are basic individuals whose
existence manifests a true unity and independence. All
truths about the created universe are truths about these
substances. Again, this is an expression of Leibniz's nomi·
nalism. At his most theoretical, Leibniz says that all substances are what he calls monads. His theory of monads is
notoriously difficult to relate to discourse at the less abstract levels of physical science, psychology, and ethics. I
think it is certain that Leibniz himself never connected
his Monadology with other universes of discourse in any
definite way.70 Nonetheless, Leibniz also allows discourse
in which far less theoretical individuals such as persons
and physical bodies are the subjects about which truths
may be asserted. At both the most theoretical and the
more practical levels of discourse .he defends the idea that
every individual has a complete concept and he freely uses
persons and blocks of marble as illustrations of individual
things with complete concepts.71 When Leibniz wrote to
Arnauld saying that the entire history of the individual is
contained in its complete concept, down to the minutest
detail and once and for all, Arnauld found in this doctrine
"a necessity more than fatal." 72 Thus, Arnauld may be the
first of those who found in this opinion of Leibniz a philosophy that excludes all contingency. Readers who now
say that Leibniz makes all truths analytic in connection
with the complete-concept thesis are reasserting Arnauld's
initial reaction.
The analyticity interpretation gets support here because
we so naturally suppose that to speak about what is in a
concept is to speak about meanings. If all truths about in-
36
dividual substances can be generated by knowledge of concepts, then they all come from meanings and are, therefore,
analytic. This understanding is inadequate for reasons
much like those we have already stated in the context of a
priori proof and infinite analysis. Leibniz is using the term
"concept" of a substance so that all features of a substance, and not merely essential, definitional, or necessary
features, will appear in the concept. He uses the word
"concept" to contrast with talk about the substance itself
as an existant thing. The concept is the representation of
the thing. The features of the concept follow the features
of the thing and include contingent elements, if the thing
has contingent features.
Of course, the concept of the individual is accessible to
God before creation, so God is not merely forming a representation of an existant. This a priori accessibility of the
concept is, again, an important part of the doctrine that
encourages the analyticity thesis about Leibniz. Since the
concept pre-exists the thing of which it is the concept,
truths derived just from the concept must be conceptual
truths. But, again, this is wrong. We finite minds can have
concepts of things before they exist, and whether or not
they later exist. We may have a complete concept (relatively speaking, of course) of a certain engine, and then we
may build the engine that just fits that concept, or we may
build another, or none, if other ideas suit us better. This is
the way we should think of Leibniz' s God, allowing the
appropriate superiority of his power and wisdom. When
we think in advance that the bearings we have designed
for our engine will not last for more than one year of constant use, we envision a contingent feature of our engine.
If we build the engine and are entirely right about the
bearings, the fact that they wear out in less than a year
does not become a kind of necessary truth. It is a contingent truth that we were able to foresee, so that it was part
of our concept of this engine before the engine existed.
To call it "a truth about an engine" presupposes that the
engine is built. If we do not go on to build the engine,
then all we have is a conditional truth. "If we build such
an engine, and if the laws of nature are as we assert them
to be, then the bearings of that engine will wear out in less
than a year." This is a necessary truth, but, as Leibniz
himself says, its content is only of the form, "Such a thing
posited, such another thing is."73
We conclude, that for God and for man, the existence
of concepts of things prior to the existence of the things
of which they are concepts does not in any way imply that
truths about the things, legible from the concepts, are
necessary or analytic. In the absence of the existence of
the thing, such truths are not truths about individuals at
all. With the existence, even the subsequent existence,
nothing prevents them from being contingent truths.
(4) Leibniz sometimes says that an individual is a species
infima.74 That is, each substance is a least species, a species having only one member, namely, that individual substance itself. Now truths about the relation of species and
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�subspecies are ordinarily truths based wholly on meanings
within some scheme of classification. Let us assume in
any case, that such is the status of assertions like, "Cats
are mammals." Let us assume that this and other truths
like it are necessary and analytic truths. In the example,
we can see that being a member of the smaller class, cats,
has as an essential requirement being in the larger class,
mammals. If sentences about individuals could be assimi·
lated to this pattern they too would be necessary and analytic. It is as though the more defining qualifications one
introduces in speaking of a species, the fewer will be the
individuals that instantiate that species-concept. Then
Leibniz may seem to be saying that the most articulate
species-concept, the ultimate definition of a subspecies, is
always a concept so full that there is but one individual
that can satisfy that species concept. Such a concept will
specify everything about the single individual that is, under this understanding, the member of a species infima.
This idea is plainly close to the complete-concept theory
that we have just considered. The remarks we made about
that theory apply equally to the notion of a species infima.
Leibniz got the idea of a species infima containing one individual out of scholastic thought. The scholastics arrived
at the concept in connection with the problem of individuation. What is it that really makes one thing, one man,
for example, a different individual from another? According to a powerful and plausible Aristotelian view, the body
is the ultimate and decisive foundation for the individuality of things. But for scholastics some things, such as
angels, differ from men in that angels do not have bodies.
The idea that each angel is a species infima is a scholastic
solution to this problem. It tries to accept the Aristotelian
concept of individuation by ruling that there can be only
one bodiless entity of each conceptually distinct sort.75
Leibniz extends the idea of species infima to all individuals whether or not they have bodies. He has in mind
that no two individuals, such as two men, will have just
the same bodily features, nor just the same physical histories, etc. Therefore, classifications based on subtle
enough differences will yield classes containing only one
individual. But, as we saw, this will include classification
with respect to empirical and contingent features, and not
merely with respect to essential features. In fact, Leibniz' s
special objective here is not complete concepts or a priori
proofs but rather a vehicle for expression of his well-known
view that no two individuals are exactly alike, or that individuals never differ in number only.76
I have devoted a lot of detail to this point, that is, the
idea that all truths are analytic according to Leibniz, because it is an error that is widespread and an error that,
once made, leaves Leibniz' s overall thought in hopeless
confusion and inconsistency. I think it can be said that
this misinterpretation is just based on inappropriate modernizations of Leibniz's use of word.s such as "a priori",
"concept", "containment" and 11 teduction to an identity."
Confining ourselves to Leibniz's senses of such expres-
Tiffi ST. JOHNS REVIEW
sions, none of his doctrines lend any support to the popular misinterpretation.
4 Possibility and Possible Worlds
Leibniz often expresses his commitment to contingent
truth by saying that not everything that is possible actu·
ally exists.77 Spinoza and Hobbes are generally bracketed
in his discussions as thinkers who erroneously eliminate
contingency and equate what is possible and what is real.78
If there were no unactualized possibilities, Leibniz says, it
would be inappropriate to praise God for his creation,79
and men could not be free and responsible for their actions.80 To speak of human freedom presupposes that
more than one possibility must be open to a man. To praise
God presupposes that other worlds might have been created. This is the setting of the famous concept of possible
worlds.
The thought of other possible worlds emphasizes a side
of our reflections on contingency that easily generates
puzzles and paradoxes. The recent great revival of discussions of possible worlds has not neglected to revive these
paradoxes and puzzles.81 The paradoxes turn on the idea
of the existence of possible worlds. Suppose we agree that
Leibniz is right about Spinoza. Then Leibniz asserts and
Spinoza denies that there are possibilities beyond those
that are actualities. But what can this mean? Both men
know that what exists, exists, and what does not, does not.
Leibniz says that there are further possibilities, and Spinoza that it is not the case that there are further possibilities. These perhaps inevitable expressions suggest that
the difference is in some way a difference about what
there is. To say that there are unrealized possibilities
seems to be the same as to say that unrealized possibilities
exist somehow. Of course, they do not exist in the way in
which realized possibilities exist. But if Leibniz were to
admit that these possibilities do not exist at all, that they
do not exist in any sense, then what would be the difference between his view and Spinoza's? Generally, this kind
of thinking has led many, and sometimes Leibniz among
them, to think of a possible world as a kind of existent
thing. Because it gives unrealized possible worlds some
kind of ontological weight, I call this the ontological inter·
pretation of possible worlds.
The temptations and advantages of the ontological interpretation can be illustrated in connection with Leibniz's
discussions of the "problem of evil." Among the creatures
of God are some, some men, for example, whose acts are
vicious, whose characters are corrupt, and whose very
constitution is deficient. How can an all-powerful and allgood God have produced such creatures? One view of
Leibniz's solution to this problem is that, in Leibniz's system, God's creation does not include the fashioning of
such deficient individuals at all because all individuals, as
possibilities, exist eternally and, therefore, pre-exist all creative acts of God. A recent exposition states:
37
�siderable ontological standing. God is not responsible for
these individuals because they exist as possibilities quite
independently of him.
The ontological interpretation of possible worlds is
especially clear in a passage at the end of the Theodicee
where Leibniz adds a sequel to the dialogue of Lorenzo
Valla that he has retold. The high priest Theodore is sent
by Jupiter to be instructed by Pallas Athena so that he will
understand how misery and corruption of some men is
compatible with the greatness and goodness of God. The
goddess meets Theodore on the steps of an immehse palace of inconceivable brilliance. After first making him capable of receiving divine enlightenment, Athena tells him:
system wherein competing organisms fully exploit every
possibility and exist in every ecological niche. Both Russell and Arthur Lovejoy point out that, if Leibniz's theory
of competing possibilities is taken literally, there appears
to be no role at all for God in determining what exists.85
This is precisely because the theory gives possibilities not
only a kind of existence but also a certain activity that is
independent of and precedes actuality.
Leibniz seems to have thought of the "urge to exist" of
possibilities as at best a convenient metaphor. He usually
speaks of unrealized possibilities as existing only as thoughts
in the mind of God. In the Theodicee he says that the idea
of a struggle for actual existence must really be understood
as a conflict of "reasons in the perfect understanding of
God," and at least once he expressly asserted that possible
things, since they do not exist, can have no power to bring
themselves into existence.86 These views of possibility are
deflationary in comparison with the ontological interpretation that makes possibilities into things that are. When
Leibniz follows this ontologically restrained line of thought
and speaks of possibilities that God considers before crea·
tion as "ideas", he means that something that is just an
idea contrasts with things that exist in any sense at all.
The fact that God recognizes that many different actualities might arise, depending upc,m what he freely decides to
create, does not mean that anything already exists, as
though ready for his "examination" in its fully formed
state, merely leaving God to determine whether or not to
license the full-blooded actuality of an already subsisting
entity."
Leibniz's writings and life-long interest in the theory of
combinations shed light on his thinking about possibility.
In the Ars Combinatoria Leibniz relates his abstract development of a theory of combinations to truth by way of the
reflection that a proposition is composed of a subject and
a predicate and is, therefore, an instance of binary combi-
You see here the palace of destinies, of which I am the keeper.
There are representations here, not only of everything that
happens, but also of all that is possible; and Jupiter; having reviewed these representations before the beginning of the existing world, examined the possibilities for worlds, and made
It is, then, the business of inventive [combinatory] logic (as far
as it concerns propositions) to solve this problem: (i) given a
subject to find its predicates. (ii) given a predicate to find its
subjects.88
Each substance has "always" subsistfd, or, strictly speaking,
has had a conceptual mode of being that lies outside of time
altogether~sub ratio possibilitatis. Its total nature was determined, for its adequate and complete notion (including all its
predicates save existence) was fiXed. For this God is in no way
responsible; it is an object of his understanding and no creature of his will.82
According to this line of thought, possibilities are completed essences which God knows about but does not
make. Creation consists in admitting into actuality certain
of these individuals who, actuality apart, are completely
formed. In his policy for conferring actual existence on
these individuals God sees to it that the best possible world
becomes the actual world. This best possible world has
some defective individuals in it but it is, on balance, better
than any possible alternative. God did not construct these
deficient individuals, nor their betters. He merely allowed
them, so to speak, through the portals of actuality. I am
not particularly concerned here with the success of this
well-known formula for the absolution of God. I do want
to stress that, insofar as it does absolve him from the responsibility for having created deficient individuals, it
gives those individuals, as mere possibilities, a certain con-
the choice of the best of all. ... Thereupon, the goddess led
Theodore into one of the apartments: when he was there, it
was no longer an apartment, it was a world.83
In this forceful, entertaining and figurative exploitation of
the concept of possible worlds, unrealized possibilities are
construed on the pattern of other worlds that one might
visit or observe.84
The high-water mark of this realistic interpretation of
possibility in Leibniz is probably his theory of exigentia.
According to this view, all possibilities contain a certain
urge to exist. The actual world is the net effect of the strivings of individuals many of which are incompatible with
one another. The result is a world of maximal existence
which we might think of on analogy with an ecological
38
nation.
From the point of view of combinations, Leibniz is think·
ing of possible truths and not actual truths. That is, combinatory analysis will never enable us to see that the ascription
of one predicate to a subject makes a true proposition and
the ascription of another makes a false proposition. But
if our language were adequate and complete enough, a
merely combinatory procedure would generate all the
statements about every subject that could possibly be
true.
The idea of an adequate and complete language is itself
problematic. Leibniz always supposes that adequacy will
be enhanced by analysis and definitions that reduce complex predicates to their simpler, .and ultimately, to their
primitive constituents. The completeness of a language
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�would require that the miscellany of subject terms of ordinary speech be replaced by terms representing the simple
constituents of reality. This kind of project faces a large
number of philosophical and technical difficulties. It is
certainly a familiar project in twentieth-century philosophy. Ideas very much like those of Leibniz on the subject
of possibility, ideal language, and combinatory analysis lie
behind the modern development of truth-functional analysis, Russell's Hlogical atomism", the metaphysics and
"picture-theory" of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Rudolph
Carnap's many versions of the theory of "state-descriptions", and the extensional semantics of quantification
theory. Like Leibniz's schemes, a few of these recent projects for ideal languages have got beyond the programmatic
stage. The scheme itself, however, enables us to grasp and
evaluate Leibniz's thinking about possible worlds.
A drastically simplified model for the world will be helpful. Suppose that the universe could only have two constituent substances in it, apart from God. Suppose these
substances are two dice and that names for each of them
are the simple subject terms of our language. Suppose,
further, that the only truth to be told about a die is what
number of dots it shows. Then the simple predicates of
the language will all be expressions like "shows a three"
and "shows a six." Let us imagine that the whole history
of the universe is just the outcome of one roll of the dice.
The roll itself is not even a part of reality. Then all the
truth there is about the universe would consist in saying
what number of dots between one and six each of the dice
shows. We can write this as a pair of numbers: for example, let the truth be that (5, 6), which is to be read, "The
first die shows a five and the second a six." In this representation the subject terms are indicated just by position
in the pair. Leibniz' s problem of the Ars Combinatoria
would be this: Find all the predicates of the first die. And
the solution would be the set of all simple predicates
{shows a one, shows a two, ... , shows a six}.
All subjects of a given predicate, for instance, the predicate "shows a two," would be the set of all the subjects or
{the first die, the second die}.
Though creation will be a trifling matter with this attenuated universe, God still has the job of determining which
possible world shall come into existence. That means that
God will determine which of the several outcomes for a roll
of two dice shall be the actual universe. Being wise, God
understands that the possible worlds are exhausted in the
array of combinations:
(I ,I)
(2,1)
(3,1)
(4,1)
(5,1)
(6,1)
(1,2)
(2,2)
(3,2)
(4,2)
(5,2)
(6,2)
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
(1,3)
(2,3)
(3,3)
(4,3)
(5,3)
(6,3)
(1,4)
(2,4)
(3,4)
(4,4)
(5,4)
(6,4)
(1,5)
(2,5)
(3,5)
(4,5)
(5,5)
(6,5)
(1,6)
(2,6)
(3,6)
(4,6)
(5,6)
(6,6).
Now we need something to distinguish the different possible worlds represented in this array in terms of value so
as to make it thinkable in the framework of the analogy that
God might judge one possible world better than another.
Leibniz says that God combines things so as to produce a
maximum of ordered variety. Let us say that the numerical total of dots on both dice measures the quantity of existence and that variety is represented only by evenness
and oddness of the number of dots on each die. Under this
stipulation, the possible world (6,6) maximizes quantity but
not variety, while (4,5) maximizes variety but not quantity.
(5,6) offers a maximum of quantity with variety, so this
may be our model for the best possible world.89
Were the universe as simple as this dice-world, a mentality no more powerful than ours could survey possible
worlds in advance as well as any divinity. We could know,
as God would, that there are eleven possible totals of dots,
ranging from two to twelve. There are fifteen worlds with
sums less than seven and fifteen with sums more than seven.
On the array, these sets of fifteen possible worlds are displayed above and below, respectively, the diagonal going
from the lower left to the upper right. The diagonal itself
contains the six ways of getting a total of seven, which is
more ways than there are for getting any other total. We
could extend this set of analytical truths about the set of
possible outcomes indefinitely. These truths about possible outcomes are all accessible to us prior to rolling the dice.
Leibniz thinks of such intelligible considerations about
possible worlds as themselves necessary truths, as indeed
these are when considered as statements of possible arithmetical combinations. Should we point out to Leibniz that,
when these mathematical reflections are transferred to actual physical objects, they cease to be necessary truths?
Real dice might be so constructed (for instance, they might
be loaded) so that certain combinations will never come up.
We might then say, for example, that it is not possible to
roll a seven with a certain pair of dice. Still this would be a
matter of hypothetical necessity according to Leibniz, depending on physical laws and conditions. The outcome
(3,4) would not be contradictory, even for loaded dice. After
all, God will decide the physical laws too, so He can make
uninhibited use of combinatorially analyzed possibilities
in connection with possible physical objects.
Thinking in terms of this simple model of the world and
alternative possibilities, and in terms of our own real abilities to understand possibilities in advance, reduces our impulse to construe possible worlds as having any kind of existence at all apart from the one possible world which is
the world. Our own thought and survey of possible outcomes of a roll of dice does not depend on thinking that
those possibilities somehow exist with fully articulated status in advance of any rolling. No outcomes of railings preexist the actual rolling in any sense whatever, and speech
about possible outcomes only refers to what may happen
after rolling. When Leibniz says that God considers a
world or worlds in which Adam does not sin as well as worlds
39
�in which he does, he need mean by this nothing more than
a vastly more complicated case logically quite like our reflection that, in some rolls, the first die comes up a one,
and in others it does not. That these outcomes are open to
intelligent survey does not mean that they must already
exist in any sense at all.
In contemporary discussions of modal concepts in logic,
the ontologically weighty interpretation of possible worlds
is currently defended by David Lewis. In his theory, the
ontological standing of all possible worlds is so consider·
able that "real" or "actual" cease to be ways of making
fundamental distinctions between one possible world and
all the others.90 Lewis thinks that "actual" and "real" are
indexical expressions like <~here" and "now."91 Any place
at all is "here" for a person speaking from that place. One
time is not fundamentally distinguished from others by
being now. In a similar way, there is an internal and an external use of "actual" in characterizing worlds. Of course,
speaking within this possible world, we say that all the
others are merely possible while this one is actual. But the
inhabitants of other possible worlds will inevitably make
the same claim for the actuality of their world, and with
the same justice. To say that other possible worlds are not
actual does not diminish them in point of ontological
standing anymore than it diminishes the existence of places
to say that they are not liere. This ingenious, perhaps intuitively unconvincing proposal is egalitarian about the
existence of all possible worlds. Metaphysically speaking,
they are all equally constituents of reality.
Possible worlds are all of them representations like the
items in the array that represents thirty-six possible outcomes of one roll of a pair of dice. The real world is not a
representation. It is the world. So, too, by our hypothesis,
there is but one roll of the dice. The real world cannot be
identified with one of the items on the array, not even with
the item that represents the world as it actually is. Lewis's
theory about possible worlds succumbs, first, to the tempting thought that there are thirty-five items of one kind
and one item of a different kind, thirty-five shadowy worlds
and one full-blooded reality. On this basis, Lewis is able to
propose that full-bloodness or actuality is perspectival. We
have to judge, so Lewis thinks, from within one of these
thirty-six worlds. Naturally, the one we judge from will be
called "actual" and the others "merely possible." But we do
not judge from within one of these worlds, for none of
them is the world. We have, in the dice-world, thirty-six descriptions and one world. Nobody lives in descriptions and
must judge from such vantage points. The thirty-six possibilities all deserve the old scholastic label: "entia rationis."
Leibniz makes use of this thought when he points out
that we have to think even of the actual world as a possible world and as contemplated by God. 92 We will be safe
from ontological largesse as long as we make all possible
worlds alike, and do not think of them as all shadowy except one.
40
The most decisive argument against any ontological interpretation of possible worlds in the context of Leibniz's
thinking is that it undercuts the view of possibility that he
defends. Leibniz himself presents this argument. If possibilities were any kind of subsisting things, intelligible,
because they are somehow, there like Athena's palace of
destinies, to be inspected by God or man, then they would
have to be objects of a kind of experience, rather than products of reason and understanding. Inspection of possible
worlds, were they to exist in any way, would amount to a
further source of a posteriori knowledge. Theodore actually observes other worlds and explicitly gains knowledge
of them and of the comparision with his own world by experience. And that is just what Jupiter has done in contemplating the possibilities prior to creation. But this figure
gives us no reason to think that Leibniz actually inclines
to the ontological interpretation of possibilities in the
Theodicee. Athena, herself, calls the contents of the palace "representations" and though Theodore experiences
other possible events, this is not described as another reality but Comme dans une representation de theatre."93 In
other words, the items from which we learn about possibility are not other worlds with a less robust kind of being,
nor are they other worlds with the same being as ours, when
viewed from within, as David Lewis proposes. They are
not worlds at all but only representations. When thinking
about possibilities we are comparing representations of
worlds with each other.
The fact that we make an actual object like the array of
thirty-six possible dice worlds, or the palace of destinies of
Athena, is an accidental feature of representation. Our
representations could be all of them in imagination only.
But, whether the representations are real objects or only
thoughts, the important point is that we do not have alternative worlds to compare, but only alternative representations, one of which, by hypothesis, represents the world as
it is.
Leibniz makes the point that, if possibilities were to exist as inspectible things, then knowledge of them would
be a_posteriori, in discussing the idea of a "scientia media."
Such a middle science was proposed by Luis Molina,
among others, as a device for resolving the tensions between the concepts of human freedom and predestination. The middle knowledge was supposed to be a kind of
visionary appreciation of things accessible to God and
constituting a third option between the absolute necessity
of definitional and mathematical truth and the mere con·
tingency of matters of fact which we learn in experience.
Leibniz points out that, if the notion of vision actually car·
ries any weight in the concept of "scientia media", the
knowledge deemed accessible to God will be a posteriori
knowledge:
11
Non ergo in quadam Visione consistit DEI scientia, quae imperfecta est et a posteriori; sed in cognitione causae et, a
priori.
AUfUMN/WINfER 1982-83
�Thus the knowledge of God is not made up of a kind of vision1 which is imperfect and a posteriori; but in understanding
of causes, and a priori. 94
This theme becomes immediately relevant to the thought
of existing and inspectible possible worlds when Leibniz
rejects the Molinist claim that God might see the future
infallibly reflected in a great mirror.
Secundum au tares scientiae mediae non possetDEUS rationem
reddere sui pronuntiati, nee mihi explicare. Hoc unum dicere
poterit quaerenti cur ita futurum esse pronuntiet, quod ita
videat actum hunc representari in magna illo specula, intra se
posito, in quo omnia praesentia, futura, absoluta vel condi-
tionata exhibentur. Quae scientia pure empirica est, nee
DEO ipsi satisfaceret, quia rationum cur hoc potius quam illud in specula repraesentetur, non intelligeret.
According to the advocates of the scientia media, God could
not give a reason for his assertions, nor explain them to me.
To someone who asks why he says that things will be thus, he
would be able to say just that it is because he sees this event
represented thus in that great mirror, posited among them, in
which everything present, future, absolute or conditioned is
exhibited. Such knowledge is wholly empirical, and it would
not satisfy God himself because he would not know the reason
for which this rather than that is represented in the mirror.95
A vision in a glass, no matter how accurate and trustworthy,
is only another experience which cannot replace rational
understanding. In the spirit of this conclusion we have to
suppose that God's representations of other possible
worlds have the features that they do because God understands how things would be related in those worlds. The
same holds for the simpler human mind contemplating
the simpler dice-world. The array of thirty-six outcomes
has the constituents that it does because we understand
just what would be possible and we make the representations accordingly. Possible worlds are dependent upon our
understanding, and not the other way around. And if other
possible worlds did exist, somehow, and God could examine them, that would not give him reasoned knowledge
but only a kind of empirical knowledge that is not available to us.
5 Freedom
Leibniz's understanding of freedom is dependent in
many ways on his doctrines concerning contingency and
possibility. Mechanism perennially challenges the claims
of freedom. In the second part of this study, we have seen
Leibniz's proposals for the reconciliation of freedom and
a ubiquitous mechanical causality covering all motions.
The view that all truths are analytic which we have criticized in the third part would also contradict the view that
men are free, and the rejection of that interpretation elim-
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
inates a general threat to Leibniz's doctrines. The theme
of possible worlds, just considered in the fourth part, can
also be interpreted in a way that creates a fundamental
obstacle to freedom.
The thought that a man could have done something other
than what he did do plainly requires that some other action
was possible. Insofar as possible worlds are to offer a way
of expressing our thoughts about possibility, we can say
that, where there is freedom, one action is done in the actual world and other actions in other possible worlds. But
can we say that one and the same man exists in more than
one possible world? Or is an individual confined to just
one world so that other possible worlds could at best contain similar individuals faced with similar choices? If one
and the same man cannot exist in more than one world, the
prospect for freedom is dark. We shall apparently be forced
to construe the idea of the freedom of one individual as
equivalent to the idea of the behavior of more than one
individual.
This is the problem of transworld identity of individuals. It arises in a clear form in Leibniz's exchanges with
Arnauld and it is much discussed in recent literature on
identity and modal concepts.96 Leibniz sometimes seems
to imply that a true individual can exist in one possible
world only. The thesis that there can be no transworld identity is defended at present, again by David Lewis, among
others. It is closely connected with the ontological interpretation of possible worlds just examined. If possible
worlds exist in any sense at all, they seem to be, to that extent, like other places that one might visit, or at least
places of which one might obtain news. Under any such conception, each world will have its own population. At best,
one possible world may have an individual in it who more
or less perfectly resembles, in history and features, an individual in another possible world. Even if such a similarity
were perfect, an individual in one possible world cannot
be the very individual that is in another world any more
than a man born in New York can be the very same individual as an exactly similar man born in New Jersey.
We have repudiated the ontological interpretation of
possible worlds and we have argued that, in his best
thought, Leibniz repudiates it too. If the prohibition on
identity across possible worlds comes entirely from the ontological interpretation we can expect that it will be removed when that interpretation is set aside. If alternative
possible worlds are only representations of different systems and not existing systems of different entities, then it
seems that possible worlds will contain different representations of one and the same individual. Freedom would,
then, not be threatened.
When he received a sketch of the Discourse of Metaphysics from Leibniz in 1686, Arnauld found that the complete
concept of the individual enunciated in Article Thirteen
destroys the foundations of freedom and responsibiity.97
The ensuing exchange on this point brought the problem
41
�of transworld identity to the surface. In that correspondence, Leibniz uses the concept of possible worlds in arguments intended to overcome Arnauld's initially negative
judgment. God knows all the things that Adam and all his
descendants have freely done and all that they ever will
do. He also knows all the things they might have done had
they chosen to act differently, or were they going to
choose differently in the future. This is part of God's knowledge of other possible worlds which he could have created.
In other worlds Adam does different things. How does
Leibniz think it possible to fit freedom for Adam and his
progeny into this picture of God's knowledge and creation? There are two thoughts pertinent to this question
and the second of them hinges on transworld identity.
In the first place, God can know in advance what a man
will freely choose, so free agents do not present an obstacle to God's complete knowledge of the "series of things."
It is this thought that is responsible for the rapid shift in
point of view in the Discourse from the issue of determinism to the issue of foreknowledge." God contemplates all
possible worlds. Some of them have free agents in them
and some do not. Worlds with free creatures in them are
better than worlds without freedom, so God will surely
create one of them. This one is best of all, a judgment that
requires knowledge of the actual series of things and of all
possible series. But God does not produce the events of the
actual world himself. They are produced by the causes that
we rightly mention in explaining those events. Actions are
really done for the reasons the agent has.
Here we find again the point of "On Nature Itself." Explanations have their footing in the world and not merely
in its creator. By analogy, the pistons drive the crankshaft
of an engine and we cannot skip over or drop explanatory
reference to the pistons and explain the motions of the
crankshaft by appealing to the intentions or actions of the
builder of the engine. So in the inanimate world it is forces
that causes motions and not God. When a man acts freely,
he, and not God, determines what he will do. This is the
platform for Leibniz's defense of freedom and reconciliation of freedom with the complete concept of the individual and with God's knowledge. Though everything that I
do belongs to my complete concept, many things belong
contingently, and some because of what I freely choose to
do.
no more impairs my freedom than does another man's
knowledge of how I will vote impair my freedom to vote as
I see fit.
Leibniz's second line of thought about the freedom of
the individual in the correspondence with Arnauld is a
good deal less secure than the first line of thought. In the
passage concerning a possible journey that we have just
quoted, Leibniz touches on the question of the identity of
individuals across possible worlds. In introducing the possible journey as an illustration, Arnauld had sought to distinguish those facts about an individual without which he
could not be the individual that he is from another range
of facts which can vary without affecting identity. Arnauld
thinks that this distinction must be pressed in opposition
to Liebniz's claim that all the facts about an individual are
equally contained in the complete concept of that individ·
ual which God is able to consult before creation. Thus,
Arnauld says, with echos of the Cartesian cogito:
I am certain that, since I think, I, myself, exist. For I cannot
think that I am not, nor that I am not myself. But I can think
that I will make a certain voyage or not, while remaining en-
tirely sure that neither the one nor the other will require that
I am not myself. 100
If we put this in the terminology of possible worlds, Arnauld is asserting that the very same individual can exist
in more than one possible world. In one possible world Arnauld makes a journey and in another world the identical
Arnauld does not make the journey. As we have seen, this
claim rules out the ontological interpretation of possible
worlds.
In responding to this contention Leibniz comes very
close to denying the possibility that the same man may be
a constituent of more than one possible world. In his earlier letters Leibniz had fallen into use of the expression
"possible Adams" and in response to the statement of Arnauld that we have just cited, he says that the notion of
multiple Adams has to be taken figuratively. When we
think about Adam from the point of view of a few salient
characteristics: "that he was the first man, put into the
garden of enjoyment, and that from his side God took a
And there is nothing in me of all that can be conceived sub ratione generalitatis . .. from which it can be deduced that I will
make it necessarily _9 9
woman," 101 we speak as though these few characteristics
determine the individual so thaf he will remain one and
the same substance whether he has or lacks other features. Different completions will be the various possible
Adams, yet, we speak as though they will all be the same
individual, differently completed. This is what Leibniz
says must be understood as a loose and metaphorical way
of speaking. Rigorously speaking, a few salient characteris·
tics do not determine an individual,
God's knowledge of what I will do is not the explanation
for my free action. God knows my motives and he knows
how I will assess my Circumstances and this is the basis of
his knowledge of what I will freely do. God's knowledge
... for there may be an infinity of Adams, that is to say, of
possible persons [sharing these salient characteristicsJ who
would nonetheless differ among themselves . ... the nature of
an individual should be complete a,nd determined. 102
The connection of events, although it is certain, is not necessary, and . .. I am at liberty either to make the journey or not
make the journey, for, although it is involved in my concept
that I will make it, it is also involved that I will make it freely.
42
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�If a man were to differ in any way at all from the actual
Adam, in his features, in his history·, or in his relations to
the rest of the universe, then that man could not be Adam
but, at most, another possible man similar to Adam.
It seems to me that, if he were to rely on this second
line of thought, Leibniz's reconciliation of freedom and
the complete concept of an individual would surely fail. It
is as though Leibniz is here reducing the idea of two alter·
native courses of action available to a free agent to the
quite different idea of two very similar possible individuals, one of whom necessarily pursues one course, while
the other necessarily pursues the other course. If this re-
sult is allowed to stand it must be a severe disappointment
to those who hoped to analyze contingency in terms of
possible worlds. We start by thinking that I could take the
journey, or I could not. It is up to me. Possible world analysis then restates this as the fact that one possible world
has me taking the journey and another has me not taking
it. But now the ontological interpretation exerts its undesirable influence. It cannot be true of one and the same individual that he takes a trip and does not take that trip. So
if these possible worlds are like existing things, even with
a shadowy existence, it will turn out that it cannot be me
that does not take the trip in another possible world but,
instead, a man much like me. This is disappointing because the idea of freedom surely requires that one and the
same individual may either perform or not perform a certain act. Freedom is rejected if we substitute a conception
of two different individuals one of whom performs the act
while the other does not. What another does can never be
part of the essence of my freedom.
Leibniz does not seem to appreciate fully the dangers
implicit in the denial of transworld identity. Yet even in
these passages he does not foreclose an understanding
that will save both the complete concept notion and freedom. Thus, in the same context, Leibniz considers the life
of an individual up to a certain point in time, and the life
of the same individual after that point. The crucial time is
labelled B. B is the time at which the individual does in
fact perform some free action such as setting out on a
journey103 The line ABC then represents the life history
of the individual and the issue of identity and possibility
focusses on the conditions for saying that the individual in
the interval AB is the same as the individual in the interval BC. Since there is a reason for everything, and no free
action is a manifestation of arbitrariness or indifference,
there was a reason prior to B which explains why the journey is taken at B. Since the event at B is a free action, the
existence of a reason means that there is something about
the agent's constitution, thought, perceptions, and assessment of his circumstances prior to B which would make it
possible to predict with complete certainty that he would
make the journey. It is in this sense that everything that
he does is contained in the complete concept of the individual. But as we have stressed in Part Ill, the coercive
reason for a free decision does not necessitate behavior.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
The very idea of a course of action entails that other courses
were possible. The individual whose choice could be predicted by a sufficiently well-informed observer is, nonetheless, really choosing. This too must be counted part of
the complete concept of the individual.
The complete concept gives the impression of conflict
with the concept of free deci>ion. But Leibniz means to
include the fact that he makes free decisions in the complete concept of an individual. That he will make the free
decision to take a journey is as much part of the concept
of a man as is the fact that he will take the journey. We
feel a conflict here that is reinforced by Leibniz' s assertion that an individual who does not make the trip cannot
be the same individual. By the same token an individual
who decides not to make the trip cannot be the same individual. Then how can the decision be free? If we set aside
the ontological interpretation of possible worlds, there is a
way of putting together all of these ideas that reconciles
them all. This requires as the focal element the thought
that a man deciding what to do is, in the jargon of possible
worlds, deciding which of two possible worlds to bring
about. Strictly speaking, there are an infinite number of
possible worlds in which I make the journey and an infinite nu.mber of worlds in which I do not. The set of all
possible worlds is the union of these two sets. In a free action, I determine that the actual world will fall into one
or the other of these two exhaustive sets of possibilities.
In this respect Leibniz' s conception of human freedom is
modelled in the creativity of God. God's work consists in
determining which possible world will be real. He chooses
a world which contains free agents. But that means that
he does not fully determine which world will be real, for
that is partly a consequence of all of the free decisions of
all free agents. Every free act makes a difference as to
what possible world is actual. We have seen that God
knows just which world will be real, but that knowledge
depends upon knowing how men will freely choose. This
means no less than the thought that God's knowledge of
the complete actual world depends upon his knowledge of
our world-choosing actions as well as his own.
At the point of choice an individual can really do either
of two things. If he does one, he makes himself and the
world different from what it would have been had he done
the other. In this sense, insofar as he is free, it is up to a
man to determine which possible individual he is. The result of this decision, like all other features of an individual,
contingent as well as necessary features, belongs to the
complete concept of that individual. So we can say that,
though a man has a real choice, he will not be the same individual he would have been had he chosen differently.
This does not at all require that there is, in some kind of
existence or subsistence, another individual who does
choose differently. The existence of such another would
not help us to understand freedom. I determine what individual I will become not in the sense that there is a collection of individuals and I can become identical to just one
43
�of them. Rather, I can represent my future in different
ways and my action will determine which of these repre·
sentations is a representation of the real world. Insofar as
he means that, when a man acts freely, he forecloses pas·
sibilities that would have made him a different man had
they been realized, Leibniz is certainly right.
. This ultimate reconciliation depends upon accepting
the thought that Leibniz understands every free action as
eliminating worlds from the roster of all possibilities. This
interpretation would have men sharing in just the kind of
creativity that Leibniz assigns to God. Men's power and
knowledge remain insignificant in comparison with divine
power and knowledge, but the essence of human action is
otherwise quite a lot like divine action. In many passages
in his writings this seems to be just the conception of human action that Leibniz does adopt. Thus:
[The rational spirit] is an image of divinity. The spirit not only
has a perception of the works of God but is even capable of
producing something which resembles them ... our soul is ar·
chitectonic in its voluntary actions .... In its realm and in the
small world in which it is allowed to act, the soul imitates
what God performs in the great world. 104
The following abbreviations are used in these notes:
G: I-VII: Gerhardt, C. J., Die Philosophische Schriften von G. W. Leibniz, seven volumes, Berlin, 1885.
Grua I-II: Grua, Gaston, G. W. Leibniz: Textes Inedits, two volumes,
Paris, 1948.
OF: Couturat, Louis, G. W. Leibniz: Opuscules et Fragments Inedits,
Paris, 1903.
L: Loemker, Leroy, Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters, Second
edition, Dordrecht, 1969.
M: Mason, H. T., The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence, Manchester,
1967.
F: Frankfurt, H. G., Editor, Leibniz: Critical Essays, Garden City,
1972.
I have translated the Latin citations from Couturat and Grua, of which
there are no English translations, and the French from Theodicee, G VI.
Other quotations in English translation only are from the works cited in
the relevant notes.
L See "A Brief Demonstration of a Notable Error of Descartes," L:
297-302; also "Critical Thoughts on the General Part of the Principles
of Descartes," especially Leibniz's comments on Part 11, art. 4 and 36, L:
392, and 393-5. Leibniz restates, summarizes, and refers to this issue in
many of his articles and letters.
2. See Mach, E., The Science of Mechanics, McCormack, T. J., tr., La
Salle, 1960, 360-5, and Papineau, D., "The Vis Viva Controversy,"
Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, val. 8, 1977, 111-42.
3. The Passions of the Soul, Haldane and Ross, editors, Descartes: Philosophical Works, Cambridge, 1931, art. xxxv-vi, val. I, 347-8.
4. See "On Nature Itself," L, 503.
5. Principles of Philosophy, art. 1xiv, in Haldane and Ross, val. I, 269.
6. The distinction between primary qualities (as those susceptible of
mathematical characterization and thus objective) and secondary qualities (taken to include all sensuous qualities and to be subjective only) was
first drawn by Galileo. The terminology, "primary" and "secondary," was
first used by Robert Boyle. The distinction plays a fundamental part in
the philosophies of Descartes and Locke and has been retained by many
thinkers up to the preSent. See, for example, Jackson, F., Perception,
London, 1977,ch. 7.
44
7. See Meditations, "Replies to Objections," Haldane and Ross, val. II,
253-4; and Meditations, VI, val. I, 191.
8. Principles of Philosophy, Part II, art. xxxvi.
9. E. g., Letter to Mersenne, Adam and Tannery, Oeuvres de Descartes,
Paris, val. III, 648-9.
10. Principles of Philosophy, Part II, Art. xliv-lii, Adam and Tannery,
vol. VIII-I, 68-70.
11. "Critical Thoughts," L:398-402; and the note to Leibniz's comment
on Part II, Art. 53, G: IV, 382-4.
12. "On Nature," L: 505.
13. "On Nature," L: 505; and Letter to DeVolder, L: 516; see also,
Naert, E., Memoire et conscience de soi selon Leibniz, Paris, 1961, 15-20.
14. Cassirer, E., Leibniz's System in Seinen Wissenschaftlichen
Grundlagen, Mar burg, 1902, Einleitung, art. 7, 90-102.
15. Discourse on Method, Anscombe and Geach, editors, Descartes'
Philosophical Writings, London, 1954, 47.
16. Principles of Philosophy, Part IV, art. cciv, Haldane and Ross, vol. I,
300.
17. "But they who observe how many things regarding the magnet, fire,
and the fabric of the whole world, are here deduced from a very small
number of principles, although they consider that I had taken up these
principles at random and without good· grounds, they will yet acknowledge that it could hardly happen that so much could be coherent if they
were false," Principles of Philosophy, 301. Here Descartes approximates
the so-called hypothetico-deductive conception of theory formation
and confirmation. The degree to which this kind of thinking appears in
Descartes' ideas about scientific knowledge has been generally overlooked.
18. Discourse on Metaphysics, art. 10, L: 308-9.
19. Discourse, art, 22, L: 317-8.
20. Meditations, reply to objections, Haldane and Ross, 219.
21. "On Nature," L: 505.
22. "On Nature," 501.
23. L: 498-508.
24. "On Nature," 500.
25. "On Nature," 501.
26. Boyle, R., "Free Inquiry etc.," 1692; See Loemker's account, L: 498.
27. "On Nature," L: 502.
28. "On Nature," 504-5.
29. See my "The Scientific Background of Descartes' Dualism," this
journal, Winter 1981.
30. "On Nature," L: 502.
31. "On Nature," 503. The writer is Spinoza.
32. " ... [I]f this world were only possible, the individual concept of a
body in this world, containing certain movements as possibilities, would
also contain our laws of motion (which are free decrees of God) but also
as mere possibilities," from Leibniz's remarks on a letter of Arnauld,
M:43.
33. Discourse on Metaphysics, art 10, L: 308-9.
34. See Hobbes' Leviathan, Part I, ch. l-3, and De corpore, Part IV,
ch. 25. For contemporary materialist conceptions of the mind see
Rosenthal, D., editor, Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem, En·
glewood Cliffs, 1971.
35. See O'Shaugnessy, "Observation and the Will," J. Phil., vol. LX,
1963.
36. See my "Teleological Reasoning," J. Phil., LXXV, 1978.
37. For example, Grua, 270-l. The distinction is also discussed in
several letters of the Correspondence with Arnauld.
38. Nouveaux Essais, G: V, 429.
39. M: 43. See note (32), above.
40. See Clarke's fifth letter, addressed to art. 1-20 of Leibniz's previous
letter, Alexander, H. G., editor, The Liebniz-Clarke Correspondence,
Manchester, 1956, especially 98.
41. Leibniz's second letter to Clarke, art 1, Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, 16.
42. Discourse on Metaphysics, art. 5, L: 305.
43. Montgomery, G., Leibniz: Basic Writings, LaSalle, 1902, 127.
44. See Russel4 B., The Philosophy of Leibniz, London, 1902, ch. II~
25-30.
AU1UMN/WINTER 1982-83
�45. Louis Couturat played an especially important role in promoting
this interpretation. See La Logique de Leibniz, Paris, 1901, ch. VI, sect.
5-18, 184-213. Summing up his detailed inVestigation, Couturat says,
"En resume, toutes verite est formellement ou virtuellement identique
ou comme dira Kant, analytique, et par consequent doit pouvoir se
demontrer a priori au moyen des definitions et du principe d'identite,"
210. Couturat's book influenced Russell to change his interpretation
from his 1902 exposition, according to which Leibniz makes existential
propositions contingent, to the 1903 view that Leibniz did not really
believe in contingency at all since he held that all truths are analytic.
The prestige of Russell and Couturat has been an enduring support for
this interpretation. Among more recent writers, the analyticity of all
truth is ascribed to Leibniz by Fried, D., "Necessity and Contingency in
Leibniz," Phil. R., val. 87, 1978, 576; Wilson, M., "On Leibniz's Explication of Necessary Truth," in F: 402; Lovejoy, A, "Plenitude and Sufficient Reason," The Great Chain of Being, Cambridge, Mass., 1936, as
reprinted in F; 295, 316, and 321; Hacking, I, "Individual Substance," F:
138; Rescher, N., Leibniz: An Introduction to his Philosophy, Totowa,
N. ]., 1979, 23; and Nason, J. W., "Leibniz and the Logical Argument for
Individual Substances," Mind, vol. LI, 1942, 201-2. Prominent dissidents are Broad, C. D., Leibniz, Cambridge, 1975, who recognizes the
compatibility of the containment thesis and the complete concept with
contingency; and I Ishiguro, H., Leibniz's Philosophy of Logic and Language, Ithaca, N.Y., 1972, 15 and 120.
46. Quine, W. V., "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," in From a Logical
Point of View, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, 20---46.
47. The limitation of this example to the subject-predicate propositional structure has no theoretical implications. Equally compelling illustrations could be constructed to fit any propositional form.
48. Grua, 387.
49. OF: 16-7 and 405; Grua, 273.
50. Grua, 288.
51. See Strawson, P., and Grice, H., "In Defense of a Dogma," Phil. R.
52. "Recent Work in the Philosophy of Leibniz," Mind, 1902, as reprinted in F: 365.
53. "Recent Work."
54. OF: 16.
55. Grua, 303; OF: 405.
56. Discourse on Metaphysics, art. 13, L: 310.
57. OF: 18.
58. OF: 405.
59. "First Truths," L: 267.
60. Letter to Arnauld, M: 63.
61. "Reflections sur Bellarmin," Grua, 301.
62. See especially, Rescher, N., The Philosophy of Leibniz, Englewood,
1967, ch. II and III; and the same author's Leibniz: An Introduction,
Totowa, N.j., 1979, ch. III and IV.
63. Parkinson, G. H. R., Leibniz: Logical Papers, Oxford, 1966, 77-8;
OF: 388 and 18.
64. OF: 405.
65. Grua, 304; see also, OF: 388, ffl34.
66. OF: 18.
67. OF: 408.
68. Letter to Arnauld, M: 58.
69. Nouveaux Essais, G: V, 428.
70. See, for example, the Correspondence with Des Bosses, L: 596-616.
Here Leibniz shows great flexibility, or ambiguity, on the connection
between monads and the status of animals as unified beings. The muchdiscussed vinculum substantiale marks his insecurity concerning the adequacy of the theory that all true substances are monads.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
71. M: 42.
72. M: 9.
73. Nouveaux Essais, G: V, 428.
74. Discourse on Metaphysics, art. 9, L: 308.
75. Discourse, art. 9, L: 308.
76. This claim appears throughout Leibniz's writings. It makes up one
of his arguments against atomism; it is a foundation for his relational
theory of space and time; and it is a prominent dictum of the Discourse
on Metaphysics and of the Monadology.
77. Grua, 263.
78. Leibniz thinks that Spinoza and Hobbes held this erroneous view and
that Descartes risks falling into it. See L; 273 and Theodicee, G: VI, 139.
79. Theodicee, G: VI, 145.
80. Grua, 270; and Theodicee, G: VI, 122.
81. This revival has been stimulated in major part by the work of Saul
Kripke who made use of the concept of possible worlds in constructing a
semantics for modal logic. For the revival of the paradoxes see the discussion of David Lewis's theory of possible worlds below.
82. Rescher, N., Leibniz: An Introduction, Totowa, N. ]., 1979, 72.
83. Go VI, 363.
84. Compare, "I argued against those misuses of the. concept that regard possible worlds as something like distant planets, like our own surroundings but somehow existing in a different dimension, or that lead to
spurious problems of 'transworld identification' "; Kripke, S., Naming
and Necessity, Cambridge, Mass., 1980, 15.
85. For Lovejoy's view see F: 327; for Russell's, F: 378.
86. Grua, 286; and Theodicee, G VI: 236.
87. This deflationary, non-ontological conception of possible worlds
also seems to rule out the solution of the problem of evil that is imputed
to Leibniz by Rescher and others. Nothing evil exists prior to the creation of the world. God's understanding that something evil might exist
cannot be made to yield the idea that something evil does exist whether
He does any creating or not.
88. Parkinson, G. H. R., Leibniz: Logical Papers, Oxford, 1966, 1-12;
and Couturat, L., La Logique de Leibniz, Paris, 1901, ch. II, "La Combinatoire."
89. It is a defect of the simple dice-world as a model for Leibniz's thinking
that the best world can be achieved in either of two ways: (5, 6) or (6, 5).
Strictly speaking Leibniz is absolutely committed to the view that there
must be just one uniquely best possible world if God is to create anything.
90. Lewis, D., Counterfactuals, Cambridge, Mass., 1973, 84-91; and
"Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic," J. Phil., vol. LXV,
1968, 113-26.
91. Counterfactuals, 85-6.
92. Grua, 270.
93. G: VI, 363.
94. OF: 26.
95. OF: 26.
96. See the works of Kripke and Lewis cited above and Chisholm, R.,
"Identity through Possible Worlds: Some Questions," and other essays
in Loux, M., The Actual and the Possible, Ithaca, 1979.
97. Letter of Arnauld to Leibniz, M: 9.
98. Articles 13-17, L: 310-5.
99. M: 58.
100. G. II:
101. M: 45:
102. M: 45, and see also 60-1.
103. M: 46.
104. Principles of Nature and Grace, art. 14, L: 640.
45
�Letter from a Polish Prison
Adam Michnik
Bialoleka Prison
Aprill982
Dear Friend,
General )aruzelski has announced that political prisoners who promise to give up all "illegal" activity will be
freed. Liberty is within reach. All you have to do is pick up
a pen and sign a loyalty oath ...
You don't have to do much to get rid of the barbed
wires and bars between you and "freedom." The steel
doors of Bialoleka Prison will open. No more prison walks:
you will see the city streets. You will see streets endlessly
patrolled by armored cars and sentries. You will see pedestrians and automobiles stopped for identity checks,. You
will see the informer surveying the crowd for people suspected of having broken "emergency security restrictions." You will hear words you know only from having
read them in history books: police round-ups, volksliste,
words suddenly stripped of the patina of time and revived
in all their horror by the present moment. You will hear
the latest news: summary sentences, the fate of friends arrested, hunted, hidden.
On Loyalty Oaths
But if you make a simple little calculation, the simplest
possible-supposing you are able-you will know at once
why signing a loyalty oath is of no interest to you: quite
simply, because it is not worth the trouble. Here, in
prison, no one is going to arrest you ''until the situation is
clarified." Here, you don't have anything to be afraid of.
One of the most courageous and dear-headed of the young Polish political thinkers and leaders, Ada'm Michnik wrote an important essay on tolerance that has been translated into French, L'€glise et la gauche (Paris,
Seuil 1979).
This article first appeared in Commentaire, Summer 1982.
46
It's paradoxical, I know. Here, w,hen there's a knock on
the door at daybreak, it's not strangers in uniform. It's
your flunky bringing you coffee: under his sharp eye you
know you are safe from spies. Bialoleka Prison is a moral
luxury and an oasis of freedom. It is also testimony to your
resistance and your importance. !f the government has
put you in prison it shows that they have been forced to
take you seriously.
Sometimes they try to frighten you. A friend of mine, a
factory worker from Warsaw, was threatened with fifteen
years in prison; another prisoner they tried to intimidate
by threatening to implicate him in a case of espionage.
One man has had to put up with being interrogated in
Russian, another was dragged from his cell to be trans·
ferred to the farthest reaches of Russia. He came to a little
while later at the dentist. But these blows are bearable. I
think it is easier to resist here than out there on the other
side of the barbed wire, where the situation is more com·
plicated, morally as well as politically. ("It may be easier to
be in prison than to be free," a friend writes to me. "The
waters have all burst and in their whirlpools the slime has
risen to the surface.")
The Primate of Poland has called it an outrage that loy·
alty oaths are exacted under duress. The Pope has called
this violation of conscience criminal. It is hard to think
otherwise. We condemn with all our heart those who are
guilty of extorting these loyalty oaths and brutally destroying another man's dignity. A young woman, the wife of a
Solidarity activist, was arrested and her sick child taken
away from her. They told her the child would be put in an
orphanage. She signed. One of my \riends was arrested,
and had to leave his mother who was riddled with cancer.
"There won't be a lame dog who will dare give her some·
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�thing to drink," they said to him. He signed. Useless to
give more examples: the brutality df some, the weakness
of others, sordid blackmailings, tragic slander, we know all
that well, and we also know well that subjected to such
pressures people don't all act the same way. The Primate
has left it open to each one to make his own choice.
Teachers particularly have to choose between two equally
important imperatives: to retain their self-respect and to
maintain their contact with the young. The decision rests
upon the· individual; it makes appeal to his intelligence
and to his conscience. No one can judge anyone else. To
resort to ostracism would only correspond to the desires of
the government: isn't it their idea to set us against one an·
other and thereby break down our resistance and our solidarity? But such a tolerant attitude, born of understanding,
ought not to lead us to conclude that to sign a loyalty oath
is a morally neutral act. No. To sign a loyalty oath is wrong,
whatever the circumstances are; it is only that circumstances can make it more or less wrong. A man who signs a
loyalty oath always deserves pity, sometimes understanding; praise, never. There are many reasons for this, first
among them the imperative of self-respect.
On Self-Respect
To be powerless before armed violence is to be deeply
humiliated. Set upon by six thugs, you are powerless. But
just because of this powerlessness, if you have the least
shred of self-respect, you will not find this the moment to
sign agreements and make promises. They force the door,
they bash the furniture, they take you to headquarters
with handcuffs on your wrists, they knock you down, they
squirt teargas in your eyes, and then they request you to
sign an oath. Your basic instinct for self-preservation and
simple human dignity force you to say "No."
For even if these people were fighting fbr an altogether
honorable cause, they would defile it by such behavior.
At that moment your mind is no longer clear. It's only
after traveling several hours, when you find yourself at
Bialoleka Prison, shaking with cold (later they'll talk about
"humane conditions"), and you can listen to the radio,
that you learn that war has been declared against your
people. This war has been declared against them by the
very men to whom they gave their mandate to govern, to
formulate policy, and sign international treaties. These
men offer us a helping hand in public and talk about rec·
onciliation at the same time that they order the secret police to arrest us in the middle of the night ...
It is immediately clear to you that you are not going to
give these people the gift of your loyalty oath; loyalty is
something they are not capable of.
You don't as yet know what this war will bring. You
don't know as yet how the factories and steelworks will be
stormed, or the shipyards or the mines. You know nothing
as yet about "Black Wednesday" in the Wujek mine. But
you do know that if you sign a loyalty oath you will be
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
haunted by the sense that you have denied yourself and
the meaning of your life, by the sense that you have be·
trayed people who placed their trust in you. It would
mean betraying friends who are in prison and friends in
hiding, betraying those who are trying to defend you by
printing pamphlets in Gdansk'Or in Krakow, by organizing
meetings in Paris or New York. You see before your eyes
the face of Zbigniew, in hiding, of Edward, convicted, of
Seweryn, waiting in Paris. Nothing is decided, many paths
are open, choices are not yet sealed, but you already
know, you feel it, that your self-respect is not the currency
with which to buy your liberty. At this point, another argument not to sign a loyalty oath emerges: good sense.
It is irrational to sign a contract with people for whom
even the term Hcontract" has no fixed meaning, who
blandly renege on their commitments and for whom lying
is an everyday matter. Have you ever met a security agent
who hasn't lied to you? These people, whose eyes are
blank but never at rest, whose minds are dull but keen at
the art of torture, debased and greedy for advancement,
see you only as an object to be worked over. These people
have a particular view of human nature. For them every
man can be "convinced": by that they mean corrupted or
terrified. The only question is the price to be paid or the
blows to be delivered. They go methodically about their
business-but your least slip, your least weakness, gives
meaning to their lives. To them your capitulation means
more than simple professional success: it proves their
raison d'etre.
The Meaning of the Confrontation
You are engaged in a philosophic confrontation with
them. At stake in this confrontation is the meaning of
your life and of every human being's life-and the loss of
meaning in theirs. It is the confrontation of Giordano
Bruno with the inquisitor, of the Decembrist with the police, of Lukasinski with the Tsar's destroying angel, of
Ossetsky with the blond fellow in the Gestapo uniform, of
Mandelstam with the Bolshevik in the uniform of the
NKVD. It is a confrontation which has never ended and
whose stake, as Elzenberg said, isn't measured by your
chance of emerging victorious, but by the intrinsic worth
of the idea. In other words, it is not in overcoming the
forces against you that you carry off the victory, but by remaining true to yourself.
Reason also tells you that in signing a loyalty oath you
give the officials the weapon they'll make use of to make
you sign the next declaration: that of collaboration. In
signing .the loyalty oath, know that you sign a pact with
the devil. Be wary of giving these uniformed inquisitors so
much as your little finger: they'll soon grab your whole
hand. How many men do you know who have destroyed
their lives in a moment of weakness? Today they are pursued by phone calls at home and at work, subjected to
blackmail every time they go abroad. They pay for a min·
47
�ute of thoughtlessness with years of.humiliation and fear. ,
If you don't want to be afraid, if you want to respect yourself, an inner voice tells you, don't .make compromises
with the government police. The police official inspires in
you less hatred than pity. You know he suffers psychologi·
cal complaints, he is often ashamed in front of his children;
you know he will disappear, buried in collective forgetful·
ness. (Who remembers the informers and executioners of
the past?) And this brings us to the third reason for not
signing: memory.
Memory
You think about your country's history; to sign a loyalty
oath in prison has always been a disgrace; to remain faithful to yourself and your country has always been a virtue.
You think of people who have been tortured and who
spent many years in prison but who never signed. And
you know that you will not sign either because you will
not renounce their memory. Especially will you not sign
when you remember what happened to those who did
give up in prison. You remember Andrzej M., the distinguished literary critic, your friend, who, in prison, wrote a
clever pamphlet cooperating with the authorities, evidence of his spiritual death; Henryk Sz., an intelligent and
ambitious young man, who rose to the rank of chief Informer on his comrades; you remember Zygmunt D., that
charming and witty companion who, once he gave in, con~
tinued to inform on his friends for years afterwards. You
remember with horror this human flotsam, these creatures destroyed by the police; and you wonder what will
become of you. Of course, the choice is yours alone, but
memory reminds you that you, too, could find yourself in
their ranks: no one is born a spy. You and you alone daily
forge your lot, sometimes at the risk of your life. You
haven't heard as yet the loyalty oaths on the radio, the disgusting interviews, you don't know that Marian K., that
intelligent and courageous activist from Nowa Huta, who
in his loyalty oath wanted to render unto God that which
belongs to God and to Caesar what is Caesar's, ended by
rendering everything to the police for want of understanding that in certain situations ambiguity loses its shades of
meaning and the half truth becomes a total lie. You
haven't heard the interview with Stanislas Z. a workeractivist also from Nowa Huta, cunning, resourceful,
whose voice was never clear until it joined the government propagandists; you haven't yet read the statement
of Marek B., spokesman for the National Committee, protege of Leszek, the doctor of Gdansk, who dragged the
name of Solidarity in the mud; neither have you read the
statement of Zygmunt L., from Szczecin, Marian j.'s adviser; it was he who, at that time, whispered him absurdities about the "jews in government," and "gallows for
profiteers"; today he denounces the "extremists." In
short, you don't yet know that this time, as always, there
will be people who will allow themselves to be manipula-
48
ted into telling lies Oike Zdzislaw R. from Poznan with
whom you spoke at the time of the dedication of the monument), influenced by threats. This time, as always, the
rats will leave the sinking ship first. But you know that
this situation is not new and that you are not going to
agree to talk to the official no matter how much he waves
your release papers before your eyes. You are not going to
explain to him that he is the slave here, and that no order
is going to come to free you. You are not going to explain
to him that these activist workers, these teachers, writers,
students, and artists, these friends and strangers who
crowd the smokey corridors of police headquarters, embody the freedom of the country-and that just for that
reason war has been declared upon them. You are not going to explain to this official, after he has slugged you with
the force of the sadism pent up these last fifteen months,
the meaning of Rosanov' s essay i.n which he asks the fundamental question for European culture that arises when
the man who holds the whip is face to face with the man
who is whipped. You are not going to explain to him that
meeting him in this place is nothing but a new version of
that old confrontation. No, you will explain nothing; you
won't even speak to him. You will give him an ironic
smile, you will refuse to sign whatever there is to sign (including the internment order), you will say how sorry you
are and ... you will leave the room.
On Jailers as Slaves
You will be transfered to the Bialoleka Prison in the
company of men who are a credit to the best of Polish society; a famous philosopher, a brilliant historian, a stage
director, a professor of economics, members of Solidarity
from Ursus and from the University, students and workers. You won't be beaten in prison. On the contrary. They
need you as a proof of their liberalism and their humanism. Won't you be shown to the Red Cross delegation? to
the deputies of the Diet? even to the Primate of Poland
himself? They will be fairly polite, fairly obliging, fairly
pleasant. Only occasionally will they make you run the
gauntlet of helmets, truncheons, and imported japanese
shields. But the only effect of this masquerade will be to
make it even more evident that the regime is like a bad
dog who would very much like to bite but cannot because
his rotten teeth make him powerless. The day of Pawka
Kortchaguine is past. Today it is enough to raise your
voice to kindle a gleam of fear in the eyes of the official.
Fear and uncertainty are betrayed despite the helmet, the
uniform, and the shield. And you will understand at once
that this fear on the part of the official is a source of hope
for you. Hope is essential. It is perhaps the most important thing there is ...
Hope is precisely what's at stake in the present struggle.
The officials want to force us to to renounce our hope.
They understand that the man who declares his loyalty to
a regime of violence and lies abandons all hope of seeing
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�Poland free from lies and violence. The loyalty oath aims
to transform us into servile beasts who will no longer raise
our heads to defend liberty and dignity. In refusing all en·
ticement to talk with the official, in refusing him your CO·
operation, in rejecting the role of informer and spy, in
choosing the human condition of political prisoner, you
preserve your hope. A hope not only in yourself and for
yourself, but one which is also in others, for others. Your
declaration of hope is like a bottle you cast from your
prison to be carried by the sea across the world to go
among men. If you succeed in reaching even one single
person, you have won.
I know what you will say: he is spouting commonplaces,
he is playing the hero, his head is in the clouds. That's not
exactly true.
True, I do assert commonplaces. Ordinary truths, how·
ever, have to be repeated frequently in order to endure,
particularly today when it takes courage to assert ordinary
truths. In contrast, relativism, otherwise so useful in intel·
lectual activity, may confound moral criteria and call into
question moral principles. . . Is this attitude synonymous
with the cult of heroism? I don't think so. You know you
are not a hero and you never wanted to be one. You didn't
want to die for your people, nor for freedom, or for any·
thing else ... You did not envy Ordon or Winkelride their
fate ... You wanted to live a normal life, to be able to con·
tinue to respect yourself and your friends. You loved the
moral ease that allowed you to feel free inside yourself, to
love beautiful women, to enjoy good drink. This war
caught you with a beautiful woman, not on the point of
attacking the offices of the Central Committee.
But since this war has been declared on you, along with
more than thirty thousand of your fellow citizens, normal
life is out of the question. A normal life, in which self·
respect is joined to material security, cannot be found in
the midst of police raids, summary sentences, outrageous
radio broadcasts, and underground Solidarity publications.
You must choose between moral and material luxury. You
know that your "ordinary" life today would have the bitter
taste of defeat. It is precisely because you want to enjoy
life that you won't give in to the seductive propositions of
the government bureaucrat. He promises you freedom, he
gives you glimpses of ordinary human happiness, but he
brings you only slavery, suffering, and damnation.
No, this is not heroism. It is a rational choice. Brecht
said; "Woe to the people who need heroes." He was right.
Heroism implies an exceptional situation, while the Poles
mili~
tary and police power.
I do not want to be misunderstood. I do not propose ro·
mantic intransigeance, but social resistance. It is not,
therefore, appropriate to bring up in this context, as
Daniel P. did in his article in Polityka, the two opposed
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Romantic Revolt and Organic Struggle
While he acknowledges the validity of both these posi·
tions, the writer defends those who espouse "organic
struggle" on the staff of Polityka, the journalists who con·
tinued to ply their trade. At the risk of finding themselves
questioned by their own children, "What did you do when
guns took the place of reason?", they decided to assume
the responsibility of staying at their posts instead of quietly
withdrawing. "There's no point in pursuing lost virtue,"
The Value of Morality
today need a "normal" and "general" resistance to
positions which have become classic in our history: the
one of romantic revolution and the other of "organic,
struggle. Let us see why.
writes Daniel P. "There's no point in mouthing grand
principles and forgetting the practical. There are no spurs
on bedroom slippers." (This apropos of the rebellious
journalists of Polityka.)
It is his view that "it is not in the interest of society that
the press disappear in Poland or that it should see 'its di·
versity even more restricted. We must work to send the
soldiers back to their barracks. Who will do it if we take on
easy jobs as spokesmen for exile organizations abroad, as
editors for nonpolitical newspapers?" Daniel P. uses here
arguments you know well beginning with the controversy
about the Essay on Grubs by Piotr Wierzbicki. He doesn't
beat around the bush, he doesn't ramble, he uses serious
arguments and states clearly the dilemmas that weigh
upon every Pole today.
To argue these points one must apply two standards,
one for particular issues and another one for general ques·
tions.
It may be true, as Daniel P. says, that the people who
believe in defiance are as essential as the people who be·
lieve in organic struggle, but I should like to add, however,
that it is important to be "organic" in form and "defiant"
in content. We need men who don't befoul themselves in
the lies of public life, who enjoy the good opinion of soci·
ety, who refuse to compromise with the sort of system
imposed on our country, but who do not endorse irrespon·
sible actions such as terrorism or guerilla attacks. In other
words, the dilemma isn't expressed simply in the terms
"organic struggle" versus "defiance" but in the terms
ganic struggle" versus ''collaboration."
"or~
Compromise is an indispensable element of a healthy
public life, on the condition, however, that society per·
ceives it as compromise. As soon as public opinion perceives it as a device or a betrayal, compromise loses its
validity. It becomes a mistake or a lie. To come out on the
side of WRONA* today amounts, as we both know well,
to coming out against the country. The loyalty oath the
officials demand of you, like the one, couched in slightly
different terms, demanded of the journalists of Polityka,
*WRON: The Military Council for National Defense; wrona means
"crow."
49
�has nothing to do with compromise: it is a certificate of
collaboration and so conceived. In signing it, those who
wanted to save the "renewal" (I don't like this official ex·
pression, I prefer "democratic form") put the seal on their
final condemnation. [An illegible phrase.] Daniel P. pre·
tends to believe that Polityka can once more become an
oasis of half-truths and of halfway honesty. I cannot agree
with him; the day is gone for this way of thinking. It was
gone well before December 13, 1981, even before the first
of September 1980. Which brings us back almost to the
middle of the time of Gierek when Polityka gave up its
role as liberal and moderate critic of the government to
become its glib apologist. Beginning in June 1976, with the
uprisings of U rsus and Radom, Polityka lost its credibility.
It wasn't even interesting any more; it was an anachronism.
The political rise of the editor-in-chief coincided with the
political death of the newspaper. Today Polityka exists
only as a caricature of its former self. Its history is the history of many Polish intellectuals who cherished the illusion that the system could be reformed from above, by
finding one's way into the corridors of power, by knocking
at the door of the Central Committee, by joining forces
with the minister in power. This idea has had its day.
Nothing can bring it back. The battlefield of social conflict, and therefore of the social compromise to come, is
today the factory and the university, no longer the halls of
the Central Committee or of the Diet. Despite the past
complexity and the distortion of the relations between
Communist power and Polish society, the Party only lost
its mandate with its declaration of this last "war." It's easy
to replace the policeman's helmet with the traditional
chapka of the Polish army. But that alone won't change
anything.
Resistance to the Government
If we, as an organized society, want to exert the least influence upon the future of Poland, we have to forge that
influence by a constant pressure on the machinery of
power. To count upon the good will of the military leadership is to rely on miracles. To count on their weakness, on
the other hand, has nothing irrational about it. It is not
irrational to think that the machinery of power could be
obliged to compromise. The obvious ideological and practical vacuum of the Party are proof. The government
50
defends its power and its privilege, not ideas or values.
The fact that it has had to resort to the definitive argument of force proves it. To paraphrase Hegel: "Minerva's
crow flies at night."
There you are, overwhelmed by the piercing sense of
your loneliness and weakness in the face of a military
machine which went into motion that December night.
You don't know what developed after that. You don't
know that people will gradually recover from the shock,
that underground newspapers are going to appear, that
Zbignew B. is going to direct the struggle from his hiding
place, that Wladyslaw E. from Wroclaw is going to escape
from the police, that events at Gdansk, Swidnik, and Poznan are going to make Poland tremble again, and that the
structure of the outlawed union will reappear. You don't
yet know that the generals direct a machine that jams and
sputters, and that the wave of repression and slander has
no effect.
Alone, facing police officers who wave their guns at
you, handcuffed, with teargas in your eyes, you can see
clearly despite the starless night, and you repeat the words
of your favorite poet: "A stone can change the course of
the avalanche in its path." And you want to be that stone
that changes the course of events, even if it is to be flung
at the ramparts.
Translated from a French translation of the Polish
by Linda Collins
Afternote:
The military regime in Poland has recently accused Michnik along with
other leaders of KOR (the Committee for Social Self-Defense)-Jacek
Kuron, Jan Litynski, Jan Jozef Lipski, Henryk Wujec-of treason and conspiracy, which carry the maximum penalty of death. The official press
treat them as guilty before "trial." In the judgement of the Hungarian
writer, George Konrad, in a letter of November 1 (see The New York Review of Books, December l, 1982), they may be shot before the West, or
anybody else outside of Poland, notices their danger. L.R.
AUTUMN/WJNTER 1982-83
�Not Just Another Communist Party:
The Polish Communist Party
Branko Lazitch
Communists parties the world over are much the same
in their doctrine: Marxism-Leninism; in their structure:
democratic centralism; in their history with its identical
periods: Lenin, Bolshevization, Stalinization, destalinization~ etc. As anyone can see at the present time, however,
the Polish Communist Party is a special case-a party unlike the other "brother parties." No other Communist party
in the world has entrusted its fate to the army; taken a career officer for its First Secretary; declared a state of war
against its own citizens. This is not the first time the Party
has been at war with the people of Poland. They have
been at war for more than sixty years.
Summer 1920
The story starts in the summer of 1920: the Soviet Polish War, the first revolutionary war of the Bolsheviks after their victory in Russia. A war in Lenin's conception on
two essential fronts. First: the collapse of the home front
through revolutionary propaganda (Agit-Prop). The call to
the people, and especially the soldiers, to rise up. A pamphlet in circulation in June 1920 reads:
Soldiers of the Polish Army! Work for the Victory of the
Revolution in Poland. No longer obey your leaders, who are
betraying you. Instead of fighting against your brothers, the
workers and the peasants of Russia and the Ukraine, turn
your arms on your officers, on the bourgeois and the landlords. Whoever fights against Soviet Russia fights against the
working class in the whole world and joins the enemies of the
people.
Second front of the revolutionary war: under the protection
of the tanks and cannons of the Red Army, the organization
of a provisional "national" power meant to bring Socialist
Poland into immediate existence. In Bialystok a revolutionBranko Lazitch writes for L'express. His most recent books are Le Rapport
Kroutchev et son histoire (Paris, Seuil1976) and L'€chec permanent, l' alliance communiste-socialiste (Paris, Laffont 1978).
This article first appeared in Commentaire, Spring 1982.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ary committee (a provisional government) was organized
under the presidency of the most well-known Polish revolutionary, Julian Marchlevski (Karski), with several other
Polish Communists who already held high positions in Soviet Russia and in the Communist International. From
the start Lenin counted on the success of this revolutionary war.
At his reception of the French Delegation to the Second Congress of the Co min tern on July 28 in the Kremlin,
Lenin overflowed in optimism: "The world revolution will
have taken a decisive step if Poland gives herself to Communism. Yes, the Soviets in Warsaw means Germany
shortly afterwards, the reconquest of Hungary, the revolt
of the Balkans against capitalism, Italy shaken-bourgeois
Europe cracking on all sides in a fearful hurricane."
The two Polish Communists in his immediate circle did
not share Lenin's euphoria. Of the first of these, Julian
Marchlevski himself, Trotsky was later to say: "There was
an unknown: what attitude would the Polish workers and
peasants have? Some of our Polish comrades, for instance
Julian Marchlevski, friend and companion of Rosa Luxemburg, entertained considerable scepticism." Later Lenin
revealed the doubts of the second ranking Polish Communist, Karel Radek, secretary of the International: "Radek
foresaw how it would turn out. He warned us. I was furious. I accused him of 'defeatism.' But he was essentially
right."
A military set-back outside of Warsaw followed this political setback throughout Poland. On August 18 the Red
Army began its retreat. It would not return for twenty
years, and then in the wake, not of revolutionary war, but
of the Hitler-Stalin pact in September 1939.
Pro-Trotsky
After this first conflict with the Polish people, the Polish Communist Party was compelled to set itself against
Moscow within the International. In the months that immediately preceded Lenin's death (January 21, 1924), the
struggle for the succession already raged. The Bolshevik
51
�old guard had banded together to remove the candidate
with the greatest prestige-who, however, had not always
been a Bolshevik-Leon Trotsky. The top of the International, the controlling troika of G. Zinoviev, the President,
and Kamenev and Stalin, were involved in this manuever.
Only two voices rose at the highest level of the Comintern
to denounce the plot against Trotsky in almost the same
words: the leadership of the Polish Communist Party and
Boris Souvarine, the representative of the French Communist Party at the Comintern. Made up of the three
W's: Walecki, Warski, and Wera Kostrzewa, the Polish
leadership declared: "For our Party, for the whole Comintern, and for the world revolutionary proletariat the name
of Comrade Trotsky is irrevocably linked to the victorious
October Revolution, to the Red Army and Communism."
Six months after Lenin's death, in the summer of 1924, at
the fifth Congress of the Comintem, this attitude of the Polish Communist Party came under examination. A Polish
Commission was formed, presided over by a Bolshevik who
had never spoken during the congresses of the Comintem,
and who, unlike the other Bolsheviks involved in the business of the organization, did not know a single foreign language: Stalin. At the time his name meant absolutely nothing
to almost all the foreign delegates at the Congress. But the
Poles knew him well-and he them.
Unlike the other Committees that, since the birth of
the Comintern in 1919, had used German, the Polish
Committee under Stalin carried on its work in Russian.
The discussion moved immediately from the realm of
ideas to the realities of power. Stalin circulated in the cor-·
ridors of the Congress to assert that the "bones of the obstinate must be broken." "Not those whose bones can be
broken for the same reasons as ours but those who have
no bones at all are dangerous to you," Wera Kostrzewa replied, not in the corridors, but on the floor of the Congress. Her words pointed to the increasing political, moral,
and material corruption within the Comintern. At another time she also objected to the excessive dependence
of the foreign branches on the Russian Communist Party,
the dominant force in the Comintern: "The most important branches of the Co mintern ought to enjoy greater independence in the making of policy within their party and
greater responsibility in all international questions." But
in the following years in the Comintern things turned out
exactly the opposite.
The Russians had already mastered the technique of
manipulating meetings both in committees and in plenary
sessions at this fifth Congress, the Congress of Bolshevization. The immediate consequence was the removal of
the leadership of the Polish Communist Party with a resolution that: "The Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party, under the political direction of the group
Warski, Kostrzewa, and Walecki, despite its revolutionary
words, has shown itself incapable of applying the line of
the Communist InternationaL"
This was only a prelude. It took ten years for Stalin to
52
show the Poles his true stuff: to make blood flow. He
made blood flow not only in the Russian Communist Party
but throughout the Comintern. In the Comintern he
began, fittingly, with the Polish Communist Party.
1933: Second Purge
The time came in 1933, the victim was Jerzy Sochacki:
member of the Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party since 1921; Communist deputy to the Sejm;
member of the Politbureau; permanent representative of
the Polish Communist Party to the headquarters of the
Comintern since 1930; member of the two supreme bodies of the Comintern, the Praesidium and the Secretariat.
On the fifteenth of August 1933, the Soviet police arrested Sochacki, and accused him of spying from the time
he joined the Communist Party in 1921. A complete dossier was drawn up to cover his twelve years {(work" as a
spy. A secret trial was staged. "I die proud and happy for
my leader Pilsudski," were quoted as Sochacki's "last
words" before execution. Stalin's justice had moved swiftly
between Sochacki's arrest on the fifteenth of August and
his execution on September 4, 1933, Sochacki's postumous rehabilitation, in contrast, had to wait for the destalinization that followed the Twentieth Congress of the
Soviet Communist Party in February 1956, and Gomulka's
return to power in Warsaw.
A Pole thus became the first foreign Communist to lose
his life in Moscow. Shortly afterward, in 1936 and 1938,
the Polish Communist party knew slaughter. The Polish
Party suffered more victims than any other foreign
branch of the Comintern. The Hungarian, German, and
Jugoslav Communists suffered Stalin's extermination but
in fewer numbers than the Poles. The nature of factscommon revolutionary past, linguistic facility, and geographical proximity-made for more Polish Communist
political exiles in Russia than from any other country in
Europe. The men and women from the rest of Europe depended on the protection-relative-of their respective
Communist Parties, members in good standing of the
Comintern. The only branch of the Comintern that Stalin
had dissolved, the Polish Communist Party, had no such
resort.
193 8: Dissolution by Stalin
In January 1938 the official organ of the Comintern,
The International Communist, published an article called
"Provocateurs at Work" that held that agents of Pilsudski
had long ago infiltrated the Polish Communist Party up
to, and including, its top leadership. After this article,
Communist publications ceased to mention the Polish
Communist Party. There was no public notice of the decision in Moscow in April1938 to dissolve it. The party simply no longer existed physically or politically. Alone, Stalin
could only undo the Polish CP. The next year, 1939, Hit-
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�ler's alliance made it possible for Stalin to abolish the Polish State as well.
1942: Resurrection
After his pact with Hitler, Stalin had no need of either
the Polish Communist Party or the Polish state. Hitler's
attack on Russia on June 22, 1941, however, overturned
the situation. Stalin recognized Poland in 1941. In 1942
he authorized the resurrection of the Polish Communist
Party. The beginning of 1942 was a critical moment for
the Soviet Union: Hitler's military superiority was beyond
doubt; the alliance with the democracies was only at its
first steps. Two reasons for Stalin to muffle the emphasis
on Communism on its doctrine, practice, and even on
the word itself. Stalinist vocabulary saw the disappearance
of the adjective "communist." The new Communist parties organized during the war avoided it: in Switzerland,
the Labour Party; in Iran, The Party of the Masses (Tudeh);
in Cyprus, The Progressive Party of the Working People; in
Poland, The Worker's Party.
This new label did not make the Polish CP anymore
successful. By the summer of 1944, on the eve of Soviet
troops' entry into Poland, the Party numbered about
20,000, a ridiculous total. The Communists who had survived Hitler's occupation or Stalin's Gulags could count
on only one power, the Red Army. In the summer of 1944,
at Lublin, a Committee was formed, a carbon copy of the
1920 Committee of Bialystok-except for the inferior
quality of its members. The Lublin Committee became
the nucleus of the future regime, because the Red Army
occupied the country.
1
1944-1945: Satellization
Between 1944 and 1945 Poland, like all the other countries under the Soviet jackboot, underwent satellization.
The usalami tactic" was the same as in Hungary and else-
where: first, the gradual elimination of adversaries; then
of allies; the compulsory fusion of Communist and Socialist Parties. Soviet colonization offered Poland the prize of
a Marshal of the Red Army, Rokossovsky, to head the
Polish "National" Ministry of Defense. There was more:
the persecution of the Catholic Church: the arrest of Cardinal Wysznski; purges of Party leadership: the pushing
aside and the arrest of Gomulka who, however, was neither hailed before a People's Tribunal nor shot.
1956: Rehabilitation
Starting in 1956, the year of the Twentieth Congress of
the Soviet Communist Party and of destalinization in Soviet Russia and elsewhere, the story of the Polish Communist Party again takes its distance from the "brother parties."
The Polish Party took the lead. The Twentieth Congress
opened on the fourteenth of September without at first
1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
arousing excitement in Moscow. Warsaw, in contrast, felt
its effects immediately. Large-scale photographs of the
three founders of the Polish Communist Party, Warski,
Walecki, and Wera Kostrzewa-all three victims of Stalinappeared on the front page of the Communist daily Tribuna Ludu on the nineteenth of February. The same
front page also carried a declaration of the five "brother
parties" that for the first time revealed what had happened
eighteen years before: "In 1938 the Executive Committee
of the Communist International adopted a resolution to
dissolve the Polish CP on the grounds of an accusation of
widespread penetration of the ranks of the Party by enemy
agents. It has now been established that this accusation
was based on documents forged by a gang of saboteurs
and provacateurs whose true role was not brought to light
until the unmasking of Beria". No mention of Stalin. It
was as if he had played no role in the history of the Polish
CP.
In the aftermath of the Twentieth Congress another
exploit distinguished the Polish CP. Khrushchev's Secret
Report in circulation among the "brother parties" in the
East found its way westward through Warsaw. The most
explosive document ever to come from leading Communist circles came in this way to have its world-wide effect.
The Gomulka Experiment
In June 1956 Poland also saw another historical event,
the first of its kind after the initiation of uncertainty: the
revolt of the people in Poznan. The same year in October
there was another unprecedented event: Khruschev came
to Warsaw at the head of a Soviet delegation determined
to impose its will on Warsaw and the Polish CP. The attempt ended abruptly. Gomulka came back to power.
This Polish "October Spring" began a new experiment-a
reexamination of Communism and a reform from within.
The result was negative. Instead of democratizing the
Communist system, the Polish CP only weakened itself.
Movements of the workers and people brought about
three changes in the top leadership of the CP. In 1956,
1970, and in 1980 three first secretaries fell under pressure from the masses, facts unprecedented in the history
of "real" socialism. Once again the Polish CP knew a lot
different from the other "brother parties". Its acceptance
of powers parallel to its own made its lot unique in addition: the spiritual power of the Church starting in the
mid-fifties; the power of the Solidarity Union after 1980.
The military coup on December 13, 1981, brought this exceptional situation to an end at the price of a no less exceptional situation: it reversed the roles of Army and Party.
The Party now transmits the orders of the Army. Such a
situation cannot last. There will be new sudden changes
and reversals in the chequered history of this Party-and
in the tragic story of Poland.
Translated by Brother Robert Smith and Leo Raditsa
53
�A Nighttime Story
Linda Collins
On the day the president of Egypt was assassinated,
Charles Pettit's little boy had stayed home from school
with a temperature. In the middle of the morning, his
mother found him sitting on the floor of the living room
looking at television.
"Let me tie your bathrobe," she said. "It's too chilly to
be sitting there with your bathrobe open."
He didn't look around. When she glanced at the screen
to see what he was watching, she knew by the chaotic way
the camera was moving that again something bad had
happened.
A while later Charles telephoned from his office in
Greenfield. He had heard the news on the car radio, but
he hadn't called her right away, he said, because he hoped
it wasn't true.
"It's true," she said.
"I know if s true," said Charles.
She said she thought Robert might not have understood what he had seen. He could have thought he was
looking at a movie, she said.
"Perhaps," said Charles.
In the evening, the children made brownies with their
mother while Charles watched the news, turning from
channel to channel. Then he went outside and breathed
the cold night air.
The next day Robert was well, and the following day he
went back to school.
On Friday, Charles drove the five miles home from
work as the sun set and the sky flamed. Yellow stacks of
freshly split wood sat beside each house, and in the openings of sheds and outbuildings he could see the same raw
color. An occasional meadow was still bright green, and
here and there a dark horse raised its head as he drove by.
Remembering they were to use the car later, he left it half
way out of the shed, where his own firewood was stacked.
Linda Collins has previously contributed "Going to See the Leaves"
(Autumn 1981) to the St. Johh's Review. Her stories have appeared in
Mademoiselle, the Hudson Review, and other magazines.
54
His wife was in the kitchen straightening up after the
children's supp.er. He kissed her on the cheek. She put
down the sponge and turned to him for another kiss.
"Make your drink," she said. ''I have a few more things
to do."
The children were waiting for him in the living room.
Robert was in his dinosaur pajamas, and the younger
child, Lizzie, wore a thick one-piece suit with padded feet.
An outsized zipper ran up to her chin.
Charles put his drink down on the coffee table and took
off his glasses to receive their embraces.
When they were all sitting on the rug near the fire he
put his glasses back on. Lizzie moved into his lap.
"Daddy," she said and pressed his cheek with her hand.
She stroked his sleeve, touched the buttons of his jacket,
patted his face. She was rosy from her bath and her fingers smelled of soap. He took her wandering hand and
held it still.
"Daddy!" she said.
Releasing her hand, he ran his finger over her fine pale
hair. She looked up at him with a fierce expression.
"Tell us a story," she said. "Tell."
Robert, who was six, sat with his legs straight out in
front of him. He rotated his feet in their new bedroom
slippers and watched the elastic stretch and retract. His
eyes were brown and his hair was smooth and brown.
Where his sister was fat and flushed, he was thin. He was
sitting slightly apart from his father and sister, and
although he kept his eyes on his slippers, having noticed
that the firelight lent them a shine which could be made
to slide from the toe to the heel by twisting his foot, every
now and then he directed a quick look at his father. He
busied himself with slippers, dinosaurs, and whatever diversions the fire could offer: sparks, gleams, the collapse
of a burnt-out log, but when he looked up his glance measured the distance between his father and his sister. He
waited.
"All right, kitty cats," said Charles. "What shall it be?"
"Ticky tats," said the little girl.
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�"Kitty cats," said Robert. "Kitty cats." He was mocking
his father who would not have said "kitty cats" had he
been directing his attention only at him. His father could
make him laugh when he didn't want to, and often did, by
saying things like "kitty cats," and worse.
Suddenly he felt tired of keeping this stiff watch and
unbending guard. He sighed, acknowledging a kind of de·
feat, and he moved in closer to Daddy and Lizzie.
"All right/' said Charles. "Ready?"
"Ready," said the children.
Lizzie put her thumb in her mouth and then took it out
and looked at it. It was wet. "Ready," she said.
Charles began the story: "Once there was a little girl
and her name was Frimble. She was a very good little girl.
She always did whatever her mother asked her to do, and
she always did what her father asked her to do. In nursery
school she was good, and she was good in the supermarket. She stayed on her side in the car and she never forgot
to brush her hair. She smiled at the good and frowned at
the bad-"
"And sometimes she was very sad," said Robert, rapidly
and in a slightly confused tone as though surprised to find
himself saying anything at all.
"No," said his father. "She wasn't actually ever sad. She
was quite happy. Reasonably happy."
Both children looked at him. The little boy moved
closer and the father reached toward him and grasped
with two fingers of one hand the slender column of the
back of his neck. The child put his head to one side to relish the feeling and to bear the happiness that had begun
to mount inside him. He let his eyes close.
The little girl shifted her weight on Charles's thigh, and
he, feeling a sudden strain in his back, said, "Why are we
sitting on the floor? Let's go sit on the couch."
They stood up.
The move meant they had to pick up and start again.
From the couch the fire looked far away and formal.
"Daddy!" said the little girl imperiously.
He put an arm around each of them and started again:
"But one fine day-"
"Charles, not too long." His wife had stopped in the
doorway to look at them. Her arms were full of bathtowels. Later, when the children were in bed, they would
have a quick supper, and then, as they sometimes did on
Friday evening, as soon as the neighbor's daughter came,
they would drive down to Greenfield and go to the
movies.
"And then?" said Robert.
Lizzie was standing up on Charles's leg. He could feel
her toes inside her rubberized pajama soles as she tried to
balance on his thigh. Gently, by pressing his hand against
the small of her back, he persuaded her to sit down. "But
one day, one fine and cloudless day, when Frimble had
gone with her nursery school class to buy fish food for the
class goldfish, she got separated from the other children
and the teacher, and she found herself all alone in the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
middle of the shopping center. She looked down the ar·
cade on her right and saw no one. Then she looked to the
left and saw no one there. She was all alone." The story
went on, almost by itself. He knew he wasn't doing his
best. Sometimes his stories amazed him. Some stories
poured through him as though they came from some·
where else; they bemused even the teller, and he could
imagine that years from now, when the children were
grown up, they would remember the best ones, like The
Boy Who Had X-ray Vision, or the one about the children
who lived in the woods on the far side of the dump.
He went on, speaking in a soft voice, and told them how
Frimble was at last rescued from the locked and echoing
supermarket by a certain first-grade boy whose intelligence in deducing her location was equalled only by his
agility in squeezing into narrow places. "And so the boy,
having found his way into the warehouse, edged past
boxes and cartons and crates. How dark it was! He knew,
however, that he must not let himself be frightened. If he
panicked, he would not be able to tell which cartons held
paper towels and paper diapers and toilet paper-the
large light ones that rocked if you gave them a little
push-and which, heavier and pungent, held soap powder
and soap flakes. For then he'd never find Frimble whose
voice he had heard over the intercom before the power
failed, telling him she was between the dogfood and the
place where the candy was. 'Courage,' he said to himself,
and so, listening and feeling and sniffing, he made his
way."
Charles glanced from his son to his daughter and saw by
their grave, wide-opened eyes and their parted lips that
their hearts lay with the lost girl and the brave frightened
boy. His own heart went out to them and he decided,
while he was speaking, to edit one or two effects he had
had in mind and hasten the denouement.
The fire made a popping noise.
The children were sitting close to their father. Robert
was holding one of his father's hands in his hands.
As he finished the story, Charles could hear the children breathing.
"And then she went home?'' asked his daughter.
"And then she went home," he said.
The movie took place in California. The camera slid
around a house in such a way as to induce apprehension
in the viewer. In the house lived one of the main characters, a fifty-year-old woman, played by an actress who was
making a movie for the first time in many years. Charles
was reminded of his youth by the sight of her face. He had
liked her in college and even in high school. There was a
lot of driving in the movie, particularly by women, who got
in and out of their cars in a way characteristic of women
in movies and on television. The way they slammed car
doors and drove away said: This is California, this is modern life, this is dangerous and exciting. The woman lived
55
�alone in the house, and in the evening, after her housekeeper and gardener went home, it \VaS clear she was in
danger. She had lovers. Someone was going to kill her.
One of her lovers was going to kill her. Her death was prolonged. Charles knew at some point his wife would turn
her head away. When she did, he smiled and gave her a little pat.
«Tell me when it's over," she said.
"It's only ketchup," he said.
"I don't think so," she whispered back.
During the time the several police officers were weighing the probable involvement of the known suspects, the
minor characters were portrayed in places familiar to nonCalifornians from other movies: at a Pacific beach house,
at an orange ranch, and at a dusty gas station and general
store at a crossroads in the desert. The killer did turn out
to be one of her lovers, but not the obvious one. The
shoot-out took place at the tiny motel where the housekeeper's aged mother lived.
"How did you like it?" asked Charles in the lobby, feeling for the car keys.
44
Horrible," said his wife. "They said he was an Ameri-
can Lelouch. I'm sorry I brought you."
44
You didn't make me come," he said. "Anyway, I liked
it."
They drove home through the quiet countryside. From
time to time their headlights picked out of the darkness a
tree whose leaves had turned yellow or flashed on the
black window panes of a farmhouse where everyone had
gone to bed. "I think we could use some heat," said
Charles, and turned the knob for the heater ·and the one
for the fan. After a minute they felt the warm air. It was
soothing to drive through the pale autumn fields. Neither
spoke. Just before the road started its rise toward their
village it passed through a marshy place where mist was
thick on either side and they were plunged into milky
obscurity. Charles reached with his right hand under his
wife's skirt and felt for the elasticized edge of her undergarment.
At home, she paid the baby sitter and watched at the
window while the girl ran across the road to her own
house where the outside light was on. When the light
went off, she let the curtain drop and went upstairs. She
pushed the children's door open over the stiff new carpet
56
and Charles stood in the doorway while she touched both
children and adjusted the window and the shade. Then
they went together into their own room.
Much later in the night, Charles woke up. The television was still on. Dread had seized him in his sleep. He
had dreamed they were all in a train, his wife and both
children, and the outside of the train was being pounded
by bullets. There was a terrible racket of metal against
metal and it was not at all clear he was going to be able to
continue to protect them. Awake, he was as afraid as he
had been asleep. He lay still and waited for his arms and
legs to stop trembling.
After a while he felt calmer. He turned on his side, toward the television. It was a movie, in black and white, set
in Prague during World War II, about three Czech exiles
who parachut~d into Czechoslovakia on a mission to kill
the Reichskommissar; one of the three, it seemed, had betrayed the others. Intrigued now, and wide awake, he
reached for his wife's extra pillow, which was lying between them, and stuck it under his head. His heart was
still beating heavily. The room was silvery. He stretched
his legs and began to relax. The wife, or the girlfriend, of
one of the exiles came and went, bringing messages.
There was a lot of running. It must have been the sound
of gunfire from the television he had heard in his dream.
In the dream he had tried to lie on top of the children to
protect them from bullets. He had tried to lie on top of
them without hurting them.
In the crypt of St. Vitus, the two loyal Czechs met their
heroic end while gunfire sounded from the street.
When the movie was over, he turned to the news channel and watched a summary of the events of the week.
The film had been edited. He was never able to find what
his wife said Robert had seen: the arm, the clothing, the
expression on the injured man's face.
He saw the sky above Cairo and the plumes of colored
smoke expanding as the formation of Mirages flew by the
reviewing stand. Within the reviewing stand the chairs
were all turned over. It looked as though no one was there,
but then, like anemones on the sea floor, the chairs
started to move and wave about, and one by one the men
appeared from beneath the chairs, their hands first, as
they reached from below for leverage to help them rise.
AU1UMN/WINTER 1982-83
�Marx's Sadism
Robert J. Loewen berg
"The death of mankind is ... the goal of socialism." Igor Shafarevich, The Socialist Phenomenon
It is a notorious fact, or for some an ironic and scandal·
ous one, that Karl Marx's hatred of the bourgeois intellec·
tuals, of liberals, has not prevented them from becoming
the heirs and custodians of his ideals. Except for the liberal
intellectuals who today dominate the universities and al·
lied institutions, principally the media, there is no respect·
able Marxism. That is, unless one counts as respectable
the wrinkled pedagogues of dialectical materialism and
their dozing charges in Russia or the freakish ideological
concoctions of Oriental tyrants. Moreover, insofar as the
bourgeois intellectuals have inherited the mantle of Marx
in a culture that cheerfully submits its offspring to instruc·
tion in today's liberal ideals, ideals that in part descend
from the abolitionists, the very civilization of America can
be called Marxist. In fact it has been called this by the world's
most outstanding Marxist scholar, Alexander Kojeve in
delight, over twenty years ago.'
'
That Kojeve's observation was not entirely wishful
thinking by a frustrated communist is suggested by the
comments of another more recent Russian emigre, not a
Communist, who only months ago confirmed Kojeve's
judgment. Lev Navrozov was shocked to find that America
is "a Left-biased" culture, that is, one in which all political
opinions agree upon a vocabulary that is largely Marxist.
Navrozov called this discovery, in sadness, "the most eye·
opening experience I have had since my arrival. .. from
Associate professor of history at Arizona State University, Robert Loewenberg has previously contributed "The Trivialization of the Holocaust
as an Aspect of Modern Idolatry" (Winter 1982) and "That Graver Fire
Bell: A Reconsideration of the Debate over Slavery from the Standpoint
of Lincoln" (Summer 1982) to the St. fohn's Review. He is at work on
studies of Emerson and of the abolitionists.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Russia in 1972."2 Important here is not the sadness or the
delight of Russian observers but their agreement about
what is, after all, a commonplace: America is a Left-biased
culture. History, it almost appears, has turned the master
dialectician, Marx, on his head. Having reduced Marx to his
antithesis, bourgeois communism, history now evidently
prepares to sweep even him into its ample dustbin. Ko·
jeve, a Marxist who transcended Marx, believed he had a
more properly Marxist explanation.
"The United States," Kojeve said, "has already attained
the final stage of Marxist 'communism,' seeing that, prac·
tically, all the members of a 'classless society' can from now
on appropriate ... everything that seems good to them ... "
The classless society, Kojeve continues, is "the end of His·
tory [that is, it is the eternal present when] men ... con·
struct their edifices and works of art as birds build their
nests and spiders spin their webs, ... perform musical con·
certs after the fashion of frogs and cicadas ... and ... in·
dulge in love like adult beasts .... But there is more ... the
definitive disappearance of human Discourse ... [that is,
human] 'language' ... would be like what is supposed to
be the 'language' of bees." 3
What Kojeve tells us then is that the liberal intellectuals,
the same liberals that he as well as Marx despised, are not
so much Marxists as the products of Marxism. They are
witnesses to Marx's truth. America is the realm of free·
dom. How else, Kojeve suggests, shall we understand the
conceptual egalitarianism of our culture or relativism? Has
it not transformed words into gestures and made a kind of
language of bees the law of the land? And do we not ap·
proach the free love ideal of Kojeve, to say nothing of the
character of our edifices and our popular concerts? But im·
pressions can be misleading, at least as justifications for
sweeping generalizations such as Kojeve's. There is no
doubt something wrong or even self-serving about his idea,
because his experience of America did not lead Kojeve
to question his Marxism.
57
�If we are to accept that America has already achieved
the final stage of Marxist communism, the realm of freedom, certain serious problems and questions arise. In the
first place such an achievement can hardly be supposed to
satisfy Marxists. For them the violent revolutionary over·
throw, at least, of bourgeois capitalism is an article of faith.
There has been no such event in America as there has been
no abolition of property. Nor can today's liberal intellec·
tuals be remotely likened to a revolutionary cadre. As·
suredly they are not the descendants of one. But there is
another set of questions that arises in connection with Ko·
jeve's observation. If it is at all correct to say that America
has attained the final stage of Marxist communism, what
are we to identify as the sources, both historical and philo·
sophie, of American culture and of the notorious fact that
our liberal intellectuals are heir to Marx's ideals? How has
American culture arrived at the final stage of Marxist
communism without Marx and without a vindication of
Marxist historical processes?
Perhaps the obvious answer is the right one: Marx was
not radical enough. American culture is not Marxist com·
munism but some other "ism" that looks like Marxism. We
may reasonably suppose that our present-day American
ideal and practice of freedom has its sources in indigenous
traditions and institutions. In fact the historical beginning
of what Kojeve describes as the attainment in the United
States of the final stage of Marxist communism is found
in the abolitionist movement, in particular in the thinking
of its radical figures. In addition to William Lloyd Garrison
and other famous abolitionists, these include two of the
more daring, and as they were called, ultraist reformers of
that day, Stephen Pearl Andrews and John Humphrey
Noyes. And, although Emerson and Thoreau were not ac·
tive abolitionists, their contributions to the movement in
the form of conceptual elaboration of the ideal of freedom
were great. Finally, we are guided by the abolitionists' vi·
sion, actually by the movement's most acid and brilliant
contemporary critic, George Fitzhugh, who was a socialist
and the nation's top defender of slavery, to the philosophic
source, that is, to the source of the institutions that have
grown up from abolitionist seed to become the "final stage
of Marxist 'communism'."
Fitzhugh's judgment (and it is important to know that
he was a proto-Marxist of the kind to attract favorable in·
teres! from communist historians in our day) was this: the
abolitionist ideal of freedom did not really differ from his
own ideal of slavery.4 The difference between slavery and
abolitionism was, he said, that abolitionists would cure the
problems of free society, above all the problems stemming
from inequalities created by profit, by giving men yet more
freedom rather than less. Fitzhugh, however, said the abolitionists' ideal of freedom would lead them to free love and
this, he concluded, would lead them to despotism.
The discovery of Fitzhugh that abolition must lead
either to Southern slavery or to free love, which would lead
to despotism, was an insight of genius. He made this dis·
58
covery after reading the abolitionist and communist writer
Stephen Pearl Andrews who later beca!Tie the Pontiff of
Free Lovism in America, and the first American to print
the Manifesto. What Fitzhugh did not see was that free
love was a radicalization of the socialist labor theory of
value, or the principle of Marx that man is "nothing but the
creation of ... labour.''' This discovery, in particular the
uncovering of an infallible linkage between the timeless
and universal fact of human sexuality and the founding
doctrine of modern political theory, the state of nature, according to which man has no telos, was made by another
man more radical than Marx. Historians should now begin
to recognize that the lines of liberationist reasoning reaching into our time from the abolitionist and reform movements of the nineteenth century have their philosophic
source much less in Marx or even in Hegel than in a certain
Frenchman. Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade (17401814), a self-described "libertine" (his American editors remind us that this word is drawn "from the Latin liber:
'free' -an exceptional man of exceptional penchants, passions and ideas") is an author whose real thought, as these
same editors rightly say, ''remains . .. unknown.'' 6
Unlike Friedrich Engels, the Marquis de Sade did not
find it "curious ... that in every large revolutionary movement the question of 'free love' comes to the foreground.'''
Sade understood that free love is the revolution. Neither
have the liberal epigones of Engels as yet uncovered their
intimate connection with the man who is defined by the
"Latin liber: 'free'." This is striking considering that these
same thinkers have not' been slow to count men such as
Engels among the great leaders of the international antislavery movement.' Even more important, today's liberals
regard themselves as the descendants of the abolitionists
who, like them, "dream of extending the intimate love of
the private family to a wider circle of social relationships
.. '[and] debate ... the justifications for monogamous mar·
riage, the proper role of woman, and the best methods
of child-rearing."' In sum, the oversight regarding Sade's
proper and central place in the history of modern freedom
is a grave one. Except for a few daring poets, for the Surre·
alists, and more recently a handful of avant garde literary
critics all of whom consider him a heroic figure, Sa de is in
truth "unknown."lO
First and foremost a political writer and theorist, Dona·
tien de Sade is, however, known only as a pornographer.
Certainly he was a pornographer. But it seems unlikely to·
day that anyone except the most hopelessly prurient or
naive student could doubt that pornography is intrinsically
political even if it is more subtly, and more effectively, PO·
litical than utopian or science fiction. Pornography stands
in automatic rebellion against civility and against the so·
cia! as such. Indeed, as we shall see, it stands in opposition
to the human condition. Unlike theft or prostitution which
cannot easily thrive without honesty and chastity respectively, pornography, especially in Sade's expert hands (and
especially in its written form) is the enemy, rather like mur·
AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83
�der, a crime Sade prized, of everything civil. Sade sought
to found a critique that would justify the destruction, as
Marx put it, of "everything existing." 11 His aspirations, also
like Marx, were cosmic. To men living in the last third of
the twentieth century when pornography of the sort Sade
wrote secretly in jail can be bought in supermarkets, and
when the ideals he promoted are legal or social commonplaces or soon to become so (for example, homosexuality,
incest, abortion, murder, cannibalism), it seems fair to say
that Sade had a better understanding of the role of "the
abolition ... of the family" than his more famous revolutionary successor who regarded it as a mere "practical measure."" Sade had a profound understanding of why "the
attack on the family ... could not be shirked," as a student
of the socialist idea and of Robert Owen, its most famous
popularizer prior to Marx, has said. This attack is in truth
"central to the whole communitarian position." 13
The failure of our historians to grasp Sa de's great importance in the history of the communitarian movement cannot be explained by any secret writing in Sade or by any
lack of historical interest in an approach such as Sade' s
that emphasizes material factors. We cannot read very far
in Sade, in Marx, or in the history of American radical reform movements before we come upon an intersection that
relates property and freedom. Property, they all concur,
has its roots in the self, in amour propre or vanity. This of
course is Rousseau's idea, the foundation of his critique of
civilization. Moreover, it was Marx's solution to the problem of civilization considered as exchange deriving from
the division of labor, his solution, that is, of the problem of
the labor theory of value, that made him famous. A critique
of human enslavement based upon unequal exchange,
Marx's idea was that man's freedom lay in the principle
that all labor is equal. Men shall be freed by work. Sade (and
the American abolitionists as well) agreed that the inequality arising from the division of labor was man's slavery.
But Sade's solution to this problem was more radical than
Marx's. As for the solutions of Fitzhugh or the abolitionists, they were more Sadean than we have guessed until
now. Sade's idea was that men shall be freed not by work
but by pleasure.
Marx, we know, shared the assumption of his time that
labor is the basis of all value. It was, however, Marx's revision of this idea, his "trenchant distinction," as a recent
Marxist writer and admirer of Fitzhugh has put it, that the
ground of exchange was not use-value (for example hats
and corn are not commensurable in use.)l' Rather the
basis of exchange is labor as such or labor measured by duration. Where the means of producing hats and corn are
privately owned, and where labor itself is therefore an item
in exchange (labor power), and also privately owned in its
right (by the laborer), it follows, said Marx, that profit, hence
also alienation and unfreedom, is precisely a consequence
of exchange. Exchange serves capital, not needs. Marx
then radicalized the labor theory of value by applying it to
labor itself. He counted profit as the sale or exchange of
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
labor-value. According to this view, labor as work is credited
or paid its value at the same time that the product of the
labor is paid its value. The "surplus value," or profit, is
then a legitimate theft from labor.
The abolition of the division of labor and exchange,
thereby of civil society and all that goes with it, is tantamount to the appearance of man as absolutely free. Freedom, in other words, is no other than the abolition of
amour propre, of vanity. Vanity in the sense of selfish is
understood by Rousseau, as by Marx, to be the product of
meum et teum; all relationships are founded in property
and are property. This commutative proposition makes relationship as such, or dependence, property. But the substance of this freedom in Marx and in Rousseau as well is
problematical. What is this nonselfish, or as we say in common speech, unselfish being? What is freedom?
Marx did not explain the realm of freedom perhaps for
the same reason that he was at pains to insist, at the other
or starting end of his thought, that the inevitable question
regarding the origins of man and nature is impermissiblean "abstraction," as he says. 15 Instead, Marx explains the
source of freedom. Sade, however, admits of no such restraints. He merely drew out to its fullest extent the idea
that all labor is equal, that what Fitzhugh called skill and
wit and what Andrews called natural wealth is nature's
gift.I6 Like water from a spring this natural wealth is free
to all men.
If one's natural wealth, actually one's possession of those
endowments of nature which make for inequality, is as
free to everyone as air and water, then it follows that all
exclusive relationships, especially marriage, are radically
unfree. It was Andrews who had said, in explaining natural
wealth, that "when man deals with Nature, he is dealing
with an abject servant or slave ... man is a Sovereign and
Nature his minister. He extorts from her rightfully, whatever she can be made to yield. The legitimate business of
man is the conquest and subjugation of Nature." 17 This was
Sade' s opinion, too. Man's overcoming of the involuntary
or natural distinction between the sexes, the distinction at
the root of all division oflabor (thus the source of all property and pain), is the final, actually the first freedom; it is
the highest pleasure. Pleasure, not labor, sex, nor reproduction explains man's origin and his purposes. Where
Marx had said that "the whole of what is called world history is nothing but the creation of man by human labour,
and the emergence of nature for man ... has the evident
and irrefutable proof of his self-creation, of his own origins," Sa de proclaimed that man's origin is in pleasure.IB
In fact he does not distinguish pleasure or creation from
masturbation or pornography. Human freedom places the
endowments given by Nature to oneself and to others, like
air and water, at the disposal of all.
Sade' s idea of freedom looks forward to the replacement
of selfhood and the unmooring of all selves for use by others.
This is free love. And Sade realized, as would Kojeve, that
this objective involved the "definitive annihilation of Man
59
�properly so-called" along with the destruction of language
and philosophy." Sade realized the need for an attack as a
kind of self-rape on all creative powers, human and divine,
by the liberating and death-defying pornographer. This is
a political and philosophic undertaking, and because it flies
with greatest daring in the face of all human history and
fact, it begins with seizure of the world.
It will be obvious to the reader that Sa de's ideals, whatever else may be said of them, do not entail revolution. He
regarded the abolition of private property, following the
politicization of all human affairs that attends the liberation of the sexes~ as a mere "practical measure". Any vestiges of "this barbarous inequality" might legitimately be
cured by so traditional a means as theft: "Is theft, whose
effect is to distribute wealth more evenly, to be branded
as a wrong in our day, under our government which aims at
equality?" The state must indeed stimulate this useful if
simple equalizer in view of the admirable way that it "furthers equality and ... renders more difficult the conservation of property."20 Sade had no need of dialectical materialism. A pragmatist in economic matters as in others, he
would have dismissed Marx's contemptuous labeling of his
ideas as bourgeois radicalism while attacking Marx as an
absolutist. If man is made by pleasure and not by labor he
requires only pornography and a certain education in the
"sublimities of Nature."21 Sade's elaboration of these ideas
is found in an ingenious essay entitled "Yet another Effort,
Frenchmen, if you Would become Republicans."
The positioning of this essay is part of its meaning. Sade
embeds it in the middle of his pornographic novel-play entitled Philosophy in the Bedroom in which sexual acrobatics
is the main theme. In addition to the amorous relationship between a brother and sister with which the story begins, the plot turns upon the efforts of the protagonist, a
homosexual named Dolmance, a paramour of the brother,
to instruct a fifteen-year-old virgin, Eugenie, paramour of
the sister and the daughter of "one of the wealthiest commercial figures in the capital" (thus the story's predictable
anticapitalist element), in libertinism and debauchery."
Dolmance' s success, of which there was never any doubt,
is illustrated at the book's theoretical center, the womb of
the book, when Eugenie delightedly leads the revelers in
the near murdering of the story's sole antagonist, her
mother. The crime of this woman, easily guessed for all of
its implausible oddity, is that of being a mother. She confused the act of sex with its consequence, or children. The
woman is also guilty of failing to recognize that she has no
rights as a mother except that of instructing a child in sexual matters. Fittingly, then, the daughter administers just
punishment for her mother's crime. Eugenie's sewing together of her mother's womb "so that you'll give me no
more little brothers and sisters" is the occasion for a carnival flow of blood and semen. Like the mingled screams
of pain and pleasure, they flow as one. Dolmance, overwhelmed by the scene's perfection, is immediately aroused."
Eugenie has been educated. She has seen with her own
eyes that life is being unto death by means of sex. This is
60
freedom. Eugenie has witnessed, actually participated in,
the fact of man's equality with all other men, indeed with
all other beings. Sade has demonstrated that in making love
like an adult beast man severs the connection between sex
and reproduction. But this is death.
Freedom is death. In Kojeve's words for which Marx is
his source, "Death and Freedom are but two ... aspects of
one and the same thing .... j'To say 'mortal' is to say 'free'.24
And what of future generations, of reproduction simply?
Where freedom is death and reproduction is separated from
sex, the danger and the hope of the future is transferred
from God to man. The future is no longer a providential
matter. Sade intended, as did Noyes, as we shall see in a
moment, that the control of reproduction by means of
abortion, infanticide, and promiscuity would take the
power of childmaking and childrearing from the private
sphere and from God and place these powers in the hands
of mankind, that is, of the state.
It is Dolmance who reads the essay, "Yet another Effort, Frenchmen," to his partners. As the group's leader
and an advertised "cynic," his action on the occasion of
Eugenie' s triumph over her mother is the essay's meaning. Dolmance is the apparent author of the essay just as
Sade is the apparent model for Dolmance. But Dolmance,
although he admits that his thinking "does correspond
with some part of these reflections," is not the real
author. 25 Here, brilliantly, Sade insinuates the theme of
his work into his characterization: the theme is creation
by each self of new selves. Each self, generated by sex not
by reproduction, is interchangeable with other selves. Of
course a homosexual imitator of Sa de shall be Sa de's hero
and persona.
The essay that Dolmance reads but has not written is
said to have been picked up at a Paris newsstand. That Dolmance does not take credit for "Yet another Effort,
Frenchmen," or that he is not named Sade, is a joke at the
expense of philosophy and truth: philosophy is an undertaking appropriate only in the bedroom; more exactly philosophy is action, sexual action particularly, of which the
ideal is "philosophy" raped or pornography. The ideal of
philosophy so conceived is ''realized" in a scene such as
the one just described.
Philosophy is action which expresses the self in context
of the most liberated sexuality. This activity puts all false
philosophy, and all reality which is less than pornographic
sexual activity, out-of-bounds. Philosophy in the bedroom
is the highest action. This is idealism or theory conceived
as the goal for action to achieve. It is the restriction oflanguage to sense objects, but sense objects created by a pornographer. Reality, here susceptible of definition, is also
achievable or nearly so. The action of the mind in creating
the standard for action is the highest activity because it
defines action and precedes it. Sa de's creativity places
reality at the service of mind. Sade imagines libertinism,
therefore he exists.
Consider the extent of Sade's onanism. For him the
wasting of seed is creation. He is performing an act of ereAUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�ation by his own standards more obscene and blasphemous than anything even he can describe. Yet because it
is not a sexual act but a properly philosophic one he cannot explain it without seeming to undermine his point that
philosophy in the bedroom is the sole philosophy. Sade is
simulating an act of would-be creation, in particular the
creation of non-reproducing or death-seeking beings who,
like him, seek new reality, that is philosophic pleasure, by
means of a theoretical or hypothetical auto-eroticism modeled upon real auto-eroticism, masturbation, as an ideal.
Sade's aspiration here causes us to reconsider the judgment, made by one of the rare philosophic intelligences of
our time, that Marx's Theses on Feuerbach is "the best
world fetish ever constructed by a man [Marx] who wanted
to be God."26
It is appropriate to note here that it was not Marx's ideas
or his influence that affected the thinking of the American
communist John Humphrey Noyes, the results of whose
ideals Kojeve and Navrozov have described as Marxist
communism. Noyes, often considered the most revolutionary of modern times, was the founder in Oneida (New York)
of a free love commune in the 1840s. But Noyes goes beyond Marx: his ideas are Sadean; for instance, his remarkable system for human reproduction. Only couples chosen
by Noyes could mate for the purpose of conception. In
this way Noyes intended to efface the real mother and father and make himself, almost literally, the creator of the
offspring of others. Insisting, like Sade, upon the sinfulness
of egos, of what he called "selfish love", Noyes assured the
absolute equality of the sexes by implementing a thoroughgoing promiscuity without the possibility of offspring."
(Celibacy would achieve the same result and has been
adopted at times, for example by the Shakers in America,
to serve the same egalitarian goals Sade or Noyes had in
mind.) Noyes's object, the object of sexual equality, was
the disconnection of sex and reproduction. The resulting
offspring, products of Noyes's command, were touched in
only the slightest degree by human intervention.
Sa de's pornography or Noyes's system with its denial of
reality on principle raises the question how other, lesser
men will be induced to follow and to waive common sense.
Self-evidently Sade's answer, like that of America's "Leftbiased" culture, is that common sense can be seduced; it
can be sexually bewitched by pornography. Not the envious desire for equal porridge as Marx supposed but a lust
for nirvana, for "mind-blowing", is what Sa de supposed as
the basis for politics. But because real men differ from
creatures such as Sade's Minski, the fantastic and bestial
hero of The Story ofluliette, who is no more than a fleshed
phallic symbol housed in a metaphorical body, something
more is n~eded. Education is needed.
In pinning his hopes for Frenchmen upon education,
Sade showed himself a typical bourgeois radical of the type
so much hated by Marxists. Sade seeks to educate his fellows in the doctrine of political hedonism, to substitute the
pleasurable for the good. A cosmic thinker, Sade promises
immortality to his followers. It can be won, he explains, if
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
man will cast off his foolish and cowardly reliance upon the
gods. Sade's atheism, like that of Marx, is fundamental to
his project. It is in fact the project's purpose.
Sade establishes the foundation of education exactly as
Marx does. Sade prohibits questions about man's origin
and his end. He prohibits the subject of cosmology. "Let a
simple philosopher introduce ... [youth] to the inscrutable
but wonderful sublimities of Nature," Sade says. As for
anyone who might ask about man's origins, about God,
free will, and good and evil, let such a simpleton be told
"that things always having been what now they are, never
had a beginning, are never going to have an end." Such
questions, Sade indicates, are pointless. They are faintly
immoral as well. "It. .. becomes as useless as impossible
for man to be able to trace things back to an imaginary
origin which would explain nothing and not do· a jot of
good."28 Only egotistical people or those with too much
time on their hands seek answers to such questions. Compare Marx's treatment of a questioner of this type: "Are
you such an egotist/' Marx asks, "that you conceive every-
thing as non-existent and yet want to exist yourself?""
So as not to lose the sharpness of Sa de's thought it is
important to realize that he possessed the firmest possible
grip upon the problem posed by the rejection of classical
philosophy and Christianity. He understood what is meant
by Kojeve's principle that where "there is eternal life and
hence God, there is no place for human freedom." 30 Sade
boldly rejected "the grubby Nazarene fraud [and] ... His
foul, nay repellent mother, the shameless Mary," replacing
them with "atheism ... the one doctrine of all those prone
to reason .... Religion," he said, "is incompatible with the
libertarian system." 31 Sade hated the divine with a consuming hate of one who wishes himself to be creator. He
was quite clear about the necessity for atheism, actually of
nirvana or Nothing which is something more than atheism,
to the purposes of creation. Sade is a radical and does not
condescend to argue. Instead, he delights to sneer, challenging his reader to doubt, once all the veils are drawn, if
cannibalism, rape, murder, sodomy, and incest are other
than the most natural impulses to which objections are at
best hypocrisy. Indulging these so-called crimes, Sade insists, is noble and also revolutionary, since the performance
of, say murder, is liberation and freedom. Such indul·
gences, Sade believes, and his admirers agree, reflect only
the "singularity of. .. tastes." 32
Like a bourgeois radical, Sade demands absolute toleration and openness as his due. He knows that his tolerant
liberal reader, who dares not go so far as he, will grant him
the right to indulge his tastes. He knows, in other words,
that he will subdue his liberal reader. Yet Sade has only
contempt for toleration and for liberal readers. He cruelly
invokes toleration as an argument on his behalf. Finally,
he does not permit the tolerant reader to evade the consequences of his tolerance.
It is self-evident that Sade is not a liberal or one who discourses on the need for revolution while fully clothed and
within reach of a policeman. Sade is radical and insists
61
�upon raping, indeed sodomizing, one's mother and murdering her if necessary for the orgasm of everyone. In this
way Sade creates followers whose position, like that of today's liberals in face of their communist colleagues, is to
oppose his goal as inappropriate even as they insist that
this goal or absolute freedom is the essence of all morality."
Sade's appeal to the argument of radical toleration-"We
wonder that savagery could ever reach the point where
you condemn to death an unhappy person [sodomist, murderer, rapist] all of whose crime amounts to not sharing
your tastes" -serves the double purpose of embarrassing
liberals while condemning the principle of toleration as
evidence of liberal fears and egotism." In other words, Sade
demonstrates that the dreadful outcome of liberal egotism
and toleration is intolerance (his position), and the destruction of egos (also his position). Toleration permits what liberals call "victimless crimes" which, however, destroy egos
(e.g., sadism) and are therefore intolerant. Sade had a perfect understanding that the meaning of radical toleration,
the essence of which is a hatred of the philosophic or an
embrace of the proposition that all truth claims are equal,
is freedom: it is the destruction oflanguage or its mutation
into the language of bees. "Debate" on the subjects of"extending the love of the private family" and the rest, Sade
knew to be cowardice, for the principle that admits debate
concedes the legitimacy of the possibility. The purpose of
freedom (of speech and of actions) in the modern context,
he well knew, was to liberate men from reality so that good
and evil would possess whatever meanings he assigned
to them.
Certainly if man is to be free he must be free above all
from a standard of good and bad beyond himself. This was
especially clear to those American abolitionists and femi- •
nists who considered the conscience the primary site of
freedom. That many abolitionists could, however, say as
much without acting on what they said reflected a failure
on their part to realize Sa de's point: that sexuality and the
overcoming of any distance between men and women was
the true test of all liberation.
In this respect it will be necessary to revise the historians' estimate of the abolitionists in light of a more comprehensive and more historical context. They were rather
less radical or liberated than previously supposed. As one
recent student has put it in a study aptly entitled The
Slavery of Sex, many of the radical female abolitionists
were "limited by their elitism ... [for example] women who
were socially and sexually deviant were not accepted ....
These women were prudish in sexual matters, and many
were willing ... to impose their moral standards on others."35
Like Andrews, these ~omen were not quite ready, with
Sade, to embrace deviation-what is today routinely called
"deviationn-as virtuous, an expression of individuality,
or freedom, let alone to tolerate it. Their "elitism, ... the
denial of radical equality to all, brought them up short of
the goal of abolishing slavery to sex as a social and a political principle.H36
It is sufficient to mention only Garrison, widely consid-
62
ered to have been the most radical of abolitionists active in
the cause and undoubtedly a feminist. His speech or rather
the conceptions he propounded were radical enough. He
looked for the dissolution of the Union, of government as
such, and considered there was at once nothing more contemptible "than the exclusive spirit toward women," or
nothing higher than the "right of every soul to decide ...
what is true ... [so that] no man can be an infidel, except he
be false to his own standard." 37 But he could not bring himself to endorse, much less to engage in, free love. Even the
petty anarchism of his sometime pupil, Nathaniel Rogers,
caused him to act the tyrant. In identifying Garrison as the
head of the "extreme wing of the Socialist, Infidel, Women's-Right" party, Fitzhugh was only partly correct. 38
What the abolitionists broached and what their historians today praise as true freedom Sade had conceived in
1795, the year of "Yet another Effort, Frenchman." Sade
contemplated ·a revision of personhood or what is today
recommended to us as the "twilight of subjectivity.'' 39 It is
doubtful if even now men fully understand what Sade understood so well, namely that this ideal must encourage,
not prevent, victimization. Only the most advanced twentieth century thinkers in the abolitionist tradition seem to
have grasped this point. For example, joel Feinberg argues
for the necessity to "withhold noncontingent rights from
infants ... [basing] the case for prohibiting infanticide on
reasons other than ... rights." 40
Sade attempted to resolve the conflict between liberty
and equality as posed by the premises of modern political
theory. He sought to resolve the claims of individuality
versus the community, of liberty versus equality, by transforming rights into needs and needs into pleasure. The
problem of liberty versus equality has proven insoluble in
all modern systems except the Marxist theory of value and
its promise of the realm of freedom, a faith rooted in historical processes. But Marx's solution, as we have said, has
no respectable believers but liberals. It is in fact Sade's solution, for which Marxists such as Koji:ve have taken credit
without making clear that it goes beyond Marx, that leads
observers to confuse America with the final stage of Marxist communism. Sa de simply radicalized freedom: freedom
must be free. The enslavement of others that must follow
this doctrine Sade greeted amiably as the means of yet
greater liberation, that is, the liberation from vanity or
natural wealth. Here in fact is the key to his thought. He
begins with the primacy of sex or, rather, he substitutes
sexuality for reproduction as the basis of human existence.
The core of life is the moment of lust.
"There is no moment in the life of man," Sa de writes,
"when liberty in its whole amplitude is so important to
him." But while "no passion has a greater need of the
widest horizon of liberty than this one, none, doubtless, is
as despotic.''41 Sade's resolution of this apparent dilemma,
a form of the essential dilemma of the political conceived
as a contest between the individual and the community,
i.e., as a form of the theory of unequal exchanges or the labor theory of value, is ingenious. ''Never," says Sade, ''may
AlYTIJMN/WINTER 1982-83
�an act of possession be exercised upon a free being."42 Such
an exercise is the acme of tyranny. He supports this asser·
tion with a predictable and telling comparison. The "ex·
elusive possession of a woman," he says, "is ~o less unjust
than the possession of slaves."43 No one will doubt that
Sade was an abolitionist. He was more of one than Engels
and a better one than Andrews. Sade's doctrine here, com·
mon to abolitionists in America, implies a revision of the
idea that labor forms selfhood. Sade, who was impatient
with what he considered, rightly in this case, derivative
matters, was not interested in the labor question but rather
in its source. Unlike Charles Fourier, for whom work could
be transformed into play, or Marx, for whom work or pro·
duction is constitutive of man in the realm of freedom-or
like other modern thinkers and leaders who also conceived
work as an instrument ofliberation-Sade had his own novel
and seductive formulation.
If exclusive possession is prohibited for men, must it
not work a correlative freedom for women? Sade insisted
upon it: "All men are born free, all have equal rights." Ac·
cording to this principle, one of which we should "never
... lose sight," it is also true that "never may there be
granted to one sex the legitimate right to lay monopolizing
hands upon the other, and never may one of these sexes,
or classes, arbitrarily possess the other."44 But then what
of liberty's need for the widest possible horizon? Has Sa de,
too, run aground in the narrow passage between Commu-
nism or equality and Individualism or freedom?
Sa de's response to this challenge shows his position.
"No man," he says, "may be excluded from the having of
a woman ... [because] she ... belongs to all men. The act
of possession can only be exercised upon a chattel or an
animal, never upon an individual who resembles us."45
Consider, Sade says, that in permitting all men access to
all women, females are freed from possession by a single
male. Does the principle of freedom, Sade asks, not give
the appearance of the enslavement of women? This is an
appearance only. Of course, freedom must include rape,
murder, and cannibalism, but Sade does not suppose for a
moment that a woman's freedom is affected adversely by
this fact. Actually a woman is freed marvelously precisely
in the act of rape. The freedom expressed in rape is "a
question of enjoyment [i.e., of pleasure] only, not of property."46 And to this distinction between ownership and
pleasure, which is no less trenchant than Marx's regarding
the theory of labor, S'l\le adds an example especially instructive because it occurred later to Andrews.
"I have no right of possession upon that fountain I find
by the road," Sade explains, "but I have certain rights to
its use."" Andrews's example also demonstrates the principle of ownership and pleasure with a reference to the use
of water. "So soon as I have dipped up a pitcher of water
from the spring or stream," Andrews expounds, '~it is no
longer ... natural wealth; it is a product of my labor."48
But his example, in contrast to Sade's, tells us why American abolitionists moved, as Andrews himself complained,
festina lente in sexual matters. If natural wealth becomes
1BE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
property through the intervention of labor, all hope of resolving the dilemma of freedom and equality, of Individualism and Communism, vanishes. Again Sade had the
better answer.
The radicalization of the labor theory of value is Sa de's
solution to freedom's conflict with possession or ownership. The taking of natural wealth, water from a stream,
on the principle of pleasure-not labor-insures that the
object taken does not become a possession. As Marx turned
the labor theory of value back upon itself to show how
capital was a theft from labor, Sade radicalized the labor
theory of value by making all possession, the product of
labor, an encroachment upon pleasure and upon natural
wealth.
The effect of Sa de's reasoning in practical, or at least in
"philosophical," life (i.e., in pornography) is surprisingly,
we may say dialectically, a boon to women. Women are
liberated by submitting to men. But because pleasure, not
possession, is the basis of ownership and at the same time
destroys ownership, pleasure liberates men from self-possession or egotism in the act of possessing women. That
every man has of right equal access to all women is simply
justified: women are no different from other natural objects such as water and air. Moreover, women do not choose
to be beautiful to men or indeed they do not choose to be
women. Rape is then liberation in a fundamental sense of
overcoming womanhood or the outward self, the unfree
or involuntary eleinent of a "woman's" being.
Of course no woman can be said to possess womanhood
or to choose it. What women do not possess and what
costs them nothing is free, like water, to all who wish it for
the sake of pleasure. Regardless of any egotistical or possessive and selfish objection women may have, men have
the right "to compel their submission."49 Sade proclaims
in the name of freedom that "I have the right to force from
her this enjoyment, if she refuses me it for whatever the
cause."so But because pleasure, the purpose of rape, is not
labor, the raped woman is not a possession of the rapist. It
follows finally that men can have no rights to pleasure itself as a possession as this would be a contradiction in
terms.
The apparent enslavement of women, or rape, which
liberates women from the slavery of womanhood, hence
from unfreedom, thus pain, is also the means for women
to liberate men. If it is allowed to all men that women, and
"all sexes ... [and] creatures," shall yield to lust, it cannot
be doubted that men must equally yield to women. 11 Is
not the basis of right found in pleasure the most complete
freedom? But what is pleasurable is by definition not a
possession. What is pleasurable is free. Natural wealth is
free to everyone on the same principle that women are free
to everyone. The pleasure of men, guaranteed by their
freedom of access to all women, is itself a natural product
like air and water.
Certainly it would be unnatural and irrational for an individual male to deny himself pleasure, i.e., to deny himself freedom. Such a denial, moreover, would constitute
63
�exclusivity and egotism, a hoarding, of natural wealth, his
own or others. This would be precisely that elitism deplored
by antebellum abolitionists and by neoabolitionists. It
would be to suppose that one's own special pleasure, like
one's own special skill or wit, was his when in fact it is
everyone's. In other words, individuals may not discriminate or distinguish egos or persons where pleasure is concerned without contradicting the principle of pleasure
itself, thereby committing an act of self-enslavement. Certainly pleasures may be various-in fact, must be so. But
pleasure as such, whatever its variations, is common to all.
It must be free to all if it is to be free to any.
Pleasure or freedom, the opposite of labor or slavery,
having no costs, works the same effacement of ego and
selfhood in men that male access to women works upon
women. This is why love, ego, and self-interest are evils
for Sade as they were for John Humphrey Noyes. Again
Sade, however, is far ahead of most contemporary neoabolitionists. It is only in recent times that the possibilities
of "sex without love" have begun to expose themselves to
radical scholarship.52 Sade realized that "love ... is no more
a title [to a man or a woman], ... and cannot serve the happiness of others, and it is for the sake of ... happiness ...
that women have been given to us."53
Sade was not affected by elitism. He was its constant
enemy. Moreover, as pleasure is the instrument to cure
men of egotism, it is especially effective in the hands of
women who are, in Sade's view, capable of greater pleasure, hence of greater freedom and selflessness than men.
"Women [have] been endowed with considerably more
violent penchants for carnal pleasure then we," Sade contends.54 For this reason he considers it necessary to say, al
want laws [sic?] permitting them to give themselves to as
many men as they see fit. .. [U]nder the special clause
prescribing their surrender to all who desire them, there
must be subjoined another guaranteeing them a similar
freedom to enjoy all they deem worthy to satisfy them."55
Laws, it appears, are instruments of permission. But why
laws at all in the reign of freedom and pleasure? Sade has
a special conception of laws in mind.
Sade yokes the seeming extremes of absolute liberty
and abject tyranny in a perfect mutuality. Of course this is
possible only in the realm of the pleasure-made man who
has donated his selfish ego for a better human future.
The drift of Sade' s thinking leads one to suspect that he is
about to counsel the effacement of man as such and the
merging of the human with the natural in a kind of species
cannibalism. Perhaps the refusal to go beyond a hint of
this possibility is the only concession Sade makes to his
reader in Philosophy in the Bedroom.
Describing the sexual, and the transsexual, meshing
and entwining of bodies and beings, of "all parts of the
body" among "all sexes, all ages, all creatures possible,"
Sade calls finally for an annihilation of every possible distinction among hurrians. 56 Here is equality. It is a doctrine
of salvation. Sade calls for an engorging of the human by
64
the rest of nature. Celebrating the immortalizing effects
of a kind of enmaggoting of the human, Sade makes no
distinction between humanity and plants and animals.
Sade announces his ontological contribution in a formula
characteristic of the modern liberator as suffering servant.
"The philosopher," he says, "does not flatter small human
vanities ... [but in the] ever ... burning pursuit of truth,"
he utters huge veriti~s regardless of the consequences and
the squeals of conformists. 57 Because the truth is philosophic, that is, because it is an action idealized, or philosophy in the bedroom, a disquisition can do no better
than ask, and with a rhetorical sneer, how anyone dares to
suppose that man is different from a rat or a manure pile.
"What is man?" Sade inquires, jjand what difference is
there between him ... and all other animals of the world?""
In fact man is reducible to his physical being. But this is
no bad thing. Far from it. Man's natural condition is the
source of the greatest liberation of all.
Because man is part of nature and does nature's bidding,
he is freed from the greatest enslavement. What is more
repugnant and more completely contrary to all desire and
freedom than death? And what, if not the fear of death,
enslaves men to religion, that is, to superstition? Sade proclaimed immortality or liberation from death because he
could also proclaim man is liberated from the divine.
Above all, immortality is the fitting reward of those who
bravely reject the "absurd dogmas, the appalling mysteries,
the impossible morality of. .. [Christianity], this disgusting
religion." 59 Christianity promises immortality in order to
control and limit nature. But just as pleasure is liberation
because it is sensual, atheism is knowledge of the highest
things because it too is sensual. Atheism is a true judgment because, like "every [true] judgment [it is] the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by
the . .. senses."60
It is also perfectly obvious that, as man has no beginning
except in sex, there· can be "no ... annihilation; what we
call the end of the living animal is no longer a true finis,
but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter
. ... According to these irrefutable principles, death is
hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible
passage from one existence into another ... what Pythagoras called metempyschosis."61 Sex and all allied pleasure
insure everlasting life, but it is the orgasmic, not the reproductive aspects of sexuality, which do so.
Self-sovereignty, absolute liberty and pleasure having
made necessary the elimination of egos, requires as well
the abolition of man. But the cost is only pleasure and the
reward, or immortality, is the highest pleasure of all. Sade's
inversion of Christianity includes necessarily a vision of
the good regime since his kingdom is emphatically of this
world. The philosopher in the bedroom speaks not only to
Frenchmen, whom he urges to make "yet another effort if
they would be republicans"; he speaks as well to the "legislator" whom he also openly addresses in the course of
his essay as you. 62 He speaks to us.
AtnlJNUN/~UNlllR
1982-83
�.i
The republican regime of liberty is unquestionably a
regime of laws. It is already clear that the freedom of
women is to be assured by laws. But radical individualism
and self-sovereignty are manifestly incompatible with laws
in the accepted sense. How could one possibly "devise as
many laws as there are men," asks Sade. He answers by
promising that laws shall "be lenient, and so few in num·
her, that all men, of whatever character, can easily observe
them."63
Laws must suit the variations of people, their tastes es·
pecially. Laws must be particular, not general; they must
be value-free. But of course there is a universality in this
version of law, namely every case is special. The man above
the law or the philosopher is here everyman. And unlike
the classic philosopher, the lawgiver, everyman, conceived
by Sa de denies nothing to himself in the way of pleasures.
Indeed, law is solely for the sake of pleasure. The purpose
of law so conceived is to incite passions and indulgences,
not to control them. This is all there is of virtue and law in
Sade. He explains why the law, in the accepted view, is
unfair, that is, unjust to human nature·. His rationale proceeds in light of a dialectic of sorts to the effect that man
has a nature, but in a special sense. Man has no fixed nature. "It has been pointed out that there are certain virtues
whose practice is impossible for certain men ... ," Sa de
begins. Since this is so, he continues, "would it not be to
carry your injustice beyond all limits were you to send the
law to strike the man incapable of bowing to the law?"64
What kind oflaws should the republican regime devise?
What meaning might law have at all? Sa de's answer is a
model of the bourgeois radical's vision of the liberation of
individuals. "The legislator ... must never be concerned
with the effect of that crime which strikes only the individual."65 In other words the republican regime, which
sets about to liberate the individual and to fashion laws for
him particularly, is now to be unconcerned about individuals
and care only for itself, the state. Sade describes here what
Kojeve commends as the universal and homogeneous
state, the state that has the appearance of having attained
Marxist communism. 66 This is the realm in which we are
to witness what Rousseau called a "change ... [of] human
nature ... transforming each individual, who by himself is
a perfect and solitary whole, into a part of a much greater
whole."67 The objective of law in such a state is the enlargement of the public sphere and the destruction of the
private sphere in the name of and for the sake of the individual's liberty. But this object is no other than the widest
horizon of pleasure or liberty, namely the elimination of
all distinctions and exclusivities. The object of law is
equality. This object, Sade realized (much before Tocque·
ville and with less evidence for his inferences), demands
the destruction of what sociologists call mediate institutions. This destruction is to be done by the omnicompetent state in the name of liberty, a procedure that must
enhance the power of the state and its reputation as the
source of benevolence. "Equality," said Tocqueville at the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
conclusion of his famous study of 1835, "prompts men to
think of one sole uniform and strong government. ... In
the dawning centuries of democracy, individual indepen·
dence and local liberties will always be the products of art.
Centralized government will be the natural thing."68 Historians, who have of course paid great attention to Tocqueville, have wondered if Tocqueville considered this
tendency benign or malevolent. Sa de is not ambiguous on
this point. He considered this tendency Sadean.
It remains only to address the vestiges of exclusivity and
inequality, of elitism, in the residual superstructure oflife.
Sade turns to this subject with relish.
Because ego and selfishness are melted in the furnace
of pleasure and all sexual or natural distinctions turn to
ashes, the state must do its part to extinguish all derived
distinctions. Sade encourages with vigor the work of man's
compulsory education. Surely life is the absolute possession of the state, first of all. A human being who does not
possess a self cannot be said to possess life either. Rather
he "possesses," as aspects of his (more properly "its") immortality as matter, those feelings and functions which he
shares with all other humans and indeed with all nature.
The urge of self-preservation, for example, does not convey a right to self-preservation in the individual. This right
is the state's. In fact Sa de's position that "the freest of
people are they who are most friendly to murder" further
underlines his ideal of liberation of the self from egotism.69
The instinct for self preservation is in Sa de's view outmoded. Moreover, it is man's finitude or death that
justifies Sa de's reasoning on all forms of murder. Murder,
infanticide, and abortion result from the principle that
severs the relation of sex and reproduction. All of these
murderings sever man from the divine or eternity. Sade
writes: "If all individuals were possessed of eternal life,
would it not become impossible for Nature to create any
new ones? If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows
that their destruction is one of her laws." 70 The logic of
these sentences, in addition to licensing all murder that
will cut the connections of sex and reproduction, is that
the state may murder at will just as it may create at will.
"Every individual born lacking the qualities to become
useful. .. has no right to live, and the best thing ... is to
deprive him of life the moment he receives it." Likewise
the state may "prevent the arrival. .. of a being."71
Undoubtedly the independence, the freedom and equality of each being, warrants such measures. These measures
will appear harsh only in the eyes of those individuals who
persist in selfish and egotistical ways. The source of selfpossession is vanity, after all. Rousseau was not the only
one to see that the absence of freedom, that is, dependence, means vanity and egotism. Sade simply decreed
dependence a crime against freedom, its contradiction.
The extinction of what the American communist John
Humphrey Noyes called the "I spirit" can mean only that
the I who acts and speaks must be We. Elimination of egos
or creation of the we spirit is critical to the interdepen·
65
�dence of the community and to the freedom of all to do
what they desire to do. A weeding' out of those who are
dependent because they cannot participate in their own
liberation and that of others, while superficially an act of
cruelty, is in the larger view an act of magnanimity.
Sade does not flatter small vanities. The truth is that
the elimination of useless individuals is a function of free·
dam. "It is not unjust," Sade proclaims, that "the human
species ... be purged from the cradle; what you foresee as
useless to society is what must be stricken out of it."72 Of
course uselessness is defined only by whatever suits the
ruler's pleasure. First of all men and women must be made
to give way to others without qualifications of any sort,
and as all must yield their egos to pleasure, so government
must enforce these activities and promote them. In addition to providing free and certainly compulsory state education (Sade understood the necessity of compulsory and
free education in a regime founded in equality and freedom), the legislator must encourage every effort in the
direction of freedom and equality .73
The government must promote the most complete independence of every individual, the freedom of each person. As we have already seen, the state shall encourage
theft as an instrument of equalization. Much more important, the state must prohibit those activities with a tendency to establish vanity. Offenses tending to inhibit
sexual indulgences must be rooted out and punished with
utmost severity. The government for its part will establish
"various stations, cheerful [and] sanitary" for the satisfaction of every possible lust. "The laws ... will oblige
[women] ... to prostitute themselves ... [This] is ... the
most equitable of laws ... all egotistical sentiments quite
aside."74 What other law could be more useful to freedom?
But the fundamental purpose of the state's provisions
for individual freedom is "absolutely destroying all marital
bonds."75 Because sexual activity is not for the sake of reproduction but serves the opposite purpose, suicide, murder,
annihilation, and nothingness are as much to be encouraged as other pleasures. Incest, for example, is a new virtue:
"It loosens family ties .... [It] ought to be every government's law."76 Sade means it must not simply be permitted.
It must be forced. Whereas certain ancient gnostics, seeking to free men from the body, urged activities designed
to extinguish human life, Sade put sex in the service of
these goals. Offspring are not only an annoyance rightfully to be disposed of, they are an affront to pleasureseeking liberators. Only the state is the creator of beings.
Sade turned the business of reproduction over to the state,
to "you", the legislator, much as Noyes took this task
upon himself at Oneida. In other words, the creation of
human beings is taken from men and women in the name
of their liberation. This reverses the way of civilization as
well as the first commandment gi'(en to men in the book
of Genesis to multiply and replenish the earth. Opposite
principles are set in their place. These are the substitution
of man's power for God's power, finitude and mortality
for infinitude and immortality; above all death for life.
66
Sade invites a new view of children, thus of being.
HThere are no longer born, as fruits of the woman's plea-
sure, anything but children to whom knowledge of their
father is absolutely forbidden." Children, instead of "belonging to only one family ... must be ... purely les enfants
de Ia patrie."77 The formation of a family of man, deriving
from the "annihilation" of the traditional family, is the
special duty of republics.
Every individual must have no other dam than the nation . ..
from her alone all must be expected. Do not suppose you are
fashioning good republicans so long as children, who ought to
belong solely to the republic, remain immured in their families. By extending to the family, to a restricted number of persons, the portion of affection they ought to distribute amongst
their brothers, they inevitably adopt those persons' sometimes very harmful prejudices; such children's opinions, their
thoughts, are particularized, malformed, and the virtues of a
Man of the State become completely inaccessible to them . ..
[Those who], love ... their children less but their country
more [are most free ].78
Sade's reference here to "particularism" summarizes
his thinking. As a quintessential bourgeois radical for
whom particularism means tribalism, egotism, and selfishness, Sade proposes instead the family of m,an. But we
have just seen in Sa de's essay that the core of the family
of man lies with the reduction of philosophy to action, in
particular to sexual action. Sade's purpose reverses the
meaning of philosophy in two ways. Philosophy distinguishes act and contemplation; Sade combines them by
reducing thought to act. He is pragmatic. Philosophy regards thought as universal and action as particular; Sade
insists upon the opposite. But acts cannot be universal.
They are particular. Sade's inversion of philosophy, his reduction of it to action is profitably compared to the betterknown efforts of Marx and Hegel, the materialist and the
idealist, who also attempted to transpose the realm of philosophy to action, to history.
Marx and Hegel, as we know, invested history with
meaning, that is, with philosophy or universality. Kojeve
has described this as making the concept equal to time.79
Sade also made this equation but with a difference. This
difference is the institutional substance of that reality
Kojeve thought he found in America as the attainment of
Marxist communism. Sade equates the concept (philosophy) with time as pleasure. In other words he equates the
concept with temporality, with every moment of time.
The meaning of such an equation in practice would be
the eternal present or the realm of freedom. Philosophy in
the bedroom is then a universal language or the language
of bees.
The author is pleased to acknowledge the assistance of the Earhart
Foundation in the preparation of this essay.
l. Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, Lectures on
the Phenomenology of the Spirit, Ithaca 1969, 159-61. Note to the Sec·
ond Edition.
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�2. Lev Navrozov, Letter to the Editor, Commentary 73 June 1982, 16.
3. Kojeve, Introduction, 161. Note to the Second Edition, 159-60.
4. Fitzhugh's chief work is Cannibals All! or Slaves Without Masters, ed.,
and with an introduction by C. Vann Woodward, Boston, 1960 (1856).
For a brief survey of his ideas see the present writer's "The Proslavery
Roots of Socialist Thought," The Conservative Historians' Forum 6 1982,
14-21.
5. Karl Marx, "Private Property and Communism," in T. B. Bottomore,
Karl Marx Early Writings, New York 1964, 166.
6. Richard Seaver and Austryn Wainhouse, eds., The Marquis de Sade,
The Complete Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom and Other Writings,
New York 1965, viii, v.
7. Friedrich Engels. "The Book of Revelations," in Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, Works [in Russian] Moscow-Leningrad 1928-48, xvi,
pt. 1, 160. I am indebted to Joseph Dwyer, deputy curator, Hoover Institution, for this citation.
8. For example, David Brion Davis, who is the leading as well as quintessential abolitionist historian. See his The Problem of Slavery in the
Age of Revolution 1770-1823, Ithaca 1975,468.
9. David Brion Davis, "Ante-Bellum Reform," in Frank Otto Gatell and
Allen Weinstein, American Themes, &says in Historiography, New York
1968, 153.
10. A recent work in literary criticism is Jane Gallop, Intersections. A
Reading of Sade with Bataille, Blanchot, and Klossowski, Lincoln, Neb
1981.
11. Karl Marx to R. Kreuznach in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The MarxEngels Reader, New York 1972, 8.
12. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party,
in Tucker ed., The Marx·Engels Reader 360.
13. J. F. C. Harrison, Quest for the New Moral World, New York 1969,
59.
14. Eugene D. Genovese, The World the Slaveholders Made, Two Essays
in Interpretation, New York, 1969, 176.
15. Marx, "Private Prop~rty and Communism," 166.
16. Fitzhugh, Cannibals All!, 21 and following. Stephen Pearl Andrews,
The Science of Society, New York 1851,76.
17. Andrews, The Science of Society, 81.
18. Karl Marx, "Private Property and Communism," 166.
19. Kojeve, Introduction, 159, note 6.
20. Sade, Philosophy in the Bedroom, 313-14.
21. Sade, Bedroom, 304.
22. Bedroom, 192.
23. Bedroom, 363, 365.
24. Kojeve, Introduction, 247.
25. Sade, Bedroom, 339.
26. Eric Voegelin, From Enlightenment to Revolution, Durham, N.C.
1975, 299.
27. Charles Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of the United States,
New York 1875, 292.
28. Sade, Bedroom, 304.
29. Marx, "Private Property and Communism," 166.
30. Kojeve, Introduction, 258.
31. Sade, Bedroom, 299, 300, 301.
32. Seaver and Wainhouse, The Marquis de Sade, viii.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
33. Based on Irving Kristol, "Taxes, Poverty, and Equality," Public In·
terest 37, 1974, 25.
34. Sade, Bedroom, 325.
35. Blanche Glassman Hersh, The Slavery of Sex, Urbana 1978, 225.
36. Hersh, Slavery, 225.
37. Walter M. Merill, ed., The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison 6 vo1s.,
Boston 1971-1981, III 148, lV 387.
38. Fitzhugh, Cannibals Alll, 95.
39. Fred Dallmayr, Twilight of Subjectivity: Contributions to a PostIndividualist Theory of Politics, Amherst,-Mass. 1981.
40. Joel Feinberg, Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty: Essays on
Social Philosophy, Princeton 1980, xii.
41. Sade, Bedroom, 317.
42. Bedroom, 318.
43. Bedroom, 318.
44. Bedroom, 318
45. Bedroom, 319.
46. Bedroom, 319, note 15.
47. Bedroom, 319, note 15
48. Andrews, The Science-of Society, 77.
49. Sade, Bedroom, 319.
50. Bedroom, 319, note 15.
51. Bedroom, 316.
52. Russell Vannoy, Sex Without Love: A Philosophical Exploration,
New York 1980.
53. Sade, Bedroom, 319.
54. Bedroom, 321.
55. Bedroom, 321.
56. Bedroom, 321, 316.
57. Bedroom, 329.
58. Bedroom, 329.
59. Bedroom, 298.
60. Bedroom, 304.
61. Bedroom, 330-l.
62. Bedroom, 316, 317, 325.
63. Bedroom, 310.
64. Bedroom, 310.
65. Bedroom, 312.
66. Kojeve, Introduction, 139 and elsewhere.
67. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, ed., Charles Frankel,
New York 1947, 36.
68. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in American, ed., J.P. Mayer and
Max Lerner, New York 1966, 649.
69. Sade, Bedroom, 333.
70. Bedroom, 3 30.
71. Bedroom, 335 note 20, 336.
72. Bedroom, 336.
73. Bedroom, 321-2.
74. Bedroom, 316, 319-20.
75. Bedroom, 322.
76. Bedroom, 324.
77. Bedroom, 322.
78. Bedroom, 335, 321-2.
79. Kojeve, Introduction, 100-149.
67
�Meetings, Recognitions
Meyer Liben
1 - - - How do you know him?
- - - Oh, we met about a month ago at a party, at a
friend's house, he didn't know anybody there, he had just
moved into the city-he's from out West somewheres-and
came with a girl who was a friend of the hostess, really of
the host's wife, that was more the effect, met the girl
through a fellow he used to go to college with, I think they
roomed together for a year and then he (I mean the one
you're asking about) switched to another school, didn't
like the place or maybe it was his marks, anyway he's in
some phase of T.V., or maybe he just watches it a lot, I
don't know him very well, we just met him at this party,
and hardly spoke to him at all.
2 - - - I didn't know that you knew him.
- - - Oh yes, we met about seven years ago, one of
those relationships where, if you pass in the street, you
nod without talking, never quite sure whether she remem·
bers who you are or not (or sometimes imagining that she
thinks about you quite often, covering the interest with a
nod) and then when someone mentions her name you say:
Oh I know her slightly, or, after a while: I've met her but
don't really know her, I think we actually met at the
beach, she was with mutual friends, people I'm still friends
with, tho I've never seen her with them again, you know
how it is at the beach, everything stands in the way of real
contact, the ocean's vastness, solar somnolence, we're all
half·naked and insignificant, the meetings are unreal, so
you nod, faintly, when you pass in the street, or say:
We've met, but I don't really know her.
3 - - - I didn't know you knew them.
- - - Are you kidding? We've known them for years,
we don't see them as much as we used to, they used to live
across the street from us on 84th Street, that was before
Meyer Liben's (1911-1975) collection of short stories, Street Games and
Other Stories will appear in 1983 (Schocken Books). Justice Hunger and
Nine Stories appeared in 1967 (Dial Press). His stories have often appeared in the St. John's Review Ouly 1980, Summer 1981, Winter 1981).
68
the West Side was making its comeback, the kids used to
play together, and we used to visit back and forth, naturally
see each other in the park. Then they moved, and we
moved. For a while (especially when we were still on the
old block) we'd see each other, but now I don't know,
maybe they moved into another bracket or something,
not that they're highhat or anything, anyway we kind of
drifted apart once we were in neighborhoods to which the
other was strange, we know them at least sixteen years,
lived on the same block for let's see, nine years, our kids
practically grew up together.
4 - - - How did you meet?
- - - It was a foggy day, I was standing on the beach,
looking out into the mist, and she suddenly appeared from
the water, pretty weird, because I'd been there for about
an hour, and hadn't seen anyone, but we didn't talk, and I
actually met her a week later at a friend's house, we recog·
nized one another right off, but we never have said any·
thing about that first meeting, I'm pretty sure it was the
same girl, I mean how can you forget, under the circum·
stances?
5 I don't really remember how we met, I mean I don't
remember the exact occasion, it's funny how the exact
moment of meeting tends to be forgotten, we can place it
by years, or season, or place, but things seem to conspire
against the exact moment, maybe it's because we rarely
meet a person for the first time, but have seen him, at a
distance, on a number of occasions, or have heard about
him, so the first meeting is blurred by those views from a
distance, or by the previous mention, and it becomes
quite impossible to pin down.
6 I can tell you the exact moment that I met her, I came
down to the dock with a friend, and she was sitting there
with a group of youngsters, reading, that was absolutely
the first time that I laid eyes on her, never saw her in a back·
ground of other figures, had never heard her name men·
AU1UMN/WINTER 1982-83
�boned, that was absolutely the first contact, when I came
down to the dock, a meeting of str~ngers, loveliest and
purest of all meetings.
7 The first time we met we didn't seem to have very
much interest in one another, but then we met for the
second time and fell very much in love, and as the years
went by, remembered that as the first meeting, but it
wasn't it was really the second meeting, and we've put the
first meeting out of mind, as tho we're ashamed not to
have fallen ih love then, but that was really the important
meeting, for had we not met then, the second meeting
would have meant nothing at all, we're both sure of that,
and yet we keep forgetting that first meeting and think
only of the second meeting, when we fell in love, but not
as strangers.
8 He claims that he knows me, tells me exactly where
we met, at whose house, the company present, what was
said, even the actual date, but I don't remember him at all,
know that I never saw him in my life, and the more pre·
cise he is in his details, the surer I am that I never saw
him, tho I have been at the house where he claims we met,
been at parties there, and if indeed he was there on an occasion when I was there, then all I can say is that our meet·
ing created absolutely no impression, so that it's as tho I
never met him, but is it really possible to meet a person
and have absolutely not the slightest remembrance, is it
possible that his recollection is accurate (but I know that
I've never seen him) that things happen to people, and
then it's as tho they never happened?
9 We've met, we know one another, we used to see one
another as parts of a group (I don't mean as individuals
who also happened to be part of a group), and we occa·
sionally meet now, for we work in the same area, but it
doesn't mean a thing, in the sense that we have no inter·
est in one another, no concern; if one of us died, the other
would shrug condolingly, part of the news of the day;
there's an edge of hostility, but not enough to create real
interest, and all in all it would have been much better had
we never met at all, for our connection is a kind of waste
of human energy, we have nothing to say to one another,
and have learned nothing from one another (such things
happen) except the knowledge that we ought never to
have met, call it, if you will, one of Fate's discards.
10 I had actually met him in the park, we were intro·
duced by a random acquaintance, but then we met a few
weeks later in the company of my husband and his wife (I
mean to say that I was with my husband and he was with
his wife), we were introduced and acted as tho this was
the first time we had ever met, but I don't quite understand why we acted that way, because our first meeting
had been casual, and, how shall we say: innocent?
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
11 You know how it is when you meet a person you
haven't seen for maybe 40 years, since you were in the
same elementary school class, you recognize him immediately, but make no sign because you are not sure that he has
recognized you, tho it is entirely possible that he has recognized you and passes you by because he thinks you
have not recognized him, at any rate you pass one another
by, maybe both of you knowing that you have recognized
one another and both chary of picking up the ancient strand.
12 - - - I thought that you were old friends.
- - - Oh, we used to be old friends.
13 How we met? A blind date-you know, one of those
dates where I'm wearing a grey suit, red tie, and you're
wearing a yellow dress and what color necklace would go
with yellow, and then we stand in the lobby and look around
wonderingly or anxiously, and then we recognize the color
combines, but that is not the true recognition, the way it
is after a long, grim, separation, or the way it is when eyes
meet for the first time, and bring old dreams to life.
14 We met just once and I've never seen her since, and
you can carry an impression like that for a long time, for it
will not be sullied by experience, but buried warm and secretive, lives its own life.
15 We met just once, and I can tell you exactly where
and when. It was four years ago, on New Year's Eve, at
the home of a person, who, it turned out, neither one of
us knew. We got into a bitter argument, over immortality,
he held that it is morally indefensible even to discuss the
question, being an escape from reality and from the demands of terrestrial life. That was the only time I ever saw
him, I'm sorry to hear of his death. I usually remember
people by what we talk about, but in this case it was not
only the topic of conversation, it was also the time, the occasion, I don't think I've ever forgotten any person I've
ever met on New Year's Eve.
16 We neither one of us recognized the other, but as we
spoke, it turned out that we came from the same neighborhood, and then we discovered that we had gone to the
same school, and then it turned out that we were in the
same class for a year, there was no question about it, we
double-checked graduation dates, etc., we recalled (he admiringly, I with reverse emotion) our teacher, a number
of the kids in the class-there was no one not remembered by both of us-various episodes in which we had both
apparently participated, but we did not remember one
another at all, looked at each other blankly as we recalled
the childhood scenes we had lived through together.
17 It's kind of a joke between us, we argue about it, she
claims that we met, briefly, at a friend's house about two
weeks before my recollection of the time we met, at a
69
�cocktail party which she too recalls very well, but I don't
remember the first occasion at all: and every now and
then (jokingly) she reminds me of that earlier occasion,
saying that she apparently didn't make much of a first impression on me, but I frankly don't remember seeing her, I
stayed at the party for only a few moments, she was probably in a corner, out of sight, we joke about it, I say she was
probably absorbed in an interesting conversation with
some handsome gent, cornered off, but she says she definitely saw me, even remembers the suit I wore (blue serge),
we joke about it, she brings it up at argumentative moments, and as the years go by, fills in more and more details of that party, that party seems to be more important
to her than any social event of her life, she is constantly
adding figures to it, coming up with new scraps of conver-
stantial than you might think, more than air, but we could
be in the same room and not recognize one another (much
harder if we were in different rooms), in fact, after all
these years-we've done an awful lot of business together-I'm kind of scared to meet him, the voice has become disembodied, spectral almost, I really don't want to
meet him, I hope the occasion never arises, I don't want
to bring that familiar voice and that strange body together, I just hope that our relationship remains telephonic,
friendly, faintly personal.
become celebrities, I was there for just a couple of minutes, being late for a dinner date, but I know I didn't see
her there, sometimes I wonder if I actually was at the party,
if only I could prove that I wasn't.
22 What bothers him, you see, is that I met his wife before he did, I met her almost a year before he did, I don't
know why that should annoy him as much as it does, but
it doe~ annoy him, it upsets him in fact, it isn't as tho I
went out with her seriously (but even if I had, why should
that upset him?), we were friendly, and apparently he keeps
throwing it up to her, he seems to blame her for my knowing her before he did, I can't understand his attitude, of
course I met her first, it was at least a year before he met
her, it might have been more than a year, but what of it,
18 You have to be of a certain age before you meet people, otherwise you see them or are exposed to them, the
way it is with children and parents, no formal introduc-
lance, absolutely no other kind of priority is involved, why
does he make such a big deal of the fact that I knew his wife
before he did, met her perhaps two years before he did?
sation, new interpersonal connections, nuances of the be·
havior of strangers, comments on people who have since
it's just a matter of chronology, it's of no intrinsic impor·
tions necessary.
19 I'm very pleased to meet you, it was very nice to have
met you, haven't we met before, don't I know you from
somewhere, it was very interesting to have made your acquaintance, I trust we'll see each other again soon, I didn't
quite catch your name, I hope this will have proved to be
the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship, I've looked
forward to this for years, it's a great thrill to shake the
hand of the man who, h'ya, how do you do, sir, I trust this
will have proved to be, an unexpected pleasure, I didn't
quite catch the name.
20 He says that he doesn't know her, in the sense that
he doesn't know her name, or anything at all about her, but
that their eyes met across the room, and he feels in that
sense (not the Biblical) he knows her, in fact he says that
when he meets anyone (particularly an attractive girl) he
prefers not to know anything about her, in that way, he
contends, he is not distracted from the essential, the real
presence, and he knows this girl, he says, by the mixing of
the glances.
21 One of those telephonic connections-we've had
occasion to speak to one another for some twenty years
now, business-wise, his voice is as familiar to me as that of
my closest friends, hut I've never seen him, we're very
friendly on the phone, not quite personal, of course I've
built up some notion of what he looks like, building a body
from a voice, of course the sound of a voice is more sub-
70
23 How do I know her? In the ancient meaning of the
word. As a youth, in a great midwestern university (name
disclosed on request), we went off, on a Saturday night,
for a little fun in town, .rounded the bars, and then wound
up in a house of prostitution, poorly reputed, the address
of which one of us had unbelievably remembered from a
conversation he had overheard between two seniors two
weeks back, and that woman was my bed-mate, I imagine
that's her husband next to her, she's put on weight, but I
recognized her immediately, I doubt if she remembers
me, do you think she would, after all these years, I don't
think we even spoke at the time.
24 He has a very odd habit when he meets ehildren of
bowing in a very grave and courtly manner, shaking the
hand of the boy, kissing the hand of the girl; the children
tend to be very impressed, they feel the importance of a
first meeting, they like something to be made of it, for
these are strange figures, coming from a distance.
25 Having met for the first time, and now taking our departure, we say: nice to have met you, or: very pleased to
make your acquaintance, or: it was a pleasure meeting you,
or: very nice meeting you.
26 When he meets you, it is not like one meeting you
for the first time, and either glad or sorry for the opportunity, but rather he is sizing you up for some reason which
you cannot comprehend-as a prospective buyer (or a proAUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83
�spective friend), as a subsidiary character in a novel he is
working on (or the main character in an unwritten novel),
as a most·wanted criminal, as a sexual rival, he looks care·
fully at the cut of your clothes, tries to figure out your income, the state of your health, your weaknesses and strong
points, not at all interested in making your acquaintance.
27 I'm sorry, you're making a mistake, I don't know you
at all, you're mistaking me for someone else, absolutely a
case of mistaken identity, no, I've never seen you in my
life before, you're confusing me with another person, it's
possible that the resemblance is there, no I don't have a
twin sister, I've never been in Detroit, I never went to
George Washington High School, I never spent a summer
in a camp near Berlin, New Hampshire, I never worked in
Kresges, I never went to summer school at the University
of Washington, never been on a cruise to Haiti, I've hardly
been anywheres, and you definitely don't know me, this is
positively the first time that you've ever seen me.
28--- It was very embarrassing, she said, I went up
to him, thinking that he was my old teacher, my old favorite teacher, then as soon as I said hello and introduced myself, I saw that I had made a mistake, that at close range he
didn't resemble my teacher at all, tho he seemed to from a
distance, I guess I must have been thinking about him,
anyway this fellow was pretty fresh, I guess he thought I
was introducing myself because I was attracted to him, or
something, anyway he was very nasty and suggestive, and I
walked off fast, there couldn't be any two people more unlike than this man and my old teacher.
29 Have you ever noticed how two children act when
they meet for the first time? But of course you have, what
man yields to what other man when it comes to closeness
of observation, we all of us note the most delicate nuances,
the slightest tremors of change or novelty, seismographers
all, so you've certainly noticed how two children, small
ones, act when they meet for the first time, and I am talking here of the relief they experience in meeting a person
of the same height, they look straight ahead, they do not
have to look up (that looking up is the primary cause of all
future neck troubles, orthopedists' bonanza) the strain is
taken out of their world view, and then too there is that
joyful recognition of the contemporary (for only contemporary peers understand one another), no talking down,
no struggling to make yourself understood (seeking neither
the disciple nor the sage) and that accounts for the way
they move apart from the first movement (the way it is
when things are too good to be true) and then they joyfully
turn to one another and begin-joyfully-to wreck Paradise.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
30 Their hands clasped, one was dry, one was clammy,
their eyes met, one pair frank, open, the other conniving,
sly, they spoke, one straightforwardly, to the point, the
other circuitously, avoiding the issue, but do not think that
(in this introductory meeting) the dry hand, the frank eyes
and the straightforward speaking style belonged to one of
the men, because there was a division (obviously unequal).
31 Last night, for the first time, I met Death, in the naturalist, the Lucretian manner. Exhausted, I fell asleep after dinner, but as is my habit, I heard and was aware of all
the significant events in my household-the phone ringing, the sibling quarrel, the peal of laughter-! heard the
bell ring and knew that my daughter's escort had arrived, I
heard another child leave for her party, I heard the familiar
introduction to the T.V. program, telling me the time, but
asleep nevertheless, and then I fell deeper asleep, and in
that sleep heard nothing, not the voice of my wife reading
our youngest to sleep, not the 11 o'clock voice of Ron
Cochran, I did not hear the one child return and did not
hear the other return, did not hear the front door open
and close, or the Frigidaire open and close (formerly
known as raiding the pantry), did not hear the silence of
the house asleep, the milkman's approach and departure,
awoke to greet (without ceremonial) the dawn of a glorious
summer day, realizing, the way it is when you meet Death
in the Lucretian manner, that life goes on, and you not
aware (maybe not even aware that you were not aware).
32 It was pretty funny-we passed each other in the
middle of the block, looked at one another, with that air of
vague familiarity just short of recognition, went on, both
looked back, the recognition on the tip of the unconscious,
and when we reached our respective corners, we turned
around and rushed back, meeting again in the middle of
the block, crying out each other's names, in an orgy of delayed recognition.
33 I've seen the oddest things in the way of introductions-a man forgetting the name of his oldest friend, his
mind an absolute blank, until his friend (luckily remembering his own name) announces it; a woman introducing
24 people-half of whom she had met for the first time,
skipping 14 people mutually known-in drumfire order to
the most recent arrival at a party; a man introducing himself by a wrong name, or introducing an arrival by the introducer's name; a woman introducing her husband by
her lover's name, a man introducing his third wife to her
first husband; a man who introduces people by names and
occupation; and other oddities at the moment of bringing
strangers together.
71
�Achilles
In Memoriam:
John Downes
His heel, just a palm-full when
She held him there, now is gone
As far as body can; arch-ended,
Is walked under stone.
Annapolis (1909-1926)
Myth will recall what bone
Forgets: so heroes burn
In their own flame desired beyond all,
0 beyond beauty, beyond love.
All changed now, all he looked
At, even what he never truly saw:
Monuments, ribs of old ships
Stuck through sand; ribs of cattle.
And culled across an open mouthed sky
Birds chirp at breakfast. Their acid
Droppings scald the outraged marble, toppled
Capitals of such and such a style,
Rubbed to ether, to cinders of
A pureness so intense the hands melt
Touching them. Silence like a blade's
Unfelt acuity parts flesh from blood.
Never under the sun did a friend
Warrant more violence for daring
To die first, or lover less faithful
Require more deaths for slaking
Than such a thirst loosened by dusty
War into the shape of sobbing:
That lovely throat now dust
Itself in no known place, and nowhere known.
Above the bay he lies, bone-dead to dreams
Protected from desires by flowers and grass,
Young Jack asleep whose parents on their way
To bed admired an instant by the light of lamps.
Deep deep in loam, his grief is uncompared
By birds that rise to argent dawn and cloud;
This sleeping sailor, narrowed to his name,
No legends make him prince, no crown his doom.
For in his youth the merry dancers stopped
Behind his eyes prepared to scan the sea.
The dolphins bright as love removed his life
From wave to wave to final silent beach
Where enemies and friends alike are good.
Not lost at sea but on the land betrayed,
To sickness logging down his youth he fell,
Landlocked by tides before he shot the sun.
His lovers, now already less than strangers,
Like stars, like drifting wood, like tides,
Curve through the night-course of his memory
Remembering him who cannot say their names.
0 may his death be brief, appear no more
Than banks of cloud between whose clearing poles
The hill he lies in, with its flags and stones,
Moves slowly out upon the unsafest wave.
LAURENCE JOSEPHS
Laurence Josephs teaches English at Skidmore College. His poems have
appeared in the St. John's Review (Autumn '81, Winter '82).
AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83
�The Lost Continent
The Conundrum of Christian Origins
Joel Carmichael
The countless thousands of books devoted to Christian
origins, including hundreds and thousands of lives of
Jesus and Paul, while deploying a vast amount of scholarship in a variety of fields, are all obliged to concentrate,
finally, on a very small number of documents: the New
Testament (essentially the Four Gospels and Paul's Letters) and the works of F1avius Josephus, especially The
Jewish War. Aside from these, the number of references to
Jesus and to early Christianity fill no more than a handful
of lines.
The .critical analysis of Christian origins began only two
centuries ago: until very recently it was hampered in its
criticism by preconceptions that even conscientious schol·
ars were unaware of. In the case of Jesus and Paul it has
been difficult to escape from the bondage of tradition,
which is itself the product of the documentation under
examination.
It took many generations of scholarship before it was
possible to discuss seriously what was really obvious at
first glance: if Jesus had been executed by the Romans for
sedition, might he not, in fact, have been a rebel against
Rome?
The reluctance to ask this simple question is all the
more surprising since Hermann Reimarus, the first critical
student of the historic Jesus, flatly laid it down in the eighteenth century th"t the Kingdom of God agitation carried
Among his many books, Joel Carmichael has written important studies
of Trotsky and Stalin, Trotsky (New York, St. Martin's Press 1975) and
Stalin's Masterpiece (New York, St. Martin's Press 1976). He translated
the memoirs of N. N. Sukhanov (The Russian Revolution 1917, Oxford
1952), the only full-length eyewitness account of the February and October events in Russia in 1917. First published in 1963, his Death of Jesus
appeared in a new edition in 1982 (New York, Horizon Press). In 1980
his study of Paul, Steh auf und rufe Seinen Namen, Paulus, Erwecker der
Christen und Prophet der Heiden, appeared in German (Munich,
C. Bertelsmann). Since 1975 he has been editor of Midstream.
The above essay summarizes the conclusions of a new study, The Unrid-
dling of Christian Origins.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
on by Jesus had a political aim. After Reimarus, however,
the question was not to be raised again until our own day,
and then only in a few scholarly and semi-scholarly books
that have not affected most people.
Our sources, taken together, do not create a unified picture: the facts they include must be disentangled from
tendency, apologetics, and obscurities, both intentional
and unintentional, to allow a real-life picture to emerge.
In the case of the Four Gospels, especially, the warp is
embedded deep in their very conception and purpose-in
the very reason they came into being.
There are two factors in the genesis of the First Three
Gospels (the historical and chronological basis for our
knowledge of Jesus):
On the one hand there was a global transformation of
perspective between the events of Jesus' own lifetime and
the germination of a new belief founded shortly after the
crucifixion on Simon the Rock's Vision of Jesus resurrected.
On the other hand this shift in perspective was paralleled by a socio-political upheaval-the destruction of the
Temple in Jerusalem in 70, the consequent emancipation
of the new belief from its institutional restraints, and the
concomitant fact that for generations after the destruction of the Temple the new sect of believers in Jesus was
opposed by the Jewish elite-the rabbis who had inherited the Pharisee tradition.
Thus the writers and editors of the Gospels after the destruction of the Temple, whose belief in the Vision of the
Risen Jesus necessarily distorted their view of events beforehand, found it natural to transpose their own contemporary disputes with the rabbis to the lifetime of Jesus,
especially since by then the Jews were no longer regarded
as targets for conversion and the leaders of the new sect
were directing their propaganda at all mankind.
Paul's Letters are, of course, by far the oldest source for
the history of the earliest phase in the formation of the
new sect. But Paul, though a slightly younger contempo-
73
�rary of Jesus, tells us almost nothing of the flesh-and-blood
Jesus: he was preoccupied with working out his own ideas
concerning the significance of the resurrection of Jesus.
The historical material that can be extracted from his Letters is, however, invaluable.
The Gospels, too, contain nuggets of historical information, though they were written under the pressure of a
specific situation and are biased in a characteristic way.
They have, in addition, an ait of timelessness, of motion-
lessness, in which Jesus expresses various ideas without
the reader being able to see their meaning against an historical background: it is hard to see, from the text alone,
just what there was about the Kingdom of God, or about
his ideas in general, that could have led to his crucifixion.
When we consider, further, that his whole career as outlined in the first three Gospels could scarcely have lasted
more than a few weeks, and that the Kingdom of God he
proclaims at the outset of all three accounts seems peculiarly abstract and anodyne, we are bound to be baffled.
It might be thought that the works of Flavius Josephus,
which cover a lengthy period before the Roman-Jewish
War, would fill in all this background. And for anyone
studying the first century of the Roman Empire they are,
indeed, indispensable.
Josephus was an aristocratic priest, and a commander in
the war against Rome. After defecting to the Romans during the war he became an outstanding propagandist of the
Flavian dynasty that came out of it victorious. The
Church Fathers took over the texts of Josephus's works
very early on-he died at the end of the first century-because it was the only account covering this densely packed
epoch and because it served as a vehicle for a very early
forgery designed to make Josephus a "witness" to the
supernatural status of Jesus, a forgery whose blatancy,
while obvious in any dispassionate examination, was not
exposed until the sixteenth century.
Josephus has become a special subject: specialists concentrate on fine points called for by each one's specialty.
By segregating Josephus's chronicles within a special area
of biased, though recondite, scholarship, and by projecting its own version of events as exclusively authoritative,
Church tradition insulated the whole era against empirical enquiries.
Josephus's account is packed with action and personalities: it conveys unmistakably the throb of life in Palestine
for the generations preceding the outbreak of the RomanJewish War. It is steeped in blood: murders, revolts, cruelty,
rapacity, cataclysms of all kinds are intertwined. Grinding
oppression on the part of the Romans, desperate uprisings
on the part of the Jewish Kingdom of God activists,
against a background of well-nigh total corruption, ferocity, and deceit, are routine. His descriptions provide a
blanket contrast with the eerie calm of the Gospels.
The Gospels and the Church tradition founded on
them indicate no friction at all between Romans and Jews
in Palestine. Everything that happens to Jesus takes place
in a Jewish milieu; even his trial before the Roman procu-
74
rator is explained as a Jewish plot. The stateliness of the
seemingly simple anecdotes, shot through with camouflaged theological motifs, casts an atmosphere of motionless pageantry over what we know was a most turbulent
era. And in our own day the countless books describing
the life of Jesus from a traditional point of view make life
in Palestine at the time sound well-nigh idyllic.
The Gospels suppress any criticism of the Romans. The
word itself, indeed, occurs only once (J n ll :48), and the
Romans are assigned a role only twice-Pilate himself and
the Roman centurion who on seeing Jesus on the cross
calls him "Son of God" (Mk 15:39).
The Romans, who crucified countless thousands of
Jews, so that the cross became the conventional symbol of
Jewish resistance to Roman power, go completely unnoticed by the writers and editors of the Gospels. Contrariwise, the Pharisees who were equated with the rabbis, the
chief opponents of the nascent sect by the time the Gospels were composed, after the destruction of the Temple,
are more or less constantly reviled (though here too
numerous indications of the opposite peep through the
web of apologetics).
It was the global transformation of outlook inherent in
the germination of a new belief inspired by Simon the
Rock's Vision of the Risen Jesus, reinforced by the reaction of the new sect to the Jewish debacle of 70, that distorted the Gospels systematically: all the basic ideas that
had a living context in the life of Jewry beforehandKingdom of God, the Messiah, Son of David, salvationwere wrenched out. of their true context: national insurrection.
In Jesus' lifetime not a single day could have passed
without some inflammatory incident; the mere presence
of the Romans constituted a constant provocation. All of
this is glossed over in the Gospels.
Nevertheless, the mere fact that Jesus was announcing
the Kingdom of God-i.e., a total transformation of the
universe in which the pagan powers, pre-eminently
Rome, were to be destroyed-together with his execution
by the Romans for sedition, irresistibly brings to mind the
Kingdom of God agitation that had dominated life in Palestine from the installation of direct Roman administration in 6 A.D. until it brought about the Roman Jewish
War in 66, and even later flared up in the abortive Bar
Kochba revolt in 132-35.
It is evident, in short, that any discussion of Jesus'
career, even if it is limited to the Gospels alone, will bring
us face to face to face with the Zealots, Kingdom of God
activists par excellence. If these diehards were capable of
swinging the bulk of the Jewish population of Palestine
into the. desperate rebellion against Rome, their mood must
have been incubating for a long tiine~losephus' account,
dense with real-life detail and vivid characterizations that
articulate a long-drawn-out process of alienation leading
to a last-ditch insurrection, fills in the background of the
Zealot agitation.
He has, to be sure, a bias of his own: he comprehen-
s
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�sively vilifies the Zealot movement in all its variations,
partly in the conviction, no doubt sincere, that the Kingdom of God activists were destroying Jewry and that God
himself had favored the Romans by giving them victory,
and partly, of course, because he was making propaganda
on behalf of his Roman patrons.
Nevertheless, the texture of his chronicles is so closeknit that the broad outlines of the Zealot movement, beginning with Judah the Galilean's agitation in 6 A.D., are
unmistakable. It is easy to allow, so to speak, for Josephus's
bias: when he describes people he calls "thieves" and
"brigands" as being tortured to death for refusing to call
Caesar "Lord," we are bound to conclude that they could
not, after all, have been mere thieves and brigands.
Josephus, however, says nothing whatever about Jesus
(aside from the forged paragraph mentioned above); he
does mention John the Baptist, innocuously, and also Upright Jacob, in a brief and equally innocuous passage. But
for the fleshing out of the realities of life in Palestine
around this time he is our only source. He is also priceless
for the study of the earliest phase of the new belief in
Jesus. His chronicle creates an infinitely broader, deeper,
and more ramified framework for judging the historical
material in Paul's Letters, the Gospels, and the Acts of the
Apostles.
If we compare Josephus's treatment of the Zealot movement with the treatment given by the Gospels, especially
Mark, to the complex of ideas, personalities, and events involved in the Kingdom of God movement, we see a striking
parallel. Both, for substantially the same reasons, ignore
the true content of the whole movement: Josephus describes the Kingdom of God activists in such a way as to
downgrade their ideological, idealistic concerns; the Gospels wholly disregard their political aims, too.
Most illustrative of this negative attitude of the Gospels
is Jesus' complete silence about the Zealots. The Gospelwriters, intent on whitewashing the Romans and dissociating the nascent sect from any connection with the Kingdom
of God activists who, after harassing the Romans for so
many decades, had brought about the ferocious war of
66-70, would surely have found it very convenient to set
down Jesus' denunciation of the architects of the catastrophe, if he had ever made any. In Rome, especially (where
Mark was written during or shortly after the war), some
negative remarks attributed to Jesus would have eased the
embarrassment of his followers. But since the author, or
authors, of Mark could not actually forge anything, they
were obliged to disregard the subject altogether; this disregard is all the more striking since they did find, in the reminiscences they had at hand, echoes of Jesus' opinions
about real people (Pharisees, HHerodians", even occa~
sionally, Sadduccees).
Taken together, however, both Josephus and the Gospels enable us to divine the presence of a remarkably energetic, grandiose movement capacious enough to bring the
Jewry of Palestine to destruction during the Roman-Jewish War in 66-70. Both accounts, accordingly, radically
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
contrasting with each other in all respects, confirm,
through this same negative attitude, the existence of a
vanished movement that in the desert of our documentation can be pieced together only through analysis.
Paul's Letters, taken together with the Gospels and
Acts of the Apostles, disclose a 4affling enigma~the dense
obscurity overhanging the two decades, roughly 60-80
A.D., between the Letters written by Paul, a real individual, and the anonymous compilations in the Gospels that
came into being one by one after the destruction of the
Jewish State and Temple in 70.
Consciousness of this obscurity allows one to sense a
profound, inexplicable, and of course camouflaged contrast between the official version of Christian origins in
the Gospels and the realistic glimpses tantalizingly suggested both by Paul's urgent, passionate, real-life struggle,
and by the random nuggets of historic actuality embedded in the Gospels themselves.
From this point of view the indifference of both church
historians and academic scholarship to the fate of the Jesist
coterie in Jerusalem, headed by Jesus' brother, is bewildering. If the "Mother Church," in distinction to the Jesist
coterie, actually existed before the destruction of the
Temple, the total silence of scholarship is incomprehensible: if its leaders had ever had anything self-aware to say it
would have been easy and natural for whatever it was to
circulate throughout the far-flung Jewish Diaspora. It is
obvious that the very concept, "Mother Church," as well
as the phrase itself, is a retrojective fiction.
Around the middle of the Fifties, that is, the time of the
riot occasioned by Paul on the Temple premises, it is possible to infer a crisis in the history of the Jewish state and
hence within the coterie of the Jerusalem Jesists. From
then on all remains blank; we are thrown back on the evolution of the Zealot crisis that erupted in the Roman War
of 66-70, and then, as the earliest documents of the new
sect began to be assembled afterwards, beginning with
Mark, we can once again see the beginning of a continuity,
in which, however, the first phase in the evolution of the
new faith~ the lives of Jesus, John the Baptist, Upright
Jacob, and Paul himself~is twisted about to conform with
the later tradition embodied in Mark, Matthew, Luke, Acts,
and John.
I have mentioned the omission, suppression, and distortion in the Gospels, and also referred to the nuggets of information embedded in them: there was no question of
forging, but of selecting and stressing and, conversely,
neglecting.
If the Gospels had been fabricated, after all, there would
be no way of knowing anything whatever about the career
of Jesus the man. If we recall the sweeping powers assumed by the Church when Christianity became a state
institution under Constantine the Great in the first quarter of the fourth century, and the severity of the censorship he authorized, which from the fifth century on was
applied with energy, the survival of the few scraps of information we have is remarkable. We owe such scraps es-
75
�sentially to an indifference to mundane history and to the
reverence for traditional texts that piety forbade tampering with.
Some principle for distinguishing between grades of evidence is indispensable; it seems sensible to me to take as
a starting-point the global transformation of perspective,
i.e., the germination and spread of the belief in the special
status of Jesus entailed by his Resurrection and Glorification, which intervened between the events of Jesus' life
and their chroniclers.
In my Death o{Jesus I established a "cardinal criterion":
Anything that conflicts with that global transformation of
perspective is likely to be true.
If a document records something countering the prevailing tendency in the Gospels to exalt Jesus, to preach
his universality, and to emphasize his originality, it should
be regarded, other things being equal, as being ipso facto
likely.
Very soon after the execution of Jesus and until the
Roman-Jewish War the predominant attitude among the
believers in the Vision was that of the jerusalem coterie.
At the same time, a contrary tendency-against the Torah
and toward the escalation of Jesus as Lord.of the Universehad already made itself felt even in Jerusalem, when the socalled "Hellenists" epitomized by the name of Stephen
were expelled and took their characteristic views to Antioch and no doubt to many other centers in the Jewish
Diaspora.
Paul himself, after attacking the new sect, as he himself
says, was then converted and began to express a point of
view he shared with some unknown predecessors. Indeed,
Paul's own initial hostility toward the Jesists was doubtless
a reaction against the anti-Torah views of such "Hellenists," since before his conversion Paul had applied his passion, as it seems, to the defence of the Torah, and only
afterwards went to the opposite extreme.
At the same time it is evident that Paul's views were not
predominant among the Jesists in general. When they
were made known in Jerusalem they put him in a predicament that undid him.
It is evident, moreover, not only that he ran afoul of the
Jesists in Jerusalem led by Jesus' brother Upright Jacob,
but that throughout his own lifetime he had no serious
influence. A moment's reflection on the background of
conflict-totally divergent from the sugary, harmonious
version of Paul's relations with the Jesists in Jerusalem as
recorded in Acts-shows Paul's unimportance during his
lifetime: While the Temple was at the peak of its majesty-the most celebrated edifice of antiquity, a citadel
and magnet for all Jewry-Paul was necessarily overshadowed.
It is plain from Paul's Letters themselves that he must
have written far more than have come down to us. He was
intensely active, apparently, for some two decades-from
about 35 to about 55.lt is hard to believe that all he wrote
is summed up by the small number of letters that now
form the backbone of the New Testament.
76
The condition of the Letters themselves indicates as
much: they are plainly random selections, often fragmentary to boot. One of the major ones-2 Corinthians-is
practically incomprehensible; it is best understood as a mosaic of scraps of other, left-over letters gathered together
after the phenomenon of"Paulinism"made its appearance.
Moreover, it is evident from the content of the Letters
we have that a dominant theme in all his major Lettersthe theme that often makes them sound hysterically demanding-is his rivalry with others; he is plainly describing
a situation in which he is promoting his own ideas against
rivals. And the rivals are, equally plainly, precisely the
leaders of the community of Jesists in Jerusalem.
It is obvious, in short, that during Paul's lifetime his
Letters were disregarded. It was only later, with the destruction of the Jewish State and Temple in 70 and the
consequent· disappearance of any institutional brake on
the spread of the new faith among the Jews, that Paul's
ideas, originally conceived as an explanation of what was
for Paul a current historical crisis, became, through a systematic misunderstanding of the key phrase, the Kingdom of God, the foundation of something he could never
have dreamed of-a timeless theology.
The Jewishness of the first Jesist coteries, under the
leadership of Jerusalem, can scarcely be exaggerated. This
also applies to the coteries Paul himself was connected
with, for despite the development of his own views it is
plain that in developing those very views Paul takes for
granted the overwhelming authority of the Scriptures as,
quite simply, unchallengeable: not only does he use Scriptural texts in a rabbinical manner (which might of course
have been a mere personal mannerism taken from his
training), but he expects his readers to realize that the
Messiah had come, died, and been raised again "according
to the Scriptures" (Rom 1:2, I Cor 15:3); he takes it for
granted that they will get the point of the examples he
gives of Abraham and Isaac _(Rom 4:2,3; Gal 4:28), Sarah
and Hagar (Gal4:21-31), and, even more striking, Moses'
Tablets of Stone (2 Cor 3:2, 3), the Covenant (2 Cor 3:6),
Adam's Sin (Rom 5:14), and the Stumbling-Block (Rom 9:
32,33). He makes flat statements assuming the unquestionable acceptance among his readers of the Hebrew
Scriptures: "Through the comfort of the Scriptures we
might have hope" (Rom 15:4).
Whatever might have been the background of the pagans whose lives had become linked to the Synagogue,
once they had become involved either as God-fearers or
something similar their locus of authority automatically
had become the Hebrew Scriptures. This in and of itself
entailed the giving of respect to the Jewish authorities in
Jerusalem, in this case, of course, the Jesists.
The original centrality of the Jerusalem Jesists is, in
short, evident from all the earliest documents on: even
Acts, which takes pains to harmonize the disputes that
separated its hero Paul from the Jerusalem Jesists, concurs
with Paul in accepting the centrality of the Jesists in Jerusalem.
AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83
�In their own way the Gospels disclose a profoundly Jewish substratum: it peeps unmistakably' out of texts that include additions or changes designed to camouflage that
substratum or focus it differently. The Gospels were written and compiled to serve an apologetic purpose, but the
many elements they contain, if detached from the tendency of the editors, can point to some historical realities.
The idea of the Chosen People was taken for granted
by Jesus' immediate followers with unquestioning matterof-factness: it is graphically illustrated in the story of Jesus
and the pagan woman: it surely goes back to the first community: here Jesus rejects the pagan woman's appeal for
help by saying: "Let the children first be fed, for it is not
right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."
Whether this was said by Jesus himself may not be certain, but its preservation must surely imply its being embedded in documents too revered to be disregarded: it
means, plainly and simply, that the Jews come first: i.e.,
that the pagans-"dogs" -are outside the Torah. Jesus relents in the story, but only after the woman modestly asks
no more for herself and her daughter than a few crumbs of
the "children's food" (Mk 7:24-30).
This theme of the Chosen People is repeated a number
of times in the Gospels-as where Jesus is seen sending
out his twelve "apostles" to go through Palestine, but to
"go nowhere among the pagans and enter no town of the
Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the House
of Israel" (Mt 10: 5-6).
There are countless other remarks-recalled, no doubt,
from Jesus' actual life-that indicate the same Jewish substratum.
Jesus is asked a fundamental question: "Which commandment is first of all?" He answers:
The first is, Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God is one: and you
shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart, with all your
soul, and with all your mind, and with all your might. The sec-
ond is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. [Mt 22:
36-39]
The first statement is the key affirmation of Judaism;
the second sums up its ethics.
Think not that I have come to abolish the Torah and the
Prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them.
[Mt 5:17]
And day by day, attending the Temple together ... they partook of food ... praising God and having favor with all the
people. [Acts 2:46]
Now many wonders were done by the . .. apostles . .. all to-
gether in Solomon's portico. [Acts 5:12]
God exalted (jesus) ... to give repentance to Israel [Acts 5:31]
[The pilgrims en route to Emmaus] We had hoped that (Jesus)
was the one to redeem Israel. [Lk 24:21]
For that matter it seems likely, in accordance with our
Cardinal Criterion, that Jesus, despite his constant arguments with the Pharisees, was in fact a Pharisee himself:
he says only Pharisees can interpret the Torah (Mt 23:1-3).
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
These nuggets of history, however, have been tucked
into a framework contrived to accommodate a much later
situation. Essentially, Mark plucks Jesus out of his place in
time and space and transcendentalizes him beyond his
own politics. And the historical rationale for this is obvious: On the face of it it must have been a source of acute
embarrassment for believers living in Rome during the
years just preceding the Zealot war against Rome that
their own leader, Jesus of Nazareth, had himself been executed only a few decades earlier for just the same reasonsedition. It was vital for them to dissociate themselves
somehow from the opprobrium naturally clinging to followers of an enemy of Rome at a time when Rome was
engaged in a ferocious struggle against Kingdom of God
activists. It was just this crisis in the Roman Jesist community, indeed, that led to the composition of our first Gospel, Mark.
Since there was, however, no way of twisting the basic
facts out of shape-i.e., the indictment and execution of
Jesus as "King of the Jews" by a Roman procurator-it was
necessary to create a narrative structure that, while accommodating the irrefragable facts of Jesus's execution,
plausibly explained them away.
This was by no means due to hypocrisy: In the Jewish
Diaspora Jesus the Messiah had been escalated into Lord
of the Universe, Son of God, and Savior of Mankind. Psychologically, indeed, the same impulse that divorced the
real-life Jesus from his historical background after the
destruction of the Temple, was a parallel to the original
impulse in the psyches of Diaspora Jews like Paul that
made them, too, transcendentalize all traditional Jewish
national ideas while remaining convinced, like Paul, that
that itself represented a realization of a Jewish concept.
In any case, the problem confronting the author of the
ground-plan of Mark was simple: he had to obliterate the
possibility that Jesus would be linked to the Zealots the
Romans were fighting. He had to exculpate him from the
charge of being an activist in general, and an enemy of
Rome in particular. To do this he had to denature the
Kingdom of God-to depoliticize it by twisting its undeniable association with Jesus out of its socio-political background and by giving it an elusive other-worldly meaning.
The corollary of this was to slide past the attack on the
Temple and the resulting trial of Jesus for sedition.
The convergence of two concerns led to the apologetic
distortion of the historical account in Mark (and subsequently in Matthew, Luke, and Acts, which all accepted
the ground-plan of Mark).
One concern was to stress the transcendentalization of
Jesus that had been going on in the Jewish Diaspora sideby-side with the Jewish tradition of Jesus the Messiah and
his Glorious Return as Bringer of the Kingdom of God;
the other concern, desperately urgent because of the bitterness surrounding a war, was to free the Jesist congregations in the Roman Empire from the stigma of the Zealots.
Whoever wrote Mark solved the problem more than adequately: he created a model, in fact, that still enthralls
77
�the hundreds of millions of people indoctrinated by the
Gospels and by the vast cultural heritage they underlie.
Though by and large details are missing in all Gospel ac·
counts of Jesus' attack on the Temple, it is impossible to
escape the implications of the enterprise, whatever its
specific shape. It is indissolubly linked to the primary fact
of the tradition-the most solid, unchallengeable fact of
all: that Jesus was executed by the Romans as King of the
Jews.
If we start from this fact, and consider the skimpy de·
tails embedded in the Gospels, to the effect that Jesus
events preceding his arrest there was a real-life, stark event
-an abortive insurrection.
If we recall that the Temple had been standing in
Mark's own lifetime, that the insurrection he was camouflaging had taken place only the generation before, and
that the reminiscences he himself was making pious use
of must have referred to some of the events, we can see
that Mark had to contrive an overarching aesthetic
framework to achieve plausibility. Some oversights, perhaps inevitable, were to survive.
The echo of the Zealots, for instance, is arresting:
Simon the Rock (Peter) is called "Baryon," as though it
meant Bar Yonah," or son of Yonah, but "Baryon"
<I
meant a "rebel, outlaw," a political or social outcast living
"on the outside," i.e., away from the settled areas controlled
by the state. Judas "Iscariot" must surely refer to sicarius,
or Daggerman, an extremist Zealot group; the two sons of
Zavdai (John and Jacob) are called "sons of rage," echoing
the violence associated with the Kingdom of God activists.
Also, two Kingdom of God activists, called "bandits"
and Hthieves," were crucified alongside Jesus: these were
simply pejorative expressions for such rebels used by Flavius Josephus as well as by the Romans, for tendentious
reasons: Barabbas, too, "arrested in the insurrection" (Mk
On this and opposite page: 67 A.D. Silver Shekel, Obverse (above), legend: "Shekel of IsraeL" Chalice. These coins were issued for five years,
from 66 to 70 A.D. (Roughly twice actual size.)
"preached" in the Temple for three days, "overturned the
tables of the money-changers" and "drove them out with
a whip of cords," we see that the whole incident, presented in the Gospels as though it were symbolical, or in
any case non-violent, becomes portentous: Jesus held the
Temple.
Now, how could he seize the Temple, and hold it for
any length of time? The Temple was a vast edifice,
guarded by a Roman cohort of 5-600 as well as by a Tern-.
pie police force of 20,000. How could Jesus have scattered
the money-changers and overturned their tables in the
face of the armed police units? (To say nothing of the
money-changers themselves,)
The group led by Jesus must have been armed themselves. This simple fact makes understandable the many
references to arms lurking in the present text:
One (of the party) drew his sword, and struck at the High
Priests' servant, cutting off his ear. [Mk 14:47]
Look, Lord, we have two swords here. [Mt 22:49]
(and parallels)
Lord, shall we use our swords? [Mt 22:38]
Jesus could seize the Temple only by armed force; his
execution by the Romans as "King of the Jews" was directly linked to his seizure of the Temple. Behind the
skimpy, distorted, and obscure Gospel references to the
78
15:7), was likewise a Kingdom of God activist.
Simon the "Kananean" (in the list of the Twelve appointed by Jesus [Mk 3:18]), is revealing: "Kananean," a
word incomprehensible in the Greek text, is evidently a
transliteration of a Hebrew-Aramaic work (Qanna'i) for
"Zealot". Now, it was Mark's habit to explain such words:
just before this, the epithet "Boanerges" ("sons of rage")
for the sons of Zavdai, has been explained by the narrator.
Mark's avoidance of an explanation in this instance makes
it obvious that a real translation of the meaningless
uKananean" would have been embarrassing in the atmosphere of Rome at the time. Later, to be sure, it lost its
odium: A half-generation or more after the destruction of
the Jewish State it was possible for Luke to translate it, for
a different readership, quite straightforwardly as "Zealot"
by using the Greek word "Zealot" instead of a transliteration of the Hebrew-Aramaic (Mt 10:4).
In the Palestine of Jesus' day the statement "Pay Ceasar what is due to Caesar, and God what is due to God"
(Mk 12:13-17), would be taken by any Kingdom of God
agitator in a real-life situation as self-evidently insurrectionist. To such an agitator it went without saying that
the Holy Land was God's alone and no pagans could profit
from it, and in particular that the taxation imposed in 6
A.D. was an outrage. But Mark places it in a context in
which it sounds unmistakably as though Jesus were endorsing the tribute to Rome: he uses the phrase as Jesus'
response to a trap set for him by the "Pharisees and the
Herodians." It was natural for the Romans to expect a
subject people to pay tribute, just as it was natural for a
Kingdom of God agitator to refuse to pay tribute; by
transposing the context of the question, accordingly, the
AUTIJMN /WINTER 1982-83
�architect of the Markan theme extract.ed its political taint,
as it were, and soothed his readers among the Jesists in
Rome as the Zealot war erupted.
In general, Mark depicts the Jewish authorities as hostile
to Jesus from the outset: "Pharisees" plot with "Herodians"
(the pro-Roman Jews headed by sons of Herod the Great
and ruling Galilee at the time) against Jesus (even though
it is the High Priests who finally engineer the crucifixion
[Mk 15: 10-11]).
By the time of the spread of the Gospels the High
Priests had vanished with the Temple cult, while the
Pharisee tradition was sustained by the rabbis, now the
chief opposition to the new sect: for the Gospel-writers,
the word "Pharisees" stood for the Jewish authorities in a
comprehensive, absolute sense.
Jesus in turn vilifies all Jewish authorities as cultically,
legally, and spiritually sterile, even evil. The hostility to the
Jewish authorities is extended to the Jewish people as a
whole, who fail to perceive that even someone they are familiar with since childhood is meritorious: hence Jesus'
comment that "a prophet is without honor in his own
country, and among his own people, and in his own house"
(6:1-6); the Jewish people as such is condemned for ritualism (7: 6-8); to cap the process the Jewish mob actually
calls for his death and derides him (15: 1lff., 29-30).
Moreover, Jesus is described as cutting himself off from
his kinship not only with his people, but with his own
family:
And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside
they sent to him. Jesus replies: "Who are my mother and my
brothers?" and goes on: "Whoever does the will of God is my
brother, and my sister, and my mother." [3:31-5]
Mark tells us, in short, that mere biology is meaningless:
the Roman Jesists can be as close to Jesus as his own family. If we recall the importance of the dynastic factor in the
emergence of Upright Jacob in the Jerusalem coterie before the Roman-Jewish War, we discern a polemical thrust
at Jesus's family that must have entered the story at the
time the Gospel was set down after the destruction of the
Temple.
When the pre-eminence of Jesus's family in the Jerusalem coterie was made obsolete by its extinction together
with the Temple, it was possible to defy the vanished authority and virtuously separate the Roman Jesists from it.
Thus, the family of Jesus is presented as having thought
him out of his mind, to begin with, and as explicitly repudiated by Jesus.
This is complemented by the contemptuous description
of Jesus' Jewish companions, called the "Apostles," who
of course also constituted, together with Upright Jacob,
the core of the Jesist coterie in Jerusalem. They are constantly described as bickering over precedence and rewards
(9:34, 10:34-45) and as devoid of Jesus' own remarkable
powers (9:6, 10, 18) One betrays him (14:10, 11, 20, 21,
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
43-5); on his arrest they all abandon him and flee (14:50).
For that matter the leading apostle, Simon the Rock,
though acknowledged as the first to see in Jesus theMessiah, is said to '1 rebuke" Jesus for speaking of his resurrec-
tion and because of that, indeed, is called by Jesus "Satan".
On top of that there is an account of Simon the Rock's
unappetizing denial of any acquaintance with Jesus: not
only is it excessively long in such a short document, but it
is negative through and through.
That Simon the Rock recognized Jesus as Messiah but
denied the salvational function of the resurrection shows
Reverse, legend: "Jerusalem the Holy." Stem with three pomegranates.
that the Jerusalem group headed by Upright Jacob did not
believe in Jesus except as the Jewish Messiah-that his
role as Lord of the Universe, of Divine Savior of Mankind,
meant nothing to them. In short, the viewpoint of Paul is
put forth in Mark in such a way as to take advantage of the
Jewish defeat in war.
The ground-plan of Mark goes far beyond details: it has
a profound apologetic aim.
While bound to accept the historic fact that the Roman
indictment was followed by a Roman execution, Mark tells
us that Pilate was forced by the Jews to do what they
wanted. In the narration this has already been built up"planted," in literary parlance-by clear-cut suggestions of
a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Jesus.
The assignment of an executive role to the Jewish authorities in explaining away the Roman indictment and
execution of Jesus in and for itself expresses the anti-Jewish
tendency of Mark's ground-plan.
It is more than likely, of course, that the Kingdom of
God agitation engaged in by Jesus would have set him
against the Jewish aristocracy as well as the Romans, but
there was no need at all for them to be involved in an actual trial: in view of the public nature of the agitation, indeed, it is hard to see why the Romans had any need for a
trial either: a perfunctory hearing would seem to have
been sufficient.
In any case, any number of Kingdom of God agitators,
79
�would-be Messiahs and pretenders of all kinds were routinely exterminated by the Romahs. There was no need
for the Jewish authorities to intervene at all.
Moreover, since the tendency in:Mark is in any case to
highlight the evil intentions of the Jews, had there been,
in fact, any Jewish intervention to undo Jesus it would
have been both natural and easy to build up that theme
and omit the Roman role altogether.
The fact that the original writer of the ground-plan for
Mark was obliged, despite his reluctance, to record an important role for the Romans, confirms the matter-of-fact
historicity of the Roman charge on the cross itself-"King
of the Jews" -and demonstrates the tendentious artificiality of Mark's emphasis on the role of the Jews.
The theme was vital for Mark: to amplify it he enlarges
on how Jesus, though of course a Jew, was not appreciated
by Jews and how he expressly denied the importance of
any kinship.
Since the Jews in the Roman Empire were suspect at
the time because of the Kingdom of God agitation, which
had even penetrated the Diaspora, and because of their
success in proselytization (cf. Tacitus's sneer at Christianity for its Jewish roots), Mark has set himself the task of
splitting Jesus away from his original background.
From the very outset, the reader is informed that Jesus
did not follow the tradition represented by the "scribes":
he, in contrast, "has authority" (Mk I :22). Jesus, by absolving the sins of a paralytic he has just healed, forces the
scribes to charge him with blasphemy (2:6-7); then he attacks the "scribes of the Pharisees" for their objections to
his eating with "tax-collectors and sinners"; and in explaining that his disciples do not fast like "John [the Baptist's] disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees," uses a
metaphor-the futility of using new cloth to repair an old
garment or of putting new wine into old wine-skins-evidently intended to drive home the point of Judaism's
obsolescence.
This metaphor would have had compelling force precisely in the wake of the destruction of the Temple, and
not before: it gives lapidary expression to what has now become an historic fact-that the Roman Jesists, with a
large admixture of converts and semi-converts, have
found the solution to a problem that, as we know from the
evolution of Paul's ideas, must have begun to weigh on
them beforehand-i.e., the reinterpretation of the Torah
and of Jewish traditions in general in the light of Simon
the Rock's Vision.
The theme of Mark can be tersely summed up: the
Jews, both leaders and masses, are responsible for Jesus'
death; his immediate family thought him crazy; his
"Apostles", having misunderstood him, also abandon him.
Jesus himself provides the counterpoint to this series of
negatives: he rejects those who reject him, emphasizes
the importance of worshipping God through him in contrast to loyalty to blood-relationships, and denounces the
chauvinistic limitations of Simon the Rock, his pre-eminent follower.
7
80
In short, Mark, while depicting Jesus in a Jewish environment, has extracted him from it and placed him beyond it.
This point is driven home explicitly in what is, thematically, the climax of the Gospel: after demonstrating how
the Jews had failed to apprehend the divine nature of
Jesus, the narrator puts a key phrase-"verily, this man
was the Son of God" -into the mouth of the Roman centurion directing the Crucifixion.
Perceived beforehand in Mark only by demons (responsible in antiquity for the supernatural knowledge ascribed
to madmen), this basic idea is expressed by a normal
human being, that is, a pagan, like, perhaps, the bulk of
the Jesists in Rome. (The fact that Mark uses a Latin
word, when Matthew and Luke use a Greek, reinforces the
impression that Mark was indeed composed in Rome.)
The preliminary stage for the deification of Jesus has
reached its climax: Jesus has been crucified, the Gentiles
have seen the Light, Judaism has been definitively superseded.
The original author of Mark has solved the problem set
for him by the historical circumstances of Jesus' arrest, indictment, and execution by the Roman authorities. He
has demonstrated that it was a machination of the Jews,
who had either misunderstood or opposed him, that Jesus
had not been executed as a freedom-fighter in a nationalist movement against the Romans at all, but was, in fact, a
divine figure whose fate was part of a cosmic plan.
By elevating the drama to this supra-terrestrial terrain
Mark has wrenched Jesus out of his historical framework.
He gives the remark about paying tribute to Caesar,
which in a historical context would have been understood
as an insurrectionist slogan, a seemingly natural background in which its meaning is reversed, and Jesus, in his
only comment on politics, seems to be endorsing tribute
to Caesar, and blandly slides past the Zealots in Jesus's entourage by misrepresenting Simon the Zealot through an
unintelligible transliteration.
Mark's extracting of Jesus from his folk heritage bridges
the main chasm between Judaism and the world outside
by making it entirely unnecessary for pagans to become
Jews for any reason whatever, and facilitates their conversion by showing that belief has nothing whatever to do
with communal or biological bonds. Although Mark did
not specifically strip the traditional Messiah of a martial
function, by transcendentalizing Jesus out of his political
background he promoted a conception of Christ that also
transcended the provincial background of politics in Palestine and thus laid the underpinnings for a cosmic role to
be played by an eternal, divine Christ.
There is no reason to assume that Paul's writings,
which were not paid much attention to in his lifetime,
necessarily served as matrix for this idea. An anti-Torah,
transcendent view of Jesus was adumbrated, if not elaborated, only a few years after the crucifixion; there is no reason it shouldn't have been represented in Rome as well as
in Antioch, or indeed in any Jesist coterie anywhere at all.
AUTUMN I WINTER 1982-83
�It surfaced very naturally, just as Paul's ideas in general
were recovered, after the destruction bf the Temple, and
came to embody the official view of an evolving religious
·
fellowship.
Once a sharp contrast was drawn between Jesus the
Jewish Messiah and Jesus Lord of the Universe, the contrast itself became the pivot on which all subsequent speculation turned, and once the contrast was grasped by the
believer, and internalized, it became in and for itself a natural matrix for still further speculation.
Mark solved the primary problem involved in the transformation of a cluster of Jewish beliefs into a universal,
transcendent religion expanded far beyond the horizons
of Judaism: his solution, by explaining away the real cause
of Jesus' execution and shifting it to a theological plane involving a radical and unbridgeable difference with Jewry,
served simultaneously as the model for the dehistorizing
and theologization of the new religion.
Just as Paul's ideas were to create a universe of ideas for
the new sect, so the ground-plan of Mark created an original historic basis for it. By camouflaging a simple fact
-that Jesus was executed not as a reformer of Judaism
but as a rebel against Rome-Mark provided an historical
foundation from which Paul's ideas could soar aloft.
But before that something else had to happen: the idea
that the World's End was imminent had to be given up.
The Gospels recorded a number of postponements of
the advent of the Kingdom of God-from the "at hand"
of the very first fervor, to the few weeks implied by the
disciples going through the towns of Israel, to the end of
the lives of the listeners to one of Jesus' speeches. It may
well be that even by the time the first draft of Mark was
written the writer was no longer so sure of the imminence
of the World's End; by the time John was composed,
around the turn of the second century, the notion of the
World's End has been totally dislocated from the author's
cosmology: for him there is to be no Glorious Return at
all-the Lord has already come. On the other hand, some
scraps in the New Testament-such as I and II Peter and
Revelations, as well as small fragments of the Gospel John
itself-seem to return to the perspective of an imminent
Final Judgement (Jn 5:27-29; 6:39ff).
Though it took varying lengths of time before the
World's End idea was wholly extinct, it is plain that by the
time Luke was written, some decades after the destruction of the Temple, the idea had become at least quiescent. It was no longer held seriously.
Thus the general feeling had moved definitively away
from Paul's state of mind: he wrote because he felt the
World's End was imminent despite delay. By the time this
had evolved into the conviction that the delay was no
longer a delay but a condition of nature, it was possible,
indeed indispensable, for something to be put down on
paper. Thus, some decades after Mark, Luke and Acts
were drafted (parts of both of which were, as it seems, the
work of the same hand).
Acts is, indeed, our sole source for the earliest period of
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the new sect after the destruction of the Temple: it carries the process of socio-political accommodation begun
by Mark still further.
The sources embodied in Acts are so fragmentary that
no coherent account is possible; still less does it say anything about any individual except Paul himself. There is
almost literally no information about anyone mentioned.
The individuals are given names, to be sure, and an occa~
sional sentence or two purports to flesh out an inchoate
narrative, but there is no way of apprehending motive,
character, or activity.
The writings set down in this very early period had the
function of defining, that is, establishing the leadership of
the new sect: they were a major attempt at organization.
And to do so, decades after the destruction of the Temple
and two generations after the death of Jesus, it was vital
for the leaders to claim a living link between Jesus and
themselves.
Accordingly, the newly evolving Church was "defined"
by the Twelve Apostles, or rather, more accurately, by
apostles in the plural. This claim, wedded to the claim, implicit and explicit, that the founding Apostles' authority
was binding, became the theological principle underpinning the Church.
This principle of the binding authority of the Apostles
in and for itself was never to be challenged by the great divisions of the later Church (Catholics, both Roman and
Greek Orthodox, and Protestants); the only dispute was to
be the manner in which the authority attributed to the
Apostles was, in fact, binding (the Protestants, of course,
accepted the Scriptures alone as binding; the Catholics
considered the "Church tradition" equally binding.)
But in fact the "Apostles" were simply part of a theory.
In the very beginning there was no such institution as
"The Twelve": the figure itself, reflecting the World's
End expectations of the Kingdom of God activists, merely
stood for the Twelve Tribes of Israel. "The Twelve" never
played a role of any kind, even in the sources that mention them: after their first mention (in late sources) they
are never, except for Simon the Rock, mentioned again as
"Apostles." A major associate of Jesus, Jacob ben-Zavdai,
lived for a decade after Jesus' crucifixion and must have
been both eminent and active, since he was executed
in 43 by Agrippa I. But after the first mention he is not
called an "Apostle."
Most striking of all, in discussing his trips to Jerusalem
Paul makes no mention of "The Twelve" whatever-he
talks only of the three "pillars," the only ones he confers
with: they are obviously the leaders of the Jerusalem coterie. That is, even if there was such a group as "The
Twelve/' it was no longer in existence in the middle or
perhaps end of the Forties (44 or 48). Later on only
Upright Jacob, Jesus' brother, is mentioned as leader of
the Jerusalem coterie (Acts 32: 15ff).
It is obvious that the statement that there were apostles
is part of the early Church tradition itself: it is the way the
tradition substantiates itself.
81
�Though the church "theory" is very old, it goes back,
accordingly, only to the time when there was already a
huge break with the real-life background of the historic
jesus, and an awareness of that break-that is, to about
100, when the jewish Temple had been extinct for a
whole generation and when the jesists themselves were
swiftly being transformed into the first stage of what
could now be called "Christians," or perhaps only "protoChristians." Although Paul was now accepted and the
foundations of the religion accordingly laid, the organization of the Church itself was still rudimentary and uncertain, and a dogma that was to be indispensable-the Trinity-had not yet been thought of, let alone worked out.
But the generation of 100, aware that they were different as it were in essence from the historic jesus, Simon
the Rock, Upright Jacob, and Jacob and John ben-Zavdai,
and aware of the gap between them, conceived of themselves as being not the second link in the chain of generations-the break made that impossible-but the third;
i.e., they had to create a link between themselves and the
first generation. The concept of the Apostles fixed and
·amplified this link: it became the "Apostolic tradition," as
though it were a tradition about an historical situation.
The traditional definition of the "Apostolic age" as ending with the deaths of Simon the Rock (Peter), Paul, and
probably Upright jacob rests on the claim that until a few
years before 66 reminiscences directly derived from jesus
were still alive. This "living tradition" about jesus itself
consists, however, of assertions made about it by the tradition.
Hence the Gospels and Acts, while containing nuggets
of historical fact or probability, as I have indicated, no
longer reflect the circumstances of jesus's real life, but the
pseudo-tradition about them embodied in revered documents. The handful of what might have been historic
reminiscences committed to writing as the real-life first
generation began to die off, survive merely as fragments
embedded in theologically tinctured and slanted texts
that began to be assembled as a "canon" around the middle of the second century.
It is plain that the earliest current of belief in jesus had
already been expressed in two different styles. One had to
do with the homely tradition of jesus the Jewish Messiah
who had lived in Palestine, been executed by the Romans,
and been seen resurrected at the Right Hand of God; the
second was the visionary jesus stripped completely of all
earthly attributes and embodying a simple principle, to
wit, that he had died and been raised again. But basically
the two traditions were to become one, since the tradition
about the earthly jesus, though it underlies. what seem to
be the facts in the Gospels-sayings, miracles, snippets of
statements etc.-in fact has been twisted around as a
form of adaption to the disembodied, spiritual, abstract,
principled framework of the confessional formula inherited by Paul from his own predecessors very early on. The
significance of the seemingly historical framework of the
82
Gospels is in fact found only within the capsule of the confessional formula of the Death and Resurrection of jesus
Christ. The seemingly factual framework of the Gospels
was itself an adaptation of historical or semi-historical
fragments about jesus's life on earth only from the point
of view of fleshing out the formula of the confession.
This fusion of two beliefs about Jesus had little to do
with a lapse of time-it was a transformation of view that
took place very rapidly: it was already given a sort of
schematic representation by Paul: whereas before his
resurrection Jesus was the son of David-i.e., the jewish
Messiah-afterwards he was the Son of God, Lord of the
Universe (Rom 1:3-4). Thus the process of transforming
historical into theological materials that took place after
the destruction of the Temple was the same, writ large, as
the transformation already seen at work in Paul's Letters,
written before 55.
For Paul, too, a communal repast had already become
sacramental. It can be summed up in a single sentence:
When we bless "the cup of blessing", is it not a means of shar~
ing in the blood of Christ? When we break the bread, is it not
a means of sharing in the body of Christ? [I Cor 10:16].
The transition from the tim~ in which the early )esists
interpreted the Lord's Supper as a Passover meal-a
seder-to the time, much later, when Christ was himself
called a Passover lamb, is evident.
Though the factual information in Paul's Letters is peripheral as well as scanty-he was arguing a case, exhorting his audience; justifying his position-it is, to be sure,
illuminating: it gives us an insight, for instance, into the
authoritative position of Upright Jacob and his possible
role in Temple politics just before the Roman-jewish War;
negatively, too, his Letters tell us something: before the
Destruction of the Temple Paul was overshadowed by the
jerusalem jesists. We can also estimate the speed of expansion in the very earliest tradition: when Paul mentions
the appearance of the Risen jesus to more than "500
brethern" (I Cor 15:6) he is already employing a formulaic
expression typical of an already fixed tradition to events
that occurred fairly soon after Simon the Rock's Vision.
The jerusalem coterie did not interfere with the new
speculations that under Hellenistic influence began in the
jewish Diaspora after the Vision: no doubt they were
shapeless and unsystematic. Perhaps such speculations
came to the surface in only a few centers-such as Antioch-that were to become important after the extinction of the jerusalem coterie in the debacle of 70. And it
was just this fact of their later importance that was concealed after the debacle by the instinctive creation of a
legendary, mythological fabric to manifest the continuity
claimed by all institutions.
The conventional view of theologians today would have
it that the anti-Torah, transcendental conception of Jesus
held by Paul and Stephen had already struck deep roots
AUTIJMN /WINTER 1982-83
�throughout the "Christian" community long before the
destruction of the Temple in 70. From that point of view,
accordingly, the elimination of the "Mother Church"
-the Jesist Coterie-and all the more so of the Temple
and the Jewish State meant nothing-a mere clearing
away of the debris long since left behind by the evolving
faith.
This conventional view, is also, of course, the grand
theme of Acts-indeed, its purpose. Yet it can hardly be
correct: Paul's Letters, written many decades before the
destruction of the Temple and long before the evolution
of any theological "views" at all, show his second-class
status. They show his irritation with the contending
"Gospels" he kept colliding with, the hostile attitude of
the Jerusalem "pillars," the atmosphere of contention and
self. justification. The impression left by these striking motifs in Paul's Letters is reinforced negatively by their random and fragmentary survival.
From an historical point of view it is plain that Paul was
dead long before the triumph of his ideas: the destruction
of the Temple cleared the way for the tendentious slant·
ing of the Gospels, beginning with Mark, away from the
real-life career of Jesus, executed by the Romans for sedition, into the Pacific Christ, Lord of the Universe, and
Savior of Mankind, whose salvational powers were to be
mediated to believers via the magical apparatus of the
Church.
In one respect proto-Christianity carried on the tradition of Judaism: it was grounded in mundane history as
well as in reflections on its meaning. Yet the contrast with
Judaism, in which the Creator of the Universe stands
apart from his own handiwork, was fundamental: Incarnation, propped up on two great events, the Crucifixion
(and its meaning) and the Vision of the Risen Jesus (and
its meaning) was the very core of the new faith. For
Judaism, the Incarnation was inconceivable.
The surviving Letters of Paul provided a theological
framework for the pseudo-historical Gospels and Acts of
the Apostles. The combination of these writings into a
canon made necessary the obfuscation of the facts they
contain.
It seems fair to say that until very recently the sum total
of all scholarship dealing with Christian origins has been
confined to tendentious documents. Since it reaches conclusions implied in its premises, it constitutes no more
than a vast circular argument-a begging of the question.
The apologetics, both theological and practical, that generated the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles cannot, without incisive analysis, solve historical puzzles.
The warping of perspective inherent in our sources can
scarcely be exaggerated. Because of the very fact that
Christian tradition was itself fabricated by writings, the
conventional view today accepts without question a tranTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
scendental interpretation of those origins, an interpretation
that, overshadowed at first by the historical expectations
of the first Jesist coterie, later, after the Jewish debacle in
70, swept the field and was amplified, magnified, ramified, and consolidated precisely as the institutional expression of the triumphant tendency.
If the rationale of the Church is summed up in the
phrase ascribed to the Risen Jesus-"I am with you always, until the World's End" -and if its institutional continuity is guaranteed by the passage aimed at Doubting
Thomas-"Blessed are those who have not seen (the
Risen Jesus's) wounds and yet believe" (Jn 20:29)-we see
how essential it was for Christian theology from the very
beginning to wrench both Jesus and the Kingdom of God
out of their historical matrix.
It was thus the course of history itself that created
Christian theology-conditioned, to be sure, by the long·
ings of multitudes.
Yet historicized theology is imaginary history: the web
of myth has suffocated the history of real people.
What is, perhaps, astonishing is the durability of that
imaginary history. Christianity is the only major religion
whose essence is substantiated by supernatural claims
made on behalf of an historic individual-claims, moreover, expressed in actual documents. One might have
thought, once the documents were closely scrutinized,
that the real-life background of the supernatural claims
would eventually edge aside or at least modify the claims
themselves. Yet to this day the tradition has survived all
the assaults of commonsense; it has withstood the counterweight of probability, of rank impossibility, of pervasive discrepancies, of manifest contradictions, of outright
nonsensicality.
The hundreds of millions of Protestants-recently joined
by Catholics, now also allowed to read the Bible freely
-who even in childhood read and study the New Testa·
ment, which despite its ethereal cast constantly hints at
factual situations, look-and see nothing. Huge motion
pictures have been made depicting, in a naturalistic setting, the supposed events of Jesus' life in Roman Palestine. These motion pictures, conscientiously made with
the guidance of sincere experts, are so foolish when held
up against their real-life background in the vividness called
for by naturalism that one might well think the insulating
walls of traditional perception would surely be pierced.
They seem to elicit no reflection. Audiences are so con·
ditioned by the theological interpretation of the historic
setting that the setting itself is apprehended dimly or not
at all; the mythology is potent enough to plaster over all
the fissures between itself and real-life plausibility.
Accounts of Christian origins that diverge from the tradition are often called "hypothetical," even by skeptics, as
though the tradition itself were true to life.
This attitude on the part of believers and non-believers
alike seems to me due to a sort of shyness, a reluctance to
accept conclusions arising out of the logic of analysis.
83
�Some find it difficult to accept the contradictions in the
sources, as when, for instance, the ~.~pacific" passages attrib-
uted to Jesus contradict the martial passages, the references to arms and so on. Others, accepting one part of a
Gospel but not another, will doubt the likelihood of the
Romans' having allowed Jesus to survive as long as he did,
instead of arresting him, say, on the spot. At bottom many
are put off by the notion that the historic Jesus could possibly have been so utterly different from the Jesus conceived of by Paul; they require a palpable demonstration,
however tenuous, of a link between the two irreconcilable
portraits.
The "Higher Critics", after almost two centuries of
analysis, have not been helpful in filling the empirical void
left by the destruction of the tradition. No doubt this, too,
is due to a reluctance to venture into conjecture and surmise, away from the buttressing of documentation. For
instance, even though the connections between Judah
the Galilean, John the Baptist, Jesus, and the Zealot leaders of the war against Rome are unmistakable, they are
not, after all, fleshed out in sufficiently copious detail to
make a dense chronicle possible.
Still, three facts remain: Jesus preached the "Kingdom
of God;" he was executed as "King of the Jews"; everything expressly attributed to him was taken from one aspect or another of Judaism.
These three facts, which after all are also embedded in
our sources, entail two conclusions: The first is that for
the evolution of the later religion we are thrown back, in
sum, not to Jesus, but to what was said about him-to the
theology that after Jesus' death was layered around the
concept of Lord of the Universe and Savior of Mankind.
The second is that we can, very reasonably, extrapolate
from the nuggets of history I have mentioned a true
though, to be sure, scanty account.
These three facts, then, when propped up on the fac-
84
tual matter scattered about even in the Gospels and Acts
and downright abundant in Josephus's writings, constitute a tripod sturdy enough to warrant a "new" account
of Christian origins. It is possible to extract from the
sources a coherent chronicle of the Kingdom of God agitation against Rome during the first century of the Empire that will locate Jesus in time and space and explain
how normal history was later transformed-again, in time
and space-into the theology of a great Church.
Inevitably, that chronicle will be skimpy; while the factual structure, so to speak, is there, the details are bound
to be absent precisely because of the process we have
been discussing. The Kingdom of God agitation against
Rome-in other words, the Jewish independence movement-is a sort of Lost Continent: the historiography that
covered the two centuries between the successful Maccabee insurrection and the abortive Bar Kochba insurrection is, except for Josephus, simply missing. And even
Josephus, whose histories stop in any case with 70, is
warped, despite his copious detail, by his hostility to the
independence movement and in particular by his omission of the background to Christianity (it is, of course,
conceivable that self-serving parties might have eliminated references to Jesus in Josephus's early manuscripts).
What remains of the Lost Continent are skeletal vestiges and some glimpses-a few peaks, a spur or two, a
panoramic vista. Still, bare bones are better than nothing.
The philosophical implications of such a reconstruction
surely demand a re-assessment of our own history. For if
this reconstruction of Christian origins is accepted, it will
be evident that it was not the career or Jesus, after all, that
was the seminal event of the modern age, but the Jewish
debacle of 70.
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�New Year's Eve
Meyer Liben
It was twenty minutes to twelve, but there was nothing
to indicate that it was twenty minutes before the New
Year. I was sitting next to a man who had introduced himself as Hudson, and I immediately commented that Thomas
Hudson was the name of the hero in Ernest Hemingway's
posthumously published novel, Islands In The Stream,
which I had recently read.
"What's it about?" asked Hudson.
"It's about difficult work, desperate love, and death."
"How come you didn't put an adjective before 'death'?"
asked Hudson.
"That word can get along without an adjective," I replied.
We were looking north through a window at the familiar
nightscape of the city. I do not know what Hudson felt,
but I felt the comfort of shelter on a bitter cold night, and
that New Year's Eve sense of desolation and futurity.
There were a couple of dozen people in the room, broken
up into small groups in accord with inclination, accident,
and the arrangement of the furniture.
"You know," said Hudson, "it feels like the end of an
Old Year more than the beginning of a New Year."
"Past experience bears more on some than does the
ex~
pectancy of the unknown," I replied in the sententious
manner which many find annoying, including myself.
A nearby couple were having a serious low-keyed discussion about a family matter, and across the room an ex·
uberant drunk was telling a small group a long anecdote
which was being listened to with varying degrees of interest.
"When Hemingway died," said Hudson, ''a number of
critics commented that his stories would outlast his novels."
"Some race," I said.
The sound of a police siren faintly entered the steamheated room.
"How come he knocked himself off?" asked Hudson.
"What's your feeling about it?"
"Well," I said, "if you figure Hudson to be pretty much
autobiographical, and that's how it sounds, then he tells
you in the novel. He says that work keeps him alive, that if
he couldn't get that daily work done, he'd be lost, his day
would lose all its meaning. By work he means his painting,
which we translate into Hemingway's writing. Indeed, in
an earlier book, he wrote: ' ... I felt the death loneliness
that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your
life.' In this last book he talks about the matter in a strong,
single-minded way. Without work accomplishment, the
actuality or strong potentiality of it, he felt he was nothing.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
The work was a talisman, a defense, a protection against
the inroads of mortality. There must have come a time
when he felt that the work, actual or potential, was not
under his control (Carlos Baker, in his biography, indicates
that). That bulwark gone, he did away with himself."
"There's plenty of other kinds of work in the world besides writing," said Hudson. "He could have worked as a
fisherman ... "
"Come on, Hudson/' I said, "at this stage it was not a
question of livelihood with him. He was a very competitive
man, kept comparing himself to the greatest writers, and I
suppose that when he was continually creating, he felt that
he was struggling with God, with the original Creation.
When that ceased to be the case, he left the world. All his
pride, duty, defiance, sense of being, and meaning in the
world, was tied up with that creative making."
"How about his children?" asked Hudson, "their need
for him?"
"The way he saw it, children need a courageous father.
Baker quotes him to the effect that the worst luck for a kid
is to have a coward for a father. And he maybe equated
lack of creative juices with cowardice.''
"Well/' said Hudson, <~courage is a most urgent quality,
but there may be other qualities just as important. Charity,
for example. He could have spent time, in his own way,
helping others, or working with them to transform lives
and institutions. The sense of justice."
"I guess for him there was no substitute for the courage
of creation."
Just then I heard the first ring of the telephone in a room
down the hall. As the second ring began, I was at the
phone, having excused myself abruptly to Hudson and
skilfully weaved through the scattered groups. My son had
promised to call me at midnight, and that young, hopeful
voice was indeed there.
"Hi dad. Happy New Year."
"Happy New Year to you. How's the party?"
"Great, really great. All the kids are here, music and
everything."
"Marvelous. Stay with it. I'm always with you."
"I know it, dad. I know it all the time."
And then I moved back into the party room, knowing
that the sense of the New Year was beginning to stirin the
hearts of all those here, and everywhere, all the ones loved
and unloved, neglected, forgotten, in the hearts of all the
undefeated.
85
�Gotthold Lessing
Ernst and Falk:
Conversations for Freemasons
Translation and notes by Chaninah Maschler
At Ephesus towards his life's end, when his disciples could
barely carry him to church and his voice could not put together sev~
eral words, St.John the Evangelist used to say nothing at each meeting except this: "My sons, love one another." Bored at always hearing
the same words, his disciples and the brothers who were present
asked: "Teacher, why do you always repeat the same thing?" John's
answer was worthy of him: "Because it is the Lord's command.
And if it only be done, it shall suffice."
Beatus Ioannes Evangelista, cum Ephesi moraretur usque ad
ultimam senectutem, et vix inter discipulorum manus ad Essiesiam deferretur, nee posset in plura vocem verba contexere, nihil
aliud per singulas solebat proferre collectas, nisi hoc: Filioli diligite
alterutrum. Tandem discipuli et fratres qui aderant, taedio affecti,
quod eadem semper audirent, dixerunt: Magister, quare semper hoc
loqueris? Qui respondit dignam Ionne sententiam: Quia praeceptum Domini est, et si solitm fiat, sufficit.
(Lessing concludes his short dialogue, the Testament of John
[1777], with this passage from St. jerome's Commentary on the
Epistle to the Galatians [6]).
Prefatory Note
Lessing died in 1781, the year in which Kant's Critique
of Pure Reason was published. Eleven years earlier he had
accepted a call from the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbi.ittel
to settle in Wolfenbi.ittel, there to superintend the Ducal
Library. His original reasons for accepting the Duke's invitation were financial, but he soon came to use his somewhat protected position as librarian to advance the cause
of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Locke~ the great cause of religious toleration. 1
Only a few days after settling in at Wolfenbi.ittel he had
discovered a manuscript on the sacrament of the eucha·
rist by Berengarius of Tours (died 1088), which gave sup·
A tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, Md., Chaninah Maschler has
recently published an essay on Eva Brann's Paradoxes of Education in a
Republic in Interpretation (10,1, January 1982).
86
port to a Lutheran interpretation of the Lord's Supper.
He published it under the rubric Contributions to History
and Literature: From the Treasures of the Ducal Library at
Wolfenbuttel. At intervals he would, under the same head·
ing, publish carefully annotated editions of other manuscripts found in the Woffenbi.ittel Library.
Thus, in 1774, he announces in print, under the by now
established heading, that he has unearthed "fragments"
of a mysteriously untitled and anonymous work that was
hidden among the more recently acquired Ducal manuscripts. How the pages got into the library and whether
they originally constituted·one whole he has been unable
to establish, though he notes that all the fragments have
one and the same objective~to examine revealed religion
and test the trustworthiness of Biblical history. The first
fragment is sent into the world under the title On Tolerating Deists.
It doesn't cause a stir. Three years later he publishes
five more "anonymous fragments": On Decrying Reason
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�from the Pulpit, Impossibility of a Revelation which All
Men can Believe on Rational Grounds, The Israelites'
Crossing of the Red Sea, That the Books of the Old Testament were not Written to Reveal a Religion, On the Resurrection Narrative.
To protect the laity and needle the professional theologians he appends some "counter propositions by the Editor," the tenor of which can be gathered from the following
passage:
... Much might be said in reply . .. But even supposing there
could be no rebuttal, what follows? The learned theologian
would, perhaps, in the end, be embarrassed, but need the
Christian be? Surely not! At most, the theologian would be
perplexed to see the supports with which he wanted to uphold religion thus shaken, to find the buttresses cast down by
which he, God willing, had kept it safe and sound. But what
does the Christian care about that man's hypotheses and explanations and demonstrations? For him it is a fact, something that exists, this Christianity which he feels to be true
and in which he feels blessed. When the paralytic experiences
the beneficial shocks of the electric spark, does he care
whether Nollet or Franklin or neither of the two is right?
This time Lessing succeeds in provoking a reaction:
The orthodox, led by the Chief Pastor of Hamburg, J
ohann Melchior Goeze (1717-1786), proceed to the defense
of their territory, though they call it a fight for truth and
in behalf of the hearts and minds of the faithfuL
Given the manifest mystery-mongering of Lessing's original account of his finding of the Wolfenbiittel Fragments, most readers, unless otherwise instructed by a
scholarly note, will think of them as composed by Lessing
himself. They will be all the more disposed to take them
as expressing Lessing's own beliefs when they read the
very long final "fragment," On the Aims of Jesus and his
Disciples.
Yet the facts are otherwise: Before settling in Wolfenbiittel in 1770 Lessing had been given the manuscript for
a book entitled Apology or Defense of Rational Worshippers of God. Its author, Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Professor of Oriental languages at the Gymnasium in Hamburg,
had allowed it to circulate privately but expressly advised
against publication "until more enlightened days." After
Reimarus's death his daughter showed the manuscript to
Lessing and, either at her initiative or at Lessing's, the two
of them plotted to have the book published, thereby to
hasten the coming of enlightenment. Berlin publishers refused to take on the job, for fear of the censor. But as Librarian to the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel, paid to
glorify the Ducal House by exhibiting its scholarly treasures to the world, Lessing was protected against the censors! Hence the scheme to publish Reimarus' s detailed
critique of Revealed Religion in "fragments" ostensibly
found in the Ducal Library. Reimarus's argument would
complete Spinoza's (in the Theologico-Political Treatise)
that faith and philosophy are fundamentally distinct, that
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the certainty of faith is not mathematical but moral, and
that freedom of conscience not only can be granted without imperiling public peace but must be granted in the interest of public peace.
But the power of the orthodox is too great for Lessing:
In 1778 he is deprived of his freed"m from censorship and
must turn in the manuscript of Reimarus's Apology. That
same year he publishes, anonymously, the Dialogues for
Freemasons translated below, the year thereafter Nathan
the Wise, and finally, in 1780 (again anonymously), the essay in which he shows more explicitly in what respects he
differs from Reimarus and Spinoza, On the Education of
Mankind. The difference lies in Lessing's different attitude toward human history: The hope for, the faith in the
gradual though always partial and Perspectival enlightenment of all mankind and some uncertainty about the location and permanence of the boundaries separating "the
few" from Hthe many" is what sets him apart from
Spinoza and Reimarus.
At their first appearance, the Conversations for Freemasons were dedicated to Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick- Wolfenbiittel, not the reigning Duke, Charles, but his brother.
The dedication is appropriate because the House of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel seems to have had a tradition of supporting enlightment: For example, Duke Anton Ulrich,
two generations or so earlier, had invited Leibniz, who
then (about 1706) occupied the same position as librarian
later held by Lessing under Duke Charles, to design plans
for a building that would house the already magnificent
Ducal Library, and the plan offered by Leibniz, and executed, was for a kind of "library temple." Again, the
persecuted author of the first translation into German of
Matthew Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation as
well as of Spinoza' s Ethics, J- Lorenz Schmidt (1702-49),
spent his last years under an assumed name in Wolfenbiittel: The Duke of Brunswick had given him asylum.
Moreover, Duke Ferdinand and Duke Charles both were
Masons, but according to Heinrich Schneider ("Lessing
und die Freimaurer," 169, Zwolf Biographische Studien),
Duke Ferdinand carried more weight in local Masonic affairs.
Given the fact that not only the immediate addressee of
the Conversations for Freemasons, Duke Ferdinand, but
Lessing himself as well, were Freemasons, sworn to secrecy, the elusiveness of certain passages in the Conversations should not be surprising. Given the further fact that
many, to this day, seem to be attracted to the Brotherhood because they love to believe that there are secrets
which, if they live long enough, they may gradually learn,
while others, uninitiated, have no hope of learning them,
the occasionally irritating evasive allusions in the dialogues can, I believe, sometimes be taken ironically, as a
joke on insiders. The presence of odd-sounding words and
phrases such as HBrother Speaker" or "accept" is due to
Lessing's desire to give the dialogues Masonic coloring.
How, otherwise, could he convert his brethren?
87
�Translation
'
Ernst: Admittedly. But give me a straight answer, are you
a Freemason?
Dedication: To His Serene Highness, Duke Ferdinand:
I too stood by the well of truth and drew from it. How
deeply, only he can judge from whom I await permission
to draw more deeply still. The people have long been Ian·
guishing. They are dying of thirst.
Falk: I believe myself to be one.
Ernst: That's the answer of one who doesn't feel quite
sure of himself.
Falk: But I am.
Ernst: Then you must know whether, when, where, and
His Highness' most obedient servant.
Falk: I know those things. But they don't mean all that
much.
Ernst: How is that?
Falk: Who doesn't "accept." And who isn't "accepted"!
Ernst: What do you mean?
Falk: I believe that I am a Freemason, not because older
Masons have accepted me into an official lodge, but be·
cause I understand and appreciate what and why Freema·
sonry is, when and where it has existed, what fosters or
hinders it.
Ernst: And nevertheless you speak in such tones of doubt
-"I believe myself to be one"?
Falk: I've grown accustomed to that tone, not because of
lack of conviction, but because I would not stand in any·
through whom you were ((accepted."
Introduction by a Third Party:
If the following pages do not contain the true ontology
of Freemasonry, I desire to be told which of the innumer·
able writings occasioned by Freemasonry gives a more exact
idea of its true nature (Lessing's italics). But if all Freema·
sons, no matter of what stamp, willingly allow that the point
of view indicated here is the only one from which sound
eyes can see something genuine (rather than a phantom
rearing up before the nearly blind), why has it been so
long till someone spokeplainly?
Many and diverse things might be said in reply. But it
would be hard to come up with a question more nearly like
the one just uttered than this: Why were systematically
laid-out handbooks of Christianity produced so late? Why
have there been so many good Christians for so long who
neither could nor would give a rational account of their
faith? Indeed, such handbooks of Christianity as we now
have might still be said to have been produced prematurely
(since faith itself probably gained little from them), were it
not that [certain] Christians had conceived the notion of
explaining the faith in a totally nonsensical way.
The application of these remarks can be left to the
reader.
First Conversation:
Ernst: What are you thinking about, friend?
Falk: Nothing.
Ernst: But you're so quiet.
Falk: Precisely! Who thinks when he is enjoying himself?
And I'm enjoying the lovely morning.
Ernst: You are quite right. So, why not ask me what I'm
thinking about?
Falk: If I were thinking about something I'd be talking: No
pleasure compares with that of thinking out loud with a
friend.
Ernst: I agree.
Falk: Perhaps you've had your fill of quietly taking in the
fine morning. Why don't you talk if something occurs to
you.
Ernst: I've been meaning to ask you something for a long
time.
Falk: Ask away!
Ernst: Is it true, friend, that you are a Freemason?
Falk: That's the question of one who is not a Mason.
88
one's way.
Ernst: You answer me as though I were a stranger.
Falk: Stranger or friend!
Ernst: You were accepted, you know everything .... ?
Falk: Others, too, have been accepted and believe they
know.
Ernst: But could you have been accepted without know·
ing what you know?
Falk: Yes, unfortunately.
Ernst: How?
Falk: Because many who "accept" others do not them·
selves know it2 while the few who do cannot say it (Lessing's italics).
Ernst: But could you know what you know without having
been accepted?
Falk: Why not? Freemasonry isn't an arbitrary thing, a luxury, but a necessity, grounded in the nature of man and of
civil society. So to come upon it as a result of one's own
reflection rather than under the guidance of others must
be possible.
Ernst: Freemasonry isn't anything arbitrary? Doesn't it involve words and signs and customs every one of which
might have been different, and so must be arbitrary?
Falk: Sure. But these words, these signs, these customs
do not constitute Freemasonry.
Ernst: Freemasonry a necessity? How did people manage
before Freemasonry?
Falk: Freemasonry has always existed.
Ernst: Come off it! What is this necessary, this indispensable Freemasonry?
Falk: As I indicated earlier, something of which even
those who know it cannot speak.
Ernst: A nonentity, then?
Falk: Don't be hasty.
Ernst: What I understand I can put into words.
AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83
�Falk: Not always, and often not in such a way that the
words convey to others the idea I have exactly.
Ernst: Approximately, if not exactly. '
Falk: Approximately the same idea would be useless or
even dangerous here: Useless, if it conveys less than the
idea; dangerous if it holds the least little bit more.
Ernst: Odd! If even the Freemasons who know the secret
of their order cannot impart it verbally, how, then, do
they spread their order?
Falk: Through deeds. They allow good men and youths
whom they deem worthy of more intimate association to
surmise, guess at, see their deeds (as much of them as is
visible). Their new intimates find such deeds to their liking and do the same.
Ernst: Deeds? Deeds done by Freemasons? I only know
their speeches and songs-more often prettily printed
than thought or recited.
Falk: (interrupting his friend)-as are lots of other songs
and speeches.
Ernst: Or am I supposed to take the things they boast of in
these songs as their deeds?
Falk: Do you think they are just boasting?
Ernst: And what are they boasting about, anyway? Noth·
ing except what is expected of every good human being
and decent citizen-that they're so friendly, so charitable,
so obedient, so patriotic.
F alk: Are those virtues nothing?
Ernst: Nothing that would set the Freemasons apart from
the rest of mankind. Who isn't supposed to be friendly,
charitable, and the rest?
Falk: Supposed to be!
Ernst: Aren't there plenty of incentives and opportunities
for these virtues apart from Freemasonry?
Falk: Yes, but the Masonic fellowship gives men an additional incentive.
Ernst: What's the good of multiplying incentives to vir·
tue? Better to strengthen one motive to the utmost. A
multitude of motives is like a multitude of gears in a
machine: the more gears, the more slips.
Falk: I can't deny it.
Ernst: Besides, what sort of "additional incentive is this
that belittles all others, casts doubt on them, gives itself
out as strongest and best?
Falk: Friend, be fair! Don't judge by the exaggerations or
petty vindictiveness of idle songs and speeches. They're
the work of apprentices, callow disciples.
Ernst: You mean, Brother Speaker was talking nonsense?
Falk: I mean, the things that Brother Speaker was praising
the Freemasons for are obviously not their deeds, since
(whatever else you may say of him) he doesn't talk out of
school,' and deeds speak for themselves.
Ernst: I'm beginning to see what you are driving at. Why
didn't they occur to me before, those deeds, those telling,
I'd almost call them shouting, deeds: Freemasons don't
just support one another, and powerfully so, like members
of any association. They work for the public good of any
state of which they are members.
11
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Falk: For instance? I want to be sure you're on the right
track.
Ernst: For instance, the Freemasons of Stockholm, didn't
they establish a foundling hospital?
Falk: I hope that the Freemasons of Stockholm showed
their mettle at other occasions.
Ernst: What other occasions?"
Falk: Just others.
Ernst: And the Freemasons of Dresden, who employ poor
young girls as lace makers and embroiderers, to reduce the·
size of the foundling hospital!
Falk: Erl)st, need I remind you of your name? Be serious!
Ernst: Well, seriously, consider the Freemasons of Brunswick, who give talented poor boys drawing lessons.
Falk: What's wrong with that?
Ernst: Or the Freemasons of Berlin, who support Basedow's Philanthropin.4
Falk: The Masons support Basedow's institute. Who told
you that fable?
Ernst: It was all over the newspaper.
Falk: You read it in the newspaper? I won't believe lt till I
see Basedow's handwritten receipt. And I'd want to be
sure that it was made out to the Freemasons, not just to
some Freemasons in Berlin.
Ernst: Why? Don't you approve of Basedow's institute.
Falk:: Me? I approve wholeheartedly.
Ernst: Then you won't begrudge him such financial assistance?
Falk: Begrudge? Quite the contrary. Who is a stronger
well-wisher of Basedow than I?
Ernst: Well, then .... You're becoming incomprehensible.
Falk: I suppose so. Anyway, I was unfair: Even Freemasons may undertake something not as Freemasons.
Ernst: Does that hold for all their other good deeds as
well?
Falk: Perhaps. Perhaps the several good deeds you enumerated just now are, to use scholastic jargon for brevity's
sake, their dee~ad extra.
Ernst: How do y u mean that?
Falk: Perhaps the e are the eye-catching things they do
only to draw the multitude's attention, and which they do
only on that account.
Ernst: To win respect and toleration from the multitude?
Falk: Could be.
Ernst: What about their real deeds then? You keep silent?
F alk: Perhaps I have already answered you? Their real
deeds are their secret.
Ernst: Ha Hal Yet another one of those things that cannot
be put into words?
Falk: Not very well. But I can and am permitted to tell you
this much: The Freemasons' real deeds are so great and so
far from realization that centuries may pass before someone can say, "This is what they achieved." Yet they have
done everything good in the world, note well, in the world.
And they continue to work for all the good that is to be in
the world, note well, in the world.
Ernst: Come now, you are pulling my leg.
89
�Falk: Indeed not. But look-there goes a butterfly that I
must have. It's a woepmilchraupe~a milkweed caterpillar.
I want to be off. The true deeds of the Freemasons aim at
making most of the deeds commonly called good super·
fluous.
Ernst: But are these themselves good deeds?
Falk: None better. Think about that for a bit. I'll be right
back.
Ernst: Good deeds whose object is to make good deeds superfluous? That's a riddle. 5 I refuse to guess at riddles. I'd
rather stretch out beneath this tree and watch the ants.
Second Conversation
Ernst: What's been keeping you? You didn't catch your
butterfly after all?
Falk: It lured me from bush to bush, down to the brook.
Suddenly, it was on the other side.
Ernst: There are such seducers!
Falk: Have you thought it over?
Ernst: What? Your riddle? I won't catch my butterfly
either. But I am not going to worry about mine from now
on. I tried once to talk to you about Freemasonry. That's
enough. You are just like the rest of them-obviously.
Falk: The rest of them? But they don't say the things I say.
Ernst: They don't? So there are heretics among the Ma·
sons, too? And you are one of them? But heretics always
have something in common with the orthodox. And that's
what I meant.
Falk: What did you mean?
Ernst: Orthodox or heretical-Freemasons all play with
words, provoke questions and then answer without really
answering.
Falk: Is that so? Well, then, let's talk about something else,
since you tore me away from my pleasant condition of
mute contemplation.
Ernst: Nothing is easier than getting you back into that
condition. just lie down beside me and look.
Falk: At what?
Ernst: At the life and activity in and around and on top of
this ant heap. Such busyness-and such order! Every one
of them fetches and carries and pushes, and yet none is in
the other's way. Look, they even help each other!
Falk: Ants live in society just like bees.
Ernst: And theirs is a society more wonderful than the
bees', because there is none in their midst to bind them
together or to rule over them.
Falk: Order can exist even without government?
Ernst: If every individual knows how to rule himself, why
not?6
·
Falk: I wonder whether human beings will ever reach that
stage.
Ernst: Hardly.
Falk: What a shame.
Ernst: Indeed.
Falk: Get up. Let's go: They're going to crawl all over you,
90
I mean the ants. I want to ask you something. I don't know
your opinion on this at all.
Ernst: On what? ·
Falk: Civil society, for human beings in general. How do
you size it up?
Ernst: As a great good thing.
Falk: No doubt. But do you consider it a means or an end?
Ernst: I don't follow.
Falk: Do you think that men were made for the state or
rather states for men?
Ernst: Some, it seems, want to maintain the former, but
the latter is probably truer.
Falk: I think so too. States unite human beings in order
that-through and in these associations-every individual
human being may better and more securely enjoy his
share of happiness. The totality of the shares of happiness
of the members is the happiness of the state. Apart from
this there is no happiness. Every other so-called happiness
of the state, for the sake of which some of the members,
no matter how few, are said to have to suffer, is only a
cover-up for tyranny.
Ernst: I would rather not say that so loud.
Falk: Why?
Ernst: A truth which each construes according to his own
situation is easily abused.
Falk: Do you realize, friend, that you're already a demiFreemason?
Ernst: Who? Me?
Falk: Yes, since you admit there are truths better not
spoken.
Ernst: Yes, but they could be spoken.
Falk: The sage is unable to say things better left unsaid.
Ernst: As you wish. Let's not get back to the Freemasons.
I don't want to know about them anyway.
Falk: I beg your pardon. But at least you see that I'm willing to tell you more about them.
Ernst: You are making fun of me. All right, civil society and
Political organization of whatever sort are mere means
to human happiness. What follows?
Falk: Means only! And means of human devising, though
I won't deny that nature has arranged things in such a way
that men would have had to invent political organization
sooner or later.?
Ernst: Which is why some have held that civil society is a
natural end: Because everything-our passions and our
needs-leads there, they believed that civil society and
the state are ultimate ends of nature. As though natural
teleology didn't bear on the production of means! As
though nature were more interested in the happiness of
abstractions like STATE, FATHERLAND, than in the
happiness of flesh and blood individuals!
Falk: Fine! You're meeting me half-way. The next thing I
want to ask you is this: Admitting that political constitutions are means, and means of human invention, would
you say that they alone are exempt from the vicissitudes
of human means?
AUTIJMN/WINTER 1982-83
�Ernst: What do you mean by "the vicissitudes of human
means"?
Falk: What makes them different from divine, infallible
means.
Ernst: What?
Falk: That they are not infallible: Worse than being unreliable, they often produce results contrary to their design.
Ernst: Give me an example, if you can think of one.
Falk: Ships and navigation are means toward distant lands
but they are also to blame for many a man's never arriving
there.
Ernst: Those who suffer shipwreck and drown? I see what
you are driving at. But the reasons for a constitution's failure, why it cheats so many individuals of their happiness,
can be learned. There are many types of constitution, one
better than the next; some very inadequate, blatantly at
odds with their purpose; the best may yet be undiscovered.
F alk: Forget about that. Suppose the very best constitution imaginable were invented. Suppose everybody the
world over accepted it. Don't you think that even then,
under this best constitution, things that are extremely disadvantageous to human happiness would necessarily occur, things of which men in the state of nature would have
been utterly ignorant?
Ernst: If such things occur under the supposedly best constitution, I infer it isn't the best after all.
F alk: Assuming that a better one is possible? Well, take
that better one as best and repeat the question.
Ernst: You seem to me to be disguising with spurious subtlety that you assume all along that every instrument of
human invention 1 including political constitutions, must
be flawed.
Falk: I'm not just assuming it.
Ernst: Show me.
Falk: You want examples of the harm that comes necessarily of even the best constitution? I could mention ten
at least!
Ernst: One will do for a start.
Falk: We are supposing that the best constitution has
been invented and that all mankind lives under it. Does
that imply that all human beings in the world make up
one single state?
Ernst: Hardly. Such an immense state would be ungovernable. So it would have to be divided into many smaller
states, all governed with the same laws.
Falk: People would still be Germans and Frenchmen,
Dutchmen and Spaniards, Russians and Swedes, or whatever they happen to be called?
Ernst: Certainly.
Falk: Wouldn't each of these states have its own interests,
and the members of each state have the interests of whatever state happens to be theirs?
Ernst: Obviously.
Falk: These state-interests would often clash, wouldn't
they, just as they do now? So wouldn't the citizens of two
different states be just as unable to encounter one another
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
without the burden of prejudice and suspicion if they lived
under the best imaginable constitution as a German and a
Frenchman, or a Frenchman and an Englishman today?
Ernst: Very probably.
Falk: When a German meets a Frenchman or a Frenchman
an Englishman, he does not meet him simply as a human
being, as a fellow man to whom' he is drawn because of
their shared nature. They meet as German and French,
French and English; aware of their nations' competing interests, they are from the start cold, distant, suspicious
toward one another.
Ernst: You're right, unfortunately.
Falk: Doesn't that prove that the means for uniting human beings, for assuring their happiness through association, also divide them?
Ernst: I suppose so.
Falk: One step further; these several states, many of
them, will have climates that are very different;_ consequently they will have quite different needs and satisfactions; consequently they will have different moral codes;
consequently different religions. Don't you think?
Ernst: That's an enormous step!
Falk: Wouldn't people still be Jews and Christians and
Moslems and such?
Ernst: I don't dare deny it.
Falk: In that case, Christians, Jews, and Moslems alike will
continue to deal with each other as before, not as one human being with another, but as a Christian with a Jew, a
Jew with a Moslem: Each will claim that men of his type
are spiritually superior to men of other type, and they will
thus lay the foundation for rights that natural man could
not possibly claim to be possessed o£.8
Ernst: It's very sad. But what you say is probably quite true.
Falk: Only "probably true"?
Ernst: I would think that, just as you supposed that all the
world's states would have the same political constitution,
so one ought to suppose that they would be of one religion.
I can't imagine how they could be the same politically without religious uniformity.
Falk: Me neither! Anyway, I proposed the hypothesis of
the one best political constitution only to prevent your
evading the issue [of the possibility or impossibility of a
perfect constitution.]' Political and religious uniformity
the world over are equally impossible. [The steps of our
argument were:] One state, several states. Several states,
several political constitutions. Several political constitutions, several religions.
Ernst: Yes, that's how things look.
Falk: That's how they are! Consider next the second misfortune which civil society, quite at odds with its end,
gives rise to. Civil society cannot unite men without dividing them, nor divide them without erecting walls or digging ditches to keep them apart.
Ernst: Those chasms are so· dreadful, those walls often so
impossible to climb!
Falk: I must add a third: Civil society doesn't just divide
91
�human beings along national an(! religious lines. Without
divisions and separations, that form subordinate wholes,
there would be no whole whatever. But civil society di·
vides on and on within each such partial whole. 10
Ernst: Explain.
Falk: Do you believe a state without differentiation of social
classes is conceivable? Let it be a good or a bad state, closer
or further from perfection, it is impossible for all its citizens to share the same conditions. Even if they all participate in legislative activity, they cannot all have an equal
share in it; at least, not an equal direct share. So there are
going to be upper and lower classes. And supposing that
originally each citizen got an equal share in the state's
wealth, this distribution cannot be expected to last beyond a mere two generations: One man will know better
than another how to increase his property; or the poorly
administered estate must, nevertheless, be shared among
more heirs than the well-administered one. Soon there are
bound to be rich and poor.
Ernst: Evidently.
Falk: Consider now, are there many evils that are not due
to such social differentiation?
Ernst: As though I could contradict you! But why would I
want to, anyway? To unite human beings one must divide
them, and keep them divided. Granted. That's how it is. It
can't be otherwise.
Falk: Precisely!
Ernst: But what's the point of dwelling on this conclusion? Are you trying to make civil society hateful to me?
Do you want me to regret that people ever conceived the
idea of uniting into states?
Falk: Do you know me so little? If the only good gained
from civil society were that human reason can be cultivated
there, and there alone, I would bless it even if the evils it
produced were greater by far than the ones mentioned.
Ernst: If you want to enjoy the fire you must expect to put
up with the smoke-as the saying goes.
Falk: Quite. But granting that fire makes smoke unavoidable, should one therefore prohibit the invention of chimneys? Is the fellow who invented them to be called an
enemy of fire? You see, that's what I was after.
Ernst: What? I don't follow you.
Falk: And yet the image was most suitable.ll If human beings cannot be united into states apart from such divisions
as we spoke of, does that make the divisions good?
Ernst: Why, no.
Falk: Does it make them sacred?
Ernst: How do you mean that usacred"?
Falk: I mean, so that touching them ought to be prohibited.
Ernst: Touching with what end in view?
Falk: This, of not letting them gain more ground than is
absolutely necessary, of canceling their ill effects as much
as possible.
Ernst: Why should that be prohibited?
Falk: But it can't very well be enjoined either, at least not
by the civil law, since the civil law holds only within the
boundaries of the state, and what is wanted is precisely
7
92
something that crosses these. So it can only be an opus
supererogatum ["a work of supererogation"; see note 5]:
That the wisest and best of every state freely undertake
this task beyond the call of duty can onlv be wished for.
Ernst: However ardent, it must remain merely a wish.
Falk: I believe so. May there be men in every state who
are beyond popular prejudices and who know when patriotism ceases to be virtuous.
Ernst: I join you in your wish.
Falk: May every state contain men who are not the creatures of the prejudices of the religion they were raised in,
who do not believe that everything which they regard as
good and true must be good and true.
Ernst: May it be so.
Falk: May every state contain men who are not dazzled by
high position and not put off by low, men in whose company the nobleman gladly stoops and the lowly confidently
nses.
Ernst: May it be so.
Falk: What if this wish of ours were fulfilled?
Ernst: Fulfilled? To be sure, here and there a man like that
might turn up.
Falk: I don't mean just here and there and now and then.
Ernst: In certain epochs and certain regions there might
even be several such men.
Falk: What would you say if I told you that men like this
exist everywhere today; that from now on there are always
going to be such men?
Ernst: Please God!
Falk: What if I told you, further, that they do not live ineffectually dispersed, like the Church Invisible?
Ernst: Happy dream!
Falk: I'll get right to the point-these men that we are
speaking of are the Freemasons.
Ernst: What's that you're saying?
Falk: What if the Freemasons were the ones who count it
one of their jobs to bridge those gaps and cross those
boundaries that estrange men from one another?
Ernst: The Freemasons?
Falk: Yes, I'm saying they count it as part of their business.
Ernst: The Masons?
Falk: I beg your pardon. I forgot that you don't want to
hear about them. Look-we're being called to breakfast.
Let's go.
Ernst: Wait a minute, you say the Freemasons ... ?
Falk: Our conversation brought me back to them against
my will. I do apologize. We're bound to find more deserving matter for conversation once we join the breakfast
crowd. Come!
Third Conversation:
Ernst: All day long you have been avoiding me in the
crowd. But I've tracked you down to your bedroom.
Falk: Do you have something important to say to me? I'm
too tired for a mere chat.
AUfUMN /WINTER 1982-83
�Ernst: You're ridiculing my curiosity.
Falk: Curiosity?
,
Ernst: Yes, which you so artfully piqued this morning.
Falk: What were we talking about this morning?
Ernst: The Freemasons.
Falk: Well, what about them? I hope I didn't give the
secret away when I was high on the rhinewine.
Ernst: The secret which, you say, no one can give away?
Falk: All right. That restores my peace of mind.
Ernst: You said something about the Freemasons that
came unexpected, struck me, made me think.
Falk: What was that?
Ernst: Come on, stop teasing me. I'm sure you remember.
Falk: Now that you mention it, it does come back to me.
That's why you were so absentminded with your men and
women friends all day?
Ernst: Right. I won't be able to get to sleep until you've
answered at least one question of mine.
Falk: The question.?
Ernst: How can you prove, or at least support, your claim
that the Freemasons have these great and worthy aims?
Falk: Did I speak to you of their aims? I was not aware of
it. You were quite at a loss when I asked what might be
the Masons' true deeds. I wanted to draw your attention
to something that deserves to be worked at, something
that doesn't figure in the dreams of our clever political
theorists (staatskluge Leute). Perhaps the Masons are
working on it. Perhaps they're working in that area. I
merely wanted to cure you of the prejudice that every
spot fit for building has been identified and occupied and
that all construction work has duly been meted out.!'
Ernst: Wiggle as you please: From your speeches I con·
elude that the Freemasons are people who have freely
chosen the responsibility to work against the unavoidable
evils of the state.
Falk: Such a conception of their undertaking will at least
not dishonor them. Hold on to it. But understand it right.
Don't include things that don't belong. We're talking
about the unavoidable evils of the state, of any state, not
about the evils that go with this or that particular state of
a given constitution. The healing and alleviating of evils
native to a particular state the Freemason leaves to its citizens, who must venture and risk themselves according to
their citizen insight and courage. Evils of a quite different, higher kind are the object of the Mason's efforts.
Though inasmuch as he is also a citizen, he may take part
in making civic ills milder.
Ernst: I understand. Without the evils that concern the
Mason there could be no happy citizens. They are not the
evils that cause citizens unhappiness.
Falk: Right, the Freemasons mean to-how did you put
it?-work against the unavoidable evils.
Ernst: Yes.
Falk: "Work against" may be too strong a word, if it is
taken to mean "undo them." These evils cannot be undone. It would destroy the state. They should not even be
made apparent now to those who do not yet perceive
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
them as evils. At most they can be mitigated, by distantly
stirring up this perception in people, by allowing it to germinate and send out shoots, by clearing away weeds and
thinning out the new plants. Now do you understand why
I said that, whether or not Freemasons have always been
at work, centuries may pass before one could say "This is
what they wrought"?
Ernst: Yes, and I now also understand the second part of
the riddle-"good deeds that are to make good deeds
superfluous." 13
Falk: Fine! Go, then, and study these evils. Get to know
them all. Weigh their mutual influences. This study will
reveal things to you which, in days of dejection, will seem
irrefutable arguments against providence and virtue. But
this discovery, this illumination, will give you peace and
make you happy without being called a Freemason.
Ernst: You say the word "being called" with so much emphasis.
Falk: Because one may be something without being called
it.
.
Ernst: All right. I understand. But to return to my question,
which I need only rephrase: Since I now know the evils
Freemasonry combats ...
Falk: You know them?
Ernst: Didn't you yourself enumerate them for me?
Falk: I merely named a few of them, by way of test, just
those which are obvious even to the most nearsighted,
just a few of the most uncontested and most comprehensive. But there are many less obvious and more debatable,
but just as sure and inevitable.
Ernst: I limit my question to the evils you have yourself
named. Prove to me the Freemasons have these in mind.
You are silent. Are you thinking?
Falk: Not about how to answer your question. But why do
you want to know?
Ernst: Will you answer my question if I answer yours?
Falk: Yes. I promise.
Ernst: I asked for evidence that the Freemasons think as
you say they do because I know and fear your ingenuity.
Falk: My ingenuity?
Ernst: Yes. I am afraid you're selling me your own speculations for fact.
Falk: Thanks a lot!
Ernst: Did I insult you?
Falk: I suppose I ought to be grateful that you call "ingenuity" what might have been given quite a different
name.
Ernst: No, no. Only, I know how easily a clever person deceives himself, how readily he attributes plans and intentions which they never thought of to others.
Falk: But how do we infer that people have certain plans
and intentions? Don't we reason from their several deeds?
Ernst: How else? Which brings me back to my question-from what individual, uncontested deeds done by
Freemasons can it be inferred that in and by their
fellowship they mean to overcome the divisions among
men of which you spoke? The unavoidable divisions
93
�within the state and among states. Show me that this is
even one of their objectives.
,
Falk: And that they mean to do this without threatening
the individual state or the continued existence of a plurality of states.
Ernst: I'm glad to hear it. Look, I am not necessarily asking
you to tell me of deeds. Oddities, idiosyncracies that spring
from or lead to union among men would serve. You must
have based your speculations about Freemasonry on some
such signs as I am asking for if your "system" is a hypothesis.
Falk: You continue suspicious of me? But perhaps you
will doubt me less if I cite a constitutional principle of
Freemasonry for you. 14
Ernst: Which?
Falk: A principle they have never made a secret and in accord with which they have always conducted themselves
before the world's eyes.
Ernst: To wit?
Falk: To accept into their ranks any worthy man of fit
character, without distinction of fatherland, religion, or
civil condition.
Ernst: Really?
Falk: Admittedly, such a constitutional principle seems to
presuppose men who already make light of national,
religious, and social distinctions. The constitutional principle itself does not raise up such men. But mustn't there
be Nitrogen in the air for saltpeter [KN0 3 or NaN0 3] to
accumulate upon the walls?
Ernst: Yes.
Falk: And may the Freemasons not have been resorting to
a perfectly familiar ruse, that of openly practicing some of
their secret objectives, so as to mislead such men as are
always on the look-out for something different from what
stares them in the face because they are driven by suspicion?
Ernst: Perhaps.
Falk: Why shouldn't the artisan who can make silver deal
in silver scrap, so as to allay the suspicion that he knows
how to make it?
Ernst: Why not?
Falk: Ernst, are you listening? You sound as though you
are half asleep.
Ernst: No, friend. But I have had enough, enough for
tonight. Tomorrow very early I'm going back to town.
Falk: Already? Why so soon?
Ernst: You know me and ask? How long will it be before
you conclude your [mineral water] cure?
Falk: I only started it day before yesterday.
Ernst: Then I shall be seeing you before you have finished
yours. Good night. Farewell.
Notice to the Reader:
The spark took. Ernst went and became a Freemason.
What he thus learned, at first, is the matter of a fourth and a
fifth conversation, in which there is a parting of ways.
94
Of the three conversations here translated, Lessing
wrote Duke Ferdinand on 19 October, 1778:
Since I make so bold as to deem the first three of the conversations in question the weightiest, most laudable, and truest
things that may ever have been written about Freemasonry, I
could no longer resist the temptation to have them printed.
(Da ich mire schmeicheln darf, class von den bewussten Gesprachen die drey erstern, das Ernsthafteste, Riihmlichste,
Wahrste sind, was vielleicht jemals tiber die Freimaurerei
geschrieben worden: so habe ich der Versuchung, sie driicken
zu lassen nicht Ianger widerstehen kOnnen.) [Schneider, Stri-
dien, Bern, 1951, 14]
Two years later a fourth and a fifth conversation between Ernst and Falk were published (some say contrary
to Lessing's wishes). Their dramatic date is long after the
conclusion of Falk's "cure." Ernst is disgusted with his
friend for having sweet-talked him into joining a society of
fools and charlatans. None of the hopes and expectations
that Falk had stirred up in him were met by the flesh and
blood Masons he encountered:
That equality which you gave out as a constitutional principle
of the order, that equality which filled my soul with such surprising hope . .. does it still exist? Did it ever? Let an educated
Jew ask for admission. "A Jew? Well, the candidate must be a
Christian, though we don't ca;e what manner of Christian."
"Without distinction of religion" means "without discriminating among the three officially tolerated religions in the
Holy Roman Empire." Is that your interpretation too, Falk? ...
Let a cobbler come ... even if he be a Jacob Boehme or a Hans
Sachs, they'll
s~y:
"A cobbler? Why, obviously, a cobbler ... "
The fifth conversation takes place after a dinner party
also attended by a Mason of whom both friends disapprove, a man who means to defend the American cause in
Europe and who believes, mistakenly in the friends' opinion, that the American Congress is a Masonic Lodge and
that the Masons are, in America, establishing their realm
by force of arms.~' In this conversation Falk explains what
he conceives to be the true history of Freemasonry:
Anderson's history, according to which "speculative"
Masons joined already existing lodges of "operative" Freemasons, is rejected. The word "masonry" is linked to
"masons" only by an erroneous folk etymology according
to Falk. Its true etymology is "Masonei," says he, meaning,
roughly, eating club. One of these eating clubs was, in Sir
Christopher Wren's day, close by St. Paul's, in London.
During the thirty years of St. Paul's reconstruction, Sir
Christopher Wren would frequent this eating club, of
which he was a member. All London wanted to get progress reports on the construction of the great church. Hearing that the architect frequented a masony, Londoners
mistook the word for a masonry, a fellowship of builders.
Sir Christopher, according to F alk, simply used the popular confusion for ends of his own:
He had helped conceive the plan-for a society that would make
speculative truths more directly efficacious in establishing the
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�public good and in making civic life mor:e e0mmodious. Then
it occmrred to him that a society that Fo-~e- £Fom the activities
of daily life to spectllation would be· a- fitting counterpart to it.
"There," he thought, "men would investigate what in the
realm of truth is useful; here what that iS useful is true."
be far better known in America tl\an they now are. His
every piece of writing is refreshing and instructive. Even
brief association with him, merely through his books,
makes it easy to credit Moses Mendelssohn's words of
condolence to Lessing's younger brother
Thus far Lessing's Falk.
His etymology sounds so wildly unlikely to me, and the
history attached to the supposedly Germanic origin of the
word-root so much like pseudo-history, that it is hard for
me to read them as anything but a spoof-of the eighteenth
century literary industry of fabricating Masonic pseudohistories, and perhaps of other kinds of make-believe history as well.
Readers of the foregoing translation may wonder why I
thought Lessing's dialogues worth translating and why it
seemed right that they be made known to members of the
St. John's College community. My reasons aren't all in
yet, but among them are these: Charlotte Fletcher has
argued in detail in the Maryland Historical Magazine (val.
74, no. 2, June 1979; pp 133-151), that St. John's College
was not named after the Cambridge University College of
the same name; rather~
. .. I thank Providence for i"ts benevolence in allowing me, so
early in life, in the flower of youth, to know a man who
shaped my very soul, a man whom I would conjure up as
friend and judge whenever I was deliberating about something to be done or written, a man of whom I shall at all times
continue to think as my friend and judge whenever I have to
take a step of some importance.
... the Maryland legislators named the Western Shore college
for the day when [Washington's Potomac bill] was enacted,
the Feast Day of the Evangelist. ... Not only was it a day
which they had enjoyed in the company of their former Commander-in-Chief, it was a day which would have had special
significance· for Washington, the Freemason [December 27,
the Feast Day of the Evangelist, is singled out by many British
and American Masonic handbooks as a day for important
transactions and special celebration] .... Records show ... that
a remarkable legislative performance ... [took] place on the
Feast Day of St. John the Evangelist, December 27, 1784,
when on behalf of their good friend, George Washington.
Maryland legislators enacted the first piece of cooperative legislation among the various states in the Confederation following
the definitive "Treaty of Peace" (my italics).
Moreover, she showed that it is worthwhile to ask whether
there is a more intimate, even curricular, connection between the college and the fellowship which, as has plausibly
been argued in a number of Masonic histories, preserved
ancient astronomical, geometric, and architectural lore (in
effect, the quadrivium) after the disintegration of Rome
in the West. 16
Second, it is hard for me to believe that there is no "real"
connection between the founding of these United States
of America and Masonic doctrines such as the one in the
"first charge" of Anderson's Constitution (see footnote
14). The Masonic insignia on our dollar bills, which got
there from the verso of the Great Seal of the United States
(designed in the eighteenth century), should not, I think,
be written off as boys-will-be-boys-even-when-grown
mumbo jumbo. They were put there to say something, to
Americans and to the world at large, and to those who
decided to put them there1 17
Finally, Lessing's name and Lessing's work deserve to
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
( ... Ich danke der VOrsehung fiir die Wohltat, class sie mich
so frUh, in der Bluthe meiner Jugend, hat einen Mann kennen lassen, der meine Sehle gebildet hat, den ich bey jeder
Handlung, die ich vorhatte, bey joder Zeile die ich hinschreiben sollte, mir als Freund und Richter vorstellte, und den ich
mir zu allen Zeiten noch als Freund und Richter vor-stellen
werde, so oft ich einen Schritt von Wichtigkeit zu thun babe.)
Quoted in Karl Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim Lessings Leben,
Berlin 1795, 450.
l. Locke's first (anonymously) published work is the Epistola de
Raymond Klibansky writes: "It cannot be doubted that Locke
systematically collected all_ books on toleration which he could
find. , .. Even in one of his earliest notebooks, that of 1674, Locke, having
read Spinoza's treatise on Descartes' Principia Philosophiae, expressed his intention of finding out what other works there were by this author. When
in 1674-6 he was Lord Shaftesbury's confidential agent, he certainly
had the opportunity of perusing some of Spinoza's works, for
Shaftesbury reimbursed him for a sum spent on acquiring these books
for him. Later, Locke mentioned in his 'Catalogue de livres differends et
qu'on trouve avec peine' the Tractatus Theologico politicus ... . In a
catalogue of his [Locke's] books drawn up ... in 1693 the Tractatus [is
mentioned]. Perusal of the letter has convinced me that there is also internal evidence for Locke's having read and profited from Spinoza's
Theological-Political Treatise. For Leibniz on the subject of toleration,
see New Essays 416f. I accept the thesis of H. R. Trevor Roper that this
tradition of devoting one's life to the cause of toleration. goes back to
Erasmus (see The European Witchcraze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries and Other Essays, Harper Torchbook 1968). But its true begettor may well have been the Dean of St. Paul's, Erasmus's friend and
mentor, John Colet.'' (Oxford ed. by Raymond Klibansky and J. W.
Gough of the Letter of Toleration, xxxi, ii.)
2. The enigmatic "it" wants to be impenetrable and cannot be
eliminated from the translation. As Lessing wrote Duke Ferdinand on
Tolera~ia.
Octobe, 26, 1778,
I did not desecrate any secret knOwledge. I only tried to convince the
world that truly great secrets continue to lie hidden there, where the
world had at last become tired of looking for them.
(Ich babe keine geheime Kenntnisse enheiliget: ich habe bloss die
Welt zu ilberzeugen gesucht, class da noch wirklich grosse geheime
Kenntnisse verborgen liegen, wo sie derleichen zu suchen endlich
mOde ward.) Quoted in Heinrich Schneider, ZwOlf Biographische
Studies, Bern 1951, 15.
3. Lessing'·s word here is "plaudern," familiar from Mozart's Magic
Flute: "Ich plauderte, und das war schlechr,;• says Papageno toward the
end of Act ii.
4. Johann Bernhard Basedow (1723;_11790); was a German educational
reformer who established a teacher training institute in Dessau, where
his educational principles, much affected· by Rosseau's Emile, were
taught. This teacher training· institute· he called the Philanthropin. A
95
�student of theology earlier in his life, he,had come under the influence
of Reimarus.
1
5. I haven't cracked the riddle but suspect that in speaking of "Cute
Taten, welche darauf zielen, gute Taten entbehrlich zu machen," Lessing's Falk refers covertly and ambiguouslY to human charitable works,
Church sacraments, and the supreme, Divine work of charity, the
sacrifice of Christ. My guess depends on hearing the word opus-which
figures so prominently in Luther's doctrine of "salvation by faith, not
works," in the Catholic Church's rationale of the Sacraments, and in
the Bacon passage froiD the New Organon which Kant quotes as fronti·
piece to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason-underneath
the German Tat. Lessing himself introduces the Latin word in the second conversation, which is why I retained his expression opus
supererogatum. It is, unmistakeably, a technical locution-"works of
supererogation," beyond the call of duty, figure in Catholic teaching as
works by which the faithful gain extra merit.
6. Compare Adeimantus in Republic ii, 367 " . , . we would not now be
guard~ng ag~~nst one another's injustice, but each would be his own best
guardtan ...
7. Compare Aristotle's Politics i, 1253a30: phusei men oun he horme en
pasin epi ten toiauten koinOnian. ho de prOtos sustases megistOn
agathon aitios.
8. "Nimmermehr" in "Rechte ... die dem nati'lrlichen Menschen nimmermehr einfallen kOnnten," is ambiguous: it is not clear whether the
"natural man" of whom Falk speaks belongs to the past, the future, or
neither. This sounds very like Rousseau to me.
9. Compare Leibniz on oUrs being the best of all possible worlds: He did
not mean that it is perfect, as Voltaire foolishly thought. He meant that
the Very conceptiori of a perfect world is self-contradictory, so that ours is
the best of worlds that are possible. Lessing was a great admiror of Leibniz.
10. Lessing is borrowing Aristotle's word "whole." Compare note 7.
Students of Leo Strauss will recognize the degree to which the argu·
ments, the attitude, the very vocabulary of Ernst and Falk, are saved by
Strauss. Strauss refers to the work in a footnote on p. 28 of Persecution
and the Art of Writing, Glencoe, Illinois 1952.
11. Compare Republic vii. Much like Leibniz also in this respect, Lessing carried his very great erudition lightly. ThorOughly "modern," he
was intimate with the works of the AnCients, die Alten, as in "Wie die
Alten den Tad gebildet."
12. The use of architectural images is, unsurprisingly, prominent in
Masonic writings. I do not think that the extraordinary proliferation of
talk about "foundations", "architects", "clearing away the underbrush",
"corner stones", "city planning" in the books of Machiavelli, Bacon,
Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz in some measure, and certainly Kant
has been sufficiently noted.
13. See note 5, whence perhaps also "good works that are to make good
works superfluous."
14. Lessing is referring to the Constitution of the Grand Lodge of London, drawn up by James Anderson at the instance of the then Master of
the Lodge, John, Duke of Montague. A copy of Anderson's The Consti·
tution of the Freemasons (though in a later edition than the one pub·
lished in London in 1723) was in the Ducal Library in WolfenbUttel. The
"First Charge" of Anderson's Constitution runs as follows:
Concerning GOD and RELIGION. A Mason is obliged by his Ten·
ure, to obey the moral Law: and if he rightly understands the Art, he
will never be a stupid Atheist, nor an irreligious Libertine. But
though in ancient Times Masons were charg'd in every Country to
be of the Religion of that country or Nation, whatever it was, yet it's
now thought more expedient only to oblige them to that religion in
which all Men agree, leaving their particular opinions to themselves.
That is, to be good Men and true, or Men of Honour and Honesty,
by whatever Denominations or Persuasions they may be distinguished; whereby Masonry becomes the Center of Unition, and the
96
Means of conciliating true Friendship among Persons that must
have remain'd at a perpetual Distance.
I was unable to obtain a copy of Anderson's book and rely on Jacob
Katz's citation in his Jews and Freemasons in Europe, 1723-1939, 13
Cambridge, 1970.
Katz's book is a remarkable piece of sociological history. There is
hardly a page in it that doesn't throw light on issues far greater than the
seemingly recondite one of the title. About the quoted First Charge he
writes:
... There is no reason to assume that the authors of the English constitution intended, in their universal tolerance, to provide for Jewish
candidates in the flesh. Yet, when such candidates did apply for admission, the principle was followed in practice [in England, but not
in Germany] .... At least some of these Jews sought to retain their
own religious principles within the frame work of the lodges. In 1756
an anthology of Masonic prayers appeared in print, among them one
to be recited "at the opening of the lodge meeting and the like, for the
use of Jewish Freemasons." While the other prayers were addressed
to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the Jewish prayers contained nothing at variance with the Jewish tradition. [pp. l5ff]
Katz does not comment on the fact that the drawing up of a written constitution, which itself records what the proper procedures for amending
it are, was a Masonic practice, and one which may well have influenced
the American Founding Fathers, since a written constitution for a state
or nation was, in those days, ~ rarity.
15. There are a number of books on the theme of possible connections
between the American Revolution and Freemasonry. The author of one
of these, Bernard Fay, a Frenchman, maintains that the French Revolution too was "made" by Masons. It is extraordinarily difficult to sort out
whether-to speak in the voice of their critics-Masonic Lodges were
hotbeds of sedition or rather the reverse, whether illdeed Freemasonry
stood for anything in particular in the political realm. My interim
hypothesis is that it is probably pointless to speak of Masonic politics
without specifying the period and the countr'Y and perhaps even the particular Lodge. I do not believe that this means that the expression
"Masonic teachings" is simply empty: One of my contentions is that what
we usually identify as the distinctively modern linking of knowledge and
power, or knowing what and knowing how, or artes liberales and artes serviles is Masonic doctrine.
16. See for example George F. Fort, The Early History and Antiquities of
Freemasonry as connected with Ancient Norse Guilds and the Oriental
and Medieval Building Fraternities, Philadelphia 1875, and Tons Brunes,
The Secrets of Ancient Geometry and its Use, Copenhagen 1967.
17. Our coins too bear a motto-"In God we Trust-that can be linked
to the Masons: It was the motto of the London "operative" Masons in
the fifteenth and seventeenth century, except that their motto added
the little word "alone" between "God" and "we" (Georg Kloss, Geschichte der Freimaurerei in England, Irland und Schotland, 1848, 325. But
according to a little pamphlet of the United States Mint, the motto appeared on our coins only in the nineteenth century: Toward the end of
1861 the Secretary of the TreasUry received a letter from a certain Mr. Watkinson, Minister of the Gospel, who urged that the lack of some reference
to God on our coins might lead "the antiquaries of succeeding centuries"
to believe that we were "a heathen nation." In response to this letter, the
Secretary of the Treasury wrote the Director of the Mint: "You will cause a
device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in
the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition [of the trust
of our people in God]." But it turned out that, because of an earlier Act of
Congress, the Director of the Mint could not "cause" the preparation of
such a device. Legislative action was needed. Is there another modem nation where such an exchange of letters might have occurred?
AUTIJMN /WINTER 1982-83
�The Rainfall in the Pine Grove
Mter Gabriele D' Annunzio, "La pioggia nel pineto."
Be still.
On the leaf-strewn sill
of the forest I hear
no human words spoken,
but newer words sung
by the drops' tinkling tongue
and the broken
murmuration of distant leaves.
Listen! It is raining
from tattered clouds driven,
raining down from heaven
on the tamarisks burnt,
on the brackish tamarisks.
Raining on the tangled hairy kirtles
of the pine,
on the myrtles
divine;
on the thick -clustered broom,
on the juniper's loom;
Upon our sylvan
faces,
upon our naked
hands,
our vestments and our poses,
on each fresh -quickened thought
that the soul newly discloses;
on the fable richly-wrought
that yesterday
deluded thee, and today deludes me,
0 Hermione!
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Do you hear?
The rain is slanting
on the lawn's lonely green
with a tinkling silver sheen,
with a rustling and a canting
that varies in the air
as the foliage is there
more rare, less rare;
Listen! the cricket's chatter
replies to all this weeping:
What does it matter?
This flood of austral tears
provokes not his fears,
nor does heaven's windy whine.
And the pine
has one sound
and the myrtle yet another,
and the juniper another:
a pure liquescent round
of instruments
diverse:
played and plucked upon
by the rain's fluent fingers
and choir of the leaves,
0 green-mouthed singers!
So verse follows verse
until we are immersed
in the spirit of the wood,
of this life
arboreal
and your face immemorial
is washed in the rain
soft as a leaf;
and your hair
97
�falls fair
as the juniper's caresses;
as the rain's glistening grief
is the streaming of your tresses.
0 terrestrial creature
by name and by featureHermione.
Hear! 0 hear!
the harmonious hammer
of the cricket's shrill trill
fades still and more still,
muffled by the rain's
crescendoing roar.
Yet low
below
from depths unquenched,
from humid shadow
a melody mingles,
is drowned, expunged ...
only one note
trembles yet,
plucked from the fret;
resurgent, remote,surges ... shivers ... spills awaySeems, but is not, the voice of the sea.
And now you hear on every frond
the shattering sound
of the argent rain:
the downrushing Whence
that varies as the verdure
grows dense, or less dense.
Listen. The daughter
of the aria is mute,
but the unseen daughter
of the green-veiled water,
child of the distant bog,the frog,chants in denser shadow:
Who knows where? Who knows where?
And it is raining on your eyes,
And it is raining on your hair,
0 Hermione!
98
It is raining on your eyes ...
And as the downpour dashes
upon your black lashes,
tiny diamonds hang
and you seem to be weepingBut for joy! but for joy!
No longer wan
you emerge from the bark:
Vigorous, reborn
and freshly we turn
each to each,
And the heart in the breast is an intact
peach,
And the eyes in their lids
are springs in the grass,
And like almonds peeled
is the honeycomb of teeth.
So, slowly we pass
from hedge to hedge,
now together, now apart
(As rude-fingered weeds
ensnare our ankles,
entwine our knees)
Who knows where? Who knows where?
For the curtain of the air
Is a rustle of laces
As it rains as it rains
Upon our sylvan
faces,
Upon our naked hands,
Our vestments and our poses,
on each fresh-quickened thought
that the soul newly discloses,
on the fable richly-wrought
that yesterday
eluded me, and today eludes thee,
0 Hermione!
AUTIJMN /WINTER 1982-83
�The Donkey Rides
the Man . ..
The donkey rides the man
Swallows shoot the hunter
Sun rises in the West
Daisies bloom in winter
Constellations sunder
All singleness is lost
Adam's rod has wilted
Breasts are hard as frost
Contrarities now rule
Two perpendiculars
Fall to a single line
Peace plus peace make wars
0 Alice underground
Rise and take command
Scepter us with laughter
Orb with tickling hand
This topsy-turvy world
Spin it with your wand
All boys must be girled
All girls must be manned
Come Alice come from under
Nibble us high and low
Pacify with thunder
the apocalyptic show
The Mannequins
Flowing down Fifth Avegue
The shoppers in a churning stream
Flash dazzling semaphors of dew
Between the banks of deed and dream.
Where mermaids-sleeker for their sinsMay view in underseas of glass
Themselves beside the mannequins:
Shipwrecked, headless now. Alas!
Alas for the perfect thigh and breast!
Alas for the perfect lacquered smile!
Alas for the perfect all-the-rest
That lies beside her in a pile!
For he's entered there on sheepsoft feet:
That Devil-0 that panderer!
Stripped her on a public street,
With shameless hands he sullied her.
Yes, in the electric glare of noon
(Narcissus, transfixed, saw him do it)
Divested her of dress and shoon
And her lovely head, he did unscrew it.
Take heed, then, Beauties. Blemished be.
For perfect She is lifeless She.
Where reins of Yes and No
Ride us to no conclusion
In a dazzling merry-go-round
Of rectified confusion
SIDNEY ALEXANDER
Sidney Alexander has translated Francesco Guicciardini's The History of
Italy (New York 1969). The last volume, Nicodenz.us, t~e_Roman Ye~rs of
Michalangelo, 1534-1564, of his three-volume retmagmm? of ~e hfe of
Michelangelo is planned for publication in 1983 (Ohio Umvers1ty Press).
For the last twenty-seven years he has lived in Florence.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
99
�REviEw EssAY·.,
Defeat in Vietnam
Norman Podhoretz's Why We Were in Vietnam*
JOSEPH A.
For anyone over the age of twenty, Why We Were in Vietnam
is an unwanted attempt to face a painful past. Norman Podhoretz wants to reopen the Vietnam debate because he thinks
we have learned the wrong "lessons" from the disaster. The failure of American policy in Vietnam not only brought defeat without peace. It cancelled out the single most important lesson that
the Second World War, the "unnecessary war" in Churchill's
phrase, taught those who managed to live through it, the lesson
of Munich, that yielding in the face of aggression encourages
more aggression. For the lessons of Munich Vietnam's failure
substituted "new lessons": that the limitations on American
power no longer allowed the arrogance of policing the world; that
an ''ideologically-based anti-Communist foreign policy" must inevitably fail; and worst of all, that America's actions in Vietnam
made her equal to Hitler's Germany in "criminality" and showed
that now "the U.S., not the Soviet Union and certainly not Communism, represented the greatest threat to the security and wellbeing of the peoples of the world."
With evidence available during the war, Podhoretz faces the
charges of "genocide" and "atrocity" against American "policies" -the "McCarthyism of the left." The Geneva Convention
sanctions the U.S. "war crime" of clearing an area of civilians to
spare them before bombing enemy forces. In Vietnam civilians
numbered forty percent of the dead, the same percentage as in
the Second World War, in contrast to the seventy percent of the
War in Korea. He compares the war's suffering to Indochina under Communism: forced mass expulsions with millions dead; total suppression of political, religious, and press freedoms (South
Vietnam at war had twenty-seven daily newspapers, three televi-
*
New York, Simon and Schuster 1982. 240 pages. $13.50.
A lawyer in Washington, D.C., Joseph A. Bosco practices corporate and
administrative law arid represents European companies in the United
States.
100
Bosco
sian stations, more than twenty radio stations). "'Among the
boat people who survived, including those who were raped by pirates and those who suffered in the refugee camps, nobody regrets
his escape from the present regime.'"
Almost alone of contemporary writers, Podhoretz concludes
Americans need feel no shame. "That the U.S. involvement in
Vietnam should be described as a moral disgrace is itself a moral
disgrace." Reagan's description of the war as a "noble cause"
that made headlines during the 1980 campaign, again won a place
in the Washington Post's recent front-page story on the President's "gaffes".
Podhoretz calls to account the hypocrisy of those who proclaimed their desire for "peace" in Vietnam but who actually
supported the Communist victory; the malice of the "Amerika"
haters who likened the United States to Nazi Germany. (The in·
vective against America was palpable at teach-ins I attended in
Boston and Cambridge as early as 1964 .) These ''inveterate apologists for the Vietnamese Communists" still do not acknowledge
the suffering in Indochina today nor their complicity in it.
He criticizes the "anti-anti-Communists," the teachers and
media people who considered anti-Communism unsatisfying,
who said they opposed Communism but were against every antiCommunist government from Diem to Thieu, who fancied a
neutralist compromise or" coalition or "progressive ... 'third
force'". "[They] should now be ashamed of their naivete and the
contributions they made to the victory of forces they had a moral
duty to oppose .... In practice, and in its political effect, aritianti-Communism was often hard to tell apart from pro-Communism.'' Podhoretz concludes that the defenders of American
policy were right about its morality, but that the critics correctly
saw its futility.
But this moral calling to account is incomplete. Podhoretz ignores those Americans (many of my friends) who knew which
side was right and who certainly preferred our side, but who
nevertheless joined the anti-war movement, especially after the
Tet offensive in 1968, because, like Podhoretz, they thought vic-
AUfUMN /WINTER 1982-83
�tory impossible. To succeed, the anti-war movement, as Hanoi
realized, had to reach out beyond the MarxiS~-Leninists, the radical students, the anti-anti-Communists, to the ordinary, patriotic,
mainstream American citizens. Despite the: finest of motives,
these citizens strengthened the Communists. Why and how this
happened has to be understood. The prolongation of the war
and the absence of a strategy for victory that grew evident with
its prolongation had a lot to do with the disillusionment of many
ordinary Americans. With the concern for human life and public
opinion that distinguishes democracies from their totalitarian adversaries, how could Washington's "war of attrition," that took
the place of a strategy for victory, not have failed eventually? Recent Communist statements show that Hanoi, with the experience of the French in Indochina and the Americans in Korea
before its eyes, knew the importance of prolonging the war for
the spread of the anti-war moverrient in the United States and
throughout the world. From the beginning Hanoi planned to
out-last us, whether or not it out-fought us.
Podhoretz argues that the unwillingness (or inability) of the
elite in government to make the "moral, political, and strategic"
case for the war left a "moral vacuum" for the anti-war extremists. I find that charge curious and unfair. "Why, then, were we
in Vietnam?" asks Podhoretz. "To say it once again: because we
were trying to save the Southern half of that country from the
evils of Communism." The answer is hardly novel; Presidents
Kennedy and johnson gave it from 1961 through 1968. Most
Americans, "passive and unenthusiastic," in Podhoretz's description, understood that explanation: they remembered the
world wars, Eastern Europe, Korea, and they recognized the
evils of totalitarianism.
But the anti-war elites rejected those justifications. In April
1965, Secretary of State Dean Rusk raised a professorial firestorm when he remarked on "the gullibility of the academic
community and their shibborn disregard of the plain facts." A
teaching fellow at law school, I attended an "emergency" meeting of the Greater Boston Faculty Committee on Vietnam,
which included several prestigious academic names, convened
to draft an angry full-page advertisement for the New York Times
to answer Rusk. No one of the hundreds present defended U.S.
policy. The chairman, a professor of divinity, told me I could express my disagreement by "keeping my seat and remaining silent." (Later, the protests of a few won me a minute or two.)
Even Henry Kissinger, at Harvard in 1965, objected to the government's defense of the war on "moral grounds," because "in a
civil war it is not clear who the aggressor is; it is not like one sovereign nation attacking another." Later Kissinger modified his
view which confused a civil war with protracted war of aggression and which refused to see that a protracted, masked aggression did not differ in kind from open war as in Korea. By that
time, however, the "civil war'' argument had become favorite
anti-war mythology.
Podhoretz states that even though the anti-war positions clearly
represented a small, minority viewpoint, our government made
"the mistake" of believing "this meant that the American people
supported the war." He argues that until 1973 the public simply
"went along," more or less willing, to give their leaders the "benefit
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
of the doubt." At the same time that he criticizes the elites who
had gotten us into the war and· conceived and carried out our
failed policies, Podhoretz does not shrink from blaming the
American people themselves for the 1975 congressional action
that stopped further military aid to South Vietnam despite the
continuing danger from Hanoi. "At least a measure of responsibility" for this abandonment of an ally "belongs to the people ...
whose wishes their representatives believed themselves to be carrying out." The original intervention by the elites, he argues, had
been "an attempt born of noble ideals and impulses," but uthe
same cannot be said of what the American people did in 1975."
The American public demonstrated its own ultimate lack of
umoral capacity" to save South Vietnam-by contrast, they earlier
had been "willing to shoulder the burden of Korea."
Podhoretz is wrong to call the American people morally inadequate at the same time that he refuses to recognize their earlier
steadfastness. "Going along" and giving the· government "the
benefit of the doubt" meant seeing sons and brothers die in another faraway place for other men's freedom-without succumbing to hysteria or a new wave of McCarthyism despite provocations from the "wild men of the Left" with their Vietcong
flags and anti-American obscenities. In contrast, after only two
years of the Korean War the "stalemate" contributed to the rise
of McCarthyism and made Eisenhower pledge in the campaign
of 1952 to "go to Korea" with the implicit promise to end the
fighting one way or the other.
Nor were Americans really ever as "passive and acquiescent"
as Podhoretz describes them, until the very end. In election after
election they voted for candidates who supported U.S. policy in
Vietnam, they supported the deployment of forces and the military budgets to pay for it, and they expressed their belief in the
justness of the cause in numerous patriotic and "pro-war" demonstrations over the years-though never in as well-organized or
violent a manner as the anti-war activists.
In his mischaracterization of the people in both the Korean
and the Vietnam war, Podhoretz seems almost oblivious to the
working of the Communist strategy of protracted war and pro·
traded negotiations. Three years passed between the first commitment of American forces in Korea (never to number more
than roughly half the American forces, and the dead, in Vietnam) and the signing of the truce agreement at Panmunjom-an
agreement still enforced by our troops. In Vietnam it took twelve
years to get from Kennedy's first introduction of troops to the
signing of the hollow, non-enforceable agreement between
Henry Kissinger and Le Due Tho. Despite this, Podhoretz writes:
" ... Looking back on Korea from a perspective shaped by the experience of Vietnam, what seems most remarkable is the absence of any serious opposition to what Truman decided to do."
What seems more remarkable, looking at Vietnam in the light of
Korea, is that Americans held on for as long as they did! American patience and mahirity through this long national ordeal seem
nothing less than magnificent. Where is the "nobility" of the Vietnam cause Podhoretz celebrates, if not here?
The turning point in public support for the war was the 1968
Tet offensive, an overwhelming Communist defeat: the Communists suffered heavy losses and could not hold the scores of
101
�populated areas and military facilities they attacked; instead of
joining the liberating invaders, the 1 South Vietnamese fled in
every instance to areas with mor:e fighting but fewer Communists. But the media devastated suppbrt for the war in America
by portraying Tet as a Communist triumph. Why? In his important study, Big Story (new edition, Yale University Press 1982),
Peter Braestrup argues that not media "ideology" but "the limited ability of the press corps to cover so complicated and strange
a war" caused the "distortions ;md misrepresentations." To
Podhoretz instead, "Tet provided the occasion for a growing disenchantment with the war to express itself." Both may be right.
But Tet shocked me because it should never have happened at
all: it showed greater enemy strength and determination (suicidal
determination), and weaker allied intelligence, preparedness,
and security than should have existed at that point in the war.
Tel showed the futility of the "war of attrition" with its gradual
and "rational" bombing and troop escalation-with its official
guarantees of North Vietnam's territorial integrity and its assurances for the survival of the regime in Hanoi. In response, Hanoi
simply threw still more men south to be chewed up by superior
American military might-but not without taking their toll of
American lives and will. Most Americans were disturbed not by
the reasons for our involvement in Vietnam, but, especially after
Tet, by doubts about whether our policy was working.
Beneath this disappointment in the American people, nagging
at Podhoretz (and at many other Americans) is guilt, not for having defended Vietnam at all that the anti-war critics would have
us bear, but guilt at deserting an ally, furtively in 1973, openly in
1975. That this, our longest war, was the first in which the Yanks
came back before it was "over, over there," cannot help but
bother us.
Most troubling about Podhoretz' s moral analysis is his failure
to reconcile it with his own pragmatic judgement that we should
never have gone into Vietnam in the first place: "The only way
the U.S. could have avoided defeat in Vietnam was by staying
out altogether ... saving Vietnam from Communism was beyond
its reasonable military, political. . . intellectual. .. and moral
capabilities."
The moral and practical questions are intertwined. For if failure was unavoidable, the people of South Vietnam were cursed
with the worst of all worlds-the war and Communism. Wasn't it
deeply wrong-unconscionable-to impose such an unnecessary price on them and us? Bad enough to "destroy the country
in order to save it", but to put it through a war with no realistic
prospect of saving it? This seems less morally defensible than the
"arrogance" Podhoretz finds in the Kennedy and Johnson people who at least believed their policies would succeed, or than the
"naivete" of the moderate anti-war movement which could conceive of no worse fate for Vietnam than the war itself.
If it is true that American victory was not inevitable, as many
hawks wrongly believed, does it necessarily follow, as Podhoretz
maintains, that American failure was? Given the stakes, his fatalism is intuitively and historically unsatisfying. What was tried did
not work, but would an)lthing else have? Podhoretz criticizes
successive administrations for conducting the war militarily, politically, and strategically "on the cheap." Wouldn't avoiding or
102
correcting their "failures of leadership" have brought a different
result? Was America defeated militarily in Vietnam or politically
and strategically at home?
The United States in Vietnam forgot the lessons of conventional war in Korea and of counterinsurgency in Malaya, Greece,
and the Phi1lipines. In Korea, a conventional war of open and
unambiguous aggression, the first limited war of modern times,
the UN/US forces did not bring North Korea to negotiation until
they drove them from the South, invaded the North-and threatened its existence with a non-Communist reunification of Korea.
Until this invasion, numerous troop losses had not moved the
North Koreans to abandon their aggression. (Korea also, incidentally, showed that the Soviet Union and China would not intervene directly to defend the homeland of their ally-but only to
defend their own homeland, in that instance, China.) In Greece,
Malaya, and the Phillipines, the West prevailed by providing
material support without large troop commitments, because the
local Communis.t guerrillas were cut off from supplies and reinforcements from abroad. A hybrid of conventional and counterinsurgency warfare, our Vietnam strategy ignored the crucial
lessons of each: it did not invade the enemy's homeland and it
did not cut off the local guerrillas from supplies and reinforcements from abroad.
In contrast to the United States, the Communist world applied
the lessons of Korea in Vietnam. With Southeast Asia's largest
army, second in Asia only to China's, Hanoi openly proclaimed
its goal of Communist reunification; but it did not attack the
South directly and in force in 1955, because it feared the response
North Korea's open and unambiguous attack had provoked in 1950.
Instead it supplied the local guerrillas and infiltrated its own troops,
masquerading as guerrillas, into the South. All-out attack by regular mechanized divisions came twenty years later, after protracted disguised aggression had led the United States to abandon Saigon in fact in 1973 and by law in 1975. Vietnam ended
the way Korea had started, with brutal open conquest, but at a
time and under circumstances that prevented the response the
lesson of Munich required.
On leaving office, Eisenhower, who had refused to commit U.S.
soldiers to stop North Vietnamese advances in Laos and Vietnam, had no qualms about recommending to the new president
that he might have to intervene there, especially in the increasingly desperate situation in Laos. In early 1961-an incident
Podhoretz curiously ignores-Kennedy did in fact dramatically
and publicly commit the U.S. to the defense of Laotian "inde·
pendence." When a few months later, however, it became clear
that the defense of Laos required American troops, Kennedyin contrast to Eisenhower, who had supported a coalition that
favored the West-settled for a coalition government with Communists that conceded the Communist guerrillas two-thirds of
Laos with its access routes to Vietnam. (In 1965 Kissinger characterized Kennedy's decision as "backing down" and "abandoning an ally," a pattern he saw repeated in the Kennedy administration's, at least passive, involvement in the overthrow of Diem
in 1963.)
After his failure in Laos (and the Bay of Pigs and Khruschev's
"traumatizing" summit bullying) Kennedy decided to take a stand
AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83
�in Vietnam. Because of fear of a big~power confrontation, however, his intervention was "timid and hesitant. .. half-hearted
and gradual." He decided on counterinsurgency without, however, sealing-off Vietnam's borders. By dealing with a protracted
and disguised invasion as if it were a guerri11a'war-and not tak~
ing the measures necessary for victory in such a war-Kennedy
allowed the myth of a "civil war and local insurgency" to take
hold of the world.
We cannot know whether, had Kennedy lived, his Irish would
have prevailed over his Harvard and he might have decided on a
more Truman-like response, or whether (as JFK apologists have
argued) he would have followed the cut-and-run model of Laos.
Either policy would have had better consequences. But even if,
as Podhoretz contends, he would have done more or less what
johnson did, the results probably would have been different.
Why? Because Kennedy doing it would have made all the differ~
ence: unlike LBJ, he had the "style" and "charisma" to mobilize
public opinion, and a network of media and academic allies.
Kennedy's closet doves would have remained there rather than
reacting to fate's cruel blow in Dallas by attacking the besieged
sitting president, hinting at a Robert Kennedy "dump Johnson"
challenge in 1964, and actually launching one in 1968. (Would
we have heard chants of"Hey, hey, JFK, how many kids did you
kill today"?) And without its trump card-a combined anti-war
and "get Johnson" movement gradually draining America's
will-Hanoi would have had the incentive to make peace not
war.
But that was not to be. Kennedy's death three weeks after
Diem's sealed the fate of Vietnam-and of America in Vietnam. Just as Diem's murder unhinged events in South Vietnam,
the assassination of Kennedy permanently altered the course at.
home. Vietnam almost instantly became "Johnson's war'' and
then "Nixon's war." But the rules of the game had largely been
set, by Kennedy and even by Eisenhower before him: aggression
would be resisted, but on the enemy's terms, and not on his home
ground. Neither Johnson or Nixon would fundamentally change
these terms-Johnson because of the domestic turmoil, and Nixon
and Kissinger for the same fear but also because they nurtured
bigger "geopolitical" ambitions on the international stage: detente with the Soviet Union and rapprochement with China.
At Home and Abroad
LETTER FROM THE HoMEFRONT: ON MARRYING
This is an Apology. The deed for which I
must atone, or provide justification, is mar·
riage. My particular faults-youth and gender (I am 23 and a woman in the 1980's)
-are incidental. But they have helped to
magnify-by making my own situation
more extreme-the central issue of mar~
riage. So much for the overall "efficient
cause" of this essay.
The more immediate catalyst was my
observation of various long-term "relationships" (my use of the term excludes marriage) and their eventual dissolution. What
struck me in each case was the couples' surprise at the fading of love and the resigna·
tion with which they accepted their parting.
I saw a remarkable mixture of innocence
and cynicism. The surprise that accompa·
nied the couples' loss of passion showed
shallow understanding of the way men and
women work together. The easy resigna·
tion suggested weary sophistication. But
perhaps the combination, innocence and
cynicism, ought not surprise. In our time
the kind of experience likely to promote
such cynicism is readily available, but seri·
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ous and thorough thought about the malefemale relationship is rare. We are jaded by
our past, and as pure of any real insight as
if we'd led the cloistered lives of our ances·
tors. Experience rather than understanding
has become the god to whom we appeal
The old rules that governed such matters
have been overthrown, but the subsequent
void is yet unfilled. No new constitution
was born of this revolution but only pur~
poseless freedom. Experience is now avail~
able in plenty, to what end no one knows. If
wisdom is not the aim, and since we've es·
tablished no rights and wrongs it cannot be,
experience itself must be the end. We are
left with a society that uses up mates as it
does cars, with equanimity. We have learned
to cloak the absence of thought with the
jargon of "relationships."
For most of my generation, marriage has
been, at best, an irrelevancy. We have slept
together-if not carelessly, then certainly
without mutual promise or obligation. When
we grew somewhat more attached we have
moved in together rather than marry. We
were "not ready" for marriage although
what we were waiting for was never quite
clear. We wanted to "test" each other first
to ensure that our marriage would never
end in divorce. We did not see the point of
"a piece of paper," because if we loved
each other that was enough, and if love
ceased it was only reasonable that the
union should also dissolve. Lest we bind
ourselves to anything that might become
difficult, we chose the temporary over the
permanent, the safe and casual over the
risky and demanding.
Now, months or years later, we find that
"something has happened," that we do not
in fact feel about each other as we once did.
What a good thing we didn't marry! The
situation is unpleasant, and it seems a pity
to part after so much shared past, but at
least no divorce is necessary. Yet if we are
not quite satisfied with the knowledge that
our caution was justified, if we are perhaps
uneasy about relationships with "planned
obsolescence," then we may well Wonder
what "happened," what went wrong.
It is not a very difficult puzzle. The arrangement was from the beginning inten·
103
�tionally temporary. Is it surprising that the
love also should be temporary? No, promises were made, no future anticipated. Is it
surprising that there should in fact be no
future? When two people have shared (another word, like urelationships" which has
been grossly overused but seems hard to
avoid) everything that can presently be
shared but have made no promises about
future sharing, it is not surprising that they
should eventually weary of each other.
Indeed, that very refusal to promise future love must immediately lessen present
love. When lover says to beloved, "I love
you now, but can't guarantee the future,"
he has already damaged their present. Pea·
ple who love may, of course, themselves be
sensible and cautious, but only insofar as
they are and do something other than love.
For love, itself, is by nature immoderate and
demanding. It is content with nothing less
than total commitment: love is itself the
food of love. Promise of love-guaranteed
future love-enables present love. When
we deny our mutual future, we remove the
endless supply of love and so begin to starve
our present love.
It seems a simple truth, that love which
is not fed will die; but it is one which is extraordinarily difficult both to remember and
to act upon. Love must grow or decline. Unless the couple is willing to promise a shared
future, their love cannot grow,,indeed, must
fade. The couple have avoided the promise, and as they watch their love weaken,
they agree, not surprisingly, to part.
The self-defeating effects of intentioned
temporariness seem evident; but we have yet
to address explicitly the initially mentioned
objection to marriage. The second, that
the couple must "test" one another, must
live together for awhile to see if things
work out, seems obviously mistaken. ''Testing" assumes a possible end of love, when
it is precisely the opposite which must be assumed if the love is to be fed and so prosper.
More interesting is the first objection,
the notion of "being ready." At the root of
this phrase and of many difficulties with
marriage-whether of the initial decision
to marry or the later and sadder one of divorce-lies one particular problem: that of
identity (we seem hounded by these once
worthy, now sadly jargonized words for
which we can find no alternative). It is the
problem which Tolstoy addresses so mar·
velously in Anna Karenina where he treats
104
marriage as an identity-giver, and which has
become especially important with the rise
of "Women's Liberation."
The refusal to commit oneself to another
in the name of finding or perhaps preserving one's identity has today become commonplace. We wonder at those men and
women who are not interested in a career,
in contributing to the GNP-and who prefer to stay at home with a family. We assume they are less complete, more reliant
upon others for their identity, less selfpossessed. An unattached woman with a
promising career is respected because she
is "free," dependent on no one and able to
"be herself." A married woman with a child
(although we are taught to pay lip service
to the "homemaker") is considered a mere
adjunct of her family who is unable to "realize her full potential." If talk of "finding
oneself" is passe now, it is only because
such ideas have found almost universal ac·
ceptance. We act as if this "self" were out
there somewhere, ready made and awaiting
discovery; or if we have already "found" our·
selves," we suppose we must guard our findings assiduously to preserve our own sacred
"individuality.''
The obvious mistake in all this is the un·
ders~anding of the self as something apart
from what defines it. We are always defined
by others. We do not and cannot define ourselves. An internal search for identity is
doomed to failure, because our sense of reality is so entirely bound up with others
that we cannot be sure of anything on our
own. Alone, we are capable of endless selfdoubt. The inner dialogue arrives at no
conclusion and will trap us in circles if unaided by an external presence. We are in
fact known and know ourselves by the
company we keep.
The fear of losing oneself in marriage, of
denying one's identity by joining it with an·
other's, is groundless. If we are inescapably
defined by others, the question is not
whether we wish rather to identify ourselves by our mate than to maintain independence and individuality, but whether
we choose one alliance over another. The
choice against spouse is not a victory for
self, but only the decision to be defined by
other and inevitably larger groups: proponents of the ERA, Moral Majority mem·
bers, Soho loft-dwellers, Visa-Card carriers.
We are all constantly defining and redefining ourselves by membership in various or·
ganizations. But insofar as our definition of
self is acquired solely from such groups, we
have forfeited any claim to some special
unique identity.
Commitment to a single other gives one
a specificity, an individuality not achiev·
able by participation in a variety of groups.
The statement, "She is the one who married A_ B_" is manifestly more specific
than "She is 3 lawyer." There are, to be
sure, thousands of lawyers. There is only
one wife of A._ B_. Equally, the single
most specific statement A_ B_ could
make about himself is "I am the one who
married C_ D_." Neither of them there·
by become mere adjuncts of the other.
Rather, they have defined themselves with
utter specificity and so possess their selves
most securely. The fear of commitment in
the name of self is mere self-deception be·
cause we are bound to "find ourselves" in
others in any case, and because if we are
really concerned about individuality and
differentiation from others, we will always
be most individual when we ally ourselves
with one other.
Let us return to the phrase, "being ready."
One must grant its occasional legitimacy.
Until we begin to make sense of the many
larger identifying groups and claim membership in some rather than in others, it
might well be folly to attempt the conclusively defining decision: the choice of a
spouse. But to procrastinate indefinitely is,
quite literally, self-defeating. It is frighten·
ing to marry, consciously to choose and de·
clare one's ultimate definition. And it is
easy to understand why so many have happily taken advantage of society's relaxed at·
titude toward living together. If we can
avoid decisions, by all means let us do so,
but let us admit that we do so out of laziness and fear, not out of a lofty sense of
self-fulfillment.
It is a radical step to risk defining oneself
by a single other, but it offers wilder possibilities than any other alliance. To marry is
not to surrender one's own individuality
but to join it with another's to create some·
thing radically new and unpredictable.
Much has been made of the security of marriage. I have never desired that sort of se·
curity; it is precisely the larger insecurity,
the increase of possibilities and the risk of
creation, that entices me.
Finally, we must address the third of
those initial objections. Why bother with
AUTIJMN/WINTER 1982-83
�the "piece of paper" which is the evidence
of a public promise? If we have promised
faithfulness to each other, what does it
matter that society know? After all, is it not
a private affair?
In fact, the promise of marriage is anything but private. As marriage is the most
profound commitment between two persons, so its public declaration is the most
profound action we can perform in the
world of men. The public promise to love is
the remarkable merging of the private with
the public, of the individual with the universal, of the world of thought with the
world of action. For in the public sphere,
action rules, in the private, thought. To assume that One can promise love in private is
seriously to misunderstand the nature of
promise. Promise is action and therefore an
essentially public undertaking. It is through
promise that a lasting love-a love "till
death us do part"-is made possible, piecisely because we are thereby transferred
from the private, unsure, and always vulnerable world of thought to the public,
strong, and definite world of action. Public
promise frees us. from dependence on our
"feelings," which are dark and easily swayed.
We are set free in the clarity of action.
Faithfulness to one person and its public
avowal are essentially one and the same. If it
is through promise that faithful love is made
possible and promise is a public event, then
to promise faithfulness is to declare it publicly. Moreover, the problem we have with
the "piece of paper" is precisely the same
problem we have with commitment. Both
stem from a fundamental misunderstanding
of identity. I have already discussed the fear
of losing oneself in marriage. Unwillingness
to make public avowal is the same fear taken
one step further. It is again the attempted
separation of self (although this time "self"
includes the loved one) from the external
world. It is to forget that we are always defined by others and so are inescapably public. When I marry, my definition is radically
altered and must necessarily affect my relationship to my other "definers" -the Public. Denial of "the piece of paper" can only
be futile evasion.
Prevailing contemporary opinion maintains that the private is somehow more
"real" than the public. Again, this implies a
misunderstanding of "public." The publicprivate dichotomy is that of action and
thought, and it is, after all, action which
1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
shapes thought, which gives it final definition. We are all of us a strange mixture of
public and private, but to assume that the
one is more profound, more "real" than the
other, is to misunderstand the distinction.
Serious participation in public affairs is
increasingly rare. Indeed, we assume those
who do pursue public life to be either crazy
or crooked. More_ and more we desire only
to be left alone, free to pursue private happiness. It seems no coincidence that this is
the same time in which the fear of, or perhaps studied disinterest in, marriage is also
so prevalent. Confusion about identity is at
the root of both. Only when we fully understand that the self is not a separate entity,
that we can never be wholly private, will we
risk commitment to the other-whether an
individual or a group.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about
the public-private division is our ability to
transcend it. We do so daily but nowhere
more completely than in marriage. In marriage, the profoundly private-love-becomes public. The indefinable is defined
and so ensured. We receive our ultimate
identity by the choice of spouse even as
our love is identified through unconditional promise. For in marriage conditions
are surrendered. We promise a love "'till
death us do part," a promise made possible
precisely in the making, because it is the
knowledge that love must last which allows
it freedom and the chance to grow, and because promise as action allows love to
transcend the problems inherent in its own
realm of the private. That we are at once so
entirely divided and yet able to transcend
such division is most miraculous. The possibility of promise is, after all, something
we share with no other creature. Let us not
surrender the distinction.
KARl JENSON
An actress, Kari Jenson lives and works in New
York.
THE HOLOCAUST MISSION:
July 29 to August 12, 1979
At the end of 1978 President Carter establishe_d a Commission on the Holocaust.
It was charged with the task of proposing an
appropriate memorial to the Jewish victims
of the Nazi regime. There was an element
of retroactivity in the presidenes decision,
a reaching out for the five million dead
whose very identity as Jews was not readily
recognized by the United States at a time
when they were being subjected to a sys·
tematic process of destruction. Now they
were to have a monument under official
U.S. auspices to recall the days when they
died alone.
The drafting of such a recommendation
is quite an undertaking and the work was
to be carried out by (I) a small staff consisting of a part-time director, full-time deputy
director and full-time assistant, (2) the "President's Commission" itself-a large body of
twenty~four members chosen from the public, plus five from the Senate and five from
the House of Representatives, and (3) an
advisory board almost as big as the commission. To finance the half year or so of deliberations and planning, a . modest budget
was allocated to the commission by the Department of the Interior. Commissioners
and advisory board members accepted no
fees and their official travel outside the
United States was to be billed to them personally.
Most members of the commission as
well as the board were Jews, a number of
them survivors. The most conspicuous profession in the group was the clergy (Jewish,
Protestant, and Catholic), albeit one that
was drawn mainly from academic life.
There was an obvious tilt to the northeast,
although several members had come from
Georgia. A number of commissioners
could be described as prominent in public
or cultural life. Few, very few, were young.
I had little inkling or knowledge of the
consultations which led to the creation of
the commission and the selection of its
me~bership. No doubt I was approached
because I had devoted about three decades
of research and writing to the Holocaust,
but I have long been accustomed to working
in solitude. No wonder that in one of the
105
�first telephone calls informing me of the
commission's existence I was admonished
not to turn down an appointment ifl should
be requested to serve. I would be needed
because the memorial was to be more than
mute stone; it was to contain records, books,
films, and it was to be a depository of such
materials in order that one might progress
beyond remembering the imperfectly known
to know what was imperfectly remembered.
This was the offer I could not refuse. To
my surprise, virtually all of the commissioners espoused the idea of a "living" memorial, a building in which one could meet,
learn, and think. More than that, there was
to be an endowment to aid researchers
with fellowships and grants. Of course,
most of the funds for this program would
have to be private. We would not only have
to recOmmend a broad framework, but we
would also have to think about the means.
During an early meeting, mention was
made by the director of a journey abroad,
to visit some of the principal sites in Poland
and the USSR where the jews had been
killed and to survey hitherto unavailable
documentary holdings in the archives of
these countries. This mission preoccupied
me from that very moment; it filled my mind
long after it was over.
I had never been in Poland or the USSR;
I had never visited Auschwitz, Treblinka,
or Babi Yar. Something-not only lack of
money-had kept me from traveling to
these places. I had "seen" them, of course,
in German documents. It is in those files,
thousands and tens of thousands of them,
that I had wandered and it is there that I
had encountered "planet Auschwitz" and
the "concentration camp universe." Eventually I had become familiar with these
phenomena, their terrain, logistics, and operational characteristics. Yet in essence
they remained mysterious to me and inexplicable.
"No one who has not been there can
imagine what it was like." How often had I
heard this phrase from survivors. Its implications could hardly be overlooked: those
who had not lived through the experience
would not be able to recreate it, even if
they studied the original records or examined the old barbed wires. There is no way
one can be in Auschwitz anymore; it is not
a concentration camp today, but a museum. Nor can one be in Treblinka, it is a
106
sculpture. One cannot be in Babi Yar either, it is a monument in a park. What then
could one recapture in those surroundings?
What could we do there now?
The survivors on the commission were
to be our guides. The Holocaust mission
was in the first instance their journey. At
the opening meeting of the commission in
Washington, a procedural point had been
raised by a Christian member. He said that
survivors should always speak first. He was
gently overruled by the survivors themselves who preferred to follow a proper
American alphabetical order, but here, on
the grounds where they had been the outcasts of mankind, orphaned or widowed in
a single night, they were to be at the head
of the procession.
· The undisputed spiritual leader was Elie
Wiesel, once an inmate of Auschwitz, now
the chairman of the commission, ''prophetlike," mesmerizing, saying at every occasion not merely that which must be said to
a host, but also those things that for most
of us would have been unutterable, and
saying them in the morning, the afternoon,
or the night. Fluent in French, English,
Hebrew, Yiddish (not to mention Hungarian), this gaunt figure moved among us,
sleeping little and eating almost nothing.
We almost did not go. The Soviet Union
issued visas to us on the Saturday prior to
our scheduled Sunday departure, and it denied entry to the part-time director of the
commission as well as to a member of the
advisory board. (Both had visited the USSR
before and had apparently been in contact
with dissidents.) The detailed itinerary was
a series of last-minute arrangements that
must have been put together with the assistance of extraordinarily diligent officials of
the Department of State and embassies
abroad. The group was large. Though it included fewer than half of the commissioners and advisory board members (none at
all from the legislative branch), there were
wives, reporters, and invited guests, some
of them financial supporters of remembrance projects. At the many ceremonies
at graves and monuments, the cameras
would sweep across this crowd which numbered between fifty and sixty.
Only after we had left the United States
did I understand the multiple purposes of
the mission. We would not only have to absorb much that we would encounter dur-
ing our hurried visits and meetings; we
would also have to impart information to
others. Our foreign hosts in Eastern Europe would ask us what we meant when we
said the word "Holocaust" and we would
devote more time than we had anticipated
to answering that one question above all.
Poland
Today Poland is a homogeneous society.
Unlike the Polish state of 1939, the present
republic has no substantial minorities. The
territories inhabited by Ukrainians and
Lithuanians were yielded to the USSR,
and from the western provinces, acquired
after the war, the Germans were expelled.
The Jewish community, once 3,300,000
dispersed in the large cities and smaller
towns, now numbers 6,000. Ninety percent
of the prewar Jewish population were kiHed
in the Holocaust; most of the remainder
survived as soldiers, 'refugees, or forced laborers outside or inside the destructive
arena, and these people have since moved
to other countries, mainly to Israel and the
United States.
The three million Polish Jews who succumbed to German destruction represent
nearly three-fifths of all the jewish dead.
Moreover, Poland (as defined by the
boundaries of 1939) is the graveyard not
only of those three million, but also of a
million more transported there in special
trains from several countries of Germandominated Europe.
Before their final destruction, the Jews
of Poland were incarcerated in hundreds of
ghettos, large and small. Near some of
these ghettos the death camps appeared.
From these ghettos the Jews were moved
out to the gas chambers where they were
killed along with the other jewish deportees from the northern, western, and
southern portions of the continent.
Few are the traces of Jewry in the physical panorama of contemporary Warsaw. As
we stood in front of the monument-cast
in heroic proportions-of the Warsaw
ghetto fighters, I glanced at the ordinary
apartment buildings erected by the Polish
government on the former ghetto site. They
were already showing signs of wear. I knew
AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83
�that the old quarter was no more. For sev- every unmarked grave, every prison bar." I
eral years I had been one of the editors of took down these words and almost memothe diary kept by the man who was Chair- ' rized them; they rang in my ears longer
man of the Jewish Council of the Warsaw than any others expressed in these official
Ghetto, Adam Czerniakow. Again and meetings.
again, I had consulted a map of the TYet I knew that during our century, Jews
shaped walled ghetto, some ten full blocks had endured misery in Polish society. It is
at its widest and twenty blocks long, which hardly an unknown story and in the Amerihoused well over 400,000 people in three can Jewish community it has shaped sentior four story buildings. After the deporta- ments much less mellow than my own. I
tions, and the battle ignited by the armed could imagine a reaction in America to
resistance of the last ghetto inhabitants, what we were hearing in Warsaw that day.
the SS razed the jewish quarter lest War- It would be said in our country that Poland
saw regain its prewar population size. Now is embracing its Jews, now that they are
that there are Polish houses where the gone, as much as it was rejecting them
ghetto stood, it is difficult to visualize its when they were still alive. In the extreme
former boundary even at the Umschlag- form of this view, Poland has been the antiplatz through which the official ghetto ex- semitic nation par excellence, discriminatports and imports passed and from which ing against the Jewish population before
more than 300,000 Jews were taken to Tre- the war, welcoming German actions against
blinka.
jewry during the_conflict, and all but exOn the first day we visited also a Polish pelling the remnant thereafter. I myself
monument commemorating the Polish have always attempted to assess evidence
struggle against the Germans. At that cere- of Polish hostility toward the jews in the
mony picked Polish troops stood by and broadest possible context. Long before the
the American ambassador was present as Holocaust, there was little tranquility for
we placed flowers at the foot of the memo- Jewry in several countries of Europe. After
rial. The Polish People's Republic does not the German invasion of Poland, the ghetdeny the Holocaust, it does not obscure toization process instituted by the occupathe fact that jews died as jews, but it will tion authorities resulted in a reallocation of
remind the world of the Poles who died as Jewish housing and Jewish trading to the
Poles, and it will present the two fates in a Polish sector. The Poles profited, if that is
formula suggesting parity. Repeatedly we the word, from a Jewish misfortune. The
heard a statistic indicating that three mil- Germans set up also their death camps on
lion Polish Jews and three million non- Polish soil, not, however, to take advantage
Jewish Poles had died as a consequence of of any Polish hospitality, but to reduce
the German occupation. The Polish toll- costs, particularly of transportation. There
casualties in battle, deaths in camps, and was no central Polish authority under Gerfatalities in epidemics-was calculated a man rule and it is not Poland that destroyed
long time ago and may well be reexamined the Jews-this deed was performed by Nazi
by experts, but when Polish Justice Minis- Germany.
ter Jerzy Bafia referred to this "Golgotha"
Still, I could not ignore the circumstance
as a trauma that after thirty-five years was that for the remaining handful of Jews, life
still being felt in every walk oflife, I believed in Poland had become difficult and even
oppressive. Only a few days after our stay
him without need for any substantiation.
For Czeslaw Pilichowski, Director of the in Eastern Europe, I was to meet a middleMain Commission for Investigation of Nazi aged Jew in Denmark who had emigrated
Crimes in Poland, the double disaster in- from Poland nearly a decade ago. I asked
flicted on Jews and Poles by the same im- him what his profession had been before
placable foe was more than a matter of his emigration. He was a major in the Poljuxtaposition. He cited a poem, "To the ish army. Had he retired? No, he had been
Polish Jews," by Wladislaw Broniewski, dismissed abruptly in 1967, one week after
which contains the verse "Our common the outbreak of the Six-Day War between
home has been wrecked and the blood shed Israel and the Arab states. No doubt, the
makes us brothers, we have been united by reasons for the action against him were
execution walls, by Dachau, Auschwitz, by linked to foreign policy issues, but I could
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
not help being troubled by his experience
and the similar dilemma faced by other
Jews in the Soviet Union. The problem is
the age-old lesson so ingrained in the mind
of the Eastern Enropean Jew that eventually he will suffer, not for a religion he does
not practice or a Zionist cause he does not
espouse, but for the fact that in the eyes of
all those around him he remains unalterably a jew.
Our hosts placed stress on the Polish
agony during the war, and they implied
that since those trying days Jews and Poles
have had much in common. They also reminded us of the help that ordinary Poles
had given to endangered Jews in the course
of the German occupation. This chapter in
the history of Polish-Jewish relations was
emphasized in speeches, books, and exhibits. I had occasion to look at some of the
evidence-it was documentary. In German
parlance, Poles who had extended shelter
or sustenance to Jews were guilty of Judenbeherbergung, a crime for which the penalty
was a swift death. The Germans had the
habit of posting the names of Polish men
and women who lost their lives for such
activities.
We had a great many meetings. Addresses were given, points made, themes
stressed. At the end of a long day, I would
walk alone in Warsaw. Once, before midnight, I saw a Polish family placing flowers
on a plaque at the entrance of a park.
We have moved from cemetery to cemetery, said Elie Wiesel later in Jerusalem,
and everywhere we went we found a strange
beauty. This observation about localities
in which masses of people were killed expressed in quintessence a thought I had
during our visit to-Treblinka.
We had traveled to the site of the death
camp in the stifling heat of a Hungarian
bus. On the way, a survivor pointed out to
us the small Jewish towns that had once existed nearby. We passed old wooden houses,
rode over a narrow bridge, and saw old
freight cars at a railway siding-a deportation train preserved there by the Polish
government. I wish we could have approached the camp by rail, as the deportees
of 1942 had come, but we were arriving on
a very' warm day at the end of July, at a
time of year when the first of the Warsaw
107
�ghetto transports were being hauled into
this killing center. Though the distance is
not long, the Jewish victims had been moved
much more slowly than we, and they must
have jumped out of the cars with forebod·
ings and parUy in shock, but also with some
sense of physical relief. Did they notice the
sky and the trees? It took but two hours for
the deportees to be deprived of all their
personal belongings and to be walked the
incredibly short distance to the chambers
where they were gassed.
A small German guard force, augmented
by Ukrainian auxiliaries, killed three quarters of a million Jews in Treblinka on a vir·
tual assembly line. Several hundred Jewish
inmates employed in maintenance and facing certain death rebelled in August 1943.
Few were the survivors of the break, but
those Jews who did not escape from T reblinka did not outlive the camp. In the end,
the bodies in the mass graves were exhumed. All the installations were razed,
and a Ukrainian farm was established on
the site to restore its pastoral appearance.
Only a cobblestone path, built by prison·
ers, was left where Treblinka had existed.
After the war, the Polish government laid
down concrete ties, arranged as a symbolic
railway track, and set up hundreds of jagged
stones, each representing a Jewish community, around the stone meffiorial. For this
construction, the entire terrain was used
on a scale of 1: l, in the place where it had
all happened. A guide pointed out that af·
ter every heavy rain, tiny bone fragments
are disgorged by the earth and mix with
pebbles on the ground. Involuntarily, one
or two visitors bent down to pick up what
might have been such relics, only to drop
them quickly. I was still gazing at the
woods and I thought I heard the whine of
heavy trucks in the distance. Where is the
highway, I asked? Where are the trucks go·
ing? There is no highway and there are no
trucks, I was told. I was hearing the famous
Treblinka wind moving through the trees.
Much farther from Warsaw, to the south·
west, was Auschwitz, the most lethal place
in Nazi Europe. One million Jews died
there, as well as several hundred thousand
Poles, Russians, Frenchmen-all the nationalities in the orbit of the German army
and the German Security Police. Auschwitz
was a complex of three camps: the main
one, or Auschwitz I, which housed the ad-
108
ministration as well as a large number of
inmates; the killing center of Birkenau,
designated Auschwitz II; and the industrial
camp, Monowitz, or Auschwitz Ill. The
entire cluster was photographed repeatedly
by allied reconnaissance aircraft in 1944.
Auschwitz I is still intact. Its barracks
stand where they were, a reconstructed gas
chamber may be viewed, and the crematory
is in working order. The death camp ofBirk·
enau is almost bare; the tall smoke stacks of
the crematories are gone, but near the rail·
way track one may climb over the ruins of
the largest gas chambers ever built.
Adjacent to Auschwitz I is the city of
Auschwitz with its large railway yard.
Houses now filled with children are ranged
along the edge of the former camp. Every
day the inhabitants of these buildings may
look out of their windows and see the roofs
of barracks.
We stepped in, wearing our tags with the
emblem of the United States and the leg·
end "President's Commission on the Holocaust.'' The main entrance crowned with
iron grill work still proclaims the slogan
Arbeit macht frei (work makes free) and a
smaller sign at the side says HALT Ausweise
vorzeigen (Halt-show identification). The
walkways and buildings were those of a
permanent military fort, but that appearance was deceptive. On iron bars still flank·
ing the street on which we were walking,
men had been hanged. Individual buildings,
which the Germans called blocks, were put
to unique concentration camp uses: in one,
surgical experiments were performed, in
another prisoners were pushed into a cage
and starved to death. Between two of the
barracks there was an alley used for shoot·
ings. The windows of the building to the
left had been filled so that prisoners housed
there could not see the executions. To the
right, however, no such precautions had
been taken, since the only inmates kept
there were the condemned, waiting their
turn.
Each of the buildings is part of the Ausch·
witz museum. I went to see the exhibits of
old shoes, eyeglasses, prosthetic devices,
utensils, and luggage left behind by the
Germans because of their unsuitability for
shipment to the Reich. I saw a hallway filled
with photographs of Polish prisoners, young
men and women, who were brought here
in 1942 and 1943. Each of them looked
healthy, for their pictures were taken on
the day of arrival. For each the SS had
noted also the date of birth, and the date of
death. Most had lived only a few months in
Auschwitz. I peered at these photographs,
one or the other adorned with fresh flowers
left by Polish friends or family. I wanted to
find some young man who had been as old
as I was at that time. The search did not
take long. My contemporary, born a few
days before me, was dead as a teenager in
Auschwitz even before my schooling in
New York was interrupted by the war.
In Birkenau, standing on earth, sand, and
what may have been ashes, I attached myself to a Polish young lady of noble beauty
and refined features who explained the history of the camp. She was obviously a professional historian and I admired her grasp
of complex information. She was preparing
an album of German SS photographs of
Auschwitz and I promised her aerial photographs from our own archives.
Our group was about to be divided, some
to visit an old synagogue in nearby Krakow,
the others to stay in Auschwitz. just at that
moment I began to feel an unmistakable
pain, a cramp brought on by a kidney stone
which I must have formed. I am prone to
this malady when there is too much heat
and not enough water to drink. The pain
always worsens and then I need morphine
for relief. Obviously, I should have left im·
mediately to see a physician in Krakow, but
instead I raised my hand to join those who
chose to remain in the camp. I returned to
the barracks, the old shoes, to the photo·
graphs of the dead Poles, to the alley, to
the cells. I wanted to stand where the present pontiff had knelt in prayer. My pain
subsided, my muscles relaxed, and at the
end of the day, I knew that I would have no
need of drugs.
There was to be one more visit to a cemetery in Poland, a real one in Warsaw. By
now, I had run out of time-time to look at
documents in the Jewish historical insti·
tute, and time to survey the land behind
the tombstones where 80,000 jews, dead of
emaciation and disease, had been buried
during the ghetto days. I wanted to see only
one grave, a regular large slab half hidden
in the growing thicket of weeds. It is the
resting place of Adam Czerniakow, the
chairman of the Warsaw Jewish Council,
who took his life upon the outbreak of de-
AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83
�portations after he had failed to save his
people.
The Soviet Union
I was startled when Elie Wiesel, the chairman of our commission, called a meeting
of the group in the open environment of a
dining room of our Warsaw hotel to discuss
the advisability of proceeding to the Soviet
Union in the light of the refusal of visas to
the director of the commission and to a
member of the advisory board. So far as I
was concerned, that issue had been settled
before we left our homes in the United
States-we would go. Much to Wiesel's
dismay, several of us spoke up to reiterate
the earlier decision. Exhausted by a full
day, we reassured him in a sluggish manner
that at some appropriate time in the future
we would express our outrage to protest
the Soviet action. Only one member of our
group, Bayard Rustin, understood immediately that Wiesel was attempting to elicit
our outrage on the spot in order that he
might use it for yet another attempt to obtain the visas. I was too concerned with the
possibility that he migh't actually abandon
our original plans to be of help to him. For
me, the visit to the Soviet Union was essential, if only because we had been admitted
as members of an official Holocaust commission. Already my head was filled with
burning curiosity. How would we be received? What would be said to us?
The director of the commission, Irving
Greenberg, was not in Europe. Perhaps he
had expected an immediate statement of
solidarity from the membership. The advisory board member whose visa was also denied, had come with us as far as Warsaw.
He had in fact been instrumental in arranging the entire journey. It was his miserable
travel bureau we all had to use. Now he
conceded defeat: he wanted us to continue
without him. He only asked that we would
say one prayer for him at Babi Yar and
another in the Moscow synagogue. His
voice breaking, he sat down, but then rose
again to apologize for having displayed his
feelings so openly. Now he wanted to give
us a reason for leaving him behind. He had
been a member of a partisan unit in Eastern Europe during the war. There was an
iron rule in the unit that a wounded man
would be shot by his comrades lest their
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
mission be jeopardized. I liked Miles Lerman. This former partisan and current oil
distributor personifies the character traits I
, have come to associate with survivors.
They are men and women with fast reactions, high intelligence, great endurance,
and an extraordinary capacity for regenerating their lives from the impact of shattering experiences. When I saw Lerman again
in Copenhagen, barely a week after our
meeting in the Warsaw hotel, he was talking to all of us, full of inquiries and plans.
I was not prepared for the Soviet Union.
As a political scientist, I should not have
been surprised by anything, not the standard of living as exemplified by the merchandise in a department store, nor the
restrictions so evident in the mere absence
of foreign non-communist newspapers in
the lobbies of our hotels. I knew of the So·
viet belief that distant goals require constant sacrifices: for capital formation and
industrialization, many consumers goods
are not produced; for the stability of theregime, intellectual and physical mobility is
curtailed; and for the sake of unity in the
Soviet Union, the separate memories of
constituent nationalities, including the Holocaust that befell the Soviet Jews, must be
submerged. What I had not quite expected
was backwardness in so much art, architecture, and historiography, that stale conforming manner in which Soviet designers
and writers are casting the aesthetic qualities of life. Hence I was taken aback also by
the counterpart of this stylistic retardation
in the formula ridden answers of bureaucrats to central questions about the Second
World War and the Holocaust which had
transpired in its course. The approach of
Soviet officialdom to the meaning of history is fixed and rigid; the encounter of
these men with us could be no different.
In Poland, we had not only been warmly
received; we were given assurances that
the Polish archives would be open to American researchers interested in the German
occupation. Poland holds a large quantity
of German documents, particularly records
portraying the destructive scene at a local
leveL Much that occurred in the final hours
of Polish Jewry and of other Jews deported
to Poland is reflected in these files. The
USSR also possesses documents of Ger-
man occupation authorities, not to speak
of contemporaneous Soviet correspondence dealing directly with the German
onslaught and its effects on the civilian
populatidn. I was interested in these materials, though I realized that access to them
would be a major problem. Not only would
a segmentation of occupation history into
Jewish and other subject matter be unwelcome in principle, but such sorting requires
an examination of all the German records
in detail. We know enough about these documents to expect any report, whether by
German SS offices, civilian overseers, military government, railroad directorates, or
economic agencies, to contain information
about a variety of events-the production
of wooden carts and the shooting of Jews
might be described on a single page. Moreover, the researcher might be particularly
interested in comparisons and contexts; he
might wish to investigate the German "racial ladder" and the placement of various
groups in this scheme, or the role of native
auxiliaries in German service, or the psychological repercussions of shootings on
White Russian or Ukrainian communities.
It would be inherently impossible for So·
viet authorities to permit foreigners the
pursuit of information about any aspect of
the Jewish catastrophe without allowing
them some insight into the entire fabric of
Soviet society at a time when it was undergoing its greatest stress.
Tactically, there was yet another problem, one which affects all attempts to effect
exchanges of knowledge with the Soviet
Union. The United States is an open society, our libraries and archives are accessible
to all visitors without any stipulation of reciprocity. What Soviet or East German researchers want to know is given to them
without restrictions; for what we attempt
to find out, we have no more to give. In
Kiev, on our first night, walking with Bayard Rustin, I voiced the thought that one
argument-the only argument-might be
the point that it would be in the interest of
the USSR to open its shelves to us, that in
the United States there was little appreciation of the Soviet agony or the Soviet contribution in the Second World War, that
findings made by American researchers in
the Soviet Union would carry more weight
in our country than the selection and presentation of topics by Soviet historians and
109
�journalists. Rustin was without question
the most astute and experienced member
of our mission, and what he said to me that
evening in Kiev was somewhat as follows:
"I hope you do not mind, my friend, my
telling you that you are naive."
a
Kiev has the appearance of new city.
Before the war, its population was 900,000;
now the number is 2,150,000. From Sep·
!ember 19, 1941, to November 6, 1943,
Kiev was in German hands. As soon as the
city had been captured, a unit of the SS
and Police, Einsatzkommando 4a, ordered
the Jewish inhabitants by means of wall
posters to assemble for "resettlement."
They were taken to a ravine at the city
boundary wh.ere the Kommando, a small
company-size unit augmented by detach·
ments of German Order Police, massacred
them in a three-day shooting operation.
The count was 33,771 jewish dead. When,
in the spring of 194 2, the commander of
Kommando 4a, Paul Blobel, received a visi·
tor from Berlin (Albert Hartl), he pointed
to the mass grave, explaining that the Jews
were buried there. Now, more than three
and a half decades later, the Chairman of
the Executive Committee of the Kiev City
Soviet of Peoples' Deputies welcomed the
Holocaust commission to the city, and Soviet guides showed the recently built memorial to the American visitors.
I do not know what route the bus was
following from our hotel, but the ride
seemed very short and when we arrived at
the ravine called Babi Yar I immediately
asked how far we were from the center of
the city. Barely two miles was the answer. I
could not help wondering then how many
people, including the victims themselves,
must have heard the rifle shots and rna·
chine-gun fire. Babi Yar is a moon shaped
depression in the earth, covered with grass
and surrounded by trees. Raised on a ridge
that is jutting into the center of the dish is
a Janus-like monument. Facing the street
are heroic figures, while on the far side one
may see the tormented faces and contorted
bodies of Soviet citizens, including women
and children. I talked to the designer of the
memorial who explained, that the Germans
had shot captured partisans here and help·
less civilians there; the sculptor had kept
that geography in mind when he shaped
110
the monument. I knew that, unlike Blobel,
the Soviet planners of the memorial made
no mention of Jews. Our commission had
brought a wreath of flowers with streamers
commemorating Babi Yar as a Jewish tragedy and laid it down at the foot of the ped·
estal on which stood the partisans of stone.
The cantor sang, and I disengaged myself
from the coil of people around him, stepped
back twenty feet and looked up at the crown
of the monument. Two Soviet photographers rushed towards me and took pictures
of me at close range.
We were leaving Kiev for Moscow on a
Friday afternoon and I did not think that
we would have meetings until Monday. No
sooner, however, had we arrived when
several of us were asked to go to the headquarters of the Moscow Writers Union, a
building which in furnishings and atmo·
sphere reminded me of a typical student
center at an American university. It was
old and nondescript; on several of its floors
people were sitting, reading, eating. Our
delegation was headed by Wiesel and in·
eluded the theologian Robert McAfee
Brown, as well as Time magazine book
review editor Stefan Kanfer, not in his capacity as a correspondent covering our mission, but as a novelist pressed into service
at the spur of the moment to match the
formidable array of literary talent assembled on the Soviet side. To our surprise, the Soviet chairman introduced the
members of his group by citing their military records. Two had evidently received
high decorations and' another had risen
from private to major. "When you introduce us," I whispered to Wiesel, "you may
say that I was a soldier." "An officer perhaps?" Wiesel asked quickly. "No, just a
soldier." Kanfer did not stir. He is a veteran
of the Korean conflict. Wrong war.
The Soviet delegation consisted of eight
people; half of them were Jews. Were so
many Jews assembled as a courtesy to us?
The idea was unsettling. As if to read my
mind, one of the Soviet writers referred to
himself as a member of a minority~he was
a Russian. Later, the Soviet chairman
showed us two large tablets listing the names
of Moscow writers killed in action. Half
were Jewish names, he explained.
We were eating a full meal, the best I
was to be served in the Soviet Union, and
we were assured that we could have every
course without concern-the food was
completely kosher. While we were dining,
each of us spoke, not as one would in an official meeting with formal agenda, but to
say something personal. One of the Soviet
writers (the one who had risen from private
to major) was Anatoli Rybakov. This is
what he told us.
He had grown up, of Jewish parents,
wholly assimilated into Russian culture. He
did not attend religious services and he
knew no Yiddish or Hebrew. His eighteen
novels had no Jewish content. One day,
however, he wanted to write a short story
in which the two protagonists, a man and a
woman, were Jews. He wanted his story to
be about love, not merely the romantic
love of young people who had just met, but
also the mature love of a husband and wife
after they had lived with each other for
many years. He decided that his young
man should have migrated to Russia from
Switzerland in 1910, that he should have
met a young woman, married her, and
stayed on through the First World War and
the Revolution. To show them growing
older, he had to continue the story to 1941
and the German assault. He had spent three
years in research to construct a locality in
which his couple might have lived. By then
his story was becoming a novel. He had to
place them into a ghetto and inevitably he
had to_ construct the ultimate scene of a
German shooting operation. It troubled
him greatly that the Jews went to their
deaths with apparent docility, but he was
convinced that they had nO recourse and
that they died with dignity. After the publication of his novel he had received hun·
dreds of letters assuring him that he had
been right in his portrayal.
Wiesel spoke of his concern about Babi
Yar. Having been there only that morning,
still agitated by the experience, he had to
point out that it was painful to see the
monument without an inscription identifying the victims as Jews.
There are monuments and there are
monuments, the Russian chairman replied.
When,. for example, his -friend, Yevgenij
Yevtushenko, wrote a poem "Babi Yar" explicitly dwelling on the jewish fate, that
verse was a monument. Who could tell
which of the two monuments, the one of
rock or the other-on paper, would last the
longer?
AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83
�The Saturday morning was devoted to Soviet archival administration. I had familan appearance by the commission and its iarized myself as well as I could with the
guests at the Moscow synagogue. I declined organization and holdings of the Soviet arto join the group. Religious observances chives by reading the standard work on that
make me uncomfortable and the political . subject by the American Sovietologist Paovertones of that particular visit disturbed tricia Grimsted. In her substantial volume,
me. We had come to the Soviet Union as a there is no mention of captured German
commission of the president and our man- documents. I would have to inquire about
date was the Holocaust. For me there was their location and availability in the course
no other purpose, but I realized that many of our discussions in Moscow.
of my colleagues did not share my singleThe chief of the Soviet team of archivists
mindedness. Our very presence in Moscow was the deputy director of the Main Archion a weekend was no accident; the Satur- val Administration, Vaganov. I pressed the
day in the synagogue had been planned to attack for the American group, supported at
show support for Soviet Jewry. Later I was every turn by my friends who were eager to
to learn that Elie Wiesel had asked for a widen any opening and exploit any breach.
private moment after a meeting with Proc- The Main Archival Administration, said
urator General Roman Rudenko to present Vaganov, had no German documents. It
a list of four incarcerated dissidents to the had no documents at all dated after 1940.
Soviet official. Wiesel is a deeply sensitive Furthermore, there was no "fond" or colman and he could not bring himself to re- lection identified as German documents as
member the dead by forgetting the living. I such. Where were they then? I asked. Did
myself was thinking about unknown, Rus- the Defense Ministry retain possession of
sified, and atheistic people whose lives in them? Documents dated after 1940, said
the. Soviet Union are increasingly filled Vaganov, were being kept by whatever
with questions and quandaries.
ministry was the appropriate custodian in
On Red Square, of all places, I was to accordance with their subject matter. In
have an unexpected encounter with one that case, I asked, when would documents
nameless individual. It was evening and dated 1941 or 1942 be transferred by minisfour of us, still wearing our tags, were stand- tries currently keeping them to the Main
ing there. He came up to us and in halting Archival Administration? There was a key,
but intelligible English said that he knew said Vaganov, according to which transfers
about our arrival from broadcasts on the were being made; the schedules varied on
Voice of America. His age was about twenty- the basis of different criteria. The Main Arnine and he was born in a small town far chival Administration did not know whe~
from Moscow of a Jewish father, long dead, documents would be handed over by the
and a Russian mother, still living. Some time Ministry of Defense. Was he saying, I asked,
ago he had moved to the Soviet capital that he had no German documents? The
with his Russian wife. By profession he was Soviet Archival Administration, said Vagaan engineer and he was working in his field, nov, may have documents needed for inbut lately he was contemplating emigra- vestigation of war crimes. One or another
tion. "Why?" I1 asked. "Because I want free- document may be found in the files of an
dom." Did he have access to military secrets Archive in Byelorussia or the Ukraine. We
in his job? Yes, he said, and that is why he should consUlt the volumes of the Soviet hiswas seeking employment in a position not tory of the Second World War for sources.
requiring knowledge of such information. We should avail ourselves of the existing
Once he had made the change he would system of cooperation between the Acadstay for a period of three years. Two of my emy of Sciences of the USSR and US acacompanions immediately handed him their demic bodies if we wished to utilize a Soviet
cards, but he would not give us his name. Archive.
Who was he? Why did he approach us?
Even before our queries to the archivists
Was I becoming paranoid for asking what were over, a larger group of our commishis purpose may have been?
sion had begun a meeting with Soviet hisBefore the commission had left the torians. We joined our colleagues to talk
United States, I had insisted on an oppor- with members of the World War II Section
tunity to meet with a representative of the of the Institute of the History of the USSR
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
in the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The
Soviet chairman was V. A. Kumanyov, but
the most active discussant at the Russian
end of the table was the military historian
of World War II Alexander Samsonov. It is
Samsonov who challenged our mission and
everything we stood for. In pursuing a study
of the Jewish disaster, he said, with World
War II as a background, we were reversing
reality and standing history on its head. As
a Marxist he had to conclude that the Fascist assault on the USSR was an attempt to
conquer the world. In the wake of this aggression, Jews were killed, Russians were
killed, Ukrainians were killed. The Fascist
plan was to wipe out entire peoples, including all of the Slavic nations. He himself was
a Bylorussian and more than thirty years
ago he had seen with his own eyes the devastation visited upon the area that was his
home.
Several of us replied to this argument.
We said that the jews had been the victims
of German actions from 1933 to 1945. The
ghettos were established on Polish soil in
1940 and when German armies suddenly
struck at the Soviet Union on june 22, 1941,
the Jews were facing mass death. We were
not unmindful of the fact that in German
plans the Slavic populations of Eastern Europe were destined for rapid enslavement
and ultimate extinction. Yet as Soviet forces
turned the tide of war in the titanic battle
of Stalingrad, the invader's vision of the
obliteration of the Slavs was dissipated in
the retreat. The Jews, however, were being
killed until the end; their annihil<ition became reality, and European Jewry, as we
once knew it, is no more.
Kumanyov now joined the debate. There
were differences of opinion, he said, particularly about Nazi policy vis-a-vis the Jews
in the total constellation of German planning. To Kumanyov the destruction of the
Jews was just an experiment which was to
lead to the annihilation of others. Thus he
agreed in part with Samsonov, in part with
us, but he had to add that if we were to look
at the Holocaust in an isolated manner, we
would weaken our common struggle against
Fascism.
We left the Soviet Union that afternoon.
The first of our two last stops was in Copenhagen, where we paid tribute to the
Danish people for their singular rescue effort of October 1943 which resulted in the
111
�clandestine transport in small boats of almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark to safety in Sweden. Our j~urney
ended with a depleted group in jerusalem
where our Israeli friends were worried that
the Holocaust Commission would not succeed in isolating itself from the urgings of
nationalities with martyrological claims of
their own. At Yad Vashem, Israel's Remembrance Authority, a display had been
prepared of original documents. One was
the last notebook of Adam Czerniakow
(the chairman of the Warsaw Jewish Council) opened to the last entry. My colleague,
S. ). Staron, and I had worked with type·
written transcriptions and a facsimile edition of the diary; only now did I notice that
at the moment of Czerniakow's suicide,
hours after his final entry, the notebook
was just about full.
On September 27, 1979, the commission
assembled in the Rose Garden of the White
House for a presentation of its report to the
president. Elie Wiesel spoke in front of the
microphone, as President Carter stood at
his side, erect and motionless, looking off
into the distance. Was he listening to the
words7'Was he thinking about one of the
many crises with which he had to deal?
Wiesel, still thinking of Babi Yar, remarked that this massacre had occurred
just thirty-eight years before. The world
had looked on then and in the following
years, as the Holocaust swept across the
European Jewish communities.
The president responded, commending
us for our work and the journey that in itself was an act of memorialization. Then
he recalled the omissions of the time when
the world had looked the other way.
It was in the middle of the afternoon,
and for the president, not yet the middle of
his working day. He is like a prisoner, I
thought, always under guard, pressured by
every summons. That day he had given us
an hour. Could it be that he had already
devoted more time and thought to the Holocaust than his predecessor during the
war, Franklin Roosevelt, had managed
while the Jews were dying?
It is natural, I said to myself as I was walking in the streets of Washington that night,
for me to feel slightly depressed. Not because of those who would deny the Holocaust, or those who would dilute it, or the
others who would forget it-1 understand
them all. If I did not feel all that well, I was
merely experiencing the reaction I always
had after some concluding ceremony.
What I had to do now was to plan my research. There were documents I had to
read, particularly the records in the Polish
archives, and I would have to travel again
soon. Next year, in Auschwitz.
RAUL HILBERG
Professor of political science at the University of
Vermont, Raul Hilberg wrote The Destruction
of the European Jews, (Chicago 1961), which will
appear in a revised expanded edition in 1983
(Holmes and Meier). With Stanislaw Staron and
Josef Kermisz he edited The Warsaw Diary of
Adam Czerniakow, (Stein and Day 1979). "The
President's Commission on the Holocaust," after
its final report, was replaced by "The United
States Memorial Council."
FROM OUR READERS (Continued.from page 2)
colleges, do likewise. Several of them who
had never heard, of St. John's asked me
abOut it after reading the Review, and you
can bet that they read the article about the
New York Times versus Pravda, not the one
about Plotinus.
I am not berating the article about Plotinus or any other such article; I enjoy reading
them, too. But I think that the new editorial_y-clicy you have in mind will upset the
admirable balance (between the two types
of articles I gave examples of) that the Review has maintained over the last several issues. The general public, and most alumni,
will have no incentive to read it because
nothing will grab their attention. Offer
them something that they suspect will interest them, though, and they might read
the rest of the issue as well.
There is a case of such a publication as
you seem to want the Review to become; in
fact, it is none other than the Review itself
in the days when it wa,s called The College.
As I recall, I seldom read it, and none of my
non-St. John's friends I showed it to ever
112
did. It had the same tone as the professional
journals that tutors and alumni who have
gone on to become college professors write
in: a cut above the competition, but nonetheless plodding and addressed to a much
too narrow audience. Of course, articles
that lack pizzazz, like great books that lack
pizzazz, often have important things to
say. However, a whole magazine full of
them makes for a whole magazine unread.
You tutors, who develop great patience for
texts as a part of your job, tend to forget
this.
"The disciplined reflection which is nurtured by the St. John's Program" (I quote
the statement of editorial policy) is also
nurtured elsewhere besides St. John's, and
on other matters besides those investigated
in the program. Let the St. John's Review
continue to reflect the best efforts of the
whole republic of letters, not just those of
the small citadel that is our college; that is
the best way to communicate the intellectual liveliness of St. John's to those outside
its campuses. If you do not, the Review will
become another one of those magazines
read only by those who write for it.
KURT SCHULER '81
The following is the Instruction Committee's
statement of editorial policy which the
writer cites:
Editorial Policy For The St.John's Review
The St. John's Review exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection which is nurtured by the St. John's
Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors-their familiarity with that Program
and their respect for it-and through the
style and content of their contributions.
Contributors are, for the most part,
members of the greater college community-tutors, alumni, and visiting lecturers
(continued inside back cover)
AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83
�-and others who are friends and critics of
the Program. Appropriate submissions by
those less familiar with the Program are
welcome.
For the most part, contributions do not
observe the usual limits of research scholarship, nor do they use its apparatus. On
the other hand, however, they do not display the easy generalization and simplification of popular journalism. Rather, under
the discipline of the liberal arts, they aim at
the immediacy and directness characteristic of intelligent fundamental inquiry.
Contributions aim to provide their readers with a representation in print of the
continuing study and free discussion which
is fostered by the Program and by which
the tutors, alumni, and students of the College live and work: the interpretation of
texts of worth and power and the consideration of deep and troubling issues. Although
the perennial character of the concerns
nourished by .tf,Ie Program often lends contributions a ce~tain distance from current
practical affairs, a thoughtful investigation
of a present political problem is not inappropriate. From time to time, original works
of the imagination are presented.
As it represents the St. John's Program,
the St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and
its readers may accordingly expect to find
diversity of thought represented in its
pages.
Error:
This picture in Philip Holt's article (page 58,
Summer 1982) appeared upside down;
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<em>The St. John's Review</em>
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<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Office of the Dean
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St. John's College
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ISSN 0277-4720
thestjohnsreview
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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112 pages
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The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Autumn/Winter 1982-83
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1982-10
1983-01
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Radista, Leo
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Carnes, David
Bolotin, David
Wilson, Curtis A.
Sachs, Joe
Alexander, Sidney
Brann, Eva T. H.
Description
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Volume XXXIV, Number 1 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Autumn/Winter 1982-1983.
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The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_34_No_1_1982-1983
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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English
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text
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St. John's Review
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Text
Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan
_
I
_,;
rY
. . . have m the past three years set up at Annapolis the only liberal arts •,..c~l~ e
m the United States.
This book describes what they have done; it ts a tribute to what t ey a
'
~
Barr
Mr.
St.
M R.summerand 1937 Buchanan came totheir John's Col~ e
to put into effect
answer to ~~e
of
major problems in liberal education today-the problem o o o
f
many people can go to college for four years, become b chel
arts, and still be uneducated. Their answer is the now amous St.
Johns Program, which consists principally in the Cu~d
discussion of the works of about one hundred and sevente~ut~rs
in the Western tradition.
~
From the beginning one of Mr. Barr's chief ·function
sident of the college has been to explain the St. John's P
to
assorted
the general public. He has made innumerable speeches
Rotary clubs, chambers of commerce, groups of educl'toiT," l_d
domestic clubs; has written magazine articles, has started a~d
on a series of radio programs describing activities at t~e,
and in general has played the role of public spokesm
or t e
college-a role to which his congenial and somewhat
ular
o
pefsonality is well fitted. Just as important has been h.
keep the college from falling off the financial brink it as been
teetering on for the past several years. Yet even though
very busy performing as college politician and master ~y
M
fieT k\>t
"'~"' in the New Program<lm< '" "'""""History 26
M,. ''"<Oil fu.rl,
·' ll•cl<
seminar
and to teach
popular course in the Old Program. Perhaps his most
characteristic from the student point of view is the fa
knows most of them well enough to address them by
t
st
g
e
st
~
names.
Mr. Buchanan as Dean of the college has necessaril
ad to
·
n
concern himself with the internal affairs of the college.
task has been to arrange the actual working structure o = i culum, to determine the subject matter and schedule of cia es, o
o~
provide the order and locus in which the various parts
gram function-in short to guide and co~ordinate the wo actua 1y
done on the great books. Besides his work on the curreue
serves as a reference point for disciplinary matters, and, n con£ r~
ence with members of the administration, faculty, and stu
y,
determines the great policies on which St. John's operat~
from his administrative duties Mr. Buchanan acts as the~eader o"\
the Junior seminar.
t:.__..
Even though separately they have different functions~~ad
inistrative men, both Mr. Barr and Mr. Buchanan are ss ta y
a · g
teachers, are working for the same end, and as a team ar
St. John's a liberal arts college which, oddly enough, tef'!y a"Jd
practices the liberal arts.
~
6
:c
~
�Editor's Note
FROM OUR READERS
With the Winter 1982 issue the St. John's Review began
to charge new subscribers. Old subscribers, St. John's
alumni and friends, students and their families will con·
tinue to receive the magazine without charge. My desire
to turn the St. John's Review into an unambiguously pub·
lie magazine and to win an additional audience prompted
this decision. The St. John's Review will appear three times
a year, in the fall, winter, and summer-L.R.
ON " 'SEXISM' IS MEANINGLESS"
Editor:
Leo Raditsa
Managing Editor:
Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistants:
David Carnes
Janet Durholz
Consulting Editors:
David Bolotin,
Eva Brann,
Curtis A. Wilson.
Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome,
but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also
welcome.
THEST)OHNSREVIEW (formerly The College) is published by
the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland
21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Samuel S. Kutler, Dean.
Published thrice yearly, in the fall, winter, and summer. For those
not on the distribution list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for
two years, or $36.00 for three years, payable in advance. Address
all correspondence to The St. John's Review, St. John's College,
Annapolis, Maryland 21404.
Volume XXXIII
SUMMERI982
Number 3
©1982, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4 720
Cover: Page 6 of the nineteen forty St. John's College Yearbook.
ComPosition: Britton Composition Co.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co.
To the Editor of the St. John's Review:
After reading Mr. Doskow's letter answering Michael Levin
("'Sexism' is Meaningless" St. John's Review Autumn 1981), I decided to abandon temporarily my subjugation as housewife and
respond to Mr. Doskow's myopic view of human nature. In his
letter Mr. Doskow accuses Mr. Levin of various "prejudices" concerning women. In so doing he examines the condition of women,
past and present, under two false assumptions. The first false assumption is that women have been forced by men to stay at home
and rear children. The second is that women are still being forced
by men to stay at home and rear children. Underlying both assumptions and embedded in the fabric of his letter (though nowhere stated explicitly) is the further assumption that the habit
of centuries has no connection with and is a violation of the laws
of nature. (It is, however, open to question whether or not Mr.
Doskow accepts the existence of permanent standards which
dictate certain modes of human behavior.) In answer to Mr.
Doskow' s first assumption, I must cite a book by George Gilder
called Sexual Suicide in which Gilder claims that men never forced
women to stay at home and rear children. In fact, women, because of the nature of female sexuality (which includes the processes of pregnancy and childbirth) have traditionally required
men to marry them and provide for the upkeep of the resulting
children. Male sexuality, according to Gilder, is characterized by
indiscriminate and temporary liasons, and only the necessity of
fathering a woman's children causes men to embrace monogamy. If Mr. Doskow would pause in his ruminations on the
plight of women and read the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice, he would see there a clear demonstration ofthe necessity,
imposed by women upon men, that men marry in order to establish themselves in civilized society. The second assumption is
false because women are now encouraged to play more roles in
society than we ever have in human history. The present education of women encourages masculine, not feminine qualities.
Mr. Doskow assumes that the "environmental differences
boys and girls are subjected to" are responsible for different
forms of behavior in boys and girls and hence the "subjugation"
of the latter. (I would like to know what the term "environmental
differences" signifies-barometric pressure, or humidity???) I
can't disagree with the claim that girls have usually been educated
with their feminine characteristics in mind-receptivity, for example-until now. Mr Deskew does not bother to address himself to the question of whether or not it is proper to prepare girls for
motherhood, and I tend to think that he considers motherhood
such a casual affair that education regarding it is unnecessary.
The modern liberal has placed himself in the uneasy position of
asserting the primacy of early childhood development in the correct functioning of society, while maintaining all along that anyone-mother, father, daycare worker, psychologist, teacher(continued on page 2)
�.HESTJOHNSREVIEWSUMMER1982
3
St. John's under Barr and Buchanan: the Fight with the Navy
and the Departure of the Founders ]. Winfree Smith
20
Schiller's Drama- Fulfillment of History and Philosophy in
Poetry Gisela Berns
31
Some Chinese Poems
39
That Graver Fire Bell: A Reconsideration of the Debate over
Slavery from the Standpoint of Lincoln Robert]. Loewenberg
51
Sophocles' Ajax and the Ajax Myth Philip Holt
62
Toward Reading Thomas Aquinas
translated by julie Landau
Thomas]. Slakey
REvmw EssAY
68
Updike and Roth: Are They Writers? John Updike's Rabbit
Is Rich, and Philip Roth's Zuckerman Unbound review
essay by Lev Navrozov
�can assist in said developlnent equipped
with nothing more than a brief course of
training. Motherhood involves much more
than a course in applied social sciences,
however. For one thing, only a mother can
do it: that is, a woman who has given birth
to or accepted as her own through adoption an utterly dependent human person.
The commitment made is physical, emotional, and instinctive. It is the most powerful bond between two people in nature.
The idea that "mothering" can be accomplished by anyone but a mother is analogous to the suggestion that the function of
husband or wife could be performed by
someone hired for the purpose: the essential personal involvement which constitutes
a marriage would be absent. Motherhood,
then, is a role which demands a participation which is intrinsically connected with
the very soul of the mother; a participation
which never ceases to exist and never ceases
to demand the selfless cooperation of the
mother in a natural process which entails
the separation of the beloved (the child)
from the lover (the mother) with the cooperation and encouragement of the lover. In
this way the natural order provides for the
existence of society. It is only the personal
element in motherhood-"my child" vs.
"the child" which ensures the possibility of
moral education; moral actions are, fundamentally, not performed out of self-interest.
If I die for my country it is not because in
doing so I consider myself to be performing
a rational act, but because it is my country
and I love it. If this personal element, that
is, the task of "mothering" as performed by
a mother, is absent in child-rearing, then
the soundest basis for moral actions is removed from society. Given, then, the importance of the position of a mother to a
society, one must surely admit the necessity
of preparing potential mothers for such a
role.
Mr. Doskow seems to believe that nature
makes no significant distinction between
men and women. He also claims, implicitly,
that habit must necessarily be a perversion
of political and social truth. That nature
and convention, or habit, are distinct is not
to say that they are apposed, and it is here
that Mr. Doskow makes his mistake. That
education is purposive (which it necessarily
is) does not mean that it is a violation of
nature, and Mr. Doskow assumes that
2
throughout his letter without bothering to
substantiate his claim. In this he seems to
fall prey to a vice common to those who assume that human nature is malleable or
nonexistent: he neglects the problem of
necessity. Although political society is an
institution, that is, it is made by men, it
must do more than provide us with the opportunity for happiness. It must be able to
withstand the vicissitudes of fortune; it
must last. Although my tutors at St. John's
succeeded in giving me a phobia of secondary sources, I must cite a story I have had
occasion to read many times since I graduated. It is about three pigs and their varying abilities to survive in the "wide world"
after they leave home. The smart pig, of
course, worked hard at building ·a brick
house while the other pigs played. The
practical pig survived and protected his
brothers because he was able to provide for
protection against the gluttonous wolf. Mr.
Doskow's sentiments about the "rights" of
women reflect the finer sensibilities of the
less sensible pigs-it would be nice if society were constructed in such a way that
everyone could do what he wanted. Yesterday my son brought home a social studies
newsletter his kindergarten class reads.
This particular issue featured the story of a
female coalminer. In fact, every newsletter
he brings home features a woman doing a
job ather than rearing children and keeping
house. I have not yet seen an elementary
school textbook describe child-rearing as a
job particularly suited to women (so much
for evidence in favor of the "subjugation of
women" theory). What these newsletters
(and I think Mr. Doskow) forget to take
into consideration is .the fact that someone
has to raise the children and women usually do a better job of it than men. But
like every other job one must be trained to
perform it, and habit serves to reinforce aspects of motherhood which would otherwise be difficult to endure.
Men perfect themselves in political
society. That perfection rests on the qualities of each man and is accomplished by
means of his nature and not by its subjugation. Education is the means by which
common and permanent standards are
communicated to individuals in such a way
that each man participates, often unknowingly, in the propagation of aims which are
intellectually accessible to only a few men.
It is this unthinking participation in the
preservation of the moral health of society
by means of the family (which is the first
and most effective school) which Mr.
Doskow calls "prejudice". We must consider men and women not as interchangeable parts in a machine, units possessing
"rights", but as members of mankind,
working in cooperation for the greatest
good possible. Men are such that the greatness of one man shines on all of us, just as
the infamy committed by one man calls
the rest of us into question. When Father
Brown, of the Chesterton stories, explained
the method he used to discover the identity
of a murderer he said that he "became"
the murderer and hence could imagine the
circumstances of the crime and identify
the culprit. Father Brown understood that
what connects us to each other is not a superficial similarity of abilities or sympathies
but a common late. This unity shows itself,
strangely, in our ability to perform the various and separate functions necessary to
the well-being of a political society. In a
stable society these accomplishments-the
different kinds of work done by its members-will benefit both the fathers and
mothers who perform their work and the
society as a whole. Just as a mother raises
her child knowing that he will, if all goes
well, cease his dependence on her and become a father or mother in his own right,
our satisfaction at being citizens rests to
some extent on our capacity for selflessness.
The success of work depends on its being
performed in a political framework, and
upon this political nature of work depends
the stability of society. Those who complain of "prejudice," when differences between men and women are recognized by a
society in the education of its children are
apparently unable to make the essential
connection between human nature as expressed in habit and the higher aims of
society, which utilizes habit to further its
own aims and protect itself from decay. To
disregard the primacy of motherhood both
in a woman's life and in the larger context
of society is to disregard the fundamental
basis for moral education and the place
nature holds in our society. If Mr. Doskow's
objections to "prejudice" lie in a fundamental difference between his opinions
and the aims of this regime, then he should
{continued on inside back cover)
SUMMER 1982
�St. John's College under Barr and
Buchanan: the Fight with the Navy
and the Departure of the Founders
J.
Winfree Smith
Public Interest and Internal Changes under
Barr and Buchanan
The St. John's curriculum, differing so radically from
the curriculums of most American colleges, evoked wide·
spread interest as soon as it was inaugurated. In Decem~
ber 1938 Walter Lippmann wrote a column that appeared
in many newspapers in which he praised the St. John's
way. He praised it primarily because it promised a recov·
ery of an understanding of the principles on which the
American Republic was founded, the understanding that
the founding fathers had because of their own study of
the classics. HI do know," he wrote, ''that in this country
and abroad there are men who see that the onset of barbarism must be met not only by programs of rearmament,
but by another revival of learning. It is the fact, moreover,
that after tentative beginnings in several of the American
universities, Columbia, Virginia, and Chicago, a revival is
actually begun-is not merely desired, talked about, and
projected, but is in operation with teachers and students
and a carefully planned course of study." He concluded
with the prophecy: "I venture to believe that ... in the fu-
These pages are taken from Chapters IV, V, and VI of J. Winfree
Smith's history of St. John's College from 1937 to 1958, which the St.
John's College Press will publish in 1983. The work draws on many un·
published sources in the St. John's College Archives, in the Buchanan
Files at Houghton Library, Harvard, and elsewhere.
J.
Winfree Smith has been a tutor at St. John's College since 1941.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ture men will point to St. John's College and say that there
was the seed-bed of the American Renaissance." 1
There were many who wanted to know about the revival
as it was in operation. A series of articles in the Baltimore
Sun in January 1939 gave vignettes of what was going on
in the tutorials-' The freshmen in their mathematics tutorial were wrestling with some of the most fundamental
questions in mathematics raised by their investigation of
Book 5 of Euclid in the context of the discovery of incommensurable magnitudes. The same freshmen in their Jan·
guage tutorial were making careful analyses of Greek
sentences and were translating Plato's Meno, using the
Greek they were learning to try to find out what was happening in that dialogue, why Socrates said what he said, or
asked what he asked, and what Meno's answers might
mean in the development of the dialogue. The sophomores
were enthusiastically engaged with Apollonius' Conics,
being in a position to contemplate the beautiful logical
and analogical structure of the first book of that work,
which they had recently finished reading. In their language tutorial they were translating from a chapter of
Augustine's Confessions, and producing the following:
"They [Augustine's friends who wanted him to write the
book] are desirous to hear me confess what I am within;
whither neither eye, nor ear, nor understanding is able to
dive; they desire it as ready to believe me; but will they
know me?" This led to a lively discussion of Augustine's
effort at self-knowledge and of whether one can know
oneself thoroughly.
About a year later Life magazine sent to the college
Gerard Pie!, who later became the founder and publisher
of Scientific American 3 Pie! brought with him an excel-
3
�lent photographer and together they produced with words
and pictures a quite accurate and attractive account of St.
John's with the new program in operation. There was a pic·
ture of Buchanan leading a seminar, of a student, Francis
Mason, in rapt contemplation of one of Euclid's regular
solids, of a group of students in the snow using an instru·
mentwith which Aristarchus (third century B.C.) made measurements from which to calculate the sizes and distances
of the sun and moon. A two-page spread showed a shelf of
the great books with those translated by St. John's faculty
clearly marked. These pictures and the accompanying
story, both concise and complete, gave a great boost to the
enrollment. In the fall of 1940 ninety-three freshmen
enrolled as contrasted with forty in 1938 and fifty-four in
1939. People sometimes referred to the class of 1944 as the
"L"~e cIass ." ...
t1
Criticism from Outside and Inside
and Effect of World War II
Hutchins, Adler, and Barr were not simply advocates of
a different kind of college education from what was to be
found in American colleges and universities generally.
They were constantly attacking college education in insti·
tutions other than St. John's. Barr in a public address
would say such things as: "Modern college education is
being conducted in a new tower of Babel staffed by pro·
fessors often proud of their own ignorance, its corridors
crammed with bewildered students learning a hodgepodge
of useless skills and becoming increasingly unintelligible to
one another and to the world they face." Hutchins and Barr
were devastatingly witty, and this made their attacks all the
more effective and provocative. Hutchins and Alder tended
to blame John Dewey and his followers for much that they
considered wrong with American college education.
It was understandable, then, that there were various
counterattacks and especially from the followers of Dewey.
Dewey himself in August 1944 published an article in For·
tune called "A Challenge to Liberal Thought." The article
did not refer by name to any of the challengers except
Robert Hutchins. It did mention Hutchins's "theological
fellow travelers." It did not mention St. John's, but it was
generally taken to be directed at St. John's because of such
sentences as: "The idea that an adequate education can
be obtained by means of a miscellaneous assortment of a
hundred books, more or less, is laughable when viewed
practically."1 Dewey concluded from Hutchins's claim that
human nature is everywhere and always the same that
Hutchins must also think that the principles governing
human conduct are unchangeable, that they are to be
found not by experimental inquiry or direct observation,
but in books. He saw this partly as a reversion to antiquity
but even more as a reversion to what he considered to be
4
the anti-scientific dogmatism of the Middle Ages. Dewey
himself was, of course, particularly concerned that education should follow the way of experiment and observation
as much in the study of man and society as in the study of
non-human things. He saw this way as closely linked with
freedom of inquiry made possible by democracy and with
the technological control of nature. Hutchins and his
friends were, in his opinion, anti-scientific, anti-democratic
dogmatists, mindful only of the past and oblivious to the
present.
In the issue of Fortune for January 1945 Alexander
Meiklejohn had "A Reply to John Dewey." Meiklejohn
quite naturally supposed that Dewey was attacking the St.
John's curriculum, and his reply was largely a defense of
that curriculum.
Against the charge that the St. John's way of studying
the past led to dogmatism, to the acceptance of some set
of beliefs held by somebody in the past, he pointed out
that in reading and discussing the great books a St. John's
student meets not just one set of beliefs, but many con·
flicting sets; that he "will find Protagoras at war with Plato,
Kant at war with Hume, Rousseau at war with Locke,
Veblen at war with Adam Smith, and he must try to understand both sides of these controversies."' To the charge
that reading a miscellaneous collection of great books in
the four college years is laughable as a way of education,
when viewed practically, he replied that, for all the startling audacity of having college students read many such
very difficult books, the studying of these books was not
irresponsibly done, being subject through careful discussion to guidance, correction, and criticism. Against the
charge that St. John's ignores the way of experimental in·
quiry and observation, he pointed out that every student
at St. John's was required to devote half of his course of
study to the learning of science and of mathematics as the
'language' upon which scientific achievement depends.
In regard to this disagreement between Dewey and
Meiklejohn, it should be noted that they both assumed
that the St. John's kind of education involved an interest
in the past as such. That was, and still is, incorrect. Teachers and students have no interest in studying the past as
past. They have an interest in reading certain books that
were written in the past because those books raise impor·
tant perennial questions, questions which are always live
and present questions if we let our thought get hold of
them. Moreover, St. John's was and is perhaps more radi·
cal than either Dewey or Meiklejohn was. For Dewey,
while acknowledging that a study of the past is necessary
for understanding the present, was quite sure that modern
thought represents a tremendous gain over ancient and
medieval thought. Meiklejohn, though quite clear about
such thinkers as Hume and Kant, nonetheless thought
and supposed it to be a basic postulate of St. John's that
"from the time of the Greeks until the present the knowledge and wisdom of men have been growing." Actually, at
St. John's it would be a question whether there has been
SUMMER 1982
�such growth, a question not so easily answered if by wisdom is meant the wisdom about the whole of things. While
one could hardly deny that there has been a tremendous
growth of 'knowledge' in the modern natural sciences, of
which St. John's tries to take sufficient cognizance, it is
not easy to decide whether Plato or Hegel were closer to
the knowledge of the whole of things. ·
Dewey's response to Meiklejohn was a letter to Fortune
in which he said that he had not been referring to St.
John's at all in his "A Challenge to Liberal Thought."
The philosophy I criticized [he wrote] is so current and so
much more influential than is the work of St. John's, there are
only a few sentences in my article even indirectly referring to
St. John's. Rightly or wrongly, I had not supposed that the
program and work of St. John's was of such importance as to
justify my use of the pages of Fortune in extended criticism of
it, especially as a number of effective criticisms of it had already been made. 3
The criticisms to which he was referring were principally those of Sidney Hook, which had appeared in the
New Leader of May 26, 1944, and June 3, 1944, and were
later included in a book entitled Education for Modern
Man under the title "A Critical Appraisal of the St. John's
College Curriculum." Some of Hook's criticisms were the
same that Dewey had made of Hutchins and Hutchins's
"fellow travelers." He claimed that the people at St. John's
thought that man has an essential unchangeable nature
and that the unchangeable truth about man's nature and
about all things can be learned because it is written down
in ancient and medieval books, that to possess these truths
all one has to do is to read those books. He mentioned that
it was the hidden assumption in the philosophy underlying St. John's that "the true answers to our problems can
be found by assaying the heritage of antiquity and the
Middle Ages."4 He recognized that in studying books written in ancient Greece the St. John's people were not seeking to know Greek man but to know about human nature,
but he seemed to think that what one learns directly from
a Greek book is only something about Greek man. He
raised the question others have raised through the years,
of why there are no Chinese or Hindu books in the St.
John's list, why, granted that the reading of ancient literature develops the imagination, the reading of ancient oriental literature might not produce an imaginative sympathy
with the problems and experience of those Eastern people
with whom we have to deal and will have to deal. He attacked what he considered to be the St. John's doctrine
that there is "transfer of learning." Presumably he was referring, for example, to the assumption that in studying
the grammar of one language one can learn certain things
that appear universally in language, the knowledge of
which will be profitable in learning any language and in
learning how language may be a means of inquiry or may
convey truth about things. He also attacked the view that
a good way to learn mathematics and science is through
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the reading of classical works in those areas, and he invoked the formidable names of Richard Courant, Bertrand
Russell, and Albert Einstein in support of his attack, all of
whom in letters from which he quoted supposed that what
was in question was a study of the historical development
of mathematics and science rather than an understanding
of what is fundamental in them through sharing and exploring the thought of the original discoverers. Those responsible for the St. John's curJiculum never supposed
that it would always be the case that the original discoverer of a science or a scientific theory would make a more
intelligible presentation of it than someone else. That it is
usually the case is not something known a priori, but is a
matter of the long experience of both ways of presentation.
Some of Sidney Hook's criticisms were justified. Barr's
harsh judgments of other colleges went too far. Barr had
no doubt made exaggerated claims when he said that the
St. John's students were going to read every one of the
books on the list in its entirety. It was certainly debatable
whether the whole St. John's curriculum were suitable, as
Barr maintained, for all students of college age. It was certainly conceivable that a college student might learn as
much from analyzing a bad book such as Hitler's Mein
Kampf as from reading a good or a great book. All of these
were points that Hook made. But on the whole his "critical appraisal" was based on misconceptions. One reason
that he had so many misconceptions was that he assumed
that anything Hutchins or Adler said St. John's would endorse. This illusion on his part was understandable in view
of Hutchins's lose connection with the college, first as a
member, and then as chairman, of the board, and also in
view of Adler's position as lecturer at the college and his
constant support of it in public utterances. Hook referred
to Adler both as Hutchins's mentor and as the "mentor of
the St. John's educators." 5
Hook should nonetheless have known better, since before writing his articles for the New Leader he had had
several letters from Buchanan that attempted to limit and
define their differences. These letters indeed affirmed
"the rational scientific nature" of metaphysics, politics,
and religion. Buchanan could hardly expect Hook to agree
that metaphysics and religion were scientific. At the same
time, he explicitly refused to deny "the rational scientific
nature" of social studies, which he knew Hook would
strongly affirm. He vigorously resisted the charge of indoctrination, insisting that he would "defend the freedom
of the intellect and the will in considering them [the studies mentioned, especially metaphysics and theology] in
such a way as to show that indoctrination in them is impossible."' Later on he wrote urging Hook to come to the
college and lecture; he mentioned several possible topics:
"Karl Marx," "The St. John's Brand of 'Indoctrination'"
(as Hook saw it), "The Scientific Method, Intelligence and
Society."7 He suggested that such a lecture would be of
great aid in the lively controversies that had been going on
within the college now that there were faculty and stu-
5
�dents who had read the whole list of books, were caught
up in the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns,
and had engaged in considerable debate about Marx.
It was not possible for Hook to visit St. John's at that
time, and by the time he published the New Leader articles
the character of the exchange of correspondence that he
had with Buchanan made the visit increasingly unlikely. It
became clearer and clearer that his principal target was
Adler, but Hook could never come to terms with Buchanan
as long as Buchanan failed to repudiate publicly those
statements or positions of Adler with which Buchanan
disagreed. On January 26, 1943, Hook wrote to Buchanan:
I am glad to learn that you haven't joined the neo-Thomist
"gang." I don't recall Using the word, but now that you have
used it I think it quite apt. A "gang" is a group of people who
are unalterably committed to a vested interest or doctrine,
even if truth, honor, and justice be elsewhere . .. . A large number of people, however, believe, apparently on insufficient evidence, that doctrinally you are approaching the neo-Thomists
more closely than one would. expect on the basis of your personal outlook and better knowledge of your earlier philosophical position. As the leading spirit of an important educational
enterprise I think you should be concerned about the generality of this impression. I am taking the liberty of suggesting that
it would be helpful if you found an opportunity to state publicly what you thought about the doctrine of neo-Thomism
from its sacred theology to its educational philosophy.8
In spite of disagreements with Adler, Buchanan could
not repudiate him ip any way that would be satisfactory to
Hook. With his view that metaphysics and theology, even
if not wholly identical with any metaphysics and theology
of the past, were the sciences that would give unity to all
knowledge, Buchanan could not well repudiate the neoThomists in a way that would be satisfactory to Hook.
After the New Leader articles severely critical of Barr as
well as of Adler, the exchange between Hook and Buchanan became more and more acrimonious. Buchanan
kept inviting Hook to come to St. John's, spend a while,
and see for himself. Hook refused to come on the ground
that, if he came and found that things were just as he expected, Buchanan would discover one reason after another
to explain why he had not been able to put his ideas into
execution.
Buchanan did not in any of his letters to Hook reply to
the question about oriental classics. His position on the
subject was, however, made clear in a reply that he wrote
in the spring of 1940 to a letter that made a plea for the inclusion of such classics in the list of great books:
Four yecirs [he wrote] is a short time for reading the books we
already have on the list. If I did not think people would go on
gradually studying the books these lead to I should think we
were a complete fake. We are doing the first reading of the
few books which will initiate us to the study of all the things
6
we should know, including other books. I think the great books
of the Orient .are included in that perspective?
Clearly, Chinese and Hindu books were not in principle
excluded from the St. John's curriculum.
The students at St. John's have, on the whole, not been
critical of the conception and plan of the curriculum. Perhaps in many cases their decision to attend St. John's
rather than some other college has meant an acceptance
of that conception and that plan. Most of the students'
criticism has been to the effect that the college, while be·
ing right and quite articulate about its aims, did not in per·
formance live up to its aims. Not much of this criticism
was expressed until the program had been in operation for
a few years. Many of the first new programmers within a
very short time began to look back on their student days
as a "golden age."
The golden age probably never existed. There was indeed a certain excitement among the first new program·
mers which arose not simply because significant learning
is exciting but also because of their belonging to a group
who were engaged not in an experiment, but in something
new in relation to the conventionalities of other colleges.
One record of student commentary and criticism was
the college yearbook, the student editors of w):Jich, during
the Barr-Buchanan era, were exceptionally intelligent and
perceptive. The nineteen forty Yearbook mentions what
are called "difficulties" .encountered in the first year of
the program, difficulties that were said to have been overcome or to be in process of being overcome. The difficulties
seem to have been caused by the demands on the stu·
dents' time that went beyond those of the officially announced curriculum. There were lectures for all students
twice a week, each of which lasted from two to two and
one-half hours. There were, in addition, supplementary
lectures on Platonic dialogues. There was a special tuto·
rial for practice in writing in addition to the language tu·
torial. To discuss the dialogues of Plato in seminar fashion
was no doubt a more Socratic way of getting into them
than by listening to lectures. In any case, the supplementary lectures were soon eliminated, practice in writing was
assigned to the language tutorial, and the number of lee·
tures reduced to one a week with an hour and a half as the
time limit. "The greatest difficulty this class [the first new
program class] has met so far in connection with the cur,
riculum," the nineteen forty Yearbook reported, "has been
the laboratory. After the class had roamed aimlessly for a
year or so in its lab work a method of instruction has been
developed that runs much more smoothly and is better
correlated with the rest of the Program." 10
The entry of the United States into World War II
brought many changes in the college. In October 1939 the
St. John's Collegian took a poll among the students to get
their opinion about United States policy in relation to the
war which had clearly begun in Europe. Eighty-one students responded to the five questions that were asked.
The questions and the results of the poll were as follows: 11
SUMMER 1982
�l. Should the United States give immediate armed sup-
port to the European democracies?
Yes
No
Noopinion
8
72
1
2. Should this country assist England and France by filling, as far as possible, their demands for munitions
and commodities such as food, raw materials, and
manufactured goods?
Yes
No
34
42
No opinion
5
3. Should America pursue a policy of strict isolationism
concerning European affairs?
Yes
38
No
41
No opinion
2
4. Do you think Britain and France should attempt to
make peace with Germany at this stage of the war?
Yes
No
Noopinion
21
55
5
5. In case of this country's engaging in the present war
in Europe, would you volunteer before a draft were
effected?
Yes
No
No opinion
27
55
4
In over a hundred colleges throughout the country similar polls were taken and with similar results. At that time
American college students were strongly opposed to sending American troops to support England and France but a
larger percentage (42 per cent) than was the case at St.
John's were willing to volunteer if England and France
were in danger of defeat.
Student opinion at St. John's seems to have changed by
the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
When the news of Pearl Harbor came, there was, according to the nineteen forty-two Yearbook, much talk among
the students about enlistment. A college meeting was
called the day after and the students expected Barr and
Buchanan to plead with them to stay at least until June
1942. Barr did not plead with them to stay. Having made
the point that only a few ever take part in what the young
might consider the romantic adventures of war, he suggested a definite choice either to enlist or to stay and work
at studies. He even suggested that it might be their duty
to stay; he believed that it was of the utmost importance
that gopd thinking about war and peace should go on while
the country was at war, and that colleges, especially St.
John's College, should not close, but stay open and think
about war and peace. Buchanan at the same college meeting spoke of the problems that would arise in the relation
of the college to the townspeople who, as the country became more and more involved in the war, would judge
and condemn those young men who were studying God
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
knows what when they ought to be fighting in defense
of their country. The editor of the Yearbook, John Louis
Hedeman, ended his account of this meeting with the report that "for the most part, students, thinking things
over, found that a year or even two or three in the army
did not appeal to them and went back to their seminars to
discuss the same problems in the light of ages past." 12
The college administration took various steps to prepare the students in what they thought might be useful in
the war. There was a three-hour course once a week in
radio. There was a course in navigation. Franz Plunder, a
sculptor and boat-builder, who also possessed many other
skills, taught a group of about sixty persons the intricacies
of the gasoline engine, for, as the nineteen forty-two Yearbook put it, "no one knew which St. Johnnie might be
stranded in a tank somewhere on the battlefront, where
there would be no hardware store and mechanics for him
to turn to."ll The press poked a certain amount of fun at
the "great books" college for this course in the gasoline
engine. Actually the course was in line with Buchanan's
view that there is a training of the .intellect that happens
in the learning and practice of the manual arts as well as
the liberal arts. Also, Buchanan knew that one learns quite
a bit of physics if one acquires a full understanding of all
the transformations of energy that take place in the internal
combustion engine.
Whether these courses were in fact useful to many of
the students when later they were in military service is
doubtful. But at the time they helped them to feel that
they were not just engaged in talk about the war but were
doing something. In spite of the talk that went on in meetings to discuss the war, and in spite of the activities just
mentioned, the war did not have a great impact upon the
college during the session of 1941-42. Many students,
through joining the reserves, were able to finish the year.
All students, not just the reservists, were required to take
part in military drill, which all accepted, though some
found it irksome. It was in the following session that the
war really began to have a big effect. At the beginning of
that session there were 173 students enrolled. By the end
of the year there were fewer than a hundred. When the
next session began, there were only forty-two in the three
upper classes. Only seven of the ninety-three in the "Life
class" remained to receive degrees in 1944. Not only were
students leaving in droves for military service, but faculty
were leaving too, among them some who had contributed
most to get the program established and to make it go:
George Comenetz, Catesby Taliaferro, John Neustadt,
and Raymond Wilburn. There were also very promising
newcomers on the faculty who had hardly been at the college a year before having to leave for military service or for
some employment related to the war effort.
The president and the dean thought that it would be
fitting to mark with a ceremony the departure of students
for the war. During the 1942-43 session there were twp
occasions when a solemn ceremony was held in the college's Great Hall, and all those leaving for the war took the
7
�Ephebic oath administered by Barr. This oath was once
taken by Athenian youth as they were going off to war:
outstanding faculty was considered a serious injury to successful study within the program. Said Campbell,
I will not disgrace the name of my country and I will not desert my comrades in the ranks. By myself and with my fellows
I will defend what is sacred, whether private or public. I will
hand on my country not lessened but greater and nobler than
it was handed down to me. I will hearken diligently to those
The advent of the war, although unable to affect the Program, certainly introduced deficiencies into the teaching of it.
A good faculty is absolutely essential to good participation in
duly charged with judging, and I will obey the established laws
and whatever others the people with common consent establish. And if anyone attempts to overthrow the laws, or not
obey them, I will not stand idly by but by myself and with all
my comrades I will defend the law. And I will honor the religion of my fathers. The gods be witness of these things.l4
There were some who wondered how American youth
could honor the religion of their fathers and at the same
time call upon the Greek gods to witness their oath. But
everyone felt the seriousness of the occasion. Some of the
young men who took the oath were to give their lives in
combat. Many were to follow Barr's admonition, given on
that occasion, not to forget in the midst of all the irrationality of war that there is still such a thing as human reason. Many, too, would return when the war was over.
Obviously, the college had to take some drastic steps if
it were not to close its doors. It was decided to admit as
freshmen at the beginning of every term fifteen-year-olds
who had not finished high schooJ,I 5 and also to add a summer term to the three terms already current. In this way a
fifteen-year-old could complete his college course in three
years and do so before being subject to the draft. With the
admission of freshmen in June and September 1943 the
total enrollment went up to 138, and it never again fell as
low as it did in the spring of 1943. In the fall of 1946, when
the accelerated schedule had already been abandoned,
the return of veterans shot the enrollment up to 253.
The yearbooks for 1944 and for 1945-46, edited by
Robert Campbell and Eugene Thaw, reflect a considerable amount of self-criticism on the part of students and
also criticism of the college. The loss of such a large portion of the students in 1942-43 was very depressing for
those who remained, who, if they were not wondering
when they themselves might have to leave, were agonizingly asking themselves whether staying in college and
studying were the best thing to be doing when their
friends were engaged in a war, the outcome of which was
so important for human life on this planet. "We neglected
our studies," Campbell wrote in the· nineteen forty-four
Yearbook, "and sought diversion .... We became adept
and ingenious at excusing our own vices and our facility in
this respect usually manifested itself in criticism, not of
the Program itself (for we knew too well its necessity, goodness, and consequences) but of the way in which it was being applied." 16 The students do not seem to have shared
Buchanan's opinion that the books are the teachers and
that the faculty are decidedly of minor importance. The
loss not only of some of the best students, but also of
8
the program by the student body. It may be argued that the
books are, after all, the teachers, and that the student learns
from them rather than from the faculty, the latter being only
the means leading the students to the end, but from this it
would be difficult to conclude that the quality of the means is
unimportant. 17
He found the faculty who had come to replace those who
had left definitely inferior.
Also the great number of young freshmen and the small
number of upperclassmen, so Campbell thought, destroyed
the learning community as a community, even if individually some students were doing better work than they had
done before. The juniors and seniors, instead of communicating to the freshmen customs and habits conducive to
the kind of study most suitable for success within the program, retired into small groups and left the freshmen to
produce, or not to produce, their own traditions.
"The Iron Age" was the title given to the next yearbook, edited by Eugene Thaw, which was a two-year book
since the drafting of two editors into military service had
prevented the production of a yearbook in 1945. The title
indicated that the two years covered were being thought
of as a period of decline from an earlier 'golden age', but
also along with the dedication to Virgil it indicated a hope
for a golden age to come. The yearbook spoke of a "trend
of decline" in all sections of the program except the formal
lectures. It complained of student lethargy and of inadequate preparation for tutorials with the result that much
routine work which should have been done outside of
class had to be done in class. The claim was made that the
seminars had suffered as a consequence. The tutorials
were called the "mainstay of the program" as the place for
the acquisition of skills to be exhibited and tested in the
seminar. (<The seminar," it was said, His the finished product of the program, accomplished and consummate, however, only to the degree of success in tutoria1." 18
In the fall of 1945 there was a change in schedule from
five one-hour tutorial classes a week to three classes with
normal length of an hour·and-a-half. This was thought to
have produced improvement in the quality of the tutorials.
But it was set down as a disadvantage that the new scheduling had made it impossible for a student to attend alanguage or mathematics tutorial other than the one to which
he had been assigned. The mere fact that a student might
want to attend another such class with the expectation of
getting a better understanding than he had got in his assigned class pointed to the strong student opinion that it
mattered very much that the tutors were unequal in teaching ability and in their grasp of what they were teaching.
As Campbell had done in the nineteen forty-four YearSUMMER 1982
�book, Thaw made a plea for a place for the fine arts within
the curriculum. Music as a fine art has, since the time of
Barr and Buchanan, had some place in the curriculum.
Concerts have been given on certain Friday evenings in·
stead of lectures. Herbert Swartz in 1938, Elliott Carter in
1940, and Nicholas Nabokov in 1941 were all added to the
faculty in large part because of their musical knowledge
which, it was expected, would enable them to suggest how
music as a fine art might fit into the curriculum and also
to sponsor and supervise music as an extracurricular activ-
ity. None of them remained very long and little came of
their efforts. When Carter and Nabokov were at the college there were seminars on musical compositions 1 but the
musicians were at odds with Buchanan, who thought that
one should study the scores without listening to and without ever having listened to the sounds represented by the
staves with their whole notes, half notes and quarternotes,
etc., and without even knowing that those marks might refer to sounds.
In August 1937 Buchanan had written on the subject of
the college and the fine arts to an inquirer:
In our study of liberal college education, we have been forced
to consider the bookish classics as the basic medium of our
teaching. There is a sense in which great books are works of
fine art; on the other hand, we realize very vividly that we are
ignoring, or seeming to ignore, the classics in the fine arts
proper. When we have consolidated our program, we shall
turn very definitely to the problem of teaching the fine arts as
well as the liberal arts. In the meantime we shall proceed tentatively with extracurricular activities in the fine arts. 19
Buchanan had a theory about the fine arts, namely that
at the Renaissance they had become substitutes for the
sacraments. He no doubt would have liked to have St.
John's discover the right way of combining divine arts,
liberal arts, fine arts, and manual arts. During the BarrBuchanan era, however, little was done to encourage the
study of works of fine art besides musical works. Edgar
Wind of the Warburg Institute gave some excellent lectures
on the School of Athens, the frescoes of the Sistine ceiling, and Hogarth, but that was about all. When later Jacob
Klein became dean, he even called in question the meaningfulness of the term "fine arts" as applied in common to
music and the visual arts. Herbert Swartz, in a radio talk in
1939, explaining the place of music in a liberal arts college
program, argued that what music, painting, and sculpture
have in common is that they are end arts rather than useful
arts, arts the products of which are to be understood and
enjoyedfor their own sake rather than arts the products of
which are to be used. In any case, whether works of music, painting, and sculpture are all of the same kind or not,
Eugene Thaw in the nineteen forty-five-forty-six Yearbook
wrote convincingly, "It seems not too much to ask an undergraduate college concerned with producing well-educated men to take notice of Michelangelo and Pheidias." 20
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
The Fight with the Navy in War Time
and the Departure of Barr and Buchanan
This is a strange, and perhaps incomprehensible, story.
The struggle over the possible acquisition by the Navy of
the St. John's campus had three distinct episodes. Its outcome was favorable to St. John's in the judgement of nearly
everyone except Barr and Buchanan, whose departure
shortly thereafter astonished nearly everyone. The first of
these episodes began in 1940. It was announced to the
faculty in September of that year that there was a rumor
that the United States Naval Academy, whose grounds
are separated from the St. John's campus only by a street, 1
wished to acquire the campus. Admiral Wilson Brown,
then Superintendent of the Naval Academy, and Stringfellow Barr, who had very amicable relations with each
other, went together to Washington on October first to
appear before the Senate Appropriations Committee who
were considering the question of the acquisition of the
campus by the Navy for the expansion of the Academy.
An exchange of correspondence between Barr and Brown
occurred shortly after that. Barr wrote, "It seems to me
desirable that I should repeat to you in writing what I
then stated to the Committee. You will recall that I was
asked by Senator Byrnes [)ames Byrnes, later Secretary of
State] what would be my attitude as President of St. John's
College towards a proposal by the Navy Department to
purchase the College in order to expand the present facilities of the Naval Academy. You will also doubtless recall
my reply that as President of the College I would urgently
recommend to the trustees that they reject such a proposal unless it could be clearly demonstrated that the exigencies of the national defense program required the
Naval Academy to secure our property rather than other
available land."'
Shortly after that the Secretary of the Navy, Frank
Knox, stated that the Navy would make no attempt to
take the St. John's campus provided that St. John's agree
to two conditions laid down by President Franklin Roosevelt: (1) that the college not dispose of her property without first notifying the Navy and giving the Navy a chance
to purchase it; (2) that the land not be used for any other
purpose than that of the college and that no other than
college buildings be erected upon it. Agreement on the
second condition put an end to an attempt by the Annapolis Housing Authority to take by condemnation one and
a third acres of the campus as a site for low cost housing
for white people of moderate income. Barr was only too
glad to assent to these conditions-and by january 31, 1941,
he was able to report to the St. John's board that "the
question of the Naval Academy's acquiring the property
of the College was now definitely settled." 3
The second episode was very brief. It occurred in july
1942 when the United States was already at war, and the
Navy was faced with the necessity of expanding its facili-
9
�ties for the training of officers. On July 15, Barr wrote to
Knox reminding him of positions taken by St. John's and
the Navy when Wilson Brown had been Superintendent
of the Academy, and reporting that an aide to the then
superintendent had appeared on the campus to look it
over to see whether it could be used as an indoctrination
school for Naval Reserve officers. He went on to say, "It is
most doubtful whether the College could survive transplanting," but continued, "I am certain you will not construe this letter as an objection to the Navy's defense
[presumably of the country]." The secretary replied that
such surveys as the aide was making were being made at
institutions in many places and that there was no specific
proposal about the St. John's campus 4
The third episode, the dramatic culmination, began early
in 1945. On February 28 of that year, Barr reported to the
board as follows:
Because of persistent and increasing rumors that the Navy
Department is about to seize St. John's College or that the
I told him [Roosevelt] of Senator Tydings' inquiry regarding St. John's College. He said he thought it was desirable to
acquire the St. John's grounds and buildings but would like to
see the buildings preserved. I told him I shared his feeling and
reported Admiral King's suggestion that we grasp the nettle
firmly and go across the river to acquire land for expansion of
the Academy. The general conclusion was:
a) Acquire St. John's
b) Keep the buildings and grounds intact
c) Proceed with acquisition of land across the river for
further additions to the Academy.
This entry in Forrestal's diary supports Admiral King's
statement to Mrs. Howard that the rumor had "substantial basis in fact.'' No one connected with St. John's knew
of this meeting with Roosevelt, but, because the persistent
rumor did appear to have a basis in fact, the Board, no
doubt with the approval, if not under the prompting of
Barr and Buchanan, on April21, 1945, formulated the following statement of policy to be sent to Secretary Forrestal:
State of Maryland might 'acquire' the College (possibly in order later to 'decide' to hand it over to the Navy Department) I
ought to report to you what facts I possess.
On February 13, 1945, Delegate Bertram L. Boone (D. 5th,
Baltimore) introduced a bill in the Maryland House of Delegates calling for appointment of a commission to examine the
possibility of the State's taking over St. John's. In presenting
the bill, Mr. Boone announced, 'The thing is going to pot.'
The next day I stated in the press that 'St. John's College is
not for sale,' and a 'spokesman' for the Navy Department
said, 'The Navy has no present plans for the acquisition of St.
John's College.'
Meanwhile, Mrs. Douglas Howard, widow of Captain Howard, once Dean of St. John's College, had written Admiral
Ernest King, who is an intimate friend of hers, urging that the
Navy Department disassociate itself from the Navy-Realtor
clique, a clique that has now resorted to defamation of the
College in order to squeeze it out of town. Mrs. Howard
showed me Ernie's reply which was to the effect that the
rumor has substantial basis in fact, that the Academy was to
be approximately double its size and that the most available
land for this expansion was our campus and the three blocks
of residence property between the Academy and King George
St. Admiral King stated that the matter would be decided by
the President at the end of this month. I have since learned
that Admiral Wilson Brown, formerly Superintendent of the
Academy and most friendly to the College, now once more
Naval Aide to the President, has several times blocked seizure.
I am personally disinclined to pull wires to prevent seizure.
The Navy, it should be reported, feels more threatened than
we do-by the California delegation in Congress, which is
working to get a part of their establishment here moved to the
Coast. This fact is known to the business element of Annapolis, who therefore feel the College is standing between them
and their bread and butter. The College's relations with the
town have, therefore, never been more painful during my
administration.5
On March 9, James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy,
and Admiral Chester Nimitz had lunch with President
Roosevelt and, as F orrestal reports in his Diary:6
10
(1) The present uncertainty, aggravated by irresponsible
rumors of imminent condemnation of the College's property,
is harmful to the morale of the College, to its relations with
the Annapolis community, and to the College Administration's ability to exercise its function wisely or to plan intelligently for future building now in prospect. An immediate
understanding with the Navy Department is accordingly
imperative.
(2) This Board is entrusted with and proposes to fulfill the
continuing responsibility of carrying on vigorously the function of the College, and cannot deal with its property as mere
real estate and buildings. The Board believes that this function could be carried on elsewhere, in spite of obvious problems and difficulties, if an adequate site and the means of
acquiring it could be made available. The Board, however,
feels that it cannot properly or intelligently consider removing the College from its historic site in Annapolis unless the
Navy Department formally represents to the Board that acquisition of the College property is required in the national
interest. The Board, obviously, could not undertake to pass
judgment on the decision of the Navy Department. Nor does
the Board propose to interpose any objection to such acquisition, provided that the arrangements permit the Board, in its
judgment, to continue to carry on the work of the College,
and to discharge its legal and moral obligations to its college
community, including faculty, students, alumni, the benefactors, creditors, and the State of Maryland.
(3) The Board respectfully records its conviction that the
Navy Department has a genuine responsibility in the premises to dispose of the present damaging impasse by plainly advising the Board at this time whether or not it now requires
the College property for the national welfare; and furthermore, whether or not present plans for the future will require
it. [Statement of Policy, Buchanan Files, Houghton Library,
Harvard University.]
This statement of policy was the crucial document in
the whole affair. Whereas Barr's letter to Knox four years
earlier had said, "It's doubtful whether the College could
SUMMER 1982
�survive transplanting" this statement says "The Board believes this function [the function of educating] could be
carried on elsewhere in spite of obvious problems and difficulties, if an adequate site and the means of acquiring it
could be made available." Also, whereas in 1940 Barr had
said that he would recommend that the trustees reject the
proposal for acquisition unless it could be clearly demonstrated that the exigencies of the national defense program required the Naval Academy to secure the College
property, etc., this statement makes no mention of clear
demonstration but asks that the Navy Department formally represent to the board that "acquisition of the College property is required in the national interest." It goes
on to say that the board "could not undertake to pass
judgment on the decision of the Navy Department," that
the board does not "propose to interpose any objection to
such acquisition whether by formal condemnation or negotiation, provided that the arrangements permit the
Board, in its judgment, to continue to carry on the work of
the College," etc.
The admirals and the Secretary of the Navy little knew
what this statement of policy was going to get them into.
They understood it as tantamount to an offer. That this
was the Navy's interpretation is clear from the subsequent testimony of Admiral Moreell, Chief of the Bureau
of Yards and Docks, before the Senate Naval Affairs Committee. Admiral Moreell stated, "The acquisition of the
adjoining property [the St. John's campus] has been under
consideration for a number of years, but the Department
has not advanced this project due to the reluctance of the
board of governors and visitors of the college to dispose of
this property. The college authorities, however, have recently expressed a willingness to dispose of the property
to the Navy Department in the event that it is needed in
connection with the Naval Academy." 7 It certainly appeared to the admirals that St. John's was ready to let the
Navy have the campus provided the Navy did no more
than declare the acquisition necessary in the national interest and provided that the college receive sufficient
compensation to enable it to continue elsewhere as the
distinguished liberal arts college it had become.
The board's action, interpreted as it was by the Navy,
precipitated the Navy's final and most serious attempt to
acquire the St. John's campus. On April 27, 1945, Secretary Forrestal wrote to Thomas Parran, chairman of the
St. John's board and at that time Surgeon General of the
United States: "It now appears that the expansion of the
Naval Academy will require the acquisition of the present
property belonging to St. John's College." But he had not
declared that the acquisition was necessary in the national
interest. On May 5 Dr. Parran, in a letter to Secretary Forrestal, inquired when the Navy would acquire the campus
since plans for the removal of the college would require
more definite knowledge. A month later Forrestal replied
that negotiations would begin immediately.' The Naval
Affairs committees of the Senate and the House still had
to approve the acquisition, but the Secretary of the Navy
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
seems to have had little doubt that they would. On May 7
Buchanan wrote to Robert Hutchins:
Perhaps you ought to know my opinion of certain events
here. You will have seen our communication with James Forrestal. You may not have heard the reply. It is that the expansion of the Naval Academy will require the acquisition of the
St. John's campus. Action waits on Congressional appropriation. What had appeared in prospect as a desirable event is,
because of numerous circumstances, becoming a crisis.
Where do we go and how? Do we go or not?9
Hutchins replied, "You really say something when you say
the Naval Academy requires the campus and is merely
waiting for an appropriation. This sounds to me like an
Opportunity." 10
What was the event desirable in prospect? Was it the acquisition of the campus by the Navy? And was the "Opportunity" that of moving the St. John's program from a
place where, as Buchanan thought, the Navy was always
making it difficult to pursue the program? A letter of
about the same time from Buchanan to Senator Wayne
Morse claimed that the Naval Academy dominated Annapolis commercially, was pandered to by the city and
county governments, and that the state government paid
more attention to the Navy than to the public welfare_Il
He clearly thought that the mere presence of the Navy
was damaging not only to the college, but to the town and
to the state and to the citizens of the town and of the
state.
As early as June 1944 he had written in a letter to his
son Douglas,
Winkie and I have today been wondering again how to extricate the program from this place. It is now quite clear that the
academy is what has kept this poor little college sick for almost a century. We can't see how we move alive but we can
see that we ought to have done so a year ago last January
when we had to decide whether we would suspend operations or take youngsters. We should have suspended; a great
deal of damage to the idea itself has. resulted from our noble
decision to carry on.
A year later he wrote, "The Navy has turned the town into
a little Fascist community governed by greed and fear."
What caused the event desirable in prospect to become
a crisis? For one thing, alumni tend not to think of the college they have attended as an invisible chartered entity
which might exist on other land and in other buildings
than those in which they used to eat, sleep, study, and
learn. So it was with St. John's alumni. The president of
the Alumni Association, William Lentz, a Baltimore lawyer, wrote Senator Radcliffe on behalf of the association,
protesting the annexation of the campus by the Academy.
He stated that the alumni "feel that it is detrimental to
the national interest to emasculate a college of liberal arts
unless the most pressing and urgent national necessity requires it," and expressed the opinion of the alumni that
11
�"it should not be left solely to the Navy to determine
whether that existed,"i2
The public generally seemed to view what was happening as a fight between the Navy with the power of the big
federal government behind it and little St. John's. Almost
immediately the people of Annapolis and people all over
the country took sides. The Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun in editorials opposed the Navy's taking the
campusY The Post proposed in a front page editorial that,
because of the importance for national security of the
naval and air bases in the Pacific, there should be established a second naval academy on the Pacific coast. Several senators from western states were in support of that
proposal. Josephus Daniels, who had been Secretary of
the Navy under Woodrow Wilson, in a letter to the Post
supported a Pacific coast Academy as opposed to expanding the Academy in Annapolis. The businessmen of Annapolis became alarmed. They wanted the business that
would necessarily result from doubling the brigade of midshipmen and hence greatly increasing the payroll of the
Academy. They were fearful that Annapolis might lose
the Naval Academy, and their fear was strengthened by a
statement from Lansdale Sasscer, the Congressman for
the Congressional district in which Annapolis lies, to the
effect that, if a second academy were established on the
west coast, "The education of midshipmen will be rapidly
transferred to the West Coast Academy and Annapolis
will become only a specialist or post graduate school. ...
we have got to either press for the expansion program at
the Naval Academy which includes the taking of St. John's
... or else lose the Academy." The mayor of Annapolis,
William U. McCready, reminded his fellow Annapolitans
that the Naval Academy brought to the community $17.5
million in annual payroll.
In the meantime Buchanan had discovered the Dartmouth College case. Dartmouth College was incorporated
by royal charter in 1769. After the American Revolution
and in the course of a controversy between the Republicans and the Federalists of that time, the New Hampshire
legislature changed the college charter in such a way as to
replace the self-perpetuating body of trustees with a stateappointed body of trustees and a board of overseers. This
would have transformed what had been a private college
into a public one directly under the control of the state
government. The state court of New Hampshire upheld
the act of the legislature, but the Supreme Court of the
United States reversed the decision. Chief Justice John
Marshall, delivering the opinion of the Court, argued that
the acts of the legislature were unconstitutional because
they were in violation of Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution which declares that "no State shall ... pass any
bill ... impairing the obligation of contracts." The royal
charter was regarded as a contract establishing a corporation and therefore not subject to change by the legislature.
There is perhaps a superficial resemblance between the
New Hampshire government's attempt to change the institutional character of Dartmouth and the attempt by
12
the Navy in 1945 to acquire the St. John's campus. In each
case there was an action on the part of government against
a liberal arts college. But the federal government in 1945,
unlike the New Hampshire government in 1816, was not
attempting to alter the terms of the charter with which
the state legislature had incorporated St. John's in 1784
and hence was not "impairing the obligation of a
contract." Moreover, the Naval Affairs Committees were
concerned that St. John's receive adequate compensation
for the campus and buildings so that the College could
continue as the same incorporated entity on another site.
Buchanan, however, saw St. John's as leading a fight on
behalf of all liberal arts colleges as the old trustees of Dartmouth had fought and won a fight that had implications
for all liberal arts colleges in America. It was his ambition
to get the United States government to abjure the exercise against liberal arts colleges of the power of eminent
domain. As he wrote to his son Douglas on July 9, 1945,
"The big question is whether the right of eminent domain
could be challenged under the Dartmouth case. I think it
could be if one wanted to build a case." Recalling that it
was St. John's that in Aprill945 had first suggested negotiations with the Navy, he said in a statement to the Board
on July 31, 1946,
We were important members, albeit revolutionary members,
of the great liberal arts college family. We were ready to take
on the responsibilities of leaders in that family, and to fight
our own battle without their help if necessary or to fight their
battle for them if it could be seen that way. 14
It is a recognized principle that the federal government
may exercise the power of eminent domain and acquire
property whenever it is "necessary and proper" for it to
do so in order to carry out any of the powers conferred on
it by the Constitution,!' and it may do that by condemnation proceedings if no other way is open. It would seem
that no exception could be made in the case of liberal arts
colleges. The question, however, of the necessity and propriety of the Navy's takihg the St. John's campus remained.
No one voiced any desire to destroy St. John's as an invisible chartered entity or as such an entity embodied in
persons and buildings. For many Annapolitans it was just
a question of money. If the Academy were expanded in
Annapolis, that would mean more money for the town. If
the federal government compensated StJohn's financially
in a way that would make it possible for it to continue
with its liberal arts program elsewhere, why should reasonable persons object? The editor of the Annapolis Evening
Capital did go so far as to say,
In cold logical fact, Annapolis has been given the choice between allowing the expansion of a great national institution,
the only one of its kind in the United States and one which
guards the safety of the people and a college which is but one
of many similar educational institutions.l 6
On June 27, 1945, a five-man House Naval Affairs subcommittee, of which Congressman Sasscer was a member,
SUMMER 1982
�visited Annapolis to inspect possible sites for the expansion of the Academy. They also interviewed two Annap·
olis real estate men to inquire about possible sites for the
relocation of St. John's. The realtors suggested two sites
near Annapolis. One was at Holly Beach farm, the Labrot
estate at Sandy Point, nine miles away. The other was at
Hillsmere on the South River, five miles away. A Baltimore architect, James R. Edmunds, who was then president of the American Institute of Architects, after studying
the situation, indicated several other possibilities for the
expansion of the Academy than the purchase of the St.
John's campus. 17
The St. John's board, including Barr and Buchanan,
were indeed concerned, as the statement of policy of
April 21, 1945, shows, with having the wherewithal to
continue the function of the college on another s1te m the
event that the Navy were to take the campus. But they
meant what they said when they made removal of the college conditional upon the Navy's representing to the Board
that acquisition of the college property was necessary m
the national interest. They may have come to mean a little
more than they said, since Buchanan was soon to talk
about requiring the Navy not simply to "declare" but to
"find" national interest. Neither the House committee
nor the Senate committee on naval affairs had up to this
point made any formal declaration. Nor had the Secretary
of the Navy. There were hearings before the committees
during June 1945. Richard Cleveland, then secretary of
the board, appearing before the Senate Committee on
June 20, attempted to make sure that the committee understood what importance the board attached to the declaration of necessity:
First, the Board makes clear that it will cheerfully accede to
genuine national necessity if such necessity, as distinguished
from convenience, is formally declared by the Navy. We now
assume that the function of making such a determination and
declaration of national necessity has been transferred from
the Navy Department to the Congress [i.e. the Congressional
committees]. The Board waives the privilege of arguing national necessity, but waives this privilege on condition that
the terms of acquisition permit the Board, in its judgment, to
continue to do its duty to the college community. While waiving conditionally the right for itself to argue the issue of necessity, the Board would be disappointed if the Congress did
not exhaustively explore that issue. We respectfully suggest
that in the distinction between necessity and convenience
there is an issue much more significant in America's future
than the continued life of this little college . ...
If this Committee should determine that acquisition of the
College property is not in the national interest, we respectfully urge that the basis of that determination be made so explitit and so decisive that no rational persons can ever again
raise the issue. We would first prefer to stay in Annapolis under conditions which would guarantee our future security. If
that security is compromised, we would prefer to move to a
site where no overshadowing neighbor holds the power of
eminent domain . ... If the air is once cleared, we have no
fear of our ability to live near the Naval Academy in harmony
and mutual respect.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Perhaps this is no Dartmouth College case. But it is being
watched all over this nation by citizens who hope that this
war has not been fought in vain. 18
It seems that the committees and the Navy Department
still did not grasp what St. John's was after in asking for a
declaration of national necessity. 19 At a meeting in Secretary Forrestal's office on July 20, 1945, at which Senator
Walsh, Chairman of the Senate Committee and Congressman Vinson, Chairman of the House Committee and various naval officers were present, and after they had agreed
on the project of expanding the Academy by acquiring
the St. John's campus, "the Secretary suggested (and it
was adopted as the course of action to be pursued) that
Admiral Jacobs prepare a letter for the signature of the
Secretary to the Trustees of the College outlining the results of this meeting-i.e., that because of the needs of
the post-war Navy the Academy must be expanded, that
the Navy intends to acquire the property by negotiation if
possible, or by condemnation if necessary."20
I think it unlikely that the Board had received or knew
of this letter when they met the following day. 21 Buchanan
was obviously disappointed with what had, or had not,
happened at the board meeting. For the day after in a
lengthy statement to the board, after referring to "eight
years of startling success of the St. John's program," he
berated the members for not pressing hard enough for a
declaration about national interest. He said,
The Statement of Policy of April 21st recognizes and embraces our highest duty as trustees in the present situation,
namely to 'find' national interest. It does this by refusing to
give or sell the campus or discuss damages until national interest is 'found' by due process of law . .. finding na~ional interest allows of two courses, negotiation and condemnation.
The Navy has chosen the former. On a pfevious occasion
[probably in 1942] we chose condemnation and the Navy
withdrew.
He went on to say, "This campus is essential to this College and its defence is therefore a part of the essential obligation of its trustees." He tried to frighten the board by
saying that they could possibly be indicted for not fulfilling their function as trustees, and threatened to resign
from the board as a vote of lack of confidence in them 22
Whether there was some communication with the Navy
Department or the committees during the following week
is not clear. On July 27, probably as a consequence of the
July 20 meeting in Forrestal's office, Senator Walsh (D.
Mass.), the chairman of the Senate committee, was writing a letter to Talbot Speer, president and publisher of the
Evening Capital. He wrote that the Senate committee had
taken no action except to authorize the Navy Department
to enter into negotiations with the authorities at St. John's
to see if an agreement on price could be reached." He affirmed his understanding that the college would remain in
possession of the campus for the next academic session. A
postscript shows that, no sooner had he dictated the letter,
than it was brought to his attention that this would not
13
�satisfy th~ St. John's board. He was given the impression
that what the board wanted was simply action by the two
congressional committees to authorize the Navy Department to acquire the campus as distinguished from negotiation with a view to agreeing on a price. This authorization
he proceeded to obtain from House Committee and a majority of the Senate Committee by the next day.
On August 4 a special committee of the St. John's board
meeting in Baltimore decided on the basis of published reports that the congressional committees had not met the
first of the board's conditions. They agreed that they
should not at this point compromise their position by entering into any negotiation; and they requested Cleveland
to seek a personal talk with Senator Walsh.
Cleveland met with Walsh on August 15 at the senator's
office and, while he was trying once more to make the college's position clear, Vinson walked in. So he got to talk
with the chairmen of both committees. Apparently, almost up to this point they had believed, perhaps because
of the Statement of Policy of April 21, that St. John's
wanted to sell the campus without any fuss. They had
now begun to understand that this was not the case. According to Cleveland, Senator Walsh seemed to get the
point about the declaration of national necessity, though
Congressman Vinson did not. Vinson "stated emphatically
that he thought his committee would find national interest if that was what we wanted."24 Both chairmen declared that the action of their committees up to that time
had not authorized condemnation but only negotiation
and agreed that nothing would be done until the Congress
reconvened on September 5, after which hearings would
be held. At a hearing in the fall on October 2, the Board
stated flatly that they "would not willingly sell the historic
campus at any price."25
About this time Buchanan used the Collegian, the student newspaper, to report to the college as follows: "With
the help of Mr. Edmunds the College was resting its whole
case on the architectural problem and alternative solutions [for the expansion of the Academy] instead of the
campus. It should be noted that the full force of the attack
[St. John's attack on the Navy) was actually Socratic irony,
tending to make the Navy produce its wind egg ....
"October 24th has been set as the day for the formal decision by the House Committee. Will the College celebrate with hemlock or a feast in the Mess Hall in Bancroft? We shall discuss immortality26 while the ship returns
from Aegina.
"Proposed toast in case it is drunk in hemlock:
Here stood
St. John's College
The first liberal arts college
To be condemned by
The United States Government
1784-1946
They knew not what they did." 27
14
October 24 came and went and there was no announcement from Washington. In a new formal statement of policy dated November 21, 1945, the board reviewed the
events since April and asserted that it was unfortunate
that the project had proceeded so far before the record
could be set straight on this simple but vital point. They
expressed their belief that the Navy had not proved that
the acquisition of the St. John's campus was necessary in
the national interest. "It is now clear," they said, "that the
extensive testimony before the Committees fell far short
of establishing national necessity for this unprecedented
use of the power of eminent domain; that failure of the
Committees to act after their long and exhaustive inquiry
is in itself evidence that no such necessity exists. In the
light of these developments in the long interval since the
Board's statement of policy, made on April21, 1945, that
statement is no longer a realistic or relevant statement of
the Board's duty as trustees, and is hereby withdrawn.
The Board therefore regard the unfortunate episode as
concluded, and trust that the Naval Academy and St.
John's are now free to proceed in mutual respect and harmony, as neighbors, to get on with their respective functions." They urged the congressi0nal committees to declare
the acquisition not necessary in the national interest and
urged the Secretary of the Navy to withdraw the project,
stating their belief that the government should make a public declaration that "the Government does not intend to acquire in any manner, the campus of St. John's College." 28
Nothing conclusive was heard from the Naval Affairs
Committees or the Navy Department until well into the
next year. In the meantime Paul Mellon, who had been a
student at St. John's in 1940-41 and who had, by generous contributions over the years, kept the college going on
a year-to-year basis, wrote to Stringfellow Barr,
Ever since last June I have been interested in setting up an
initial endowment for the St. John's Program. I have been deterred from action by doubts as to whether St. John's College
could keep its campus. I have felt that if it could not, it might
be more in the interest of American education to find a
stronger institutional vehicle to develop the education program which you initiated at St. John's.
I am therefore placing at the disposal of the Old Dominion
Foundation securities currently producing an income of
$125,000 per annum, which may be used for the purpose of
developing the type of education now carried on at St. John's
College and for other similar purposes. I am instructing the
Trustees of the Foundation that they may rely on your personal judgment as to whether St. John's can be expected to
preserve the campus or whether some other college you may
designate will better carry out my intention and thereby become the beneficiary of these funds. 29
When later Mellon agreed to contribute a total endowment of $4.5 million, it looked as if St. John's College
might for the first time in its history become financially
secure. But the question whether it would or not depended on the outcome of the Navy affair. At the same
SUMMER 1982
�faculty meeting at which Barr announced Mellon's intention to endow the program, whether at St. John's or elsewhere, he also announced that "the Chairman and the
Secretary of the Board were requested to visit the Senate
and House Committees on Naval Affairs in an attempt to
clarify the relation of the College with the Navy." Evidently the committees had still not formally declared that
the only possible way for the Navy to expand its facilities
for training officers (it being assumed that such expansion
was necessary for the security of the United States) was by
acquiring the land and buildings of the college.
On june 8, 1946, Thomas Farran, the chairman of the
St. John's Board, received a letter from Secretary Forrestal
which read as follows:
I have recently been informed by the Chairman of the
House Naval Affairs Committee that his Committee on
May 22, 1946, adopted the following resolution regarding the
utilization of St. John's College Property for expansion of the
Naval Academy:
'Whereas, a proposal has been made that the expanding
program of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis,
Maryland, requires the acquisition of the adjoining site of St.
John's College,
'Whereas the Naval Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives has held long and exhaustive hearings thereon,
and
'Whereas upon careful consideration it is the sense of this
committee that the National Emergency neither justifies nor
warrants the proposed acquisition of St. John's campus. Now,
therefore, be it resolved
'That said proposed acquisition officially known as Project
No. 460C of the Real Estate Division, Bureau of Yards and
Docks, Navy Department, is hereby disapproved.'
I am happy to advise you that the Navy Department acquiesces in this action of the House Naval Affairs Committee.
The Department was most reluctant to undertake the acquisition of the college property for the required expansion of
the Naval Academy in Annapolis since the Department
recognizes that only considerations of extreme national
necessity would justify the taking of the campus of a liberal
arts college . ...
It is believed that the present considerations of the House
Naval Affairs Committee and the Department . .. coupled
with the fact that the Department has other plans for the expansion of the Academy in Annapolis, makes it possible for
the college to pursue its plans with assurance that it will be
secure on its historic site for the foreseeable future . ...
A few days after Forrestal's letter the Senate Naval Affairs Committee followed the example of the House Committee. Dr. Farran observed that this action consequent
upon the House Committee resolution and the secretary's
letter, drove "the third nail in the coffin" of the project to
take the campus.
Cleveland, who knew that Barr and Buchanan wanted
from the Congressional committees a strong statement
that it was not the policy of the United States government
to use the power of eminent domain against liberal arts
colleges, had been engaged in some activity behind the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
scenes to get from the House committee a statement that
would satisfy them and keep them with the program at St.
John's in Annapolis. He even persuaded Carl Vinson,
chairman of the House Committee, who had already written a letter saying that the committee's resolution wrote
"Finis" to the project, to write a second stronger letter.
But in spite of the death and burial of the project, and in
spite of this stronger letter, and in spite of Forrestal's
declaration that only extreme national necessity would
warrant the government's taking the property of a liberal
arts college, and in spite of the assurance given about the
foreseeable future, Barr, after consulting with Buchanan,
decided that the securities promised by Mellon should not
come to St. John's. He suggested to the board that the St.
John's campus be turned over to the State of Maryland to
provide educational facilities for the state since the state
would be better able to protect the campus and that the
board should seek a safe place for the college. In the event
that the board did not accept his suggestion he would resign and "seek another college for the program." Buchanan
had said the year before that the campus was essential to
the college, and Barr had said that it was doubtful whether
the college could "survive transplanting." Now they were
saying something else.
Barr has always maintained that he was not satisfied
that the Navy had given any substantial assurance that
there would not be another attempt to take the campus. 30
But that was not his only reason, and probably not his
principal reason, for taking the money elsewhere. He
thought that he could not dispense with the help of Buchanan in continuing the program on another site under
the charter of St. John's or in establishing the program at
another college. 31 Buchanan would probably have left St.
John's even if the fray with the Navy had not occurred. In
early january 1945 he was already beginning to withdraw
from the full exercise of the office of dean. At the first faculty meeting of that year he reported that new adult education duties he had taken on in the District of Columbia
would necessitate the reduction of his decanal duties. On
January 18, 1945, Barr sent a memorandum to the treasurer instructing him that the dean's salary had, at the
dean's request, been reduced by the board from $5,500 a
year to $3,000 a year in view of other salaried employment
undertaken in Washington. He would continue as "the officer of instruction," i.e., as chairman of the Instruction
Committee, and as adviser to students in relation to their
studies. Buchanan himself in a letter to Cleveland about
two years later wrote: "If things had gone as usual, I would
have resigned during this year [1945-46] to go into adult
education or something else. I never was made for an administrator." On june 1, 1946, he announced that he would
take a year's leave of absence. It seemed clear to everyone
that the unique role he had played for the eight years that
he had portrayed as "eight years of startling success" was
coming to an end. In addition to that, as Barr describes it,
while he himself was exhausted from the fight with the
Navy, Buchanan was both tired and sick.32
15
�The board had, since 1937, been guided in practically
everything by Batr and Buchanan. They failed, however,
to concur in the opinion that there was just as much danger as ever that the Navy would soon again seek possession
of the St. John's campus. They were unwilling to abandon
the campus and move the college and the program, and
they were also unwilling to resign as trustees of St. John's
and become trustees of some other college yet to be char·
tered in Maryland or some other state. They had been
convinced by Barr and Buchanan of the worth of the program, and they were resolved to continue it at St. John's
and in Annapolis. They tried, but failed, to persuade Barr
and Buchanan to reconsider.
Buchanan professed surprise at the board's decision. In
fact, in a memorandum of July 31, 1946, addressed to them
he declared that it was "surprising to all" that the board
had decided to continue the St. John's program in Annap·
olis "even when it was clear that the original pilots could
not honestly take the risk as they saw it and weighed it." 33
He, nevertheless, spoke of the ready respect commanded
by the board's insight and courage, but also asserted that
the board's action did not "convince the ex-pilots that
their return would be safe or wise." He already had plans
for a larger enterprise which would grow from the cooper·
ation of St. John's and the new college. The aim was the
eventual establishment of a university which would be
composed of (1) a graduate school for research in the "liberal arts and philosophy," (2) an adult school with many
communities, and (3) several undergraduate colleges. For
the immediate future the new college somewhere other
than at Annapolis would, with the Mellon gift as endow·
ment, be a "small model of the whole." In addition to a
small undergraduate school, it would include a committee
on the liberal arts to become a nucleus of the graduate
school, "and it would be situated in a place suitable for
"cooperation with a lively industrial community in adult
education." He even suggested that for a certain period of
transition there be one board and one president for St.
John's and the new institution.
Looking back over the nine years, he commented on
the successes and failures of the program. While denying
once more that the program was an experiment designed
to prove or disprove an hypothesis, he affirmed that there
had been a common search for a true liberal arts college
and that the search was based on guiding principles and a
common comprehensive sphere for exploration. There had
been found a pattern of the liberal arts as embodied in the
great books and it had proved to be "workable, versatile,
instructive, fruitful, and heuristic." He spoke of the "high
level of teaching and learning we had already achieved be·
fore the war" as well as of serious sickness caused by the
war. The case for the endowment could now be based, he
mailltained on achievement rather than "mere paper
1
promises.''
The Navy affair itself he cited as evidence of the college's growth and strength. He assigned as a reason for the
college's suggesting negotiations with the Navy in the
16
statement of April 21, 1945, the desire to "discover and
clarify the foundations of our own existence." He meant
more than the particular and local factors affecting the existence of St. John's. He meant, as he had said earlier, that
St. John's had been leading a fight on behalf of all liberal
arts colleges insofar as their existence depends upon the
policies of the federal government.
A few days after this memorandum of Buchanan's the
board made public the following announcement:
The Board wishes to record publicly its deep satisfaction at
the favorable termination ofthe Navy Department's proposal
to acquire the campus of St. John's College and joins heartily
in the gratification expressed by Secretary Forrestal that this
solution will make it possible for the College and Naval Acad·
emy to continue their long history as friendly neighbors . ...
The Board believes that this solution . .. places the College
in a stronger position than it has been in its long history to
press forward with plans for the future . ...
The firm foundation now achieved in Annapolis also makes
it possible sometime in the near future, to further the estab·
lishment elsewhere of an additional college to carry on the
program developed and now secure in Annapolis. Fortunately
a generous gift for this purpose makes it practicable . ...
In furtherance of this project the Board has agreed to re·
lease Mr. Barr from the presidency of St. John's College as of
July l, 1947, or such other date as may be determined, in or·
der that he may take over the leadership of the proposed new
college. 34
Buchanan in a letter to Adler gave his own very different account of what had happened:
The Board, primarily Dick Cleveland, had not earlier imag·
ined, say nothing of believed, that Winkie was actually thinking
of weighing old St. John's and making an objective decision
on his findings. They therefore had thought only of their and
his efforts to set things straight in Annapolis and were them·
selves ready to settle for anything that the Navy and the Con·
gressional Committees would do; no one in his right mind will
refuse four and a half million dollars because of an uncertain
future.3 5
He proceeded to describe a meeting in Paul Mellon's
office in Washington at which he and Barr were present
together with Mellon, Adolph Schmidt, and Thomas Parran. Parran spoke for the Board. Buchanan's version of
what he said is as follows:
First the Board was determined to continue the St. John's
Program in Annapolis; I am sure this implied that the pro·
gram, like the library for instance, was the property of the
Board, copyrighted and patented in the name of the College.
We would be stealing if we took it elsewhere and taught it,
and they would tell the public so. Second, Winkie was tired
and probably sick like me, and he ought to take a leave of ab·
sence this year to recover his right mind and allow the decision to be postponed. Third, if Winkie insisted on accepting
the endowment to go elsewhere, he should give it to some institution with which he would have no personal connection.
Farran delivered these threats in the presence of Mellon and
SUMMER 1982
�Schmidt. They behaved admirably ... Mellon and Schmidt
were very clear about their original intention and their full
confidence in Winkie.
At the November faculty meeting in 1946, Barr announced the formation of a foundation to be known as
Liberal Arts Incorporated to be a formal instrument for
acquiring property for the new college. 36 He further stated
that Liberal Arts Incorporated might eventually become a
"higher governing board for both colleges." At the December meeting he informed the faculty that the site of
the new college would be the Hanna estate in the Stockbridge Bowl in western Massachusetts, that his resignation would take effect on December 31, 1946, and that
john S. Kieffer had been appointed acting president by
the board.
By this time Buchanan had left and was living in Richmond, Massachusetts, not far from Stockbridge. In a letter to Richard Cleveland in late November he made as a
tentative proposal that Liberal Arts Incorporated take
over the financial and educational direction of St. John's
from the trustees "exactly as Winkie and I had taken it in
1937 except that this time we would recommend other
personnel to do the job on the spot." 37 He added, "I wish
with all my heart that the Board had had confidence in
Winkie and me and had wished to come with us- .. -The
new enterprise has lost immeasurably by the Board's refusal to come with us. We have some money but we have
lost a college. I saw that this was so and that it was intended
to be so when you read your announcement to us. Winkie
and I have lost nine years of work unless you and the
Board relent and give us some help. I am not regretting
our decision but I am suggesting that you are making the
cost maximum." The board of St. John's made no re·
sponse to the proposal that Liberal Arts Incorporated be
given responsibilities that were not properly theirs.
Shortly thereafter, in a letter to Hutchins, Buchanan
recorded his reflections about what had happened at St.
john's 38 He claimed that a controlled search for a liberal
college had been started, that some liberal arts had been
set into motion within a framework of great books, that
there was enough initial success to justify that kind of
practice and that certain things had to be added, such as
the graduate school to sharpen the focus on subject matter, and full commitment to adult education. "It is also
clear," he went on, "that the next thirty or forty years offer a desperately receptive world for us to bring light to.
As I have said in print, this is the day of the liberal college
which has been waiting for twenty-four hundred years to
be born." In the same letter he says "we don't know what
we have been studying and teaching, and we ought to find
out."
The inconsistencies in Buchanan's statements make it
difficult to know what he was thinking. On the one hand,
he had reported to the board that the first eight years of
the program were "eight years of startling success." On
the other hand, he says that he and Barr will have "lost
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
nine years of work" if the board don't follow in his footsteps. On the one hand he says he doesn't know what he's
been studying and teaching. But on the other, he thinks
that he and his associates will bring light not just to a few
who might be interested in "the liberal college," but to
the world. Presumably he means more than a little light,
since it is something that the world has been waiting for
since the time of Plato and Aristotle.
Buchanan tried to get his old friends, Adler and McKeon,
to join him and Barr in Massachusetts. He also tried to get
Hutchins, Van Doren, and Meiklejohn to leave what they
were doing and join the new enterprise. All refused. A few
of the St. John's faculty were invited; they too refused, believing that the outcome of the contest with the Navy was
decisive and that there was much more uncertainty about
the new college than about the future of St. John's in Annapolis. Liberal Arts Incorporated, as Acting President
Kieffer announced to the faculty on january 11, 1947,
would contribute $150,000 to meet the operating deficit
that year at St. John's. It was understood that this would
fulfill the intention of Liberal Arts Incorporated to cause as
few difficulties as possible for St. John's, and that by the
summer of 1948 the two colleges would be independent
but free to enter into any form of cooperation that might
at the time seem wise.
It became clear early in 1947, less than a month after
Barr's departure from St. John's, that he was running into
difficulties in founding the new college. On january 25 he
wrote to Paul Mellon, "The size of the endowment was
measured to fit an entirely different problem from the
new one we now face. It would have run St. John's well.
But St. John's already had a campus, a plant in good order,
and equipment." Around the middle of the year he requested Mellon to release the entire benefits of the endowment fund to Liberal Arts Incorporated for other use
than the establishment of an undergraduate college. Mellon refused to do so on the ground that it had been his
intention only to endow a "college for undergraduates
similar in size and curriculum to St. John's." He noted in a
letter to Barr of june 24, 1947, "Through circumstances
beyond your control that project now appears unfeasible,
if not impossible, within any reasonable amount of time,
chiefly due to lack of qualified teachers and adequate
building funds." 39 Barr, however, has claimed that the
whole effort was sabotaged by Donald Shepard, who, as
vice-president of Mellon's Old Dominion Foundation,
had a good deal to do with the terms of the disposal of the
funds. 40 It was announced to the St. John's faculty at the
first fall meeting in 1947 that on August 1 Liberal Arts Incorporated had met in Stockbridge and decided to abandon the project of a new college. "U npropitiousness of
building," it was said, "and difficulties of cooperating with
the Old Dominion Foundation were the chief reasons for
the decision. "41 The endowment fund reverted to the Old
Dominion Foundation.
Thus ended the last attempt of Barr and Buch;man to
form an institution which would be a beacon for colleges
17
�and universities to follow. They did not in the succeeding
years keep in close touch with St. John's College and
knew very little about what was happening at St. John's.
There were a few times when they returned, upon invita·
tion, to lecture or to speak at Class Day or Commencement. One such occasion was Class Day in 1948 when both
Barr and Buchanan spoke. Buchanan in his speech urged
that the liberal arts should have a subject matter and that
the core of the St. John's curriculum should be, not metaphysical (which had earlier been his constant theme), but
political. A few days later, when he had returned to Massachusetts, he wrote President Kieffer a letter in which
he told him that the decision that Kieffer and the board
thermore that he never knew to what extent he had laid
the foundations for a building that through many vicissitudes, was to increase in worth.
Barr, reflecting upon these events many years later,
could say of his decision to leave St. John's and to use the
Mellon money to start another college, "I don't claim for a
second I made a ·wise choice."43
Unless othenvise indicated, all records of meetings of the faculty and of the
Board of Visitors and Governors are located in the archives of St. John's
College in Annapolis.
11
made to continue the program in Annapolis was Stupid
and blind and therefore highly irresponsible to the vision,
highly misleading to the community, and disloyal to whatever leadership Winkie and I provided."42 He claimed that
the original program was "a revolutionary blueprint, an
attempt to subvert and rebuild education," that it was a
bull-dozer "inside a Trojan horse which was to be let loose
once the walls of the sacred city were passed and left behind." He said, "I fought the Navy fight, with the few who
cared, out of piety to the sacred city" .... There were no
reinforcements, and there was no outside recognition of
the sacred city, only a faint sentimental wish to live in the
ruins." He maintained, presumably referring to the agree-
ment that St. John's should have the income from the
Mellon endowment until July I, 1948, that he and Barr
had a fit of personal generosity which did not blind them
but blurred their vision, and that out of their clear vision
of what was the only hope for the program together with
their blurred vision produced by the board's bad decision
had come "the ordeal of Stockbridge which could only
commit suicide because of its high courage and generosity
to St. John's." He said that "the program should be laid on
the shelf and forgotten," that it was "not even a pattern to
be laid up in heaven and beheld, but a poison corrupting a
household at St. John's" and that because of its being at
St. John's it "would become a poison wherever it was
tried." He asserted that he and Barr had in 1937 made "a
mistaken historical judgment and a bad educational prediction" and that they should be counted out of any plans
that Kieffer and the people at St. John's might make.
Scott Buchanan had over a period of twenty years invested an enormous amount of love and work in formulating, planning, and trying to bring into being, whether at
St. John's or elsewhere, what had come to be called the St.
John's program. At this point it seemed to him that it had
all come to nothing. The tragedy, if it is to be dignified by
that name, is not that he had failed, or that the program
had failed, or that others had failed him, but rather that
he could not question the wisdom of actions that by denying the college the endowment it otherwise would have
had, jeopardized the existence of the only college where
had been established, however precariously, the program
for which he more than anyone was responsible, and fur-
18
Chapter IV
1. Walter Lippman, "Today and Tomorrow," New
Tribune, December 27, 1938.
2. Baltimore Evening Sun, January 23, 24, 25, 1939.
3. Life magazine, February 5, 1940.
Yorl~
Herald
Chapter V
1. John Dewey, "Challenge to Liberal Thought," Fortune, August
1944.
2. Alexander Meiklejohn, "A Reply to John Dewey," Fortune, January
1945.
3. John Dewey, Letter to the Editors, Fortune, March 1945.
4. Sidney Hook, Education for Modern Man, New York 1946, 209.
5. Hook, 2!, 213.
6. Buchanan to Hook, November 10, 1938, St. John's College
Archives.
7. Buchanan to Hook, December 15, 1942, St. John's College
Archives.
8. Hook to Buchanan, January 26, 1943, St. John's College Archives.
9. Buchanan to Emily S. Hamblen, April27, 1940, St. John's College
Archives.
10. Nineteen Forty Yearbook, 15.
11. St. John's Collegian, October 27, 1939, 1.
12. Nineteen Forty-two Yearbook, 14.
13. Nineteen Forty-two Yearbook, 25.
14. Nineteen Forty-three Yearbook, 20.
15. Robert Hutchins thought this a good idea anyway, believing that
the last two years of high school were usually wasted.
16. Nineteen Forty-four Yearbook, 7.
17. Nineteen Forty-four Yearbook, 8.
18. Nineteen Forty-five-Forty-six Yearbook, 11.
19. Buchanan to H. G. Cayley, August 25, 1937, St. John's College
Archives.
20. Nineteen Forty-five-Forty-six Yearbook, 13.
Chapter VI
1. In 1868 the Naval Academy had purchased from St. John's a triangular piece of land of which a part of King George Street is one side.
2. St. John's Faculty Minutes, September 1940.
3. St. John's Board Minutes, January 13, 1941.
4. Buchanan Files, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
5. St. John's Board Minutes, February 25, 1945.
6. Diary of James V. Forrestal, Copy in the Navy Operational Archives,
Naval History Center, Washington, D.C.
7. Record of the hearing before the Committee on Naval Affairs of the
U.S. Senate (June 20, 1945). Navy Library, Washington, D.C. Cf. the
testimony of Captain T. R. Wirth, representing the Superintendent of
the Academy, at the same hearing.
8. Copies of letters in Buchanan Files, Houghton Library.
9. Buchanan to Hutchins, May 7, 1945, Buchanan Files, Houghton
Library.
10. Hutchins to Buchanan, May 9, 1945, Buchanan Files, Houghton
Library.
SUMMER 1982
�11 .Buchanan to Senator Wayne Morse, undated, Buchanan Files,
Houghton Library,
12. Baltimore Sun, April.1945.
13. Baltimore Sun, July 3, 1945; Washington Post, July 30, 1945.
14. Dean's Nine Year Report (1946), St. John's College Archives.
15. Cf. the Supreme Court decision in Kohl v. United States (1875).
16. Evening Capital, October 22, 1945.
17. Testimony before the House Naval Affairs Committee, October 9,
1945.
18. Statement of Richard Cleveland before the Senate Naval Affairs
Committee, June 20, 1945.
19. Captain T. R. Wirth indeed stated at the Senate Committee hearing
of June 20, "Acquisition of the St. John's property is urgently required in
the national interest to provide the area determined to be essential to
the continuance of the Naval Academy mission: the fundamental education and training of the number of young men required for the commissioned personnel of the United States Navy." This, of course, was
not an official declaration of policy by the Navy Department or the
Committees.
20. Diary of James V. Forrestal, copy in the Operational Archives,
Naval History Center, Washington, D.C., 403-4.
21. Minutes of the Board for 1944-47 are missing.
22. Buchanan Files, Houghton Library.
23. Evening Capital, August 1, 1945.
24. Memorandum by Richard Cleveland to the St. John's College
Board, St. John's College Archives.
25. Statement of Policy by the Board of Visitors and Governors of St.
John's College, with reference on Navy Department proposal to acquire
the St. John's campus (November 21, 1945), St. John's College Archives.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
26.
the
27.
28.
29.
Buchanan had discovered from studying the Dartmouth case that
charter of a college confers upon it immortality.
Dean's Report, St. John's Collegian, October 19, 1945.
Statement of Policy, November 21, 1945.
Mellon to Barr, appended to the St. John's Faculty Minutes for
April 27, 1946.
30. Transcript of a recorded conversation with Allan Hoffman, July 27,
1975: "I thought, why not put an end to it by putting the College where
the huge beast couldn't suddenly attack again? And it was clear that a lot
of people in the Navy were damned determined to attack again." Since
1946 there has been no attempt by the Navy to take the campus. St.
John's College Archives,
31. Hoffman conversation.
32. Hoffman conversation,
33. Memorandum to the Board of Visitors and Governors, July 31, 1946,
St. John's College Archives.
34. Announcement by the Board of St. John's College, August 3, 1946,
Buchanan Files, Houghton Library.
35. Buchanan to Adler, August 14, 1946, Adler Files, Institute for
Philosophical Research, Chicago.
36. St. John's Faculty Minutes, November 2, 1946,
37: Buchanan to Cleveland, November 20, 1946, Buchanan Files,
Houghton Library.
38. Buchanan to Hutchins, December 5, 1946, Buchanan Files,
Houghton Library.
39. Buchanan Files, Houghton Library.
40. Hoffman conversation.
41. St. John's Faculty Minutes, September 15, 1947.
42. Buchanan to Kieffer, June 8, 1948, St. John's College Archives.
43, Hoffman conversation.
19
�Schiller's Drama-Fulfillment
of History and Philosophy in Poetry
Gisela Berns
Friedrich Schiller, the great German dramatist at the
end of. the eighteenth century, was not only a great poet,
but also a great historical and philosophical thinker. A
contemporary of the Founding Fathers of this country
and akin to them in thoughts and feelings about the political issues of the time, Schiller was inspired by the ideas of
the ancients in their striving for human excellence, but
committed to the ideals of a modern world in its fight for
the rule of law, based on the recognition of human free·
dom. At a time of social and political revolutions, Schiller
believed that art, and only art, through its mediation between the senses and reason, might be able to prepare
man for the difficult task of governing himself. Schiller's
drama-from The Robbers (started at the time of the Declaration of Independence) to William Tell (finished at the
time of jefferson's first presidency)-deals with one
theme: the problematic relationship between freedom
and rule. Focusing on great revolutionary ideas like the
conflict between nature and convention, explored in The
Robbers and in Intrigue and Love, or on great revolutionary figures of history like Fiesco, Don Carlos, Wallenstein,
Mary Stuart, The Maid of Orleans, and William Tell, all of
Gisela Berns, a Tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis, delivered the
original version of this essay as a lecture in Annapolis on February 26,
1982. Its main theme is the subject of her forthcoming book, Schiller's
Wallenstein~Fulfillment of History and Philosophy in Poetry.
20
Schiller's plays, even The Bride of Messina, modeled on
the Oedipus story, wrestle with the problem of freedom.
In recognition of this historical role, Schiller was awarded
honorary citizenship of the French Revolution (that the
document, issued in 1793, did not reach him till 1798,
long after the revolution vanquished its signer, Danton,
Schiller always considered an ironic reminder of the problematic nature of freedom).
An account of Schiller's life1 and work,2 culminating in
a discussion of Wallenstein, his highest artistic achievement, shall show in what sense he understood poetry to
be a fulfillment of history and philosophy.
Schiller's life, from 1759 to 1805, was, except for his early
childhood and the beginning years of his marriage, a
never ending struggle. First against a tyrannical ruler, later
against poverty and prejudice, finally against a fatal illness
which racked the last fifteen years of his short life. A
struggle it was, this life of Schiller's, but what a glorious
struggle! A testimony to man's ability to overcome or, in
Wallenstein's proud words, to the conviction that "it is
the mind which builds itself the body." 3 Schiller's father,
by his own report, offered a prayer at Schiller's birth:
And you, Being of all beings! You I begged, after the birth of
my only son, that you would add to his strength of mind what
I, for want of education, could not reach.4
Schiller's early plans of studying theology were rudely
shattered by the interference of the Duke of WurttemSUMMER 1982
�berg in whose newly established military academy the
promising sons of the country were educated towards
various professions. Separated from his family, Schiller
spent his young years, from age thirteen to twenty-one, in
an atmosphere of oppressive regimentation. After a year
of broad general education in sciences and humanities,
with strong emphasis on philosophy, Schiller, at first,
studied law, later, because "bolder" and "more akin to
poetry," medicine. A cross between medicine and philosophy, his dissertation On the Connection between Man's
Animal and Spiritual Nature for the first time explores a
theme to surface again and again in Schiller's poetry.
The great breakthrough of his passion for poetry came
after Schiller, at sixteen, had been introduced to Shakespeare. Emboldened by his love for Shakespeare, he was
obsessed with the idea of writing a play that would expose
all the evils of conventional society. Full of admiration for
the ancient heroes of Plutarch and the modern sentiments of Rousseau, Schiller, for years, feverishly and passionately worked on his Robbers. Forbidden to read or
write poetry, he risked life and liberty in the production of
this first play of his. With the performance of The Robbers, in 1782, at the famous theater of Mannheim, Schiller
gained immortal fame and lost his homeland. Hailed by
one reviewer as the coming "German Shakespeare,'' 5 he
was ordered by the Duke, under penalty of arrest, to stop
writing anything but medical works. With the help of a
young musician, Schiller, in disguise, fled to Mannheim
where he hoped to find support for his life as a poet. Even
there he had to spend months in hiding, at work on his
Fiesco and Intrigue and Love, before the authorities accepted him. In a letter of 1783, possibly meant to hide his
whereabouts from the Duke, Schiller toyed with the idea
of emigrating to America. Undecided among medicine,
philosophy, or politics, he envisioned a life in the New
World that, above all, would allow him to be a poet:
But tragedies, for that matter, I shall never cease to writeyou know my whole being hangs on it.6
A contemporary of the Founding Fathers of this country, inspired by the ideal of human freedom, and set on
writing tragedies (no matter what profession he would
have taken up in this New World), Schiller might have
given us that sorely missing drama on the American Revolution. Such a drama (as Harold Jantz, in his article William Tell and the American Revolution, suggests7) could
have been written either from the British point of view
(something like Aeschylus' Persians) or from the American
point of view (something like Schiller's William Tell).
In the spirit of revolution, Intrigue and Love, a "Bourgeois Tragedy," scourges the nobility's injustices against
the lower classes, most poignantly in the heartrending account of the forced recruitment of German troops to be
sold to the British for the Revolutionary War in America.8
With The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa, a "Republican
Tragedy," Schiller, for the first time, strikes a theme
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
found, in one form or another, in all his subsequent plays:
the tragedy of the great political hero who, for the sake of
his vision of a more perfect world, destroys the existing
world, including himself.
After the "Storm and Stress" of The Robbers, Fiesco,
and Intrigue and Love, Schiller, in 1787, reached a first
classical height with Don Carlos-not only because of his
change from rhythmic prose to verse, but even more
because of his sovereign treatment of the theme, the conflict between revolutionary idealism and imperialistic realism. The stark contrast between good and evil of Schiller's
earlier plays turns to a dark and haunting complexity in
Don Carlos. The tragic beauty of Don Carlos has moved
more than one great writer after Schiller to integrate parts
of it into their own work: Dostoyevsky, the theme and setting of the "Grand Inquisitor" story in The Brothers
Karamazov; Thomas Mann, the burning admiration of
Tanio Kroger for the breathtaking scene in Don Carlos,
where the king, the absolute ruler of the catholic world, is
said to have wept-a scene to which Mann, in his late
Essay on Schiller, confesses to have "early given his homage."' Apart from its literary influence, Schiller's Don
Carlos always had a political voice and was felt to be a
threat to tyrants. During Hitler's Third Reich, both William Tell and Don Carlos disappeared from the German
theater. As Oscar Seidlin, in his article Schiller: Poet of
Politics, reports:
A quarter of a century ago, when darkness descended upon
Schiller's native country, a darkness that was to engulf all of
mankind in the shortest possible time, a theater in Hamburg
produced one of Schi11er's great dramatic works, Don Carlos.
It is the play which culminates in the stirring climax of its
third act, the confrontation scene between King Philip of
Spain and the Marquis Posa, the powerful verbal and intellec~
tual battle between the rigid and autocratic monarch, con~
temptuous of mankind and gloomily convinced that only
harsh and tyrannical suppression can preserve peace and
order in his vast empire, and the young, enthusiastic advocate
of revolutionary principles, who demands for his fellow citi~
zens the untrammeled right to happiness, the possibility of
unhampered self~development and self~ realization of every in~
dividual. The scene rises to its pitch with Marquis Posa's
brave challenge flung into the king's face: "Geben Sie Gedankenfreiheit!-Do give freedom of thought!" When this line,
one of the most famous in all German dramatic literature, resounded from the Hamburg stage in the early years of Hitler's
terror, the audience under the friendly protection of darkness
burst out, night after night, into tumultuous applause. So
dangerous and embarrassing to the new rulers proved a single
verse of the greatest German playwright, who by then had
been dead for fully a hundred and thirty years, that the management of the theater was forced to cut out the scandalous
line. But the audience, knowing their classic well enough
even if it was fed to them in an emasculated version, reacted
quickwittedly: from that evening on they interrupted the per~
formance by thunderous applause at the moment when Mar~
quis Posa should have uttered his famous plea on the stage_,.
and did not. After these incidents the play was withdrawn
from tlie repertoire altogether. 10
21
�In prepar,ation for Don Carlos, Schiller had occupied
himself more and more with historical studies and, finally,
published a History of the Revolt of the United Netherlands from the Spanish Rule. This comprehensive, dramatically written work, in 1789, won him a professorship
at the University of Jena. Besides lecturing on Universal
History and Aesthetics, Schiller devoted himself to his
second major historical work, the History of the Thirty
Years War, later to become the basis for his monumental
trilogy on Wallenstein, the imperial general of the Thirty
Years War.
The summer before settling in )ena, Schiller had met
Charlotte v. Lengefeld, his future wife, in whose circle of
family and friends the young poet, every evening, read
from Homer and the Greek tragedians. Filled with a kind
of Grecomania, Schiller threw himself into translating Euripides' Iphigeneia in Aulis, an activity he hoped would
give him classical purity and simplicity. In a letter to the
sisters v. Lengefeld Schiller writes:
My Euripides still gives me much pleasure, and a great deal
of it also stems from its antiquity. To find man so eternally
remaining the same, the same passions, the same collisions of
passions, the same language of passions. With this infinite
multiplicity always though this unity of the same human
form. 11
In the spirit of those days, Schiller composed a long
melancholy poem, The Gods of Greece, that laments the
disappearance of beauty and nobility from the modern
world:
"Als die Cotter menschlicher noch waren,
Waren Menschen gbttlicher.
When the gods still were more human,
Men were more godlike.
This immersion in Greek antiquity-and the study of
Kant that followed-became crucial for Schiller's aesthetic writings.
A terrible illness of Schiller's, in 1791, stirred rumors of
his death. At the discovery that Schiller was still alive,
months later, a circle of admirers in Denmark prevailed
upon the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Augustenburg to
ease the burden of the poet's daily existence and, for a
few years, bestow a pension on him. Schiller accepted, full
of joy over the unexpected freedom to devote himself to
the "formation of his ideas":
Serenely I look to the future-and if the expectations of
myself should prove to have been nothing but sweet illusions
with which my oppressed pride took revenge on fate, I for one
shall not lack the determination to justify the hopes two excellent citizens of our century have placed in me. Since my
lot does not allow me to act as benefactor in their way, I shall,
nevertheless, attempt it in the only way that is given to meand may the seed they have spread unfold in me into a beautiful blossom for mankind. 12
22
With the same mail, Schiller ordered Kant's Critique of
Pure Reason. Earlier that year, in the throes of his illness,
reading the Critique of Judgement had convinced him
that nothing short of a thorough understanding of Kant's
philosophical system would satisfy him. For three years, a
long time in so short a life as Schiller's, he studied Kant
and wrote his own philosophical essays: On Tragic Art, On
Grace and Dignity, On the Sublime, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, and On Naive and Sentimental Poetry. On
the Aesthetic Education of Man he wrote, as a gesture of
gratitude, in the form of letters to the Duke of Schleswig·
Holstein-Augustenburg.
Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man sketches
out a history of mankind from a state of nature to a state
of civilization, where the progress of the species towards a
fulfillment of human nature depends on the fragmentation of nature in the individual. Schiller complements this
view of history, reminiscent in part of Rousseau's Second
Discourse, with the hope that a higher art might restore
the totality of nature, destroyed by art in the process of
civilization. Far from romantic longing for a "Golden
Age" of nature, Schiller exclaims:
I would not like to live in a different century and have worked
for a different one. One is as much a citizen of one's time as
one is a citizen of one's country.B
At the beginning of his poem The Artists, a panoramic
history of mankind, written in 1789, Schiller speaks of
man as "the ripest son of time, free through reason, strong
through laws," standing "at the close of the century" in
"noble, proud manliness":
Wie schOn, o Mensch, mit deinem Palmenzweige
Stehst du an des Jahrhunderts Neige,
In edler stolzer Mannlichkeit,
Mit aufgeschlossnem Sinn, mit Geistesflille,
Voll milden Ernsts, in tatenreicher Stille,
Der reifste Sohn der Zeit,
Frei durch Vernunft, stark durch Gesetze,
Durch Sanftmut gross, und reich durch Schatze,
Die lange Zeit dein Busen dir verschwieg,
Herr der Natur, die deine Fesseln liebet,
Die deine Kraft in tausend Kampfen tibet
Und prangend unter dir aus der Verwildrung stieg!
Like Hamilton, in Federalist One, and Madison, in Federalist Fourteen, Schiller calls his contemporaries to the task
of deciding the fate of mankind:
Der Menschheit Wtirde ist in eure Hand gegeben,
Bewahret siel
Sie sinkt mit euch! Mit euch wird sie sich heben!
The dignity of mankind is in your hands,
Preserve it!
It sinks with you! With you uplifts itself! 14
Both Hamilton and Madison speak of the people as the
ones to decide the case:
SUMMER 1982
�Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they
have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and
other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for
antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? To this
manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and
the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theater, in favor of private rights and
public happiness.
Schiller, however, as in the Prologue to Wallenstein,
judges the artists to be responsible for the legacy of mankind:
Und jetzt an des Jahrhunderts ernstem Ende,
Wo selbst die Wirklichkeit zur Dichtung wird,
Wo wir den Kampf gewaltiger Naturen
Und ein bedeutend Ziel vor Augen sehn,
Und urn der Menschheit grosse Gegenstande,
Urn Herrschaft und urn Knechtschaft wird gerungen,
Jetzt darf die Kunst auf ihrer SchattenbD.hne
Auch hohern Flug versuchen, ja sie muss,
So1l nicht des Lebens Bohne sie beschamen.
Now at this century's impressive close,
As actuality itself is turned
To art, as we see mighty natures locked
In struggle for a goal of lofty import,
As conflict rages for the great objectives
Of ffian, for masterdorn, for freedom, now
Art is allowed assay of higher flight
Upon its shadow stage; indeed it must be,
Lest it be put to shame by life's own stageY
consciousness of the Moderns. Anticipating much of
Hegel's philosophy of history, both in perspective and in
formulation, Schiller portrays man's historical development
as progress from a naturally to a rationally given form of
humanity 18 In homage to this kinship of thought, Hegel
chooses two lines from Schiller's early poem Friendship as
Finale of his Phenomenology of the Spirit. The slight
change he makes in speaking of "Geisterreich" ("realm of
spirits") rather than "Seelenreich" ("realm of the soul")
points, I think, to a crucial difference between Hegel and
Schiller. The fragmentation of human nature in the individual for the sake of greater differentation in the species
moves the tragic poet more than the philosopher:
But can it be that man should be fated to neglect himself
for any end? Should nature, through her ends, be able to rob
us of a perfection which reason, through hers, prescribes for
us? It, therefore, must be false that the development of the
single faculties necessitates the sacrifice of their totality; or
even if the law of nature tended there ever so much, it must
be up to us to restore, by a higher art, this totality of our
nature which art has destroyed. 19
Aiming at a balance between reason and the senses,
Schiller (who, in 1793, was rereading both Kant's Critique
of Judgement and Homer's Iliad) uses a Homeric simile:
Reason herself will not battle directly with this savage force
that resists her weapons and, as little as the son of Saturn in
the Iliad, descend, acting herself, to the gloomy theater. But
from the midst of the fighters she chooses the most worthy,
attires him, as Zeus did his grandson, with divine weapons
and, through his victorious power, effects the great decision. 20
Anticipating an objection to his concern about aesthetic
education in a time of social and political revolutions,
Schiller claims that the "path to freedom" leads through
"the land of beauty." 16 The contemplation of beauty, because of its mediation between the senses and reason,
might be able to prepare man for the challenge of freedom. Looking back to the beginnings of civilization, Schiller states:
This use of Achilles as symbol of noble, and sometimes
tragic, beauty is only one of many in Schiller's work. In his
poem The Gifts of Fortune, Schiller extols the honor the
gods bestow on Achilles, in his poem Nenia, their lament
over him at his death. The idea, symbolized by Achilles, of
truth manifesting itself in beauty, and therefore speaking
to us through the senses as well as reason, implies a new
appreciation of the senses:
Nature does not make a better start with man than with the
rest of her works: she acts for him, where he cannot yet act
himself as free intelligence. But it is just this which makes
him human that he does not stop at what mere nature made
him to be, but possesses the power through reason to retrace
the steps which she anticipated with him, to transform the
work of compulsion into a work of free choice and to elevate
the physical necessity to a moral one.
The path to divinity, if one can call a path what never leads to
its destination, is opened up for man in his senses. 21
Deeply conscious of the challenge,
that the physical society, in time, may not cease for a moment,
while the moral one, in the idea, forms itself, that for the sake
of man's dignity his existence may not be endangered,l7
Schiller strives for a model of humanity that combines the
natural beauty of the Greeks with the historical selfTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Clearly in answer to Plato's Republic, Schiller considers
"the priority of the sensuous drive" in man's experience
"the clue to the whole history of human freedom.""
In a highly dialectical sequence of steps, Schiller presents first the synthesis of the senses and reason in man's
contemplation of beauty, then the synthesis of the material and the formal drive in man's play drive, and finally
the synthesis of the physical and the moral necessity in
man's aesthetic freedom. Aware that aesthetic freedom, as
a state of being, is only an ideal, but that, as momentary
balance between the senses and reason, it is part of our
human experience, Schiller proclaims one of the most
provocative sentences of his work:
23
�Man plays only where, in the full sense of the word, he is
man; and he is fUlly man only where he plays.B
The freedom of the aesthetic state that results from a balance between the necessity of the moral as well as the
physical state Schiller considers the "highest of all legacies, the legacy of humanity":
It, therefore, is not only poetically permitted, but philosophically right, if one calls beauty our second creator. For although she only makes our humanity possible and, for the
rest, leaves it up to our free will how far we want to actualize
it, she shares this trait with our original creator, nature, who
likewise provided us with only the capacity for humanity, but
left the use of it -to our own determination of will. 24
Like Plato and Hegel, before and after him, Schiller understands man's development from a natural to a moral
being in terms of an analogy between the individual and
the species. But where Plato and Hegel insist on the sovereignty of reason over the senses, Schiller claims that "the
path to the head has to be opened through the heart," for
the species as well as for the individual: 25
The dynamic state can only make society possible by overcoming nature through nature; the ethical state can only
make society (morally) necessary by subjecting the single to
the general will; the aesthetic state alone can make society actual because it consummates the will of the whole through
the nature of the individuaF6
In explanation, Schiller maintains that "beauty alone we
enjoy, at the same time, as individuals and as species, that
is, as representatives of the species."
Interpreters of Schiller's aesthetic theories have always
wondered whether, for Schiller, the aesthetic or the moral
state is finally the highest form of humanity. Like Meno' s
opening question about virtue, this dilemma has no direct
answer. In terms of actual achievement, the moral state
presents the height of human perfection, the aesthetic
state an ideal comparable only to the life of the Olympian
gods:
But does such a state of beautiful semblance exist, and
where is it to be found? As need, it exists in every finely tuned
soul, as reality, one might find it, like the pure church and the
pure republic, only in a few select circles, where not mindless
imitation of the ways of others, but inherent beautiful nature
guides human behavi(_)r, where man goes through the most
complex situations with bold simplicity and calm innocence,
and neither finds it necessary to offend another's freedom in
order to assert his own, nor to throw away his dignity in order
to exhibit grace. 27
This combination of Grace (Anmut) and Dignity
(Wiirde), an ideal realized among the Greeks but lost in
modern times, Schiller sees preserved in Greek works of
art:
24
Mankind has lost its dig11ity, but art has saved and preserved
it in significant stones; truth (Wahrheit) lives on in semblance
(Tiiuschung), and from the copy (Nachbild) the original (Urbild) shall be reconstituted."
This perspective, for Schiller, defines the artist's relationship to his time:
The artist certainly is the son of his time, but woe to him if,
at the same time, he is its pupil or even its favorite. Let a beneficent deity snatch the suckling betimes from his mother's
breast, nourish him with the milk of a better age and allow
him to reach maturity under a far-off Grecian sky. Then,
when he has become a man, let him return, a s_tranger, to his
own century; yet, not in order to please it with his appearance, but terrible as Agamemnon's son, in order to purify
it. The material he certainly will take from the present, but
the form from a nobler time, yes, from beyond all time, borrowed from the absolute unchangeable unity of his being. 29
This comprehensive task of the artist, to span the whole
history of human civilization in an attempt to give mankind its fullest possible expression, Schiller discusses more
specifically in On Naive and Sentimental Poetry. Understanding the poets as "preservers and avengers of nature,"
he distinguishes between two types, the Naive poet as
''being nature,'' the Sentimental poet as ''seeking nature.''
Expressive of two states of mankind, Naive poetry of a
union, Sentimental poetry of a separation between man
and nature, both forms of poetry, in different ways, show
a perfection of art: Naive poetry, as "imitation of reality,"
by fulfilling a finite goal, Sentimental poetry, as "presentation of the ideal," by striving for an infinite goal.
Schiller's terms Naive and Sentimental might sound
confusing at first. They certainly do not mean what they
mean today. The Naive poet, like a god behind his work,
lets the world speak for itself. In this sense, Schiller considers not only Homer, but also Shakespeare and Goethe,30
Naive poets. The Sentimental poet, on the other hand, an
intellectual presence in his work, reflects on the world he
portrays. In this sense, Schiller considers most modern
poets, including himself, Sentimental poets.
Striving for an ideal of poetry, Schiller wonders whether
and how far a work of art might combine classical individuality and modern ideality. To "individualize the ideal"
and "idealize the individual," in Schiller's eyes, would not
only constitute "the highest peak of all art," but also serve
as that "higher art," expected to restore the totality of
human nature which art had destroyed in the process of
civilization.
Understanding On Naive and Sentimental Poetry "so to
speak" as ua bridge to poetic production" 31 Schiller, again,
begins to write poetry-first philosophical poems, later
ballads and historical dramas:
I have, at the same time, the intention, in this way to reconcile
myselfwith the poetic :Muse whom, through my falling away
SUMMER 1982
�to the historic Muse (a fall indeed) I have grossly offended. If I
should succeed in regaining the favor of the god of poetry, I
hope tO hang up in his temple the spoils which I have labored
to obtain in the realm of philosophy and history, and to dedi~
cate myself to his service forever. 12
In 1795, Schiller writes to Countess v. Schimmelmann:
You wish, in your letter, that I continue in the poetic path
which I have entered. Why should I not, if you find it worth
your while to encourage me in it. Also by heeding your advice
I only follow the inclination of my heart. From the beginning,
poetry was the highest concern of my soul, and I only left it
for a time in order to return to it richer and worthier. 33
Encouraged by his friendship with Goethe, Schiller lived
the last ten years of his life for poetry. A constant source
of inspiration for both of them, this friendship had started
with a famous conversation in july of 1794. On the way
home from a meeting of the Society for Natural Science
in )ena, Goethe had outlined his Metamorphosis of Plants
to Schiller who, still a Kantian, had retorted: "This is no
experience! This is an idea!" To which Goethe, with courteous irony, had replied: "I certainly should be glad to have
ideas without my knowing and even to see them with my
eyes." In a letter following this conversation, Schiller
sums up the difference between them:
Your spirit, to an extraordinary degree, works intuitively,
and all your thinking powers seem to have compromised on
the imagination, so to speak, as their common representative.
... My mind works really more in a symbolizing way, and
thus I am suspended, as a kind of hybrid, between concept
and imagination, between rule and feeling, between technical
head and genius. This, especially in former years, has given
me a rather awk~ard appearance, in the field of speculation
as well as in the art of poetry; for, usually, the poet overtook
me where I was supposed to philosophize, and the philosophical spirit where I wanted to write poetry. Even now, it happens to me often enough that imagination disturbs my
abstractions and cold reason my poetry. If I can master these
two forces to the point that, through my freedom, I can assign
each one its limits, a beautiful fate shall still await me .... 34
Another friendship, with Wilhelm von Humboldt, the
great scholar in classical languages and literatures, was
crucial for Schiller's understanding of his relation to the
Ancients. In a Jetter of 1795, Humboldt writes:
I believe I can justify this seemingly paradoxical sentence that
you, on the one hand, are the direct opposite of the Greeks,
since your products exhibit the very character of autonomy;
and that, at the same time, you, among the moderns, again
are closest to them, since your products, after Greek ones, express necessity of form; only that you draw it from yourself,
while the Greeks take it from the aspect of external nature,
which is likewise necessary in its form. Wherefore also, Greek
form resembles more the object of the senses, yours more the
object of reason, even though the former, finally, also rests on
a necessity of reason, and yours, of course, also speaks to the
senses. 35
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
After the completion of his Bride of Messina, in 1803,
Schiller reminds Humboldt of this earlier exchange of
theirs:
My first attempt at a tragedy in strict form will give you
pleasure; you will be able to judge from it, whether as contemporary of Sophocles I might have been able to carry off a
prize. I have not forgotten that you called me the most
modern of all newer poets and, therefore, thought me in opposition to everything that could be called ancient.36
In an introduction to the publication of their correspondence, twenty-five years after Schiller's death, Humboldt
reminisces:
What every observer had to notice in Schiller, as characteristically defining, was that, in a higher and more pregnant sense
than perhaps ever in anyone else, thought was the element of
his life. Continual authentic intellectual activity almost never
left him, and only yielded to the more violent attacks of his
bodily illness. It seemed to him relaxation, not strain. This
showed itself especially in conversation for which Schiller
seemed most truly born. He never sought for a significant
topic of discourse, he left it more to chance to bring up the
subject matter, but from each he led the conversation to a
more general perspective, and after a few exchanges one
found oneself in the middle of a mind-provoking discussion.
He always treated the thought as a result to be reached together, always seemed to need the interlocutor, even if one
remained conscious of receiving the idea merely from him
.... Moving above his subject matter with perfect freedom,
he used every sideline which offered itself, and so his conversation was rich in words that carry the feature of happy creations of the moment. The freedom, however, did not curtail
the investigation. Schiller always held on to the thread which
had to lead to its end. 37
~chiller's gift for friendship which, throughout his life,
moved him, whether face to face or in letters, to engage in
conversation, found its early expression in a letter of April
1783:
In this wonderful breath of the morning, I think of you,
friend-and of my Carlos ... I imagine---Every poetic work
is nothing but an enthusiastic friendship or Platonic love for a
creation of our head .... If we can ardently feel the state of a
friend, we will also be able to glow for our poetic heroes. Not
that the capacity for friendship and Platonic love would simply entail the capacity for great poetry-for I might be very
able to feel a great character without being able to create it.
But it should be clear that a great poet has to have, at least,
the capacity for the highest friendship, even if he has notalways expressed it. 38
Schiller's return to poetry, and to dramatic poetry in
particular, begins with a work which stands out in many
ways. In the center between his four earlier and four later
plays, Schiller's Wallenstein, his only trilogy, surpasses the
25
�others both in subject matter and in poetic form. Like the
Republic among Plato's Dialogues, Wallenstein, among
Schiller's plays, in one dramatic poem of epic dimensions,
encompasses all the earlier and later themes.
Alternating between a stricter and looser dramatic
form, Schiller, in the last five years of his life, completed
Mary Stuart, a "Tragedy" about the Scottish queen and
Elizabeth I; The Maid of Orleans, a "Romantic Tragedy"
about Joan of Arc and her mysterious fight for France;
The Bride of Messina, a "Tragedy with Choruses," modeled on the Oedipus story; and finally William Tell, a
"Drama" about the Swiss fight for independent unity. Of
these later four plays only William Tell, Schiller's last
finished play (1805), is not a tragedy. Different from
Schiller's other heroes, Tell avoids the abyss of tragedy
because he does not presume any power beyond the
limits of republican government.
The translations of such diametrically opposed works as
Shakespeare's Macbeth (1801) and Racine's Phi!dre, (1805)
reveal the range of Schiller's dramatic sensibility as much
as his own poetic work.
The summit of that work, both in content and form, is
Schiller's Wallenstein, a modern historical drama about
the imperial general of the Thirty Years War. An account
of the last few days of his life that ends with his treason
and his assassination, Wallenstein confronts us with the
issue of war and peace as an expression of the tragic situa~
tion of man. Disregarding religious and political interests,
Wallenstein, a new Caesar, claims to be the only one able
to unify Europe. This ideal, though noble in itself, turns
into a treacherous weapon in the hands of lesser men and
thus, indirectly, is responsible for Wallenstein's tragic fall.
As Lincoln, later, formulated it in his Perpetuation speech:
Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task
they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition
would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a guber-
natorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these
places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a
Napoleon?-Neverl Towering genius disdains a beaten path.
It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.- It sees no distinction in
adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected
to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to
serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any
predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen.3 9
Like the Divided Line in Plato's Republic, Schiller's
Wallenstein, divided into the poet's Prologue and three
plays, leads from the realm of the visible to the realm of
the intelligible, from the realm of imagination and opinion to the realm of understanding and thought. Preceded
by a Prologue about the intricate relationship of life and
history to art and nature, the Wallenstein trilogy confronts
us first with Wallenstein's "shadow image," emerging
from the opinions of his soldiers, then with his "public
26
self,"' surrounded by his family and his generals, and finally with his "private self," suspended between the freedom of his heavenbound reflections and the necessity of
his earthbound actions.
The first dramatic poem after many years of historical
and philosophical studies, Wallenstein presents a fulfillment of Schiller's poetic ideal. As Hebbel's Schiller in his
Aesthetic Writings claims:
Unter den Richtern der Form bist du der erste, der einz'ge,
Der das Gesetz, das er gibt, gleich schon im Geben erfullt.
Among the judges of form, you are the first one, the only
Who, in the giving, fulfills already the law that he gives.
Schiller's "law" of aesthetic form, more than anything
else, implies a union between the natural grace and dignity of the Ancients and the historical self-consciousness
of the Moderns.
Even in Schiller's historical narrative of the confrontation between the Emperor, defending Catholicism, and
Gustav Adolf of Sweden, fighting for Protestantism, the
rise and fall of Wallenstein in the service of the Emperor
strangely suggests the story of Achilles. The historical figures and events of the Thirty Years War seem to fit the
poetic panorama of Homer's Iliad, where the natural enmity between Agamemnon, the ruler, and Achilles, the
hero, almost outweighs their national enmity against Hector, whose humanity encompasses both their natures. At
the end of his account of Wallenstein's role in the Thirty
Years War, Schiller writes:
Thus Wallenstein, at the age of fifty, ended his action-filled
and extraordinary life; raised by love of honor, felled by lust
for honor, with all his failings still great and admirable, unsurpassable if he had kept within bounds. The virtues of the ruler
and hero, prudence, justice, firmness and courage, tower in
his character colossally; but he lacked the gentler virtues of
the man, which grace the hero and gain love for the ruler.40
In answer to this Epilogue of the historian, the Prologue
of the poet promises:
Von der Parteien Gunst und Hass verwirrt
Schwankt sein Charakterbild in der Geschichte,
Doch euren Augen soli ihn jetzt die Kunst,
Auch eurem Herzen, menschlich naherbringen.
Denn jedes Ausserste fiihrt sie, die alles
Begrenzt und bindet, zur Natur zun1ck.
Blurred by the favor and the hate of parties
His image wavers within history.
But art shall now bring him more humanly
And closer to your eyes and to your heart.
For art, which binds and limits everything,
Brings all extremes back to the sphere of nature. 41
In the Preface to his Bride of Messina, Schiller speaks of
the relationship of historical truth to poetic truth or, as he
calls it in On Tragic Art, to the truth of nature:
SUMMER 1982
�Nature itself is only a spiritual idea, which never falls into the
senses. Under the cover of the appearances it lies, but it itself
never rises to·appearance. Only the art of the ideal is favored,
or rather shouldered with the task to grasp this spirit of the
whole and to bind it into bodily form. Though never before
the senses, this [type of art}, because of its creative power, can
bring it (the spirit of the whole} before the imagination and
thus be more true than all actuality and more real than all experience. From this it follows by itself that the artist cannot
use a single element from actuality as he finds it, that his work
must be ideal in all its parts, if it is supposed to have reality as
a whole and agree with nature.
Striving for a form of art that would be true both to historical reality and to nature, Schiller, in his Wallenstein,
surrounds the modern world of the Thirty Years War with
a mythical horizon of Homeric overtones- In a letter of
1794, in which he tells Korner of "writing his treatise on
the Naive and, at the same time, thinking about the plan
for Wallenstein," Schiller confesses:
In the true sense of the word, I enter a path wholly unknown to me, a path certainly untried, for in poetic matters,
dating back three, four years, I have put on a completely new
man.4Z
Reaching for the truth of nature by combining Naive and
Sentimental poetry, Schiller integrates Homer's "imitation of nature" into his own "presentation of the ideal."
In his advice to Goethe who, at the time of Schiller's work
on Wallenstein, was engaged in his Achilleis, an epic poem
about the death of Achilles, Schiller suggests:
Since it is certainly right that no Iliad is possible after the Iliad,
even if there were again a Homer and again a Greece, I believe I can wish you nothing better than that you compare
your Achilleis, as it exists now in your imagination, only with
itself, and in Homer only seek the mood, without rea1ly comparing your task with his . ... For it is as impossible as thankless
for the poet, if he should leave his homeground altogether
and actually oppose himself to his time. It is your beautiful
vocation to be a contemporary and citizen of both poetic
worlds, and exactly because of this higher advantage you will
belong to neither exclusively_43
Like catalysts in the process of establishing an ideal mode
of poetic expression, the echoes of Homer's Iliad in Schiller's Wallenstein accentuate its modernity.
In a major change from the History of the Thirty Years
War, Schiller's Wallenstein, like Homer's Iliad, begins in
the middle of the war. But where Homer, in the first
seven lines of the Iliad, describes the wrath of Achilles,
and the fateful clash between Achilles and Agamemnon,
Schiller, in the Prologue to Wallenstein, discusses the role
of art, and art's relationship to history and nature. Befitting the ancient epic poem, Homer's description centers
on Zeus and the fulfillment of his will; befitting the modern dramatic poem, Schiller's discussion centers on the
phenomenon of the great historical personality.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Both Homer's Iliad and Schiller's Wallenstein, with the
Catalogue of Ships and the first play of the trilogy, exhibit
the army and its various elements in a set picture. But
where the Catalogue of Ships, preceded by an invocation
to the Muse, merely lists the leaders of the Trojan war,
Wallenstein's Camp (the model for Brecht's Mother Courage), depicts the dissolution of life in the state of war
which, as a state of nature in the midst of the state of society, perverts all human values.
Both Homer's Iliad, in the center of its first half, and
Schiller's Wallenstein, in the center of its central play, The
Piccolomini, show the most tender human relationship
exposed to the harsh reality of war. But where Homer, in
the parting of Hector from wife and child on the wall of
Troy, focuses on the conflict between family and society,
Schiller, in the love scenes between Max and Thekla,
focuses on the conflict between individuals and society. A
poetic expression of Kant's Moral Law, founded on nothing but their hearts, love creates an island of freedom in
the sea of historical necessity.
Both Homer and Schiller, with the Shield of Achilles
and the chalice of the banquet at Pilsen, use the detailed
description of an artifact to highlight the world view implicit in each poem. But where the scenes on the shield
depict human life within the timeless order of nature and,
therefore, are self-explanatory, the scenes on the chalice
require an explanation not only for their reference to a
specific moment in human history, but also for their use
of allegory in portraying that moment.
Where Homer, in the First Book of the Iliad, tells of
Achilles' meeting with Thetis, and of her visit to Zeus on
Olympus, Schiller, in the opening scene of Wallenstein's
Death, the last play of the trilogy, shows Wallenstein concentrating on the long expected moment of the conjunction between the planets Venus and Jupiter. The change
of perspective, from trusting in divine powers that are
moved by will and fate to relying on heavenly bodies that
move in accordance with universal laws, does not affect
the hopes and the despair that either of them occasion.
Both Homer and Schiller, with dramatic suspense, portray their heroes in thoughtful solitude. But where Homer
paints the rich scene of Achilles sitting before his tent, in
the company of Patroclos, and singing about the glory of
men to the sound of his lyre, Schiller presents Wallenstein
absorbed in a monologue, reflecting on the relationship of
freedom and necessity in human nature. Unlike Achilles'
song which, in the creative process, unites freedom and
necessity, Wallenstein's reflection, in the form of a
syllogism with invalid premises, denies such a union and is
left with the fragments of abstract thought. Achilles' restful repose conveys the harmony of his song as much as
Wallenstein's restless stopping and starting the disharmony of his reflection.
In striking change from the History of the Thirty Years
War Schiller models the friendship between Wallenstein
and Max, the only non-historical character in the play, on
27
�the friendship between Achilles and Patroclos in Homer's
Iliad. Both Homer and Schiller, in the poetic constellation
of their characters and plots, make friendship, a middle
ground between a natural and a conventional bond, the
turning point for tragedy. Like the death of Patroclos for
Achilles, the death of Max brings Wallenstein closer to
realizing the tragic connection between freedom and ne·
cessity, borne out in the problematic relationship of
nature and convention.
The modern complexity of Schiller's Wallenstein, over
and against the relative simplicity of Homer's Iliad, shows
itself in content as well as in form. Expressive of the frag·
mentation of human nature in the course of history, Schiller's abstract language lends itself to portraying characters
that are torn between action and reflection. Striving for a
new totality of human nature, some of Schiller's characters parallel more than one of Homer's characters: Max,
both Patroclos and Hector; Thekla, both Briseis and Andromache. This double role of the modern characters is
the more significant, as it obliterates the enmity between
Greeks and Trojans and thus points to an individuality
which, viable or not, transcends the political nature of
man. Complementary to the parallels of characters, parallels of plots create a maze of poetic affinities· between the
ancient epic and the modern tragic poem. Discontinuous
and staggered, the parallels of plots seem to point not only
to the fragmentation of human nature in modern times,
but also to a new totality made possible through history.
Intent on exploring the way in which time and timelessness complement each other in the work of art, Schiller
and Goethe, in their letters during the years of Schiller's
work on Wallenstein, discuss the relationship of tragic to
epic poetry. Perceiving them as complementary art forms,
the one under the category of causality, the other under
the category of substantiality, Schiller defines tragedy as the
capture of ~'singular extraordinary moments," and epic
poetry as the depiction of "the permanent, persistent
whole of mankind."44 In agreement with Aristotle's no·
tion of tragedy as the more comprehensive art form of the
two,45 Schiller changes his early plans for an epic poem
about the Thirty Years War, centering on Gustav Adolf,
to his final ones for a dramatic poem, centering on
Wallenstein. Immersed in his task of translating Euripides,
in Schiller's eyes a poet on the way from Naive to Sentimental poetry, Schiller, in 1789, had written to Korner:
Let me add further that in getting better acquainted with
Greek plays I, in the end, abstract from them what is true,
beautiful and effective and, by leaving out what is defective, I
therefrom shape a certairi ideal through which my present
way shall be corrected and wholly founded.46
In a letter to Goethe, in which he speaks of "sketching
out a detailed scenario for Wallenstein," Schiller remarks:
I find the more I think about my own task and about the
way the Greeks dealt with tragedy that everything hinges on
the art of inventing a poetic fable. 47
28
Schiller's Wallenstein and Euripides' Iphigeneia in Aulis,
which Schiller had translated in 1788, apparently follow
the same poetic fable. In both dramas, the leader of the
army orders members of his family to join him at his
camp. In both, the political reasons for this move are disguised as personal reasons. In both, the heroic action of a
youth close to the leader interferes with his plans and finally causes tragedy and death. In the comparison with
Homer's Iliad, the main parallels were drawn between the
Emperor and Agamemnon, Wallenstein and Achilles, and
Max and Patroclos. In the comparison with Euripides'
Iphigeneia in Aulis, however, the main parallels would
have to be drawn between Wallenstein and Agamemnon,
Max and Achilles, and Thekla and Iphigeneia. The fundamental theme of Schiller's Wallenstein, the necessary connection between nature and convention, emerges in the
"living shape"48 of Wallenstein, presenting, in one
modern historical figure, Achilles, the archetype of the
natural hero, and Agamemnon, the archetype of the conventional ruler.
In the 26th letter On the Aesthetic Education of Man,
Schiller comments on the sovereign power of the artist:
With unlimited freedom he can fit together what nature
separated, as long as he can somehow think it together, and
separate what nature connected, as long as he can only detach it in his mind. Here nothing ought to be sacred to him
but his own law, as long as he only watches the marking
which divides his province from the existence of things or
realm of nature.
True to the reality of history, Schiller presents Wallenstein in a modern historical drama, set in the world of the
Thirty Years War. Separating what nature connected,
Schiller omits those features of the historical Wallenstein
that would disqualify him for being a tragic hero. True to
the reality of poetry, where the historical characters, as
poetic figures, become symbolic beings, Schiller presents
Wallenstein in a dramatic poem, surrounded by a mythical horizon. Fitting together what nature separated,
Schiller strikes parallels, respectively, between one historical and more than one mythical character, and between
one historical and more than one mythical plot. The fact
that the poetic figure of Wallenstein reflects the archetypes from Homer and Euripides in a cross between naturally opposed, but artistically complementary, characters
demonstrates both the fragmentation and the striving for
a new totality of human nature in the course of history.
By reflecting the Iliad as well as the pregnant moment before the Iliad, Schiller's Wallenstein, a living example of
the unity of time and timelessness, opens up a perspective
from history to epic as well as tragic poetry. With his integration of Greek "imitation of nature" into his own
"presentation of the ideal," Schiller seems to point to the
fulfillment of an ideal in which art and nature would meet
again.
SUMMER 1982
�To a letter in which Korner had suggested a few changes
in the plot of Wallenstein, Schiller replies with unusual
sharpness:
A product of art, insofar as it has been designed with artistic
sense, is a living work, where everything hangs together with
everything, where nothing can be moved without moving
everything from its place.49
Correlation of everything with everything can be detected
in more than one element of Schiller's dramatic poem:
the polarity of characters sustains the symmetry of plots
which, in concentric circles of scenes and acts, form the
whole of the trilogy. Corresponding to the three parts of
the Prologue, the three plays of Wallenstein explore the
relationship between nature and art, portrayed in the life
of individuals, representative of the life of mankind. Schil·
ler's integration of characters and plots from Greek epic
and tragic poetry into his modern historical drama con·
tributes to the symbolic nature of his poetic figures and
poses the question of the relationship between Ancients
and Moderns, fully discussed in his philosophical writings.
The correspondence between dramatic characters and
aesthetic principles ties together life and art by interpret·
ing them in terms of history, understood in the light of
nature.
The evidence of such complex relationships between
the various elements of Schiller's Wallenstein certainly
proves it to be a Hproduct of art/' but does it prove it to be
a "living work?" In a long, painstaking letter about Wallenstein, Humboldt writes to his friend:
We often talked with each other about this poem, when it was
scarcely more than sketched out. Yau considered it the
touchstone with which to test your poetic capacity. With admiration, but also with apprehension, I saw how much you
bound up in this task .... Such masses no one ever has set in
motion; such a comprehensive subject matter no one ever has
chosen; an action, the motivating springs and consequences
of which, like the roots and branches of a tremendous treetrunk, lie so far spread out and dispersed in such diverse
forms, no one ever has presented in one tragedy. 50
In a letter to Korner, Schiller confesses:
None of my old plays has as much purpose and form as my
Wallenstein already has; but, by now, I know too well what I
want and what I have to do that I could make the task so easy
for myself. 51
In the light of his notion of the poets as "preservers" and
"avengers" of nature, Schiller, in the letters On ihe Aesthetic Education of Man, compares the artist to Agamemnon's son who returns to the house of his fathers in order
to avenge the past on the present. Understanding him as a
contemporary and citizen of more than one world, Schiller advises the artist to take the material for his work from
the present, but the form from "a nobler time, yes, from
beyond all time, borrowed from the absolute, unchangeTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
able unity of his being." In compliance with his own advice, Schiller takes the material for his Wallenstein from
modern history, but the form from a blend of Naive and
Sentimental poetry, explicated in the aesthetic theories of
his philosophical writings. Fully aware of the artificial
nature of such a process, Schiller, nevertheless, expects to
achieve an ideal of poetry in which history and philosophy
would contribute to the vindication of nature. The fact
that no one, for now almost two hundred years, has seen
that Schiller's Wallenstein, in appearance the most
modern of his dramas, in substance is also the one where
Naive and Sentimental poetry blend most completely,
should be enough of an indication that history and philosophy, though indispensable for Schiller's work, are only
means towards a higher goal: their fulfillment in poetry.
To end with Schiller's own words:
All paths of the human spirit end in poetry, and the worse for
it if it lacks the courage to lead them there. The highest philosophy ends in a poetic idea, so the highest morality, the
highest politics. It is the poetic spirit that, for all three of
them, delineates their ideal which to approximate is their
highest perfection.sz
l. The main sources for my account of Schiller's life are: F. Burschell,
F. Schiller, In Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Hamburg-1958; G.v
Wilpert, Schiller-Chronik, Sein Leben und Schaffen, Stuttgart 1958.
With a few exceptions, references to secondary literature have been
kept out of the account.
2. Translations of dramatic works, C.E. Passage, Wallenstein, 1958; Don
Carlos, 1959; Mary Stuart, The Maid of Orleans, 1961; The Bride of
Messina, William Tell, Demetrius, 1962; Intrigue and Love, 1971, New
York; F.J. Lamport, The Robbers and Wallenstein, London 1979.
Translations of philosophical works, On the Aesthetic Education of Man,
R. Snell, New York 1954; E.M. Wilkinson and L.A. Willoughby, dual
language edition with extensive introduction and commentary, Oxford
1967; On Naive and Sentimental Poetry and On the Sublime, J.A. Elias,
New York 1966.
3. Wallenstein's Death, III, 13, 1813.
4. F. Burschell, F. Schiller, 7.
5. G.v. Wilpert, Schiller-Chronik, 41.
6. To Lempp (1), Jun. 19, 1783.
7. In A Schiller Symposium, ed. L. Willson, Austin, Texas 1960, 65-81.
8. See. T. Sowell, Ethnic America, A History, New York 1981,54: "The
British brought nearly 30,000 German mercenary soldiers to the col·
onies to try to put down the American rebellion. These were not individual volunteers but soldiers sold or rented to the British by the rulers
of various German principalities."
9. Th. Mann, Versuch ilber Schiller, Frankfurt a.M. 1955, 35 (Last
Essays: translation R. and C. Winston, New York 1966, 29, but without
this personal reference).
10. In A Schiller Symposium, Austin 1960, 31-48.
11. Dec. 4, 1788.
12. To Baggesen, Dec. 16, 1791.
13. On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Letter 2.
14. The Artists, 443-445.
15. Wallenstein, Prol. 61-69 (translation C.E. Passage; "great objectives,"
my correction).
16. Aesthetic Education, Letter 2.
17. Aesthetic Education, Letter 3.
18. Aesthetic Education, Letter 6.
29
�19. Aesthetic Education, Letter 6.
20. Aesthetic EduCation, Letter 8.
21. Aesthetic Education, Letter 11.
22. Aesthetic Education, Letter 20.
23. Aesthetic Education, Letter 15.
24. Aesthetic Education, Letter 21.
25. Aesthetic Education, Letter 8.
26. Aesthetic Education, Letter 27.
27. Aesthetic Education, Letter 27.
28. Aesthetic Education, Letter 9.
29. Aesthetic Education, Letter 9.
30. Note that Schiller's judgment (1794/95) dates from long before even
the First Part of Goethe's Faust {1806).
31. To Korner, Sep. 12, 1794.
32. To E.v. Schimmelmann, Jul. 13, 1793.
33. To C.v. Schimmelmann, Nov. 4, 1795.
34. To Goethe, Aug. 31, 1794.
35. To Schiller, Nov. 6, 1795.
36. To Humboldt, Feb. 17, 1803.
37. Ober Schiller und den Gang seiner Geistesentwicklung, 1830, in
Werke, II, ed. A. Flitner/K. Giel, Darmstadt 1969, 361-362.
38. To Reinwald, Apr. 14, 1783, quoted in F. Burschell, F. Schiller,
47-48.
39. A. Lincoln, "The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions," Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, Jan. 27,
1838.
40. History of the Thirty Years War, End of IV.
30
41. Wallenstein, Pro!. 102-107 (translation C.E. Passage; "within",
"heart", my corrections).
42. To Komer, Sep. 4, 1794.
43. To Coethe, May 18, 1798; in his earlier work Hermann and
Dorothea Goethe closely imitates Homer. Under the names of the nine
Muses, starting with Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, and ending with
Urania, the Muse of philosophical poetry, the nine Cantos of Hermann
and Dorothea present the whole realm of poetic expression. Set against
the historical background of the French Revolution, the story of Hermann and Dorothea, together with the different modes of poetry evolving from each other, seems to be a modern version of Homer's Shield of
Achilles. The Muse of epic poetry, however, not only governs the First
Canto, but her spirit prevades the poem as a whole: Homeric meter,
Homeric diction, Homeric epHhets and episodes, though softened from
heroic to idyllic tone, echo Iliad as well as Odyssey in every line of
Goethe's poem. As Goethe, in his elegy "Hermann and Dorothea,"
states it: "Doch Home ride zu sein, auch nur als letzter, ist schon" ("Yet,
to be a Homeride, even if only the last one, is beautiful").
44. To Goethe, Apr. 25, 1797; Aug. 24, 1798.
45. To Goethe, May 5, 1797.
46. Mar. 9, 1789.
47. Apr. 4, 1797.
48. Aesthetic Education, Letter 15.
49. Mar. 24, 1800.
50. To Schiller, Sep. 1800.
51. Nov. 28, 1796.
52. To. C.v. Schimmelmann, Nov. 4, 1795.
SUMMER 1982
�Some Chinese Poems
Translated by Julie Landau
Six Dynasties Period (317-588)
Anonymous
Tzu- YEH SoNGS
Three Selections
I
When first I knew him,
I thought two hearts could be as one
My thread hung on a broken loom,
How could it make good cloth?
II
Through the long night, I can not sleep,
How dazzling the moon!
I think I hear someone callingAnd sigh 'yes' to the emptiness
III
I am as the morning star,
Fixed for a thousand years.
Your fickle heart goes with the sun,
Rising in the east, while it sets in the west!
Julie Landau has studied Chinese at Columbia University and for a year
(1967-1968) in Hong Kong. Her translations of Chinese poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Renditions {Hong Kong), and in the anthology, Song without Music: Chinese Tzu Poetry, edited by Stephen C.
Soong, (University of Washington Press, 1980).
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
31
�T'ao Ch'ien (365-427)
RETURNING TO 1HE FARM TO liVE
I
I never had a taste for men's affairs
Mountains and hills are what I love
Stupidly, I was drawn in
Once snared, thirty years went by
The fettered bird longs for the forest
The fish in the pool thinks of tbe lake
To clear some land in the wilderness
The foolishness I held to, and came back to farm.
Ten acres and a place to live
A thatched hut, a few rooms
Elm and willow shade the back
Peach and plum grace the front
A village in the distance
Sends up light smoke
Far down the lane, a dog barks
A cock crows atop the mulberryMy door is far from the world's muddle
I've room enough and time
Caged for so long
At last I am myself again
II
The wilderness is out of reach of men's intrigues
An alley leading nowhere attracts few wheels and reins
All day the bramble gate stays closed
In bare rooms, where are worldly thoughts to settle
From time to time, winding through rough country
Others too part the grass to come and go
We meet-no time for idle talkMulberry and hemp is all we think about
Mulberry and hemp are bigger day by day
And day by day I open up more land
We live in fear that frost and hail
Will kill the crop and scatter it like straw
These are from a series of five poems on the same theme.
32
SUMMER 1982
�IMITATION OF OLD POEM
A riot of orchids under the window
Dense, dense the willow by the hallWhen first we parted
You did not say it would be long
Once out the door, you went ten thousand miles
And on the way met others.
Hearts drunk before we spoke
What need then for wine?
But orchids fade, willows wither
Promises are broken.
Go, tell the young
To love and not be true
Rashly destroys a lifeFor parted, what is left?
T'ang Dynasty (618-907)
Tu Fu (712-770)
A LONGING LOOK IN SPRING
The country's in pieces, the river flows on
The capital, trees and grass, in full springAfflicted by the times, flowers cry
Birds grow restive in the air of partings
Warning beacons have burned three months
Letters from home are worth ten thousand in gold
White hair grows so thin
It can not bear a pin
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
33
�MOONLIGHT NIGHT REMEMBERING
MY YOUNGER BROTHER
The drums of battle interrupt my journey
The front in autumn, lonely as the wild goose cry
Dew from tonight: white
The moon, bright as at home
My brother and I, now parted
Without a home to send us word, who lives, who died
Our letters, forever on the way,
And war, and war, and war
THE GUEST ARRIVES
North of the cottage and south, spring floods,
Day in day out, my only guests are gulls.
The path has not been swept of petals
When I make wide the bramble gate for you.
Only a simple supper- the market is so far,
Even the wine is roughIf you'd care to drink with my old neighbor,
I'll call across the bamboo fence that we've a cup for him.
CLIMBING
Impatient wind, high sky, baboons shrilly lamenting,
Shoal in clear water, white sand, birds slowly circling
Space without bounds, the whisper of falling leaves,
River without end, rushing and tumbling.
Ten thousand miles I travelled in autumn,
Full of years, sick and alone, I climb.
Hardship, suffering, regret, frost my temples.
New misfortunes keep me even from my muddy wine
34
SUMMER 1982
�Li Po (701-762)
BRING WINE!
Don't you see the waters of the Yellow River come from the sky
Flow out to sea and never return?
Don't you see in bright mirrors of high rooms, white hair lamented
Black silk in the morning, by evening pure snow?
Of life and happiness, drain the cup,
Don't leave the gold bottle in the moonlight in vain,
Use the talent heaven bestowed,
Squander a thousand in gold, it can come back,
Roast a lamb, slaughter a cow, enjoy life,
In company you must drink three hundred cups!
Honored Ts'en,
Tan-ch'iu, good sir,
Bring wine!
Give the cup no rest
I'll sing you a song ...
Lend an ear ...
The bell, the drum and all life's luxuries are not enough
Stay drunk, and never come to
History is full of saints and sages, lonely and forgotten
Only the drinkers leave their mark
Prince Chen, in his day, feasted at Ping Le
Spent thousands on a measure of wine, the price of laughter
When buying, don't say you can't afford it
Just buy and drink and pour
The dappled horse,
The fine fur coat,
Let's trade them for a splendid wine
Dissolve ten thousand ancient sorrows
Ts'en and Tan-ch'iu are names. Ts'en is thought to be the poet, Ts'en Ts'an.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
35
�Kao Shih (702?-765)
SONG OF YEN
(written to music)
In the twenty-sixth year of K'ai Yuan, an officer
who returned from having served at the border
showed me "The Song of Yen." Affected by
thoughts of the campaign, I wrote this to the
same rhyme.
Lured northeast by the smoke of Han victories
Generals leave home to wipe out straggling opposition
A man by nature likes to use his power
And the emperor is pleased.
Brass and drums echo along Yii Pass,
Banners serpentine through rock
Battle orders fly over the desert
The fires of the khails light up Lang Shan
Mountain and river: bleak and chill
Wind and rain: allies to the Tartar horsemen.
Up front, half our troops are dead
In camp, girls still sing and dance.
Deep in the desert, autumn withers grass and trees
Few men are left to see the sunset at the lonely fort.
The privileged were intrepid
Strength spent, the pass still under siege,
Those in armor diligently endure, cut off.
Jade tears are shed at home
Young girls, south of the wall, despair
Soldiers, north of the front, look back in vain
They're out of reach
In that forsaken place what is there
But the stench of death, all day, rising in clouds?
Chill battle sounds fill the night
And everywhere white steel and blood,
Valor and death without reward.
Can't you see the misery of it all
That even now, it's only victory that counts?
The twenty-sixth year of K'ai YUan is A.D. 738. Yen is a state in north
China. "Song of Yen" belongs to a genre of ballad called ylieh-fu, folk ballads collected in the Han Dynasty and their later imitations. The imitations,
of which this is one, usually follow the original theme, and retain the tide,
but describe current ills or events. "White Snow Song" and "Bring Wine" are
also yiieh-fu.
36
SUMMER 1982
�Ts'en Ts'an (715-770)
WHITE SNOW SONG
Sending Field Clerk Mou Back to the Capital
A north wind snaps the frosted grass
Under the Tartar sky, snow in August
Everything suddenly transformed as by the first spring breeze
That in one night
Opens ten thousand pear blossoms
Snow sprinkles bead curtains, wets silk screens,
Fox furs aren't warm enough, silk quilts seem thin
The general can not arch his horn tipped bow,
Frontier guards' coats of mail, frozen, but still worn.
On tangled, jagged desert, a sea of ice,
Sad clouds, frozen, stiff, gloomy, extend ten thousand leagues
The garrison commander toasts the the departing guest,
Tartar instruments-lute, mandolin and reed pipe, play ...
Flake upon flake, the evening snow piles up against the gate;
Vainly, the wind rips the red banner, stiff with cold
Lun T' ai East Gate, I see you off
You go by the snow filled T'ien Shan pass
The road curves, you're out of sight,
You leave nothing here but the marks of your horse on the snow
Lun T'ai is a place on the northern border, outside the Great Wall.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
37
�Liu Tsung-yiian (773-819)
OLD MAN FISHING
An old fisherman passes the night beside the western cliff
At dawn, scoops clear water from the Hsiang, kindles bamboo
The mist clears, the sun comes out-not a soul in sight
The long oar whispers in the water; green hills, green water
Turn back and see the river flow from heaven
Above the cliff, clouds idly play tag.
The Hsiang is a river.
Afternote
These selections represent two disparate periods of Chinese
history: one of disunity, political instability, and confusion;
one of empire. After the Han Dynasty disintegrated in the
third century, attempts to reunify China faz/ed. The north
fell to barbarians and was ruled successively by a variety of
foreign dynasties; the south, by a succession of weak, regional, native dynasties. Among the intelligentsia- China's
traditional bureaucracy- many retreated from political life
rather than take the risks of aligning themselves with the
wrong usurping famzly. Confucianism, which had adapted itself to the exigencies of an orderly, unified empire, declined
in importance. The more mystical ideas of Buddhism and
Taoism were in the ascendant. Many poets sought nature,
wine, and seclusion. One of the greatest of the recluse poets
of the Six Dynasties period was T'ao Ch'ien.
Folk poetry, especially love poetry, constrained by the Confucian morality of the Han, re-emerged in this period of dis-
38
unity-free, suggestive, and amoral. Tzu-yeh (Midnight) is
thought to have been a singing girl of the fourth century.
Tzu-yeh songs, some of which she may have written 1 are un-
inhibited love songs whose simplicity and frankness are their
charm.
China, north and south, was reunited by the Sui Dynasty
(581-618). During the T'ang Dynasty (618-907} China was,
once more, strong and expansionist. Confucian values again
prevailed. Most poets chose to serve the state in China's vast
bureaucracy. Rarely in favor at court for long, many passed
much of their lives as minor offiCials in remote, often disease-
ridden, outposts of empire. Kao Shih and Ts'en Ts'an wrote
of life and war at the frontier in the far west and northwest.
Liu Tsung-yiian wrote from exz/e in the south. Tu Fu's war
poems descn'be the chaos around the capital at the time ofthe
An Lu-shan rebellion (755), an uprising which the dynasty
survived, but from which it never really recovered-J. L.
SUMMER 1982
�That Graver Fire Bell: A Reconsideration
of the Debate over Slavery from the
Standpoint of Lincoln
Robert Loewenberg
It was George Fitzhugh, the nation's most profound defender of slavery and the man who proposed to enslave
whites as well as blacks, who was the first to make the
point that the proslavery position and abolitionism do not
represent two opposite extremes but two sides of a single
extreme. Considering his own position in support of slavery a form of socialism, a view not disputed by Marxist or
radical historians now, Fitzhugh insisted that abolitionism
was akin to slavery in principle and in ultimate tendency.'
He contended that abolitionism was a malevolent brand
of socialism, however, while the slavery he defended was
benevolent.
But if the ideas at the root of both proslavery and abolition were alike, are we to suppose that the Civil War was a
gigantic hoax, each side fighting benightedly for the same
bad cause? Or is it more likely that the people of those
times had some reasonably clear understanding of what issues were at stake, while it is we who have been misled by
extremists? In fact, our present view of the period and all
that is connected to it is influenced by the assumption,
virtually universal and unquestioned, that the proslavery
and abolitionist extremes were opposed in theory because
they were opposed regarding the Southern slave. But contemporary Americans were not confronted with a choice
between abolitionism as pure freedom on one side, and
Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University, Robert Loewen berg has previously contributed "The Trivialization of the Holocaust
as an Aspect of Modern Idolatry" (Winter 1982) to the St. John's Review.
He has published Equality on the Oregon Frontier (University of Washington Press, 1976) and articles on the history of the American Northwest and on values in writing history.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
some brand of slavery on the other. The real extremes were
these: slavery and freedom, not proslavery and abolition.
It would seem that no opposition could be clearer than
slavery and freedom. The difference is commonsensical;
any slave or free man could tell the difference. But we are
accustomed to uses of language which convey more confusion than common sense regarding freedom or regarding most political terms. For example, are men free when
they are equal before the law, an ancient ideal which Lincoln cherished; or does freedom require an equality that
rejects law as a disguise for power, a bourgeois convention, as the abolitionists and their defenders claimed?
The antebellum debate over slavery was a struggle for
control of the terms of public debate. The struggle regarding words has, in the main, been won by abolitionism. Today we see the Civil War, and much else, in abolitionist
terms. How ironic then that George Fitzhugh, slavery's
great advocate, should now provide us with the means to
develop a more correct and historically accurate understanding of freedom. Fitzhugh demythologized abolition.
But, inadvertently, he did more than this. In identifying
abolition with his own proslavery position, Fitzhugh did
not explain its opposite, or freedom.
Fitzhugh's demonstration-and it was devastatingthat the abolitionists were the ones, even more than he,
who called for an end to free society as the source of all
enslavements, including wage slavery, child abuse, intern~
perance, and female political disabilities, amounted to this:
freedom as such did not exist except in a negative sense as
an absence of slavery. In other words, Fitzhugh, agreeing
that abolition was pure freedom while also insisting that
abolitionism was reducible to slavery, seemed to imply
39
�there could be no such thjng as freedom at all. Unless
common sense and philosophy both fail us, however, there
must be an opposite to slavery. Freedom is the opposite
of slavery.
In his critique of abolition, Fitzhugh unwittingly showed
that Lincoln was the real champion of the principle of
freedom in those times. Lincoln was, if anything, even
more alive to the character of abolition than Fitzhugh.
Not in the middle between the opposites of abolition
and proslavery, Lincoln, in fact, spoke for freedom as the
opposite of slavery. Lincoln, not William Lloyd Garrison,
Elijah P. Lovejoy, Horace Greeley, or Thaddeus Stevens,
is properly contrasted with Fitzhugh, the South's most
complete defender of slavery. And, if this is a proper pair·
ing, we might anticipate a certain congruence between
the analyses of Lincoln and Fitzhugh. As a matter of fact,
they made the same discoveries from opposite sides of the
debate about slavery and freedom. Fitzhugh detected
sameness where a difference had been supposed to reside.
Lincoln discovered that two things that seemed the same,
freedom and abolition of slavery, were really different.
Fitzhugh exposed the kinship of slavery and abolitionist
doctrines; Lincoln showed that his own defense of free·
dom, based upon the principle of consent of the governed,
was different from, actually antithetical to, Stephen A.
Douglas's supposed defense of freedom, which was also
based upon the principle of consent of the governed.
Lincoln called Douglas's doctrine of popular sover·
eignty, according to which voters living in the territories
would decid.e the question of slavery prior to statehood, a
"covert . .. zeal for . .. slavery." 2 Douglas said that a major-
ity had the right to do whatever it wished, that is, to be
free, even to vote others into slavery and to deprive them
of the consent of the governed. Douglas opposed slavery,
but would not, he said, intolerantly impose his personal
view on others. He did not care whether slavery were
voted up or down so long as people voted and the majority
governed. The good and bad of slavery for Douglas was a
matter of votes and personal conviction, "conscience" as
it was sometimes called.
Lincoln argued that Douglas's version of consent of the
governed subverted freedom in the moment it professed
to uphold it. The themes of reversal and betrayal are cen·
tral ones in Lincoln's thought during the years 1838 to
1865. Popular sovereignty twisted the principles of Ameri·
can government and made the Declaration of Indepen·
dence the foundation for slavery, just as the Dred Scott
Decision of 1857 misinterpreted the Constitution, making
it an instrument for slavery and force instead of an instru·
men! of law and right.3 Lincoln saw at the root of Douglas's
idea the reversal of the principle of consent of the gov·
erned as found· in the Declaration and the betrayal of law
and the Constitution. Fitzhugh also contemplated a rever·
sal of law and right, but from the opposite perspective.
Slavery, he said, is the "inalienable right" of everyone' He
dismissed as irrelevant the then common defenses of slav·
40
ery based upon biblical and racial grounds and proclaimed
that slavery was suitable and just. Slavery was the higher
law.
The higher law doctrine was, of course, not Fitzhugh's
slogan but William Seward's. Seward proclaimed it in
1850 during the debates that preceded the famous Com·
promise of 1850 which men hoped would extinguish all
debate about the slavery question. This was more than
ten years before Seward became Lincoln's Secretary of
State. Actually, Fitzhugh loathed every kind of law and
politics~like the abolitionists. In fact, the debate over
slavery and freedom focussed on just the point the aboli·
tionists and Fitzhugh wished away: It was a debate about
law.
From the standpoint of the abolitionist identification of
abolition and freedom, the measure of Lincoln and the
nation turns upon the correct relation of law to the higher
law. From this point of view Lincoln is seen to have sacri·
ficed the Declaration to the Constitution, principle to
expedience. In particular, Lincoln failed to make emanci·
pation the aim of the Civil War rather than simply the res·
!oration of the Union. Those who take this view also think
that Lincoln preferred property rights and states' rights to
human rights. This group, which contains most writers,
includes those whom C. Vann Woodward has called "lib·
era] and radical historians who identify with abolition." 5
These historians are divided between those who despise
Lincoln as morally obtuse and others who credit him with
prudence. But the important point is granted by all, namely
that the abolitionist rhetoric, with its conflicts between
the Declaration and the Constitution, the Union and
emancipation, human rights and property rights, is true.
Lincoln denied this. The abolitionist context and the sev·
era] sets of opposites that are part of it is exactly what Lin·
coln did not grant as properly framing the issues or dividing
the people in the years before or during the Civil War.
Above all, Lincoln did not regard law or the Constitution
as inferior to any "higher law," whether in the consciences
of abolitionists and transcendentalists such as Henry
David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, or in Douglas's
law of the majority.
It is taken for granted that Lincoln, however great a
man, was a "moderate," in the sense of one who stands
against pure good in favor of expedience. Not Lincoln's
version of freedom but Emerson's or Thoreau's is the one
that post-Civil War Americans have been taught in schools,
in colleges, and from the pulpit, where Lincoln called for
freedom to be taught. Moreover, freedom emphasizing, in
Thoreau's words, that "it is not desirable to cultivate are·
spec! for the law, so much as for the right," is contrary to
Lincoln's teaching.' Lincoln denied the conflict of right
and law, as Thoreau posed it, because he denied the eleva·
lion of what Thoreau and the abolitionists called "con·
science" to a level transcending law and government.
Abolitionist ideals which were articulated best by Emer·
son and Thoreau, who were not active abolitionists, are
SUMMER 1982
�part of a tradition that is hostile to Lincoln as are those related versions of American history we know as liberal and
radical. The "radical vein which the conservative and reactionary of Christendom had for centuries endeavored to
keep submerged," and that Perry Miller finds in Jonathan
Edwards, is the vein that also nourished nineteenth century abolition.7 What Miller calls reactionary and conservative, however, Christendom called heretical-in particular, gnosticism. Abolitionism proper had its beginnings
in the sixteenth century among the followers of Thomas
Miinzter. Although historian David B. Davis calls the
MUnzterites the
11
first abolitionists" in order to praise
them, he is not wrong as to fact 8 But Miinzter's and Jonathan Edwards's vision of freedom is the one Lincoln instructed Americans to reject.
In the decade of the 1850s, when George Fitzhugh was
at the peak of his powers, producing in his two books the
most important defense of slavery ever made by an American up to that time, Lincoln was embarking on the early
stages of a second career in national politics. The corner·
stone of this effort, like the first, was his conviction that
slavery was wrong and freedom was right. As Lincoln said
in a speech at Peoria, Illinois, in October 1854, "I say this
is the leading principle-the sheet anchor of American
republicanism ... this [is] our ancient faith .... Now the
relation of masters and slaves is~ pro tanto, a total violation
of this principle."' As a practical matter, Lincoln's position committed him to opposing the extension of slavery
into territories acquired from Mexico in 1848. One could,
as Lincoln often said, compromise about the existence of
slavery as a fact only if one did not compromise with the
fact of slavery as evil. The great point of difference between Lincoln and some contemporaries (as well as later
critics) is that they compromised in the other direction.
They would not give ground on the existence of slavery,
but they compromised, unknowingly, with freedom itself.
This was Lincoln's quarrel with abolition as well as with
Douglas. Freedom and slavery for Lincoln were absolutely
opposed: the house divided.
By freedom Lincoln meant nothing outwardly complex
or unfamiliar to the men of his day. Those who heard his
speeches, beginning with his first major address in 1838,
the Lyceum Address, or who listened to his debates with
Douglas two decades later, understood that when Lincoln
said "freedom" he had something clearly in mind. By freedom Lincoln meant this: law. By law Lincoln did not
mean what is sometimes called positive or public law, or
any other historical or relativistic idea. Rather, Lincoln
understood by law transcendence, which is the opposite
of relativism. The law is lawful because it transcends times
and places as well as majorities and the higher law of individual consciences. Lincoln saw that law is the "sheet anchor" of American republicanism; in his words, "No man
is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent." 10 To this proposition Lincoln opposed popular
sovereignty. The fight against Douglas occupied Lincoln
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
untill860. After that time he defended his position against
the Radicals in Congress who said with Thoreau that "my
only obligation ... is to do at any time what I think right
[or] ... conscience."]\ But both periods and both fights
show the same understanding of the law and freedom.
Law and freedom, as they are found in the Constitution
and the Declaration, are alike a unity or a whole in Lincoln's thought. These two documents were related, he
said in January 1861, as an apple of gold to a frame of silver: "The picture was made, not to conceal or destroy the
apple; but to adorn, and preserve it." 12
The physical Union that Lincoln wanted to save, embodying the union of the Declaration and the Constitution, included other unions. Among these is the union of
the politic and the ethical. Lincoln did not suppose this an
impossible union as later Max Weber, the founder of modern social science, would do. Lincoln was certainly an
idealist. By idealism Lincoln understood the ongoing struggle of men, of talented men especially, to meet the challenges to virtuous and civil dealings posed by an opposite
idealism which holds that men should compel reality to fit
their ideals of it. This second kind of idealism, the source
of modern fanaticism, has its roots in a view of politics
and of words that Lincoln instinctively deplored. At the
root of Lincoln's union was a relationship ofChristianity ·
and law, properly understood. He called this union "political religion."
Political religion was Lincoln's answer to the question
which he himself raised in 1838 in the Lyceum Address
about how best to secure that ~~government . .. conducing
more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty
than any of which the history of former times tells us,"
i.e., American republicanism. He says:
The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity swear by the blood of
the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws
of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.
As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration . .. so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let
every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred
honor. ... Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every
American mother to the lisping babe ... let it be taught in
schools, in seminaries, and in colleges ... let it be preached
from the pulpit . .. in short, let it become the political religion
of the nation. 13
This unity of Christianity and law, this political religion, is
what prompted Lincoln to call American republicanism
the second greatest institution in the world after Christianity. Let it be clear what political religion was not. Lincoln did not regard Christianity as a thing merely useful to
order. He also did not understand by political religion any
substitution of religion for politics. This substitution, especially in its insidious modern form, was the fanaticism
that threatened America. By political religion Lincoln understood a certain connection of the human to the divine,
41
�the connection that had long sustained Western political
thought about freedom.
Lincoln understood, as Aristotle before him, that all political life has as its condition the principle that "the mind
is moved by the mover." 14 In other words, man is free because he is related to the divine; he is, as Plato put it in a
pertinent observation on suicide, the possession of the
godsY It is not coincidental that the present expression of
the abolitionist position as elaborated by Alexandre Kojeve (whose doctrines influence such important studies of
American slavery as David B. Davis's) is opposite to this.
"Death and freedom," Kojeve has written, "are but two
... aspects of one and the same thing." Kojeve's understanding of freedom stands on suicide which, in its turn,
reflects and requires atheism. "If Man lived eternally and
could not die, he could not render himself immune to
god's omnipotence either. But if he can kill himself ... ,"
then he is free. That is to say, freedom rests upon "a complete atheistic philosophy." 16
Naturally, these two extremes regarding freedom partake of related extremes in politics. The practical aspect
of Lincolnian freedom is that human government is not a
meaningless and irrational undertaking, rather, government is essential to humans. If this is so, then questions of
good and evil regarding governments cannot be reduced
merely to the pleasurable. The good and the pleasurable
are not the same. Then freedom cannot be identified simply with desire, but must instead be identified with something outside a selfish will. Reason and not passion, the
good and not pleasure, constitute human freedom. All of
this together Lincoln signified by the word "law." It signifies transcendence. The substance of this view is the one
expressed by Aristotle that "men should not think it slavery to live according to the rule of the constitution; for it
is their salvation." 17 The implication of this doctrine is
that self-government demands self-control, not "popular
sovereignty" or "conscience." But we know that abolition-
ists looked at law and salvation, as well as constitutions, in
a different light.
Abolitionists considered constitutions and laws to be enslavements. Garrison's famous public burning of the Constitution in 1854 is the essential symbol of the abolitionist
movement. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 symbolizes Lincoln's answer to it. Against the Promethean
symbolism of Garrison, Lincoln emphasized Christian
symbols. Lincoln's use of religious symbols, as they apply
to law and freedom, is part of the rhetoric of his political
religion.
Lincoln's understanding of the American republic and
his assessment of its destiny turn upon his view that freedom provides for man's political "salvation." Constitutions, in other words, are not the means of enslavement
but of freedom. Lincoln's meaning is that law is man's salvation, his assurance of a humane, civilized life in this
world.
American republicanism was to man's political salva-
42
lion what Christianity was to the salvation of man's soul.
The two salvations for Lincoln were connected. As Jesus
made the family a sacramental union so as to provide a
metaphorical basis for knowledge of God (called Father
and bridegroom), so Lincoln, immersed in these same
meanings and their purposes, sought to make the Union
sacramental by posing the Declaration and the Constitution as a metaphorical basis for knowledge of the self
(called ruler and ruled). Moreover, because the divine or
transcendence is necessarily connected to or unified with
the human by means of reason or the soul, the relationship between the political and the religious realms is not
simply a metaphorical one. Christianity is marked by universality; it promises salvation to all men. The law of the
republic is both a replica of this universality as well as an
effect of all transcendence. Governments, that is, are natural to man, or, as the ancients put it, governments are
"divine." For good and evil to be possible, there must be
transcendence. Man is not just another kind of animal for
whom speech, as among bees, is solely a behavioral instrument. Hence time and place cannot be the determinants
of good and evil. But the truth about the political sphere,
though it hinges on the truth of the religious sphere, is always different and in some sense opposed. Lincoln did
not call for religious politics but for political religion. Accordingly, Lincoln contrasted Europe, or the old world as
Americans of that day called it, with the new, passion with
reason, and otherworldly with worldly aspirations. As
Christianity rests upon the crucifixion of a savior, the republic rests upon resistance to what Lincoln calls "suicide" in the Lyceum Address. Political salvation is not the
work of one man for all others, but the work of each man
through self-control. Political salvation is the Constitution
and the Union because the sovereignty of majorities(what
Douglas advocated) or the sovereignty of conscience (what
abolition advocated) are alike against the Union and unconstitutional in a moral and human sense as well as in a
legal one.
What do Lincoln's life and writings teach of political religion? The outward form of Lincoln's political life, like
his own outward form, is simple and inelegant. It was
bound at both ends, from 1838 to 1865, by the principles
already noted and by his consistent opposition in practice
to the extension of slavery. In 1847, during his sole term
in Congress, Lincoln voted for the Wilmot Proviso, stipulating that any territories acquired from Mexico must be
closed to slavery, "at least forty times" by his count. 18 Years
later in 1861 Lincoln made the principle of nonextension
of slavery the basis for his opposition to the Crittenden
Compromise, which would have extended the superseded
Missouri Compromise of 1820 to the Pacific. The event
that brought his life and thought into focus, and from
which comes our own understanding of political religion
as he practiced it, was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
It was the passage of this bill for the settlement of Kansas and Nebraska on the principle of popular sovereignty
SUMMER 1982
�that brought Lincoln to the center of public controversy.
Douglas's bill repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
That famous piece of legislation stilled, at least for a time,
what Thomas Jefferson had called a fire bell in the night,
the slavery question.
Jefferson's anxieties in 1820 about slavery in the lands
of Kansas, lands he purchased from France in 1803 with
anxieties touching the constitutionality of his right to
make the purchase, took on a new urgency during Lincoln's day. This is because the politicians of the 1820s led
by Martin Van Buren had thought to use the conflict over
slavery, the fire bell in the night, as the means to build a
new party coalition that would keep the slavery issue out
of national politics. Lincoln's election in 1860, by shattering that coalition of Northern farmers and Southern yeomen, undid Van Buren's political work, forcing men once
more to consider Jefferson's warning. Van Buren's idea
had been to keep the country half slave and half free in
fact. The result of his effort turned out to be that the
country became half slave and half free in principle. It was
this dreadful consequence that Lincoln spelled out to
Alexander Stephens in December 1860, two days after
South Carolina seceded.
You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we
think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the
rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us. 19
Stephens, who was to become the vice president of the
Confederacy, had asked Lincoln, who was already president-elect of the Union, "to save our common country"
and to recognize that he and the Southerners were not
Lincoln's personal enemies.
But Lincoln had always recognized this. The distinction
between right and wrong, liberty and slavery, was superior
to all things because things perish. This was the rub. Liberty was above the "c.ommon country" and above Lincoln
and Stephens. The physical union, an object of emotion,
was destined to perish. But the union sustained by political religion would, as Lincoln said in 1838, "live through
all time."20 The wishes and desires of men, even men who
wished for emancipation, would have to yield to the law.
Lincoln made this point to Horace Greeley on August 22,
1862, in response to his Prayer of Twenty Millions, written to Lincoln three days before. Lincoln explained that
his policy would be to free slaves or not to free them "if
it would save the Union" quite regardless of his "oftexpressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could
be free." 21
The prudence suggested in this observation by Lincoln
is not mainly expressive of expedience or trimming. Lincoln's prudence relates instead to self-control and to forbearance indicative of constitutional rigor in the personal
and legal realms. The Constitution did not permit Lincoln
to make emancipation the purpose of the war as Greeley
demanded. Lincoln's personal wish to emancipate the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
slaves did not overcome an inner law of reason and an
outer law, the Constitution, that salvation of all reason
and law, viz., no man has the right to rule another without
that other's consent. Lincoln understood he could not fulfill
the law by breaking the law as some messianic abolitionist
would do. To proceed in that way Lincoln considered tyrannical and un-Christian. A grant of freedom to the
slaves, at that point, however desirable or possible, would
have been an even graver fire bell in the night than the
one Jefferson warned about in 1820. It would have signaled that a new enslavement was about to begin.
What was this new enslavement, how and why was it
new? That Lincoln knew the answers to these questions
emerges from his struggle with the Radicals. With the secession of South Carolina in midwinter of 1860, the focus
but not the substance of Lincoln's quarrel with the ideals
of popular sovereignty shifted from Douglas to the Radicals. This new struggle began when Lincoln took office.
The main question was how to deal with the eight slave
states remaining in the Union after February 1861. Although both Garrison on the abolitionist Left and Greeley
on the abolitionist Right hailed the Southern departures,
they would soon be calling upon Lincoln to give no quarter to the South once the war started. Most people, however, looked for some way to save the situation. Congress
considered a host of plans and ideas for restoring the
Union. The end result was a cruel caricature of "compromise." The eight wavering states split their loyalty, four to
the North, four to the South. And, as if to mimic those
trying times, fifty-five counties in western Virginia seceded from the state of Virginia in May 1861. Adopting a
new constitution for itself, with slavery, West Virginia
joined the Union to the delight, not only of Lincoln, but
of Thaddeus Stevens, who was the Robespierre of Radicals. What this meant was obvious to Lincoln: the war to
come would not be about slavery as a practical matter,
however much slavery had been its cause. Even so, the
question of the war's aim became the subject of contention between Lincoln and the Radicals. For Lincoln the
seceded states were not a nation, and consequently constitutional provisions applicable to them remained intact.
The Radicals, for their part, were openly contemptuous of
the Constitution. They were also much less agitated than
Lincoln about the practical consequences to the Union
where the five Union slave states were concerned. For
Lincoln the triumph of the Union, that is, the defeat of
the eleven slave states, required the support of the five
Union slave states. And the triumph of the Union would
also be the resolution of the intolerable condition of the
house divided; it would be the triumph of freedom.
Lincoln's position was that the aim of the war should be
the perpetuation of the Union, so that the result of the
war would be the "ultimate extinction" of slavery. This result, as Lincoln had always insisted, at no time more importunately than during the secession crisis of 1860, could
be accomplished without war and without the violation of
43
�either the Constitution or the rights of the Southern
states. Essential to this result was obedience to the law
and the recognition of "our. ancient faith" that slavery was
the soul of lawlessness. The South well understood, rather
better than some Radicals, that an end to the fact and the
principle of slavery extension meant the ultimate extinc·
tion of slavery. This is why the South seceded. It is why
Lincoln refused to give his support to the Crittenden
Compromise in 1861.
The Republican leaders in Congress took a different
view of things. Falling under the skillful and often ruthless
leadership of men who called themselves Radicals, in par·
ticular Senators Zachariah Chandler, Benjamin Wade,
Charles Sumner, and in the House, Thaddeus Stevens,
James Ashley, George Julian, and H. Winter Davis, Con·
gress relished a power unknOwn to American institutions
to that time. The Radicals' outward objective, resisted by
Lincoln 1 was to make emancipation the aim of the war.
The struggle, as Lincoln saw it, however, was between po·
litical religion and its opposite, religious politics.
On its practical side this contest centered in the Radical
Committee on the Conduct of the War chaired by Ben
Wade. The Committee's main goal, whether in investigat·
ing generals or in cashiering them, was to make Lincoln
revise the purpose of the war. And the Radicals also pro·
mated the fortunes of their favorite generals, especially
General John C. Fremont. He had proclaimed martial law
in Missouri, declaring that all slaves were confiscated
property, thus free. Although Lincoln had countermanded
his order, other Radical generals imitated Fremont. Con·
gressional Radicals also tried to force the President's hand
by legislative means. They passed confiscation acts in the
summers of 1861 and 1862. The differences between Lin·
coln and the Radicals are clearest, however, in the contest
over the Emancipation Proclamation. This episode, one
of the most famous in American history, was also the
great "passion play" of political religion.
Much has been said about the Emancipation Proclama·
tion. There is now a strong tendency to think that only the
naive could credit the "stereotyped picture of the emanci·
pator suddenly striking the shackles from millions of slaves
by one stroke of the presidential pen."22 Moreover, the doc·
ument is considered deficient in grandeur. It resembles a
"bill oflading" in the view of historian Richard Hofstadter.23
It is also widely believed that the famous Proclamation
came about as a result of the President being forced onto
higher moral ground by the importuning Radicals. But
this view of events, like the wider abolitionist context it
sustains and reflects, does not square with the facts. That
Lincoln was forced to issue the Emancipation Proclama·
tion, in the sense that he was also forced to conciliate the
South before the war or to hang Union deserters during
the war, is likely true enough. But the complaints of the
Radicals, who called the Proclamation "futile" and "ridic·
ulous," as well as the comments of historians in later
44
times, would indicate that Lincoln did not do what he was
supposedly pressured into doing.
Lincoln was a master of the politician's art. What he did
in this case, as he so frequently did in others, was to make
the best of difficult circumstances. He served his own pur·
pose, which was to salvage the Union as a physical and
constitutional entity, and he tied even tighter the princi·
ples of emancipation and constitutionality. The Proclamation distinctly subordinated emancipation to the overriding
purpose of the war, reunion. Lincoln beat back the demand for emancipation on Radical terms, which demanded
the unconditional liberation of the slaves regardless of any
constitutional or military considerations. Regarding such
terms as the instruments of tyranny, Lincoln understood
what most of his contemporaries only glimpsed, as when
Henry Wilson, himself a Radical, discovered with shock
that radical emancipator Ben Wade, chairman of the
Committee on the Conduct of the War, had all the ear·
marks of the slaveholder. "] thought the old slave-masters
had come back again," said Wilson, speaking of Wade's
behavior in Congress in 1865.24
The Radicals lost the fight with Lincoln over the Eman·
cipation Proclamation and most of them knew it. Those
who were satisfied that the Proclamation had raised Lin·
coln to their level failed to see that Lincoln had raised
them to his. They conceded what Lincoln wanted from
the start, that only lawful emancipation was true emanci·
pation. They conceded, in other words, the necessity for a
constitutional amendment, the 13th. Later no one worked
harder for it than Lincoln. The Proclamation did not strike
off the slaves' chains because only a constitutional amend·
ment could do that. As a military measure that made the
continuation of rebellion the justification for freeing slaves,
the Proclamation only applied in the rebellious states, and
there, as the Radicals loudly complained, it could not free a
single slave because Union authority had been usurped by
the rebels.
The Proclamation was, as it says, a war measure. It was
written as a war measure and not as a grander measure
might have been. Yet in the subtlety of its ultimate pur·
poses, both its political purpose toward the Radicals and its
moral purpose toward the slaves and the aim of the war,
the Emancipation Proclamation must surely qualify as one
of the more remarkable bills of lading ever written.
Perhaps Hofstadter was more apt than he knew. Lin·
coln's political religion charged him with the delivery of the
Constitution to a recipient, the slaves. Lincoln at least con·
sidered his agency essential to the wholeness of the nation
and to the warrantability of the product, freedom. Com·
pare the Proclamation as a symbol of Lincoln the man and
the principle of self-government with Garrison's Prome·
thean gesture, his burning of the Constitution in 1854. The
contrast becomes sharper still as the elements of Lincoln's
political religion unfold. Lincoln's goal of self-government
for the republic was also his personal goal.
SUMMER 1982
�My paramount object [Lincoln said in 1862] .. . is to save the
Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery . ... [W]hat
I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe
it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear be·
cause I do not believe it would help to save the Union.ZS
Forbearance is in truth the soul of what Lincoln called
"political religion." In this connection, and in other star·
tling ways, the contrast between Lincoln and abolition
shows most clearly. At the level of personalities, the contrast
between Lincoln and William Lloyd Garrison is especially
obvious. Garrison was the nation's high priest of religious
politics. He was no doubt America's nineteenth century
Munzter. He regarded "politicians and philosophers [who]
... sometimes foolishly speculate ... about the best forms
of government" as idle men. 26 When men were "perfect,"
that is, beyond good and evil, they would have true government, which is to say no government. Thus Garrison
said, as did Lincoln, that America would be "immortal,"
but their meanings were perfectly opposite. Lincoln un·
derstood America's immortality in the sense supplied by
political religion. Garrison, on the other hand, meant that
America was to become a heaven on earth, a New Jeru·
salem.
Garrison, like Munzter and the first abolitionists before
him, understood human life and history to be in the grip
of immanent eschatological purposes: history had meaning
and America was history. Counting all men as potential
Christs, Garrison regarded religious salvation as measured
by one's willingness to sacrifice and martyr himself for the
heavenly realm of freedom in this world. Slavery was for
Garrison the sum of all villainies because the freedom he
craved was literally not of this world. This seemingly absurd vision is the apocalyptic one that Munzter also held
when he directed all European princes to submit to him
as the risen Christ. Looking upon this world as the field of
man's salvation, the reformer proposes to escape the con·
ditions of human reality by insisting that these conditions
are actually impediments to true humanity, hence the work
of some devil, for example, class, race, sex. Once the devil
is exorcised, man will be free in the radical sense once reserved to religion, i.e., man will be liberated from the con·
ditions of human being. Thus was America immortal in
Garrison's mind.
There are several other instances in which antebellum
reformers considered this release from the conditions of
being human to include actual immortality. The case of
John Humphrey Noyes, the famous founder of the Oneida
commune in 1840, where free love, eugenics, and birth
control methods were used to create what Noyes called
the We spirit that would liberate men from all possessions,
is the best Known. But Lincoln understood that abolition
offered in truth a kind of religion. Garrison's "idealism,"
which left "every man to decide, according to the dictates
of his conscience," promised as a matter of political doctrine that good and bad were only names." This vision of
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
man, which is loosely called relativism and egalitarianism
today, was a promise of immortality and certainty in this
world for those who had rejected Christianity's promise of
immortality in the next world. Garrison's cry for men to
become free by being "crucified with Christ" comprised
the betrayal of Christianity, as well as the reversal of Lincoln's political religion." Men who seek to be crucified
with Christ in order to bring about political salvation in
reality commit suicide. They subvert political religion by
turning politics into religion and religion into lawlessness.
Lincoln said the conflict with the abolitionists was a
struggle to maintain freedom by means of political religion,
a struggle against any form of religious politics. The contest was made more dangerous since both sides used the
language of freedom and the language of religion. Although there was not a group in America that more often
sought to connect Christian and political symbols than
the abolitionists, there were others who did it better and
who knew better what they were doing. America's poet of
freedom delighted most in braiding political and religious
meanings. The contrast of Lincoln with Emerson, who
compared John Brown to Christ, best reveals differences
between political religion and the ideals of abolition."
Where Lincoln's free man is marked by restraint and forbearance, Emerson's free man or Man Thinking is the
model of unrestraint. Man Thinking is radically free.
In 1836, two years before Lincoln made the Lyceum
Address, Emerson marked himself out as one of America's
outstanding spokesmen for freedom. Like Lincoln, Emerson spoke of freedom as a sacred thing. It was, however,
the will of man and not the law that Emerson considered
sacred. "Nothing," wrote Emerson in 1841, "is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." If so, is the law
profane? Emerson supposed it was. "No law," he insisted,
"can be sacred to me but that of my nature."30 What then
of morality or transcendence as the foundation of law?
For Lincoln the sanctity of the Constitution was its transcendence of individual minds and natures, singly or as
majorities. This transcendence, relying upon reason in
individuals as the means to discern law, demonstrates that
good and evil are truths beyond time and place, beyond
the consciences of individuals. Supporting law is the
divine. As Lincoln suggested, Christianity is the greatest
institution. Emerson was a transcendentalist of quite an
opposite kind.
Precisely, it was law that free men were to transcend;
they were to transcend transcendence. Emerson said ''good
and ·bad are but names ... the only right is what is after
my constitution; the only wrong what is against it."31 Here
was a very different constitution than the one Lincoln had
in mind. If Emerson was right, then Garrison was justified
in burning the Constitution and in calling it "a covenant
with death and a league with hell." 32 Whereas Lincoln's
prescription of political religion evoked Aristotle's praise
of constitutions as the source of freedom and therein sal-
45
�vation, Emerson's doctrine encouraged men to burn constitutions as the means of salvation. Freedom is the
release from covenants. But covenants of one type or another are the web of a man's life. How would ordinary
people know to burn covenants? Emerson, aware of the
question, as was Lincoln, had the answer. The gift of freedom must be the work of great men. Great men, not covenants, shall be the liberators. And the means to greatness
is no other than the destruction of all covenants, or freedom. Thus will the great man "have no covenant but
proximities," no covenants that outlast whim, thus the renunciation of all covenants. Emerson anticipates here the
disclosure of his most shocking teaching that true liberation is the release from an egoistic self, to be replaced by a
godlike unity that is not an "I" but a "We." This was his
ideal "ever new and sublime, that here is One Man."33
Emerson really meant all covenants, even a man's relation
to himself. This is why he counted the human memory a
hindrance to freedom. Lincoln noticed this version of
freedom and emphasized antidotes to it. He especially
nurtured memory, because it would help to preserve
covenants. Lincoln urged men to consider the Declaration a covenant ('undecayed by the lapse of time," a
means to knit together all customary and personal covenants which depended on memory. 34
We need not look far for the opposition of Lincoln and
Emerson on the subject of the sacredness of freedom.
Emerson rests freedom in the sacred recesses of man's
passion, in "unhandselled savage nature." 35 It is sacred because it is screened, as Emerson put it, from natural law,
from society, and from books and the past. But Lincoln
believed that only reason could sustain law. Moreover,
reason must overcome passion if good and evil are to be
more than names. For the ancients, and for Lincoln, slavery was the spontaneous submission to the will without
the mediation of reason, but this is what Emerson called
freedom. The source of this difference lies in what each
side considered reason to be.
For Emerson, reason is an instrument, at once the product and the producer of nature. Lincoln understood reason as the ancients understood it. He considered it, along
with those whom Perry Miller called the conservative and
reactionary of Christendom, the sensorium of transcendence. The ultimate imperative of Emersonian freedom
says, "do not choose." 36 In other words, let your will subdue all choices and all anxiety regarding them. Simply do.
This understanding of freedom and the will is the one that
Miller found so affecting in Jonathan Edwards. Moreover,
where Edwards named this necessitous or enslaving will
God, Emerson identified it as "Man Thinking." Freedom
is oneness with "God," or nature; the creation of human
constitutions is mere whim. A man is liberated in this way
from every interference. He is a new Adam, a veritable
Christ. This is the "reason and faith" that Emerson sought
in the woods where ('all mean egotism vanishes." 37
But how perfectly does this Emersonian ideal of free-
46
dom recall the worldly freedom of slavemasters. Emerson's
freedom, which does not wittingly or outwardly envision
slaves and masters, was this: complete liberation requires
the liberation of passion from the internal conflict of desires within one's self. This is the basis of that affirmation
of uman' s freedom" celebrated now by writers on the subject of freedom such as David Brion Davis. Davis, perhaps
the most highly regarded student of American abolition,
counts the Munzterites and their like as the West's "first
abolitionists" as we have already seen. If sin "was not a
reality," says Davis, characterizing the first abolitionists,
"but only a name that could be made meaningless by an
act of will [Emerson's position], there could be no justification for inequalities of sex and property which violated
the law of spontaneous love." Above all, the law of spontaneous love would overcome that most unconscionable
property and possession, the self, or what Emerson called
"mean egotism." Freedom from the ego is the red heart of
abolitionism that Fitzhugh, too, discovered. It supplies as
well those veins of radical, actually heretical, Christianity
that historian Miller found beating as a "mighty engine of
revolution" in Jonathan Edwards. 38
Lincoln linked memory of the Revolution to the Bible.
His purpose was to show that truth or transcendence partakes of the sources of all transcendence, hence of its sanctity. Indeed, Lincoln goes far beyond Washington, whose
own linking of religion and the political is not without a
pragmatic aspect. The parallel that Lincoln proposes between American republicanism and Christianity is, for
him, the source of all salvation in this world. Lincoln invests religious and Christian principles and their symbols
with political ends. He counts the reverse, the investing of
politics with religious ends, as of the essence of reversal
and betrayal; the reversal of the two realms, religion and
politics, and the betrayal of the separate purposes of each.
Abolitionism is religious politics.
American republicanism, compared by Lincoln to "that
only greater institution," Christianity, is, like Christianity,
a "rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail." 39
Lincoln did not invoke the words of the Christian savior
Jesus to his chief apostle Peter without purpose. Let us
explore this comparison of Christianity with republicanism. It contains within it the essential elements of Lincoln's teaching on abolition. What is it, we must ask of
Matthew 16:18, the Christian source Lincoln drew from
for use in the Lyceum Address, that does prevail against
Christianity? The answer is "suicide": the danger to republicanism, like the danger to Christianity according to
Scripture, comes from within.
The rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail
is the Church, actually Peter himself. In Matthew the
gates of hell shall not prevail against Christianity or against
the salvation provided to men by Jesus. But the -danger to
Christianity is that Peter as a man and the Church as a
body will behave falsely, suicidally. As the Church must
keep the teaching of Jesus, so Peter must be loyal to Jesus.
SUMMER 1982
�If these loyalties are kept, Matthew teaches, spiritual salvation is assured. These relations found in Matthew regarding man's spiritual salvation and the only institution
greater than republicanism are duplicated in the Lyceum
Address in which republicanism itself and political salvation are at issue.
The relationships of Peter to Jesus and of the Church
to the teachings of jesus compel us to consider the parallel
that Lincoln makes between the first and second greatest
institutions. In the Lyceum Address abolitionism (the real
subject of the address) stands in relation to freedom as
Peter stands in relation to jesus. Abolition as a movement
favoring freedom for the slave is an "apostle" of the
savior, freedom. If abolitionism is a faithful apostle the republic will be saved. If it is false-as Peter was at one crucial point-then Has a nation of free men we must . .. die
by suicide." The relationship of the Constitution to the
Declaration also expresses the relationship of the church
to the teaching of jesus. Specifically, the survival of freedom calls for each American "to .. _support the Constitution and Laws [with] ... his life, his property and his
sacred honor," just as the "patriots of seventy-six [supported] ... the Declaration of Independence."40 But just
as the Southern slaveholders hoped to see the Constitution upheld at the expense of the Declaration, so the abolitionists and the advocates of popular sovereignty
thought they could bypass the Constitution, the one by
majority rule, the other by individual conscience, in favor
of the Declaration.
All three groups would deprive political life of content,
none more so than abolitionism. Abolitionists were explicit in regarding all political things with contempt To
the abolitionist, the occupation of political man, called
upon to rank goods and evils in light of the vast complexities of civil life, was an evil enterprise. Where freedom of
conscience is the highest good, either all men think alike,
in which case no government is necessary, or each man
thinks and acts differently, in which case no government
is possible and certainly none is legitimate. Politics, in this
view, is a game at best At worst it is the sign of man's degradation. This is how abolitionists most often saw government and political life. Accordingly, the abolitionist John
Humphrey Noyes said to Garrison in the year of Elijah P.
Lovejoy's murder, that he would "nominate jesus Christ
for the Presidency" as the best means to "overthrow ...
the nations."41 Thus abolitionist relativism disguised a
dogmatic absolutism.
In the history of American abolitionism there is no more
perfect example of the fanaticism bred of such dogmatism
-than the affair of john Brown. Brown, like Lovejoy, who
courted martyrdom, confused the emancipation of slaves
with the emancipation of souls. He confused his martyrdom with crucifixion and made his death nearly a suicide.
Although john Brown was too pathetic and absurd to become more than a terrorist-Lincoln compared him to the
frustrated assassin of Napoleon III-the acclaim Brown
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
won from Emerson and Thoreau, who compared him to
Christ, is more important as an indication of the caesarism that Lincoln sensed in abolition than Brown's acts.42
Brown's comments in 1859 demonstrate the nature of the
caesarism involved in the transformation of religion into
politics.
Brown's religious politics were the same as Noyes's,
who abjured all political life, and also like Garrison's, who
renounced (until about 1859) all violence. "Christ," said
Brown, is "the great Captain of liberty; as well as
salvation." This expression of religious politics was uttered by Brown after Harper's Ferry when he had begun
to compare himself to religious heroes of old, including
Peter. In a remarkably revealing comment, meant to justify religious politics, Brown misstates the role of Peter
and thereby renders a Lincolnian judgment against himself. Writing a month before he was hanged, Brown said,
"Christ once armed Peter. So also in my case I think he
put a sword into my hand."43
But jesus disarmed Peter. When jesus was arrested,
Peter was disarmed by his Master to show that the
Kingdom of God, Jesus' presidency, was not of this, but of
another world. It showed that jesus was not the captain of
liberty as well as salvation.
But while abolitionists condemned Lincoln as a moderate, and Douglas deplored what he called Lincoln's moral
absolutism, that is, Lincoln's insistence that slavery was
evil-in fact popular sovereignty and abolitionism were
alike "absolutistic" in the sense disapproved by these foes
of Lincoln who said they favored freedom. This is simply
demonstrated: absolute freedom, whether for majorities
or individual consciences, rests upon the self~canceling
proposition that all truth is relative. The political or practical consequences of popular sovereignty and abolitionism
as political remedies are more important. Lincoln under-
stood that governments founded on the principle of popular sovereignty would destroy freedom by vote since that
principle made it possible to enslave individuals if a majority decided that it was good to do so. Lincoln also realized
that abolitionism would, for its part, make government
and all social life impossible. Lincoln, supporting both majority rule and freedom, as well as the Constitution, which
Southern slaveholders raised in their defense, sought to
unify all three of these fundamental principles of American republicanism-majority rule, freedom, constitutionalism-as a means to prevent their destruction at the
hands of any one of them. The method Lincoln employed
for this purpose and called political religion may be called
moderation.
By moderation Lincoln did not mean the taking up of a
position halfway between two extremes. This is what Fitzhugh meant by moderation or what modern liberals mean
by it In this view the center is a creature of extremes. By
moderation Lincoln understood a position above the extremes which, though partaking of principles found in
each, majority rule in popular sovereignty and emancipa-
47
�tionism in abolition~ transforms and unites the extremities
by means of a higher principle. The higher principle Lin·
coin had in view was political religion in its mechanical
and its essential aspects.
Lincoln considered that political religion involved the
substitution of persuasion for force as the essence of polit·
ical religion. Moreover~ his political religion as a mechanical or procedural principle, by seeking common intellectual
ground among members of the political community, ap·
peals to the interests and passions of reasonable men, so
that passion or force shall yield to reason, or to constitu·
tions. The aim, then, of moderation is the replacement of
force and passion with reason in each member of the
political community. Political religion is the teaching of
self-control.
Lincoln's life shows three examples of this self-control.
Two of these concern Lincoln's efforts toward others in the
first years of his political life. The third example concerns
Lincoln near the end of his life. Whether such consistency
as Lincoln's was "foolish ... [,] the hobgoblin of [a] little
mind ... ", as Emerson would have been bound to regard it,
is a matter the reader must decide for himself.44
The first example of political religion is Lincoln's first
public statement as a politician on the subject of slavery,
his now famous protest in the lllinois legislature, made
March 3, 1837, when he was twenty-eight years old. In
principle and in method this early affair set a pattern from
which he did not deviate. Although this protest is famous
because of its opposition to slavery founded on "injustice
and bad pGlicy," it is difficult to see why Lincoln should
have received much credit for it.45 And, while Albert
Beveridge, many years ago, could find little difference be·
tween the majority resolutions and the protest of Lincoln
and his fellow representative from Sangamon County,
Dan Stone, except the "moral" difference between slavery
and freedom, even this difference is not obvious.46
The majority resolutions of the Illinois legislature do
not say that slavery is moral. Rather the resolutions are a
high-flown defense of slavery as constitutional. The rna·
jority contend that "the right of property in slaves, is
sacred to the slaveholding states by the Federal Constitu·
tion." 47 Stone and Lincoln do not deny this or even dispute another point of the majority, that the federal gov·
ernment could not abolish slavery in the District of
Columbia. What then is the difference between the rna·
jority resolutions and Lincoln's protest? Is there indeed
any basis for praise of Lincoln in the drafting of the pro·
test at all? Lincoln not only agreed with the majority that
the Constitution protected slavery, he also roundly con·
demned the "promulgation of abolition doctrines [as tend·
ing] ... rather to increase than to abate the evils of slavery."48
Finally, when one considers that Lincoln, eleven months
later in the Lyceum Address, called upon every American
never to violate the Constitution and laws in the "least
particular," the difficulty in seeing any special point in
the protest becomes even greater and more paradoxical.49
48
But of course it was Lincoln's agreement with the major·
ity that makes the protest significant. The Illinois legisla·
lure, responding to petitions from Southern legislatures
seeking support and assurance that Northerners respected
the constitutionality of slavery and deplored the anti·
constitutional implications of abolitionism, had no oppo·
nent in Lincoln. But just as Lincoln would not later, in the
Lyceum Address, praise the mob that killed the abolitionist
Lovejoy, so he could not join the majority in the Illinois
legislature in giving unconditional support to the constitu·
tional right to slavery without protesting that slavery was
wrong. It is not the genius of Lincoln's rhetoric, however,
but the intent of his politics that should be emphasized.
Lincoln's intention in the protest was to call attention
to his disagreement with the majority by means of his
agreement with it. The "moral" difference was the only
difference as it was later between Lincoln and Alexander
Stephens. Here, as later, that difference was the rub.
Freedom is what the Constitution supported, not slav·
ery. Just as the framers had won support of the Constitu·
tion by appealing to the monetary interests and passions
of slaveholders, so Lincoln in his protest hoped to secure
the support of men whose interests in the constitutional·
ity of slavery had less to do with the Constitution than with
such commercial interests as trading in Southern ports
downriver from St. Louis or Alton.
The second example of Lincoln's teaching of political
religion is found in the Lyceum Address considered as a
politician's instrument. Lincoln's strategy in Springfield,
speaking to an audience caught up in the excitement of
Lovejoy's recent murder, was the same as it had been in
the Illinois legislature. Once again Lincoln's purpose was
to teach self-control by demonstrating it.
As we have already seen, Lincoln's objective in the Lyceum Address was to use Christian symbols to distinguish
political religion from religious politics. In the Lyceum
Address Lincoln identified abolitionism as a species of an·
tinomianism. Abolitionism makes a political principle,
freedom~ into a religious principle, salvation. Moreover,
its open despising of politics is as dangerous to freedom as
it is to religion. Abolitionism is the enemy of political
religion because it is the enemy of freedom as well as law.
But Lincoln was careful not to make this point in the
manner of an abolitionist. He was moderate and did not
say all he meant.
In the Lyceum Address Lincoln set himself the task of
showing that abolitionism is mob law, hence wrong. But
Lincoln did not wish to appear to applaud Lovejoy's lynch·
ers. Lincoln also wished to demonstrate that freedom is
right without appearing to take Lovejoy's side against the
mob (and against his audience which had no more affec·
lion for Lovejoy than had the Illinois legislature).
Lincoln's moderation is visible in the rhetorical struc·
lure of the speech. He did not mention Lovejoy, the first
and recent martyr to abolitionism, and also carefully sepa·
rated his discussion of Lovejoy from his discussion of other
SUMMER 1982
�victims of mob rule such as gamblers and murderers. In
this way the reader or listener senses a difference between
wrong behavior wrongly punished and abolitionism, also
wrongly punished. The impression is that abolition is a
churchly doctrine carried to the point of destroying both
Church or Constitution, and doctrine or freedom. Free·
dom liberated from its home in the law is a betrayal of
freedom. Allied with mob law and with slavery in its con·
tempt for law, abolition itself brings about lynchings. In·
deed, Lincoln suggested that freedom and lynch lawslavery, in a word-may become one. This, incidentally,
was Fitzhugh's point about abolitionism.
Lincoln taught in the speech before the Illinois legisla·
ture and in the Lyceum Address that self-control is the chief
instrument and end of political religion. The "suicides" of
Lovejoy and Brown should be called reversals of selfcontrol and betrayals of freedom, as the Lyceum address
suggests. The identification of a man's will with the law is
what men have always called absolutism.
In fact it is the danger of absolutism in the name of
emancipation or liberation that is the great center and focus
of everything Lincoln taught and learned about freedom.
Lincoln, a man whom his best friends knew to be exces·
sively ambitious, possessed considerable personal knowl·
edge about the freedom for which Emerson had only
wished. It is perhaps as important to us that Lincoln had
an opportunity to act on his knowledge. Thus Lincoln rea·
lized as early as 18 38, and proclaimed publicly, that a
"towering genius" and a passionate man who was unwill-
ing simply to do his part, with lesser men, in preserving
the gains to freedom brought by the Revolution, "would
as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire [distinction] ... by
doing good as harm."50 In particular, the great man who
was not content to abide the constraints of law, who wished
to tear down the "sepulchres of the fathers" 51 with Emer·
son, rather than add "story to story upon the monument
of fame erected to the memory of others," would as will·
ingly serve his passion for distinction "at the expense of
emancipating slaves" as by enslaving free men. Lincoln
had this chance himself in the middle of the Civil War.52
Lincoln had an opportunity to emancipate slaves in a
way satisfying to both his ambition for freedom as a prin·
ciple and to his personal ambition. Shortly after the
Emancipation Proclamation was issued, Lincoln was bid·
den by Salmon P. Chase, his Secretary of the Treasury, to
apply the Proclamation in areas specifically excepted by
it, for example, parts of Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia
that were under Union control. Such an application as
Chase asker! Lincoln to make would subvert the letter and
spirit of the Proclamation as a war measure. Lincoln
resisted. Perhaps this was a hard decision-he was a man
of genius after all. It was certainly a "religious" decision at
all events. His explanation of his course of action to Chase
is pertinent.
If I take the step [you recommend] must I not do so, without
the argument of military necessity, and so, without any arguTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ment, except the one that I think the measure politically expedient, and morally right? Would I not thus give up all footing upon constitution or law? Would I not thus be in the
boundless field of absolutism?53
Liberation was the graver fire bell. Unlike the bell that
frightened Jefferson, this bell rang at high noon when
men do not fear fire but are inclined instead to regard it as
a source of illumination and warmth. And Fitzhugh heard
this graver bell, too. Unlike Lincoln he was delighted by
its noise and especially by the abolitionists who rang it.
Did they not alert all men, ifmen would only see-and
Fitzhugh certainly thought the light was bright enoughthat the new freedom was none other than the old slavery? But here Fitzhugh may have been too sanguine.
There was, as Lincoln strongly hinted, something new
and far more dangerous in the new freedom.
It was the brightness that troubled Lincoln. He may
have guessed that someone would say, as Perry Miller did,
that "one has to look into the blinding sun" in order to be
free at all. 54 Yet who but a man with "a transparent eye·
ball" can look into the blinding sun? .Only such a man as
Emerson's Man Thinking or one who counts the tran·
scending of self, the extinguishment of the human I as
freedom; he says, in liberation: "I am nothing." 55 The
issue was the abolition of man, a consequence Fitzhugh
could not have imagined.
The author is pleased to acknowledge the assistance of the Earhart
Foundation in the preparation of this essay.
1. Fitzhugh was regarded as among the most important of slavery's defenders in his day, a judgement largely affirmed by later historians, including those who credit Fitzhugh with a Marxist-like critique of capital
[Eugene Genovese, The World the Slaveholders Made: Two Essays in Interpretation, New York 1969}, and others who consider his defense of
slavery unusual or sui generis [C. Vann Woodward, "George Fitzhugh,
Sui Generis," in George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All/ or Slaves Without
Masters, Cambridge 1960, vii-xxxix; Drew Gilpin Faust, A Sacred Circle:
The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South 1840-1860, Baltimore
1977.1
A recent collection of essays on Fitzhugh will be found in The Conservative Historians' Forum, 6, Spring 1982.
2. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed., Roy P. Basler, 10 vols.,
New Brunswick, New Jersey 1953, II, 255.
3. See Lincoln's "Fragment on the Dred Scott Case," Works, II,
387-388. Lincoln makes the argument here that the Supreme Court
must itself overthrow the Constitution, creating a kind of popular sovereignty among the three federal branches, if it can decide "all constitutional questions."
4. Fitzhugh, Cannibals All/ 69.
5. C. Vann Woodward, American Cotp;terpoint, Slavery and Racism in
the North-South Dialogue, Boston 1971, 38.
6. H. D. Thoreau, Walden, New York 1960, 223.
7. Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards, Westport, Connecticut 1949, 319.
8. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, Ithaca, New York 1966, 297.
9. Lincoln, Works, II, 266.
10. Lincoln, Works, II, 266.
11. Thoreau, Walden, 223.
12. Lincoln, Works, IV, 169. (Cf. Proverbs 25:11)
13. Lincoln, Works, I, 112.
49
�14. Metaphysics, 1072a30.
15. Phaedo, 62b4.
16. Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, Ithaca, New
Yock 1969, 247, 259, note 41.
17. Politics, l310a34-36.
18. Lincoln, Works, II, 252.
19. Lincoln, Works, IV, 160, 161.
20. Lincoln, Works, I, 109.
21. Frank Moore, ed., The Rebellion Record, New York 1862-1868, Supplement, I, Part II, 483.
22. J. G. Randall and David Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction,
rev. 2d ed., Lexington, Massachusetts 1973, 380. One of the better recent studies is La Wanda Cox, Lincoln and Black Freedom; A Study in
Presidential Leadership, Columbia, S.C. 1981.
23. Richard Hofstadter, The American Poli~ical Tradition, New York
1955, 132.
24. Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, 2 sess, 497.
25. Moore, ed., The Rebellion Record, Supplement I, Part II, 482-483.
26. William Lloyd Garrison, Liberator, VII, June 23, 1837: 103.
27. Garrison, Liberator, VII, 103.
28. Garrison, Liberator, VII, 103.
29. See the present author's "Emerson's Platonism: and 'the terrific
Jewish idea'," Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of
Literature XV, 1982.
30. Robert Spiller and Alfred Ferguson, The Complete Works of Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Cambridge 1971, 1979, II, 30.
31. Spiller and Ferguson, Complete Works.
32. Garrison, Liberator, XXIV, July 7, 1854: 106.
50
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
ent
Emerson, Works, II, 42; I, 53.
Lincoln, Works, I, 108.
Emerson, Works, I, 61.
Emerson, Works, I, 82.
Emerson, Works, I, 10.
Davis, The Problem of Slavery, 299, 298; also on Davis see the presauthor's "The Idea of Freedom in American Historical Writing,"
The Center Joumal1, Fall, 1982; Miller, Jonathan Edwards, 319-20.
39. Lincoln, Works, I, ll5.
40. Lincoln, Works, I, ll2.
41. Noyes to Garrison in William Lloyd Garrison, the Story of his Life
Told by his Children, 4 vols., Boston 1894, II, 147.
42. Lincoln, Works, III, 541.
43. John Brown to E. B. in Louis Ruchames, A John Brown Reader, London !959, 135, !29.
44. Emerson, Works, II, 33.
45. Lincoln, Works, I, 75.
46. Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 4 vols., Boston 1928, I, 195.
47. Quoted in Lincoln, Works, I, 75.
48. Quoted in Lincoln, Works, I, 75.
49. Lincoln, Works, I, 112.
50. Lincoln, Works, I, ll4.
51. Emerson, Works, I, 7.
52. Lincoln, Works, I, ll4.
53. Lincoln, Works, VI, 429.
54. Miller, Jonathan Edwards, 195.
55. Emerson, Works, I, lO.
SUMMER 1982
�Sophocles' Ajax and the Ajax Myth
Philip Holt
The Greek tragic poet worked with myths, with stories
shaped by tradition and known (at least in outline) to his
audience. 1 He was not wholly in control of his material.
The poet interpreted the myth; he did not invent it. Myth
required that Troy fall to the Greeks, that Agamemnon be
murdered upon returning home, that Oedipus discover
the truth about his birth and marriage. Yet myths were
flexible within limits-sometimes, broad limits. The playwright could usually choose among different versions of
his myth, and he could even make innovations of his own
-not simply in drawing characters and writing speeches
to flesh out the myth, but in constructing the plot. Aristotle (Poetics ch. 9, 145lb) took notice of this freedom:
One must not aim at a rigid adherence to the traditional stories
on which tragedies are based. It would be absurd, in fact, to
do so, as even the known stories are only known to a few,
though they are a delight none the less to all.
In view of this flexibility within tradition, we can approach a Greek play by contrasting it with earlier treatments of the same story. What did its author emphasize
that his predecessors had played down, or add which they
had omitted, or delete which they had included? With
these questions answered, we can go on to interpret the
play itself: precisely what did the playwright create by presenting his version of the story rather than some other?
1. The Myth
The story of Ajax' death, as Sophocles tells it, is complicated. After Achilles died, Ajax and Odysseus laid claim to
his armor. The Greeks awarded it to Odysseus. Enraged at
this slight to his honor, Ajax set out by night to kill the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Greek leaders, but Athena clouded his mind so that he mistook the army's cattle for its men, and he killed and tortured the cattle instead. When he recovered his sanity and
saw what he had done, shame and fear of reprisals drove
him to fall on his sword. The Greek commanders sought
to punish him after death by leaving his body unburied,
but Odysseus persuaded them to allow his funeral.
Sophocles' authority and the excellence of his play made
this version prominent in later antiquity and standard for
modern times. But this was not the version Sophocles inherited, probably in the 440s B.C., when he wrote the
Ajax. The evidence on earlier treatments of the myth is
often spotty, but it gives us good reason to believe that
Sophocles' predecessors knew a simpler story with some
highly un-Sophoclean meanings-'
We first find the Ajax story in Odyssey 11.543-551,
where Odysseus tells of his journey to the underworld and
its ghosts:
Only the soul of Telamonian Aias stood off
at a distance from me, angry still over that decision
I won against him, when beside the ships we disputed
our cases for the arms of Achilleus. His queenly mother
set them as prize, and the sons of the Trojans, with
Pallas Athene,
judged; and I wish I had never won in a contest like this,
so high a head has gone under the ground for the sake
of that armor,
Aias, who for beauty and achievement surpassed
all the Danaans next to the stately son of Peleus.
Philip Holt wrote his doctoral dissertation on Sophocles' Trachiniae
(Stanford 1976). He has published several articles on Vergil and Sophocles.
51
�Figure 2. Etruscan bronze statuette, 460s B.c.; sui·
cide of Ajax; Kappeli collection, photo courtesy of
Antikenmuseum und Skulpturhalle, Basel.
Figure 1. Corinthian cup by the cavalcade painter, sixth century B.C.;
Greek leaders discover Ajax' suicide; private collection, photo courtesy
of Antikenmuseum und Skulpturhalle, Basel.
Odysseus goes on to tell how he tried to speak to Ajax, but
Ajax walked off without saying a word. Beyond the bare
facts that Ajax lost the judgment of arms and died, Homer
tells us only that "the sons of the Trojans" decided the
dispute. He probably means (as one scholiast tells us) that
the Greeks summoned a group of Trojan prisoners and
asked them "by which of the two heroes they had been
more greatly harmed." There is nothing about Ajax' madness or the slaughter of the cattle.
Pindar tells the story with considerable sympathy for the
fallen hero in three passages written from 479 to 459 B.C.:
The greater mass of men have blind hearts. If it were possible
for them to know the truth, then mighty Ajax would not have
become enraged over the arms and thrust a smooth sword
through his breast. [Nemean 7.23-27]
Envy devoured even the son ofTelamon, rolling him upon his
sword. Oblivion overcomes in grim strife the man who has no
tongue but is mighty in heart; the greatest honor goes to the
elaborate lie. For with secret votes the Danaans showed
Odysseus favor. Ajax, deprived of the golden arms, wrestled
with death. [Nemean 8.23-27]
The art of inferior men has seized and overthrown a stronger
man. Consider mighty Ajax, who slaughtered himself late at
night and won blame from aU the sons of the Greeks who
went to Troy. [Isthmian 4.36-40]
Where Homer committed the judgment of arms to "the
sons of the Trojans with Pallas Athene," Pindar has it
decided by the "secret votes" of the Greeks. He also regards the judgment of arms as unjust. Ajax deserved to
win, but he lost because "the greater mass of men" were
"blind" to his true worth, or because of the Greeks' envy
and desire to curry favor with Odysseus, or because the
hero "who has no tongue, but is mighty in heart" is vul-
52
nerable to "the art of inferior men." Pindar's view of Ajax
as a victim of injustice and corruption carried weight in
later decades. The Socrates of Plato's Apology (41 b) muses
that if he must die,
It would be marvelous to pass time in Hades and meet Palamedes and Ajax the son of Telamon and ariy other of the
men of old who died because of an unjust verdict, and to
compare my sufferings with -theirs.
This hero is not, however, the Ajax of the Odyssey, where
Odysseus mourns Ajax' death without admitting that
Ajax was cheated. Nor is it the Ajax of Sophocles.
Both Homer and Pindar move immediately from the
judgment of arms to Ajax' death. They put nothing in between-no plot to murder the Greeks, no delusion sent by
Athena, no slaughter of the cattle. They might have known
of these things and chosen to leave them out, for the picture of Ajax as a murderous, cattle-killing madman would
mar Homer's sorrow over the passing of a great warrior
and Pindar's indignation at heroic virtue misunderstood
and unrewarded. Or they might not have known them.
Their version of the story is quite intelligible, without any
gaps to be filled with madness or attempted murder from
Sophocles' plot. Homer and Pindar may present the original version of the myth, for time and retelling are more
likely to complicate a myth than to simplify it. The short
version kept its appeal in later times. Ovid gives us the
shortest version of all, with Ajax killing himself on the spot
the minute the verdict goes against him (Metamorphoses
13.1-398).
The Odyssey and Pin dar's Odes contain the only surviving accounts of Ajax' death in poetry before Sophocles.
More complicated versions (if any) must be sought among
the fragments (often meager) of lost epics and dramas, and
in works of art.
Our story appeared twice in the "cycle" of epics composed not long after Homer to round out the story of the
SUMMER 1982
�Figure 3. Etruscan carnelian scarab, early fourth century B.C.; suicide of
Ajax; photo courtesy of Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Trojan War and its aftermath. The Aethiopis closed with
it, with the essential events of the short version. Proclus,
the author of a plot summary from the fifth century A.D.,
tells us that the Aethiopis included the judgment of arms.
After Achilles' death, he says, "the Greeks made a grave·
mound and held a contest, and a dispute arose between
Odysseus and Ajax over Achilles' arms." The suicide is at·
tested by a scholiast on the Isthmian 4 passage quoted
earlier: "The author of the Aethiopis says that Ajax killed
himself towards dawn." The judgment of arms may well
have been settled by a jury of Trojan prisoners. A scholiast
on the Odyssey ll passage quoted earlier says the Trojan
jury is described in "the cyclic poets," and we shall see
that it does not come from our only other possibility, the
Little Iliad. There is no literary evidence that the
Aethiopis included Ajax' plot to murder the Greeks, his
madness, or the attack on the cattle.
The Aethiopis may have been content with the short
version of our story-Ajax killing himself "towards dawn"
after a night of brooding over his disgrace. This ending
would preserve the Aethiopis' focus on Achilles' exploits
after the death of Hector. The death of Ajax-best of the
Greeks after Achilles (Iliad 2.768 f., Odyssey 11.550 f.) and
Achilles' companion and (in one tradition) his cousinwould fit into the Aethiopis as a somber coda to the death
of Achilles himself. It would fit better in a short version
than in a long one.
This may not be the whole story. Scenes from the epic
cycle appear on a large relief sculpture from the early Roman .empire, the Tabula Iliaca Capitolina, and the section
devoted to the Aethiopis includes a brooding figure captioned "Ajax mad." The nature of his madness-delusion,
rage, melancholy-is not clear. In any event, the Tabula
Iliaca Capitolina is too late, and too far slanted towards
Roman versions of the myths, to tell us much about the
Aethiopis.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Figure 4. Athenian black-figure amphora by Exekias, 530s B.C.; Ajax prepares to commit suicide; photo by H. and B. Devos, courtesy of Musee
des Beaux-Arts et d'Archeologie, Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Another work in the epic cycle, the Little Iliad, opened
with the judgment of arms in a different version from the
Aethiopis. To settle the dispute between Odysseus and
Ajax, the Greeks sent spies up to the walls of Troy to learn
the Trojans' opinion of the two heroes. Conveniently
enough, the spies overheard two women debating that very
question. One praised Ajax for carrying Achilles' corpse out
of the thick of battle, but the other replied ("through the
providence of Athena") that Odysseus was braver because
of his work in fighting-presumably in fighting off the Trojans while Ajax made away with the body. This tradition of
a decision on narrow grounds in the judgment of arms (best
service in rescuing Achilles' corpse, not greatest overall
prowess) was disregarded by Pindar and Sophocles, but it
was fairly widespread in epic. It even left traces in the third
or fourth century A.D., in the Posthomerica of Quintus of
Smyrna (5.125, 158-160).
More important, our sources on the Little Iliad tell us
that after the judgment of arms, "Ajax went mad, slaughtered the cattle of the Achaeans, and killed himself," and
that because of this deed "he was not cremated in the usual
way, but was buried in a mound because of the anger of the
king." Scholars tend to assume this means Ajax set out to
kill the Greeks but was blinded by Athena and killed the
cattle instead. They use Sophocles' plot to fill out the gaps
in our evidence for the Little Iliad, and then they turn
around and conclude that the Little Iliad gave Sophocles
his plot. Sophocles certainly took the slaughter of the cattle
from the Little Iliad, and the "irregular" burial there probably inspired the debate over Ajax' burial in the last part
of his play. The madness in the Little Iliad, however, invites another explanation once we stop using Sophocles'
Ajax to piece out the story. If we read that "Ajax went
mad, slaughtered the cattle of the Achaeans, and killed
himself," the natural inference is that Ajax went berserk
53
�Figure 6. Athenian red-figure cup by Douris, c. 490 B.C.; quarrel of Ajax
and Odysseus over Achilles' armor; photo courtesy of Kunsthistorisches
Museum, Vienna.
Figure 5. Athenian red-figure lekythos, 460s B.C.; Ajax prepares to commit suicide (sword planted in ground to right); private collection, photo
courtesy of Antikenmuseum und Skulpturhalle, Basel.
Figure 8. Detail of Figure 7. Odysseus;
Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Figure 7. Other side of the cup by Douris; vote on the judgment of
arms; Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Figure 9. Detail of
Figure 7. Ajax; Kunsthistorisches Museum.
54
SUMMER 1982
�and vented his wrath on the nearest available object, the
cattle. This madness is a frenzy, not a delusion. Agamemnon's anger can be explained by the attack on the cattle
(army property) without reference to a plot to murder the
Greeks.3
The epic cycle gives other evidence of an enraged (not a
deluded) Ajax. A fragment of the Sack of Ilium praises the
diagnostic skills of the physician Podalirius, "who first
recognized the flashing eyes and burdened mind of the
wrathful Ajax." These symptoms may have boded an attack on the cattle or a simple suicide; they hardly suggest
the onset of a hallucination.
The elaborate and melodramatic story found in the Little Iliad, with its spy mission, madness, and rampage among
the cattle, stands in contrast to the more somber and
straightforward version which seems to have appeared in
the Aethiopis. Intrigue and adventure are characteristic of
the Little Iliad. It is an episodic work, fond of complicated
and varied incidents. Aristotle complained that it was too
episodic: one could find eight or ten tragic plots in it,
where a properly focused epic like the Iliad offered only
one of two (Poetics ch. 23, 1459b). Amid all its romance
and adventure, and no doubt because of these things, the
Little Iliad maintains a special interest in Odysseus,
whose wiles and exploits occupy a large part of its action.
The Little Iliad glorifies its favorite hero by making his opponent's conduct as outrageous as possible. By contrast,
the Aethiopis seems to have been relatively sympathetic
to Ajax, who is much like its own favorite hero, Achilles.
Aeschylus wrote a play called The Judgment of Arms
and presented Ajax' suicide in The Thracian Women.
These plays included some interesting details not found
in other pre-Sophoclean versions of the myth. Aeschylus
seems to have used Nereids, not Greeks or Trojans, to
decide the judgment of arms (fr. 285). His Ajax was endowed with a magical invulnerability (fr. 292b):
According to the story, Ajax was invulnerable on the rest of
his body, but he could be wounded in the armpit, because
when Heracles wrapped him in his lion-skin he left that part
uncovered because of the quiver which he wore. Aeschylus
says of him that the sword bent "like a man stretching a bow"
when his skin did not give way to the blow, until (he says) a
goddess came and showed him in what part of the body he
needed to stab himself.
There is nothing in the fragments (admittedly scanty)
about madness or cattle. Aeschylus' two Ajax plays may
have presented the two essential events of the short version of our myth-the judgment of arms and the suicide
-with little in between.
In art, Ajax' death furnished material for vase-painters,
metal-workers, and gem-engravers throughout antiquity.'
Representations of the suicide reach back as far as the
seventh century B.C. They show Ajax bending over or lying face down as a great sword, planted hilt down in the
earth, pierces his body. On the manner of Ajax' suicide,
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Sophocles was following an old and well-established tradition. Figure I shows an early example from Corinth, with
the Greek chieftains gathered around to look at the body.
Later artists, more adept at showing the human figure in
action, sometimes varied the poses. Etruscan artists of the
fifth and fourth centuries B.C. (with whom the scene was
rather popular) show Ajax in wild, contorted attitudes,
leaping on his sword almost like an acrobat (Figure 2 and
3).
Athenian representations of the suicide are fewer, but
more impressive, than those from Corinth and Etruria. A
well-known vase by the black-figure master Exekias from
the 530s B.C. shows a naked, intent Ajax planting his
sword in the ground (Figure 4). His armor sits opposite
him, a reminder of the warrior's life he is leaving and of
the warrior's honor that drives him to his death. In the
460s, an Athenian artist working in the later red-figure
technique .showed a similar scene (Figure 5).5 This Ajax,
less grim and more plaintive, kneels before his upturned
sword, arms raised in prayer, in a scene recalling his dying
speech in Sophocles. Both these scenes, though painted
well before Sophocles wrote, would make excellent illustrations for his play.
The other main event of our story, the judgment of
arms, is fairly popular with Athenian artists. The debate
between Odysseus and Ajax appears on vases before 500
B.C., and scenes of the Greeks voting on their claims enjoy
a vogue between 500 and 480. In one example (Figure 6),
the two heroes quarrel violently over Achilles' armor.
They rush at each other, one drawing his sword, the other
with his sword already drawn. Their friends try to hold
them back. Agamemnon, with the armor at his feet, stands
between them to keep them apart. The other side of the
cup (Figure 7) shows a more orderly scene: the Greeks
vote (with pebbles, like Athenian jurors) between the two
heroes. Athena presides-'-perhaps to bless democratic
procedure, perhaps to ensure Odysseus' victory. Since the
Greeks pile their pebbles up in the open rather than
follow the Athenian practice of putting them in urns, we
can see how the voting is going. The pile on the left is
clearly bigger, and at the far left of the scene Odysseus
shows his surprise and delight (Figure 8). At the far right,
Ajax turns away to lean on his staff and hide his head in
his mantle (Figure 9).
Another cup from about the same time gives us different versions of the same scenes. In the quarrel (Figure
I 0), we see the Greeks restraining the heroes again as a regal, but agitated, Agamemnon steps between them and
shouts for order. The other side of the cup shows the
scene immediately after the voting (Figure II). A close
look shows fifteen pebbles on the left and fourteen on the
right: the vote has been close, but Odysseus wins. To the
far right, Ajax claps his hand to his head in dismay. To the
left, the cup is badly broken, but we can make out the second figure from the left as Athena, for the tassels of her
aegis project from her back. The figure to her right is
55
�Figure 10. Athenian red·figure cup by the Brygos
painter, c. 490 B.C.; quarrel of Ajax and Achilles; collection of Walter Bareiss, photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; all rights reserved,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
probably Odysseus, for he is holding a shield, whose lower
rim can be seen below the broken edge of the cup. He has
just taken possession of Achilles' armor. ·
The painter of this cup carries the story a step further
(Figure 12). On the inside of the cup (for its strongstomached owner to see as he drained the last of his wine),
he shows Ajax pierced by his sword and lying dead as Tecmessa comes up to drape a robe over his body. Ajax lies on
a nubbly surface, probably a beach. The setting at the
seashore and Tecmessa covering the body appear here
forty years before Sophocles showed them on the stage.
In these details as in the manner of Ajax' suicide,
Sophocles was following an older tradition.
The artists, like the poets, appear interested primarily
in the two main events of our myth, the judgment of arms
and Ajax' suicide. They paid little attention to what happened in between. The slaughter of the cattle appears only
once in vase-painting before Sophocles (Figure 13). Only
fragments of the vase survive, but we can make out the
hindquarters of a bull, lying supine with legs upturned, on
one fragment and the hindquarters of a sheep in a similar
position on another. The human figures must be curious
or horrified Greeks on the morning after Ajax' rampage.
After this vase, the cattle drop from sight (except for one
appearance in Hellenistic timesf until the first century
B.C. and after in Rome.
The Romans more than made up for Greek neglect of
the slaughtered cattle, but only with repeated reproductions of one scene. Ajax sits on a rock~ resting his head on
one hand and holding a sword. Carcasses of slaughtered
animals are before him. We have over thirty copies of this
scene, mostly on engraved gems (Figure 14), based on a
56
Figure 11. Other side of the cup by the Brygos painter; vote oh the
judgment of arms; collection of Walter Bareiss; all rights reserved, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
work of art which somehow became popular in Rome in
the first century B.C. That work of art was more likely an
illustration of Sophocles' play than an inspiration for it.
Finding Ajax' madness in ancient art is almost as hard
as finding slaughtered cattle. The wild, contorted poses in
some scenes of Ajax' suicide suggest Ajax killing himself
in a frenzy, but the madness of Sophocles' play is different.
There are no scenes of Ajax' attempt on the Greeks in ancient art. Athena's intervention to cloud his wits might appear difficult to show in a painting, but it is not impossible;
Greek art is no stranger to mad scenes. No Greek artist~
however~ undertook this one.
2. The Play
Sophocles did not inherit a canonical version of the
Ajax myth. His predecessors in treating the story left him
a simple outline (judgment of arms, suicide of Ajax) and
ample room for choice in filling it out. Our study of the
myth shows what choices Sophocles made and how they
affected the meaning of the play. By examining the poet's
sources~ we discover something often undervalued in a
Greek writer: his originality.
Like other fifth-century writers, but unlike some of the
epic poets, Sophocles universalized the judgment of arms
by having it decided on the broadest possible groundsSUMMER 1982
�between the assertive and cooperative virtues. Ajax is
above all an individualistic hero, bold and self-assertive,
proud and independent. His prowess in battle makes him
a valued member of the community, needed by the Greek
army, needed even more by his own followers, Tecmessa
and the Chorus. His prowess also sets him apart-stationed at a post of honor at the extreme end of the Greek
camp (4), open to the envy and resentment of others (154157), repeatedly called ((alone," Single," "solitary" in the
language of the play. He does little to fit in with the community, to accommodate his rugged nature to its demands. His treatment of Tecmessa and the Chorus shows
how deaf he is to advice and entreaties from others; his attempt to murder the Greeks shows how little he cares for
the rights of others when his own are at stake.
Where his abilities and temper set him apart, he insists
on being set apart in honor too-in winning extraordinary
prizes to match his extraordinary merits. Like his cousin
Achilles, he meets the great crisis of his life when the loss
of a prize breaks down the correlation between his achievements and the community's recognition. From then on,
his individualism isolates him further. He becomes the
would-be murderer of his comrades in arms, an object of
universal hatred (457-459), a weak support for a Chorus
which cannot understand him and for a devoted woman
he does not care to understand, and finally a solitary suicide left to address his last words to the landscape. Only
his burial gives him a place in the human community
again 7 His character and fate show both the attractions
and the problems of the heroic imperative to excel, to
stand out from the rest of the community.
In contrast to Ajax, Odysseus is very much the man of
the community, endowed with the cooperative spirit, reasonableness, and readiness to try persuasion that Ajax lacks
-all qualities necessary for the smooth functioning of society. Odysseus shows these qualities most clearly at the end
of the play, when he breaks into a deadlocked debate between Teucer and the Atreidae to secure Ajax' right to
burial. This debate is almost surely Sophocles' invention,
although Ajax' "irregular" funeral in the Little Iliad probably inspired it. By including the debate, Sophocles displays Odysseus' conciliatory spirit to good adva_ntage
against the vituperation, intransigence, and petty pnde of
the others.
More impressive than Odysseus' persuasive skills in
breaking the deadlock are the humility and moderation
that bring his success. More than anyone else in the play,
he knows the limits set upon mortal life. He hated Ajax
"while. it was right to hate" (1347), but justice and respect
for Ajax' merits tell him not to pursue that enmity past
death (1344 f.):
11
Figure 12, Inside of the cup by the Brygos painter; suicide of Ajax; Tecmessa covers the body; collection of Walter Bareiss; all rights reserved,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
on who was the best of the Greeks generally, not on who
did the most to rescue Achilles' body. He further universalized the conflict by following a tradition that emerged
around 500 B.C.: the whole Greek community settled the
dispute by a democratic vote.
Classical authors universalized the conflict in different
ways. For Pindar, the conflict between Ajax and Odysseus
pits true worth against low cunning. Odysseus represe_nts
the art of inferior men," and he wins a popular electiOn
because "the greater mass of men have blind hearts." Something similar appears in Ajax' and Teucer's complaints that
the judgment of arms was rigged (445 f., 1135, 1137), but
this is mere propaganda, unsupported by the facts of the
play. Sophocles may be raising Pindar's idea of a corrupt
election only to reject it.
Other classical authors (mostly after Sophocles) see the
judgment of arms as the victory of intelligence and wit over
mere strength and courage. In the fourth century B.C., Antisthenes wrote two speeches for Ajax and Odysseus that
stress the conflict of intelligence and courage, and the conflict looms large in the later debate-scenes of Ovid and
Quintus of Smyrna. Ajax becomes the hero of brawn defeated by the hero of brain-though he is still far from the
"beef-witted lord" of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.
Again, Sophocles raises the idea, for we hear of Ajax' size
and strength as his main qualities (1077 f., 1250-1254; cf.
758). Again, he rejects it: the words come from Ajax' enemies, and the !).jax we see in the play is an intelligent man.
His speeches are forceful, well thought out, and eloquent.
On the battlefield, too, he is thoughtful. "Who was found
more prudent than this man, or better at doing what the
occasion demanded?" Athena asks rhetorically (119 f.).
Few other authors praise Ajax for prudence or sagacity.
For Sophocles, the judgment of arms shows the conflict
11
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
It is not just to harm a noble man once he is dead, not even if
you happen to hate him.
Since he knows human limits, he accepts human changes:
"Many who are now friends become enemies again" (1359).
57
�Figure 13. Fragments of an Athenian red-figure cup by Onesimus, 490s
{?); photo by M.
Chuzeville, courtesy of the Louvre, Paris.
B.C.; the Greeks discover the slaughter of the cattle
Ajax made the same observation earlier, but in a tone of
bitter, cynical disillusionment (678-683):
I now learn that we are to hate our enemy only so much, as
one who will be our friend again, and I shall want to help my
friend only so much, as one who will not always remain my
friend; for with most mortals the harbor of companionship is
untrustworthy.
In contrast, Odysseus accepts changes pragmatically and
finds in them a call for tolerance and magnanimity.
Odysseus thinks as he does because he knows we are all
weak and mortal. The fallen enemy is no different from
the rest of us; Ajax' fate can happen to anyone (1364 f.):
Agamemnon: So you bid me to let this corpse be buried?
Odysseus: I do, for I myself shall come to this.
Odysseus' words here recall his pity for Ajax in the prologue (121-126):
I pity the wretch, even if he is my enemy, because he is yoked
to an awful ruin, anO I think no more of his case than of my
own. For I see that we who live are nothing but phantoms or
a light shadow.
His enmity with Ajax matters less than their common humanity. This is the wisdom of Priam and Achilles in the
last book of the Iliad, but Odysseus uses this wisdom dif·
ferently. Priam and Achilles weep together, then part to
go to their separate dooms. Odysseus turns towards life,
formulates sound principles for guiding life in community, and applies those principles with telling force in the
final debate. In the words of Sophocles' famous praise of
human achievement, "he has taught himself the temperament that governs towns" (Antigone 354-356). Sophocles
sees Odysseus' famous versatility not as low trickery (as
Pindar did) or as cynical pragmatism (as Sophocles was to
58
Figure 14. Roman gem; Ajax amid the slaughtered
cattle; one carcass visible to the left; photo courtesy
of the British Museum, London.
do later in the Philoctetes), but as the humble flexibility
that we need to live with others.
Odysseus' victory over Ajax in a democratic election is
the result of his sociable wisdom. Sophocles could have
had him win through the favor of Athena or the caprice of
Trojan prisoners. Victory through the community's choice
shows the community's preference for humility and concern for the common good over boundless self-assertion
and love of distinction. Odysseus makes a better neighbor
(if not a better story-book hero) because he is good for the
community.
If Sophocles made Odysseus nobler than the tradition
did, he made Ajax more selfish, violent, and irrational.
Ajax is a fascinating and sympathetic figure in Sophocles'
hands, but one of the most significant conclusions that
emerges from comparing the play with the myth is that
our sympathy for him comes very hard indeed. Sophocles
included everything the myth offered-and possibly much
that it did not-that might discredit the hero. Unlike
Homer and Pindar, he makes Ajax slaughter the cattlean act both horrifying and absurd. Unlike the author of
the Little Iliad (probably), he makes the slaughter of the
cattle a diversion from something worse-the slaughter of
the Greeks. He adds other touches that might, if treated
differently, serve admirably to blacken Ajax' character: his
callous disregard for the loving Tecmessa and for the family ties that she invokes; his proud and foolish rejection of
divine aid, told to us by the Messenger in another apparent Sophoclean invention (762-775); his boast in the
prologue over the torture he thinks he is inflicting on
Odysseus. If Sophocles had set out to make a villain of
Ajax, or to debunk his brand of heroism after the manner
of Euripides, it is hard to see what more he could have
done to the story.
SUMMER 1982
�Yet the play does not debunk, and it is not the story of a
bad man's downfall-the sort of story Aristotle warned
tragedians to avoid (Poetics ch. 13, 1453a). For all his
faults, Ajax still merits Tecmessa' s love and the Chorus'
devotion. He is a greater, perhaps even a better, man than
most who survive him. Agamemnon and Menelaus are full
of petty spite, eager to abuse in death a man they could
never surpass in life. Teucer, though more sympathetic, is
a small-scale Ajax, a man of mere pugnacity, not of grand
wrath. Even the wise Odysseus is a small-scale figure, a
good and humble man rather than a great one. Display of
their smallness, and of Ajax' greatness by contrast, is one
reason for the debate over the hero's burial at the end of
the play. (It is also one reason why some critics find the
debate dull and undramatic.)
Ajax' greatness is not simply shown in his foils. It is
shown in the man himself. His courage and prowess are
beyond serious question, and Odysseus admits (agreeing
with the epic tradition) that Ajax was the best of the
Greeks after Achilles (13 39-1341 ). His faults are fascinating, not repugnant, because they are the faults of a great
man, not of a small one. His towering (and largely justified) self-confidence, his anger and self-assertiveness, his
refusal to accept the army's judgment or Tecmessa' s advice, all stem from the same nature that made him the
bulwark of the Achaeans. His heroic merits and heroic
vices are inextricably linked: we cannot have the merits
without the vices.
The same can be said of Sophocles' other heroes. The
qualities that make Philoctetes a worthy possessor of
Heracles' bow and an indispensable member of the Greek
army at Troy also give him a self-destructive grudge that
confines him more tightly than his exile and nearly keeps
him from going to the war. The same quick wit, keen
pride, and decisiveness that make Oedipus king of Thebes
and drive him to search for the truth also arouse his
groundless suspicions of Creon. Some years earlier, they
led him to kill his father at the crossroads. Sophocles' work
shows an enduring preoccupation with the problems and
appeal of a rugged, proud sort of human excellence, unquestionably great but not entirely good, needed by society but not amenable to society's desires or demands.
The paradoxes in Sophocles' heroes also show themselves in the hero-cults of Greek religion. A hidi5s, in
Greek terms, is a person who has died but who continues
to exercise unusual power over human life and who demands worship at his (or sometimes her) grave.8 Heroes
are not honored because they are good; they are appeased
and conciliated because they are powerful and dangerous.
Their power is often linked to a sinister force of character
that shows itself in pride, swiftness to anger, hunger for
honor. Heroes arouse in their worshipers a fascinated awe
or dread that is quite independent of moral judgment.
Sophocles was a devotee of hero-cults. He helped introduce the worship of Asclepius to Athens, and he founded
a shrine to Heracles. (These figures were not pure heroes,
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
but their worship combined heroic and divine elements.)
He was the priest of another hero-cult and was honored as
a hero himself after his death. Every recorded example of
his famous piety is connected with a hero-cult.
His interest in hero-cults carried over from his life into
his art. Oedipus at Colonus tells, among other things, the
story behind a hero-cult in Sophocles' district of Athens.
The benefit that Oedipus can confer on the place of his
death, and over which Thebans and Athenians fight, is
the benefit that a city receives from the burial and worship of a hero in its territory.
Like the Oedipus at Colonus, the Ajax involves the
foundation-story of a local hero-cult. Ajax was a popular
hero in Athens, the patron of one of the ten tribes of
Athenian citizens. He and his family were invoked to defend their home island, Salamis, at the battle in 480 B.C.
(Herodotus 8.64, 121). The debate on his burial at the end
of the play is important partly because a proper funeral
and a recognizable tomb are generally prerequisites for a
hero-cult. Interest in Ajax' cult seems to have influenced
Sophocles' treatment of Ajax' character. He draws out the
tensions and sharpens the paradoxes latent in the worship
of heroes. He probes the fascination which heroes inspire.
In developing our own contemporary response to the
play, we should keep in mind that fascination with heroes
of this sort is not confined to ancient Greece. Something
like it lives on in popular culture. We find it in the romantic fascination with the temperamental artist or performer, who can treat family and friends abominably, be
moody, egotistical, and possibly mad, and still write great
poems or symphonies or deliver great performances on
the stage. On another level, there is something like it in a
type of athletic hero who has become popular (at least in
the United States) in the last fifteen years or so-the braggart, bully, or playboy who wins games.' It would be misleading to say that these people succeed in spite of their
irresponsibility, selfishness, and lack of restraint. In a
sense, they succeed because of them; the Hheroic" vices
stem from the same forces of character that produce gripping music, impassioned acting, and last-second touchdowns. Even in an age far more inclined than ancient
Greece to demand humility of its heroes, and far more
ready to spread moral standards into every department of
life, the archaic cult-hero has a place. Fans of Richard
Wagner and Maria Callas (not to mention joe Namath and
Muhammed Ali) know something of its power.
Sophocles' appreciation of Ajax' heroism is great, but
extraordinarily balanced and clear-eyed. He shows us a
hero worthy of admiration, but he does not ignore the
claims of the community or the dangers of the heroic temper. Sophocles knows the cost of having men like Ajax in
the world, and he produces a profound appreciation of
the moral ambiguities of the Greek heroic type. His appreciation of Ajax would not be so subtle and deep without Ajax' plot to murder the Greeks, or his slaughter of
the cattle, or his rejection of divine aid, or the other in-
59
�criminating details left out of most other treatments of
the myth.
Sophocles' most important departure from tradition concerns the nature of Ajax' madness. In earlier versions of the
story (certainly in the Sack of Ilium, possibly in the Little
Iliad), the madness is a rage or a frenzy-if it appears at
all. In Sophocles, it is the delusion that cattle were Greek
soldiers. 10 This is made quite clear in the prologue, where
Athena describes Ajax' adventures with the care and detail we would expect in an original (or at least, an unfamiliar) version of the story. By her account, Ajax was sane
when he set out to kill the Greeks. She did not intervene,
"casting hard-to-bear imaginings upon his mind" (51 f.),
until he was at the entrance of the Atreidae's tent. Ajax in
the prologue is mad .because he is still deluded. His recovery (described by Tecmessa) lies in regaining his wits and
recognizing what he has really done. Nobody in the play
blames madness for Ajax' attack on the Greeks, or for his
suicide, or for anything else except the delusion and the
accompanying slaughter of the cattle.
Identifying the limits of Ajax' madness does not reduce
its importance in the play. Rather, it helps us understand
its meaning and dramatic function better by focusing our
attention on the important theme of correct perception.
Perception gets little attention, as far as we can tell, in
earlier treatments of the Ajax story. Perception is, however, a theme dear to Sophocles' heart, especially in his
earlier plays. Discoveries and revelations are important in
the Antigone, the Trachiniae, and the Oedipus Tyrannus.
Both the Ajax and the Oedipus draw symbolic links between physical sight and deeper knowledge. In the
Oedipus, sight and knowledge are opposed: the blind
"seer" Teiresias has knowledge that the sighted Oedipus
lacks, and Oedipus blinds himself when he gains knowledge. In the Ajax, sight and knowledge are equated. Ajax'
delusion about cattle and men symbolizes ignorance about
more important matters.
In some ways, the ramifications of the hero's ignorance
are more complex and varied in the Ajax than in the
Oedipus. Ajax' delusion expresses (and aggravates) his
heroic isolation. He is so cut off from his fellows that he
cannot even see them plainly, and so full of contempt for
them that he sees no difference between them and beasts.
More important, the delusion reflects a basic confusion
that was already in his mind about telling his friends from
his enemies. 11
The Greeks, supposedly his friends, turned out to be
his enemies (as he sees it) by depriving him of Achilles'
arms. Tecmessa, once his enemy, has become a loving and
devoted friend (487-495). Odysseus, the friend turned enemy, does a friend's service by securing Ajax' right to
burial. Friends and enemies keep changing places. Ajax'
bitter reflections on that fact (678-683, quoted earlier) are
drawn directly from his experience. Odysseus, as we have
seen, accepts that mutability and acts with the appropriate moderation. Ajax is confused by it, and particularly
60
confused by the supposed treachery of the Greeks against
him. The confusion about cattle and men is a natural
result.
Even Ajax' confusion about friends and enemies is but
one aspect of something more general: confusion about
the nature of the world. The steadfast Ajax believes in a
world that runs according to fixed and definite rules. He
had every reason to think he would get Achilles' arms because of his lineage and deeds (434-440). There seemed to
be no way he could fail to kill the Atreidae (447-456). He
thought he could reject divine aid in battle because his
own strength would be equal to any challenge (762-775).
What these things have in common is Ajax' firm confidence that the qualities of things and men are fixed, not
to be altered by time and chance. His confidence is misplaced. The world of this play is full of unexpected and irrational change. "A day brings down and brings back up
again all things human," says Athena (131 f.). Ajax' experience is excellent proof of her words.
The Ajax is a story of discovery. The hero wrestles with
disillusionment, comes to see the way things really are,
and faces the problem of living in a world of change. This
intellectual enterprise has a symbolic model in Ajax' delusion about the cattle and his recovery from that delusion.
Sophocles first tells the story of the little delusion about
cattle, then goes on to develop the larger story of Ajax' discovery of the nature of the world.
We can now follow that larger story through the play.
Early in the play, especially in his first monologue (430480), Ajax confronts the shock that his loss of Achilles'
arms and his failure to kill the Greeks has dealt his preconceptions. He resents these failures not simply as personal
setbacks, but as violations of the proper order of things.
"If one of the gods interferes, even a weakling can escape
someone mightier," he says (455 f.). His rejection of divine
aid earlier in the war rested on a similar principle: "With
the gods, even a nobody can attain prowess, but I am confident that I shall win glory without them" (767-769). He
wants to succeed by his own merits, not by divine in~
tervention. The first monologue shows his bitter, disillusioned protests at his discovery that a man's fortunes do
not depend simply on his merits. In tone and in spirit, the
speech corresponds to Ajax' first cries of anguish upon
discovering that his attempt to kill the Greeks has failed.
Ajax faces his situation squarely, examines the different
courses of action open to him, and resolves to kill himself.
Tecmessa pleads with him to go on living-eloquently,
but to no avail. Ajax says his farewell to their son and goes
into his tent. The Chorus sings about his impending death,
and we have every reason to expect a messenger to enter
and announce the worst.
Instead, Ajax re-enters, still alive and holding a sword.
He delivers an eloquent and enigmatic speech on time
and change (646-692). Time, he says in words that recall
Athena's at 131 f., makes obscure things to grow and hides
away things that were manifest. Nothing is beyond expecSUMMER 1982
�tation. Even he has been softened by Tecmessa's words so
that he pities her. He goes on to say that he will go to the
shore to purify himself and to bury the sword which Hector once gave him. Then he will "be sensible" (sophronein)
and submit to the gods and the Atreidae. After all, harsh
things in nature yield: winter gives way to summer, day to
night, storm to calm weather, sleep to waking. He realizes
now (he says in words quoted earlier) that friends turn to
enemies and enemies to friends. With some final instructions to Tecmessa and the Chorus, he leaves the stage.
The Chorus sings a joyous ode to celebrate his supposed
change of mind. In fact, Ajax is going to his death.
Discussion of the speech tends to center on the question whether Ajax' apparent change of mind is sincere. I
shall avoid that issue to point out that on one important
matter, he is telling the truth. He is describing, with con·
siderable force and eloquence, the way the world (as presented in this play) really is. Athena enforces the law of
change and Odysseus shows us how to obey it, but it is
left to Ajax, the staunchest opponent of that law, to give it
its fullest and most poetic expression. He has now worked
past his early grief and disillusionment to see clearly and
soberly how the world really operates and where he was
wrong in his earlier conceptions and demands of life. In a
way, the Chorus is right when it sings that Ajax has
recovered from his sickness. The great delusion has passed,
much like the smaller one about men and cattle.
This discovery does not alter his decision to kill himself.
The old reasons for suicide-his shame over killing the
cattle, the army's hatred of him, his hatred of the armyhave not gone away. Rather, the speech on time shows
that Ajax has found new and more profound reasons for
dying. He cannot live in a world of change. When he
speaks of "doing reverence to the Atreidae" instead of
simply honoring them, and of "the untrustworthy harbor
of friendship," his language shows a bitterness and a vehe·
mence that mark him as the old Ajax still. He can see that
yielding is natural and necessary; he cannot imagine himself doing it, and he rejects the idea even while speaking
of it. Seeing the world clearly means seeing clearly the
reasons why he must leave it. 12
Yet paradoxically, Ajax' leaving the world is a form of
yielding to it. 13 The law of nature is that "fearful and
mighty things give way" (669 f.), and Ajax' examples of
change in nature (winter giving way to summer, storm
yielding to calm) all involve something grim and mighty
passing out of existence to make room for something mild
and gentle. Ajax will follow this law himself by passing out
of existence and leaving the world to the humanity and
tact' of Odysseus. Death takes him into a state where
things are most surely and permanently settled, but it is
also the ultimate change. There is more to Ajax' death
than defiance of the world. In an ironic way, and at great
cost to himself, he reaches a certain rapprochement with
it. Sophocles' most important contribution to the Ajax
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
myth was to see the story of a great man's spiritual
journey within the traditional tale of warrior pride.
l. An earlier version of this paper was read before the Fourth Comparative Drama Conference at the University of Florida on April 18, 1980.
My thanks to Frank Romer and the library staff of Johns Hopkins University for access to some excellent research materials and to Mark I.
Davies for advice on art and for reading a draft of the paper.
2. Sources for the myth (mostly literary) are collected and discussed in
the Ajax commentaries ofR. C. Jebb, Cambridge 1896, J. C. Kamerbeek,
Leiden 1953, and W. B. Stanford, London 1963. Jebb offers the fullest
collection of material, Kamerbeek the most incisive discussion, and
Stanford some good remarks about Ajax in Homer and at Athens. Also,
Carl Robert, Die griechische Heldensage 11.3.2., Berlin 1923, 1198-1207.
For the epic cycle, T. W. Allen (ed.), Homeri Opera 5, Oxford 1912, and
Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica,
Loeb Classical Library, London/New York 1964. For Aeschylus, Hans
Joachim Mette, Die Fragmente der TragOdien des Aischylos, Berlin
1959.
3. Apollodorus, Epitome 5.6-7, in the first century A.D., describes Ajax'
plot to murder the Greeks, his delusion, and the slaughter of the cattle
much as we find them in Sophocles, then adds the "irregular" burial as
it appeared in the Little Iliad. Did Apollodorus follow the Little Iliad
throughout-in which case Sophocles followed the Little Iliad closely
indeed? Or did he conflate Sophocles' version with that of the Little Iliad?
4. For the myth of Ajax in art, see Frank Brommer, Vasenlisten zur griechischen Heldensage, 3rd ed., Marburg 1973, 380 f., 418, and Denkmiiler·
listen zur griechischen Heldensage 3, Marburg 1976, 14-19; Mark I.
Davies, "The Suicide of Ajax: A Bronze Etruscan Statuette from the
Kappeli Collection," Antike Kunst 14, 1971, 148-157, and "Ajax and
Tekrnessa: A Cup by the Brygos Painter in the Bareiss Collection," An·
tike Kunst 16, 1973, 60-70; Mary B. Moore, "Exekias and Telamonian
Ajax," American Journal of Archeology 84, 1980, 417-434; B. B. Shefton,
"Agamemnon or Ajax?" Revue Archeologique 1973, 203-218; and Dyfri
Williams, "Ajax, Odysseus, and the Arms of Achilles," Antike Kunst 23,
1980, 137-145.
5. Discussed in Karl Schefold, "Sophokles' Aias auf einer Lekythos,"
Antike Kunst 19, 1976, 71-78.
6. Some fragments in relief from a molded bowl of the second century
B.C. appear to show Ajax among the cattle: see Fernand Camby, Les
vases grecs d reliefs, Paris 1922, 287 no. 10.
7. On Ajax' "heroic isolation," see Bernard M. W. Knox, "The Ajax of
Sophocles," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 65, 1961, 1-37, reprinted in Thomas Woodard (editor), Sophocles: A Collection of Critical
Essays, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1966, 29-61 (whose page numbers I cite
hereafter) and Knox, Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater,
Baltimore 1979, 125-160. Knox has examined the heroic isolation of
Sophoclean heroes generally in The Heroic Temper, Berkeley/Los
Angeles 1966. Also useful is the chapter on the Ajax in Charles Segal,
Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles, Cambridge,
Mass. 1981.
8. For a good outline of Greek hero-cults and their connection with the
heroes of Sophoclean drama, see Knox, The Heroic Temper, 53-58.
9. There is a good account of the type in George Plimpton, Paper Lion,
New York 1966, 72-75 on Bobby Layne.
10. This is widely, though not universally, accepted by critics of the play
and stated with particular force by Knox, "Ajax," 34. I have argued it
and presented my interpretation of the play's madness theme in greater
detail in "Ajax' Ailment," Ramus 9, 1980, 22-33. Also useful are
Penelope Biggs, "The Disease Theme in Sophocles' Ajax, Philoctetes,
and Trachiniae," Classical Philology 61, 1966, 223-235; and Michael
Simpson, "Sophocles' Ajax: His Madness and Transformation,"
Arethusa 2, 1969, 88-103.
11. For discussions of this aspect of the play, see especially Knox,
"Ajax"; Simpson; and David Bolotin, "On Sophocles' Ajax," The St.
John's Review 32.1, 1980,49-57.
12. See Knox, "Ajax," 45-48.
13. For this important aspect of the play, see Simpson.
61
�Toward Reading Thomas Aquinas
Thomas ] . Slakey
that Thomas' particular endeavor
was to reconcile Aristotle with the Bible. While this is
true, it is only part of a much larger truth .. In late antiquity the process of weaving together Platonic, Aristotelian,
and Stoic materials was already well under way among
those in the Eastern Mediterranean who spoke Greek. In
addition, Cicero and others undertook the task of transmitting Greek wisdom to the Latin West. The early Christians
merely expanded this process, and in fact the first instance
is recorded in the New Testament itself, in the Acts of the
Apostles, where St. Paul is speaking in Athens. Paul uses
pagan worship of an unknown god and quotations from
pagan poets as starting points toward the Christian gospel
(Acts 17: 22-34; see also Romans I: 19-20; II, 14-15). Many
of the early Christians were educated in pagan schools
and some even saw Greek philosophy, especially in Plato,
as the means by which God, in His divine providence, had
prepared the Gentile world for Christian revelation. Augustine emphasizes the importance of Platonic specula·
tion to his own conversion, though it should be noted that
he knew Plato chiefly through Cicero and Plotinus. Augustine in turn was one of the chief vehicles of Platonic,
or rather neo'Platonic, thought to the medieval world. 1
Thus Thomas did not begin the process of combining and
adapting pagan and Christian materials. Rather he was
heir to a very long and wide-spread tradition.
Nevertheless, by his time the process had taken on a
particular character through the rise of the medieval university, which began about 1200, shortly before Thomas
was born. There were two chief methods of instruction in
the medieval university, the lectio and the disputatio. The
I
T IS SOMETIMES SAID
A tutor at St. John's College, Thomas J. Slakey gave this lecture at St.
John's College, Annapolis, on February 19, 1982.
62
lectio seems to have meant literally the reading aloud of a
text,in class, together with commentary. The commentary
could range from a brief exposition of words and phrases
to a detailed explanation and discussion of the positions
taken in the text. Thomas himself taught in this manner
throughout his career and we can get close to his Classroom because many of the commentaries survive, some
based on lecture notes taken by students or secretaries
and some refined and reworked for publication. There are
twelve commentaries on separate books of the Bible and
five on other theological works. In addition there are
twelve on separate works by Aristotle, but these seem to
have been written by Thomas directly for the use of students rather than for his own classroom teaching, since
Thomas himself was in the Faculty of Theology rather
than the F acuity of Arts, where Aristotle was studied-'
Nevertheless, the commentaries on Aristotle grew out of
the tradition of the lectio and they illustrate Thomas' way
of reading a book. He rarely permits himself the moves so
dear to modern scholars when they meet difficulties and
apparent contradictions: maybe the author changed his
mind, maybe the text is corrupt; maybe this passage was
inserted by some later editor; maybe this whole way of
talking merely reflects a distant and primitive past. Rather
Thomas tries to understand the author as saying something intelligible or maybe even true, a tactic sometimes
called benigna interpretatio, benign or kindly interpretation.
Benigna interpretatio does have a real danger: we can
rest too comfortably in our own opinions and assume too
easily that our own paltry ideas deserve the majestic clothing bequeathed by some great author. If we are, however,
able to face our real differences of opinion with the author
when they do finally emerge, this way of reading seems to
me the best way to learn from books, especially old books,
In fact, in its respect for texts, the lectio resembles our
SUMMER 1982
�seminars, although we substitute a joint reading by twenty
or so people for a lecture by a single teacher.
T
HE SECOND METHOD of instruction in the medieval
university was the disputatio (Weisheipl, 124-26).
This was an interruption in the daily routine of lectiones for an extended public discussion or debate of a
particular issue, called a quaestio disputata. The question
for the day would be set by one of the masters. Numerous
proposed solutions would be offered by the bachelors, or
junior teachers in the university, usually based on quotations from the authors in the curriculum, the auctores, a
word which can also be translated "authorities." There
would also be replies and counter arguments. Some time
after the public disputation was concluded, the master
who had proposed the discussion would publish his understanding of the question in writing. He would gather
the proposed solutions into some kind of order, offer his
own detailed resolution or "reply" to the question asked,
and then briefly comment on each of the alternative proposed solutions.
Several volumes of Thomas' quaestiones also survive,
and they extend throughout the whole period of his teaching life. Moreover, it is clearly the method of the quaestio
which is used in the Summa Theologiae, Thomas' longest
and most ambitious work, begun at about age forty and
left unfinished at his death at about age fifty. It attempts
to speak to all the major questions of theology in a way suitable to beginners (See Prologue to Part I). The topics are
organized into questions and subdivided into "articles," or
"joints," each phrased as a question. (On the word "article" see Ila Ilae, Q.l, a.6.) Each begins with a series of brief
arguments, usually based on quotations from received au-
thors, or "authorities." These arguments should not be
understood as "objections," as they are sometimes described in English translations, because this word suggests
that a position has already been arrived at. They are rather
proposals toward a solution, and they generally set the
terms in which the discussion will proceed. There follows
a sed contra, or "on the contrary/' again usually based on a
quotation, and usually counter to the general sense of the
first set of arguments. There then follows the "reply" in
which Thomas sets out his own position, followed by brief
comments on each of the initial arguments and sometimes
on the sed contra as well. Throughout, Thomas' strategy is
to save and use what he can from each of the arguments
put forward, to show that the truth as he sees it is suggested by, or at least not opposed by, the quoted authority.
His typical move is the distinction: taken in one sense an
argument is misleading, but in another sense it is true.
Dante brings this out nicely when he presents Thomas as
a speaker in the Paradiso. In Canto X, Thomas says of
Solomon, quoting Scripture, that he was "given wisdom
so deep that, if the truth be true, there never arose a second of such vision" (X, 112-114, Sinclair translation). But
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
then what about Christ Himself, and also Adam? Three
cantos later the qualification comes: Dante has Thomas
explain that Solomon was wisest in the wisdom proper to
kings. Thomas concludes: " ... let this always be lead on
thy feet to make thee slow, like a weary man, in moving
either to the yea or the nay where thou dost not see clearly;
for he ranks very low among the fools, in the one case as in
the other, who affirms or denies without distinguishing,
since it often happens that a hasty opinion inclines to the
wrong side and then the feelings bind the intellect" (XIII,
94-120).
The overwhelming characteristic of Thomas' writing is
its impersonality. It's as if the commentaries, the quaestiones, and the Summas could have been written by any·
one who brought various authors together and carefully
sifted and worked back and forth in a constant search for
the truth. In notable contrast to present day philosophical
and theological writing, Thomas almost never says anyone
is simply mistaken and he never, never claims originality
for his own positions.' Even his Christian belief is not
thrust to the fore. Though he sometimes singles out questions where only divine revelation can be a guide, and
where Scripture must be taken as decisive, Thomas more
commonly weaves together in a single article suggestions
from the Bible, from Aristotle, from Cicero, from Augustine, or from whoever else he finds speaking some part of
the truth. Finally, and again in marked contrast to present
day scholarly writing, Thomas almost never mentions his
contemporaries by name. The most burning issues of the
day appear in the Summa only in their assigned places.
The impersonality has its weak side. Thomas is not
good at arousing our interest, at leading us into a topic, at
making us care about the outcome. Feelings shouldn't
bind the intellect, but some kind of feeling helps to get
the intellect started. Also, the inexorable march of arguments can give the impression that Thomas always thinks
definitive solutions have been reached. The Summa appeals to some who want simple knockdown answers to
complex questions. The strength of Thomas' writing, however, is that if one is involved in a topic through a study of
the authors he quotes, the Bible, Augustine, Aristotle, and
others, then one can appreciate both the subtlety of his
distinctions and the testing, tentative character of his
work. I have used metaphors of sifting and weaving to describe it. I think he took for granted, without laboring the
point, that the sifting and the weaving would be continued
by others.
H
OW DOES THOMAS conceive of man's relation to
God? Let us begin with his discussion of religion
-not Christianity, but simply religion, what
would now be called "comparative religion." Thomas,
however, considers religion not as an aspect of human
psychology or sociology but, following Cicero's lead,
under the heading of justice. 4 Man owes a kind of debt to
63
�God. It cannot be a debt in the strict sense, for man in the
strict sense can bring nothing to the God who made him
and the whole universe out of nothing, and man can
therefore make no return to God. The reverence and
honor we show to God are not for His sake, but for ours.
To the extent that we revere and honor God, our minds
are subjected to Him, and in this the perfection of our
minds consists. For each thing reaches its just perfection
by being placed under its superior, just as body is
perfected when it is made alive by soul and air when it is
lighted by the sun (Ila Ilae, Q.81, a.7c). As Plato argues
that justice is reached only when each part of a man's soul
is in right relation to the whole man, and only when each
man is in right relation to the whole city, so Thomas
argues that justice is reached only when man is in right
relation to God. Religion is not an adjunct or department
of human life. It is central to human life properly lived.
Moreover, in joining ourselves to God, we need to ex·
press ourselves in physical ways (Ila, Ilae, Q.81, a.7c), by
voice, by gestures such as bowing and kneeling, even by
sacred buildings (Q.83, a.l2; 84, a.3). Acts of reverence are
not peculiar to religion. Many are shown to other men,. to
parents, to kings and presidents, to country. The word
pietas or piety, as used in Latin and still to some extent in
English, ranges from reverence towards gods to reverence
towards family and fatherland. But one act of reverence
Thomas considers proper to God alone, namely the act of
offering sacrifice. Sacrifice is a sacred act in which something is offered to God and generally destroyed in the pro·
cess, as in the-killing of animals or in burnt offerings (Q.85,
a.3, ad 3). Thomas sees sacrifice as common to peoples
throughout the world (Q.85, a. I, on the contrary). He says
that "natural reason tells man that he is placed under something higher, because of the lack which he feels in himself
so that he needs help and direction from something higher.
And whatever that is, it is what among all men is called
God" (85, a.lc). The external act of sacrifice expresses "an
internal spiritual sacrifice, in which the soul offers itself to
God ... as the source of its creation and the completion of
its happiness." Only God is our creator and only God is
the completion of our happiness. Therefore to God alone
should we offer ourselves and to God alone should we
make those external offerings in sacrifice which express
the offering of ourselves (85, a.2c).
to consider Thomas' study of humility.
He classifies humility under the heading of temperence, or moderation. The Latin word humilitas derives from the notion of "low" or "close to the ground"
and tends to have a pejorative sense in classical Latin
writers. Greek has a word with a similar meaning and precisely the same etymology, tapeinotes. Humility is a rather
striking omission from Aristotle's list of virtues in the
Ethics, especially when one considers the emphasis Soph·
N
64
EXT, I WISH
odes and other Greek writers give to the dangers of exces·
sive pride. Thomas' own comment on Aristotle's omission
is that in his study of the virtues Aristotle was concerned
only with man's civil life, whereas humility especially concerns man's relation to God (IIa Ilae, Q.l61, a. I, ad 5). According to Thomas we should see ourselves as assigned by
God to a certain level (secundum gradum quem est a Deo
sortitus, a.2, ad 3), and we should recognize that whatever
is good in ourselves comes from God. Even the exercise of
our abilities comes from God, who acts in us and through
us (a.4c).
This profoundly difficult doctrine gives rise to questions about how God can act in us without destroying otir
free wills, and also questions as to why God did not make
the world better than He has, with less sin and suffering,
the questions which so tormented Job. It is a doctrine,
however, which has its roots deep in the Bible, for example, in the claim that God uses whole nations and armies
as his instruments for the punishment and restoration of
Israel: first the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, and finally
the Persians under Cyrus (see, for instance, Amos 3:11,
Isaiah 7:18-20. Also Psalm 139). Isaiah says of Cyrus, who
delivered Israel from captivity in Babylon, "Who stirred
up one from the east whom victory meets at every step?
He gives up nations before him, so that he tramples kings
under foot ... Who has performed and done this, calling
the generations from the beginning? I, the Lord, the tirst
and with the last; I am He" (Isaiah 41:2-4). It is Cyrus who
acts, but it is also God who acts through Cyrus.
The doctrine also has its roots in the concept of crea·
tion out of nothing. If we are made by God out of noth·
ing, all we are and all we do comes from God. And yet
God has not made us like rocks, and stones, and trees, or
even like the beasts of the field. He has given us the capacity to think and choose, and when He acts in us it is as beings which think and choose. (See Ia, Q.22, a.4).
Finally, this doctrine of God's action in us has its roots
in the life of prayer. We pray to God for help. Do we think
that God who is Lord of heaven and earth can only affect
such things as weather and disease and not affect ourselves? Rather we pray, "Create in us a clean heart, 0
God, and put a new and right spirit within us ... Take not
thy Holy Spirit from us" (Psalm 51:10-11 ).
To acknowledge the fact that God acts in us and through
us, to pray by it and live by it, is to see ourselves as we really
are, creatures wholy dependent on God for everything we
are and do and this is what is meant by humility. We become, in the phrase from Matthew's gospel, "poor in
spirit" (5:3), and we feel that "fear of the Lord" which the
Bible so often calls "the beginning of wisdom" (e.g. Psalm
111:10, Proverbs 9:10; see Thomas Ila Ilae, Q.l61, a.2, ad 3).
Thomas sees no conflict between humility so under·
stood and the virtues which the pagan philosophers saw
as leading to achievement in public life, in particular with
the virtue which Aristotle calls megalopsychia, magnanimity
or greatness of soul. 5 Megalopsychia strengthens our resolve to attempt great things when we really are capable
SUMMER 1982
�of them. It requires an accurate judgment of our abilities
and a courageous use of them (Q.l61, a.lc; also Q.129, a.3,
ad 4). The vice Thomas opposes to humility is superbia, or
Hpride." The word is derived from super, meaning "over"
or "above," and it has a double sense in classical Latin
writers: it can mean loftiness of spirit but also arrogance
or haughtiness. Thomas takes it in the latter sense as a
vice.
Pride is not, properly speaking, the desire for honor and
recognition. Thomas calls the desire for honor and recognition vain glory (inanis gloria, IIa IIae, Q.l62, a.S, ad 2),
empty glory. The name suggests a trifling or even silly
vice. Pride in contrast is a vice of strength. It seeks not the
recognition of excellence but excellence itself. The proud
man seeks not so much to be recognized as first as to be
first.
Pride becomes a vice when it seeks excellence beyond
our capacity (Q.l62, a.lc). Thomas does not claim that
pride is the source of all sins. He recognizes that we sin
sometimes from ignorance and sometimes from weakness
(a.2c). But when sin involves a conscious and deliberate
turning away from God, a refusal to seek God as the final
goal of our lives, it is at least an expression of pride if not a
result of pride, a desire to put ourselves in the place of God
and to govern our own lives (a.7; see also Ia I!ae, Q.84, a.2,
and Q.88, a. I, on "mortal" sin.) In this sense pride is the
first sin. It was the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden.
The temptation of the serpent was that they might "be
like God, knowing good and evil." They determined for
themselves what was good and what was evil instead of accepting that determination from God (IIa Ilae, Q.163, a. I,
a.2.).
Pride is also the source of many other sins, such as what
Thomas calls a "distaste" for the truth (excellentiam veritatis fastidiunt). The proud delight in their own excellence to such an extent that they cannot experience "the
sweetness" of certain facts. They might know how the
facts are, but not "how they taste."6
bodily but not composed of matter and form at all. It follows, he argues, that each angel is a distinct form (a.2), and
therefore, as it were, like a distinct species of animal. One
angel is as different from the next as, say, a horse is from a
camel.
Thomas holds that the angels' powers of understanding,
varied as they are among themselves, exceed our own not
only in degree but in kind. (See Ia, QQ's 54-58, especially
Q.58, a's 2-3). All our knowledge begins from our five separate bodily senses. Through colors, sounds, textures, and
so on, we slowly and painstakingly put together concepts
of things. We then make sentences about them, sentences
which are combinations of subjects and predicates, sentences like "lead is heavy." What we call "speech" or
"thinking" is expressed, in both the Greek logos and the
Latin ratio, by the same word as a mathematical "ratio,"
that is, a relation between a pair of magnitudes. And this
is what is meant by saying that we are rational animals: we
connect things. Moreover, we make further connections
called inferences. We "reason," and thus we reach conclusions.
The angels, on the other hand, are intellectual creatures, which means that they apprehend by a kind of immediate insight or "reading into" things (intus Iegere).
Thomas describes their insight only in general terms, but
we can get some clue as to what it might be like by considering mathematical examples. After having gone through
a proof we can often see in the figure that a conclusion
must follow without having to recall all the intermediate
steps. For example, having learned why the angles of a
triangle equal two right angles we can see this immediately
in the nature of a triangle, in the fact that it is composed
of three sides. Even better would be to see this immediately without ever having gone through the proof-presumably the way Euclid first saw it. Such would be the
insight of a rather low ranking angel. An angel of more
powerful mind might see the whole of Apollonius in the
first sketch of the conic sections. And a still more powerful angel would have an intuitive grasp of vast amounts of
information which we cannot even conceive except in our
T
ROMAS" STUDY OF ANGELS (Ia, Q.50 ff.) also helps
clarify man's relation to God. It is frequently said
that ancient and medieval cosmology, with the earth
at the center of the physical universe and the sun, planets,
and stars rotating around it, gave man an extremely exalted
position. The Copernican revolution, placing the sun at
the center, is said to lower man. This seems to me almost a
total misunderstanding. In the medieval universe, man
does have a definite place but it is not the highest place.
The highest place is filled by God, and in fact so high is it
above our comprehension that we cannot speak of it as
place. Moreover, there also exist above us vast multitudes
of angels, greater in number than human beings and animals, in Thomas' opinion (Q.50, a.3). Angels are nonbodily, and, according to Thomas' Aristotelian analysis of
the Biblical and neo-Platonic materials, not only nonTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
piecemeal and haphazard fashion.
Although we do have some share in intellect, we are the
lowest of intellectual creatures. We have bodies and our
knowledge begins from our bodily senses. Our position at
the center of the physical universe is of little importance
compared to our position at the very edge of the intellectual and moral universes.
Moreover, as Dante shows most powerfully, the center
of the physical universe can be conceived of as the locus
of all that is heavy, slow, and evil. We begin to emerge
from sin only as we come out of the earth and ascend the
Mount of Purgatory. We still have to move beyond the
shadow which the earth casts on to the first three planets
(Paradiso, IX, 118), before we approach regions of greater
speed and perfect light, which can more nearly image divine perfection. It is the outer boundaries of the solar system and the heavens which are their true center. Man, far
65
�from being at the center, is at the edge. We are, as C. S.
Lewis puts it, 44 Creatures of the Margin."7
A
LTHOUGH ALL OUR KNOWLEDGE begins from the
senses, and although we are therefore on the very
edge of the intellectual world, we are on that edge.
We do have the capacity to know not merely sensible particulars, a cat, a horse, but to grasp universals, cat, horse.
As is clearest of all in geometry, we can understand certain properties as following not merely by physical observation and measurement of particular triangles, but from
the definition of triangle. To repeat the earlier example, it
is because a triangle is bounded by three straight lines that
its angles equal two right angles.
Moreover, in the case of certain properties like
"justice," we know that no physical manifestation in a just
individual matches our conception of what justice is.
Socrates may occasionally fail and fall short, and even if
he does not, our conception of what justice is does not depend on Socrates' being perfectly just. It points beyond
Socrates to something which Socrates can only aim at. To
use Platonic language, Socrates has only a "share" or a
!(participation" in justice. He does not reach justice itself.
Similarly with our conception of being. Socrates will
die, and any of the things we experience through our senses
will also degenerate and pass away. All physical things
have only a shared existence. They are not being itself.
But even the angels, though they will not die, have only a
shared existence. It is not part of their nature to exist.
Rather their existence is derived, like ours, from a creator
who made them out of nothing. We can strive to move beyond such beings to the conception of a being who simply
is, not by sharing or participation but by His own nature.
He is the source of all the lesser things we know and of all
that is good and just and wise in them. He Himself is
goodness and justice and wisdom. As Thomas puts it,
even though we develop words like "good" from our experience of physical things, such words point beyond themselves and ultimately to God. Their full meaning is realized
only in God. (See Ia, Q.l3, a.6.)
WO IMPORTANT ARGUMENTS follow from this conception of man as knowing universals. The first is
that man's life is not limited to the world of particular physical things. Even though man obviously dies, it is
his body which dies, not his mind or soul. The mind which
can grasp non-bodily things like goodness, justice, and being, must itself be non-bodily. This argument is of course
found in the Phaedo (64-69, 74-75, 78-79) and Thomas
also finds it, I think rightly, in Aristotle's De Anima, whatever Aristotle's final opinion on this question may be. (See
Ia, Q.75, a.6; De Anima III, 4,429a 18-b 22.)
The other argument is that man's happiness can be
found only in union with God. This argument is found at
T
66
the beginning of Part Two of the Summa Theologiae and
is reflected in the structure of the work as a whole. Part
One of the Summa starts from God as creator, and goes
on to treat of the angels and men and all the physical universe as coming forth from God. Part Two reverses the
motion. It begins from man and sees everything in human
life as leading man back to God. For instance, the discussion of law, which comes from the second part of the
Summa, deals with law as an instrument of man's service
to God and return to God. (See Ia Ilae, QQ's 90-108.)
We seek many things in life: wealth, sensual pleasure,
power, and knowledge. Each of these has, or at least can
have, some share in goodness and can therefore give us
some share in happiness. But only goodness itself can fully
satisfy our desire, our constant movement from one
par~
tial and temporary satisfaction to another. And goodness
itself is God Himself (Ia Ilae, Q.2, a.8). Whether we realize
it or not, all our confused and haphazard search in life is
really for God. The search Augustine describes in the
Confessions is the true search of every man. As Augustine
puts it, "Thou hast made us for Thyself, 0 Lord, and our
hearts are ever restless until they rest in Thee" (Confessions, I, l ).
There is a fundamental paradox in human existence. In
one sense man is firmly in place in an elaborate hierarchy,
a sacred order. He is a creature of God, he owes reverence
to God. He must humble his pride and bow his head before God. He is located in a range of creatures, neither
lowest nor highest, between animals and angels. In a different sense, his position is most unstable. He is a creature
of the margin. He shares something of the nature of animals and something of the nature of angels. His desire for
happiness leads him beyond anything he can find in the
world about him. His reason leads him beyond what he
can fully understand.
I
'VE EXPLORED THREE EXAMPLES, from the Summa
Theologiae, Thomas' study of religion, his study of
pride, and his study of the angels. Nothing I've said so
far is specifically Christian-' For Thomas, if I understand
him rightly, the world I've described so far is knowable, at
least in principle, by natural reason. I do not mean to say
that in developing his conception of the universe that
comes from God and returns to God, Thomas makes no
use of the Bible. He constantly draws on the Bible and on
other Christian writers. But following a passage from St.
Paul that he is fond of quoting (for instance, Ia, Q.2 a.2,
on lhe contrary), Thomas holds that "the invisible nature"
of God, "His eternal power and deity" can be "seen by the
mind in things made" (Romans, I, 20; see also, Romans II,
14-15).
Thomas' understanding of religious faith is very different from that most commonly expressed today when we
speak of "faith in God." For Thomas the existence of God
is not a matter of faith. Rather faith presupposes the exisSUMMER 1982
�tence of God. Speaking strictly, to have faith means to
believe that something is true because we believe that it
has been revealed by God (Ila Ilae, Q.l, a.lc).
In the Bible itself there is never any question of God's
existence. Faith is demanded only when God enters our
world and speaks in something like a human voice: when
He speaks to Abraham and promises him a son in his old
age, or to Moses from the burning bush and promises that
He will lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, or through
the prophets, or finally through His Word made flesh in
the man jesus Christ. Then those who have ears to hear
must believe that it is God who speaks and they must
trust in His word. This is where faith enters.
The good news of the gospels is that God has not abandoned us to our sins and to our own feeble efforts at finding him. God has revealed Himself as Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, and especially in the Son made flesh in jesus
Christ. Christ has died on the cross for our sins and risen
from the dead. Through him we can begin to rise from
our sins in this life and later we can rise from death to live
with God. In that life we will find what we have been
seeking all along. It is our true home, our fatherland, our
patria. On this earth we are only viatores, travelers, pilgrims. (For the use of these terms, see for example Ila Ilae,
Q.18, a.2, a.3.)
HEN THOMAS APPROACHES the mysteries of revelation in study and prayer, his faith is serene. He
expresses neither the anxiety nor the bluster of
so many modern Christians. His world is open to the voice
of God. Like Samuel he can say, "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening" (I Samuel 3:10).
To what extent is our own world open to the voice of
God? I do not know the answer to this question, but I do
think there is something about the typical modern process
of inquiry, especially as it begins in Descartes, which
makes it difficult for us to hear God's voice when He does
speak. Descartes imagines true knowledge as a city of perfectly straight streets built by one skillful engineer in an
empty plain (Discourse on Method, Part II). Nothing could
be further from Thomas' manner of inquiry, which is truly
like the medieval city Descartes despises, making use of
all the twisting alleys and old houses, always building on
foundations laid by others, adjusting, modifying, combining.
Secondly, Descartes wishes that he could have been
born with the full use of his reason and that he had never
had to rely on any teacher or parent for anything he thought.
This suggests that he wished to think without even the
hindrance of any human language, in a new language of
perfect clarity and precision. Again, nothing could be farther from Thomas' manner of inquiry. Like Plato and Aristotle, Thomas began from what was said by others. He
ransacked old books, pagan, Moslem, jewish, and Christian, for whatever help he could find.
Finally, Descartes establishes as a criterion of truth
whatever is completely clear and certain to himself. The
W
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
first question of modern philosophy becomes, what can I
know for certain? The principal endeavor of modern philosophy from Descartes through Kant and to a large extent
to our own day, is to set limits to knowledge, to exclude
from inquiry those matters which do not sufficiently meet
the standards of certainty which are somehow prescribed
at the beginning, and the standards of certainty generally
come from mathematics and physical science. Even the
most evident truths of morality become suspect, since
they do not possess the kind of clarity that mathematics
and the physical sciences seem to have. Obviously any
purported truths of religion are even more suspect.
Again, Thomas turns this criterion of certainty upside
down. He invokes a metaphor of Aristotle's in which the
most certain and evident truths are precisely those hardest for us to grasp. The obscurity does not lie in those
truths but in our feeble knowing powers. Aristotle says,
" ... as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the
reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most
evident of all" (Metaphysics II, 1, 993b 10, quoted Ia, Q.l,
a.5, ad 1 and frequently elsewhere). It is not the truth of
God's existence and nature, or even the truths of revelation, which are obscure. God Himself is truth and the
source of all truth. The obscurity and the weakness lie
with us.
We ridicule medieval man for placing himself at the
center of the physical universe. Perhaps we have made a
more important mistake: placing ourselves at the center of
the universe of knowledge and truth.
l. Let me mention in passing that Plato's own writings were largely
unknown in the Latin West until the fifteenth century. No Platonic text
was ever the direct subject of instruction in any medieval school. See
Rashdall's Medieval Universities, ed. Powicke and Emden, Oxford 1936,
1, 38.
2. See James A. Weisheipl, O.P., Friar Thomas D'Aquino, New York,
1974, 281-82.
3. A notable exception is Ia, Q.3, a.S, where he mentions three "errors"
and describes one David de Dinando as having spoken "really stupidly"
(stultissime) when he identified God with prime matter.
4. See Cicero, De Invent Rhetor., Book II, chapter 53. See Sum. Theol.,
Ila llae, Q.80, A.un., obj. 1. I'm using the Marietti edition, Rome 1948.
All translations are my own.
5. David Ross's widely used translation of the Ethics unfortunately renders megalopsychia as "pride.''
6. Ila Ilae, Q.l62, a3, ad l. The metaphor of tasting the truth comes
from St Gregory's Moralia.
7. C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, Cambridge 1964, 58.
8. See Lewis, The Discarded Image, 18-19.
67
�REVIEW EsSAY
Updike and Roth: Are They Writers?
John Updike's Rabbit Is Rich
and Philip Roth's Zuckerman Unbound
lEV NAVROZOV
When manuals entitled "How to Become a Writer" began to
appear in Russia in the 20s, they used the term zavyazka, which
is the opposite of denouement. The latter means the "untying,"
"release," "resolution" of the novel, while zavyazka means its
"tying-up"-its "conceptual beginning." After reading the first
eighty-eight pages of Mr. Updike's novel, we finally reach its
"tying-up." Nelson, son of the car dealer Rabbit, residing in
Brewer, Pennsylvania, leaves his college at Kent State, Ohio, and
visits his :Parents with a girl named Melanie.
First of all, Rabbit discovers that he is "not turned on" by
Melanie. In that pansexual phoneyland that Mr. Updike and his
colleagues describe as America, everyone at any age is or must be
"turned on" by everyone else. Indeed, Rabbit "feels even sexier
toward fat old Bessie," his seventy- or eighty-year-old mother-inlaw, than to the college girl his son came with. To make this
cultist pansexualism plausible, Mr. Updike goes into the lavatory
experiences of fat old Bessie, as witnessed by Rabbit. Besides the
incredible fact that his son's girl, Melanie, does not turn Rabbit
on, said Rabbit concludes that she does not turn on his son either.
Since everyone has to be sexually attracted to everyone else,
Rabbit's old sick subordinate named Charlie feels he must have
Rabbit Is Rich, by John Updike. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1981. 467
pages. $13.95.
Zuckerman Unbound, by Philip Roth. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New
York 1981. 225 pages. $10.95.
Lev Navrozov has contributed "One Day in the Life of the New York
Times and Pravda in the World: Which is More Informative?" (Autumn
1981) and "A Pead Man's Knowledge" (Winter 1982) to the St. John's
Review. Author of The Education of Lev Navrozov (Harper & Row 1975)
and of the forthcoming What the New York Times Knows About the
World, he has written many articles for Commentary, Midstream, The
Yale Literary Magazine, and other magazines.
68
an affair with Melanie. Why should a pretty college girl of 20 or
so have an affair with an old, sick, boring, vulgar, and uneducated man who works as a car salesman's subordinate in a small
Pennsylvania town? Because Mr. Updike's phoneyland has even
less to do with America or any real society than the Soviet novels
of the Stalin era had to do with Russia. Sex in thi!'l phoneyland is
not a reality observed in any real society, but a figment of cultist
imagination.
Like many other Westerners mistaken today for novelists, Mr.
Updike is sure that realism in literature is the utmost absence of
all good manners, utmost obscenity, utmost vulgarity. Describe
all the lavatory experiences you can, and your amateur puppet
show will come wonderfully to life, and your cardboard figures
will begin to live. The sex Mr. Updike describes is no less detailed
than in a medical reference book or locker room conversation.
But as soon as Mr. Updike departs from medicine or locker room
lore into human relations, this sex becomes as false, fantastic,
and far-fetched as everything he writes about.
Apart from this, the-more-vulgar-the-more-realistic approach,
Mr. Updike uses two no less naive amateur techniques to give
realism to his puppet show. First, he believes that the more detailed
his description of everything is, the more lifelike his cardboard
will be. Rabbit jogs, and Mr. Updike proceeds to describe (I) the
color of his running shoes, (2) where they were bought, (3) what
sort of shoes they are, (4) what soles they have at toe and heel,
and (5) how the soles behave, owing to "resilient circlets like flattened cleats." Also, all puppets must be fashionable: "Melanie
was mystical, she ate no meat and felt no fear, the tangled weedy
gods of Asia spelled a harmony to her."
After this fantastic puppet show "nouement," we learn that
the fashionably mystical Melanie is not the girl of Rabbit's son,
Nelson. Quite the contrary. His girl's name is Prudence: this is
how she has been nicknamed for her insufficient promiscuity in
SUMMER 1982
�1\!Ir. Updike's sex utopia. For some reasons as implausible as
everything else in the novel, Prudence is so far into her pregnancy that Nelson must marry her. So Nelson has left the unwed
expectant mother Prudence at college and come to his father to
get a job at his car sales shop, with Prudence's friend Melanie to
chaperone him on this mission. "You (arc) such a goddam watchdog," Nelson complains to Melanie, "I can't even go into town
for a beer."
The idea that a college girl will go from Kent to Pennsylvania
to chaperone her friend's fiance in his father's home and will live
there as if she were the fiance's aunt or mother is again good only
for an amateur puppet theater. But Ivlr. Updike adds more hastily invented nonsense to this silly invention of his. We find that
in the middle of a grand Hollywood-movie affair with Rabbit's
old, sick, poor, uneducated, and vulgar assistant named Charlie,
the beautiful chaperone Melanie sleeps also with her charge,
Nelson.
Like those philistines who are, in any company, interested in
nothing except obscene jokes and are dead, bored, and monosyllabic until someone begins to tell them, Mr. Updike comes to the
same kind of phosphorescent animation only when he is at his
locker room jokes. Mr. Updike invented IYielanie and dragged
her all the way from college to chaperone her friend's fiance in
order to have a pretext for more locker room entertainment.
What is the attitude of Prudence toward the chaperon's cohabitation with her fiance? Explains Janice, the wife of Rabbit:
"They don't have this jealousy thing the way we do, if you can
believe them."
No, they don't have jealousy. Nor any other feelings. They are
Mr. Updike's sexual-gastric puppets which IYir. Updike puts
through various sexual-gastric acts of his imagination so narrow
that the impression finally is that the sexual-gastric automaton is
Mr. Updike himself.
After a series of locker room jokes strung out over the 467
pages, comes the denouement: Nelson marries Prudence and
even goes back to college. This is what Rabbit wanted: to get rid
of Nelson. Father and son hate each other. Mr. Updike, an exemplary Freudian cultist, thought it necessary to invent this as well.
I\llr. Updike seems to have a lower ability to observe human relations than an average person-a layman who has never dreamed
of becoming a writer. About sixty pages before the end of Rabbit
Is Rich, Mr. Updike decided again to compose Couples, a novel
about wife-swapping written about a decade earlier, and "plug"
it in somewhere at the end of whatever he had written under the
title Rabbit Is Rich. Why not? As it was, Rabbit Is Rich was a
string of desultory anecdotes. Why not plug in at the end some
wife-swapping anecdote as well? No sooner said than done. Instead of getting someone's wife named Cindy, as he wanted,
Rabbit got, according to the first night's arrangement, sorneone's
wife named Thelma. Nevertheless, there follows the novel's biggest in-bed scene. Since the time of Couples, Mr. Updike has
learned a perversion about which any boy of any country may
read in any standard textbook of general psychiatry. Mr. Updike
displays his discovery over a dozen or so pages.
The wife-swapping vacation is interrupted by the news of the
disappearance of Nelson. On their way back, Rabbit's wife, JanTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ice, begins to sob aboard the plane. Rabbit assumes that the disappearance of their son Nelson causes the tears. Finally Janice
explains to Rabbit:
"I felt so sorry for you, having Thelma when you wanted
Cindy so much." With that there is no stopping her crying.
The mother of a son who has disappeared cries over her husband's getting the wrong wife during a wife-swapping session.
Chekhov says about a character of his that he could multiply
big figures in his mind but he could not understand why people
cry or laugh. Can Ivlr. Updike multiply big figures in his mind?
He certainly cannot understand why people cry or laugh.
The New York Times celebrated the appearance of this
467-page volume of emetic pulp: the upper half of the front page
of the New York Times Book Review showed Mr. Updike against
a panorama of books, presumably his own. From an article below, "Updike on Updike," we learn from Mr. Updike that his
"20-odd books" have been translated into "20-odd languages, including Finnish, Serbo-Croatian, Hebrew and Korean." 1
I recall how we read that the worst novels of the Stalin era had
been translated into many languages. The psychology of selfevaluation is the same: "Look how many books I have written,
how many pages each of them contains, how many copies of
each of them sold, and how many prizes they have won."
Mr. Updike, speaking of "what the aim of my [Mr. Updike's]
fiction is," says: "let literature concern itself, as the Gospels do,
with the inner life of hidden men." A writer is a "secreter of images," l\!Ir. Updike explains, "some of which he prays will have
the immortal resonance of Don Quixote's windmills, of Proust's
madeleine, of Huck Finn's raft._" Mr. Updike's ambition does not
stop at the immortal resonance of Cervantes, Proust, and Twain.
"I want to write books ... " 1\!lr. Updike declares to l\!Ir. Updike.
Yes, what books? "Something like E=mc2 , only in words, one
after the other."
No Soviet literary charlatan under Stalin had Ivlr. Updike's insolence: it is truly cosmic.
Now listen to l\!Ir. John Leonard's riddles or pomposities in his
Books of the Times review. They are vague, confusing or obscure
enough to pass for wisdom intended for the select few:
He [Rabbit] wastes himself while the dead aren't looking [are
they looking elsewhere?] and God is short of meanings [or of
literary critics?].
Or:
After the death of God-after the chilling discovery that
every time we make a move toward "the invisible," somebody
gets killed-we require a myth of community, sm;nething as
Felix put it in "Coup," that fits the facts, as it were, backwards."
A hard lesson and, after three "Rabbit" books, a splendid
achievement. Let Felix also have the last word: "I perceived
that a man, in America, is a failed boy" [period, end of reviewJ.Z
69
�What does all this highfalutin rigmarole mean?
The "death of God" is Nietzsche's phrase which had been
worn threadbare (in Russia, for example) before Nietzsche died
in 1900. Mr. Leonard must think it terrifically new, for he repeats it several times. But what does it have to do with someone
getting killed? Who gets killed?
What is a "hard lesson?" That God is dead? That someone
gets killed? That we require a myth of community, as Felix of
Mr. Updike's Coup discovered?
What has all this to do with a man in America being allegedly a
failed boy, or a boy being a failed man?
The less comprehensible the better. An understandable text
will expose Mr. Leonard: everyone will see that he has no more
to say as a critic than l\llr. Updike as a writer.
But what was Mr. Leonard's evaluation of Rabbit Is Rich?
It consists of nine words. The book is the "usual Updike xylophone" (three words), and "I like his mus_ic very much" (six
words). Whereupon Mr. Leonard pounces on the critics who fail
to like Mr. Updike's xylophone (not saxophone?) music:
Let the critics, like Nelson, "suck the foam out of one more
can," their "surly puzzled" faces "drinking and eating up the
world, and out of spite at that."
How can Nelson and the critics suck the foam out of one more
can if they drink and eat up the world? Is the world the foam? Or
they do not drink and eat up the world, but only their faces do?
Anyway, these outpourings are to show that the critics, their
faces surly and puzzled, are against Mr. Updike, and only Mr.
Leonard is heroically out to appreciate and defend singlehandedly
the "usual Updike xylophone." It is amazing how conformist salaried officials of a corporation, like Mr. Leonard, praising John
Updike only because "everybody does it," are fond of imagining
themselves to be lone fierce intellectual heroes, fighting against
the overwhelming establishment.
The review in the New York Times Book Review presents a different style: the courtier describing the Emperor's nonexistent
clothes. This particular courtier is Professor Roger Sale of the University of Washington. Dr. Sale ends his review quite resolutely:
For me "Rabbit is Rich" is the first book in which Updike has
fulfilled the fabulous promise he offered with "Rabbit Run"
20 years ago. 3
How did Dr. Sale arrive at this (fabulous) conclusion? Thereview is either vague or vaguely pompous in this respect:
Harry Angstrom [Rabbit] can never be described as largeminded, but that does not prevent Updike from imagining him
largely [or large-mindedly?].
But at one point Dr. Sale decided to be specific. Rabbit's and
Janice's "lovemaking while talking about moving out of his motherin-law's house and worrying about their son Nelson is the best
moment in the book, maybe in all Updike." Prepare yourself for
the best moment:
70
"Could we afford it," Janice asks,"with the mortgage rates
up around thirteen percent now?"
He shifts his hand down the silvery slick undulations of her
belly .... [the dots are in the magazine].
"It seems hard on Mother," Janice says in that weak voice
she gets, lovemaking. "She'll be leaving us this place some day
and I know she expects we'd stay in it with her till then."
The quotation goes on in the same spirit for another twenty-four
lines but I grudge the space.
Mr. Updike describes common Americans who turn out, under
his pen, to be fantastic, obnoxious, stupid, and asocial animals,
driven by fantastic sexual-gastric urges of Mr. Updike's invention. Mr. Roth describes Americans like himself who turn out,
under his pen, to be like the phoney dukes and duchesses of old
pulp novels.
The first twentieth century Western pulp novel I read had
been published in England in the 1920s and was entitled The
Undesirable Governess. There was a difference between The Undesirable Governess and nineteenth century European dime fiction. The latter usually displayed dukes and duchesses, and all
the "appurtenances of luxury." "Tears streaming down her pale
face, the duchess was running to the pond." The pond was a
ducal "appurtenance of luxury." The Undesirable Governess displayed "people of culture" as the modern equivalent of dukes
and duchesses. Instead of running to the ducal pond, the heroine read the Upanishads, the most cultured pastime for the
English middle class of the 20s. The Upanishads had replaced
the ducal pond. Just as the 19th-century dime novel readers were
to gasp at the luxury of dukes and duchesses, the new pulp novel
readers were to marvel at the culture of "people of culture."
In Philip Roth's Zuckerman Unbound, Zuckerman is a writer
whose book makes a million dollars. "But what writer?" any more
or less intelligent American is bound to ask. "A hack like Gay
Talese, who has made millions of dollars, or a Chekhov, who
would be unable to live off his genius in New York today?"
Philip Roth is not that complicated. His Zuckerman is a great
writer-like Tolstoy, John Updike, Cervantes, Proust, Mark Twain,
Philip Roth. Naturally, his book makes a million, not millions. Millions of dollars would make readers suspicious: What if this great
writer were just another Harold Robbins?
A million dollars is enough for Mr. Roth to show "how the rich
live" -the subject of his pulp novel-and at the same time remove
any suspicion as to the greatness of his Zuckerman.
There is a writer's love affair, of course. With a Hollywood star,
of course. How do writers have affairs, in contrast to Mr. Updike's
car dealers or college students?
We have to recall again nineteenth century pulp literature in
which the readers who never had seen a real duke or duchess at
close quarters were shown how phoney dukes and duchesses lived.
In Zuckerman Unbound, the phoney Duke and Duchess have been
replaced by the phoney Writer and the phoney Movie Actress.
When Writer Zuckerman came to Movie Actress Caesara
O'Shea's hotel suite, what did he do-go to bed with her as Mr.
SUMMER 1982
�Updike's Rabbit, a car dealer? Little do you know about the life
of Writers.
Writer Zuckerman read S(,iren Kierkegaard aloud to her.
Do not expect that Writer Zuckerman or Movie Actress Caesara
or Philip Roth himself would say anything original about "Syiren
Kierkegaard" (or about anyone and anything else on earth). "Sy{ren
Kierkegaard" plays here the same role as the Duke's carriage
played in the nineteenth century pulp.
Now, the Movie Actress begins to fidget. After all, she is a Movie
Actress, not a Theatre Actress or Authoress. A Movie Actress corresponds to the illegitimate daughter of a duke and a kitchen maid
in old dime novels.
Is Writer Zuckerman going to read all of Sy{ren Kierkegaard at
a go?
Zuckerman laughed. "And what will you do?"
"What I always do when I invite a man to my room and he sits
down and starts reading. I'll throw myself from the window."
Writer Zuckerman has to descend to this half-duchess-halfkitchen-maid and explain to her that he is a Duke of literature,
not a Harold Robbins:
"Your problem is this taste of yours, Caesara. If you just had
Harold Robbins around, like the other actresses, it would be
easier to pay attention to you."
Writer Zuckerman is not like Harold Robbins who would go to
bed with the Movie Actre_ss instead of reading S0'ren Kierkegaard
to her. Just as in old dime novels there would be the villain who
was born and bred low, but who impersonated a duke, so, too,
Harold Robbins, in contrast to Writer Zuckerman (or Writer Philip
Roth), has no more refinement than Mr. Updike's car dealer.
Having proven, by dropping the name of S¢ren Kierkegaard,
that Zuckerman is a Writer, not a Harold Robbins, Mr. Roth shows
him and his life in a way no different from the way People magazine portrays Harold Robbins and his high-society life. Indeed,
we are treated to a clipp-ing frorri such a magazine:
I know, I know, actually you only want to know who's doing
what to whom. Well, NATHAN ZUCKERMAN and CAESARA
O'SHEA are still Manhattan's most delectable twosome. They
were very together at the little dinner that agent ANDRE
SCHEVITZ and wife MARY gave where KAY GRA.HAM talked to
WILLIAM STYRON and TONY RANDALL talked to LEONARD
BERNSTEIN and LAUREN BACALL talked to GORE VIDAL and
Nathan and Caesara talked to one another.
The actual descriptions of this kind in People and other such
magazines at least refer to real people like real Harold Robbins.
What Mr. Roth describes is phoneyness about phoneyness, society chitchat twice removed from life, a fictitious People magazine
column about a fictitious Zuckerman.
If Philip Roth were to describe an "unsuccessful" writer as,
say, Chekhov would be in New York today, all readers, including
those who read People magazine and other such, would find his
book unreadable, for Mr. Roth would have nothing to say on the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
subject. As it is, Mr. Roth sets up Zuckerman as a Kierkegaardreading Writer high above People magazine, and then proceeds
to write People magazine stuff "about how the rich live," to be
entertaining at least to some People magazine readers, or to
those who do not read People magazine out of college-educated
snobbery and read Mr. Roth for the same kind of "high-society"
pulp.
About two pages are devoted to Writer Zuckerman's ordering
of twelve suits at the most fashionable tailor. I am sure that Mr.
Roth is factual1y accurate describing the particular fashions of
1981 in New York since he has been a millionaire Writer himself.
But as soon as Mr. Roth departs from his consumer's report of
fashionable goods and services, phoneyness sets in:
One night a pretty rock singer whom he'd never seen before
told johnny Carson about her one and "Thank God" only
date with Nathan Zuckerman. She brought the house down
describing the "gear" Zuckerman advised her to wear to dinner if she wanted to "turn him on."
Silly and cheap as Johnny Carson and his show are, it is improbable that a rock singer on his show would brag of a date with a
writer (like Philip Roth) she had never seen, and would "bring
the house down" by inventing the "gear" he allegedly advised
her to wear. Mr. Roth sounds like a foreigner describing the
Johnny Carson show to a foreign pulp magazine.
Mr. Roth must have felt that the story about how a Writer
made a million dollars and proceeded to live like a Harold Robbins, except for reading Kierkegaard to Movie Actresses, as a
Writer should, is too little for a novel.
The new fashion seems to be to avoid in-bed scenes, and in
this respect Mr. Roth has become more fashionable than Mr.
Updike. Without such scenes, however, he has not much to say.
So Mr. Roth invented a substory, combining again amateur triteness and amateur implausibility to the same amazing degree Mr.
Updike does.
A former television quiz winner named Alvin Pepler from
Newark, Zuckerman's home town, comes to New York and
meets, on page 11 of the book, the celebrated Zuckerman. This
trite meeting of the trite admirer with the trite celebrity, worn
threadbare in humorous sketches and vaudevilles a century ago,
lasts to page 41, about one-fifth of the slender book.
Alvin Pepler turns out to be somewhat insane and threatens,
in the farfetched ways of Mr. Roth's invention, to kill the celebrated Zuckerman.
Finally, Alvin Pepler reappears on page 13 3-he is writing areview of Zuckerman's celebrated book for the New York Times
and wants his opinion of the review, because Alvin Pepler does
not 'want Sulzberger to read it if it stinks."
Everything in the "novel" is so farfetched, contrived, and amateurish that it is not clear whether this is a humorless spoof or if
Mr. Roth really believes that the New York Times accepts reviews from former Newark television quiz winners-and Arthur
Ochs Sulzberger reads them personally. Why has not this highbrow best-seller been reviewed before if it has already made a
million dollars? Is this Mr. Roth's idea of being funny? Or
Pepler's? Who is silliest-l\!Ir. Roth or Pepler or Zuckerman?
71
�This review-for-the-New-York-Times filler goes on for twentythree pages, about one-tenth of the book. Finally, Zuckerman
opines that Pepler's thoughts in the review are not original (are
Zuckerman's or Mr. Roth's?), but "Sulzberger could be crazy
about it." Pepler flairs up, like the professor from Ionesco's wellknown old play The Lesson, which Mr. Roth evidently decided to
imitate to fill in some pages, and besides, possibly to show how
well-read he is.
Still, Mr. Roth felt himself duly bound to fill in another dozen
or so pages. So Zuckerman's father dies, and the ensuing description, as trite and implausible as the rest of the book, does
the trick of bringing the "novel" to a decent minimum size.
Anatole Broyard entitled his Books of the Times review of
Zuckerman Unbound "The Voyeur Vu," for only the French can
-convey the subtlety of Mr. Broyard's perception of Mr. Roth's
novel. "Voyeur" is in French "peeper," "Peeping Tom," meaning a writer in this particular case, and when the latter becomes a
celebrity he becomes a "peeper peeped at."
Now, when he walks down the street, everyone he meets is
a literary critic. He is the voyeur vu. 4
How could one express this in plain English, instead of the language of Proust?
And what an achievement of Philip Roth, too! A celebrity is
peeped or peeked at. Voyeur vu. Perhaps Mr. Roth should write
his books straight in French?
As is usual, about two-thirds of Mr. Broyard's review is devoted to the "retelling of the plot." Then Mr: Broyard notes that
"Mr. Roth's voice is convincing and emotionally charged." He
refers to Mr. Rpth's "wit and grace." Not that the book is impeccably free from weaknesses: "Pepler is too monolithic, too quickly
comprehended." Mr. Roth's voice "seems to be pitched just a little too high up in the sinuses, too ready with ironic incredulity."
Mr. Roth suffers from too much irony (and also from too much
wit, grace, talent, intelligence, and beauty?).
The new book is reasonably funny, reasonably sad, reasonably interesting, and occasionally just plain reasonable.
The review in the New York Times Book Review is a bravura. It
reproaches Philip Roth only for his new avoidance of pornography, in contrast with his former pornographic self. The reviewer
(George Stade) is one of those middle-class males who imagine
themselves big-hearted, open-minded, and oceanically gifted hemen because they are noisy, pushy, and ill-mannered. Often
they also eat and drink a lot, do not pass a single woman without
a lewd observation-and this seems to prove their oceanic talent.
Listen to Mr. Stade's bojsterous masculine harangue:
Mr. Stade assumes that Fenny Cooper, Nate Hawthorne, Hermie Melville, and Sammy Clemens (as well as Em Dickinson and
Tommy Eliot, no doubt) larded their works with American middle-class locker room anecdotes, told in the most masculine locker
room manner of the most masculine he-man, as Philip Roth did
in his earlier works. This is why these writers are still read in
many countries. American middle-class locker room anecdotes
have been cherished all over the world. No country has ever had
such obscene language, or such noisy, pushy, ill~mannered males.
And look what Philip Roth has done-he has stopped pouring
out obscenities because of the retrograde and feminizing custodians of our high literary culture.
I had thought that our "high literary culture" and its "custodians" were steeped in pornography. Pulp culture thrives on pornography. How can "high literary culture" abstain, if it is mostly
just an amateur version of pulp culture? What else would Mr.
Roth or Mr. Updike sell?
But no. The custodians of our high literary culture are as they
were over a hundred years ago. Mr. Stade, the lone heroic heman, possibly the last male on earth, is fighting single~handedly,
just like Mr. Leonard, against the feminizing establishment, led
by the New York Times (and Playboy?), for the preservation of
that almost destroyed national treasure of treasures: middle-class
vulgarity. And IIOW Philip Roth has left the-cause. Alone, all alone,
Mr. Stade is, pitted against hordes of feminizing retrogrades.
Yes, only the feminized retrograde absence of modern robust
male pornography mars Philip Roth's book, which is
masterful, sure of every touch, clear and economical ofline as
a crystal vase, but there is something diminished about it as
about its immediate predecessors. The usual heartbreak and
hilarity are there, but they no longer amplify each other; now
both are muted.
If only there were a generous splash of pornography on every
page, as in the good old days-the 60s and 70s, when the fashion
was full on. How Mr. Roth's crystal vase of a book would sparkle,
and how the heartbreak and hilarity amplify each other, no longer
muted. Good old days. When Normie Mailer was mistaken for
Billy Shakespeare. Remember? Will they ever come back?
l.
2.
3.
4.
5.
New York Times Book Review, September 27, 1981, 1.
Books of the Times, September 22, 1981.
New York Times Book Review, September 27, 1981, I.
New York Times, May 9, 1981, 13.
New York Times Book Review, May 24, 1981, l.
The custodians of our high literary culture are as retrograde and feminizing as they were over a hundred years ago.
The ghosts of Mr. Roth's Landsmanner, Fenny Cooper, Nate
Hawthorne, Hermie Melville, and Sammy Clemens are nodding approval. Who cares what the Momma's boys think?5
72
SUMMER 1982
�FROM OUR READERS (continued from page 2)
probably say so. In that case, his reactions
to arguments against feminism would be
more consistent than they now appear.
TINA BELL
Nyack, N.Y.
Mr. Doskow replies:
Ms. Bell misses the point of my quarrel
with Mr. Levin. The issue is not one of
women being forced to stay home by their
husbands (though this has been known to
happen), nor is it a question of the importance of raising children, certainly a most
important task {I would only add that Fatherhood deserves equal billing with Motherhood). Rather the issue is whether women
should be judged on their individual abilities or considered congenitally incapable of
doing certain kinds of work, and whether
when they do the same work as men they
should be paid equally, something which
has not been and is not now the case. There
may well be significant distinctions between
men and women. But, as I thought I made
overabundantly clear, what seemed to be
natural differences not very long ago
(women's innate incapacity to be attor-
neys, e.g.) turn out to be merely prejudices.
To cite just one more example (from Stephen Gould, The Mismeasure of Man,
p. 118): G. Stanley Hall, "America's premier psychologist," attributed the higher
suicide rate of women to "A profound psychic difference between the sexes. Wornen's body and soul is phyletically older and
more primitive, while man is more modern,
variable, and less conservative .... Women
prefer passive methods; to give themselves
up to the power of elemental forces, as
gravity, when they throw themselves from
heights ... "
Incidentally, if Pride and Prejudice is to
be Ms. Bell's text, it is a pity that she misses
the profound irony of the first sentence
which remarks, among other things, that it
is not all men but only those "in possession
of a good fortune" who must be "in want
of a wife." Arc the others not to "establish
themselves in civilized society"? I might
also remark that in a more enlightened age
Charlotte Lucas might find something
more interesting and useful to do with her
life than to marry Mr. Collins and spend it
as a toady to Lady Catherine.
GEORGE DOSKOW
�The St. John's Review
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
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�Editor's Note
FROM
OUR READERS
'
With this issue the St. John's Review begins to charge
new subscribers. Old subscribers, St. John's alumni and
friends, students and their families will continue to receive the magazine without charge. My desire to turn the
St. John's Review into an unambiguously public magazine
and to win an additional audience prompts this decision.
From now on the St. John's Review will appear three
times a year1 in the fall, winter, and summer-L.R.
Editor:
Leo Raditsa
Managing Editor:
Thomas Patran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant:
Janet Durholz
Consulting Editors:
David Bolotin,
Eva Brann,
Curtis A. Wilson.
Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome,
but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also
welcome.
THESTJOHNSREVIEW (formerly The College) is published by
the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland
21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Edward G. Sparrow, Dean.
Published thrice yearly, in the fall, winter, and summer. For those
not on the distribution list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for
two years, or $36.00 for three years, payable in advance. Address
all correspondence to The St. John's Review, St. John's College,
Annapolis, Maryland 21404.
Volume XXXIII
WINTER 1982
Number2
©1982, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Cover: Thick-billed Murre by J. J. Audubon; photograph courtesy of the
New-York Historical Society, New York City.
Composition: Britton Composition Co.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co.
ON" 'SEXISM' IS MEANINGLESS"
To the Editor of the St. John's Review:
Mr. Levin (" 'Sexism' is Meaningless") seems not to be able to
distinguish between what is in fact the case and his personal
prejudices, which he calls "factual beliefs" -a strange term since
if they were factual, they would presumably be knowledge, not
belief. Mr. Levin is, for example, concerned about the degradation of language as exemplified by the use of the word "sexiSm"
which, according to him, either has no reasonable meaning or
"simply encapsulates and obscures" the confusion which feminists have about their subject. To illustrate his notion of rhetorical abuse of language he chooses the word "exploit" which he
says means "to uSe another without his consent." From this definition it is then easy to argue that to use "exploitation" to describe contractual wage labor is to employ a rhetorical trap to
denounce wage labor itself. It was, however, not my impression
that consent, itself a rather tricky concept to analyze, had much
to do with exploitation. So I checked the dictionaries I have
around the house, the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the
American College Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary,
and the Oxford English Dictionary, and, curiously enough, none
of them used or implied the word "consent" as part of its definition. To quote just one of the four, the New Collegiate Dictionary, "exploit la: to turn to economic account (a mine); b: to t.ake
advantage of; 2: to make use of meanly or unjustly for one's own
advantage." I quote this not to be pedantic or to score cheap
points, but to indicate hQw Mr. Levin confuses his private view
of the world and language with that shared by most of the rest of
the English-speaking world. "Exploit" and "exploitation" are perfectly legitimate terms to use to describe contractual wage labor
if one believes either that surplus value is at the root of capitalist
profit, or, to be less doctrinaire, if one simply believes that
employers have, on the whole, more power than employees and
can use that power to arrive at less than equitable contracts
-not, I believe, a very radical position.
But we should turn to more substantive matters. When Mr.
Levin asserts in his title that "sexism is meaningless", this seems
to me to have two possible interpretations: l, that the term is
without clearly definable meaning; and 2, that there is no phenomenon corresponding to the term, whatever it might mean in
some loose, confusing way. I believe Mr. Levin to be wrong on
both counts.
As to the meaning of "sexism", Mr. Levin says the following:
" 'Sexism', then, is typically used to describe either the view that
there are general, innate psychological differences between the
sexes, or that gender is in and of itself important." He further as~
serts that "the first view is simply a factual belief supported by a
vast body of evidence, and the second view, however objectionable, is held by almost no-one." "Neither view," he asserts, "is
worth attacking." But, as I understand them, both are worth attacking, because the first is, I think, though clearly a belief, not
factual, and the second is, I believe, held by virtually everyone,
not no-one.
(continued on page 2)
�1
HESTJOHNSREVIEWWINTER82
•
1
I
3
George Dennison
Shawno (narrative)
24
Nietzsche and the Classic
William Mullen
33
The Trivialization of the Holocaust as an Aspect
of Modern Idolatry Robert Loewenberg
44
Proof and Pascal Brother Robert Smith
52
Five Translations
57
The Federal Republic of Germany:
Finlandization or Germanization?
Charles G.Bell
Anne-Marie Le Gloannec
63
Io (poem)
Laurence Josephs
64
Kekkonen, the "Finlandizer"
65
Hephaestus (poem)
Laurence Josephs
66
Mozart's Cherubino
Wye jamison Allanbrook
75
The Fury of Aeneas joe Sachs
Indro Montanelli
REVIEW ESSAYS
83
Objectivity and Philosophical Conversation:
Philosophy and the Mi?Tor of Nature, by
Richard Rorty
review essay by Arthur Collins
90
Afghanistan Fights: The Struggle for Afghanistan,
by Nancy Peabody Newell and
Richard S. Newell
review essay by Leo Raditsa
AT HOME AND ABROAD
98
Letter from Vietnam jean Dulich
FIRST READINGS
102
Laos; Marie-Noele and Didier Sicard, Au nom de Ma?X et de
Bouddha, Revolution au Laos: un peuple, une culture disparaissent, review by Leo Raditsa
106
A Dead Man's Knowledge; Varlam Shalamov, Graphite, review
by Lev Navrozov
Inside front cover-FROM OUR READERS
Michael Levin's "'Sexism' is Meaningless"
and Harry V. Jaffa's "Inventing the Past"
1
�(continued from inside front cover)
To defend the view that there are innate
psychological gender differences, Mr. Levin
says that he doubts that his daughter will
become a quarterback, not because of her
size, weight, and strength, but because of
psychology. I agree with him that it is unlikely that his daughter will become a quarterback, but I also believe that it is almost
equally unlikely that his son will become
one. It is a well-attested "factual belief'
that very few quarterbacks are the sons of
philosophy professors, not because of genetic psychological deficiencies but because
they are raised in homes where athletics is
valued less than other things. I think it is
also very likely that if Mr. Levin raises his
daughter praising her for docility, obedience, and gentleness and raises his son
praising his drive, aggressiveness, and assertiveness that his son will turn out more
aggressive than his daughter. And, in fact,
it is clear that that is, on the whole, how
sons and daughters have been raised. I
hope it is not necessary to rehearse the
whole dreary range of environmental differences that boys and girls are subjected
to, ranging from dressing daughters in
dresses and sons in pants (my wife as recently as the early 1960's taught in a Connecticut school system where girls were
allowed to wear pants only under blizzard
conditions), to spending years with school
books where the boys are doctors and the
girls are nurses looking admiringly at their
superiors, or where the boys are active
while the gids can only passively marvel at
their multi-talented male counterparts.
Certainly Mr. Levin's expectations for his
daughter will have consequences, but it is
less than clear that genetic differences are
the root cause of how she will turn out psychologically. The "vast body of evidence"
which he mentions is, at best, controversial, and to assume that the case is proven
as he does is to commit that marvelous
trick one can sometimes get away with in
geometry, namely to put what you're trying to prove in the given.
As to the second view, "that gender is in
and of itself important," that seems so
clearly true that he must mean something
other than what the words seem to say
when he denies it. Clearly the difference in
the reproductive systems is crucially important, as are differences in average size,
though what the psychological consequences
2
of those differences are is open to dispute, Now, in the extremes, this is clearly true.
and what the social and political conse- However, the amount of overlap between
quences should be are really the central is- women and men in even this test is so great
that it is not clear to me that any important
sue of Mr. Levin's article.
consequences follow. For example, in the
First, however, I would like to address
two other relatively minor linguistic mat- !980 Olympic Games, the winning javelin
ters because they are revealing of the way throw by a woman was 224 ft., 5 in., a disMr. Levin argues. The first is his assertion tance about 4 ft. less than that of the male
that he suspects that "feminists avoid the winner in !948. Even granted that 1980
word 'misogyny' because it carries no con- was a good year for women javelin thrownotations of system." The real reason they ers and 1948 a bad year for men, if I were
do not use it ("avoid" is, in itself, a rhetori- looking for a large group of spear-throwers,
cal gambit to suggest some devious game I would certainly open the competition to
they are playing) is because it fails to de- both men and women, because it seem eviscribe the phenomena they are concerned dent that some women are going to be
with. On the whole, men are not misogy- much better at it than most men. That is,
nists, though the amount of violence di- the statistical superiority of men even in
rected at women is appalling, the incidence this rather uninteresting and loaded inof rape being the most obvious example, stance is not such as to conclude that an
though by no means the only one. On the army of projectile throwers should autocontrary, men like women, when they stay matically be all male. We can note that
in their place. When the recently retired Plato, not a notorious egalitarian or femihead of the Baltimore Police Department, nist (women, after all, are dismissed before
Donald Pomerlau, was under attack for his serious conversation begins), makes a simitreatment of women on the force, he de- lar point in The Republic (456b): "Then we
nied vehemently that he had any preju- have come around full circle to where we
dices against women. He really was fond of were before and agree that it's not against
what he described as "little balls of fluff." nature to assign music and gymnastic to
Now misogyny is clearly not the word to the women guardians." "That's entirely
describe such an attitude, but I think "sex- certain." "Then we weren't giving laws
that are impossible or like prayers, since
ism" is.
Second, let us look at another little ploy the law we set down is according to nature.
of Mr. Levin's. He calls attention to the ug- Rather, the way things are nowadays
liness of "sexism" and comments on its proves to be, as it seems, against nature."
Mr. Levin then moves from this example
"grating sound," suggesting that that very
rather casually to the less obvious "factual
ugliness was the motive for coining it. Perhaps we don't all share Mr. Levin's delicate hypotheses" that women are inferior in
ear, but it should be noted that in the !8th "abstract reasoning" and superior in
century, a "sexism" was a "sequence of six "child-rearing." Here again the evidence is
cards" (OED) and I doubt that its "ugli- anything but clear. It is not clear what a
ness" disturbed anyone. And words like test of abstract reasoning would be; noth''saxophone," "hexadecimal," ''textile," ing that has yet been developed can lay any
and so on seem equally good candidates for claim to validity in judging that ability; and
rejection on grounds of ugliness, though I would certainly not trust Mr. Levin's
Mr. Levin is, I trust, not bothered by them. anecdotal evidence, given his prejudices.
But let us turn to the main issues. I fully That women, on the whole, do less well
agree with Mr. Levin that "better" means than men on the mathematical part of the
nothing without more specification of con- SAT's is true, but the reasons for that are
tent or context. " 'Better'," as he says, not obvious. A few of the many possible ex"must mean better at this or that particular planations are that male students are much
task." The issue then becomes, "Are men more likely to be directed into mathematics
generically better than women at signifi~ classes than female students (anecdotal evicant tasks?" He finds that "men are so ob- dence for this is everywhere), that the imviously better at some things than women" portance of mathematics is emphasized to
that it scarcely bears discussing. His first male students more than to female, or it
example is that men can obviously hurl may be that men are generally better a.t
(continued on page 107)
projectiles much farther than women.
WINTER 1982
�Shawno
George Dennison
A marathon. Euphoria. Sights and sounds in the
corridor of dogs. Finches and morning.
We could hear our children's voices in the darkness on
the sweet-smelling hill by my friend's house, and could hear
the barking of Angus, his dog. At nine o'clock Patricia put
our three into the car and went home. My friend's wife
and son said goodnight shortly afterwards. By then he and
I had gone back to the roomy, decrepit, smoke-discolored,
homey, extremely pleasant farmhouse kitchen and were
finishing the wine we had had at .dinner. It was late August. Our northern New England nights were drawing on
noticeably toward fall, but the cool of the night was enjoyable. He opened a bottle of mezcal he had brought from
Mexico, and we talked of the writings of friends, and of
the friends themselves, and of our youthful days in New
York. He had written a paper on Mahler. We listened to
the Eighth and Ninth symphonies, and the unfinished
Tenth, which moved him deeply. We talked again. When
we parted, the stars, still yellow and numerous in most of
the sky, had paled and grown fewer in the east. I set out to
walk the four miles home.
I was euphoric, as happens at times even without mezcal. For a short distance, since there was no one to disturb
(the town road is a dead-end road and I was at the end of
it) I shouted and sang. And truly, for those brief moments,
everything did seem right and good, or rather, wonderful
and strange. But the echoes of my voice sobered me and I
stopped singing. A dog was barking. The night air was
moist and cool. I became aware that something was calling
for my attention, calling insistently, and then I realized
that it was the stream, and so I listened for a while to its
George Dennison has published The Lives of Children (1969) and Oilers
and Sweepers (1979). His story, "Family Pages, Little Facts: October,"
appeared in the St. John's Review (Winter 1981).
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
noisy bubbling. The lower stars were blocked by densely
wooded hills. A dozen or fifteen old houses lay ahead of
me still darkened for sleep.
Angus came with me. He is a pointy-nosed, black and
white mongrel in which Border collie predominates, and
therefore he is bright-eyed and quick-footed, and is amazingly interested in human affairs. He pattered along beside me, turning his head every few seconds to look at me,
and it was as if he were keeping up continually a companionable cheerful jabbering. I spoke to him at one point
and he barked lightly and jumped toward my face, hoping
to kiss me.
Abruptly he sat down. We had come to the edge of
what he imagined to be his territory, though in fact we
had crossed his line several paces back. He sat there and
cocked his head and watched me as I walked away. I had
taken only twenty steps when on my right, with jarring
suddenness, came the explosive deep barking of the German shepherd tethered to the one new house in the valley. Angus sprang up, bracing his legs, and hurled his own
challenge, that was high-pitched and somewhat frantic.
He was answered by a barking that seemed limitless. I
could hear it speeding away, the same challenge repeated
in voice after voice, and growing faint. Surely it passed beyond our village, very likely beyond our state. I was in a
corridor of barking dogs.
A soft projectile of some sort spurted from the shadows
to my right and came to rest not far from my feet, where it
turned out to be a chubby little pug. It was shaking with
excitement and was giving vent through its open mouth
to a continuous siren of indignation. The cluttered porch
it had been guarding suddenly flared with yellow light.
Two elderly spinsters lived here. They rose with the sun,
or before it, as did many of the older folk. The clapboards
of their house had been a mustard color, the trim of the
windows white, but that had been thirty years ago. The
3
�barn beside the house had fallen down, the apple trees
had decayed, the mound of sheep manure was grassed
over. Across the road, in a smaller house, lived a childless
couple related to the spinsters, and they, too, owned a
pug. While the one barked in the road ahead of me, the
other barked silently inside the house, its front paws braced
against the window and its rear paws stamping the back of
a sofa. These dogs I praised for their attention to duty.
They did not alter my mood. Brave as they were, they
were hopelessly affectionate, and I knew it, and passed on
confidently.
But now came a barking that I feared and loathed, more
savage by far than that of the German shepherd. He was
chained to a dying apple tree before a collapsing gray
house, the hard-packed yard of which was crowded with
wheelless cars. The dog was a Doberman. His barking was
frenzied. He leaped at me again and again and was jerked
back by the chain, as by a violent master. Were he free
and approaching me I should certainly try to kill him.
Overlapping these disturbing tones were the melodious
deep tones of the long-legged black hound tied before his
own little house in the strange compound farther on: a
mobile home, half of a barn, some small sheds, a corral, all
huddled before the large trees that bordered the stream.
Nothing was finished. There was an air of disconsolate
ambition everywhere, failure, and disconsolate endurance. The hound himself seemed disconsolate. He was
not tugging at his chain. He did not even brace his feet.
He followed me with his eyes, barking his bark that was almost a baying and was actually beautiful. He cocked his
head and seemed to be listening to the other dogs.
What a racket! What a strange, almost musical hullabaloo! I myself was the cause of it, but it wouldn't cease
when I passed. The sun would be up, the dogs would keep
barking, every bird awake w<;>uld raise its voice, and that
wave of noise would follow the sun right across the land.
More lights came on. The sun had not yet risen, but the
night was gone. It was the morning dusk, fresh and cool.
Birds had been calling right along, but now there were
more. At intervals I could hear roosters. There were only
three. The valley had been noisy once with crowing, and
the asphalt road had been an earthen road, packed by
wagon wheels and shaded by many elms. The elms were
garious good cheer and selfish, robust curiosity. He left
me to consort with a fluffy collie, who was not chained
but would not leave the shed it crouched beside. Now I
passed a small house set back from the road by a small
yard. A huge maple overspread the yard. Beneath the rna·
ple there stood a blue tractor, and near the tractor an
orange skidder, a pick-up truck, two cars, a rowboat, a
child's wagon, several bikes. A large, lugubrious Saint Bernard, who all summer had suffered from the heat, was
chained to the tree, and she barked at me perfunctorily in
a voice not unlike the hound's, almost a baying, but not a
challenge bark at all, or much of one. She wanted to be
petted, she wanted to lie down and be scratched, she
wanted anything but to hurl a challenge ... nevertheless,
she barked. I came to a boxer, tied; a pure-bred Border collie, tied; a rabbit hound, tied; several mongrels, not tied,
but clustered and apparently waiting for their breakfasts.
One, a black, squat hound, had one lame foot and one
blind eye, mementos of a terrible mid-winter fight with a
fox in defense of newborn pups, who froze to death anyway. She barked vociferously, but then ambled out to
apologize and be petted. How fabulous our hands must
seem to these fingerless creatures! What pleased surprises
we elicit from their brows, their throats and backs and bellies, touching as no dog can touch another dog ...
At almost every house there was a dog. At absolutely
every house with a garden there was a dog. One must
have one to raise food, or the woodchucks take it all. A
second car passed me. My euphoria was abating to good
cheer and I was aware that I was hungry. .
I was approaching the turn to my own road. In the crook
of the turn there was a trailer, a so-called mobile home,
covered with a second roof of wood. There were three
small sheds around it, and a large garden out back, handsome now with the dark greens of potato plants and the
lighter greens of bush beans. Near the garden were stakes
and boxes for horseshoe pitching. A few steps away, at the
edge of the stream, there were chairs, benches, and a picnic table. Two battered cars and a battered truck crowded
the dooryard, in which there was also a tripod, taller than
the trailer, made of strong young maples from the nearby
woods. From its apex dangled a block and chain. Bantam
stumps now, huge ones.
Even so, it was beautiful. There were maples and pines
beside the road, a few cows were still milked, a few fields
were still hayed, a few eggs were still gathered from hens,
a few pigs transformed to pork, a few sheep to mutton.
Swallows were darting about. They perched in long
against which three paddles and four inexpensive fishing
rods were leaning. Swimming suits and orange life vests
hung from a clothesline. The house was silent. All had
watched TV until late at night and all were still asleep,
among them my seven-year-old daughter's new-found
friend. The uproar of dogs was considerable here. Six
rows on the electric wires.
were in residence, more or less. The young German shep-
A car passed me from behind, the first.
And Brandy, the Kimber's gray and ginger mutt, trotted
up from the stream and joined me. His hair was bristly, his
legs short. He was muscular, energetic, stunted, bearded
and mustachioed, like some old campaigner out of the hills
of Spain. He went beside me a little way, cheerfully, but
without affection. There was no affection in him, but gre-
herd was chained. The handsome boxer was free; in fact
all the others were free, and with one exception ran to upbraid me and greet me. The exception, the incredibly
pretty, positively magnetizing exception was Princess, the
malamute, who did not bark or move. She lay at her royal
ease atop a grassy mound that once had been an elm, her
handsome wolf-like head erect and one paw crossed de-
4
hens were scratching the dirt near an aluminum canoe,
WINTER 1982
�murely and arrogantly over the other. Her sharply slanted,
almond-shaped eyes were placed close tpgether and gave
her an almost human, oriental-slavic air. It was as if she
knew she were being admired, and disdained response,
but followed me impassively with those provocative eyes.
How stran!lf she was! She knew me well. Were I to ap·
proach her she'd suddenly melt. She'd sit up and lift one
paw tremblingly as high as her head in a gesture of adulation and entreaty. She'd lay her head adoringly to one side
and let it fall closer and closer to her shoulder in a surrender irresistible in its abject charm-"! am yours, yours utterly" -as if pulling the weight of a lover down on top of
her. She ends on her back at such times, belly exposed,
hind legs opened wide, lips pulled back voluptuously and
front paws tucked under in the air. Especially in the winter, when all six dogs are crowded with the eleven humans
into the lamplight of the little home, she indulges in such
tricks. What a press there is then of dog flesh and child
flesh in the overheated room! There are times when
everyone seems glassy with contentment, and times when
bad humor, apparently passing over into bad character,
seems hopeless and destructive. Then there are quarrels
as fierce and brief as the fights of cats, and peace comes
again, usually in the person of Betsy, the mother, who is
mild and benign. She has lost her front teeth and can't afford dentures, yet never hesitates to smile. The children
drink soda pop and watch TV, while Verne, who is deepvoiced and patriarchal, with the broad back and muscular
huge belly of a Sumo wrestler, sits at the kitchen table sipping beer from a can, measuring gunpowder on a little balance scale, loading and crimping shotgun shells, and
glancing at the program on the tube. He is opinionated,
vain, and egotistical, to the point of foolish pomposity,
but he is good-natured and earnest and is easily carried
away into animation, and then the posturing vanishes. He
issues an order, directs a booming word to one of the kids
or dogs, but especially to Princess, who draws effusions
one would not think were in him. "Well, Princess!" he
roars, "Ain't you the charmer! Ain't you my baby! Ain't
you now! Oh, you want your belly scratched? Well, we all
do, Princess! We all do! But you're the one that gits it,
ain't you! Oh, yes you are! Oh, yes!"
This morning I didn't stop to caress the malamute. At
the turn in the road I heard a far-off barking that made me
smile and want to be home. I crossed the cement bridge
and turned into a small dirt road. There wouldn't be a
house now for a mile, and then there would be ours and
the road would end.
Day had begun. There was color in the sky. The moisture in the air was thinning.
The land was flat and the road paralleled the stream,
which was to my right now. Here and there along its
banks, in May, after the flood has gone down and the soil
has warmed, we gather the just-emerging coils of the ferns
called ficjdleheads. Occasionally I have fished here, not
really hopefully (the trout are few), but because the
stream is so exciting. Once, however, while I knelt on the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
bank baiting my hook, I glanced into the water, deep at
that point, and saw gliding heavily downstream a fish I
scarcely could believe to be a trout. What a passion of
helplessness seized mel I would have leaped on it bodily if
that might have succeeded. I learned later that ice had
broken the dam to a private fishpond in the hills and this
prize and many others had· fled down tributaries to the
main stream and the river.
To my left, beyond a miniature bog of alders and swale
lay a handsome small pond. Its outlet joined the stream
fifty yards on, flowing under a bridge of stout pine stringers and heavy planks. The game warden had been here
several times with dynamite, but the beavers had rebuilt
their dam across the outlet, and once again the pond was
eighteen inches higher than the stream. It was not unusual to see them. They had cut their half-tunnels under
all these banks, creating concave, sharply overhanging
edges. I had stood here with the children one night, downstream from the bridge, at the water's edge, looking for
beavers, and two had passed under our feet. It was a windless, mellow night of full moon. I saw the glint of moonlight on the beaver's fur as he emerged from his channel
under the bank, and then I saw his head quietly break the
water. The dark shape of a second beaver, following him,
glided like a phantom among the wavering images of the
moon and trees.
I could no longer hear the barking on the hill. I was very
hungry now, and intermittently felt sleepy, but here between the pond and stream the morning air was endlessly
refreshing and I entered that pleasant state of being
wholly relaxed, utterly drained of muscular energy, yet
suffused by awareness, interest, and approval ... the mild,
benign energies of momentary happiness.
Five or six bright yellow streamers-so they seemed to
be-approached me and sped by, dipping and rising.
They were finches. The pattern of their flight was of long
smooth waves, in the troughs of which they would flutter
their wings to ascend the coming slope, but fold them before the top and soar curvingly over the crest. Sleek as torpedoes or little fish, they would glide downward again into
the next trough and there extend their wings and flutter
them.
Beyond the bridge, the road began to climb. On both
sides vigorous ferns, green but no longer the vivid green of
summer, crowded the sunny space before the trees. There
was a coolness of night in the woods and it poured mildly
into the road, mingling with the warmer air.
Abruptly I heard and saw him, and though no creature
is more familiar to me, more likely to be taken for granted,
I was thrilled to see him, and gladdened, more than gladdened, filled for a moment with the complex happiness of
our relationship that is both less than human and utterly
human. Certainly I was made happy by his show of love
for me. But my admiration of him is undiminished, and I
felt it again, as always. He is the handsomest of dogs, muscular and large, with tufted, golden fur. The sound of his
feet was audible on the hard-packed, pebble-strewn road. I
5
�leaned forward and called to him and clapped my hands,
and he accelerated, arching his throat and running with
more gusto. He ran with a powerful driving stride that was
almost that of a greyhound, and as he neared me he drew
back his lips, arched his throat still more and let out a volley of ecstatic little yips. This sound was so puppyish, and
his ensuing behavior so utterly without dignity, so close to
fawning slavishness that one might have contemned him
for it, except that it was extreme, so extreme that there
was no hint of fawning, and certainly not of cringing, but
the very opposite: great confidence and security, into
which there welled an ecstasy he could not contain and
could not express rapidly enough to diminish, so that for a
while he seemed actually to be in pain. I had to assist him,
had to let him lick my face protractedly and press his paws
into my shoulders. And as sometimes happens ~'l' my euphorias and early morning solitudes, there came over me a
sense of the finitude of our world, and of my own brute
fraternity with the other creatures who will soon be dead,
and I almost spoke aloud to my dog the thoughts that I
was thinking: how much it matters to be alive together!
how marvelous and brief our lives are! and how good, dear
one that you are, to have the wonderful strange passion of
your spirit in my life!
As he wound around me and pressed his body against
mine, I remembered another greeting when I had seen
blood on his teeth and feet. He was three then, in his
prime. I had been away for several weeks-our first parting-and he had been baffled. When I came back I had
reached this very place in the road, in my car, also in summer, when I saw him hurtling toward me. His first sounds
were pathetic, a mixed barking, whimpering, and gulping
for breath. I had to get out of the car to prevent him from
injuring himself. I had to kneel in the road and let him kiss
me and wind around me. He was weeping; I had to console him. And then he was laughing, and dancing on his
hind legs, and I laughed too, except that it was then that I
noticed the blood. He had been in the house, Patricia told
me later, and had heard the car. He had torn open the
screen door with his teeth and claws, had chewed away
some protective slats and had driven his body through the
opening.
He danced around me now on his hind legs, licking my
face. I knew I could terminate this ecstasy by throwing a
stone for him, which I did, hard and low, so that he would
not overtake it and break his teeth. A few moments later
he laid it at my feet and looked into.my face excitedly.
Patricia and the children were still sleeping. I ate breakfast alone, or rather, with Shawno, who waited by my chair.
I had hoped to spend the morning writing, and I went
upstairs and sat at my table. It was ludicrous. The mere
process of holding still caused my eyes to close and head
to fall. Yet I didn't want to sleep, didn't want to abandon
that mood-too rare to be taken lightly-of happiness and
peace; and so I went into the garden and pulled up the
bush beans that had already borne and died, and carried
tall spikes of bolted lettuce to the compost pile. There is a
6
rough rail fence around the garden to keep the ponies out.
Shawno lay beneath it and watched me. I cleared a few
weeds and from time to time got rid of stones by flinging
them absently into the woods. I pulled out the brittle pea
vines from their chicken wire trellis, rolled up the wire
and took it to the barn. After two hours of this I went to
bed. Shawno had gone in akeady and was enjoying a second breakfast with the children. I had forgotten about
him, but as I left the garden I saw by the fence, where the
grass had been flattened by his body, a little heap of
stones. He had pursued every one I had tried to get rid of.
His parents. Ida's delight. His leaping. Children in
the park. An elderly scholar.
When Patricia was pregnant with Ida we were living on
Riverside Drive in New York. One bright October day we
saw a crowd of people at the low stone wall of the park.
Many were murmuring in admiration and we could hear
exclamations of delight. Down below, on the grassy flat,
two dogs were racing. The first belonged to an acquaintance in our building. She was tawny and short-haired
with the lines of a greyhound, but larger and of more massive head and shoulders. She was in heat and was leading the other in fantastic, playful sprints, throwing her
haunches against him gaily and changing direction at
great speed. The male, a Belgian shepherd with golden
fur, was young and in a state of transport. He ran stifflegged, arching his neck over her body with an eagerness
that seemed ruthless, except that his ears were laid back
shyly. The dogs' speed was dazzling; both were beauties,
and the exclamations continued as long as they remained
in sight.
Shawno was the largest of the issue of those memorable
nuptials. He arrived in our apartment when Ida was
twelve weeks old. She looked down from her perch on Patricia's bosom and saw him wobbling this way and that,
and with a chortle that was almost a scream reached for
him with both arms. Soon she was bawling the astonished,
gasping wails of extreme alarm (his needle-point bites),
and he was yelping piteously in the monkey-like grip with
which she had seized his ear and was holding him at arm's
length, out of mind, while she turned her tearful face to
her mother.
These new beginnings, and especially my marriage with
Patricia, overtaking me late in my maturity, ended a period of unhappiness so extreme as to have amounted to
grief. And I found that loving the child, cradling and dandling her, watching her sleep, and above all watching her
nurse at Patricia's bosom, awakened images of my childhood I would not have guessed were still intact. Something similar happened with the dog. I began a regimen of
early morning running, as if he were an athlete and I his
trainer, and I had trotted behind him through the weathers of several months before I realized that my happiness
WINTER 1982
�at these times was composed in part of recovered memories of the daybreak runnings of my youth, that had been
so hopeful and so satisfied as to seem to me, now, paradisal.
The dog developed precociously. He was not a year and
a half old when, in pursuit of sticks or balls that I threw for
him, he was leaping seven foot walls. He was a delight to
watch, combining power and beauty with indolent confidence, though this last, no doubt, was an illusion of his
style, for instead of hitching up his hind legs as he cleared
the obstacle at the height of his leap, he'd swing them lazily to one side, as if such feats were no more difficult than
sprawling on the floor. He became a personage in the park
and soon acquired a band of children, who left their
games to follow him, or who, more correctly, played new
games to include him. It was not only his prowess and
beauty that attracted them, but the extraordinary love he
bestowed on them. He was simply smitten with our race. I
was crossing upper Broadway with him once; he was
leashed; the crossing was crowded. There came toward us
an old gentleman holding a four-year-old boy by the hand.
The boy's face and the dog's were on a level, and as they
passed the two faces turned to each other in mutual delight, and Shawno bestowed a kiss that began at one ear,
went all the way across and ended at the other. I glanced
back. The boy, too, was glancing back, grinning widely. In
fact, the boy and Shawno were looking back at each other.
This incident is paired for all time with another that I
witnessed in New Yark and that perhaps could not have
occurred in any other city. It was in the subway at rush
hour. The corridors were booming with the hammering,
grinding roar of the trains and the pounding of thousands
of almost running feet. Three corridors came together in a
Y and two of them were streaming with people packed far
tighter than soldiers in military formation. The columns
were approaching each other rapidly. There was room to
pass, but just barely. Alas, the columns collided. That is,
their inside corners did, and these corners were occupied
by apparently irrascible men. Each hurled one, exactly
one, furious roundhouse blow at the other, and both were
swept away in their columns-a memorable fight.
I would never have known certain people in New Yark
except for the loving spirit of the dog; worse, it would
never have occurred to me that knowing them was desirable, or possible, where in fact it was delightful. The people I mean were children. What could I have done with
them were it not for the dog? As it was, I changed my
hours in order to meet them, and they-a group of eight
or so-waited for us devotedly after school. Most were
Puerto Rican. The youngest was only seven, the eldest
eleven. They would spread themselves in a large circle
with the dog in the center and throw a ball back and forth,
shouting as he leaped and tried to snatch it from the air.
When he succeeded, which was often, there ensued the
merriest and most musical of chases, the boys arranged
behind the dog according to their speed of foot, the dog
holding the ball high, displaying it provocatively, looking
back over his shoulder and trotting stiff-legged just fast
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
enough to elude the foremost boy, winding that laughing,
shouting, almost singing line .of children this way and that
through the park. I discovered that many of the by-standers I used to see at this time came on purpose to watch
the children and the dog. One elderly, white-haired man I
have never forgotten. He was jewish and spoke with a
German accent, wore a felt hat and expensive coats. He
came to our playground regularly and stood with his hands
behind his back, his head dropped forward, nodding and
chuckling, and smiling unweariedly. His face was wonderful. It was intelligent and kindly, was still strong, still handsome, and it possessed a quality I have come to associate
with genius, an apparent unity of feeling, an alacrity and
wholeness of response. Whatever he was feeling suffused
his face; he did not have attitudes and counter-attitudes
toward his feelings. One sensed great confidence in this,
and great trust in himself. The dog delighted him. It was
the dog he came to see. He deferred to the headlong, boisterous children, who, when Shawno would appear, would
shout happily and in unison, and Shawno would go to
them, bounding exuberantly, but it would not be long before the old gentleman >'vould call him, and Shawno would
leave the children, not bounding now but sweeping his
tail in such extreme motions that his hind legs performed
a little dance from side to side independently of his front
ones. The old gentleman would lean over him, speak to
him and pet him, and the dog would press against his legs
and look into his face.
We usually chatted for a few minutes before I went
home. When I asked him about his work and life he waved
away the questions with gestures that were humorous and
pleading yet were impressive in their authority. One day I
recognized his face in a photograph in the Times, alas, on
the obituary page. He was an eminent refugee scholar, a
sociologist. I discovered, reading the description of his
career, that I had studied briefly with his son at Columbia.
By this time we had moved to the remote farmhouse in the
country and our second child had been born.
Past lives. Streams. An incident in the woods. Ferocity and family concern.
Our house had been occupied by Finns, as had many
others near us. The hill, actually a ridge, sloped away on
two sides, one forested and the other, to the south, open
pasture with the remnants of an orchard. At the bottom
of these fields was a stream, and in an arm of the stream, a
sauna. It was here that the old Finn who had built the
house had bathed his invalid wife, carrying her back and
forth every day until her final illness. From this same small
pool he had carried water in buckets to the garden a few
strides away. The sauna was damaged beyond repair, but
we let it stand; and we brought back the garden, which
now was one of three. For the few years that the romance
of country living endured, it was this garden that I tended
with greatest satisfaction, carrying water in buckets, as
7
�had the old man. Just beyond the sauna a wooded slope
rose steeply. Racoons and deer erttered our field here, and
it was here that the ponies and dog all came to drink.
There were other relics of those vanished lives: handmade apple boxes with leather hinges cut from old boots;
door handles in all the sheds made of sapling crotches; an
apple picking ladder that was a tall young spruce (the bark
was still on it) cut lengthwise down the middle and fitted
with rungs of sugar maple saplings; ten-foot Finnish skis
bent at the tips with steam from a kettle. There were hills
wherever one looked, and there had been farms on all the
hills. Some of the Finns had skied to market. They had
cruised their woodlots on skis. Some of their children had
skied to school.
The hills and ridges are so numerous that in the spring,
while the snow is melting, the sound of water can be heard
everywhere. It pours and tumbles; there is a continual roaring; and when the thaw is well advanced the large stream
in the valley makes the frightening sounds of flood, hurling chunks of ice ahead of it, crowding violently into the
curves, and hurtling over falls so deep in spume that the
rocks cannot be seen. Later, in the hot weather, one hears
the braided sounds and folded sounds of quiet water. The
orange gashes and abrasions on the trunks of trees are
darkening. More trees are dead. The banks of the streams,
however beautiful, and however teeming with new life, are
strewn with debris in endless stages of decay.
The streams have become presences in my life. For a
while they were passions. There are few that I haven't
fished and walked to their source. These have been solitary
excursions, except for the single time that I took the dog.
His innocent trotting at the water's edge disturbed the
trout. Still worse was his drinking and wading in the stream.
I called him out. He stood on the bank and braced his legs
and shook himself. Rather, he was seized by a violent shak·
ing, a shaking so swift and powerful as to seem like a vibration. It shook his head from side to side, then letting his
head come to rest seized his shoulders and shook them,
then his ribs, and in a swift, continuous wave passed violently to his haunches, which it shook with especial vigor,
and then entered his tail and shook the entire length of it,
and at last, from the very tip, sprang free, leaving behind,
at the center of the now-subsided aura of sparkling waterdrops, an invigorated and happy dog. It was at this moment
of perfected well-being that one of those darting slim shadows caught his eye. He was electrified. He hurled himself
into the stream head first, thrusting his snout to the very
bottom, where he rooted this way and that. He lifted his
head from the shallow water, legs braced, and looked in
amazement from side to side. The trout had vanished so
utterly that he had no notion even of the direction of its
flight. He thrust down his head again and turned over
stones, then came up, his streaming fur clinging to his
body, and stood there, smooth and muscular, peering
down, poised in the electric stillness of the hunter that
seems to be a waiting but is actually a fascination. Years
later, after my own passion for trout had cooled, I would
8
see him poised like that in the shallows of the swimming
hole, ignoring the splashing, clamoring children, looking
down, still mesmerized, still ready-so he thought-to
pounce.
During most of the thaw there is little point in going into
the woods. Long after the fields have cleared and their
brown is touched with green, there'll be pools and streaks
of granular snow, not only in the low-lying places in the
woods, but on shadowed slopes and behind rocks. For a
whiie the topmost foot of soil is too watery to be called
mud. The road to our house becomes impassable, and for
days, or one week, or two, or three, we walk home from
the store wearing rubber boots and carrying the groceries
and perhaps the youngest children in knapsacks and our
arms. This was once a corduroy road, and it never fails that
some of the logs have risen again to the surface.
Spring in the north is almost violent. After the period of
desolation, when the snow has gone and everything that
once was growing seems to have been bleached and crushed,
and the soil itself seems to have been killed by winter, there
comes, accompanied by the roaring of the streams, a prickling of the tree buds that had formed in the cold, and a
prickling of little stems on the forest floor, and a tentative,
small stirring of bird life. This vitalizing process, once be·
gun, becomes bolder, more lavish, and larger, and soon
there is green everywhere, and the open fretwork of
branches and trunks, beyond which, all winter, we had
seen sky, hills, and snow, becomes an eye-stopping mass
of green. The roaring of the streams diminishes, but the
spreading of the green increases until the interlocking
leaves cannot claim another inch of sunlight except by
slow adjustment and the killing off of rival growth. Now
the animal presence is spread widely through the woods,
and Shawno runs this way and that, nose to the ground, so
provoked by scents that he cannot concentrate and remains excited and distracted by overlapping trails.
It was in this season of early summer that we came here.
The woods were new to me. I was prepared for wonders.
And there occurred a small but strange encounter that did
indeed prove haunting. We had been walking a woods road,
Shawno and I, or the ghost of a road, and came to a little
dell, dense with ferns and the huge leaves of young striped
maples. Shawno drew close to me and seemed perturbed.
He stood still for a moment sniffing the air instead of the
ground; and then the fur rose on his neck and he began to
growl.
At that moment there emerged from the semi-dark of a
dense leaf bank perhaps thirty steps away, two dogs, who
stopped silently and came no further. The smaller dog was
a beagle, the larger a German shepherd, black and gigantic. His jowls on both sides and his snout in front bristled
with white-shafted porcupine quills. He did not seem to
be in pain, but seemed helpless and pathetic, a creature
without fingers or tools, and therefore doomed. The uncanny thing about the dogs was their stillness. That intelligence that seems almost human and that in their case was
amplified in the logic of their companionship, was refusWINTER 1982
�ing contact of any sort not only with me but with the dog
at my side. Shawno continued to growl' and to stamp his
feet uncertainly. Just as silently as they h~d appeared, the
beagle and the shepherd turned into the undergrowth and
vanished.
I was to see these two dogs again. In the meantime, I
learned that it was not rare for dogs to run wild, or to lead
double lives; and that such pairings of scent and sight were
common. The beagle could follow a trail. The shepherd
had sharp eyes, was strong and could kill.
In the city cars had been the chief threat of Shawno's
life. Here it was hunters. He was large and tawny, and
though he was lighter in color than a deer, he resembled a
deer far more closely than had the cows, sheep, and horses
which in the memory of my neighbors had been shot for
deer-certainly more closely than had the goat that had
been gutted in the field and brought to the village on the
hood of the hunter's car. With such anecdotes in mind. I
discovered one day, toward the end of hunting season,
that Shawno had escaped from the house. At least eight
hunters had gone up our road into the woods. I know now
that his life was not at quite the risk that I imagined, but
at that time I was disturbed. I ran into the woods calling to
him and whistling, praying for his survival and wondering
how I should find him if, already, he had been shot.
Several hours later, his courting finished (probably it
had been that) he emerged into our field loping and pant·
ing, and came into the house, and with a clatter of elbows
and a thump of his torso dropped into his nook by the
woodstove. He held his head erect and looked at me. The
corners of his lips were lifted. His mouth was open to the
full, and his extended tongue, red with exertion, vibrated
with his panting in a long, highly arched curve that turned
up again at its tip. He blinked as the warmth took hold of
him, and with a grunt that was partly a sigh stretched his
neck forward and dropped his chin on his paws.
In February of that winter I saw the beagle and German
shepherd again. We were sharing a load of hay with a dis·
tant neighbor, an elderly man whose bachelor brother had
died and who was living alone among the bleached and
crumbling pieces of what had once been a considerable
farm. He still raised a few horses and trained them for har·
ness, though there wasn't a living in it. I had backed the
truck into the barn and was handing down bales to him
when a car drew up and a uniformed man got out. I recog·
nized the game warden, though I had never met him. He
was strikingly different from the police of the county seat
ten miles away, who walked with waddling gaits and could
be found at all hours consuming ice cream at the restaurant
on the highway south. The warden was large but trim, was
actually an imposing figure, as he needed to be-two at·
tempts had been made on his life, one a rifle shot through
the window, the other a gasoline bomb that had brought
down the house in flames, at night, in winter. He and his
wife and adolescent son had escaped. He was spoken of as
a fanatic, but hunters praised his skill as a hunter. A man
who had paid a fine for poaching said to me, "If he's after
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
you in the woods he'll git you. No man can run through
the woods like him." His large round eyes were a pale blue.
Their gaze was unblinking, open, disturbingly strange.
He addressed the elderly man by his last name. The
warden, too, was a scion of an old family here.
"We'd all be better off," he said, "if you'd kept him
chained.''
His voice was emphatic but not angry. He spoke with
the unconscious energy and loudness that one hears in
many of the rural voices. "He's been runnin' deer, and
you know it. I caught him at the carcass. It was still
kickin' ." The warden handed him the piece of paper he
had been carrying, which was obviously a summons. "I've
done away with him," he said.
We had come out of the barn. The warden opened the
trunk of his car and brought out the small stiff body of the
beagle. Its eyes and mouth were open, its tongue pro·
truded between its teeth on one side, and its chest was
matted with blood. The warden laid the body on the snow
bank by the barn and said, "Come back to the car a min·
ute."
The black German shepherd lay on a burlap sack, taking
up the whole of the trunk.
uyou know who owns that?"
The elderly man shook his head. No emotion had ap·
peared on his face since the warden had arrived. The war·
den turned his blue, strangely un·aggressive eyes on me
and repeated the question. I, too, shook my head. The
shepherd had been home since I had seen him in the
woods: someone had pulled out the quills.
Shawno was barking from the cab of the truck. I had
left the window open to give him air, and the smell of the
dead dogs must have reached him.
After the warden left, my neighbor went into the house
and came back with money for the hay.
"Obliged to you for haulin it," he said, and that was all.
That night, on the phone, I told a friend, a hunter, about
the dogs.
"The warden was right," he said. "Dogs like that can kill
a deer a day, even more. Jake Wesley's dogs cornered a
doe in my back field last year. She was pregnant with
twins. They didn't bother killing her, they don't know
how, they were eating her while she stood there. She was
ripped to shreds. I shot them both."
There was a crust on the snow just then. Dogs could run
on it, but the sharp hooves of the deer would break through
and the ice cut their legs. They spent such winters herded
in evergreen groves, or "yards/' and if the bark and buds
gave out many would starve. Occasionally the wardens
took them hay, but this introduced another problem, for if
the dogs found the snowmobile trails and followed them
to the yards, the slaughter could be severe.
And what of Shawno? I realized that I regarded him
habitually with the egocentricity of a doting master, as if
he were a creature chiefly of his human relations, though
certainly I knew better. I thought of the many cats his fe·
rocious mother had killed. And I remembered how, the
9
�previous fall, while our children were playing with a neighbor's children in front of our house, Shawno had come
into their midst with a freshly-killed woodchuck. He held
his head high and trotted proudly among us, displaying
his kill. It was a beautiful chestnut color and it dangled
flexibly full-length from his teeth, jouncing limply as he
trotted. He placed it on the ground under the large maple,
where he often lay, and stretched out regally above it, lionlike, the corpse between his paws. I was tying a shoelace
for one of the children. I heard a rushing growl of savagery
and out of the corner of my eye saw Shawno spring forward. I shouted and jumped in front of him. One of the
visiting boys had come too close.
I doubt that Shawno would have bitten him. Nevertheless, in that frightening moment I had seen and heard the
animal nervous system that is not like ours, that is capable
of an explosive savagery we never approximate, even in
our most violent rages.
He was with me in the pick-up one day when I went for
milk to a neighbor's dairy. There were usually dogs in
front of the barn and Shawno was on friendly terms with
them. This time, however, before I had shut the motor, he
leaped across me in the cab, growling and glaring, his
snout wrinkled and his front teeth bared to the full. His
body was tense, and instantaneously had been charged
with an extraordinary energy. Down below, also growling,
was a large black hound with yellow eyes. The window was
open. Before I could close it or admonish him, Shawno put
his head and shoulders through it, and with a push of his
hind feet that gouged the seat cover, propelled himself
outward and down on the hound.
There were no preliminaries. They crashed together
with gnashing teeth and a savage, high-pitched screaming.
The fight was over in a moment. Shawno seized him by
the neck, his upper teeth near the ear, his lower on the
throat, and driving forward with his powerful hind legs
twisted him violently to the ground.
The hound tried to right himself. Shawno responded
with siren-like growls of rage and a munching and tightening of teeth that must have been excruciating. The hound's
yellow eyes flashed. He ceased struggling. Shawno growled
again, and this time shook his head from side to side in the
worrying motion with which small animals are killed by
large ones. The hound lay still. Shawno let him up. The
hound turned its head away. Shawno pressed against him,
at right angles, extending his chin and entire neck over
the hound's shoulder. The hound turned its head as far as
it could in the other direction.
The fight was over. There was no battle for survival, as
in the Jack London stories that had thrilled me in my
youth. Survival lay precisely not in tooth and claw, but in
the social signalling that tempered their savagery, as it
tempered that of wolves. It was this that accounted for
the fact that one never came upon the carcasses of belligerent dogs who had misconceived their powers, as had the
hound.
The victory was exhilarating. What right had I, who had
10
' done nothing but watch, to feel exultation and pride? Yet
I did feel these things. Shawno felt them too, I am sure.
He sat erect beside me going home, and there was still a
charge of energy, an aura about his body. He held his head
proudly, or so I thought. His mouth was open, his tongue
lolled forward and he was panting lightly. From time to
time he glanced aside at me out of narrowed eyes. As for
me, I could not forbear looking at him again and again. I
was smiling and could not stop. I reached across and stroked
his head and spoke to him, and again he glanced at me. He
was like the roughneck athlete heros of my youth, who after great feats in the sandlot or high school football games,
begrimed, bruised, wet-haired, and dishevelled, would
walk to the dressing room or the cars, heads high, helmets
dangling from their fingertips or held in the crooks of their
arms, riding sweet tides of exhaustion and praise. And I
remembered a few glorious occasions, after I too had come
of an age to compete, when my brief inspirations on the
field had been rewarded by teammates' arms around my
shoulders.
But more than this, I felt augmented by his animal
power, as if my very existence, both spirit and body, had
been multiplied, as a horseman is animally augmented
guiding the great power of the creature. And I felt protected. It was as if somewhere within me there were still a
little boy, a child, and this guardian with thick fur and
fearsome teeth, who could leap nonchalantly over the truck
we now rode in, had devoted his powers utterly to my wellbeing.
How little of this, how nothing at all of this, came into
my account when I said at home, "Shawno got into a fight!"
Ida and Patricia came close to me, asking, "What happened? What happened?"
Ida had never witnessed the animal temper I have just
described. What she wanted to know was, had he been bitten?
If anyone had said to Shawno what the little boy says in
Ida's Mother Goose-"Bow wow wow, whose dog art
thou?" he could not have answered except by linking Ida's
name with my own. He often sat by her chair when she
ate. Three of the five things he knew to search for and
fetch belonged to Ida: her shoes, her boots, her doll. When
I read to her in the evening she leaned against me on the
sofa and Shawno lay on the other side with his head in her
lap. Often she fell asleep while I read, and we would leave
her there until we ourselves were ready for bed. When we
came for her Shawno would be asleep beside her. On the
nights when I carried her, still awake, to her bed, she would
insist that both Shawno and Patricia come kiss her goodnight, and both would. Usually he would leap into the bed,
curl up beside her and spend part of the night.
When she was five or six we bought two shaggy ponies
from a neighbor, and having fenced the garden, let them
roam as they would. The larger pony had been gelded, but
was still inclined to nip and sport. Late one afternoon I
WINTER 1982
�Down to Searles.
shoe pits by the road and games before supper and at night
under the single light at the corner of the store. Three
roads converged here. One was steep and on winter Sundays and occasional evenings had been used for sledding.
That was when the roads had been packed, not plowed,
and the only traffic had been teams and sleds. Searles's
father-the second of the three generations of C. W.
Searles-though he was known as a hard and somewhat
grasping man, would open the store and perhaps bring up
cider for the sledders. There would be a bonfire in the
road, and as many as a hundred people in motion around
it.
Searles was sixty years old when we arrived. His store
was wonderfully well organized and good to look at,
crowded but neat and logical, filled with implements of
the local trades and pastimes. Searles had worked indoors
for his father as a boy. Later as a youth, he had gone with
a cart and horse to the outlying farms, taking meat, hardware, clothing, and tools and bringing back not cash but
eggs, butter, apples, pears, chickens, shingles. Now when
he bought the pate called cretan, he knew it would be
consumed by the Dulacs, Dubords, and Pelletiers. The five
sets of rubber children's boots were for the Sawyers and
were in the proper sizes. He displayed them temptingly,
brought down the price, and finally said, "Why don't you
take the lot, Charlie, and make me an offer?" He knew
who hunted and who fished, and what state their boots,
pants, and coats were in. A death in the town affected his
business. He saw the price of bullets going skyhigh, put in
several shell and bullet-making kits, and said, "Verne,
what do you figure you spend a year on shells and bullets?"
The owners of bitches, when their dogs were in heat,
were often obliged to call the owners of males and request
that they be taken home and chained. Shawno was gone
for four days. At last the call came. He had travelled sev·
era] miles. When I went for him he wouldn't obey me, was
glassy-eyed and frantic. The only way to get him home
was to put the bitch in the car and lure him. It was pa·
thetic. He hadn't slept, was thin, had been fighting with
other males, and had had no enjoyment at all: the bitch
was a feisty little dachshund. For two days he lay chained
on the porch lost utterly in gloom. He didn't respond to
anyone, not even to Ida, but kept his chin flat between his
paws and averted his eyes. He had gone to bitches before,
but I had been able to fetch him. He had suffered frustra·
tion before, but had recovered quickly. What was differ·
ent this time? I never knew.
Apart from these vigils of instinct, his absences were on
account of human loves, the first and most protracted of
which was not a single person but a place and situation ir·
resistible to his nature. This was the general store.·
The one-story white clapboard building was near the
same broad stream that ran through the whole of the valley. The banks were steep here and the stream curved
sharply, passing under a bridge and frothing noisily over a
double ledge of rounded rocks. There had used to be horse-
come to ... "
In the summer there were rakes, hoes, spades, cultivators, coils of garden hose, sections of low white fencing to
put around flower beds, and perhaps a wheelbarrow ar·
rayed on the loading apron in front of the store. In winter
there were snowshovels, and the large, flat-bottomed snow
scoops that one pushed with both hands, and wood stoves
in crates, and sections of black stove pipe, while in the
window, set up in lines, were insulated rubber boots with
thick felt liners, and two styles of snowshoes, glistening
with varnish. At all times there were axes and axe handles,
bucksaws, wooden wedges and iron wedges, birch hooks, a
peavey or two, many chainsaw files and cans of oil. For
years he kept a huge skillet that finally replaced, as he
knew it would, the warped implement at the boys' camp.
He carried kitchenware and electrical and plumbing sup·
plies, and tools for carpentry, as well as drugstore items,
including a great deal of Maalox. All this was in addition
to the food, the candy rack, the newspapers, the greeting
cards, and the school supplies.
People stopped to talk. Those he liked-some of whom
had sat beside him in the little red schoolhouse up the
road, long unused now-would stand near the counter for
half an hour exchanging news or pleasantries. One day I
heard Franklin Mason, who was five years older than
glanced from an upstairs window and saw Ida leading Liza
and Jacob across the yard, all three holding hands. Jacob
had just learned to walk and they were going slowly. The
ponies came behind them silently. Starbright, the gelding,
drew close to Jacob and seemed about to nudge him, which
he had done several times in recent weeks, knocking him
over. Shawno was watching from across the yard. He sprang
forward and came running in a crouch, close to the ground.
I called Patricia to the window. His style was wonderful to
see, so calm and masterly. There had been a time when he
had harried the ponies gleefully, chasing them up and
down the road without respite, nipping at their heels,
leaping at their shoulders, and eluding their kicks with
what, to them, must have been taunting ease. I had had to
chastize him several times before he would give it up.
Now silently and crouching menacingly he interposed
himself between the children and their stalkers. Star·
bright knew that he would leap but did not know when,
and began to lift his feet apprehensively. Shawno waited ...
and it seemed that the pony concluded that he would not
leap, and abruptly he leapt, darting like a snake at Star·
bright's feet. The pony pulled back and wheeled, obliging
the smaller pony to wheel too. Shawno let them come
along then, but followed the children himself, glancing
back to see that the ponies kept their distance. The children hadn't seen a bit of this. "What a darling!" said
Patricia. "What a dear dog!"
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
uoh 1 it's horrible. I don't practice no more, that's what's
11
�Searles, say testily, ((I seen 'em, 1seen 'em." He was refer·
1
ring to the shingling brackets that had been propped up
prominently at the end of the co[lnter. Searles had known
for two years that Mason wanted to replace his roofing; he
had JUSt learned that Mason had decided on asphalt shingles. "I might borrow Mark's brackets," said Mason, but
he added, in a different tone, scratching his face, "these
are nice, though ... "
People didn't say "Searles's place" but "down to
Searles." "Oh, they'll have it down to Se;rles." "I stopped
in down to Searles." "Let me just call down to Searles."
He was C. W. the third, but had been called Bob all his life.
Of the men in the village he was certainly the least
rural. He had grown up on a farm, loved to hunt and fish,
play poker, drink whisky, and swap yarns. But he had gone
away to college, and then to business school, and had
worked in Boston for three years. He was not just clever or
smart but was extremely intelligent, with a meticulous,
lively, retentive mind. He had come home not because he
couldn't make a go of things in the city, but because he
loved the village and the countryside and sorely missed
the people. He subscribed to the Wall Street Journal and
the New York Times, read many periodicals, was interested in politics and controversy and changing customs.
When I met him, his three children were away at college.
We disagreed irreconcilably on politics. I was aware of his
forebearance and was grateful for it. And I was impressed
by his wit and his kindliness, as when, without reproach or
impatience, he allowed certain desperately impoverished
children to come back repeatedly and exchange their
penny candies; and as when he built a ramp for the wheelchair of a neighbor who could no longer walk but was still
alert and lively.
He was not a happy man. He drank too much to be
healthy, and his powers of mind by and large went unused. Yet one could sense in him a bedrock of contentment, and a correct choice of place and work. He was tall
and bony, carried far too large a stomach, and was lame in
one leg. In damp weather he used a cane and moved with
some difficulty about the store. I came to see that most of
his friends were old friends and were devoted to him. I
learned, too, that he had forgiven many debts and had
signed over choice lots of land to the town, one for a ball
field, another for picnics. His gregarious cocker spaniel,
who possessed no territorial sense at all lounged in the
aisles and corners, and on sunny days ca'u!d be found on
the loading apron under the awning. And it was here, in
front of the store, beside the caramel colored spaniel that
one sunny day I encountered my own dog who had vanished from the house.
'
He leaped up gaily, showing no guilt at all and came beside me when I entered the store.
'
Searles, on the high stool, was leaning over the Wall
Street Journal that was spread across the counter. The moment he raised his head, Shawno looked at him alertly.
Searles smiled at me. "I've got a new friend" he said·
.
12
'
'
and to the dog, "Haven't I, Shawno? What'll you have,
Shawno? Do you want a biscuit? Do you?" Shawno
reared, put his front paws on the counter and barked.
"Oh, you do?" said Searles. "Well, I happen to have
one. "
He put his hand under the counter, where he kept the
dog biscuits that had fattened the spaniel.
"Will you pay for it now?" he said. "Will you? Will you,
Shawno?"
Shawno, whose paws were still on the counter, barked
in a deep, almost indignant way. Searles was holding the
biscuit, not offering it.
. "Oh, you want it on credit?" he said. He held up the
b1scmt, and at the sight of it the dog barked in lighter,
more eager tones. ((What?" said Searles, uyou want it
free? Free?" Again Shawno barked, the eagerness mixed
now with impatience and demand. "All right," said
Searles, "Here 'tis. On the house." He held it out and
Shawno took it with a deft thrust of his head.
I watched all this with a long-lasting, rather complicated
smile.
I said that I hoped the dog wasn't a nuisance.
((Oh, no," said Searles, uhe's a good dog. He's a fine
dog."
And I looked at Shawno, who was looking at Searles
and thought, "you wretch, you unfaithful wretch. Ho~
easily you can be charmed and bought!"
Yet I let him go back there again and again. He'd trot
away in the morning as if he were going off to work, and
then at supperbme would appear on the brow of the hill
muddied and wet, having jumped into the stream to drink:
I didn't have the heart to chain him. And I couldn't
blame him. What better place for a gregarious dog than
this one surviving social fragment of the bygone town?
There were other dogs to sport with, there was the store
itself with its pleasant odors, there was Searles, my rival,
with his biscuits, there were children to make much of
him, and grown-ups by the score. Moreover, there were
cars, trucks, and delivery vans, and all had been marked by
the dogs of far-flung places. We would arrive for groceries
or mail and find him stretched on the apron in front of the
store, or gamboling in the road with other dogs, or standing in a cluster of kids with bikes, or stationed by the
counter inside, looking up inquiringly at customers who
were chatting with Searles.
My jealousy grew. I was seriously perturbed. Somewhere within me an abandoned lover was saying "Don't
you love me anymore? Have you forgotten how I raised
you and trained you? Have you forgotten those mornings
in the park when I threw sticks for you and taught you to
leap, or our walks here in the woods, and the thousand discoveries we've made together?"
Most serious of all was his absence while I worked. I had
built a little cabin half a mile from the house. He had been
a presence, almost a tutelary spirit, in the very building of
it, and then he had walked beside me every day to and
from it, and had lain near my feet while I wrote or read.
WINTER 1982
�Often when I turned to him he would' already have seen
the movement and I would find his eyes waiting for mine.
Those inactive hours were a poor substitute for the attractions of the store, and I knew it, in spite of our companionable lunches and afternoon walks. But what of me?
One day, several weeks after his first visit to the store, I
jumped into the car and went down there rather speedily,
ordered him rather firmly into the back seat, and took him
home. The procedure was repeated the following day.
The day after that I chained him, and the day after that
chained him again ...
Life returned to normal. I took away the chain. He was
grateful and stopped moping. I saw that he had renounced his friends at the store, and I was glad, forgetting
that I had forced him to do it. Anyway, those diversions
had never cancelled his love for me-so I reminded myself, and began to see fidelity where I had established
dependence. But that didn't matter. The undiminished,
familiar love wiped out everything-at least for me.
Eddie Dubord. Sawyer's Labrador. Quills.
Just below us in the woods the stream was speeded by a
short channel of granite blocks, though the millwheel was
gone that once had turned continuously during thaw, reducing small hills of cedar drums to stacks of shingles.
There had been trout for a while in the abandoned millrace, but chubs, that eat the eggs of trout, had supplanted
them.
Upstream of this ghost of a mill, just beyond the second
of two handsome waterfalls, one stringer of a rotted bridge
still joined the banks. Snowmobilers had dropped a tree
beside it and had nailed enough crossboards to make a
narrow path. I had crossed it often on snowshoes, and
then on skis, and the dog had trotted behind, but there
came a day in spring, after the mud had dried, that
Shawno drew back and stood there on the bank stamping
his feet, moving from side to side, and barking. He had
seen the frothing water between the boards of the bridge.
I picked him up and carried him across, and could not
help laughing, he was so big, such a complicated bundle in
my arms who once had nestled there snugly.
Beyond the bridge a grassy road curved away into the
trees. In somewhat more than a mile it would join the
tarred road, but halfway there, on the inside of its curve, it
was met by a wagon trail, now partly closed by saplings,
and it was here at the corner of this spur that my neighbor, Eddie Dubord, built a small cabin similar to my own.
It was summer. The dog had gone with the children to
the swimming hole and I was walking alone carrying a
small rod and a tin of worms. I saw two columns of smoke
ahead of me, thinning and mingling in the breeze, and
then I could see a parked car and a man working at something. The smoke was blowing toward him and came from
two small fires spaced twelve feet apart. The man was
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
blocky and short. He wore a visored cap of bright orange
and a chore jacket of dark blue denim. His movements
were stiff and slow, yet there was something impressive
and attractive about the way he worked. Every motion
achieved something and led to the next without waste or
repetition. He went to one of the fires carrying an axe,
which he used only to lift some pine boughs from a pile.
He threw several on each of the fires. I walked closer, but
stopped again and watched him. We had never met, but I
knew that it was Dubord. He was seventy-four years old.
He had driven the corner stakes to mark the floor of a
cabin, had tied a cord on one of them and had carried it
around the others. Apparently he had already levelled the
cord. I watched him as he picked up a five foot iron bar
and went away dragging a stoneboat that was simply the
hood of an ancient car turned upside down and fitted
with a yoke and rope. He stopped at a pile of stones, and
with his bar levered a large flat stone onto the car hood,
which he dragged back to one of the corner stakes. With
short, efficient strokes he levered the stone onto the
ground. When finally I walked by he was on his hands and
knees firming the stone and didn't see me.
Several days later I went that way again, and without
fully knowing why, stopped to watch him. He had finished the floor and had built a low platform the length of
it, and had equipped the platform with steps. He would be
able to work on the rafters and roof without resorting to a
ladder.
He had assembled several units of studs, rafters, and
cross braces, and now as I watched he pushed one erect
with a stick, and lodged it in the fork of a long pole that
held it while he adjusted it for plumb. He nailed bracing
boards at the sides, and drove in permanent nails at the
base. His concentration was remarkable. It was as total
and self-forgetful as a child's. Later, after I had come to
know him well, I marvelled more, not less, at this quality. I
had seen him at work on almost every gadget the economy
afforded: radios and TVs, pop-up toasters, lawnmowers of
several kinds, snow-blowers, rota-tillers, outboard motors,
locks, shotguns, clocks. On several occasions I had come
close to him and had stood beside him wondering how to
announce my presence ... but it never mattered how: he
invariably looked up with a start of panic, and then
blushed. It was not merely as if his concentration had
been disturbed, but as if some deep, continuous melody
had been shattered. Then he would smile shyly and greet
me in his unassuming, yet gracious, almost courtly way.
He had already roofed the cabin and was boarding the
sides-on the diagonal, as the old farmhouses were
boarded-when we finally met. And as has often happened, it was the dog who introduced us, ignoring utterly
the foolish shyness on both sides.
The smudge fires were going again to drive away the
bugs. A small stack of rough-cut boards lay on a pallet of
logs. Dubord had just hung the saw on a prong of the sawhorse and was carrying a board to the wall when Shawno
trotted up to him and barked. He was startled and backed
13
�away defensively, ready to use the board as a weapon. But
Shawno was wagging his tail in, the extreme sweeps of
great enthusiasm, and he did something he had almost
abandoned since our coming to the country: he reared up,
put his paws on Dubord's broad chest and tried to lick his
weathered, leathery face with its smoke-haze of white
stubble beard. By the time I reached them Shawno had
conquered him utterly. Dubord was patting the dog,
bending over him, and talking to him in that slurred, attractive baritone voice that seemed to have burrs and
knurls in it, a grain and dark hue as of polished walnut,
and that he seemed to savor in his throat and on his
tongue, just as he savored tobacco, black coffee, and
whisky. And of course he- knew the dog's name, as he
knew my name, and as I knew his. It was the simplest
thing in the world to shake hands and be friends.
To hold Dubord's hand was like holding a leather sack
filled with chunks of wood. His fingers were three times
the size of ordinary fingers. He scarcely gripped my hand,
but politely allowed me to hold his. Gravely he said,
"Pleased to meet you," and then his small blue eyes grew
lively behind the round, steel-framed spectacles. "I'd ask
you in," he said, "but there ain't much difference yet between out and in. You got time for a drink?" I said I did,
and he opened the toolbox and handed me a pint of Four
Roses.
His skull was shaped like a cannonball. His jaw was
broad and gristly. Everything about him suggested
strength and endurance, yet his dominant trait, I soon
came to see, was thoughtfulness. He listened, noticed, reflected, though it was apparent, even now, that these
qualities must often have been overwhelmed in his youth
by passions of one kind or another. He had come from
Quebec at the age of twenty, and for almost two decades
had worked in lumber camps as a woodcutter and cook.
He had farmed here in this valley, both as a hired hand
and on his own-had dug wells, built houses, barns, and
sheds, had installed his own electric lines and his own
plumbing, had raised animals and crops of all kinds. In
middle age he had married a diminutive, high-tempered,
rotund, cross-eyed, childishly silly, childishly gracious
woman. They had never had children. They had never
even established a lasting peace. Her crippled mother
lived with them in the small house he had built, knitting
in an armchair before the TV while her daughter dusted
the china knickknacks and photographs of relatives,
straightened the paper flowers in their vases, and flattened the paper doilies they had placed under everything.
Dubord liked all this, or rather, approved it, but felt ill at
ease with his heavy boots and oilstained pants, and spent
his days in a shed beside the house. There, surrounded by
his hundreds of small tools, he tinkered at the workbench,
listened to French Canadian fiddle music on cassettes,
and occasionally put aside the tools to play his own fiddle.
The camp in the woods served the same purposes as the
shed, but promised longer interludes of peace.
I got to know him that summer and fall, but it was not
14
until winter-our family's third in the little town-that
Dubord and I realized that we were friends.
The deep snow of our first winter had made me giddy
with excitement. The silence in the woods, the hilly terrain with its many streams, most of them frozen and
white, but :; few audible with a muted, far-off gurgling under their covering of ice and snow, occasional sightings of
the large white snowshoe hares, animal tracks-all this
had been a kind of enchantment and had recalled boyhood enjoyments that once had been dear to me. I went
about on snowshoes, and Shawno came behind. The following year I discovered the lightweight, highly-arched,
cross-country skis, my speed in the woods was doubled,
and our outings became strenuous affairs for the dog. Often he sank to his shoulders and was obliged to bound like
a porpoise. Except in the driest, coldest snow, he stopped
frequently, and pulling back his lips in a silent snarl would
bite away the impacted snow from between his toes. His
tawny, snow-cleaned, winter-thickened fur looked handsome against the whiteness. When we came to downhill
stretches I would speed ahead, and he would rally and follow at a run.
We had taken a turn like this through the woods in our
third year, on a sunny, blue-skied day in March, and
stopped at the camp to visit Dubord.
I could smell the smoke of his tin chimney before I
could see it. Then the cabin came in view. His intricately
webbed, gracefully curved snowshoes leaned against the
depleted stack of firewood that early in the winter had
filled the overhang of the entranceway.
I could hear music. It was the almost martial, furiously
rhythmic music of the old country dances ... but there
seemed to be two fiddles.
Shawno barked and raced ahead ... and Dubord's pet
squirrel bounded up the woodpile. When I reached the
camp Shawno was dancing on his hind legs barking angrily
and complainingly, and the handsome red squirrel was
crouching in a phoebe's nest in the peak of the roof, looking down with bright eyes and maddening calm. The
music stopped, the door opened, and Dubord greeted us
cheerfully-actually with a merry look on his face.
"You won't get that old squirrel, Shawno," he said.
"He's too fast for you. You'll never get 'im. Might's well
bark ... "
"Come in," he said. ui just made coffee. Haven't seen
those for a while, Where'd you get 'em?"
He meant the skis. He had never seen a manufactured
pair, though he had seen many of the eight and nine foot
handmade skis the Finns had used. He didn't know why
(so he said later) only the Finns had used them. Everyone
else had stayed with snowshoes, which were an Indian invention.
"Nilo Ansden used to take his eggs down to Searles on
skis," he said. The Searles he meant was Bob Searles's father. "He took a short cut one day down that hill 'cross
from your place. We had a two-foot storm all night and
the day before. He got halfway down and remembered
WINTER 1982
�Esther Barden's chicken coop was in the way, but he
thought there's enough snow to get up on the roof. .. and
there was. Once he was up there there was nothin' to do
but jump, so he jumped. Had a packbasket of eggs on's
back. Didn't break a one."
In the whole of any winter there are never more than a
few such sunny days, gloriously sunny and blue. One be·
comes starved for the sun.
He left the door open and we turned our chairs to face
the snow and blue sky and the vast expanse of evergreen
and hardwood forest. He stirred the coals in the woodstove, opened the draft and threw in some split chunks of
rock maple. There was a delicious swirling all around us of
hot, dry currents from the stove and cool, fragrant currents from the snow and woods. Occasionally a tang of
wood smoke came in with the cold air.
As for the fiddle music-"Oh, I was scratchin' away,"
he said. "I have a lot of fiddle music on the cassettes. I put
it on and play along."
His cassette recorder stood on the broad work table by
the window. The violin lay beside it amidst a clutter of
tools and TV parts.
"If I hear somebody's got somethin' special or new, I go
over an' put it on the recorder. Take a good while to play
the ones I got now. You like that fiddle music, Shawno?"
-and to me: "That was a schottische you heard comin'
in."
He was fond of the dog. He looked at him again and
again, and there began a friendship between them that
pleased me and that I never cared to interrupt.
Shawno lay on the floor twisting his head this way and
that and snapping at a large glossy fly that buzzed around
him. He caught it, cracked it with his teeth, and ejected it
with a wrinkling of the nose. Eddie laughed and said,
"That's right, Shawno, you catch that old bastard fly."
The dog got up and went to him and Eddie gave him a
piece of the "rat cheese" we had been eating with our cof·
fee. For a long time Shawno sat beside him, resting his
head on Eddie's knee.
We laced our coffee with Four Roses whisky and had
second cups. The squirrel looked in at the window,
crouching eagerly, its hands lifted and tucked in at the
wrists, and its feathery long tail poised forward like a canopy over its head.
"I built that platform to feed the birds, but he took
over, so I let him have it. That's where the birds eat now."
He pointed to a wooden contraption hanging by a wire
from a tree out front. Several chicadees fluttered around
it angrily. It was rocking from the weight of the bluejay
perched on its edge, a brilliant, unbelievable blue in the
sunlight.
Eddie had hinged a tiny window in one of the panels of
the side window. He opened it now and laid his hand on
the feeding platform, a few peanuts and sunflower seeds
on the palm. The squirrel leaped away, but came back immediately and proceeded to eat from his hand, picking up
one seed at a time. Shawno went over and barked, and the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
squirrel seized one last morsel and fled. Dubord closed the
window and turned to the dog, chuckling. Again the dog
sat with him, this time laying his chin over one wide rubber boot.
I saw his packbasket in the corner. He used it daily to
bring in water and whisky and a few tools. The handle of
his axe protruded from the basket. The basket was of ash
strips, such as the Indians make. I had bought several two
towns away. Dubord had made this one himself.
"The Indians can take brown ash wherever they find
it," he said. "Did you know that? They used to camp
every summer on the Folsom place. Diamond National
owns it now. There's brown ash down there, downhill
goin' toward the pond. I used to trap beaver with one o'
the men, and he showed me."
The basket was thirty years old.
He sipped his coffee.
"Have you met Mister Mouse?" he said.
"Who?"
"Don't know if he'll come while Shawno's here."
Smiling like a little boy, he said, "Keep your eyes open,
but don't move. Don't even blink. He can see it."
He put a peanut on the two-by-four at the upper edge
of the far wall, stepped back from it and stood there making a strange little whimpering sound. Shawno perked up
his ears and was suddenly excited, but I whispered to him,
no, no ... stay.
Again Dubord made the squeaking sound, sucking air
through his lips. Presently, quite soundlessly, a roundeared gray mouse appeared on the ledge, sniffing. It crept
forward a few inches and stopped, sniffing alertly and angling the delicate long antennae of its whiskers this way
and that. It nibbled the peanut rapidly, listening while it
ate, its bulging black eyes glinting with light from the windows and the open door.
Shawno got to his feet ... and that huge movement and
the sound of his claws on the floor put an end to the performance.
We stayed for two hours. He talked of his early days in
the States, and his years in the woods. I could hear the
French Canadian and the Yankee accents contending in
his speech, the one wanting to stress the final syllables,
the other to drawl them. Shawno sat close to him, sometimes upright with his chin on his knee, sometimes lying
flat with his nose near the broad booted foot. Until now all
his friendships had been friendships of play. This was a
friendship of peace. It was one of those rare occasions on
which, perhaps only momentarily, a little family of the
spirit is formed.
It was good sapping weather. The days were sunny, the
snow melting, the nights cold. When we saw Dubord several days later he was gathering sap from the huge maples
near his camp.
A rapidly moving cloud of light gray smoke rolled over
and over in the lower branches of the trees. I skied closer
and saw that it was not coming from the cabin, as I had
15
�feared, nor was it smoke, but steam from a bubbling large
tray of maple sap.
He had shovelled away some snow and had built a fire·
place of fieldstones he had gathered in the fall. The sides
were lined with scraps of metal. The back had been cut
from a sheetmetal stove and was equipped with a metal
chimney five feet high. A shallow tray, two feet by four,
formed the top of this fireplace/stove. It was from the
tray that the clouds of steam were rising.
While I was examining all this Dubord appeared, plod·
ding blockily on snowshoes, pulling a toboggan that I rec·
ognized, since I had helped in the making of it, splitting
out boards from a squared-off log of ash, steaming the
tips, nailing them around a log to cool and set. On the to·
boggan were two five-gallon white plastic jugs, each halffilled with sap. A tin funnel bounced against one of them,
secured by a wire to its handle.
Eddie threw me a furious glance that was scarcely a
greeting. His teeth were clamped and his mouth was
pulled down. I knew without asking that he had been
quarrelling with Nellie, his wife. How long he would have
maintained this furious silence I don't know, but it was
more than he could do to hold out against the dog. A dark,
deep blush suffused his weathered round face. He
dropped the toboggan rope, and smiling helplessly at the
corners of his mouth, bowed his head to the uprearing
dog, petting him with both hands and allowing his face to
be licked.
He took off the snowshoes and put more wood on the
fire. The four foot strips of white birch-edgings from the
turning mill-had been stacked in the fall and covered.
Papery white bark still clung to them. The wood was well
dried and burned hot-the "biscuit wood" of the old
farmhouse kitchens.
The tray was slanted toward one of its forward corners,
and there, with his brazing torch, Dubord had attached a
little spigot. He drained some syrup into a large spoon,
blew on it, tested it with his finger. It was too thin to drain
off.
I helped him pour some of the new sap into the noisily
bubbling syrup. The steam was sweet and had a pleasant
odor.
Several galvanized buckets stood by the fire and we
poured the rest of the sap into them. I noticed that just as
he had not filled the plastic jugs he did not fill the buckets
-an old man's foresight, avoiding loads that might injure
him.
I went with him back to the maple trees, and at last he
broke his silence.
"Was a damn good farm here fifty years ago," he said. "!
wanted to buy it but I couldn't meet the price."
The huge maples lined the road. There were smaller
trees around them, some in the road itself, but the maples
were leafy and well exposed to the sun, and their sap was
far richer than that of forest maples. The boiling ratio
would be forty to one, or better.
Buckets, four to a tree, clung to the stout, coarse-barked
16
trunks waist high, as if suspended from a single belt. They
hung from short spouts of galvanized metal, and were cov·
ered with metal lids that were creased slightly in the middle and looked like roofs.
Since I was helping, we filled the jugs, and soon had
sledded sixty gallons to the fire.
Nellie's canary, whom they had called Buddy, had been
killed that morning. The quarrel had followed its death.
She had been cleaning its cage and had let it out to
stretch its wings.
"She could've put it in the other cage," Dubord said.
He was stirring the boiling sap with a stick of wood, and
in his anger he splashed it again and again.
"It was right there under the bed," he said. "Damn
thing shittin' all over the place! If I come in with one
speck o' mud on my boots she raises hell! I wanted to go
out. 'Don't open the door!' 'Well put 'im in the cage!'"
He thumped the tray as if he meant to drive holes
through it.
"Freddie Latham was outside fillin' the oil tank," he
said. "Nellie's mother'd knitted some mittens for the new
baby, so Nellie says to me, 'Cit Buddy,' and she comes
right past me and opens the door. 'Yoo hoo, Freddie."'
He ground his teeth a while.
"Cit the bird!" he muttered explosively. "What'd she
expect me t'do, fly up an' catch it? Damn thing flew out
the door right behind her and she didn't even notice.
Then she opened the porch door and it flew out that one
too. Damn! If I been holdin' a stick o' wood I'd heaved it
at 'er! You could o' heard her down t'village. 'Save Buddy!'
'Here, Buddy!' 'Cit Buddy!"'
Dubord never glanced at me. His eyes were re-seeing
the whole event.
"He perched on the roof o' the shed," he said, "And I
got the ladder and started U:p with some birdseed, and
Freddie went in and got my smeltin' net. Soon as the bird
saw me gittin 1 close, he flew over an' perched on the ridge·
pole o' the house. Then he flew up to the antenna, and
Nellie's whistlin' to him an' suckin' her lips. 'Eddie, git
that canary record, maybe if we play it Buddy'll come
down.'"
Dubord glanced at me fiercely and demanded: "If he
could hear it up there what'd he want t'come down for?"
"By the time I come down off the ladder the bird' d flew
up to the electric wire. He was just gittin' settled ... wham!
Some damn ol' red-tail hawk been watchin' the whole
thing. I never seen 'im. Where he come from I don't
know. Couple o' yella feathers come down like snowflakes. I thought, here's your canary, Nellie. An' I thought,
enjoy your dinner, mister hawk. You just saved me two
hund'd dolluhs."
Dubord glared at me again and said, "Yessuh! That's
what I said! Two hund'd dolluhs! That's what I spent for
birdseed! I'm tellin' the truth, I ain't makin' it up! And I
ain't sayin' Buddy et that much, I'm sayin' we BOUGHT
that much! You saw him do that Christly trick! You and
WINTER 1982
�the Missus saw that trick the first time you come down.
Sure you did! Yau had the girl with you ... "
The trick he was referring to was something Nellie had
taught the bird, or had discovered, namely, that when she
put his cage up to the feeding platform at the window, he
would pick up a seed from the floor and hold it between
the bars, and the chickadees would jostle one another until one had plucked the seed from his beak, and then Buddy
would get another. Nellie had loved to show this off.
Eddie was still glaring at me. "WHERE DID YOU THINK
THEM BIRDS COME FROM?" he shouted. "We had t'have
them birds ON HAND! We was feedin' a whole damn flock
right through the year so Buddy could do his Christly trick
two or three times a month! In bad weather he couldn't
do it 't all, but we still had t'feed the chickadees."
He paced back and forth by the evaporating tray grinding his teeth and glaring. "I guess I warn't upset 'nough
t'suit 'er," he said "God tamn! Hasn't she got a tongue!"
One last wave of anger smote him and he howled
louder than before, but there was a plaintive note in his
voice and he almost addressed it to the sky.
"IT WAS NELLIE HER OWN GODDAM RATTLE BRAIN
SELF OPENED THE DOOR!" he cried.
And then he calmed down. That is to say, he walked
around the steaming tray panting and lurching and
thumping the sides and bottom with the little stick.
He had brought some blankets in his packbasket and
was planning to spend the night.
He drained off some thick syrup into a small creamery
pail and set it aside to cool. He drained a little more into
an old enamel frying pan and with a grunt bent down and
thrust it under the evaporator tray right among the flames
and coals. After it had bubbled and frothed a while, he
knelt again and patted the snow to make it firm, and scattered the hot syrup over it. When Shawno and I went
home I had a jar of syrup for Patricia and a bag of maple
taffy for the kids.
At around two o'clock the next afternoon I answered
the phone and heard the voice of Nellie Dubord, whose
salutation, calling or receiving, it always Yeh-isss, as if she
were emphatically agreeing with some previous remark.
Eddie had not come home. She knew that he had taken
blankets to the camp, but she was worried.
"!just don't feel right," she said. "]can't see any smoke
up there. I should be able to see the chimney smoke,
though maybe not. Ain't he boilin' sap? I should see that
smoke too. Can you see it up there? Take a look. I guess
I'm bein' foolish, but I don't know ... I just don't feel
right."
I went upstairs and looked from the west windows.
There wasn't any smoke. I skied across.
There was no activity at the cabin, no smoke or shimmering of heated air at the chimney, no fire out front.
Shawno sniffed at the threshold. He chuffed and snorted,
sniffed again, then drew back and barked. He went forward again and lowered his head and sniffed.
The door was locked. I went around to the window. DuTHE ST. JOHNS
REVIEW
bard lay on the floor on his back beside the little platform
bed. He was dressed except for his boots. The blankets
had come away from the bed, as if he had clutched them
at the moment of falling. I battered the door with a piece
of stovewood and went to him. He was breathing faintly,
but his weathered face was as bloodless as putty.
He was astonishingly heavy. I got him onto the bed,
covered him with the blankets and our two coats, and
skied to the road. I saw his car there and cursed myself for
not having searched him for the key. The nearest house
was three quarters of a mile away. I telephoned there for
an ambulance, and made two other calls, then went back
and put him on the toboggan and set out pulling him over
the packed but melting trail, dreadfully slowly.
I hadn't gone twenty paces before the men I had called
appeared. The two elder were carpenters, the young man
was their helper. They were running towards us vigorously, and I felt a surge of hope.
But it was more than hope that I felt at that moment.
Something priceless was visible in their faces, and I have
been moved by the recollection of it again and again. It
was the purified, electric look of wholehearted response.
The men came running towards us vigorously, lifting their
knees in the snow and swinging their arms, and that unforgettable look was on their faces.
Ten days later Patricia, the children, and I went with
Nellie to the hospital. The children weren't admitted, and
Nellie sat with them in the lobby.
Dubord was propped up by pillows and was wearing a
hospital smock that left his arms bare. I was used to the
leathery skin of his hands and face; the skin of his upper
arms, that were still brawny, was soft and white, one
would say shockingly white.
"Sicker cats than this have got well and et another
meal," he said. And then, gravely, "Nellie told me you
went in for me. I'm much obliged to you."
"Did the girls like their candy?" he asked ... and it took
me a moment to realize that he was referring to the maple
taffy, the last thing he had made before the heart attack.
A few moments later he said, 11 How's my dog?" meaning
Shawno, and I told him how the dog had known at once
that something was wrong, and that rapt, shy look came
over his face.
A neighbor came in while I was there, Earl Sawyer, who
after chatting briefly, said to him, "Well, you won't be
seein' Blackie no more."
Dubord asked him what had happened.
"I did away with him," said Sawyer. "I had to. He went
after porcupines three times in the last two weeks. Three
times I took him to the vet, eighteen dollars each time. I
can't be doin' that. Then he went and did it again, so I
took him out and shot 'im, quills and all."
Sawyer was upset.
"If he can't learn," he said. " ... I can't be doin' that.
Damn near sixty dollars in two weeks, and there's a leak in
the goddam cellar. He was a nice dog, though. He was a
good dog otherwise."
17
�Sawyer was thirty-three or four, but his face was worn
and tense. He worked ten hours a day as a mechanic, belonged to the fire department, and was serving his second
term as road commissioner. He had built his own house
and was raising two children.
"I don't blame you," said Dubord. "You'd be after 'im
every day."
"He went out an' did it again," said Sawyer.
There was silence for a while.
"I can't see chainin' a dog," Sawyer said. ''I'd rather not
have one."
"A chained dog ain't worth much," Eddie said.
Months went by before Eddie recovered his spirits. But
in truth he never did entirely recover them. I could see a
sadness in him that hadn't been there before, and a tendency to sigh where once he had raged.
The change in his life was severe. He sold the new cabin
he had liked so much, and spent more time in the little
shed beside the house. I drove down to see him frequently,
but it wasn't the same as stopping by on skis or walking
through the woods. Nor was he allowed to drink whisky.
Nor did I always remember to bring the dog.
Most of the snow was gone by the end of that ApriL
One night Shawno failed to appear for supper, and there
was no response when I called into the dusk from the
porch. I called again an hour later, and this time I saw
movement in the shadows just beyond the cars. Why was
he not bounding toward me? I ran out, calling to him. He
crept forward a few paces on his belly, silently, and then
lay still. When I stood over him, he turned his head away
from me. His jowls and nose were packed with quills. He
could not close his mouth. There were quills in his tongue
and hanging down from his palate. The porcupine had
been a small one, the worst kind for a dog.
He seemd to be suffering more from shame than from
the pain of the quills. He would not meet my eyes; and
the once or twice that he did, he lowered his head and
looked up woefully, so that the whites showed beneath
the irises. I had never seen him so stricken.
I was afraid that he might run off, and so I picked him
up and carried him into the house. This, too, was mortifying. His eyes skittered from side to side. What an abject
entrance for this golden creature, who was used to bounding in proudly!
The black tips of the quills are barbed with multiple,
hair-fine points. The quills are shaped like torpedoes and
are hollow-shafted, so that the pressure of the flesh
around them draws them deeper into the victim's body.
They are capable of migrating then to heart, eyes, liver ...
He wanted to obey me. He lay flat under the floor lamp.
But every time I touched a quill with the pliers, a tic of
survival jerked away his head.
Ida was shocked. He was the very image of The
Wounded, The Victimized. It was as if some malevolent
tiny troll had shot him with arrows. She knelt beside him
18
and threw her arms around his neck, and in her high, passionate voice of child goodness repeated the words both
Patricia and I had already said: "Don't worry, Shawno,
we'll get them out for you!" -but with this difference:
that he drew back the corners of his open mouth, panted
slightly, glanced at her, and thumped his taiL
I took him to the vet the next day, and brought him
back unconscious in the car.
I thought of Sawyer and his Black Labrador, and saw
from still another aspect the luxury of our lives. I did not
go to bed exhausted every night, was not worried about a
job, a mortgage, a repair bill, a doctor's bill, unpaid loans
at the bank. And here was another of the homely luxuries
our modest security brought us: he lay on the back seat
with his eyes closed, his mouth open, his tongue out,
panting unconsciously. Great quantities of saliva came
from his mouth, so much of it that the seat was wet when
finally we moved him.
A walk with Ida. Waldo. Persistence of the city.
Kerosene light and an aphorism. The rock above
the town. Wandering dogs.
Spring comes slowly and in many stages. The fields go
through their piebald phase again and again, in which the
browns and blacks of grass and wet earth are mingled with
streaks of white-and then everything is covered again
with the moist, characteristically dimpled snow of spring.
But soon the sun comes back, a warm wind blows, and in
half a day the paths in the woods and the ruts in our long
dirt road are streaming with water.
Black wasps made their appearance on a warm day in
March, then vanished. This was the day that a neighbor
left his shovel upright in the snow in the morning and in
the evening found it on bare ground. It was the day that a
man in his seventies with whom I had stopped to talk
while he picked up twigs and shreds of bark from his
south-facing yard, turned away from me abruptly and
pointed with his finger, saying, "Look! Is that a bee? Yes,
by gurry! It's a bee! The first one!"
But there was more rain and more snow, and then, alas,
came the flooding we had hoped to be spared, as the
stream overflowed our lower road, this time to a depth of
two feet. For several days we came home through the
woods with our groceries in rucksacks, but again the snow
shrivelled and sank into the ground, and high winds dried
the mud. I saw a crowd of black starlings foraging in a
brown field, and heard the first cawing of crows. The
leaves of the gray birches uncurled. There were snow flurries, sun again, and the ponies followed the sun all day,
lolling on the dormant grass or in the mud. Shawno, too,
basked in the sun like a tourist on a cruise ship. He lay
blinking on a snowbank with his tongue extended, baking
above and cooling below. I pulled last year's leaves out of
several culverts, and opened channels in the dooryard
WlNTER 1982
�mud so that the standing water could reach the ditch.
Early one morning six Canada Geese flew over my head,
due north, silently, flying low; and then.at dusk the same
day I heard a partridge drumming in the woods.
Several days after Easter, when the garden was clear of
snow and the chives were three inches high, Ida came
striding into my room, striking her feet noisily on the floor
and grinning.
"Wake up, dad!" she called. "It's forty-forty!"
She was seven. I had told her the night before how
when she was four years old and could not count or tell
time she had invented that urgent hour, forty-forty, and
had awakened me one morning proclaiming it.
When she saw that I was awake, she said eagerly, "Look
out the window, daddy! Look!"
I did, and saw a world of astonishing whiteness. Clinging, heavy snow had come down copiously in the night
and had ceased before dawn. There was no wind at all.
Our white garden was bounded by a white rail fence,
every post of which was capped by a mound of white. The
pines and firs at the wood's edge were almost entirely
white, and the heavy snow had straightened their upwardsweeping branches, giving the trees a sharp triangular outline and a wonderfully festive look.
The whiteness was everywhere. Even the sky was
white, and the just-risen sun was not visible as a disc at all
but as a lovely haze of orange between whitenesses I knew
to be hills.
An hour later Ida, Shawno, and I were walking through
the silent, utterly motionless woods. We took the old
county road, that for decades now has been a mere trail,
rocky and overgrown. It goes directly up the wooded high
ridge of Folsom hill and then emerges into broad, shaggy
fields that every year become smaller as the trees move in.
We gather blueberries here in the summer, and in the fall
apples and grapes, but for almost two years now we have
come to the old farm for more sociable reasons.
After breakfast Ida had wanted to hear stories of her
earlier childhood, and now as we walked through the
woods she requested them again, taking my bare hand
with her small, gloved one, and saying, "Daddy, tell me
about when I was a kid."
"You mean like the time you disappeared in the snow?"
This was an incident I had described to her before, and
of which she delighted to hear.
"Yes!" she said.
"Well ... that was it-you disappeared. You were two
years old. You were sitting on my lap on the toboggan and
we went down the hill beside the house. We were going
really fast, and the toboggan turned over and you flew
into a snowbank and disappeared."
She laughed and said, "You couldn't even see me?"
"Nope. The snow was light and fluffy and very deep."
"Not even my head?"
"Not even the tassel on your hat."
"How did you find me?"
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
"I just reached down and there you were, and I pulled
you out."
She laughed triumphantly and said, "Tell me some
more."
While we talked in this fashion the dog trotted to and
fro among the snow-burdened close-set trees, knocking
white cascades from bushes and small pines. Often he
would range out of sight, leaping over deadfalls and
crouching under gray birches that had been pressed almost flat by the heavy snows of previous years, and then
he would come closer, sniffing at the six inch layer of wet
snow, and chuffing and snorting to clear his nose. Occasionally, snorting still more vigorously, he would thrust his
snout deep into the snow and then step back and busily
pull away snow and matted leaves with his front paws.
Watching all this, I understood once again that the
world of his experience was unimaginably different from
the world of mine. What were the actual sensations of his
sense of smell? How could I possibly know them? And
how were those olfactory shapes and meanings structured
in his memory? Snout, eyes, tongue, ears, belly-all were
close to the ground; his entire life was close to it, and mine
was not. I knew that in recent weeks complex odors had
sprung up in the woods, stirring him and drawing him excitedly this way and that. And I could see that last night's
snowfall had suppressed the odors and was thwarting him,
and that was all, really, that I could know.
After three-quarters of a mile the trail grew steep, and
the trees more numerous. We could not walk side by side;
I let Ida go in front, and our conversation now consisted of
the smiles we exchanged when she looked back at me over
her shoulder. I watched her graceful, well-formed little
body in its quilted red jacket and blue snow pants, and felt
a peace and happiness until now rare in my life.
Milky sky appeared between the snowy tops of the
trees. A few moments later there was nothing behind the
trees but the unmarked white of a broad field-at which
moment there occurred one of those surprises of country
life that are dazzling in much the way that works of art are
dazzling, but that occur on a scale no artwork can imitate.
I called to Ida, and she, too, cried aloud. The dog turned
to us and came closer, lifting his head eagerly.
The sight that so astonished us was this: several hundred birds, perhaps as many as five hundred, plump and
black, were scattered throughout the branches of one of
the maples at the wood's edge. The branches themselves
were spectacular enough, amplified by snow and traced
elegantly underneath by thin black lines of wet bark, but
the surprising abundance of the birds and their glossy
blackness against the white of the field were breathtaking.
I threw a stick at them. I couldn't resist. The entire tree
seemed to shimmer and crumble, then it burst, and black
sparks fluttered upward almost in the shape of a plume of
smoke. The plume thinned and tilted, then massed together again with a wheeling motion, from which a fluttering ribbon emerged, and the entire flock streamed
away in good order down the field to another tree.
19
�Shawno, who had remained baffled and excluded, resumed his foraging. He stopped and raised his head
alertly, then leaped forward in a bounding, enthusiastic
gallop, and in a moment was out of sight. When Ida and I
came to the spot he had just left, she, too, quickened excitedly, and with no more ceremony than had been shown
me by the dog let go of my hand and ran.
And if I had been a child, I would have followed, since it
was here, precisely here, that due to the lie of the land,
that is, the acoustics of the field, the playful, headlong
gaiety of two voices could be heard quite clearly, a girl's
voice shouting "I did, Leo! I did!" and the voice of her
brother, who was eight, replying, "Ha, ha, hal" and then
both shouting, "Shawno! Shawno!" I stood there and
watched Ida's diminutive figure running alone across the
snowy field in the direction of the house that was still to
come in sight.
I looked back for a moment down the long slope of the
field, towards the woods, the way we had come. I had intended to look for the birds, but our three sets of footprints caught my eye, and I could not help but smile at the
tale they told. They were like diagrams of our three different ways of being in the world. Mine, alas, denoted logic
and responsible decision: they plodded straight ahead,
straight ahead. Ida's footprints, in contrast to mine, went
out to the sides here and there, performed a few curlicues
and turns, and were even supplanted at one place by a
star-shaped body-print where she had thrown herself
laughing onto the snow.
But the footprints of the dog! ... this was a trail that was
wonderful to see! One might take it as erratic wandering,
or as continual inspiration, or as continua] attraction,
which may come to the same thing. It consisted of meandering huge loops, doublings, zig-zags, festoons ... The
whole was travelling as a system in the direction I had
chosen, yet it remained a system and was entirely his own.
The voices of the children grew louder. I saw the dark
gray flank of the made-over barn that was now their
home, and then saw the children themselves, running
with the dog among the whitened trees of the orchard.
These two, Gretl and Leo Carpenter, together with Ida
and myself and Eddie Dubord, complete the quintet of
Shawno's five great loves.
Gretl is Ida's age, Leo a year older. They are the children of Waldo and Aldana Carpenter, whom Patricia and
I have .known for years. But I have known Waldo since the
end of World War II, when we both arrived in New York
from small towns to the west.
Aldana was evidently waiting for me. She was standing
in the doorway, and when she saw me she beckoned. I had
not planned to stop, except to leave Ida and the dog, since
in all likelihood Waldo would be working, but Aldana had
no sooner waved to me than the broad window right
above her swung open and Waldo, too, beckoned to me,
cupping his hands and shouting. Aldana stepped out and
looked up at him, and they smiled at one another, though
his expression was not happy.
20
Aldana was fifteen years younger than Waldo. By the
time I came into the kitchen she was standing at the stove
turning thick strips of bacon with a fork. She looked
rested and fresh-it was one of the days, in fact, that her
entirely handsome and appealing person seemed actually
to be beautiful. She wore a dark blue skirt, a light sweaterblouse of gray wool, and loose-fitting boots from L. L.
Bean. Her long brown hair, that was remarkably thick and
glossy, was covered with a kerchief of deep blue.
"Waldo was up all night," she said to me, having already
urged me to eat with them. The large round table was set
for three.
She said, in a lower voice, ''We are going back."
She meant back to New York.
I had known that they wanted to. Waldo's excitement,
coming here, had had nothing to do with country life. He
had been fleeing New York and an art world that had become meaningless to him. His own painting, moreover, af
ter two periods of great success, was in a crisis of spirit,
and he had begun to mistrust the virtuosity (so he had told
me) that allowed him to cover this fact with achievements
of technique. But the isolation of country life had not had
the rejuvenating effect he had hoped for, and he had been
saying to me for a couple of months, "We won't be staying
forever . .. "
I was not surprised, then, to hear Aldana say that they
were leaving. Nevertheless, it was saddening, and I knew
that the loss, for Ida, would be severe.
I said as much to Aldana.
"We'll certainly miss you," she said. "All of you. All of
us. But we'll be back every summer."
"When are you going?"
"Soon. I don't know."
"How do the children feel about it?"
"We haven't told them yet," she said. "They've been
happy here ... but they do miss New York ... there's so
much to do ... "
I could hear Waldo walking on the floor above our
heads, and moving something. I asked him, shouting, if he
needed a hand. "I'll be right down," he called back.
Aldana looked into the oven, closing it quickly, and I
caught the aroma of yeast rolls.
The handsome kitchen had been the stables of the old
barn. The ceiling was low and was heavily beamed. Narrow horizontal windows ran the entire length of two sides
and gave fine views of our mountains, though today nothing could be seen in them but snowy woods and a misty
white sky. Many leafy plants, suspended in pots, were silhouetted in the white light. At the far end of the kitchen a
flight of open stairs led to Waldo's studio, and there also,
at that end, was Aldana's nook: a pine work table near the
window, on which there were several jars of small brushes,
a broad window-seat with cushions and many pillows, a
stool, more hanging plants, shelves with books and kerosene lamps. She was fluent in Lithuanian, and for two
years, at a leisurely pace, had been translating a cycle of
folktales for a children's book. She had done a great many
WINTER 1982
�gouache illustrations as well, and I knew that the project
'
was nearly finished.
I heard Waldo on the stairs. He stopped part way down,
and leaning forward called across to me, "Do you want to
see something?"
After the whites and blacks and evergreen greens of the
woods it was dazzling to see the colors of his work. He was
noted for these colors. Color was event, meaning, and
form.
Small abstract paintings on paper were pinned to the
white work wall, as were clippings from magazines and
some color wheels he had recently made. Larger paintings
on canvas, still in progress, leaned here and there, and two
were positioned on the wall. A stack of finished paintings,
all of which I had seen, leaned against the wall in the corner.
Waldo had placed the new painting on the seat of a
chair, and we stood side by side studying it. The paint was
still wet and gave off a pleasant odor of oil and turpentine.
Waldo's manner was that of an engineer. Physically he
was imposing, tall and strong, with a stern, black-browed,
grave face that was actually a forbidding face, or would
have been were it not that his underlying good humor was
never entirely out of sight. When he was alight with that
humor, which after all was fairly often, one saw an aston·
ishing sweetness and charm. Aldana, at such times, would
rest her hand on his shoulder, or stroke the back of his
head; and the children, if they were near, would come
closer, and perhaps climb into his lap.
The studio windows were sheeted with a plastic that
gave the effect of frosted glass, shutting off the outside
and filling the space with a shadowless white light.
Beyond one of those milky oblongs we heard a sudden
shouting and loud barking. Ida and Grell were shouting
together, "Help, Shawno! Help!" in tones that were al·
most but not quite urgent, and the dog was barking notes
of indignation, disapproval, and complaint, a medley that
occurred nowhere else but in this game, for I knew with·
out seeing it that Leo was pretending to beat the girls with
his fist, and was looking back at the dog, who in a moment
would spring forward and carefully yet quite excitedly
seize Leo's wrist with his teeth.
"It's a total dud," Waldo said dispassionately, "but it's
interesting, isn't it? Kerosene light does such weird things
to the colors. It's like working under a filter. Look how
sour and acidic it is. It's over-controlled, too, and at the
same time there are accidents everywhere. That's what
gives it that moronic look. I should have known betterI've done it before. When you rob the eye you rob the
mind."
Abruptly he turned to me and lowered his voice.
"We're going back to the city," he said. ''I'm going
down in a couple of days and see what has to be done ... "
I knew that he had not sublet his studio, which he
didn't rent, but owned-a floor-through in a large loft
building.
"We haven't told the kids yet," he said, "but I think
they want to go back. There's so much to do there ... "
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Aldana's voice came up from below. We cut short our
conversation and went down into the warm kitchen, that
was fragrant now with the odors of bacon, rolls, just·
brewed coffee, and fried eggs.
The rosy, bright-faced children stormed in just as we sat
down. Leo and Grell clamored for juice, while Ida looked
at them joyfully. Shawno came with them. He trotted to
Aldana, and to Waldo, and to me, greeting us eagerly but
without arresting his motion or taking his eyes from the
children. "Hi, Hi," they said to me. "Hi, daddy," said Ida.
All three tilted their heads, took on fuel, and with the dog
bounding among them rushed out again as noisily as they
had entered.
The sky was beginning to clear when I left half an hour
later, and it was blue now, but a pale, wintry blue. A light,
raw breeze was blowing.
I crossed the dooryard without calling to the children.
They were throwing snowballs at Shawno, except for Ida,
who was tagging along. They ran among the budded but
leafless apple trees, while the dog, who did not under·
stand that he was their target, kept leaping and twisting,
biting the snowballs with swift snaps that reduced them to
fragments.
I went alone down the snowy road to the right, toward
the river. Little clumps of snow were falling wetly from
the roadside trees.
I had been cheerful coming through the woods with Ida
and the dog, but now a familiar sadness began to creep
through me. There was an objective cause in the fact that
our friends were leaving, but I knew that this was not the
cause, the cause was old, and in truth I didn't know what
it was. It was as if this sadness, which at times was
touched by homelessness, were a zone between the animation I felt in the presence of others and the firmness I
felt in the solitude to which finally, after many years of
loneliness, I had been able to attain. And I was obliged to
pass through this zone, though I had passed through it
thousands of times already.
My solitary footprints were the only markings on the
short spur from Waldo's house to the back road, but as
soon as I made the turn I found myself walking between
the muddy tracks of a car. In ten minutes I stood on the
high ledge that overlooked the river and that invariably I
came to when I walked this way.
The river was broad in this stretch, and was still heavy
with spring flood. The water was dark. Huge pieces of ice
were strewn in a continuous line on the steep bank across
from me. The ice had been dirty with debris a week ago,
but now temporarily was white.
Two miles downriver lay the town, on which all such
villages as ours were dependent. There were its hundreds
of houses, its red roofs and black roofs, its white clapboard
sidings, its large, bare-limbed shade trees, all following the
slopes of the hills. I could see the gleaming belltowers and
white spires of the four churches, the plump wooden cupola of the town hall, also white, and several red-brick
business buildings. It was a lovely sight from this angle,
21
�but it no longer stirred me. Just the opposite. The town
was spiritless and dull, without a public life of any kind, or
any character of its own, but the usual brand names in the
stores and the usual cars on the streets.
Just this side of the town, the elegant timbered latticework of a railroad trestle crossed the river high in the air,
emerging from evergreens on one bank and plunging into
evergreens on the other.
Halfway to the trestle, where the hills, for a short distance, gave way to lowland, the broad pasture of a dairy
lay in a sweeping bend of the river. Its tall blue silo and
unpainted sheet metal barn stood close to the highway,
uphill from the fields. Black and white cows, a herd of
Holsteins which I knew numbered a hundred and fifty,
progressed across their snowy pasture toward the river, as
if without moving.
There came a loud metallic scraping and banging from
the gravel pit below me. A bucket-loader was scooping up
gravel. It swivelled and showered the stones heavily into a
waiting truck, that quivered under the impact. Another
truck, as I watched, drove down the long incline to the
riverbank.
I went home by the same route, thinking chiefly of my
work, that had become a kind of monastery, I had had to
empty it of so many things.
Shawno and the children were still playing, but they
were no longer running. Ida and Gretl were holding the
two sides of a flattened cardboard box, quite large, and
Leo, wielding a hammer, was nailing it to the rails of a
broken hay wain by the house, apparently to be the roof
of a hut. The dog sat near them, more or less watching. I
didn't call or wave, but Shawno saw me. He responded
with a start ... and then he did something I had seen him
do before and had found so touching I could not resent:
he pretended that he hadn't seen me. He turned his head
and yawned, stood up and stretched, dropped abruptly to
the ground with his chin on his paws, and then just as
abruptly stood up again and moved out of sight around
the house. What a display of doggy craftiness! It makes me
smile to remember it-even though I must now say that
this was the last that I saw him in the fullness of his life. I
did see him again, but by our bedtime that night he was
dead.
I went back alone through the woods, walking on the
footprints we had made that morning. In a scant three
hours the snow had become both wetter and shrivelled. It
was no deeper than three inches now, and was falling
noisily from the trees, leaving the branches wet and glistening.
At the bottom of the first hill, where I had to jump
across a little stream, and where that morning I had lifted
Ida, I noticed the footprints of two deer. The deer had
gone somewhere along the stream and then had come
back, running. I hadn't noticed the tracks that morning ... but I wasn't sure.
Instead of going home, I turned into the little field at
the far end of which my cabin/studio was situated. Every-
22
thing was quiet, the fresh snow untouched. I was halfway
across the field when I caught a movement in the sky.
High up, drawing a broad white line behind it, a military
jet drifted soundlessly. A moment later the thunderclap of
the sonic boom startled me ... and as if it had brought
them into being, two dogs stepped out of the woods behind my cabin. Or rather, one stepped out, a brown and
white collie, and came toward me. The other, a solemnlooking rabbit hound, stood motionless among the trees.
I thought I recognized the collie and called to it. It came
a few steps, and then a few steps more. It stood still when
it heard my voice, then it turned and went back to the
other dog, and both vanished into the woods.
I built a fire in the cabin, in the cast-iron stove, and
spent the rest of the day at my work.
Before the house at night.
As was my custom, whether I had done the cooking or
not, I mixed some scraps and pan rinsings with dry food
and went to the door to call Shawno, who ate when we did
and in the same room. Ida had come home that afternoon
with Patricia, but Shawno had not.
Half an hour later, after we had finished eating, and
while the water was heating for coffee, I went outside
again and called him, but this time I went across the road
and stood before the barn. The lie of the land was such
that in this position, and with the help of that huge sounding-board, my voice would carry to Waldo's fields, at least
to the sharp ears of the dog. I shouted repeatedly. As I
went back to the house I thought I saw movement on the
woods road we had travelled that morning. I was expecting to see him come bounding toward me, but nothing
happened and I went into the house.
We finished our coffee and dessert. Liza was staying
overnight with the twins she played with. Patricia sat on
the sofa with Jacob and Ida and read first a picture book
and then a story of Ernest Thompson Seton's, that enchanted Ida and put Jacob to sleep.
I telephoned Aldana. She said that the dog had left
them shortly after Patricia had come in the car for Ida. He
had stayed like that often with Leo and Gretl and had
come home through the woods at suppertime.
I put the porch light on and went across to the barn
again. I was preparing to shout when I saw him in the
shadows of the woods road, at the same place in which I
had thought I had seen movement before. A turbulence
of alarm, a controlled panic raced through me, and I ran to
him calling.
He lay on his belly. His head was erect, but just barely,
and was not far above the ground. He pulled himself forward with his front paws, or tried to, but no motion resulted. His hind legs were spread limply behind him. His
backbone seemed inert.
I knelt beside him and took his head on my knees. He
WINTER 1982
�was breathing so faintly that I doubted if any air was
reaching his lungs. I heard my own voice saying in the
high-pitched, grievously astonished tones of a child, "Oh,
dog, dog ... "
I ran my hand down his body. Near his lower ribcage,
even in the shadows, I could see a dark mass that here and
there glistened dully. It was smooth and soft, and there
jutted out of it numerous fine points sharper than a saw. I
.was touching the exit wound of a large-calibre bullet, in·
testines and shattered bone.
I put my face close to his and stroked his cheek. He was
looking straight ahead with a serious, soft, dim gaze. He
gave a breath that sounded like a sigh because it was not
followed by another breath, and instantaneously was heavy
to the touch.
I stayed there a long while with his head on my knees,
from time to time crying like a child.
I heard the front door open and heard Patricia calling
me. A moment later she was kneeling in the mud beside
Tiffi ST. JOHNS REVJEW
me saying, "Oh, oh, oh . .. " in a voice of compassion and
surpnse.
We conferred briefly, and I went indoors.
Ida sat on the sofa, in the light of the floor lamp, looking
at the pictures in the Seton book. Jacob lay asleep at the
other end of the sofa.
I said to her, "Ida, something has happened ... " and
knelt in front of her. She saw that I had been crying, and
her face whitened.
I said, "Shawno has been hurt very very badly ... " I did
not want to say to her that he was dead. "He's out front,"
I said. "Come."
She said, "Okay" quickly, never taking her eyes from
mine. She gave me her hand and we went outside, into
the road, where Patricia still knelt beside him just beyond
the light from the porch. She was bowed above him and
was stroking him. She looked up as we approached, and
held out one hand for Ida, but with the other kept stroking
his head, neck, and shoulders.
23
�Nietzsche and the Classic
William Mullen
Quod si tam Graecis novitas invisa fuisset quam
Horace
nobis, quid nunc esset vetus?
If you set out deliberately to make a masterpiece,
Balanchine
how will you ever get it finished?
T
O ASK WHAT CONSTITUTES A CLASSIC
is to ask
what kind of civilization we inhabit. Imagine, for the
sake of contrast, a purely archaic civilization in
which the paradigms for thought and action are so definitively expounded in the foundation myths that innovation is excluded altogether_ Then imagine, as its opposite,
a purely scientific civilization in which the piecemeal
progress towards greater knowledge and control relentlessly renders every aspect of the past an object for amusement and contempt If we like to think we have put the
first kind of civilization behind us forever (assuming it
ever existed) and yet have still not entirely succumbed to
the second (assuming it could ever entirely win out), our
conviction is somehow due to the presence of classic
works in our midst, holding at bay both the tyranny of the
past and the tyranny of the future by continuing to inspire new works in the present.
The usual lament of the classicist, of course, is directed
against the tyranny of the future, and the more threatened
he becomes by the ascendancy of science, the more Egyptological he becomes in his techniques-mummification of
the classics at all costs. But I am more interested in considering here the opposite threat, the tyranny of the past itWilliam Mullen is a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. His book,
Choreia: Pindar and Dance, will appear in the summer of 1982 (Princeton University Press).
24
self, and its only true check, the continuous creation of
new work fine enough to take a place beside the old. The
reason we secure the presence of classic works among us
is not that they are so fine that we can never equal them
but, on the contrary, that they are so fine that they will always challenge us to equal them.
In his earliest writings on the Greeks, Nietzsche pointed
out that it is no accident that the people from whom our
finest instances of the classic are taken was one that
pushed the principle of competition to its limits, in the
spheres of poetry and art no less than athletics and politics. 1 But the power of competition to incite the artists of
our civilization to do their best is inadequately shown by
its place in the culture of a single people, for competition
between peoples as well as within them has long been a
governing principle for us. The complex civilization of the
West assumed its essential form when the Romans worked
out a truce with Greek culture whereby classic status was
granted to Roman imitations that could join their Greek
models in rank without replacing them. This notion of a
highest rank that remains open to expansion is one to
which the word itself points, the Latin classicus originally
designating someone who belonged to the highest of the
five classes into which Roman citizens were divided when
the roll of the army was called.
Classics, of course, can only be so designated by later
generations. "Le classique," as Valery put it, "c'est ce qui
WINTER 1982
�vient apnes." As a new work comes into the light it may
well seem to rival the classics of the past for brilliance but
it is impossible to say at the time whether it will also rival
them for durability. And the question of durability becomes particularly problematic when one considers that
while some classic works exist as objects-paintings, statues, buildings-others exist as performing events-music,
dance, theater. In the case of the art object the materials
of which the work is made give a preliminary guarantee of
durability and it is only a question whether the work will
continue to be valued enough to be maintained in a position of honor. In the case of the performance event, however, durability can be achieved only by revivals, where all
is at hazard because there is no guarantee that the revival
will house the original informing spirit. And the difficulty
becomes acute when one considers that the original Greek
classics in the medium we call "poetry" were actually of a
dual nature, being performance events when they first appeared and turning into classics only after being stripped
of their musical and orchestic accompaniment in order to
become durable as texts. The work done by the classic
masters of Greek music and dance has completely van·
ished, both the work done to accompany poetry and whatever autonomous masterpieces may have been executed
in these media. In what sense, then, do we really possess
the classics of Greek poetry at all, and what is it we are doing when we set about to "equal" them?
If the question of durability is made difficult by the fact
of the variety of artistic media, then we must ask what is
the ground of this variety in the first place. In order to
come into its proper flowering, a work of art must be pres-
ent to the senses as well as the mind, and the fact that we
possess five different senses is in itself enough to necessitate a variety of media that can appeal to them either severally or in combination. The variety of media is in effect
one of the conditions apart from which we would be unable to experience art at all, for it flows from our bodily
existence in time as well as space. And works of the performing arts, which require fixed periods of time to be
unfolded before us, by that very fact also require that we
accept the element of transience in their conditions of
presentation. It should be clear, then, that this is a quint·
essentially Nietzschean subject I have in hand, since it has
ultimately to do with the status of the bodily and the tern
poral. The desire for the old works of art that are kept
present to be rivalled by new ones turns out to be grounded
in the disposition·of a healthy civilization to set high value
on the presence in its midst of works by which the human
senses are exalted. It is in new work, before the mind has
set about to gain distance by reflection and categorization, that the element of sensuous presence is most obviously compelling; and by juxtaposing new work with old
we remind ourselves of the importance of remaining open
to the same intensity of sensuous presence in the classics
themselves as well as their recent rivals, even when, as in
the Gase of the performing arts, this means exposing ourselves to transient revivals in the absence of the original
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
production. Nietzsche himself had a zest for theorizing
about the differences among the various artistic media,
and I should like, therefore, to try to extend some of his
leading ideas in the course of exploring the nature of the
classic as it is incarnated in different kinds of works of art
and different conditions of presentation.
B
EFORE DOING SO, however, it is best to acknowledge
at the outset how quickly these ideas come to grief
when transferred from the realm of art to the realm
of politics. Throughout his writing there runs a notion
which, color it how one will, remains irreducibly offensive,
namely, that a statesman aiming at greatness should consider himself an artist and other human beings his medium. Curiously enough, this monster first rears its head
in an early essay on "The Greek State" in which Nietzsche
praises Plato precisely for his cool willingness, in the Republic, to treat all other citizens as mere tools and means
for the production of "the Genius." 2 That Plato's ideal Genius was meant to be a philosopher and a scientist rather
than an artist, Nietzsche proposed, is only a regrettable
consequence of his appropriation of Socrates' negative
judgment on art, and should not distract us from the essential point that on the matter of treating citizens as a
Mittel-the German word for both "means" and "medium" -Plato had got things right.
I suggest that the very oddity of this way of reading the
Republic has the advantage of forcing us to face one of
the gravest questions raised by the speakers of that dialogue as they devise a city in speech rather than in deed. It
was Hannah Arendt, using an Aristotelian distinction, who
suggested that the reason the program of the Republic
would lead to such oppressive political consequences if actually implemented is that it is based on a mistaken substitution of the category of fabrication for that of action. This
is so because the craftsman (and the Greek language did
not explicitly distinguish between artificers and artists)
must first contemplate in solitude the mental model of
what he wishes to make-its idea, shape, or form, whence
the Platonic "idea" -and must then use violence on the
medium at hand in order to realize that model as best he
can. (Compare, for instance, Republic SOla and 54la.) In
raising her objections to the analogy between craftsman
and statesman, Arendt's immediate concern was to show
how the violence implicit in it was actualized when Marxism declared the "making" of a classless society an end
which justified any "means" and hence any treatment of
one's "medium." 3 But she might equally well have given
an account of the justification of violence by Nazism
through reference to its esthetic goals, for it is well-known
how many esthetes flocked to the early Nazi movement
and how belief in the supremacy of German art served as
a stimulus to the task of creating racial purity. In order to
transform the rough block of the citizenry into the fair
statue of the state one must be prepared to hack off the
25
�racially or physiologically sick and not to flinch if this human marble happens to make cries of pain as it is hewn.
To see the notion of men as both "medium" and "means"
in its most virulent form one needs to turn to Nietzsche's
late notebook jottings collected posthumously under the
title The Will to Power. "To keep objective, hard, firm in
executing a design-this is something artists are best at.
But when one needs men for that purpose (as do teachers,
statesmen, etc.) then the calmness and coldness and hardness quickly disappear. In natures like Caesar and Napoleon one can get a sense for jdisinterested' work on their
marble, whatever may have to be sacrificed by way of
men." 4 In the face of passages like this the convenient notion of Nazis as coarse literalizers of Nietzsche's refined
metaphors breaks down. Here a proto-Nazi esthete would
find just the sort of encouragement he needed to emerge
from his esthetic cocoon into totalitarian practice. 5 It is no
exculpation of Nietzsche to argue that he expressed contempt for the particular analysis that was later to come to
power, namely, that he preferred racial mixture as a better
breeding technique than racial purity. He is as explicit in
theory as the Nazis were in practice in his contempt for
the ethical principle at issue, whose classical formulation
is Kant's imperative always to treat human beings as ends
and never solely as means.
T
to Nietzsche's complexity, however,
we must take seriously the parenthesis in the jotting
just quoted, in which he mentions as instances of
those who must use men as their medium not only statesmen but also teachers. Insofar as the contents and methods
of an educational system are not entirely pre-legislated
and supervised, there is a temptation to see something of
the artist's prerogative over his material in the way the
teacher exercises authority over his students, and in fact
metaphors of "molding minds" and "shaping characters"
are seldom absent in discussions of the way educators
transform the young. We do not feel uneasy with these
metaphors because in a society of specialists we like to
think that the various things that need to be taught are in
various hands and that accordingly some kind of benign
separation of powers holds sway. The good is taught by
the parents inculcating morality at home, the true by the
teachers transmitting knowledge at school, and the beautiful by the artists passing on skills in their studios. The
nature of the authority of the molders of the young becomes more provocative, however, when we turn from
the problematic pluralism of the present to a highly integrated society like that of archaic Greece. I am referring
now not to the theoretical programs of Plato's Republic or
Laws but to the realities of the city in the time of Pindar
and Aeschylus.
In these archaic cities the choral poets who train young
dancers to perform sacred odes in public spaces are granted
authority simultaneously to teach them singing, dancing,
26
O DO )USTICE
morality, and the tales of the tribe. In Athenian tragedy
the authority the playwright exercises over his performers
is complicated by the fact that as part of a dramatic fiction
the chorus members assume personalities other than their
own and doff them when the play is over, so that even
though they are allowed to participate in the ritual only
if they are able-bodied and free-born male citizens of
Athens, it is not these aspects of their identity which their
role in the play is exhibiting to their fellow-citizens. In a
Pindaric ode, however, the free-born young men or young
women of the city perform in propria persona and are expected by their elders to believe in the words they recite
as they dance. The elders would have dismissed a poet for
training the youth in odes that exhibited bad morals no
less than bad dancing, false tales no less than false notes.
Not that we need sentimentalize the matter by assuming
that every single member of a Pindaric chorus was a good
Boy Scout and did in fact acquire the morals Pindar had to
teach him. Enough that through participation in many
choral events a young person would be trained in the public quality of morality and learn by instinct how he was expected to act. (Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.)
Moreover, by making these young dancers the mouthpieces for what his civilization most valued, the poet was
in effect arranging a spectacle in which truth and goodness were fused with beauty, and unabashedly so. In all
this the dancers are unquestionably the medium of the
poet, but far from being denied their human dignity by
such treatment they are in fact led by it, educatively, from
the confusion of adolescence to the bracing norms of
adulthood.
EADERS OF The Birth of Tragedy will notice quite a
difference between my very Apollonian account of
these Pindaric dancers and Nietzsche's very Dionysian one of the tragic chorus. His dancers are empowered
by their song and dance to doff their identities and merge
with the primordial unity, while those I have preferred to
fix my gaze on are rather bringing their identities into perfect focus, declaring by song and dance the essence of
what it is to be a free-born and able-bodied young man or
woman in a particular city 6 Moreover, the dithyrambic
improvisations in which Nietzsche wishes to see both the
origin and the essence of the tragic chorus would seem
to have dispensed with pre-arranged choreography altogether and to require at most a leader who impersonates
the hallucinated god, whereas the odes of Pindar require
the poet's presence in the city not only as leader of the
dance during performance but also as choreographer and
chorus-trainer beforehand.' The choreographer's engagement with the dancers as the medium in which he executes a. meaningful design is in effect an aspect of dance
which Nietzsche ignores in preference to some more mys~
tical situation in which the dancers improvise through
direct contact with the powers of nature. Consider his
R
WINTER 1982
�characterization of the tragic dancers in the last sentences
of the very opening section of the book. "Man is no longer
artist, he has become the work of art: the artistic power of
all nature, to the highest delight of the primordial unity,
makes itself manifest in the thrill of intoxication [Rausch].
The noblest clay, the most costly marble, Man, is here
kneaded and hewn, and to the chisel strokes of the Diony·
sian world-artist sounds out the Eleusinian mystery-cry:
'Do you bow down, Millions? Do you divine your Creator,
World?' " 8 Both the metaphor from sculpture and the
mystical HDionysian
world~artist"
here betray Nietzsche's
unwillingness to consider the choreographer's art on its
own terms. Indeed, throughout his writings he takes infinite delight in dance as an activity and a metaphor, but
never once considers it as an artistic medium and never
mentions a single choreographer or ballet.
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche was positing the
chorus as the essence of the Dionysian in order to work
out an Hegelian scheme according to which the actors
represented the essence of the Apollonian and tragedy as
a whole constituted some higher synthesis in the history
of Greek genres. In order to fill in this scheme, he had to
posit Homer as the earlier type of the Apollonian, and
then lay Archilochus and Pin dar on the bed of Procrustes
as successive types of the Dionysian. Soon thereafter he
abandoned the whole Hegelian construct and began to
call in question the superiority of Athenian culture itself,
so that in the notes for We Philologists he is to be seen
playing with such tantalizing propositions as the following: "Athenian tragedy is not the supreme form we might
think it is. Its heroes are too much lacking in the Pindaric
quality."' I am, therefore, not interested in lingering to
discuss his earlier distortions, but wish rather to see what
his later use of the Apollonian/Dionysian distinction has
to say about the effects of various artistic media on those
who experience them, as artists, as participants, and as
spectators. The essential text lies in two consecutive
"Skirmishes of an Untimely Man" in Twilight of the Idols. 10
Here he restates his earlier association of the Apollonian
experience with the painter, the sculptor, and the epic
poet, and the Dionysian with the actor, the dancer, the
musician, and the lyric poet; but now he shows greater sophistication in suggesting both the physiological bases of
the distinction and the historical development which both
categories of media have undergone. In Apollonian art, he
theorizes, it is the artist's eye which is engaged, with the
result that the existence of the work as an object separate
from him is brought to the fore; while in Dionysian art,
the whole muscular and nervous system is engaged, with
the result that the artist'·becomes a mimic of whatever inspires him and hence a participant in the event which the
work of art becomes. The media of modern man are the
result of a process of specialization. The poet, the musician, and the choreographer, who used to be united in a
single performing artist who led the dance, are now three
separate specialists who do not necessarily form part of a
performance at all.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
A
S HEIDEGGER HAS SUGGESTED, Nietzsche's usual
interest in his characterization of art seems to be in
the state of the artist as he creates rather than in
the independent quality of the resultant work of art or the
particular modes in which the work is experienced by others11 This is the state Nietzsche calls Rausch- rapture, intoxication, frenzy, the feeling that "rushes" over the artist
and carries him beyond himself into creation-and it is
significant that in the sections just referred to in Twilight
of the Idols, the Apollonian artist is said to experience
Rausch no less than the Dionysian, only through the eye,
rather than the nerves and muscles of the rest of the body.
But in these sections the term Rausch is actually being
used by way of prelude to another, the famous "will to
power" itself. And, surprisingly, Nietzsche here assigns
the will to power a medium of its own, architecture. "The
architect represents neither a Dionysian nor an Apollonian
condition: here it is ... the intoxication [Rausch] of the
great will that demands art. Architects have always been
inspired by the most powerful men; the architect has always been under the 'suggestion' of power. In architecture ... the will to power means to make itself visible ...
The highest feeling of power and sureness comes to expression in the great style."
Since elsewhere Nietzsche goes so far as to say that everything in the world is simply one form or another of the
will to power, one is at first perplexed. 12 Surely the will to
power will also be at play in the various states (Rausch
whether of the eye or the whole body) in which artists
turn to other media, and surely the resultant works of art
will also bear witness to it. Moreover, insofar as all art
brings things into full presence to the senses-into visibility, audibility, surface-why is it in architecture especially
that "the will to power means to make itself visible"?
Nietzsche is no longer interested now in setting up any
medium as a synthesis of Apollonian and Dionysian conditions, but rather in designating architecture as a medium that stands apart from them both and brings the will
to power into appearance in a special way.
A clue to his thinking here lies in the fact that this is
one of the rare occasions on which he mentions not only
the creators and participants in works of art but also their
patrons. To speak of these "powerful men" at whose b!'hest the architect creates a building is to raise the question of its purpose. In order to bring a great building into
being, an architect must employ more durable materials
than any other kind of artist, must claim more space, mobilize more resources, and give more commands. Above
all, he must consult more closely with the desires of his patron, whether individual, institution, church, or state, and
if the patron has commissioned a great building, then
these desires will reach beyond mere functionality. Whatever the intended function of the building might be, its
coming into appearance as a work of art shows that the
power of its patron is possessed of the will and the means
to stability and endurance. The patron will understand
this as well as the architect, and the cooperation of the
27
�two will always ultimately be with a view to the final effect of the building on other people. Churchill's saying,
that we shape our buildings and our buildings then shape
us, needs to be more precise. It is architect and patron
who shape the building, and it is us they are aiming to
shape by it.
I suspect, then, that Nietzsche sets such value on architecture precisely because it fuses the categories of art and
politics. And the suspicion is increased by the striking fact
that his favorite way of praising the Roman Empire is in
architectural metaphors. The most manic expression of
this association comes in The Antichrist: "Is it still not un·
derstood yet? The imperium Romanum . .. this most admirable work of art in the great style, was a beginning, its
construction was calculated to give proof of itself over millenia-to this day no one has ever again built in such a
way, has even dreamed of building in the same measure
sub specie aetemi! This organization was stable enough to
support bad emperors: the accident of individuals ought
to be insignificant in such matters-first principle of all
great architecture." 13 The praise continues into the next
section, which describes the Romans' act of consolidating
the classical heritage as "the will to the future of man, the
great Yes to all things made visible as the imperium Romanum, visible for all the senses, the great style no longer
merely art but rather become reality, truth, life . .. " 14
Underneath the dithyrambic phrasing it is not hard to
grasp the essential characteristics of architecture that
make it easy for Nietzsche to identify it with the will to
power. Any ambitiously constructed building is meant to
last longer than the lifespans of its builders and to be used
by future generations. These generations will be molded
by both the functional and the esthetic aspects of the
building. Architect and patron cooperate to cast the spell
of their power over the future both in art and in life, and
we may accept the legitimacy of this ambition without being forced to debate the morality of political ambitions for
the expansion of an imperial system in space. Roman ar~
chitecture remains our great symbol of the ambition to
make cultural institutions endure through time.
of art in its own right but also both a functional means
and a compelling symbol for the process by which a civilization honors its classical works. And as part of this process it also helps to create a space in which the new work
can be juxtaposed to the old, an act no less essential to a
healthy civilization than the preservation of the classics
themselves. To see a work of modern art exhibited in a
museum built in the neoclassical style is an experience
which, common as it may be, has some meaning if we consider the tension between old and new which these conditions of presentation intend to symbolize.
ITH ROMAN ARCHITECTURE as a paradigm, then,
I wish to bring this meditation on artistic media
to its proper culmination by offering a few examples of the ways in which some of the best works of art our
civilization has to offer have themselves symbolically acknowledged, as part of their own conditions of coming
into being, the crucial tension between the old and the
new, between that which is preserved in presence and
that which comes into presence for the first time. Buildings are not the only works of art capable of making such
acknowledgements, nor were the Romans the only people
to be conscious of their importance. I shall therefore include examples from poetry and dance as well as architecture, and take them from the earliest as well as the most
recent phases of the West. What I am looking for are cases
in which it is clear that an artist is not merely presenting a
new work of art by itself without any reference to its conditions of appearance, but on the contrary is going out of
his way to insure that the new work have old ones in its
background, and that the transience of the conditions of
its first appearance be assured of being transformed into
the durability of the conditions of preservation that will
attend it if its bid for classic status is successful.
My example from the earliest phase will be an ode of
W
Pindar, whose poetry is in many ways more archaic even
than that of Homer. The Fifth Nemean, one of his most
Mozartean compositions, is a victory ode, or epinician, for
a boy pancratiast from the island of Aegina, famous in antiquity both for its athletic statuary and its temple archi-
I
PROPOSED AT THE OUTSET that our civilization in its
essential form came into being only when the brief but
glorious artistic achievement of Greece was preserved
by the Romans in such a way that their own artistic efforts
might be juxtaposed to it. This is a process which it is one
of the most important tasks of architecture to make possible. It does so in one sphere by sheltering and setting in
relief those other works of art which endure as objects,
and in another by shaping a space for the performing arts
in which they can take on scale and project themselves to
a particular audience. If one includes churches and temples as well as museums and concert-halls, the comprehensiveness of architecture's roles becomes clearer, for
one is then speaking of sacred art and ritual performance.
A work of architecture is thus not only an enduring work
28
tecture.
To compliment his hosts, Pindar begins by having himself and his chorus of Aeginetan boys claim, as they strike
up the dance, that "I am no statue-maker, to fashion
sculptures at holiday as they stand on their own pedestals," an opening sally which may well have been underscored by choreography imitating sculptural positions for
a split second before whirling merrily on. In standard epinician form, the ode goes on to praise the boy victor, and
then to make its way back, by a series of allusions and
partly told stories, to the foundational age of the earlier
Aeginetan heroes, including the founding father Aeacus
himself, who had once saved all Greece from a drought by
supplicating his own father Zeus for rain. Finally, in its
last line and a half, the ode returns to the present and
WINTER 1982
�praises the athletic victories of the boy's grandfather in
the following language: "At the portals of Aeacus bring
him crowns luxuriant with flowers, in the company of the
blond Graces." The "portals of Aeacus" here are the fore·
court of a shrine to that hero at the center of the city,
fronting the agora, where victory dances were normally
performed. This shrine was decorated with friezes depict·
ing the same event alluded to in the ode, the moment at
which Zeus showed favor to Aeacus by showering on the
parched land; such moments of favor typically form the
climax both of the odes' mythical language and of their
choreography. Since the forecourt of hero-shrines was a
traditional place for erecting statues of victorious athletes,
the dancers may have been referring to a ritual custom according to which victors might have their crowns placed
on the statues of ancestors who had themselves been victorious in earlier games. Whether or not this is the case
here, it is clear that some kind of offering of flowers is being made before the shrine as the ode comes to its end, an
act carried out in stylized motion which is to be thought
of as a continuation of the ode's ritual choreography.
All we have left of this lovely event is the concluding
phrase quoted earlier about the portals of Aeacus and the
blond Graces: 7r/Jo8Vpoww llAtcxKofJ &ve~wv trouhvTlx 4>EPe
an</Jom;,,ara avv ~av8afs X&pwmv. Fully conscious that
his language is destined to endure as a memorial text, Pindar seems to be playing here, as often at the conclusion
of his odes, with the implication that as the never-to-be
repeated victory dance draws to its close the language
which it has sustained is begining to move into its own immortality as a text. He is seeking a symbol of the ode's
dual nature, as transient dance and as enduring text, and
he finds it in the contrast between the luxuriant flowers
out of which the young victor's crown has been woven
and the magnificently sculpted stone of the statues and
friezes at the front of the ancestral shrine. Nor is Pindar
satisfied to allude to this contrast by the language alone;
he seems also to have arranged to draw it into the circle of
the ode's choreography, by having the flowers placed in
the forecourt of the shrine at the very moment when the
language falls still and the motion of the dancers continues in silence. To this ritual motion the vivid archaic
smiles on the faces of the ancestral athletic statues and
the heroic friezes are witness, in that acclamation between living and dead which can be fully mutual only if it
is made in silence.
And somehow present in all this, through the invocation of the final phrase, is the consort of the Graces themselves, goddesses of the transient comeliness of dancing
and flowers, who as immortals can themselves never fade.
Through the fostering by these divine presences, as well
as by Father Zeus and Father Aeacus, the new work of the
poet has blossomed into public performance and is now
about to reach the moment at which it will cease to be a
ritual dance and begin to be a durable text. It is taking its
place among the immortal stone masterpieces by which
the center of the city is adorned, and by the act of naming
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
these masterpieces and declaring its place among them, it
becomes a monument to its own occasion. The old and
the new are thus made in the most essential way to belong
to each other, and the same is true of the transient and
the durable; it is a belonging registered by the combination of the several media at the occasion of the performance. The old and the durable are present as sculpture,
the new and the transient are present as dance, and sover-
eign over all is the language of the ode which both declares these dualities and transcends them.
SHALL NOT TRY to claim that such a blaze of civic splendor has been equalled by any poetic event of recent times.
If there is an absence at the center of our civilization it
may lie just here: in our inability to agree on any objects of
reverence deeply enough to summon forth our best poets
and have them arrange spectacles at the centers of our cities in which the young both embody and share our agreement in the course of their performance. Efforts to mount
such spectacles in the Twentieth Century have usually
been totalitarian parodies, and it takes only one look at
films of the Nuremberg rallies to make most people flee
back to pluralism with a sigh of relief.
Acknowledging this difficult absence, then, I nevertheless have no desire to end with yet another eloquent
grouse against the age. As Nietzsche puts it in one of his
aphorisms on the classic, "Both classically and romantically minded spirits ... are preoccupied by a vision of the
future, but the former out of the strength of their time,
the latter out of its weakness." 15 The more classically
minded tack here, the one which refuses to lapse into
complaining out of weakness, would be simply to let one's
eye rove in a fine frenzy until it lights on the best work
now being done and then to ask whether anything like the
same interplay of the old and the new, and of the durable
and the transient, is to be traced in the conditions in
which it comes into public appearance. The artists I wish
to honor by this kind of inquiry work in media which lie at
the two extremes of the spectrum I have proposed in
speaking of the combination Pindar arranges. They are
George Balanchine, whose repertory of dances currently
being offered at the New York City Ballet is acknowledged
to be one of the greatest choreographic achievements in
the century, and I. M. Pei, whose career seemed to reach
its peak recently with the opening of the East Building of
the National Gallery in Washington. And, as it happens,
next to both artists stand patrons worthy of them, respectively Lincoln Kirstein and Paul Mellon, whose roles and
intentions also deserve to be honored by reflection.
I
T
HE LEVEL OF EXCELLENCE at which the New York
City Ballet is performing right now is rather terrifying. One risks nothing in calling it currently the finest dance company in the world; the knowledgeable go
further and prophesy that what we have been seeing for
29
�Figure I: The architect's concept sketch, showing the existing network of streets
and the relationship between the National Gallery (West Building, left) and the new
East Building. The altitude of the larger of the two triangles which comprise the
new building prolongs the long axis of the old building. The numbers in the upper
part of the sketch refer to square feet of space in the two buildings. (Figures 1 and 2
courtesy I. M. Pei & Associates.)
the last few decades will someday be as legendary as Diaghilev's Ballet Russe. Balanchine has been choreographing
new works for this company uninterruptedly since 1935,
and his presence has set the finest dancers in the world
knocking at its doors. Since the company lacks a "star system," the number of dancers of the highest rank it can
admit is, like my definition of the classic, theoretically susceptible of indefinite expansion. These resources of talent
have in turn enabled it to maintain a prodigious repertory
from season to season, so that in the winter and spring
seasons of 1980-81, some forty Balanchine ballets were
performed in addition to those of the company's other
choreographers. The sense of superabundance is heightened yet further by the variety of musical scores represented. Of the musicians who have written expressly for
ballet, Balanchine prefers to choreograph to scores of his
fellow Russians Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, but he has
also choreographed a series of masterpieces in homage to
Bach, Gluck, Mozart, Brahms, Bizet, and others. Coming
away from an evening with a strong program, one feels
that by some miracle time has been collapsed and the
highest graces of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Centuries have been made present together in the
same theater, not as objects but as living bodies performing at the limits of skill under the direction of a master
fully capable of rising to the scores he has selected.
Modern technology is of course hard at work trying to
pin down these wonders, the choreography by dance notation and the performances by videotape, and Balanchine himself has lived to contemplate the production of
his works by many other companies around the world
whose stagings he has neither supervised nor seen. Some
speculate that his preponderance will only be augmented
after his death and might have something of the same
30
daunting effect as Beethoven did on later writers of symphonies, but all talk of monumental permanence is pleasantly mocked by the man himself. "I want to make new
ballets .... If you made a borscht, you'd use fresh ingredients. If you were asked to write a book twice, you'd use
new words. People say, what about posterity? What do
you preserve, I ask? A tape? What counts is now. Nobody
will ever be the same again. And I don't care about people
who aren't born yet." 16 If one wants to seek the frame of
permanence in which all this new work is held, it is to be
looked for not in recording techniques but in the concept
of repertory which Lincoln Kirstein has so well articulated.
"Increasingly, however, what pleases our audiences is rep~
ertory-illuminated, to be sure, by .well-trained dancers
.... Stars are replaceable by emergent students; choreography, in repetition, persists." 17 In any given season's of~
ferings of the New York City Ballet, there will be two or
three new works by Balanchine and two or three of his
own versions of the Nineteenth Century classics, and
both categories will be set in relief by thirty-odd of his
pieces choreographed since 1935 and deemed worthy of
repeating. Some of these are already granted classic status
by the audience, and in the rapidly changing world of
dance, anything preserved for as long as fifty years is
shown to be a classic by that very fact; others, more recent, are still making their bids and may eventually be
dropped and never revived again. The point to be stressed
is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The
consort of new and old works which this repertory maintains in performance is as healthy an image as our time
has to offer of that imperturbable ceremony, refusing to
be retarded or accelerated, by which the ranks of the classic are augmented.
T
O MOVE FROM THE STATE THEATER OF NEW
YORK to the East Building of the National Gallery in
Washington is to feel these equations change their
terms and yet remain the same. The original gallery was
completed by Andrew Mellon in 1941 as a gift to the nation, and the new free-standing extension was completed
in 1978 by his son Paul, with the superbly understated designation "East Building." The very Roman piety of the
son to the father is registered by the fact that both buildings are of marble from the same quarry in Tennessee,
and though the new building looks lighter in color now, its
stone will deepen to the same hue as that of the old in a
matter of decades. In his uncompromising demand for the
highest quality of execution, Paul Mellon sustained a
tripling of costs during construction, and the building's
prime location at the end of the Mall closest to the national Capitol only accentuates the contrast between the
level of quality to be achieved by private versus public
wealth. The old main gallery (now called the West
Building) is itself the most harmoniously executed of all
the neo-classical buildings on the Mall, and it is to the
glory of the East Building that it harmonizes with the old
WINTER 1982
�one in proportions and quality of design while speaking its
own assured modern idiom. By his choice of axes and
shapes I. M. Pei has in fact accommodated the new
building not only to the old one but also to the original
design for the streets of the city which dates back to 1791.
L'Enfant's whole system of traffic circles, with radial
avenues leading out from them and cutting diagonally
across the grid of the other streets, is generated by the two
major axes he projected from the Capitol building, one
leading along the Mall to the Washington Monument and
the other along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White
House. The East Building is situated just at the point
where the angle between these two axes from the Capitol
begins to create trapezoidal city blocks, and the building is
itself a trapezoid bisected into two triangles whose angles
observe those of the avenues outside. Moreover, Pei has
used these angles as his governing principle not only in
the shapes of the building's two halves but also at many
other levels of detail, from the space-frame over the vast
and airy central court down to the very shape of the
blocks in the floors. Thus should one's eye ever drop to
one's feet it would encounter, there too, in the very cut of
the marble, an homage to the design commissioned by our
own founding father for the city to be named after him.
In all these details of execution, then, there is manifested on the part of patron and architect alike a desire
that the new should take its place beside the old in a tension whose vibrancy only enhances the harmony that underlies it. This desire reaches its most dramatic realization
in the contrast between the actual way the two galleries
are intended to be used. The function of the reposeful
West Building is, now as always, to house the permanent
collection of the National Gallery, while one of the principal functions of the energetic East Building is to provide
space for temporary exhibitions, the new genre of internationally organized blockbusters that has emerged in the
last few decades. The central court of the East Building
gives a view of all levels of the building in the manner of
an opera-house, and the ('performances" for which this
Figure 2: An elaboration of the two·triangle plan of the East Building. The larger
triangle {divided by the arrow) contains public spaces-the central court and the
galleries, for example. The smaller (lower part of the sketch) is devoted to secondary
uses such as the study center. (The small figure in the upper right shows a preliminary sketch of a triangular building on the existing trapezoidal plot of ground.)
of course,
the name of Nietzsche has vanished altogether. I
should ·like to think, however, that far from implying
his irrelevance I have been paying him the right kind of
tribute. It may be that his greatness is less that of a philosopher, if by that word we mean one who offers us an account of the world and a guide to life through examination
of universals, and more that of a critic, if by that word we
mean one who leads us to make exacting perceptions and
valuations of the particular. By his sustained refusal to
slander the body, the senses, and the moment in all its
transience, Nietzsche gave us a fresh sense of what is at
stake when we submit ourselves to the power of a work of
art in the plenitude of its presence. But to consider what
is necessary for that plenitude means to consider the nature of the immortal, the monumental, the classic. And it
F
ROM MY ACCOUNT OF RECENT WORK,
means, finally, to be strong enough to sustain an irresolu-
court provides ''intermissions" are in fact going on around
ble paradoxical desire-the desire to be witness to a "new
the building's sides in the various galleries and towers,
where space has been left open by the architect, so that it
can be shaped anew by the curators through use of temporary walls designed for each specific exhibit. The East
Building is, in other words, a place for festivals, whose brilliance is inseparable from their transience 18 Patron and
architect have incorporated into the function of the new
building an element of festival brilliance which will stand
in perpetual tension with the marmoreal achievement of
its fundamental design. I should, therefore, like to offer
the two buildings together, with their complementary
styles and complementary functions, as my final image of
the interplay between the new and the old, and the durable and the transient, which a healthy civilization has the
sense and the will to sustain. Here too, as with dance repertory, the ceremony of the classical is, in Pindar's phrase,
classic" as it comes into being.
at perpetual ((holiday on its own pedestal."
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
l. See "Homers Wettkampf' in Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke, ed. Karl
Schlechta, Munich 1966, III, 291-299. Hereafter all references will give
the title and section number of the work and then the volume and page
number in Schlechta. Unless otherwise stated all translations are my
own.
2. "Der Griechische Staat," Werke, III, 285-286.
3. The essential text in Arendt is The Human Condition (Anchor Books
Edition 1959), Chap. 31, "The Traditional Substitution of Making for
Acting," 197-206.
4. Der Wille zur Macht, no. 975, Werke, III, 850. Though Schlechta
abandons the section numbers of earlier editions of Nietzsche's Nachlass collected under the title Der Wille zur Macht, he provides in his fifth
volume (609ff.) a concordance by which a given section can be found in
his own edition.
5. Nor will it do to maintain that these notebook jottings remained unpublished by Nietzsche because he could not bring himself to recommend in public the adoption of such a stance of hardness. Consider the
quotation from Zarathustra with which he concludes Gotzen-Dam-
31
�merung: "All creators are hard. And you' must think it blessedness to
press your hand on millenia as on wax,-/-Blessedness, to write on the
will of millenia as on bronze,-harder than bronze, nobler than bronze.
Only the noblest are completely hard." (Werke, II, 1033) Compare this
with the laudatory remarks on Caesar and Napoleon in the same book,
"Streifzuge eines Unzeitgemassen" nos. 38, 44, 45, 49, Werke, II, 1015,
1019-1022, 1025. To be fair, however, it must be added that the connection between the artist's hardness on his material and the statesman/
general's hardness on human beings is not made explicit anywhere in
Gotzen-Dammerung but rather left as a hint, a not-too-esoteric doctrine.
6. Nietzsche shows himself quite conscious of the distinction: "The
young women who march solemnly to the temple of Apollo, laurel in
hand, and sing as they go a processional song, remain who they are and
maintain the names they possess as citizens; the dithyrambic chorus is a
chorus of transformed beings for whom their past as citizens and their
social position has become oblivious." Die Geburt der TragOdie no. 8,
Werke, I, 52. The second half of his characterization, however, is incomplete, for in all the tragedies we possess (as opposed to hypothetical
original dithyrambs), the dancers who have doffed their own identities
have donned others which are equally precise: those of old men, women,
slaves, foreigners, sailors, etc.
7. Nietzsche's assumption is based on the much-disputed statement of
Artistotle (Poetics l449a9) that tragedy arose &1rO rCJv to'~apxOvrwv rOv
tneUpap,{3ov, "from those who led off the dithyramb." For a very nonDionysian critical discussion of this passage and of Nietzsche's use of it,
see Gerald F. Else, The Origin and Early Form of Greek Tragedy, New
York 1965, 9-15.
8. Die Geburt der TragOdie no. l, Werke, I, 25.
9. "Notes for 'We Philologists,'" trans. William Arrowsmith, ARION
N.S. l/2, 1973-1974, 361.
10. Nos. 10 & II, Werke, II, 996-997.
11. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, Pfullingen 1961, Vol. I, "Der Wille zur
Macht als Kunst," particularly the chapter entitled "Der Rausch als
asthetischer Zustand," 109-126.
12. Der Wille zur Macht no. 1067, Werke, III, 917.
13. Der Antichrist no. 58, Werke, II, 1229.
14. Der Antichrist no. 59, Werke, II, 1231. Cf. GOtzen-Dammerung,
"Streifzuge" no. 39, Werke, II, 1016. Nietzsche was also fond of alluding
to Horace's claim that in his three books of odes he had erected a monument more durable than bronze: exegi monumentum aere perennius
(Odes III, 30.1). Earlier in Antichrist no. 58 he uses the phrase aere perennius to characterize the whole Roman Empire, and in the last section of
Gotzen-Diimmerung, "Was lch den Alten Verdanke" no. l, he names
32
Figure 3: View of the East Building from the vicinity of the east entrance of the
original National Gallery, looking in approximately the same direction as the arrow
points in Figure 2. (Photo by Tom Farran.)
Horace and Sallust as his two great stylistic models and says that "Even
in my Zarathustra one can recognize a very serious ambition for Roman
style, for the 'aere perennius' in style." (Werke, II, 1027). See also MorgenrOte no. 71, Werke, I, 1059. In Zur Genealogie der Moral, '"Gut und
BOse,' 'Gut und Schlecht"' no. 16, he praises the nobility of Roman inscriptions, a category which combines architecture and writing (Werke,
II, 796).
15. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, "Der Wanderer und sein Schatten," no. 217, Werke, I, 965.
16. New York Times, "Arts and Leisure Section,'' Sunday, AprilS, 1979,
D 17.
17. Lincoln KirStein, Movement and Metaphor, New York 1970, 10.
18. Compare Lincoln Kirsteip's remarks on the lobby of the State
Theater of New York: "Philip Johnson built a festival ambiance in lobby
and promenade. Performances commence when audiences first enter
the houses which frame them; large theaters are more than shelter. Intermissions which link units of repertory are happy times for appreciation, disagreement, sharings of what has just been seen and heard."
New York City Ballet Souvenir Book, 1975.
WINTER 1982
�The Trivialization of the Holocaust as an
Aspect of Modern Idolatry
Robert Loewenberg
1
The Holocaust, the murdering of the Jews on Hitler's
principle that a "thorough eradication of even the last
representative and destruction of the last tradition"
should be realized, is the most mysterious event of modern
times, and perhaps the most characteristic. 1 Mysterious
and characteristic as well is the subsequent trivialization
of the Holocaust in Western discourse by those, especially
Jews, who profess detestation of Hitler and Nazism. The
trivialization of the Holocaust, and not its denial, for ex·
ample, by the Right, is the most significant post-Holocaust
phenomenon at our disposal for the purpose of understanding the Holocaust.
The charge of trivialization supposes certainly a justification of the view that the Holocaust is not trivial. One
must establish that Hitler's choice to eradicate the Jews
and Judaism instead of Armenians or Biafrans is what
makes for the Holocaust's particularity. The mystery of
the Holocaust, in other words, is not the murdering of innocents, or the number and manner of their killing. The
description of Hitler's murdering of the Jews as a holocaust constitutes a claim, a narrowly tribal one in some
minds, that the gassing of Jews was not solely a murdering
of innocents demonstrating man's inhumanity to man.
Rather the Holocaust was a murdering of another kind
that demonstrates profound truths. This claim is explored
in this essay in connection with the suggestion of Emil
Fackenheim that the Holocaust was the result of idol worship.'
Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University, Robert
Lo~wenberg has written Equality on the Oregon Frontier (University of
Washington Press, 1976) and articles on the history of the American
Northwest and on values in writing history.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
The purpose of this essay is to locate the sources of trivialization and not to detail it-the latter a task that has
been undertaken by others 3 The best evidences of trivialization are found in the most likely places, in common
speech and in academic discourse. In both instances the
quite prominent involvement of the Jews in the trivializa·
tion of the Holocaust underscores the several points to be
developed in this study.
At the first level, that of common speech, trivialization of
the Holocaust is especially visible in the rights movements.
Here the language of the Holocaust and of European
Jewry is readily affixed to circumstances of victimization.
Civil rights proponents are inclined to refer to a Negro
ghetto as an "Auschwitz" or to the denial of a lunch program as "genocide." The denial of civil rights is fascist
while support of civil rights is in some ultimate sense Jewish. This perception of the rights movement and of Judaism is commonplace among liberal Jews today. Judaism,
1
once self-understood as chosenness or ' particularism," is
now to be conceived as universalist. Judaism's universalism has suggested to some advanced or Reform rabbis
that traditional or orthodox Judaism may itself be Nazi.
Accordingly, there has been a growing tendency in pro·
gressive circles to disavow the holiday of Chanukah,
which marks the defeat of Hellenists by a band of religious
zealots, as fascism.
Developments of this type at the popular level are informed by academic conventions regarding what is
thought to be praiseworthy about Judaism. At the aca·
demic level the trivialization of the Holocaust is, in fact, a
function or product of the insistence that Judaism is es·
sentially antireligious, actually a forerunner of secular and
atheistic humanism. The real Jew is the non-Jewish Jew.
This view, deriving from the distinction between universalism and particularism, is part of a larger vision of his-
33
�tory and human affairs in which the Holocaust is, above
all, an attack upon mankind. In this view of things, Nazism
and Hitler are perceived as reactionary, the enemies of
progress, secularism, and democracy. Thus Hitler was
among those "demonic enemies," as two Jewish writers
have recently and typically said, "of modernity."' As for
Mein Kampf, it is considered "deeply barbarous," a book
"to end books. "5 The Third Reich demonstrated once and
for all the evil of nationalism or particularism, of hierarchy
and authority. Nazism vindicated an opposite set of prin·
ciples: egalitarianism, universalism, internationalism, and
tolerance.
Scholars in fields other than German history, especially
if they are Jewish, are not hesitant to use the Holocaust as
in some respects a model and metaphor. A famous exam·
pie is Stanley Elkins' astonishing comparison of death
camp inmates with American slaves. Interestingly, the
comparison was offensive to some historians on the
ground that slaves did not behave as the Jews were alleged
to have done by Elkins. In other words, the comparison as
between murder and enslavement was not faulted, only
the suggestion that slaves behaved like death camp inmates. Uses of this type explain in part the popularity of
so-called Holocaust studies, a new academic subfield.
It is the burden of this essay to suggest that trivialization of the Holocaust partakes of the same philosophical
sources that informed the actual Holocaust itself. The hatred of Judaism (not equivalent to hatred of Jewish
people), whether in destroying Jews or in trivializing their
destruction, reflects neither prejudice nor fascist militarism, but a disordering of the terms of being, a disordering
of the relationship of the One and the many. This disordering and its consequences we call idolatry. Perhaps no
Jewish writer has done more to explore this question than
Emil Fackenheim.
Fackenheim's study of the Holocaust is notable for its
daring. He dismisses certain sanctified cliches of Holocaust literature, and ignores the taboos of normal political
theory. For example, Fackenheim does not suppose that
religion is an end equal to all others, but, on the contrary,
that it is "the most serious question facing a serious man."6
In this, Fackenheim offends behaviorists and secular humanists at once. But having done so, Fackenheim is free
to disregard as unhistorical and reductionist those accounts of the Holocaust which limit our apprehension of
Hitler or of Mein Kampf either to the influences upon
them or to behavioral inferences from them. Similarly, he
does not engage in a certain type of theologizing which,
by proposing that the Holocaust demonstrates the non-existence and irrelevance of God, suggests rather the nonexistence and irrelevance of any serious Jewish theology.
Fackenheim takes Nazism at its word and considers its
deeds in light of its word. In this he adopts the commonsense approach of Werner Maser, the outstanding historian of Mein Kampf. "To explain Hitler and to understand
the period of history over which he exerted so decisive an
34
influence," Maser has written, "nothing can be so impor~
tant or informative as Mein Kampf . ... Hitler clung faithfully to the ghastly doctrine set out in Mein Kampf."'
But the ghastly aspects of Mein Kampf are not always
the obvious ones. Hitler was an idealist, or one who is devoted to what modern liberal scholarship considers the
highest goal, freedom. Fackenheim takes note of Hitler's
idealism. The idealistic element in Mein Kampf is not outwardly ghastly. For example, Hitler writes of his wish to
replace one "spiritual" doctrine with another. He does not
idolize force in this matter. "Every attempt at fighting a
view of life by means of force will finally fail," he observed, "unless the fight against it represents the form of
an attack for the sake of a new spiritual direction." 8 This
new spiritual direction is what necessitates the "thorough
eradication" of Jews. Hitler seeks a "new . .. view of 1ife." 9
Hitler's ghastly doctrine aside, he was a moralist. Conversions and mere persecutions ofjews he regarded as destructive of idealism and immoral in other respects. 10 As
for persecutions, "every [one] ... that takes place without
being based on a spiritual presupposition does not seem
justified from the moral point of view." 11 Traditional Judeophobia failed to express "the character of an inner and
higher consecration, and thus it appeared to many, and
not the worst, as immoral and objectionable. The conviction was lacking that this was a question of vital importance to the whole of mankind and that on its solution the
fate of all non-Jewish people depended." 12
The eradication of Jews and of all Jewish things Fackenheim rightly considers to derive from a worshipping of
false gods or idolatry. Nazism sought to make the trinity of
Yolk, Reich, and Fuehrer into one. Hitler's purpose was to
replace the people, who are representative of the principle that God is One, with "eternal Germanity" as one. In
order to establish the significance of idolatry, Fackenheim
has recourse to Jewish sources. Idolatry is "false 'freedom,'" in particular, idolatry is the "literal and hence total
identification of finiteness with infinitude." 13 What relation exists between ancient idolatry and modern idolators?
The ancients were preoccupied with the problems of false
worship and false gods. Moderns are secular and do not
believe in gods. Fackenheim does not forfeit his fundamental discovery that Nazism is idolatrous by suggesting
the Nazis were antimodern pagans. He does not dilute or
caricature the rabbinic teaching on idolatry, but insists
that Nazism is the "most horrendous idolatry of modern,
perhaps of all time." 14 In making this his starting point,
Fackenheim assures us that he intends to show that
Nazism and its objectives were not trivial. Of course idolatry is not trivial in Jewish terms where it serves as a
counter to Judaism itself. But idolatry is also not trivial in
absolute terms. Rather it reflects a disordering of the relationship of man to nature and to the "divine Infinity."IS
Fackenheim points out that the ancient rabbis regarded
"one who repudiates idolatry is as though he were faithful
to the whole Torah. By this standard," says Fackenheim,
WINTER 1982
�"any modern Jew would be wholly faithful." 16 But it goes
without saying that modern Jews are not wholly fmthful
even though they do repudiate the w'orship of idols or
images. Does this not indicate the irrelevance of the rab·
binic teaching, and by implication the irrelevance of Juda·
ism? Fackenheim refers to the following talmudic passage,
a characteristic utterance regarding idolatry, to suggest
why such questions are not well-founded.
When someone in his anger tears his clothes, breaks utensils,
throws away money, this should be viewed as though he worshipped idols. For this is the cunning of the evil inclination:
today it says 'do this,' tomorrow, 'do that,' until it finall~ says
'go and worship idols' and he goes and does it. ... What 1s the
alien god that dwells in a man's body? The evil inclinationP
The danger of idol worship is not the "ludicrous anti·
climax" moderns suppose it to be. 18 Instead moderns who
suspect they are not subject to idol worship because they
are indifferent to the gods have fallen prey to idolatry
without even knowing it was a temptation. In the case of
Nazism, Fackenheim explains, idol worship is based in the
same feelings of ancient idol worship, that is, in "infinite
fear, hope, pleasure or pain." But the object of worship in
Nazism, namely the unity of Hitler, Yolk, and Reich, is
not recognized as an ido].I 9 On the contrary this object is
understood to bring about the liberation from "idolatrous
thralldom." In other words, modern idolatry understands
itself to be liberation or "demythologization." As Facken·
heim puts it, "the truth in this new false 'freedom' is that,
negating all worship, it negates all idolatry in the form of
worship. This new idolator takes himself for an enlight·
ened modern."20 Moreover, because the modern idolator
is enlightened, he scorns idols as mere sticks and stones at
the same time that he condemns all worship as superflu·
ous. But the idolatrous essence, the identification of finiteness and infinitude, survives like the duck inside the
wolf in the tale of Peter. "Because [the infinite feeling of
the modern idolator] is infinite, it does not vanish ... It
thus acquires the power of generating what may be called
internalized idolatry."21
Fackenheim recognizes two forms of modern "internalized" idolatry and distinguishes "internalized religion"
from both. Hitler's idolatry Fackenheim calls "idealistic."
It identifies finiteness with infinitude in making the finite
infinite. Nazism is "absolute whim ... the extreme in fini·
tude." 22 Naturalistic or empiricist idolatry is marked by
positivist and relativistic "anti-absolutism." It identifies fi.
niteness with infinitude in making the infinite finite; the
"degradation of the infinite aspect of selfhood to a false fi.
nitude."2' The so-called value-free perverters of Dewey
and Freud, but not Dewey or Freud themselves, are naturalist idolators according to Fackenheim because they
deny all goals, including even those of Dewey and Freud
that "man should make himself into the natural being he
is." 24
Internalized religion is carefully distinguished from idola·
THE ST, JOHNS REVIEW
try, whether of the idealistic or naturalistic sort. It would
be "a fatal error to confuse" internalized religion and inter~
nalized idolatry, says Fackenheim. 25 The knowing denial
of the divine Infinity, that is, the "raising [of an individual
or a collective self] to infinity in ... [the] very act of demal,"
is "internalized religion," not "internalized idolatry," when
this denial "issues, not in an atheistic rejection of the Divine but rather in its internalization. " 26 This situation, al~
tho~gh it "raises the specter of a modern, internalized
idolatry," is kept from becoming idolatry in the "modern
... philosophies ... [of] Fichte, Schelling, Hegel," because
"finiteness and infinitude are ... kept firmly apart." And,
what is true of these "idealist" philosophers is also true of
the "humanistic atheists ... Feuerbach, Marx and Nietzsche." The identification of finiteness and infinitude is
here "as firmly (if not as obviously) rejected ... by the fact
that Divinity vanishes in the process of internalization, to
be replaced by a humanity potentially infinite in its modern 'freedom' ... The potentiality never seems to become
quite actual." In sum, internalized religion is an ~~authen
tic challenge" to the divine Infinity which should be respected by Jewish and Christian thinkers. Internalized
idolatry, on the other hand, is "demonic perversion."27
Above all this distinction is rooted in the "honest rationality" of' the philosophers. Unlike idolatrous parodies of
thought which are "the product, not of reason, but of passion," the philosophers are not idolatrous.28 Naz1sm, mternalized idolatry, is a denial of the divine Infinity. At the
same time it is a literal and hence total identification of
finiteness with infinitude. Although Hitler was "no emperor-god ... and the Yolk, no worshipping community,"
yet the "will of a Fuehrer" and the will of the Yolk was the
sole reality. The object of idol worship is the will, internalized in Yolk and Fuehrer who are one. Nazism is a "bastard-child of ... the Enlightenment." 29
Fackenheim has undoubtedly pointed us in the direction of uncovering the source of the Holocaust's mystery.
The ground of idolatry or the identification of finitude
and infinity is false freedom. But Fackenheim's further
distinction between internalized idolatry and internalized
religion is not sound.
.
The philosopher's impulse, which does not deny the divine Infinity but which seeks only to bring the divine, "as
it were ... in[to] the same inner space as the human self,"
is surely an idolatrous aspiration 30 More important, .this
impulse participates in the same aspiration which informs
such demonic perversions as Nazism. The remainder of
this essay is devoted to exploring this suggestion and its
implications for the question of the trivialization of the
Holocaust.
2
Fackenheim's distinction between internalized religion
and internalized idolatry is outwardly commonsensical in
that thought is always different from action. But this dif.
35
�ference is especially inappropriate' as a distinction in the
case of the great philosophies, all of which sought to identify thought and act at some level. Commonsensical as
wen is the unmistakable difference between any of the
great philosophies and the comparatively low level theorizing of Hitler. But differences of this type have no philosophical relevance. Moreover, Fackenheim is himself
compelled to recognize the, to him, quite troubling compatibility of Heidegger and Nazism.
Heidegger's was "one of the profoundest philosophies
of this century," Fackenheim observes, and surely he was
an exponent of internalized religion. As late as 1946, however, Heidegger failed to recognize "radical evil" in the
Holocaust. Fackenheim considers this failure a "philosophical" one, not a challenge to the distinction between
internalized religion and internalized idolatry. 31 But Fackenheim does not explain how Heidegger's "philosophical
failure" differs from idolatry. One wonders if perhaps
there is no distinction between this philosophical failure
and idolatry or, put another way, if there really is a distinction between internalized idolatry and internalized religion.
Let it be noted here, before we consider this possibility,
that historically at least, there is no reason to suppose any
such distinction ever existed. Karl Liiwith has observed
that "nihilism as the disavowal of existing civilization,"
and not internalized religion, "was the only belief of all
truly educated people at the beginning of the twentieth
century." 32
Whether Heidegger is a nihilist or if nihilism is idolatry
are matters outside the present concern. But that Hitler
explicitly disavowed existing civilization and identified it
with judaism will not be doubted. Certainly it is this disavowal that Heidegger found "great" in Nazism. As for
Heidegger' s own statements against anti-Semitism, they
cannot be given much weight as evidence of a philosophic
intention as against an idolatrous one. The tradition of
modern philosophy is, of course, marked by hostility to Judaism1 as Fackenheim's study, among others, shows, even
as this hostility is almost always hedged about with the liberal's disdain for all "prejudice," especially for anti-Semitism.
A final observation about the great philosophies considered from the standpoint of Fackenheim's defense of the
distinction between internalized idolatry and internalized
religion is the supposed "authenticity" of the great philosophies. Consider that Fackenheim exempts Hegel from
an idolatrous identification of finitude and infinity, saying
he "reaches the Fichtean goal [of a divinized moral self],
but does so in the realm of thought only." Marx too is no
idolator, according to Fackenheim. Insofar as the theorist
of world communism realized that "society [is] as yet far
from classless," he did not identify the finite and the infinite.33 But one may question if these are plausible distinctions or authentic ones. Can Hegel or Marx, of all thinkers,
be defended on the ground that the idolatrous tendency of
an identification of finitude and infinity was not idolatrous
because it was limited to the realm of thought? Precisely
36
the identification of thought and act was their objective.
Hegel did not doubt the realm of thought would succeed
to action, in particular to the Prussian state. Certainly
Marx did not scorn the prospect of a classless society. The
distinction Fackenheim insists upon is here again not a
theoretical but a circumstantial and historical one. One
must look rather far to find a more pertinent example of
internalized idolatry, a knowing identification of the divine Infinity dwelling in a man, than Hegel's Wissenschaft
der Logik:
[The] logic is to be understood as the system of pure reason,
as the realm of pure thought. This realm is the truth as it is
without veil and [for itself]. It can be said, therefore, that this
is the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence, before
the creation of nature and a finite mind. 34
We may not say of Hegel that he has taken "care [that] ...
the possibility of idolatry is ... recognized and avoided." 35
But the distinction Fackenheim would have us credit
between the great philosophies and demonic perversions
of them rests on what is itself a fatal error. Honest rationality, said to separate products of reason from those of
passion, in fact confoupd~ reason and passion.
Concerning the distinction between reason and passion,
it must at least be noted that the tide of modern political
philosophy, in which Leo Strauss noted three waves, is
dominated by philosophies of passion. 36 Beginning with
Machiavelli, who substituted glory for virtue, and Hobbes,
who replaced glory with power, the great philosophies
have been notable for their rejections of reason, whether
in hallowing folk minds as expressions of a general will or
in the sanctification of history as an expression of nature
or idea. In the third and present wave of modernity inaugurated by Nietzsche, the West has been inclined to think
"that all human life and human thought ultimately rests
on horizon-forming creations which are not susceptible of
rationa1legitimization."37
This historical consideration regarding passion and reason is not irrelevant to the distinction Fackenheim would
have us accept between the philosophies and Hitler. We
live at a time when it is the nearly universal presumption
of political thinkers that man is not a political being but is
instead an amorphous or "free" being, to be shaped by
history, by labor or by change. This presumption, a reversal of the understanding of Aristotle, is related to another
Aristotelian principle which modern political thinkers
have also reversed. This principle is that "the mind is
moved by the mover." 38 Reason, in other words, the an~
cients regarded as "revelation," not as a thing man-made. 39
These two related reversals of classical thought by moderns bear directly on our subject. They are the bases for
modern idolatry and for the too easy supposition that idolatry is not a modern possibility, or that honest rationality
is a hedge against such a possibility. The identification of
finitude and infinity in Nietzsche, one of Fackenheim's
great philosophers, is complete because the identification
of making and thinking is complete.
WINTER 1982
�In Nietzsche, thought is action, in particular it is vitalisrq. When Nietzsche internalizes the divine infinity (or
the One), his idolatry is not simply in the realm of thought.
It is palpable idolatry because thought is act in Nietzsche:
The greatest events-they are not our loudest but our stillest
hours. Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the
inventors of new values, does the world revolve; it revolves inaudibly40
And Zarathustra counsels:
'Will to truth' .... A will to the thinkability of all beings; this I
call your will. You want to make all being thinkable.4 1
Nietzsche's method is rational insofar as it is autonomous
and free, but it is openly passionate as well. What is art in
Nietzsche is system in Max Weber. Weber is the formulator of the principle of honest rationality as the basis for
the distinction between morality or idealism and immorality, the distinction informing Fackenheim's defense of
the great philosophies.
Weber's distinction between idealism and immorality
derives in part, as will be clear shortly, from his conviction
that facts and values are heterogeneous. It is not irrelevant
to add that Weber's teaching that only facts are knowable
while all judgments regarding values are relative continues
to inform both a naturalistic social science in which "value
judgments" are impermissible, and neo-Kantian secular
humanism in which the facts are said to be value-laden.
Academic social studies, in other words, must also be affected by the critique of honest rationality.
The context of Fackenheim's invocation of honest rationality is Weberian. But in a critique of Weber of the
profoundest kind, Strauss has shown the falsity of the distinction between products of reason and of passion fashioned by honest rationality.42 Honest rationality, or the
principle of freedom according to which one is free in the
degree that he is "guided by rational consideration of
means and ends," is said to be nihilistic.43 Strauss's critique
of Weber bears directly and with great force upon the subject of this essay and upon the question of idolatry.
According to Weber, reason, particularly in the determining of moral imperatives which appeal to intellect (unlike merely cultural or personal values and wants to which
our feelings are subject), is the glory and dignity of man.
Not choosing and not valuing is the equivalent of appetitiveness and passion. "Man's dignity, his being exalted far
above all brutes, consists in his setting up autonomously
his ultimate values, in making these values his constant
ends, and in rationally choosing the means to these ends.
The dignity of man consists in his ... freely choosing his
own values or his own ideals."44 Commitment to a value
which appeals to our reason Weber counted idealism.
But Strauss reminds us that the justification for this
view of idealism is a scientific understanding of values,
that is, an understanding that facts are possessed of transhistorical or universal character while values are relative
THE ST. JOHNS REVJEW
and discrete. Because the truth about values is said to be
inaccessible, a scientific and rational, as well as an honest
approach to values must be neutrality toward values. And
yet indifference to all values is precisely what Weber
counts as baseness. Freedom and rationality suggest a rational hostility toward theory. But this suggests an espousal
of unfreedom or passion. It is no accident that this hostility
to values and to theory is embodied in naturalistic social
science (behaviorism), and in the value-laden humanism
which frequently opposes it, that is, in those two forms of
academic social studies that grew out of Weber's distinction between facts and values. Thus, the positivist regards
theory as unempirical. He makes indifference to all causes
or Hopenness" a cause. At the opposite extreme stands
the humanist who dignifies all causes in the name of freedom and dignity regardless of whether a cause appeals to
our mind or to our passion. HA cause that appeals no further than 'the sphere of one's own individuality,' " the vitalism of Nietzsche, counts as a cause.45 The first position
is formalistic and self-canceling, and the second is simply a
doctrine of power. Weber, in sum, having undertaken the
defense of idealism as freedom and commitment to a value,
ultimately dignifies mere personal preferences and willing
as idealistic.
The distinction between idealism and appetitiveness
fades into freedom as such, as the distinction between values and facts, ought and is, collapses into an identity of
ought and is. The final formulation of Weber's ethical
principle would then be " 'Thou shalt have preferences'an Ought whose fulfillment is fully guaranteed by the Is."46
Honest rationality, the choosing of values as called for by
intellect as against acceptance of values which appeal to
our feelings, is obviously arbitrary. Why be honest or rational? Reason and passion, idealism and appetitiveness
are morally equal on the principle of honest rationality, or
rather there is no such principle.
Fackenheim's distinction between the great philosophies
and Hitler is subject to the same nihilistic consequence attaching to the distinction between idealism and immorality
in Weber. This would suggest that the distinction between
internalized religion and internalized idolatry is also inadequate. In fact, Fackenheim has not done full justice to
the rabbinic teaching, perhaps because he has done more
than full justice to the great philosophies.
Fackenheim's critique of the rabbinic teaching does not
do full justice to judaism. Certainly the rabbis would not
have supposed that the false freedom of the great philosophers in bringing the divine Infinity into the same space
with a human being was an "authentic challenge" to be
taken seriously as religious and not idolatrous. The rabbis
were not liberals for whom challenges to the divine Infinity counted as authentic. One cannot maintain that Nazism is idolatrous while consenting to an Hellenic gloss on
the rabbinic teaching. That "the Hellenic spirit of free inquiry ... is not rooted in judaism," as Husik has correctly
observed, is a fact that moderns find difficult to accept.47
37
�Concerning the subject of idolatry, one might even say
that this spirit of free inquiry is the essence of the yetzer
hara, the evil inclination. The divine Infinity which occupies the same inner space with the philosopher cannot be
God. Such an occupant, the rabbis say, is precisely "the
alien god." This is the god that says, "do anything," i.e.,
be free. Freedom, or the evil inclination, is the alien god.
In a word, freedom, understood as "false freedom," is
idol~
atry, even though we know it is today "a mark of intelligence and progress ... [to praise] serious consideration of
alien gods."48 Evidently the matter of "internalization"
has been the rabbinic interpretation from the start.
3
The Jewish teaching on false freedom is not ambiguous.
False freedom is false Exodus from Egypt. It is the making
of the golden calf while Moses is at Sinai preparing to deliver the Torah, or true freedom, to Israel. The remainder
of this essay is devoted to modern idolatry in two embodiments. First is the idolatry associated with the consideration of man as an animal lacking reason and a soul. Here
man exits from or escapes his condition as a being of more
than animal elements. Let us call this form of idolatry the
Mehan exodus, following Eric Voegelin, who locates the
contraction of man's being into a "power-self" as the
means of "concupiscental exodus" in the Melian dialogue
detailed by Thucydides.49 There is, in addition to the
Mehan exodus, a second embodiment of idolatry, or gnostic exodus. In gnosticism, men renounce the trappings of
their mortality, including history and culture, as if to bring
about, at God's expense, the conditions of perfection
symbolized in the garden of Eden. At the level of popular
and of academic discourse, these embodiments of idolatry
are understood in the language of political jargon as Left
and Right. This language does not intend religious meanings. Nonetheless, the present purpose is to suggest that
conventional political discourse misunderstands the difference of Right and Left, which it considers only political. The division, and opposition, of Right and Left, rather
than the content of either Right (Melian) or Left (gnostic),
is idolatry in its modern form.
It goes without saying that a judgment that Right and
Left touch religious aspects is offensive to much political
science. 50 But not all scholars are content that religious
questions should be divorced from political theory. Allan
Bloom has observed that "what is perhaps the most serious question facing a serious man-the religious question
-is almost a matter of indifference-" to political writers
in our time. This indifference is found in John Rawls, for
example, whose study of equality is considered by many
to be a significant contribution. But Rawls considers religion "just another one of the many ends that can be pursued in a liberal society."'!
Again it is Bloom who has pointed out that modern political writing which evades the serious questions also
38
evades the easy historical ones, inviting sloppiness and errors of fact. One may say, however, that what is most consistently mistaken by modern writers such as Rawls is the
involvement of political writing in idolatry. Rawls's equation of all ends is precisely idolatry of the gnostic type.
Knowledge that all ends or values are equal is not a human possibility, but a divine one. Must not metaphysics
and religion, dealing with questions about ends, be more
serious than other pursuits in a liberal society or in any society? If Nazism is idolatry, a political science such as
evinced in the work of Rawls is precluded from studying
it. One cannot undertake a study of Nazism as idolatry in
the context of modern political science because this science is implicated in idolatry. The following survey of Nazism as idolatrous suggests the nature of this implication.
The idolatry in Nazism is found in connection with the
Biblical teaching on freedom. The story of the Exodus is
an explication of true and false freedom. True freedom is
the recognition of God, and the recognition that follows
from the recognition of God, that man is radically distinct
from animals as well as from God. Man is neither raw desire nor spirit, man is
in~between
or in the metaxy, to use
the pertinent Platonic term. False freedom, in contrast, is
the freedom or exodus from the metaxy, symbolized in
the making of the golden calf, by which men simultaneously attempt to be gods themselves and to sanctify raw
desire.
The Exodus of the Jewish people is plainly not one
from Egypt but to Israel. Exodus from Egypt is marked
above all by wandering and by a desert. Moreover, the Exodus from Egypt and the opening of the Red Sea are not
effected by the Jews but by God. The Exodus is no war of
national liberation. Most important, to consider the Exodus as though it were a mere war of liberation from Egyptian bondage is idolatry. Thus, when the Israelites make
the golden calf they proclaim: "These are your Gods, 0 Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt." 52
But this is a lie; the golden calf was newly made by the
Jews. But then who split the Red Sea if not God or the
golden calf? Naturally, it must have been the Jews: God is
a projection or superstition; freedom is man's work and
man is the maker. Exodus is then freedom or the exercise
of human will: absolute whim. It is the liberation to do as
one lists, to wander. Exodus is the freedom not to wait for
Moses: to go to Israel or not. But of course the Bible
teaches that this is all false.
The calf makers are idol worshippers; they are slain.
They have forfeited reason by equating their whim or freedom with rationality. They made the same error that
Strauss detected in Weberian idealism or honest rationality. And, as in the Weberian instance, the mistaking of
whim for rationality is equivalent to animality or mere desiring. The calf makers are considered as animals. In one
of the most famous expositions of idolatry in the Bible,
Nebuchadnezzar is punished with the loss of his reason
and sent to forage in the manner of oxen for his failure,
WJNTER 1982
�demonstrated in his making of a gold,en idol, to recognize
that "the most High rules in the Kingdom of man." 53
Only reason, by which I mean the revelation that God
and not man is the maker of all things, can distinguish be·
tween exodus as false and as true freedom. A calf is a thing.
All things perish. Things come into being and go out of
being. The bush that burns but is not consumed is a sign
of divinity because it does not perish. Being remains,
namely, the process of coming into being and going out of
being remains. This process is known only to man who
alone among things possesses reason or soul. This permits
him to see the sign of the burning bush and to understand
it. This recognition indicates that aspect of man's being,
spirit or soul, which is not a thing. We call this aspect of
perception immortality.
Freedom is false when men pretend they are animals or
gods. The literal and hence total identification of finiteness and infinitude is a form of idolatry because such
identification is a willful disordering of reality. Idolatry is
the knowing denial of the doctrine which founds Judaism,
or monotheism: "Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord is your God, the
Lord is One." The Biblical exposition of this principle, set
in the Exodus or Passover story, specifies idolatry as false
freedom or exodus from the metaxy. There are two modes
of exodus or false freedom.
Men may escape the metaxy or the conditions of human being in the direction Fackenheim calls naturalism
by identifying as finite those aspects of being which are
infinite. 54 The insistence that man is an animal who invents God for the sake of satisfying behavioral imperatives
is idolatrous in this sense. The value-free principle is a
doctrine of raw power, as are its derivatives, for example,
the "open society," and certain versions of equality and
free speech. Justice, which regards all value claims as equal,
is achievable only by enforcement of absolute toleration
and permissiveness or by enforcement of sameness and
intolerance in the name of humanity. 55 Force is inevitable
in either case to insure absolute permissiveness or absolute
conformity, since it cannot be the case that values will not
clash, or that self-control will be considered a value superior
to others.
In fact, the sole means of avoiding the arbitrary dilemma
of tolerance is to undertake a transformation of the self,
that is, to undertake the elimination of the self or amour
propre. In other words, this doctrine of freedom entails a
reordering of the relationship of the One and the many
whether in the reformation of selves into a general will or
into Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer. As we shall see in
Hitler's case, work makes free because it destroys egotism.
In particular, freedom as work eliminates rewards based
upon skill. The individual is thus merged into the collective self. Freedom from values as the meaning of freedom
is simply power or will. We have already called this freedom from values the Melian exodus, after Thucydides:
"Men . .. rule wherever they can."56
Hitler's conception of right was certainly Melian. Alan
Bullock, who has called this aspect of Hitler's thought
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
<(crude Darwinism," notes that "no word occurs more fre-
quently in Hitler's speeches than 'struggle.' "57 "The
whole work of Nature," according to Hitler, is "a mighty
struggle.'' Again: "The first fundamental of any rational
Weltanschauung is the fact that on earth and in the universe, force alone is decisive."58
Voegelin explains that the "fictitious identity of conquest with reality can be achieved by identifying reality
with a humanity contracted to its libidinous self."" The
modern forms of this aspect of false freedom, according to
which values, and thus judgments concerning them, are
historical and ultimately identical to personal desire, is
embodied in historicisms of mind or spirit. In other words,
Melian exodus denies to philosophy all but historical and
pragmatic aptitudes. The difference between the ancient
and modern expressions of this exodus is the hint of tragic
fatality in the ancient and the absence of this hint in its
modern forms. The Athenian conquerors retain, "in the
background ... the tragic consciousness of the process."
They too will be massacred in time. Modern movements,
on the other hand, sink "to the untragic vileness of the
ideologist who cannot commit the murder he wants to
commit in order to gain an 'identity' in place of the self he
has lost, without moralistically appealing to a dogma of ultimate truth." 60
The dogma to which Hitler appealed was the Thousandyear Reich, eternal Germanity. This vision he conceived
as freedom and the elimination of Judaism. Freedom and
the replacement of Judaism with Germanity would prepare the way for a reconciliation of mankind. These objectives were exactly dogmas of ultimate truth for the sake of
committing murders. Moreover, these dogmas were the
instruments for the formation of selves.
We need not doubt Hitler used the word "struggle"
many times or that he identified morality with power. But
his object was not solely power. His murderous intention
was not arbitrary or irrational. Hitler's doctrine of the
blood is the key to the other side of Nazism and simultaneously to the idolatrous aspect of the great philosophies.
Hitler's notorious sacrifice of military goals so as to destroy the million Jews of Hungary reflects his commitment
to the doctrine of the blood. The doctrine of the blood is
an inversion of the doctrine of the soul. 61 Speaking often
of uour people" and "eternal Germanity," Hitler's purpose was to effect the "reconciliation of mankind/' or "all
non-Jewish peoples.''62 Nazism emerges as a counterJudaism at this point. The "purity of the blood ... [will]
enable our people to mature for the fulfillment of the mission which the Creator of the universe has allotted also to
them.''6l This, the "higher motive of national policy and
never narrow particularism" explains why the "State has
nothing whatsoever to do with a definite conception of
economics or development of economics."64 Nazism was a
moral doctrine of freedom for which race was the form.
As persecution of the Jews was immoral in Hitler's thinking, so the purity of German blood was not a medical or
39
�an anthropological doctrine, even though it had import at
such levels. One suspects we hear neither the hypocrite
nor the psychopath say, as Hitler did in 1932, "Let them
call us unhuman. If we save Germany, we shall have done
the greatest deed in the world .... Let them say that we
are without morality. If our people is saved, we shall have
paved the way for morality."65 The doctrine of the blood
introduces the gnostic aspect of Nazism.
Hitler's identification of right with power included the
second mode of exodus from the metaxy, or gnosticism.66
But the liberation of the spirit from the body in modern
gnosticism is not for rare men or for the elite as among an-
cient gnostics. The modern way of liberation is release
from the ego and egotism. The spirit, in other words, is no
private vision, it is a shared thing, for example, blood.
Modern gnosticism is distinguished from its ancient
forms in the same way that modern power politics differs
from Melian exodus of the ancients. For the ancient gnostic who strove to separate the soul from things, the instrument of liberation was the individuaL The soul with its
source in the divine was not thus denied. Liberation of
the souls of modern gnostics is altogether a thing of groups
which replaces the divine as the soul's source. Accordingly
modern gnosticism calls for the losing of the self as spirit.
The soul of modern man is liberated from the prison of
spirit, as well as the prison of the body, in becoming a thing
that does not perish, i.e., in submerging the ego in an immortalizing thing such as blood, sex, or excrement.
Consider Hitler's doctrine in connection with the tradition regarding the self extending from Rousseau. Since
Rousseau's description. of the self as formed by society, in
particular by the division of labor and the advent of property, there has evolved the idea that one's authentic self is
beneath the roles imposed by social life. Liberation is then
a release from property and its social and other derivatives.
Because this conception takes its rise in the doctrine of
the state of nature, or the doctrine that man has no nature
or telos, true personality or selfhood is freedom as such, or
becoming. At the same time, this vision of freedom imposes a conception of the self as selfless. Selflessness or
true selfhood is tantamount to compassion, and this is
how Rousseau defined it. The good self is not selfish in a
literal and a moral sense. The true self is not an I, but we.
This reversal of the classical and Jewish concept of the
self is part of everyday speech in which a self is virtuous if
it is selfless.
The tradition of this mode of thinking is long and considered honorable. It stretches, for example in American
letters, from john Humphrey Noyes who hoped to "extinguish the pronoun I," and replace it with "the we spirit,"
to Norman 0. Brown." Brown suggests that the "boundary
line between self and the external world bears no relation
to reality." Liberation for Brown is release from self by
means of return to the pre-socialized conditions of polymorphous perversity. The Hhuman consciousness can be
liberated from the parental (Oedipal) complex only by be-
40
ing liberated from its cultural derivatives, the paternalistic
state and the patriarchal God."68
This conception of self, including the role of man as
maker of God, is the one we have detected in Nazism. The
liberation from God, thus the liberation of the self, establishes the idea of freedom, of exodus from the metaxy.
The power to free the soul from the body is brought about
by freeing the self from an L The I perishes. What remains
is a thing possessed of the characteristics of God, that is,
of oneness. Those basic and selfless elements which outlast
the individual have become the instruments of immortality. What perishes excessively-excrement, sexuality,
blood-are now the bases for oneness and everlasting life.
Donatien de Sade uncovered these principles two centures before Hitler put them into practice. "What we call
the end of the living," said de Sa de (in praise of the motto
that "the freest of people are they who are most friendly
to murder''), "is no longer a true finis, but a simple trans-
formation ... of matter ... [D]eath is hence no more than
a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one
existence into another."69 Here in palpable form is the
identification of finitude with the infinite exposed by
Fackenheim. But Hitler is not a "parody" of the great philosophers. In assuming a material and communal replacement of the divine as the source of man's freedom,
Hitler's attack upon Judaism substitutes German blood
for the souL Hitler would, in this way, immortalize or
make infinite a finite thing. Hitler insists that judaism is
the negation of German blood-judaism is a race, not a
religion-exactly as Marx insists that judaism is the negation of communism-the god of judaism, he says, is
money. But if we consider, in Hitler's case, the actual doctrine of blood in judaism where it serves as a symbol of
the soul, Hitler's gnostic intention stands out boldly.
The Nazi's blood was his souL As a Jewish symbol that
had become an object of worship, the Nazi doctrine of the
blood is in truth "an absolute falsehood." 70 The blood as a
substitute for the soul of man is false. In judaism the blood
is typically considered to be in the soul only when the
body is alive. "The flesh whose blood is still in its soul,
shall ye not eat. ... Blood ... belongs to your souls." 71
This is plainly because the soul is not a thing. Preservation
of the blood of generations, what Hitler believed to be the
jews' purpose, and what he hoped to make the German
purpose, was to create oneness and immortality, as it
were, the salvation of souls. Jewish pollution of the racial
stock of others, imperiling the survival of non-jewish humanity, robbed souls by interruption of the transmission
of blood. In Nazism the soul is in the blood. The soul is
preserved after the ego dies, and because it is, the race is
preserved.
The doctrine of blood is false because it is wholly a distortion of the order of being. The source of human freedom is not the absence of the divine and its replace. men! by a Nazi or a communist community. It is hardly a
coincidence that both Hitler and Marx considered the
elimination of jews and judaism to be a condition for the
WINTER 1982
�establishment of their projects. 72 In both cases the extinguishment of the divine in the name of a man-made creation of freedom and of human being is critical. As for the
racist aspect of Nazism (and for the scientific and class
aspects of communism), they are perhaps best described
as opiates for the proletariat and the intelligentsia respectively.
The blood is then the soul made matter, an absurd idea.
The characteristic of the soul is immortality. What can it
mean to proclaim that the soul is not spiritual or that
some thing, perishable by definition, is immortal? What
aspect of a person does not perish? The answer, embodied
in the doctrine of the blood is: that aspect of a person
which is neither an ego nor a soul. Of course there is no
such thing. But what did Hitler think this thing was? Of
course he supposed it was freedom. The masses shall enter into the service of freedom once they understand that
the Jew intends the "enslavement, and with it the destruc·
tion, of all non-Jewish peoples."73 Blood is the oneness of
soul of the German people. Oneness will come about by
the destruction of vanity or egotism, the opposite of
oneness.
Egotism must be destroyed. But how is this possible?
By destroying the people of egotism. This is the people
that hides behind a false, unenlightened doctrine of elec·
tion and the divine as One. This people, the representa·
tive of the false God of spirit, and therefore the enemy of
oneness or the German people, is the Jews. "The Jew is
the mortal enemy of our people," said Hitler, because
"the Jew is ... nothing but pure egoism."74 And thus this
destruction of Jews is part of the means for liberation,
namely work. The people become one as they give over
their egos to the community. The doctrine that man is
one is egalitarianism.
"Egalitarianism," said Erich Fromm, uis not sameness
but oneness."75 Hitler's doctrine is egalitarian in the deep-
est and purest modern sense. As such, Nazism is the purest distillation of modernity. When Hitler proclaims that
"the Jew forms the strongest contrast to the Aryan" because only the Aryan is willing to give his "life for the exis·
tence of the community," he intends to be taken at his
word. 76 Giving up one's life for the community calls for
the relinquishment of ego. The means of doing so is of
course not prayer. Everyone knows, Hitler said, "a nation
cannot be freed by prayer." 77 Rather the way to freedom
is work. Work creates oneness in the process of effacing
egos. Work "establish[es] the equality of all in the moment
when every individual endeavors to do the best in his field
.... It is on this that the evaluation of man must rest, and
not on the reward." 78 Work makes free. Hitler promises
freedom from the ego, that is, from death, from anxiety,
by promising immortality in this world. This is the mean·
ing of Hitler's doctrine of the blood. It is the foundation of
the "everlasting [German] people." 79
It is correct to say, with Fackenheim, that Hitler is no
emperor-god; nor are the Yolk a worshipping community.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
It is Germanity in its immortalizing sacrifice of egos that
is God or one. This is the everlasting German people in
whose name Hitler professed to speak. The Jews, who are
said to live on behalf of an everlasting God, the God who
is one because man and all things are many, are the obvi·
ous spiritual power to be destroyed.
Hitler's idolatry is unmistakable. It reflects a disordering
of the relationship of the One and the many. Man is en·
joined, in the name of salvation, to leave his place in the
metaxy that he may assume full freedom. In the language
of political science Hitler's Melian exodus is fascist or
right-wing. Here, only power counts because all values are
equal, making law the rule of the stronger. Man is an animal. To this, Hitler's obvious or familiar side, is added the
other more subtle and as it were saintlier side. This is the
idolatry of gnosticism whereby men singly or together
take God into themselves or into their ideals.
Hitler's case suggests that modern idolatry cannot fail
to be both Melian and gnostic. We do not often, however,
credit Hitler's gnosticism or realize the Melian aspects of
gnostic or liberal idealism when it is expressed in the seductive language of opposition to Melian realism. The position of Judaism is obviously not the only representative
of the principles idolatry must oppose. It has long, however, been symbolic of all the enemies of idolatry. The hatred of Judaism is an aspect of modern if not all Western
idolatry, that is, of the impulse arising from the horror of
existence and the desire to leave the condition of the
metaxy. Consider the case of Jean Sartre, whose philosophy is the most recent great philosophy considered by
Fackenheim.
Sartre is the outstanding figure of left-wing humanistic
atheism. His insensitivity for Judaism, together with his
well-known sympathy for persecuted Jews, troubles Fack·
enheim. It may well be the case, Fackenheim thinks, that
Sartre's position is the product of his view that "an individual's freedom is ... destroyed by a divine Other," i.e.,
by God.BD But Fackenheim does not sufficiently consider
the effect the doctrine of freedom works upon Judaism.
Sartre' s view of freedom is idolatrous. It depends on the
replacement of the One with freedom. But this freedom,
gnostic in form, is not theoretically stagnant. It leads
somewhere. It leads to Melian exodus, that is, it permits
Sartre to say that he does not know if anti-Semitism is
"wrong or right" in socialist countries. 81 But Sartre would
know if racism is wrong or right. Is this another "philosophical failure" as in Heidegger's case?
The process we find in Hitler-from self-conscious Melian exodus to an unintended gnostic exodus imposed upon
him by the core of his project or the replacement of the
divine with the human-we also find in Sartre. In Sartre,
however, the order of exodus is reversed. Sartre's replacement of God with freedom is ultimately an assault upon
theory or reason; it is the idolatry we have discovered in
Hitler which does not distinguish reality from history or
the struggle for power. Accordingly Sartre must ultimately
41
�look to history, as had Hegel and Marx, as the source of
human reason. The individual's freedom then becomes a
matter of struggle against history in the manner of neo·
Kantians or Emersonians who look to the vanishing of
swine and madhouses brought about by an impulse of
spirit or will. But this is the same gnostic denouement into
which a crude reasoner such as Hitler evidently stumbled.
Hitler is not a bastard-child of the Enlightenment, only a
relatively childish enlightener. His erstwhile opponents,
those who have trivialized his deeds, are less childish but
not less idolatrous.
Trivialization of the Holocaust is the failure to consider
Nazism idolatrous. This failure is due to the implication
of the trivialization of the Holocaust in the sources of idolatry. Trivialization of the Holocaust accords what Fackenheim suggests is a posthumous victory to Nazism. 82
The Holocaust, according to two Jewish students of the
subject, is an example, unique in its excess, of how men
mistakenly put obedience above other, better traits. Seeking a model or prototype of this human failing in Western
civilization the authors hit upon the Akedah, the binding
of Isaac by Abraham, his father. Their reasoning is as
follows:
[In] the Judea-Christian tradition ... wrongdoing is utterly
clear . .. [It] is unauthorized pleasure. It is also very clear that
hardly anywhere in this tradition is there any story or statement to the effect that 'Thou shalt not obey legal orders from
superiors if they seem [sic?] atrocious to you.' Abraham, who
was prepared to obey the directive to murder his son Isaac as
a demonstration of his faith in the superior being Jaweh, is
not condemned for his blind obedience, but rather held up as
exemplary. 83
It is Abraham, the first Jew and the man who defied all
other men on earth in proclaiming God as the measure of
all things, who is here said to be the cause of the Holocaust. In other words, the cause of the Holocaust is
Judaism. Here, to be sure, is a literal trivialization of the
Holocaust. Obedience to Hitler by German Nazis is
counted the equivalent of obedience to God by Abraham
(and Isaac). It is clear the authors, Kren and Rappoport,
consider obedience to God or to Hitler the same because
honest rationality calls upon social scientists to regard all
objects of valuation as equal. The authors, as we say, do
not believe in God. But we have already suggested the
source of this atheism is not a theological investigation. It
is an opinion regarding theory, or rather the supposed
necessary limit upon theory imposed by the effort to insure man's freedom.
Harry Neumann has called social science of this type
modern Epicureanism because it seeks tranquility of mind
on the principle that Hfreedom from pain is man's summum bonum." If all ends are equal, if "no favoritism would
be shown to any particular claim," any suggestion of superiority or of divine election constitutes an impertinence, a
threat to science and peace. The equation of obedience to
God and to Hitler presupposes the equality of ends. But is
42
not knowledge of the "superhuman vantage point" reserved to God? This is the vantage point assumed by modern Epicureans who insist that "philosophy's quest to the
answer of the question of the good life is over." The good
life is freedom from pain and the good is pleasure. For this
reason modern Epicureans consider religion evil and
threatening. Religion cannot promise freedom from pain
as the equivalent of the good. Religion does not claim that
all ends are equal. In this religion and philosophy are together the enemies of "modern Epicureanism's final solution. " 84
In saying that Abraham was a model of "blind obedience" that should be despised, Kren and Rappoport wish
plainly to indict Judea-Christian civilization as the source
of the Holocaust. Above all, Judaism is the source of the
Holocaust.
The case of Abraham, the first Jew and the father of
Judaism, is undoubtedly pertinent to the subjects of obedience and idolatry. Abraham was the son of Terach, an
idol maker. Obedient to God, he cast his father's idols into
the fire. But Abraham was not a rebellious or whimsical
son. Hitler and Rimmler were obedient only to whim, to
themselves, and they cast people into furnaces. In other
words, the Nazis proceeded on the principle that Kren
and Rappoport believe to be the great truth after the
Holocaust, that "there is no morality per se, because there
is no immutable religious or legal standard for human behavior."85 Precisely the Nazis confounded pleasure, authorized or not, with the good. Abraham understood the
good to be distinct from pleasure, from his whim, because
he did not suppose he possessed divine knowledge to
regard all claims as equal. In recognizing reason he recognized its source. For this reason he rejected his father's
unreason or idolatry.
Abraham's obedience to God was disobedience to the
atrocious rule of men. More important, Abraham defied
Nimrod, the first "mighty man upon the earth ... a crafty
hero before God."86 The significance of Abraham's defiance of Nimrod could not be greater for an understanding
of idolatry. Nimrod is the founder of political idolatry, the
first to suppress men lefneh hashem, in God's name. Nimrod claimed the superhuman vantage point as his own.
Terach brought the idol-hating Abraham to Nimrod, but
Abraham did not recant. Nimrod, indulging an impulse
evidently natural to political idolators-it was of course to
become Hitler's trademark-cast Abraham into the fiery
furnace. But Abraham survived. Abraham is the founding
symbol, also in fire, that God and not man is the measure
of all things. Like the burning bush, Abraham becomes a
sign of the One that does not perish. But Abraham's
brother, Haran, supposing Abraham's survival demonstrated Abraham was now the new king, followed him into
the fire and, of course, he died.
Naturally, Judaism survived the burning of Jews by Hitler. Hitler, like Nimrod, was mistaken in thinking the soul
is a thing. Hitler was also mistaken in thinking man is a
god who can defy the order of being and assume the suWINTER 1982
�perhuman vantage point. As for the, trivialization of the
Holocaust, its source is the incapacity to distinguish the
blind obedience of Haran from Abraham's obedience.
Haran, unlike Abraham, obeyed any authority indiscrim·
inately, because he held that there is no morality per se.
l. Adolf Hi tie<, Mein Kampf, New York, Houghton Mifflin [1925, 1927],
1939, 221.
2. Emil Fackenheim, Encounters Between Judaism and Modern Philosophy: A Preface to Future Jewish Thought, New York 1973.
3. See, for example, Edward Alexander, "Stealing the Holocaust," Midstream, November, 1980, 46-50.
4. Paul R. Mendes-Flohr and Yehuda Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the
Modern World: A Documentary History, New York 1980, vii.
5. Dorothy Thompson, "A Review of Mein Kampf' in Hitler, Mein
Kampf, ii.
6. Allan Bloom, "The Study of Texts," in Melvin Richter, ed., Political
Theory and Political Education, Princeton 1980, 122.
7. Werner Maser, Hitler's Mein Kampf: an Analysis, London 1970, 11.
8. Mein Kampf, 223.
9. Mein Kampf, 221.
10. Mein Kampf, 155.
11. Mein Kampf, 221.
12. Mein Kampf, 155-56.
13. Fackenheim, Encounters, 189.
14. Fackenheim, Encounters, 175.
15. Fackenheim, Encounters, 190.
16. Fackenheim, Encounters, 173.
17. Quoted in Fackenheim, Encounters, 178.
18. Fackenheim, Encounters, 179.
19. Fackenheim, Encounters, 217.
20. Fackenheim, Encounters, 187.
21. Fackenheim, Encounters, 187.
22. Fackenheim, Encounters, 194.
23. Fackenheim, Encounters, 196.
24. Fackenheirn, Encounters, 196.
25. Fackenheim, Encounters, 190.
26. Fackenheim, Encounters, 190-91.
27. Fackenheim, Encounters, 190.
28. Fackenheim, Encounters, 192.
29. Fackenheim, Encounters, 197, 187.
30. Fackenheim, Encounters, 191, 194.
31. Fackenheim, Encounters, 217, 223.
32. Karl LOwith, Nature, History, and Existentialism, Evanston, Illinois
1966, 10.
33. Fackenheim, Encounters, 191.
34. G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic, New York 1969, 50.
35. Fackenheim, Encounters, 190.
36. Leo Strauss, "What is Political Philosophy?" in What is Political
Philosophy and Other Studies, Glencoe, Illinois 1959,9-55.
37. Strauss, Political Philosophy, 54.
38. Aristotle, Metd.physics l072a30.
39. Eric Voegelin, The Ecumenic Age, Baton Rouge 1974, 188-190.
40. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Walter Kaufman,
ed., The Portable Nietzsche New York 1960, 243.
41. Kaufman, Nietzsche, 225.
42. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, Chicago 1953, 35-80.
43. Strauss, Natural Right, 44.
44. Strauss, Natural Right, 44.
45. Strauss, Natural Right, 46.
46. Strauss, Natural Right, 46.
47. I. Husik, "Hellenism and Judaism," Philosophical Essays, Oxford
1952, 13.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
48. Harry Neumann, "Torah or Philosophy? Jewish Alternatives to
Modern Epicureanism," The Journal of Value Inquiry, 1977, 23.
49. Voegelin, The Ecumenic Age, 182, 181.
50. Eugene Miller, ''Positivism, Historicism, and Political Inquiry," The
American Political Science Review, 66 1972, 796-817.
51. Bloom, "The Study of Texts," 122.
52. Exodus, 32:4.
53. Daniel, 4:25.
54. Fackenheim, Encounters, 196.
55. Neumann, "Torah or Philosophy?" 23.
56. Quoted in Voegelin, The Ecumenic Age, 182. "Of the gods we be·
lieve, and of men we know, that by a necessity of nature they rule wher·
ever they can. We neither made this law nor were the first to act on it;
we found it to exist before us _and we shall leave it to exist forever after
us; we only make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, if you
were as strong as we are, would act as we do."
57. Alan Bullock, "The Political Ideas of Adolf Hitler," in Howard Fertig
ed., The Third Reich, New York 1975, 352.
58. Adolf Hitler, Speech, 13 April 1923; Adolf Hitler, Speech, 2 April
1928, quoted in Bullock, "The Political Ideas of Adolf Hitler," 352.
59. Voegelin, The Ecumenic Age, 182.
60. Voegelin, The Ecumenic Age, 182.
61. Mein Kampf, 221.
62. Mein Kampf, 442, 217.
63. Mein Kampf, 288-89.
64. Mein Kampf, 841, 195.
65. Adolf Hitler, Speech 1932, cited in Mein Kampf, 402n6.
66. Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, Chicago 1952, 107ff.
67. John Humphrey Noyes, History of American Socialisms, Philadelphia
1870. Reprint edition titled, Strange Cults and Utopias of Nineteenth
Century America, New York 1966, vii, 626.
68. Norman 0. Brown, Life Against Death, New York 1961, 155.
69. Donatien A. F. de Sade, Philosophy in the Bedroom, Paris 1795, in
Richard Seaver and Austryn Wainhouse, eds., The Marquis de Sade, the
Complete Justine Philosophy in the Bedroom and Other Writings, New
York 1965, 330-1, 333.
70. Fackenheim, Encounters, 188.
71. Genesis, 9:4, 5.
72. "[T]he emancipation of society from Judaism" is equivalent to the
emancipation of man from exchange, "the bill of exchange [being] ...
the real god of the Jew." Because "Judaism attains its apogee [and its
"universal dominance"] with the perfection of civil society," the destruction of Judaism is equivalent to and necessary for the realm of free·
dam or the abolition of civil society. Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Ques·
tion" in T. B. Bottomore, ed., Karl Marx Early Writings, New York 1964,
40, 37, 38. Note the remarks of Erich Fromm on this topic in the forward
to this volume, iv-v.
73. Mein Kampf, 442.
74. Mein Kampf, 416, 487.
75. Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving, New York 1956, 15.
76. Mein Kampf, 410,412.
77. Mein Kampf, 988.
78. Mein Kampf, 647.
79. AdOlf Hitler, Speech 26 March 1936 in N. H. Baynes, ed., The
Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April, 1922-August, 1939, 2 vo1s. New York
1969, II, 1317.
80. Fackenhdm, Encounters, 209.
81. Fackenheim, Encounters, 211.
82. Fackenheim, Encounters, 207.
83. George M. K:ren and Leon Rappoport, The Holocaust and the Crisis
of Human Behavior, New York 1980, 141.
84. Neumann, "Toiah or Philosophy?" 17, 20.
85. Kren and Rappoport, The Holocaust, 142.
86. Genesis, 10:8-9.
43
�·Proof and Pascal
Brother Robert Smith
To F. H. and to my friends just off Bambury Road
In his lecture, "Power and Grace," Douglas Allanbrook
said of Pascal:
One final question: what does Pascal's attitude toward
proof have to do with him personally, with Pascal as a
man?
For both Thrasymachus and Pascal, however, the voices of
power and persuasion are the only thinkable ways of talking
about politics. Reasoning about politics with any purity of discourse is foolishness. In reading over this pensee [103], most of
you have probably been struck by the lack of anything that
could be called . .. dialectic . .. the complete absence of premises . .. Pascal seldom argues: he states persuasively what is to
him the case. 1
Allanbrook may have been flattering us. When we hear
Pascal speak we may often be so dazzled by his epigrams,
his examples, and his similes that we do not think to ask
whether he is talking reasonably. It might not occur to us
that one example does not necessarily prove a general
statement or that his lack of dialectic is consciously antiphilosophical.
.
.
In his lecture, Allanbrook made good hts charges agamst
Pascal: that Pascal says we have no power to discover justice that according to Pascal we cannot know the differenc~ between a just and an unjust action, and that justice
has no power in this world.
These are shocking charges. They ought to make us ask
questions about Pascal himself. Did he reject argument
on all matters? Not only about politics, but about all that
is important in our lives? Why? What substitute for reasoning, for dialectical inquiry and proof dtd he propose?
How does Pascal proceed in a typical section of the Pensees? Does he argue? What is his attitude toward dialectics, toward philosophical inquiry in the tradition of Plato
and Aristotle, or theology, as practiced by St. Augustine
and St. Thomas? Does Pascal argue about philosophy and
theology or does he "state persuasively what is to him the
case" and. no more?
A second consideration. Aside from his practice in the
Pensees, what does Pascal think of proof itself? Does he
think it impossible? If it is possible, when is it so?
A tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, Brother Robert Smith professed membership in the Order of Christian Brothers in 1939.
A lecture read at Annapolis on October 30, 1981.
44
1 Happiness
How can Pascal set out to defend the Christian religion
without resort to argument? He says he intends to show
that religion is not contrary to reason, to make it attractive, to make good men wish it were true, and, fmally, to
show that it is true. Wh at d o " sh ow, " " rnake, " an d "' "
ts
mean to him?
First a few remarks on the order, or lack of it, in Pascal's
text. Until forty years ago, when the work of a man named
Lafuma appeared, editors had arranged Pascal's thoughts
at their discretion. Lafuma showed that Pascal had tentatively chosen some thoughts for a work, an Apology for the
Christian Religion, for which the Pensees are only the
working notes. Pascal decided on twenty-seven numbered
headings like Order, Beginning, Conclusion. Not quite
chapters, they appear to be divisions of a whole work.
With his thoughts written out helter-skelter on large foho
sheets, he selected those that related to his division headings, strung them together with needle and thread, and
placed them in packets, each packet with a headmg. Lafuma was the first to realize the significance of these arrangements, especially the titles and needlework. Oth~r
arguments have since been advanced to conflfm Lafum~ s
view that Pascal selected about one th!rd of the matenal
included in what we know as the Pensees for his projected
work.
I have chosen to examine Section Ten of those thoughts
selected from the Pensees. It is called The Soverign Good. I
have picked it because it provides a good ~xample of Pascal's last, provisional arrangement, and gives a clear picture of his procedure:
The sovereign good. Debate about the sovereign good.
That you may be content with yourself and the good things innate in you.
There is some contradiction, because they [the Stoics) finally
advise suicide. Oh, how happy is a life we throw off like the
plague! (147)
WINTIR 1982
�Second part. Man without faith can know neither true good
nor justice.
'
All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However
different the means they may employ, they all strive towards
this goal. The reason why some go to war and some do not is
the same desire in both, but interpreted in two different ways.
The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is
the motive of every act of every man, including those who go
and hang themselves.
Yet for very many years no one without faith has ever reached
the goal at which everyone is continually aiming. All men
complain: princes, subjects, nobles, commoners, old, young,
strong, weak, learned, ignorant, healthy, sick, in every country, at every time, of all ages, and all conditions.
A test which has gone on so long, without pause or change,
really ought to convince us that we are incapable of attaining
the good by our own efforts. But example teaches us very little. No two examples are so exactly alike that there is not
some subtle difference, and that is what makes us expect that
our expectations will not be disappointed this time as they
were last time. So, while the present never satisfies us, experience deceives us, and leads us on from one misfortune to another until death comes as the ultimate and eternal climax.
dence Pascal would have preferred this order. Number 148
should perhaps precede 147 because 148 begins with a
general statement of Pascal's point in this section: "Man
without faith can know neither true good nor justice."
This expression, "without faith," reminds us of the place
of Section Ten in the Apology. In saying, "Man without
faith," so absolutely, so uncompromisingly, without any
nuance or admission, Pascal runs head-long against a philosophical and theological tradition that he knows and refuses to follow. He does not turn to Aristotle, who was
known to the men around him, or to St. Thomas, whom
he had read selectively, or even to St. Augustine, who says
that the philosophical writings of the ancients, especially
those of Cicero, helped him on the way to his conversion
in the garden. (St. Augustine, for example, thanks Cicero's
lost work, Hortensius, for his turn to the search for wisdom
instead of the pursuit of political and financial success.)
Unlike Aristotle, who had a great deal to say about happi·
ness in the Ethics, and even defined it, Pascal does not
refer to human experience for his understanding of happiness. Instead, he says, "Man without faith can know
neither true good nor justice."
Pascal expects his reader first to despair of finding guidance by his reason. He hopes then he will be receptive to
the religious alternative.
The first sentence in the development of Section Ten
What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim
but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all
that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries
in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things
that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are,
though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled
only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words,
by God himself.
reads:
God alone is man's true good, and since man abandoned him
it is a strange fact that nothing in nature has been found to
take his place: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages,
leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war,
famine, vice, adultery, incest. Since losing his true good, man
is capable of seeing it in anything, even his own destruction,
although it is so contrary at once to God, to reason, and to
nature.
How do we react when we hear this sentence? Pascal
expects us to agree. Very likely he is not mistaken, for the
contrary is too unlikely.
Pascal, however, does not even offer the weak argument that the contrary is too unlikely. He expects us to
agree without question, and he is willing to proceed with
that unexamined assent.
Some seek their good in authority, some in intellectual inquiry and knowledge, some in pleasure.
has not been discussed. We think we know well enough
Others again, who have indeed come closer to it, have found
it impossible that this universal good, desired by all men,
should lie in any of the particular objects which can only be
possessed by one individual and which, once shared, cause
their possessors more grief over the part they lack than satisfaction over the part they enjoy as their own. They have realized that the true good must be such that it may be possessed
by all men at once without diminution or envy, and that no
one should be able to lose it against his will. Their reason is
that this desire is natural to man, since all men inevitably feel
it, and man cannot be without it, and they therefore conclude ... (148f
A word on the numbering of the thoughts within the
sections. In Section Ten, Lafuma, relying only on his
judgement, put pensee 147 before 148. There is no eviTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
All men seek happiness.
We are not aware that the crucial term, "happiness,"
what the sentence, "All men seek happiness," means, and
that is all Pascal needs. In contrast, Aristotle, who began
his discussion of happiness in the Ethics with just such an
unexamined use of the word, devotes the whole of Ethics
I and most of X to clarifying what the word means.
Section Ten continues:
All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However
different the means they may employ, they all strive towards
this goal. The reason some go to war and some do not is the
same desire in both, but interpreted in two different ways.
The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is
the motive of every act of every man, including those who go
and hang themselves.
Something extraordinary is happening in these sentences. Pascal has got us to agree that "happiness" applies
indiscriminately to anything that man seeks. We have
45
�agreed that, to use his example, there is no difference between leading a charge and leading a peace march.
Had we realized how Pascal was using the term, most of
us would have questioned whether happiness in that
vague sense is the goal of all man's efforts. Most of us
think "happiness" is a term with many complex meanings. We think that what we are doing now is better or
worse, more or less conducive to happiness, than what we
were doing, say, two years ago. We think there are kinds
and degrees of happiness.
Pascal has made us accept uncritically an apparently obvious statement containing a term whose meaning seems
equally obvious. With the acceptance of that statement,
we have been led to agree that all the things we strive for
are the same. Am I characterizing Pascal fairly?
Already wary of the consequences of our uncritical acceptance of the obvious, we will be even more suspicious
of what follows:
Yet, for very many years no one without faith has ever reached
the goal at which everyone is continually aiming.
Once more, we have a general statement. This statement is not, however, offered without discussion. We are
asked to accept it because there are indications in our experience that it is true:
All men complain: princes, subjects, nobles, commoners, old,
young, strong, weak, learned, ignorant, healthy, sick, in every
country, at every time, of all ages, and all conditions.
The opening sentence seems plausible because we know
that we all complain, and so we cannot imagine anyone
else not complaining. In that case, he would be, well, odd.
No, everyone complains. A parade of characters passes
through our imagination-all complaining as we imagine
them. So we agree.
Without protest, we are accepting a new definition of
happiness. Happiness now means "something that satisfies
us completely." Only when happiness means complete
satisfaction does our complaining show that no one has
reached happiness without faith. Because all men, including ourselves, complain, they cannot be. completely satisfied, i.e. happy. Everything comes out so clearly and with
such assurance that we agree. No one, including ourselves,
is happy. But, you will agree, Pascal's procedure does not
amount to an argument.
Tacitly and guardedly, Pascal admits that his conclusion
is open to question:
A test which has gone on so long, without pause or change,
really ought to convince us that we are incapable of attaining
the good by our own efforts.
By saying, "really ought to convince us," Pascal protests
too much. He raises the possibility that we have not been
convinced that we are incapable of attaining the good by
our own efforts. Why do we all keep scurrying about so
46
much when we really ought to know that all our efforts
are doomed to failure?
But example teaches us very little. No two examples are so exactly alike that there is not some subtle difference, and that is
what makes us expect that our expectations will not be disappointed this time as they were last time.
Pascal says we keep scurrying about because we think
that the future will be different. We think that we will be
happy next time because then, everything will turn our
way, to our complete satisfaction. We think this because
we want to, not because we are convinced by proof.
Pascal's argument that mere reason leads to despair
would be conclusive if our failure to be completely satisfied was the same thing as complete misery. Then we
would not get out of bed in the morning. In fact, though,
we do get some satisfaction out of writing our essays, such
as they are, and hope to write better ones. There is more
than a "subtle difference" between failing to be completely satisfied and suffering complete misery. We are
not fools to keep on hoping to improve our situation. A
more modest definition of happiness might make us accept some complaint. Even the chance to complain may
occasion a certain happiness.
I know this may sound unfair to Pascal. I am not without question granting him his definition, and so I lead you
to doubt his word. Pascal would not be at all surprised by
what we have done, nor would he think us guilty of bad
manners. I am pointing out that Pascal has, without saying so, substituted a definition of happiness derived from
faith for one derived from ordinary experience. A definition from faith, which restricts happiness to the complete
and unqualified happiness that comes from seeing God
face to face, supports his argument and will find acceptance among his readers if they are believing, though nonpracticing, Christians. The Apology was, in fact, addressed
to such Christians.
So, while the present never satisfies us, experience deceives
us, and leads us on from one misfortune to another until death
comes as the ultimate and eternal climax.
A man without a conventional religious upbringing
would be unprepared for Pascal's assertions that "the
present never satisifies us" and "experience deceives us"
or Hleads us on from one misfortune to another." He would
be even more unprepared for the assertion that death is
the "ultimate and eternal climax." This is the language of
sermons heard in childhood. It is useful for evoking sentiments felt then. Someone who has these sentiments to recall will follow the whole resounding periodic sentence in
the way Pascal intends. Someone who has not been exposed to religious oratory is not so likely to follow it
unhesitatingly.
I am saying that this enthusiastic tone will seem sincere
and justified to a reader who can bring to the text religious
WINTER 1982
�associations from childhood. Those qf us who have a deep
religious background, strengthened by childhood memories, will be carried along by Pascal's prose to his conclu-
do the things we did when we believed, the responses will
follow, revived by the automatism of habit:
sion: the present never satisfies us, experience deceives us
For we must make no mistake about ourselves: we are as
much automaton as mind . .. habit provides the strongest
proofs and those that are most believed. It inclines the autom-
with its endless variety and promise of something better,
we are led from failure to failure until lastly, our life ends
in a crash-the last resounding crash-death.
The text we have been studying is a powerful piece of
rhetoric, worthy of a sermon in the grand tradition, be·
cause, like all successful oratory, it ties the speaker's mes·
sage to sympathies dormant in the hearer's memory. Like
a speech in a dramatic production that makes a character
come to life, Pascar s prose succeeds in evoking our own
experience. Racine realized this when, smarting under
Pascal's boutade that a good playwright was as bad as a
public poisoner, he told the authorities at Port-Royal that
their darling Pascal was himself a dramatist in the Provin·
cia! Letters.
Pascal, in fact, has been practicing oratorical art. He be·
gan with something that any reader could accept without
reflection. He went on to talk about our futile search for
happiness. Those readers whose experience confirms
what they read, believe him because they find the truth of
his words in themselves, just as Pascal claimed to find the
truth of Montaigne' s words in his own, not Montaigne' s,
experience.
Pascal's discourse is, then, limited to those who have
had a conventional religious upbringing in childhood. His
discourse is like a discussion among a closed circle of
friends who agree on what is desirable but differ as to how
to achieve it.
To get his hearers to turn towards God, Pascal relies on
reviving deeply ingrained beliefs dormant in their memo·
ries. When he began the Pensees, he must have thought of
making the Apology a series of letters like the Provincial
Letters:
A letter of exhortation to a friend, to induce him to seek. He
will reply: 'But what good will it do me? Nothing comes of it.'
... The answer to that is 'the Machine.' (5)
After the letter urging men to seek God, write the letter about
removing obstacles, that is the argument about the Machine
... (11)
What does he mean by the "Machine?" It is the response
that arises in us when we see something that once moved
us deeply, in a new context:
The fact that kings are habitually seen in the company of
guards, drums, officers, and all the things which prompt automatic responses of respect and fear has the result that, when
they are sometimes alone . .. their features are enough to strike
respect and fear into their subjects ... (25)
The "Machine" also helps to recall dormant religious
sentiments. We who once actively believed can again experience the responses we made when we believed. If we
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
aton which leads the mind unconsciously along with it. (821)
In addressing this audience of those who once strongly
believed, Pascal defines happiness as the result of a direct
vision of a personal God, whom we know even as we are
known:
What else does this craving for happiness . .. proclaim but
that there was once in man a true happiness . .. an infinite
abyss which can be filled only ... by God himself. (148)
Does Pascal believe this reliance on faith is our only
hope for knowing anything about happiness? Cannot we,
with our reason, our good sense, explore experience and
discover something worthwhile? Does Pascal go so far as
to reject the possibility that man can acquire for himself a
high .and noble happiness? He does.
Debate about the sovereign good.
That you may be content with yourself and the good things innate in you. (147)3
The quotation is from Seneca and it is given so that
Pascal can immediately reject it:
There is some contradiction, because they [the Stoics] finally
advise suicide. Oh, how happy is a life we throw off like the
plague!
With this sarcastic comment, Pascal dismisses Seneca
and all others who find in man's nature a genuine good
capable of being the basis for a moral life. Man, in his fallen nature, cannot find any of the good things that Seneca
attributes to him.
God alone is man's true good, and since man abandoned him
it is a strange fact that nothing in nature has been found to
take his place: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages,
leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war,
famine, vice, adultery, incest. Since losing his true good, man
is capable of seeing it in anything . ..
Pascal does not think that we can ever come to know
what is best by reasoning about our own nature or the
things around us. We have not succeeded in rising to that
knowledge and we never will.
2 Proof
From Section Ten, a single, though typical, section of
the Pensees, we have gotten some idea of the Pascal's conception of the limitations of philosophical inquiry. We will
be more confident we know his mind if we look at another
47
�work where he discusses proof and qur ability to produce
it. In a short essay called, On the Geometrical Art, he says:
To show how to make unbeatable proofs . .. all we have to do
is to explain the method that geometry uses, for geometry
teaches it perfectly by example.4
[Attempts to clarify these truths] confuse everything, and de-
A few lines further he says:
What goes beyond geometry, is beyond
ness because such knowledge cannot come to the level of
speech. Geometry falls short of the highest method of
proof.
.
We should not try to clarify these first truths, known
from the heart. Attempts to clarify these truths bring obscurity and disagreement. We are better off without them:
us.5
stroying all order and light, destroy themselves and get lost in
inextricable difficulty.8
We know the truth not only through our reason but also
[Geometry] does not define any of these things: space, time,
movement, number, equality, nor large numbers of similar
thirigs, because these terms naturally designate the things
which they signify for anyone who knows the language . .. and
any clarification which one might wish to bring to them will
bring more obscurity than instruction.9
through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first
principles ... like space, time, motion, number .. it is on such
knowledge, coming from the heart and instinct, that reason
The passage immediately following shows the limits of
philosophical discourse, in Pascal's conception:
Reason cannot go beyond geometry, the model of perfect reasoning. How does geometry serve as a model for
reasoning? In the Pensees we read:
has to depend and base all its argument The heart feels that
there are three spatial dimensions and that there is an infinite
series of numbers, and reason goes on to demonstrate that
there are no two square numbers of which one is double the
other. Principles are felt, propositions proved, and both with
For there is nothing weaker than the discourse of those who
wish to define these primitive words. What necessity is there
for explaining the word "man?" What advantage did Plato
think he was offering us in saying that man is a featherless
certainty though by different means. (110)
biped? As if the idea which I have naturally and which I can-
Pascal speaks of knowledge we have through the heart
as sentiment (751), from sentir, "to feel," "to sense." The
connection is more than verbal. Through the heart we
have knowledge that is certain and cannot be doubted
but, like our knowledge of "green" or "soft," cannot be
expressed.
Geometrical reasoning is perfect because it begins in
the knowledge of the heart:
Geometry only sustains things that are clear and unchanging
through natural reason. That is why geometry is perfectly
true, since nature supports it where reasoning fails. This
order, the most perfect on the human level, consists not in defining everything or demonstrating nothing, but in remaining
on the middle ground of not defining things that are clear and
understood by all men, and of not defining all others, of not
proving what is known by all men, of demonstrating all
others.
Like Pascal's favorite theologian, St. Augustine, we
know what time is as long as we do not try to say what it is.
We know what time is because our heart tells us what it is.
When we try to clarify what is already clear in its own way,
we only add confusion. Nothing that we know is clearer to
us than time or number. Time and number are examples
of first known truths, which cannot be clarified:
Geometry, when it has arrived at the first known truths, stops
there and asks that they be granted, since it has nothing more
clear from which to prove them.?
The first known truths are geometry's strength and its
weakness. They are its strength because they give geometry a universally agreed starting point. They are its weak-
48
not express were not more exact and more sure than the one
he has given me in his useless and even ridiculous example,
since a man does not lose his humanity by losing his two legs
and a capon does not gain humanity by having its feathers
removed. 10
In a moment of euphoria, Pascal said that to be a
geometer is the most beautiful profession in the world.
Geometry, however, cannot define its starting points. Pascal exalts geometry at the same time that he casts doubt
on other inquiries that attempt to define their starting
points. Geometry is the best thing man can do on his own.
In contrast, Plato believed that philosophy should begin
with the study of "primitive words" such as space, time,
and equality. He urged apprentice philosophers to start by
inquiring into the greatness, the smallness, and the equality of their fingers.
Just as when he held that the true good could only be
found in faith, Pascal by refusing to inquire into the nature of space, time, and equality rejects much of the work
of philosophers before and after him.
But there is a more serious obstacle to achieving a full
grasp of the world through geometry. In its three branches
~movement, number, and space-geometry lies between
the infinitely great and the infinitely small:
Consequently . .. [the three branches] are all contained between nothingness and the infinitely great . .. and they are infinitely removed from either of these extremes. 11
Man is not to conceive of these two infinities but to admire them. Their contemplation will keep man from making any rash statements about the whole of the universe
or the combination of its parts. The world is a sphere
whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is
WINTER 1982
�nowhere. Our discourse can start with the inexpressible
data of the heart, but these do not correspond to any starting point in the universe. Worrying ab,aut whether Copernicus is right makes no sense. We will never have a sense
of the whole, we can have no hope of reaching an end, a
limit. We must remain in an unpretentious middleness. At
no stage of our intellectual journey are we any further
along than when we started.
Descartes is right in thinking that things are put together out of matter and motion, but when he hopes to
construct in thought a world so like the one God made
that one cannot tell the difference between the two, the
two infinites will mock him.
Descartes useless and uncertain. (887)
Because they failed to contemplate these two infinities, men
have rashly undertaken to probe into nature as if there were
some proportion between themselves and her. (199)
We have no starting point, no fulcrum for the lever that
is supposed to move the world: the infinities " ... meet in
God and in God alone."
Geometry, the best of the sciences, cannot help us say
where we are. Even if it could:
... we do not think the whole of . .. [geometry} is worth one
hour of trouble. (84)
Remember, though, that geometry, despite these limitations, " ... alone observes the true method, while all
other discourses are by natural necessity in some sort of
confusion. 12
3 Morality and Politics
What does Pascal think about other forms of discourse,
discourse which, because it is beyond geometry, is also beyond us?
Pascal thinks there are only two domains in which men
aspire to excellence: science, on the one hand, and moral~
ity and politics on the other. He thinks we cannot succeed
in either domain because each demands that we obtain
the unattainable, namely, a comprehensive grasp of the
world.
We have, in a preliminary way, seen how little Pascal
thinks of our ability to see what is good. Because of this inability, we cannot establish moral order in our lives. Without faith, we have no reason to say that incest is inferior to
anything else that attracts men. Without grace, selfishness
is our ultimate guide.
In Allanbrook's lecture, we meditated on our inability
to discover what justice is and our consequent inability to
establish any political order. We are living in an insane
asylum, Pascal says. How could Plato or Aristotle, in the
Laws or the Politics, pretend to show us just ways of living
in society? They had no such intention. They were not serious when they wrote those books. They knew enough of
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the world to see that laughing with friends is our only serious occupation:
... When [Plato and Aristotle] amused themselves by composing their Laws and Politics, they did it for fun. It was the
least philosophical and least serious part of their lives: the
most philosophical part was living simply and without fuss.
If they wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a
madhouse. (533)
Since we live in an insane asylum, it might be useful to
ask our fellow inmates to treat one another less cruelly:
One cannot ask the insane to discover justice.
If we leave the matter there, you may wish to dismiss
Pascal as a misanthrope. It is fairer to try once more to see
things as he sees them before we bid him farewell. Let us
look at a passage where he describes the real difficulties of
any talk about human authority. A present-day writer on
Pascal says that the following passage is a paradigm of the
insuperable difficulties that Pascal thought stand in the
way of not only political, but of all discourseY
... Ordinary people honor those who are highly born, the
half-clever ones despise them, saying that birth is a matter of
chance, not personal merit. Really clever men honor them,
not for the same reason as ordinary people, but for deeper
motives. Pious folk with more zeal than knowledge despise
them regardless of the reason which makes clever men honor
them, because they judge men in the new light of piety, but
perfect Christians honor them because they are guided by a
still higher light.
So opinions swing back and forth, from pro to con, according
to one's lights. (90)
Pascal's statement here is anti-Cartesian. Descartes
held that if we could not persuade others of our meaning,
we did not know what we were talking about. Pascal says
we cannot persuade others unless they share our starting
point in discourse. Not normally transmitted by one
speaker to another, the starting point is given from nature, as in geometry, or by custom, or by private experi~
ence, or by faith.
Anybody who does not see the wider bearing of the passage we are about to study, might dismiss it as a piece of
baroque rhetoric, an example of Jansenist obsession with
the Fall of Man. But Pascal means what he says, in this instance, to apply to all human discourse.
For Pascal, the pattern of all knowledge about matters
moral or religious is illumination from above, and no dis~
course can be successful without it. With illumination
from above, lesser truths are made valid. Without it, they
are misleading.
Pascal has listed five successive opinions:
l. Ordinary people honor those who are highly born.
In an earlier pensee, he tells us the dark grounds for this
honor:
49
�I am supposed not to honor a man dressed in brocade and at-
tended by seven or eight lackeys. Why! He will have me
thrashed if I do not bow to him. (89)
Our ordinary man thinks as he does because he fears
the strong arms and stout sticks of the lackeys who follow
their expensively dressed master. Don Giovanni frightens
Leporello into submission by reminding him that stout
thugs ready to use their whips will punish his failure to
obey.
2.... the half-clever ones despise them [the highly born], say·
ing that birth is a matter of chance, not personal merit.
Pascal himself takes this view when he asks whether
sailors would allow someone to direct a ship at sea merely
because he was the first-born son of some nobleman.
Birth is not enough to determine the command of a ship.
Why should it be accepted for the rule of a country?
3. Really clever people honor them, not for the same reason
as ordinary people, but for deeper motives.
Pascal tells us their motives. Reason cannot discover
any universally accepted sign of legitimacy apart from custom or bring forth any laws that all men will think are just.
As soon as people begin to dispute about who should rule
them or whether the commands of the rulers are just,
there will be the greatest political evil-civil war. A really
clever man will know that we can never be sure about
right or wrong and that convention only determines who
rules us, president, king, parliament. The clever man will
say we should leave well enough alone because things will
only get worse through civil war. Protest against injustice
arouses passion-and passion may lead to rioting in the
streets, repression, or anarchy.
4. Pious folk with more zeal than knowledge despise them
[the highly born] regardless of the reason which makes clever
men honor them, because they judge men in the new light of
piety.
Here Pascal seems to be thinking of people who, in the
enthusiasm of new converts to religion, think that one
need not care about political matters or even fear civil disorder. They may be well-advised to place their hopes in
heaven, but they are short-sighted in not realizing what a
great evil civil war is in this life, a life that they and others
must share.
We should pause here to note how "opinions swing
Dack and forth, from pro to con" among the four groups.
Two groups say we should honor those highly born, two
say we should not. The two groups who say we should
honor them do not say we should do so for the same reasons. Neither do the two groups who say we should
despite the high-born.
Most important in all this is the extreme, perhaps insurmountable difficulty that those who hold one set of opin-
50
ions have in persuading those who hold other opinions. In
abject fear of the whip, an ordinary man like Leporello
does not need to be convinced to obey because of the
evils of civil war. He probably will never be detached
enough to think about the matter. Leporello does think
for a moment how unjust it is that he should remain outside as a sentinel while his master disports indoors, but
the mention of the whip makes him forget that thought.
Those who fear civil war will probably riot want -fo give
their reasons for enduring present evils to men like Leporello. They will also find it discouraging to argue with halfclever men who hope in the future and do not fear civil
war because they have not experienced it.
The new converts, who believe they have nothing to
learn from others, are similarly isolated and unlikely to be
able to talk to any of the others.
What of the fifth opinion?
5.... but perfect Christians honor them [the high-born] because they [the perfect Christians] are guided by a still higher
light.
Perfect Christians share Pascal's belief that we should
submit to those who hold power over us because we are
thereby submitting to God. God has ordained that the unjust power of rulers should weigh upon us in punishment
for original sin.
The first four explanations are all consistent with the
last one. If it is true, they all can be partially true as well,
even if they do contradict one another. Rulers do have the
power to frighten and punish us. We are in this slavish
state because an angry God has left us prey to the passions of the strong because we rebelled against him. Fear
belongs to a fallen nature. So does the cruelty of the
powerful toward the weak. The doctrine of the Fall accounts for Leporello's fear of Don Giovanni.
The doctrine of the Fall also accounts for the second
explanation, which holds the highly born in contempt.
Men are all equal in the state of innocence. None are by
nature superior. All are subject only to God and because
of him are well-disposed toward one another. Because of
the Fall, however, the restraints on human behavior have
been removed and the strong unfairly try to dominate the
weak. Their domination is unjust in itself, but that injustice is our reward for having rebelled against the only naturally superior ruler. The second explanation is both true
and incomplete. The fifth explanation confirms and completes its truth.
The third explanation, that of the really clever, who
fear civil war and on that account respect authority, is
based on experience. It is consistent with the fifth reason,
that of the perfect Christians.
The fourth explanation, that of the zealous convert,
though religious, is insufficient because it does not consider the crucial religious truth-that only the redeemer
can redress the Fall.
WINTER 1982
�The Fall and Redemption are the ~ey that resolves the
conflicting opinions about authority. That key opens the
understanding to whatever truth is contained in any hu·
man opinions. Pascal is calling all valid discourse about
moral matters-matters other than geometry-"ciphered
language." The doctrine of the Fall and Redemption
breaks that code. Supplied by faith, it illumines our
searching just as our instinctive knowledge of number illumines our geometrical quest. This key is given by God.
Those to whom he does not give it wander in the incompleteness of one of the first four partial truths. Only with
the fifth explanation, that of the perfect Christians, can
we preserve what validity lies in each of those explanations while avoiding their limitations, their semi-falsity.
Pascal would consider this account of the incompleteness of our knowledge of a prime political matter a paradigm of our knowledge in general. All knowledge of what
is important, of what is true for man and for the world, is
fragmentary.
_ Like the two infinities, all knowledge meets and is comprehended in and by God. Only those who see him face to
face will see clearly the general truths. Goodness, justice,
and happiness are revealed only dimly and in faith to
those who have the key of the Fall and Redemption.
Pascal uses the language of seduction when he wants to
make us feel as he does about these matters. God overcomes our resistance, he says, by an overpowering delight,
not by argument or proof. Pascal thinks God gives us the
ability to accept enlightenment, the will to surrender, because of Christ's death for us. Not only does he not think
we should look for arguments, he believes that to hope to
achieve enlightenment by them is blasphemous. To obtain moral knowledge by human means would make the
Cross useless. (808).
To know what Pascal thinks is true, we would have to
see within ourselves what he sees. By his own principles,
he can only hope to point us in a direction that leads us
on. He can remind us of the advantages of accepting
Christian doctrine. But Pascal also thinks that God must
move us to accept in order for us to yield. Short of that experience and lacking an interpretation of it that would be
identical with Pascal's own, all that we can do is look at
Pascal himself.
Before we leave him, let me read one passage where he
tells us how alone he felt in the world. Let us hear Pascal
describe what must have been his state of mind before the
religious experience on the night of Monday, November
23, 1654, that made him turn to God.
When . .. I survey the whole universe in its dumbness and
man left to himself with no light, as though lost in a corner of
the universe . .. incapable of knowing anything, I am moved
to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying
desert island, who wakes up quite lost and with no means of
escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive
people to despair. I see other people around me . .. I ask them
if they are better informed than I, and they say they are not.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Then these lost and wretched creatures look around and find
some attractive objects to which they become addicted and
attached. For my part, I have never been able to form such
attachments ... (198)
How consistent his language is with what must have
been his feelings! Never having been able to form any attachment to people or things around him, Pascal speaks of
those who have as "wretched and lost." We can see how
much religious reassurance and enlightenment must have
meant to him.
It need not be true that Pascal always felt the way he
did in this passage. "Never" may be a hyperbole justified
by the depth of his revulsion for things or people he no
longer admired. "Never" shows how unimportant they
were to him when he wrote those words.
Another sign of this solitariness is the harshness with
which he speaks about love, the passion of love:
A man goes to the window to see the people passing by; if I
pass by, can I say that he went there to see me? No, for he is
not thinking of me in particular. But what about a person
who loves someone for the sake of her beauty; does he love
her? No, for smallpox, which will destroy beauty without destroying the person, will put an end to his love for her.
And if someone loves me for my judgement or my memory,
do they love me? me, myself? Where then is this self, if it is
neither in the body nor the soul? . .. we never love anyone ex-
cept for borrowed qualities. (688)
How much must it have meant to such a man to have
felt that he knew that God cared for him, and that Christ
had died for his sake. We who remain outside this experience will remain unaffected by his account. Some of us
may even want to say that he is describing a delusion.
There is no need to argue about the matter. Nothing
could have been more important for Pascal than a revelation which, in his own words, brought him "certainty, cer-
tainty, peace." From the high point of that experience he
henceforth judged all else.
It will be no surprise to us that he could not prove what
he said, or, indeed, successfully point to it.
1. Douglas Allanbrook, ''Power and Grace," The College, January 1977.
2. All quotations from the Pensies are from the translation of A. J.
Krailsheimer, New York 1966.
3. Seneca, Ep. 20.8.
4. Blaise Pascal, Oeuvres Completes, Louis Lafuma, ed., Paris 1963,348.
Translations by Brother Robert Smith.
5. Pascal, Oeuvres, 349.
6. Pascal, Oeuvres, 350.
7. Pascal, Oeuvres, 351.
8. Pascal, Oeuvres, 351.
9. Pascal, Oeuvres, 350.
10. Pascal, Oeuvres, 350.
11. Pascal, Oeuvres, 352.
12. Pascal, Oeuvres, 349.
13. Louis Marin, La critique du discours, Paris 1975, 372~374.
51
�Five Translations
Charles G. Bell
By Victor Hugo, past eighty years old
Ave, Dea: Moriturus te salutatA judith Gautier
La mort et Ia beaute sont deux choses profondes
Qui contiennent tant d'ombres et d'azur qu'on dirait
Deux soeurs egalement terribles et fecondes
Ayant Ia meme enigme et le meme secret.
0 femmes, voix, regards, cheveux noirs, tresses blondes,
Brillez, je meurs! Ayez !'eclat, !'amour, l'attrait,
0 perles que Ia mer mele a ses grandes ondes,
0 lumineux oiseaux de Ia sombre foret!
Judith, nos deux destins sont plus pres l'un de !'autre
Qu'on ne croirait, a voir mon visage et le votre;
Tout le divin ab!me appara!t dans vos yeux,
Et moi, je sens le gouffre etoile dans mon arne;
Nous sommes tousles deux voisins du ciel, madame,
Puisque vous etes belle et puisque je suis vieux.
Death and beauty are two somber loves,
As deep in blue and shade as if to say:
Two sisters, alike fecund and destructive,
Bearing the burden of one mystery.
Loves, voices, looks, tresses dark and fair,
Be radiant; for I die. Hold light, warmth, solaceyou pearls the sea rolls in waves up the shore,
You birds that nestle, luminous, in the forest.
Judith, our destinies are nearer kin
Than one might think to see your face and mine.
The abyss of all opens in your eyesThe same starred gulf I harbor in my soul.
We are neighbors of the sky, and for this cause,
That you are beautiful and I am old.
Charles Bell is a tutor at St.John's College, Santa Fe. These translations are a sequence from a forthcoming collection of poems, The Five-Chambered Heart.
52
WINTER 1982
�. Goethe: Se/ige Sehnsucht (1814)
Sagt es niemand, nur den Weisen,
Wei! die Menge gleich verhonet:
Das Lebendige will ich preisen,
Das nach Flammentod sich sehnet.
In der Liebesnachte Kiihlung,
Die dich zeugte, wo du zeugtest,
Dberfallt dich fremde Fiihlung,
Wenn die stille Kerze leuchtet.
Nicht mehr bleibest du umfangen
In der Finsternis Beschattung,
Und dich reisset neu Verlangen
Auf zu hoherer Begattung.
Keine Ferne macht dich schwierig,
Kommst geflogen und gebannt,
Und zuletzt, des Lichts begierig,
Bist du, Schmetterling, verbrannt.
Und solang du das nicht hast,
Dieses: Stirb und werde!
Bist do nur ein triiber Gast
Auf der dunklen Erde.
Sacred Lust
Tell the wise; the many lour,
And make ignorance their shame;
Say I praise the living power
That hungers for a death of flame.
Love-nights breed us as we breed:
In the candlelighted cool,
Feel the gates of dark go wide
For the moulting of the soul.
From its woven bed of shadows
Mere enclosure falls away:
Love spreads new wings to the meadows
Of another mating play.
Tireless, upward; spaces dwindle;
Nothing hems declared desire;
God is light and light will kindle,
And the moth wings leap in fire.
Know, until you learn to weave
Each flame-dying into breath,
Everywhere you haunt the grave
Of the shadowed earth.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
53
�Petrarch (1304-74): Sonnet XI,
After Laura's Death
Se lamentar augelli, o verdi fronde
mover soavemente a !'aura estiva,
o roco mormorar di lucide onde
s'ode d'una fiorita e fresca riva,
Ia 'v' io seggia d' amor pensoso e scriva;
lei che '1 ciel ne mostro, terra n'asconde,
veggio et odo et intendo, ch' ancor viva
di sl lontano a' sospir miei risponde:
"Deh perche innanzi '1 tempo ti consume?"
mi dice con pietate: "a che pur versi
degli occhi tristi un doloroso fiume?
Di me non pianger tu, che' miei dl fersi
morendo eterni, e nell' eterno lume,
quando mostrai di chiuder, gli occhi apersi."
If birds' lament, green leaves' or tendrils' stir
To the soft sighing of the air of summer,
Or through the wave-wash at the petalled shore
Of a clear stream, crystal's liquid murmur
Sound, where I sit bowed to the forest floorHer, whom heaven showed and earth now covers,
I see and hear and know, as if the power
Of her live voice responded from afar:
"Why do you spend yourself before your years?"
She asks in pity. "Or wherefore and for whom
Pour the wasting river of your tears?
You must not weep for me. My life became,
Dying, eternal; and to eternal light,
The dark, that seemed its closure, cleared my sight."
54
WINTER 1982
�Catullus, 55-54 BC: Attack on Caesar
for his favorite Mamurra (#29)
Quis hoc potest uidere, quis potest pati,
Nisi impudicus et uorax et aleo,
Mamurram habere quod comata Gallia
Habebat ante et ultima Britannia?
Cinaede Romule, haec uidebis et feres?
Et ille nunc superbus et superfluens
Perambulabit omnium cubilia
Vt albulus columbus aut Adoneus?
Cinaede Romule, haec uidebis et feres?
Es impudicus et uorax et aleo.
Eone nomine, imperator unice,
Fuisti in ultima occidentis insula,
Vt ista uestra diffututa mentula
Ducenties comesset aut trecenties?
Quid est alid sinistra liberalitas?
Parum expatrauit an parum elluatus est?
Paterna prima lancinata sunt bona;
Secunda praeda Pontica; inde tertia
Hibera, quam scit amnis aurifer Tagus.
Nunc Galliae timetur et Britanniae.
Quid hunc malum fouetis? aut quid hie potest
Nisi uncta deuorare patrimonia?
Eone nomine urbis opulentissime
Socer generque, perdidistis omnia?
The man who can face this, the man who can take it,
Is whored himself, a drunk, a swindler. Mamurra
Laps the fat of crested Gaul and farthest Britain.
Pansied Romulus, you see this thing, you take it?
How he struts his way through everybody's bedroom,
Like a white dove, a white-skinned soft AdonisPansied little Roman, you take it in, you bear it?
You are like him then, as drunk, as whored a swindler.
And was it for this, Rome's only great general,
You conquered the remotest island of the West,
To feed this screwed-out tool of yours, Mamurra?
See him spend, twenty or thirty million? First were
His own estates, then the loot of Pontus, then of SpainHear Tagus, the gold-bearing river. They say the Gauls
And Britains fear him? And you love the mongrel? Both
Of you, Caesar, Pompey? While he swills oil of patrimony?
For this, like in-laws, father and son,
You have sluiced wealth and all of the world-city.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
55
�SanJuan de la Cruz (1549-1591)
Cancion de Ia subida del Monte CarmelaThe Ascent of Mount Carmel
En una noche oscura,
con ansias en amores inflamada,
oh dichosa ventura!
sali sin ser notada,
estando ya mi casa sosegada.
In the dark of night
With love inflamed
By luck, by chance
I rose unseen
From the house hushed in sleep.
A escuras y segura
por Ia secreta escala, disfrazada,
o dichosa ventura!
a escuras, en celada
estando ja mi casa sosegada.
Safe in the dark
By a secret stair
My luck, my chance
And night for a veil
I stole from the house of sleep.
En Ia noche dichosa,
en secreto, que nadie me veia,
ni yo miraba cosa,
sin otra luz ni gu1a,
sino Ia que en el corazon ard1a.
By chance of night
By secret ways
Unseeing and unseen
No light, no guide
But the flames that my heart gave-
Aquesta me guiaba
mas cierto que Ia luz de mediod1a,
adonde me esperaba
quien yo bien me sab1a,
en parte donde nadie pareda.
Led by those rays
Surer than day
I came where one waits
Who is known to me
In a place where none seemed to be.
Oh noche, que guiaste,
oh noche amable mas que el alborada,
oh noche, que juntaste
Amado con amada,
amada en el Amado trasformada!
Night that guides
Purer than dawn
Night that joins
Lover and loved
And the loved into Lover changed.
En mi pecho florido,
que entero para el solo se guardaba,
all! qued6 dormido,
yo le regalaba,
y el ventalle de cedros aire daba.
In my flowered heart
That is only his
He lay in sleep
Lulled by the breeze
The fanning of my cedars gave.
El aire del almena,
cuando ya sus cabellos esparda,
en mi cuello her1a
y todos mis sendidos suspend1a.
Down turrets that air
With hand serene
As it stirred in his hair
Gave my throat a wound
That took all sense away.
Quedeme y olvideme,
el rostro recline sobre el Amado,
ces6 todo, y dejeme,
dejando mi cuidado
entre las azucenas olvidado.
I ceased, I was gone
My face to his own
All passed away
Care and all thrown down
There among the lillies where I lay.
con su mano serena,
56
WINTER 1982
�The Federal Republic of Germany:
Finlandization and Germanization?
Anne-Marie Le Gloannec
Is the Federal Republic of Germany headed for "finlandization"? Since Zbigniew Brzezinski detected neutralist leanings in West Germany nearly three years ago, the
charge has often been made. On both sides of the Atlantic, analysts and politicians and West German opposition
parties have followed the former National Security Adviser
in asking themselves about the Federal Republic's eastward slip. The most polemical have pointed to supposed
neutralization plans (the famous "Bahr Plan") and Bonn's
deplorable "Atlantic coolness" as something unusual, even
shocking, in a government that had supported American
policy with few reservations, even in the seventies. Others,
more prudent and at first loath to adopt conclusions they
regarded as hasty, have nevertheless discerned the first
signs of "finlandization" in the policies followed since the
winter of 1979. Rather, of "self-finlandization" or "voluntary finlandization." For we are dealing in this instance
not so much with neutrality imposed by the Soviet Union
as with a policy deliberately chosen by Bonn to soothe an
unduly touchy neighbor.
Richard Lowenthal, who is thought to have conceived
confuse the views of what the Christian Democratic-Socialist opposition calls the "Moscow wing" of the Social
Democratic Party with those of the governing Social Democratic-Free Democratic coalition. For instance, despite
his moral authority, Herbert Wehner did not speak for the
SPD majority-and even less so for the governing coalition
-when he called the Warsaw Pact's arms build-up defensible in the winter of 1979-80, and when even more recently
he did what he could to take the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan for the reaction of a power on its guard. Wehner's
controversial remarks in any case provoked opposition that
reached the center of his party. Moreover, the inclinations
of Helmut Schmidt's character, the makeup of the coalition, and the differences natural between party leaders
and men-in-office see to it that not even the SPD itself inspires government policy.
Even though the opinions of Social Democrats, snipers
or not, cannot be attributed to the government wholesale,
the government itself is not beyond suspicion. There is
plenty of evidence in relations between Moscow, Bonn,
and Washington: the West Germans' irritation with Ameri-
the term ufinlandization," calls "self-finlandization" ab-
can ((human rights" policy; their initial evasion of, then
surd. And in any case the Berlin political scientist holds
that neither term does justice to West German political
reality. The Federal Republic of Germany itself denies
that it wants to steer "a course between the blocs." In the
spring of 1980, it should not be forgotten, Chancellor
Schmidt did not succeed in hiding his annoyance at some
analyses (in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) that at-
hesitant and limited support for, President Carter's counter
reprisals after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan;
their cautiousness at plans for the neutron bomb, and later
in regard to deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles; their lack of enthusiasm for the consolidation and expansion of the Atlantic alliance. Until recently, all signs
seemed to indicate that in loosening its Atlantic ties, Bonn
sought to forestall Soviet suspicions and objections, and
tacked the readiness "to appease" and the inconsistencies
of the government 1
In the past few years West German politics undeniably
betrays a number of ambiguities. One must not, however,
Anne-Marie Le Gloannec is on the staff of the Centre d'Etudes et de
Relations internationales de la Fondation nationale des Sciences Politiques in France. This article first appeared in Commentaire 14, Summer
1981.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
that in its wish to please Moscow, it reserved its criticisms
for its American ally. The new administration in the United
States does not appear about to win over Bonn completely
to its views on East-West policy.
We must not forget that German-American tensions
have a specifically Western dimension that comes of profound differences over economic policy and the export of
nuclear technology. In these two areas, pressures from
57
�Washington have caused bitterness, even exasperation,
on the other side of the Atlantic. Also, German-American
relations have always been susceptible to the conflicts
that exist in any alliance. In our examination of present
tensions and "slipping," we should avoid yielding to the il·
lusion of an over-idyllic past. In the fifties and sixties the
two partners entertained suspicions of each other. When
Washington sought agreement with Moscow, West Ger·
many feared Washington would drop it. And the American
administration feared Bonn's too-close understanding with
its Soviet neighbor.
Are the present transatlantic misunderstandings the
same as in the past-or have they changed with the change
in the relative strengths of the United States and West
Germany? In any event, are they great enough to justify
Bonn's apparent weakmindedness towards Moscow? Does
the loosening of transatlantic ties necessarily tempt West
Germany to "appease" the USSR? In other words, are
German-American relations and German-Soviet relations
a zero-sum game? Finally, is it really a question of pusillan·
imity and appeasement? Perhaps Bonn desires to play an
independent role, neither too pro-American nor too antiSoviet? As Raymond Aron asked:
Do the Europeans shrink from American leadership because
they have come to have confidence in themselves or because
the power of the Soviet Union frightens them? Or is there a
third reason that subsumes the other two: the decline of
America?2
Beyond Electoral Turmoil
With detente in danger, the disagreements between the
United States and West Germany have never appeared
deeper. What might have passed a few years ago as simple
disagreements over particular policies-over human rights,
or the arms build-up-have now spread over the whole
range of economic, military, and political relations between East and West, and after the Soviet intervention in
Afghanistan have come to bear on fundamental questions:
the nature of East-West relations, and more specifically
the assessment of Soviet ambitions and the development
of a suitable Western policy. Does the Soviet Union seek
to take advantage of local instability when the occasion
arises? Or does it pursue a policy of systematic expansion?
Should the West pursue detente, or return to containment?
Despite various shades of opinion, the Carter administration was pretty much united in its perception of a will
to expand in Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. In West
Germany, however, the various party leaders expressed
widely differing opinions that ranged from one extreme to
the other. The opposition leaders, Hans Kohl and FranzJosef Strauss, as well as the CDU's military affairs specialist
Manfred Woerner, reached conclusions similar to Washington's. Herbert Wehner, as already mentioned, saw the
move as a defensive measure; Willy Brandt minimized the
importance of the intervention. These reactions were
hardly surprising, for they came from the opposite sides of
58
the political chess board. The same cannot be said of the
attitude of Chancellor Schmidt, who did not see fit to interrupt his vacation, and who in his New Year's address
showed little of his usual vigor in his condemnation of the
Soviet operation. A few days before had he not declared
that Soviet leaders, far from being adventurers, desired
peace?
The nature of the Soviet intervention-surgical operation or act in a drama of expansion-raised the question:
what would become of Europe? Those who adopted the
hypothesis of expansion could not escape the fear that
sooner rather than later Berlin, Hamburg, or Paris would
suffer the fate of Kabul. A groundless fear, according to
Schmidt and his minister of foreign affairs-who considered the intervention "reversible" and thereby reduced it
to an anomalous case, limited in time and place. From
there it needed just a step to invoke the "divisibility" of
detente-a step some took, even though the FrenchGerman communique of February 1980 condemned the
concept.
There should be no exaggeration of the differences in
understanding between Chancellor Schmidt and Strauss.
Strauss denounced the Soviets' global ambitions, but
nonetheless still agreed with his political rival that Moscow did not want to unleash a Third World War. Schmidt
wanted detente to be divisible, but still claimed the dangers of the new balance of power in Asia or the Persian
Gulf region, and, consequently, for Europe. In the chancellor's perspective, the divisibility of detente did not
excuse West Germany or Europe from all action. He considered it of importance, however, not to react too harshly,
especially in the resort to sanctions. The Afghan crisis,
Schmidt would say in the course of 1980, did not recall
Europe in 1938-39 and Hitler's expansion-but 1914 and
the incapacity to master international difficulties. Such is
the explanation of Germany's silence in regard to American sanctions-a policy Germany judged inappropriate
and even dangerous.
It was actually as if almost in regret that Chancellor
Schmidt declared himself in favor of the Olympic boycott
that President Carter demanded, and he contented himself
with an embargo on strategic products and with symbolic
declarations at the same time that he refused sanctions
against the Soviet Union for its military intervention. This
was a compromise between the political necessity of supporting the American protector and the fear that America
would unleash the crisis. It was also a compromise between the Social Democratic Party that followed Willy
Brandt in his opposition to retaliatory measures and Foreign Minister Genscher, who favored a demonstration of
Atlantic solidarity. Ever ready to demonstrate its proAmericanism and to demand usacrifices," the opposition
had a field day denouncing the governing coalition's recantations and ((neutralist" leanings.
If one may trust certain public opinion polls, however,
~~neutralism" may respond to the wishes of a significant
minority, and in some cases, a majority, of the West GerWINTER 1982
�man population. Asked whether they wished for "greater
independence of the Federal Republic of Germany from
the United States" or "unconditional support of American foreign policy," 49 percent of those polled answered
"yes" to the first question (with 29 percent "no"), and 52
percent said "no" to the second (with 26 percent "yes").
Forty-five percent of the respondents believed that the
military neutrality of both Germanies "would make a fit
contribution to the maintenance of peace. " 3
The significance of these results should not be overestimated, quite apart from the debate over the reliability
of the methods used by different West German polling organizations. Since the beginning of the Federal Republic,
West Germans have favored a policy of neutrality. Sometimes a minority, sometimes, notably in the second half of
the fifties and during the seventies, a majority. When
questioned, however, not simply about the policy they
would like to see Bonn follow, but about the military position they prefer for the Federal Republic, only a few declare themselves for neutrality. The most that can be said
is that Social Democratic sympathizers, people under
twenty, and people with advanced education, are more
likely to favour neutral status than the rest of the population. 4 In the majority, West German public opinion remains as much attached to NATO as to the American
military "umbrella" that it expects will protect it in the
event of a Soviet threat.' To be sure, in 1980 public opinion
continued to believe in the possibility of war (58%). Most
Germans, however, did not believe that Moscow's resort
to force in Afghanistan called into question the detente it
damaged. And in 1981, most Germans favored a policy of
conciliation.' All in all, the coalition's attitude seems to
answer public expectations better than the opposition's.
The legitimate distinction between the Social Democratic-Liberal line and the Christian Socialist opposition
does not mean that lines are clearly drawn and policies
consistent. Despite their disagreements over the nature of
the crisis and the immediate measures to take, the government and the opposition were closer than they would
have liked people to think. In contrast to Washington, no
German political party, much less German public opinion,
was eager to question detente. The pace of official East·
West contacts slowed down in the early spring of 1980,
but it soon picked up again. Strauss was not the last politician to make his appearance in Communist capitals. (Unlike the government, however, the opposition says it is
ready to risk detente the better to preserve it.) Moreover,
in favor, in various degrees, of resumption or pursuit of
disarmament negotiations, both the governing coalition
and the opposition recognize the need for strengthening
NATO to restore the East-West military balance,' and for
providing economic, political, and military aid to countries close to the Soviet Union (Pakistan, Turkey, and
Greece; the cultivation of ties with the Islamic countries).
Lastly, except for those Social Democrats who, like Willy
Brandt, seem to give European solidarity first priority,
both sides emphasize the importance of the GermanTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
American alliance (even though the opposition appears to
consider it more important than the government).
The old divisions between the left and right wings of
the Social Democratic Party have reappeared with greater
force than ever in the last few months, really in the last
two years, to shake the Social Democratic consensus on issues of external security. This was especially evident when
Karsten Voigt, among others, appeared to question the
delicate compromise that emerged from the party conference on December 1979 (the Doppelbeschluss, or double
resolution). Voigt, the Social Democratic spokesman for
the parliamentary commission on foreign affairs, judged
early in 1980 that the lack of progress or results in the arms
limitations talks mortgaged the deployment of American
missiles in Europe. Social Democratic deputies also undermined the foundations of Bonn's policy towards the
Atlantic alliance by opposing arms sales to Saudi Arabia
and by proposing reductions in military spending. The
joining of this leftist opposition with groups as diverse as
the German Peace Union (DFU), close to the Communists, the churches, and the ecologists; the coordination of
pacifist movements, opponents of nuclear power, and the
extra-parliamentary opposition (APO) around the same
issue, a sometimes violent coordination whose capacity to
make a sensation does not necessarily mean it enioys a
wide following-all this disturbs the balance at the heart
of the SPD, without, incidentally, sparing the Liberals,
(FDP), and forces the governing coalition into a weak or
rigid position. Witness Helmut Schmidt's recent remarks
on Soviet policy, or on the pacifism of young Germans.
Much of the leadership and of public opinion, undeniably, would like, in one way or another, to see Europe as
an island of peace precisely because it wishes it were one.
There would then be no more worry about sanctions or rearmament; more costly decisions could be avoided. To
calm oneself with the attribution of reassuring intentions
to the Soviets-is that not already "finlandization" of a
sort? 8
The Ostpolitik and its Fragile Gains
People have outdone themselves in repeating that
detente brought tangible benefits to the Germans-and
until recently one could believe that the Ostpolitik bore
fruit in every area. The status of West Berlin, guaranteed
by the four powers in September 1971, assured that city
some military and political security and, in theory, reduced
the risks of a sudden Soviet seizure. With the fundamental treaty signed in October 1972, the two Germanies
resumed relations pretty much broken off since the beginning of the sixties. During the seventies, several million
West Germans visited East Germany each year, and several
hundred thousand East Germans went to West Germany.
Over fifty thousand East Germans have settled permanently in the Federal Republic. Thanks to a significant
audience for West German television and the development of trade, West Germany makes its presence felt be-
59
�yond the Elbe. In negotiating the, treaty of 1972, the
Social Democratic-Liberal coalition meant to maintain
and strengthen the ties between the .two Germanies and
thereby keep alive the idea of German nationhood. If we,
however, may believe West German public opinion, that
holds that the two states are growing further and further
apart, and if we believe certain analysts who report the
development of two distinct national consciousnesses, we
are led to ask whether the coalition has really reached its
goal.
These measures have, in any case, improved the lot of a
good many people and permitted a relative "normalization" of relations between the two Germanies. Bonn also
normalized relations with other Socialist capitals. In recent
years, over half a million Soviet, Rumanian, and Polish citizens of German origin have been allowed to settle in the
Federal Republic; the volume of West German trade with
these countries has quintupled since 1970. Chancellor
Schmidt figured along with Valery Giscard d'Estaing
among the preferred partners of Edward Gierek.
This relative ((normalization" of relations with Eastern
Europe, rather than any immediate gains, give the Ostpolitik its historical significance. By abandoning its revisionist claims and by no longer making German unity a
prerequisite for detente, West Germany ceased troubling
its Eastern neighbors and importuning its Western all-ies:
it made itself ordinary, and thereby undid the mortgage
that up to then had weighed on its foreign policy. With
this added maneuvering room and with a measure of prestige won for it by its skill in negotiation-not to mention
its considerable economic strength-the West German
government could now make its voice heard in international councils. German participation in the Guadeloupe
summit in January 1979 surprised some observers. But her
presence represented the logical outcome of previous diplomatic activity. This growth in West Germany's power
could not, however, obscure the fact that the gains of the
Ostpolitik depended, at least in part, on the goodwill of
the Soviets and their East German allies. The border incidents, the harrassment, the pin-pricks in West Berlin, during the sixties, were there to remind everybody. In spite of
everything, West Germany was not a state like any other.
Even without considering the 17 million East German
"hostages" of the Soviet Union, the Federal Republic remains extremely vulnerable: on the front line of battle, it
would be devastated in both a conventional and a nuclear
war-but with all that it remains powerless to assure its
own security by itself.
This special characteristic and its liabilities give the Soviets a political bargaining advantage that they have not
failed to exploit, when international tensions or the internal
weaknesses of the Socialist camp have provoked a more
rigid attitude in the Kremlin, or when Moscow hoped to
divide NATO by isolating West Germany. NATO's decision of December 1979 to strengthen its theater nuclear
forces in Europe, the deterioration of East-West relations
after Afghanistan, and the threat of destabilization in Po-
60
land, have revivified Soviet and East German pressures
and threats. The Soviets reminded the West Germans in
the summer of 1980 that their territory would be the first
and worst casualty in a nuclear exchange-and that American protection was not certain. Following that, the East
German authorities decided to restrict severely all travel
between the two countries. They also let it be known that
West Berlin could suffer the consequences if Bonn changed
the conditions of inter-German trade (in the event of Soviet intervention in Poland).
It is hardly surprising then, that the West German leaders attempt to keep detente alive, to continue to enjoy its
benefits, that they wish to slow further worsening of the
international climate, since they would be among the first
to suffer, or even that they censor their words or actions
in anticipation of Soviet objections. Bonn, for instance,
refused to respond with reprisals to East Berlin's affront
after the elections. It has since, it is true, contemplated
not renewing the "swing" accords-credits without interest granted to East Germany-if East Germany did not
rescind its decision. Such a display of deliberate firmness
was successful in 1973, when East Berlin also had decided
to increase the amount of obligatory currency exchange
for travellers entering East Germany. But circumstances
are now different. There are grounds for fearing that, unwilling to risk detente, Bonn finds herself without recourse. In such an event, powerlessness would succeed to
deliberate firmness.
Everything, including the vulnerability of her economy,
glaringly evident for a year now, has contributed to make
West Germany either directly or indirectly susceptible to
international tensions and pressures. Extremely dependent on world trade for her raw materials and energy, and
for the export of her finished goods, West Germany seeks
to diversify her raw material sources and her new markets.
Her trade with Eastern Europe and the USSR represents
a little less than 6 percent of her total foreign trade, but
certain sectors and industries export a larger proportion of
their production to the East: the exports of Mannesmann,
and Hoescht made up almost 9 percent of their output in
1979. By 1985, 30 percent of West German imports of natural gas will come from the Soviet Union.
Is there not a danger that in allowing this dependence
West Germany is granting the Soviets the means to exercise pressure and influence over her? Without entering
into the broader debate on the advantages of East-West
trade (structural advantages for the East, sectorial advantages for the West), we should note the disagreement
among experts on the threshold of independence. At the
Soviet Union's and West Germany's announcement of an
agreement on natural gas (whose conception had been
made public at the moment Chancellor Schmidt in Moscow condemned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), the
Americans warned West Germany against dependence on
more than 30 percent of any product from any one country. In contrast, German experts set the critical threshold
at 40 percent. The political dimensions of this labyrinWINTER 1982
�thine quarrel need to be remembe,ed: American objections and West German defiance.
In my opinion, the danger, if there is one, lies else·
where. The fear is not of Soviet pressures or threats of an
embargo. Nor is it deplorable that Bonn is reluctant to enact strict economic sanctions that the business community
would not hear of, and which the Christian-Democrats
might not have applied with any greater vigour had they
been in power. Sanctions, it turns out in retrospect, are of~
ten evaded.
What is questionable is "Arms-of-Peace" thinking itself,
the kind of thinking that impelled Egan Bahr' s remark
that it is "necessary to institutionalize the interest in the
maintenance of peace through large-scale economic projects beneficial to both parties."' Chancellor Schmidt
apparently shares the same perspective, for he favors the
establishment of long-term contractual economic relations between West Germany and the Soviet Union. In
1977 he even tried (in vain) to have the Bundestag solemnly ratify the Soviet-German twenty-five year commer·
cia! accord. The desire to bind the Soviet Union with a
network of contracts is like trying to tie Gulliver down.
This is the policy of the West German government, specifically, of the Social Democratic-Liberal coalition. Instead of resorting to sanctions it prefers to take advantage
of the commercial and financial ebb and flow to buy concessions and guarantees. But mutual economic ties do not
necessarily guarantee the partners' political goodwill, especially the goodwill of a centralized and authoritarian regime
-when Bonn risks excessive conciliatoriness because of
its anxiety to protect investments or because of its respect
for treaties (its rationale in the question of sanctions).
West German government and business circles showed
the political and economic powerlessness of this attitude
during the Polish crisis. Poland's creditors felt obliged to
lend her more money to save her from bankruptcy. At the
same time Bonn, haunted by the memory of 1968, refrained from gestures or statements that might give the
Soviets an excuse to intervene. For these two reasons
Bonn found itself even less desirous and able to attach political conditions to its loans to Warsaw. 10
As in the early sixties, West Germany's Eastern policy
shows no innovation. In the sixties, however, she had
nothing to lose. Now, any revision might endanger the
Ostpolitik's accomplishments, both the more immediate
(increased human contact) and the less tangible (security
and relative independence). To preserve these benefits,
Bonn no longer gives priority in her dealings to peoples in·
stead of governments, to "change" instead of "reconciliation." It is undoubtedly time in West Germany for a fresh
debate on the ultimate goals and means of the Ostpolitik,
a debate the coalition in power has up to now appeared to
wish to avoid.
An Actor in Search of a Role
The Soviet leadership that in 1980 raised some doubts
about the effectiveness of America's military umbrella,
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
knowingly touched a raw nerve in Bonn. More than once
in the past Europeans have questioned American ability
and willingness to deter or repel a Soviet attack-doubts
more than ever justified by the progressive change in the
Soviet-American military balance since the beginning of
the seventies. The mutual "neutralization," to use Helmut Schmidt's word, 11 of Soviet and American strategic
forces, along with Soviet conventional and nuclear superi·
ority in Europe, separates the United States from Euro·
pean territory more than ever before, for it is not certain
that the U.S. would be willing to engage its strategic forces
in the case of a limited Soviet attack on the old world.
Western Europe and especially the Federal Republic of
Germany, a "state on the front line" without her own nuclear capacity-and subject not only to Soviet pressures
but also to Washington's goodwill-finds herself singularly exposed as long as war remains a textbook hypothesis. The decision of the NATO Council in December 1979
to deploy medium-range missiles in Europe starting in
1983 and at the same time to begin negotiations with the
Soviet Union on the reduction of theater nuclear forces,
will make up for Europe's military inferiority without,
however, undoing her political powerlessness: the mere
presence of Pershing and cruise missiles under American
control will not reassure further the Europeans against
the risk of American indifference; and the propaganda
campaign the Soviets unleashed from the fall of 1979 to
the summer of 1980 shows that they will hardly forgo the
crudest sorts of intimidation.
The uncertainties of the American commitment, and
Washington's demonstrated relative indifference to the
military balance in Europe, have led Bonn to its own initiatives to protect its interests: the call for the strengthening of European middle-range nuclear capacity, and, at
the same time, for negotiations for the reduction and re·
balancing of Soviet and NATO theater nuclear forces.
Bonn counts on both reinforcement and negotiation, the
United States tends to stress reinforcement. Is the coali·
tion yielding to pacifist tendencies that hold sway inside
the Social-Democratic Party? Certainly. But realistic considerations also guide it: the stationing of middle-range
nuclear arms on her territory that spares West Germany
neither political pressures nor destruction in the event of
nuclear war, will serve as a bargaining chip for the West in
the negotiations-negotiations that, thanks to Helmut
Schmidt's diplomacy in Moscow in June 1980, will open
without preconditions.
Both the relative success of the chancellor's mission to
Moscow and President Carter's suspicion beforehand that
the chancellor might trade his commitments for the proposal or acceptance of a moratorium 12 served only to reinforce a sense of isolation in West Germany, a sense that it
could hardly count on its American ally (not to mention
the disturbing effect of the failure of the raid in April1980
to save the hostages in Tehran).
Even more serious, the West Germany that doubted
the authority and efficacy of American leadership, also
61
�was losing faith in American values~at least in its conception of American values. The United States no longer
held a fascination for West German elites. 13 With the
United States itself in the throes of self-doubt how was it
to escape such disillusion? Such circumstances make it
easier to understand the government's and public opinion's tardy and lukewarm show of solidarity with Washington during the winter of 1979-1980. In their criticisms of
American policy and sometimes of the bases of Atlantic
solidarity, the West Germans seem unobtrusively to give
way to indifference to the Atlantic Alliance and to retreat
upon themselves 14 Those under twenty, significantly,
tend more to neutralism than their seniors.
This indifference and withdrawal is no easier to reverse
because concealed. Even if the new U.S. administration
succeeds in the restoration of America's political and
moral authority, and, at the same time, in respecting the
wishes of her allies, West Germany will no longer be the
model ally, Washington's right arm. As we have seen, the
Ostpolitik and the changes in the international system in
the seventies have combined to fashion a stronger, more
independent, and more self-confident Federal Republic of
Germany.
Until very recently, Bonn still refused a role consonant
with her power. In May 1978, Helmut Schmidt declared
at the U.N., "I speak in the name of a country that is neither able nor desires to assume the role of a Great Power."
Under a constant barrage of criticism for almost thirty
years, called too Atlanticist or not enough, too revanchist
or too accommodating toward the East, Bonn steered a
middle course without making waves. Barely two years
ago, however, the chancellor took to different words: he
demanded heavier responsibilities and a greater role for
his country. Even public opinion in West Germany conceives a powerful Federal Republic, more readily than in
the past-20 percent for enormous, 47 percent for great,
influence on the international scene15 All this has not
kept the government, nor in all likelihood public opinion,
from recognition of the limits of this influence, particularly in its relations with Eastern Europe, and of the political and moral constraints that still weigh upon its actions
-limitations that Bonn and the people sometimes find irritating. In contrast to the fifties and sixties, West German leaders dare assert themselves among their allies at
the same time that they exercise the greatest discretion in
t!Jeir dealings with the countries of Socialist Europe-all
in all a curious reversal.
The contrast between confidence toward the West and
timidity toward the East, the distortions that come of the
combination of economic might and military weakness,
the ambiguities of the Federal Republic's international
role, drive the Germans to question themselves. Once the
first enthusiasms faded-the enthusiasm for reconstruction under the auspices of the pax americana and the enthusiasm for a certain conception of Europe-the erosion
of the myth of economic invulnerability and a certain disenchantment with Social Democracy opened the way to
62
the uncertainty and insecurity that, according to Richard
Lowenthal, springs of cultural and political rootlessness. 16
The search for identity, with certain intellectuals as selfappointed scouts, compounds in Germany the malaise
general in Western democracies. My analysis, if correct,
should hardly occasion retrospective surprise-at least insofar as in the last ten years the Ostpolitik has encouraged
inter-German contacts and rekindled the concern of West
Germans for the Germans in the East. That the East German United Socialist Party's (SED) policy of ideological
demarcation-Abgrenzung-with its transplantation of
undesirable East German intellectuals to West Germany
has revived the awareness of German identity and the
search for it-that would be an irony of history. The
search for identity does not, however, necessarily amount
to the desire for national unity-as the declarations of
Guenther Gaus, former permanent representative to East
Berlin, and the public debate that followed tend to show.
Strong but vulnerable, faced with equally unsatisfactory
alternatives when it comes to political and military security, still afflicted with a "deficit in legitimacy" and with a
loss of cultural identity, West Germany is in some sense
an actor in search of a role. There is no certainty that she
will find this role either in a political union of Europe that
Walter Scheel and Hans-Dietrich Genscher recently did
what they could to revive or in the Franco-German dimension. Based on real but limited complementarities,
the Franco-German marriage rests on a double misunderstanding. West Germany, without doubt, relies more than
France on the Atlantic Alliance and on the continuation
of American protection. The defense of her national interests, however, which lie in Central Europe, will drive her
to greater Gaullism than France. It is a paradox that a
greater consciousness of her own interests and of her distinctive particularity could very well lead the Federal Republic to a certain kind of "finlandization." 17
Translated by Lisa Simeone, Philip Holt and
Preston Niblack
1. See especially Fritz Ullrich Fack, "Der Nebellichtet sich," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 23, 1980, and "1st das Friedenspolitik?"
FAZ, May 23, 1980.
2. Raymond Aron, "L'hegemonism sovietique: An I," Commentaire 11,
Autumn 1980, 358. (translation in The St. John's Review, Summer 1981,
20).
3. Poll said to have been made in March 1980 at the request of the
Chancellor. Cited with no further reference by the weekly Der Spiegel,
18, 1980, "Mit den Amerikanern nicht in den Tod."
4. I rely here on polls conducted by Emnid (especially those reported in
Informationen, Emnid-Institut, 5, 1980) and by the lnstitut fur
Demoskopie Allensbach (files).
5. See especially Werner Kaltefleiter, "Germans, Friendlier but Apprehensive," Public Opinion, March-May 1979, 10-12. See also Gebhard
Schweigler, "Spannung und Entspannung: Reaktionen im Westen," in
the excellent collection of Josef Fullenbach and Eberhard Schulz (eds.\
Entspannung am Ende (Munich 1980). Schweigler gives the following
characterization of German pUblic opinion: "Because of the complexity
of West German security policy, public opinion in the Federal Republic
appears to hide its head in the sand in blind reliance on NATO's deterence."
WINTER 1982
�6. See the Emnid poll in Der Spiegel, March 2, 1981, and the poll in Le
Point 442, March 9, 1981; The International Herald Tribune, April14,
1980.
7. Even if the government, despite earlier commitments, is not prepared to devote 3 percent of its gross national p[oduct to military spending.
8. Pierre Hassner, "Western European Perceptions of the USSR,"
Daeddlus, Winter 1979, 114.
9. The first assessment of the Ostpolitik in Die Zeit, December 14, 1973.
10. In the winter of 1980-81 the government-more particularly, the
Minister of Foreign Affairs-showed some firmness (at the heart of the
common market) in dissuading the Soviet Union from intervening.
11. Cf. the lecture Helmut Schmidt gave on October 28, 1977, at the Institute of Strategic Studies in London.
12. President Carter suspected that Chancellor Schmidt, who declared
himself in favor of a three-year moratorium, actually wanted to put an
indefinite freeze on the deployment of tactical forces in Europe.
13. See Gunter Gillessen, "Defiziten im deutsch-amerikanischen Verhalltnis," FAZ, July 31, 1979, as well as Martin Hillenbrand, former U.S.
ambassador to West Germany; "The United States and Germany" in
West Gennan Foreign Policy, 1949-1979, Wolfram Hanreider ed., Boulder,
Colorado, 73. See also the recent article by the Vice-President of the
Bundestag, Annemarie Renger, "Das Buendnis an einer Wegmarke,"
FAZ, April4, 1981.
14. See the words of Guenter Grass, Sarah Kirsch, Thomas Brasch, and
Peter Schneider to the Social-Democrats of Schleswig-Holstein: "Don't
let the American government that since the war in Vietnam, has lost
the right to launch moralizing appeals, draw you into (a policy that could
lead to the destruction of all life on this planet)." Quoted in "mit den
Amerikanern nicht in den Tod," Der Spiegel, 18, April 28, 1980.
15. R. Wildenmann poll, cited by Martin and Silvia Greiffenhagen, Ein
schwieriges Vaterland: Zur politschen Kultur Deutschlands, Munich 1979,
315. See also Dieter Bossmann, Schueler ueber die Einheit der Nation,
Frankfurt-am-Main 1978, 249.
16. Richard Lowenthal, "Incertitudes allemandes," Commentaire, 6, 979.
17. As Fritz Stern has aptly observed, "Germany in a Semi-Gaullist Europe," Foreign Affairs, Spring 1980. For a plea to anchor West Germany
in the Franco-German community within a united Europe and in the
Atlantic Alliance, Joseph Rovan, "De !'Ostpolitik a l'auto-neutralisation?," Politique Internationale, 10, Winter 1980-81, 85-100.
Io
Under a cloud, milky she stood,
Garlanded, surprised by her cow
Voice after love, and by his wife
In a fine rage planning revenge,
Skillful as Maupassant. The gadFly stung her beauty lumbering
Inside bovine embarrassment
To lurch through a sea she hardly
Noticed, though it was named for her.
A long time galloping, her flowers
Withered as an old joke, she came
To seed on Egypt, so arid.
That good girl, transformed by the careLessly human god-his quick loveLay in the hot desert, panting
Slow birth on monumental sand
Where every grain seemed in the heat
An eye watching her terrible
And unprivate delivering.
lAURENCE JOSEPHS
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
63
�Kekkonen, the "Finlandizer"
Indro Montanelli
One of the few voices that rose in protest on March 12,
1940, when the government in Helsinki announced that
Finland, bled dry after four months of heroic resistance,
had sued Russia for armistice, was the voice of a deputy of
the agrarian party. Urho Kekkonen said that Finland's sur·
render turned the blood split up to then into a "useless
sacrifice.''
I was not surprised. I knew him. A man of the people,
son of a game warden, Kekkonen had fought as a boy un·
der the flag of Mannerheim in the war of liberation from
Russia in 1919. His nationalism even drove him to a bit of
sympathy for fascism. He wanted war to the death, "heroic
suicide." I thought that such ideas would not get him very
far in the politics of a country that, abandoned by the West
and overwhelmed, had to resign itself to the role of satellite of the U.S.S.R.
I was much surprised, therefore, at the news in 1956 that
he had succeeded Paasikivi to the presidency of the Re·
public. With some worry-for I am a great friend and admirer of Finland-I asked myself how the Russians would
take it. As it turned out the Russians took it so well that
for twenty-five years they not only put up with the presidency of Kekkonen but urged his reelection-and now are
doing all they can to delay his retirement.
I do not know how Kekkonen, with his political past,
won their confidence. But I cannot conceive he resorted
to duplicity, because he did not have it in his character.
For he had not only the shrewdness, but also the abrupt
straightforwardness of a peasant. And perhaps it was just
this abrupt straightforwardness that won him the respect
of the arrogant victor. In 1950 Paasikivi, who knew men,
entrusted him with negotiations on which the survival of
Finland depended-negotiations that had failed two years
before. The story goes that Stalin took to him among other
reasons because of his capacity to hold his liquor, which
even the Finns considered phenomenal. In any case, for
the agreement he brought home, Kekkonen received the
reward of the office of prime minister. From that moment
Paasikivi of his own accord arranged to leave him his own
office, the presidency of the Republic.
Kekkonen assumed the presidency in 1956 at an espe·
cially dramatic moment. The government of Finland had
One of the great journalists of Europe, Indro Montanelli is editor and
founder, nine years ago, of the important newspaper, Il Giornale Nuovo.
This article first appeared in II Giornale Nuovo on October 16, 1981.
64
refused to allow the Soviet government to station troops
in Finland, and Moscow had broken diplomatic relations
with Helsinki, a move taken for a prologue to invasion. At
the Kremlin Kekkonen succeeded in fixing things up. But
four years later the crisis broke out again. Kekkonen
showed up alone in Novosibirsk for a stormy, nine~hour
exchange with Khrushchev. In Moscow there were ru·
mours that they had also let loose with slaps. Questioned,
Kekkonen replied only: "I was not slapped." Even if the
story is not true, the fact that it was told tells quite a bit
about Kekkonen's diplomacy in the face of the Russians.
In the last twenty-five years Kekkonen has done his best
to "finlandize" Finland. He had no other choice-and he
succeeded. Finland is the only satellite of the Soviet Union
where fundamental democratic liberties are respected and
whose door is open to the West.* I do not think that this
miracle is all Kekkonen's doing. Above all it is Finland's
doing and the doing of what even Kekkonen in his youth·
ful nationalistic extremism had called "the useless sacrifice." In fact nothing was more useful than that sacrifice.
Because of it Finland was not erased from the political
map of Europe like the three other Baltic countries, Esto·
nia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In those four months of hellish
winter war on the isthmus of Karelia, the Russians learned
at their own expense of what stuff the Finns were made
and that they could not take their subjection for granted.
Just this always escapes the promoters of the "finlandiza·
tion" of Europe. They forget that to finlandize themselves
the Finns in twenty-five years have dared look Russian
might three times in the face-in 1919, in 1939, and in
1941; that they have inflicted unforgettable defeats and
losses on those unspeakable battlefields; that they sacri·
ficed the best of the best of two generations. And defeated,
they did not bow their heads. The victors demanded trials
11
of War criminals." Instead of suffering a Nuremberg trial,
the marshall who led them against the Russians three times
became president of the Republic. The Finns found only
one "war criminal," Tanner, a former Social Democratic
minister whom they sentenced to ten years. Upon his re·
lease they reelected him deputy and president of the party.
*On February 5, 1982, in the General Assembly at the United Nations,
Finland along with all the free nations of Europe (except for Austria,
Spain, and Turkey, who abstained, and Greece, who voted in favour)
and the United States, Canada, Israel, Japan, Australia, New Zealand,
and Fiji-twenty-one in all-voted against a resolution punishing Israel
for the extension of jurisdiction to the Golan Heights.-LR
WINTER 1982
�As for the Communists, they were and remain a minorityand outside the government. Even' the Russians trust
Kekkonen more than the Communists.
There is no finlandization without Finns. In other
hands-for love of my country I shall not name names-it
does not take much to imagine what would become of
"finlandization": the rush to servileness, zeal outdoing
zeal, bulgarization.
According to news from Helsinki coming through Stockholm, Kekkonen, eighty years old and suffering from a
stroke, is now providing-with deliberation-for his succession. I do not think there is much to worry about. For
even if the finlandizer goes, Finland remains.
Translated by Leo Raditsa
HEPHAESTUS
Thrown away, damaged, thrown down, falling
Broken, limited except the hands, eyes;
Only the will intact, the need braced against
Those wrong legs, ugly and mechanically bad.
Still godlike, inventive craftsman holding
Metals in the indestructible brazier, that flame
Tempering what could be tempered-not his legsBut unchangeable beauty; and seeing it,
Praising it in the armor of the beautiful doomed!
Of Achilles who wept for love in the pursuit of glory.
Hephaestus the gifted dwarf, the talented lover
Of the garb of beauty, striking gold shell
To curve with his skill, grown warm
Over the breast of the more fortunate hero
In whose fame, in whose sulking annointment
The sound of the hammer rang like bells in a dream.
LAURENCE JOSEPHS
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
65
�Mozart's Cherubino
Wye Jamison Allanbrook
Cherubino makes his first entrance in Le nozze di
Figaro midway through the first act, as Susanna is angrily
reflecting on the pretensions of her old enemy Marcellina,
the Countess's blue-stocking governess, after an angry encounter with her:
Va' Ia, vecchia pedante,
Dottoressa arrogante!
Perche hai /etta due libri,
E seccato Madama in
gioventu .. . '
Cherubino brings with him a literary aura of a gentler sort:
while Marcellina clings to pedantry as the emblem of her
superiority, lovestruck Cherubino is not learned, but a
natural poet. He hands Susanna a love song which he has
written, either to one woman or to all (when she asks him
what to do with it, he gives her leave, "with transports of
joy" as the stage directions have it, to read it to every
woman in the palace 2). When she chides him for his impetuousness,3 he answers her in song. Unlike ''Voi che
sapete" -Cherubino's rendition, in Act II, of his own
composition, accompanied by Susanna on the Countess's
guitar-the lovely "Non so pili" is not intended as a real
performance. Yet it has much in common with the later
aria-staged-as-love-song.
Obvious similarities are their closely related key signatures C'Non so pill" in Eb major, ''Voi che sapete" in Bb),
their duple meters, and the prominence in them both of
winds and horns. But, more significantly, in an opera
whose arias are dominated by dance rhythms both pieces
are clearly meant to be apprehended as sung poems, "Non
so pill" as well as HVoi che sapete," even though in the
first case the plot does not suggest an actual performance.
Not measured gestures, but measured words seem to be
the native element of Cherubino's song.
This article comes from a book, The Motion of Character: Rhythmic
Gesture in "Le noz:ze di Figaro" and "Don Giovanni," that the University
of Chicago Press will publish in the fall of 1983.
66
Cherubino's nature unfolds gradually in the course of
the first two acts. A page in Almaviva's castle and probably the Countess's godchild,' at first he seems just a minor character, a member of a detachable subplot. Yet he
ultimately acquires transcendent importance as a touchstone for all the other characters in the opera.
The three principle occasions one has for observing
him in the first two acts are these two solo arias and,
strangely enough, a scene in which he himself is entirely
mute-his romp with Figaro at the end of Act I, "Non
pili andrai," where Figaro playfully initiates the boy into
the joys of war. When Cherubino's "second nature" is
made explicit, it becomes clear that this brilliant march
aria is actually a hymn to the young page, to his figure and
to his powers. But it is necessary first to examine Cherubino's literary idiom: to establish that it is indeed literary,
in HNon so pill" especially, and to discover what its
precise resonances are.
"Non so pili" is divided into two sections. The text of
the first half of the aria consists of two stanzas each containing three ten-syllable lines, and a fourth with nine
syllables:
Non so piu cosa son, cosa faccio . . .
Or di fuoco, ora sono di ghiaccio . . .
Ogni donna cangiar di colore,
Ogni donna mi fa palpitar.
Solo ai nomi d'amor, di diletto
Mi si turba, mi s'altera if petto,
E a par/are mi sforza d'amore
Un desio ch 'io non posso spiegar/5
In rhyme scheme the two stanzas are united by end
rhyme-aabc, ddbc. The first three lines of each stanza
have f~minine rhymes, but the c rhyme (palpitar, spiegar)
is masculine. Mozart sets the poem in a quick alia breve
(2/2) with a single bass note "plucked" on every beat
while the other strings 11 Strum" an accompaniment-the
WINTER 1982
�orchestra is a stand-in for the performer's guitar. Traditionally in popular musical settings pf Italian poetry the
metrical foot (anapests here) established the basic rhythm
of each member, while the number of syllables dictated
the primary and secondary stresses and the cadence;6 the
same principle seems to be in operation here. A rhythmic
germ with an anapestic shape
is repeated three times in each line, with a secondary
stress on the third syllable and a primary stress and cadence on the ninth. Each of the first three lines closes
with a feminine ending
JJ/JDJOjJJ
but the anapest is preserved in the fourth for a masculine
ending and thus a full stop. In order to direct attention to
its integrity as a unit line of a poem, each line is carefully
set off from the next by a quarter note rest: 7
/
'~:p
f
f
Example l
Furthermore, all repetitions are of)"hole lines, and not of
single words or phrases abstracted from their lines, as
would frequently occur in most arias.
All these elements work together toward the apprehension of the regular poetic rhythms of the aria. But there is
a musical problem with a series of lines or a series of stanzas:
"one thing after another" militates against the dramatic
curve of a piece which gives it conviction of a beginning,
middle, and end. In a poem read aloud, meaning, and to a
lesser extent rhythmic variations, provide a sense of crisis
and resolution where it is wanted (as it is not always in a
lyric poem). But in an operatic aria, particularly in Classic
music where climax always has to do with the dramatization of a departure from and return to a certain harmonic
place, a series of lines does not make a period, nor a series
of stanzas a fully shaped whole.; Mpzart always has to alter
the line and verse forms slightly to provide the contractions in .the material, the critical imbalance which creates
the demand for balance-regularity- to return. To shape
the first stanza into a period, Mozart works an augmentation, with syncopation, on the anapes_tic line:
original phrase:
in augmentation:
with syncopation:
n IJ n
J Jl IJ
J J IJ J J ]J J J IJ
J J ]JJ J fJ J..l']J
This transmutation of the regular anapests permits a
sense of closure at stanza's end while still carrying a suggestion of the poetic meter of the verse.
The second stanza raises the problem of the shaping of
the larger-scale formal elements of the aria. The usual
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
plan of an aria in Classic music begins with a statement of
the home key and then modulates to the key a fifth above
it, the dominant (this corresponds to the conventional
term ((exposition" of a "sonata form"). It then moves back
to the home key, or tonic, either directly or after a motion
through a few other keys in order to diffuse the power of
the dominant. This motion through foreign keys (the "development" of a sonata form) I call the X-section.8 Mozart
decides to locate the rhythmic crisis of "Non so piu" early,
in the move to the dominant, and creates it by first exaggerating regularity, then breaching it. He sets the first two
lines of the new stanza carefully as lines of poetry, but in a
somewhat different manner than before: the short syllables of the head anapest are lengthened to occupy an entire measure, a metrical adjustment which doubles the
breathing space between unit lines (two beats instead of
one), and results in leisurely-musically uncompellingphrases of 3 + 3:
IJ. Jli n J n !J J 3 ~IJ.JIJ JJJ OIJJ 3>1
These relaxed phrases, however, create a launching pad
for the motion to the second key area, a motion which is
paralleled by a transformation of the poetic diction which
is charming and dramatically apt. His words about the
movements of his own passion move Cherubino out of
the measured artifice of his verse to sing in a more direct
and passionate style. The three-measure phrases quicken
to urgent and breathless two-measure units,9 the harmony, also quickening, darkens to a diminished seventh
chord on the word desio ("desire"), 10 and desio is itself repeated a fourth higher as the Eli slips down to an Eb and
the beginning of a strong Bb cadential formula:
'"
]f,
r'
x•
Example 2
The repetition of the word desio is governed by an exclusively musical necessity: for the first time in the aria a single word is repeated, lifted from its unit length of poetry,
and it weakens the illusion that the singer is performing a
canzona. But it brings a passionate intensity to this important cadence which would be lacking if the strumming
metrical regularity were retained. Thus in retrospect the
introduction of the leisurely three-measure line length at
the beginning of this period serves to intensify the effect
of the contractions of desire at its final cadence. The great
wit in this manipulation lies in Mozart's realization that
after the lulling regularity of the poetic lines phrases measured purely musically-"aria-style" -would appear as
the accents of true passion, rendering the final cadence
on the dominant "heartfelt" and thus structurally strong. II
67
�"Non so pill" has no formal X~section, moving immedi~
ately back to Eb and a repetition of the opening period. (A
detail in the bass line of that repetition is further confirmation that Mozart intended the aria to be apprehended
as sung verse, as opposed to dance or declamation. At the
opening the bass played only roots of chords, as if to stress
the affinity of the orchestra with a "giant guitar" playing a
simple chordal accompaniment. Since by the return of
the tonic the poetic form is firmly established, the bass
can be put to a different use; compare the following measures with the bass line of example number 1:
1'1·
51
W.'bt• 1 "I p ra II $J ~lh p
jt' J sIr '-
Example 3
In the return the bass has been freed from its mimetic role
to add some contrapuntal interest, implying that it was
under some constraint before.) The fifty-one measures
ending with the repetition of the opening material represent the main body of the aria, a strophic song adapted by
clever modifications to the exigencies of the key area process. The forty-nine measures which remain, an extended
coda, introduce Cherubino the poet's special subject matter-the pastorale. Its text moves Jove out into the country:
Par!o d'amor veg!iando,
Parlo d'amor sognando:
A!l'acque, a!l'ombre, ai manti,
Ai /ion; al!'erbe, ai fonti,
A!l'eco, a!l'arta, ai venti
Che if suon de' vani accenti
Portano via con se."
The second time through, the text is set to a musette with
tonic pedal point, Cherubino and the violins taking the
skirl (ms. 72-80):
Example 4
The pastoral affect, which comes to dominate the opera
in its last two acts, makes a modest entrance here. Cherubino, the young court page, would surely have read or
heard some pastoral poetry. Here he mimics his models,
naively imitating Tasso, perhaps, or another Italian poet
of the pastoral mode. Yet the literary reference, and its
support in Mozart's canzona-like setting of the text, are
not merely for the sake of a convincing characterization of
the youthful poet. In "Voi che sapete" the literary frame
broadens to include Dante, and Cherubino's donne, by
then no longer the vague generality "Women" but clearly
68
Susanna and the Countess, will receive from him homage
of a more profound sort. In "Non so piu" the tremulous
youth who, if no one else will listen, tells his love to himself," becomes a creature in his own pastoral landscape;
the poet is rightly not quite at home within the narrow
bounds of Almaviva's castle.
Cherubino sings the canzona of his own composition
early in Act II, at the behest of Susanna, who is anxious
to comfort the Countess after some tactless words of
Figaro's have left her sad and distracted. Furious at the
Count, Figaro speaks with cruel banter to the Countess
about the Count's attempts to seduce Susanna. He exits
after having enjoined the two women to help him in a plot
to humiliate the Count which may involve new dangers
and humiliations for the Countess, for to set it in motion
the Count will receive an anonymous note about an assignation which the Countess has supposedly made with a
lover. To draw her mistress's attention away from her
troubles, Susanna suggests that Cherubino perform his
composition; the diversion is a welcome one, for Cheru~
bino wants to pay court to the Countess and the Countess
to put her unfaithful husband from her mind. Susanna indulges them both in a moment of loveplay, her indulgence in itself an act of Jove.
The loveplay must, however, be merely an innocent
tableau. It is crucial to da Ponte's and Mozart's conception of their story that the relationship between Cherubino and the Countess be treated less suggestively than it
was in Beaumarchais's original. They took pains to eliminate certain passages from Le mariage de Figaro which
suggested more than a delicate flirtation between the two.
Whereas in Le mariage the Countess often seems to be
hesitating between two lovers, in the opera Cherubino is a
pet, and never a real source of temptation. In Act II, scene
iii, of the play the Countess excitedly prepares herself for
Cherubino's arrival as one would for a lover. Da Ponte in
the corresponding scene (the recitative before this aria)
has her instead sadly lament the improprietous conversations Cherubino overheard when he hid in the chair in
Act I. He omits a scene from the Beaumarchais (IV, viii)
between the Countess and the Count in which the
Countess expresses surprising anguish over the departure
of Cherubino from the castle. The text of "Voi che
sapete" is another of da Ponte's interpolations. In Le
mariage Cherubino sings, to the tune "Malbroug s' en
va't'en guerre," a ballad-like poem about a particular lad's
intense devotion to his godmother. Da Ponte's text, on
the other hand, is conventional and impersonal, addressed
not to one donna, but to the collective donne:
Voi che sapete
Che cosa e amor,
Donne, vedete
S'io l'ho ne! cor. 14
WINTER 1982
�The change is a material one: it is important to Mozart's
conception of Cherubino's role in the opera that he be
more "in love with love" than with any particular object
of his desires.
Again, as in "Non so pili/' the text is plainly a poem,
consisting of seven four-line stanzas with abab rhyme
schemes:
2. Quello ch'io provo
f::i ridiro;
E per me nuovo,
Capir no! so.
5. Ricerco un bene
3. Sento un affetto
6. Sospiro e gemo
Pien di desir
Ch'ora e diletto,
Ch'ora e martir.
Senza vo!er,
Palpito e tremo
Senza saper,
4. Ge!o, e poi sen to
L'alma avvampar,
E in un momenta
Torno a gelar.
Fuori dime,
Non so chi'/ tiene,
Non so cos'e.
7. Non trovo pace
nario had a characteristic stress on the fourth syllable, and
was often set as a galliard: IJ J J IJ J I .16
Mozart's musical line reflects the same stress, although
not the galliard's triple rhythms:
These two measures constitute a unit length, corresponding to one line of poetry, which will be deployed in various
multiples as the aria progresses.
The first verbal stanza-and first period-consists of
four of these lengths (eight measures), brought to closure
by a four-measure cadential phrase (ms. 17-20). The first
two measures of this phrase are poetically anomalous,
smoothing over the quinario rhythms to provide a rhythmic and melodic climax which drives home the cadence,
and its second two measures are a rhythmic rhyme with
the second of the unit lengths:
Notte ne di:
Ma pur mi piace
Languir cos/. 15
Its sentiments are pure Cherubino. Again, as in "Non so
pili/' Mozart must set the poem as a convincing song, unw
derlining its literary origin. Furthermore, since in "Voi
che sapete" opera's great artifice and the reality are oneCherubino is actually meant to be singing-the stanzaic
nature of the piece must be more than just a suggestion.
Yet a straight strophic construction with the same music
repeated seven times will be monotonous, while the usual
key-area plan is too dramatic, obscuring by its spirited
curve the necessary poetic element of formal repetition.
Mozart solves the problem in much the same way as he
did in "Non so piil," combining the key-area plan with
outlines of stanzas asserted by attention to the configurations of Italian metrics. In "Voi che sapete," however, the
solution is even more of a triumph. Neither element is
submerged at the appearance of the other, and Mozart's
attention to the detail of the text is exquisite.
In 2/4 meter, Andante, "Voi che sapete" opens with a
gesture which could in theory be a slow contredanse:
But the stately harmonic rhythm of the opening, underlined by the plucking of Susanna's guitar (pizzicati in all
the strings), militates against the usual rhythmic excitement and compression of a key-area dance form. Cheru·
bino's music is ingenuous and leisurely, lacking the urgency
of dance. Clearly at the outset the principles of syllable
count and of the integrity of a unit line of poetry set the
limits. "Voi che sapete" uses the five-syllable line or quinario (the second and fourth lines of each stanza are quinarios with the fifth syllable verbally but not musically
mute-it is sounded in the orchestral introduction). QuiTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
In the truncated orchestral introduction this cadential
phrase serves as a neat consequent member for two unit
lengths:
I~'"
~~:;-
,~~~ &1 1Ipr1IrIJI11 r 'I Q' f3 •Iiii' iJrl r jj1i It rt zj
,
anl.u.At..f
J t
c.tnJ'<!flt"'"f-
I
Example 5
Once one knows the aria, however, the consequent
sounds tacked on: it is clear that the introduction is a compression and that the proper mode of the aria is the expansive spinning-out of poetic stanzas rather than the
antecedent-consequent symmetries of dance. After the
first period the consequent will be withheld until the two
crucial moments of closure which remain-the end of the
"exposition" and the final cadence of the aria. All the
other stanzas will be left open-ended, "poetically," rather
than "musically" conceived.
The second poetic stanza (ms. 21-28) moves to the
dominant of the dominant, F major, preserving the rhythm
of the preceding stanza's first eight measures except for a
few small variations. The modulation introduces the first
dark harmony of the piece, a d-minor triad, aptly on the
word nuovo ("new") for a nice poetic touch. The third
poetic stanza opens in F major, the proper key of the sec·
ond key area. Once the dominant has been achieved, all
that is lacking is the characteristic confirmation of the
new harmonic place. This stanza, like the second consisting of eight measures modelled on measures 9-16, only
postpones confirmation. Each four-measure member
ends on the dominant of F major, and the interest of the
69
�stanza is in a madrigalistic touch-a pretty painting of the
contrast between diletto and martir ("pleasure" and "torment"): diletto receives an ornamental division, while
Cherubino's warblings turn dark ori the word martn (an
f-minor chord and an augmented sixth), as the pretty
youth sings prettily of the pangs of love:
~
~
"'
Cl.'o#I'JI. ~ .11- kf·fto
..1_1_
'F ;r'
:I-
!-Jl
~
~
j•,
J,l·-~-~
J .L
""t-
*·
\r
Example 6
The conventional pathos of the turn is delicately comic.
The next stanza constitutes one of the critical moments
in the juggling of musical and poetic priorities, the problem being how to bring the second key area to an emphatic
close while preserving a sense of the repetition natural to
a strophic song. At this moment in "Non so piu" Mozart
breached poetic regularities, having first rather exaggerated them. Here he takes the opposite tack, violating a
firmly established principle of the key-area plan by closing
the exposition in an alien key. At the outset of the new
stanza (m. 37) the bottom of the C-major triad (V of F)
drops out:
The X-section begins with a harmonic move toG minor
and a new stanza-the fifth one-in rhythm essentially
resembling the second and third:
In ''\nnlJ. \
• Jfl ffflh nn !D Jn
' J n n J, J n !H J lffl .fff'lll J
; J n Jm J J n J J n J ; J
n
n
J~
J>
ms. 21-28
ms. 29-36
ms. 45-52
Again the text is apt for the harmonic motion, speaking of
Cherubino's search for a good outside of himself, the nature and whereabouts of which he does not know. G
minor is conventionally "outside" the place just abandoned, and the modulation to it is open-ended,_ "searching" (passing through G as V of C ~nd then backmg up to
a G tonic through an augmented stxth to D). But the ftrm
harmonic cadence at the end of the stanza (stanzas 2 and
3 both ended on a dominant, not a tonic) gives the lie to
the charmingly melodramatic words of Cherubino's
quest, settling gently back in a harmonic place and reasserting by its sing-song rhythmic rhyme the frame of the
poem.
In "Non so piu" Mozart disturbed the regular poetic
rhythm during the move to the dominant, balancing that
gesture against the return and expansive pastoral coda.
The balance is different in "Voi che sapete:" the rhythmic crisis helps to weight the eighteen measures of thereturn against the forty-four measures of "exposition." Now
for the first time the repetitive trochees
IJnJJJI
- "I_.,
Example 7
The entire stanza is set in Ab major, a key with a remote
and cool relation to the tonality of the aria. The strange
modulation is suited to the text-Cherubino's description
of the fire and ice of infatuation-and rationalized by the
repetition of the four-measure consequent which closed
the first period: it makes here a solid rhythmic rhyme back
to that cadence in order to counterbalance the harmonic
aberration. Thus by a brilliant manipulation of the elements which he set up as "musical" and "poetic" premises at the beginning of the aria, Mozart has managed a
convincing close to the second key area without at all
abandoning metrics. The strange key (a side-slipping modulation instead of the usual drama of the move up to the
dominant) and the eight-measure rhythmic rhyme-yet
another stanza-are unconventionally undramatic. (Literal end rhyme between the first and second key areas is
unusual, since the dramatic point of the new key area is
the movement to the new harmonic place.) Yet the fourmeasure consequent-marked as having a umusical"
function because it diverges just enough from the regular
strophic rhythms to act as a closing gesture-can still signal forcefully the end of a major formal section. Thus the
second key area of the canzona is dramatic in asserting an
essentially undramatic gesture-the rhythmic repetitions
of verse.
70
and the constant four-measure units lose their hold. Urgent and breathless sixteenth notes with an iambic stress~ffliR J' 'ffllh• fflifl J' nfl'ljl'
... - I .. -1"' - I "'-/
begin a long-arched nine-measure phrase which culminates
on the dominant (m. 61). Five of these iambic phrases ornament a chromatic scale in the bass which overshoots
the dominant by one note. A four-measure trochaic unit
length emerges from the iambs and the phrase backs
down to F, the dominant of Bb, ending in a harmonic and
rhythmic rhyme with stanzas 2 and 3. The text is appropriately breathless; for the first time two stanzas constitute one sentence, and the antitheses pile up to a climax;
"I sigh and moan without wanting to, I quiver and tremble without knowing it, I find no peace night or day, and
yet it pleases me to languish this way." These two stanzas
of text are crammed into the nine measures of music. The
rhyme, which provides a mimetic pause on languir (vii' of
V, m. 60) restrains their breathy passion;
/
..
.....
~
/1""*""~ ..
:
"'
r· e* ,..f-k ~ J,:
Jo.'f
p«r ,.;
..
.. "
.,.
,,,_ .,-k
(1-
"
~
Example 8
WINTER 1982
�Cherubino seems for a moment to step outside his formal
song, overwhelmed with emotion. Yet his outburst does
not violate the studied dramatic effects of a charming !tal·
ian song, since the end rhyme once again asserts the
frame of the poem. The piece plays itself out in a return
to the tonic and to the first stanza of text -a final rhyme
both of key area and of canzona. The four·measure conse·
quent makes its third and fourth appearances to provide
the rhetoric of cadence.
Cherubino is indeed a strange invention; some specta·
tors find him repellent, others merely silly. Certainly da
Ponte and Mozart went out of their way to underline his
mixed nature. A young and blushing girl, dressed as a boy,
tremulously singing the cliches of passion with a cool and
vibrato.free voice-the creature before us must be very
special. One expects him to dance-the established rhyth·
mic idiom of the opera-and his dance turns to song. His
conventionally melodramatic gestures-the chromatic turn
on the word martir for example-suggest a moonstruck
adolescent, yet suddenly his song turns to a cool and sub·
tie Ab major, a strange and otherworldly place, laid out but
never explored. Early adolescence is a peculiarly amor·
phous time of life, when youth is androgynous and uncle·
limited-unsure of what it is or what to expect from the
people around it. Cherubino knows of himself only that
he does not know himself, and he is strikingly undiscrimi·
nating in his relationships. "I no longer know what I am,
what I do," he confesses; "every woman makes me blush,
makes me tremble." The decision to compose the role for
a young woman did more than simply ensure a convincing
portrait of adolescence, however. It kept Cherubino from
being particularized and "embodied," located in a real
place and time like the other characters in the opera. He is
the only character who is "placeless," not generated and
defined by the manners of a particular social world (which
is one reason for his failure, when left to himself, to dance,
for affecting a particular social dance gesture must mark
him as a member of a particular class). More precisely, he
off triumphantly, accompanied by an entire military band
which Figaro has summoned up from nowhere. "Non pili
andrai" is an exuberant romp for the trio (Susanna is on
stage, although she does not sing), and a coming·of·age for
a dreamy adolescent engineered by his affectionate but
realistic "older brother," Figaro.
The aria is cast in rondo form. In its main section and
first episode Figaro describes Cherubino as he is now and
in the other sections as he will be on the field of battle,
both in a comically exaggerated style. Of Cherubino now
Figaro says:
Non piu andrai, farfallone amoroso,
Notte e giomo d'intomo girando,
Delle belle turbando il riposo,
Narcisetto, Adoncino d'amor.
Non piu avrai questi bei pennacchini,
Que/ cappello leggero e galante,
Quella chioma, quell'aria brillante,
Que/ vermiglio, donnesco color."
The music to which the first stanza is set is a C·major
march in 4/4 time with a dotted upbeat. Its opening mo·
tive consists almost exclusively of C·major triads, with a
rousing military fanfare to the words "disturbing the
beauties' beauty·sleep," a musical mixed metaphor which
becomes a substantive trope both in the aria and in the
opera. Here the mixture is one of amorous language and
military music, whereas in the first episode of the rondo
(ms. l5ff.) two musical styles mingle: amorous music in·
sinuates itself into the martial ambiance. Describing
Cherubino's appearance in a gently mocking idiom, Fig·
aro alternates a gavotte rhythm with the orchestra's
march:
Viol,.,. II
/1'-..
is "out of place/' for he is not in his proper home and his
genealogy is left unclear. There is, however, one sympa·
thetic portrait of Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro which
may help to make sense of his changeling natureFigaro's description of the boy in his aria at the end of the
i>•'.ta.· .,. ...;1\Wii bo: }"'........~-
R,..,JJ
ltJJ
p
t~
d.;. ,.,.·,
I
I
T
Example 9
first act, his "battle song," "Non pill andrai."
Following the Count's announcement that Cherubino
must leave the castle, Figaro, fond of the page and amused
at-some would say jealous of-his adolescent love pangs,
wants to sweeten the bitterness of his banishment from
his amorous playground. He sings for Cherubino an aria
containing consolation, paternal advice, and encourage-
ment, interlarded with affectionate jibes at the boy's
youth and cynical comment on the nature of that glorious
endeavor, war. Since Figaro is always actor and illusionist,
Cherubino can't simply walk off to war; he must march
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
A little Adonis on his way to battle deserves a mixture of
erotic and military gestures; the march and the coy gavotte
with its pastoral and amorous connotations are a wholly
appropriate conjunction here, and Figaro revels in them.
The brief gavotte dissolves into a dominant pedal, which
calls back the original march theme (m. 31). Figaro's fancy
is afire: after repeating the march he launches an enor·
mously expanded episode (ms. 43ff.)-the description of
Cherubino at the front-returning to the same dominant
pedal and bedroom march (m. 78) and adding a coda. Orig·
71
�inally the march gesture, found p~incipally in the strings,
was merely the orchestral accompaniment; now it becomes
a presence on stage, brought to life as a real military
march. Mozart calls on the full colors of the orchestra:
strings alternate with winds and brass, including trumpets, and the tympani sound for the first time. Figaro, no
longer singing a human vocal line, imitates a trumpet
voicing battle calls:
Example lO
In measure 61 the strings drop out entirely and a full military band plays a new march, suitable for the field and not
at all singable. In the coda this field march returns, and
the stage directions read "Partono tutti alia militare;" 18 in
this playful aria about playing the imaginative has drawn
playfully near to the real, with the help of the "realistic"
rhythms and colors of music.
Figaro's description of Cherubino goes a long way toward explaining some of the paradoxes which surround
him. There is much about the "little Cherub" which
evokes another moonstruck child, an antique deity-the
figure of Eros-Cupid. The imagery of the libretto of Le
nozze di Figaro, thoroughly pastoral, is also frequently
classical. Much of this language centers around Cherubino himself; even Basilio calls him "Cherubino, Cherubin d'amore," hinting at the connection with Eros, and to
Figaro in this aria he is a "little Narcisetto, little Adonis of
love." The classical and the pastoral were for the eighteenth century two genres inextricably mixed. The shepherd-lovers of late eighteenth-century pastoral pieces are
inevitably given classical-sounding names, often drawn directly from the pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Virgil;
they are distant descendants of that tradition. At the end
of the opera Figaro is moved to draw the connection himself: just after Susanna sings her beautiful pastorale,
"Deh, vieni," musings on the theme of the correspondence between the twilight night and the state of a lover's
soul (and meant to tease Figaro for the absurdity of his distrust of her), he is drawn, coming to interrupt her purported rendezvous, ironically to style himself as Vulcan,
and Susanna and the unknown lover as Venus and Mars.
The pastoral diction and musette of "Non so pili" place
Cherubino squarely in the Arcadian tradition; as Eros he
presides over the couples in the opera-the indigenous
deity of pastoral love.
The pastoral Eros of Le nozze di Figaro is very different
from whatever Eros presides, for example, in Don Giovanni. There Eros wounds, and often disastrously; he
strikes Donna Elvira just as Virgil's Cupid cunningly
pierced the breast of Dido with a fatal love for Aeneas. In
Figaro, on the other hand, Eros is love through his very
vulnerability. In his openness to all love and love for all, he
72
touches Susanna, Figaro, and the Countess, and makes
the Count suspicious and edgy, although Almaviva is
plainly never quite sure why he should distrust the young
page. The Count ought to worry less about the possibility
of Cherubino seducing the Countess and more about the
efficacy of Cherubino's selfless brand of love, which Almaviva is incapable of comprehending. In the dogma of
Cherubino's eros, being moved by someone is equally as
important as one's own su<;cess in moving the other toward oneself. Cherubino celebrates passion in the strict
sense of the word-the joys and pains of suffering the object of one's affections to move one. When in the finale of
the second act the Count gasps out "Rosina" (II, 15, 229230), he is beginning to learn about this "being affected."
Cherubino's relationships with Susanna, the Countess,
and Figaro reveal the many facets of his special "affection." One erotic thread runs through them all: an aliveness to the physical qualities of the beloved-his walk, his
gestures, the sound of his voice-so that merely glancing
at the beloved gives one an involuntary start. Cherubino
presides over many relationships not explicitly erotic. He
is fond of Susanna, and calls her sorella ("sister"), she
dresses him up like a doll, and they banter and plot like
brother and sister. When in Act II they are caught in danger together they behave like two frightened children. Yet
Susanna affectionately appreciates Cherubino's beauty;
his physical presence moves her. "Che vezzo, che figura!/
Mirate il bricconcello,/Mirate quanta e bello!" 19 she cries.
Cherubino's affection for the Countess is more explicitly
erotic; he steals her ribbon for a magic talisman, and she is
obviously fluttered by his presence. When Susanna admires him the Countess turns away abruptly, snapping
"Quante buffonerie!"20 as though to remind herself to keep
her distance from the charming boy. Rosina is not a middleaged matron, but a young girl recently married and suffering from the inattention of a philandering husband. But, as
I have already pointed out, Mozart and da Ponte treat the
erotic side of their affection more delicately than did Beaumarchais, combining it with Cherubino's hero-worship of
his handsome and benevolent godmother; if anything,
Cherubino's stammering when he speaks to the Countess
makes her seem more matronly than she actually is.
Despite his awkwardness and naivete, his constant facility for annoying, all the characters in the opera find themselves moved in some way by this absurd child. The
Count's exasperation at Cherubino's ubiquity goes deeper
than he realizes. When he cries "E mi fara il destino/Ritrovar questa paggio in ogni loco!"21 he is only admitting to
the boy's disturbing influence on all the loves and friendships in the opera. The affection between Susanna and
the Countess also patterns itself on Cherubino's eros:
awakened by each other's admirable qualities, they move
toward each other and toward friendship. The opera is in
fact about the friendship between the two women and its
possibility-how trust and affection can exist between
two people who share nobility of character, but not of
rank. Now it can be seen more clearly why it is fitting that
WINTER 1982
�Cherubino be a poet. The androgynous Eros-Cupid, neither young nor old, male nor female, .human nor divine,
sings a song which celebrates the passions which Susanna
experiences gladly, the Countess perforce sadly, which
the Countess is too dignified, Susanna too matter-of-fact,
to express outright. The utterly conventional poetry of
"Voi che sapete" from its first line suggests another, less
conventional poet and a more serious intent: "Donne
ch'avete intelletto d'amore"22 is the first line of Dante's
sonnet sequence about the fine discipline of love, and the
abstract quality of its language is a reflection of the tradition in which erotic love sets the soul on the path to
higher things. Cherubino the poet is celebrating the two
women themselves; the opening words of his song sweep
them into his court. He identifies them as "donne che
sanno che cosa e amor, che hanna intelletto d'amore."2 3
He dubs them secular Beatrices, mediums for the workings of Eros. A special aura surrounds them; comprehend-
ing "che cosa e amor," they are gifted with a surpassing
vision of the way things are. (The Countess, it should be
pointed out, returns the compliment, in "Porgi, amor,"
her aria at the opening of Act II, addressing her petition
there to the god of love, Cherubino-Eros.) Furthermore,
by addressing the two women indiscriminately as donne,
Cherubino reveals the special bond between servant and
mistress; initiates, at least, can address them on equal
terms. This relation fittingly comes to light reflected in
the eyes of its catalyst, Cherubino d'a more.
We return in a roundabout way to Figaro and "Non pili
andrai." There exist various interpretations of what Figaro is up to in the aria. It may be perhaps just what it
seems~Figaro's attempt to divert Cherubino from the
sorrows of parting~or, as some have suggested, actually
an attack on Cherubino, teasing banter meant to rub salt
in the wounds, stemming from Figaro's jealousy of the
boy's appeal for the ladies or from a plebeian's resentment
of the aristocratic page 24 In the latter case an aside which
Figaro makes to Cherubino just before the aria~"Io vo'
parlati/Pria che tu parta"' 5 ~is taken as a bullying invitation to a later showdown, whispered so that Susanna can't
hear. That aside, however, has a further audience~the
Count and Basilio. Although many editions have them
leave the stage just before the aside, in the 1786 libretto
(and in the corresponding scene from Le mariage de Figaro) they do not leave, and indeed witness the whole of
Figaro's performance; the scene is rarely played this way,
and loses most of its significance as a result. A scrap of dialogue from the beginning of Act II, just before Cherubino
sings "Voi che sa pete," clarifies the intent of the aside immediately. Figaro is expounding to the Countess the plan
for the Count's humiliation, which involves dressing
Cherubino as Susanna and sending him to the rendezvous
with the Count. Then Figaro says to the Countess, "Il picciol Cherubino,/Per mio consiglio non ancor partito . .. " 26
He plainly wants words with the boy here in Act I not in
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
order to vent his jealousy or class resentment, but to keep
Cherubino from leaving the castle, so that they can lay
plans about the plot he mentions in Act II. Thus all
through "Non pili andrai" Figaro is foresworn to keep
Cherubino back from battle; he has no intention ofletting
the Count disturb the ornamental life of the "amorous
butterfly, flitting around night and day." In the course of
the plot the lad will have to be disguised as a maiden, but
the task takes almost no effort; already his checks have
"that blushing, womanly color." By celebrating the imminent departure as if in rueful assent to it, Figaro's affectionate romp with Cherubino is meant to keep the watching Count off the scent.
Yet the artful dodge has deeper overtones. If Cherubino is the presiding genius of the opera, offering a paradigm of the right way to love, the moment of romping joy
must be more than a sugar-coated pill for a charming
young rascal and a dodge to deceive the Count. "Non pili
andrai" establishes an important relationship between Figaro and Cherubino. Least of all is Figaro teaching Cherubino; he is describing Cherubino, celebrating CheruCherubino, and enlisting Cherubino.
In the first case, Cherubino's comportment on the
stage will not in itself spell out his "second nature." We
need the comments of another observer who will single
out details which consolidate the scattered impressions
generated by "Non so pili." We hear Cherubino called a
"little Narcissus, little Adonis of love," have our attention
drawn to his "little feathers," his "sparkling air," his
"blushing, womanly color," and our impressions are confirmed; it was right that the youth reminded us of that
other love child, the pagan cherub Eros.
Secondly, Figaro celebrates Cherubino. Susanna and
the Countess need not be embarrassed about being moved
by Cherubino, even in his guise as a page; for women to
amuse themselves decorously with the castle mascot is
perfectly proper. Figaro must also be touched by the
power of the strange youth, but to show it is for him a
more delicate matter. Both Figaro and Cherubino are
male, and while they are near the same age, Figaro has attained his manhood. On the other hand, Figaro may be a
little jealous of Cherubino's luscious youth. Circumstances
prevent their sharing the innocent playmate-friendship of
Susanna and Cherubino. Later, at the end of the opera,
Figaro turns away momentarily from the graces of the two
women, giving in to the darker passions of jealousy and
distrust. It is important that he show here that his primary
attachment is to the court of Cherubino, and not to the
selfish brotherhood of the Count and his satellites. Figaro
will rarely reveal how Cherubino moves him; a fraternal
romp in which all three join is one of the few occasions
where it is possible. Figaro shows his affection for Cherubino by exercising for the boy his imaginative talents;
"Non piu andrai" is a moment of uloveplay" between
Cherubino and Figaro.
Finally, Figaro enlists Cherubino. Figaro in his tribute
to the page admits the power of Cherubino's kind of pas-
73
�sian. Only this eros will unite all the conspirators, later on
even moving an unlikely ally like Marcellina over to their
side (when she sees Figaro as if for the first time, and is
genuinely moved by the person of her son). To arm Eros·
Cupid with arrows and shield was an ancient conceit.
Here in "Non pill andrai" Figaro is arming Cherubino,
girding him for the struggle to come. In fact the figure of
the "bedroom soldier," usually the matter of vulgar jokes,
becomes in Figaro an emblem for the righteous of the
opera and for the right kind of passion; the gentle Count·
ess moves to a mixture of lyric and military modes in
"Porgi, amor," and in the finale to Act III a ragged band of
militants for Eros executes a stirring march, the uniformed Cherubino at their head, before they outmaneuver
the Count once again. The gesture of the military march,
taking off from Cherubino's imminent field commission,
becomes a testimony to trust in the powers of human af.
fection when matched against the assailing brutishness of
men. "Amor vincit omnia": the lyrics of Cherubino the
poet celebrate this maxim in all its delicate compulsion.
l. "Go on, you old pedant, you stuck-up lady scholar; just because you
once read two books, and annoyed Madame in her youth ... " (I, v,
75- 78).
2. "Leggila alia padrona,/Leggila tu medesma,/Leggila a Barbarina, a
Marcellina,/Leggila ad ogni donna del palazzo!" ("Read it to my mistress, you read it to yourself, read it to Barbarina, to Marcellina, read it
to every woman in the palace").
3. "Povero Cherubin, siete voi pazzo?" ("Poor Cherubin, are you
mad?").
4. In the original of Le nozze di Figaro, Beaumarchais's Le mariage de
Figaro, the Countess explains that Cherubino is related to her family
and is her godchild (1, x). Da Ponte omitted the scene in which these
lines occur, but the Countess is referred to as Cherubino's comare or
godmother (by Susanna-!, v, 86). It was customary to take nobJe.born
boys into noble households as pages.
5. "I don't know what I am, what I'm doing .... Sometimes I'm on fire,
sometimes I'm all ice .... Every woman makes me blush, makes me
tremble. At the mere names of love, of pleasure, I grow agitated, my
heart skips a beat, and a desire which I cannot explain forces me to
speak of love!"
6. See Putnam Aldrich, Rhythm in Seventeenth-Century Italian Monody
New York 1966.
7. Lines three and four of the first stanza might seem to be an anomaly
in an anapestic scheme because of the string of six eighth-notes with
which they begin:
Q-.~.,; do11·n4.. CM·11'.fr- ,1; e~-/D-r~
n1nn
J JJ/JJ
But the first eighth-note on the syllable don- is an appOggiatura varying
the line by embellishing the all-important word donna; it does not distract from the underlying rhythm.
8. For a more detailed discussion of the reasons for substituting these
terms for the more conventional ones, see Leonard G. Ratner, "Harmonic Aspects of Classic Form," Journal of the American Musicological
Society 2, 1949, 159-68.
9. Measure 22, using for the first two lines the syncopation from the
earlier cadence.
10. Measure 27-vii7 ofF, the new dominant. Or the Db could be regarded as a chromatic appoggiatura to a V~ of V; the effect is the same.
ll. Ordinarily to register "truest" passion in the middle of an operatic
aria the character moves from strictly measured music to the freer
74
rhythms of recitative. For example, in the finale to the second act of
Figaro, in the midst of a spirited 4/4 interchange between the Count
and the Countess, he calls her suddenly by her Christian name and she,
deeply stung, answers him in a phrase of recitative which brings the
rhythmic action to an abrupt halt (II, 15, 230-233). In "Non so pill" the
strictly "poetic" setting is apprehended as the artifice, and the singer
need not resort to declamation to register his natural voice.
12. "I speak of love when I'm awake, I speak of love when I'm dreaming: to the water, to the shadows, to the mountains, to the flowers, to the
grass, to the fountains, to the echo, to the air, to the winds, which bear
away with themselves the sound ofthe empty syllables" (ms. 54-91).
13. "E, se non ho chi m'oda,/Parlo d'amor con me"-the last two lines
of the text of "Non so pill."
14. "Ladies, you who know what love is, see if I have it in my heart."
15. "I shall tell you again what I'm feeling; it's new for me, and I don't
know how to understand it. I have a feeling full of desire; sometimes it's
pleasure, sometimes torment. I'm cold, and then I feel my soul all
ablaze, and in a moment I'm cold again. I'm looking for a good which is
outside of me; I don't know who has it, or what it is. I sigh and moan
without wanting to, I quiver and tremble without knowing it, I find no
peace night or day, and yet it pleases me to languish this way."
16. Alddch, 103-133.
17. "No more, amorous butterfly, will you go flitting around night and
day disturbing the beauties' beauty-sleep, you little Narcissus, little
Adonis of love. No more will you have these fine little feathers, that light
and rakish cap, that sparkling air, that blushing, womanly color."
18. "All exit in military style."
19. "What a bearing, what a face! Look at the little colt, see how beautiful he is!" (II, 12, 89-92).
20. "What foolishness!" (II, 12, 119).
21. "And will destiny make me find this page everywhere!" (II, viii, 8385).
22. "Ye women who comprehend love ... "
23. "Women who know what love is, who comprehend love ... " My
sentence is a conflation of the opening line of the aria and the opening
line of Dante's poem.
24. This suggestion is made by Siegmund Levarie (Mozart's Le nozze di
Figaro: A Critical Analysis, Chicago 1952, 72), and by Frits Noske ("Social Tensions in Le nozze di Figaro," Music and Letters, January 1969,
52). Because it is important ammunition for those who see the opera as a
revolutionary comedy in the tradition of its original, and not as a pastoral
romance about the nature of true attachment, as it seems to me to have
become, this suggestion needs refutation. It depends partly on the assumption that Figaro, while he defers to Cherubino in public, addressing him in the second person plural at the beginning of this scene ("E
voi non applaudite?"), is in private insolent (he addresses Cherubino
thereafter exclusively as tu).
But since all Figaro's remarks except for one aside are overheard by
the Count and Basilio (see above), there is actually no distinction made
here between public and private. According to the original libretto, Figaro's final words to Cherubino before the aria ("Farewell, little Cherubino. How your [tuo]fate changes in a moment!") are said with feigned
joy (finta gioia)-the public prevails. Furthermore, although Cherubino
is probably of gentle birth, he is nevertheless a child, not in his proper
home, and in a position of service; ordinary protocol will probably not
apply. The issue of Cherubino's aristocracy never seems to be a live one
in his relationships with Susanna and Figaro, and so tu is no more necessarily insolent than voi defers. Susanna calls Cherubino voi perhaps for
the same reasons as the Countess does-to keep the attractive and
amorous boy at arm's length. And Figaro's tu to Cherubino is probably
affectionate, his one public voi a perfunctory attempt, before he warms
to his role as fond older brother, to conceal from the Count and Basilio
their relationship as friends and-as I shall show in a moment-future
conspirators.
25. "I want to speak to you before you leave."
26. "Little Cherubino, who on my advice has not yet left ... " (italics
mine).
WINTER 1982
�The Fury of Aeneas
Joe
The story Homer tells in the Iliad begins with the eruption of the anger of Achilles. As the twenty-fourth book of
the poem opens, that anger has reached its greatest intensity. Achilles "let fall the swelling tears, lying sometimes
along his side, sometimes on his back, and now again prone
on his face; then he would stand upright, and pace turning in distraction along the beach of the sea ... (At dawn,)
when he had yoked running horses under the chariot he
would fasten Hektor behind the chariot, so as to drag him,
and draw him three times around the tomb of Menoitios'
fallen son, then rest again in his shelter, and throw down
the dead man and leave him to lie sprawled on his face in
the dust ... So Achilleus in his fury outraged great
Hektor." (24. 9-22) The wrath which has withstood the
events of twenty-three books has swollen into a rage
which denies Achilles sleep, food, or the cessation of his
tears, a rage which breaks forth in monotonous acts of revenge which do not relieve but frustrate and provoke.
Achilles now walks the circular path at the center of anger
in which it is quenchless, infinite.
But the Iliad is not finally the story of the victory of anger over Achilles, because Zeus has one last scheme. He
arranges for Priam to visit Achilles, to stand before him
risking his wrath, to ask in person for pity. Priam kills the
anger of Achilles by displacing it with the grief of Achilles,
which can meet and merge with the grief of Priam and
come to rest in mutual comforting. Here is Homer's de~
scription of that last and least-expected turning point in
the Iliad: as Priam ends his words to Achilles, saying, " 'I
put my lips to the hands of the man who has killed my
children,' " Homer continues, 10 So he spoke, and stirred in
the other a passion of grieving for his own father. He took
the old man's hand and pushed him gently away, and the
A tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis, Joe Sachs delivered this lecture in Santa Fe on September 18, 1981, and in Annapolis on October 2,
1981.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Sachs
two remembered, as Priam sat huddled at the feet of
Achilleus and wept close for manslaughtering Hektor and
Achilleus wept now for his own father, now again for Patroklos. The sound of their mourning moved in the house.
Then when great Achilleus had taken full satisfaction in
sorrow and the passion for it had gone from his mind and
body, thereafter he rose from his chair, and took the old
man by the hand, and set him on his feet again, in pity for
the grey head and the grey beard, and spoke to him and
addressed him in winged words." (24. 506-17)
Book twenty-four ends with one last Homeric dawn, in
which the doomed people of Troy celebrate the burial of
their beloved Hector with fitting ceremonies and a glorious feast. Such was the burial of Hector, breaker of
horses, only because, between his wrath and his own imminent death, Achilles rejoined the human community.
The climax of the Iliad, then, is the moment when Achilles remembers his father. That moment, which pierces his
heart and lets the anger drain from it, will not add a day to
his life or to the survival of Troy, but it does make supportable the enormous weight of grief which has built in
Achilles, in Priam, in the Trojans, and in the hearer or
reader of the poem.
Virgil's Aeneid is, above all else, a reply to the Iliad and
Odyssey and a rejection of the kind of comfort Homer offers. I have set before you at length the moment into
which Homer puts a power which counterbalances all the
horror and pain of the Iliad because Virgil frames the
Aeneid with two echoes of that moment. Twice in the
Aeneid, in scenes of battle, the image of Aeneas' father
comes into his mind. On the first occasion, Aeneas is looking at Priam, and the memory of his father stirs him to action. The scene is in Book two, but it is a flashback to the
beginning of Aeneas' story, and the memory of his father
marks the beginning of his undertaking of the deeds to
which he has been called. On the second occasion, Aeneas
has just watched a young man die whom he killed, and
75
�whose father he is about to confront. The two characters,
Lausus and Mezentius, evoke memories of Hector and
Priam for the reader, and in Aeneas a memory of his father which occasions a moment of understanding. This
scene is in Book ten, but it is a direct preparation for the
understanding of the concluding lines and action of the
Aeneid. Thus the climactic moment of the Iliad is present
in the first and last events in Virgil's story, and in both
cases it is put in a perspective in which its power is acknowledged but its weight is lessened.
In Book two of the Aeneid we watch alongside a helpless Aeneas while Achilles' one deed of comfort and kindness is desecrated by Achilles' son. Listen as this third
generation speaks to the first: " 'Carry off these tidings; go
and bring this message to my father, son of Peleus; and
remember, let him know my sorry doings, how degenerate
is Neoptolemus. Now die.' This said, he dragged him to
the very altar stone, with Priam shuddering and slipping
in the blood that streamed from his own son. And Pyrrhus
with his left hand clutched tight the hair of Priam; his
right hand drew his glistening blade, and then he buried it
hilt-high in the king's side. This was the end of Priam's
destinies ... Now he lies along the shore, a giant trunk, his
head torn from his shoulders, as a corpse without a
name." (2. 547-58) As Neoptolemus sinks back into the
horror from which his father had emerged, the words
"This was the end of Priam" overtake and destroy the
calm of the words "Such was the burial of Hector."
Aeneas can do nothing for Priam, since he watches
trapped on a roof-beam of the wrecked and burning palace. But as he watches Priam die, he remembers his own
father, and all his helpless loved ones whom he has left at
home while he fights a useless battle to vent his rage at
the conquering Greeks. It seems that the memory of his
father will recall Aeneas to the deeds the ghost of Hector
has asked of him: to let Troy fall, and carry himself and
Troy's holy things across the sea. Like Achilles, Aeneas
has been wasting himself in the effort to exact the satisfaction of revenge from his enemies, and like Achilles he
is restored to himself in remembering his father. But just
as we begin to expect Aeneas to return to save his father,
wife, and son, and leave revenge behind, his eye lights on
Helen. In that sight his father's need of him is forgotten,
and a blind fury to destroy the cause of so much evil overwhelms even his capacity to keep that evil from reaching
those dearest to him. As Aeneas' sword is about to fall on
Helen, his goddess-mother grabs his arm. Venus sends
him to save his family, after showing him that not Helen
but the gods are responsible for the destruction of Troy.
But the violent arresting of Aeneas' arm when it has been
set in motion by the strongest longing in his heart leaves
behind a feeling of frustration which is not released until
the last lines of the poem. That is the beginning of the
story of Aeneas' journey. Let us try to understand how it
speaks to Homer.
The healing of Achilles' anger is the last event in his
story, and nearly the last in his life. It is enshrined forever
76
by the structure of Homer's story, which makes it the resolution of twenty-three books of tension. Achilles' story
moves out of anger, through pity, to a peace in the midst
of war. But does Homer's framing of that story reveal or
distort? Does his emphasis convey the true weights of
things? Virgil carries Homer's story beyond Homer's ending, to submerge Achilles' humanity in the brutality of his
son and Hector's glorious funeral in the hideous, headless,
nameless corpse of his father. But more important, Virgil
appropriates the climactic moment of the Iliad to make it
a fleeting mood which has no lasting effect, none in the
world and none in the heart of Aeneas. The Iliad ends
with a frozen picture of a pendulum at the top of its
swing: the picture is beautiful but that of which it is a picture is unstable. If only the dualities in our lives could be
laid to rest by our embracing of their wholesome sides, if
only the death of anger could be an overcoming, once and
for all, of its power over us, then the world might be a turbulent but finally a simple good place, and evil our own
fault. But dead anger rises again; the self-destructive passions can be seen for what they are and still reassert their
power over us. The poet Homer can show us things that
make us glad, but is that seeing what we need? The anger
of Aeneas recurs throughout the Aeneid, and both its ebb
and its flow are destructive. One of the principal teachings of the Aeneid is that rage is ineradicable from the human heart, because its cure is worse than the disease. Let
us watch as Aeneas' eyes are opened to this ugliest of
truths, in Virgil's second echo of the climax of the Iliad.
The worst man in the Aeneid is undoubtedly Mezentius,
a tyrant who tortured his subjects for sport until they rebelled and he escaped. Thousands of those subjects unite
with Aeneas in his Italian war, solely for the chance to kill
Mezentius. Without any good reason, as Virgil puts it, another thousand remain loyal to Mezentius, among them
his son Lausus, called breaker of horses. When Aeneas
wounds Mezentius with a spearcast, Lausus, his valor
awakened by his love for his father, prevents Aeneas'
sword from falling, giving his companions the chance to
save Mezentius and drive back Aeneas. Fury rises in Aeneas as he is once again thwarted on the point of killing a
thing of evil, but as he waits in shelter for all his enemies'
javelins to be thrown he calms down, and shouts at La usus
to be sensible and withdraw. When Lausus insists on
fighting him, a greater anger surges in Aeneas, and in that
rage he kills Lausus.
At whom is Aeneas angry? Can it be at Lausus, whom
he has no desire to fight and for whom he has nothing but
admiration? As Aeneas looks at La usus' dying face he sees
the image of his own love for his own father, and gives the
dead Lausus to his companions for honorable burial. It is
at this moment that the transformation in the heart of
Achilles resonates most strongly in the Aeneid, but Aeneas felt his pity before Lausus was dead, and would have
spared him had he not been driven to a resurgence of his
dead anger. To understand the killing of Lausus is, I think,
to be halfway to understanding the killing of Turnus,
WINTER 1982
�which would be equivalent to understanding the whole
Aeneid. Let us keep trying.
'
Lausus loves a father whom no one could respect. His
motive is therefore pure, irrational love, with no other
support. By painting Mezentius as unrelievedly, monstrously evil, Virgil makes the central choice of Lausus'
life be between love and everything that makes sense.
Even further, the circumstances of the battle force Lausus
to measure the strength of that love, since after he has
saved his father's life he could retreat honorably, and
must decide whether to do so or to throw away his life.
Unrestrained love and loyalty are, for Lausus, consistent
only with what is wild and reckless: to attack Aeneas and
die. Both Lausus and Aeneas have a long time to think
about this before it happens. There is an irrational and inescapable logic at work in the scene: the better a man Lausus is the more is it necessary that he die in a bad cause,
and the more fully Aeneas recognizes his goodness the
more necessary is it that he kill him, and not do him the
insult of refusing his self-sacrifice. The rage which supplies the motive power for the killing Aeneas has no heart
to commit is a rage brought about by his recognition of
the way in which both Lausus and he are trapped.
Achilles and Priam, suffering the worst private grief,
could draw together in mutual recognition and give each
other what each needed most. Priam gave Achilles deliverance from his anger, and Achilles gave Priam the means
and the time to unite with his city and his dead son in one
last civic festival. In the corresponding Virgilian recognition scene, it seems that Lausus can give Aeneas nothing,
and Aeneas can give Lausus only death. With the image
of his own father in mind, Aeneas asks the dead Lausus,
"Miserable boy, what can I give you now? What honor is
worthy of your character?" (10. 825-6) He gives to the
corpse the weapons in which it found its only happiness,
and gives the corpse itelf back to its own people, to be
mingled with the ashes and shades of its ancestors, wondering aloud if that will matter to anyone. Finally, he dedicates to La usus the only gift in his power which can solace
such a miserably unhappy death: the resolve to make his
own greatness such that there will be no shame in having
fallen beneath it. Thus La usus has given something to Aeneas-the burden of another obligation to the dead. The
Homeric comfort of the sharing in human community is
not available either to Lausus or to Aeneas. Lausus, whom
Virgil introduces in Book seven as a young man worthy to
be happy, had the wrong father, and he cannot but be the
son of his father. Aeneas likewise cannot escape being the
man on whom Trojans, Italians, and gods depend to stand
divided in war from Lausus, and be his killer. The Homeric world, whatever divisions may be within it, makes a
whole; the Virgilian world is too full of purposes too
deeply crossed to be composed, ever.
Am I going too far in reading in an intensely painful but
small tragic event a vision of a tragic world? Is not Virgil's
theme the bringing of law to the world? Are not the tragedies of Lausus and Turnus and Camilla and Nisus and
1
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Euryalus and Pallas and Evander and Amata and Dido
and Palinurus the events which Virgil shapes into the
transformation of the world into a place in which such
things will no longer happen? It is true that the bringing
of the world to peace under law is the theme of the Aeneid,
but we must not let anyone but Virgil tell us what Virgil
thinks about that subject.
We hear of it first, early in Book one, from Jupiter. He
tells Venus that Aeneas' Roman descendents will be the
lords of all things, without limits in time or place, that one
of them, meaning Augustus, will carry his empire to the
Ocean and his fame to the stars, and in doing so allow the
rough ages of the world to become gentle under law. And
here are Jupiter's last words: "The gruesome gates of war,
with tightly welded iron plates, shall be shut fast. Within,
unholy Rage shall sit on his ferocious weapons, bound behind his back by a hundred knots of brass; he shall groan
horribly with bloody lips." (293-6) Forty lines devoted to
triumph and glory seem to dissolve in four lines of ugliness. One's gaze is turned not outward, to a world finally
free of the source of war, but to the struggling caged being
confined within. The last words of this first picture of
Rome are not of victory or victors but of a victim, Furor,
and of the sights and sounds of his pain. Why is rage presented as a person? Why is a reader who is incapable of
enjoying a description of torture made to sympathize with
the cause of war?
Three lines after this ghastly and troubling portrait we
hear for the first time in the poem the name of Dido. One
third of the poem of the founding of Rome is the story of
Dido, and more than a third of its impact is carried by Virgil's presentation of her. One famous commentator has
said that Virgil was "no master of the epic art" because he
allowed such things as the sufferings of Dido to overwhelm his efforts to glorify Rome. Another has said that
the Aeneid is the first wholly successful epic ever written,
because it is the first to have the unity attained previously
only in dramas, a unity evident primarily in the complete
merging of the Dido story into that of the triumph of
Rome. Each commentator is half-right. The Aeneid is unified, but not around the figure of Augustus; Dido is the
most powerful figure in Virgil's composition, but not by
accident. The theme of Rome's bringing of a new age of
law to the world enters the poem, modulates to a strange
sadness, and passes over into the story of Dido. Dido's
story is deeper than Rome's, and illuminates it.
Dido is, to begin with, in the same situation as Aeneas,
and she has handled that situation so well that everything
about her gives hope to Aeneas at a time when he has
none. She too has been driven out of her own country and
been responsible for the lives of a band of fellow-refugees.
She too has had to find a new life in the strange and unknown lands of the West. She has won a place for her people by winning the respect of neighboring rulers, and under
her leadership, her subjects are building the conditions of
a healthy communal life: fortifications, houses, a harbor, a
theater, a senate. Already built, in the center of the city, is
77
�a temple to Juno, filled with scenes of the Trojan War.
The work under way is to Aeneas a vision of happiness,
and the completed work feeds his soul. One of the other
Trojans sees in Carthage a city with the power to impose
justice on the proud and a ruler with the goodness to
spare the defeated. We will hear almost the same words
spoken in Book six as an exhortation to Rome. The story
of Dido, smaller only in geographical scale, begins where
the story of Rome aims.
Dido's Phoenician Carthage, where Aeneas tells the
tale of his long wanderings, is, like the Phaiakian Scheria
of Alkinous and Arete, a city ruled by virtue and strong intellect. Dido herself, like Penelope, is a woman with the
dignity to keep arrogant suitors at a distance. And the hospitality, the capacity to permit another to be at home in a
place that is not his own, that is so beautifully depicted in
the Odyssey, is enjoyed by Aeneas nowhere but in the
home of Dido. In Virgil's re-casting of Homer's story of
Odysseus, almost all its places and people are condensed
into the story of Dido. Like the Iliad, Homer's Odyssey is a
story of the recovery of human community. Its culmination is the restoration of political order to Ithaca. But Dido's story reverses the Odyssean motion from anarchy to
order, from savagery to serenity. In the midst of his journey Odysseus is cursed by a one-eyed monster, a nonhuman being who lives outside all law. At the end of his
stay in Carthage, Aeneas too is cursed by a being who is
outside all law and community, and that monster is Dido
herself.
Why was Dido so successful as a ruler? I think Virgil's
briefest answer can be found near the end of Book one:
because her soul was in repose, because in turn her heart
was out of use {resides animas desuetaque corda, I. 722).
Since the death of her first husband, she tells her sister,
Aeneas alone has caused her judgment to bend and her
soul to totter. (4. 20-3) The empty pathways which the
flame of love once burned through her have not closed or
healed. The ancient flame is still within Dido, just as a living rage is still behind the gates of war which Augustus
closes with force and with law. In Latin, the name of Augustus' victim and that of Dido's conqueror are the same,
furor. Virgil's one brief portrait of a happy city is of Carthage under the rule of Dido for only so long as the furious
love within her is out of use. In the Odyssey, political community is displayed as the natural and the only life which
realizes what it is to be a human being. In the Aeneid, political life is presented as depending upon the inhuman
constraint that Dido practices upon herself and Augustus
exerts on the world. Carthage thrives on Didp' s serene
control, and collapses into disarray when she falls in love.
Many readers have seen in the fate of Dido a dangerous
example which Aeneas must see and learn to avoid. Such
readers see the foundations of the political life in Aeneas'
rejection of her. Like an oak tree in the Alps shaken by the
North wind, Aeneas suffers from love and care for Dido,
but he withstands their fury. Reason holds firm against
passion and duty vanquishes desire. One pities Dido, but
78
rejoices that Aeneas does not let his own pity become a
morass in which the hopes of his son and of the world
would be lost. But Aeneas is bound to Dido not just by his
love for her, which is his to control if he can, but by the
fact that he has allowed her to love him. That is not passion but choice, and to reverse it is not duty but betrayal.
In the simile of the oak tree, it is Aeneas' mind which
overcomes the care in his breast, but that is merely the
overcoming of the last obstacle to a choice he has already
made. The widespread interpretation according to which
Aeneas' rejection of Dido is a victory of the rational and
political over the passionate and personal does not stand
up to a moment's scrutiny. He has already told Dido that
he loves her less than he loves the remnants of Troy
which he had been bidden to carry to Italy. (4. 340-7) His
choice is personal through-and-through. And in setting
out for the city he will build in Italy, Aeneas knows that he
is leaving Carthage in wreckage. (4. 86-9) His choice is political through-and-through as well. Aeneas cannot choose
otherwise than he does. He has gotten himself into a fix
from which there is only one way out. But he cannot pretend that what he does is not a betrayal. Aeneas does not
understand his destruction of Dido as he will later understand his destruction of Lausus, but we need not be fooled.
But if Aeneas' abandonment of Dido cannot be praised
as an act of Stoic virtue, must it not be given its due as an
act of piety? Twice Aeneas tells Dido that his leaving her
for a bride and kingdom in Italy is not by his own will but
in accordance with what is fated, and we have known from
the second line of the poem that Virgil is writing of a man
whose deeds are compelled by fate. But what is the nature
of that compulsion? What does Virgil understand fate to
be? He tells us that Dido's death was not only undeserved
but unfated (4. 696), and, narrating a battle in Book nine,
he tells us that if Turnus had hesitated a moment to break
the bolts on one gate, Rome would never have come to be
(9. 757-9). In order to understand what Virgil has written,
we must conceive a fate that is both limited and fallible.
The Latin fatum contains all the meanings of our word
fate, but in it they are derivative meanings. Never absent
from the Latin word is its primary sense of a thing spoken
or uttered. And Virgil does not present the speech which
is fate as an irrevocable decree, but uses the word with
verbs meaning to call or to ask. The source of fate is a mystery in the Aeneid, but the nature of its action is evident.
Fated outcomes are known to some among the gods and
the shades of the dead, but are brought about only by human beings who must be lured, persuaded, or tricked. Every device of rhetoric must be used, because fate in the
Aeneid remains always and altogether subordinate to human choice.
The fall of Troy in Book two, for example, is a fated
event. The destruction of the city is completed by Neptune, who shakes the walls and uproots the foundations
from the earth, but neither he nor any other god acts so
directly until the conquest of the Trojans by the Greeks is
an accomplished fact. First, an indecisive war has been
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�carried on for ten years. Second, the Greeks have concealed their best fighters in a counterfeit religious offering
left on the beach of Troy. Third, a lying story told by a
Greek has aroused the pity of the Trojans and inclined
them to bring the fatal horse into their city. But beyond
all the strength, cleverness, and rhetorical skill of the
Greeks, one more element was necessary, without which,
Aeneas says years later, Troy would still be standing: the
minds of the Trojans had to be made left-handed (2. 54-6);
they had to be brought confidently to trust that the divine
purpose was opposite to what it truly was. One respected
Trojan leader, Laocoon, priest of Neptune, would have
held Troy against all the resources of Greeks and gods,
had he not been made to seem to be profaning a sacred offering. Laocoon pierced the horse with a spear, before Sinon told the Trojans that their prosperity would depend
on treating the horse with reverence. At that moment a
pair of gigantic snakes came across the sea and the land,
making straight for the small sons of Laocoon, and killing
them and him. That horrible supernatural spectacle was
the call of fate which the Trojans answered to their own
rmn.
That which is fated must be recognized, interpreted, assented to, and carried out by human beings, who may be
mistaken or may have been deliberately deceived. Aeneas
is responsible not only for his choice to answer his fate,
but also for the judgment that what fate calls him to is
good. The half-understood future that could be brought
about by Aeneas' deeds does make a powerful claim upon
him, but so does the life of Dido, which he has allowed to
become dependent upon him. No one but he can make
the final decision that the former claim is more worthy of
respect than the latter. That Aeneas is not comfortable
with his choice is obvious when he begs Dido's ghost for
understanding and absolution. Her stony refusal and undying hatred make it forever impossible for anyone to say
that his choice was right. And the unforgettable example
of Laocoon makes it equally impossible to take any comfort in the reflection that Aeneas' choice was fated.
There is a powerful presence in the Aeneid of the inescapable, but it is not the same as nor even entirely compatible with the fated. The divine call which pulls one
toward the future may be refused or defeated, but the human entanglements which grasp one from out of the past
cannot be escaped. Aeneas can abandon Dido, but he can
never be free of the pain of the knowledge that he has betrayed the love and trust he had once accepted from her.
The true fatalism of the Aeneid is not a sense of the inevitable triumph of what is to be, of a healing and elevating
future, but a sense of the sad burden of all that has been,
of past choices and rejections that one has not gotten
beyond.
Readers are sometimes puzzled by a character in the
Aeneid who is mentioned repeatedly but to whom Virgil
seems deliberately to have given no human features or
qualities. He is the closest companion of Aeneas, but we
never hear either speak to the other. He is the true or
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
trusty Achates, whose name has become an idiomatic label for a devoted friend, but he seems to be nothing more
than a label; we do not know who Aeneas' friend is or
what he is like. But Virgil often gives his characters names
which are descriptive in Greek. A Greek soldier whom Aeneas encounters on Sicily and whose story he trusts is
called Achaemenides, "still a Greek." An aging boxer who
rouses himself to win one last fight is called Entellus, "mature" or Hat an end." A monster who seems to delight in
evil itself is called Cacus, "the evil one." As a Greek word,
Achates would name ''one who grieves," one whose spe·
cia! or characteristic business is to grieve. Never absent
from the side of Aeneas in anything he does is the true or
trusty grieving one; never, in the Aeneid, does hope overcome grief.
The burden of grief which one feels through the last
two-thirds of the poem is thus explicitly figured in the person of Achates as Aeneas' second self. The inescapability
of the past is also figured by Virgil in one of the great central images of the poem, that of the labyrinth. We hear of
it first in Book five, in connection with an intricate display
of horsemanship by the Trojan children, but the words
are too strong for their immediate occasion. The sons of
Troy are said to be entangled in "an undiscovered and irretraceable wandering" (5. 591) as in the dark and ambiguous Labyrinth of ancient Crete. Aeneas soon sees a carved
image of that Labyrinth on the walls of the Sibyl's cave,
when he begins his journey in Book six to the land of the
dead. The Sibyl tells him that it will be easy to enter that
land, but to retrace his way to the upper air, "this," she
says, "is work; this is labor." (6. 126-9) We are made to
think of the Trojans' journey to Italy as labyrinthine, and
to expect Aeneas' return from Hell to be especially so. We
are startled, then, at the end of Book six, when Aeneas' return to the upper world is no trouble at all. Notoriously,
that return is through the gate of false dreams. Great ingenuity has been expended by many interpreters to remove
the taint of falsity from Aeneas' mission, but it cannot be
done. Aeneas returns to earth with his soul burning with
the love of coming fame, and that is a false exit from the
land of the dead, the place of Dido. The Labyrinth image
is still with us, the sense of betrayal of Dido's love has not
been left behind, and the Sibyl is right: what lies before
Aeneas is the true labor. He has not left the place of the
dead; he will carry it with him wherever he goes.
The war in Italy which occupies the last third of the
Aeneid has a labyrinthine structure. When Turnus enters
the Trojan camp in Book nine, he is pressed back to the
walls and carried back to his comrades by the Tiber before
there is any decisive outcome. In Book ten, when Turnus
has killed Pallas, he and Aeneas fight toward each other,
but juno lures Turnus away from the battlefield with a
phantom-Aeneas made of wind. In Book eleven, when
there is a truce, Aeneas and Turnus are both eager to submit to single combat when a double misunderstanding
makes the war resume; the two men finally catch sight of
each other across a plain, just as night falls. In the last
79
�book, Turnus' goddess-sister, disguised as his charioteer,
keeps carrying him away when Aeneas catches sight of
him. It is only in the last lines of the poem that Aeneas
reaches the center of the maze. The monster he finds
there is not Turnus, now humble, resigned to death, and
gracious in defeat. What is the meaning of Aeneas' last
furious act of violence? What does the maze of war and
frustration that stands between Aeneas and his final confrontation with Turnus have to do with the false exit from
the land of the dead by which Aeneas seems to have entered his labyrinth?
The strange and abrupt ending of the Aeneid collects
into itself all that has gone before it. It is a vivid culmination of the theme of the labyrinth, but that image in turn
takes its meaning from a chain of connected images of
which it is part. The first of these images is Aeolia, the
vast cave of the winds in which, we are told, angry tempests rage in indignation at the mountain which confines
them (l. 53-6). Unrestrained, those winds would destroy
the seas, the lands, and heaven itself. Therefore jupiter,
here called the omnipotent father, confined them and
gave them a king skilled to know when to loosen, when to
draw in, their reins. Can the word omnipotens be intended seriously in this context? It seems that it cannot
mean more than "stronger than anything else," so that
even the winds can be brought under the control of the
strongest one. If jupiter were truly able to do anything, he
could change the nature of the winds, or destroy them
and replace them with others just as useful and not as
dangerous. Could it be that one with the power to choose
otherwise would judge it good to design a world in which
hurricanes must sometimes be unleashed? The single
word omnipotens leaves that question hanging over the
poem.
The second image in the poem which picks up the
theme of caged fury is one we examined earlier: Furor,
rage itself, removed from the world and imprisoned behind the iron gates of war. What we found strange in that
picture was the presentation of rage personified as an object of pity. We saw then that the image of Furor led directly into the story of Dido and that her story was of the
unleashing of furor within her. It is in the story of Dido
that the two earlier images begin to make sense. Dido is
ruined because she is capable of loving without restraint.
The years of her self-denial make possible the existence of
Carthage, because the chiefs of the surrounding countries
respect her fidelity to her dead husband, and because it
gives her reign a dignity and stability under which her subjects thrive. But her sister, who loves her, does not want
Dido to continue that life. Royalty does not fulfill the
longings caged within Dido.
When Venus wants to bind Dido to Aeneas by means of
lust, she begins by arousing in Dido tenderness for a small
child. Once Dido falls in love with Aeneas, her ruin is assured, but she only becomes vulnerable to falling in love
by first feeling a loving response to a child. Would Dido
have been better off if a child sitting in her lap could
80
arouse no irrational longing in her childless heart?-if intimate contact with a child left her feeling no more than
the general benevolence she had for all her subjects? If
not, if a cold, loveless life is never choiceworthy, then the
omnipotent father was right to leave the furious and destructive things in the world, and Virgil was right to grieve
over the imposition of law on the earth. For even a mother's love is potentially furious, as we see it in the mothers
of Euryalus and Lavinia. And the loving, irrational desire
to have a child of one's own is inseparable from all the raging loves and hates within us. It is not the political life
which fulfills us, if Virgil is right, but the loving attachments to particular other people, which also make us vulnerable to frenzy, madness, and war.
Virgil uses the cave of the winds and the gates of war as
images of the human soul, which always encloses irrational longings and loyalties capable of furious emergence
into the world. Madness, as of Lausus, anger, as of Aeneas, rage of battle, as of Turnus, passionate love, as of
Dido, prophetic frenzy, as of the Sybil, and poetic inspiration, as of Virgil himself: these are the meanings my small
Latin dictionary gives for the word furor, the name Virgil
gives to the being at the center. And what is the labyrinth
which surrounds the center? It is, I think, Virgil's picture
of any life which ignores or denies the furious things at
the center. Aeneas leaves the land of the dead glorying in
his vision of the Roman future, only to find in Italy the
same intractable opposition he has left behind in Dido,
and finally to yield to it in himself. And Augustus subdues
the proud of all the world, only to become a monster of
pride himself.
In Book eight a fourth image joins the winds, the gates
and the labyrinth. In the land of King Evander Aeneas
sees the rock on which the Senate of Rome will one day
stand, and learns that it once enclosed the home of a murderous, fire-breathing, half-human monster named Cacus.
From the "proud doorposts" of this senseless killer there
had always hung rotting, severed heads of his human victims. (8. 195-7) Evander tells how Hercules killed the
monster and exposed his dark cavern to the light of the
sun. Commentators routinely take the triumphant Hercules as a '~symbol" for Aeneas, who overcomes the monsters
of unreason, Dido and Turnus, and for Augustus, who will
overcome war itself. One who reads Evander's account
not as a symbol but as a story, though, must feel some unease as Hercules, before he can kill Cacus, must become a
thing of fury and frenzy himself. Hercules' triumph is not
an example with which one can be quite comfortable.
Book eight ends with a hundred lines describing the future glories of Rome depicted on Aeneas' shield, culminating with Augustus sitting in triumph over conquered
peoples from all the nations of the earth. In a characteristic stroke, Virgil says that Aeneas rejoiced in the images,
ignorant of the things, so that once again a portrait of
Rome just fails to come into focus as a sight at which one
could be glad. The attentive reader will have seen that Augustus on the shield hangs the spoils of all the world on his
WINTER 1982
�"proud doorposts," a phrase used qnly of him and of
Cacus. The same spot is still the home of a monster, but
the new one ravages the whole world-'
There are two kinds of motion in a labyrinth. The outward motion is an illusion of progress away from something. It is the more pitiable, because the more ignorant,
of the two kinds. It characterizes the march of imperial
Rome outward over the world. It is seen in what Virgil
calls in Book six the "proud soul of Brutus the punisher,"
expeller of the Tarquins, the first to rule as consul, who,
"for the sake of beautiful freedom" put love of country and
praise ahead of everything else and killed his own sons.
Virgil calls him "unhappy father, no matter what posterity
may say of his deed." (6. 817-23) And Augustus cannot escape the same human vulnerability that Brutus tried to
deny. A few lines later in Book six, the entire spectacle of
the shades of the heroes of Rome is immersed in grief
over Marcellus, the young man Augustus adopted and
named as his heir, but who died when he was twenty. No
political order holds any answer for or relief from human
troubles. It is after Aeneas hears the infinity of grief over
Marcellus in his father's voice, that he looks back over the
souls of his triumphant offspring, recovers his own love of
fame, and returns to the world through the gate of false
dreams.
But Aeneas is no Augustus. He is too aware of the losses
and pains of others for his own proud illusions ever to last
for long. Aeneas for the most part moves in the other direction, inward in the labyrinth. This is the direction of "if
only." If only Helen were dead; if only Dido could be
made to understand; if only Lausus would see reason; if
only Turnus would surrender. Aeneas never uses his quest
for political glory as an excuse to turn his back on a human being in distress, but he cannot relinquish that quest,
on which so many others depend, and he can never quite
find his way to the center of the source of distress to remove its cause. At the beginning of Book eight, the last in
a long succession of divine apparitions comes to Aeneas.
The old god of the Tiber tells him that his troubles are
near an end, and that home and rest await him. He must
fight and win a war with the Latins, but for once help will
be available. Inland along the Tiber live Arcadian Greeks
ruled by King Evander. They will happily join Aeneas in
his fight and he can put an end once and for all to the
troubles he has carried with him for so long and in which
he has involved so many others.
Aeneas does find welcome and help in Evander's city,
Pallanteum. As in Carthage, he finds too much welcome
and too much help. It turns out that Evander once met
Aeneas' father, and adored him with youthful love. The
gifts Anchises gave him seem to be the only signs of
wealth Evander has allowed to remain in his city. (8. 15569) History repeats itself in Pallanteum, in a double sense.
As with their fathers, Pallas is fired with a loving admiration for Aeneas. As he joins with him, we see in one brief,
lovely scene, a greater closeness between the two than we
ever see between Aeneas and his own son. (10. 159-62)
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
But Aeneas' recent Carthaginian history repeats itself at
the same time: from Evander and from Pallas, Aeneas has
again accepted the loving gift of a human life, entrusted
to his care. Pallas seems to think Aeneas can answer the
deepest questions of his life, but the two men know each
other only for a day. When Pallas arrives in Latium he
begins to fight, and two hundred lines later he is dead.
Like every young man in the Aeneid, excepting only Iulus,
who is deliberately kept out of the fighting, Pallas dies at
the moment of his greatest valor. That is the theme of
Book nine, in which, in Aeneas' absence, only young men
are fighting. It is embodied in the figure of Euryalus,
whose longing for glory leads him to put on the shining
helmet of one of his victims, immediately to become a victim because that shining makes him an easy target. (9. 35966, 373-4) It is embodied, too, in the similes of Book nine,
which liken the young warriors to beasts of prey which, if
they are daring and successful predators, become a danger
to men and an easy prey. Pallas cannot escape the Virgilian logic of glory and death.
The saddest words of this saddest of poems are spoken
by Aeneas to the corpse of Pallas: "The same horrible fate
of war calls me from here to other tears; hail from me eternally, dearest Pallas, and eternally farewell." (11. 96-8) In
the last lines of the poem, Aeneas recognizes that there is
no such thing as an eternal farewell. The dead live as
sources of obligation, and neither death nor any ceremony
can cancel such debts. If Dido can be assimilated to a
larger purpose, then she did not live. If Lausus' decision
to throw away his life were not acknowledged as binding
his adversary, then Lausus would not be recognized as the
source of his own choices. And if Pallas can be forgotten
for the sake of the living, and the greater number, then
Pallas himself is accorded no worth at all. Human worth
does not fit in any scales. Its claims are unconditional.
We admire Aeneas in the war books of the last third of
the poem because he always seeks the sanest and most
sensible solutions for his enemies as well as for his own
people. We rage along with him when trivial, irrational
causes produce and prolong the slaughter. Aeneas longs
for peace and for harmony with all the tribes in Italy. And
what does Turnus fight for? For wholly selfish reasons
and for the joy of fighting. Must he not be cut down like
the irrational thing he is, so decent citizens might get on
with the business of living in co-operation? To see that
this is not how Virgil regards Turnus, listen to this simile
with which Turnus goes out to fight: "He is delirious with
courage, his hope already tears the enemy: just as a stallion when he snaps his tether and flies off from the stables, free at last to lord the open plains, will either make
for meadows and the herds of mares or else leap from the
stream where he is used to bathing and, wanton, happy,
neigh, his head raised high, while his mane sweeps across
his neck and shoulders." (11. 491-7) Turnus is young,
strong, brave, and handsome. He is not made for submission to a foreigner who arrives saying he is destined to
marry his fiancee and be his king. In the line following the
81
�simile of the stallion, Virgil brings 'Camilla into the poem,
to fight beside Turnus. She is in .instant and complete
communion with Turnus. The freedom and the lordship
of Italy is theirs by birth and by nature. Each of them is
crushed by what Aeneas has brought to Italy, but each
dies with the sentiment that something unworthy has
happened.
At the end, when Turnus lies wounded at Aeneas' feet,
we begin to hear again the familiar echoes of the end of
the Iliad, but this time they are like a deceptive cadence in
a piece of music. Turnus asks Aeneas to remember his
own father and to return him, alive or dead as he prefers,
to his father. But as Aeneas begins to relax, and we expect
the gesture of reconciliation that Aeneas has tried so hard
and so often to make to come finally as a healing ending to
the poem, Aeneas instead remembers Pallas, and kills Turnus in fury. Why? It is his seeing the belt of Pallas, which
Turnus is wearing as spoil, that precipitates the deed.
What does Aeneas see when he looks at the belt? I think it
is not too much to say that he sees in it everything that
has happened to him through the eight years and twelve
books that have gone before.
The belt is carved with a legendary scene of fifty bride-
82
grooms killed on their wedding night. It recalls the spectacle
Aeneas watched from the roof of Priam's ruined palace,
with its fifty bridal chambers for his sons. (2. 503-4;
I 0. 497 -9) It must, too, re-open the wound of the memory
of the bridal chamber he himself shared so briefly with
Dido. And as showing men cut down in their youth, it must
remind him of much that has happened around him in
the war just fought. But more than anything else, it brings
back to him Pallas, to whom he could not succeed in saying good-bye. As he kills Turnus, Aeneas calls Pallas "my
own." His acceptance of the call of fate prevented Aeneas
from dying alongside his own people in his own city of
Troy. It prevented him from remaining loyal to his own
lover, Dido. But the gods have now left Aeneas alone. The
last act of the poem is the first one that is unequivocally
Aeneas' own, and on his own, though inclined toward a
characteristic and politically sound act of kindness, Aeneas commits a furious and painful murder out of love.
Turnus dies rightly feeling that his death is unworthy of
him. But Aeneas, finally at the center of the labyrinth of
his own life, could not let Turnus live and be worthy of
the gift of Pallas' life and death. In the inevitable conflict
of unconditional claims, one can only cling to one's own.
WINTER 1982
�REvmw EssAY
Objectivity and Philosophical Conversation
Richard Rorty's Pht!osophy and the Mirror of Nature
ARTHUR COlliNS
Men have confident beliefs which they take to be knowledge,
and then it sometimes turns out that what was confidently believed is discarded and replaced by contrary beliefs, perhaps just
as confident. Such convictions can be important beliefs at the
heart of a whole way of looking at the world. Naturally philoso·
phers have concerned themselves with this instability in our beliefs, and they have tried to find permanent foundations for our
claims to know anything. With foundations our knowledge is reliable and objective; without foundations our pretensions to know
collapse into the beliefs we happen to have. Discourse with no
foundations seems to reduce to a flux of opinions, for we have no
way of determining which opinions are really grounded and
which are not. But where shall we find foundations for knowledge, and how shall our claims to know such foundations themselves be insulated from the possibility of error and replacement?
Discussions of the objectivity of knowledge were already sophisticated in Greek philosophy. Protagoras held that no objec·
tive foundation of a belief can get beyond the fact that it seems
to be true to the man who holds it. All beliefs, then, are true for
those who hold them, and grounding is an illusion. So Protagoras
proposed to substitute the contrast: healthy versus unhealthy belief for the unavailable contrast: objectively grounded belief versus mere opinion. If this report of Protagoras' doctrine from
Plato's Theaetetus is reliable, Protagoras was the first pragmatist.
Socrates opposed this relativism and Plato's theory of Forms is
an effort to articulate foundations of knowledge solid enough to
enable a philosopher to rule against one man's conviction and in
favor of another's on objective grounds. The preponderance of
philosophers since Plato have defended the idea of objective
knoWledge and pursued its foundations. A minority including
Nietzsche and the American pragmatists have more or less sided
with Protagoras.
This conflict is the theme of Richard Rorty's Philosophy and
the Mirror of Nature.* The thesis of the book can be summarized
in two general claims: The first is that modern philosophy has
been dominated by an essentially Cartesian and mistaken idea of
inner representations as the foundation of knowledge of all outer
realities. The second claim is the assertion of a sweeping historical and pragmatic relativism about human knowledge. In rejecting Cartesian inner mental representations, Rorty contends that
the dominant modern program that sought to furnish foundations for knowledge is a complete failure. In his general relativist
view, Rorty asserts, with Protagoras, that the objectivity philosophers have looked for cannot be found at all and knowledge can
have no foundations.
The conception of inner representations as the necessary
starting point for all knowledge is what Rorty calls "the Mirror of
Nature." The mind is this mirror. Descartes and most thinkers
after him place the source of objectivity in the knower's mind
rather than in any specially apprehended outer reality such as
Plato's Forms. Epistemology has been promoted since the Renaissance as a kind of bogus science that ·confirms its hypotheses
in terms of the ultimate evidence we find reflected in the mirror
of the mind. Rorty says that the rejection of this spurious epistemology will bring with it huge changes in philosophical practice.
This first claim is powerfully argued and richly illustrated, and
Rorty's many-sided discussion of it repays study.
According to his second general claim, Rorty' s Protagorean
relativism, philosophers are deceived in thinking that there can
be objective reasons for preferring one view of things to another.
In the course of exposition of this relativist view, Rorty denies
that science can be understood to attain a progressively better
approximation to the truth. He finds that we cannot successfully
segregate meanings and facts. We cannot distinguish features of
a conceptual scheme and truths that are asserted within and
*Princeton University Press, 1979
Review.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York, Arthur Collins has published articles in many philosophical journals. He has previously contributed "Kant's Empiricism" (July 1979) and "The Scientific
Background of Descartes' Dualism" (Winter 1981) to the St. John's
83
�with the help of that scheme. So we qmnot suppose that earlier
scientists were talking about the same reality that we speak of, but
saying different things about it. Thus there is no way in which
we can see ourselves as the proprietors of a better understanding
of the same world. Our distinctions between conceptual truths
and factual truths, and between mathematical propositions and
empirical facts, are not absolute. Such distinctions are always dependent upon our own contingent decisions and relatively transient objectives of our discourse. There are no privileged truths,
no absolutely secure modes of reference, no irrefragible assertions about meanings, and no incorrigible data of sense. All these
candidates for an Archimedean fixed point in epistemology turn
out to be moveable. Our intellectual undertakings, systems, and
theories are endlessly adjustable in many ways and subtle ways,
but nothing is permanent and there is no given point of contact
with the real, no unchanging frontier between our thought and
what we think about.
Unlike his rejections of the Mirror of Nature, which is limited to
a particular conception of objectivity (the Cartesian conception),
Rorty's general relativism does not leave room for a contrast between the situations of philosophy and science. In rejecting traditional Cartesian epistemology, Rorty says that philosophers
have mistakenly tried to copy what scientists legitimately do. But
when he advances from this critique to a relativistic rejection of
the very idea of objectivity, Rorty asserts that philosophers and
scientists are alike in their susceptibility to the mistaken idea that
rational investigation can lead, and has led, to a better and better
understanding of things. There are no thought-independent
truths to be sought by philosophers or scientists and no objective
methods to be adopted by either.
Rorty is right to reject what he calls the Mirror of Nature. He
is also right to say that it has exerted an enormous and mostly
bad influence on modern thought. But he seems to think that if
we don't have Cartesian foundations for our knowledge we must
become relativists. If the Mirror of Nature is no good, there is
nothing else. That means that Rorty himself is still under the
spell of Cartesian thinking about the mind and knowledge. He is
agreeing that if there is to be objective knowledge at all, there will
have to be Cartesian foundations for it. If this is Rorty's assumption, it would account for the fact that he moves so easily from a
penetrating critique of the Mirror of Nature to the general repudiation of objectivity. On the whole Rorty treats these two very
different views as if they were one and the same reaction to the
history of modern philosophy. This is a mistake.
1
The goal of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is an assessment of the claims and prospects of contemporary philosophy,
especially the broad current of thought finding expression primarily in English, called "analytic philosophy." Rorty identifies
the most important historical roots of the modern outlook in the
pervasive influence of Descartes' philosophy of mind and in
Kant's two-sided philosophical project: the identification of objective knowledge and the demonstration of the inescapable
though disappointing limits of such knowledge. The Mirror of
84
Nature is really Descartes' invention. Descartes imposed on subsequent philosophers, and prominently on the British empiricists,
the job of trying to get from a perfect acquaintance with inner
mental representations (which are taken to exhaust our ultimate
evidence) to knowledge of extra-mental reality. This project,
which is hardly represented in classical thought, determines the
characteristic schedule of solipsistic problems which are the first
business of all modern epistemology. Endless variations within
this Cartesian epistemological framework have been articulated
since the seventeenth century. As recently as 1949, in the Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle aptly called Cartesianism "the official
doctrine." Russell, Moore, Santayana, Carnap, Ayer, Chisholm,
and Sellars are some of the best known twentieth century philosophers whose projects are decisively influenced by this tradition.
This is so even though some of these thinkers have expressly rejected Cartesianism and tried to break its hold on philosophy.
Rorty's repudiation ofthe Mirror of Nature is the repudiation of
this tenacious idea.
The Kantian contribution to the modern outlook is, Rorty
says, the idea of a universal system for judging and comparing
the credentials of all intellectual undertakings. In Rorty's terminology this is the "transcendental turn" which projects a scheme
for the universal "commensurability" of all doctrines, theories,
and beliefs. The rejection of this idea is Rorty's relativism. It is an
error, he says, to suppose that all our thinking belongS to the
same intellectual space within which views can always be tested
against one another and choices forced by a fixed rational procedure. Accepting the idea of such a universal scheme, philosophers
have thought of knowledge as a matter of gradual convergence
on the truth.
Rorty, however, allows no concept of truth external to the particular pragmatically judged intellectual constructions that men
make in grappling with the world. In their pretense to occupy a
viewpoint outside all viewpoints, Kantian foundationalists are
dogmatic and self-deceptive. Their claims to permanent judgments and fixed tests conceal the creative and constructive play
of human intelligence under the guise of ever-closer conformity
to truth. For Rorty, what we take as known can have no foundations apart from acceptance in the unending interplay of human
discourse. Accepted truths, systems, and sciences have the value
that they do have because they confer an understanding on
things that enables us better to negotiate our existence, not because they approach more closely to the final truth about things.
In this view, Rorty substitutes the idea of the utility of belief for
the discarded idea of objective truth, much as Protagoras substituted healthy belief for objectively grounded belief.
There can be no epistemological foundations and Rorty thinks
pursuit of them should stop and is going to stop some time soon.
Foundationalism has so contaminated the structure of philosophical thought and so determined the content of modern philosophy that its rejection will mean the end of most of what we
know as philosophy. When current practices have been abandoned, science will still be science, and scientists will continue to
generate and discard their own standards of admissibility. But, if
Rorty is right, epistemology will no longer be credited as a kind of
preliminary science. The philosophy of mind has been develWINTER 1982
�oped almost entirely in the service of Mirrqr-of-Nature projects,
so it too is finished. The same is true of the bulk of the philosophy of science. Language has become, for analytic philosophers, the refuge of foundationalist pretensioD.s which are denied
appeal to the mind by contemporary hostility to dualism. As a
consequence, philosophy of language is mostly "impure," Rorty
says. It has been fatally infected by the epidemic passion to find
objective foundations somewhere. Most of the aspirations of
philosophical logic and ontology, including the resurgent essentialism encouraged by Kripke, are also to be cancelled in the
coming purge. Even the value-oriented branches of thought
have been hopelessly compromised by foundationalist schemes
that try to identify the cognitive part of discourse involving values and to relegate the rest, in the positivist manner, to emotion,
arbitrary preference, and taste.
Rorty thinks that some kind of philosophy will survive the
coming demise of foundationalism and objective pretensions. He
admits that he is vague about the contents and purposes of this
philosophy of the future:
Our present notions of what it is to be a philosopher are so
tied up with the Kantian attempt to render all knowledge
claims commensurable that it is difficult to imagine what philosophy without epistemology could be. (357)
The predictions that Rorty does make are the least convincing and
the least appealing part of his book. He sees the tendency of things
to come in -the continental hermeneutics movement (H. G. Gada mer, in particular) and in philosophical "deconstruction" (Derrida). He endorses a considerable list of European existentialists,
structuralists, and phenomenologists whose writings are as longwinded as they are difficult to grasp clearly. Rorty says that the
new philosophy will be "conversational" without being exclusive
and competitive. Philosophy will be "edifying" which contrasts
with misguided efforts to be "systematic." Philosophical discourse will be "abnormal" in the sense of Thomas Kuhn's "abnormal science"; that is, it will take place without the benefit of
an inherited framework of standards and methods shared by a
consensus of those participating. 1 Philosophy will be open, pluralistic, even "playful." It will abandon its agressive assertiveness.
The work of philosophers will become more like activities in art,
politics, and religion.
Rorty does not succeed in saying (in fact, he does not try) what
will be the subject matter or the goals of the conversations to
which philosophers will contribute when they have given up the
hopeless search for objective foundations. Nor does he say why it
is that anything such a philosopher could say might strike us as
edifying. It often seems as if he is only dreaming of something
nice that otherwise unemployed philosophers can apply their talents to when most of the things they now do have been abolished.
2
Like most radical relativists, Rorty is not entirely consistent.
His examination of analytic philosophy finds that this whole enterprise is mired in the Cartesian-Kantian "problematic." Analytic philosophers are prominently guilty of presuming that they
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
have at least our concepts or conceptual schemes at their disposal. The accessibility of his own concepts is alleged by an analytic philosopher to be the source of the necessity and objectivity
of his conceptual analyses. Rorty rejects this allegation and the
philosophy it tries to legitimize. But his own arguments are full
of points which are indistinguishable in their standing from the
views he rejects as lacking any credentials at all. For example, he
finds that Locke's confusion of explanation and justification is
one of the great influential errors of modern thought. Maybe he
is right. But, in what sense can Rorty allow himself access to
what is really "explanation" and what "justification" while denying that analytic philosophers have access to concepts and thus a
basis for their analyses? He praises Wilfred Sellars for not offering "a theory of how the mind works" or a theory "of the 'nature
of concepts'." He describes a claim Sellars makes as "a remark
about the difference between facts and rules" (187). The use of
the informal word "remark" for the praised opinion of Sellars
and the weighty word "theory" for the bad views Sellars avoids
sounds like an effort to deflect the question. If the foundation of
this "remark" about facts and rules is not a kind of conceptual
analysis, then what is it? Again, Rorty says in the context of the
possibility of foundations for knowledge:
The question is not whether human knowledge in fact has
"foundations," but whether it makes sense to suggest that it
does-whether the idea of epistemic or mo.ral authority having a "ground" in nature is a coherent one. (178)
This kind of claim about what makes sense and what does not,
and what is and is not coherent, is just the sort of thing that analytic philosophers propose all the time. If their pretenses to know
what makes sense and what does not are empty, then what gives
substance to Rorty's identical pretenses?
These inconsistencies are predictable. As Socrates said of Protagoras, a relativist is always in trouble when he tries to assert
anything. He naturally thinks his relativism is objectively correct
and he thinks the foundationalist thinkers he opposes are objectively wrong. It is hard to see how a relativist can say less than
this and still have an intelligible position.
Rorty's general relativism sometimes appears to undermine his
own best insights. He is attracted by John Dewey's thinking be~
cause Dewey emphasized the social character of knowledge as
opposed to the solipsistic stance of Descartes. Similarly, in psychology Rorty thinks that a healthy materialism that is not a reductive mind-brain identity theory will supercede the confusions
of Cartesian philosophy of mind. Perhaps these are very sound
convictions to have. They fit ill with relativism. If we are to appreciate the validity of physiological psychology do we not have
to suppose that idealism is objectively wrong? It is not just another alternative conversational stance for philosophy. Rorty
thinks a materialist philosophy will survive the prevalent philosophical errors. Why? Surely he thinks we will be left with the
body and its relation to all our intellectual functions after the illusions of the Mirror of Nature have been dispelled. If so, this
material subject matter must be objectively available to us. In the
same way, if we are to base our understandings, like Dewey, on the
irreducible social context of discourse and knowledge, we must
85
�take that context as something that the world objectively contains. There really are other people with whom we speak and interact. How can we praise Dewey's vieW if we say that even these
convictions about social reality are just "optional descriptions"?
Even Rorty's customarily sensitive historical judgments are
sometimes distorted by his application of a set of standards to the
views he rejects which he cannot apply to his own views and
those he endorses. For example, he simultaneously praises Jerry
Fodor and condemns Kant in this passage:
The crucial point is that there is no way to raise the sceptical
question "How well do the subject's internal representations
represent reality?" about Fodor's "language of thought." In
particular there is no way to ask whether, or how well, the
products of spontaneity's theories represent the sources of receptivity's evidence, and thus no way to be sceptical about
the relation between appearance and reality. (246-7)
This passage actually describes Fodor's view in terms which do
not distinguish it at all from Kant's. Rorty knows that Kant's theory of the mind and empirical reality also rules out scepticism
"about the relation of appearance and reality" and, therefore,
deserves whatever praise Fodor deserves on that count. But
Rorty's rhetorical usage of the Kantian terminoloy (''spontaneity"
and "receptivity") seem to imply that Kant held the opposite and
that Fodor's stand is an improvement and a correction.
3
Rorty is entirely right to say that epistemological illusions are ·
responsible for the spurious format of scientific theory-building
that many modern philosophies have adopted. Mirror-of-Nature
thinking leads directly to this format. If our knowledge has to
start from acquaintance restricted to inner representations, such
as seventeenth-century ideas or twentieth-century sense-data,
then the mere assertion that there is an extra-mental world
stands in need of defense. In the absence of a successful defense,
we have no reason at all for thinking that there is any subject
matter for sciences like physics or biology to investigate. So a preliminary philosophical theory is needed to vouch for the existence of a subject matter for all other sciences. Empiricists have
constructed a great many such "theories" which introduce material objects only in hypotheses that are supposed to be accepted
because they explain the patterns we encounter in our mental
experiences. Here the philosopher imitates scientific theories
that posit unobserved atoms in hypotheses that explain observed
combining weights of elements, or that posit unobserved heavenly
bodies in hypotheses that explain observed orbital perturbations.
When philosophers argue in this way they are making epistemology into a hypothetico-deductive science. Philosophers then posit
unobserved chairs and tables to explain observed perceptual experiences! It is a virtue of Rorty's critique to release us from this
misapplied model of scientific thinking.
When we have fully rejected the Mirror of Nature, a lot of this
"scientific" philosophy will automatically be eliminated. This is
very much to be hoped for, but it gives us no reason at all for
thinking, with Rorty, that these misguided epistemological thea-
86
ries will be replaced by the incommensurable badinage that he
sees coming. In fact, a significant scientific influence in philosophy is unaffected by Rorty's critique. For philosophers of the
empiricist, rationalist, and analytic traditions, quite apart from
theory-construction, scientific influence in philosophy has meant
a tough-minded independence, it has meant adherence to the
ideals of self-criticism and clarity, and it has meant the open ac~
ceptance of tests of one's ideas in competitive intellectual confrontations. Rorty's general relativism and his predictions for the
future appear to depend on rejecting these wholesome influences along with the inapplicable pattern of hypothetico-deductive theory construction. The elimination of Cartesianism and
its aftermath, however, does not show that there is anything
wrong with these ideals, nor with their adoption in philosophy.
Rorty claims that once the epistemological bias is eliminated
there will be a general change in direction in philosophy which
will not be limited to those disciplines directly engendered by the
Mirror of Nature. It is in this spirit that he says that language
tends to replace the Mirror in the continuing but spurious foun~
dationalist projects of anti-dualist analytic philosophers. This is a
sensitive insight. Perhaps it is generally true in philosophy today
that real advance in understanding is only attained with the recognition that all theorizing is out of place. Our intellectual needs
are mischaracterized and our confusions made permanent insofar as we think that what is required is something like a theory.
This may be the clearest and most enduring part of Wittgen~
stein's elusive teaching. Here is Saul Kripke's appreciation of the
same thought in the context of theories about reference and
names:
It really is a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably common to all philosophical theories. It's wrong. You
may suspect me of proposing another theory in its place, but I
hope not, because I'm sure it's wrong too, if it's a theory.2
If this attitude is right we have inherited a conception of philosophical thought which deforms our actual problems by forcing
them into the mold of scientific theory. The harmful conception
goes beyond the influence of the Mirror of Nature. To say that
we should stop this deforming and forcing is good, but that in it~
self does not show anything about what philosophers should do
instead, and it bodes nothing for relativism. The understandings
that survive misguided foundationalism ought to be, per se, more
objective, not less objective, than the illusory pursuit of philosophical theories where such theories can accomplish nothing.
4
Under the influence of Kant, most philosophers, according to
Rorty, have accepted the idea of the universal commensurability
of all opinions. Like the idea of theory-building in philosophy,
the idea of commensurability is modelled on scientific practice.
Scientists intentionally try to sharpen opposed views in order to
force a showdown which only one view will survive. The process
of sharpening differences and forcing choices is only feasible if
the holders of different opinions share a general framework
within which their views are commensurable. Rorty thinks that
WINTER 1982
�there is such a general framework which permits commensuration withiri particular sciences, or maybe wit,hin the whole scientific enterprise at a particular time. But there is no permanent
commensurating framework for science through all lime, and no
framework that embraces scientific,. moral, artistic, and philosophical activities all at once. There may be some great truth in
this view about commensurability. If so, Rorty's exposition of
that truth is inadequate. His discussions of incommensurable
discourse never get beyond the unresolved tension between insightful critique and disastrous relativism.
Can there be such a thing as discourse that does not presuppose a shared commensurating framework of meanings? How
can speakers get as far as conversation without commensurability? The framework of shared meaning may not suffice for formulation of a means for resolving differences, but this does not
establish incommensurability. Inability to resolve differences is
notorious, for example, in economics, but no one will conclude
that views on the effects of monetary policy are, therefore,
incommensurable.
We would, I_think, say that the views expressed in two different
poems are often incommensurable. To the extent that we would
say that, we would also say that poems do not make assertions in
any ordinary sense. If two speakers do make genuine assertions
for one another's benefit, that is, if they produce sentences that
they mean to be true and mean to be taken as such, then. they
must also hold out the hope, at least, that they can find some
way of telling whether their assertions are compatible OF ihcompatible, that is, they must presuppose commensurability. They
cannot be indifferent about this and simply go on with the conversation. So commensurability seems to be indispensable for
participation in a conversation in which assertions are made. It
may be that this is too rigid a conception of commensurability
for exhibition of the point that Rorty wants to bring to our attention about the multiple enterprises of the human intelligence.
He offers us no guidance on a less rigid conception.
These abstract difficulties find concrete illustration when we
turn to Rorty's examples of incommensurable discourse. He calls
Marx and Freud edifying philosophers whose discourses are incommensurable. He criticizes those who try to draw the thought
of these figures into the "mainstream," and that means those
who want to make the doctrines of Freud and Marx commensurable with other opinions and theories about psychology, physiology, economics, history, and morals. Rorty's relativism is out of
hand here.
We may all agree that the insights and theories of Freud and
Marx are hard to connect with less revolutionary patterns of
thought about man. These two are similar in that they both construct self-contained schemes of things with relatively clear internal rules for investigation and interpretation (though this is a
problem for these systems). Furthermore, for their initiation
such systems may depend on an exceptional willingness to ignore prevailing rules and concepts and entrenched opinions.
Rorty is sensitive to all this insulation of these radical theories
from the rest of the universe of thought. But this insulation is
necessarily only partial. Thinking, no matter how radical, must
preserve substantial contact with preexisting thought. This is the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
minimum price of intelligibility. Marx and Freud, in particular,
certainly do respond to earlier views and they both expect their
work to be preferred to other doctrines on rational grounds, even
on "scientific" grounds. Freud connects his work in straightforward ways to the international psychiatric thinking of his time.
He incorporates in his thinking some large ideas from earlier
German philosophy, and he openly commits himself to the ultimate commensurability, even the. reducibility, of his psychological
theory to the workaday conceptual scheme o£ physical medicine
and physiology. Similar points apply to the doctrines of Marx.
These thinkers regarded their own views as commensurable with
the "mainstream" and only in the setting of that commensurability were they able to think of their own views as important.
The question of commensurability arises for Rorty only when
he thinks about two beliefs that seem to be opposed. Freud's
opinions seem to be incommensurable just because he says such
things as, "Slips of the tongue and lapses of memory are intended." Assertions like this seem to be in flat contradiction to
our ordinary opinion that slips and forgetting are unintended.
Furthermore, there is something especially troublesome about
the seeming opposition of Freud's claim to the ordinary view
about slips and lapses of memory. The ordinary view is not
merely a widely held empirical belief. It belongs, rather, to a
framework of shared meanings. We all think, though we don't articulate such thoughts much, that a verbal performance is not a
slip, by definition, if it fulfills the speaker's intentions. This
comes, in some sense, from the meanings of "a slip'' and "intentional." Similarly, it is not just that we have found that people do
not intentionally forget things. They cannot intentionally forget
because doing anything intentionally entails knowing what you
are doing. If you knew what you were forgetting, that wouldn't
be forgotten. Within the context of this limited illustration, I
think it is this special character of Freud's opposition to ordinary
thinking that leads Rorty to the contention that his doctrines are
incommensurable and his philosophy edifying. Freud's view cannot be commensurated with the mainstream because it conflicts
with the framework of meanings within which assertions about
intentions and slips and forgetting can be logically related to one
another.
There is something in this. Freud expresses views which are
not only new opinions in psychology but which also deform the
accepted system of meanings within which psychological assertions are customarily formulated and compared. Freud does not
discuss these deformations himself. He seems to be far from fully
aware of them. But he is certainly not simply making false statements with the old concepts. He is trying to make true statements with altered concepts. No one seems to know just where
Freud violates the traditional system of interrelated concepts
and beliefs and where he relies on a common fund of meanings
in order to communicate anything at all. Now we have to ask,
Where does incommensurability fit in here? Can we say that
Freud is not really opposing established views but merely "sending the conversation in new directions," as Rorty thinks the new
non-foundationalist philosophers will? Can we agree that Freud's
opinions may become the prevailing belief by simply replacing
without ever confronting earlier opinion?
87
�I think that we must try to reconcile, or to choose between,
Freud's doctrines and the ordinary beliefs with which they seem
to conflict. For example, we can attempt reconciliations that
stress the unconscious status of the intentions Freud finds. We
can try reformulations of Freud's views that capture the spirit
without the conceptual deformations, for example, ascribing intentions to a subagent for behavior that is unintended by the
whole man. And we can try to soften the apparent rigidity of the
ordinary system of meanings by calling attention to non-psychoanalytic contexts, such as brain bisections, where the contrasts
"intended/unintended" and "forgotten/not forgotten" come
under remarkable pressure. These are suggestions for "continuing the conversation," and it may be that Rorty has in mind just
this development of conversational philosophy. But these efforts
at understanding Freud are also nothing short of efforts at making his thinking commensurable with the thinking of others. If
we are not trying to make Freud's ideas commensurable in such
ways, then we are just not trying to understand him. It will not
do to call this failure to understand edification or respect for a
kind of creativity.
Quite a bit of just this not-trying-to-understand is presently
done in the intellectual world. It generates the familiar self-enclosed cultish point of view in which unexamined and deformed
terminology become an insider's rhetoric. When this happens,
the failure of commensurability will not promote a democratic
conversational mentality. The very fact that there are still such
things as Freudianism and Marxism is in part a measure of the
extent to which incommensurability seals off thinking from the
give and take of ideas which Rorty values.
5
Rorty's thinking is very well-informed and he always tries to
use the views of other philosophers as guideposts even in cases
where he does not want to follow them. Throughout his book he
says that Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger have been his
greatest guides, showing him the path out Of epistemological
foundationalism. These three thinkers all reject the schemes
that have grown out of Cartesianism, and they all attack the Cartesian root and not just the modern branches. But Rorty actually
has little to say about the views of any of these three. In the
fourth chapter, which he calls the "central chapter of the book,"
he examines instead, and in quite a bit of detail, much more recent analytic philosophy and, in particular, the views of Sellars
and Quine._ It is as though these tough-minded analysts, who do
not reach the relativism he adopts and whom Rorty himself calls
"systematic philosophers," help him to see the virtues of the
much vaguer and more relativistic doctrines of Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger. According to Rorty's exposition, Sellars
clearly grasps the hopeless defects of "the Myth of the Given,"
and all the foundationalist programs that have been based upon
it. His appreciation of "the logical space of reasons" marks Sellars's perception of the indispensable contrast between causal explanation and justification. But Rorty finds that Sellars remains
committed to the illusion of "analysis," which is the idea that
our concepts are, in any case, accessible to us, so that we can
88
make entirely secure judgments as to what is and what is not true
of these concepts. Just here Quine's thinking is most important.
Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction is aimed at
precisely this presumption of the availability of our own concepts as unshakeable support for analytic judgments. Rorty sees
the two ideas: (i) the incorrigible data of sense, and (ii) incorrigible
access to our own concepts as the twin supports of contemporary epistemological foundationalism. Therefore, a combination
of Sellars's critical rejection of the first view and Quine's rejection of the second, a combination that neither Sellars nor Quine
fully attains, is just what Rorty wants in order to disenfranchise
foundationalism.
Throughout Rorty's work there is erudition, sensitivity, and
much truth. At the end there remains a large gap in his argument. The failure of Cartesian foundationalism does not establish relativism. Rorty seems uncbaracteristically insensitive to
the problems of internal coherence bf relativism, problems that
have been known since Socrates criticized Protagoras. Even
Rorty's appeal to the painstaking work of analytic philosophers
seems odd, since they are, in his own characterization, systematic philosophers whose work would have to appear to be a waste
of time dominated by baseless illusions from the vantage point of
edifying conversational philosophy. Sellars and Quine are both
philosophers whose thinking is pervaded by the idea of science.
Given Rorty's meticulous presentation of their doctrines, and
given his appreciation of the clarity (Quine's anyway), the penetration, and rigor of this, the best philosophical thinking of the
analytic school, his final position that seems to applaud all the
voluminous obscurantism now produced in Europe is disappointing.
There is another kind of inconsistency in Rorty' s thought which
is understandable, maybe even attractive, if not altogether acceptable. At several points in his discussion, Rorty seems to draw
back from his own radical conclusions as though in recognition
of the fact that they are in themselves so profoundly unsatisfying. In this mood, Rorty describes the anti-systematic conversational philosophy he endorses as essentially reactive and critical.
Such philosophy demands a correlative systematic and objective
philosophy. Without systematic philosophy to react to, edifying
philosophy is nothing at all. In consequence, Rorty seems to envision a cyclical alternation between systematic and critical philosophy, each of which has its purposes and legitimacy:
Great systematic philosophers are constructive and offer arguments. Great edifying philosophers are reactive and offer
satires, parodies, aphorisms. They know their work loses its
point when the period they were reacting against is over.
They are intentionally peripheral. Great systematic philosophers like great scientists build for eternity. Great edifying
philosophers destroy for the sake of their own generation. (369}
Here Rorty seems to agree with my judgment that his conversational philosophers, left to themselves, do not have anything to
talk about. The only real views ever at issue are those of philosophers who look for objective truths. These truths try to be universally commensurable in that they are to be tested against all
comers. If this is Rorty's view, he may be right to oppose a partieWINTER 1982
�ular conception of foundations, but it hardly makes sense to oppose the very idea of objective knowledge daims.
It seems that Rorty might envision something like this: Some
day, through the reactive efforts of thinkers such as himself and
the great figures he admires (Dewey, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein), the program of the Cartesian Mirror of Nature will be set
aside and it will no longer have any appreciable hold on the philosophical imaginations of men. When that day arrives, a philosopher considering objectivity, rational methods, and truth will not
be planning to relate his beliefs to any supposed inner magazine
of perfectly apprehended representations. Of course, under
these circumstances edifying philosophers will have nothing to
say. Their conversations will have dried up as a consequence of
their own success. Their work will have "lost its point," as Rorty
puts it. Now, at this stage, we could imagine that there would be
no further philosophy produced at all out of a recognition that
any new objective theory is bound to have the same deficiencies
as its predecessors, or we could imagine a new systematic project
that is not obviously susceptible to the criticisms raised in earlier
reactive phases. When he says that edifying philosophy is essentially reactive, Rorty seems to me to envision the latter development, and in some passages I think he expressly foresees a future
return to thought with objective foundations. However Rorty's
speculations on this point come down, neither of these outcomes is compatible with the general relativism that he presents
in most of the book. For if there is no further systematic project
in the offing, then conversational, creative, and edifying philosophy is not a true successor to the philosophy we have known but
merely a final winding down of philosophy. And if further sys·
tematic projects are to be expected when conversationalism has
lost its point, then Rorty must concede the inadequacy of his
own arguments for relativism. If objective philosophy has a real
future, then we are not entitled to rule it out generally in favor of
pragmatic relativism.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
In this dilemma we can see that Rorty has become ensnared in
the very traps he detected in foundationalist schemes. A relativist
allows that, within the context of relevant human activities and
needs, one assertion may be warranted and another assertion not.
But the effort to elevate the concept of warranted assertibility to
that of objective truth allegedly fails because it presupposes that
we can abstract from any particular context of activities and
needs, or it presupposes that there is one all-embracing context.
This is the viewpoint beyond all viewpoints that Rorty repudiates. But his own efforts at characterizing the plural projects of
human intelligence have engendered just the same presupposition. Rorty thinks that he can assess objective projects from a
perspective in which they are a mere phase inevitably overcome
in the next phase of reactive criticism. The reactive phase, in
turn, is ultimately sterile and needs replacement by further objective efforts. Thus we are to see the intellectual life of man as a
permanent vacillation between the illusion of theory and the impotence of criticism. Perhaps this view can seem to be acceptable and not simply a form of despair, because possession of it
seems to embody a higher objectivity and understanding. But
really there is no such point of view and no occasion for despair.
It is impossible to accept a permanent role for systematic philosophy and at the very same time to repudiate the idea of such philosophy. Rorty's picture of alternating objective and reactive
phases of philosophy does invite us to regard his relativism as a
higher objectivity, but this is not so much a virtue of his account
as it is a contradiction in it.
I See Kuhn, T., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago 1962.
2
Kripke, S., "Naming and Necessity," in Davidson, D., and Harman, G.,
editors, Semantics of Natural Language, Dordrecht.Holland 1971.
Quoted from the slightly revised reissue, Naming and Necessity. Cambridge 1980.
89
�R:Evmw EssAY
Afghanistan Fights
The Struggle for Afghanistan
by Nancy Peabody Newell and Richard S. Newell*
LEo RADITSA
Le regime des Seleucides ne constituaitcependantnullement un
regime colonial dans le sens oil nous 1' en tendons aujourd'hui.
Comme ils n'avaient aucun zele missionaire, et ne cherchaient a
ameliorer ni la religion ni les egouts d~ leurs sujets, mais laissaient les indigenes aussi crasseux et aussi heureux qu'ils l'avaient
ete auparavant, la dynastie ne donna jamais lieu a aucune insurrection de leur part.
E. J. Bickerman
On December 8, 1978, just after signature of treaty between
Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, like the Soviet treaties with
Vietnam, Angola, and Ethiopia, the New York Times said, "Instead of being a strategic highway to India, as the Victorians
feared, Afghanistan looks more like a footpath to nowhere."! But
catastrophe teaches provincials geography. In the last three years
Kabul has become almost a household word. And people have
slowly come to grasp that places few had heard of before 1979,
Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mazar-i-Sharif, are not about to become
family estates of the Bonaparte family. The Afghans are fighting
to almost everybody's amazement in the West-and the rest of
the world.
This ignorance does not come from scarcity of books or lack of
involvement with Afghanistan. We have been more involved
with Afghanistan since 1945 than the British in the nineteenth
century.2 This.ignorance comes from lack of judgement.
In contrast to nineteenth-century accounts, largely written by
British officers in India, and to the diplomatic correspondence
the British government published at the time of the Afghan crises of 1836-42 and 1873-79, the writings in this century, especially those after 1945, betray little grasp of Afghan history. They
obscure fundamentals that nineteenth-century writings stressed:
*Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London 1981, 236 pages.
90
The difficulties of access that Afghanistan opposes on all
sides to an invading army, surrounded as it is by the vast
tracts of mountain and desert, the former only to be traversed
by surmounting steep ridges and threading narrow defiles
where a few hundreds of well-armed and resolute men could
effectually oppose the passage of as many thousands, entitle
it to be considered in a military sense, as one of the strongest
countries in the whole world, whilst the manly independence
of its hardy inhabitants, their sturdy valour, and their skill in
the use of weapons of war, to which they are trained from early
boyhood, combine to render them far from despicable oppo·
nents, especially on their own ground, for even the disciplined
warriors of Europe ... Afghanistan is the great breakwater established by nature against an inundation of northern forces
in these times. [Emphases minep
In the nineteenth century the British knew Afghanistan less
but saw it more clearly and respected it more. They knew less
but what they knew counted for more.
And wear~ busy relearning some of it-but it is already very
late. In its contrast with Richard Newell's earlier book, The Politics of Afghanistan (Cornell University Press, 1972), The Struggle
for Afghanistan betrays this relearning, for unlike the earlier
work it concentrates on events.
And events are teaching us what we should have known: that
Afghanistan is not a typical country of the so-called "Third
World" -a term that serves largely to undo nations, and to excite
them to undo themselves, by blurring the distinctions between
Leo Raditsa writes frequently on events in the world for Midstream
(most recently, "The Source of World Terrorism," December 1981). He
recently published a monograph on the marriage legislation of Augustus, "Augustus' Legislation concerning Marriage, Procreation, Love
Affairs and Adultery" (in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Roemischen Welt,
Berlin !981, II, 13).
WINTER 1982
�them-because it never experienced direct colonial rule and until1973 had a monarchy (not, of course, in ,the European sense)
that had lasted for more than two hundred years; because in its
many isolated valleys traditions of self-rule and assembly prevail
that are hundreds of years older than the monarchy. And that
just these traditions of self rule and their unwritten constitution
-and not the 1964 written constitution which in retrospect
turns out to have hastened the destruction of the monarchy
-give Afghanistan the strength of resistance: in May 1980 a traditional assembly-a jirgah-brought 916 representatives of
groups fighting in all parts of Afghanistan to Peshawar.
Based on the recognition of the fastness of the territory,
(greater than France) and of the courage of its peoples, British
policy in the nineteenth century supported Afghan independence-which meant independence from Russia and Russia's
manipulation of Persia-at the same time that it did not interfere with Afghan internal politics and its way of life except for
commerce. In the nineteenth century, the amirs of Afghanistan
carried on prolonged subtle and difficult negotiations with the
British government of India and much less frequently with missions of the Tsar-negotiations that betrayed a remarkable grasp
of relations between European nations and Afghanistan's place
in them, and a recognition that their capacity to cope with their
place in the world did not mean they had to become like the nations they dealt with. 4 The crises of 1836-42 and 1873-79 came
about when Britain forsook its own policy of support for the independence of Afghanistan, and interfered directly and unnecessarily in Afghan affairs.
The crisis that came to a head in 1878 and that, incidentally,
precipitated "The Second Afghan War," started in Europe in
1873, and especially in 1875, with the revolt of the Christian
provinces of the Turkish Empire, Herzegovina and Bosnia. Austria, Russia, and Germany, with Italy and France, in early 1876
demanded reforms of the Sublime Porte-demands that Britain
supported only after the Sultan's request. In May Bulgaria rebelled, in late June and early July, Serbia and Montenegro-in
the expectation of support from Russia. In September 1876, Turkey's brutal suppression of rebellion in Bulgaria reported in the
Daily Mail aroused public opinion and sent Gladstone out of
retirement to denounce in Parliament a government that countenanced such atrocities-a furor that hindered the British government's support of Turkey. With the failure of another attempt,
in this instance sponsored by Britain, at negotiations with the
Porte, Russia declared war on Turkey on April 27, 1877. Her
troops approached Constantinople in December.
In response to the threat to Constantinople, Disraeli summoned Parliament two weeks early and announced that the prolongation of fighting between Russia and Turkey might require
precautionary measures. In February 1878, the British fleet sailed
through the Dardanelles to Constantinople; British troops, some
from India, arrived in Malta, and, with Turkish consent, in Cyprus. War between Britain and Russia appeared possible.
In response to Britain's resort to troops from India, Russia mobilized an army of fifteen thousand men (whose size was exaggerated to thirty and eighty thousand men in the reports that reached
India) in Russian Turkestan along the borders of Afghanistan
and sent a mission into Afghanistan. At first in response to inTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
structions from London and then on his own, the viceroy of India
treated with the amir in Kabul for the establishment of a British
presence in Afghanistan, especially in Herat. Aware that the
pressure on Afghanistan came from the crisis in Europe and despite the insistence of his friends and associates that he sacrifice
the independence of Afghanistan in the choice between Russia
and Britain, the amir prolonged negotiations in pursuit of the inherited policy of preserving Afghanistan's independence by neither yielding to Britain and the British government of India or
Russia. The expectations of his delay were fulfilled when the
powerful nations of Europe came to an agreement with Turkey,
which deprived it of much of its territory in Europe, in July 1878
in Berlin, just at the moment of the arrival of the Russian mission in Kabul In part out of ambitious obstinacy-he apparently
dreamed of pushing the frontier of British India beyond the
Hindu Kush-and in part because of the slowness of communications, the viceroy of India, Lord Lytton, entered Afghanistan
with ill-prepared and badly equipped troops from the army of India, and started "The Second Afghan War" -after the resolution
of the crisis in Europe.
It had been the same in the crisis of 1838-42, "The First Afghan War." Britain had become embroiled in a war of succession
in Afghanistan on the side of the "legitimate" king after it had
foiled a Russian-manipulated attempt of Persia to seize Herat
from Afghanistan before it occurred. In 1838, in a letter meant for
Lord Palmerston, that accepted, without acknowledging it, Britain's understanding of recent events, the Russian diplomat,
Count Nesselrode, reaffirmed. with admirable clarity and nuance
the traditional policy toward Afghanistan, now generally identified with the catchword, "the buffer state":
La Grande Bretagne, comme la Russie, doit avoir a coeur le
meme interet, celui de maintenir la Paix au centre de l' Asie,
et d'eviter qu'il ne survienne dans cette vaste partie du globe,
une conflagration generale. Or, pour empecher ce grand
malheur, il faut conserver soigneusement le repos des pays intermediaires qui separent les possessions de la Russie de celles
de la Grande Bretagne. Consolider la tranquillite de ces contrees, ne point les exciter les unes contre les autres en nourrissant leurs haines mutuelles, se horner a rivaliser d'industrie,
mais non pas s'engager dans une lutte d'influence politique;
enfin, plus que tout le reste, respecter l'independance des
pays intermediaires qui nous separent; tel est, a notre avis, le
systeme que les 2 Cabinets ant un commun interet a suivre
invariablement, afin d'empl!:cher la possibilite d'un conflit entre 2 gran des Puissances qui, pour rester amies, ant besoin de
ne passe toucher et de ne passe heurter au centre de l'Asie. 5
The intelligence of British policy towards Afghanistan in the
nineteenth century was in part Afghanistan's doing. The Afghans
inflicted spectacular defeats on the British in the two instances,
in 1838-42 and 1878, in which they blundered into violating
their policy, defeats which brought the British Parliament
enough to its senses to have the government of India withdraw
its forces without being driven out.
In the story of these events there is nothing more instructive
than this capacity of the British government and public to learn
from errors-and Afghan courage. This capacity to acknowledge
error made the British blunders in Afghanistan different in kind
91
�from the present Soviet attempted conquest. In contrast to the
British, the Soviets, because they do not recognize opposition
and, as a result, have no parliament that can publicly acknowledge error, will not leave Afghanistan unless driven out. What officer in the Soviet army could say the words Lieutenant Vincent
Eyre published in London in 1844 and 1879!
We English went on slumbering contentedly, as though the
Afghans, whose country we had so coolly occupied, were our
very best friends in the world, and quite content to be our
obedient servants to boot, until one cold morning in November we woke up to the unpleasant sounds of bullets in the air,
and an infuriated people's voices in revolt, like the great
ocean's distant, angry roar, in a rising tempest.6
The unwelcome truth was soon forced upon us, that in the
whole Afghan nation we could not reckon on a single friend.?
Even a generation after the Second Afghan War the disasters
and the blunders of each war were vividly remembered and discussed clearly.
But Afghanistan was not to keep European ways out forever.
In the twentieth century the monarchs of Afghanistan, in varying degree, began to suffer the attractions of Europe they had resisted in the times of her greatest confidence. At the same time
the political experience they inherited allowed them to appreciate the full seriousness of the self-destructive convulsions that
overwhelmed Europe. "The Europeans demonstrated to the Afghans and other non-Western peoples that Western culture was
capable of self-destruction. Afghan modernists were confronted
with the realization that Europe did not have all the answers to
the needs of modern society," Newell sensitively observed of the
effects of the First V\'orld War on Afghanistan in his first book.
Fearful as they were, those convulsions intensified, rather than
weakened, Afghanistan's entanglement with Europe, because
they made it clear that Britain and Europe, with Russia turned
inside out in 1917, and refugees from Soviet Turkestan in
Afghanistan in the early twenties to prove it, no longer had the
control that the exercise of the traditional policy toward Afghanistan required.
Untill945, the monarchs remained capable of controlling the
European influence they encouraged: only their misjudgement
occasioned the excesses that occurred. But after 1945, they lost
control over the pace of "modernization" in part because of the
breakdown and reversal in the traditional policy toward Afghanistan that occurred, more or less unacknowledged, after the British left India in 1947.
At the end of 1948, with Europe still in ruins and Britain out
of India, the Afghan minister of national economy asked the
United States, without stating it in those terms, to take up the
traditional Western policy toward Afghanistan. At the same time
that he acknowledged the central government's need for arms
for domestic control, he foresaw that Afghanistan would fight
for the West in the war now actually going on:
._..it [Afg~an~sta~] wants U.S. arms in order to make a positive contnbubon m the event there is war with the Soviets.
Properly armed, and convinced of U.S. backing, Afghanistan
could manage a delaying action in the passes of the Hindu
92
Kush which would be a contribution to the success of the
armed forces of the West and might enable them to utilize
bases which Pakistan and India might provide.
Ab?ul Majid referred repeatedly to the "war", indicating his
behef that a war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. is inevitable, and said that when war came Afghanistan would of
course be overrun and occupied. But the Russians would be
unable to pacify the country. Afghanistan could and would
pursue guerrilla tactics for an indefinite period. a
Several years later, in the early nineteen-fifties, the United
States decided as a matter of policy to refuse military aid to Afghanistan for fear of offending the Soviets, and because they
judged that no amount of military aid could defend Afghanistan
from a determined Soviet conquest-an expectation Afghanistan's previous history and the events of the last three years
belie.
After the American refus;l, Prince Daoud, prime minister
from 1953 to 1963, turned to the Soviet Union for military and
economic aid. After Bulganin's and Khrushchev's visit to Kabul
in 1955, the Czechs in 1956 supplied the first arms to the Afghan
army, and Afghan officers, eventually as many as 200 a year,
went to school in the Soviet Union.
At first Soviet aid projects meant to attract attention with
quick results: in 1954 a highly visible, twenty-thousand ton grain
elevator in Kabul whose grain, although mostly supplied by the
United States, was often mistaken for Soviet; the paving of the
streets of Kabul, a project rejected as unimportant by the United
States. But soon the Soviets concentrated on projects that would
count when it came to force: besides equipping and training the
army, exploration for natural gas and oil and minerals, jet airports, communications, and spectacular all-weather roadsroads that with their reenforced bridges now bear Soviet armor
and gas _decontamination equipment into Afghanistan. In 1956,
the Soviets offered credits for a road through the Hindu Kush
with a tunnel at the Salang pass which would cut one hundred
and fifty miles and two days from the distance between northern
Afghanistan and Kabul A few years later, work started on another road from the Soviet border to Herat and Kandahar.
Despite the warnings of writers in the West alarmed by the
ominous possible uses of the roads, the governments of the
West, first the United States but then, as Europe recovered economically from the war, France, Italy, and Germany chose to
compete with the Soviets exclusively in economic terms. They
helped agriculture, improved the southern roads, organized an
airline, built airports and hydroelectric projects, improved local
education on all levels, sent Afghans abroad to study-"education" to turn out fateful for the country. In contrast to Soviet
money which was lent against barter arrangements for agricultural produce and for raw materials, like natural gas, whose terms
have never become public, gifts made up eighty percent of
American aid to Afghanistan until 1967.
The United States' decision to compete on unequal terms, in
economic but not military aid-which represented itself as a continuation of the old policy under a new name, "non-alignment,"
instead of "buffer state" -actually amounted to an unacknowlWINTER 1982
�edged reversal of the old policy, for it substituted engagement in
Afghanistan's domestic affairs for support of its independence.
The West's unwillingness to recognize the new policy's reversal
of the old blinded it to its greater risks-risks that plainly acknowledged would have made undeniable the recklessness of
fostering change within Afghanistan without supporting its independence. Did Afghanistan need an army, which the United
States allowed the Soviets to control, for anything except standing up to the Soviets?
We pursued the inherently more dangerous policy, because
we feared the bluntness and explicitness of the old. The old policy faced the risk of war-and appreciated Afghan courage and
Afghanistan's formidible natural defenses-the new policy ignored the possibility of war (and true to its evasiveness, acts as if
nothing is happening, now that war has occurred!) in the protestation of good intentions and the condescension of the assumption
that the Afghans could not resist a determined Soviet attempt at
conquest. In retrospect, in pursuit of this policy of changing Afghanistan's domestic life without supporting its independence,
the West appears unwittingly to have cooperated with the Soviets in undermining the central government of Afghanistan
(which both it and the Soviets mistook for the country).
The new policy with its almost exclusive preoccupation with
Afghanistan's domestic affairs had another fateful consequence
besides the forgetting of Afghanistan's past. It forgot where Afghanistan was. It forgot how the world was put together. It forgot
that the independence of Afghanistan meant the safety of Pakistan and India, and to a degree of Persia, the Persian Gulf, the
Sea of Arabia. Because of this readiness to forget that Afghanistan was an actual country in a specific place that came of not
facing the possibility that Afghanistan might have enemies, Afghanistan despite our greater involvement in it appears to us
much further away than in the nineteenth century.
Admittedly, the British in some sense had it easier, because
they did not have to defend India without being there-and being there, and riding and walking everywhere they went, they
knew how the world was put together. But there are deeper
causes for this incapacity to see that countries are in specific
places and to remember their past. So-called ideological competition serves to blind people to the past and to what is actually going on before their eyes. Besides the diplomats of the West,
much of the youth in Kabul and many in the government fell for
this ideological brooding which does not distinguish between
one country and another: forgetful of their monarchy's political
experience and their country's independence and self-rule they
took themselves for any country in the "Third World" -an expression which, Irving Kristol has profoundly pointed out, exists
only because of the UN's capacity to spread its illusions.
After ten years, in 1963, the king dismissed Prince Daoud as
prime minister. In his concentration on winning money from
abroad for economic development, Daoud had suppressed all political activity except for the distraction of agitation for the "autonomy" of the Pushtun peoples in Pakistan-agitation meant to
foster the illusion of "national" unity and coherence. The foreign money for improving Afghanistan's "infrastructure" and for
education had produced the beginnings of a middle class (about
one hundred thousand by 1973) but not the increase in producTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
tion for the trade the new roads meant to facilitate. Largely dependent on the Kabul government, the new middle class spent
its money for imported goods instead of investing in light industry and agriculture.
In an attempt to make up for Daoud's neglect of politics, the
King in 1963 appointed a committee to draft a new constitution.
Approved by a traditional countrywide tribal and ethnic assembly-a national jirgah-the new written constitution betrayed
the divided mind of the monarch-and his hesitations. At the
same time that it granted parliament legislative powers and excluded the entire royal family, except the king, from political office, it granted the king control of foreign and military affairs, the
appointment of the cabinet, veto of legislation, and the dissolution of parliament. At the same time that it sought the consent
of the people, it attempted to preserve the absolute powers of
the king: "The King is not accountable and shall be respected by
all." (Article 15)
Of the 209 members of the 1965 Parliament, the first elected
with universal suffrage, 146 were tribal and ethnic leaders, 25 religious leaders. There were only four deputies from Kabul, four
women, four from the newly founded People's Democratic Party
of Afghanistan (PDPA), among them Babrak Karma] and Hafizullah Amin. Traditional authority, status, wealth, not political issues,
decided most of the electoral contests, especially in the country.9
The king attempted to mediate between this parliament
(largely from the country) and the Westernized Afghans in the
government in Kabul. At the same time as he called himself the
"founder of the progressive movement in Afghanistan," the king
attempted to explain his reforms in Islamic terms. The king's ambivalence betrayed itself in his vacillations in regard to the independent press he alternately tolerated and suppressed, and in his
refusal to approve a law parliament passed for the establishment
of parties that might have in the course of time, a generation-but as it turned out there was to be nowhere near that
amount of time, brought the country into the politics of the city.
Unwilling to risk the organization of the popular will of the country through parties, the king unwittingly encouraged clandestine
groups in Kabul and the other cities of Afghanistan- where less
than ten percent of Afghanistan's estimated fifteen million people live.
In all its ambiguity the new constitution brought an explosion
of political action, outside parliament, at the University and on
the streets of Kabul. For the first time, less than two years after
the dismissal of Daoud, in 1965, organized Marxist-Leninist
groups, especially the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan,
appeared in Kabul During the debate for confidence for the first
cabinet under the new constitution in October 1965, the police
and the army killed at least three high school and university students in demonstrations in the streets. In October 1968, students
prevented the enforcement of a law on education they did not
like. In May 1969, an unimportant matter precipitated a general
strike that closed the University until November. In November
1971, new exam requirements provoked another general strike
that rapidly assumed political character, and again closed the
University for five months.
In the absence of other political organizations, Babrak Karmal
and other representatives from the tightly-organized People's
93
�Democratic Party of Afghanistan often dominated debate in parliament at the same time that their coffirades manipulated crowds
at the university and in the streets. But the students did not need
much encouragement. Western and Soviet money during the ten
years of Daoud's prime-ministership had increased the numbers
of students, but not the quality of education. In primary and secondary schools throughout the country, the teachers, often with
only a few years more study than their students, persisted in rote
instruction that allowed students little discussion or initiative. In
Kabul language difficulties plagued the University: in the sixties
about one hundred professors from abroad lectured in six languages, with the result that the one European language Afghan
students chose to learn determined the· education they got.
There were not enough books: of the hundred thousand books
in the library, the bare minimum for a university, eighty percent
were in English. Also, students wanted to study "letters," fashionable and customary. But the country needed technicians. By
the end of the sixties, Afghans in Afghanistan who had returned
from graduate study abroad numbered five hundred-and in Afghanistan, in contrast to many "Third-World" countries, most
had returned.
Out of this chaos came many students more ambitious than
qualified-and in addition unemployable-good prospects for
the political agitation and the clandestine organizations bent on
undoing the world in the name of bettering it. In some ways a
grotesque magnification, and to some extent a reflection of the
battling that undid many western universities in the same years,
this chaos had more brutal-or, at least more obvious-consequences in Afghanistan.
At its founding in january 1965, PDPA openly declared its allegiance to Soviet foreign policy and the Soviet model. Like many
organizations that cannot cope with opposition, it succumbed almost immediately to the hatred of faction. Each faction had a
newspaper that bore its name: Khalq (Masses), was closed down
by the government in 1966 after five issues, because of vilification of Western influences and of the royal family, and Parcham
(The Banner) lasted until 1969. By 1971, Pareham began to
organize Marxist-Leninist cells in the army, especially among
junior officers-and perhaps to establish contact with Prince
Daoud in forced political retirement, who was to destroy the
monarchy in 1973 with its help. At the same time that it kept up
open and close relations with the government and the army, the
Soviet Union secretly financed and manipulated the organizations meant to undermine them, Parcham and, to a lesser extent,
Khalq. In this situation in which the street counted for more
than a parliament that could not muster the will to legislate, the
king unnecessarily contributed to the heady disorienting atmosphere in Kabul by siding with the Arabs-and the Soviet Unionagainst Israel in the international propaganda war that sought to
undo victory on the battlefield in 1967.
In retrospect it is clear that the present war for Afghanistan
started with Daoud's destruction of the Monarchy in 1973-an
event whose significance was hardly appreciated at the time by
commentators not used to valuing inherited institutionsiO_and
that was hardly remembered in the catastrophe of 1978. Up to
1973 there had been abdications and struggles for succession, but
no direct attack on the monarchy. The only institution of the cen-
94
tral government that had survived more than a generation, the
two-hundred year old monarchy, enjoyed real respect among
educated and uneducated Afghans alike, who called it the
"Shadow of God." Such an enormity required a prince like
Daoud, who was also cousin and brother-in-law of the king, but
a prince with a mind confused by "progressive" ideas-and
with an army ready to obey him in part because of Parcham's
infiltration.
With the exception of some tribesmen, the countryside did
not react to Daoud's destruction of the monarchy, probably because they did not realize that Daoud intended to do away with
the monarchy, rather than substitute himself for the king, and
because they were used to defending themselves from the monarchy rather than defending it. With the monarchy gone, restraint
gradually disappeared in Kabul.
In his proclamation of a republic after his seizure of power,
Daoud called the king a "despot." Despite his promises to turn
the king's "pseudodemocracy" into real democracy, he adopted
the Marxist program and pro-Soviet foreign policy of Parcham.
He emphasized the bloodlessness of his coup at the same time
that he admitted eight murders. 11 The Soviet Union offered
much military and technical aid to the new regime that it, India,
Czechoslovakia and West Germany quickly recognized. For the
authority of the king which rested on the consent of the tribes,
Daoud tried to substitute the fascination of his personality-and
the distractions of his Marxist program, meant for the students
and intellectuals of Kabul whom he mistook for the people of
Afghanistan.
A little more than a year after his seizure of power, Daoud began to undo the Communist infiltration of his regime. In 1975 he
expelled the Parcham leaders. In 1977 he dismissed forty Sovie~
trained officers and began to send officers for training to Egypt
instead of the Soviet Union. Despite his success in undoing
Communist infiltration in at least the top positions in his regime-but not in the army-Daoud still did not, or could not,
conceive a program other than Communist: democracy, in his
1977 constitution, turned out to mean a one-party state that
recognized no opposition.
After its expulsion, Parcham, probably upon Soviet instigation, came in 1976 to an understanding with Khalq, that had
from the beginning considered Daoud too "reactionary" to support. At the same time, in order to lessen dependence on the
Soviet Union, Daoud conciliated Pakistan and turned for aid to
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and, more importantly, Egypt and
Persia. Aware of Soviet and Marxist infiltration in Kabul, the
Shah had already in 1974 offered two billion dollars in credits,
mostly for the construction of a nine-hundred mile railway to
connect Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat with Persia and the world
outside. Several hundred thousand Afghans had gone to work in
Persia and the states along the Gulf. In early 1978 a few months
before his murder and the destruction of his regime, Daoud
visited Sadat, who had recently won the attention of the world
with his visit to Jerusalem.
But it was too late. Unable to defend the status-quo because of
his destruction of the monarchy, Daoud could neither go backward nor forward. That he got into most trouble over women's
rights tells something of the disorientation in Kabul that abWINTER 1982
�sorbed Daoud to the point that he forgot the countryside. 12 He
had become a European in spite of himself. In the end those
who did not hate him would not support him.
Unlike the seizure of power of 1973, the coup of 1978 brought
much murder: guesses ranged from two to len thousand dead.
Carefully planned (according to Khalq, as early as 1975) and carried out by some of the same officers who had seized power in
1973, the coup of 1978 was precipitated by the unexplained
murder of Mir Akbar Khyber, an important leader of the Parcham
faction-one of seven political murders in the last months of
Daoud. Frightened by Khalq-Parcham demonstrations of mourning and defiance that numbered, perhaps, ten thousand, the first
demonstrations against him, Daoud ordered the arrest of the
most important Communist leaders. Either inefficient or infiltrated, Daoud's police allowed one of these leaders, Hafizullah
Amin, after his arrest, to write detailed instructions to army and air
officers to begin the seizure of power the next morning, April 27.
With air battles, spectacular in their precision, and intense street
battles, the coup took a relatively long time, something like
thirty-six hours, time enough for decisive mediation by Western
ambassadors who understood the significance of eventsY
The April 1978 coup brought a mounting fury of intrigue between one faction after another in Kabul and an attack on the
countryside that by early 1979 had provoked violent resistance
throughout Afghanistan. Open in its hatred of the destroyed
monarchy and the murdered Daoud, the regime at first sought
to win confidence at home and abroad with its denial of Marxism
and Communism. Its first proclamation acknowledged God. In
an interview with Die Zeit, Taraki, a leader ofKhalq and the new
President of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, denied
disingenuously that the violence of the seizure of power aimed
at anything other than democracy. 14 A leading expert on Afghanistan scolded the New York Times for calling the coup Communist.15 But soon the fancies that justified their violence overwhelmed the new leaders' capacity to distinguish their seizure of
power from an uprising of all Afghanistan, a "revolution." "But
he [Taraki] insisted on calling himself the leader of a revolution,
not a coup. The conviction that the masses were behind them
would lead Taraki and the clannish Marxist leadership to disaster."
Unwilling to know themselves in the distasteful role of despots,
which in any case was beyond their justification, the new leaders,
within a few months of their seizure of power, took the measures
that Montesquieu taught provoked the ruin of despotism: with
totalitarian arrogance which, unlike the open cruelty of despotism, knows no limits, they attacked Afghan customs and religion
in the name of freedom In October 1978 they unfurled a new
flag for Afghanistan, modeled after the flags of the Soviet Socialist
Republics, which by substituting red for Islamic green undermined their Islamic pretences before the whole country. In November they announced reforms that interfered with customs:
compulsory education; limitation of marriage price; required licensing of all marriages and prohibition of marriage before the
age of eighteen; prohibition of usury in customary credit arrangements between the poor in the country and their money
lenders; redistribution of three million acres of the best landmeasures all ·taken without adequate study of the conditions
they ostensibly meant to correct.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Used to heady "progressive" pronouncements of reform from
Kabul, the Afghans did not react until the arrival in the countryside of bands of fanatic Marxist university and high-school
students as government officials, backed by the well-paid and
radicalized police, showed them that the new regime, in contrast
to Daoud, meant what it said. Tribal and religious leaders who
resisted were arrested and executed.
The attempt to enroll by force all school-age children (up to
then families had voluntarily enrolled about fifty percent of their
boys but only ten percent of their girls) in schools of Marxist indoctrination in which Russian substituted for English amounted
to an attack by the privileged young of Kabul on the authority of
the parents in the countryside. Based on the crude brutality of
the expectation that the expropriation, and destruction, of the
top two percent of the population would free the rest from "oppression" and, even more cynically, win their allegiance to complicity in murder, and robbery, the land reform program ignored
many of the realities of land tenure in an old and poor country
only incipiently sensitive to economic differences. Despite the
recent appearance of something approaching a rural proletariat
of no longer independent nomads, a "majority of farmers and
herders appear not to be hopelessly poor" (by Afghan standards)
and own their own land. The uncertainty that came with the expropriation showed itself in a one-third drop in the spring wheat
harvest in 1979. In the Newells' judgement the abruptness of the
marriage reform shows that it aimed, not at the "emancipation
of women," but, like the compulsory Marxist education program,
at undermining families in order to expose individuals to "social
engineering." The resort to force in all these measures provoked
explosions of resistance throughout Afghanistan-resistance that
coalesced after Kabul showed its readiness to depend on Soviet
force, with its treaty with the Soviet Union on December 8, 1978.
With the countryside in resistance throughout Afghanistan by
the beginning of 1979, uprisings took hold of the cities: in March
1979, in Hera~ the Afghan city closest to Persia, perhaps five
thousand people, in a city numbering eighty-five thousand, including all known Soviet advisers and Khalq members, were
murdered, often with savage atrocity-an event that wants a
Livy to find its proper place in Western history; in April in Jalalabad Afghan soldiers, ordered to attack resistance groups outside
the city, killed their Soviet advisors in mutiny and fled to the resistance, after suffering defeat from loyal government and, according to some reports, Soviet troops. There was violence also
in Kandahar, Pul-i.Khumri, and Mazar·i-Sharif.
The first purges took place just two months after the KhalqParcham seized Kabul: in July, Hafizullah Amin expelled Babrak
Karmal and five other Parcham leaders to the exile of ambassadorships in eastern Europe and jailed hundreds of Parcham
members. Reckless, arrogantly confident that the Soviets needed
him more than he them, in some sense an amateur, with illusions of independence, for unlike Soviet trained Parcham members, he had learned his Marxism on American campuses,
Hafizullah Amin defied the Soviets in his fanatic impatience, only
to become more dependent on them. For instance, Soviet advisors, whose numbers increased from fifteen hundred at the
time of the coup to at least five thousand by the early summer of
1979 to ten thousand at the time of the invasion, often took the
95
�places in the ministries and elsewhere, of the Parcham members
Amin purged. By driving events beyoll,d anybody's control, Amin
probably more than anyone precipitated the Soviet attempt at
conquest that began with his murder.
Even as he jailed Parcham members and prepared the measures that by provoking rebellion in the countryside would make
him more dependent on the Soviets, Amin convinced visiting
American "experts" in the summer and fall of 1978, and apparently, the American ambassador, who saw him frequently, that
he could turn Afghanistan into a Communist country without
succumbing to Soviet domination. This fanciful expectation
came of the illusion, which led to the support ofTito in 1948 and
in the last ten years to the support of Communist China, that
the enemy is just another nation, Russia, and not Communism
that seeks domination by destroying governments of every sort.
Even the murder of the American ambassador in early February
1979 in a Soviet-directed attempt, supposedly, to rescue him
from unidentified terrorists, did not awaken the West to the
seriousness of the situation not only in Kabul but throughout
Afghanistan-and to the increase in Soviet penetration. After
all, what free nation makes a fuss about the murder of an ambassador? The United States which had up to then ignored
Amin's treaty with the Soviet Union meekly withdrew even further from Afghanistan after uttering its first disapproval of the
Communist regime. Perhaps nothing more shows the participation of Western diplomats and journalists in Amin's illusions than the sensation caused by Amin's foreign minister's
outburst against Soviet "unreliability and treachery," less than
three months before the invasion-in the fall of 1979. At the
same time Amin began to plot against his closest associate Taraki
who may have been in touch with Babrak Karmal and other Parcham members during his enthusiastic reception in Moscow in
September 1979.
Speculation about Soviet motives for invading Afghanistan on
December 25 with eighty-five thousand troops (soon to number
one hundred thousand) serves largely to continue the evasion
that kept Western journalists and governments from anticipating
the danger of attempted conquest throughout the preceding six
years, and taking action against it before it occurred-even after
intelligence reports of Soviet troop movements along the northern
bank of the Oxus River early in December 1979. According to
the Newells, Amin's defiance of the Soviets and his successive
purges of their favorites, Parcham and then Taraki, drew the
Soviets to attempt the conquest of Afghanistan. But the struggle
between factions that turned murderous in the end was at most
a precipitating cause. The reason for the attempted conquest is
that the Soviets can not face the uprising of almost a whole nation, of almost all the Afghans, not for their "world revolution"
but against it. "The most self-defeating aspect of Khalq's program was its failure to give those elements of the population it
championed anything they could recognize other than trouble.
As a consequence, Khalq ignited one of the most truly popular
revolts of the twentieth century." (Emphasis mine.)
In appearance abrupt, the attempted Soviet invasion of Afghanistan actually brought to a head a generation of active infiltration
in Afghanistan. Already in 1950, the year Spanish, incredibly, attained equal priority with English-and four years before the ap-
96
pearance of a ten-thoUsand copy edition of a Russian-Vietnamese,
Vietnamese-Russian dictionary-students at Soviet language
schools studied Pushtu.
To the surprise of both the Soviet Union and the United States,
it turned out, however, that without an open fight Afghanistan
was not for the stealing. Suddenly, the courage of the Afghans
rediscovered the buffer state, under all the obfuscations about
"non-alignment," and the wisdom of nineteenth century diplomacy. But the courage that was too much for the Soviets was
also too much for the West. The United States too could not
cope with the courage of men ready to fight, almost with their
bare hands and without waiting for support, against the soldiers
of a regime that terrifies it and the other leading nations of the
world. The Soviets tried to destroy the men of this courage; the
United States cynically took their destruction for granted. "The
primary inadequacy of American policy lay in the fact that it immediately conceded Afghanistan. Carter conveyed that concession even in his strongest denunciations of the invasion."
The unreality of the West's response showed itself in the ludicrousness of Western statesmen's remarks and proposals for
Afghanistan. Without blushing, the government of Germany remarked on the divisibility of detente, a remark which, if it meant
anything at all, meant that Germany expected Europe to be conquered last or next to last-and without fighting. Fresh from
handing Rhodesia to Mugabe with the acclamation of the whole
world, Lord Carrington proposed "non-alignment" for Afghanistan, just at the moment when the Soviets were lost in the attempt, and denying it, to destroy the buffer state, for which
"non-alignment" had been for a generation a kind of codeword
that obscured the realities of its survival both to the West and
the Soviets: the courage of the Afghans and nature's gift of
fastness.
The United States' admission that it would fight for the Gulf
of Persia but not by implication help the men and women resisting aggression in Afghanistan, showed for perhaps the first time
since 1945 that it was reduced to defending natural resourcesnot freedom. Against this shameless-and unintelligent, for it
forgets Afghanistan's strategic position (but mountains and courage do not appear in the defense budget)-admission of a policy
of expediency, nobody said a word. Least of all those who, with
the mindlessness of the "educated," had been quick to assume
that the lust for profits had driven us to fight for Indochina. The
consequences of preferring expediency to the defense of freedom-as if aid to those ready to fight for freedom in Afghanistan
were not expedient!-shows itself in the United States' readiness
to cater to the whims of Saudi Arabia and to forget that the importance of Israel comes not because of its ties with American
Jews, but because it has the reliable daring strength that can only
come of democracy-the only democracy in the Middle East ex·
cept for Turkey whose moderate temporary military dictator·
ship, terrorism's bitter fruit, now begins to awaken the contempt
of those who can only recognize freedom in its absence. It also
shows itself in the prevarications of our relationship to China, itself occasioned by our abandonment of Indochina, especially in
the refusal to recognize that China, which has not said a word
for Poland (but totalitarian countries fear nothing more than a
meaningful word), is more ruthless than the Soviet Union, and in
WINTER 1982
�the readiness to make embarassing compromises of dubious legality in the support of Taiwan. But the truth is that the struggle
that counts, and the only one we can win, r~ally win-and without major war, but at the risk of small wars in which individuals
but not whole populations die-is for freedoffi. We were in Indochina because of freedom.
United States and Western evasiveness shows itself most in its
incapacity to face up to the Soviet use of gas in Afghanistan, reported already in May 1980 by Newsweek-and in Laos since
1976, and in Cambodia-and to supply the Afghans openly with
elementary weapons and simple medicines. The Soviet resort to
gas in violation of two international treaties is an international
issue, that is, an issue that affects all countries if there ever was
one. It occurs at a moment when the government of the United
States, against its desires and probably unnecessarily, has yielded
to the importunity of some of Europe for arms control negotiations for both middle and long-range nuclear strategic weapons.
To enter into such negotiations in the knowledge that the Soviet
Union is violating two international treaties against the use of
gas, amounts to saying we will negotiate with you no matter
what you do. That is not to negotiate, but to yield without acknowledging, and even knowing, it-just what totalitarian countries mean by "negotiate." The only newspaper I know of that
has shown courage in facing up to Soviet use of gas, the Wall
Street Journal, is right in its judgement that the enormity of the
outrage is too much for the government.
Because the Afghans dare fight the Soviets we are afraid to
help them, not fight along with them, but simply to help. There
have been reports in the American press that the government
has seen to weapons for the Afghans from the beginning. But
then why the secrecy? And why President Reagan's casual remark in the first months of his presidency that he would aid the
Afghans if they but asked? 16 Do we really live in a world in which
Sadat dared say that he sent old weapons from East Europe, apparently paid for by the United States, to people fighting for
their homeland against brutal aggression with more or less their
bare hands in cold and heat we can barely imagine-but the
United States does not?
Whatever the truth of these rumors of covert aid to the
Afghans from the United States, every report I have read from
men who have dared enter Afghanistan and every report the
Newells cite tells of the absence of modern weapons, especially
of ground to air missiles, and of simple medical supplies. 17 We
may send some weapons, but they do not get through.
The underlying reasons for Western refusal to help the Afghans are not pretty. Fear, first of all And then condescension.
We are quite used to pitying the weak whom the Soviets, in
much of the world, know how to turn into unwilling victims of
their own hate and resentment, but not to respecting the brave.
Who are these unlettered rustics with their World War I rifles to
teach us courage? Who are they to fight for their country and us,
unasked?
The sixty to two hundred resistance groups, often acting on
their own and, thereby, baffling Soviet planning, draw their cohesion and authority not from European parliamentary institutions and "political" ideas, which served largely to destroy the
Monarchy and bring the European civil war to Afghanistan, but
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
from age·old tribal assemblies that make binding majority deci·
sions, assemblies where speakers with age, wisdom, courage and
brilliance in speaking, and lineage exercise the most influence.
That we take it for granted that these are ineffective and primitive tells a good deal more about us and our distance from the
past that made us than it does about the Afghans. For these institutions resemble those of Homer, who lived only a hundred generations ago.
The British in the nineteenth century were much closer to
that past. In 1841 Vincent Eyre knew who had marched in
Afghanistan before him-"a country hitherto untraversed by an
European Army since the classic days of Alexander the Great."
As a result Afghanistan was closer to them than Europe to Af~
ghanistan. In contrast, the Afghans now know the intimacy of
our minds and what Afghanistan means to us better than we
who can barely catch sight of their country in the distance. Several months ago, the leader of the National Liberation Front of
Afghanistan, Sayed Ahmed Gailani, explained the strategic and
moral significance of the war for Afghanistan to an Italian journalist with a clarity beyond most officeholders in the West:
The Pakistanis have done their Islamic duty by us, not only
because of solidarity, but also because they realize that in the
eventuality of the consolidation of their grip on Afghanistan,
the Russians already plan a blitz through Pakistani Baluchistan that would bring them to the Sea of Arabia-in the ful·
fillment of a dream of centuries. The Sea of Arabia means oil
and the strangulation of Europe. The Europeans either do
not grasp this sequence of events-or pretend they do not.
In answer to the reporter's question: "What would the Afghans like from Europe?" Gailani said:
A bit of solidarity, if not for humanitarian reasons, for the vulgar reasons of expediency. Would you dedicate to us a few of
those peace marches that occur everywhere often in favour of
our invaders. You walked for Vietnam where the two great
powers collided. You might walk for us, a country where nobody collided with anybody, which has been invaded in the
coarsest colonial fashion, the fashion we escaped in the time
of the British and which now comes to us from Moscow.
We ask ourselves over and over again: How can Europe, hypersensitive Europe, who rises to her feet for Chile and Cambodia, find the strength to close her eyes to our instance, the
most shameful of all?
Our fight can have three great consequences: the liberation
of Afghanistan from an invading army, the rescue of Pakistan
from probability of a similar fate, the frustration of the plan to
encircle Europe. Unless it is just this that you want-to be
encircled. 18
Tucked away in the pages of the New York Times several
weeks ago, the U.S. Army chief of staff remarked almost as a
matter of course that the Third World War had started in Af.
ghanistan. 19 It may also be won there. But there is not much time.
1. "Keeping Cool about Kabul," New York Times, December 8, 1978.
2. In his proposal on March 12, 1948 to President Truman to raise the
American Diplomatic Mission in Afghanistan from Legation to Em-
97
�bassy, George C. Marshall observed" ... that the American Community
in Afghanistan is now larger than that oLany other foreign state." Foreign Relations of the United States, Part 1, V {1948), 490-494.
3. Vincent Eyre, The Kabul Insurrection of 1841.42, London 1879, 1-2,
63. Published on the occasion of "The Second Afghan War," this second edition of Eyre's The Military Operations at Cabul, which ended in
the Retreat and Destruction of the British Army (London 1843) contains a
long introduction, not included in the first edition.
4. For an account, extraordinary in its intelligent subtlety, of the nego·
tiations that broke down in the crisis of 1879, see H. B. Hanna, The Second Afghan War, 1878-79-80, London 1899, 2 vols., especially I, 1-285.
5. Correspondence Relating to Persia and Afghanistan, London 1839, 261.
6. Eyre, Kabul 2, London 1879, 53-54.
7. Eyre, Cabul1, London, 1843,29.
8. FRUS, Part I,V (1948), 490-494.
9. Christine F. Ridout, "Authority Patterns and Afghan Coup of 1973,"
Middle East Jouma/29, 2, 1975, 165-78.
10. Without distinguishing between the king and the monarchy, the
New York Times called the King "conservative" the day after the coup,
July 18,1973. The next day, in perhaps a typographical error, it reported
that "Afghanistan had been ruled by the monarchy for 43 years." Two
days later, on July 21, 1973, C. C. Sulzberger assured everyone that
there was no significant difference between the King and Daoud: "Af·
ghanistan was no democracy under King Zahir nor will it be under President Daoud."
The former American Ambassador to Afghanistan (1966-73) Robert G.
Neumann ("Afghanistan Under the Red Flag," The Impact of the Iranian
Events upon Persian Gulf and United States Security, Washington, D.C.
1979, 128-148 also barely notices the disappearance of the monarchyprobably because the intensity of intrigue and gossip in Kabul robbed
him of perspective.
11. According to the New York Times ofJuly 26, 1973, Daoud stated: "I
can safely say that this was in every sense a bloodless coup. It not only
enjoyed the complete cooperation of all branches of the army but also the
support of all people, particularly the intellectuals and youth." (Emphasis
mine.)
12. Robert G. Weinland, "An Explanation of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan," Center for Naval Analyses, Alexandria, Virginia 1981,7. For
an example of the disproportionate interest in the position of women in
a country with more tractable and pressing problems like a high infant
mortality rate, see the ideological but interesting study of Erika Knabe,
Frauenemanzipation in Afghanistan, Germany 1977.
13. See the interesting article by Hannah Negaran {pseudonym for an
Afghan), "The Afghan Coup of April 1978: Revolution and International Security," Orbis 23, 1, Spring 1979, 93-113. The reluctance of
Afghans even abroad to speak of events in Afghanistan openly betrays
the nearness of the violence that appears so far away.
14. Die Zeit, june 9, 1978.
15. Louis Dupree, New York Times May 20, 1978: " ... an enlightened
press should avoid the loose use of the term 'Communist.' All should examine the words of the new leaders carefully for governments, like persons, should be considered innocent until proven guilty."
16. New York Times, March 10, 1981. For the indications, all from unidentified sources, that the United States sends arms to the Afghans,
Carl Bernstein, "Arms for Afghanistan," The New Republic, July 18,
1981, 8-10.
17. I cite only the most recent reports: II Giornale Nuovo, December 2,
1981; Neue Zuercher Zeitung, December 20-21, 1981; Foreign Report,
January 7, 1982.
18. Il Giomale Nuovo, October 29, 1981.
19. New York Times, January 3, 1982.
See also the important article by Pierre and Micheline Centlivres,
"Village en Afghanistan," Commentaire 16, Winter 1981-82, 516-525.
AT HOME AND ABROAD
LETTER FROM VIETNAM
Hanoi, ecological city
Four A.M. at my hotel, right in the middle of Hano~ near the Grand Theatre. The
crowing of roosters from the yards nearby
awakens me. Not-to-be-believed! Thirty
years ago, at the age of thirteen, I had last
seen this colonial city that looked more like
a French provincial town-with, however,
every feature of an urban center-than a
capitol. In thirty years the regime has managed to rusticate Hanoi at the same time
that its population (not counting the new
suburbs) has quadrupled to 800,000.
98
In that early morning's walk and in the
following days, I saw other sides of the city's
"ecological" transformation. With the exception of a few public buildings, no new
housing had gone up within the city limits.
Banana trees, vegetables, chicken cages,
pig pens take up every square foot of the
gardens of the villas of the past. Fertilized
by the excrement of fowls and little pigs that
are raised like dogs, a vegetable green spills
from the terraces of even small apartment
houses. The inhabitants are even encour-
aged to take up part of the sidewalk to plant
fruit trees-or vegetables that the urine of
passing children waters.
Interior spaces are laid out with the same
ecological concern. Each individual takes
up an average of one and a half square
yards. He eats, sleeps, studies, works, and
entertains on a bed made of one large
wooden board. Thin panel-partitions and
balconies under the ceilings quadruple the
available space. Four to five households
now live in the space once taken up by
WINTER 1982
�one. This crowding makes for the mutual
surveillance the State desires. In the course
of time, however, it may make for loyalties,
and even connivance against the state's
hostility.
The housing crisis
Unventilated and usually dark, these low
houses in the center of town are still preferable to the recently and poorly constructed
dormitory houses of the suburbs that break
down into slums within four to five years.
They are preferable because the life of the
streets makes footage in front of these
houses worth a mint in rent or in sale price.
With their stands set up there, small craftsmen and peddlers earn ten times more than
state employees, even despite heavy taxes
and the necessity of restocking in the open
market.
In the suburbs humidity and mould
crumble the walls; doors and windows don't
shut; the stairwells stink; running water
reaches only to the second floor; the waste
drainage system is inadequate or nonexistent. Coming home from factory or office,
men and women have to carry pails of water
to the third, fourth, or fifth floor, and, for
fear of theft, in addition, their bicycles.
These houses in the suburbs are not available to anyone who wants them. Heroes of
labour and high-level state and party offi·
cials have preference; others may leave
their names on a waiting list that may drag
on four or five years. But money can always buy the right to rent from those who
enjoy preference.
The state also builds housing for those
who can pay lavishly for associative ownership-four to eight thousand dong down,
the rest in monthly installments, with salaries in the range from 50 to 200 dong a
month. And yet because of the crises in
housing the waiting lists for co-ownership
of these apartments are long: illegitimate
favors and illegal transactions are the rule.
The discrepancy between the earnings
of employees and bureaucrats and what
they spend always bewilders foreigners. A
family of four with two working adults
spends an average of 500 to 600 dong for
essentials: food, clothing, medicine, travelbut the two salaries together hardly add up
to 200 dong. How do people make up the
difference? This is one mystery in the everyday life of a citizen of Socialist Vietnam.
Small in size, the apartments hold a bewildering amount of stuff. Refrigerators
and TVs take center stage; then sewing
machines, radio-cassettes, thermos bottles,
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
dishes, kitchen utensils, clothes, canned
and dry foods, table, chairs, bed; even a
mo-ped or a bicycle kept away from thieves
,-all crammed into a poor lodging of twelve
to twenty square yards.
No paintings, no vases with flowers. Even
in the homes of intellectuals, there is no
room for aesthetics. Only one picture hangs
on the wall, high above the many shelves
filled with useful objects-the portrait of
Uncle Ho, outward sign of loyalty to theregime, and protective talisman against the
indiscreetness of the cultural police.
Meant for lawns and children's play, the
space between houses was turned two years
ago into vegetable gardens with plots for
each apartment. Every family gets two
square yards of land for vegetables and its
pig or chickens. Dogs-traditional guardians of the Vietnamese house, children's
playmates, and a special holiday delicacyare nowhere to be seen. Utility and survival
are the only things that count.
The inhabitants of sprawling suburban
projects in Hanoi should count themselves
lucky in comparison to the half of Hanoi
dwellers who swarm in areas that have no
sewage system. On rainy days, it takes acrobatics to keep your knees dry crossing the
muddy lanes in these slums infested with
flies, mosquitoes, and rats. Thirty to fifty
people share a common toilet, a sink, a tiny
kitchen. Despite the single-story houses,
the population density makes the pollution
from the garbage and excrement left uncollected in the humidity among swarming rats
far worse than in the areas overwhelmed
by the exhaust of cars in Western cities.
The institute of health of Hanoi reports
the highest incidence of respiratory and intestinal maladies in just these areas that
the tropical heat makes ideal for the prolif·
eration of bacteria. And yet it is these streets
which house the favorites of the regime,
the proletarians of the workshops and factories-except when these rural-born workers still keep a house in the surrounding
countryside, fifteen or twenty kilometers
outside the city.
Urban life
In Hanoi people travel mostly by foot or
on bicycle, which should please the world·
wide ecological movement-except for the
anarchy of traffic. Fatal accidents occur
daily in the wild swarm of cyclists that
thread daringly between trucks driven by
young "bodoi" drivers still used to jungle
paths. No one pays any attention to the
traffic lights that hardly ever work because
of power blackouts. Without looking ahead
or behind drivers turn right or left. The
young policemen who casually direct traffic are completely overwhelmed. A cigarette
will do if you are stopped for a violation.
After dark, the undiminished traffic of motor·
bikes in the unlighted streets and boulevards
of Hanoi causes serious collisions between
cyclists-and fatal crashes between trucks
and motorbikes.
The use of electricity is severely restricted. With its frequent and prolonged
power cuts, Hanoi becomes a little village
after nightfall. Except for the embassy area
and the houses of the top men, darkness
covers the city. Ostensibly, the energy is
saved for the sake of factories and country
agricultural machines. But such darkness,
in a city of a million people, increases crime
-thefts, break-ins, rapes, prostitution in the
parks, juvenile delinquency. By depriving
the urban proletariat of its one relaxation,
TV sets and radios, it also invites a noticeable rise in a birth rate already rising at an
alarming thirty percent a year. One saying
in Hanoi goes: "I bury my joy deep in the
belly of my wife, and from year to year my
family grows."
Socialist "work"
Like space, time, especially work-time, is
used ecologically. The factories, workshops, and offices have realized the dream
of all Western ecologists, the two-hour day.
A worker, who barely lives five days on his
monthly salary, gives the Party-State its
due: two hours. The other six he keeps for
the pursuit of his private interests. In factory Number X in Hanoi, the team of mechanics makes spare parts for a series of
underground bicycle, kitchen-, and household-ware workshops. They draw upon the
state's raw materials, which rarely arrive at
the same time. This excess of some materials and absence of others equally necessary,
excuses non-fulfillment of quotas and leaves
workers with nothing to do. But since it is
the rule, the socialist rule, that machines
must run unceasingly, workers more often
than not turn the machines to practical advantage-instead of letting them run on
emptily. With the surplus materials or with
scraps that have a way of piling up, they
make themselves objects not forseen in the
plan. Garment workers have a way of cutting large scraps from the textiles the fac·
tory provides-scraps that they turn into
pretty blouses at home for their own use
or, more often, for sale on the open market
in competition with factory goods. When
99
�occasionally the local marketing of factory
"surplus" materials, or of items made out
of them, arouses the suspicions of the economic police, truck-drivers cart the illegal
merchandise away to sell along the roads in
the country~much to the delight of the
peasants, who usually have to do without
manufactured goods.
With such a duplication of effort, socialist enterprises have no chance of reaching
the goals they negotiate with the stateunless they indulge in the common practice of altering the books. The failure to
meet production goals, however, compels
managers to multiply expensive overtimea move that in turn encourages the workers to increase the amount of overtime by
further reducing their productivity during
the regular day.
For twenty years the Party-State has
thundered against the waste and theft of
the public property and means of production of the nation. But the workers and employees feel even more robbed and exploited by a state that pays them wages too
low for their biological reproduction. Who
is the thief here? That is the question.
Short of shutting down its own enterprises
-a move which it will never bring itself to
make-the state can always hold its managers "responsible" to more easily dismiss
them. But the system survives the removal
and replacement of advisors, unchanged.
Workers in distribution and service are
not to be outdone by factory colleagues. According to the Party's daily paper, the People, the Peoples' control committees from
a sample of 500 state stores exposed the following covert practices: the employees of
state stores keep the best of the merchandise, sometimes all of it, for themselves; in
food stores, employees sell customers flour
and other grains after buying up all the rice
for themselves; in the bicycle store M. K.,
the employees together buy up all bicycles
and tires for their own use and especially to
resell at large profit to relatives and neighbours; at a state "supermarket," Bach Hoa
in Hanoi, the shopper who asks for a piece
of fabric, a thermos bottle, a ballpoint pen,
a notebook, or a bar of soap, can expect the
automatic response of the saleslady, "All
out" -but he knows for a fact that a buyerspeculator ready to share his profit with
the saleslady could take home a good supply. Even for rationed items for which you
have coupons you often have to buy your
place in the long lines made up oflittle professionals between the ages of eight and fifteen. This mafia of buyers-speculators in
connivance with the salespersons, whose
wages rarely exceed twenty-five dollars a
month, infests almost all the state stores in
100
Hanoi and in the other cities of Vietnam.
In this racket, the buyer and saleslady
never deal alone but in concert with every
one of their colleagues-and with the omnipresent agents of the police.
Widespread corruption
The transportation business is just as riddled with corruption. It often takes weeks
to get the authorization necessary to move
from one city to another, and, especially,
from north to south-and just as long again
to get a train or bus ticket. The train ticket
from Hanoi to Haiphong, three dong at the
official state price, is available only on the
black market for ten times the price. State
officials take an unlimited number of "business" trips, often with their families. Employees of the railroad and bus lines sell at
least a third of their tickets to "relatives"
and friends who then renegotiate them on
the black market. The price of airplane
tickets is prohibitive. And yet the Vietnamese travel constantly, both to visit friends
and family and, more often, to speculate
on the significant differences in the price
of merchandise in different regions.
At least once a week the party papers accuse a bus or shipping line of misappropriating hundreds of tons of rice or wheat
flour. But the denounced crimes go unpunished. Prompt enough in handing down
harsh verdicts against their political enemies, public tribunals are slow and indulgent towards economic delinquents whose
hands are no dirtier than anyone else's.
The gangrene of corruption does not
spare the most "sacred" sectors of socialist
society, health and education. The managers and staff of hospitals and clinics skim
off substantial amounts of the medicine
and food intended for the sick. Managers
report an inflated number of beds or patients. If the state maintains it cannot meet
such inflationist demands, the patients
have somehow or other to pay for the supposedly free services and medications. In
this condition of severe scarcity and blatant inequalities, it seems only natural that
hospital workers attend to their own wellbeing before treating the rest of the people.
In the socialist system there are at least
three types of hospitals: those for the people, those for the middle-level bureaucrats,
and those for the higher officials of the
Party-State. Within each type treatment
varies according to wage or salary scales.
Everyone in Hanoi knows that the large
hospital, "Viet-XO" (Russian-Vietnamese)
admits only high-level officials, who are assigned to wards according to salary. Before
explaining his symptoms, a sick man who ar-
rives at a hospital must show his party card
or his certificate of salary.
The hard times of 1980 showed the weakness of the Vietnamese academic system. At
the start of the 1980 school year, the regime
took pride in an enrollment of 13 million,
from nursery school to secondary school,
and a teaching staff of 300,000.
At the material level, the academic system is totally inadequate. The buildings (including those made of wood and corrugated
iron or mud) barely suffice for a third of the
students. Classes are organized in shifts:
morning classes from seven to eleven or afternoon ones from one to five are for youths
following a normal course of studies; evening classes, from six to ten, are for adults.
Children are left to themselves a good half
of the day. The youth organizations cannot
cope with their numbers. They often loiter
in gangs in the parks or in the streets of the
suburbs. In the present hard times, children
help their families in their unofficial workshops or do their own small-time peddling in
front of state stores, train stations, movies,
and theatres. Some of them prove to be excellent pickpockets. A walk after dark in certain areas of Hanoi and Saigon is ill-advised.
In 1980, the students or their parents had
to buy textbooks and notebooks, often at
high open-market prices. In many schools,
students have neither paper nor pencils to
copy down the lessons of teachers, who cannot keep up standards. After school, students and teachers run into each other in
the pursuit of small deals on the sidewalks.
The teachers I interviewed said they had
never known their profession so debased
and humiliated. Their poverty wages allow
them no time for advanced study, for research, or self-instruction.
Secondary-school teachers with classes
preparing for degrees or for college entrance
are a bit better off. They reserve their best
teaching for those students whose parents
can pay extra for special lessons. To pass
the entrance and graduation exams of universities and technical schools, you had
better be the child of high-ranking officials
in the regime, or be able to afford large payoffs-or be a genius. The certainty that
their students, unless they are ready to go
till the soil in the New Economic Zones,
will be unemployed after graduation from
high school or university, discourages many
honourable teachers. In the south, the lot
of students and their teachers seems even
more desperate. There, in addition to the
material deprivation common to all Vietnamese, the newly "liberated" suffer the psychological torment that comes of not being
able to absorb socialist education based on
Leninist indoctrination.
WINTER 1982
�Indoctrination
Instruction in "revolutionary vigilance,"
even and above all towards one's parents
and relatives, replaces the teaching of mo·
rality. The outcome of an individual's exams depends in large part on his political
history and on the political history of his
parents and grandparents. As they say in
the South, "Hoc tai thi ly lich": "Study
with your brains, compete with your political past."
(Students in the South are divided into
four categories:
A. Militant, or belonging to the family
of a party militant;
B. Worker, or child of a worker-family
which did not work for the old regime;
C. Child of a petty official or non-ranking
military man of the old regime. Petty bourgeois origin;
D. Men who worked for the old regime,
or child of parents who held high positions
in the old regime.)
University professors and researchers
must keep strictly to "the eight valuable
hours of socialist work." A professor of
medicine from the faculty of the University of Paris, fifteen minutes late for his lecture, often puts up with the reproaches of
his doorman-comrade.
The regime appoints officials, recruited
from the illiterate peasantry, to watch over
the activities of Southern intellectuals
barred from all teaching. Former professors of literature and law hang on in untenured positions at the Institute of Research
in the Social Sciences. Others who are in
shape pedal bicycle-taxis. All of them
dream of leaving their country~now become a foreign land-even though not
many years ago most took part in the struggle against the American presence. The
Southern intelligentsia is most pitiable.
The regime distrusts the quarrelsome habits it took on in the long struggle against
the American war. To make matters worse,
the Stalinist conception of a proletarian
science and technology radically different
from, and far superior to, bourgeois science, still holds sway over Vietnamese
Communist bureaucrats.
During a national congress of the
Writer's Union, in Hanoi in May 1980, in
celebration of thirty-five years of literary
production under the regime, Nguyen
dinh Thi, famous writer and ex-president
of the union, conceded: "Over thirty-five
years of independence and socialist construction, we have seen a host of writers
and poets emerge, but not a single literary
work." This outrageous admission earned
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
him the total suppression of his play,
"Nhuyen Trai a DOng Quan," commissioned by the Party's Central Committee
: to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the
national hero, general, chief of state, and
poet. Party censors accused him of playing
down the great man's victorious resistance
to the Chinese army of occupation in his
overemphasis of his hero's time of disgrace
-and of implicitly slandering the present
socialist regime in his critique of the despotic monarchy of that time. The fate of
this party writer, producer of some twenty
novels extolling the anti-colonialist and
anti-imperialist struggles and the construction of socialism, sheds a harsh light on the
predicament of not-so-conformist writers
and artists.
Painters and musicians are encouraged
to take up subjects that will build socialism,
and socialist love of country and of work.
Eastern or Western Impressionism, abstract painting, and painting of nude figures are on the index. A squad from the
cultural police descended upon the studio
of painter B one day to seize his paintings
of too-delicate young girls, and to teach
him to draw "a hand with all five fingers."
The censors classify music into three
fundamental groups: red, yellow, and blue.
The radio broadcasts red or revolutionary
music, martial in its rhythms and lyrics, all
day long. Yell ow music, romantic and softening like the former music of the South or
agitated like the Western "disco" music, is
passionately condemned. Finally, blue music, like classical music and the light music of
the West, is to be listened to in moderation.
Repression is so severe that many intellectuals confess that they do not dare to
write their thoughts and real feelings, even
privately. They do not dare pursue unorthodox ideas for fear these might slip out in
conversation with an unreliable colleague
or in the course of police questioning. The
motto of Buddhist and Christian monks,
"Banish impure thoughts," has become a
party order to the subjects of the Socialist
Republic of Vietnam.
In twenty-five years of socialism, at least
sixty famous writers and artists have
known banishment, expulsion from the
Party, reeducation through work in camps.
Professor Tran Due Thao, once a student
and professor at the :Ecole Normale Superieure of Paris, is the most notorious
case. For requesting more freedom in university teaching and in literary and artistic
expression, and particularly for daring to
criticize the anti·intellectual Stalinist practices of the Party, he was arrested in 1958,
subjected to self-criticism and sent to tend
cows in a reeducation camp in the High
Regions. Upon his return to Hanoi in early
1960, he was barred from teaching and
publishing. In exchange for a food allowance, he translates works of Marx and
Lenin. Denied hospital privileges, he must
depend on the help of friends in case of illness. Since 1971, at the request of some intellectuals of the French Communist
Party, the Vietnamese Communist Party
authorized Tran Due Thao to publish
some articles on the philosophy of language in the French journal La Pensee.
Country life
Compared to country life, the cities with
all their poverty seem to the Vietnamese
peasants like little heavens-for they still
have medicines, white rice, sugar, cigarettes, and all sorts of amenities. Despite
Party propaganda, the young people (students or graduates) sent to the country see
that the peasants are even more exploited
than the urban proletariat. Unable to bear
the harsh conditions of country life, the ostracism of local officials, the ignorance the
Party fosters in the peasantry, most of
these young people sneak back to the cities.
Organized into cooperatives that have
collectivized all the means of production,
land, and equipment, the peasants take
their work in the collective rice paddies in
resignation for a corvee for the Party. They
control neither the production plan nor the
distribution that allots them the bare minimum of food: forty-four pounds of paddy
per person per month in a good harvest,
about thirty percent of total production.
The rest must be sold to the state at ridiculously low prices. The manure, agricultural
equipment, and other items of everyday
use supposedly supplied by the state at low
prices are available in far from sufficient
quality or quantity.
With the exception of Party schools for
the children of the political bureaucracy,
the schools, which are free, offer no prospect of advancement. Because in 1980 the
medical clinics had no medicines, the peasants had to seek their medicines in the cities at black market prices. To survive they
must, in addition to the eight hours of socialist work on the rice paddies of the cooperative, put in as much or more time on
their family plots. The productivity of
these individual plots, that taken together
make up five to seven percent of the communal lands, surpasses the collective rice
paddies six or seven times.
Thanks to a tropical climate that knows
no harsh winters, the peasant may, with
101
�deft rotation, manage four or five harvests
a year: one of rice, one of potatoes or corn,
two or three of kidney beans, soy beans,
tomatoes, squash, tobacco, etc. He takes
his tools and fertilizer from the cooperative's stocks.
Convinced the state exploits him, the
peasant flaunts a high rate of absenteeism.
In his five to six hours on collective land,
the peasant prepares his strength for the
pursuit of much more lucrative work at
home: truck farming, pig and poultry raising, handicrafts or peddling. In consequence
of these arrangements, young researchers
from Hanoi, engaged in a survey of rural
life, were astonished to find thirty-hour day
schedules for peasants: eight hours of work
on the cooperative farm, eight more of work
at home, eight hours for sleep, four hours
of domestic activities (kitchen work, housework, childcare ... ) and one hour for relaxation or political meetings.
The family economy resorts to all available labor, from six-year-old children tore-
tired grandparents. The children are given
the least burdensome tasks, such as babysitting or watching the pigs and poultry.
But the children's work in the family interferes with their schooling: most Vietnamese peasant children quit school after the
elementary grades.
The yield of the family plots not directly
consumed at home fetches prices on the
open market in the cities from eight to ten
times higher than in state stores. Only this
parallel economy, which the State tolerates
in suspicion, allows the peasant to add
enough to the meager collective-farm food
rations to satisfy his basic needs for clothing, housing, health, transportation, social,
and cultural life.
More spacious than city homes, half the
houses in the country in the North are now
solidly built, with brick walls and red tile
roofs. Not the productivity of the cooperatives, as the regime would have it, but
twenty years of desperate work on plots of
individual land have built these houses.
This article appeared in 1981 in the autumn issue of Commentaire.
Eight years ago the writers, a physician
and a professor of education at the top of
French professional life-Paris-and about
to join the Socialist Party, accepted an invitation from the French Ministry of Foreign
Affairs to spend five years in Laos. With
their three infant daughters they arrived in
Vientiane, for an at first sight "mad adventure" that reflection had told them actually
amounted to an "extraordinary opportunity," on September 14, 1974-little more
than six months before the Communist
conquest of South Vietnam that they enthusiastically took for the "liberation" of
Indochina. Despite their expectations, their
eyes were alive enough to see what went
on before them-and their souls strong
enough to stand the pain of their sight.
Every Communist victory in Vietnam
brought the Communist Pathet Lao nearer
to power. A little more than six months after the signature of the Paris accords to end
the Vietnam War January 23, 1973, a Provi·
sional Government of National Union was
formed in Laos in which Communist ministers matched right wing minist~rs in pairs.
Even the police was reduced to powerlessness by the resort to pairs: a Communist
accompanied each American-uniformed regular policeman. The conquest of Saigon in
April 1975 made possible-in addition to
the Khmer Rouge conquest of Phnom Penh
-the "Liberation" of Vientiane and the
seizure of power in Laos by the revolutionary committees supported by the Pathet
Lao on August 23, followed by abdication
of the king on November 29 and the decla·
ration of the Peoples Democratic Republic
of Laos on December 2.
The more the Communists in Vientiane
The state may complain that the oblig·
atory deliveries of produce from the cooperatives leave much to be desired-and
sometimes do not occur at all. At fault,
however, are not the collective-farm members, who receive only thirty percent of the
harvest-but the middle-men who each
skim something off the surplus: officials of
the cooperative, of the commune, of the
district, and of the province; managerial,
administrative, military, and political officials. In the endless "bureaucracy" in Vietnamese rural society, there is an official for
each four or five workers.
Hdnoi, November 1980
JEAN DULICH
Translated by Colette Hughes
Jean Dulich is a pseudonym for a Vietnamese.
FIRST READINGS
LAOS
Au nom de Marx et de Bouddha, Revolution au Laos: un people, une culture disparaissent, by Marie-Noele and Didier Sicard
InterEditions, Paris 1981, 207 pages.
Laos has long since returned to the strategic insignificance for which, one judges,
nature intended it and for which its inhabitants unquestionably yearn.
J. K. Galbraith
New York Times
January l, 1982
This is a real book, a book that had to be
written. Like most such books it is also a
story of self-education. It has an awkwardness, not to be confused with ineptness,
that tells in its dreadful simplicity indelibly
of experience.
102
WINTER 1982
�tighten their grip on Laos, the more they unity, and equality between the various
fall into dependence on the Communists peoples of Laos. Who could object? People
of Vietnam. For instance, the arrest in responded to the regime's call with undeniMarch 1977 of the king, whose legitimacy , able eagerness: after thirty years of guerrilla
the Communists had made a great show of warfare they yearned for reconciliation.
respecting in their years of infiltrating the Since all were to take part, reconciliation
royal government, came a few months be- meant meetings which people in the beginfore the signature of the treaty of "friend- ning attended with enthusiasm.
ship and cooperation" (july 18, 1977) with
This readiness to trust the regime's offer
Vietnam that spelled out the "special rela- of reconciliation and attend its meetings
tions" that obtain between the two coun- was, in the Sicards' retrospective judgetries in national defense, the arts, radio, ment, a mistake that could not be undone,
press, education-and secretly traced a new for the regime had no intention of keeping
frontier between the two countries.
its promise of reconciliation. "Caution! If
To some extent the Communist seizure you trust in good faith, if you honestly deof power in Laos amounts to a disguised sire an understanding, know that under
North Vietnamese conquest. But the North their apparent frankness and good will your
Vietnamese ascendance, like almost every enemies of thirty years' standing intend to
other fact in Laos, has to be denied. Since remain that way." "The function of the pothe "friendship" treaty, expression of anti- litical meetings is to invite people to tie
Vietnamese sentiments brings eight years their own hands of their own free will."
in the camps. Haircuts, accents, and the
At these meetings, that took place in the
availability in butcher shops of dogmeat, a beginning two or three times a week, on
Vietnamese delicacy Laotians despise, be- short notice, at any time of the day or night,
tray the Vietnamese, who disguise them- individuals had to demonstrate their adherselves in the uniform of the Pathet Lao. ence to propositions that changed with beOnly the Thai kids, for the moment safe wildering rapidity. There was no question
beyond the wide Mekong, dare refer openly of objecting or expressing one's thoughts.
to the North Vietnamese domination of The ever-changing line had to be repeated
Laos: they call the Laotian children on the as if one meant it. The primary experience
other side, "dog-eaters."
of these meetings was that one can be made
Because they were less obviously brutal to assent to anything: the writers agreed at
and murderous than the Communists in one of these sessions that foreign reporters
Cambodia and Vietnam, the Communists should be kept out of Laos, because their
in Laos thought they could undo Laos with- news might hurt the "revolution." At least
out anybody, either Laotian or foreigner, made to appear to assent to anything. " 'I
noticing. At a time of exclusion of foreign- am sure that ninety percent of us make beers not from the socialist countries from lieve we agree. But do we have any other
Vietnam and Cambodia, they allowed men choice .... '" "To give up speaking, means
and women like the Sicards the freedom of dying to yourself and thereby to others."
the country. This confidence of the ComAnd the self-betrayal requires actions as
munists in Laos that they could get away well as words. Often, the betrayal of friends.
with anything that was not unmistakable Or symbolic "political" action: on a night
-and with their, in appearance, frank and in December 1977 the whole population
open manner they won the Sicards at first- suddenly turns to digging trenches to defend
makes the Sicards fear that "the 'normal' the "revolution" from imminent attack beworld of tomorrow will perhaps be closer to cause the line holds that Thai "imperialism"
the world of Communist Laos than our threatens the nation.
own."
In addition to frequent political meetings,
In the beginning, immediately after the there are weekly sessions of self-criticism at
seizure of power, the new regime offered work and, especially at the university,
reconciliation. In contrast to the old gov- monthly rehearsal of political thoughts in
ernment it promised to explain all its ac- writing-"autobiographies" that allow no
tions: people would no longer be ruled from fact or feeling to escape the great simplistic
the outside without explanation, but would divide "before and after the revolution." At
themselves take part in decisions. All were self-criticism sessions a person criticizes
to help realize progress, reconciliation, himself before suffering the criticism of
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
everybody else. In grand self-criticism sessions, an individual, for instance, a young
woman, pregnant by a professor who has
fled across the Mekong, faces a thousand
people on her feet for six hours. These criticism sessions serve to isolate individuals
-and at the same time to make them feel
responsible for their isolation. "'The most
painful thing is not to be able to speak
openly to anyone. Out of fear, we use ambiguous language. But the torture is unbearable.'" They reinforce each person's
sense of his own powerlessness and of the
force of the state without limits-which
cannot be distinguished from everybody
else and from oneself-that does what it
pleases with impunity. The forced writing
of "autobiographies" makes individuals feel
that Party cadres can see through them-as
one student put it. But again they are the
ones making themselves transparent.
In 1979, four years after the seizure of
power, Party cadres addressing these meetings openly confessed the deceptiveness of
their initial offers of reconciliation:
Now that you have advanced in your
study of our politics, you can realize that
we never had the slightest intention of
carrying out the program announced in
1975. The announcement of the program
was simply a step necessary to reassure
the people, to win their acceptance of
us- in order to reach the only and glorious goal of socialism.
Reconciliation that looked like an offer
to negotiate meant only to disarm the people and turn them to their own oppression.
"Between brotherly countries there are
never negotiations-there is only one reality: the correlations of forces." Negotiation,
even the demand for an openly acknowledged surrender instead of the offer of reconciliation, would have meant the Party
recognized limitations, acknowledged another will than its own, another world than
the mind of Lenin. The seizure of power,
therefore, does not bring the end of fighting
but continuation of fighting by other means:
fewer are murdered but almost all made to
lead themselves to a living death. "To reduce the forces of the enemy to powerlessness without fighting them, that is the
greatest victory."
But such a victory has no end, it needs
triumph after unacknowledged triumph,
for an acknowledged triumph would mean
103
�recognition of limitation. After the -.seizure
of power, the life in a person which•might
lead him to say or think something unexpected and obvious, to say "no," bec'omes
the enemy. In order to survive physically
the individual must never cease denying
that life-the reason for the frequency and
unexpectedness of meetings, self-criticism
sessions and the rest. "This process of education/reeducation really means learning
to cover up your individuality and turning
yourself into a skeleton or body of marblethe only stuff fitted to this society."" ... biological existence becomes the only point
of reference that does not arouse suspicion .... "
You cannot read the Sicards' account of
the Pathet Lao's exploitation of the yearning for pe"!ce and reconciliation to continue
war without combat-but not without murder-without wondering what it tells about
big international "negotiations" with the
Soviet Union and China. Ever since 1944,
the back and forth between the yearning
for peace and the failure of negotiations,
for instance, the failure _to conclude a
peace in Europe, has served to keep many
people from realizing that the Second
World War continues in a succession of
wars-small only in the sense they are not
total-which served to ideologize and
polarize the perceptions, especially of
"elites," throughout the world in unprecedented fashion. (And polarization of perception means paralysis of the capacity to
see what is going on and to make common
sense judgements: in terms of the struggle
to destroy men's minds, all wars since 1944
have been waged throughout the whole
world.) The terror at nuclear extermination, and the negotiations to soothe it, are
major weapons right now in the struggle to
destroy the remnants of Europe's freedom.
The pursuit of settlement through negotiation played a role in the destruction of
South Vietnam. Those who should most
study this book, diplomats, will probably be
the last to read it.
Besides political meetings, forced-voluntary labor also continues the war after the
seizure of power without guerrilla combat.
It acts out the theses of political meetings.
Everywhere at all times individuals must
look active. In the morning before work in
front of the ministries they water vegetable
gardens to foster the self-sufficiency of
Laos-gardens whose produce is not gath-
104
ered, for the point is to sow, not necessarily
to reap. After work there are calisthenics
and sports. At the university the grounds
show continuous regimented activity-in
contrast to the easy-going leisure before the
''revolution."
The point of this labour is not to accomplish anything but "to realize a concept for
a moment": to show that the people together can do anything-and the individual
alone nothing. Like the "discussions" at
meetings it is largely gesture, but gesture
with the purpose of turning people to their
own oppression-with the excuse that it
will earn them entrance into the "socialist
fraternity." Sometimes the forced-voluntary
labour accomplished the opposite of its intention. For instance, because of the failure
to consult the "reactionary" experts of the
past, ditches dug from the Mekong to irrigate the rice paddies drained them. "The
display of energy in labour has only one
purpose: to express vengeance, the vengeance of the fighters of the Pathet Lao on
those who collaborated or waited, upon
those who thought the nation could come
to independence without turning Communist. And those who suffer this vengeance
must not only undergo it-they must
desire it."
Like the political meetings, the forcedvoluntary labour turns people into accomplices in their own oppression. That everybody suffers makes the suffering easier to
bear. The satisfaction people feel at the
sight of others, once their betters or their
elders, suffering like themselves, blinds
them almost against their will to the system
that crushes them.
But they want somebody to blame for
their self-inflicted misery. "I will bear oppression, the absence of liberty, hunger,
the hardness of life on condition that I can
let my aggression loose on somebody whom
I can hold responsible for my misery. To
survive and overcome my misery, I am ready
to turn in my neighbour-even at the cost
of my moral consciousness." And the readiness to turn in neighbours also means the
nations nearby still outside the "socialist
fraternity."
In this book that describes a society turning into a camp, there is little about the
camps that are nevertheless a distinct unmentioned presence. At the center of the
life left in Laos, the Sicards were about as
far away from awareness of the camps as
anybody could be within Laos. Behind the
still dead waters of a dam about sixty kilometers from Vientiane, there are islands
with a series of camps of increasing severity.
On the first of these islands, one for women,
one for men, open to the world in the boast
of the regime, weaving, basketry, gardening, songs, and dancing "mildly reeducate
parasites-drug addicts, the young unemployed, juvenile deliquents, criminals, lepers,
and prostitutes. The Sicards were turned
away upon their arrival to visit these islands. In other camps there are something
like fifty to sixty thousand officers, soldiers
and civil se~vants of the royal governmenT
-about 2 percent of the population of
Laos. Upon the seizure of power, the officers and soldiers of the royal army went
willingly to political meetings that, in their
instance, turned immediately, brutally into
a concentration camp.
Everybody exists with the unexpressed
fear that they too might disappear into these
camps. "The talk is of freedom, but in reality there is fear and spying." The students
of the Sicards disappeared, it turned out
never to return, often on the excuse of fortyday political meetings or of study abroad in
eastern Europe. "Seven of my students disappeared in October 1975. Arrested because
they insisted on thinking for themselves
and because they could not conceive that
their classmates would use their lives to
dress themselves in progressivism's rags."
A student, a cadre in the Party, obscure
and incapable before the "revolution," now
full of that feverish energy whose characteristic is that it cannot focus enough to accomplish anything, who has the power to
decide which students can go home or
abroad, who makes a show of not going to
his home village for his mother's funeral
(for the Party has become his parents), goes
to a splendid dinner at the house of a
young woman, a classmate. In self-criticism
session the next day at the University, he
denounces her for keeping "bourgeois"
ways. The anger of the Sicards leads them
to the despairing realization that normality
has come to mean such betrayal: people
make believe they take it for granted.
A society that turns into a camp means
paralysis-literally the freezing of movement, not only in private and traditional
life-that is, feeling and thought-but of
actual physical movement, simply getting
around. At night patrols, meant to protect
WINTER 1982
�that sometimes arrest arbitrarily, discour- body else but themselves-as capable of
age circulation. In Vientiane, people are re- anything-and with impunity.
duced to walking because of the scarcity of ' The attack on tradition and the rigidifipublic transportation, and because other cation shows itself perhaps most in the noise
means meet with disapproval: cars show that replaces traditional music and even
privilege, tricycle taxis "exploit" drivers- traditional sounds like the calls of farmers
who as a result without customers must to their water buffaloes. From five-thirty in
work in the fields in the country_ The "rev- the morning, martial music in alternation
olutionary" salute, the clenched fist, like with political announcements blares from
the Hitler salute in Germany, replaces the loudspeakers at almost every comer in Vientraditional, now "reactionary," greeting, tiane. At the hospital and elsewhere there
hands together with a slight bow of the is singing of "revolutionary" songs and
head 1 The young walk apart from each music-which makes the traditional and
other and no longer hold hands. Dress ancient music look somehow out-of-place
changes from the elegance and fresh care and ridiculous. "For the first time in Laos I
that once distinguished one individual from saw that people no longer lived music with
another, to the disguise of monotony: hair their hands and bodies ... they listened rigid
can no longer be worn long, nails painted; in silence." "We can do nothing about it. It
Ho Chi Minh sandals made of tires replace is the people's will," officials told Sicard in
traditional footwear; above all, no jeans; no answer to his complaint that the earsplitting
American cigarettes except in secret; the noise at the hospital disturbed the-seriously
uniform jackets of the liberation army for sick. Like the meetings and the forced volstudents.
untary labour, the noise aims to destroy the
The attack on the spontaneous centers capacity to think-or, at least, to hear your
on the goodwill that informs private and tra- thoughts. At one point Sicard, to his astonditional life: it desires to violate and devour ished bewilderment, comes upon a tradiit. More than ten people cannot meet with- tional Laotian orchestra at the hospital
out permission. Marriages also require per- playing "revolutionary" martial music. Sudmission-and occasion political speeches. denly, the players stop playing but the music
Upon requesting permission for a tradi- continues: the orchestra had made believe
tional Laotian party, a baci, for a newborn it played the music that came from recchild, a couple is asked whether it has for- ords. "Laotian easygoingness makes it imgotten that the "revolution," too, is an in- possible to keep up subterfuge for a long
fant. Not ready to attack Buddhist priests time."
directly, the Party drives them to violate
In the name of return to traditional Laotheir vocation in its exercise. For instance, tian medicine-that had at first stirred Si~
they are told to preach hatred of "Ameri- card-lepers, later accused of "spying for
can imperialism" or to work to avoid arrest the Americans for pay," no longer receive
for "parasitism" -both violations of their antibiotics. The paralysis of life also shows
tenets. Individuals must give the traditional itself in hunger and the incapacity to protest
alms to monks in secret for fear of accusa- against it. The significance of the recurtion for "abetting parasitism." As a result rence of food in her students' grammatical
of this interference individuals and families examples finally comes to Mrs. Sicard: they
now do secretly the things they did openly have nothing to eat between five-thirty in
"before the revolution" -and suffer guilt the afternoon and eleven-thirty the next
and conflict, for they must risk their lives morning-but they had been ashamed to
to live in their accustomed manner. They tell her until questioned! Time rigidifies
experience the state-that is, almost every- also into universal Socialist time: the dates
of Stalingrad, the "October Revolution,"
obliterate the Buddhist festivals of custom
that bore no fixed dates. "The only reality is
1. For an essay showing exact parallels in Nathe undeniable existence of a society that
tional-Socialist Germany, and stressing, like the
Sicards, the acquiescence and cooperation of inmakes its power to crush felt at every modividuals in their own oppression in order to
ment."
survive, see Bruno Bettelheim, "Remarks on
Escape is the only resistance. Since 1975,
the Psychological Appeal of Totalitarianism,"
three hundred thousand have fled-around
(originally published in 1952) in Surviving, New
Ymk 1979, 317-322.
!0 percent of the population. Of the about
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
three hundred thousand Hmong tribeSmen
who fought with great bravery alongside
the Americans and the South Vietnamese,
seventy-five thousand have fled, fifty thousand have been murdered-many by Vietnamese and Soviet gas attacks since 1975
or 1976, largely ignored by a press that has
too long taken self~hatred for indignation.
To flee one's native land forever always
leaves scars that last for generations. But
for Laotians, more timid and with less ex~
perience of the world than Westerners,
flight from their native land means the end
of everything. They flee because of their
children, they remain because of their parents. They flee because they feel "nailed"
to a past they will never be able to live
down: not to have fought for the Communists means to have made the wrong choice
for all time. In the beginning, scornful and
uncomprehending of those who fled, the
Sicards ended up helping anybody they
could to flee. They tell a story emblematic
of Western callousness and the incapacity
to grasp the significance of events at the
moment of their occurrence. At about four
in the afternoon at the luxurious swimming
pool of the Australian embassy along the
Mekong river, a woman, tipsy or unconscionable, rose as if at a football match to
cheer a swimmer she had just noticed making his way toward the shore of Thailand.
The head went down under the surface at
the sound of a shot from an until-then-inattentive Pathet Lao guard. With its disappearance, she collapased when, and perhaps
because, it was too late.
Except for the daring of these flights, the
Laotians do not protest or resist. Brought
up never to show their emotions, they pre~
tend not to notice what is going on. They
are helpless before this seizure of power
and conquest called "a revolution" that exploits every weakness of their character, es~
pecially their incapacity to yield to their
rational anger and to defend themselves.
They are helpless before the onslaught that
above all-and in this it differs from the
clas~ical despotisms of the past described
by Montesquieu-makes them complicit in
their own oppression.
Unlike many observers the Sicards do
not feel this helplessness differs in kind
from the helplessness of the West. "We fear
that this change we lived through in Laos,
in the heart of Indochina, has a universal
meaning. For what is at stake is not simply
105
�a political phenomenon, not simply some
abstract correlation of forces, not simply
the replacement of one culture with another. This is the death of man, and riddle
of riddles, with his own consent.''
The last most terrible pages of this book
tell of the Sicards' own helplessness. Didier
Sicard demanded antibiotics, available in a
nearby ward reserved for Party cadres, for
an adolescent dying of meningitis. He was
told to mind his medicine and stay out of
politics. He demanded vitamins to treat the
alarming increase in cases of beriberi. A
commission of Soviet doctors replied they
knew of no beriberi in Laos. The Sicards
are overwhelmed by the realization that
they did not get through to the men responsible for the outrages all around them.
They take their helplessness for the helplessness of the Laotians. Perhaps, like the
Laotians, they proved incapable of undoing
their good manners. At the end of their account they bravely print the criticisms of a
friend, an anthropologist who left Laos with
them after ten years: "Do not fool yourselves, you were quite popular in spite of
everything. They never did you the honor
of hating you. We were all class enemiesbut hardly dangerous. You began to try their
patience only at the end with your criticisms and unceasing talk. Then you really
became a nuisance with your readiness to
help people escape across the Mekong and
your visits to the refugee camps in Thailand.
But on the whole you were tolerated. They
took you for too idealistic to be taken seriously."
They observe profoundly that the Communists feed on merely verbal opposition
because they know how to outbid and turn
it to ridicule. (An observation reinforced by
the recent revelation that one of the most
outspoken energetic anti-communists in
Saigon government circles was actually a
Communist agent-the Wall Street Journal,
February 10, 1982.) "To argue with them
means you have already surrendered. Pay
attention to what they do-not to what they
say."
They observe with fear that "this flight
into an imaginary world (really the world of
another, of Lenin?) paralyzes the capacity
to oppose, to say no." They ask themselves;
"Who can be against the declaration that
history is progress? What can you say against
Hate excited in the name of Solidarity?
Against the extirpation of a culture in the
name of Progress? The words are Peace,
Independence, Neutrality, Democracy,
Prosperity-what can you say in their faces?
Are we to say they are not true? That the
truth is that instead of Peace there is war,
instead of Independence, dependence on
Vietnam, instead of Neutrality, alignment
with the Soviet Union, instead of Democracy, totalitarianism, instead of Prosperity,
poverty? But in the name of what? In the
name of whom? What are we defending?"
Events in Laos are much nearer to us
than we dare imagine, just because we take
them to be so far away. For in the name of
freeing itself from Europe, from which it
had achieved formal independence in 1954
at the time of the Geneva accords on Vietnam, Laos has been abandoned by the West
and itself to the European civil war, the
war that did not stop after victory in 1945.
LEO RADITSA
A DEAD MAN'S KNOWLEDGE
Graphite, by Varlam Shalamov, translated
by John Glad, 287 pp., Norton, 1981,$14.95.
One day in 1929, a gifted, decent, indeed
noble young man of 22, Varlam Shalamov,
disappeared. The Western expression "arrested" does not describe the situation. After a brief, ghost-like reappearance in 1934,
he disappeared again, presumably forever.
Yet, miraculously, in 1950 he came back
from the other world. He entered the other
world a tall, powerfully built, handsome
youth, and emerged an invalid, an old, sick
man.
The other world had a very prosaic geographic location: Kolyma, some fifty miles
from American territory, beyond the Arctic
Circle.
106
This is Shalamov's second book published in the West. What is it? Short stories?
No. Apparitions from Kolyma are beyond literature or scholarship or essays.
Shalamov tells what Dante would call
"strange narratives."
Right on the cover of the book and in
the reviews of his previous book, Kolyma
Tales, Shalamov has been compared with
and to Solzhenitsyn. Why? Both are Russians who were in "Soviet prison camps."
Jack London tells a story of a French policeman not able to distinguish between
two natives until one of them explained
that he was small and stout, the other tall
and thin.
Shalamov says about an Andreyev, an
old prisoner (who is himself), gazing at the
newer Kolyma prisoners:
These were living people, and Andreyev
was a representative of the dead. His
knowledge, a dead man's knowledge,
was of no use to them, the living.
According to Victor Nekrasov, a Russian
writer in exile, Shalamov lives in Russia in
poverty and obscurity, completely forsaken
and forgotten by his relatives and whatever
friends he had, except for one devoted person who comes to see him.*
F arne, literature, politics, Russia, greatness, Tolstoy~all that Solzhenitzen, immensely ambitious and immensely successful, wanted in his youth and wants nowburned out in Shalamov. Hark to a dead
*Shalamov died on January 17, 1982.
WINTER 1982
�man's knowledge. Andreyev's neighbor
was crying.
Andreyev, however, stared at him without sympathy. He had seen too many
men cry for too many reasons.
These reasons are then described by
someone who no longer belongs to the humanity that weeps-by God or by angels or
by the dead.
The only touch of literature Shalamov
affords is an occasional final punch linethe last sentence of the narrative. In
"Dominoes," a prison doctor (a prisoner
himself) whose privileges (such as a separate room) made him a semi-god in the eyes
of ordinary prisoners, has a fancy (gods and
semi-gods do have fancies) to play a game
of dominoes, and his favorite ordinary prisoner is escorted to the doctor's room by
another prisoner.
In the divine privacy of the room, a di, vine orgy unfolds: the semi-god treats the
mortal to some porridge and bread, and
they drink tea with sugor(certainly the food
of semi-gods). Hours fly by in this heavenly
bliss, and after a game of dominoes, apotheosis follows: the mortal is treated to a cigarette which he smokes almost in delirium.
Ecstatic, he says goodbye to the semi~
divine doctor and walks out of the room
into the dark corridor. The punch line: the
other prisoner had waited for him by the
door all these hours (in the vain hope to get
a crust of bread or a cigarette butt).
Some reviewers invoked Dostoyevsky's
"Notes from the House of the Dead." Shal·
amov says, with his terse, lustreless, dead
man's scorn: "There was no Kolyma in the
House of the Dead."
Or: "Dostoyevsky never knew anyone
from the true criminal world." Even criminals in the Russia of Nicholas I and serfdom
(the first, ferocious half of the nineteenth
century) were not real criminals compared
with criminals in post-1917 Russia.
Kolyma. What's the moral of Shalamov's
life? Of anyone's Kolyma life? There is
none. Every minute of Kolyma life is a
"poisoned minute."
There is much there that a man should
not know, should not see, and if he does
see it, it is better for him to die.
Shalamov saw. The tragic mask he speaks
through is his death mask.
LEV NAVROZOV
FROM OUR READERS (continued from page 2)
mathematics than women. On the verbal
part of the SAT's, scores are about equal.
Perhaps women, in their passive way, read
more and hence become better readers
and so overcome their intellectual deficiencies and test as equals to men, or perhaps
they are equal. Both the math and verbal
parts of the examination demand reasoning ability, and so no conclusion can be
drawn from these results. In the absence of
solid evidence, it seems to me incumbent
on us to treat men and women as equals
rather than assuming inequalitieS and thus
injuring those who, though equal (or often,
be it noted, superior), are treated as..inferiors.
As for child-rearing, it is my impression
that as men spend more time with their
children, many of them become quite proficient at rearing them (sometimes even
better than their wives). Again this may be
a case where habit and prejudice are seen
as laws of nature.
Mr. Levin claims that child rearing is
highly valued by all but feminists. What is
the measure of that valuation? In a society
in which the value of one's work is measured either in terms of money or public
honor (usually the former), child-rearing
seems among the least esteemed jobs.
Nursery school teachers, kindergarten
teachers, and day-care workers, not to
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
mention mothers, get about as little money
or public recognition as it is possible to get.
It is true that those who prefer to have
women at home rather than in the workplace have tried to puff motherhood and
family publicly, but they draw the line at
considering raising children sufficiently
important work to make mothering a qualification for, say, social security. Rather, it
seems to me that the respect paid to rearing children is the kind one typically gives
to those who relieve us of difficult and, on
the whole, unappealing tasks to keep up
their morale. Though I think it is certainly
the case that managing a household well
requires a variety of skills, managerial, financial, social, and political, it is equally
certainly the case that women trying to return to the work-place after years of raising
children and managing households are
treated as if they had been idly passing
their time and had no useful skills, unlike
their male counterparts, who, whatever
paid employment they have had, are treated
as eminently employable. If Mr. Levin really
does value child-rearing, not in some abstract "Yes, the future of our nation depends on h6w our children are raised" way,
but by actually valuing the people who do
it, I commend him; but I think he is part of
a small minority of men.
I do not wish to belabor the issue, but we
should consider at somewhat greater length
the issue of what "sexism" means in terms
of treatment of women in the work-place.
Mr. Levin introduces "a complaint of dubious relevance" at this juncture: namely,
that "judging people on the basis of what is
usually true is unfair to the unusual." His
response to that "dubious objection" is that
"expectations must be based on what is
generally, even if not universally, true."
But this response is inadequate for at least
two reasons. First, "what is generally true"
is sometimes true because of historical circumstances. When Dr. Johnson, a man not
full of the prejudices of his time, met and
was so impressed by the intellect of Fanny
Burney that he offered to teach her Greek
and Latin, he was not permitted to by her
family, most strongly by her brother, be·
cause it was inappropriate for English ladies
to learn Greek and Latin. It was indeed
"generally true" that English ladies were
not classicists, but it by no means followed
from that historical fact that they could not
or should not be. What we are accustomed
to seeing is often the result of a history of
discrimination, and we should not be misled into thinking that what is "generally
the case" is generally the case for good reason. Custom sometimes misleads us into
107
�finding invalid reasons for those appearances, as, for example, the notion of' women's genetic incapacities. The notio~ that
women are genetically lacking either'. certain abilities or psychological traits t:[anslates into their not being considered on
their own merits. Employers have not always employed the "brightest" or the most
skilled, despite Mr. Levin's claim, because
prejudices have prevented them from seeing the talents in front of their eyes or
because they prefer to hire those with
whom they are psychologically more comfortable (see, for example, the study of hiring practices of monopoly and non-monopoly companies of Harvard Business School
graduates by Alchian and Kessel in H. G.
Lewis's Aspects of Labor Economics). Since
Mr. Levin, for example, is convinced of the
inferiority of women in "abstract reasoning" as distinguished from "twenty questions", I would assume that women in his
philosophy classes would be looked at
somewhat differently than men, and his
judgements of students might reflect his
"factual beliefs". The Supreme Court,
after all, knew in much the same way as
Mr. Levin does, that it was perfectly appropriate for women not to be permitted to
practice law (in an 1872 decision the court
ruled that 111inois was within its rights to
deny women admission to the bar). Mr. Justice Bradley's opinion is strikingly like
Mr. Levin's. He, too, claims that "the natural and proper timidity and delicacy which
belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it
for many of the occupations of civil life."
He, too, is not a misogynist. He is in sympathy with the "humane movements" which
have for their object "the multiplication of
avenues for women's advancement." But
this should not be construed to mean that
they should have free admission to those
professions which require "that decision
and firmness which are presumed to predominate in the sterner sex." We can now
laugh at such closed-mindedness, but common sense must have made this home
truth seem obvious to those justices and, in
fact, they had, not surprisingly, never seen
successful women attorneys. Women trying to enter medical schools faced much
the same kind of prejudice, though different rationalizations for the prejudice were
found. And, even when women have been
able to get the jobs for which their abilities
fitted them, they have traditionally been
108
paid less than men. For example, in a lawsuit brought against the U. of Maryland, it
was determined that women were paid, at
the same ranks, in the same departments,
and with the same qualifications, several
thousand dollars less per year than their
male colleagues. And the U. of Maryland is
by no means unusual in this respect. The
most recent figures comparing the salaries
of male and female academics (The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 25,
1981) showed that women on full-time,
nine-month appointments earned, on the
average, approximately 15% less than their
male colleagues. And this difference does
not result from the fact that women tend to
teach in the less highly paid departments
such as the Arts and Humanities. The salaries of women teaching in the Arts were
only 74% of the men's salaries while in the
Humanities the women earned 86% of
what the men ·earned. The only area in
which women's salaries came close to
men's was, curiously, Physical Education,
where women were only 6% behind. And
if it should be objected that women are
paid less because they have earned their
doctorates only recently and hence are
concentrated in the lower academic ranks,
or that women change jobs less frequently
because of family ties, or that they are more
likely to interrupt their careers for childrearing, a study by the National ResearcP
Council (see the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 2, 1981) shows that "Objective
factors alone cannot account adequately
for the career differences which exist between male and female Ph.D.'s." And this
discrimination continues despite "affirmative action" programs which, according to
the study, have not produced "reverse discrimination." I would suggest that sexism
on the part of those doing the hiring and
promoting is the cause of these disparities.
The relatively new issue of equal pay for
comparable work is the old story in new
guise. The jobs open to women simply paid
less than men's jobs, and the differences
had nothing to do with skill, arduousness,
responsibility, or any of the other distinctions one might draw. The only significant
distinction was whether men or women
were doing the work. For example, when
almost all elementary school teachers were
women, elementary school teachers were
paid significantly less than secondaryschool teachers, many of whom were male.
As men began to move into elementary
school teaching, the salaries began to
equalize, and today, in most school districts, all public school teachers are paid on
the same scale. The work didn't change,
only the workers.
Second, we have a long-standing and
rightly respected tradition in this country,
one not always followed but one worth preserving, that people are to be judged on
their individual merits or lack thereof, not
by their belonging to some particular
group, religious, ethnic, or sexual. To act
counter to this deliberately is to invite a
system in which we are judged, not by
what we can do, but by some general notion
of what the group we belong to is capable
of. This seems to me to be a pernicious
doctrine and one to be opposed strongly.
We should note, in closing, that similar
prejudices in the guise of natural laws have
been operative for centuries. The notion of
a decadent "Jewish physics" could only
make sense because it was obvious that
Jews were greedy, treacherous, and dishonest, though clever. Without such prejudices
based on what was obvious to most, the
idea would have been still-born. The presumed obvious inferiority of blacks was
necessary to make slavery a reality and a
morally justifiable institution. Just as "racism" and "anti-semitism" are genuine words
describing genuine facts about the world,
so is "sexism," and to fail to see the evidence of it around one seems to me to be a
case of willful blindness.
GEORGE DOSKOW
St. John's College
Annapolis, Md.
To the Editor of the St. John's Review
... Sexism, according to Professor Levin,
is meaningless, for what it purports to
describe is really the honest recognition of
reality. Facts are facts: there are innate differences between men and women it is only
sensible to recognize ....
But consider this: the illiteracy of the
poor in former days was "confirmed by
experience countless times"; would it
therefore now be correct to assume innate
differences between rich and poor individuals? And would it be fair to deny a job to a
poor person on the assumption of his personal illiteracy? Most of us would agree
not, yet this is precisely what we do to
women in our society. We deny them opWINTER 1982
�portunities based on historical experiences
which have little to do with their innate
abilities or present circumstances, and
much to do with past conditions.
As a female scientist "comfortable in
milieus demanding aggression," I can easily
define sexism (haVing personally experienced it) as the assumption that a generalization true of some persons of a given
gender is necessarily applicable to anyone
of that gender, and the consequent denial
of an opportunity which would otherwise
be granted.
... And what of the exceptional
woman ... ? Prof. Levin would accuse me
of being "perniciously utopian" to expect
exceptional talents to be recognized, but
does not the advancement of society depend upon the recognition, and utilization,
of exceptional talent? ....
Prof. Levin is co.rrect that no one promised me at birth that I would enter the field
most suited to my talents, but having one
way or another managed to do precisely
that, do I not now have the right to be
judged on the basis of my achievements
and experience, without regard to my gender,
as I would expect to be judged without regard to my race or religion? And yet in spite
of my proven ability to work in dominantly
male environments, I am invariably asked
in job interviews how I will "manage," as if I
were a deaf-mute or paraplegic, as if my experience proved nothing. This is the meaning of sexism. That Prof. Levin fails to
understand the meaning of this word in no
way disproves that the word has meaning.
But what of the innate differences between men and women? I would not deny
that men and women "differ significantly";
few feminists do. I do maintain, however,
that with the exception of tasks requiring
great physical strength, these differences
(which Prof. Levin noticeably fails to enumerate) do not necessarily, or even generally, make men any more competent at
holding jobs, solving problems, or wielding
authority than women. Different, yes; better no ....
... apart from the gross biological features, we just don't know what the innate
differences between men and women are,
because we don't know how to distinguish
the. effects of social conditioning from genetic determinism. But to deny that social
attitudes have any impact on human behavior is clearly absurd ....
... in attempting to justify the sexist attitudes which women encounter as the natural result of historical experience, Prof.
Levin actually demonstrates the need for a
"women's movement." He cites the examTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ple of a professor who, used to encountering 1'inferior philosophy examinations"
from female students, comes to expect pre1
cisely that. (Should we ask who this profesl)Or might be?) His expectation is in fact
fulfilled by his own prejudiced perception.
This expectation is changed only by a "run
of good female tests," i.e., the woman must
first prove herself where a man need not.
She must, in fact, initially perform better
than that man in order to get the same
grade, in order to compensate for her professor's bias. Hence for women to obtain
equal recognition of their talents they must
change society's expectations; i.e., they
need a public umovement," a public declaration of intent.
Finally, albeit reluctantly, I must take issue with Prof. Levin's implication that to
be a feminist is to hate men, tacitly or
overtly, and that a woman who engages in
traditionally male activities is ~·m at ease
with her essential identity." As such an accusation can neither be proved nor disproved, Prof. Levin rna y further suggest
with impunity that such a woman "cannot
very well admit this to herself: no ego can
support such self-hate, such ·loss of
meaning."
Well, Prof. Levin, you may refuse to believe this, but I do not hate men. Indeed I
am close to both my father and my two
brothers and am romantically involved
with a wonderful man whom I hope, in
time, to marry. I also have every intention
of having children (by my lawful wedded
husband, I might add), although it may
take some time to work out the logistics of
doing so. How is it possible that I love men,
children, and science? ....
NAOMI 0RESKES
Unley
South Australia
To the Editor of the St. John's Review
I enjoyed the Autumn 1981 issue of the
Review, especially Harry Jaffa's remarkable
article, "Inventing the Past," which taught
me much about my adopted country.
One article, in my opinion, failed to
reach the high standards of this issue.
Michael Levin's" 'Sexism' is Meaningless"
does less than justice to either editor or
author, whose tastes, thinking, and attitudes are, I know, sympathetic to women,
their goals, aspirations, and difficulties.
Some of the article's arguments are clever,
but they have nothing to do with tbe subject at hand. In fact it is hard to say what
the subject at hand is, since Mr. Levin sets
up as a straw man the extreme rhetoric of
the "feminist,'' and then proceeds to ridicule it at the same shrill level. Much of the
discussion about feminism is certainly embarrassing and, as Mr. Levin says, confusing. Instead of helping to clear away the
confusion, the author adds to it by trivializing the argument.
It is silly to say that "sexism" is meaningless. It obviously means something important to a great many people, or he would
not be writing an irritated article against it.
His opening words point out the emotion
the subject calls forth. Should this emotion
not have alerted him to the fact that there
must be more to it than mere silliness? According to his own argument, the obvioUs
is often true, and people should trust their
own commonsense perceptions, feelings,
and beliefs. Are the perceptions of those
against whom he is arguing not bound to
have some validity? It seems perverse to
deny that there was a need for changes in
law and attitudes. Ten years ago I would
never have received a sizeable raise to put
me on the level of the men in my department had it not been for pressure to comply
with the new government rulings. Today
Time-Life has women writers, the Naval
Academy has women midshipmen, and it
works out fine-or at least as imperfectly as
usual. Some "obvious" things are true,
others are not, and it is part of growing up
to learn to distinguish between them.
Most surprising to me is the fact that an
article on "sexism" fails to mention the only
real difference between men and women,
the only difference which is not merely statistical and therefore endlessly arguable in
individual cases. (It need not maher to a
woman mathematician that there are few
other women mathematicians. A creative
person will always be different.) In not
mentioning that women are the only ones
who can and do bear children, Mr. Levin
agrees with 11 feminists" who strangely also
ignore this fact. Lysistrata, and Medea, said
they would rather face the enemy three
times than bear one child. Today, though
science has eliminated the dangers of
childbirth and-they say-fear of pregnancy, women have not changed in this respect. They are still usually responsible for
raising the children they bear; and raising
children is probably more difficult, not less,
than it was in the past.
The subject is highly charged, it seems
to me, because it is the area where public
and private can least easily be disentangled. Reason and emotion, individual and
family converge. How does a legal system
deal with this situation, ensure justice, and
allow freedom? How do men and women
109
�react, and children cope? Abortion legislation and ethics, open adoption r~Fords,
child welfare, ERA, pornography-all
these are highly emotional issues. And the
discussion is so often embarrassing beCause
it touches us personally, on the level of our
intimate feelings and fears. The irrational,
secret fears men and women have towards
each other are surely part of life; where
there is magic, as between a man and a
woman, or a mother and child, there is fear
as well.
Mr. Levin deals only with surface irritations. Does he mean-though he does not
say it-that many problems being discussed are part of life, private, and can
never be solved by political means publicly,
but only worked out privately, with as
much good will and understanding as
possible? His occasionally clever and amusing, irritated and irritating article has not
helped us to understand. And even today,
we need philosophers who will do that.
LARISSA BONFANTE
Professor of Classics
New York University
To the Editor of the St. John's Review:
Mr. Levin has a point in his article
"'Sexism' is Meaningless" (St. John's Review, Autumn 1981). Many women are angry with men and for no apparent reason.
He concludes that a feminist is angry because she has "lost the sense of the values
peculiar to her sex." This conclusion is possible only if the word "sexism" is meaningless. I suggest that Mr. Levin has simplified
the argument and in so doing has missed
the case where "sexism" does have meaning.
Anger is a result of facing something
that you want to change but cannot. What
can't be changed does not have to be a law
of nature. An individual may become angry if he or she is treated in a way he or she
does not like. If this treatment stems from
applying characteristics true, in general, of
either sex to an individual of that sex, it is
"sexism." Mr. Levin denies that anyone
holds the belief that gender is intrinsically
important. It is true that men and women
are different and that some characteristics
are generally true of men and some of
women. Because I can generalize this way,
I can know a lot about someone immediately. If I meet a man, I know that chances
are he is more aggressive, better at math
and stronger than I am. He may later prove
to be none of these, but they are fair assumptions. This is not "sexism." All I am
saying is that most men are like this and
110
chances are that this individual will fit into
the generalization. I accept that gender is
intrinsically significant. I can be called
"sexist" only ifl am unable to see this man
in any other way than that which fits my
preconception. When a woman is angry at
all men, that too is "sexism." Sexism is the
attitude which holds that the differences
which exist between men and women in
general can be applied, without qualifications, to individual men or to individual
women. It is exactly the belief that gender
is intrinsically important in evaluating individuals. If this is not accepted as the definition of "sexism," then "sexism" is indeed a
meaningless word.
By this definition of "sexism," the word
seems to be susceptible to exactly the same
problems in application as Mr. Levin
points out with the use of "exploitation."
There is a stable central case, that between
individuals, and vaguely peripheral ones,
the judgment of men and women in gen~
eral. Mr. Levin, then, is ignoring the ''stable central case" which gives this word
meaning and focussing on those "vaguely
peripheral ones" to which it is not applica~
ble. "Sexism" has no meaning when ap~
plied to groups. It is entirely a question of
the treatment of individuals.
If "sexism" is not,_ in fact, meaningless,
the question arises whether "anti-discrimination" legislation is an appropriate solution. Can an individual ever be considered
not by the general rule but as an individual
through the law? The law is impersonal
but it is made personal by the judicial system. You are judged in a trial, in which you
are faced by individuals. You and your situ·
ation are judged as a particular one. The
sole purpose of the judicial system is to
interpret the law and to apply it to particular cases. Women should have the right of
recourse under law if they feel they are being treated unfairly. This, however, is a
negative solution. The other side is the
question of affirmative action. Should
quotas be legislated? People should have
the right to hire whomever they wish, yet
will people recognize that women can do a
good job if they do not see many women
working in responsible positions? The generality of the law makes it impossible to
solve this dilemma theoretically. The real
issue is not one of the meaningfulness of
"sexism," or of the ability of the law to address it, but of the extent to which legislation can be justified in doing so.
KATHARINE HEED
Annapolis, Md.
To the Editor of the St. John's Review:
Mr. Levin uses the word "feminist"
with the same thoughtlessness and vehemence with which he claims feminists use
"sexism."
The author characterizes a feminist as a
woman who believes there is absolutely no
difference between the sexes and, therefore, objects to the, in her opinion, prevalent view that men are superior to women.
He also asserts that. feminists secretly know
there is a difference between men and
women although they profess otherwise.
As a result they are filled with self-loathing
and, in classical Freudian behavior, transfer their loathing onto men, the world, and
nature. Mr. Levin's very general argument
does not document this serious accusation.
Why does the request that people be
looked upon each as an individual meet
such rage? It seems reasonable that girls,
like boys, should perfect their talents in
sports, mathematics, physics, biology, literature, or language. Why shouldn't women
expect to have a career after they leave
school, and to receive the same pay as a
man for the same work? Most women will
have to work when they leave school. Mr.
Levin implies that the only permanent jobs
which have evolved naturally for women
are those of telephone operator and
mother. Where has Mr. Levin been if he
has not noticed that society has changed
drastically, not only over the past twenty
years, but since the Industrial Revolution
put women in factories? How can a woman's right to continue at these jobs but also
at others requiring physical or intellectual
ability be denied? Levin thinks it can be beqmse women lack the necessary aggression.
When Mr. Levin writes ''The discomfort
of women in milieus demanding aggression
has been confirmed by experience countless
times," I must question whose experience.
To survive, women must be aggressive.
More than half the households in the
United States require two incomes for sup·
port. Thousands of women work to support
families by themselves. Because women
pay taxes they deserve protection from the
government against discrimination.
Aggressive behavior is not limited to the
office. Perhaps Mr. Levin has never experienced shopping, especially in a bargain
basement or in a department store during a
big sale. Five minutes in Loehman's would
change even Mr. Levin's mind about ag·
gression. Perhaps Mr. Levin never has had
to return an unsatisfactory article of clothing or of food, or to argue about being overcharged for a service. No one can deny that
driving children to school or oneself to work
WINTER 1982
�requires aggression. Many women perform
at least one of these tasks daily.
Mr. Levin's expression "people think"
makes his argument less cogent. The people I know don't think the way Mr. Levin's
people do. My experience, both at St.
John's and in my job, shows me that a
woman is expected to perform tasks, both
academic and secular, as well as she can,
i.e., as well as a man.
On such a serious question which involves the lives of over half the population
of the United States, why does Mr. Levin
think he can dismiss legitimate demands
with the generalization "people think" or,
even worse, "ordinary people think"? How
can he attack with such vehemence "feminists" whose work and political beliefs he
does not clarify? Isn't his article merely
pOlitical cant?
ELOISE PEEKE COLLINGwOOD
Annapolis, Md.
To the Editor of the St. John's Review:
... What is one to make of a philosopher
who identifies "essential identity" and "significance" with gender and who lets a simple comma serve as the only argumentative
transition in the statement that "Women
differ physically from men, and act differently"? Our bodies are ponderous and
absorbing fates, each one different, but we
are capable of directing them in moral actions and of giving them meaning with our
discourse. We do not increase our chances
of finding meaning when stereotyping is
deemed reasonable and factual. Prof.
Levin worries about tiny firefighters when
he might have been watching the Olym·
pies, but the variety of biological "fact" is
acknowledged even by him, despite his
confusion of instances and hypothetical
classes, instinct and behavior, and biology
and politics (for the last of which we have
another useful neologism, "racism," to give
suffici~nt historical warning).
The implication that troubles me more is
the denial of the brilliance and achievement of St. John's women and, manifested
right here, their unequal share in recognition. And the damage to both the taught
and the teacher if anyone should seriously
think that "if a professor has found over
many years that females write inferior philosophy examinations, it is reasonable for
him to anticipate that the next female philosophy examination will be inferior." A
nice ambiguity toward the end there: who,
after all, in the philosophical life is the
marker? In a society more severely maledominated and oligarchical than our own,
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
and no less stultified, Dante submitted
himself under correction to "donne
'ch'avete intelletto d'amore." Such intelletto might get us all a better grasp of
public understanding and the cardinal virtues and help us distinguish the vicious circle of self-congratulating conventions from
the deep imperative of mutual liberation.
E. C. RONQUIST
Concordia University
Montreal, Canada
continue to enjoy the right to select national leaders, who routinely involve all of
us in crises that could destroy civilization
as we know it and, indeed, could destroy
the world and its ecosystems.
If the United States must remain militarily strong, women can help us do so. As a
feminist, I even dare hope they may help a
little to humanize the military.
LEON V. DRISKELL
Professor of English
University of Louisville
Louisville, Ky.
To the Editor of the St. John's Review:
Professor Michael Levin's article "'Sexism' is meaningless" (St. John's Review,
Autumn 1981) so frequently violated stan·
dards of argumentation that I found it hard
to take seriously. Nevertheless, I suspect it
may do considerable harm, chiefly because
it appears in your publication-the standards of which have seemed to me generally high. I cannot undertake here to point
out all of the essay's faults, but I have selected one which seems to me particularly
flagrant.
Because it suits his purposes, or because
he is not paying attention to what he
writes, Professor Levin equates conscription with battle readiness. The issue of
conscripting women, particularly in times
of peace, must be separated from such issues
as degrees of aggressiveness and tolerance
of the stress of combat. When Professor
Levin writes that the "pivotal objection to
conscripting women has nothing to do
with any inherent 'inferiority' of femaleness, everything to do with the ability of
women to fight," he is guilty of grievous
equivocation.
Many a Norman has been conscripted to
do clerical work, administrative work, or
strategic work. Many a Norma has done
similar work in the private sector (with relatively higher pay, enormously greater freedom of choice), and some of those Normans
have been maladroitly thrust into combat
though no more aggressive or tolerant of
"the stress of combat" than their female
counterparts.
Conscription means yielding one's free~
dam of choice, but it does not automatically mean going into battle. Neither does
abandoning sex discrimination mean that
all of us-men and women-must give up
our differences or share bathrooms. Re~
turning from Korea some years ago, I
found that many of my male friends and all
of my women friends had been going
ahead with their lives while I submitted to
military regimentation. Meantime, all of us
To the Editor of the St. John's Review:
I will not address Mr. Levin's callous misrepresentations of the positions of those of
us whose active vocabulary includes the
word "sexism," although anyone interested
in reasoning as opposed to sophistry could
not but take offense at the many misrepresentations in his article. I will, however, as
a social scientist in training, challenge Mr.
Levin, or anyone else, to present me with
clear evidence that " ... there are general,
innate, psychological differences between
the sexes." Mr. Levin claims that this is
" ... simply a factual belief, supported by a
vast body of evidence." I know of no such
"evidence" that can be drawn from the social science disciplines and that would withstand close scrutiny. If Mr. Levin's evidence
is drawn from disciplines or traditions other
than the social sciences, I would certainly
not object to seeing that as well. I ask him
to produce the evidence, and all can debate
it, and we will debate the larger question of
upon what basis is one able to make reasonable statements about human nature and
behavior, and what should be the method
of verification for such statements. These
are issues that members of the St. John's
community can get their teeth into, but in
order to do so we must move away from
the unsupported statements made by Mr.
Levin. Furthermore, I ask Mr. Levin to
produce this evidence because I believe
that the ultimate truth and validity of his
argument depend upon it.
I would like to make one further statement. (This should be allowed an irate alumnus.) I was deeply disturbed by the decision
to print that article. It was so clearly biased,
so badly reasoned and argued, in places simply so silly, that it does not represent St.
John's College well. Mr. Raditsa is using
The St. John's Review to propagate his own
political philosophy. I will not debate here
whether it is a good philosophy, or a correct one, I would only raise the question of
111
�whether it is the purpose of The Review to
propagate it. I think not. I also think that
his doing this is only made more unbearable
by the fact that he is in the process presenting us with articles which insult our illtelligence. I wonder if Mr. Raditsa does not care
more about propagating his political philosophy than he does about serving St. John's.
He must certainly see that the two goals are
not identical, and that he was made editor
of the St.john's Review to do the latter and
not to do the former at the latter's expense.
DAVID E. WOOLWINE
Princeton, New Jersey
To the Editor of the St. John's Review:
As an alumnus of St. John's College, I
was morally and intellectually affronted by
your decision to print the article, " 'Sexism' is Meaningless," by Michael Levin, in
the recent issue of The St. John's Review.
Has The St. John's Review become such a
mouthpiece for right-wing views that it will
print anything which supports them-even
an article of such patently poor scholarship
and moral insensitivity as Michael Levin's
piece? The factual and logical errancies of
the article are manifest, and scarcely need
refutation. The flagrant moral callousness
of the article is more serious, flying as it
does in the face of obvious injustice, first
by belittling and denying the history and
continuing reality of that injustice, then by
supporting and sanctioning it. If the article
had been titled not " 'Sexism' is Meaningless" but rather " 'Racism' is Meaningless"
or even "'Anti-Semitism' is Meaningless,"
would you have printed it? Let the Editorial
Staff examine its memory and it will discover how the arguments put forward by
Mr. Levin, and similar unsupported claims
of "scientific" evidence, have previously
been used to "prove" the genetic, moral,
and intellectual "difference" of blacks and
Jews, supporting institutionalized bigotry,
the denial of civil liberties, and unequal
opportunities in housing, education, and
employment.
STEPHANIE SLOWINSKI
Princeton, New Jersey
112
Professor Levin replies:
Those of us who persist in noting that
men and women differ are so regularly accused of being "for discrimination" that
my wife dubs this "The Ritual Missing of
the Point." The point, of course, is that the
typical man does differ in certain systematic
ways from the typical woman. It is no one's
fault, and people are within their rights to
use this patent fact in making judgments.
Within their legal rights?, some correspondents ask. Certainly. Anyone who thinks
that individuals should be treated as individuals will repudiate the quota mentality
that has settled on our public officials like a
disease. Quotas should be repealed and
abandoned immediately. I also believe that
laws against discrimination are unsupportable. They conflict with liberty of association. If I choose not to hire you because of
your looks (or sex, or color, or religion) I
withhold from you my consent to enter into
an agreement. I am not thereby thwarting
your will or interfering with your liberty,
since you do not have any prior right to my
consent. Unless you regard me as your slave.
Some confusion has arisen about the
Norma-Norman example. I was simply repeating the sort of thing feminists cite. In
fact, this so-called "Pygmalion effect" has
not been scientifically replicated, and what
is more, educators are now generally agreed
that the ordinary methods of classroom instruction are somewhat biased in favor of
girls, who are temperamentally more inclined to sit still for lessons.
As for my Freudian analysis: in addition
to the evidence cited in the references to
Ed Levine, there is also some suggestive
work by S. Deon Henderson on the rising
female crime rate and its possible relation
to anomie. Unfortunately, as Miss Henderson herself reports, investigation into the
adverse effects of feminism is an absolutely
taboo topic in sociology. No one will touch
it. That is probably why we have no psycho·
social profile of the typical feminist, even
though social scientists will normally rush
to study just about anything. So, even
though I lack medical credentials, someone
has to begin suggesting hypotheses. I should
note as well Frances Lear's concession (The
Nation, 12/12/81) that "lesbians make up
a large portion of the volunteer work force"
in feminist political organizations, which I
take as some further confirmation.
I agree with Miss Heed that anger is often prima face evidence of a wrong; often,
but not always. Sometimes it is a symptom
of dysfunction.
I stress again that I approve as much as
anyone does "treating each individual as
an individual." With little faith that repeti·
tion will convince my more splenetic correspondents of my good faith, I turn to some
more specific points.
l) Neurologists like Restak and Pribram,
endocrinologists like Money, and even selfdescribed "feminist" psychologists like Mac·
coby and Jacklin have found that by four
months male and female newborns respond differently to such variables as speech
tone and exhibit neurological differences.
Benbow and Stanley found that 10-12 year
old girls who both tested as well as the ablest
boys on math aptitude tests and reported
finding math as much a girl's as a boy's subject, did less well than the same boys on
more difficult math aptitude tests. At the
upper levels of ability, innate differences
appear most clearly. Some people still tell
each other that all this is "social conditioning" (whatever that might mean). Some
people also still believe the Earth is flat.
2) A woman should indeed be free to do
what she wants. Who denies that? But even
sanguine feminists have lately admitted to
"logistic problems" in pursuing a career
and raising a family. Even the EEOC has
lately admitted that the famous wage dis·
crepancies between men and women are
entirely due to voluntary decisions women
make-e.g., having babies during their
prime career advancement years. The feminist "solution" tends, unhealthily, to be
advocacy of government intervention.
3) That there are bad arguments for jew·
ish covetousness does not rule out good
arguments for gender differences. Since no
one is planning concentration camps for
women, the implied analogy is even more
absurd. In fact, all questions about racial
and ethnic differences are empirical, in
many cases still open, and worth investigating. Given the number of Japanese Nobel
Laureates in physics, I would be neither
surprised nor displeased to learn that Japanese are smarter than the rest of us.
WINTER 1982
�Editor's Note
On Harry V. Jaffa's
"Inventing the Past"
The policy of the St. John's Review is '
to publish writing addressed to important
questions. Some of these questions are To the Editor of the St. John's Review:
disturbing as the response to Professor
Levin's article shows. Such open invesHarry V. Jaffa's article, '~Inventing the
tigation and discussion is in the tradi- Past," (Autumn 1981) was interesting and
tions of St. John's College. The views valuable, but I was bothered by his slightexpressed by the writers in the St. John's ing reference to the protests and demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. He
Review do not necessarily reflect the
speaks of the people involved as seeking a
opinions of the editor.
minority veto upon majority action, as trying, ' 4 in behalf of their Thoreauvian consciences," to "arrest the process of constitutional government."
I question whether the events of the sixties and early seventies actually fit the
categories of "majority action" and "constitutional government." To mention some
of them: in the election of 1964 the majority
elected Johnson as President after he denounced Goldwater's proposal for extensive bombing of North Vietnam-and after
the election, he did just what he had denounced. The Vietnam war was waged, of
course, not after a declaration of war by
Congress as provided by the Constitution,
but on the basis of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which itself was passed by Congress
after it heard misleading testimony by the
Administration.
Coming to 1968, the majority elected
Nixon, who had a plan to end the war-and
then waged it for four more years and included a secret bombing of Cambodia.
I submit that these events certainly do
not fit the categories of majority action and
constitutional process, and to talk as if they
do is to talk about a dream world.
THOMAS
RALEIGH
Cocheton, New Yark
Professor Jaffa replies:
Mr. Thomas Raleigh questions my assertion that the demonstrators against the
Vietnam war, or some of them, were attempting to "arrest the process of constitutional government." He does so on the
ground that the actions of the United
States, in prosecuting the war, were themselves unconstitutional
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
The principal ground of his objections is
that the war was not waged "after a declaration of war as provided by the Constitution, but on the basis of the Tonkin Gulf
Resolution, which itself was passed by
Congress after it heard misleading testimony by the Administration."
The war in Vietnam was a limited war,
and the United States has prosecuted
many such wars without a formal declaration by the Congress. Among these have
been the naval war with France, during the
presidency of john Adams, Woodrow Wilson's war with Mexico, many Indian wars,
and, above all, the Civil War. The last, our
greatest war, was from the point of view of
the Lincoln government a "rebellion." To
have asked for a declaration of war against
"rebels" would have been to confer upon
them a political status that it was the whole
point of the war to deny. This points up
the paradox that there are circumstances
in which a declaration of war may defeat
the policy for which the war is waged.
Such was the case in Vietnam. Rightly or
wrongly, the Johnson administration (and
later that of Nixon) thought that North
Vietnam itself should not be invaded, and
that this "privileged sanctuary" could not
be maintained once a formal declaration of
war had been made. It was feared that if
North Vietnam was invaded that China
would intervene, as it did in North Korea
in 1950.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was not the
sole basis for the prosecution of the war.
Not a man or gun was sent to Vietnam except upon the basis of appropriations made
by the Congress. And not a dollar was appropriated, except upon the basis of extensive-sometimes exhaustive-hearings by
committees of both houses, and after
debates and votes in both houses. The
Congress authorized every step that the
administration took, and the American
people participated in such authorizations
through their elected representatives. The
opposition to the prosecution of the war
was extremely intense, and extremely vocal, but no one can rightly say that their
rights were ignored or suppressed.
To say that the American government
acted unconstitutionally in Vietnam is to
say that a free government cannot act in
such circumstances except upon something
like unanimous consent. This is absurd.
113
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Radista, Leo
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Durholz, Janet
Bolotin, David
Wilson, Curtis A.
Sachs, Joe
Allanbrook, Wye Jamison
Brann, Eva T. H.
Dennison, George
Mullen, William
Loewenberg, Robert
Smith, Brother Robert
Bell, Charles G.
Le Gloannecc, Anne-Marie
Josephs, Laurence
Montanelli, Indro
Collins, Arthur
Dulich, Jean
Navrozov, Lev
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�Editor:
Leo Raditsa
Managing Editor:
Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant:
Janet Durholz
Consulting Editors:
Eva Brann,
Curtis A. Wilson.
Editor's Note
Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome,
but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also
welcome.
Requests for subscriptions should be sent to The St.
John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404.
Although there are currently no subscription fees, volun·
tary contributions toward production costs are gratefully
received.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW (formerly THE COLLEGE) is pub·
lished by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Edward G. Spar·
row, Dean. Published thrice yearly, usually in autumn, winter
and summer.
Volume XXXIIl
AUTUMN 1981
Number 1
©1981, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Cover: Superimposed on Thomas Jefferson's "Rough draft" of the Declaration of Independence (composed between June 11 and 28, 1776) upon
a Mathew B. Brady photograph of President Abraham Lincoln with
General George B. McClellan, October 4, 1862. This latter photograph
was taken at McClellan's headquarters near Sharpsburg, Maryland, about
two and one· half weeks after the Battle of Antietam.
Composition: Britton Composition Co.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co.
�~HESTJOHNSREVIEWAUTUMN81
3
Inventing the Past Henry V. jaffa
20
Four Poems Laurence Josephs
22
The World of Physics and the
"Natural" World jacob Klein
35
"Sexism" is Meaningless Michael Levin
41
Going to See the Leaves Linda Collins
46
One Day in the Life of the New
York Times and Pravda in the
World: Which is more informative?
Lev Navrozov
62
The Incompleteness Theory David Guaspari
72
Philosophy and Spirituality in
Plotinus Bruce Venable
81
OCCASIONAL DISCOURSES
The Permanent Part of the College Eva T. H. Brann
84
FIRST READINGS
Sidney Hook, Philosophy and Public Policy,
review by Nelson Lund
V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River, review
by Adam Wasserman.
1
�Abraham Lincoln, photograph by Mathew B. Brady,
probably taken in February 1860. From the Collections
of the Library of Congress.
2
AUTUMN 1981
�Inventing the Past
Garry Wills's Inventing America and the Pathology of
Ideological Scholarship
Harry V. Jaffa
And this too is denied even to God, to make that which has been not to have been.
Thomas Aquinas
Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence is a book that should never
have been' published, certainly not in its present
form. Its errors are so egregious that any intelligent graduate student-or undergraduate student-checking many
of its assertions against their alleged sources, would have
demanded, at the least, considerable revision.
It has been widely hailed as a great contribution to our
understanding of the American political tradition. There
have been "rave" reviews in the New York Times Book
Review, the New York Review of Books, the Saturday Review, the New Republic, the American Spectator, and National Review, to mention but a few of many. It has been
praised by S\lCh glittering eminences of the academy, and
of the historical profession, as David Brion Davis, Edmund
Morgan, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. These are men who
can, if they wish, split a hair at fifty paces. In this instance,
their critical faculties seem to have gone into a narcotic
G
ARRY WILLS'S
Henry Salvatori Research Professor of Political Philosophy at Clare·
mont Men's College and Claremont Graduate School, Harry V. Jaffa
has recently published The Conditions of Freedom (The John Hopkins
University Press 1975) and How to Think about the American Revolution
(Carolina Academic Press 1978) He is editor of, and contributor to, the
forthcoming Statesmanship: Essays in Honor or Sir Winston Spencer
Churchill (Carolina Academic Press 1981).
THE ST.JOHNSREVJEW
trance, proving the truth of the aphorism that ideology is
the opiate of the intellectuals. Among the reviewers hitherto, only Professor Kenneth Lynn, writing in Commentary, October, 1978, has seen Wills's book for what it is.
"Inventing America," he writes, udoes not help us to un~
derstand Thomas Jefferson, but its totally unearned acclaim tells us a good deal about modern intellectuals and
their terrible need for radical myths." The myth promoted by Inventing America "is that the Declaration is
not grounded in Lockean individualism, as we have been
accustomed to think, but is a communitarian manifesto
derived from the common-sense philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment. .. " By this myth, says Lynn, Wills
would have "transmogrified" a ~~new nation, conceived in
liberty ... into a new nation, conceived in communality,"
and thus have supplied "the history of the Republic with
as pink a dawn as possible."
I think that Professor Lynn is correct as far as he goes.
But he does not go far enough. Inventing America was received with virtually the same enthusiasm on the Right as
on the Left. The reviews in National Review and the
American Spectator were both written by current editors
of National Review, surely the most authoritative of conservative journals* (Ronald Reagan's message to the
*See Postscript
3
�Twentieth Anniversary banquet declared he had read
every issue from cover to cover.) But the current editors,
we must note, are apostolic successors to Wills himself,
who wrote for the journal for a number of years. His account of his days as an NR staffer may be found in
Confessions of a Conservative, published shortly after Inventing America. The title of the book is not meant in
irony. Wills thinks of himself as a Conservative still, and
somehow traces all his serious ideas to St. Augustine. At
the deepest level of Wills's being, there is indeed a kind of
Lutheran hatred (and Luther was an Augustinian Monk)
of classical rationalism. Lynn calls Wills "the leftist
(formerly rightist) writer." Yet there is more inner consistency between the two "Willses" than Lynn perceives.
That is because there is more inner consistency between
the Right and the Left than is commonly supposed.
where Inventing America "comes
from," to employ a popular neologism, one must read
an essay Wills published in 1964, entitled "The Convenient State." It was originally published in a volume
edited by the late Frank Meyer (an NR editor, and Wills's
close friend), called What is Conservatism? Later, it achieved
neo-canonical status, by. its inclusion in an anthology of
American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century,
edited by NR's Editor of Editors, William F. Buckley, Jr.
(It is only fair to add that an essay of mine, "On the Nature of Civil and Religious Liberty," was included in the
same volume. My essay, however, represented Conservative heresy; Wills's Conservative orthodoxy.) Frank Meyer
and I exchanged dialectical blows in the pages of NR in
1965, after Meyer published an article attacking Abraham
Lincoln as the enemy of American constitutionalism and
American freedom. (Meyer's own best known book is called
In Defense of Freedom.) Meyer in 1965 and Wills in 1964,
follow exactly the same line: Calhoun is their hero and
their authority, Lincoln the villain of American history. As
we shall see, both of them, in the decisive sense, follow a
pattern of thought which seems to have been worked out
for them by Willmoore Kendall. Kendall was a professor of
political science at Yale when Wills was a graduate student in classics there. For Wills, as for Meyer and Kendall,
there is no contradiction, nor even any paradox, in identifying the cause of constitutionalism and freedom with the
defense of chattel slavery. For all three, the defense of
freedom turns, in the decisive case, into the defense of
the freedom of_ slaveowners.
The main thesis of Wills's 1964 essay was that something called "rationalism" is the root of all political evil.
This attack on "reason" has been the stock-in-trade of
Conservatism since Rousseau's attack on the Enlightenment was fortified by Burke's polemics against the French
Revolution. Most present-day Conservatives would be
horrified to learn that they are disciples of Rousseau, yet
such is surely the case. For it was Rousseau who, in going
all the way back to the "state of nature" discovered that
T
4
O UNDERSTAND
man by nature was free, but not rational. The celebration
of freedom, divorced from reason, has a theoretical foundation in Rousseau which is nowhere else to be found.
The Rousseauan denigration of reason, and the elevation
of sentiment to take its place, is the core of nineteenth
century romanticism, both in its Left phases (e.g. anarchism, syndicalism, socialism, communism), and in its
Right phases (e.g. monarchism, clericalism, feudalism,
slavery). Romantic nationalism has been equally a phenomenon of the Right and of the Left. "Rationalism,"
Wills declared as a man of the Right, "leads to a sterile
paradox, to an ideal freedom that is a denial of freedom."
What such a remark means can be inferred only from the
use to which it is put. Here it clearly refers to the question
of slavery, and to the Civil War. Concerning slavery, heremarks, somewhat vaguely, "One cannot simply ask whether
a thing is just." Certainly, to ask whether slavery was just
was never sufficient, but it was always necessary. One
cannot distinguish a greater from a lesser evil, unless one
can distinguish evil from good. Wills concedes that "the
abolition of slavery [may have] been just," but insists nevertheless that the only politically relevant question was
"whether it [was] constitutional." For "what is meant by
constitutional government" Wills turns to that statesman
of the Old South, the spiritual Father of the Confederacy,
John C. Calhoun. According to Calhoun, we are told, constitutional gov·ernment means Hthe government in which
all the free forms of society-or as many as possible-retain their life and 'concur' in a political area of peaceful
cooperation and compromise." We can now better understand Wills's polemic against "rationalism," since among
the "free forms" which, by the foregoing statement,
ought to be retained, was the institution of chattel slavery.
It was not the slaves whose concurrence Calhoun's constitutional doctrine required, but only those who had an
interest in preserving, protecting, and defending slavery.
Calhoun provided the slaveholders a constitutional mechanism, in the supposed rights of nullification and secession, to veto any national (or federal) legislation that they
regarded as hostile to the interests of slavery. Calhoun's
constitutionalism, based upon supposed rights of the
states, was originally forged in the fires of the nullification
controversy, between 1828 and 1839. Later it was elaborated in two books, the Disquisition on Government, and
the Discourse on the Constitution. Calhoun's main dialectical adversary in 1830 was no one less than the Father of
the Constitution, James Madison, although his principal
political adversary was President Andrew Jackson, backed
in the Senate by Daniel Webster. It was as the heir of
Madison, Jackson, Webster (and others) that Lincoln compounded his constitutional doctrine. Lincoln's genius
proved itself less by its originality than by the ability to reduce a complex matter to its essentials, and to express
those essentials in profound and memorable prose. The
essence of a constitutional regime, according to Lincoln,
was that it was based upon the consent of the governed.
And the consent of the governed was required, because
AUTUMN 1981
�"all men are created equal." In 1964, Wills rejected Lincolnian constitutionalism because (like the Declaration) it
was rational. In 1978, he rejects it because it is based upon
an allegedly mistaken understanding of the Declaration.
In Inventing America, he will undercut what Lincoln has
made of the Declaration, by unleashing a barrage of fanciful scholarship designed to transform the Declaration's
lucid doctrine of self-evident truths into esoteric eighteenth century mysteries.
Wills's 1964 essay follows the conventional path of Confederate apologists since the Civil War (and Wills is a native of Atlanta). He tries to make it appear that, on the one
hand, Lincoln's war was an abolitionist crusade and, on
the other, that the South was defending, not slavery, but
constitutionalism. Nothing could be further from the
truth. As we shall presently see, however, Inventing America is less a book about Thomas jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, than it is a book against Abraham
Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address.
make the record straight, as against the
1964 Garry Wills and his preceptors of the Right, as
to what purposes were in conflict, that led to the Civil
War, or the War for the Union. (It was not a War between
the States.) First of all, there was no disagreement between Abraham Lincoln and the followers of John C. Calhoun that slavery was a lawful institution in some fifteen
of the States. Moreover, it was agreed that where slavery
was lawful, it was under the exclusive control of the
States, and that the federal government had no jurisdiction over it. In his inaugural address, Lincoln quoted from
a statement he had made many times before, in which he
said that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where
it exists." He said that he believed that he had "no lawful
right to do so," and added that he "had no inclination to
do so." Lincoln's anti-slavery policy was comprehended
completely by his avowed purpose to have excluded slavery, by federal law, from the national territories, where it
had not already established itself. It is true that Lincoln
believed, as, indeed, his pro-slavery antagonists believed,
that slavery as an institution in the United States was
highly volatile, and that if its expansion were prevented,
its contraction would set in. And, it was further believed-on both sides-that if contraction once set in,
slavery would be, in Lincoln's words, "in course of ulti~
mate extinction."
Lincoln believed that, in the understanding of the
Founding Fathers, slavery was an evil. It was an evil condemned by the principles of the Declaration, which Lincoln called "the father of all moral principle among us." It
was an evil to which certain constitutional guarantees
were given, in the political arrangements of the Founding,
because at the time there did not appear to be any alternative arrangements which would not have been disruptive
L
ET US HERE
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
of the Union. Yet the Fathers showed their opposition to
its perpetuation in various ways: by the limit placed upon
the foreign slave tra-de, and by the prohibition upon slavery in the Northwest Territory, among others. They had
left the institution of slavery where, to repeat, "the public
mind might rest in the belief that it was in course of ultimate extinction." Such a belief, Lincoln held, was absolutely necessary, if the slavery question were not to agitate
the public mind, and threaten the perpetuity of the Union.
Yet the expectations of the Fathers had been upset: by
the invention of the cotton gin, by the progress of the factory system, by the enormous expansion of the cotton
economy, and with the latter, the expansion of the demand for slave labor. These changes culminated, in time,
in the most sinister change of all: that change in at least a
part of the public mind which, from regarding slavery as
at best a necessary evil, now began to look upon it as a positive good. With this, slavery sought expansion into new
lands: into the lands acquired from France in 1803 (the
Louisiana Purchase), and into the lands acquired from
Mexico as a result of the war that ended in 1848. To prevent this expansion of slavery, the Republican Party was
formed in 1854, and, in 1860, elected Abraham Lincoln to
be sixteenth President of the United States.
The great ante-bellum political question, the one that
dwarfed and absorbed all others, was the question of
whether slavery should be permitted in the territories of
the United States, while they were territories, and before
they became states. The dialectics of this dispute became
as complicated as any thirteenth century theological controversy. Yet in the end the legal and political questions
resolved themselves into moral questions, and the moral
questions into a question of both the meaning and the
authority of the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution itself was ambiguous-if not actually self-contradictory-as to whether Negro slaves were human persons
or chattels. In fact, the Constitution refers to slaves
(which are never explicitly mentioned before the Thirteenth Amendment) only as persons, even in the fugitive
slave clause. But by implication, it also refers to them as
chattels, since they were so regarded by the laws of the
states that the fugitive slave clause recognized. But the
logic of the idea of a chattel excludes that of personality,
while that of a person excludes that of chatteldom. The
Fifth Amendment of the Constitution forbade the United
States to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
except by due process of law. Did this forbid the United
States to deprive any citizen of a slave state of his Negro
chattel, when he entered the territory of Kansas? Or did it
forbid the United States to deprive any Negro person of
his liberty, when he entered that same territory? Since the
language of the Constitution was equally consistent with
two mutually exclusive interpretations, there was no way
to resolve the meaning of the Constitution, from the language of the Constitution alone. For Lincoln the question
was resolved by the Declaration of Independence, by the
proposition that all men are created equal. The right of
5
�persons to own property under the Constitution as under
any substance. Rather was he "the great artist of America's
the laws of nature and of nature's God," was derivative
romantic period." By his "democratic-oracular tone" he
from their right, as human beings, to life and to liberty.
Such an understanding of the Declaration alone gave life
and meaning to the Constitution. Wills, in "The Conve·
nient State," repudiates the Declaration. In Inventing
America, he denies that it has any such meaning as Lincoln found in it. In the course of denying that meaning,
he denies some of the most undeniable facts of American
history.
invested the Declaration with a meaning that the Gettysburg Address canonized, but which has nothing in com·
mon with the document drafted by Thomas Jefferson in
1776!
The Civil War was not, however, fought because of any
merely abstract moral judgment concerning the ethics of
treating human beings as chattels. It was fought because
eleven states of the Union "seceded," meaning that they
repudiated and took arms against the Constitution and
the laws of the United States. They did so because they
refused to accept the lawful election of a President who
believed that slavery ought to be excluded by law from
United States territories. (The President, by himself, had
no authority to accomplish that exclusion. Nor was there
a majority in Congress to pass such a law, before the representatives of the "seceding" states left Washington.)
Slavery was, in fact, abolished as a result of the Civil War.
This abolition was accomplished, in part, by the Emancipation Proclamation. It was consummated by the Thir-
11
*
*
*
in the free states of the antebellum United States, for public opinion to acquiesce
in the proposition that slavery was in itself neither good
nor evil, and that it was best to leave to the people of a territory the decision whether they should permit slavery as
one of their domestic institutions. This was the famous
doctrine of "popular sovereignty," advanced by Lincoln's
redoubtable opponent, Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas's
doctrine was both appealing and plausible, since it seemed
to rest upon and embody the very kernel of the idea of
popular self-government, that "the people shall be judge."
Here is how Lincoln-dealt with it. The following is from
Lincoln's Peoria speech, of October 1854:
I
T WAS NOT POSSIBLE,
The doctrine of self-government is right-absolutely and eternally right-but it has no just application as here attempted.
Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such application depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If he
is not a man, why in that case, he who is a man may, as a matter of self-government, do just as he pleases with him. But if
the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction
of self-government, to say that he too shall not govern himself? When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another
man, that is more than self-government-that is despotism. If
the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me
that "all men are created equal;" and that there can be no
moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of
another. [All emphasis is Lincoln's.]
I have quoted so much of classic Lincolniana here, to
bring before the reader an example of that reasoning that
Garry Wills dismisses and ridicules. For Lincoln, of
course, the article of his "ancient faith" was such, not be-
cause it was inherited, but because it was true. Inventing
America was written for no other reason than to obfuscate
and deny what Lincoln here affirmed. The Declaration,
Wills writes, "is written in the lost language of the Englightenment." "It is dark with unexamined lights." It embodies "the dry intellectual formulae of the eighteenth
century" which according to Wills "were traced in fine
acids of doubt, leaving them difficult to decipher across
the intervals of time and fashion." Wills does not think
that Lincoln-like Calhoun-was a political thinker of
6
teenth Amendment. The former was a war measure, aimed
at the property of the enemies of the United States, in
arms against the United States. But we cannot forget that
the destruction of property by the Proclamation had a
double effect, due to the peculiarity of the "peculiar institution" at which it was directed. By the laws governing
this institution, certain human beings were legally defined
as chattels. Interestingly, the root meanings of both "peculiar" and of "chattel" refer to "cattle." But some eightysix thousand of these human beings who had hitherto
been regarded by law as no more than cattle, enlisted and
fought in the Union armies, many of them sealing with
their blood their right to that freedom that the Declaration of Independence had proclaimed to be the universal
birthright of mankind. Nevertheless, the Civil War was
not, we repeat, an abolitionist crusade. It was a war to preserve the Union, to prove that there could not be a successful appeal, as Lincoln said, from ballots to bullets.
Emancipation and abolition became, in the course of the
war, and because of the war, indispensable constitutional
means to a constitutional end. Let us never forget this just
but tragic consummation of our history: that men who
had been called cattle proved their manhood in arms, and
provided indispensable help to save a Union which thereby
became theirs. They also vindicated the Declaration ofln·
dependence, by proving that human laws which rest upon
a denial of the laws of nature cannot long endure. The
Union endured, but only by repudiating that denial and
becoming a different Union. The original Union-or nation-embodied the Original Sin of human slavery. With·
out "a new birth of freedom" it must needs have perished
from the earth. It is this understanding of the Declaration
of Independence, in the light of what "fourscore and seven
years" had revealed as to its meaning, that is immortalized
by the Gettysburg Address, but that Inventing America
maliciously attacks.
AUTUMN 1981
�in 1964 that in a constitutional
regime "the free forms of society ... 'concur' in ...
peaceful cooperation and compromise," he was
using Calhounian Confederate code language, implying
the rightfulness and constitutionality of "secession." Con·
versely, he was implying the wrongfulness and unconstitutionality of Lincoln's executive action to preserve the
Constitution and the Union. But what was this vaunted
''right of secession"? Lincoln called it an "ingenious
sophism" according to which "any State of the Union
may, consistently with the national Constitution, and
therefore lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the
Union without the consent of the Union or of any other
State." [Lincoln's emphasis.] But, Lincoln asked, if one
can reject the constitutional decision of a constitutional
majority, whenever one dislikes that decision, how can
there be any free government at all? Unanimity is impossible. Government that is both constitutional and popular
also becomes impossible, if the principle of "secession" is
once granted. With what right, Lincoln asked, can the
seceders deny the right of secession against themselves, if
a discontented minority should arise amongst them?
In 1848 Henry David Thoreau published his essay, "Civil
Disobedience." At the same time, Thoreau called for the
secession of Massachusetts from the Union. He adopted
the pattern of abolitionists generally, who declared that
there should be "No Union with slaveholders." Thus
Thoreau invoked an alleged right of secession against slavery, as Calhoun's followers would invoke it for the sake of
slavery. But Thoreau brushed aside any such notion as
that of the "concurrent majority" in Calhoun's sense.
Thoreau saw quite clearly that the argument of a minority
veto upon majority action, in any matter of interest that
could be called one of conscience, did not admit of any
stopping point, short of the minority of one. Thoreau declared frankly that, although he preferred "that government ... which governs least," he would not be satisfied
except with that government "which governs not at all."
Thoreau believed in the withering away of the state quite
W
HEN WILLS WROTE
as much as Karl Marx, and saw the best regime as an anar-
chist regime, also quite as much as Marx. But Lincoln, in
1861, showed by unrefutable logic that Calhoun's premises
led to Thoreau's conclusions. In short, despotism leads to
anarchy, as surely as anarchy leads to despotism. The
Garry Wills of 1964 defended despotism. In the later sixties and early seventies, Garry Wills joined those who
were protesting and demonstrating in behalf of their
Thoreauvian consciences, in behalf of those causes
which, in the name of conscience, would arrest the process of constitutional government. But the earlier Wills
and the later Wills are like two segments of the same circle. Each leads into the other: like anarchy and despotism.
I
*
*
*
differs from the later one, as John
C. Calhoun differs from Henry David Thoreau, so also
do the two "Willses" differ as George Fitzhugh and Karl
F THE EARLIER WILLS
THE ST.JOHNSREVIEW
Marx. Fitzhugh (1806-1881), after the death of Calhoun
in 1850, became the leading publicist and intellectual protagonist of the thesis that slavery was a positive good. Of
all the pro-slavery writers, none roused the anger of Abraham Lincoln more than he did. Yet Lincoln viewed Fitzhugh's argument with a certain grim satisfaction, since it
arrived at the conclusion that Lincoln always insisted followed from the pro-slavery premises: namely, that if slavery was a positive good for black men, then it must also be
good for white men. Calhoun had already argued that, in
the burgeoning conflict in the industrial North, between
capital and labor, the South, with its stability rooted in
chattel slavery, would be the force making for equilibrium
between the two great factions. Fitzhugh went a step farther: only by the enslavement of the white work force,
could the North achieve that equilibrium. By way of contrast, Lincoln declared, in March, 1860, "I am glad to
know there is a system of labor where the laborer can
strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system
prevailed all over the world."
It is a matter of the highest moment for students of the
political scene today, to understand that what is now called
Conservatism, and what is now called Liberalism (although
neither is properly so called), have their common ground
in the rejection of the principles of the American Founding, above all in the rejection of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. On both sides, there is a peculiar
hatred of Abraham Lincoln, because of the renewed vitality
he gave to the authority of the Declaration, in and through
the Gettysburg Address. The Liberalism of today-or,
more properly the Radical Liberalism of today-stems
largely from the Abolitionism of the ante-bellum North
(not to mention its successor in the Reconstruction era).
And the abolitionist critique of Northern free society, and
the critique by Fitzhugh and his pro-slavery coadjutors of
that same free society, were not only virtually identical,
but were hardly distinguishable from the Marxist critique
of capitalism.
Anyone today reading the pro-slavery literature of the
ante-bellum South, must be struck by the constant reference to Northern workers as ''wage slaves." Indeed, if
someone reading these tracts did not know where they
came from, and when, he might reasonably suppose that
they were written by Marxists of a later period, or even by
Bolsheviks. The general argument against Northern capitalism-which as we noted was shared with the Abolitionists-ran as follows. The "free workers" depended upon
the owners for their livelihood. But the owners employed
them only when they could make a profit from their labor.
There was no provision for the workers during the slack
periods of business; but neither was there provision for
them when they were too young, too old, too sick, too feeble, or too handicapped to be profitably employed. In
these respects, Fitzhugh (and all the other defenders of
slavery) argued, slavery, with its traditions of paternalism
and patriarchalism, with its ethics of responsibility for
masters no less than of obedience for slaves, was morally
7
�as well as economically superior. Thus Fitzhugh, at the
end of Cannibals All! (1857) addresses the Abolitionists as
follows. (In today's parlance, a Conservative addressing a
Radical Liberal, or Garry Wills, vintage 1964, addressing
Garry Wills, vintage 1978):
As we are a Brother Socialist, we have a right to prescribe for
the patient; and our Consulting Brethren, Messrs. Garrison,
Greeley, and others, should duly consider the value of our
opinion. Extremes meet-and we and the leading abolitionists
differ but a hairbreadth. We ... prescribe more of government;
they insist on No-Government. Yet their social institutions
would make excellently conducted Southern sugar and cotton farms, with a head to govern them. Add a Virginia overseer to Mr. Greeley's Phalansteries, and Mr. Greeley and we
would have little to quarrel about.
Extremes do indeed meet. "Phalansteries" were the Fourierist anticipation of the later and better known "communes" and "soviets." Nearly a century before Hayek's
Road to Serfdom, Fitzhugh saw with perfect clarity the inner identity of the slave system and a socialist system.
We noted earlier the denigration of reason, and the
elevation of sentiment, that characterized the radical
thought~equally of the Left and the Right-of the nineteenth century. Capitalism, Marx declared, reduces all
human relations to "the naked cash nexus." It is this
~~nakedness," this reducton of man to a "commodity"
which ((alienates" him, and leaves him feeling alone in a
world without meaning. It is Marxism's promise to restore
"community" (where all men will be "comrades"), that is
the source of that magnetism to which we have adverted.
No promise of wealth to mere "individuals" by a market
economy can possibly compete for long with this secularization of Christian eschatology. But Marx's communist
moral vision is itself adapted from the moral vision of the
ancien regime that we find in Edmund Burke. From the
standpoint of historical dialectics, it is true that the bourgeois regime is "progressive" compared with its predecessor_ That is because, in stripping away ''illusions," it
prepared the way for the revolution of the proletariat. Intrinsically, however, the ancien regime is more humanly
desirable, even to Marx, because these self-same illusions
made man at home in his world. Men are not as ''alien-
as if Conservatism is wedded to the
free market economy. But that is true only on the
surface. Garry Wills deserted Conservatism rather
than embrace the free market. Others embraced the free
market, rather than submit themselves to the authoritarianism of the Left. But Conservatives who embrace the
free market, not as Abraham Lincoln did, because it implements the moral principles of the Declaration of Inde-
T
ODAY IT SEEMS
pendence, but because it is "value free," are building their
politics on that same "House Divided" as the ante-bellum
Union. For a free market economy committed to nothing
but "consumer sovereignty" does not differ essentially
from a "popular sovereignty" that is free to choose slavery. Those who look backward to slavery, and those who
look forward to the dictatorship of the proletariat, will
always have the better of an argument founded upon
"ethical neutrality." Critics of Marxism in our time,
notably the patrons of the free market economy, constantly marvel at the survival of Marxism as an intellectual
force (notably in the minds of college professors of the
liberal arts). They marvel at the apparent immunity of
Marxism to the disastrous fate of every single one of
Marx's predictions, based upon his analysis of the dynamics of capitalism. And this, moreover, despite his
claim of "scientific" status for his analysis, and his staking
of his claim to that status upon the verification of these
same predictions. But the magnetic core of Marxism, the
source of the power of its attraction, consists not in its
economic analysis, or its economic claims, but in its moral
analysis, and in its moral claims. What follows is a representative passage from the Manifesto:
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put
an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to
his "natural superiors."
8
ated" under feudalism as they are under capitalism. For in
the ancien regime there is the illusion that, in being governed by his "natural superiors" the superiors and inferiors
are joined together in ucommunity," an organic relation-
ship in which the whole gives independent meaning to
each of its human parts. In the meaning that the proletarian whole gives to the lives of each of the comrades, it
resembles the feudal order. This is why R. H. Tawneyhimself a socialist-could remark, with profound insight,
that "the last of the Schoolmen was Karl Marx." Both feudalism and communism see themselves as bonded into a
community, which is denied to man in "the lonely crowd"
of the de-humanized bourgeois-capitalistic order.
Burke's romantic imagination dignified the morality of inequality, of the ancien regime.
Here, in truth, is the inspiration of Marx's moral
imagination. What follows are excerpts from the Reflections on the Revolution in France:
H
ERE IS HOW
It is now sixteen or seventeen years, since I saw the Queen of
France, then the Dauphiness ... and surely never lighted on
this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful
vision ...
Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men . .. I thought
ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards
to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the
age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and
calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever . ..
All the pleasing illusions . .. are to be dissolved by this conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of
AUTUMN 1981
�life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furn·
Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another,
ished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the
heart owns and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to
cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature . .. are to be
example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence
but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by
when built.
exploded ...
On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a
woman ...
In another famous line, Burke also spoke of that "digni·
fied obedience, that subordination of the heart, which
kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted
freedom." Here was the very spiritual charter or gospel of
the Confederacy, in building a polity upon chattel slavery.
For make no mistake, it was this spiritual justification of
the ancien regime that became the ideology of the Holy
Alliance, and that served the cause of American slavery,
when it came across.the seas. For the "exalted freedom"
of the slaves was compared, to its disadvantage, with the
debased freedom of the "wage slaves" of the bourgeois
order. How these "superadded ideas" appeared to the
leader of the American Revolution, may be inferred from
what Washington wrote in 1783:
The foundation of our empire was not laid in the gloomy ages
of ignorance and superstition; but at an epoch when the
rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly
defined, than at any other period.
Everyone knows that Karl Marx called revealed religion
"the opiate of the people." But Marx's critique of Chris·
tianity, the very foundation of his system, also had its lum·
inous antecedent in Burke. Here is what Burke wrote, in
the Reflections, before Marx was born:
The body of the people ... must respect that property of
which they cannot partake. They must labor to obtain what
by labor can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavor, they
must be taught their consolation in the final proportions of
eternal justice. Of this consolation, whoever deprives them,
deadens their industry, and strikes at the root of all acquisition as of all conservation.
To convert Burkean Conservatism into Revolutionary
Communism, all that was necessary was to declare that
the disproportion between labor's endeavor and labor's
success was the Hsurplus value" appropriated by the owning classes. To make the proletariat revolutionary, it was
necessary to deprive them of that meretricious consola·
tion in the "final proportions of eternal justice." Marx did
not state more clearly than Burke the utility of revealed
religion for maintaining a regime of unmerited privilege.
here to compare the proto-Marxism of
Burke, and the Marxism of Marx, with Abraham Lin·
coln. Here is how Lincoln teaches respect for private
property:
I
T IS DESIRABLE
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
Concerning the priority of labor to capital, Lincoln was as
emphatic as Marx:
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only
the fruit of labor; and could not exist if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the
higher consideration. (Nevertheless] Capital has its rights,
which are as worthy of protection as any other rights . ..
What the rights of Capital are, is seen in the following:
That men who are industrious and sober and honest in the
pursuit of their own interests should after a while accumulate
capital, and after that should be allowed to enjoy it in peace,
and . .. to use it to save themselves actual labor, and hire
other people to labor for them is right.
The common ground of Burke and Marx is the idea that
morality-whether illusory or real-is ineluctably grounded
in stratified and invincible class distinctions. For Burke,
this stratification follows the arbitrary lines of the feudal
regime. It requires, in the name of the myths of such a re·
gime, an unequal distribution of the rewards of life, along
the lines of class and caste. Yet the proletarian society of
the future-the classless society of Marx-is nothing but
a mirror image of that very same feudalism. For it is as
arbitrary in its commitment to an equal distribution of the
rewards of life, as the other is to an unequal distribution.
For arbitrary equality-that is to say, giving equal rewards
to unequal persons-is as unjust as unequal rewards to
equal persons. Both are equally unjust, for the same
reasons. The regime of the American Founding, however
imperfect the implementation of its principles, is in its
principles the perfectly just middle way between these
two extemes. As a regime of equal rights, it recognizes the
justice of unequal rewards. There is, said James Madison,
"a diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights
of property originate." "The protection of these faculties,"
he added, "is the first object of government." Because of
this equal protection of unequal faculties, wealth accumu·
lates and social classes become distinguishable. But neither
accumulations of wealth, nor social classes, are fixed in
any immutable pattern. As Lincoln declared, on one of
many similar occasons,
There is no permanent class of hired laborers among us.
Twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer
of yesterday labors on his own account today, and will hire
others to labor for him tomorrow.
And again:
The progress by which the poor, honest, industrious and resolute man raises himself . .. is that progress that human nature
is entitled to [and} is that improvement in condition that is in-
9
�tended to be secured by those institutions under which we
live ...
It is this moral vindication of the "bourgeois" regime, as
the regime which is truly in accord with human nature,
that makes Abraham Lincoln, and his interpretation of
the Declaration of Independece, that "hard nut" that the
tyrannies of both Right and Left must crack, to establish
their sway and domination. It explains the extraordinary
efforts in Inventing America, of that symbol of the union
of Left and Right: Garry Wills.
I
NVENTING AMERICA begins in this way:
Americans like, at intervals, to play this dirty trick upon themselves: Pollsters are sent out to canvass men and women on
certain doctrines and to shame them when these are declared
-as usually happens-unacceptable. Shortly after, the results
are published: Americans have, once again, failed to subscribe
to some phrase or other from the Declaration of Independence. The late political scientist Willmoore Kendall called
this game ''discovering America.'' He meant to remind us that
running men out of town on a rail is at least as much an American tradition as declaring unalienable rights.
But Wills is not accurate even in this reference to Kendall.
The game Wills calls "discovering America" is called by
Kendall "Sam Stouffer discovers America," and may be
found described in pages 80 and 81 of The Conservative
Affirmation. It is Kendall's commentary on a book by
Stouffer published in the early fifties under the title of
Civil Liberties, Communism, and Conformity. It is one of
the "classic" liberal attacks on the reactionary public opinion of the so-called McCarthy era; and one should bear in
mind that Kendall was one of McCarthy's staunchest defenders. Hence Kendall's testimony is unusual, in this
context, for a guru of the Left to take as his authority!
Here is how Kendall actually described Stouffer's book:
Mr. Stouffer and his team of researchers asked a representative sample of Americans a number of questions calculated to
find out whether they would permit (a) a Communist, or (b)
an atheist, to (I) speak in their local community, or (2) teach
in their local high school, or (3) be represented, by means of a
book he had written, in their local public library. And consider: some two-thirds of the sample answered "Nothing
doing" right straight down the line . .. nor was there any evidence that they would have been much disturbed to learn
that the Supreme Court says that the Fourteenth Amend-
ment says they can't do anything legally to (e.g.) prevent the
Communist from speaking.
In the poll conducted by Stouffer there is, we see, literally
nothing about the Declaration of Independence. What
Kendall observes the American people saying "Nothing
doing" to-at the period in question-is what the Warren
Court (not the Declaration) was saying in interpreting the
First and Fourteenth Amendments. And on this point I
10
think the American people (thus polled) were right, and
the Court wrong. In 1964 I myself published an essay "On
the Nature of Civil and Religious Liberty" in which I
argued that precisely on the ground of the principles of
the Declaration, Communists and Nazis had no just claim
to the constitutional privileges of the First Amendment.
Moreover, I know of no such polls or studies, that Wills asserts exist, in which Americans have "failed to subscribe
to some phrase or other from the Declaration oflndependence."
In any event, it is not phrases that count, but ideas or
principles. These must be stated in terms intelligible to
the respondent. Perhaps the best known slogan of the
American Revolution was "Taxation without Representation is Tyranny." In accordance with it, the Declaration
denounced the King "For imposing taxes on us without
our Consent." The premise underlying these judgments is
that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Does Wills
think that Americans today do not agree with these judgments or their underlying premise? The Declaration says
that the just powers of government are derived from the
consent of the governed. Suppose a pollster, asking
whether the respondent thinks that any government that
governed him, might do so justly without his consent.
Does Wills believe that Americans today would answer
differently from those in 1776? Does he think that they
think that any government might justly levy taxes upon
them-or on anyone else-without the consent, given by
their elected representatives, of the ones taxed?
But perhaps Wills thinks that the arch mystery of the
Declaration is the great proposition, upon which Lincoln
so concentrated attention in the Gettysburg Address, that
all men are created equal. Certainly many are today puzzled by this doctrine. This is not, I think, because of its intrinsic difficulty, but because publicists like Wills have for
so long told them that it is a mere vague abstraction. But
let us re-phrase the proposition, in some of its applications. Suppose, in conducting a poll, one asked whether
the respondents thought it reasonable to divide all human
beings (men and women) into the superior and the inferior, the latter to be ruled by the former, and without their
consent? Or, to put the same queston slightly differently,
suppose one asked whether those· who made the laws
should live under them, or whether the government might
reasonably and justly exempt itself from the laws it made
for others. (One example might be whether the lawmakers
might exempt themselves from the payment of taxes; another might be whether the punishments for either civil
damage or criminal offenses might be different for those
in office, as compared with those out of office.) How
many today would reject Lincoln's simple maxim-interpreting the proposition that all men are created equalthat no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent?
All the foregoing questions a.re based upon that simplified Lockeanism that Jefferson thought was to be found
AUTUMN 1981
�in the American mind, no less than in the common sense
of the subject. One need not have ever heard of the
names of Hume or Hutcheson or Reid or Stewart-indeed
one need not have heard of John Locke-to know that the
power to tax is the power to destroy, and to draw all the
long series of inferences that follow from it. Wills wants to
turn the Declaration into an esoteric mystery, by convincing us that we do not know things that we know perfectly
welL He would have us think that eighteenth century
beliefs are necessarily different from twentieth century
beliefs, and that the veil between them can be pierced only by the magic of the cultural (or professorial) elite. This
is the priestcraft of our contemporary Dark Age.
I would like to make one
further comment on Kendall's assertion, endorsed by
Wills, that
T
O END THIS DISCUSSION,
the true American tradition is less that of our Fourth of July
orations and our constitutional law textbooks, with their
cluck-clucking over the so-called preferred freedoms, than,
quite simply, that of riding someone out of town on a rail.
Note that even here Kendall says something different
from what Wills represents him as saying. Kendall does
not mention unalienable rights. The closest he comes to it
is when he mentions Fourth of July orations. "Preferred
freedoms" refers almost certainly to the constitutional
doctrines of Mr. Justice Black, not to those of Thomas Jefferson, or of any other of the Founding Fathers. Yet Kendall here is in fact being squeamish, something certainly
unusual for KendalL Riding someone out of town on a rail
is a quasi-euphemism for lynching. Someone-perhaps a
specialist in Burlamaqui or Hutcheson-might not know
that riding on a rail was usually preceded by tarring and
feathering. And tarring frequently resulted in second (and
sometimes third) degree burns. Since the tar covered the
whole body, the minimum result was usually pneumonia.
Not many more survived a tarring and feathering than
survived a hanging. But it was a more protracted process,
and accompanied by terrible suffering. In the thirty-third
chapter of Huckleberry Finn we bid our farewell to the
Duke and the King. These bunco artists have by now forfeited all of our-and Huck's-sympathy, by betraying
Jim back into slavery. In their last appearance Huck sees
them being whooped along by the townsmen they had
cheated. Huck says he knew it was the Duke and the
King,
though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like
nothing in the world that was human . ..
Although he had loathed them before, and hates them
now, he says that
It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful
cruel to one another.
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
When Kendall or Wills tells us that lynching is as much an
American tradition as declaring that there are unalienable, or natural human rights, they are telling us no more
than that evil is as deeply engrained in the American tradition as good. This is a difficult proposition to contest. All
that I would contend is that the principles of the Declaration, which embody the principles of the rule oflaw, stand
in direct opposition to lynching, which is the denial or repudiation of lawfulness. And by a disposition of Providence, as poetical as it is historical, Abraham Lincoln's
first great speech-his Lyceum Address of 1838-was a
denunciation of the growing and dangerous habit of lawlessness, which he observed to be abroad in the land then.
In that speech, Lincoln warned that lynch law and free
government were enemies of each other, and that one
could not long survive in the presence of the other. Lynch
law, we repeat, was but one expression of the repudiation
of the Declaration of Independence. Slavery was another.
Slavery and lynch law went together. Kendall's (and
Wills's) tacit patronage of lynch law is but another aspect
of their tacit patronage of slavery.
According to Wills, Abraham Lincoln was "a great artist
of America's romantic period." This, however, is not in-
tended as a compliment. Rather is it intended as an a
priori explanation of how Lincoln was able to substitute a
fallacious myth of our origins as a nation for the truth
about those origins. Lincoln's artistry, he says, fit the antiscientific, biblical mood of mid-century, so that the "biblically shrouded" figure of "Fourscore and seven years . .. "
presumably evoked acceptance, as "eighty-seven" might
not. And Wills is not tender with Lincoln's character, in
regard to this alleged deception about the date of the
founding of the nation. "Useful falsehoods," he writes,
"are dangerous things, often costing us down the road."
The Gettysburg Address, beginning with its magisterial
invocation of the year 1776 as the point of our origin as a
nation, is a "falsehood," and even a "dangerous" one.
Wills has summoned up a strict standard of truthfulness,
by which he, no less than Abraham Lincoln, must then be
judged.
Wills's entire work, as we shall see, actually stands or
falls by this claim that 1776 is not, and cannot be regarded
as, the birth date of the nation. Lincoln, he says, "obviously gave some thought" to his "Fourscore and seven."
Indeed he did.
I pointed out, more
than a score of years ago, that the beginning of the Gettysburg Address marked as well the end of the long debate with Stephen A. Douglas. For Douglas had declared
that we existed as a nation only by virtue of the Constitution. Notwithstanding the fact that, in other respects,
Douglas was a Jacksonian Unionist, in this he echoes
Southern-and Calhounian-doctrine. It was axiomatic
for Jefferson Davis-and for all who voted for secession in
the winter and spring of 1860-1861-that the United
I
N CRISIS OF THE HOUSE DNIDED
11
�States could be regarded as a single nation, solely by virtue
of the Constitution. Each state, it was held, became part
of the Union or nation by virtue of the process of ratification. The ordinances of secession were regarded as-and
in some cases were actually called~acts of de-ratification.
And there can be no doubt that, were the Union or nation
created solely by the process by which the Constitution of
1787 was ratified, then it could lawfully have been uncreated by the same process. Willmoore Kendall, whom
Wills is obviously following, repeats this Confederate
dogma, saying that there was a "bakers dozen" of new nations resulting from the Declaration of Independence. By
this interpretation, in the Declaration of Independence
the thirteen colonies were not only declaring their independence of Great Britain, they were declaring their independence of each other.
Wills thinks that Lincoln would have had some ground
for treating 1777 as the year of birth of the nation, since in
that year the Articles of Confederation were adopted. But
best of all, as a proposed birth date, he thinks, is 1789, the
year in which the Constitution came into operation. For
this date, he says, Lincoln should have written "Four
score minus six years ago ... " With this ill-placed facetiousness Wills shows himself completely oblivious of the
great ante-bellum debate. He seems unconscious of the
existence of the masterful brief, legal, historical, and
philosophical, that Lincoln presented, notably in his inaugural address, and still more copiously, after Sumter, in
his message to Congress, in special session, July 4, 1861.
Lincoln's argument, as to the nature and origin of the
Union, is presented with Euclidean precision and classic
beauty. It is surpassed by nothing in Demosthenes, Cicero, or Burke.
Wills writes as if Lincoln had suddenly invented the notion that the nation had been born in 1776 as he com·
posed the Gettysburg Address, and that he relied upon
the mesmerizing influence of his vowels and consonants
(e.g. "by mere ripple and interplay of liquids") to secure
his deception. But Lincoln's audience in 1863 and thereafter, unlike Wills, knew very well that the Gettysburg Ad·
dress was but a moment in a dialectical process that had
been going on for more than a generation. Neither Lin·
coin nor the nation ever imagined that he was appealing
to their sentiment, apart from an argument, laid in fact
and reason. It would have been perfectly honorable for
Wills to have taken up the weapons of controversy against
Lincoln's side, as statemen and scholars have done since
the days of Calhoun, jefferson Davis, and Alexander
Stephens. But mere malicious sneering has no place in
such a debate.
Wills tells us, with easy assurance, that "there are some
fairly self-evident objections to that mode of calculating,"
viz., the mode expressed by "Four score and seven years
ago ... " What are these objections?
All thirteen colonies [writes Wills] subscribed to the Declaration with instructions to their delegates that this was not to
12
imply formation of a single nation. If anything, july 4, 1776,
produced twelve new nations (with a thirteenth coming in on
July 15)-conceived in liberty perhaps, but more dedicated to
the proposition that the colonies they severed from the
mother country were equal to each other than that their in-
habitants were equal. [Italics by Wills.]
We note that Wills does not say that the delegates were
not instructed to form a single nation. He says that they
were instructed not to form (or imply formation of) a single
nation. If Wills had said that the instructions for indepen·
dence were in some cases ambiguous, as to whether the
thirteen colonies were to form a single union, state, or na~
tion, he would have asserted what would certainly have
been plausible. But in positively asserting an unambiguous intention not to form a single nation, he is asserting
something for which there is not a shred of evidence.
Not many readers will take the trouble to look up the
colonial instructions to the delegates to the Continental
Congress, in the spring of 1776. Like most reviewers, they
will assume that someone with a prestigious professorship
at a major university, with a doctorate from Yale (all
things advertised on the dust jacket), will of course have
read documents carefully, and reported them faithfully.
Errors like Wills's, launched with such authority, spread
like plague germs in an epidemic. And although it takes
few words to put such errors in circulation, it takes painstaking effort, and detailed analysis, effectively to contradict them.
Turning now to the instructions, we note that they do
not contain the word "nation" at all. The word "union" is
its nearest equivalent. (We note also that in Lincoln's political vocabulary, the words "union" and "nation" were
virtually synonymous.) In the instructions, the word "confederation" is also used in a sense, at least quasi~synony~
mous with "union."
The important question we must ask, in examining the
language of the instructions for independence, is whether
the colonies were, in making a single and common declaration of independence, implying or assuming or declaring
that they did so as members of a common government.
And further, we would want to know whether they implied or stated that they expected their association in and
through the Congress to become a permanent one. An affirmative answer to these two questions is all that would
be needed to sustain Lincoln's thesis with respect to the
"Four score and seven years." Wills, we repeat, by assert~
ing that in july of 1776 thirteen nations or states came
into existence by virtue of the Declaration, asserts that
the thirteen were not merely declaring their independence of Great Britain, but their independence of each
other.
Rhode Island, by its General Assembly, on May 4, 1776,
instructed its delegates
to join with the delegates of the other United Colonies in
Congress . .. to consult and advise . .. upon the most proper
AUTUMN 1981
�measures for promoting and confirming the strictest union
and confederation . ..
such further compact and confederation . .. as shall be judged
necessary for securing the liberties of America . ..
Virginia's instructions-May 15th-called simply for such
measures as might be thought proper and necessary
Most extraordinary of all is the instruction of the House
of Representatives of New Hampshire. For in this case,
the instruction for independence and the instruction for
union, given separately in the other cases, were here com~
bined into one. New Hampshire instructed its (single)
delegate
for forming foreign alliances, and a confederation of the
colonies.
Here "confederation" is synonymous with "union and
confederation" in the Rhode Island instructions.
in reading these documents,
that we are witnessing a transformation in the use
and application of certain key terms. The word
"confederation," like the words "federal" or "confederal,"
was an old bottle into which new wine was being poured.
The American Revolution, and the American Founding,
produced a form of government unprecedented in the history of the world. In later years, James Madison called the
government of the United States a "nondescript," because there was still no word that properly expressed what
it actually was. In 1787, in the Federalist, Madison called
the government of the new Constitution, "partly national,
partly federal," although by the traditional understanding
of "federal" and ''national" such an expression would
have been a self-contradiction. As the late Martin Diamond
has pointed out, the expression "federal government"
would have been a solecism, prior to the emergence of the
American form of government. What had hitherto been
regarded as federal, could not properly be regarded as a
government, and what had hitherto been regarded as government, could not properly admit any distinct or separate sovereignty in any of its parts. In these instructions
we see an early application of "confederation" in a sense
consistent with what was later understood clearly in the
expression "federal government." It would be a mistake to
assume that the later meaning was clearly present to the
minds ofthe men of 1776. Yet it would be an equally great
mistake to fail to perceive, in 1776, the genesis of the later
meaning. Lincoln, one should remember, said that the nation had been born in 1776, he did not say it had already
matured.
W
E SHOULD BE AWARE,
Connecticut, on June 14, 1776, instructed its delegates
in Congress to
.
move and promote, as fast as may be convenient, a regular
and permanent plan of union and confederation of the
Colonies ...
New Jersey, on June 21st, called for
entering into a confederation for union and common
defense .. .
Maryland, on June 28th, in authorizing independence,
also authorized
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
to join with the other colonies in declaring the thirteen
United Colonies a free and independent state . ..
Concerning what might justly be called the burgeoning
national consciousness, consider the language with which
the Georgia Colonial Congress addressed its delegates in
the Continental Congress, in April of 1776. They exhorted their representatives that they
always keep in view the general utility, remembering that the
great and righteous cause in which we are engaged is not provincial, but continental. We therefore, gentlemen, shall rely
upon your patriotism, abilities, firmness, and integrity, to propose, join, and concur in all such meaSures as you shall think
calculated for the common good, and to oppose all such asappear destructive.
We see the coordination of "patriotism" with the "com~
mon good," and that this good is said to be "continental"
and not "provincial." Can anyone, reading these words,
think that in 1776 Georgia (any more than New Hampshire) was engaged in declaring its independence from its
sister colonies?
what could lie behind Wills's assertion
about these colonial instructions. It is certainly true
that the full implications of single statehood, or
union, or nationhood, were not visible in 1776. And it is
true that all of the colonies, while endorsing union in vary:
ing terms, nonetheless did so with reservation. For example, while calling for the formation of the "strictest
union," Rhode Island required that the greatest care be
taken
L
ET US ASK
to secure to this colony . .. its present established form, and all
powers of government, so far as it related to its internal police
and conduct of our own affairs, civil and religious.
Virginia, in like manner, asked that
the power of forming government for, and the regulating of
the internal concerns of, each colony, be left to the respective
Colonial Legislatures.
Pennsylvania required that there be reserved
to the people of this colony the sole and exclusive right of
regulating the internal government and police of the same.
13
�And New Hampshire, the same New Hampshire which
thought that the United Colonies should declare themselves a single "free and independent state," nonetheless
required that,
the regulation of our internal police be under the direction of
our own Assembly.
Could there be any clearer demonstration, than these
words by which New Hampshire reserved its right of internal or local government, that such reservations did not
constitute obstacles, in the minds of those making the reservations, to national unity?
These reservations of local or state autonomy represent,
in generic form, the great principle of American federalism. They reappeared, the year following the Declaration,
in the Articles of Confederation, in Article II, which reads
as follows.
Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not
expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress
assembled.
The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution contains a
similar reservation of the "internal concerns" to the juris-
diction of the governments of the states-and to the people of the states-as is found in those colonial instructions
of the spring of 1776. It reads:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively,
o~
to the people.
The notable difference between these two articles is the
presence of the words Hsovereignty" and "expressly" in
the former. But John Quincy Adams, among others,
thought that the spirit of the Declaration (and of the instructions authorizing the Declaration) was stronger in
the Constitution than in the Articles. The Tenth Amendment, by not referring to the powers delegated as being
"expressly" delegated, opened the door to the great contest, begun by Hamilton and Jefferson, between liberalor broad-construction, and strict-or narrow-construction, a contest which continues until this very day. But
the ambiguity in the Constitution which permits two
schools of constitutional interpretation is not different
from the ambiguity in the original instructions for forming a union. If that ambiguity is regarded as militating
against the formation of a national union, then we are no
more a nation today than we were on July 4, 1776.
*
*
*
denies any credibility to
Lincoln's characterization, in the Gettysburg Address, of july 4, 1776, as the birth date of the nation. We have seen that his alleged grounds for this denial,
the colonial instructions to the delegates to the Continen-
W
14
lLLS, WE HAVE NOTED,
tal Congress in the spring of 1776, do not bear out what
he says about them. But Edmund Morgan, writing in The
New York Review of Books, August 17, 1978, in a generally
favorable notice of Inventing America, has pointed to a
very good test of single statehood in the Declaration itself.
For the Declaration reads, near the end, as follows:
That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free
and Independent States . .. and that as Free and Independent
States, they have full power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and do all other Acts
and Things which Independent States may of right do.
"Which of these free and independent states," asks Morgan, "undertook to do the acts and things Jefferson specified as characteristic of a state?"
It was Congress [Morgan continues] that levied war through
the Continental Army; it was Congress that concluded peace
through its appointed commissioners; and it was Congress
that contracted the alliance with France. Congress may not
have established commerce, but in the Association it had disestablished it, and in a resolution of the preceding April 6, it
had opened American ports to all the world except England.
In denying that there was "one nation" or anything like
it, resulting from the Declaration of Independence, Wills
makes the extraordinary assertion that the Declaration is
not a legal document of any kind. He calls it and the Gettysburg Address mere "war propaganda with no legal
force."
Now the Gettysburg Address was an occasional address
of the President of the United States. Its force, as such,
was moral rather than legal. Its chief feature, however,
was to reaffirm the principles of the Declaration, and to
reaffirm them in conjunction with another Presidential
act, namely, the Emancipation Proclamation. The latter
of course was a legal act, although its permanent force depended upon the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. The purpose of the Gettysburg Address was to help
to generate the political forces which would lead the nation from the Emancipation Proclamation-whose legal
effect was limited to what could be inferred from the war
powers of the Commander-in-Chief-to that permanent
abolition of chattel slavery that could only be accomplished by an amendment to the Constitution. It is that
fulfillment of the promise of equal human rights by the
Declaration, in the Thirteenth Amendment, that constitutes the "new birth of freedom" wished for by the Address. If Wills regards this as mere "war propaganda" then
he can have little regard for the abolition of slavery as an
event in American history.
To assert, as Wills does, that the Declaration of Independence is not a legal document, is simply amazing. It is
among the more stupendous reasons why we think that
Inventing America should have been shipped back to its
author in manuscript. Evidently Wills-and the readers of
his manuscript-have never held in their hands the StatAUTUMN 1981
�utes at Large of the United States, the Revised Statutes of
the United States, or the United States Code. The 1970
edition of the United States Code, which is before me as I
write, classifies the Declaration among the "Organic Laws
of the United States." Of these, the Declaration of Independence is the first. Second is the Articles of Confederation. Third is the Ordinance of 1787: The Northwest
Territorial Government. Fourth is the Constitution of the
United States and Amendments.
Let us recall that Wills preferred both the Articles and
the Constitution to the Declaration, as marking the beginning of American statehood or nationhood. But the Articles declares, in its preamble, that it was done "in the
second year of the Independence of America." Moreover,
the Constitution, in the form in which it left the Convention, over the signature of George Washington, dates
Itself
in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and
Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States
of America the Twelfth.
Both these notable documents-which Wills thinks Lincoln should have preferred to the Declaration-themselves
refer to the Declaration as the originating document of
the United States.
This dating of the union, at the end of Article VII of the
Constitution, has moreover a particular legal application.
Article VI reads, in its first paragraph, that
our State, and of that of the United States," they wrote,
the first of the "best guides" to this end was
the Declaration of Independence, as the fundamental act of
union of these States.
We see then that the Declaration was not regarded by Jefferson and Madison, as it is by Wills (and Kendall), as an
act whose sole effect was to separate thirteen colonies
from Great Britain. It was an act whereby the separation
from Great Britain was simultaneously accompanied by
union with each other. It was the accomplishment of
union that makes it the primitive organic law of the
United States. This is why all acts of the United States are
dated from the Declaration.
But the Declaration is more even than an organic law.
Its statement of principles remains that statement of the
principles of natural right and of natural law which is the
ground for asserting that the government of the United
States (and of each of the States) represents law and right,
and not mere force without law or right.
In 1844, for example, in a great speech in the House of
Representatives, john Quincy Adams declared that the
assertion of principles in the Declaration of Independence, beginning with the proposition that "we hold
these truths to be self-evident ... " constituted the "moral
foundation of the North American Revolution." It was, he
said, "the only foundation upon which the North American Revolution could be justified from the charge of
treason and rebellion."
All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before
the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the
United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.
From the foregoing, it is clear that there was a "United
States under the Confederation" before there was a
"United States under this Constitution." The fact that
the United States in its subsequent form (that of "a more
perfect Union") acknowledges the debts of the earlier
United States, shows that it remains the same moral person. But Article XII of the Articles of Confederation
accepts responsibility for the debts contracted by the
Congress before the adoption of the Articles, just as the
Constitution accepts the debts of the government of the
Confederation. In short, the United States is continuously
the United States, is continuously the same collective
identity, the same moral agent, from the moment that it
became independent, viz., since july 4, 1776.
In what sense then is the Declaration of Independence
a law of the United States; or, rather, in what sense is it
the first of the organic laws of the United States? The
United States Code does not say. In 1825, however,
Thomas jefferson and james Madison, both members of
the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia, together prepared a list of books and documents to serve as
authorities for the instruction to be offered by the faculty
of law. On "the distinctive principles of government of
1HE ST.JOHNSREVIEW
But Wills hates the very idea that the United States was
born out of a dedication to liberty and justice. For him,
the belief that our political arrangements are in some particular sense in accordance with universal principles of
natural right, breeds only a sense of self-righteousness,
and makes us a danger to ourselves and to others. As an
example of the latter, he cites john F. Kennedy's alleged
willingness "to throw Communist devils out of Russia,
China, Cuba, or Vietnam." As an example of the former,
he cites "the House Un-American Activities Committee!"
In 1823, jefferson, writing to Madison on August 30th,
referred to a meeting that had taken place the previous
month as an anniversary assemblage of the nation on its
birthday. When Jefferson thus referred to july 4th as the
nation's birthday, Abraham Lincoln was fourteen years
old. By this time, such references to the Glorious Fourth
were traditional and customary. No one seemed to doubt
then that the principles that accompanied our beginnings
were as luminous as they were true. It was some years
later that men began to discover the "positive good" of
slavery, and to mutter that the so called self-evident truths
might after all be self-evident lies. Then was the foundation laid for Garry Will's discovery that the Declaration
was, after all, written in "the lost language of the
Enlightenment."
*
*
*
15
�ILLS CONTENDS that the major influence upon
Jefferson, and upon the writing of the Declaration, was not John Locke, but Francis Hutcheson.
Hutcheson was a Scottish philosopher, who wrote a generation or so after Locke. The dates of his books, as given
by Wills, are from 1725 to 1755. Locke died in 1704. Indeed, the principal explicit thesis of Inventing America is
that the Declaration is an Hutchesonian and not a
Lockean document. Wills's principal antagonist, within
these lists of controversy, is Carl Becker.. Becker's The
Declaration of Independence, published in 1922, has long
been regarded as a classic. And in certain respects, its authority-as Wills notes-has gone unchallenged. We
would note that Becker was himself an historicist and a
relativist, and as such took no more seriously than Wills
the Declaration's assertion (in Lincoln's words) "of an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times." However,
Wills cites one noted scholar after another, who has cited
Becker, assimilated Becker, built on Becker. "The secret
of this universal acclaim," writes Wills,
W
lies in the inability of any later student to challenge Becker's
basic thesis-that Jefferson found in John Locke "the ideas
which he put into the Declaration." [Wills's italics]
According to Wills, the thesis of a "Lockean orthodoxy ... coloring all men's thought in the middle of the
eighteenth century" is one which has not been challenged
by "any later student." That is to say, it has not been challenged by a single student prior to Wills.
Wills's bold cliallenge to Beckerian-and all later-orthodoxy, concerning the Lockean orthodoxy of the Amer·
ican Founding, comes to a climax in Chapter 18. This
chapter is prefaced by a paragraph from an influential
pamphlet essay by James Wilson, first published in 1774.
This passage from Wilson, says Wills, was used by Becker
"to establish the orthodox Lockean nature of Jefferson's
Declaration." Here it is, as it appears in Inventing America.
All men are, by nature, equal and free: no one has a right to
any authority over another without his consent: all lawful
government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it: such consent was given with a view to ensure and to
increase the happiness of the governed, above what they
could enjoy in an independent and unconnected state of nature. The consequence is, that the happiness of the society is
the first law of every government. [Wilson's italics.]
Next, we will repeat what Wills says about this passage
from Wilson's essay, and what he says about Becker's use
of it. We give this paragraph from page 250 of Inventing
America exactly as it appears there. If the reader finds the
paragraph confusing, he must ask the apology of Wills.
For Wills has the muddling and confusing habit of using
no footnotes, but incorporating all his reference notes in
parentheses within his text. As we shall presently see,
however, Wills does not only not use footnotes, he does
not know how to read them. Becker, says Wills,
16
calls the Wilson quote "a summary of Locke" (Declaration,
108), part of America's common heritage of ideas. But if the
idea was so common, why did Wilson give a particular source
for it, and only one? Here is his own footnote to the passage
(in his Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament of 1774): "The right to
sovereignty is that of commanding finally-but in order to
procure real felicity; for if this is not obtained, sovereignty
ceases to be a legitimate authority, 2 Burl., 32, 33." He is
quoting in summary Burlamaqui's Principes du droit politique,
1, v, 1; 6( ~Principes du droit nature!, 1, x, 2). Now Burlamaqui
was a disciple of Hutcheson's philosophy of moral sense
(Nature!, 2, iii, 1) and therefore he differed from Locke on
concepts of right (ibid., 1, v, 10) and property (1, iv, 8), of the
social contract (1, iv, 9) and the state of nature (2, iv, ll). If
Wilson meant to voice a Lockean view of government, as
Becker assumed, he clumsily chose the wrong source.
The unsuspecting reader, confronted by this witches'
brew of scholarship, is apt to think that Carl Becker must
certainly have been clumsy, and not James Wilson. And it
would certainly seem as if a whole generation-or
more-of scholars had followed Becker, "like sheep,
through the gates of error." It takes two or three readings
of this paragraph before one can accustom one's eyes to
the forest of parentheses, and then slowly begin to distinguish the sentences within. This, however, is what can be
seen at last. Wilson has quoted something in a footnote.
At the end of the quotation, and within the quotation
marks, he has given a source for that quotation. Wills calls
the quotation "a summary" of a certain chapter in a book
of Burlamaqui, which parallels another chapter in another
book of Burlamaqui. Having read with some care both
chapters in both books, I would call the quotation a paraphrase rather than a summary. But that is not important.
What is important is that Wilson does not present the
paraphrase or summary of Burlamaqui as a source for
what he himself has written. Wills's assertion 'that the passage from Burlamaqui is the "particular source" and the
"only" source for Wilson's alleged "summary of Locke" is
simply untrue. It is easier to see this if one has Wilson's essay before one, and if one sees the footnote separated
from the text at the bottom of the page. Let us suppose,
for example, that after saying that "all lawful government
is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it"
Wilson had appended this footnote: "Our authority is his
consent, Sh., 2 Hen. 6, 4, I, 316." Would this have meant
that Wilson had declared that the source of the idea expressed in the text was the second part of Shakespeare's
Henry VI? Would it have meant more than that Wilson
had found a felicitous expression of his thought in Shakespeare, and that such an expression lent a certain cogency
or weight to what Wilson had said?
Wills's assertion that this note gives the "only" source
of Wilson's thought, is all the more absurd because Wilson's essay has forty-eight separate footnotes. Some cite
Blackstone, some cite Bolingbroke, but the majority refer
to decisions of British courts, and opinions of British
AUTUMN 1981
�judges. As Becker rightly observes, the main point of Wilson's entire essay is to show the close approximation of
the principles of British constitutionalism to the principles of natural law. All of Wilson's footnotes are designed
to confirm his judgments, not to give sources for his ideas.
To repeat: the quotation in the footnote is a paraphrase of
Burlamaqui. The reference to Burlamaqui is simply to
give the source in Burlamaqui of the passages thus paraphrased. The reference then is to the source of the footnote, not to the source of the text. All that buckshot spray
of alleged differences between Burlamaqui and Hutcheson, on the one hand, and Locke on the other, is simply
pretentious nonsense. Wilson has throughout spoken in
his own name, not in that of either Locke or Burlamaqui.
That he has in the main followed Locke, as Becker says, is
not to be doubted on the basis of any evidence supplied
by Wills.
*
I
*
*
N HIS ANXIETY to re-write the intellectual history of the
American Founding, Wills goes to lengths of hyperbole
and exaggeration which are inconsistent with serious
scholarship. He says, for example, that there is "no demonstrable verbal echo of the Treatise [Locke's Second
Treatise of Government] in all of Jefferson's vast body of
writings." Against the many writers who have said that
the Declaration repeats not only arguments, but even the
phraseology of the Second Treatise, Wills airily asserts that
"no precise verbal parallels have been adduced."
Wills, however, thinks that verbal parallels to the Declaration abound in Hutcheson. Here, for example, is a passage from Hutcheson, adduced by Wills as an example of
the proximity of Hutcheson to the jefferson of the
Declaration:
Nor is it justifiable in a people to have recourse for any lighter
causes to violence and civil wars against their rulers, while the
public interests are tolerably secured and consulted. But
when it is evident that the public liberty and safety is not tol-
erably secured, and that more mischiefs, and these of a more
lasting kind, are like to arise from the continuance of any plan
of civil power than are to be feared from the violent efforts for
an alteration of it, then it becomes lawful, nay honorable, to
make such efforts and change the plan of government.
Here is the passage in the Declaration it is compared with:
Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are
more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are
accustomed.
But here is what Locke, in the Second Treatise (para. 230)
had written:
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
For till the mischief be grown general, and the ill designs of
the Rulers become visible, or their attempts sensible to the
greater part, the People, who are more disposed to suffer,
than right themselves by Resistance, are not apt to stir.
Who cannot see that the words of Locke are much closer
to the words of jefferson than those of Hutcheson? The
phrases "disposed to suffer" and "right themselves" may
or may not be echoes, but they are key phrases, and they
are identical in Locke and Jefferson.
Here is another example of Hutcheson, provided by
Wills:
A good subject ought to bear patiently many injuries done
only to himself, rather than take arms against a prince in the
main good and useful to the state, provided the danger extends only to himself. But when the common rights of humanity are trampled upon, and what at first attempted
against one is made precedent against all the rest, then as the
governor is plainly perfidious to his trust, he has forfeited all
the power committed to him.
Here is the parallel passage in the Declaration. This is
from the Declaration in the draft originally reported, as
distinguished from that finally adopted:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, begun at a
distinguished period and pursuing invariably the same object,
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism it
is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government .. .
And here is Locke, in the parallel passage in the Second
Treatise.
But if a long train of abuses, Prevarications, and Artifices, all
tending the same way, make the design visible to the people,
and they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see,
whither they are going; 'tis not to be wonder'd, that they
should then rouze theniselves, and endeavor to put the rule
into such hands, which may secure to them the ends fOr
which Government was first erected . ..
Once .again, we have, not echoes, but identical phrases
in jefferson and Locke. The "long train of abuses" has
been the phrase most cited by generations of
scholars-although Wills stubbornly denies that they have
ever "adduced" such parallels. Even more to the point, is
the key word "design," which occurs in both Locke and
jefferson, and which is peculiarly vital to the Declaration's
argument.
Edmund Morgan, in the review to which we have already referred, says flatly that the resemblances of Jefferson's language to Locke are closer than anything Wills has
found in any Scottish philosopher. But even more to the
point-and we will let Morgan make this point for us-is
that in the parallels between Hutcheson and Jefferson
cited by Wills, "the distance from Locke's political principles is not noticeable, indeed it is non-existent." Yet so insistent is Wills upon this very distance of jefferson from
Locke, that he asserts that: "There is no indication )effer-
17
�son read the Second Treatise carefully or with profit. Indeed, there is no direct proof he ever read it at all (though
I assume he did at some point.)" Wills is aware that Jefferson recommended the book to others but thinks that, like
many a professor puffing himself to students, "There
would be nothing dishonest about his general recommendation of the Treatise, made to others while he lacked any
close acquaintance with the text. .. " Yet in 1790, writing
to an intimate friend, Jefferson pronounced "Locke's little
book on government" to be "perfect as far as it goes."
Forty-five years later, near the end of his life, Jefferson
collaborated with Madison-as we have already noted-in
drawing up a list of books and documents for the faculty
of law at the University of Virginia. Again-and for the
last time-he turned to Locke, as he sought by university
education to preserve the principles of the Revolution. In
a resolution, prepared for, and adopted by the Board of
Visitors, it was affirmed to be
the opinion of this Board that as to the general principles of
liberty and the rights of man, in nature and in society, the
doctrines of Locke, in his "Essay concerning the true original
extent and end of civil government," [the full title of the Sec-
ond Treatise] and of Sidney in his "Discourses on government," may be considered as those generally approved by our
fellow citizens of this, and the United States ...
From this recommendation of Locke and Sidney for "general principles" Jefferson went on, as we have already
seen, to recommend the Declaration for the "distinctive
principles" of American government. The pairing of Locke
and Sidney was, as Wills notes, a traditional Whig custom.
I do not see how this detracts from the importance of
Locke. Wills says that the famous letter to Henry Lee is
the only place in which Jefferson ever links Locke and the
Declaration. In this resolution however, Locke and the
Declaration are again linked, and linked in the most authoritative manner. Coming at the end of Jefferson's life,
this resolution has a peculiar and final authority.
Among the many absurdities of Wills's work is that
Adam Smith, as a "moral sense" philosopher, becomes a
"communitarian." Thus the spiritual father of capitalism-or the system of natural freedom, as he called
it-becomes part of the anti-individualism which prepared the way for Marx and today's Left. Had Wills read
that notable book linking the Theory of Moral Sentiments
with The Wealth of Nations, Joseph Cropsey's Polity and
Economy: An Interpretation of the Principles of Adam
Smith, he would not have committed such an egregious
error. For he would have learned from Cropsey that the
Scottish school were emenders of Locke, rather than negators or opponents. All their thought moves within a circle previously defined by Locke, and before Locke, by
Hobbes. Indeed, the quotation from Burlamaqui, relating
the purposes of civil society to sovereignty, points back
from Locke towards Hobbes, rather than forward toward
the Scottish school.
18
An important book may still be written about Hutcheson, and the school he represents, and their influence
upon the American Founding Fathers. No responsible
scholar has ever claimed that the Declaration of Independence is purely (or merely) a Lockean document. The substitution of "pursuit of happiness" for "property" in the
famous enumeration of rights is a sufficient obstacle to
such a simplistic view. So is the appeal to the "dictates of
prudence." The ultimate authority for the meaning of the
intellectual virtue of prudence is Aristotle. For it was Aristotle who separated philosophic wisdom from practical
wisdom, sophia from phronesis, sapientia from prudentia.
T
a great deal in the Declaration that points backwards from Locke, towards the
ancients. In that famous letter to Henry Lee in 1825,
Jefferson wrote of the Declaration:
HERE IS ACCORDINGLY
All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of
the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed
essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle,
Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.
Wills attempts to brush this aside and to ridicule the reference to Aristotle, because elsewhere Jefferson depreciates
him. But Jefferson makes clear in the Lee letter that in
drafting the Declaration he was the agent of the Congress, and of the American people. What he wrote was not
intended as a personal statement, but "as an expression of
the American mind." That Jefferson listed two ancientsAristotle and Cicero-before two moderns-Locke and
Sidney-was not casual or accidental. Patrick Henry's
famous apostrophe began by noting that "Caesar had his
Brutus." The Senate, the Capitol, and many other symbols from the Founding period remind us of the power of
the example of ancient Rome, and of ancient freedom.
Perhaps Rome was more looked to than Greece. But Cicero himself looked to Athens to discover the principles of
Rome's greatness. Cicero was an "academic skeptic,"
who, although he wrote both a "Republic" and a "Laws,"
came closer in many respects to Aristotle than to Plato.
Wills ends his Prologue, his apology for writing his
book, with an appeal to the authority of Douglass Adair.
He cites an essay by Adair published in 1946, in which
Adair said, among other things, that
An exact knowledge of Jefferson's ideas . .. is still lacking ... We know relatively little about his ideas in the context
of the total civilization of which he was a part . ..
This, Wills thinks, authorizes his flat rejection of the
Lockeanism of orthodox scholarship. Certainly, Adair was
himself something of a rebel against orthodox scholarship.
He was also the author of what has often been referred to
as the most influential unpublished dissertation of our
time. Adair was restrained more by modesty and perfecAUTUMN 1981
�tionism, than by fear of the orthodox. Adair-who died in
1968-was my colleague and my friend, and a copy of his
1943 dissertation is before me. It is entitled The Intellec·
tual Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy. Its exceedingly
bold hypothesis is: that the most important source of Jef.
fersonian ideas on the connection between virtue, free~
dom, agrarianism, and republicanism, was to be found in
the Sixth Book of Aristotle's Politics. Adair's argument,
although brilliantly set forth, is not altogether persuasive.
But it adds plausibility to the notion of an Aristotelian in·
fluence on the Declaration-particularly since Jefferson
mentions that influence himself. When the Declaration
speaks of the people, instituting new government, such as
"to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness," he is appealing to a tradition of more than
two thousand years. For safety and happiness are the
alpha and omega of political life, according to a tradition
originating with Aristotle. Political life, Aristotle had writ.
ten, originates in the desire for life, that is, for self-preser.
vation. But it moves on a scale of dignity, from mere life,
to the good life. And the name for the good life is happi·
ness.
In his straining to credit everything Jeffersonian to
Hutcheson, Wills makes much of the fact that Hutcheson
coined the phrase, "the greatest happiness of the greatest
number." He is sure that this is what caused Jefferson to
write "pursuit of happiness" instead of property" or
~<estate," in the famous enumeration. He tells us confidently that from the teachings of the Scottish school
"public happiness" is "measurable'' and "is, indeed, the
test and justification of any government." That public
happiness is the test and justification of any government
is also the teaching of both the Nicomachean Ethics and
of the Politics. Such public happiness would not, how·
ever, be measurable in any mathematical sense. Happi·
ness, according to Aristotle, is the summum bonum. As
such it cannot be counted among good things, since it
11
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
represents the presence of all good things, in the propor·
lions that make them beneficial to their possessor. For ex·
ample, you cannot be made happier by becoming richer,
if you already have all the wealth that you can use well.
But where does Jefferson ever speak of measuring happi·
ness, in the mathematical or geometrical manner that
Wills imputes to Hutcheson? It bears repeating, that in
sketching the literary sources of the Declaration-or,
rather, of the American mind that the Declaration ex·
pressed-Jefferson names Aristotle first of all. Then, after
naming Cicero, he mentions Locke. But the name of
Francis Hutcheson, in connection with the Declaration of
Independence, is never mentioned at all.
POSTSCRIPT
The two reviewers in question were M. J. Sobran, for NR, and
Richard Brookhiser for the American Spectator. In a later article
in NR, "Saving the Declaration," (December 22, 1978) Mr. Sobran
wrote as follows.
The Declaration is a republican document, based squarely on
Locke's theory . .. Which brings me to a personally embarrassing
point. In his recent book, Inventing America, Garry Wills persuaded
me (NR, July 7), that the Declaration can be understood without
reference to Locke. He denied, in fact, that there are any distinct
echoes of Locke, either in the Declaration or in Jefferson's writings
generally. But a careful reading of the Second Treatise makes overwhelmingly clear that Wills is wrong. In diction, terms, turns of
phrase, structure, and of course destination, the resemblance is so
close that it is hard to feel that the Declaration is anything but a sustained allusion to Locke. [Emphasis by Mr. Sobran.]
The reader will, of course, have perceived that in our opinion
the Declaration is in fact much more than an allusion to Locke.
Without that allusion, however, nothing of substance in the Declaration comes to sight. I am pleased to be able to record that Mr.
Brookhiser has authorized me to declare his association with Mr.
Sobran's revised judgment of Inventing America. This is a most
hopeful sign, that for better reasons than mere success, the Right
may become the Center of American politics.
19
�Four Poems
Laurence Josephs
ELM TREE
LATE WINTER PoEM
My elm is dead. Its bark
Peels off in shrugs, aghast
Bendings. Though some birds
Still bud there like leaves,
They sing through its bones
Resentfully, and none will nest.
For Frederick Caldwell II
A fairground edge-of-town,
A wreck stripped for the next
Stop, it shows only absence
Down to the last pennant
Where before the summer sky
Gorgeously intervened.
There has been some snow, I see,
Enough just to receive
The traced pawprints
Of small animals, to and from
The birdfeeder
Where they have mined
A first course of fallen
Seeds left by the birds.
Next spring will hear it
Shrieking in the chain-saw's
Mad embrace, as if
Gargantuan insects
Rubbed mutant wings, until,
Mire in the chimney
And released, all sickness
Burned away, its pale insubstant
Ghost against a pewter sky
Once more will branch
In air, blooming high over the house.
Up early I catch a cold
World almost a part
Of the moon, as if
It had dropped from that
Somehow and hardened.
Let me open the door! 0 let
Me open the window and lean out
Into this mask of silent air!
Has nothing really human
Happened here since last night
Before the snow began to come down?
In the road are tire-tracks:
Tracks of snow pushed aszde
To look like sculptured wavesThe wake of someone rushing past my house
As I slept and dreamed.
Professor of English at Skidmore College, Laurence Josephs has published three collections of poems, Cold Water Morning (Skidmore College 1964), The Skidmore Poems (Skidmore College 1975) and Six Elegies
(The Greenfield Review Press 1972).
20
AUTUMN 1981
�THE PoRCH
UNFINISHED SELF-PORTRAIT AND SEASCAPE
(Late August Mternoon)
Seeing in the glass their life
Losing color- as you saw that last,
Sad summer- painters will make us
Their mirror. Now I am your mirror,
Father, today looking your sickness
Back into your eyes; knowing
Nothing to disguise it in paint or words.
The breeze is transparent
Ribbons coming untied between the trees.
Far back, tin-voiced
Hawks parade the air, not flying,
But afloat, cruciform, at leisure
Just lower than the cloud.
Somewhere closed in all this
I am lying-a book interrupted
By a forgotten bookmark
Beneath which the page is a slightly
Differing color: a pale
Stripe no one could ever have painted;
Almost a whisper of color, unnameableAnd I hear your voice, unrolling too,
Like the ribboned breeze:
~ou are saying that summers were always
Ltke thts; always, always the same
As this: that there was even the same
Thunder waiting somewhere near the tall
Glasses of tea the ice had made
Weep through the tea -colored glass
And run down the sides like tears.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
On the easel where an unfinished
Seascape began to grow from canvas,
I see reflected the start
Of a world losing itself in your skill
That was not skillful enough.
Now it will never flow, that ocean,
Though in my eyes its sketchy tide
Stops, starts, subsides; changing
No course as we knew it could not
When you put aside the last brush.
Horizons show beginning
Is the end; endings begin.
And even God, I think, knew this
Ceding the sea nothing but depth
And that restlessness
From which life came crawling up
On a shore unwilling,
As it always is, to support life.
21
�The World of Physics
and The "Natural" World
Jacob Klein
I
It can scarcely be denied that at the present time physics
and philosophy, two sciences of recognized durability,
each handed down in a continuous tradition, are estranged
from one another; they oppose one another more or less
uncomprehendingly. By the nineteenth century a real and
hence effective mutual understanding between philosophers and physicists concerning the methods, presuppositions, and the meaning of physical research had already
become basically impossible; this remained true even
when both parties, with great goodwill and great earnestness, tried to reach a clear understanding of these issues.
When, in the second half of the last century, physicists
themselves adopted certain basic philosophical positions,
the Neo-Kantian or Machian, for instance, this scarcely affected their genuine scientific work. They did their work
independently of any philosophical question; they conquered more and more territory and were not distracted
from their course by difficulties appearing from time to
time in the interpretation of the formal mathematical apparatus (as in the case of Maxwell's Theory) or in regard to
the validity of ultimate physical principles (as in the case
of the second law of thermodynamics).
In this respect the situation has now changed in an essential way. To be sure, mathematical physics, in conformity with the basic attitude it has never abandoned, is still
content today with what can be established experimentally
and can be given an exact mathematical formulation; it refuses to follow philosophy into the region of what is neither experimentally nor mathematically confirmable and
hence is almost always controversial. Nonetheless, physics
now sees itself faced by questions in its own fundamental
work which have always been taken to fall within the domain of philosophy. In its own right physics raises questions about space and time, causality and substance,
about the limits of possible knowledge and the epistemic
sense of scientific statements and experimental results.
Consequently, it now considers turning to "philosophy"
as a reliable and valid court of appeal, if not for solutions
to these questions, then at least for advice or for new
points of view. The unsatisfactory relation between mathematical physics and philosophy has consequently become
more acute than it usually was in the 19th century. The
particular philosophical tendencies involved are a secondary matter. More importantly, it is clear that no agreement
about the meaning of the most fundamental concepts
which both physics and philosophy employ can be achieved,
e.g., the meaning of the concepts Space," "Time,"
11
('Causal Law,'' ''Experience,'' ''Intuition.''
texts.
Sometimes it seems as if two languages were being spoken, languages that sound the same and yet are totally different. Physicists and philosophers assess this situation
differently only insofar as the physicists are inclined-not
always, certainly, but for the most part-to regard the language of philosophy as unscientific, while the philosophers
-not always, to be sure, but frequently enough-suspect
themselves of something like bad conscience in such debates, simply because they think they are incapable of getting to the bottom of the physical concepts amidst the
formalistic thicket of differential equations, tensor calculus,
or group-theory. This bad conscience is understandable.
For, no matter how philosophy expresses itself philosophi-
22
AUTUMN 1981
Delivered as a lecture to the Physikalische Institut of the University of
Marburg on February 3, 1932, this paper is the only completed work
which one of Jacob Klein's literary executors, David R. Lachterman,
found among his papers after his death in 1978. The first half, roughly
of the paper is in typescript, the second in manuscript with marginal ad:
ditions, not always easily fitted into the text. The transcriber and translator, David R. Lachterman, has completed several elliptical references to
�cally, no matter what "standpoint" it might adopt, it cannot possibly pass by the problem of the World. And does
not physics, most of all, have to do with the world around
us? Don't the formulae of physics give an answer to the
question of the "true world," however "truth" might here
be understood? Even when philosophy believes it cannot
accept the answer physics gives, even when it regards it as
basically unsuccessful, it still has to reckon with it in some
fashion, even if only to refute it. Above all philosophy
must try to understand this answer. Even if philosophy
concerns itself exclusively with things falling within that
other hemisphere of science, the so-called "Geisteswissenschaften," it should never forget, even for an instant,
that mathematical physics is at the foundation of our
mental and spiritual life, that we see the world and ourselves in this world at first quite ingenuously as mathematical physics has taught us to see it, that the direction, the
very manner of our questioning is fixed in advance by
mathematical physics, and that even a critical attitude towards mathematical physics does not free us from its dominion. The idea of science intrinsic to mathematical
physics determines the basic fact of our contemporary
life, namely, our "scientific consciousness."
Mathematical physics and philosophy are nowadays
split apart and at odds with one another; they depend on
one another, even while time and again they are forced to
acknowledge their mutual incomprehension. What is to
be done in this situation? We must first of all try to find a
common ground, a basis of shared questions, such that
our questions are not in danger of missing their target
from the start. Is there any common ground? Where
should we try to find it? If we cannot glimpse it anywhere
in the present, then we have to consider whether we can
find it in the past.
Let us remember that there was an age that did not
know this hard and fast division between philosophy and
physics. Let us recall the title of Newton's work: Philosophiae natura/is principia mathematica. For Galileo the
true philosophy coincides with the true science of the
structure of this world. Likewise, Descrates' entire physics
is contained in his Principia philosophiae. The philosophia
naturalis of the seventeenth century is scientia naturalis,
science pure and simple, the heir to the legacy of medieval
and ancient science. The seventeenth century claimed
that the foundations it gave to this scientia were identical
with the foundations of all human knowing. Leibniz was
the first to open a gap between physics and metaphysics,
between the sciences of nature and of philosophy; however, Leibniz himself also exhibited their essential unity
in an especially impressive way. In the middle of the eighteenth century the paths of the new science of nature and
the new philosophy parted, even though their common
origin could never be forgotten. Furthermore, the contemporary tense division just noted between physics and
philosophy has its roots in precisely this history of the two
disciplines, a history which leads them from an original
unity to an increasing mutual estrangement.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Accordingly, we must try to gain purchase on that common ground by going back to the initial situation, the situation of science in the seventeenth century; from this we
might possibly gain a measure of enlightenment concerning present-day difficulties, even if we simply come to understand the nature of these difficulties better. We should
not forget that all of the basic concepts of contemporary
science were given their now·authoritative stamp in the
seventeenth century. This holds especially true of the
basic concepts of physics, at least of "classical" physics, to
speak in the idiom of modern-day physics. However great
the changes modern-day physics is about to make, or has
already made in its foundations, no one will deny that it
stands squarely on the shoulders of classical physics and,
thus, of seventeenth century physics.
Reflection on the historical foundations of physics is
not an utterly wayward and irrelevant beginning, since
physics itself, even in its most recent phase, has been
forced again and again to look back to the past in order to
recognize the limited character of many of its basic concepts. Thus, the designation "classical physics," used to
refer to the physics of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries, arises from the debate between
quantum mechanics and relativity-theory and the basic
concepts of Galilean and Newtonian mechanics. In their
own day, the debates between the mechanistic and the
energistic conceptions within physics led to the historical
investigations of Mach and Duhem. What we have to do,
in my judgment, is make this turn to historical origins
even more radical. Not only is this demanded by the issue
itself, it is most intimately connected with the basic presuppositions of our knowledge of the world.
II
Let us begin by picturing the general situation of science in the seventeenth century: A new science, desirous
above all of being a science of Nature and moreover a
"natural" science, opposed an already extant science. The
conceptual edifice of this new science was built up in continuous debate with the traditional and dominant science
of the Scholastics. The new concepts were worked out
and fortified in combat with the concepts of the old science. As has been emphasized time and again, the founders of this new science, men like Galileo, Slevin, Kepler,
Descartes, were moved by an original impulse quite alien
to the erudite science of the Scholastics. Their scientific
interests were inspired by problems of practical mechanics and practical optics, by problems of architecture,
machine construction, painting, and the newly-discovered
art of optical instruments. An open and unprejudiced eye
for the things of this world took the place of sterile booklearning.1 However, it is no less true that the conceptual
interpretation of these new insights was linked in every
case with the old, traditional concepts. The claim to communicate true science, true knowledge, necessarily took
23
�its bearings from the firmly-established edifice of traditional science. At all events, such a claim presupposes the
fact of "science"; it also presupposes the most general
foundations of the theoretical attitude which the Greeks
displayed and bequeathed to later centuries. The battle
between the new and the old science was fought on the
ground and in the name of the one, uniquely true science.
One or the other had to triumph; they could not subsist
side by side. This explains the great bitterness of the battle which lived on in the memory of succeeding generations, a bitterness immediately evident even today in the
difficulty we have when we try to distance ourselves from
the interpretation the victors -gave both of the battle and
of the enemy they vanquished.
_
What especially characterizes this battle is not only the
common goal marked out by those most general presuppositions, viz., the one, unique science, but, over and above
this, a definite uniformity of the weapons with which the
battle was fought. However different their viewpoints,
however antithetical the contents designated by their
concepts might be, the antagonists are very largely in accord as to the way in which these contents are to be interpreted, the way in which the concepts intend what is
meant by them whenever they are employed, in short, the
conceptual framework or intentionality [Begrifflichkeit] in
which their antithetical opinions are expressed. This accord has all too often been overlooked. The only issue is:
Which of them handled these weapons more suitably,
which of them filled in the conceptuality common to both
with contents genuinely in harmony with it? No doubt,
the outcome gives the victory to the new science. When it
mocks at the physics of the Scholastics, the physics of
"substantial forms/' the new science is striking primarily
at the unquestioning attitude of the old science, the Scholasticism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an
attitude which made this old science unable to detect the
tension between the contents of its concepts and the use it
made of these. Such an unquestioning understanding of
oneself always exhibits a failure to comprehend one's own
presuppositions and thus a failure really to grasp what one
pretends to know. This is the danger to which science is
always exposed; this is the danger to which Scholastic science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries succumbed
as no other science had done before.
To penetrate to the foundations of the new science
and, in this way, to the foundations of mathematical physics, we have to keep this general situation of science in the
seventeenth century constantly in mind. It determines in
the most basic way the horizon of this new science, as well
as its methods, its general structure. It determines, above
all, the intentionality of its concepts as such.
There is a long-standing controversy over how the experiential bases of physics fit together with its specific
conceptuality. The very possibility of distinguishing "experimental" from "theoretical physics," a distinction
which surely rests on nothing more than a didactic, or
technical, division of labor, illustrates the problem. The
24
reciprocity of experiment and theory, of observation and
hypothesis, the relation of universal constants to the
mathematical formalism-all of these issues point again
and again to the two antithetical tendencies pervading
modern physical science and giving it its characteristic
stamp. This controversy, familiar to us from the nineteenth century, fundamentally concerns the preeminence
of one or the other of these two tendencies. Nowadays,
depending on the side one takes, one speaks of Empiricism or Apriorism; physicists themselves customarily side
with the so-called empiricists and confuse apriorism with
a kind of capriciously speculative philosophy. The good
name of Kant has been made to bear the burden of furnishing ever-new fuel for this controversy. I am not going
to take sides in this controversy. The controversy itself
first grows from the soil of the new science and must be
clarified by turning back to its origins in the seventeenth
century. What is primarily at stake is an understanding of
the particular intentionality, the particular character of
the concepts with whose aid the mathematical physics
which arose in the seventeenth century erected the new
and immense theoretical structure of human experience
over the next two centuries.
This intentionality is that of contemporary Scholasticism. The Scholastics believed that by using it they were
faithfully administering the legacy of knowledge handed
down to them by tradition. They believed that they were
reproducing ancient doctrine, especially ancient cosmology, in exactly the same way as it was understood and
taught by the Greeks, that is, by Aristotle. They identified
their own concepts with those of the ancients. The new
science, moreover, followed them in this matter. It, too,
interpreted ancient cosmology along the lines of contemporary scholastic science. It was, however, certainly not
content with this. Rather, it called upon the things themselves in order to rebuke the untenable doctrines of this
Scholastic science, with its seemingly unquestioning certitude. In doing so, it exposed the incongruity between
Scholastic intentionality and the contents the traditional
concepts were intended to refer to. Furthermore, it went
back to the sources of Greek science, neglected by Scholastic science; these sources, too, were interpreted in
terms of the intentionality it shared with Scholastic science. And this interpretation of the legacy of ancient
teachings, involving a characteristic modification of every
ancient concept, is the basis of the whole concept-formation of the new science.
As a result, the special character of these new concepts
can be brought to light in one of two ways. First, we can
contrast the Scholastic science of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with genuine Aristotelianism. If we do
so, a direct path leads from the lengthy and little-read
compendia of Cremonini,Z Francesco Piccolomini,3 Buonamico,4 Zabarella, 5 Toletus,6 Benedictus Pereirus/ Alessandro Piccolomini,8 etc., and, above all, of Suarez, as well
as from the humanistically-influenced interpretation of
Aristotle (e.g., in Faber Stapulensis and Petrus Ramus),
AU!1JMN 1981
�back to the Nominalism of fourteenth century. As
Duhem has shown, initiatives leading to the modern sci·
ence of Nature are present everywhere in fourteenth cen·
tury Nominalism. Secondly, we can confront Aristotle
himself as well as the other sources of Greek science, most
importantly Plato, Democritus, Euclid, Archimedes, Apol·
Ianius, Pappus, and Diophantus, with the interpretation
given them by Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Fermat, Vieta,
et al. In what follows I want to discuss only this second
path, selecting just a few characteristic examples. None·
theless, before I begin I must make a more general remark.
Since the pioneering works of Hultsch and Tannery on
the history of ancient mathematics, the relation between
ancient and modern mathematics has increasingly be·
come the focus of historical investigation as well as the
theme of reflection in the philosophy of history. Two general lines of interpretation can be distinguished here.
One-the prevailing view-sees in the history of science a
continuous forward progress interrupted, at most, by periods of stagnation. On this view, forward progress takes
place with "logical necessity";' accordingly, writing the
history of a mathematical theorem or of a physical principle basically means analyzing its logic 10 The usual presentations, especially of the history of mathematics, picture a
rectilinear course; all of its accidents and irregularities disappear behind the logical straightness of the whole path.
The second interpretation emphasizes that the different stages along this path are incomparable. For example,
it sees in Greek mathematics a science totally distinct from
modern mathematics. It denies that a continuous development from the one to the other took place at all. Both
interpretations, however, start from the present-day condition of science. The first measures ancient by the standard of modern science and pursues the individual threads
leading back from the valid theorems of contemporary science to the anticipatory steps taken towards them in antiquity. Time and again it sees contemporary science in
ancient science; it seeks in ancient science only the seeds
of now-mature fruits. The second interpretation strives to
bring into relief, not what is common, but what divides
ancient and modern science. It, too, however, interprets
the otherness of ancient mathematics, for example, in
terms of the results of contemporary science. Consequently, it recognizes only a counter-image of itself in ancient science, a counter-image which still stands on its
own conceptual level.
Both interpretations fail to do justice to the true state of
the case. There can be no doubt that the science of the
seventeenth century represents a direct continuation of
ancient science. On the other hand, neither can we deny
their differences, differences not only in maturity, but,
above all, in their basic initiatives, in their whole disposition (habitus). The difficulty is precisely to avoid interpreting their differences and their affinity one-sidedly in
terms of the new science. The new science itself did exactly that, in order to prove that its own procedure was
the only correct one. The contemporary tendency to subTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
stitute admiration or tolerance of ancient cosmology for
condemnation contributes little to our understanding of
that cosmology. The issues at stake cannot be divorced
from the specific conceptual framework within which
they are interpreted. Conversely, these issues cannot even
be seen within a conceptual framework unsuited to them;
at best, they can only be imperfectly described. The best
example comes from modern physics itself: the discussion
of modern physical theories is ensnared in great difficulties when physicists and non-physicists alike try to ignore
the mathematical apparatus of physics and present the results of research in a "commonsense" manner!
We need to approach ancient science on a basis appropriate to it, a basis provided by that science itself. Only on
this basis can we measure the transformation ancient science underwent in the seventeenth century. A transformation unique and unparalleled in the history of man!
Our modern ''scientific consciousness" first arose as a re-
sult of this transformation. This modern consciousness is
to be understood not simply as a linear continuation of ancient h<UT~I'~> but as the result of a fundamental conceptual shift which took place in the modern era, a shift we
can nowadays scarcely grasp.
I want to try to grasp the nature of this conceptual shift
more precisely, that is, to determine more precisely the
character of the new concepts in contrast with the old.
III
The unambiguous and explicit preference for quantitative over qualitative determinations in the new science
sets it distinctively apart from the old. There cannot be
any difference of opinion on this point. How often have
those lines from Galileo's II Saggiatore (1623) been cited,
that pilosophy is written in mathematical language in the
great open book of the Universe! To be able to read it one
has first to understand this language, one has to know the
script, the letters in which it is written. These letters are
((triangles, circles, and other geometrical Figures"; without their aid we cannot understand even a single word of
that language. II In the second chapter of Kepler's Mysterium cosmographicum this idea finds its most pointed formulation:
God wanted quantity to make its appearance in reality before
anything else, so that the relation between the curved and the
straight might exist (Quantitatem Deus . .. ante omnia existere
voluit, ut esset curvi ad rectum comparatio.) Hence, He first
selected the curved and the straight in order to spread a
reflection of the splendor of the divine creator over the world
(ad adumbrandam in mundo divinitatem Conditoris); for this
purpose the 'quantities' were necessary, namely, figure (fig~
ura), number (numerus) and extension (amplituda or extensio).
For this reason He created the body which embraces all these
determinations. 12
25
�These words point immediately back to Nicholas of Cusa,
whom Kepler explicitly mentions, and anticipate Descartes'
later theory. However, they are also directly connected
with the whole Platonic-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic
tradition and, above all, with Plato's own Timaeus. This
tradition had always remained alive. For example, in
Roger Bacon's Opus Maius (1266-68) we can find statements such as these: "Mathematics is the gateway and
key to all other sciences." "Anyone who does not know it
cannot understand either the other sciences or the things
of this world" (Qui ignorat earn, non potest scire caeteras
scientias nee res huius mundi.) HLogic, too, depends on
mathematics. Nothing of great significance in the other
sciences can be understood without mathematics." (Nihil
in eis potest sciri magnificum sine mathematica.)" What
distinguishes Kepler's and Galileo's words from such statements in the earlier Platonic tradition? There clearly must
be a distinction here, one that shows itself in the quite different influence, that is, the entirely different role played
by mathematics in ancient and modern science. Is the distinction merely that Kepler and Galileo spoke from a firsthand, living experience of things, while the earlier authors
were attached only to traditional texts? Or, did the two
traditions understand something different by "quantity,"
by "mathematical science?"
To answer this question, I have chosen examples relevant to the foundation of analytical geometry and algebra.
Both analytical geometry and algebra stand in the closest
relation to one another from the outset, although algebra
asserted its primacy within this relation. Both belong to
the foundations of mathematical physics. Vieta took the
decisive step in the realm of algebra, basing himself both
indirectly and immediately on Diophantus. Fermat and
Descartes, who, as is well-known, count as the founders of
analytical geometry, rely directly on Diophantus and
Apollonius, as well as on Pappus. In both cases, then, we
can confront the old and the new concepts by paying attention to the way Diophantus and Apollonius were received and construed. In both cases, what is at issue is
nothing less than the creation of a formal mathematical
language, without which mathematical physics is inconceivable. I shall begin by considering Apollonius' relation
to Fermat and Descartes.
IV
A. Two works by Apollonius particularly captured the
interest of sixteenth and seventeenth century mathematicians: (I) the first four books of his Treatise on Conic Sections, available in the original Greek since the fifteenth
century and since 1566 in the first usable Latin translation
made by Fredericus Commandinus; (2) his "Plane Loci"
in two books. Only fragments of the latter are preserved in
the Mathematical Collection of Pappus, the Latin translation of which-also by Commandinus-appeared in 1588.
These works-along with those of Diophantus, Archi-
26
medes, and Euclid-are among the basic books of seventeenth century mathematical science. Fermat, for example,
undertook to reconstruct the "Plane Loci" on the basis of
the fragments in Pappus and in the light of the Conic Sections. In an introduction added later, the Isagoge ad locos
pianos et solidos, and an appendix, Fermat sketched the
basic features of analytical geometry. Among other things,
he shows that every equation of the first and second degree in two unknowns can be coordinated with a plane
geometrical locus, that is, a straight~line or a curve, if one
represents the two unknowns as (orthogonal) coordinates,
as we would say today. Among the infinitely many possible curves of this kind are the circle, the parabola, the
ellipse, and the hyperbola, that is, the conic sections Apollonius treats in his major work. Independently of Fermat,
Descartes, by solving a locus-problem posed by Pappus
which goes back to Apollonius, arrived at the definitive
conception of this procedure now familiar to us from ana-
lytical geometry. In doing so, Descartes took up again a
line of thought that had occupied him in his youth. Nonetheless, since the studies of Moritz Cantor, Fermat has
rightly been considered the genuine founder of analytical
geometry, since his Isagoge had certainly already been
written when Descartes' Geometrie appeared (1637). Strikingly, neither Fermat nor Descartes unleashed one of
those struggles over priority so common in the seventeenth century. Fermat made Descartes acquainted with
his own works in analytical geometry after the Geometrie
had appeared; nonetheless, neither of them placed any
value on claiming priority for himself. This is all the more
astonishing since they did embroil the entire Republic of
Letters in the most unpleasant disputes over much flimsier points, as Gaston Milhaud has emphasized.l4 The
only explanation must be that neither Descartes nor Fermat believed he had advanced beyond Apollonius on any
essential points. What we take to be the enormous achievement of Descartes and Fermat they themselves believed
they had learned in essence from Apollonius or Pappus.
Fermat finds fault with Apollonius only because he did
not present matters "generally enough" (non satis generaliter).15 He says very cautiously that his general procedure
for constructing geometrical loci "was perhaps not known
to Apollonius" (ab Apollonio fortasse ignorabatur). 1 And
'
Descartes is quite convinced that the Ancients-he expressly names Pappus along with Diophantus-deliberately erased the traces of their true knowledge out of a
kind of perverted cunning (perniciosa quadam astutia) and
divulged to us, not their own art, but only a few of their resultsP I want to examine this matter more closely.
When Apollonius considers a conic-section, e.g., the ellipse in Book I, Theorem 13 of the Treatise on Conic Sections,18 he begins by passing a plane through the axis of a
cone and then lets the cone be intersected by another
plane in such a way that the desired figure, an ellipse in
this case, emerges on the surface of the cone; the line of
intersection of these two planes forms the diameter of the
ellipse (see Fig. 1).
AUTUMN 1981
�A
day we call the parameter of the ellipse and in Apollonius
is called bpO{a, because it is perpendicular to the diameter
and hence is "straight.") If, now, a perpendicular to ED is
drawn at M, and Pis connected with D, then the segment
PD cuts the perpendicular from M at point X, which determines segment MX. The segments EM and FM thus
stand in a ratio that can be exactly determined geometrically and this holds true of any point F on the ellipse. In
other words, this ratio is characteristic of ~he entire ellipse
and, consequently, of any ellipse as such. Apollonius calls
the segments EM and FM, respectively, ~ &7roTEJ'VOJ'€v~
(the line "cut off' by the diameter of the chord) and ~
TE7a"fl'{vw• xaT~'YI'€v~ (hl ri)v &&J'ETPov) the line "drawn
down" to the diameter in a determinate way (that is, not
in an arbitrary, but in an "ordered" way)-in Latin translation, abscissa and ordinatim applicata, or for short, ordinata.l9 Apollonius uses these segments, the Habscissa" and
the "ordinate/' in every individual case, in order to define
Figure 1
An auxiliary line is drawn from the vertex A which meets
the plane of the base of the cone at point K; AK is parallel
to the diameter ED. From an arbitrary point F on the ellipse a straight line FM is drawn to the diameter in a determinate manner, namely, in such a way that the chord
FF' is bisected by point M. Consequently, FF' becomesas we say today-a conjugate chord to the diameter ED.
(Compare Figure 2.)
F
MF
l.
=
EM-MX
Figure 2
It is then proved that the square on FM equals the rectangle made up of EM and a segment MX (in modern notation: FM2 ~ EM•MX), where the segment MX is defined
as follows: on a perpendicular line dropped to E the segment EP is drawn, which stands in the same ratio to the
diameter ED as the rectangle BK, CK to the square on
AK (in modern notation: EP:ED ~BK·CK:AK 2 ). (Compare Fig. 1). The straight-line EP corresponds to what toTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the general properties, the basic "planimetric properties,"
characteristic of different conic-sections.
What distinguishes these segments from our "co-ordinates" employed for the first time by Fermat and Descartes? First of all, the axes to which they are referred,
viz., in the present instance, the diameter ED and the tangent to the conic atE, "do not constitute a system of lines
on their own, but like other auxiliary geometrical lines
make their appearance only in connection with the conic
section; they are brought into existence by the theorem to
be proved in each instance."20 This procedure, which for
the Greeks themselves belonged to "Analysis," has been
called "geometrical algebra." This expression, first used
by Zeuthen21 and now widely current, is quite felicitous
insofar as it hints at both the affinity as well as the difference between the Greek and the modern procedure.
The term, however, does not indicate that the procedure
can only be carried out on different conceptual levels in
these two different cases. In each case Apollonius has in
view the particular ellipse, which is cut out on the surface
of a particular cone by two particular intersecting lines.
The representation in the drawing gives a true 'image'
[Abbild] of this cone, these intersecting lines and this ellipse. There are infinitely many possible cones, sections,
and ellipses. The procedure specified is applicable to all of
them-its generality consists in this-but to this generality of procedure there does not correspond the generality
of the object. There is no "general object" for the drawing
ing to represent in a merely symbolic way [symbolisch ].
There are infinitely many possible, more or less good, images of the one ellipse represented here. And there are, in
turn, infinitely many such ellipses which can be exhibited
or 4 'imaged." The characteristic of the f.U:t.O'Yip.&nxa, math-
ematical objects in the Greek sense, is precisely that they
can be grasped by the senses only in images, while they
themselves, in their unalterable constitution, are accessi-
ble only to the discursive intellect; however, there are infinitely many of these objects. 22 What the phrase "there
are" is supposed to mean here, how the mode of being of
27
�mathematical objects is to be understood, is one of the
great disputes in Greek philosophy. No one disputes,
however, that mathematical science as such has to do
with these "pure" figures or formations [Gebilde] whose
nature is accessible to the intellect alone. The lines drawn
in any particular diagram and their ratios belong to this
"pure" ellipse which is exhibited by them. To be sure, in
the case of every individual ellipse-thanks to the generality of the procedure-such "abscissas" and "ordinates"
can always be singled out, but each time line-segments belonging to the particular ellipse in question are intended.
This is not due to the imperfection of Greek mathematics,
its defective means of presentation, or its inadequate
capacity for generalization, but is rather entailed by the
specific intentionality of Greek science. Its concepts in
each instance intend the individual objects themselves;
they are-to speak in Scholastic language-intentiones
primae ["first intentions"]-that is, concepts which refer
immediately to individual objects. This is in harmony
with the means of presentation which Greek science employs. The lines drawn in the figure exhibit the object,
they "image" it. Consequently, the mode of presentation
of Greek mathematics-with a single exception which we
shall come to later-is never merely representative [stellvertretend], never symbolic, but is always the presentation
of an image [abbildlich], and in this way first-intentional.
For this reason, the designation "geometrical algebra,"
which perhaps takes its bearings too much from the exceptional case we shall discuss later, does not really do
justice to the facts of the case.
In contrast to analysis in our own sense, Greek analysis
does not merely have a different style of presentation, but
embodies a fundamentally different relation between the
style of presentation and what is presented. What, in fact,
do the lines which Descartes and Fermat employ as abscissas and ordinates signify? What do the curves which
they draw mean? In the second part of his Discourse on
Method, Descartes gives us exhaustive information on this
point-" In these curves he intends to exhibit only relations or proportions (nihil aliud quam relationes sive proportiones~4 and to do so in the greatest possible generality
(et quidem maxime genera/iter sumptas). 25 The exhibition
of these relations in line-segments is only the simplest and
clearest illustration for the senses and the imagination, so
long as it is a matter of a single relation. In order to survey
many such relations together and to be able to keep them
conveniently in memory, they have to be simultaneously
represented [representiert] by appropriate signs of ciphers,
namely, by letters. Illustration by lines and representation
by letters are thus merely two modes of the very same
symbolic style of presentation. Lines and letters both are
here simply the most suitable bearers of the general relations and proportions being considered; they are merely
"les sujets qui serviraient a m'en rendre la connaissance
plus aisee. "26 The ellipse inscribed within coordinate-axes
(as we employ them today, using the method worked out
by Descartes and Fermat) (Fig. 3)
28
Figure 3
is thus no longer an image of the "pure" ellipse, the Ellipse-Itself. The coordinate-axes drawn are no longer images
of a pair of straight lines applicable to the "pure" ellipse,
but merely symbolize the generally possible use of such a
pair. The abscissa and the ordinate of a point when actually drawn no longer exhibit particular line-segments in
the manner of images, but "illustrate" the general procedure of Apollonius; in other words they stand immediately
only for the general concepts of "abscissa" and ('ordinate"
resulting from that procedure and not for the line-segments directly intended by these concepts in each individual instance. Accordingly, the modern concepts of "abscissa" and ''ordinate" are intentiones securidae [''second
intentions"], concepts which refer directly to other concepts, to intentiones primae, and only indirectly to objects.
In the language of mathematics this means: They are concepts of the "Variable n." For this reason the abscissa and
ordinate axes can be detached from the realm of objects.
All the curves investigated with their help are from now
on nothing but symbolic exhibitions of various possible
relations, or of the different "functional" relations, between two (or more) variables.
All this, however, is only one side of the matter (the side
emphasized principally by the Neo-Kantians and viewed
by them as the only essential aspect). It is no less essential
that these symbolic curves were understood as the images
of the curves exhibited by the Ancients. For example, the
ellipse inscribed within coordinate-axes was regarded as
the very same ellipse treated by Apollonius. Precisely this
assumption led Fermat and Descartes to believe that they
were not proceeding any differently than Apollonius had.
Although, in fact, there has been a shift in conceptual-levels, Fermat thinks that he has simply interpreted many of
Apollonius' theorems more generally (generalius), 27 that
his procedure merely opened up a "general path" to the
construction of geometrical loci (generalis ad locos via)" in
exactly the sense in which Apollonius says that Book One
of his Conic Sections treats things more generally or uniAUTUMN 1981
�versally ("a86)..ov p,&AAov~ 9 than his predecessors had
done. (And not even this is certain for Fermat, if we reflect on his word fortasse ["perhaps"].) What Fermat and
Descartes call "generalization" is in reality a complex conceptual process ascending from intentio prima to intentio
secunda while, at the same time, identifying these. Only in
this way can we understand what Descartes means when
he characterizes his analytical procedure as a unification
of the geometrical analysis of the Ancients with algebra.
This unification is brought about through a symbolic in·
terpretation and exhibiton of geometrical forms, on the
one hand, and of arithmetical ratios, on the other. Both
kinds of "quantities" are viewed together with regard to
their common 1 "general" quantitative character and ex~
hibited in this generality. Consequently, the modern analytical procedure has to do immediately only with "general
quantities." However, these "general quantities," on the
whole, can only be sensibly exhibited because their generality at the same time is understood as variability, that is,
because these magnitudes are thought of from the start as
"alterable." (And, indeed, this holds true as much of the
magnitudes posited as 'constant' as it does of genuine
variables.) The <(being" of "general magnitudes" consists
here only in their peculiar ability to take on all, or all admissible, values one after the other. This is exactly what
gives all of them the capacity to replace particular line-seg·
ments or particular numerical values. Their symbolic exhibition corresponds to what Kant understands by a
schema. Kant says:
This representation of a universal procedure of imagination
in providing an image for a concept [i.e., assigning to a first intention the image belonging to it], I entitle the schema of this
concept. 30
The schema can be directly transformed into an image
[Abbild], if the segments and ratios of segments, of which
it consists, assume numerically determinate lengths and
values. The possibility of identifying prima and secunda
intentio is, therefore, based on this, that the schema is or·
dinarily understood as a schema already transformed into
an image. Schematic imageability [Abbildlichkeit] is thus
the element which allows us to illustrate the generalization of Arithmetic into Algebra, or, in other words, to
"unite" geometry and algebra.
Only in this way can we come to understand that Des·
cartes' concept of extensio identifies the extendedness of
extension with extension itself. Our present-day concept
of space can be traced directly back to this. Present-day
Mathematics and Physics designate as "Euclidean Space"
the domain of symbolic exhibition by means of line-segments, a domain which is defined by a coordinate system,
a relational system [Bezugssystem], as we say nowadays.
"Euclidean Space" is by no means the domain of the fig·
ures and structures studied by Euclid and the rest of
Greek mathematics. It is rather only the symbolic illustration of the general character of the extendedness of those
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
structures. Once this symbolic domain is identified with
corporeal extension itself, it enters into Newtonian physics as "absolute space." At the present time it is being criticized by Relativity Theory, which has been steered by
the question of "In variance" into trying to break through
these symbolic bounds, while continuing to use this very
symbolism.
B. The founding of analytical geometry by Descartes
and Fermat is also conditioned by the immediately preceding development of algebra and the language of algebraic formulae. Vieta, as I have said, provided the decisive
impetus here. I want to consider now, as a further example of this conceptual shift, Vieta's relation to traditional
algebra.
The science of algebra, in the form in which Vieta encountered it in the sixteenth century, namely, in the form
of a doctrine of equations, was received in the West from
the thirteenth century on as an Arabic science. This Arabic science was, in all probability, nourished essentially by
two Ancient sources. We can identify one of these straightaway, viz., the Arithmetic of Diophantus; the other can
only be indirectly inferred. (Tannery believed that he
could recognize it in a lost work by a contemporary of Diophantus, sc., Anatolius.) In any case, Diophantus is by far
the most important source, as the very name "Algebra" indicates: the word ''Algebra" (a 'nomen barbaricum/ as
Descartes says) is in Arabic nothing more than the first
half of a formulaic expression for the basic rule for solving
equations that Diophantus sets out at the beginning of
Book I of his Arithmetica.l 1
The doctrine of equations had made great progress in
the West, before people began, in the second half of the
sixteenth century, to take up Diophantus' work itself.
Modern algebra and modern formalism grew out of
Vieta's direct occupation with Diophantus; later writers
merely elaborated and refined his work. Here, then, in
Vieta's reception of Diophantus, we encounter one of
those nodal-points of development, a point where the new
science arose from the confrontation of two distinct conceptual planes.
The surviving six books of Diophantus' Arithmetic*
teach how to solve problems of reckoning which today are
familiar to us as determinate and indeterminate equations
of the 1st and 2nd degree. Diophantus, in giving these solutions, uses, in addition to other signs, a series of abbreviations for the unknowns and their powers. In every case it
is only a matter of a simple abbreviation; this is above all
the case with the sign for the unknown, which is nothing
other than an abbreviation of the word &p,Op,6<. Heath has
conclusively explained this point. Diophantus' "epochal
*[Readers of the Review may be interested to know that the "lost" books
of Diophantus' Arithmetica have now been discovered in an Arabic
translation. See J. Sesiano, The Arabic Text of Books IV to VII of Diophantus' 'ApdJp.rtnx& . .. edited, with translation and commentary (Ph.D.
Diss., Brown Univ. 1975).]
29
�invention" (to use Hultsch's phrase)32 consists in his having introduced this sign into the logistical procedure of solution, that is, he reckons or calculates with the unknown.
Apart from the unknown or unknowns and their powers
he admits only formations that correspond to rational
numbers, i.e.~ to integers and fractions. In modern termi·
nology, only numerical coefficients appear. What does an
equation look like in Diophantus? Let us look at a very
simple example which I shall write in its simplest form:
That is, lxptfJp.ol OUo p.ov&OES rPt'i:~ '[(JO'i Elalv 1.wv&cn brrci.
Or, in English, "Two numbers [lxP<OI'ot] and three units
are equal to seven units." The sign s is a ligature for
&p,OI'6s; the sign IV! (or tt=J is an abbreviation for l'ov&s or
l'ov&!i<S (the plural is also written 1'"). The corresponding
equation in Vieta, which for the sake of simplicity I shall
write in modern form, since this does not basically deviate
from his, is: 2x + 3 ~ 7. Is this merely a technically more
convenient form of writing? Do the two equations say entirely the same thing, if we disregard the mode of writing?
To answer this question we have to look a little more
closely at the Greek manner of writing. (It is of no importance here whether Diophantus wrote in exactly this way;
the extant manuscripts reproduce what is essential.) What
is particularly surprising is the addition of the sign for
l'ovali<S. Scholars have tried to explain this as intended to
discriminate with sufficient clarity the numerical signs
which specify the number [Anzah~ of dptOI'o(, i.e., the
number of the unknowns (thus, in our case, the sign /3),
from the signs for the purely numerical magnitudes (in
our case the sign)'). If the sign M did not stand between /3
and)', then the expression could be read: 2 C,p,OI'o( and 3
C,p,OI'o( together make 7. Regardless of the fact that in a
great many instances confusion is not possible at all, this
interpretation fails to recognize the fundamental importance of the monad, or the monads, for Greek arithmetic.
Hence, it also misjudges the Greek concept of dptOI'ot,
the Greek "number-" concept in general. 'Apt01'6s does
not mean "Zahl," [number in general) but 11 Anzahl/' viz.,
a definite number of definite things: 'II'Els &pt01'6s nvos
ian. ("Every number is a number of something." 33 ) In
daily life we frequently have to do with numbers of visible
and tangible objects, each of which is in each case just
one. However, the very possibility of counting, where we
utter the same words again and again, viz., "two,"
~<three," "four," etc., while referring to different things at
different times, points to objects of a quite different sort,
namely, to incorporeal, "pure," ones, to "pure" monads.
The Greek science of arithmetic is occupied with these
monads. For this reason the well-known definition of
&pdJp.Os in Euclid runs as follows: ro €x p.ovciOwv
av'Yx•ii'Evov 'll't./i/Oos (Euclid 7, Def. 2), "a multitude composed of monads, of unities." What it means that there are
such monads, the question of the mode of being of these
30
pure monads, is the great issue in Greek philosophy, as I
have already mentioned. Indeed, the case of the monad is
one of the ultimate issues which divide Plato from Aristotle. It is not a matter of controversy, however, that only
these pure monads as such can be the object of scientific
arithmetic. According as one interprets the mode of being
of these pure monads there can or cannot exist a scientific
doctrine of reckoning, a logistic, alongside arithmetic, the
doctrine of pure numbers and pure numerical relations.
Diophantine arithmetic is in this sense a scientific logistic
and stands to arithmetic in much the way the metrics of
Heron of Alexandria stand to theoretical geometry. 34 It focuses upon the field of pure monads. Every single number
which it treats is a number of such monads. Its mode of
writing is accommodated to this fact. Even the unknown,
the dptOwfs which has to be reckoned, is a definite
number of monads, although still unknown at first and
"indeterminate" in this sense alone. All the signs used by
this logistic refer immediately to the enumerated objects
in question here.
How does the new science interpret this situation? In
his work "In artem analyticen Isagoge" published in 1591
Vieta introduces the fundamental distinction between a
''logistica numerosa" and a "logistica speciosa." The former is a doctrine of numerical equations; the second re-
places numerical values with general "symbols," as Vieta
himself says, that is, with letters. (We can, in this context,
disregard the fact that Vieta, in accordance with his "Law
of Homogeneity," has these symbols apparently refer to
geometrical formations.) Logistica speciosa gives Vieta the
capacity, not only of writing an expression such as
ax+ b ~ c (in a much more detailed form, with which we
are not concerned here)-initiatives in this direction can
be found prior to Vieta-but also of calculating with this
expression. With this step, he becomes the first creator of
the algebraic formula.
How are we to understand this step from 2x to ax, from
the numerical coefficient (the term "coefficient" stems
from Vieta himself) to the literal coefficient? Could Diophantus have taken basically the same step? The answer
to this depends directly on how we interpret the numerical sign "2." For Vieta the replacement of "2" by "a" is
possible because the concept of "two" no longer refers, as
it did for Diophantus, directly to an object, viz., to two
pure monads, but in itself already has a umore general"
character. "Two" no longer means in Vieta "two definite
things," but the general concept of twoness in general. In
other words, in Vieta the concept of two has the character
of an intentio secunda. It no longer means or intends a determinate number of things, but the general number-character of this one number, while the symbol "a" represents
the general numerical character of each and every number. In this sense the sign "a" represents "more" than the
sign "2." The symbolic relation between the sign and what
it designates is, however, the same in both cases. The replacement of "2" by "a" is in fact only "logically required
here." However, in this case as wel1, this
uz" is identified
AUTUMN 1981
�with the sign employed by Diophantus-and this is the
decisive thing. The concept of two ness is at the same time
understood as referring to two entities. (Modern set theory
first tries to separate these two constituents, to clarify
what "at the same time" means.) In any case, Vieta, as the
result of this identification, understands Diophantus' logistic as a logistica numerosa which "logically" presupposes the "more general" logistica speciosa. Thus, Vieta
says in paragraph 14 of his Isagoge that Diophantus practiced the art of solving equations most cleverly. He continues: "Earn vera tanquam per numeros non etiam per species,
quibus tamen usus est, institutam exhibuit." ("However,
he exhibited it [this art] as if it were based on numbers and
not also on species [that is, the literal-signs,] although he
nonetheless made use of these species.")35 Diophantus
kept silent about the latter, in Vieta's opinion, only so as
to make his acuity and his skill shine more brightly, since
the numerical solution-procedure is indeed much more
difficult than the convenient literal-reckoning. The relation between Fermat and Apollonius finds its exact counterpart here: Vieta sees in literal-reckoning only a more
convenient, because more general, path to the solution of
the problems posed. He can do this because he interprets
the numbers with which Diophantus dealt from a higher
conceptual level, because, in other words, he identifies
the concept of number with the number itself, in short he
understands Anzahl [counting-number] as Zahl [number
in general]. Our contemporary concept of number [Zahlbegriffj has its roots in this interpretation of the Ancient
c,p,ep.6s.
We can now understand how important it is that
Bachet, who in 1621 (hence, after Vieta) published the
first usable edition and Latin translation of Diophantus,
abandons the current rendering of the sign for the p.ovas.
"Who," he says, "does not immediately think of six units
when he hears the number 6 named?" ("Ecquis enim cum
audit numerum sex non statim cogitat sex unitates?") "Why
is it also necessary to say 'six units,' when it is enough to
1
say 'six'?" ("Quid ergo necesse est sex unitates dicere, cum
sufficiat dicere, sex?'')l 6 This discrepancy-felt to be selfevident-between cogitare (thinking) and dicere (saying
and also writing) expresses the general shift in the meaning of the concept from intentio prima to intentio secunda,
together with their simultaneous identification. Consequently, there is no longer anything to prevent Vieta's
logistica speciosa from becoming a part of geometrical
analysis; this is exactly what Fermat and Descartes explicitly did. The unification of these two disciplines is basically complete in Vieta' s ars analytica. Modern analysis is,
therefore, not a direct combination of Ancient geometrical analysis with the Ancient theory of equations, but the
unification of both on the basis of a transformed intentionality. The same shift in meaning can be established in
a whole series of concepts. For instance, the mathematical term OVvafus, 'power' in ancient mathematics, means
only the square of a magnitude, while we speak as well of
the third, the fourth power, etc. We do not encounter this
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
relation in the mathematical domain alone. It also holds
between the modern concept of 'method' and the Greek
term p.€8ooos, between our 'theory' and Greek B<wPia. In
two cases, those of substance and causality, this shift in
meaning was of the greatest importance for the construction of the new science. I cannot discuss these now. I
want simply to remark that the relation here is more complicated, inasmuch as these concepts-like all concepts
belonging to 1rpwr~ qn"Aoao<ria, the Ancient ontological
fundamental-science-themselves already have the character of intentiones secundae; this is why the new science
considered itself the sole legitimate heir of ancient philosophy, why, in other words, mathematical physics can in a
certain sense replace ancient ontology for us. I want now,
by way of conclusion, to turn to the exception I mentioned earlier and thereby compare one of the bases of ancient cosmology with the fundaments of the modern
study of nature.
C. I said that what is peculiar to the conceptual intention of ancient science-and especially of Greek mathematics-is that its concepts refer immediately to definite
objects. This obviously does not hold true of the 5th book
of Euclid's Elements which goes back to Plato's friend
Eudoxus. This book contains the so-called general theory
of proportions, that is, it treats ratios and proportions of
p.ey€8~, magnitudes in general. Accordingly, it does not
treat the ratios of particular magnitudes, geometrical
forms for instance, or numbers or bodily masses or time-
segments, but ratios "in themselves," the wholly undetermined bearers of which are symbolized [symbolisch . .. versinnbildlicht] by straight lines. The fifth book of Euclid, in
fact, contains a "geometrical algebra." The exceptional
character of this branch of Greek mathematics brings it
into immediate proximity to Greek ontology. It is not surprising, therefore, that it had an exemplary, although diverse, significance for both Plato and Aristotle.
This xcxOO>..ov 7rPcx'YJ.UXTEia,31 this scientia generaliS or
universalis, took on an even greater importance for the
new science, if that is possible. A direct path leads from
the fifth Book of Euclid and the late Platonic dialogues,
through the preface of Proclus' Commentary on Book
One of Euclid, and the Latin translation of that work by
Barozzi in 1560, to Kepler's astronomical researches, to
Descartes' and Wallis' mathesis universalis, to Leibniz's
universal characteristic and finally to modern symbolic
logics, on the one hand, and, on the other, to Galileo's mechanical investigations and to the conception of natural
laws in general. (The latter connection has not been sufficiently emphasized up to now.) The close relation between
the general theory of proportions and the new science is
established from the start by their kindred conceptual
basis.
What is important, however, is the very different ways
in which ancient cosmology and seventeenth century
physics made use of the concept of proportion. I want to
31
�try to define this difference by using the example of seventeenth century interpretations of Plato's Timaeus. In
that dialogue, the mathematician, the "Pythagorean" Timaeus, gives a genetic presentation of the construction of
the world. (In this context, and only in this, can we disregard the fact that this presentation does not claim to be a
valid €7na7'1/p:q, a true science, but claims only to give an
Elxws !LiiOos, an image approximating the truth as closely
as possible.)l 8 A chaotic state of the world-matter precedes
the origin of the world: Fire, Air, Water, and Earth are in
disharmonious and disordered motion, they pass freely
into one another, they are at first nothing but 7fA~!L!LEAws
xed drrixrws xtvoVp,€vcx.39 The divine demiurge brings
them from this condition of dis-order into the condition of
order, of nXtts-: Els r&~w . .. if'YCX'YfV Ex rfjs lna~t&s. 40 How
does he bring about this condition of order? By producing
a self-maintaining equilibrium among the world-materials,
so that their restless passage into one another yields to
well-balanced rest, turns into ~<Jx{rx. 'Avrx>-.o-y{rx, proportion, is best suited for this purpose, in the first place, because it knits together a firm connection, a firm bond, a
liE<JjLos,' 1 among the world-materials, a bond which proves
to be unbreakable throughout almost all internal changes
in these materials, that is, throughout the overwhelming
majority of possible permutations of the elements within
this proportion; secondly, because the proportion is a
bond which, among all possible bonds, is itself most of all
bound to what it binds together, that is, it binds itself
most intimately with what is bound together so as to form
a unitary whole: atnOv n xal: nl ~vvOoVp..EVa ~n p.&Aurra
€'v 7fotfi.42 Proportion has both of these features by virtue
of its incorporeality. Thus, its incorporeality, by virtue of
which it institutes wholeness and brings about order,
makes it akin to what we call "soul," >fvx~- Indeed, it is difficult to say whether the Timaeus allows us to draw any
distinction at all between >fvx~ and d.vrx>-.o-yfrx. All of the
world-materials together from now on form a structured
whole, because their quantity, the size of their respective
bulk (cf. rxptOjLGJv o-yxwv-3lc), remains in a fixed ratio
throughout all changes or at least comes very close to this
fixed ratio: as Fire is to Air, so Air to Water, and as Air is to
Water, so Water to Earth. Just as a single, living, "besouled"
organism maintains itself as a whole throughout the constant changes of its bodily materials, so, too, the entire visible world maintains itself, thanks to this proportion
among its materials, as this one, perfect whole (t'v OX.ov
TEAEov).43 And that means: as this living whole. It is only
through this proportion that a "world" arises at all, that is,
an ordered condition of the world-materials, which we call
that it continues to produce itself anew, renews itself
again and again as what it already is within the texture of
the world-order. Thereby it helps this world-order, this
Ta~ts, to be continuously maintained. The being of every
natural thing, therefore, is determined by the world-order
as such, the Td.~ts of the world, the >fvx~ Tov xo<JjLOV [soul
of the world) and, finally, by the d.vrx>-.o-y{rx. Td~ts is thus
the basic concept of ancient cosmology, not only Plato's,
but also Aristotle's, in the version transmitted to the
Christian centuries 45 But Ta~ts, order, essentially means
in every case a definite order, an ordering according to a
definite point of view, in conformity with which each individual thing is assigned its place, its location, its n57fos.
Order always means well-ordering. For this reason ancient
cosmology, as topology, is not possible without the question of this ultimate ordering point of view, without the
question of d-yrxOov, the Good. And ancient cosmology
reaches its fulfillment in the doctrine of the different
T61fot [places). This doctrine also investigates the ratios
and proportions in which the celestial bodies appear arranged in their spheres.
How did the new science receive this ancient doctrine
of nx~ts and rxvrx>-.o-y{rx, of ordo and proportio? In his Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo takes his
bearings continuously from the two basic books of traditional cosmology, Aristotle's De caelo and Plato's Timaeus;
in battling against Aristotle he relies again and again on
Plato. The entire construction of Galileo' s dialogue is in a
certain sense determined by the construction of the Timaeus. Like the Timaeus, Galileo, too, bases all further
cosmological explanations on the thesis that the world has
an order. Its parts are coordinated in the most perfect
manner ("con sommo e perfettissimo ordine tra di lora dispaste.") In this way the best distribution ("l'ottima distribuzione e collocazione") of the heavenly bodies, the stars
and the planets arises. However, what is important here is
how Galileo understands the Platonic principle that the
divine demiurge brought the world-material from disorder
to order. He thinks that Plato meant the following: each of
the different planets has a different orbital velocity within
the present order of the world. In order to reach these
velocities, they must, from the instant of their creation,
have passed through all the grades of lesser velocity. The
creator let them fall close to the mid-point of the world in
rectilinear motion, so that the uniform acceleration
pecu~
liar to falling-motion (free fall) could bring them gradually
to their present velocity, at the moment when they reached
the place assigned to them. Only then did He set them rotating, so that they proceeded from the non-uniform recti-
a cosmos. K6aJLoS thus means a self-maintaining condition
linear motion to the henceforth uniform circular motion
of m'~" (order). This condition is the basis of life, life that
maintains itself, produces itself time and again. For life
alone creates itself ad infinitum. Hence the world, precisely as an ordered world, is a self-sufficing animal, a tWov
rxvmpxn. 44 Its own being, as well as the being of its parts,
in which they persist until today. Non-uniform rectilinear
motion along the vertical corresponds, for Galileo, to the
state of disorder, rxmUrx, of which Plato speaks, while uni-
is cpVat.s, that is, Hnatural" being. The natural being of
every entity existing "by nature" is determined by the fact
32
form circular motion, that is, motion along the horizontal
line (for "horizontal" originally means the direction of the
circle of the horizon) corresponds to the present state of
order. With this interpretation, Galileo intends above all
AUTUMN 1981
�to defend the Platonic principle against Aristotle's criti-
new science, it is a "law." Accordingly, the new science in
cisms in De caelo.46
terprets ""'~"' ordo, as law, and construes the order of the
world as the lawfulness of the world. The shift in the meaning of the concept of ordo has its concrete basis here in
the possibility of transferring proportion from the ratios
among the quantities of the relevant elementary-bodies,
or from the ratios of their correlative positions, to the state
of motion of these bodies. This shift, however, eliminates
the order of the elementary-bodies, their r&~"' in the
sense of well-ordering. For the lawfulness of their motion,
the regular sequence of their states of motion, can be constructed only on the basis of their complete equality in
rank, their lack of ordering in the strict sense, that is, their
complete indifference to the place they occupy. The new
science now understands just this lawfulness in the course
of motion, in the temporal sequence of states of motion,
as the order of the world. The order of things moves up
one story higher, so to speak, when the temporal dimension is added. At the same time, however, the disorder of
the elementary-bodies, on which the lawfulness of the
It is not crucial here that Galileo's interpretation finds
no support in Plato's text What is significant is the direction in which he looks for the distinction between order
and disorder: not in the ratio or absence of ratio among
the quantities of the basic materials, not in the correlative
positions of the celestial bodies (although these do appear,
in accordance with the construction of the Timaeus, as
the genuine theme of his inquiry), but in the differences
in the states of motion as such. The bodies themselves are
not subject to comparison (comparatio, as Cicero in his
translation of the Timaeus says for proportion as well), only
a mode of being of these bodies, namely, their motion.
The application of proportion in Galileo's mechanical
works is also consonant with this. The connection with
the Greeks' general theory of proportions is immediate
here, thanks to the direct reception of Euclid and Archimedes, as well as indirectly, by way of a qualitative doctrine of geometrical ratios stemming from the 14th century
Nominalist school.47 What we today call Galileo's laws of
free-fall are intended by Galileo himself as EudoxianEuclidean proportions. In the Discorsi (Third day, Second
Book, Theorem II, Proportio II) a proportion is derived
with Euclidean means which we today would write as:
Both types of magnitude (S and T) are symbolized by
straight lines, in accordance with Book Five of Euclid.
The decisive difference from the cosmological proportion
in the Timaeus is that time becomes one of the elements
of the proportion. What I have said about Galileo also
holds true of Kepler, whose lifework, in his own opinion,
consists in the restoration of the Platonic doctrine of
order and proportion. The relation between the square of
the periods of the planets and the cubes of the great axes
of their orbits, familiar to us as Kepler's Third Law, is once
again conceived as a Euclidean proportion, of the form
ti:ti=d:ri,
or, as it has to be written to conform with Kepler's own
wording in Book One of the Harmonice mundi:
11
world is based, is now understood as Drder." Let us hear
Descartes: In chapter 46 of the Third Part of his Principia
he sets out the basic assumptions of his physics. In the
next chapter Descartes refers to his earlier attempt to
derive the present state of the world by assuming an original chaos. He says: "Even if, perhaps, this very same order
of things, which we encounter now (idem ille ordo qui iam
est in rebus) can be derived from chaos with the help of
laws of nature (ex chao per leges naturae deduci potest),
something I once undertook to show [sc. in Le Monde],
nonetheless I now assume that all the elementary parts of
matter were originally completely equivalent to one
another both in their magnitude and their motion ... because chaotic confusion (confusio) seems to be less fitting
to the highest perfection of God, the creator of things,
than proportion or order (proportio vel ordo) and also can
be less distinctly known by us, and because no proportion
and no order is simpler and more accessible to knowledge
than the one which consists in universal equality." It was
only later, through the work of Boltzmann and then of
Planck, that this "hypothesis of elementary disorder," as it
was called, was made explicit in statistical terms. Its importance for physics is clear from the fact that Planck called
the essence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics the
"Principle of Elementary Disorder."48
The world of mathematical physics built upon this presupposition, the world of natural processes occurring in
accordance with law, determines the concept of nature in
Taken together with the other two proportions which we
today call Kepler's First and Second Laws, it determines
the cosmic order in which we live. In these Galilean and
Keplerian proportions the concept of law, of the lex naturae, becomes visible for the first time. (Although neither
Galileo nor Kepler uses this word as a technical term; it is
first given a fixed sense by Descartes.)
The relation of the new to the old intentionality here
becomes immediately comprehensible. For Greek cosmol-
concept of nX~L>; T&~t.s is now understood as lex, that is, as
ogy, &va'Ao"({a is the expression of rtx~~~, of order; for the
order over time. The ascent from prima intentio to secunda
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
the new science generally. "Nature" means for it a system
of laws, means-to speak with Kant-"the conformity to
law of appearances in space and time." All the concepts in
this formula (as I have tried to show for "space" and "law")
can only be understood by contrast with the corresponding concepts of ancient science. Above all, the concept of
conformity to law signifies a modification of the ancient
33
�intentio is initiated here by the insertion of the time-dimension.49
How, then, does the new science, on the basis of its intentionality, interpret ancient cosmology? How does it interpret the "natural" world of the Ancients, the world of
r&hs? It interprets it as the qualitative world in contrast to
the "true" world, in contrast to the quantitative world. It
understands the "naturalness" of this qualitative world in
terms of the "naturalness" of the ''true," "lawful" world.
Eddington, in the introduction to his recent book, speaks
in a characteristic way of these two worlds: "There are duplicates of every object about me-two tables, two chairs,
two pens." The one table, the commonplace table, has extension, color, it does not fall apart under me, I can use it
for writing. The other table is the "scientific" table. "It
consists," Eddington says, "mostly of emptiness. Sparsely
scattered,in that emptiness are numerous electrical charges
rushing about with great speed."SO
Translated by David R. Lachterman
1. Leo Olschki has forcefully emphasized this point in his important
work Geschichte der neusprachlichen wissenschaftlichen Literatur, I-III
(Heidelberg 1919-1927).
2. Disputatio de coelo, 1613.
3. Librorum ad scientiam de natura attinentium pars prima, 1596.
4. De motu, 1591.
5. De rebus naturalibus libri XXX, 1589.
6. Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in octo libros Aristotelis de physica auscultatione, 1574.
7. De communibus omnium rerum naturalium principiis et affectionibus,
1562.
8. De certitudine mathematicarum, 1547.
9. Compare, e.g., Leon Brunschvicq, Les €tapes de la philosophie mathimatique, Paris 1912, 105.
10. See Pierre Duhem, La thiorie physique, son objet et sa structure,
Paris 1906, 444 [English translation, The Aim and Structure of Physical
Theory, trans. P. P. Wiener, Princeton 1954.}
11. Galileo Galilei, Opere, Edizione nazionale, 6, 232.
12. Kepler, Opera, ed. Frisch, I, 122 f.
13. Pars IV, Dist. 1, Cap. I & II.
14. Descartes savant, Paris 1921, 124-148.
15. Oeuvres de Fermat (ed. Tannery and Henry), I, 91.
16. Oeuvres de Fermat, 99.
17. Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Rule IV, Oeuvres, ed. Adam & Tan·
nery, X, 376.
18. Opera, ed. Heiberg, I, 48 ff.
34
19. See also Apollonius, ed. Heiberg, I, 6, DeF. 4. (The term "abscissa"
was first used in the 18th century; cf. Tropfke, Geschichte der ElementarMathematik (2nd ed., Leipzig 1921-24), VI, 116 f.)
20. Moritz Cantor, Vorlesungen tiber Geschichte der Mathematik (3rd.
ed., Leipzig 1907), I, 337.
21. Zeuthen [The author may have had in mind H. G, Zeuthen, Geschichte der Mathematik in Altertum und Mittelalter (Copenhagen 1896),
ch. IV: "Die geometrische Algebra," 44-53. Translator's Note.]
22. See Plato, Republic VI, 510 D-E and Aristotle, Metaphysics, #6,
987bl5 ff.
23. Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Adam & Tannery, VI, 19-20.
24. Oeuvres de Descartes, 551 (Latin text).
25. Oeuvres de Descartes.
26. Oeuvres de Descartes, 20.
27. Oeuvres de Fermat, 93.
28. Oeuvres de Fermat.
29. Ed. Heiberg, I, 4.
30. Critique of Pure Reason, B 179.
31. [The full Arabic phrase is "al-jabr wa'l-muqabalah." For a contemporary discussion of the meanings of "jabr" and "muqabalah" see G. A.
Saliba, "The Meaning of al-jabr wa'l-muqabalah," Centaurus 17 (1972),
189-204. Translator's Note.]
32. F. Hultsch, Article: "Diophant," in: Pauly Wissowa Realenzyklopii.die,
Paragraph 9.
33. Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Aristotelis Metaphysica Commentaria,
ed. M. Hayduck, 85.5-6. See also Aristotle, Physics IV 4, 224a2 ff.
34. Compare Heron, Metrica {ed. Sch6ne), I, 6 ff.
35. [Vieta's Isagoge has been translated by]. Winfree Smith as an appendix to Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of
Algebra (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). The passage cited occurs on page 345.
Translator's Note.]
36. 1621-edition, 4.
37. See, for Aristotle, Metaphysics 6 1, 1026a23-27; K4, l061b17 ff; M2,
1077a9-12; M3, 1077bl7-20; Posterior Analytics A5, 74al7-25; A24,
85a38-bl. Compare also Marinus on Apollonius [i.e. the mention of a
now-lost "General Treatise" (xa86Aou 7rPa'YJ.tO'Tda) in Euclidis Opera,
ed. Heiberg-Menge, VI, 234 Translator's Note.]
38. Timaeus 29D
39. Timaeus 30A
40. Timaeus
41. Timaeus 31C
42. Timaeus
43. Timaeus 33A-B
44. Timaeus 33D; 37D
45. See Aristotle, Metaphysics M3, 1078a36-b6 and compare the title of
Ptolemy's work: h ativm~n (sc. TWv E 1rAavw~-tfvwv The Ordering-Together of the Five Planets.) For this title, see Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. "Astronomie."
46. r2, 300b 16 11.
47. Compare P. Duhem. [The author most probably had in mind
Etudes sur Leonard de Vinci (Paris 1905-1913)-Translator's Note.]
48. Max Planck, Die Einheit des physikalischen Weltbildes, Leipzig 1909.
49. M. Planck, Das Weltbild der Physik (Leipzig 1931, 2d. ed.).
50. Sir Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, New York
1929, ix-x.
AUTUMN 1981
�"Sexism" is Meaningless
Michael Levin
W
HEN MY WIFE AND I PLAY TWENTY QUESTIONS,
and my wife must guess a woman, she will often
ask "Is this woman famous for whom she married?" Many would label her or her question "sexist." Indeed, few words have figured as prominently as "sexism"
in contemporary public discourse. Such currency would
ordinarily suggest that this epithet means something, but
in the present instance this impression is mistaken.
Beyond carrying a negativ·e expressive force, like "Grrrr"
11
or "Goddammit," Sexism" is empty. 1
What "sexism" is supposed to mean is clea~ enough.
"Dr. Smith has a roving eye, and his attractive wife is a notorious flirt" is called "sexist" because it implies that interest in the opposite sex is worse in married women than in
married men, and that appearance matters more for
that will serve my son will not serve my daughter. I base
these convictions on a belief in a difference between men
and women. Call these convictions "sexist" if you wish,
but please tell me what precisely is wrong, unreasonable,
or even controversial about them. The discomfort of
women in milieus demanding aggression has been confirmed by experience countless times. If noticing this is
sexism, there is nothing wrong with it. "Sexism" cannot
be used to label the factual judgement that the sexes dif.
fer in certain specific ways and at the same time retain its
automatic pejorative force.
Unfortunately, words are not always used as they should
be. "Exploit" means "to use another without his
consent," but contractual wages are nevertheless de-
is a man's book" is "sex-
nounced in some quarters as "exploitative." The point of
such tendentious misusage is, of course, to get your inter~
ist" because it implies that men more than women enjoy
adventure stories. My wife is a sexist because she believes
that fame often comes to women from their liaisons with
men, and-more egregious-she isn't indignant about it.
"Sexism," then, is typically used to describe either the
view that there are general, innate psychological differences between the sexes, or that gender is in and of itself
important.' Since the first view is simply a factual belief
supported by a vast body of evidence, and the second
view, however objectionable, is held by almost no-one,
neither view is worth attacking. But one thing is clear:
locutor to call wage labor "exploitation" and then to let
the negative connotations of that word impel him to denounce wage labor itself. If you succeed, you have boxed
him into a substantive moral position by word magic.
Once recognized, this trap is easy to elude. Anyone who
approves of wage labor ought to say: "I'll call wage labor
'exploitation,' if you insist on using words that way. But I
see nothing wrong with what you call 'exploitation'." The
same maneuver avoids the feminist's provocation. If, as it
often is, "sexism" is deployed simply to descredit belief in
gender differences, anyone who accepts these differences
those whose active vacabulary includes "sexism" (femi-
can treat "sexism" as a neutral name for this belief. With a
nists, for short) take it to describe something that is both
objectionable and widely held, and hence worth-in fact
requiring-regular and vehement attack.
This relentless tagging of "sexism" on to what it does
not fit suggests, to put it charitably, that feminists are confused about what their subject is and about what they
want to say about it. The word Sexism" simply encapsulates and obscures this confusion.
Take the view that there are innate gender differences.
I doubt that my daughter will become a quarterback. I expect her to develop habits different than those of my son
-and I hope so as well, because I believe that the habits
little gumption he can preface his conversations with feminists with this caveat, and continue to judge his belief on
its factual merits.
Sometimes the trick of illicitly transferring an epithet is
managed by constantly stressing some similarity between
its central cases and vaguely peripheral ones. A polemicist
may seduce his audience into calling wage labor "slavery"
by focusing on what wage labor does share with slavery.
(Both may involve working up a sweat.) To transfer an epithet to new cases ad libitum is harder, the clearer and more
stable its central cases are; easier, the fewer its antecedently
clear cases. At the limit of this process are neologisms, like
"sexism," which come into the world with only negative
connotations and nearly unlimited denotative potential.
"Exploitation" derives its force from the recognizable
badness of its central cases; abusing it consists in exporting it too far from these cases. One might suppose that
women than for men.
"Kon~Tiki
11
Professor of Philosophy at The City College of New York, Michael
Levin has recently published Metaphysics and the Mind-Body Problem
(Oxford University Press 1979). He has contributed to Measure, Commentary, Newsweek, and numerous philosophical journals.
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
35
�"sexism" has acquired its force similarly, by describing
something obviously bad. This would imply that "sexism"
does have some legitimate meaning, however much that
legitimate meaning has been abused.
Not every word, however, functions like "exploitation":
some have only the force of disapprobation. Consider the
communist practice of endlessly reviling enemies as
"bourgeois" and 1'revanchist." These words have lost a11
mooring in the descriptive uses they once had. Nonetheless, their repetition induces confusion and guilt in the
victims of public hate sessions simply because they convey so much hate.
Words used as vehicles for anger will acquire negative
force, whatever the source of the anger. Neologisms like
"sexism," trailing clouds of rage at their birth, are of this
sort. The very ugliness of "sexism" itself supports this account of its genesis, for it you want to endow a word with
a negative force, it is helpful to make the word itself repellent. Calling housework "shitwork," and using the grating
sound "sexism" for those rare cases to which ''misogyny"
might have applied, plays on the human tendency to attribute the qualities of words to things, and, by the animosity implicit in flaunting ugliness, communicates the
rancor behind the word. (Orwell noted that avoidable ugliness is a sure sign of political cant.) Calling my belief in
gender differences "sexist" invites me to perceive my belief as ugly because its name is ugly and comes prepackaged with ugly emotions.
that men and women differ
''sexist" makes for sheer confusion, what of using
"sexist" to describe the idea that gender is intrinsically
important? Obnoxious as this idea may be, it is virtually
without adherents. Suttee and purdah are not features of
Western culture. Despite the frequency and vigor with
which feminists publicly identify their enemy as the doctrine that IDen are inherently superior," 3 its followers
could hold a public meeting in a telephone booth.
That the feminists' enemy here is merely nominal becomes clear with the reflection that "better" means nothing at all apart from some specification of abilities or relevant context. Mr. A cannot simply be better than Miss B.
Of course, we do speak of one person being morally better
than another, and by this we do perhaps intend a judgement of overall value. The feminist's point can hardly be,
however, that women are morally as good as men. Not
only does no one deny this, feminists themselves are constantly deploring the ''stereotype" that woman's "role" is
to civilize the naturally amoral and anarchic impulses of
the male.
"Better," then, must mean "better at this or that particular task," and men are so obviously better at some things
than women that this "doctrine," rather than being the
object of scorn, should pass unchallenged. If "sexism," for
example, means the idea that men can hurl projectiles farther than women, it once again becomes impossible to un-
I
F CALLING THE BELIEF
11
36
derstand why "sexism" is used with such heat. Is "sexism"
the view that men surpass women at some highly valued
activity, like abstract reasoning, while women are better at
other activities like child-rearing-which, outside feminist
circles, are valued as highly as anything men do? If so,
then the view in question once again becomes a factual
hypothesis, indeed a hypothesis which is rather obvious to
the unaided and scientifically aided eye. In any case, we
are back to interpreting "sexism" as a name for a group of
factual beliefs and, as I have already stressed, calling a factual hypothesis by an invidious name is sheer confusion.
The readiness of feminists to attack what no one defends- "men are better than women" -may be explained
by the observation that traits can be significant in two different ways. A trait can be important in itself: intelligence,
for example, is necessary for a variety of tasks and is valued in its own right. This is why employers may permissibly hire the brightest applicants, and why most people
enjoy witty companions.
But many traits not significant in themselves are closely
associated with some which are. People may and do heed
such derivatively significant traits because they confirm
the presence of what actually matters. Illiteracy is not intrinsically bad, but it usually implies deeper incompetence. We permit an employer to ignore illiterates who
want to be laser technicians because an illiterate is unlikely to know much about lasers. Similarly, strength is
what counts for being a fireman, but size and weight are
sufficiently reliable signs of strength to serve as proxies in
deciding who gets to be a fireman. Since we can be pretty
sure of the results beforehand, it is a waste of time to let a
5 foot, 100-pounder try to drag a 120 pound weight up a
flight of stairs.
Values and institutions commonly deplored as "sexist"
because they appear to appeal to the intrinsic importance
of gender really rest on the idea that gender is highly correlated with traits whose significance is not at issue. Take
two examples. Those opposed to drafting women do not
argue that women are women, but that women are less aggressive and less tolerant of the stress of combat than
men. (They also understand that an army is meant to defend its country, not to serve as an equal opportunity employer or a crucible for social experiments.) The pivotal
objection to conscripting women has nothing to do with
any inherent "inferiority" of femaleness, everything to do
with the ability of women to fight.
Take even the "double standard" which judges female
promiscuity more harshly than male. Despite appear·
ances, this difference in attitude is not based on the belief
that there is something intrinsically worse about female
promiscuity. Even the unanalyzed "gut" double standard
that most people still feel rests on a belief about the different psychologies of the sexes. Most people believe that
men can divorce their sexual feelings from their emotional
commitments more easily than women, and hence can
more easily satisfy their sexual appetites without risking
rejection and unhappiness. People thus believe, or sense,
AUTIJMN 1981
�that there is more likely to be something wrong with a promiscuous woman than a promiscuous man. We expectand I know of no statistical or impressionistic evidence
against this-that willingness to have sex with many partners is more likely to be associated with compulsivity and
other personality disorders in women than men. It is this
belief, however inarticulate, that underlies the double
standard, and even feminists must agree that if it is true
the double standard is more than caprice.
I believe that a dispassionate overview would confirm
what these two examples illustrate: almost all views labelled "sexist" because implying the intrinsic importance
of gender amount to factual beliefs about the sexes.4
T
of dubious relevance so certain to be raised at this point that it must be heard. It
runs that judging people on the basis of what is usually true is unfair to the unusual. What of that unusually
strong midget who could pass the fireman's test? What if
there is a female tougher than most Marines who, because
women ar~arred from combat, will never get a chance to
win the Medal of Honor? It must be replied, first, that expectations must be based on what is generally, even if not
universally, true. A sure way to fail to get what you want is
to base your plans on expectation of the exceptional. If
ninety percent of the apples in an orchard are green, it is
sheer irrationality to expect the next apple you pick to be
red. Second, legally mandated discrimination on the basis
of derivatively significant traits is relatively rare. All that
most people want is the legal right to use their own discretion. What is wrong with much "anti-discrimination" legislation is that it forbids attending to what may prove
relevant. (The whole matter is exacerbated in this country
by the alacrity with which the federal government has
overruled local jurisdiction on such matters.) Third, and
most important, it is perniciously utopian to demand that
exceptional cases have a right to be recognized. It is not
unfair, although it is perhaps unfortunate, that a potential
female Audie Murphy goes unrecognized. No one promised her she would be appreciated, no agreement has been
breached if she is not. Nobody promised you at birth that
you would enter the field best suited to your talents, but
this hardly violates some mythical right to self-actualization.
HERE IS A COMPLAINT
B
the impatient feminist might be keen to remind me that there is a middle ground. "Sexism,"
she might say, is prejudice against women and their
abilities. According to her, prejudice is a much subtler
matter than dislike of a morally irrelevant trait like gender
or race: it is the irrational retention of unflattering beliefs
about those who have the trait. A racial bigot need not believe that Negroes are "inferior" to whites: his bigotry
consists in believing on patently insufficient grounds that
Y NOW
Negroes are lazier than
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
~bites.
Prejudice, moreover, in-
valves self-deception. A bigot may believe he has an open
mind-even though he loses his temper whenever anyone
tries to change it. Finally, prejudicial underestimation typically serves unhealthy needs: it bolsters feelings of worth
by representing the Other as inferior, or forestalls guilt by
projecting illicit desires onto the Other. Perhaps, then,
"sexism" should be taken to mean the belief, held with
irrational tenacity, that on the whole men and women differ significantly.
The trouble with this new gambit is that anyone who
claims much of past and current society to be "sexist" in
this new sense must deny that there is good evidence that
men differ significantly from women, and maintain that
people would not change their minds if presented with a
disproof of sex differences. This is not an easy position to
hold.
The most ardent feminist must admit that all the available evidence favors difference. Women differ physically
from men, and act differently. Anyone who has had anything to do with little children observes that these behavioral differences appear before "socialization" takes
hold. Every little boy notices that his little girl friends'
homework is neater than his own, and that they are not so
willing as he is to fight over points of honor. Everyone
sees that fathers are usually sterner than mothers. Anyone
familiar with the artistic and literary classics of other cultures finds that they represent men and women just about
as ours do.
The feminist may deplore these facts, and she may
believe that an environmentalist hypothesis will someday
explain them, but she cannot deny them. Even she must
admit that belief in male/female difference is perfectly
reasonable. People think of the typical physicist as male
simply because almost all physicists have been male. "Liberated" movies and novels which ostentatiously present
female detectives, etc. are so jarring precisely because
their self-conscious implausibility destroys the suspension
of disbelief. My wife asks her question because many
women have derived fame from the fame of their husbands or lovers. To pretend this is not so is to refuse to
face facts and to handicap oneself at such practical tasks
as winning at twenty questions.
Even if the apparent differences between men and
women are the result of conditioning-a hypothesis that
can only be invoked after the innateness hypothesis has
been refuted and some other hypothesis, however ad hoc,
must be invoked-classifying traits as "masculine" and
"feminine" is too well founded to be called prejudice.
Even if there is a shortage of brilliant female composers
because a conspiracy barred women from conservatories,
it is not "sexist prejudice" to expect the next Mozart to be
male.
For all its contribution to modern science, the work of
Copernicus managed to convince the learned world of a
great falsehood: that things are usually not what they
seem. Descartes was only the first of many thinkers who,
shaken by the discovery that the sun's motion is merely
37
�apparent, resolved to regard his senses as liars until
proven truthful, his ordinary beliefs guilty until proven
innocent.
In fact, the instance of Copernicus and the others
stressed by such champions of scientific revolution as
Kuhn and Feyerabend are rare and anomalous. Most
things do turn out, under critical scrutiny, to be as they
seem. Bread really nourishes, water does extinguish fire,
appeasement encourages bullies, and on and on. What
science tells us is why and how these things are so, not
that they are illusions.
I stress this because the falsehood that most scientific
discoveries undo common sense is, I suspect, one of the
main supports of the currently rampant scepticism about
sex differences. Because common experience points over·
whelmingly to important intrinsic differences between
the sexes, it is inferred that the job of science, in this case
social science, is to explain these differences away. What
the history of science should lead one to expect is that, on
the contrary, deeper inquiry will explain the gender differ·
ences revealed by ordinary experience.
But the acid test of the "prejudice" theory is whether
society would abandon belief in gender differences in the
face of evidence to the contrary. This question must be
carefully distinguished from several others. Since the
belief at issue concerns general tendencies, ignoring ex·
ceptions is not prejudice. One can consistently believe
that men are better at mathematics than women while ad·
miring the work of Emmy Noether. Furthermore, a belief
may be important without being irrationally fixed, and
serve a need which is profound but healthy. A belief may
thus be painful to surrender without being a prejudice.
For instance, a man finds it important that his wife's per·
sonality complement rather than copy his own. He meets
enough duplicates of himself in the impersonal world of
work to want something else at home. The suggestion
that the complementarity he prizes is an artifact will natu·
rally disturb him. 5 But this does not mean that his belief
channels guilt or fortifies a weak ego, or that he is wrong
to demand convincing arguments before he accepts the
suggestion.
Nor is the irritation felt by many men at the (alleged) in·
flux of women into "non-traditional" fields evidence that
belief in sex differences is held with prejudicial tenacity.
This outrage is directed against coercion, not against a
challenge to faith. It is provoked by the pressure-group
agitation, lawsuits, and doctrinaire federal fiats that force
women on them. Changes that no one would mind or take
much note of had they occurred through necessity or
social evolution (like the influx of women into factories
during World War II, or the replacement of men by wo·
men as telephone operators earlier in this century) are bit·
terly resented when imposed by ideologues.
Feminists might want to cite, as proof of "sexist prejudice," those famous experiments in which graders gave
the same test a higher grade when told that the testee was
"Norman" than when told the testee was "Norma." (I will
38
not here go into the serious issues that can be taken with
the design and replicability of these experiments, or the
ways in which they have been reported.) Even this evidence is equivocal. If a professor has found over many
years that females write inferior philosophy examinations,
it is reasonable for him to anticipate that the next female
philosophy examination will be inferior. His expectation
will, of course, influence his perception, but this influence amounts to prejudice only if there is no "feedback
loop" by which a run of good female tests can correct his
expectation. A baseball scout used to minor-league incompetence can reasonably attribute a B-league shutout to
atrocious hitting rather than good pitching. His attitude
toward the winning pitcher is prejudice only if he continues to denigrate the pitcher's fastball after it has been
clocked at 97 mph. To return to those grading experiments-there is, however, no evidence that teachers persist in anticipating poorer Norma performances after a
string of good Norma tests. (It is in any case worth remembering in this connection that the tests which provide the
chief quantitative evidence for differences in male/female
aptitudes are standardized and computer graded.)
The performance of women in the military hardly challenges the belief that women cannot do some jobs that
men can, since women have been accommodated by lowered standards. Barriers on obstacle courses, for example,
have literally been lowered so females can get over them.
It is an open secret that universities have compromised
their standards to accomodate "affirmative action" and
live in dread of lawsuits filed by females denied tenure. As
a result, it is impossible to gauge the performance of
women against the standards of scholarship men have had
to meet. Such assessment is made especially difficult by
the great number of academic women who specialize in
"women's studies" and cognate made-up subjects in other
disciplines, subjects in which expertise is the ability to
perpetuate the anger that created them. Throughout
1979 the New York Times chronicled the troubles of the
First Women's Bank, floundering despite a Federal law
mandating assistance to firms with a "substantial"
number of female managers. This law makes it impossible
to tell if women can do as well as men in the realm of
finance.
The closer one looks the harder it becomes to evaluate
the acid test. There is no way of saying how men might
react to evidence against sex differences, because there
isn't any such evidence. The anthropological uevidence" is
fanciful or worse.6 The most recent psychological and
neurological research supports the view that women are
more verbal than men, men more at home with spatial abstractions, and so on.? Indeed, these studies are so decisive
that feminists have lately started to shift the focus of the
debate by trying to minimize rather than, as in the 1960's,
denying gender differences. For instance, Drs. Macoby
and Jacklin insist that of the thousands of variables they
studied, men and women differ "only" in four: verbal ability, spatial visualization, mathematical ability, and aggresAliTUMN 1981
�siveness. This is like saying that the difference between
me and Pavarotti is insignificant because he and I differ
"only" with respect to girth and the ability to sing.
Others who are at least willing to face the scientific
facts 8 stress that intra-gender variations far exceed the difference between gender means: e.g. men average about 6"
taller than women, but the tallest man is about 4' taller
than the shortest man. This is so, but it hardly shows that
inter-gender differences are trivial. Even though Wilt
Chamberlain is much, much bigger than I am, I remain
much bigger than most women.
There is, then, not a shred of support for the view that
the ordinary attitudes of ordinary people toward the sexes
are prejudice, and hence more reason to doubt that "sexism" is the name of anything in heaven or earth.
B
EFORE ADOPTING A STUDIED incomprehension toward those who find "sexism" richly informative, let
us recur to our reflections about words as vehicles
for negative emotions. One can make a kind of sense of
Hsexism" in three stages. First, take "sexism" as the fern·
inist uses it to refer to the conviction that men and
Nomen differ. Second, take her to believe that many people subscribe to this conviction and are in this sense "sexists." Third, to explain why "sexism" is a term of abuse,
attribute to the feminist rage at the existence of these differences and people's acknowledgement of them. The
feminist's usage now becomes quite coherent: "sexism"
denotes a fact of nature while expressing outrage at this
fact and its universal recognition.
If this is the real meaning of "sexism," it is a very mis·
chievous word. Its negative charge invites us not to believe-to insist that it is bad to believe-what can be
shown to be so. Insofar as "sexism" refers to sex differ·
ences themselves, "sexism" invites a negative response to
a fact of nature, a response as inappropriate as annoyance
at the law of gravity.
Only two obstacles impede attributing this array of beliefs and resentments to the feminist. (1) She herself is unlikely to agree that this is what she means by "sexism,"
and would probably repudiate it angrily. (2) Rage at the
workings of D?ture is a peculiar and perverse emotion;
such alientation is rare and should not be imputed to anyone without good grounds.
As for (I), people often deceive themselves about what
they are doing with words and about the feelings that lie
behind the ready use of a phrase. Such blind willingness
to let language do the work of thought is a hallmark of
ideological rhetoric. There is no other way to explain, for
example, the evident sincerity of politicians who call the
forced transfer of income "compassion."
As for (2), it is not hard to understand this particular
form of alienation. Modern society rationalizes tasks,
thereby making them less expressive. Male and female impulses remain to be expressed, but it is no longer easy to
tell by inspection what is a "male" activity and what is
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
"female." Warming a TV dinner is not especially nurturant, nor does riding a bus to work satisfy the urge to
dominate. Western industrial society tends to separate
people from a sense of their own gender and hence their
own identity.' Combine this phenomenon with the radical
egalitarianism and environmentalism of the last half-century,
and widespread gender confusion becomes inevitable 10
A woman who is ill at ease with her essential identity,
who has lost the sense of the values peculiar to her sex
and to herself as a member of her sex, cannot very well admit this to herself. No ego can support such self-hate,
such loss of meaning. But the emotion is there, and the
ego must do something with it. Freud first identified the
process by which the psyche resolves such tensions: the
ego can recognize an unacceptable emotion by projecting
it onto someone else. By calling her self-hate the hatred of
others, and confirming the attribution by endlessly reviling
her imaginary enemies, the feminist can transform a sense
of worthlessness into a sense of moral superiority.
Taking this to be the real function of "sexism" explains
more than how usexism" has acquired such emotional
freight while failing to attach itself to a recognizable object. It connects as well with the larger distrust of human
sexuality that is becoming increasingly evident in the soidisant "women's movement," a distrust fully compatible
with its ritual paeans to sexual activity and to abortion as a
right coequal with free speech. In addressing the fear that
further obliteration of sex roles in the interest of "nonsexist"
childrearing will increase the incidence of homosexuality,
Letty Pogrebin writes "Homophobia, not homosexuality,
is the disease of our times/' and uour fear of lesbianism
for ourselves and our daughters may really be fear of selfhood and freedom." 11
Res ipsa loquitur.
F "SEXISM" IS SO CONFUSED, why worry about it? Since
words that mark no salient fact or distinction usually
fall into disuse, it would seem that "sexism" is destined
to go the way of the names of the humours. Unfortunately,
the situation is complicated by the immense power of
"sexism" to intimidate. No one knows what the label
means, but everyone-especially politicians-knows he is
in for trouble if the label is pinned on him. People have
learned to avoid at all costs doing or saying anything that
attracts it. Feminists have thus perfected a tool for stigmatizing beliefs that they do not like but which they cannot
discredit on rational grounds. The self-evident beliefs
most people hold about human nature have been called
"sexist" so often and so angrily that continuing to hold
them now carries a heavy price. People would rather surrender them than endure the anger and internalized misgivings that holding them provokes. Feminists are not
likely to surrender lightly so apt a tool as "sexism."
A parable and a precedent may serve to suggest the
I
39
�harm done by the persistence of "sexism" in public discourse.
L Suppose an influential group of people began referring to the belief that automobiles should move in
traffic lanes as "stupidism" (or "traffickism"), a word
they always used with rage. They denounced as "stupidist" anyone who thought that if traffic were not
uniform, driving would be too dangerous. Anyone
who requested clarification about why all vehicular
institutions to date were "stupidist" was met with redoubled anger. Through repetition, "stupidism"
would doubtless come to be regarded as more than a
device for expressing rage at the way traffic works.
Eventually, ordinary people-and especially politicians-would start to worry about being called "stupidists." To avoid the imputation of stupidism, they
would, doubtless, begin to agree that traffic should
follow no fixed lanes. They would agree that to say
or even think otherwise was stupidist prejudice. Proponents of "automobile liberation" who gained control of highway policy would denounce the desire to
test the tenets of automobile liberation as the profoundest form of stupidism of all.
I leave to the reader's imagination what a day on the
road would be like.
2. In Nazi Germany, the theory of relativity was called
"Jewish physics." This meant nothing except,
perhaps, the uninteresting fact that the theory of
relativity was invented by a Jew. Enough people
used this phrase, however, and used it vituperatively
enough until-unbelievably, it seems to us-German scientists actually began to disregard the theory
of relativity on the grounds that it was Jewish
physics.
So don't be puzzled when I say words like "sexism" and
"Jewish physics" can mean nothing at all, yet do immense
harm by creating aversion to reasonable beliefs. Happily,
this conditioning can be resisted. My wife usually wins at
twenty questions_IZ
1. The 1980 Report of the President's Advisory Committee for Women
uses "sexism" freely but without explanation. The word occurs most frequently in the subsections ominously headed "Federal Initiatives."
2. The suffix "ism" suggests, often falsely, belief in a doctrine. Socialism is indeed belief in the virtues of a command economy, but "capitalism" -i.e. the practice of anyone who distinguishes what is his from
what is someone else's-typically involves no beliefs at all about economic organization. So here: "sexism" sounds like a doctrine, and "sexists" its followers. Typically, however, practices labelled "sexist" -such
as the use of the generic pronoun "he" -involve no beliefs at all about
the sexes or anything else on the part of those who follow them. Calling
your opponent an "ist" is a good tactic, since most people are sceptical
40
of worldviews and you can thus create an unearned initial distrust for
what you want to attack. I suspect that feminists avoid the word "misogyny" because it carries no connotations of system.
3. See e.g. Iris Mitgang in Commentary, March 1981, 2.
4. Judith Finn made a comparable point simply and well when testifying
before the Senate in connection with the claim that "sexism" and "sex
discrimination" are responsible for pay differences between men and
women:
"Since pay differences are almost completely caused by differences
in jobs rather than the failure to obtain equal pay for equal work,
understanding the earnings gap requires an explanation of the
reasons why women, on the average, hold lower-paying jobs than
men. Women have different job-related attributes and different
amounts of these attributes than men." [Testimony before the U.S.
Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, April 21, 1981;
(my emphasis)]
5. See Bruno Bettleheim, "Notes on the Sexual Revolution," in Surviving New York 1979.
6. For the anthropological material on male dominance, see Steven
Goldberg, The Inevitability of Patriarchy, 2nd ed., London 1977. Martin
Whyte has lately offered the Semang (HRAF, AN7) as a matriarchy in
The Status of Women in Pre-Industrial Societies, Princeton 1978. Goldberg replies in " 'Exceptions' to the Universality of Male Dominance,"
to appear.
7. Even avowed feminists concede important psychological differences:
see e.g. E. Macoby and C. Jacklin, The Psychology of Sex Differences,
Stanfmd 1974.
8. Not all scientists are. The Newsweek of May 18, 1981, carried that
magazine's millionth cover story on "the sexes," which concludes, after
much divagation and vague talk about man's ability to "transcend his
genes," that the latest research demonstrates gender differences built in
by hormones. The editors, perhaps trying to defuse the issue, quote the
geneticist Richard Lewontin to the effect that the whole question is
"garbage from old barroom debates," as if that renders the question
meaningless. Egalitarian fundamentalists are also fond of citing silly
nineteenth century phrenological theories, as if that undercuts modern
research.
9. Edward Levine and his associates have explored this topic in a series
of papers in the Israel Annals of Psychiatry and Related Disciplines (1966,
1971, 1972, 1974), Adolescent Psychiatry (1977) and The American Journal
of Psychiatry (1977).
l 0. This hypothesis predicts parallel if not similar effects among men,
and such effects are appearing. For instance, homosexuality among
black males is increasing sharply, just as urbanization, welfare, AFDC,
and other boons of modern life destroy the black family.
11. Growing Up Free, New York 1980.
12. In an essay entitled "Research on IQ, Race and Delinquency" (in
Taboos in Criminology, ed. E. Sagarin, London 1980, 37-66), Robert
Gordon has occasion to ponder the word "racism" as it is used nowadays of scientists like Arthur Jensen. He concludes that this epithet does
no work whatever: "Clearly, if a scientist reports or hypothesizes ... a
non-trivial difference, perhaps genetic in origin, between racial groups .. .
we have added nothing to the content of discourse by describing him in
addition as a 'racist.' Employed in this way, the term is simply redun·
dant. ... But 'racist' is used in a second sense .... In this sense, use of
the term 'racist' conveys something in addition to the first sense that is
not easily communicated by other means, something plainly unscientific
and gratuitously invidious." Just replace "racism" by "sexism" here and
you have in a nutshell what I have taken many pains to say. The point
itself is obvious to Gordon, to me, and I daresay to anyone who reflects
on the issue for a single moment. Unfortunately, explaining the obvious
involves lessons more complicated than what the lesson is intended to
convey.
AUTUMN 1981
�Going To See The Leaves
Linda Collins
to go to Vermont to see the
leaves, and to invite their son and his wife to go with
them. They could stay, she said, in a really nice inn,
and go for walks, and on Saturday, if it was warm, they
could find a meadow to picnic in with a view of the moun-
I
T WAS MRS. CHILD'S IDEA,
tains.
She had suggested the plan rather tentatively: there
would be a lot of driving, and it would be sure to be quite
expensive, putting up all four. Besides, she was hesitant
about making outright proposals. She preferred to agree
to the suggestions made by others.
HAnd on Sunday," she said, "there is a concert we
might want to go to. And start home from there."
But Thomas agreed at once. He said, "Yes, let's."
Elizabeth felt that he had agreed too quickly, there was
no chance now for her to explain why it was a good idea,
no chance for them to talk about Luke and his wife,
Sarah. Thomas said, "Yes, let's," in a voice that sounded
as though he was putting his newspaper up before his
face. Yes, they should go, Elizabeth needed something.
Elizabeth did want something. It had been at one time
Thomas who used to say, "Let's take Lukie out West." He
had suggested a trip to Kenya, to the Serengeti. One of
his partners had gone there and advised him to go soon
while the animals were still thriving and before Luke was
too old to want to travel with his parents. Thomas's partner
had said it would be the experience of a lifetime. But Elizabeth hadn't wanted to go and so they had stayed home
and gone to the seaside for a week when Luke came home
from camp. But recently Elizabeth thought about places
to go, where, she didn't quite know, while Thomas now
wanted to stay at home in the evening and on long weekends, as well as on his month's vacation.
Thomas did not know what made him agree so quickly
to Elizabeth's suggestion. Still, the proposal struck him as
one that would accomplish something that should be accomplished, touched his underlying understanding of
things, for even to himself his "Yes, let's" sounded too
quickly after his wife's, "Dear?"
HOMAS DROVE, although Luke had offered to drive.
After New Haven, they started north. A blue light,
soft and even, spread from one part of the sky to the
other. It was hot.
Thomas drove, looking straight ahead. Sarah sat behind
Elizabeth, looking out the window. Her hair blew across
T
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
her mouth. She pushed it away with the back of her hand.
Luke turned this way and that, trying to find space for his
long legs. His mother saw his profile and the full, sculptured curve of his lips. He ran his big fingers through his
blond hair which sprang up again after his fingers had
passed.
Elizabeth said: "We used to sing on drives."
Luke began: "Oh, the cow kicked Nelly in the belly in
the barn."
Sarah: "But the doctor said t'wouldn't do her any harm."
The two young people sang out with their loud strong
voices. They heard themselves. Their voices shook their
chests and vibrated in their throats. Sarah tried to outsing
Luke, she sent her voice from her diaphragm, a soldier in
her cause. Luke heard the challenge but would have none
of it. He had no doubt he could wrestle her to the ground,
pin her, outsing her, but she would not accept this. Thomas
sang with them, then fell silent. Elizabeth hummed.
They passed a clump of low red bushes on the grassy
divider. Elizabeth said she hoped they had not come too
early, that the leaves would have reached the height of
their color.
They drove past the domes and cylinders of Hartford.
There were many cars on the highway with out-of-state
plates.
"I wonder how many of these cars are going to see the
leaves," said Elizabeth. She had a strong response to the
idea of people being brought together; the periodicity of
things moved her, and the discovery of community in unexpected places.
Sarah opened her camera case. She loaded three cameras.
"There," she said.
"Black and white?" said Elizabeth, looking over her
shoulder. "For the leaves? Why black and white?"
"She takes a dim view of color," said Luke.
"Oh, Luke," said Sarah. "I want to try to do something
with the leaves. With the light. I don't want just to gawk
at the color."
"You know, in Japan, people swarm to the hillsides to
see the leaves," said Elizabeth, while to herself she said
that Sarah was not being rude to her, only eager about her
work.
Linda Collins's stories have appeared in The Hudson Review and other
magazines.
41
�"Well, so do we. That's just what we're doing, isn't it?
How is it different?" Luke pressed Sarah and his mother
both.
"Nobody calls them 'leafies' in japan," said Sarah.
"How do you know?" asked Luke. "How do you know
there aren't just as many scoffers in japan as here?''
"Peering out from behind screens and saying 'See the
reafies' to one another." Sarah took up Luke's scenmio
with a certain excitement. She tried to adorn it, expand it,
but Luke let it go, turned to the window, and Sarah's
voice trailed off.
Thomas said nothing. He was the driver. He was the
person behind the wheel, taking his wife where she
wanted to go, ferrying the young people. It brought a sort
of peace to him. He had, when he was young, harbored
the idea of some outcome for himself. It had been unclear
to him what it would be, but that it would be, had seemed
unquestionable. For most of his life, he had taken courage
from the thought that a task awaited him. Thomas was still
strong, still smooth muscled and fit. Recently, the thought
had come to him that perhaps the rest of his life would be
no different from the way things were now, that he would
not be called upon. Recently, he had found he could no
longer contemplate his wife in an erotic fashion. Nothing
was said about this. He meant to speak about it, but it
seemed unspeakable. He could not raise the subject. He
was not sure whether the reason was that he feared to
hurt her or that he hesitated to embarrass himself. Sometimes he wished for old age when the issue would be, he
thought, dead.
Soon they would pass Deerfield, where Thomas had
spent his years from thirteen to seventeen. As the little
school buildings came into view, Elizabeth, as she always
did, turned her head to look at them across the fields.
They seemed far away and very small. There Thomas had
played ice hockey and read Ethan Frome. In the early
morning, in all seasons, thick white fog had sat in the low
places in the valley. In spring, limp yellow strings had blossomed on the birch trees. When his parents came to visit,
they took him out to lunch in Greenfield. His father asked
him how things were going. His mother told him what his
cousins and aunts were doing. He felt very small, very
young. It seemed at each visit that he and his parents
were growing farther apart. He no longer cried when they
left. He knew it was untenable to love them.
"How come you didn't send Luke to Deerfield?" asked
Sarah.
"Thomas hated Deerfield. They snapped towels at
him." Elizabeth was always outraged that his parents had
sent him off so young and tender.
But I didn't hate it, Thomas was thinking. That he had
been lonely as a child had seemed only ordinary. He had
merely waited for the end of childhood.
In school, he had walked from building to building. He
had seen, as the morning fog lifted, the color of the leaves,
which had grown stronger during the night. No child remarked to another on the color or observed aloud that the
42
trees, which had been green when school started, were
now orange, or red. The children noticed the leaves but
said nothing.
In the autumn, he had run cross-country; in winter, he
wrestled. He grew, he felt himself to be merely the container of his strength. Who could tell how much stronger
he might become? Running through tunnels of copper
leaves, he thought of nothing but persisting. In winter
afternoons in the wrestling room, he heard the thunder of
the basketball team overhead. In january, the daylight was
gone by the time he got to the gym. Under yellow lightbulbs in their metal cages, he lifted weights and practiced
his moves. On Saturday, all honed and pure, he struggled
with another youth. His veins swelled. He scarcely saw his
opponent. It,was all in terms of something else. If I win
this match, then ... what? His thoughts carried him far,
but something lay beyond them. There was something
more than the trophy to be gained.
In the rear-view mirror Thomas caught his son's glance.
Father and son seldom spoke to one another, but each
sometimes intercepted the other's gaze. Now Thomas
swung out into the passing lane and pressed the accelerator to the floor, causing Elizabeth to sway forward against
her seat belt, and the maps to slide along the top of the
dashboard. Exhaust fumes entered the car as he passed
first one trailer truck, then another, and pulled back into
his lane.
"Thomas, my goodness," said Elizabeth.
As they crossed into Vermont, the color in the trees
intensified.
"Oh, look," said Elizabeth, as they left the Connecticut
Valley and started up into the orange hills, "this really is
the peak. We came at the right time."
I
N THE MORNING, Thomas and Luke got up first. They
met in the hall, testing the locks of the doors they were
closing upon their wives who had not yet risen. Sunlight blazed at a little window at the end of the hall.
Thomas waited for Luke to reach him. He felt a shy excitement which he was scornful of, but nonetheless he
wondered what he could offer Luke that might please
him. Luke approached, bending a little under the low ceiling of the hallway, and together they went down the uneven, carpeted stairs to the dining room.
In the morning light, between butterings and bites and
swallows, Thomas examined his son. He felt able to look
at Luke in a way he could not in his wife's presence. He
was anxious to make his observations acutely and quickly,
before Elizabeth should appear. Luke's skin was fresh, he
looked rested, but what Thomas had thought he had detected yesterday was true, his hair was beginning to
recede. Thomas reached up to touch his own hairline, but
he blurred the gesture by stroking his head where the hair
was still thick.
How old is Luke? he thought. Is he twenty-five or
AUTUMN 1981
�already twenty-six?· Thomas hoped he was only twentyfive.
Luke held his fork with the tines down and pressed a
neatly cut, five-layered mound of pancake into the maple
syrup which had pooled at the outer edge of his plate.
When the syrup had all disappeared into the pancake, he
leaned over his plate and brought the forkful to his
mouth. It was winking with syrup. When he had finished,
he drank the last of his milk, tilting the glass, and then
turned to his coffee.
"Good?" said Thomas. "Did you enjoy your breakfast?"
"Listen, Daddy," said Luke. "I know that you are worried about me. And Mommy is, too. I know that. But
don't. Or do. I know you can't help it. I will be all right."
The morning sun moved in the sky just enough to brilliantly strike the water glasses and the restaurant silver on
the table, flinging blades of light on the walls. The table
cloth was too white to look at. For that moment Thomas
felt that Luke was the father and he was the son. He
wanted to say something to Luke that would be true. At
the £arne time he wanted to say something that would
make him be the father again. He raised his eyes from the
quivering light and saw that Elizabeth and Sarah were
standing in the doorway of the dining room.
~~There you arel" said Elizabeth.
Thomas and Luke stood up. Elizabeth wore a white cardigan over a blouse with little lavender dots, and a blue
denim skirt. She was wearing pink lipstick. Her "There
you are!" had sounded so loud in the dining room that she
was surprised. She crossed quickly from the dim hall to
the bright square of sunlight where Thomas and Luke
were standing, letting herself smile only when she had
reached them. Sarah followed. She wore an olive shirt
with many pockets. When she moved her head, her long
straight hair parted in places, and Luke could see the little
turquoise earrings his parents had given her. She seldom
wore jewelry and he was glad she had put them on.
"How lucky we are!" said Elizabeth and smoothed her
skirt under her as she bent to sit down on the chair
Thomas was holding. "What a beautiful day it is!"
Luke winced at the eagerness and timidity with which
his mother, dressed like a child, had crossed the room.
Both his mother and father had blue eyes. To Luke, it
seemed that they both peered at him as if to see what was
inside his head. Their look seemed to try to exact something from him, some agreement; for instance, as now,
that it was indeed a beautiful day, and since all were
agreed on that, all of one mind, some further harmony
was bound to follow. The mild questioning look of his
mother and father peering at him made him say: "Let's
get this show on the road," but when he realized that his
mother and Sarah had not even ordered yet, he sat back,
abashed.
Thomas ordered Granola for Sarah and muffins for
Elizabeth. While they ate, the men drank more coffee,
and together they agreed on a plan for the day.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
FTER LUNCH, it took a while to get comfortable.
They shook the crumbs off the two blankets and
·spread them out again to rest on, but they had picnicked in a mown field and the ground was stubbly. Finally, they moved the blankets to the far edge of the field
under the trees where the grass was soft. Thomas was reluctant to leave the car so far out of sight, but Luke said
he wanted to take a nap and Sarah had her tripod and
filters ready and was eager to get to work. For a while, as
they carried the blankets across the field, sending up
showers of crickets with each step, it seemed they were
making too much fuss. Elizabeth tried not to seem to be
arranging things. She knew there could be a reaction
against her for being too managing, too motherly, but she
was willing, right now, to risk it. What had they driven all
this way for, if not for this? Nonetheless, as they walked,
she hung back, not to be first. Thomas took the lead, and
Luke walked with him. The sun shone through the rims
of their ears. Sarah noticed this and said to Elizabeth:
''The sun is shining through their ears." Elizabeth was offended that this young woman should speak so familiarly
about her son's ears, her husband's.
"I think Luke might go back to school next semester,"
said Sarah in a soft voice. Elizabeth knew she was anxious
lest Luke hear them talking about him.
When the blankets were smoothed out, Luke stretched
himself out on the plaid one and folded his arms over his
chest.
"Night," he said from under closed eyes.
Sarah looked at him, the length of him on the blanket,
occupying it fully.
''I'm going to take some wide-angle shots," she said,
with a lift of her chin, and she picked up her tripod and
bag and stalked off down the field.
And so, wheh Elizabeth and Thomas lay down on their
blanket, having carefully made room for one another, the
family was together, mother, father, and son.
After a bit, Luke opened his eyes and turned his head
towards his mother. She was lying on her back with her
eyes closed. The afternoon sun struck her full in the face.
A lavender vein moved stepwise across her eyelid. The lid
was rose-colored; the edge of the lid looked moist and it
trembled slightly. Her yellow-gray hair lay in flattened
coils under the weight of her head. Above her upper lip
fine hairs shone in the light, and from the red cave of her
nostril long yellow hairs emerged. Luke touched his own
nostril and felt the stiff hairs that stuck out of his nose. He
raised himself on one elbow and looked beyond his
mother. His father lay beside her. Briefly, he saw them
both up close, enormous, as though in a fever, or through
a lens. Their faces were magnified in his eyes, for a second
they occupied the entire landscape.
With a guilty heart, he sat up straight and felt in his buttoned-down shirt pocket for a marijuana cigarette. At the
sound of the match striking, both his parents opened their
eyes. As he inhaled the smoke, his father said, "Do you
have to do that, Lukie?" and he said, "Yes, Daddy, I do."
A
43
�He sat with his knees up, one arm around them, holding
his cigarette with his free hand. His parents sat up and
began to brush bits of grass off their sweaters. Leaves, the
color of apricots, with an occasional speck of light green,
were falling from the tree above.
"There's Sarah," said Elizabeth.
Sarah was at the lower end of the meadow. It was diffi·
cult to tell how far away she was. She looked tiny and
there was nothing to measure her by.
Elizabeth stood up and waved, but the sun was behind
her. "Saaa-rah." She gave a sort of yodel. Sarah turned in
their direction but Luke knew that all she could see was
the afternoon sun. They watched her walking up the
slope with her awkward, determined stride. She could as
well have been an utter stranger.
Luke gently tapped his cigarette on a rock in the wall
behind him. When he was quite sure it was out, he pinched
the end, and folded the remains in a bit of paper which he
carefully returned to his shirt pocket. Then he stood up
and in long strides ran the length of the field to Sarah who
was standing at the edge of the woods in a drift of leaves.
She watched him running towards her. The opening and
closing of his legs gave her the impression he was running
in slow motion and she started to reach for her camera,
but he got to her too soon, before she was ready. She
hadn't got the lens cap off when he grabbed her and held
his arms around her. "Oh, Sarah, don't leave me," he said.
She felt his heart leaping like an animal in a cage, she
smelled his sweat and felt the moisture on his neck and
face.
"I wasn't going to leave you," she said, but she felt, as
usual, a certain confusion, an apprehension. Why had he
lain down in the field in front of his mother and father
and taken up the whole blanket? Didn't that mean she
should leave him? How could they be going to lead their
whole lives together? Where was comfort to come from,
where was happiness? From passion? Perhaps, but it was
unreliable. Who was this man, this blond man? How had
she come to lie down with a stranger?
The sun was veiled, as a thin skin of clouds rose in the
west. As the light in the sky paled, the radiance of the
leaves increased. Something solemn and important was
happening in the woods. A chill crept over the meadow.
Luke's lips nuzzled Sarah's neck. His knee pressed between her legs. She saw the small figures of Elizabeth and
Thomas leave the far edge of the field and move toward
them over the stubble. Luke inserted his hand under the
waist of her jeans in the back and reached down to feel
her buttocks, thin and clenched.
"Luke," said Sarah, twisting about, "don't. Don't do
that."
Luke began to laugh. He wanted to wrestle with her, to
push her down in the leaves. The smell of the woods rode
upon the cooling air which poured into the meadow, carrying with it the smell of moss, of mushrooms, of rot, of
black mud, of rotting stumps and the rotting bodies of
small animals, of chipmunks, rats, mice, squirrels, of
44
everything that dies in the woods. The smell of decaying
leaves and decomposition was delicious, it appeared suddenly and turned thoughts to the secrets that lie in the
forest. Luke pressed against Sarah.
~~Later," said Sarah.
"I would like to go into the woods with you now," said
Luke.
He pressed his knee against the hard double seam of
her blue jeans. She stepped back and let herself fall to the
ground. The wind blew a hard gust. Above, the ash tree
let loose a shower of leaves, yellow, the color of dark mustard. They lay in the leaves, laughing.
"OK," said Sarah, in a soft voice, as Luke's parents,
smiling uneasily, drew near, "later."
Elizabeth slept and
woke, hearing the wind and the tap of branches
against the window of the unfamiliar room. She lay
in bed and thought about the leaves and their drying
stems and the trees they dance upon as they try to leave.
She thought about how hard it is for them to leave. The
tree sends juices, the leaf clings; the wind blows and the
leaf turns, spins, bends back upon its stem.
She went to the window and stood looking out. Her
bare feet on the wooden floor made her feel like a girl.
The room was cold. She heard the wind and saw that the
leaves were still falling in the dark. It was a grave matter
that all the leaves were falling, but she was very glad she
had come to see them.
T
T
HE WIND BLEW ALL NIGHT LONG.
in what had been a Congregationalist church, square and white, which had
been renovated to accommodate its new function.
Moulded stackable seats replaced the pews, and recording
equipment stuck out of the pulpit. On the floor, wires
trailed.
It took most of the first movement for Elizabeth to
begin to concentrate. She had to remind herself to pay at·
tention to the sound which drummed or gurgled in her
head, memorably, she thought, but no sooner had the first
bit opened into its development than it was gone. And she
couldn't get it back. She criticized herself, but at the same
time wondered if she was alone in this failing, or whether
there were others like herself who were confused.
The cellist plucked a loose strand from his bow and
poised himself to plunge in again. The cello was pale,
almost yellow; the viola was red. The two violins were similar in color, but one glittered, the smaller one. The second violinist was a woman who wore a long dress of bright
green. The dress was sleeveless and the woman's arms
were white. Elizabeth thought it was no doubt a C<Jnvenience for her not to have sleeves. A loose sleeve would
get in the way, and a tight-fitting sleeve would pull under
the arms, or at the elbow. And yet the young woman was
HE CONCERT WAS PLAYED
AUTUMN 1981
�exposed, and her arms seemed very private, with everyone looking on. Of the four players she was the only
woman. She was neither pretty nor ugly. From time to
time, as she played, she gave her head a shake, and her
smooth brown hair crested and fell back into place. The
first violinist played, and she waited, holding her violin
upright on her thigh. When he had played for several mea·
sures, she raised her violin and held it under her chin, let·
ting the bow hang loose from her right hand, watching the
other players, and nodding her head, until, with a sudden
deliberate movement, she lifted the bow and began to
play vigorously. Her thin arm went rapidly up and down.
The four leaned toward one another as they played. The
music was loud and strong. Then the three others plucked
their instruments and the woman in green played alone.
Afternoon light fell in stripes upon the listeners. In the
darkness between the stripes, motes of dust floated. Eliza·
beth held her breath. Something wonderful was happen·
ing. The music rose from the platform and spread to fill
the space above. The sound resonated upon whatever it
touched, the beams in the ceiling, the planked floor, the
walls. The first violinist and the woman in green were
playing sweetly and loudly to one another, while the
others sustained them with arpeggios. As he finished
drawing his bow and with a subtle gesture of his wrist was
preparing to return it, she was drawing hers to its tip. Her
head was bent down so her chin touched her chest, and
her arms were spread wide apart. Her face was hidden.
Only the top of her bowed head could be seen. The
sounds she was pulling from her instrument were the
sounds of tearing, the sound of something long being torn
in two. The cello and viola fell silent and then the first via·
linist stopped playing as though to honor the last of her
long trembling notes. Elizabeth thought: Then there is no
happiness. A rush of courage filled her completely, and
she thought, I can bear it, now that I know.
From above a peculiar noise distressed her. She realized
it had been pressing upon her for some time and she had
been resisting it, as though holding a door shut against a
great force, but now she gave way. She looked up. On a
ledge under one of the high windows, birds were sitting.
One fluttered out, circled and landed. The others chirped
and shrilled. It was a shocking breach. Could the players
hear? Elizabeth would have liked to do something to save
the situation, but that was ludicrous. What could she do?
Nothing, she thought, but sit there and wait it out. Dis·
tracted, she waited for the quartet to finish.
When the concert was over and the players had come
back several times to bow to the audience, which was
standing to applaud, Elizabeth turned around to look up
at the eaves. The birds had disappeared, but she thought
she saw straw sticking out from one of the high joists. The
glare of the lights caught a feather which was floating
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
down in an uneven way, impelled by whatever drafts
reigned up there.
Luke followed her gla:rrce. He put his arm around her.
"Did they bother you, the birds?" he said.
Love for him weakened her. She wanted to sit down.
She did not want Thomas to see how moved she was, or
Luke either.
"Sparrows, were they?" she asked, turning her face
away slightly to hide her eyes.
"Passer domesticus," he said, evoking thus the days
when he and she had walked together, noting the particulars of the world. She had carried with her her bird book
and little jars in which to bring home beetles or whatever
special things they should find. In this manner she had
felt she was molding him into the kind of man she dreamed
for him to become.
In the parking lot, they saw the cellist set his instrument
carefully in the back seat of his car. They said how glad
they were that they had already checked out of the inn,
that they could start home at once. Thomas agreed that
Luke should drive, and so he and Elizabeth sat in the
back.
Thomas reached for Elizabeth's hand.
"I am glad we came," he said.
"Oh, wonderful," said Sarah. "Thank you so much.
Thank you both."
Thomas fell asleep holding Elizabeth's hand. When she
saw that he was deeply asleep, she gently withdrew her
hand. Darkness gathered quickly. As the light sank out of
the air, the sky became dark blue. Sarah and Luke murmured together in the front seat, laughing occasionally.
Then they fell silent. Sarah leaned her head on the headrest. Soon she too was asleep. Elizabeth looked at the red
taillights extending far ahead and the sweep of the lights
of the northbound cars approaching. By the dim light of
the dashboard she could see the line of Luke's cheek and
his brow when he turned his head to look in the side
mirror.
"Mom?" said Luke softly. "Why don't you go to sleep,
too? I'm going to drive very carefully."
"I wasn't worrying," said Elizabeth, quite truthfully,
but nonetheless she too then fell asleep.
Although they had agreed to stop for a bite to eat somewhere near the halfway point, Luke did not stop at all. He
drove peacefully, absorbed in the task of not driving too
fast, or too slowly, in deciding whom to pass and whom to
let pass, checking the fuel gauge and the mileage. No one
woke until he stopped for the toll at the bridge. Both his
parents woke then, and after a minute Sarah, too raised
her head.
"Where are we?" she said.
"Almost home," said Luke. "You were asleep almost
the whole way."
45
�One Day in the Life of the New York Times
and Pravda in the World:
Which is more informative?
Lev Navrozov
To inform is not the raison d'etre of Pravda, for Pravda is.
no source of news for Soviet decision-makers. The latter
have for their daily information a multi-tier system of
their own "closed" (secret) newspapers like White Tass,
just as they have their own "closed" statistics, or their
own "closed" book publishing. The goal of Pravda, as well
as all uopen" media intended for non~decision·makers, is
to assure the Soviet expendable majority (which is to do or
die, not to ask why) as well as all vassals, allies, and supporters all over the globe that they are on the right (winning) side of history.
In contrast, the Western media must be informative, for
the entire population of the Western democracies makes
decisions, if only by voting, in foreign policy, strategy, and
defense, and the New York Times is the main source of
In 1971 Lev Navrozov left Russia for the United States with all of his
son, and mother (his father had been killed in action in the
Second World War). Trained both in the exact sciences (at Moscow Energy Institute) and in languages, he graduated in 1953 from the Institute
of Foreign Languages, Referents' Faculty-a facility, organized on the
specific orders of Stalin, to produce "outstanding experts whose knowledge of Western languages and cultures would not be inferior to that of
well-educated natives of the relevant countries." In Russia he translated
Dostoevsky's The Poor People and Notes from the Deadhouse and Alex·
ander Herzen into English. In 1975 he published The Education of Lev
Navrozov (Harper and Row), a work he had written in English in Russia.
Among his most important articles are: "The Soviet Britannica" (Midstream,
February 1980); "Liberty and Radio Liberty" (Midstream, January 1981);
"What the CIA Knows about Russia" (Commentary, November 1978);
and a series of reviews of recent novels in Chronicles of Culture. In 1979
he founded The Center for the Survival of Western Democracies. This
article is taken from a forthcoming book, What the New York Times
Knows about the World.
family~wife,
46
daily international news for top American decision-makers, including the President of the United States.
In short, for Pravda to be informative is a gratuitous luxury, while in the case of the New York Times, information
is a matter of life and death for the United States and the
entire non·totalitarian world. But is ~<international news"
more informative in the New York Times than in Pravda?
The top New York Times editors seem to be confident
that it is ridiculous even to compare the two newspapers.
Pravda is free to be informative only within its propaganda assignment. The New York Times is free to be as in·
formative as it wishes. Does it not follow therefrom that
the New York Times is as informative as a newspaper can
possibly be?
Who can compare the international news of the New
York Times whose Sunday edition averaged 558 pages per
issue and weighed seven pounds way back in 1967, with
that of Pravda which still consists of six pages?
In a book of generous self-appreciation written by fortyeight Timesmen," one of the contributors, Max Frankel,
says that at some point in his sojourn in Moscow as a New
York Times correspondent, he could compose a Pravda text
in advance, without seeing it, With 80 percent accuracy":
11
11
WORLD SERIES ... TASS ... NEW YORK ... The peaceloving peoples' valiant struggle for progress throughout the
world is being obscured in the American monopoly press this
month by a great hullabaloo over what American sport finan·
ciers arrogantly call a world championship. Not only the
heroic sportsmen of the Great Socialist Camp but even
America's poorer allies are barred from the games ... 1
We will see if Mr. Frankel's composition is good even as
a parody. Alas, the fact that Pravda is a sensitive and
AU1UMN 1981
�powerful totalitarian tool in an evil cause does not mean
that it consists, as Mr. Frankel assures us, of moronic gobbledygook, in contrast to the New York Times, "by every
objective criterion the most thorough, most complete,
most responsible newspaper that time, money, talent, and
technology in the second half of the twentieth century
had been able to produce," to quote Harrison Salisbury's
Without Fear or Favor.
Unfortunately, utotalitarian" and "evil" does not mean
"stupid" or "funny." Nor should it be forgotten that freedom means in particular the freedom to ascend to the infinite heights of genius as well as the freedom to descend to
the incredible depths of ignorance, stupidity, or general
personality degradation, as is exemplified by Walter
Durante of the New York Times who is now recognized,
even by Harrison Salisbury, to have been perhaps the
worst non-Communist falsifier of information on Russia
in the twenties and thirties.
So let us turn to Pravda and the New York Times as they
are, not as the "top Timesmen" assume them to be. As a
sample for comparison I take the issues of both newspapers dated February 18, 1975, a date I picked at random as
I scanned the New York Times for Cambodia-related
reports and articles.
In its "News Summary and Index" the New York Times
lists five news items as the "major events of the day." The
first of them the newspaper summarizes as follows:
International
Secretary of State Kissinger and Andrei A. Gromyko, the Soviet Fareign Minister, completed their talks in Geneva still in
disagreement over the Middle East. After five hours of discus-
sion on the Middle East, Mr. Gromyko told newsmen that
"there were questions on which our positions did not exactly
coincide." Mr. Kissinger said he concurred with that.
The relevant Pravda article is entitled "Joint Communique on the Talks Between A. A. Gromyko and H. Kissinger" and is the text of the official document so named.
The Pravda text is worth reading for seven words near the
end of the following paragraph:
Special attention in the talks between A. A. Gromyko and
H. Kissinger has been paid to the Middle East. Both sides
continue to be concerned about the situation there which remains dangerous. They have confirmed their determination
to do their best for the solution of the key problems of a just
and durable peace in this area on the basis of Resolution 338
of the United Nations Security Council, with due account of
the legitimate interests of all peoples in this area, including
the Palestinian people . ..
The sole purpose of the "talks" and the "Joint Communique" lay for the Soviet side in these seven words, "the legitimate interests of. .. the Palestinian people," which
were to be officially and publicly endorsed by the United
States Government.
The question is: why did the New York Times leave out
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
these seven words in all relevant texts of the issue under
review?
My explanation, based on my studies of the New York
Times in the last sixty years, is that the New York Times
has always tended to conceal unpleasantly dangerous
"sharp angles" of the outside world and show it far more
benign, safe, and peaceful than it really is.
Here in 1975 there still flourished detente, that is, the
unilateral fantasy that the Soviet war-regime is a peaceful,
cooperative if essentially Russian and hence outlandish
society. And suddenly this American recognition of the
"legitimate interests of the Palestinian people" (read: the
establishment of "Arafat's Cuba" at the heart of Israel).
So the Soviet rulers were pushing their global strategic interests just as before-and much more successfully owing
to the American fantasy called "detente"?
This could upset some Americans, especially Jews, and
in the ensuing panic, paranoia, hysteria, they might (God
forbid!) question the meaning of detente itself!
It is true that the tendency of the New York Times to
conceal "sharp angles" becomes strong if the (future)
tyrant and his (future) tyranny can be connected with
"Left-wing" words like ''revolutionary," "progressive,"
"independence," "national liberation," as opposed to
"Right-wing" words like "reactionary," ~<colonialism,"
"imperialism/' "fascism." However, if the tyrant and his
tyranny are dangerous enough, the New York Times
seems to be anxious to play down the danger, no matter
whether it can be connected with Left- or Right-wing
words.
The New York Times was ruthless to Lon Nol's government in Cambodia since whatever its "ineptitude" and
"corruption" were according to the New York Times, even
the latter never suggested that Cambodia under this government was dangerous to any country on earth.
But the more dangerous the regime is the more determined the New York Times seems to be to conceal the
danger, just as some individuals conceal unpleasant news
from everyone around them and even from themselves,
and speak especially well of those who are powerful and
nasty.
Certainly Hitler and his regime could be much more
readily connected with words like "reactionary" or "fascism" than the government of Lon Nol of Cambodia, "inept" and ''corrupt" as it was, according to the New York
Times. But what was the coverage of Hitler and his regime
by the New York Times?
This digression into the past will not be time wasted.
"If the international Jewish financiers (read: the United
States, Britain, and France) go to war with Germany," Hitler stated in the official translation of his speech of January 30, 1939, "the result will be the annihilation of the
Jewish race in Europe." That is, Hitler officially declared
that he regarded the Jews of Germany and any country he
would occupy as hostages whom he would kill off if the
Western democracies tried to interfere with his conquests.
47
�The intention was clear already in 1938 as Dr. Goebbels's Angriff commented on Kristallnacht, the Nazi's ostentatious pogrom of Jewish-owned businesses in Germany on November 10:
For every suffering, every crime and every injury that this
criminal [the Jewry] inflicts on a German anywhere, every in~
dividual jew will be held responsible. All that Judah wants is
war with us, and it can have this war according to its own
moral law: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
"Excerpts" from Hitler's speech of January 30, 1939, occupy pages 6 and 7 of the New York Times. But on the
front page we find an article headlined "Hitler's Advice to
U s. "
I had to read the article twice to get rid of the notion
that the New York Times was being sardonic. No, it was
dead serious. It presented Hitler's speech as Hitler's advice
to the Americans. I reproduce the article in full, down to
the last full stop:
"Hitler's Advice to Us"
Berlin, jan. 30-That part of Chancellor Adolf Hitler's
speech dealing specifically with German-American relations
reads textually as follows:
"Our relations with the United States are suffering from a
campaign of defamation carried on to serve obvious political
and financial interests which, under the pretense that Germany threatens American independence, are endeavoring to
mobilize the hatred of an entire continent against the European States that are nationally governed.
"We all believe, however, that this does not reflect the will
of the millions of American citizens who, despite all that is
said to the contrary by the gigantic Jewish capitalistic propa·
ganda through press, radio and films, cannot fail to realize
that there is not one word of truth in all these assertions.
"Germany wishes to live in peace and on friendly terms
with all countries, including America. Germany refrains from
any intervention in American affairs and likewise decisively
repudiates any American intervention in German affairs.
"The question, for instance, whether Germany maintains
economic relations and does business with the countries of
South and Central America concerns nobody but them and
ourselves. Germany, anyway, is a great and sovereign country
and is not subject to the supervision of American politicians.
"Quite apart from that, however, I feel that all States today
have so many domestic problems to solve that it would be a
piece of good fortune for the nations if responsible statesmen
would confine their attention to their own problems."
There is a story about a class at an American school
writing an essay on poverty, and one girl stating: "That
family was very poor, and their butler was poor, too." The
girl differentiated between wealth and poverty, but the
scale of differentiation was very narrow: the wealthy employ rich butlers, while the poor poor ones. The New York
Times differentiated between good and eviL Stalin's regime was good, and Hitler's eviL But the scale of differentiation was very narrow. From the article entitled "Hitler's
48
Advice to Us" it was clear that Hitler referred to "gigantic
Jewish capitalistic propaganda" and so he was an evil
man. But no more evil than Henry Ford I and other such
reactionaries who used the word "Jewish" in this sense.
And despite this evilness, the German Chancellor's
speech is presented by the New York Times as advice,
good and sensible: he is obviously for peace (the conjecture that Hitler may be for world conquest seems in the
context as outrageous as the conjecture that some poor
family may not employ even a poor butler).
But what about Hitler's warning that the "Jewish race"
in Europe would be annihilated? Surely this was the only
news in Hitler's endless verbiage. And surely this on/y
news was the news of the century, certainly so in New
York where so many Jews lived. The New York Times
tucked away this news of the century into the middle of a
paragraph, lost in the full-page expanses of Hitler's speech
far from the front page. I wonder how many scholars
found it. I have never seen it quoted or recalled anywhere.
On page 6, the New York Times printed within a frame
inside Hitler's speech a summary of the speech as a whole.
The summary is attributed to the Associated Press and entitled "Hitler's Salient Points":
BERLIN, jan. 30.-Following are important quotations from
Chancellor Adolf Hitler's Reichstag speech tonight, as contained in the official translation.
There are four salient points. In point I, subtitled "Colonies," Hitler speaks reasonably and peacefully about the
European colonial powers, though he tactfully mentions
no country. Do usome nations" imagine that ' God has
permitted" them to "acquire the world by force and to defend this robbery with moralizing theories"? The Chancellor suggests a peaceful solution "on the ground of
equity and therefore, also, of common sense."
In point 2, subtitled "Support of Italy," Hitler says, no
less reasonably and peacefully, that Germany will side
with Italy if the latter is attacked.
In point 3, subtitled "Need for Exports," Hitler explains~not only reasonably and peacefully, but indeed in
the tone of a pathetic plea-that the "German nation
must live; that means export or die." "We have to export
in order to buy foodstuffs."
And in point 4, subtitled "Foreign 'Agitators'," Hitler is
again made to present a well-justified plaint: when British
agitators rail at Germany this is considered part of their sacred rights, but when Germany defends herself against
their attacks, this is regarded as an encroachment on these
sacred rights of theirs.
So the forthcoming annihilation of the "Jewish race" in
Europe is not even a salient point of Hitler's speech.
In other words, part of the American media, including
the New York Times, had been seeing the totalitarian regime of Germany as a projection of their own American
middle-class experience. According to this projection, international peace is something like peace in an American
middle-class environment. If you have failed to make a
1
AUTUMN 1981
�deal, do not blame the other side: you have been insufficiently understanding, attentive, accomodating. What on
earth are you trying to say? That Herr Hitler does not
want peace like all of us? Chancellor Adolf Hitler is human, isn't he? Of course, he is a Right-wing reactionary.
So what? What about Henry Ford I? Study the interests of
Germany, especially in trade, try to see its side of the case
(you must admit that its grievances are just), negotiate,
resolve conflicts, settle issues, work out problems, and
sign an agreement to your mutual advantage.
Of course, the highest triumph of this kind was the Munich Agreement of 1938. On October I, 1938, the New
York Times announced it in its banner headline as: "AntiWar Pact."
Prime Minister Wildly Cheered by Relieved LondonersKing Welcomes Him at Palace
By Ferdinand Kuhn, Jr.
London, Sept 30-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had
a hero's welcome on this rainy Autumn evening when he
came back to London, bringing the four-power agreement
and the Anglo-American declaration reaffirming "the desire
of our two peoples never to go to war with one another
again."
"For the second time in our history," he told a wildly cheering crowd in Downing Street, "a British Prime Minister has
returned from Germany bringing peace with honor."
Mr. Chamberlain was comparing himself proudly to Disraeli, who came home amid similar enthusiasm after the Ber-
lin Congress of 1878.
A cynical outsider might have said that part of Czechoslovakia has just been given away to Hitler in exchange for
a piece of paper. The purpose of every conqueror is not
fighting, but conquest The fact that Hitler was taking
over part of Czechoslovakia without a single shot fired
and could and would conquer the rest in the same way
meant that he had won a war without any resistance (the
greatest triumph of every conqueror), not that he desired
~<never
to go to war."
There had been nothing like it here since grateful crowds
surged around David Lloyd George during the victory celebrations of 1918. London usually hides its emotions, and all
this exuberance was more astonishing than a ticker tape parade on Broadway.
Women Almost Hysterical
It had more than a trace of the hysterical about it. Most of
Mr. Chamberlain's welcomers seemed to be women, who
probably had not read the terms of the Munich agreement
but who remembered the last war and all it meant to them.
They flocked from little suburban homes to watch the
Prime Minister pass in his car along the Great West Road
leading into London. They stood outside Buckingham Palace
in pouring rain with newspapers over their hats waiting for
him to arrive for a welcome by King George and Queen
Elizabeth.
The crowd set up such tremendous cheers that Mr. and
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
Mrs. Chamberlain had to appear with the King and Queen
on the
again.
flood~lit
palace balcony as if this were coronation time
And here is a New York Times report from Munich itself:
"Britain and Germany Agree" by Frederick T. Birchall. Munich, Germany, Sept. 30- The whole aspect of European relations has been changed by developments today following
the signature of the four-power agreement over Czechoslovakia in the early hours of this morning.
However, something far more important happened:
The Czechs have consented to the agreement, but far transcending their acceptance in importance to the world at large
are the results of an intimate conversation between Chancel-
lor Adolf Hitler and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in
Herr Hitler's private apartments just before the departure of
the British delegation.
What is the Czech consent to the agreement (that is,
Hitler's conquest of Czechoslovakia) compared in importance to the world at large with an intimate (yes, intimate)
conversation in Herr Hitler's private (yes, private) apartments?
These results were made known in the following joint communique issued after the conversation:
We, the German Fuehrer and Chancellor and the
British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today
and are agreed in recognizing the question of Anglo-German relations as of the first importance for the two countries and for Europe.
We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German naval agreement as symbolic of the desire of
our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.
We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be
the method adopted to deal with any other questions that
may concern our two countries, and we are determined to
continue our efforts to remove probable sources of difference and thus contribute to assure the peace of Europe.
Never has a simpler document been issued in history with
consequences more far-reaching or more pregnant with hope.
If the two men who issued it stick to their resolves the peace
of Europe seems assured for a generation at least.
It is to Czechoslovakia that the New York Times devoted about one-tenth of its editorial space:
Czechoslovakia as it stood before the end of last week was
itself the product of a series of major surgical operations made
in 1919 by the framers of the Treaty of Versaille's. As the
world knows, the results of those surgical operations were far
from uniformly happy. The city of Vienna, which had been
the financial heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, became
in many ways a shadow of its former self. The German industries in Bohemia, in becoming part of the new Czechoslovak
State, were torn from most of their previous market in the old
Austria-Hungary. It is partly for this reason that they have suf~
49
�fered so severely that many factories in that district have been
shut down and abandoned, often throwing whole communities into unemployment.
made unmistakably clear to the dictators, who have hitherto
relied upon the threat of force for the achievement of their
ends, that there is a limit beyond which the democracies of
the world will not go. Whatever Hitler may have thought be·
So what was happening to Czechoslovakia was good?
No: there is a serious but.
But if the new territorial amputating and grafting process that
is now going on partly corrects some maladjustments, it is
more likely to create new and more serious ones.
In other words, the New York Times sees Hitler's con·
quest of Czechoslovakia as a split or merger of a corpora·
tion, a mixed bag of advantages and disadvantages.
The message of the editorial is to demonstrate that as
far as the still remaining part of Czechoslovakia is con·
cerned, the new split-and-merger gives it on balance more
disadvantages than advantages. True, it might have been
different:
In a world dominated by pacific sentiments and free trade,
changes in political frontiers might have only a minor economic significance. Trade relations would continue largely in
their accustomed channels, subject to those adjustments
made necessary only by changes in currency, in legal codes,
contract forms and courts, and in the incidence of taxes.
Alas, trade relations are not to continue in their accus·
tamed channels:
But the world today is dominated more than it has been for
generations by nationalism and the doctrines of protection
and self-containment. That is why the amputation of sections
of Czechoslovakia is likely to have so serious an economic effect on the part that remains.
On the editorial page the New York Times published
"Opinions on the Munich Agreement": five letters in all.
The first letter says:
The gains from the Munich settlement for the forces of law
and order are substantial and far outweigh the sacrifices.
The greatest gain of all is that the democracies set out to
enforce peace and succeeded. British and French arms
backed by American moral support brought home to Hitler
that there is a law which he could not defy with impunity-the law of nations, which though trampled underfoot
in China, still has vitality in EurOpe.
The second letter seems to continue the first:
Despite the scramble for settlement on the part of the democracies and their leaders allowing their powerful countries
to be humbled, I think that the Four-Power Pact preserving
the peace of Europe is the greatest tribute to the democratic
form of government.
The third letter assures the good New Yorkers that the
Munich surrender has
50
fore, he knows now that Britain and France are not afraid to
fight and that there are issues for which, if need be, they will
fight.
The fourth letter states that the relevant countries
have been spared untold agonies of slaughter and have saved
billions of dollars by the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia. It is right
that millions in these countries now pray and offer up thanks
for peace ...
And the fifth and last letter deserves to be quoted in
full:
To the Editor of the New York Times:
While it was good politics in Munich for Mr. Chamberlain
and Mr. Daladier not to underscore the important fact that
Hitler retreated shamelessly from the position he took up before the four-power meeting, it is deplorable that the newspapers and the public, instead of emphasizing this outstanding
defeat of Hitler's, concentrate on bewailing what Czechoslovakia lost.
If one thing has been proved beyond doubt at the Munich
conference it was Hitler's realization that threat of force for
power politics does not work anymore, and that the council
table has to replace his former methods.
Obviously, if a threat of force is of no use to Germany's future then Hitler is played out, as there are Germans with
greater competence available to settle its affairs by discussion.
Therefore, for the good of Germany and the rest of the world,
it is Hitler's defeat and not Czechoslovakia's loss that should
be emphasized and advertised.
Alexander Gross
New York York, Oct. 1, 1938
And here four months after this triumph, Chancellor
Adolf Hitler declared like an unreal movie gangster that
the Jews of Europe were his hostages, whom he would kill
off if the United States and other countries came to the
rescue of the rest of Czechoslovakia, which Hitler meant
to occupy in six weeks, or Poland, which he was to invade
late in the year.
Now we can return to February 18, 1975-to these
seven words about the legitimate interests of the Palestin·
ian people which Henry Kissinger duly signed in 1975 on
behalf of the United States government, but the New
York Times deleted.
My Britannica (1970) calls pre-1948 Israel Palestine. The
Arabs who live on the territory or have fled (though the
government of Israel invited them to return, according to
my Britannica) were first called the Palestinian Arabs, to
distinguish them from the Iraqi Arabs, for example. Later
the word "Arabs" was dropped (for brevity?) and they be·
came the Palestinians or the Palestinian people. Now,
surely Palestine must belong to the Palestinians?
AUTUMN 1981
�But there is something called Israel in the area? In reply
to this supposition, the Palestine Liberation Organization
drew in 1968 its "Palestinian National Charter":
The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of
the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage
of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural right in their homeland, and
inconsistent with the principles embodied in the Charter of
the United Nations, particularly the right of self-determination.2
Still, what is Israel? "Israel is the instrument of the
Zionist movement," answers the Charter. But what is,
then, the Zionist movement?
Zionism is a political movement organically associated with
international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist
and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods.
On October 28, 1974, twenty Arab heads of government meeting at Rabat named the PLO with Arafat as its
leader "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." The Palestinian Arabs have not elected any
sole legitimate representative, you will say. But who
elected Stalin, the co-founder of the United Nations, to be
the sole legitimate representative there of more than 100
expansion in the Middle East, that the Soviet rulers had
repeatedly tried to crack by means of wars by proxy, and
only an unpredictable counter-attack of Israeli armor had
saved Israel in 1973.
How does one know that Arafat's ~~sovereign state" may
be like Castro's Cuba? But how did one know that Castro's Cuba would be a Castro's Cuba? The New York
Times argued that it would not be: Arafat's "sovereign
state" will be small. But Castro's Cuba was even smaller
compared with both Americas, Africa, and Asia, and yet
look at what it has been doing. There is no harm for the
Soviet rulers to try out Arafat: this is only one move by
one piece on the global chessboard. If the move does not
destroy Israel, some other moves will. If Israel destroys
Arafat, not vice versa, there is no end of spare Arafats in
this world. And if the war spreads to the entire Middle
East, its oil fields will become the first casualty, which will
be of immense benefit to Soviet global strategy, and the
Soviet invasion of the Middle East will be far easier too.
Later, the Soviet rulers will restore oil production in their
Middle East-possibly with Western aid.
On November 22, 1974, the United Nations Resolution
3236 "legitimized the interests of the Palestinian people,"
that is, Arafat's armed group. The Soviet rulers (the "Soviet people"?) voted for it with eighty-eight other "nations" or "peoples," including the Byelorussians or the
Czechs who also figure as (sovereign) "nations" or "peo-
cow a "permanent representation" (a Russian term mean-
ples" because their sole legitimate representative Stalin
wanted it that way. Most democracies, including Britain,
abstained, while a few, including the United States, voted
against. In his speech of explanation of the negative vote,
the United States delegate said that the United States favored the Security Council Resolution 338 of 1973. The
resolution does not mention any Palestinian people, let
alone their interests: it called upon the countries which attacked Israel in the Yom Kippur war and Israel which
saved herself by accident to cease fire in twelve hours and
begin to negotiate.
Pravda's text of the joint document to which Henry Kissinger agreed on behalf of the United States Government
refers to "Resolution 338 ... with due account of the legitimate interests of. .. the Palestinian people." The word
"legitimate" leaves no doubt as to the meaning: "self-determination and sovereign state of the Palestinian
people" in Palestine, as the United Nations resolved. By
having signed the "Joint Communique" the United States
recast its vote in the United Nations, as it were, which
constituted the only news the "talks" and the "Joint Communique" contained and the New York Times extirpated.
This example does not mean that Pravda is truthful by
definition, while the New York Times is mendacious by
nature (as Pravda would assert). The information on the
ing both embassy and consulate). The "legitimate" (in
American side's agreement to "Palestinian sovereignty"
Russian synonymous with "legal" or "law-bound") inter-
that appeared in Pravda showed the Soviet readers that at
the height of so-called detente early in 1975, the Soviet re·
gime was expanding as victoriously as before: the establishment of an "Arab Cuba" at the heart of Israel could
nations of Russia? Arafat is a terrorist? American periodi-
cals I have happened to read at this writing, from the frivolous Time magazine to the sedate Foreign Affairs, explain
that Prime Minister Begin of Israel was once a terrorist
too. True, the PLO killed from June 1967 to September
1979 350 Arabs who disagreed with the PLO, including
Sheik Hashem Khozander, the Imam of Gazda. 3 On the
other hand, I have never heard that Begin ever touched
even the most Arab hair on the most anti-Israeli head in
the pro-Soviet Communist Party of Israel. But the fact
that Lenin killed those who disagreed with him as well,
and George Washington did not, is evidently an irrelevant
minor difference.
In unison with what was or has since become the pre·
vailing view of the American media, not to mention the
media of West-European countries, on July 30, 1974, a
"top-level Palestinian delegation," headed by Arafat was
officially received by Boris Ponomaryov, "head of the International Section of the Central Committee of the Com·
munist Party of the Soviet Union," and in August it was
announced by Pravda that the PLO was to open in Mas·
ests of the "Palestinian people" had thus come to mean
the creation of an "Arab Cuba" to be established at the
heart of Israel, this little hard nut of resistance to Soviet
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
51
�well mean the destruction of Israel, while the refusal of Israel to have an "Arab Cuba" at its heart would lead to the
"international isolation" of Israel, which would also be
helpful in the achievement of the same goaL
In general, the veracity of Pravda has been improving in
proportion to the growth of the Soviet rulers' global
might When Pravda said on March 6, 1919: "The Soviets
have won throughout the world," and added on the next
day: "The comrades present in this hall" (of the 1st Congress of the International) "will see the establishment of
the World Federative Soviet Republic," that was wildly
untrue. Such a statement today would not be so wildly untrue. Pravda does not now need to make such explicit, extravagant, or premature statements to keep the Soviet
population as well as Soviet allies, vassals, and supporters,
assured as to the "imminent victory of our cause all over
the world." Many Soviet inhabitants, whether they identify themselves with the regime or oppose it, now believe
in the "ultimate victory" of the Soviet regime without any
assurance on the part of Pravda. Because the Soviet regime has matched and surpassed American strategic
power only in the 1970s, it is obvious to them that the Soviet global game of chess has merely begun, and as in
every game of chess, the moves are tryouts, advances, re~
treats, detours, exchanges. Many Soviet inhabitants understand, for example, that the Soviet rulers keep Eastern
Europe on a loose leash just to demonstrate to their
potential vassals in France, Italy, or elsewhere that the latter will enjoy some latitude when they come to power in
their countries-if they behave, of course. Since the Soviet rulers are after the whole globe, they play with their
Eastern European pieces.
was this kind of truth-a truth in keeping with Pravda's
propaganda goaL
Inversely, the New York Times censored out the news
which could prompt some readers to question the view of
the Times that the foreign policy or strategy called detente was working to the advantage of all concerned and,
above all, the United States.
But surely this is a generally expected behavior of an individual or a social group in a democracy. The prosecutor
in a court of justice censors out the defendant's innocence, while the counsel for defense the defendant's guilt
Why should not the New York Times censor out what contradicts its view? The trouble is that the New York Times
has no adequate opposition source or adequate competitor as regards international daily news for American decision-makers. It is the prosecutor (or the counsel for
defense) without the counsel for defense (or, respectively,
the prosecutor). The evidence in the twenty years or so,
beginning with Castro's seizure of Cuba, indicates that
what the New York Times censors out usually remains
censored out in the process of decision-making in American foreign policy, strategy, and defense.
The rest of the New York Times article is sheer verbiage. In contrast to Pravda, it is not a documentary text,
but its own report, which the Times would define as "incisive news analysis" and Soviet decision-makers as Philis-
tine prattle. Whatever it is, it would be misleading in its
own way even if the New York Times had not extirpated
the only grain of news the official text contained.
In this first high-level Soviet-American meeting since Vladi-
What makes Soviet world' conquest so plausible to
vostok and the chill caused by the Soviet abrogation of the
1972 trade agreement, the atmosphere was described as
many Soviet inhabitants is not "Soviet gains" in Europe,
somewhat more formal and slightly more abrasive than in pre-
Africa, the Caribbean, or the Middle East What impresses them is the very fact that the democracies have
been allowing and even helping the Soviet regime to grow
from a militarily backward parochial country in the 1930s
to the global military mammoth of today. Just think what
will happen tomorrow! In 195 3 the Soviet regime still produced 38 million tons of steel a year as against the lO 1 million tons of the United States. In 1978 the Soviet regime
produced 151 million tons of steel, used mainly for military purposes, while the United States produced 124 million, put mainly to civilian uses. What will stop the Soviet
global military mammoth from continuing to outgrow the
democracies? If, having invested in defense since 1947
several trillion dollars, the United States does not yet
know how to defend the Middle East, for example, these
Soviet inhabitants conjecture that the United States will
know how to do it less and less.
In other words, today Pravda can often afford the truth
and thus gain credibility without sowing any doubt as to
vious sessions, but on the whole "joviaL''
The article is a projection of American middle-class life
all over again thirty-six years later-only this time not
onto the totalitarian regime of Germany but of Russia.
The incidental difference is that while the rulers of Germany were, in the columns of the New York Times,
American Right-wing corporation presidents, the rulers of
Russia are American progressive corporation presidents,
the ''imminent victory of our cause all over the world."
pleasant, warm, and forward-looking.
It will be recalled that the "Soviet abrogation of the
1972 trade agreement" the article mentions occurred as a
result of the Jackson-Vanik amendment in Congress
which tried to "attach political strings to Soviet-American
trade and interfere in Soviet domestic affairs," as Pravda
put it. Many top American decision-makers, including
President Ford (whom Pravda quotes on the subject in the
issue under review), agreed that the "Soviet Union" had
a good reason for being offended. And yet the "atmosphere" of the Soviet-American talks was on the whole
The news that the United States government agreed as of
February 18, 1975, to "Palestinian sovereignty," and thus
reneged on its United Nations vote of four months earlier,
dents, the Soviet rulers bear no grudge: Russia, Inc. is future-oriented, optimistic, positive-it looks forward to
52
"jovial." Like up·and·coming American corporation presi·
AUTUMN 1981
�agreements on world peace, international cooperation,
and everything else-in particular in the Middle East, and
this is why the Soviet side is so eager to convene the Geneva conference on the Middle East:
On the Middle East, the Russians have pressed for an early
reconvening of the Geneva conference so that they can play a
more active role. They are co-chairmen with the Americans.
The fact that the Soviet rulers (the "Russians") prepared two wars by proxy to destroy Israel and have been
penetrating the Moslem countries by all expedient means
short of the overall invasion of the entire Moslem world,
does not exist because the Soviet war-civilization and its
rulers do not exist: there is instead Russia, Inc. with its
presidents and lawyers, and naturally, they want to play a
more active role in the establishment of peace in the Middle East-in order to trade with the Middle East, travel
there and enjoy peace in general. What other earthly purposes can a human have?
The United States would prefer to see the Geneva conference reconvened while there was momentum for further
political progress and not as a last-ditch effort to prevent a
Middle East war.
Of course, Russia, Inc. is eager to prevent a Middle East
war. Still greater is its desire to add to the "momentum for
further political progress."
During the discussions, Mr. Gromyko raised the possibility
of an accord to limit arms to the Middle East. But this was in
the context of what would be in the final settlement, not as a
measure to be adopted now.
Actually, "Mr. Gromyko," that is, the Soviet rulers,
meant that the United States would "limit arms to the
Middle East" while the Soviet regime would send them to
their allies, guerrillas, and subversives in the Middle East
so secretly that no intelligence agency of the West would
know (not that it takes any special top secrecy to achieve
this). Anyway, we learn that Mr. Kissinger "dined tonight
at Admiralty House with [British] Prime Minister Harold
Wilson and Foreign Secretary James Callaghan, who just
returned from Moscow."
They compared notes on Soviet relations. The British leaders were the first Westerners to see Mr. Brezhnev since he be·
came ill in December.
Mr. Kissinger reportedly learned from Mr. Gromyko that
Mr. Brezhnev had been suffering from influenza and was
now in "fine health" although he would, by doctors' orders,
perhaps take two more weeks of rest.
A jovial meeting cif corporation presidents and lawyers:
Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Gromyko represent different firms,
of course, but they always swap tidbits of inside info.
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
Joking with Mr. Gromyko, Mr. Kissinger said he could not
compete with "the oratorical skill" of his colleague . ..
Obviously, no meeting of corporation lawyers is complete without their joking with one another, and since the
entire description is phoney, jokes may be contrived too.
The United States discerned Soviet flexibility on extending
the agreed 150-kiloton limit on nuclear explosions to peaceful
applications.
Yes, flexibility is what also distinguishes Russia, Inc. in
negotiations. In fact, the third part of the New York Times
article is subtitled "A Russian Concession." According to
the Times, it is the Soviet side, not the American one,
which made a concession during these talks. What concession is that?
Having read the two relevant paragraphs of the article,
we learn that the Soviet side agreed that the "Geneva
conference . .. should resume its work at an early date/'
not "as soon as possible," the expression on which the Soviet side had allegedly insisted before. (Is "as soon as possible" necessarily earlier than "at an early date"?) In the
Pravda text of the communique in Russian (which is as
valid as the English text of the document) the expression
is "at the nearest time." So the Russian concession" that
the New York Times espied was lost anyway in the equally
valid Russian text.
While the Soviet side is flexible and makes concessions-as a future-oriented, optimistic, positive corporation should-this is more than can be said about the
American side:
11
Later, on the way to London aboard Mr. Kissinger's plane,
newsmen were told that Mr. Gromyko had urged the immediate reconvening of the Geneva conference on the Middle
East and had accused the United States of bad faith in excluding the Soviet Union from the Middle East diplomacy.
There is no mention, of course, that Gromyko merely
repeated the standard charge Soviet propaganda has been
making: the Soviet side is so eager to negotiate, to be flexible, to make concessions, but the egotistic American side
does not give the Soviet side half a chance in the Middle
East.
To be sure, corporation lawyers rarely agree as soon as
they meet. On the other hand, all issues can be finally resolved. After all, every issue between two corporations
can be reduced to money: who pays whom how much.
And each side will finally decide that it is worth its while
to pay the required sum, settle the issue, and recoup elsewhere the money lost.
The two sides still disagreed on some aspects of the European security conference, but the Americans believe the issues can be resolved.
All that is necessary is good will and legal expertise:
53
�After their talks in the Hotel Intercontinental in Geneva,
Mr. Gromyko and Mr. Kissinger came down to the lobby to
speak with newsmen. Mr. Gromyko said that "on many of the
questions we touched, our positions were close or coincide.''
For Stalin's man, Gromyko, who survived Stalin and
Beria and Malenkov and Khrushchev, to impersonate for
Western consumption a jovial HMr. Gromyko, Russia,
Inc." is about as difficult as for Al Capone or the Godfather to trick school children.
The last sentence of the article adds to the picture of
Hdynamism and genius" of Mr. Kissinger, America, Inc.:
The Secretary will be in Zurich for luncheon with the Shah
of Iran, who is vacationing in Switzerland.
While negotiating on the Middle East (and getting a
concession from the Soviet side), on the European security conference, and even on the extension of the
!50-kiloton limit on nuclear explosions to peaceful applications, he is taking care at the same time of AmericanIranian relations right on the spot, in Switzerland. No
wonder the relations between the United States and Iran
are so good at this writing, what with the American hostages and the rest.
Pravda did not print a word of this verbiage. Why
should Pravda mislead its readers in this way? On the contrary, Pravda readers must know that the enemy made a
concession on "the Palestinian question" because Soviet
might cows the enemy, and this is what detente is about:
Western concessions, servility, self-disarmament, retreat,
surrender, hoping to placate the globally winning Soviet
regime. As for that Philistine prattle, let the Western Philistines consume it-the more the better.
What does Pravda regard as the most important international news of the day? Britain's signing of several extensive Soviet-British documents, each of which Pravda
printed in full. Those who were interested (and I prefer to
read documents rather than their interpretation by the
New York Times) could glean from them some grains of
news.
From "The Soviet-British Protocol on Consultations"
we learn that the Soviet war mammoth and the British
midget are "determined to contribute to the deepening of
the process of relaxation of international tension [the official Soviet Russian-language definition of the word 'detente'] and to render it [the process] irreversible."
The last word is the key. The natural resources of Britain are small compared with those of the United States,
not to mention Russia (the territory of Britain accounts
for l percent of that of Russia proper, excluding Soviet
vassals). When Henry Kissinger launched his detente, the
United States preserved at least the economic ability to
reverse its policy of transfer of American science and
technology to the Soviet military if the Soviet regime
openly invaded Afganistan, for example (at that time a
wild conjecture, of course). But not Britain. "The Soviet-
54
British Protocol" was aimed at making the "process of detente" irreversible for Britain. The definition of this goal
comes up again in "The Joint Soviet-British Statement"
(just as do the "legitimate interests of the Arab people of
Palestine," though Britain had abstained from the United
Nations vote four months earlier). "Irreversible detente":
the impoverished Britain would henceforth be like a hungry little fish on a big strong hook inside the bait of Soviet
imports and exports. The Soviet turn-off of British-Soviet
trade if Britain misbehaved would lead to such deprivations and dislocations that the Government would receive
a vote of non-confidence, not to mention the British trade
unions' wrath. To bite the bait of Soviet trade, Britain offered the Soviet rulers $2.4 billion in trade credits extended over five years: the little hungry fish paid for at
least part of its bait.
In the Soviet strategists' view, Britain is the most resistant country in Europe: it is the only European country
that takes defense at least as seriously (if this may be
called serious) as the United States: British and American
military spending account for almost the same percentage
of their respective GNP's, though the living standards in
Britain are lower than in the United States.
At this writing, I was interested to see how this most resistant country of Europe had reacted to the Soviet open
invasion of Afghanistan. The latest Facts on File carries an
item of three paragraphs entitled "United Kingdom Retaliates against Soviets.''4 The first paragraph can send a chill
down the Soviet decision-makers' spine. Is the little fish
off its big hook?
Great Britain Jan. 26 announced a series of retaliatory measures against the Soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan.
The second paragraph will move to laughter even the
most humorless Soviet bureaucrat:
Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington told Parliament that
the government had canceled scheduled visits to London by a
Soviet minister and deputy minister, a performance by the
Soviet Army Chorus, and such ceremonial military contacts
as a planned exchange of naval ships.
The third paragraph announces that the five-year-credit
agreement expires in February (that is right: five years
have passed since February 18, 1975, the date of the New
York Times and Pravda we sampled). Will Britain stop at
least her financing of her transfer of science and technology to the Soviet global war-machine? Oh, no. It will continue to do so Hon a case-by-case basis."
I picked up the British newspapers and learned that two
days later, on January 28, Mrs. Thatcher said in Parliament with awesome gravity:
We have announced [see above] the measures that we shall
be taking with regard to the Soviet Union . ..
AUTUMN 1981
�In addition Mrs. Thatcher said she wanted Britain to
boycott the Olympics (an awesome retaliation in itself).
Alas, the spirit (of Mrs. Thatcher) is willing, but the flesh
(of the hungry little fish) is weak, and many British sportsmen will not inflict on the Soviet regime even the griev·
ous damage of staying home.
One section of "The Joint Soviet-British Statement" as
published by Pravda of February 18, 1975, is subtitled "Bilateral Relations." Here we learn about
the cooperation between British firms and Soviet organizations and enterprises in the field of reclamation of natural resources, including oil, aircraft building . ...
Let us pause here. So British and Soviet aircraft builders will cooperate bilaterally? The Soviet regime has been
producing at least twice as many helicopters and twice as
many combat planes as the United States, even according
to what the United States Department of Defense can observe or detect. Is Britain still dissatisfied? Perhaps Britain
wants to help the Soviet regime to realize its target of pro·
ducing one long-range bomber a day? Are there too few
Soviet transportation planes to carry troops and/or material to any point of the globe?
The documents Pravda published demonstrate how
British science and technology are put at the disposal of
Soviet military growth. Britain had expelled !05 Soviet
agents. But even 10,005 Soviet agents in Britain would
hardly be able to pass so much military-industrial information to the Soviet military. Yet, as of 1975 this all-out mass
espionage was to be called henceforth bilateral cooperation and include all possible forms of transfer of British
.;cience and technology.
Once upon a time Britain acquired colonies in order to
import raw materials from them in exchange for her scientifically or technologically sophisticated merchandise and
thus support her huge population on a small island. On
February 18, 1975, in order to achieve the same economic
goal, Britain made a major step toward becoming a Soviet
colony in economic reverse: that is, a colony which would
supply the Metropolis with her science and engineering in
exchange for raw materials and thus support her huge
population on a small island. In other words, just as Gambia was once a "raw-materials appendage of Britain" (as
Soviet propaganda puts it), so Britain began to move towards becoming a "science and technology appendage" of
the Soviet global military machine, and this is the news
Pravda of February 18, 1975, reported by publishing the
relevant documents.
The New York Times, which had printed the voluminous verbiage of the "Pentagon Papers," did not find an
inch of space for these documents. Instead, the New York
Times printed again a report of its own, from Moscow
"special to the New York Times." As nearly all "reports
from Moscow," the text could well have been written on
the New York premises of the New York Times. It is based
on the same American middle-class projection: the news is
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
that America, Inc. has been outpaced by Britain, Inc.
which landed a huge hunk of trade with Russia, Inc.:
The announcement of the British credits tended to bolster
Moscow's contention that it could find trading partners elsewhere in the West. In renouncing the 1972 trade agreement
with the United States last month, the Russians expressed
particular annoyance over the low credit ceiling, which is in
addition to about $600-million of loans already outstanding.
The United States does not want to sell on credit what
the Soviet rulers want? Then Britain will:
The credits, which Mr. Wilson said would be less than
£!-billion ($2.4-billion) are part of a broader program for
economic cooperation that was signed today. Mr. Wilson
characterized it as possibly "the biggest breakthrough in Anglo-Soviet trade that I have known."
Trade, cooperation, good relations:
The warm tone on which the British visit ended showed
that relations between the two countries had emerged from
the chill into which they were thrust after London expelled
105 Soviet diplomats on espionage charges in 1971. The
Kremlin accepted an invitation for Mr. Brezhnev, Mr. Kosygin, and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko to visit Britain.
But why does the Soviet global military mammoth keep
spies in little Britain by the hundred (or by the thousand)?
Because it fears Britain's invasion of Russia? Or because,
on the contrary, Britain is for the Soviet rulers just another Czechoslovakia, or Afghanistan, or indeed, Ukraine?
In terms of the middle-class projection, the only New York
Times answer is that Russia, Inc. kept those 105 spies in
Britain, Inc. in order to improve trade relations between
the two corporations.
Before Henry Kissinger's detente there was a practically
universal embargo on strategic trade with the Soviet re·
gime. After the embargo was repealed, each ally of the
United States began to reason that if it refrained from a
trade deal accelerating Soviet military growth, another
country would seize the opportunity. Henry Kissinger destroyed-possibly forever-whatever economic unity existed among the allies of the United States as against the
Soviet regime. If Hl'nry Kissinger were in charge of for·
eign policy in Russia, for that alone he would have been
put on trial and shot. But since he is on the other side, he
shines at this writing, as ever, and the Soviet rulers cer·
tainly owe him a monument for the destruction of a world
economic alliance against their war~regime.
Anyway, the state of world trade after the undoing of
the embargo on trade with the Soviet regime fits well the
misperception of the New York Times: the world as just so
many corporations vying with each other to sell Russia,
Inc. whatever it wants and on terms it chooses:
Mr. Wilson defended the decision to offer the low-interest
credits at a time when Britain has been hit by recession, while
55
�the Soviet Union has been increasing its foreign currency
holdings with greater oil profits. Moscow has already concluded deals for cash with other Western countries, notably
West Germany.
Or look at France, Inc. Only America, Inc. falls behind,
punishing itself:
The British credit falls short of the $2.5-billion extended by
France in a trade agreement signed last December. However,
it is seven times more than the $300-million limit set by the
United States Congress on Export-Import Bank loans to the
Soviet Union in a four-year period.
Let us now proceed to the third of the five "major [in·
ternational] events of the day" according to the New York
Times.
"World crude-oil prices have begun to sag noticeably
under the impact of reduced consumption by the indus·
trialized nations." No figure for this "noticeable sag." Is it
l, 2, 3 percent? Of what importance was this "sag" if the
OPEC countries had been raising the prices 100, 200, 300
percent? The New York Times ascribes this "sag" to "re·
duced consumption" because this tends to support the
view that the newspaper has been advocating throughout
the 1970s. In his lengthy article (February I, 1980) to
which the New York Times referred editorially with approval and which was put on the Congressional Record
twice in the same month, George Kennan says: "If the
Persian Gulf is really vital to our security, it is surely we
who by our unrestrained greed for oil have made it so."
One wonders whether it is America's greed for the fifteen raw materials without which the American economy
cannot function that has made the rest of the outside
world so vital to American security. Must the United
States overcome its greed for these fifteen critical raw materials and let the rest of the world go Soviet?
The "greatest real threats to our security in the area remain what they have been all along," Mr. Kennan says after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Predictably, the
Soviet invasion is not one of these threats. They are: "our
self-created dependence on Arab oil and our involvement
in a wholly unstable Israeli-Arab relationship." Not the Soviet involvement in this relationship, to be sure.
Let us assume that the United States has overcome its
greed for oil, and so has no need of the Middle East,
which duly becomes Soviet. As a result, the Soviet regime
will have additional hundreds of billions of dollars annually from oil alone, which means as many dollars for Soviet
global military power. Where will the United States take
additional hundreds of billions of dollars annually to invest in defense in order to counter the Soviet investment?
In other words, on February 18, 1975, the New York
Times front-paged an accidental annual or monthly crudeoil price fluctuation to support its view (which is as frivolous as it is lethal) and give it thereby the front-page
weight of a "major event of the day." Naturally, Pravda (or
1
56
1
any other newspaper in the world) did not mention it because it was not an event, whether major or minor.
The fourth "major [international] event of the day" according to the New York Times is another failure of the
Cambodian Government in its war against the "communist insurgents." Here the view of the New York Times
and that of Pravda (that is, Pravda's owners, of course) coincide in the sense that both newspapers assure their
readers that the Cambodian Government is doomed and
the sooner it will fall the better.
The reports on Cambodia in both newspapers are
wrapped in unmitigated gloom (for the Cambodian Government) except one paragraph describing the American
airlift. In Pravda this paragraph is as follows:
Washington, 17. (TASS). The United States has started an
airlift to supply the Phnom Penh regime with additional military material and ammunition. According to the Washington
Post, the first of those transportation planes, DC-8s, which
belonged to American Airlines and which the Pentagon has
chartered, has arrived in the capital of Cambodia.
The corresponding paragraph of the New York Times is:
With the Mekong blockaded, the Americans have expanded their supply airlift from Thailand. The airlift,
technically being handled by civilian contractors but actually
run from beginning to end by the American military, is mostly
devoted to ammunition so food and fuel are increasingly
scarce.
Food and fuel increasingly scarce? But the next para·
graph says that "rice and fuel stocks, if stretched carefully,
can last well over a month and even two months or more."
Does the New Yark Times expect the airlift to carry food
and fuel to the city three, four, or more months in advance? Does New Yark have food and fuel stocks for
three, four, or more months?
The differences between this paragraph of Pravda and
that of the New York Times can be outlined as follows:
Pravda
The New York Times
With Cambodia's defeat made
to seem imminent, Pravda emphasizes American involvement to show that even the
United States is so weak that
it can no longer defend any
country. Whether the planes
belong to American Airlines or
the Pentagon is immaterial.
Both are ultimately at one and
against us.
At the same time, Pravda
does not want to assure its
readers in advance that the
American airlift is ineffective
The New York Times emphasizes the wily wickedness of
the American military: they
have hired civilian contractors
for the airlift, a loophole in the
struggle led by the New York
Times against the American
aid to Cambodia.
The New York Times wants
to assure its readers that anything would be futile: that the
airlift is "mostly devoted to
ammunition," instead of carryAUTUMN 1981
�or futile: no one can predict its
outcome, and Pravda does not
want to commit itself and later
look foolish. Our side is winning, but temporary setbacks
are always possible.
ing also food and fuel to replenish the city's stocks three,
four, or more months in advance. The Cambodian Government is bound to lose, the
American aid must be stopped.
The fifth and last "major [international] event of the
day" according to the New York Times is the theft of pictures at the Municipal Museum in Milan. I am sure that
for a large part of the Western media (such as the other
two major newspapers of New Yark) this was the most important international news of the day or the only such
news worth reporting. Pravda ignored it.
Pravda was called by a Western newspaper the most
boring newspaper in the world. It is true in the sense that
Pravda feels no more obliged to be entertaining than does
the American Congressional Record or a CIA report. But,
having treated the theft as a major international event of
the day, does not the New York Times try to relieve its
boredom not by interesting information, which is so hard
to obtain, but in the same easy way the New York Post
does? Does not the New York Times mix the boredom of
Pravda (minus some of Pravda's grains of information) and
the entertainment of the New York Post?
So much for what the New York Times regards as the
five major international events of the day. Let us now take
a couple of international news items of the New York
Times which are not major events, according to the New
York Times.
On page 8 we find that in the "new winter-spring campaign" in South Vietnam the Vietcong forces, "with large
numbers of fresh North Vietnamese regulars," had "scored
their biggest gains in the Mekong area since the 60s."
This is no major international event. True, some read-
ers of the New York Times could still remember that on
January 27, 1973, the Paris peace agreement on Vietnam
had been signed after years of negotiations. So the Soviet
rulers, who were behind both the war in Vietnam and the
peace agreement in Paris, had treated the United States
But what about vast Soviet help (which is not even
mentioned)? If such exists, it is evidently part of the natural balance of forces. The Soviet rulers are part of the
nature in any country: it is the United States which is extraneous, foreign, aggressive everywhere. A truly minor
event this war is, a reassertion of the natural balance of
forces, a play of nature, as one might say. Who can compare this event to the theft of pictures in Milan or the
noticeable sag of crude-oil prices allegedly as the result of
reduced consumption!
As for Pravda's coverage of this war, here Pravda proves
that it is a totalitarian newspaper. The New York Times
can blot out or distort an event reported by the rest of the
media. But it cannot ignore it forever if the rest of the media persists. Now, according to Pravda, the war does not
exist. Of course, Pravda readers know about it from foreign radios. But Pravda does not risk the report: what if an
American Senator's aide finds such a report in Pravda?
Here you are (he will say): Pravda admits that North Vietnam's perfidious all-out invasion is fully on.
Pravda ran a three-paragraph item entitled "Repulsing
the Violators of the [Paris Peace] Agreement" only about
a month later, on March 14, 1975, after the Soviet rulers
had understood beyond all doubt (if only from the New
York Times' reports and editorials) that the top American
decision-makers regarded the Soviet perfidious all-out attack by proxy on an American ally as something having
nothing to do either with the United States or the Soviet
rulers.
Recently [days, weeks, months ago?] the Saigon administration has extended provocations aimed to undermine the Paris
agreement on Vietnam.
Fortunately, in South Vietnam there already exists the
legitimate government of South Vietnam: the Provisional
Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (the PRG of RSV). The PRG of RSV will not allow
the "Saigon administration" to violate the Paris peace
agreement.
11
Government as so many fools and used the peace" agree-
ment to prepare and launch an open all-out attack and
win the war. The impression the article creates, however,
is that this attack, brazen, perfidious, contemptuous of
the United States, is some remote war of two obscure
tribes neither of which has anything to do with the
United States, not to mention those jovial corporation
presidents and lawyers of Russia, Inc.
Besides, South Vietnam is not really endangered, according to the article. "So far most of the Communist
gains have come in the more peripheral parts of the
delta."
Some Vietnamese and Westerners therefore believe that
what is happening is a reassertion of the natural balance of
forces, which had been artificially extended in the Government's favor by vast American help.
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
In response to the appeal of the PRG of RSV, the People's
Armed Forces of Liberation of South Vietnam are repulsing
with determination the violators of the Paris agreement.
Then for two weeks Pravda is silent again. On March 28,
1975, Pravda runs a report entitled "Situation in South
Vietnam." What is the situation? The same as before.
True, Pravda now says openly, the Provisional Government of the Republic of South Vietnam governs most of
South Vietnam, and surely South Vietnam must be gov·
erned by its government, not the "reactionary Thieu
clique, stubbornly violating the Paris agreement on Vietnam," as Pravda puts it, quoting the newspaper Nyan Zan
which the "legitimate" government of South Vietnam
publishes.
Pravda does not lie when the truth is to the Soviet rul-
57
�ers' advantage. But when Pravda is called upon to lie, it
lies with the same limitless insolence, professional skill,
and almost inhuman hypocrisy with which it lied on the
6th of November of 1917 when Lenin's troops attacked
the democratic institutions of Russia, while Pravda an·
nounced that we were being attacked.
The other report of the New York Times which it does
not list as a major international event of the day, but which
is remarkable in its own way, is an especially serene lOQQ.
word fantasy by Flora Lewis entitled "Security Talks
Moving to Finale." Since many Soviet decision*makers
are male chauvinists, they would classify this report as a
starry·eyed housewife's chatter rather than (male) Philis·
tine prattle.
There has been a great deal of difficulty over the wording
of the agreements. For example, a Soviet draft used "important" where a Western draft said "essential."
So this is the stumbling block. Otherwise the Confer·
ence on European Security and Cooperation, working on
what was later called the "Helsinki agreements," ushering
in a new era in the history of mankind, is "moving to finale." Take the third section of its epoch·making agree·
ments, for example:
The third section, on human contacts and exchange of information, caused problems last year, but has now been advanced to the point where only a few details are in dispute.
What details?
There was an argument over whether a clause on information should provide for "public access" or "access by the
public."
tution named after Patrice Lumumba, a "hero of African
liberation," has young people from eighty·nine countries.
This is where future Walter Ulbrichts or Fidel Castros
study and are studied in vivo, to be selected in order to be
trained, introduced to their fellows·in·arms, and helped to
come to power in their respective countries: the most am-
bitious and lucrative profession of today, Soviet satrap.
This is the breeding ground for the young personnel of
the Soviet global political infra·structure. This is where
the Soviet global empire is built.
A grand meeting in honor of the 15th anniversary of the
Friendship-of-Peoples University named after Patrice Lu-
mumba, with the awarding of the [Friendship·of.Peoples] Or·
der to commemorate the event, was held on February 17 in
the Kremlin Palace of Congresses.
The Pravda article is heavy, oppressive, monumental, as
befits the builders of the totalitarian world empire. But it
is informative compared with Flora Lewis's daydreams,
for example.
Elected unanimously as the Presidium of Honor was the
Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union, with Comrade L. I. Brezhnev, General
Secretary of the Central Committee, at the head.
This is a university that enrolls young people of eighty·
nine countries. Foreign diplomats and correspondents are
present at the ceremony. Yet even before it begins, these
future doctors, engineers, scientists (and/or subversives,
guerrilla fighters, "revolutionary leaders") of eighty·nine
countries elect unanimously the Soviet Politburo as grand
supranational sovereign over them all, while the present
governments of their eighty.nine countries are not so
much as mentioned.
So in the Soviet regime there will be "public access" or
"access by the public" (the problem is only to decide which)
to exchange of information, not to mention human contacts. The conference is,
The speaker is B. N. Ponomaryov, that same "man in
charge of the globe" who legitimized in the person of Ara·
fat the "interests of the Palestinian people":
as one delegate described it, the only way "to transform detente from just a matter of states to something for individuals,
with human meaning."
Great Lenin was the first man to enunciate and champion
the right of the people of the colonies to self-determination
and national sovereignty. Our country fought for many years
to realize this principle. The debacle of the colonial empires
was the triumph of Lenin's great idea.
As of February 18, 1975, Flora Lewis is still living in a de·
tente which is just a "matter of states" (the invasion of the
state known as South Vietnam, in violation of an agree·
ment, being a remote irrelevant reassertion of the natural
balance of forces). But new agreements (also signed by
Henry Kissinger?) are to "transform detente from just a
matter of states to something for individuals, with human
meaning." As a Soviet lady journalist jeered off the record
on a similar occasion: uOne feels like singing, laughing,
dancing.''
Let us turn back to Pravda. "True to Lenin's Behest:
Patrice Lumumba Friendship·of·Peoples University is
Awarded Friendship·of·Peoples Order." The Soviet insti-
58
What next?
In their struggle for their economic independence, the developing countries are more and more determined to nationalize the property of foreign corporations [the Soviet regime's
property and personnel in these countries being sacred, of
course] and to take other measures assuring their sovereign
right to dispose of their national resources, as well as to con·
duct joint coordinated practical activity in defense of their in·
terests.
HThis course of events," Ponomaryov remarks with
grim satisfaction, "is obviously not to the taste of imperial·
AUTUMN 1981
�ism" (that is, any group which resists Soviet global expansion).
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics challenged them all,
liberated mankind, and saved civilization.
The imperialist powers do their utmost to arrest the progressive changes in these countries and keep these developing
states within the orbit of capitalism.
Our ideological enemies have set afloat the slanderous
myth of "superpowers." Of course, the Soviet Union is a
mighty power. But its might has not been created at the expense of exploitation of other peoples. It has been produced
by our people's labor.
The imperialist powers will fail. Bear in mind growing
Soviet global military might:
However, the international balance of forces has tipped
drastically and continues to change in favor of socialism and
progress [both of which the Soviet Politburo incarnates]. Under these conditions, the imperialists' possibilities to impose
their will on other nations become more and more limited.
The sub text of the message cannot be clearer. Young
people of eighty-nine countries! Do you see what is happening in Vietnam? Our side is winning after the United
States has paid with more than $100 billion and more
than 50,000 American lives to defend its ally against our
side. You will win in your country if you are with us. And
if you are against us, you will lose, as the South Vietnamese who defended South Vietnam are now losing, and the
United States makes believe that this has nothing to do
with them or with us.
We are on the eve of a great day, the thirtieth anniversary
of the victory over Hitlerism. It is common knowledge that
the Soviet Union sustained the he_aviest losses in this war and
made the decisive contribution to the rout of Hitler's Germany, to the liberation of the peoples of Europe from fascism, and to the rescue of world civilization.
How is this relevant to the eighty-nine countries today?
The lessons of World War II remind us of the need to maintain vigilance constantly and wage an uncompromising struggle against the aggressive plans of imperialist reaction trying
to impede the process of relaxation of tension [the official Soviet definition of detente].
Without naming the United States, the speaker makes
it clear that the United States has become a superpower
by exploiting the poor of the world.
In other words, Ponomaryov is propounding what may
be called "global Marxism." According to Marx, the rich
in each country have become rich at the expense of the
poor (who are poor as a result). The poor must rise in arms
and expropriate the rich. "The expropriators are expropriated!" said the Communist Manifesto of 1848. Obviously,
the same can be applied on the global scale to the rich
(countries) versus the poor (countries). There are dozens
of millions of "haves" in the United States, and hundreds
of millions of "have-nots" in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Why not sick these "masses of the underprivileged"
on the "handful of the rich"? It was done successfully in
Russia, Bavaria, Hungary way back in 1918. Why cannot it
be done globally-with the aid of the Soviet global armed
forces?
Ponomaryov's speech may be summed up by the following statement of his: "Domestic national policy of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union has found its extention on the international arena." If, indeed, the Soviet
regime was able to subjugate in the early 1920s the Moslem nations of Central Asia, it can absorb those of the
Middle East, for geographically and historically the Middle East is an extention of now-Soviet Central Asia. If the
Czechs or Eastern Germans fell under Soviet sway with
no more resistance than the Ukrainians or Estonians did,
the same strategic techniques can successfully be applied
to West Germans or North Americans. Ponomaryov is a
universalist: he believes that human nature is basically the
same everywhere-in Moscow, Kiev, Prague, Berlin, or
In other words, on one side, the side of goodness, is the
New York.
Soviet Union, detente, peace, progress, socialism, those
Neither the ceremony nor Ponomaryov's speech are re-
Western capitalists who sell the Soviet rulers strategically
important merchandise on credit, the young people of
eighty-nine countries, world civilization. On the other
side, the side of evil, is Hitlerism, Hitler's Germany, fas-
ported in the New York Times: The Soviet building of a
global totalitarian empire is screened out by the newspaper.
The other news of Pravda and the New York Times reduces to minor items which can be listed as follows for
brief comparison:
cism, all who are against detente, reactionaries, war, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism.
To someone like the philosopher Sidney Hook, this
Manichaean dichotomy may seem absurd. But to many
young people of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and indeed,
Europe and the United States, it may look like an ade·
quate general picture of history today. Some of them may
even believe that the capitalist United States and the
colonialist British Empire were at one with the reactionary Nazi Germany, while the freedom-loving progressive
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
The New Yark Times
"Syria Bids Arabs Bar A Limited Peace." "Syria" is against
Israeli-Egyptian rapproche·
Pravda
"Syria's Stand." The item
shorter, but no less perfunctory, superficial, empty.
ment.
59
�4
"Makarios Requests U.N.
Council to Meet." "The Cyprus Government of President
Makarios called tonight for an
urgent session of the Security
Council .... Nicosia is believed
interested in the Soviet proposal that the whole Cyprus
situation be taken up at a large
conference." The report does
not cite a word of the Makarios statement.
Statement by Makarios."
"I value highly the stand taken
by the Soviet Union on the
problem of Cyprus, as expressed unequivocally in yesterday's TASS statement,"
declared President Makarios of
Cyprus. " ... We are grateful to
the Soviet Union for its opposition to the Turkish community leaders' arbitrary decision
to proclaim an isolated state."
"Ethiopia, Battling Secessionists, asks U.S. for Airlift of
Arms." The article does not
say or imply that the Soviet regime regards the "military government" of Ethiopia to be on
the Soviet side, according to
Pravda. "United States officials indicated that there was
reluctance to comply with the
Ethiopian request" for arms
because Syria, South Yemen
and Libya will not like it: they
have been aiding the secessionists of Eritrea. The world
is construed by the New York
Times as a mosaic of totally
independent countries: Ethiopia, Eritrea, Syria, South Yemen, Libya.
"For the Sake of Unity." A
300,000-strong demonstration
in the capital of Ethiopia to
support the "military government" in its war to keep Eritrea from secession. It is clear
frOm Pravda that the "military
government" is "on our side."
Small tyrants are likely to be
eventually on the Soviet side.
A tyrant will want the democracies to comply with his tyranny. They will finally waver.
The Soviet rulers will never
waver unless his tyranny is
against theirs.
"Yugoslavs Sentence 15 as
Secessionists." Why Yugoslavs?
Is the regime and "Yugoslavs"
the same?
"Yugoslavia: Subversives on
Trial." The "defendants have
close ties with extremist emigre elements in the West.
'
The other news items do not overlap: Pravda ignores
the news items of the New York Times and vice versa.
The New York Times
Pravda
"The United Kingdom: Can it
Survive?" Secession of various
parts of England: "it is not impossible that the United Kingdom, as we know it today, will
cease to exist."
"Insolent Challenge." Spain
has the insolence of sending
warships to its bases in Africa,
though every sane person
knows that only the Soviet regime can have bases all over
the globe.
"Pakistan Charges Afghan Subversion." "Afghanistan ... has
supported a demand ... for an
independent state to be carved
out of Pakistani territory." No
Soviet involvement at present
or in future is conjectured.
"NO! to Bases." A week of
protest against imperialist (that
is, American or NATO) bases
in the Indian Ocean has begun in Sri Lanka. The global
system of Soviet military bases
is growing without anyone's
protests.
60
"Released Koreans Allege Torture for Confessions." According to this article reprinted
from The Times, London, the
participants in the "demonstrations against the authoritarian constitution" in South
Korea in 1974 have been released and "charge today" that
they were tortured by the
"Korean CIA." Why is the al1leged torturing organization
called the "CIA"? Is the CIA
the world's only institution of
torture?
"The worst days were the
rainy days. I hated them.
The C.I.A. would use the
sharp ends of their umbrellas to prod us around the
cells."
Wait for a rainy day to use umbrellas for torture. The "CIA"
could not use them very well
on a fair day, could it? I doubt
that Pravda would print something so flippant or unintentionally comical.
"Chile: The Tragedy Continues." Pravda is after what may
be defined as an ideal democracy, of the kind the United
States would have been if Senator McGovern had been
elected President, as the New
York Times wished. The motives of the two newspaper~
are different, of course. Pravdd
is after an ideal democracy in
the "target countries" because
it is, according to the Soviet
rulers, the best form of government to be first neutralized
and finally destroyed. Therefore, Pravda is at least as sensitive as the. New York Times to
any violation of an ideal democracy. At the same time,
the article on Chile is very sedate. No torture is alleged, and
the article merely soberly
notes that "even the [Chilean]
authorities admit. that thousands of political prisoners
languish in the prisons of
Santiago alone."
"Saigon Drops Case Against
Six Papers." The Government
of South Vietnam, which the
New York Times calls in its
editorials "totalitarian," has
dropped libel charges against
six newspapers, and so they
can go on publishing allegations of the corruption of the
Government, while the invasion of South Vietnam, a minor event of the day, is on,
to obliterate the "totalitarian"
Government, its alleged corruption, the independent
newspapers, their allegations,
and all.
"Here Where the Chilean junta
will be on Trial." "It is here, in
the Palace of Arts in the capital of Mexico," that the third
session will be held investigating the ''crimes of Chile's military junta." The relevant
"manifesto" has been "signed
by a number of organizations,
including the youth organization of the ruling InstitutionalRevolutionary Party of Mexico." With this sort of social
atmosphere, no wonder the
Soviet rulers were preparing a
Cuba-like coup in Mexico, and
only a Soviet defector frustrated it.
"Ford Preparing Busy Schedule of Trips Overseas in the
FalL" "One source ... said
that Mr. Ford would like to be
on hand to sign personally any
Helsinki agreement." There is
not a hint that the value of this
action is equivalent to Mr.
Ford's being on hand to sign
personally shopping bags before TV cameras, while its
harmfulness goes much
deeper than meets the eye.
"U.S. President's Interview."
Said President Ford, as translated from the Russian of
Pravda: "In the United States
there are many people who realize~and will realize even
better in future-that the abrogation of the Soviet-American trade agreement resulted
from ill-thought-out decisions
in Congress."
AUTUMN1981
�"Gulf Oil Officials in Soviet
Talks." Officials of the Gulf
Oil Corporation started talks
"Preparations for the Conference." No, not the peace conference Flora Lewis reports,
today with the Soviet Government to explore the possibility
but the "power conference"-
of helping to market Soviet
oil."
"U.S. Tuna Men Held in Ec·
uador Are Bitter and in Fight-
ing Mood." A IOOO.word piece
about American tuna fishermen wishing to fight for the
right to fish within the 200·
mile limit off Ecuador though
fifty countries have established the 200·mile limit for
their territorial waters.
"Foes
Intensifying Drive
Against Mrs. Ghandi.''
the "conference of communist
and workers' parties of
Europe."
"Victory of Progressive
Forces." The "candidate of
progressive pardes" was
elected mayor of Kyoto yesterday. Thus, "among the ten
biggest cities of Japan, seven
have mayors representing the
parliamentary opposition, including the Socialist and Communist Parties."
"India: Women's Day." Prime
Minister Gandhi: all women of
the world, unite!
"Vorster Verifies Visit to
Liberia."
Turkey).
"Italians Preparing to Send
"Gambia Yesterday and To-
U.S. Extradition Request for
day" provides a specific illustration of Ponomaryov's global
approach.
Sindona," a run-away Italian
banker.
"Saudi Denies Price Talks
"Riots of Reactionaries" (in
With Kissinger Over Oil."
"Situation on Madagascar."
The "military directoriat"
Kissinger is said to have tried
to impel Saudi Arabia to have
(Pravda would not call "junta"
a junta it favors)" of the Mala·
a heart and bring down the
gasy Republic" smashed the
price of oil sold to the United
States (oh, the power of Kiss·
HQ of the Malagasy Socialist
Party and killed sixteen people
in the process. Pravda regards
inger's diplomacy). However,
Saudi Arabia denies alL
this little massacre of Socialists
as a victory for socialism, that
is, the Soviet rulers' power.
There are several more such news items in both newspapers, but we may as well stop here, observing that in the
volume of international news data, the issue of Pravda (six
pages) roughly matches the New York Times. International
information fills the bulk of Pravda, and its presentation is
mostly concise and factual, if not documentary, while in
the New York Times it is scattered like islands over the
vastness of the newspaper, and is mostly chatty.
The conclusions?
The international information in both newspapers is su·
perficial, easy-to-obtain and insipid (I disregard the enter·
tainment, such as the reporting of a theft in the New York
Times). Both newspapers shape whatever meager information they have to fit their respective views (motives or
goals).
Pravda's mendacity is instrumental: it is a professional
propaganda tool of Soviet global expansion. The mendac·
ity of the New York Times is motivated in particular by its
narrow-minded spineless middle class desire to wrap itself
in its middle-class experience, screen out the outside
1HE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
world, and to substitute an easy fantasy spun out of this
experience. Pravda deceives only others; the New York
Times deceives itself as well.
Apart from individual exceptions, inevitable in any institution, neither newspaper is intelligent or intended for
intelligent readers: certainly the issues under review do
not contain a line which would take more than a mediocre,
conventional, and conformist mind to write. A random
selection of the same number of news items as supplied
by any world news agency would be no less informative.
But all in all, as of February 18, 1975, Pravda presents
the Soviet regime as an expanding global system of power,
with many countries as local arenas of this world struggle.
The New York Times presents the Soviet regime in a far
more false and benign way than the regime presents itself
via Pravda. According to the New York Times issue, the
world is a mosaic of separate countries and local events,
none of which has any bearing on the Soviet regime, seen
as just another chip in this mosaic: a kind of corporation
much bigger than General Motors or Chase, but essentially also seeking-through its representatives-good re·
lations, economic cooperation, and trade.
This parochial world fantasy of the New York Times
makes it on the whole not only uninformative, but
misleading. None of those bits of information which the
New Y ark Times issue contains and Pravda does not can
compensate for this dangerous deceptiveness of the New
York Times dreamland, presenting mankind as its middle
class milieu multiplied to the global scale.
But when all this is said, we must perhaps look at both
newspapers from a higher vantage point.
Quite a few people assume that reality is a certain set of
objects, and so anyone can describe reality no worse than
Einstein or Chekhov-it is sufficient to name objects in
front of you: a house, Mr. Kissinger, a tree. Similarly, it is
often assumed that it is no less easy to describe newschanges of reality: the house has caught fire, Mr. Kiss·
inger is going to Moscow, the tree has grown by ten inches
in one year.
If we look at the New York Times and Pravda through
the eyes of such a Philistine, both newspapers can be said
to describe all the world news there is, and this means all
the reality and all its changes. How and what else can one
describe?
But looking at both newspapers from a higher than
Philistine point of view, it can be said that they have no
sense of reality (the New York Times is more hopeless in
this respect) and hence no sense of changes of reality
known as world news. To claim that the New York Times
presents news about the world at large is the same as to
claim that Philistine twaddle is space-time physics or
literature.
L The Working Press, New York 1966, 71.
2. "The Middle East and North Africa 1973-74," 20th Edition,
Europa Publications, London 1973, 61-62.
3. Middle East Review, Spring 1980, 45.
4. Facts on File, Facts on File, Inc., New York, February 1980, 67.
61
�The Incompleteness Theorems
David Guaspari
[Every mathematician shares] the conviction (. .. which no one has yet supported by a proof) that every
definite mathematical problem must necessarily be susceptible ofan exact settlement, either in the form of
an actual answer to the question asked, or by the proof of the impossibility of its solution.
DAVID HILBERT
An introduction
The Goede! Incompleteness Theorems are perhaps the
most celebrated mathematical discoveries of this century.
I hope to make those celebrations more informed; and, ac·
cordingly, take as my topic not the nature of mathematics
or of the mind-grand things and plausibly related to
Goedel's work-but something rather technical and more
mundane: What, exactly, do those theorems say? What
are the questions to which they constitute some sort of
answer and the new questions to which they give rise?
To understand those questions we must devote considerable attention to some of Goedel's great predecessors:
Frege, Cantor, Russell (and Whitehead), and Hilbert.
The story begins in 1879 with the invention, by Gottlob
Frege, of (formal) logic. This invention was important in
two ways:
l. It was necessary for the elaboration of the so-called
"logicist thesis": the thesis of Frege that arithmetic
is a part of logic; or, as Frege paraphrased it into Kantian terms, that arithmetic is analytic. Russell extended Frege's "logicist thesis" to the claim that all
of mathematics is reducible to logic-that is, that
formal logic provides a fundamental theory, a
grounding, of the whole of mathematics.
2. The devices of formal logic may be used, not to lay
David Guaspari teaches at St. John's College in Annapolis. Most of
his work in mathematical logic has been in set theory and proof theory.
62
out "the" theory of mathematics, but rather as the
basis for rigorous axiomatic theories of geometry,
algebra, set theory, etc. (For the distinction between
"an axiomatic theory of X" and "an axiomatic theory
which reduces X to logic" see section l.) This secondary use of formal logic makes possible a mathematics about mathematics, by providing it with a
precise object of study-formal theories.
Hilbert proposed the invention of just such a theory of
formal systems, umetamathematics" or "proof theory", as
the basis for a radical philosophy of mathematics. The domain of meaningful mathematics was to be reduced, essentially, to the domain of mere calculation. Mathematics
was to be framed within formal theories, and any non-calculational propositions of those formal theories were to be
seen merely as byproducts generated on the way to calculations.
Hilbert wanted to have things two ways: to have the
power of modern methods, while avoiding the difficulty
of explaining or justifying those methods. In order to
understand Hilbert we will therefore need to know something about the methods he wanted so desperately to
save.
I will use Cantor's invention of set theory as a synecdoche for the whole of the modern upheaval. Cantor did
not invent the notion of "set" or "class": he invented set
(or class) theory. Classifications (rather than things classified) became the objects of study, and mathematics became the study of patterns, not things: of "the third position in the sequence of natural numbers", not of "three".
AUTUMN 1981
�After winning his way to this position, Cantor made the
further and frightening step of pressing toward its logical
conclusion (which, we will see, skirts paradox). We will be
interested in Cantor not as a participant in the controversies about the character of mathematics, but as one of the
forces which, by radically altering mathematical practice,
made those controversies urgent.
I
The logicists
Classical logic-more or less a code word for Aristotleis plainly inadequate to give an account of the most elementary sorts of mathematical reasoning, for it gives no
account of sentences involving more than one term expressing generality: sentences such as "Everybody loves
somebody.''
Medieval logicians introduced elaborate theories treating of certain sentences with two general expressions.
Those theories were correct in that they certified the correct inferences to and from such sentences; but they were
both complicated and incapable of extension to more
elaborate sentences; which is evidence that they were just
plain wrong.
What was wrongheaded in medieval logic was the attempt to treat "Everybody loves somebody" as though it
were like "John loves Mary." "Everybody" was to be, like
11
John", a kind of name, referring to certain people who
somehow or other loved a person or persons denoted by
"somebody." The difficulties with this are legion: for
example, a proper name like "Mary" always stands for the
same person, while "somebody" -assuming it ought to be
thought of as standing for someone-can stand even in
the same context for different people: If John loves somebody and somebody is the mayor of Cleveland it does not
follow that John loves the Mayor of Cleveland. Again:
"John loves Mary" is equivalent to "Mary is loved by
John." If "everybody" and "somebody" were genuine
names we would be able to make the same switch. But we
cannot: "Everybody loves somebody" and "Somebody is
loved by everybody" are not equivalent.
In the restricted cases to which their theories applied,
medieval logicians surmounted such difficulties by making distinctions about the various kinds of ways in which
general terms could refer to their objects. Unfortunately
there seemed to be no end to the making of such distinctions, and with such a logic the best one could look forward to was an ever-expanding collection of ad hoc methods
and distinctions.
According to Frege his predecessors were misled by accidents of grammar, such as the accident that "John" and
"somebody" are governed by the same grammatical rules.
The logical structure of mathematical statements-i.e.,
those features in virtue of which statements can legitimately enter into chains of inference-are not systematically displayed (and sometimes not displayed at all) by the
grammar of ordinary speech.
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
If the logical structure of a sentence is to show on its
face-in its syntax-then a revised syntax and some new
grammatical categories become necessary. Frege's revised
language is not intended to give an exhaustive account of
natural language. It gives no account of metaphors, ambiguities, tenses, modalities, puns, or jokes. Its success
comes to this: the fact that all mathematical argument
(and therefore all deductive argument) can be expressed
in Frege's language and so be made altogether explicit.
(The principal novelty is Frege's introduction of thecategories of "quantifiers" and "variables", which constitute
an analysis of the uses of troublesome general terms like
"somebody." He also discards the "subject-predicate"
analysis of sentences, because of its intrinsic demerits and
because of the requirements of the quantifier-variable
analysis of generalization.)
In addition, Frege listed a small number of rules which
suffice for the purely formal derivation of all valid inferences. By calling the derivations formal I mean this: We
can apply the rules-i.e., determine whether a sentence is
an immediate consequence of some other or group of
others-simply by inspecting the syntax of each sentence
involved; and the procedure for doing so is mechanical. A
machine can check such derivations just as it checks multiple choice tests.
Frege wanted to attain rigor-and he did. Rigor cannot
go any further; controversy over the validity of a proof
came to have the same character as controversy over the
correctness of a long division. Frege had made it clear just
what complete rigor consisted in.
This achievement did not, however, have the desired
practical effect of making mathematical argument completely certain. An attempt to verify the validity of an ordinary prose proof by translating it into Frege's system
will in general involve so many steps that a clerical error
seems no less likely than a logical error in checking the
original informal proof. Nonetheless, the theoretical possibility of rigorously formulating mathematical theories
makes Frege's language and logic, and their kin, analytical
tools for investigations about those theories.
I will from now on call a language and logic like Frege's
a forma/language and the formulation of a theory in such
a language a formalization of the theory. Formalization is
therefore the first step in laying out a completely rigorous
axiomatic theory. It is not a trivial step.
If, for example, we tried to formalize Euclid, we would
immediately be forced to see that the basic terms of geometry are not only those denoting its objects-points, lines,
planes-but also those denoting certain relations among
them: e.g., the relation of incidence, which holds between
a point and a line when the point lies on the line. Symbols
for those relations would have to be included in the language as part of the special vocabulary of geometry. When
we looked for a suitable collection of geometrical axioms
we would come to see that Euclid's unexpressed assumptions largely concern those relations.
63
�In I884 Frege published another book, The Foundations of Arithmetic, this one about the nature of mathematical truths. He was interested not in how we acquire
mathematical truths, or why we happen to believe them,
but in the ultimate justification for believing them. Frege
asserted that the truths of arithmetic and algebra (although
not those of geometry) are truths of logic:
Frege was undertaking to do more than merely to lay
out a formalized theory of arithmetic. I might well frame a
(mere) formalized theory of arithmetic by beginning with
primitive signs for "1 "~ "2", "plus", "times", etc.-signs
which, so far as the theory is concerned, are employable
only as directed by the axioms. From the rules of logic
alone we could then deduce "I=1" and even "1+2=
1 + 2", but not, e.g., "1 + 1 = 2". The specifically arithmetical content of the theory I am describing would have to be
supplied by a list of arithmetical axioms. (The provision of
a suitable list is a mathematically deep, but for our purposes technical, problem.) We need the axioms because
"1 ", " + ", and "2", being non-logical (and therefore arbi-
trary) signs, can stand in no intrinsic logical relations to
one another.
If, however, "1", "+", and "2" are signs which are
themselves defined in other terms, it might happen that a
purely logical explication of those definitions would result
in a deduction of "l + 1 =2". Frege claimed just that, that
plus, times, etc., etc., could themselves be defined in
"purely logical terms," and that from those definitions
alone, and with no need for extra hypotheses, the arithmetical truths would follow.
Arithmetical truths could-and, to be properly understood, should-be regarded as highly compressed abbreviations of logical truths. The statement "2 + 2 = 4" or
''there are infinitely many primes" would be more compli-
cated than, but of the same character as, "A implies A."
Philosophical questions about the certainty and applicability of arithmetic would then be reduced to questions
about the certainty and applicability of logic.
The terms of Frege's proposal require explanation. A
satisfactory account of arithmetic must cover not only
statements like "7 + 5 = 12" but also certain kinds of empirical statements-but not all empirical statements-involving numbers, for there is no need to account for "2 is
my favorite number." The point of contact between arithmetical theory and its empirical application is counting.
The record of a bit of counting-"There are 2 bats in the
belfry" -is what Frege calls a "statement of number."
We must account for the statements of pure arithmetic
and the statements of number.
Next we need to ask what it would mean to "define" 2
at all, and what, in particular, it would mean to cast that
definition in purely logical terms. For Frege it is pointless
to ask what 2 "actually" is. That does not mean that talk
about numbers is talk about imaginings and private fantasies. Rather, to give the meaning of the word "2" is to give
an account of the contribution it makes to specifying the
64
conditions under which arithmetical statements containing "2" are true or false. Whatever does so correctly is entitled to be called a definition of "2".
Here is an example, a purely logical explanation of the
use of "2" in "There are 2 kings of Sparta."
For some x andy, x differs from y and each is a king of Sparta;
and,
it is not the case that there are x, y, and z, each of which is a
king of Sparta and all of which are different.
This explanation is correct; that is, it is true to say that
there are two kings of Sparta in precisely those circumstances in which our elaborate paraphrase is true. Furthermore, the account is perfectly general, being an
account of the role of "2" in all such sentences: to explain
"There are 2 bats in the belfry" we simply replace "king of
Sparta" everywhere by "bat in the belfry." Finally, the
fixed terms of this general explanation (that is, all terms
except "king of Sparta") are purely logical words; and the
non-logical phrases ("king of Sparta", "bat in belfry") occur
only in the simplest way possible, as simple predications.
This account is not a definition of "2". It explains the
role of ''2'', ''3", etc., in particular statements of numberthat is, the adjectival uses "There are 2 X's", "There are 3
X's", etc. It is insufficient to account for the uses of "2" as
a noun, especially for the thinghood we seem to attribute
to numbers by generalizations such as "For every number ... " Frege took the noun-like uses as fundamental. He
argued that it would be incorrect to analyze arithmetical
statements in such a way that numbers (some collection
or other of entities to be called numbers) disappeared altogether. His analysis replaced each appearance of "2" by a
noun phrase denoting, essentially, a certain set or class.
He then explained statements of number as elliptical references to such classes and explained generalizations at
face value as generalization over the lot of them. This
counted as a logical explanation because he regarded a set
as a kind of logical object.
My example has been intended only to show what kind
of thing a purely logical definition is, and to show that
Frege's proposal is: (a) neither opaque nor occult (which
already suffices to set it apart from most accounts of the
subject); and (b) altogether unconcerned with what happens to go on in my mind when I say or believe that there
are two kings of Sparta.
Frege outlined this program (the "logicist" program of
reducing arithmetic to logic) in The Foundations of Arithmetic and carried it out in the two volumes of The Basic
Laws of Arithmetic, the first published in 1893 and the
second, delayed by the discouraging silence which met
the first, in 190 3.
There turned out to be a problem. One of Frege's fundamental notions was that of "the extension of a concept" -what we would now call the set or class of things
AU1UMN 1981
�falling under the concept. He regarded "class" as a logical
notion-and in any event could see no way to do without
it- but pointed out that its treatment was the problematic part of his system. It turned out to be, in a sense, unproblematic-because it made the system inconsistent.
Frege learned of this, while volume two was in press, in
a letter from Bertrand Russell setting out what has come
to be called the Russell Paradox. Russell's paradox is a sort
of liar's paradox. Formulated for a theory of sets, it shows
its sting by demonstrating that an assumption seemingly
fundamental, natural, and innocuous, leads swiftly to a
contradiction. The assumption is that to every property
there corresponds a set, whose members are precisely those
things which possess that property. If we apply this assumption to the property "not a member of itself' and
call the corresponding set R (so that the members of Rare
precisely those sets which are not members of themselves)
we turn up a contradiction by asking: Is R a member of R?
For, R is a member of Ras long as Rs-atisfies the defining
condition "not a selrmember"; which is to say, as long as
R is not a member of R. Frege dashed off a quick and woe-
fully inadequate fix in an appendix beginning, with characteristic detachment, "Hardly anything more unwel·
come can befall a scientific writer ... " and concluding,
hopefully, " ... still I do not doubt that the way to the solution has been found."
Russell was not Frege's adversary, but rather his heir.
Principia Mathematica, published by Russell and Alfred
North Whitehead between 1910 and 1913, advanced even
more sweeping claims for logic: the system of Principia
Mathematica (from now on, PM) was a revision of Frege's
logic which purported to reduce all of mathematics to
logic. That PM sufficed for the derivation of known mathematics, Russell and Whitehead made clear. That it might
justly be called logic they did not. And no one could tell
whether PM would suffice for all future mathematics.
II
Cantor and "Modernism"
Meanwhile, mathematics went on. One of the things
that went on is commonly called a "crisis" -a "crisis in
the foundation of mathematics" -perhaps suggesting to
the innocent (falsely, as it turns out) that mathematicians
around the world were hurling themselves from their of·
fice windows. The central event in this drama was the ap·
pearance of a large array of paradoxes and contradictions
in the theory of sets, the Russell Paradox among them.
The thinking man's reaction might well be ... So what?
Why should the collapse of some particular theory be of
more than local interest? Frege's scheme fell to the
ground and no llcrisis" resulted.
In order to understand why the difficulties with set theory are of interest to other branches of mathematics it is
necessary to understand why set theory has become the
idiom of mathematics.
Set theory was invented by Georg Cantor in a series of
papers published between 1879 and 1897. It is important
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
to know that Cantor's creation of set theory grew directly
out of his work on one of the important mathematical
problems of his day-on the convergence of a particular
kind of infinite series called a Fourier series. just what a
Fourier series is is not important to us, but two things
about Fourier series are: (1) Fourier series are a part of
hardcore applied mathematics. (Fourier introduced them
in order to study heat transfer.) (2) The theory of Fourier
series was, in Cantor's day, at the cutting edge of two important questions: What is the continuum? What is a
function?
If I needed a slogan to characterize the radical features
of twentieth century mathematics I would try something
like this: Functions are things, and things are extensional.
"Extensional" stands in opposition to "intensional", in
opposition, broadly speaking, to any concern for the "in·
ner nature" of mathematical things.
Consider Euclid's definition of "point." That definition
is never appealed to in proofs, and for that reason has no
mathematical interest. Nothing follows from it. The only
way in which something which we might call the "nature"
of a point has any mathematical significance is by way of
postulates about the relations between points and the
other geometrical notions, such as: Between any two
points there is a unique straight line. Euclid's definition of
point is an "intensional" attempt to tell us something
about the "nature" of points.
In contrast, what matters about a function is that certain inputs result in certain outputs. What a function has
by way of a "nature" is exhausted by the record of the in·
put-output pairs, conveniently representable as the set of
all such pairs. Relations are treated in the same way. The
"nature" of the relation "less than" comes to nothing but
a record of which numbers are less than which.
Galling the things of mathematics extensional comes,
grandly and vaguely, to saying something like this: What
interests us about a mathematical object is not its putative
internal constitution, but rather the role which that object
plays in the system of mathematical objects. Mathematics
is about the patterns into which things fall, not about the
things.
The other half of my slogan reads "functions are things."
What is at stake in calling functions things? The account,
I'm afraid, will begin and end in metaphor.
Think of a function as a black box from which; in some
way or other, the input-output record can be extracted.
Then I can, if I want to, take those things, those black
boxes, and put some or all of them into another box-so
that I have a big box full of functions. I offer this merely as
one example of what you can do with things. You can
heap things into big boxes.
I want to contrast this picture of function with another.
In the other a function is not a thmg, but a kind of continuing process, which you cannot put your hands on all at
once and therefore cannot pick up and toss into a box.
What's at issue behind these varying metaphors w11l have
to be considered later.
65
�Let me first give an example of the usefulness of the
first picture-function as thing. Quantum mechanics as·
signs to each thing in the world-electron, atom, cow-a
representative, a function called its wave function. Wave
functions, it so happens, input real numbers and output
complex numbers (the outputs are thought of as representing certain probabilities). All the.se wave functions are
then heaped together in a box called Hilbert Space. What
stands for the world is a box of functions.
Now, one of the other things you can do with things,
beside tossing them into boxes, is to input them into functions. It turns out that momentum, for example, can be
conveniently represented by a function which inputs not
numbers but those boxes in the Hilbert Space, and out·
puts not numbers but other boxes in Hilbert Space. Momentum and its kin, being functions, are therefore things,
and can themselves be heaped in boxes, input into still
other functions, and so on and on. All these entities have
in an important sense the same status as numbers. You
can do the same kinds of things with and to them. (An
aside: This example may give you some idea why it's wildly
wide of the mark to call our mathematics a "science of
quantity.")
To make functions and relations into things, and to be
concerned only with the extensional aspects of those
things, is to make the very fabric of mathematics a search
for patterns and analogies, whose aim it is to exploit the
power of generality. It is important also to realize that
study of the tops of those towers of generality can yield
consequences about things at the bottom. The elaborate
machinery of quantum mechanics yields testable predic·
tions about the behavior of atomic particles. Deep results
in number theory, which concerns the integers, have been
discovered by studying the calculus of complex numbers.
This raises a question to which we will return: Even if
such high-powered methods are helpful for finding theo·
rems and their proofs, are they in some way essential?
Set theory is important not in its details, but because
the point of view which is so conveniently formulable by
means of set theory is fundamental to the current mathematical enterprise. In David Hilbert's famous words: "No
one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has cre·
ated for us."
Hilbert was not voicing a consensus. He was uttering a
battle cry. The reception of Cantor's work made plain
deep and radical divisions among mathematicians. Those
opposed to set theory typically argued along lines like this:
Set theory is riddled with paradoxes and contradictions
because it admits as objects "infinite things", such as the
set of all numbers, and the notion of an "infinite thing" is
inherently contradictory. The two metaphorical pictures
of "function" show the same opposition. A function
which is a "thing" is, in general, an "infinite thing" -an
endless ledger of inputs correlated with outputs. A function, which is an "uncompleted process", is never present
all at once, but is a sort of drama at any stage of which only
66
finitely much has happened. The controversy over set
theory becomes "the problem of infinity."
This is not a problem about some alleged power, entity,
or principality called The Infinite. I, for one, have no idea
what that could mean. Nor has it anything to do with God,
goose bumps, mysticism, or eternity. (There is evidence
that Cantor thought: that it had to do with all these
things; that theological considerations vindicated set
theory; and, at times, that set theory had been granted
him by divine revelation.)
It would be better, but still not very good, to say that we
are asking whether there "really are" infinite sets. Part of
the trouble with that formulation (the passionate but redundant "really" gives it away) is that it has an air, wholly
spurious, of being clear and commonsensical, as though
the matter could be settled by an argument like Samuel
johnson's "refutation" of Berkeley: Johnson's proof that
there "really are" stones consisted of kicking some.
The fruitful view, I think, is that the important differ·
ence between the two positions is entirely expressed as a
difference in mathematical practice. In the mathematical
practice of one side infinite sets play the role of things,
and in the practice of the other side they do not. (In our
speech about Hilbert Space functions are assigned the
role of things: they serve as inputs and outputs of functions; they are collectable into boxes; they comprise a domain over which we generalize ... Moreover, that way of
speaking has been fruitful for the physicist as well as for
the mathematician.)
In one sense the practical problems of set theory were
solved in 1907 by Zermelo, who informally described a notion of set that seemed clear and persuasive, and pro·
duced axioms for that notion from which followed all of
the desired consequences of set theory and (so it seemed)
none of the undesired. To opt for Zermelo's set theory
was to opt for treating infinite sets as things. What
grounds might there be for making that choice?
The practicing mathematician might be satisfied by the
fact that set theory provides new terms in which to answer old questions, illuminates the work of his predecessors, and poses interesting new questions. If unimpressed,
however, by Zermelo's framework, he might maintain that
"infinite things" had to lead to contradictions and that
Zermelo's system would eventually tumble. He might hope
to find empirically interpretable consequences of set theory to test against experience. He might be appalled by set
theory's sheer perversity: Cantor said of one of his most
famous results, "I see it, but I don't believe it."
Set theory, in and of itself, is not a fundamental theory.
It is not an attempt to ground or to explain the nature of
mathematics, but is rather the organ of a revolutionary
change in mathematical practice. A set theorist can happily be an opportunist, tinkering with the axioms ad hoc
in order to avoid an awkwardness or a paradox. Set theory
is useful to "foundational" studies because it yields a formalization of all known mathematics, thereby making of
"mathematics" a precise object of study.
AUTUMN 1981
�III
Hilbert's metamathematics
In 1900 Hilbert began to formulate a radically new reason for deciding in favor of set theory, based on the possibility, which he seems to be the first to have fully grasped,
of using formalization as a tool for the investigation of
theories. Frege, well aware that deductions in his system
could be carried out mechanically, insisted on the importance of the fact that those deductions nonetheless had a
meaning. According to Hilbert, the fact that "deductions"
could be adequately guided by mechanical rules freed us
from the burden of trying to assign a meaning to each step.
Thus freed, we are free to see that much of the "meaning" we find in mathematics is nonsense.
Hilbert divided the statements of mathematics into two
classes: "real" statements, which are intuitively meaning·
ful and can be said to be true or false; and "ideal" statements, which are not, and cannot. Let us for the moment
sidestep all dispute about the legitimacy of such a distinction or about where to draw the line, and call anyone who
wishes to make such a distinction "Hilbertian." Let us
also temporarily adopt a "Hilbertian" position much less
stern than Hilbert's own: that the meaningful mathematical statements are the statements of elementary pure
arithmetic, such as "2 + 2 = 3", "There are infinitely many
primes," etc. Accordingly, propositions about real numbers~
calculus, or Hilbert Space are "ideal."
Let us further suppose ourselves to be contentedly employing a formal-and meaningful-theory of axiomatic
arithmetic, and to be one day confronted by Cantor. He
offers us a (non-meaningful) set theory which incorporates
our theory of arithmetic as a small part. Do we accept?
From our "Hilbertian" point of view we can think of set
theory as an ideal superstructure superimposed on a meaningful theory of arithmetic. Suppose it happened to be
the case that any meaningful proposition derivable in set
theory by ideal methods is also derivable by meaningful
methods-i.e., according to our present stance, from the
axioms of arithmetic. Then, in the "Hilbertian" view, the
controversy about set theory would be finessed out of existence. All the ideal machinery could be explained away
as an ingenious engine for facilitating proofs. We would
have saved set theory without giving in to the vulgar requirements of saving the sets; we would establish a paradise without angels.
To ask whether the ideal machinery of a formalized theory is redundant is to ask a precise mathematical question.
By formalizing a theory we make it an object of study. Its
statements are patterns of signs, comparable to positions
on a chessboard; and we possess, analogous to the rules of
chess, specified procedures, colorfully but irrelevantly
called proofs, for singling out certain of the sign patterns,
colorfully but irrelevantly called theorems. So that the
question "Does such and such a statement have a proof
employing no ideal mean?" has exactly the same character as the question "Could such and such a position on
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the chessboard have been reached without White's having castled?"
With some historical justification I will call the proposal
to justify the ideal means of set theory by demonstrating
their redundancy, the "Hilbertian" Program. To carry out
the "Hilbertian" Program we have to prove a mathematical theorem about a theory; and that proof itself must be
above suspicion or our justification would be circular.
This new branch of mathematics, the mathematical theory of formal theories, Hilbert calls "metamathematics" or
"proof theory."
To carry out the "Hilbertian" Program is also to demonstrate that all the meaningful consequences of set theory
are true. For we would be guaranteed that any meaningful
consequence of set theory, however originally obtained,
would also possess an uncontroversial proof, one employing only those arithmetical methods we had previously
been content to employ.
The "Hilbertian" Program hopes for a certain rough justice: that meaningful statements should have meaningful
proofs seems only fair. There is also some evidence in its
favor: many theorems of number theory originally proven
by ideal means have turned out to be derivable from the
axioms of elementary arithmetic. In any event, there is
now out on the table a genuine mathematical question,
susceptible to proof or disproof: Can all those positions be
reached without castling?
The Incompleteness Theorems answer, among others,
that question. Before turning to Goedel's paper, let me
summarize these three introductory sections.
Frege began his work as a participant in one of the great
intellectual enterprises of the nineteenth century-the attempt to make mathematics rigorous. He succeeded in
providing an analysis of mathematical proof which made
the notion of rigor precise and which provided all the
technical tools necessary for the elaboration of rigorous
deductive theories. This analysis led him to the conviction
that mathematics is in fact a part of logic. Neither this
thesis nor his powerful criticisms of other views of mathematics (the first half of The Foundations of Arithmetic is a
model wrecking job) received much notice until they were
partly rediscovered by Russell. Wider interest in the problems of founding mathematics arose not from Frege' s
work, but from the practical need to secure set theory
from paradox.
Hilbert, guided partly by his "faith" -the belief that all
mathematical problems can be solved-and by the specific desire to save for mathematics the generalizing
power of set theory, proposed a radically different foundation. Set theory would be saved by declaring most of it to
be meaningless; and by a proof (which he hoped to carry
out) that set theory could nonetheless be safely employed.
Goedel's 1931 paper "On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems" replies to the characteristic questions of Frege and Hilbert:
Can mathematics be reduced to logic? Are the ideal methods of set theory redundant? Is "mathematics" com-
67
�pletely specifiable? I take this last question to be a concern
of both Frege and Hilbert. Frege attempted to encompass
mathematics within logic. Hilbert's "faith" can be construed as a belief in the possibility of devising a formal system adequate for known mathematics and capable of
proving or disproving every proposition arising within it.
To each of these questions Goede! gives the answer no.
What, then, can mathematics be supposed to be? Goedel's
own view is that mathematics must be understood not as
a body of tautologies, or as the result of our constitutive
mental activity, but as something we discover.
IV A first look at Goedel's theorems
In the first part of his paper Goede! exhibited an arithmetical statement in the language of PM which is independent of PM-i.e., neither provable nor refutable from
the axioms of PM. By itself, that is a striking technical
achievement, and evidence for the fruitfulness of Hilbert's
point of view: If you make theories into objects of study
just look at the surprising things you can find out.
Let us call a theory incomplete if some of its statements
are independent; and otherwise, complete. It might now
seem that we should get to work, promulgating some new
axioms in order to extend PM to a theory which is complete. If we can demonstrate the incompleteness of some
theories we surely ought to be able to demonstrate the
completeness of others. Then we would have justified Hilbert's "faith" by a proof. For a complete formal system
provides the means for solving every problem expressible
in its language.
Unfortunately, Goede! showed more. He pointed out
that his argument applies not only to PM, but to any
formal system which is sufficiently strong (strong enough
to contain grade-school arithmetic). Such a system must
be incomplete.
The last two sentences contain a mild lie. I can easily
describe a complete formal theory by stipulating that the
list of its axioms is to be precisely the list of all true statements of arithmetic. The trouble with that theory is that
we cannot use it. Should someone hand us a purported
proof in that theory we would not be able to appeal to any
general procedure for checking it, for we have no general
procedure for determining which propositions are axioms.
If we intend to use a formal theory in our demonstrations
or to provide a standard for our demonstrations, then we
must at least require that there be an infallible (mechanical) procedure for checking the validity of its proofs. The
First Incompleteness Theorem says that any sufficiently
strong theory with that property (the property that its
proofs can be checked mechanically) must be incomplete.
How does this bear on Hilbert, or Frege, or us? Can all
mathematical problems be solved? One precise way to
construe that question is: Is it possible to construct a usable, complete formalization of mathematics? Goedel's
theorem tells us that the answer is no. Frege's program
seems dead as well. If arithmetic really is logic, then since
68
arithmetic cannot be completely axiomatized neither can
logic be. There would be no general procedure for testing
the validity of proofs in such a so-called logic.
The "Hilbertian" Program is alive only until we ask:
What about Goedel's independent arithmetical statement?
Is it true or false-or, if the axioms of arithmetic (or PM)
contain all that we think we know about arithmetic, does
the question of its truth or falsity even have any sense?
Goedel's paper contained an informal demonstration that
that independent statement is true. His argument can be
formalized and carried out in set theory-proving that set
theory is not redundant. Goede! has provided an explicit
example of a "meaningful" statement unprovable by
"meaningful" means, but provable by the "ideal" methods of set theory. Therefore our "Hilbertian" Program,
and every "Hilbertian" Program which accepts Goedel's
independent proposition as meaningful, fails. (It will be
claimed below that no "Hilbertian" Program can succeed.)
The Second Incompleteness Theorem speaks directly
to Hilbert's (actual) Program, to understand which we
need a brief excursion. Hilbert called himself a "finitist".
He maintained that a precondition to thought is an immediate intuitive grasp of certain "extralogical concrete objects", which must be surveyable "completely in all their
parts" and must therefore be, in particular, finite. It is
only about such things and by means of such intuitions
that we can perform genuine ''contentual" inferences. An
adequate expression of "contentual" inference is the manipulation of signs. The concrete objects considered by
mathematics are the mathematical signs themselves-the
numerals. Accordingly, the "real" propositions are simply
the assertions about particular calculations: "7 + 5 ~ 12",
"2 < 3", '' l =/::. l ", etc. The ''contentual" reasoning by which
we attain to the truth or falsity of these propositions Hilbert calls elementary.
In Hilbert's thought not even the formula "x + 2 ~ 2 + x",
regarded as a shorthand for the assertion that "for every x,
x + 2 = 2 + x", designates a real proposition-for we cannot directly verify the infinitely many instances of true
propositions which it summarizes. Another way to say this
is to say that we cannot really negate that assertion; for
the purely existential claim that "there is some x for
which x + 2 ,P 2 + x", since it points to no particular x, has
no finitistic meaning.
Is any mathematics left? Hilbert is willing to admit the
"ideal" propositions such as ''x + L. = 2 + x", the proposi-
tions of algebras and calculus, etc., but denies that they
have any content in and of themselves. The introduction
of "ideal" propositions is analogous to the introduction
into algebra of~ which simplifies and unifies the algebraic rules. Although the ideal propositions are individually insignificant, the system of ideal propositions is
fruitful by virtue of its ability to simplify and unify, and
the ultimate reason for its success is that it discloses the
structure of our thinking.
To justify the introduction of ideal propositions (and
rules for their manipulation) we need only an elementary
AUfUMN 1981
�proof of the consistency of the resulting system. Hilbert's
Program is the proposal to provide such a proof.
Hilbert's Program is connected with our previous no·
lion of a "Hilbertian" Program as follows. The calculating
rules of grade school arithmetic suffice for the formal
demonstration of every real truth. Those calculating rules
are derivable in, e.g., set theory. Set theory, however,
might also contain a formal refutation of one of those
truths. That is, the only way in which set theory could be
non-redundant (with respect to "contentual" inference)
would be the ruinous way of being inconsistent. Hilbert's
Program, although differently expressed, is merely that
"Hilbertian" Program that corresponds to Hilbert's austere notion of "real".
The Second Incompleteness Theorem says, roughly,
that the means available in a theory are not sufficient to
prove the consistency of that theory; so that the consistency of axiomatic arithmetic-let alone of set theorycannot be demonstrated in an elementary way.
All this needs some explanation, since arithmetic is, after all, about integers and not about formal theories. How
can we even pose the problem "Is arithmetic consistent?"
in arithmetical terms?
The answer is that we communicate with a speaker of
the language of arithmetic just as we communicate with
speakers of other foreign languages-by means of translations. Suppose we wanted to discuss the consistency of
arithmetic with a computer. We could do so be devising a
numerical code in which to signify statements and proofs.
The statement "Arithmetic is consistent" could then be
translated as a lengthy statement, from now on called
CON, about numerical calculations involving the code.
(Those who are worried by this may be justified. The
sense of the claim that the coded translation CON
somehow "means the same as" the original is not immedi-
ately clear.)
Goede! showed that CON is unprovable in axiomatic
arithmetic. Now, axiomatic arithmetic is, I take it, consistent; that is, CON is true under the ordinary interpretation of its signs. Indeed, CON is provable in set theory,
and is therefore another example of an arithmetical truth
which becomes provable as a result of adding to arithmetic the "ideal" superstructure of set theory. This is a
perfectly general phenomenon: no consistent, usable, sufficiently strong theory can prove its own consistency; and
whenever we are able to add to such a theory a suitable
"ideal" superstructure, the consistency of the original the-
ory becomes one of the newly provable arithmetic truths.
This shows that no "Hilbertian" Program can succeed.
An elementary proof that an ideal superstructure is redundant immediately yields an elementary proof that it is consistent. If it is granted that the elementary means of proof,
whatever they may be, are exhausted by the means available in ordinary arithmetic, there can be no elementary
proof of consistency, and therefore none of redundancy.
If we use a theory we are, of course, implicitly assuming
that it is consistent. Nonetheless, that supposition is
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
something over and above the suppositions of the theory.
Whatever convinces us that the theory is consistent lies
somehow outside its purview. That fact is a genuine piece
of news, even though the consistency of arithmetic is not
controversial.
Many mathematical questions which have at one time
or another been topics of active research have been
shown to be independent of the currently accepted axioms for set theory. It is a distressing fact that few of these
problems seem to be solvable by extending set theory
along the lines of its original inspiration; and that, indeed,
many are only known to be solvable by adding to set
theory hypotheses which are at best implausible and at
worst bizarre.
As a result the mathematician-in-the street typically responds to such news about a problem (the news of its independence) by losing interest in it and regarding this as
evidence that however things might have seemed at one
time the problem is not one of central importance. He can
sometimes justly say that he was seduced by set theory
into studying the wrong problem, or the right problem in
the wrong terms; but that would suffice as a general explanation only if the family of set theories were uniquely subject to the Incompleteness Theorems.
V A second look at the
First Incompleteness Theorem
Let me conclude by stating the First Incompleteness
Theorem correctly, in its most radical form, so that it is
tied to no particular formalism or formulation of logic, and
to no particular notion of proof. To do that it will be nee·
essary to look briefly at its proof. Goedel's original argument, which is important, is widely regarded as utterly
mysterious. From this apparent mysteriousness the Incompleteness Theorems derive some of their cachet. I
shall outline a different proof, which shows that the Incompleteness Theorems can be understood as facts about
mechanical procedures.
In 1936, A. M. Turing produced a precise definition of
the notion of "algorithm", or "computing rule" by defin·
ing a kind of paradigm computing agent (now called a
Turing machine). Turing machines can work in any symbolism you like and on any problem you like. We may as
well stick to machines that work on numerical problems.
Machines can provide solutions to calculating problems in
two ways-by decision procedures and by listings. Consider
the problem of determining which numbers are even
numbers. A decision procedure for the property "even
number" works like this: We hand our imaginary computer the name, in some specified notation, of a number;
it calculates awhile and then answers yes or no, according
as the number is even or not. It always answers and always
answers correctly. A listing of the property "even number"
works differently: We sit in front of the computer and
watch it. From time to time it writes down, in some specified notation, the name of a number. Only the names of
69
�even numbers appear in the list, and sooner or later the
name of every even number appears in the list.
There is no general procedure for turning a listing machine into a deciding machine (which might lead one to
suspect, correctly, that some listable properties are not decidable). Suppose I want decisions about the evenness of
6 and 7, and try to use the listing machine to get them. I
sit and wait. Eventually "6" turns up, at which point I
know that the decision about 6 is "yes." I'm still waiting,
but there has been no "7". I can never safely conclude
"no," because, for all I know, were I to wait just a little
longer 7 might turn up in the list.
"Evenness", of course, has both listing and deciding
machines, but there are indeed properties which can be
listed yet not decided. One example is the property of
"being a computer program that will run successfully." If
that were decidable (in some efficient way) life would be a
lot simpler. A Russian mathematician, Juri Matijasevic,
proved in 1971 that there is a listable but undecidable
property P of the following remarkably simple kind: For a
certain (polynomial) equation with "x" among its unknowns, x has property P (from now on, abbreviated
"P(x)"), if there are integer solutions for the other unknowns. That is, P(x) looks like the following assertion,
which I'll temporarily call R(x): There are integers y and z
for which 3xy + 2y2 + x2z +I ~ 0. So that 2 has property R
(or, for short, "R(2)") if and only if there are integers y and
z for which 6y + 2y2 +4z +I ~0.
Here is an outline for a proof of the First Incompleteness Theorem which, in a sense, only restates the fact that
there are such simple undecidable properties. Officially
we are proving a theorem about PM, but to show how
general the proof is, I will point out the only two facts
about PM which will be appealed to. The first is this:
(l) PM can "express" some undecideable
property~e.g.,
the
P(x) mentioned above. (From now on this will be abbreviated
as: PM is sufficiently strong.)
It takes a little effort to say just what "expressing" is.
For example, "+" does not happen to be one of the signs
of PM, but is instead defined in terms of others. So our
rendering of P(x) into the language of PM will be a little
indirect. That, however, is a minor point and will be ignored. I will suppose that the arithmetical signs we ordinarily use do appear in the formal language, so that "P(x)",
"P(O)", "P(l)", etc. occur both in English and in our formal
language. More important is the question: What does it
mean to say that some formula in a formal theory "expresses" the (English-language) notion P(x)? We can put
our rather weak requirement this way: Whatever PM happens to prove about the property is true. More exactly,
should the string of symbols for P(l7) occur among the
theorems of PM, then the English sentence P(17) is true,
which is to say that a certain equation with coefficient 17
has integer solutions. Should "not P(l7)" occur among the
theorems of PM, then we require that P(l7) be false. Weak
70
as this assumption is, we could get by with much less. If a
theory of arithmetic lacked the means to write down simple equations, or had the means but proved falsehoods
about them, it would not be of much use. So, for our purposes, this restriction is no restriction at all. The only theories of interest are those which are sufficiently strong.
The other thing we need to know about PM is this:
(2) The property of "being a theorem of PM" is listable.
For our purposes this is no restriction either, because it
turns out that (2) is a consequence of:
(2 ') The property of "being a proof in PM" is decideable.
I have already argued that a theory is of no use for theorizing if we cannot decide what counts as a proof.
The First Incompleteness Theorem says:
Any sufficiently strong, listable theory is incomplete.
Therefore no useful theory-PM, axiomatic arithmetic,
set theory-is complete; no useful theory can even settle
all the simple questions of elementary arithmetic.
To see the extreme generality of this it might be better
to replace the word "theory" by something like "recordable mathematical activity." We need assume nothing
about symbolism, logic, or the nature of the proofs that result from this activity, except that the activity can treat of
simple equations, and that a machine can decide whether
the record of some bit of activity counts as a proof.
The proof of the First Incompleteness Theorem is a
proof by contradiction. Assuming first that PM is listable,
I will describe a mechanical procedure (from now on to be
called M) which is an attempt at a decision procedure for
Matijasevic's property P. That is, the inputs to M will be
natural numbers and the outputs ''yes" and "no". We
know that there can be no decision procedure for P. That
is, for some input M must either give the wrong answer or
fail to give any answer at all. On the other hand, from the
assumptions that PM is sufficiently strong and complete
it will follow that M is a decision procedure for P, and
therefore at least one of the three assumptions "listable,
sufficiently strong, complete" is false. Having established
that we have established the First Incompleteness
Theorem.
Here is procedure M: Handed an input, say 17, turn on
the machine which lists the theorems of PM. If "P(l7)"
ever appears on the list, output "yes"; and if "not P(l7)"
appears, output "no".
Suppose now that PM is sufficiently strong. Then procedure M, whenever it does give an answer, gives the
right answer. Suppose further that PM is complete. Then
procedure M always yields an answer, because one or the
other of "P(l7)", "not P(l7)" is a theorem of PM and is
therefore bound to turn up in the list. It follows (from all
these assumptions) that M is a decision procedure for P.
AUTIJMN 1981
�That concludes the proof of the First Incompleteness
Theorem. (By juicing this up a little bit we can exhibit
a particular instance of property P which is independent
of PM.)
It might seem that this proof merely transfers the burden
onto the shoulders of Mr. Matijasevic, with his magical
property P. In fact, simpleminded undecideable properties are not hard to find. I chose property P only because it
seems evident that any self.respecting theory ought to be
able to express it.
We can easily tidy up the last loose end by showing why
(2') guarantees (2)-why the theorems of PM are listable.
A proof is a finite sequence of signs from the language of
PM. We therefore begin with a machine that lists all finite
sequences of signs of PM. (It is left to the reader to build
such a machine for himself.) This machine feeds its output to a proof checking machine. (Here is where we make
use of (2').) The proof checker decides which of those sequences are proofs and feeds the legitimate proofs to a
third machine; and that one writes down for us the proposition that each proof proves.
(Note: The First Incompleteness Theorem is itself
proved by elementary means. Although the hypothesis
"PM is sufficiently strong" cannot be so established, the
incompleteness of PM follows from that hypothesis by a
long chain of reasonings of the most elementary sort.)
Goede!' s own interpretation of his work is in some ways
quite cautious: Hilbert's Program has not necessarily been
shown to be impossible, because the notion of "elementary means of proof' is vague.
.
In other ways Goedel's interpretation is breathtaking:
Notice, he says, that the argument of the paper has resulted in a curious situation. Having shown that a certain
proposition {CON, let's say) is undecidable in PM, we
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
have nonetheless been able to determine that it is true.
That is, we have been able to appeal to a standard of truth
and falsity independent of the notions of provability and
refutability in PM. What could be the basis of such a standard of truth? Here Goede! reaches back to one of the
most ancient answers of all-to an independent, extramental world of mathematical objects. We believe in tables and chairs because we see no other way to make
sense of our sensible experience. Goede! feels equally
compelled, in order to make sense of his "mathematical
experience", to believe in the objects of mathematics.
Along this line of argument Goede! has few followers.
Aside from its philosophical difficulties, Goedel's view
must face a fact of our recent mathematical experience:
CON is a proposition which has been cooked up in order
to be undecidable. When we consider those set-theoretically undecidable propositions which have simply been
stumbled upon in the course of doing mathematics, we almost invariably find that we have no idea how to resolve
them or where to look for relevant "evidence."
What, then, do the Incompleteness Theorems say? As
soon as we get beyond the bounds of mere calculation, as
soon as we allow ourselves to enquire whether something
is so not merely for this or that number, but "for every
number"-we can no longer appeal to any systematic
method for obtaining answers. No improvements in mathematics or philosophy can get around that fact.
Philosophy is called on for a clarification-not to discover the address at which the numbers reside (or, perhaps, their convenience mail drop), but rather to give an
account of what we can justifiably mean by those problem-producing generalizations over the (infinite) domain
of numbers. To speak in a slightly loose and pre-Fregean
way: We need an account of the word "all".
71
�Philosophy and Spirituality in Plotinus
Bruce Venable
1 Knowledge as unity with God
The essential insight of Plotinus and, for us, the central
problem in studying the Enneads is that in them the practice of philosophy and the desire for mystical experience
are inseparable. For Plotinus, a philosophy that does not
culminate in mystical experience is an empty speculation;
the most justly celebrated passages of the Enneads, those
that have caused them to be read and cherished, are those
in which, after many pages of arduous dialectic, technical
distinctions, and dense argumentation, he summons the
reader to the state of serene union with God that fulfills
and transcends them. He felt, however, that a personal
religion that strives for mystical experiences without
grounding itself in philosophy is likely to degenerate or go
astray, like the Gnostics, into melodramatic fantasies and
delusions of cheap salvation. For those who regard philos·
ophy or, if you like, science and religion as independent of
one another their mutual dependence in the Enneads
must seem very strange and might seem even to invalidate them both because Plotinus presents neither a coherent rational philosophy nor a genuine piety, but only an
unsatisfactory muddle of the two.
In what sense is philosophy the necessary preparation
for mystical experience? In what sense is mystical experience the necessary culmination of philosophy?
Those acquainted with medieval scholasticism should
be advised that I shall not discuss this interdependence in
the form most familiar to them: the attempt to reconcile
faith and revealed religion with reason and philosophy.
The problem as it appears, for example, in the first question of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas
does not appear in the Enneads for two characteristic reasons: Plotinus recognizes neither divine revelation nor an
Bruce Venable is at work on a study of Nco-Platonic spirituality. A tutor
at Sante Fe, he delivered this essay as a lecture at St. John's College in
Annapolis on October 22, 1976, and at St. John's College in Santa Fe on
November 5, 1976.
72
independent science of theology UJ1der which the various
claims of revelation and philosophy are reconciled.
The strangeness of Plotinus' view can be somewhat dissipated if we try to peer beyond the fantastic formal complications of the Plotinian system in order to isolate the
ultimate or highest state of existence envisaged by that
system, briefly, a state of unconditioned unity and freedom. It appears in the Enneads twice: as the Good or the
One that is the unknowable first cause in metaphysics,
and again as the self that is the hidden center of the soul.
These two are very similar, if not identical, because, for
Plotinus, to ascend in thought above all created things to
a contemplation of the One is also to descend within the
soul to the hidden depths of the self. Furthermore, just as
a person does not view his self, but rather comes to exist
at that fundamental level, so also a person does not have a
vision of the One, but is rather unified with it. Returning
upon oneself is returning upon one's first cause and in at~
taining to this cause, one meets no stranger, but one's
very self.
Anyone who makes these assertions would consider
religion and philosophy inseparable and even very similar
to each other. But these assertions are rather strange.
Even setting the One aside for a moment as the mystery it
properly is, what about this notion of the self? Where does
it come from, what does it mean, and do we need it at all?
Plotinus, who was perhaps the first philosopher to feel the
need of such a concept of the self, frequently distinguishes the self as more inclusive and elementary than the
soul. The soul means the conscious activities, the acquired traits and personality, as well as the latent contents
and unconscious powers of the intellect, emotions, and
perceptions. The self means something both more primitive and more exalted than the soul. Not acquired or augmented by experience, education, or practice, it does not
present itself directly in any conscious activity, although it
supports and unifies them; the inclusive totality of the
psychic contents and powers, it is also independent of
them, isolated and aloof, unmanifested, unknowable, and
AUTUMN 1981
�unique. It is freedom. When the soul is free, it has withdrawn itself from its conscious life, its scattered thoughts
and feelings, its activities projected outward into the
world, and has gathered its powers into a motionless inward concentration. When it emerges again, the soul rea].
izes that all the goods which previously it sought outside
of itself belong to it naturally, eternally, are proper and intrinsic to itself. The soul is happy.
This description makes it clear that the self, as Plotinus
conceives it, is very similar to the One. It also makes clear
why union with the self will be union with the One. But
why did Plotinus use or even perhaps invent such a concept of the unknown self that is similar to God, when he
had already at hand the perfectly useful notion of the observed soul that is certainly not similar to God? If he had
not used this concept of the self he might have avoided
his confusion, perhaps an accidental one, between philosophy and religion.
Plotinus was certainly impelled by intimate religious desires to create and teach his philosophy. The fervor of his
desire for God is manifest in the Enneads, but something
of its inner meaning has not been shared with us. Because
he expressed his religious desires in the external form of a
philosophy that was in constant conversation with his
great precedessors in the Greek tradition, we can, by reexamining some relevant aspects of that more familiar or
less esoteric tradition, see the innovations of Plotinus in at
least the intellectual context in which he himself considered them and found them necessary. Because of his insistence on the mutual dependence of philosophy and religion,
Plotinus never teaches any religious doctrine, however
intimate its origins, that he would not be prepared to explain, amplify, defend, and fight for on purely philosophical grounds.
There was no philosopher with whom Plotinus' conver·
sation was more intimate than Aristotle. I shall begin,
therefore, with that strange passage in De anima book
three, chapter five that has caused commentators so
much vexation and disappointment.
Aristotle says that in every nature there is something
that is its matter; this is passive and receptive and becomes all the forms of that kind of being. There is also an
active or productive cause that makes all these forms in
the passive matter. It is necessary that these two exist also
in the soul: there is an intellect that makes all the forms
(of knowiedge, presumably) and an intellect that receives
or becomes these forms. The active or productive inte].
lect is like light which makes potential colors actual colors-the light that makes them visible and actually seen.
This active intellect is "separable, impassive, and unmixed." This means that the active intellect is independent of the body. Of these two intellects, Aristotle says,
the potential or passive intellect, which receives the forms
of knowledge, is temporally prior, but only in the individual; in general, the active intellect is prior. This is more
difficult to explain. The first clause seems to mean that in
each individual person, the potential for knowing exists
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
before any actual knowledge. But to say that in general
this is not so seems to imply that there is some other, nonhuman, intellect. Many ancient commentators said, therefore, that Aristotle here refers to the divine intellect.
The view that Aristotle does mean the divine intellect
gains support from his following remark that there is an
active intellect that is eternally thinking; or, as he puts it,
"it does not think sometimes and sometimes not think."
But what follows is again more puzzling: "only when it is
separated is it just what it is and this alone is immortal and
eternal." If ''separated" means "separated from the
human body," then Aristotle refers here to the destiny of
the active intellect of every individual person after the
death of the body. What follows seems to confirm this:
"But we don't remember because the active intellect is
impassible, but the passive intellect is mortal." The most
obvious interpretation of this sentence-although I don't
suppose that its being obvious must necessarily be held to
recommend it-is that every human soul contains two
intellects, an active and a passive; that only the active intellect is immortal, but that this active intellect, when liberated by death from the body, has no personal memory
of ourselves because it cannot receive the impression of
anything merely temporal and transitory, but on\y makes
universal ideas or concepts; the passive intellect does
receive the experiences of ordinary life and is related to
what we should call our personality; but this intellect
perishes along with the body. Thus there would be no personal immortality.
This interpretation was popular enough in antiquity to
cause it widely to be believed that Aristotle denied the
survival after death of any personal consciousness. Aris·
totle appeared to many as an enemy of the hopes for the
afterlife expressed in the Phaedo and the Republic.
This interpretation was not, however, without its opponents, who insisted that by the active intellect Aristotle
means the divine intellect. Many of these commentators
identified the active intellect with the thought of the unmoved mover which eternally thinks only itself. In support
of this identification, they argued that it was impossible to
imagine that Aristotle refers to any human intellect when
he says that the active intellect thinks eternally. But if this
chapter of the De anima concerns the divine intellect
rather than the human intellect, other commentators
wondered why it appears in Aristotle's book on psychology rather than in his books on metaphysics or theology.
So problems remain.
My only reason for discussing what Aristotle means in
this difficult chapter at all is to locate Plotinus in the con·
text of the problems that this chapter caused for ancient
philosophers: the possibility of something like God in the
human soul. It is easy in this context to combine or confuse metaphysics and psychology, as Plotinus seems often
to do. Perhaps it will be possible to combine or confuse
metaphysics and religion as well.
One of the most notorious interpretations of this passage
in the De anima is that of Averroes, an Arabic philosopher
73
�who lived in twelfth-century Spain. Averroes decided that
the active intellect is divine, universal, and immortal,
while the passive intellect is human, individual, and does
not survive the death of the body. An individual human
intellect actually knows only when it is illuminated by the
active intellect, passively receiving from it the forms, essences, or definitions of the things eternally known by the
active intellect. The human intellect is the mere disposition to receive intelligible objects and to suffer knowledge
to occur in it. Knowledge is not an act of the human intellect, because that intellect is purely passive, but only an
event that happens in and to the intellect. The human
person is a particular individual, but knowledge itself remains universal. Nevertheless, the individual's experience
of knowledge is a kind of contact with God. Because, however, the passive disposition of the human intellect perishes with the body, there can be no personal immortality,
no eternal life with God. In the language of religion, the
human individual is of no eternal significance and cannot
be saved. It is passive, transient, and helpless. There is a
conflict between the conclusions of philosophical psychology and the word of God as revealed in the Koran
which proclaims salvations and teaches personal immortality.
The consequences of this interpretation seemed intolerable to St. Thomas Aquinas, writing about a century
later, and he wrote a commentary on the De anima to
prove that the interpretation of Averroes was not in fact
the doctrine of Aristotle. He asked: If, as Averroes, says,
there is no individual active intellect, what sense does it
make to say "This individual person knows"? No sense at
all, St. Thomas thought. He maintained against Averroes
that, distinct from the divine intellect, every human soul
contains an active intellect as well as a passive intellect.
The passive intellect receives from the senses the images
of perceptible things; the active intellect, by its natural
power, extracts from these images their intelligible forms,
essences, or definitions. The active intellect is said to
"spiritualize" the images. In St. Thomas' reconcilation of
the psychology of Aristotle with the teachings of revealed
religion, the active intellect is spiritual in its essence:, sur-
vives the death of the body, and is immortal.
What, according to these interpretations of Averroes
and St. Thomas, is the relation between the individual
soul and the divine truth? Despite the differences between these two interpretations, this relation for both of
them is extrinsic or external. In neither interpretation is
the act of knowledge a co-operation or conversation between the soul and the truth.
For Averroes, the soul is completely passive; it receives
the illumination of the active intellect and experiences
knowledge, but remains, nonetheless, unchanged, without any intelligible content or intellectual power of its
own. The soul receives the truth as an inspired prophet
receives the divine revelation, as a free gift of a God who
exceeds the human capacity to imagine his purposes.
Because the soul is completely passive, it is not trans-
74
formed by the truth, nor can the truth save it, because it
has no immortal part.
For St. Thomas, it is of the soul's destiny and inherent
power to know the divine truth. But the soul constructs
this truth for itself, rather than receiving it from God. The
soul does not require the direct intervention of the divine
intellect to experience knowledge because the soul has an
autonomous and immanent power to know the divine
truth. This situation implies, however, that the soul is isolated; it does not meet, in the act of knowledge, any divine
being, power, or operation. Again, the act of knowledge,
and therefore philosophy, is without religious significance
for personal salvation. Also, as in the theory of Averroes,
knowledge has no specifically individual content. Although
the senses have particular experiences, the active intellect
extracts a uri!versal meaning from them. Individual salvation, therefore, according to St. Thomas, is conferred
upon the soul by an external donation of grace. Although
there is a cognitive content to this.salvation, it is incomprehensible to the human intellect unaided by grace. For
St. Thomas, as for Averroes, the soul, empty and helpless,
must accept its hope of salvation from divine revelation
alone. There is no continuity between its experience in
knowledge of the universal truth and its private desire in
religious feeling for a personal God.
St. Thomas and Averroes sought to resolve, perhaps
successfully, the conflicts that appeared to remain between philosophical psychology and personal religion.
The success of these efforts is not important here, for
these theories are far from anything that happens in the
Enneads. Averroes and St. Thomas begin with a stark contrast and separation of the human and divine intellects;
Plotinus regards them as connatural: of the same nature
and inseparable, they always act simultaneously. He considers human perfection to be a sharing in the divine act
of knowing but he does not want to have anything to do
with grace. Perfection must be real elevation of psychic
life to a higher act of existence, but must not be given to
the soul as something extrinsic to it. Perfection must be
internal and personal, it must be a discovery of and a
proper act of the self. It must also be divine; it must be
contact and union with God.
The difficulty of attaining perfection or even of describing it appears already in Aristotle: there seems to be no internal continuity between the individual human soul and
the universal divine intellect; there seems, therefore, to
be no way for the soul to share in the divine existence
without abandoning its own. In the passage from the De
anima Aristotle never says that he is discussing the divine
intellect, but he must mean the divine intellect when he
says that the active intellect thinks eternally, for surely no
human intellect can be said to think eternally.
With his usual taste for radical solutions, Plotinus says
that the human soul does indeed think eternally. Does
this mean that the human intellect shares what would
seem to be an exclusively divine power? How can an infinite divine power be present in a finite being without
AU1UMN 1981
�compromising the absolute distinction between God and
the soul (a distinction that Averroes and St. Thomas presuppose)? How can one resolve the problems of knowledge,
as posed by. Aristotle in the De anima, as the relation between the active and the passive intellects, without isolating the soul from God and without separating philosophy
from the practice of religion, as Averroes and St. Thomas
did? We seem to have either tgo much unity between
God and the soul or else not enough.
The ordinary philosophical question "How does the
soul get its ideas?" can develop convolutions that involve
the entire destiny of the soul and the religious problems
that surround that destiny. The soul has to be in contact
with God in order to have knowledge at all, but this contact with God threatens to engulf and dissolve the soul in
the ocean of the divine being.
2 Existence as unity with God
I now turn to the question of unity from a metaphysical
point of view, rather than from the point of view of knowledge and its possibility. The question of unity again develops consequences for personal religion and spirituality. It
will be seen again, I hope, that the distinction between
what happens inside the soul and what happens outside
of it becomes vague.
The Pannenides raises the problem of the participation
of material objects in their common, immaterial form.
The problem is seen there as an antinomy of immanence
and transcendence. If the many particular objects truly
participate in the single form, the form becomes immanent in them and is infected with their plurality; if they
partake of the form, they seem to take parts of it, to divide
it, and so do not all have a share of the same integral form
and so cannot all be called by its single name. Yet if the
form remains intact, if it remains untouched by, aloof
from, and transcendent to, the particular objects, it seems
that the particulars cannot participate in it at all.
The philosopher has two problems here: he wants the
form to be transcendent to the particular objects, single
and undivided, because he wants the form to be the authentic, unchanging object of knowledge, distinct from
the uncertain and changing appearances of the particulars, which can be the object only of opinion. At the same
time, however, or perhaps not quite at the same time, he
wants the form to be in some sense the cause of the particulars. This demand seems, however, to imply some contact between the form and the particulars that will violate
the integrity of the form as an object of knowledge.
This antinomy quickly became a traditional point of
argument in ancient philosophy. Most schools maintained
against the Platonists that the forms were in some way
immanent, or embedded, in the material particulars; the
Platonists strove to preserve the integrity and dignity and
the forms by keeping them separate from the sadness and
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
disorder of the material world. One typical gesture in this
direction was the view that the forms were the thoughts
of the divine intellect, the paradigms that guide its creation of the material world.
Eager to affirm the primacy of unity at all levels, Plotinus
would have inclined, as his theory of emanation suggests,
to a theory whereby the particulars, produced immediately by their causes, retain contact with them. His religious language, however, constantly exhorts one to flee
the confusions of this lower world for the true visions and
delights of a divine world somewhere "higher" and certainly separate from this one. The dilemma about unity
looks this way in Plotinus: how can the divine power
create and sustain the sensible world without (l) compromising its own transcendence and unity or (2) destroying
the real multiplicity and diversity of the sensible world?
Either the divine power will be dissipated in the world or
the world will be completely reabsorbed into the monochromatic unity of the greater power that creates it.
Plotinus devotes two long tractiltes to this technically
complex problem. He begins by attacking the Stoics who,
like him, were monists~people who emphasized the unity
of all things, but who, unlike Plotinus, were materialists.
The Stoics tried to solve the antinomy of transcendence
and immanence by making the world-soul present at
every point of the material universe. They diffused the intelligent, creative divine power throughout the world.
Plotinus objects that (l) the divine power is thus thought
of as material and that (2) it loses its unity with itself
because it is spread around on or in other material objects.
(Nothing will make Plotinus accept materialism: he thinks
it degrading. Some of the peculiarity of his own theory of
matter is due to this feeling.) Plotinus further objects that
the Stoic solution is impossible because two separate material things cannot participate in each other, they only
muddle together and lose their mutual independence. If
the world-soul is material, as the Stoics held, then the material world cannot participate in it at all. The world-soul
is left without any power to create or direct it. The objections of Plotinus to the materiality of the world-soul recall
the objections to Averroes' doctrine of the active intellect:
it abolishes the necessary distinctions between the creator
and the created.
The later Neoplatonists such as Proclus betray a desire
similar to St. Thomas Aquinas' in his doctrine of active intellect. They sought to preserve the dignity and integrity
of the transcendent form while allowing the immanent
form to govern the particulars, by distinguishing simply
and sharply between the transcendent forms in the divine
intellect, calling them unparticipated forms, and the
forms immanent in particular material things. The Neoplatonists had nevertheless to explain the real relation between the immanent forms and the transcendent form,
but not, of course, as participation. In their efforts to explain this relation they multiply distinct terms in a relation and then seek to justify their logical continuity~a
procedure that contrasts strikingly with Plotinus' method
75
�of establishing continuity between the transcendent form
and the material particulars.
I call Plotinus' solution the theory of integral omnipres·
ence. Typically, Plotinus accepts everyone's terms and
seeks to solve everyone's difficulties by comprehending
them in a universal theory that explains not only how
things are but also why other philosophers have the par·
tial and therefore false views of things that they do have.
It is a theory of consciousness, of attitudes and knowledge, as well as a theory of metaphysics, i.e., a theory
about the objects of consciousness. First, the metaphysi·
cal side of the theory because it is slightly less paradoxical
than the theory of consciousness, and because this order
provides an edifying climax.
The theory of integral omnipresence is a characteristic
expression of Plotinus' intuition of the universe as a single
spiritual life. In his philosophy, the distinctions of a static
structure of reality were overlaid and dominated by the
notion that this structure is in fact a dynamic interrela·
tionship of spiritual forces. The notion of life as a power
of self-movement and transformation prevails over the no-
tion of existence as formed and completed. Being is pri·
marily power and activity and only secondarily, form and
hypostasis (6.4.9, 23-25).
For Plotinus a form in the divine intellect is a radiance
or a power, illuminating and actualizing the particulars,
rather than an archetype or paradigm separate from them.
The transcendent form is universally present in particular
qualities. Conversely, the particular quality acts as the
form, locally present, although with diminished strength
and intensity. For example, the white color throughout a
bowl of milk is also the white color in two different bowls
of milk, because color is a quality not a quantity and,
therefore, has no parts (IV.2.l; IV.3.2). In more modern
terms, Plotinus equates the intension of a quality, its defi·
nition, with its extension, its range of application.
If the form in the divine intellect is omnipresent in its
spatially-separated and material manifestations, does this
presence not make the form itself spatial and material? If
so, Plotinus will have failed in his attempt to outflank
Stoic cosmology while retaining its dynamic character.
Plotinus attempts therefore to purify his notion of crea·
tion and created diversity from all spatial references, correcting thereby the materialistic implications of his own
imagery of emanation by which he represents the diffusion of infinite creative power into successively' lower and
weaker, but more determinate, forms of existence, desending at last to visible and tangible matter. He takes up
his own imagery and revises it carefully to remove from it
every spatial or material reference.
For clarity's sake the argument has often tried to lead the
mind to understand the origin of multiplicity by making an
image of many radii emanating from a single center. (cf.
5.1.!1, !0-!5). But one must add to this image the idea that
the radii become many while remaining together. One removes, as it were, the lengths of the radii and considers only
76
their extremities, lying at the center, where they are all one.
Again, if you add the lengths again, each radius will touch the
center still. Nevertheless (despite the length of the radii), the
several extremities at the center will not be separated from
the primary center but will be simultaneous with it. The
centers will appear to be as many as the radii which they
touch, but they remain all together. If, therefore, we liken all
the intelligible forms to many centers related to and unified
in one center, but appearing many because of their radii (although the radii do not generate the centers, but only reveal
where they are), let the radii be analogous to the material
things which, when the intelligible form touches them, make
the form appear to be multiple and to be present in many
places. (6.5.5)
In this chapter he uses a spatial image to express a
dynamic notion of causality: the generation of multiple
beings as distinct forces emanating from a single source of
creative power. Plotinus then carefully revises the image
in order to remove from it every spatial or material sugges·
tion: he strives to represent direction without quantity
and forces without a space across which they are extended.
Multiplied and diversified, the power of the creative
cause remains (paradoxically) concentrated and undiffer·
entiated in the cause. The diversity of the created world is
simultaneous with the simplicity of its cause, but utterly
distinct from it because each created being takes a direc·
tion in which it is manifested spatially and materially,
whereas the single cause is free from every specification
and limitation. The relation between cause and effect is
asymetrical; the cause has a transcendent existence be·
cause it is not exhausted in its relation to its effects: the
effects are completely defined by their dependence upon
their cause and their limited and local appearance in the
sensible world. This asymetrical relation is eternal and can
never be reversed. The primacy of the first cause lies in its
infinity and power which contrasts with the structured di·
versity of its effects.
This discussion shows one reason for introducing this
new theory. If all individuals, even the archetypes in the
divine intellect, are not constantly present to their trans·
cendent cause, the One, they will be separated from it
and deprived of its power. They will have no power of
self-subsistence and would perish as heat fades when fire
withdraws. Their death would leave the One as the single,
universal being, the imperishable substrate of its transitory
modes or emanations. A further consequence of particu·
Jar interest is that there could be no personal immortality
of the soul.
Plotinus offers this theory as a solution to the pantheis·
tic and monistic dilemmas encountered by his predeces·
sors. Nevertheless, one must admit that in seeking to solve
all possible difficulties he has invented a theory t)lat is far
stranger than anything his predecessors even imagined.
(I hope that you do not think that I am approaching my
subject frivolously. I have been provoked to this some·
what unscholarly fashion of speech in order to set the
problems aroused by a prolonged study of Plotinus in all
AUTUMN 1981
�their immediacy. Many scholars will blandly present a
bizarre theory like the present one without a hint of why
Plotinus should have desired it at all, without explaining
what sort of satisfaction he might have taken in it.)
The weirdest aspect of this theory is that it seems to
disregard matter entirely. Plotinus was ready for this objection. He points out that the greatest obstacle to understanding his theory is the persistent human weakness that
remains convinced, despite his many demonstrations to
the contrary, that the visible world is real and that consequently the intelligible world must be extended in space
to form and govern it (6.4.2, 28-43). He insists that the
material world is specious, the last feeble manifestation of
intelligible power in the blank and insubstantial substrate
of matter. This manifestation is appropriate only to the
most feeble exercise of thought: the naive opinion that
takes things for what they only seem to be.
Let me hasten to add that Plotinus does not deny that
matter is somehow real; he merely insists that its reality is
not intelligible in itself, but only with reference to the
divine intelligible power that creates, informs, and sustains it and with reference also to the power of human intellect that beholds it and seems to penetrate its deceptive
appearance. Matter is an illusion only in the sense that it
is the most diffused appearance of the divine thought
which recognizes it not as delusion or falsity, but as its
own exuberance and self-revelation. For Plotinus, all mere
existence (for the One is beyond existence) is appearance,
a real apparition of divine energy, in a particular intelligible, psychic, or material form, relative to the level of
consciousness that is able to perceive and understand it.
He insists only that the reality of these appearances is not
in themselves but in their cause because reality means in~
telligibility. All levels of reality are strictly relative to the
levels of consciousness-perception, emotion, discursive
knowledge, pure contemplation-which apprehend them.
The soul ascends to a higher level of reality as it attains to
a higher level of consciousness: the soul ascends to God as
it attains a divine power of thought. A topography of salvation is completely internalized.
This kind of thinking is unfamiliar to us and even Flolinus' contemporaries seem to have been puzzled by it.
Why does Plotinus want to think and talk this way?
Plotinus concludes from the immateriality of the intelligible world that whatever is able to participate in it, participates in it as a whole. Where there is no question of
extension or magnitude, whatever is present to any. must
be present to all (6.4.2, 43-49). The truth of this inference
is easy to see in the case of demonstrative knowledge
which, if it is to be genuine, universal knowledge, must be
the same for all human intellects, despite the differences
in human personalities. Plotinus' idea is another form of
the Aristotelian theorem that the intellect in act is identical with the intelligible in act. If individual intellects know
the identical object of knowledge, they must each become
it identically. Plotinus, therefore, says that participation in
knowledge, in the divine intellect, is identical because
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
knowledge, being immaterial, is equally present to all intellects that know it. The object of knowledge, likewise, is
equally available to any intellect that turns its attention towards it and becomes present to every intellect in proportion to its individual ability. to know it. But the differences
among actually attained knowledges are all on the side of
the individual human intellects; the divine intellect is
equally present to all. But this truth is not too obvious in
the case of existential participation, e.g. human participation in the divine virtues. Why, one may object, does this
participation not also appear uniform? Why in fact does it
appear to be wildly diverse, there being perhaps not a
single form-justice or beauty, for example-that appears
to be evenly distributed in the world? Plotinus answers
that there are manifest degrees of participation because
they correspond to the differing abilities of created things
to accept the impression of the form whose power is
nonetheless present and available to it (6.4.8, 39-40; 11,
3-5). These varying abilities to participate correspond in
turn to different intensities of the desire to receive the
quality or form (5.3.17, 28-32; 5.5.8).
Here Plotinus again uses the vocabulary of psychology
in a metaphysical discussion. But Plotinus is not just careless about his vocabulary: he wants the identification or
confusion of metaphysics and psychology to be an explicit
principle of his philosophy. Free will and not existence is
to be its foundation.
Because divine being is omnipresent and because its
presence is realized in the actual existence of each particular being according to the capacity and desire of each to
receive a divine mode of existence, this relation of the
transcendent power and immanent presence of the divine
being will be valid also for the individual soul. Because,
moreover, all divine reality is both intellectual and intelligible (both thinks and is the object of thought), the soul
shares in divine reality through contemplation, both expanding its knowledge and strengthening its power of
thought. The metaphysical interrelation of transcendence
and immanence is the structure of personal salvation. The
soul is elevated through contemplation to a divine and
universal mode of existence without losing its uniqueness
in that greater power. The divine existence appears as the
individual existence without resigning its transcendence.
This development reveals the importance of the idea of
the self as distinct from all the powers and contents of the
soul. (Compare the argumentation throughout 5.3, 3-4).
The human soul and intellect are manifestations of and
participations in the world soul and the divine intellect.
Just as, in the universe, the world soul and the divine intellect are unified by the comprehensive power of the One,
so, in the individual human person, the individual soul
and intellect are unified by the comprehensive power of
the self, superior to them and usually hidden by them.
Further, just as the One generates the world soul and the
divine intellect out of itself but remains unlimited by their
specific natures and undiminished by their specific activities, so the human self is the real source of the individual
77
�soul and intellect, but a source that remains unaffected by
their diverse natures and acts.
The soul is many things and all things, both the things above
and those below down to the limits of all life. We are each one
an intelligible cosmos, touching the lower world by the
powers of the soul belOw, but with our higher powers attain-
ing the entire intelligible realm. We remain with all the rest of
the intelligible above, but by our lowest edge we are bound to
the world below. (3.4.3, 21-27)
Only the attachment of the soul to a material body dulls
its perception of its continued residence in the divine
world. The soul does not literally descend into a body. Its
only descent is ignorance of its divine origin and nature.
Detachment from the body liberates the higher sensibility
and delivers the soul again to its original beatitude. Salvation, the ascent of the soul to divine life, is therefore selfknowledge; salvation is a re-awakening of the soul from
the torpor of incarnate existence to the eternal world of
its origin and its higher, inner, and secret life. Because the
interior cosmos of the soul mirrors the cosmos of the uni-
verse, the life of the philosopher becoming conscious of
himself is an archetypal personal history in which his individual existence is elevated to the status of an archetype
because it is consciously conformed, through his contemplation, to the pattern of universal being, a pattern that is
always present in his soul as an inherent possibility and
power of existence, the power to transform his life in the
image of the divine realities he contemplates.
As a consequence of the theory of integral omnipresence, a general theory of universal being becomes the
equivalent of the practice of the interior life of contemplation. Because of this equivalence, self-knowledge is
knowledge of God; because knowledge of God is salvation, self-knowledge is salvation.
Or is it? The One is unknowable.
But is the One God? Yes.
But is the One present in us, so that knowledge of the
self can be knowledge of the One? Yes. In the first tractate of the fifth Ennead, after outlining his metaphysics,
Plotinus continues:
It has now been shown that we must believe that things are as
follows: there is first the One which is beyond being, as our
discourse tried to demonstrate, so far as it is possible to dem-
onstrate about such things; next there is intellect and then
the soul. As these three exist in nature, so it is necessary to
believe that they exist even in ourselves. I do not mean in the
perceptible parts of ourselves-for these three are incorporeal-but in those parts that Plato calls "the inner man."
Even our soul, then, is a divine thing and of another nature,
such as is the universal nature of soul. (5.1.10, 1-12)
Plotinus says in other passages that we are joined to the
One, that we touch the ultimate Godhead, by a similar
nature in ourselves. He even says at one point, after hav-
ing described the ethical purification he demands as preparation for the contemplation of divine reality, "but our
78
desire is not to be free of sin, but to be God" (1.2.6, 2-3).
What is the meaning of this dark utterance? It is one
thing, and a thing whose meaning has, I hope, become
somewhat clearer in the course of this essay, to say that
the authentic self is an archetype in the divine intellect, a
self that is therefore unique, divine, and immortal; the
self, on this view, is a determinate aspect of the divine wis-
dom, relative to its limited sphere of manifestation in the
created world. But to assert that the One dwells in the self
seems to make an unrestricted claim for the divinity of
the self, seems to abolish the distinction between the
created self and the ultimate source and desire of all
created existence. Furthermore, because the One is said
to be present in every self and in every form in the divine
intellect, it seems that even the distinction between the
One and the divine intellect, so carefully made and so
strenuously defended, would disappear and with this distinction would disappear all rational justification for
created diversity and multiplicity.
The desire of Plotinus to unify metaphysics and personal religion has caused a serious problem.
3 Mystical Unity
I shall proceed obliquely and by negative contrasts. If
we find difficulties in the system as Plotinus presents it,
let us wonder what it would have been like if it were not as
Plotinus presents it. Specifically, if we see problems in the
distinction between the divine intellect and the One and
in the assertion that the soul can be unified mystically
with both of them, let us consider what the system would
look like without these features. I hope by this procedure
to reveal the appetites of Plotinus in making his system
and his satisfaction in it.
If, then, Plotinus had not posited above the divine intellect another deity, incomprehensible in thought, but attainable in an immediate, non-rational union, his religious
aspiration for union with God could still have been satisfied. He already speaks of the divinization. of the soul
through union with the divine intellect (5.8.7, 32-35;
5.8.10, 39-40; 5.8.11). He could have developed this idea
much as Averroes was to do, by making the conjunction
of the human passive intellect with the divine active intellect the goal of all religious and philosophical striving.
Such a theory would, however, have implied a different
notion of the self than that embodied in the system as Plotinus has it. The self for such a theory would be defined
by its being coextensive with the divine intellect as a system of laws, relationships, and pure archetypes of being.
The self would exist insofar as the truth of the divine intellect, its unity as perfect knowledge, is valid. This theory
implies a fundamentally abstract and impersonal view of
being; the self would be a law of knowledge, coextensive
with the divine intellect, rather than a life or a free will.
(Averroes, who professed this view of human beatitude,
found no need for an additional, personal immortality.)
AUTUMN 1981
�Even if this system included within the divine intellect
the forms of human individuals, the self, although imperishable, would still be defined as a unique point of view on
the finite content of the divine intellect. Its desire for
union with God would have no uniquely determined personal significance. Its immortality would be guaranteed by
the conformity of the intellect to the perfect order of the
divine intellect. This order has two essential characteristics: finitude and necessity. The self, in turn, would be
finite and contained by the necessity that governs all intellectual being. The divine intellect would be the single,
final, and absolutely integrated self and the pattern of all
genuine selfhood.
Against or, more accurately, beyond this notion of selfhood and of divinity, Plotinus sets another, for which intellect and consciousness are not the highest values. His
decision to do this sets him apart from his predecessors in
the Greek philosophical tradition. For Plotinus the two
most important personal qualities are freedom and, dependent upon it, love. It is precisely these two qualities,
insignificant in an impersonal notion of selfhood and
divinity, that Plotinus sought to preserve and exalt in the
mysticism that culminates in union with the One.
The basic affirmation of "intellectualistic" mysticism is
that each human individual is an archetype contained in
the divine intellect. Union with the divine intellect elevates the human intellect to the universality of the divine
intellect, but allows no freedom in that unity. If the self is
preserved as an eternal mode, moment, or aspect of the
divine intellect, its existence is limited and determined by
the necessary causal dependence that creates and maintains it. Such a self is not free and its personal religious
aspirations are ultimately irrelevant because that self will
cease to exist as separate. The intellect sees the One as
the supreme object of metaphysical speculation. Personal
religion desires not to understand the One, but to be
united with it as the object of its love.
This union of love reveals not only a new aspect of the
God that is loved, but also of the self that loves Him. (In
such descriptions Plotinus uses the masculine pronouns
which name a personal God instead of the more usual
neuter pronouns which name an abstract principle or im-
personal cause.) In this union with a personal God, the
self and its love are experienced as infinite and free. The
desire to experience the native infinity and freedom of the
self, in addition to purely metaphysical reasons, motivates
Plotinus' description of the One as itself (or Himself) infinite and free.
Here ·is a passage from the long and careful discussion
of how the One may be said to be free, in which Plotinus
makes it clear that his doctrine about the One's freedom
implies a similar nature in ourselves, a state of isolation
and self-mastery.
When we say that He (the One) receives nothing into Himself
and that nothing else contains Him, intending to place Him
outside of chance, we mean not only that He is free by reason
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
of His attainment of self-unity and purity from all things, but
also that, if we discover a similar nature in ourselves that has
nothing to do with those things which depend upon us and
by which we suffer accident and chance (the body and its
emotions), we mean that by that nature alone we have the
same self-mastery that the One has, the autonomy of the light
that belongs to the Good and is good in actuality, essentially
superior to any intellectual light or goodness. When we ascend into that state and become that light alone, having discarded everything else, what else can we say but that we are
more than (intellectually) free, more than autonomous?
(6.8.15, 8-23)
It would be impossible to state more emphatically that the
discovery of an utterly transcendent God corresponds to
the attainment of a state of personal transcendence that is
the unceasing presence of that God within the self. In
religion, as in metaphysics, there is a union or coincidence
of an immanent power and its transcendent cause.
In this union with God the soul discovers that its deepest ground is not its archetypal being contained in the
divine intellect, that its highest aspiration is not, therefore, to become perfect self-consciousness, omniscence,
and formed existence. Its ultimate uniqueness is a mystery
inaccessible to discursive reason, because its authentic
self is infinite and free. The self is an ideal, a teleological
notion because the self can withdraw itself from its apparent, projected, personality (within whose boundaries it
can have only finite satisfaction) and can thereby discover
its infinity and freedom in union with the infinity and
freedom of the One (6.5.7). The aspiration of the self to
know itself as unique finds its complete satisfaction only
in this union with a God unlimited in activity and uncomprehended by thought. The One is experienced in this
union as one with the deepest point of the self (6.9.11).
But we must return to our problem: how did Plotinus
think that he could get away with this? We must return
because Plotinus himself had no patience with religious
enthusiasm unsupported by philosophy.
Plotinus does not see this problem quite as we do
because he is completely unaffected by incarnational
thinking and probably completely ignorant of it. He
believes that the divine world is omnipresent: its powers
and possibilities underlie every derived existence. The
One is present to the intellect as an innate desire to surpass its self-reflective unity of being and thinking; this
desire, moreover, is prior to the subject-object duality of
intellect precisely because the desire to be at one with
oneself is the presence of the One in the human person as
its innate unity and simplicity. The life of the One persists in the intellect as its inner light which strives to
return from thoughts to its original free and undefined
condition. The One is present everywhere as this spontaneous desire to transcend every internal division, as the
desire of all things for their inherent unity (6.5.1; 6.9.1-2).
Intellect is a principle of diversity and multiplication,
"for intellect is an activity manifest in the expansion of all
things" (3.8.9, 20-33). The One is an act of contraction of
79
�the soul upon itself, a descent into itself, a negative activity that shrinks from the nullity of phenomena mto the
core of the self. All consciousness IS concentratiOn, a
strengthening of the contemplative power upon the inside of the soul. The One appears as the final event of this
concentration. This state is not an intellectual intuition of
the self nor of an absolute unity, but is a coincidence of
the self with the One, not a coalescence of substances but
a coincidence of activities. In this coincidence neither the
transcendence of the One nor the dependence of the self
as created are violated.
Plotinus often recalls the language of the Symposium
when describing this union (1.6.7; 6.7.22; 6.7.34-35). Plato
interpreted erotic passion as the vehicle of personal transcendence into the world of true bemg because eros discovers and actualizes the likeness of the soul to that world.
The sequence of transcendences that conducts the soul to
a final vision of the forms and contact with the truth IS
described in the Symposium as an ascending dialectic of
desire stimulated and desire fulfilled, of beauty perceived
and beauty attained, of love aroused by vision and love at
rest in its object. Plotinus makes one significant addition,
speaking of "beauty perceived and beauty acquired" as
the contemplative soul affectively mmors the dlVlne perfections it beholds. The soul actualizes its visions as
deeper levels of its own virtual existence. Therefore the
dialectic of love in Plotinus culminates not m VISIOn but m
union. But it is a union of lovers that does not obliterate
their distinction, for that would obliterate also their love,
but causes them to forget the distance between them.
This union is two-fold: because it is an attainment of
the authentic self, it occurs within the boundaries of the
soul but because it is union with the One, it is also a certain'transcendence of the soul's individuality. This union
is the mystical counterpart of the metaphysical theory of
integral omnipresence and is a particular application of It.
The One is transcendent because it is the efficient cause
of the lower forms of existence which proceed from it; yet
as their final cause it is immanent in its effects because
they can return to it only by enfolding and concentrating
their activity around the center of their own existence.
Transcendence corresponds to the desire stimulated by
one's unattained good; immanence corresponds to the
tranquil possession of one's good as the part and activity
of one's own self. The soul is not poor: its best part, its
innermost self, is already somehow transcendent (3.5.3,
25-26). The soul does not need to become divine by grace
because its deepest point is already God.
We must put aside all else to remain in that Alone and to
become it, discarding all other attachments. We are impatient
to depart this life and to be free of it so that we may be enfolded upon our own entirety and have no part in us but ~hat
through which we have contact with God. Then it is possible
to see Him and one's self together, insofar as one may speak
80
any longer of vision. It is a vision of a self resplendent, full of
intellectual light, pure, weightless, lightsome, a self that
~as
become God, or rather that is God always, but only then wtth
its Godhead enkindled. (6.9.9, 50-58)
The spiritual meaning of the theory of integral omnipresence is thus made clear. When the soul is saved, it apprehends and possesses its good, it is assumed into and possessed by the more inclusive existence of its good, but II
has not departed from itself in an ecstasy nor has It received a new self by grace; it has only for the first time
realized the good inherent in itself.
.
This union with the God is both the culmination of philosophy (because philosophical contemplation is the only
valid preparation) and also a transcendence of philosophy
(because the union surpasses and temporanly obliterates
the subject-object duality of all contemplation). Phtlosophy is not a mechanical method that. will inevitably supply
the desired mystical experiences (such a view would
violate the freedom of God); the self must prepare·itself
for these experiences and wait (5.5.8; also 1.6.9; 5.3.17,
28-32; 6.5.12, 29-31). The visions of the sober intellect
are annulled by the experiences of the drunken intellect
in love with God (6.7.35). In this sense philosophy is itself
left behind by religion, although it will again be asked to
interpret the experiences at the essentially inferior level
of thought and speech.
The final personal tr')nsformation is to have one's
desire for God and one's vision of God so cldsely united to
one's essential self that the self becomes the pure mirror
into which the final revelation of God is suspended. The
whole sequence of contemplative vision is accomplished
within the soul as a life of theopathy, suffering the divine,
because the transfiguration of these visions occurs only
for the soul that is transformed by them. The important
factor is the correlation of the real apparition of God to
the soul and the soul's degree of inner association with
God, the degree to which it concentrates and strengthens
its inner light into likeness with God.
The ultimate spiritual attainment of the self and the
form of its salvation coincide with the ultimate manifestation of God. The true self, experienced only in union with
the One, is perfect freedom; the ultimate God, experienced only in union with the self, is pure creative spontaneity. The return of the soul through gradual simplifications of intellectual vision to the motionless self reveals at
the same time that self, in its purity and freedom, as the
only perfect revelation of God.
We have returned to the beginning, we have seen Flolinus' idea of the self, its inseparable connection with his
experience of God, and we have solved all problems. I
hope, finally, that it is clear, through th1s discusswn of the
union of the deepest self with the highest God, how the
entire philosophy of Plotinus is but the preparation and
intimation of the silence of that unimaginable splendor.
AUTUMN
I981
�OCCASIONAL DISCOURSES
The Permanent Part
of the College*
By "the permanent part" of the College
in the title of my address, I mean, as you
have probably guessed, you, the alumni.
That is not just an ingratiating way of
speaking devised for the occasion, but it
has some facts in its favor.
Before I explain myself, let me remind
you of an occasion in which many of you
have participated-the president's Senior
Dinner. One part of it that is sometimes
quite moving is the Dean's Toast to theRepublic. If he is feeling thorough, it will
have four parts, ascending in order of
worldly magnitude and then dropping into
intimate immediacy. There will be celebrated the Republic of Plato, which is the
world's first book to set out the program of
a true school, the republic of letters which
is the commonwealth of all those who love
the word, the republic of the United States
of America which is the ground and foundation of our worldly being, and finally, St.
John's College, the living community of
learning.
The question concerning the continuity
of all these commonwealths with each
other, and of each in itself, in other words,
the question in all its range of the continuity of community has always been a preoccupation of mine. As I understand it, it is
an aspect of that question that you, as
alumni, want me to speak about, and I welcome the occasion for becoming clear
about it to myself. So to return to the position of the alumni within the college community.
Consider the students at any time attending the college. Presently they graduate, they go to a first degree of academic
honor and are students in the strict sense
no longer. The Board of the college changes
*Delivered at a gathering of San Francisco area
alumni of St. John's in the fall of 1980.
THE ST.JOHNS REVlEW
all the time; its members have a fairly short
term. Our last president was with us an
amazingly long time-the longest or among
the longest of any twentieth century college president. But he has now sworn not
to set foot on either campus for a year, for
a well-earned period of distance and refreshment. May our new president, whom
you will meet later in the year, be with us
for that length of time which betokens a
good fit!-but it will not be permanently.
And finally, the tutors themselves, who
may seem to you to be truly permanent fixtures at Annapolis and Santa Fe-they too
must retire late in life <!nd become
"emeriti," members of the college by
reason of their meritorious past but now
completed service.
Alumni, on the other hand, are alumni
for good. Their very name proclaims itthey are "nurslings" who have, presumably, absorbed something of the college's
substance. By the college Polity all students, once matriculated, become alumni
of the college, whether they leave with or
without a degree, and no one can retire or
"terminate" them. All other membership
in the college is by choice; that of alumni
alone has in it something analogous to being by nature.
So as nurslings of the institution, alumni
are first of all asked to nourish it in return. I
know very well and have a certain limited
sympathy for the complaint that when the
college communicates with graduates it is
too often about money-exactly the complaint parents have about their student
children. It has to be. Private colleges are
charitable institutions that give their services almost half free. Money-raising is the
price they pay for their freedom to choose
to be what they are. It can be done crudely
or tactfully, but done it must be, by our
president as by all other private school
presidents. Of course, the response is a
matter of choice. That choice may well be
determined not only by a general sense of
responsibility for the continuation of nongovernmental education but also by gratitude. For example, I have a fixed, and fairly
well-kept rule of sending twenty-five
dollars to St. John's whenever the institutions from which I graduated-whom I respected only as the employers of much
admired but very remote professors and
loved not all.-solicit me for money.
But, of course, the notion that the alumni's relation to the college-at least to our
college-begins or ends there is absurd. So
let me now consider the question what
constitutes the after-life of a student from
its most specific to its widest aspect.
First of all, and this turns out to be by no
means a mere formality, the alumni participate in the governance of the college
through their board representatives and informally by the weight of their organized
opinion. That opinion has on occasion
decided issues-such as the proposed
abandonment of our old name.
The college in turn, we all agree, owes its
alumni certain reliable services and wellorganized, substance-informed occasions
for their return. Among the first is the
prompt and effective composition of letters of reference. Among the second are
Homecoming with its seminars, and the exhilarating summer alumni seminars that
take place in Santa Fe. Then there are the
alumni meetings in the various cities, such
as this one. For all of these affairs the
tutors who help with them volunteer their
time and efforts, in acknowledgement of
the permanent bond between them and
their former students.
But the tutors have another kind of
duty~that more informal kind of duty
which, were it not such a pleasure to per-
81
�form, would probably not be very faithfully
observed. It is a duty which, even though it
is more sporadic than undergraduate
teaching, is as serious and as satisfying. It is
to be in some practical sense there for
alumni, to write to in weal or woe, to visit
on the way to a new departure or on a sentimental journey, to bring the conclusions
of life to. Those visits from former students-sometimes there is time only for fifteen minutes of conversation in the coffee
shop-are always talked about among us.
Nothing brings home to us the ultimate
impotence of the profession Of teaching
and the deeply dubious character of the
program as does a visit from a former student who is lost and who attributes that
condition to having been touched by some
unassimilable intimation of paradise or of
hell in this school. Nothing gives so exhilarating a sense of stability in change as the
appearance of alumni who have so well
and truly put the college in the past that it
is equa11y well and truly present in them:
an oracular saying which I am certain will
have some immediate meaning for most of
you, and of which I want to say more later.
But the feelings with which these encounters leave us, from disturbed regret to
a sense that the deliberate benevolance we
felt towards you in your student daysgood teachers are never "close" to their
students-is about to turn into life-long
friendship, are not my present point. That
point is that alumni are in a more than
metaphorical sense returning home, and
have a right to be received in that spirit.
Those, then, are the continuing relations
of the alumni with the college as a home
community, made up of officers and two
campuses and one faculty. Now I come to
the after-life of alumni on their own. How
does the college continue with them? It is
by far the more problematic topic and a
better subject for reflection.
Of course, it too has a practical and organizable part. The alumni organizations are,
as it were, independent extensions of the
college. In bringing former students together in the kind of event which is characteristic of St. John's, in seminars and
lectures legitimated by discussion, they
propagate the life of the college and provide members with the means for continuing to live it at their leisure. For us to hear
that a city has a lively alumni group is to
have a sense of having friends in the world,
82
and to come to such a city, for example, to
San Francisco, is a little like the experience
of the shipwrecked Greek who, being cast
up on a wild coast, saw scratched in a rock
the diagram of Eucid I, 47 and said: "Here
too are humans."
(Let me hasten to add that this feeling is
absurd. Humans, that is to say, people to
talk to, are everywhere. And yet, absurd as
it is, it is also humanly sensible, for it is humanly sensible to feel relieved at finding
one's own.)
This external, organized continuation of
college life away from the campuses is, of
course, only the expression of any inner individual continuity. Let me again begin at
the easy end by giving some plain and practical tutors' answers to the questions about
alumni life.
Alumni should continue reading. I imagine that most of you read quite a bit in the
ordinary course of your lives. Much of that
reading is in so called "papers" -newspapers, position papers, official paperseverything I call to myself "instrumental
junk.'' Mally of you probably also read
reams of poetry and of novels-my own
favorite genre-of that mean range of
excellence which goes down easily and yet
nourishes the imagination. Many of you
will have emerged from the program hungry for history written to that same
standard. I have often thought that the
much-bemoaned heavy tread of our program readings has in the best event this
happy side effect-that it leaves students
with a great appetite-some of you may recall that the Greeks called it boulimia, "oxfamine" -for miscellaneous reading. But
this kind of reading, which we share with
the rest of the literate world, is not what I
have in mind.
I am thinking of a very deliberate effort.
It involves first of all letting the time ripen,
by keeping the thought in mind without
pressing on to the execution. But then,
when you are ready, pick up the program
list. Readiness may be that the new ways of
life which you have, in a healthy zest for
contrast, thrown yourselves into have begun to fail you. It may mean that some specific question has returned to preoccupy
you, or that you see its true shape for the
first time. It may mean simply that you feel
the wave of activity floating you away from
the isle of contemplation.
Pick up the list and choose a text. Then
read it. Read it as experienced grown-ups
reread the books of their youth: with a
twinge of nostalgia for the circumstances
of its first reading and with some wry admiration for the lordly consumption of metaphysics of which you were once capable,
but after that with the critical discernment
which comes from a well-digested, that is
to say, half-forgotten education. That is my
small but precise recommendation for
doing alumni-deeds.
But now the moment has come for matters of larger scope. Let me work my way
into them by dwelling on a dilemma often
discussed or displayed by visiting alumni, a
dilemma at once highly specific to this college and of the widest human importance.
Alumni sometimes arrive with a shamefaced and apologetic air about them. How
have they sinned? They are respected at
their work and loved at home, but now
they have come to the place of accountgiving, and they feel wanting. The matter
is this: they are not living the philosophic
life.
Now that is a difficulty that I can only
imagine a St. Johnnie as being oppressed
by. Other students might be anxious before their teachers for having failed in the
world or even for having lost their soul, but
they would not usually know much about
or honor the philosophic life. I am always
charmed by our students' anxiety because
it shows on their part a willingness to take
root in a deep and wise tradition concerning the good life. But I am also, in turn,
anXIOUS.
Let me backtrack for a moment to be
more accurate. Sometimes there really is
something amiss in these uneasy visitors.
They may have become enmeshed in what
I will simply denominate here by its all too
instantiable formula, "the hassles of contemporary living". Or they are absorbed in
the mild miserie~ of forgetfulness and can't
come to. But more often their account of
their life is full of shy ardor and quiet intelligence. Then I ask myself: what on earth
does he or she, what do we all mean by the
philosophical life?
So the matter needs to be thought out.
Let me give you some of my thoughts,
some long in coming, some thought out for
the occasion.
When the ancient philosophers speak of
the philosophical life, the bios philosophiAUTIJMN 1981
�k6s, one thing is immediately clear. It is a
life and not a profession they are speaking
of. Professors of philosophy have certain
real disabilities in living the philosophical
life. For as professors they have a position
to maintain in the world, and work, not leisure, is their element. It is just the same
with returning graduate students in philosophy. Sometimes they are full of interesting reflections on their activity, but
sometimes they are so lost in their profession that it makes one's heart sink.
Not that tutors are altogether different.
To be sure, one incident that did much to
win my heart for the college was a salary report prepared now almost a quarter century
ago by Winfree Smith.
Its preamble declared that although tutors were paid to live, they were not paid
for their work because that was invaluable.
It was invaluable both in being a pleasure
and the need of their soul to perform and
because its value was incapable of being
quantitatively fixed. But while it is an inner
truth that tutors do not work for wages, it is
an external fact that we are the employees
of a demanding institution, who converse
by appointment, teach on schedule, and
study according to a program-and to miss
any of these official obligations without a
reason is highly unacceptable behavior.
It follows that we too are professionals,
and not free to live a daily life of absorbed
contemplation. But perhaps if no one we
know lives a philosophical life by reason of
even the best loved profession, it is still
true that that life is compatible with any
work, and any work can be done in a philosophical spirit. Let me pursue that.
The life of philosophy seems to me to
have one external condition, leisure, and
one reason for being, the search for truth.
That leisure is not exhausted "time off'
from work, bUt the free time for the sake of
which the other times of one's life are
spent. Of the search for truth let me say
only that it is not only a possibility but a
necessity for most human beings. In whose
life have there not been moments when all
considerations have waned but the desire,
the exigent desire, to know the truth?
The long and short of it is, I think, that
like all fundamental human modes the phil·
osophical life comes in graduated versions
which are continuous and even complementary, and those who come nearest to
living it in some pure form hold its shape in
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
trust for those who, from duty or preference, do the world's business.
For in spite of what I said before, there
are protected environments for that life,
and the college is the best place I know for
study and reflection. Its program and its
schedules are, after all, intended to be the
ladder and the handholds in the reflective
climb; most of us certainly I, myself, need
such prescribed paths, since a life wholly
free of stimulants and constraints leaves us
more melancholy than illumined. The
business of our college is in the service of leisure; it is a true schOol, if I m"ay recall to
you the old chestnut, that that word itself
comes from schole, Greek for '~leisure."
Of course, it is for that very reason not
the so-called real world. No one knows that
better than its long-term inhabitants, particularly since they also live out of it, as
neighbors, consumers, taxpayers, voters,
and world-watchers. To be sure, in large
academic conglomerations theoretical megalomania and practical impotence come together in that Lilliputian preoccupation
known as academic politics. But the atmosphere of smaller schools is usually no
more strained than that of an intensely
close family, while the tutors of St. John's,
because of the common allegiance to a program with integrity, form a remarkable
community of friends, willing to talk to and
to trust in each other.
Not only is the philosophical life best
carried on in a special place, it is even most
apt to be carried on by distinctive people.
That distinction seems to me to be less one
of nature or kind than of circumstance and
predeliction. For example, our students approach the leading of such a life by reason
of their being in leisured circumstances,
and most of us tutors come near it more
through our inclination than capacity for
intellection. I know that in saying all this I
can be accused of showing myself a child
of my time and of depreciating the philo·
sophical life. Those would be heavy
charges, but perhaps I must face them in
the question period.
How then is this special life, the life of
philosophy, related to the life of action, if
they are not in principle discontinuous? I
used to think that the movement back and
forth between them was entirely possible.
In particular it seemed to me that someone
who had thought deeply about the world
should be able to act wisely in it. I was
never such a fool as to think that academics or intellectuals would cope particularly
well ·with ruling responsibility, but I was
thinking of philosophers, people whose
thought is not divorced from the nature of
things. The notion of a philosopher kingor queen, for that matter-did not seem
impossible to me. I have not totally recanted, but the facts of life loom larger
now. I honor experience more, though that
is an argument against the activity of the
young as much as of the philosopher. What
matters more is that the rhythm and therequirements of the two lives seem to me
more irreconcilably different. From the
point of view of the life of reflection, the
other life seems unbearable for the continual curtailment of thought and its incessantly instrumental use, for the lack oflong
legatos of development and the hurried
forestalling of spontaneous insight it brings
with it. From the point of view of the life of
action, the inability to reach conclusions
without going back to the primal ameba (as
Elliott Zuckerman likes to say), the ob·
struction of progress on mere principle, the
lack of feel for possibilities, the sheer impotence of those who represent the other life,
must be repellent. I conclude that with
whatever freedom we may begin, at some
time we become habituated to one or the
other of the lives, and we will settle into
our profession and our setting accordingly.
But there is nothing at all in this against
frequent cross-overs. On the contrary, just
as those who make reflection the center of
their life must keep their worldly wits
about them to have anything to reflect on,
so those who do the world's business can
and ought to philosophize, either as a
steady accompaniment of their work, or intermittently, in their times of leisurewhichever fits the economy of their life. I
think our alumni often live just that way.
Would that they knew how close to us they
seem when they do it!
That is what I wanted to say about the
relations between the college as an institution and its alumni.
Now I would like to conclude by consid·
ering how alumni might cope with the college insofar as it is a place and a time in
their lives. I would like to entitle this section: "How rightly to forget the college."
By forgetting I mean, to begin with, a
phenomenon well known to theorists of
learning-and of course, to learners. Most
83
�learning begins in proud but hesitant selfconsciousness and later subsides into a
latent, yet ever active, condition. Such
learning informs the soul as a second nature-it reshapes it with good nourishment
and right exercise. It is in the hope that
something of that sort has happened that
alumni are called alumni. I think much of
that inner shaping, that passage into the
past by which what was once a time in your
life becomes a permanent possession, actually takes place in the decade after you
have left the place itself, and takes a considerable digestive effort.
Let me tell you what seem to me the
signs that the passage has taken place. My
recital will be illustrative rather than
exhaustive, because I am not much enchanted by analytic check lists of the lib·
eral skills and attitudes, and those are, of
course, what I am talking about. If you like,
we can talk more about these in the question period. And my examples will be given
pell-mell, mixing the sublime and the trivial-always remembering though, that
"trivial" originally meant: belonging to the
trivium, the triple arts of language, gram·
mar, rhetoric, logic. Here, then, are some
of the features of that second, that alumninature, which we always recognize with
deep satisfaction:
l. An unpretentious, companionable
closeness to some deep and difficult
books.
2. A fairly wide factual learning of the
sort that is absorbed incidentally, in
the course of trying to understand
some matter.
3. A resourceful recalcitrance toward
all translation, be it from Greek into
latinate English, from common language into technical jargon, from
book onto screen, from original text
to popular paraphrase.
4. A long perspective on our modern
tradition which avoids either kvetchy cavilling or easy riding, because
it is based on some knowledge of our
roots and our revolutions.
5. Knowing that the plural of eYdos is
etde.
6. A carefully cherished ignorance that
texts of mathematical symbols and
of musical notes might be anything
but essentially accessible expressions
of the human soul.
7. A determinedly naive faith in the
possibility of principled political action, supported by a shrewd and
ever-evolving theory of human nature which will neither buckle under
the weight of the world's wickedness
nor invite more of it.
8. A love for the illuminations of the
studies of motion and of life, that is,
physics and biology, and no disposition at all to be taken in by them.
9. As a precipitate of many etymologie::;
studied and many meanings discussed, a constitutional inability to
use even the most current words
without taking thought for their origin and the accumulated burden of
sense they bear.
10. A disposition toward that marriage
of radical reason with reverent respect which was when you were
there, and always will be, the best
mood of the college.
Let me finish by telling the second way
in which the college might pass into a recollection. This way has to do with the fact
that it is the place of your youth. It seems
to me likely that you never had been, nor
ever will be, so young again. Such places of
quintessential youth tend to leave a powerful after-image. McDowell Hall and Peter·
son Student Center become temples
through which float diaphanous figures
swathed in love and logos. Sometimes
when you return, this image may suddenly
fit itself onto the reality-the result will be
pure romance. However, let me try to be
sober about this phenomenon, for it is, I
think, an indispensible instrument in the
shaping of a good life-but only if the col·
lege has become a true object of recollection. By that I mean that you have allowed
life to carry you cheerfully away from its
temporal and spatial coordinates, until the
after-image has in it neither regret nor nostalgia and has become a mere vision.
When those conditions are met, the inner image can and should serve as a source
-a source, not the source-of shapes for a
good life. Then it may provide a paradigm
-a paradigm, not the paradigm-of that
earthly paradise I imagine our alumni as
forever trying to prepare for themselves: a
community of friends held together by a
love of learning. Then you will have put
the college well and truly behind you.
lie policy. But the complexity of the controversies among the great philosophers of
the past should caution us not to expect
easy answers to the questions that are
raised by such an inquiry. Philosophy and
Public Policy is a collection of twenty-one
essays that Professor Sidney Hook has selected from his work over the past thirtyfive years and edited for publication as a
book. Nowhere in this book does the author give more than passing attention to
the important disputes among the great
philosophers. Instead, he offers one admir-
ing essay about John Dewey and one introductory essay of his own on the general
theme of "philosophy and public policy."
Early in this introductory essay, the author summarizes the results of his historical studies: "The most comprehensive as
well as the most adequate conception of
philosophy that emerges from the history
of philosophy is that it is the normative consideration of human values." This definition, though the author gives Dewey credit
for it in another essay, is somewhat reminiscent of Socrates' exhorting us to think
EvA BRANN
FIRST READINGS
Philosophy and Public Policy, by Sidney
Hook, Southern Illinois Press, Carbondale
& Edwardsville, 1980.
Philosophy and politics have enjoyed a
strangely intimate and uneasy relationship
in Western civilization. This curious entanglement, which began no later than the
time of Socrates, remains today at least as
difficult to understand as it ever was. The
historical fact of the relationship should
move every student of politics to inquire
about the influence of philosophy on pub-
84
AUTUMN 1981
�about the pre-suppositions of our ordinary
opinions and activities. Such exhortations
may help move certain people to begin
seeking wisdom, but the definition does
not by itself enable us to distinguish philosophy from ordinary moral reasoning. When
the author tries to provide this distinction,
he encounters difficulties that he does not
surmount. He concedes that philosophic
inquiry is not always about moral phenomena and is not always "morally motivated"
in the usual sense of that term. But he
avoids pursuing the difficulties in the relationship between morality and philosophy
by saying that "[t]he relationships among
the various philosophical disciplines is a
meta philosophical problem, and sti11 open."
At the end of the essay he seems to return
to his original position by saying that "[t]he
philosopher is uniquely a moral seer .... "
But nowhere does he say precisely what a
moral seer is, how he comes to be, why he
does what he does, or what he is good for.
In place of ~m adequate account of philosophy, the author attempts to distinguish
the philosopher by the special skills and
outlook that he might bring to the discussion of public affairs. But the outlook and
skills he describes are available to any
thoughtful man. What Professor Hook
offers is very little more than the uncontroversial standard according to which philosophers' speech, like everyone's, should be
reasonable. That standard is a good one,
however, and I shall try to apply it to the
other essays in this volume, most of which
concern specific political issues.
Perhaps partly because he has not undertaken a thorough examination of the
Western philosophic tradition, Professor
Hook is an extreme liberal, or as he calls
himself in one essay, a "social democrat."
Though he stays well within the boundaries of modern liberal principles, he is not
as crippled by that limitation as many other
contemporary writers are. The cause of
this, I suspect, is that he has the great gift
of common sense. But whatever the cause,
he writes very well when attacking Communists, who subscribe to one of the most
poisonous liberal heresies, and when criticizing liberal fools, whom he calls "ritualistic liberals." Common sense operates best
when dealing with narrow issues, and on
such issues Professor Hook often steps resolutely aside from the sad coffle of liberal
opinion. Confronted with the little tyrannies brought to us by recently fashionable
forms of racism and feminism, he provides
a careful and devastating liberal critique of
what is so euphemistically called "reverse
discrimination." In the same spirit, he
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
shows that William 0. Douglas's confused
and intemperate defenses of political violence are incompatible with the principles
of liberal democracy. And Professor Hook
reminds us that to be a liberal one need not
substitute a fetish about the free speech
clause of the First Amendment for an intelligent interpretation of the Constitution.
But when he takes up topics that are
very general or remote from specific events,
Professor Hook is apt to become confused
and unilluminating. The volume's longest
essay, which is devoted to "human rights,"
displays this shortcoming vividly. In the
fashion of contemporary academic philosophy, the author is much concerned with
defining his terms and defending his definitions. His discussion tends to revolve
around the following statement:
A human right is a morally justifiable
claim made in behalf of all men to the enjoyment and exercise of those basic freedoms,
goods, and services which are considered
necessary to achieve the human estate. On
this definition human rights do not correspond to anything an individual literally
possesses as an attribute, whether physical
or mental. Morally justifiable claims are proposals to treat human beings in certain ways.
Human rights are not names of anything.
They specify procedures-courses of action-to be followed by agencies of the
government and community with respect to
a series of liberties, goods, and services.
If we follow ordinary usage, in which the
term "right" means something justifiable,
the first sentence appears to be little more
than a tautology. Later in the essay, the author uses the terms "rights" and "freedoms" interchangably; while this would
eliminate the tautology, it would leave us
to wonder how a freedom can be a claim to
a freedom.
Much of the essay is devoted to criticizing other definitions of human rights;
these others are worse, and most of his criticisms are appropriate. But not once does
he mention the notion of "natural rights,"
which is the best known-and I believe
also the best-alternative to his own conception. That he means to reject that
notion is evident from his claim in the quotation above that human rights are not
names of anything and are not attributes of
human beings; and his rejection of it is implied even more clearly when he later asserts that human rights "are not derived
from the reason of things or the reason in
God, Nature, or Man." The closest he
comes to offering any evidence against
such a derivation is to point out that bills of
rights are altered and re-interpreted as time
passes. But this fact does not even begin to
prove that the truth about rights has ever
changed or ever will.
Despite its lack of any arguments against
the concept of natural rights, Professor
Hook's essay does contain hints of at least
three grounds upon which that concept
might be discarded. Perhaps an appeal to
natural rights would be rhetorically ineffective in our time because of the power of
cultural relativism among our most literate
and influential citizens; or perhaps "nature" is a term so broad that it induces us
to pay insufficient attention to the particular political conditions within which all human rights are enjoyed and circumscribed;
or perhaps we should rely on human progress rather than reason, nature, or God to
tell us what the limits of human claims and
freedoms should be. There may be some
merit in one or more of these suggestions,
but Professor Hook does not defend them
adequately. His own rhetoric in this essay
is so convoluted and academic that even
such old-fashioned writers as Jefferson and
Lincoln still sound strong and timely by
comparison. And despite the author's frequent insistence on the need to understand rights in their historical context, he
offers some strained interpretations of history; with perfect seriousness, for example,
he treats the Bible's injunction to observe
the Sabbath as a recognition of "the right
to rest and leisure." In general, Professor
Hook tries to talk about rights without
specifying their limits, apparently in the
hope that this will contribUte to the expansion of human rights and human happiness. But this leads him to substitute a
rather hazy optimism about human possibilities for a definite statement about human nature and enduring human needs.
One result is that he pays too little attention to the practical constraints on the expansion of human rights. He defends the
United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights without showing that it can
ever be more than a pious fantasy; and he
acquiesces in Justice Douglas's fabrication
of a constitutional right to privacy without
so much as mentioning the grave political
consequences that this doctrine has had
through the Court's abortion decisions. Before we forsake the notion of "natural
rights," which has been such a central element in our political life, we should wait
for a more solid substitute than the one
Professor Hook offers in this essay.
On occasion, Professor Hook's weak
grasp of general issues leads him to make
statements that are simply astonishing.
85
�One example occurs in an essay on the
rights of victims of crime:
I am prepared to weaken the guarantees and
privileges to which I am entitled as a potential criminal or as a defendant in order to
strengthen my rights and safeguards as a potential victim. Purely on the basis of probabilities, I am convinced that I run a greater
danger of suffering disaster as a potential
victim than as a potential criminal or defendant. It is these probabilities, that shift from
one historical period to another, that must
be the guide to wise, prudent, and just administration of the law.
The crude egoistic utilitarianism of this
statement appears nowhere else in the essay or in the rest of the book. One can easily advocate a firmer enforcement of the
criminal laws without elevating fear for
one's own safety into a principle of justice,
and elsewhere in the essay Professor Hook
does just that. But through this one careless formulation of the principle upon
which the rights of defendants should be
circumscribed, he allows his otherwise reasonable and public-spirited arguments to
seem motivated by a selfish calculation of
his own advantage.
Another example of the author's clumsiness with general formulations occurs at
the end of an essay on political heroism:
The democratic republic that was born in
this hemisphere some two hundred years
ago is the only political alternative ever
devised to mediate, in Lincoln's phrase, "between anarchy, on the one hand, and despotism on the other."
The patriotism of this statement is touching, but the claim is preposterous. The
United States is not the first, let alone the
only, nation to escape the evils of anarchy
and despotism; and an Englishman could
remind us that our republic is not even the
oldest existing alternative to those evils.
Abraham Lincoln, in whose works I have
not been able to find the quotation offered
above, would certainly protest that his position has been distorted. In the First Inaugural Address, Lincoln does say that the
majority principle, rightly understood,
must be maintained lest the country fall
victim to anarchy or to some form of despotism. But Lincoln's whole argument is
directed to the controversies about secession that were burning in America in 1861.
He does not claim that the Union is the
first or only legitimate polity in history, nor
even that it is the best; he says nothing
about other countries, nor about the forms
86
of government that might be suitable to
them.
Not all the disagreeable statements in
the book result merely from the author's
carelessness in formulating his positions. In
one essay, Professor Hook very sensibly argues that the Cold War has been the best
mean between suicidal appeasement and
the terrible dangers that are now inherent
in military warfare between the great powers. But a little later in the same essay, he
makes this remark:
In the past, President Eisenhower, whose
charming and vacuous smile matched his
knowledge of international affairs, and who
confessed.himself stumped by General Zhukov's questions as to what ideals inspired the
West, repeatedly warned us against the dangers of "atheistic communism" as if a communism that was not atheistic would be any
less objectionable.
The language at the beginning of the sentence lacks precision, but the meaning is
clear: President Eisenhower was a buffoon.
It is unfortunate that Eisenhower became
perplexed in the encounter with Zhukov,
but that does not justify this casual and
premeditated display of disrespect; and the
injustice is especially striking since it
comes at the expense of the man who presided over the execution of policies that
Professor Hook has just spent several pages
defending. At the very least, Professor
Hook should explain to us how this buffoon managed to lead our nation through
eight years during which Communist imperialism was successfully contained and
during which prosperity at home grew almost without interruption. But the main
point of the author's sneering remark concerns President Eisenhower's opposition to
"atheistic communism." Does Professor
Hook consider all communism, whatever
its form, equally evil? Was the Oneida
COmmunity as objectionable as the Soviet
Union? Is life in the Israeli religious kibbutzim comparable to life in Cambodia? The
insistent atheism in Marxist-Leninist doctrine is certainly not the only source of its
errors; and the atheism of Communist regimes is certainly not the sole cause of the
horrors that they bring about. But one has
to ask why Professor Hook refuses even to
consider the possibility that atheism might
be one of the soui-ces of Communism's
evils.
The explanation probably lies in the author's own manifest, though unacknowledged, atheism. For reasons that are not
made clear in the book, he fails to state his
position forthrightly. But that position
becomes visible when he calls himself a
''militant secularist.'' And it becomes trans·
parent when he makes, almost in passing,
the following theological pronouncement:
"It is only because human beings build
gods in their own moral image that they
can reasonably hope that the divine com·
mandments can serve as a guideline in human experience."
Professor Hook has included in this vol·
ume Jacques Maritain's graceful and pow·
erful critique of Hook's secular humanism.
The heart of Maritain's position lies in
three propositions: "no society can live
without a basic common inspiration and a
basic common faith"; this faith must in·
elude "convictions ... which deal with the
very substance and meaning of human
life"; and for this purpose no decent substitute for religion has been found. Professor
Hook tries to refute this view by pointing
out the weakness of the logical link between religious faith and allegiance to
democracy. This weakness is obvious, and
it should remind us that tolerance of atheists is not necessarily incompatible with
preserving a decent polity; it should also re·
mind us that strong religion does not guarantee good politics. But Maritain never
denies the Weakness of the logical link: his
claim is that religion, and religion alone,
can provide a society with the durable
common morality that is one necessary precondition of political democracy. Professor
Hook, who maintains that the "validity [of
moral principles] rests upon their fruits in
human experience," offers not a single example of a society that has given up
religion without degenerating into savagery. Nor does he offer any evidence to
show that such a society can be brought
into being; indeed, the poverty of his own
anti-religious faith is manifest in the last
paragraph of the book: "How to inspire, ex·
tend, and strengthen faith in democracy,
and build a mass movement of men and
women personally dedicated to it, is a difficult problem which cannot be treated
here."
Despite its weaknesses, Philosophy and
Public Policy contains much that is sound.
The strengths of the book appear most
clearly in the section on "Heroes and AntiHeroes." The section begins with a loose
and unimpressive general essay on the
place of leadership in democracies. But
when he turns to criticizing the Communists, liberal fools, and leading hypocrites
of our time, Professor Hook emerges as a
powerful and sometimes brilliant polemicist. In a review of a biography of Trotsky,
he shows why even large men cannot be
AUTUMN 1981
�truly great if they cling to Lenin's doctrines. In a discussion of Bertrand Russell's
political ravings, he shows quite clearly
why America's involvement in Viet Nam
may have been moral without necessarily
also being prudent. In an essay on the Hiss
case, he vividly reminds us that this country has indeed recently been threatened by
at least one genuine and dangerous conspiracy. And in the volume's best piece,
Professor Hook destroys Lillian Hellman.
He is brave enough to call her "an eager
but unaccomplished liar"; he is well informed enough to convict her of act after
act of "political obscenity"; and he is generous enough to distinguish her from
Dashiell Hammett, who kept his integrity
despite his colossal political misjudgments.
Because Philosophy and Public Policy
displays so much common sense and anti-
Communist passion, it could be good medicine for contemporary liberalism. And
because the author accepts most of the liberals' leading assumptions, there is no good
reason for them to refuse him a hearing.
tory and progress~makes for the power of
Europe. But Europe also brings corruption:
Hit was Europe, I feel, that also introduced
us to the lie ... we were people who simply
did what we did. But the Europeans could
do one thing and say something quite different. .. It was their great advantage over
us." Salim discovers that a line supposedly
from the Aeneid on a Belgian monument
commemorating the founding of the city
has been altered. It reads: 41He approves of
the mingling of peoples and their bonds of
union"; but in the original the gods warned
Aeneas not to marry Dido, not to mingle
Europe and Africa. "Rome was Rome.
What was this place? To carve the words
on a monument beside this African river
was surely to invite the destruction of the
town."
The self-deluded Europeans are now
gone, driven out by their former subjects,
but their example remains ~n all its ambiguity. The Africans imitate European institutions, buy European goods, and, increasingly, look on Europe itself as a place of
refuge. As his mentor and fellow Indian
Nazruddin explains to Salim on a visit to
London, HAll over the world money is in
flight. People have scraped the world clean,
as clean as an African scrapes his yard, and
now they want to run from the dreadful
places where they've made their money
and find some nice safe country." In London, foreigners from all corners of the
Commonwealth threaten to undermine
unquestioned European values. With a
mixture of irony and dismay, Salim observes that the Arabs in London have
brought with them their black slaves; Britain now tolerates at home the slave trade it
had once stamped out in East Africa. "In
the old days they made a lot of fuss if they
caught you sending a couple of fellows to
Arabia in a dhow. Today they have their
passports and visas like everybody else, and
nobody gives a damn."
The escape to Europe is possible only for
a handful, but the pressures of modern African life~ the insecurity of rapid and random change-foster escapism throughout
the population. Salim realizes that even in
the city "when you get away from the chiefs
and the politicians there is a simple democracy about Africa; everyone is a villager."
In times of trouble the city empties as people return to their villages and the simple
life of the bush, to re-emerge when things
quite down. A new generation of young Africans, however, without ties to the bush,
who know nothing except the empty and
imitative life of the cities, has no place to
retreat. At the same time the country's
leader opens up the countryside to bring
the previously inaccessible rural population under his control.
The dilemma of the "new African" is
symbolized by Ferdinand, a young man
whom Salim befriends. Born in the bush,
Ferdinand goes to school at the Europeanrun lycee, is trained at the Domain (the Big
Man's school for future leaders), and eventually becomes the local district commissioner. Ferdinand is trapped by his own
modern upbringing, and by the precarious
nature of political life, where every official
is at the mercy of the Big Man, who rules
through a talent for playing his enemies off
against one another. At first, Ferdinand is
confused, his mind "a jumble, full of all
kinds of junk." But in the end he achieves
a terrible clarity: "Nobody's going anywhere. We're all going to hell and every
man knows this in his bones ... Everyone
wants to make his money and run away.
But where? That is what is driving people
mad. They feel they're losing the place
they can run back to ... "
The political stratagems of the Big Man
produce temporary peace and prosperity,
but in the end serve only to break down
traditional restraints. When they fail to
quell a rural uprising, the soldiers of a tradi-
NELSON LUND
Nelson Lund teaches political science at the
University of Chicago.
'THE MINGLING OF PEOPLES
A Bend in the River, by V. S. Naipaul, 278
pp., New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., !979,
$8.95
V. S. Naipaul's novel, A Bend in the
River, never names the city and country in
which the narrative takes place. Its true
setting, however, is clearly Kisangani
(formerly Stanleyville), the second-largest
city of Zaire (formerly the Belian Congo);
and the mysterious Big Man, the unnamed
country's ruler, is Sese Mobotu, Zaire's dictator for the past fifteen years. Though
Mobotu's Zaire is a poor and ill-governed
Third World country, Naipaul does not
take the stance of an expert trying to
diagnose and cure the 'disease' of underdevelopment. The principal danger he foresees is anarchy 3.nd nihilism, more often
cause than result from the impoverishment that preoccupies the experts.
The disorder and despair which permeate the novel result primarily from the
haphazard coming together of different religious, ethnic, and cultural groups. Naipaul's protagonist, Salim-an Indian
brought up in an Arab-dominated section
of East Africa, educated in British schools,
who now lives in a newly-independent black
African state-embodies Africa's contradictions. The book's great theme is the
disaster this mingling of peoples brings to
Indians, Africans, and perhaps to Europeans as welL
Europe has been the catalyst; it provides
the possibility of self-understanding for
Africans and Indians alike. Salim says: ''All
that I know of our history and the history
of the Indian Ocean I have got from books
written by Europeans ... without Europeans, I feel, all our past woUld have been
washed away, like the scuff marks of fishermen on the beach outside our town." The
ability to detach oneself, to form a distinct
self-image of one's past, present and especially future condition~the source of hisTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
87
�tional warrior tribe are treacherously disarmed and dispersed by an imported force
of white mercenaries. Unable to adopt
commercial or agricultural ways, they form
the nucleus of a new and deadlier rebellion. Official corruption, fostered by the
pervasive insecurity, makes a mockery of
the regime's motto, "Discipline Avant
Tout." The opposition turns by degrees to
unqualified hatred: "When they've finished nobody will know there was a place
like this here. They're going to kill and kill.
They say it's the only way, to go back to the
beginning before it's too late."
Salim too seeks safety, a place of retreat.
He and the other Indian expatriates fight
an ongoing battle with nostalgia and regret,
with the temptation to find refuge in the
past, in the memory of their lost East
African birth place. Unlike his friends who
become rich by acquiring the town's "Big
Boy" franchise, Salim does not forget himself in the successes of commerce. At the
end his property is nationalized, and he be-
88
comes a homeless refugee. He finds his But people are like that about places in
safety in the personal equilibrium, de- which they aren't really interested and
tached and clear-sighted, that shows itself where they don't have to live. Some papers
in the book's opening sentence: "The world spoke of the end of feudalism and the
is what it is; men who are nothing, who al- dawn of a new age. But what had haplow themselves to become nothing, have pened was not new. People who had grown
no place in it."
feeble had been physically destroyed. That,
Salim's hard-won balance does not de- in Africa, was not new; it was the oldest law
pend on condemning those who are inca- of the land." Unlike the manipulative coldpable of such accomodation. He does not blooded ness of the development theorist
explain away the Big Man's machinations or ideological reformer, Salim's detachas 'necessary' or 'progressive'; he appreci- ment comes from experience of the perenates success but rejects the ruthlessness nial laws of the human condition and of
and the denial of the past which so often the ties between personal and historical
accompany it. Naipaul/Salim understands experience.
that Africa's lost balance may be impossible to regain, and that while the losses are
ADAM WASSERMAN
c~rtain, the gains may be illusory. On hearing of the revolution which cuts him off
from his coastal homeland, he is astonished
at the optimism of some of the foreign
papers: "It was exraordinary to me that
Adam Wasserman is a space program analyst
some of the newspapers could have found for the Congressional Office of Technology Asgood words for the butchery on the coast. sessment in Washington, D.C.
AUTUMN 1981
��The St. John's Review
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Radista, Leo
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Wilson, Curtis A.
Sachs, Joe
Brann, Eva T. H.
Jaffa, Henry V.
Josephs, Laurence
Klein, Jacob
Levin, Michael
Collins, Linda
Navrozov, Lev
Guaspari, David
Venable, Bruce
Lund, Nelson
Wasserman, Adam
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�Editor:
Leo Raditsa
Managing Editor:
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Editorial Assistant:
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Consulting Editors:
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Curtis A. Wilson.
Editor's Note
Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome,
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Requests for subscriptions should be sent to The St.
John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404.
Although there are currently no subscription fees, voluntary contributions toward production costs are gratefully
received.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW (formerly THE COLLEGE) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Edward G. Sparrow, Dean. Published twice yearly, usually in winter and summer.
Volume XXXII
SUMMER 1981
Number 3
©1981, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0010-0862
Cover: Front elevation of Virginia State Capitol, by Thomas Jef-
ferson (1785). The Coolidge Collection, Massachusetts Historical
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Composition: Britton Composition Co.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co.
�fHESTJOHNSREVIEWSUMMER81
3
The Contemporary Reader and Robert Frost Helen H. Bacon
11
From The Hills as Waves
14
Soviet Hegemonism: Year 1 Raymond Aron
24
Thucydides and Perikles
30
Not Quite Alone on the Telephone
38
An Outline of the Argument of Aristotle's Metaphysics
joe Sachs
47
In the Audience Robert Roth
55 .,
Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance"
74
Cicero's Teaching on Natural Law
Etta Blum
Christopher Brue/1
Meyer Liben
Eva T. H. Brann
Thomas G. West
1
��The Contemporary Reader and Robert
Frost
The Heavenly Guest of ''One More Brevity'' and Aeneid 8
Helen H. Bacon
For Kathleen and Theodore Morrison, who pointed
me in the right direction and encouraged me to
keep on looking.
''I almost think any poem is most valuable for its ulterior
meaning .... I have developed an ulteriority complex. 1 ' '
Robert Frost said this in an interview in 1927, but it is
only recently that we have begun to take him at his word
and recognize his ulteriority-the dense literary texture of
his poems in which lurk ulterior meanings that make extraordinary demands on the reader. Frost's well-known essay, "The Prerequisites," written about the same time as
the poem I am about to discuss, is a classic formulation of
what Frost hoped of a reader of what he liked to call "a little poem." There he describes how, repudiating the
wrong, that is, academic, kind of help, he took nearly fifty
years to acquire what he called "the prerequisites" for understanding Emerson's sixteen line poem "Brahma."
What he came to understand in those fifty years was the
meaning of Nirvana, "the perfect detachment from ambition and desire that can alone rescue us from the round of
existence."
Professor of Greek and Latin at Barnard College and Columbia University,
Helen Bacon has published Barbarians in Greek Tragedy (Yale University
Press, 1961) and translated (with Anthony Hecht) Aeschylus, Seven
Against Thebes (Oxford University Press, 1973). She has also written on
Robert Frost's reading of the Greek and Latin poets in the American
Scholar (1974), the Yale Review (1977), and the Massachusetts Review
(1978).
She delivered this essay, in an earlier version, as a Blegen Lecture at
Vassar College.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
To experience the poem as poetry, as opposed to "mere
information," the reader must independently rediscover
its ulterior meanings. "The heart sinks when robbed of
the chance to see for itself what a poem is all about ....
Any footnote while the poem is going is too late. Any subsequent explanation is as dispiriting as the explanation of
a joke. Being taught poems reduces them to the rank of
mere information." And a little further on the often-quoted
statement, "Approach to the poem must be from afar off,
even generations off. A poem is best read in the light of all
the other poems ever written. We read A the better to
read B (we have to start somewhere; we may get very little
out of A). We read B the better to read C, C the better to
read D, D the better to go back and get something more
out of A. Progress is not the aim, but circulation. The
thing is to get among the poems where they hold each
other apart in their places as the stars do." 2
And this is the contemporary reader's dilemma. The
prerequisites to experiencing the full richness, the ulterior
meanings, of many of Frost's poems include knowledge of
a literary tradition from which each high school generation is more remote than the last. And of that whole enormous tradition the least familiar part, and therefore the
hardest to recognize, are the Greek and Latin classics.
Though his classical education, his lifelong reading of
Greek and Latin authors in the original, is now documented, the extent of Frost's use of them in his poems is
barely suspected. The dilemma is that, even though most
3
�of the poems stand by themselves, their ulterior meaning,
what makes them most valuable in Frost's own terms, often depends on affinities and analogies with a literature
little known and only with the greatest difficulty accessible to modern readers.
Further, the kind of commentary on a poem which I am
about to make is that "dispiriting" explanation that robs
the reader of the joy of discovery. However, if it can be
understood as an example of how to "read A the better to
understand B," etc., rather than as an attempt to reduce
the poem to "mere information," perhaps it will not be
out of keeping with the spirit of Frost's pronouncement
about prerequisites.
Of many possible examples of Frost's method of evoking ancient poems I will mention briefly two which I have
discussed elsewhere with fuller documentation. "Hyla
Brook," which seems to be, and is, about a brook in summertime on Frost's New Hampshire farm, is also an al~
most line-for-line imitation of Horace's celebrated 0 fans
Bandusiae (Odes 3.13), about a spring in summertime on
his farm in the Sabine hills. Horace rather obliquely and
unexpectedly celebrates his humble little Italian spring as
a spring of those quintessentially Greek, and for Italians at
least literary, divinities the muses. Only when we see that
Frost is evoking Horace's poem can we recognize that he
makes the same claim for his brook, and thereby gives a
whole new range of meaning to the last line:
We love the things we love for what they are.
More complicated is a poem called "The Lost
Follower," which seems to be, and is, an evocation of
Browning's "Lost Leader." Both poems are about abandoning poetry for gold. Browning's poet deserts the ranks
of true poets for material gain. Frost's poet deserts the
"golden line of lyric" not for material gold, but to try torealize through social and political action a golden age of
peace and brotherhood on earth. But beneath the explicit
reference to Browning lurks a complicated set of allusions
to another poem of Horace, Epode 16, which asserts that
the only way that men can experience the golden age in
this corrupt world is through poetry. In this context the
function of Frost's poet becomes enormously more cru~
cia!, and his defection proportionately more devastating.
Explicit classical references or clues to classical connections in Frost's poetry are rare. But he does give little
pointers. Apparently random details insisted on in the
text that are very vivid, but not obviously connected with
anything, should be scrutinized. For instance, by june the
Hyla Brook, having vanished underground, is
A brook to none but who remember long.
4
And the poem makes other allusions to memory. Why is
memory important? Memory is the mother of the muses,
and Frost's spring, like Horace's, is a spring of fhe muses,
translated to a, for them, unfamiliar landscape.
Another pointer is the way poems are grouped for publication. Frost placed "The Oven Bird" next to "Hyla
Brook" in Mountain Interval (1916). The bird of dusty
midsummer, hidden in the wood, who "knows in singing
not to sing" and asks "what to make of a diminished
thing," is a somewhat more explicit metaphor than the
vanished brook for poetry's unquenchable power. Such
groupings reinforce suggestions within poems, as do hints
Frost dropped about the poems when he read them aloud.
Frost's evocations of other texts, ancient or modern, are
never lifeless imitations. There are reversals, inversions,
variations of themes and motifs. Frost replaces Browning's materialistic poet leader with an idealistic poet follower, and makes us see the desertion of poetry as morally
paradoxical and the poet's function as morally crucial.
Horace's spring of the muses never fails even in the dog
days of August. Frost's brook dries up in summer. All the
more does it symbolize the muses' unfailing creativity, because, through the power of memory, the spring, though
no longer visible, continues to exist. His reticences and
disguises are not mere tricks. They facilitate the experience of seeing for oneself that he insists on in "The Prerequisites."
What are the criteria for recognizing an allusion, whether
to a classical or to any other poet? How can we be sure
that what we take for a pointer really is not an accidental
analogy? If a possible connection reveals an unsuspected
economy and consequent richness of language, an increased coherence, both internal and external, it is probably intended. If it enables us to see that every word of the
poem relates to a single theme, that what seems like
merely vivid detail reinforces what the poem says by connecting it with some other work of literature, it is probably
valid. If the surrounding poems reinforce and are reinforced by what that poem is saying, that is further confirmation, as are Frost's own comments and collocations
when he read the poem aloud.
Using these criteria I am going to present in detail one
poem that will illustrate how discovering "the prerequisites" (in this case they happen to be largely classical)
affects the way one reads a poem. It vividly illustrates
both the reader's dilemma, and what Frost meant by
"ulteriority ."
The poem, "One More Brevity," is about Sirius, the
brightest of the fixed stars, the "dog star" in the constellation Orion. With one significant deviation, it is in rhymed
couplets. It was Frost's Christmas poem for 1953, composed about the same time as his description of the way a
poem should be read in "The Prerequisites."
SUMMER 1981
�One More Brevity
I opened the door so my last look
Should be taken outside a house and book.
Before I gave up seeing and slept
I said I would see how Sirius kept
His watchdog eye on what remained
To be gone into if not explained.
But scarcely was my door ajar,
When past the leg I thrust for bar
Slipped in to be my problem guest,
Not a heavenly dog made manifest,
But an earthly dog of the carnage breed;
Who, having failed of the modern speed,
Now asked asylum-and I was stirred
To be the one so dog-preferred.
He dumped himself !tke a bag of bones,
He sighed himself a couple of groans,
And head to tail then firmly curled
Like swearing off on the traffic world.
I set him water, I set him food.
He rolled an eye with gratitude
(Or merely manners it may have been),
But never so much as lifted chin.
His hard tail loudly smacked the floor
As if beseeching me, "Please, no more;
I can't explain-tonight at least. ''
His brow was perceptibly trouble-creased.
So I spoke in terms of adoption thus:
"Gustie, old boy, Dalmatian Gus,
You're right, there's nothing to discuss.
Don't try to tell me what's on your mind,
The sorrow of having been left behind,
Or the sorrow of having run away.
All that can wait for the light of day.
Meanwhile feel obligation-free.
Nobody has to confide in me. "
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
'Twas too one-sided a dialogue,
And I wasn't sure I was talking dog.
I broke off baffled. But all the same,
In fancy I ratified his name,
Gustie-Da!matian Gus, that isAnd started shaping my life to his,
Finding him in his right supplies
And sharing his miles of exercise.
Next morning the minute I was about
He was at the door to be let out
With an air that said, ''I have paid my call.
You mustn't feel hurt if now I'm all
For getting back somewhere or further on. "
I opened the door and he was gone.
I was to taste in little the grief
That comes of dogs' lives being so brief,
Only a fraction of ours at most.
He might have been the dream of a ghost
In spite of the way his tail had smacked
My floor so hard and matter-offact.
And things have been going so strangely since,
I wou!dn 't be too hard to convince,
I might even claim, he was Sirius
(Think ofpresuming toea!! him Gus),
The star itself-Heaven's greatest star,
Not a meteorite, but an avatarWho had made an overnight descent
To show by deeds he didn't resent
My having depended on him so long,
And yet done nothing about it in song.
A symbol was all he could hope to convey,
An intimation, a shot of ray,
A meaning I was supposed to seek,
And finding, wasn't disposed to speak.
5
�According to the official biography this poem is "about
a dog very much like [Frost's dog] Gillie, whose death in
1949 had robbed him of his most constant companion
since 1940."3 Frost would not have disagreed. He read the
poem often-seven times at Bread Loaf, with teasing and
suggestive comments. After one of these readings he
hinted at the importance of the couplet form. "I've got a
poem somewhere about how couplets symbolize meta·
phor. There's a pairing that deeper down in is the pairing
of thought that is the metaphor. ... The couplet is the
symbol of the metaphor.''4
What then are "the prerequisites" for detecting "the
pairing of thought" deeper down beneath the pairing of
couplets in this poem? What is
A meaning I was supposed to seek,
And finding, wasn't disposed to speak?
(Note the felicitous couplings-supposed/disposed
within the lines, as well as seek/speak at the end, or, ear·
lier in the poem, smacked/matter-of-fact.)
First of all we have a pattern story quite widespread in
European and Asiatic folklore-the rewarding of a humble host who offers hospitality to a divine visitor in dis·
guise. In this case the reward is some kind of unexplained
illumination. A classic example is Ovid's story of Baucis
and Philemon (Met. 8.618-724). But beyond this easily
recognized pattern, is there a more specific reference? Let
us get to those vivid and expressive but apparently unrelated concrete details that I have already mentioned.
First and most important is the dog's name-Dalmatian
Gus, emphasized in its first mention by the only triple
rhyme in this sequence of couplets.
So I spoke in terms of adoption thus:
"Gustie, old boy, Dalmatian Gus,
You're right, there's nothing to discuss. "
And again, after telling the dog he needn't say anything,
I fancy I ratified his name,
Gustie-Dalmatian Gus, that isAnd finally,
I wouldn't be too hard to convince,
I might even claim, he was Sirius
(Think ofpresuming to call him Gus).
Then 'Dalmatian' is used twice, and also alluded to in the
phrase, "an earthly dog of the carriage breed." Dalmatians, of course, are carriage dogs. There is no need for the
dog to speak, for the poet has found his name, and a name
establishes identity and makes explanation superfluous.
Naming is itself a kind of coupling, a way of creating a relationship by recognition.
Who then is Dalmatian Gus who is also Sirius? What
Augustus, Gus for short, has connections with Dalmatia
and Sirius? I do not know that anyone has asked this question. I think I can show that Frost wanted us to associate
6
Dalmatian Gus with Augustus Caesar as Vergil presents
him in Aeneid 8 directly, and in Aeneid 10 through the figure of Aeneas, linked with the star of destiny, the Julian
star, which Vergil associates with Sirius, celebrating his
triple triumph of 29 B.C. for victories in Dalmatia, Actium, and Alexandria. To understand Frost's allusion we
do not need to understand what Augustus' triple triumph
means to historians, but only what Vergil wants it to
mean.
In book 8 the triple triumph and its attendant celebrations are the climax of a series of images on a shield presented to Aeneas by his mother, Venus, forged at her
prompting by her spouse, Vulcan. These images are
scenes from future, from the point of view of Aeneas,
Roman history. Vergil's language stresses military achievement-"Italian events, and the triumphs of the Romans . .. the whole race to come . .. and, in sequence, the
wars [which will have been] fought" (8.626-629). But, except for the last group of scenes, they are not conventional military episodes. They are rather a series of spiritual achievements, triumphs of light and order over chaos
and darkness. I mention only the first-the wolf suckling
Romulus and Remus. In what sense is this a Roman
triumph? It is an expression of Vergil's vision of Rome's
civilizing mission, the taming of natural savagery and its
integration into a higher order of peace and brotherhood.
Only the final scenes of the shield refer to a literal military
victory-Augustus' naval victory at Actium over Antony
and Cleopatra (8.675-731). As the forces of darkness take
flight Augustus, "standing in the high stern," stans celsa
in puppi, is transfigured. Flames stream from his helmet,
and over his head appears the father's star, the patrium
sidus, the star of the deified Julius Caesar, Augustus'
father by adoption. The comet which appeared at the funeral games for the murdered Julius Caesar was immediately identified as Caesar's soul transported to the realm
of the gods. Augustus was then saluted as the son of a god,
ultimately himself to become a god and join his "father"
in the sky. In the Aeneid the Julian star is a recurring symbol of the savior hero (Aeneas, Romulus, Augustus)
chosen to help realize on earth some part of the Roman
ideal and then join the gods on Olympus.
Throughout the Aeneid Vergil makes Aeneas prefigure
Augustus in his battle with the forces of darkness. This is
nowhere more explicit than in the passage in book 10
where Aeneas is transfigured. Here all the elements of Augustus' transfiguration, the ship, the flames, the Julian
star, recur. The words used of Augustus, "Standing in the
high stern," stans celsa in puppi, are now used of Aeneas
as he descends the Tiber bringing reinforcements to the
beleaguered Trojans. And as he salutes his comrades by
raising the shield, the divine gift of his goddess mother,
which has on it the image of the transfigured Augustus,
flames stream from his helmet, and from the shield. Perhaps because Aeneas is only at the beginning of the historical process which the shield envisions as culminating
with Augustus, the star is not literally present. It is intraSUMMER 1981
�duced in a characteristically complex and indirect way
through a double simile (10.260-275). The streaming
flames are first compared to a comet "glowing blood red
and mournful through the clear night," in the context an
almost inescapable allusion to that other comet, the Julian
star. The second part of the simile likens the flames to
"the burning heat of Sirius which brings thirst and sickness to suffering mortals when it rises and saddens the sky
with sinister light," an evocation of the scene in the Illiad
where Achilles, clad in divine armor, the gift of his goddess mother, about to confront Hector in their final duel,
is compared to Sirius, bringer of suffering and disaster
(22.26). The comet links Aeneas to the future, to Julius
Caesar's death and the culmination of the vision in Augustus' victory at Actium. Sirius links him to the past and
the beginnings of the great historical process in Hector's
death and Achilles' victory, itself the prelude to Achilles'
own death. Both images have a double message. The
comet signalled not only mourning for the murdered
leader, but also his deification and the eventual deification of his son. The rising of the dog star signalled not
only the "dog days" of August, with the suffering and privations of heat and drought, but also the eventual coming
of the season of fruition, of the vintage and the autumn
rains. Both comet and star allude to the suffering and destruction that inevitably accompany the attempt to realize the ideal.
To come back to the shield~the three final scenes of
Vulcan's masterpiece offer a vision of the fulfillment
through Augustus of the ideals which are the goal of all
the struggles of the A~neid. These scenes are the moment
of victory at Actium, and its sequel, Augustus celebrating
the triple triumph of Dalmatia, Actium, and Alexandria,
and finally, enthroned, godlike, on the threshold of the
newly restored temple of Apollo on the Palatine, receiving
the homage of a pacified world, and inaugurating a new
golden age of peace and brotherhood. The imagery of
comet, star, and flame, which links every stage of the attempt to realize this vision from the fall of Troy, through
the ordeals of Aeneas and his descendants, to its culmination in Augustus' victory, stresses the cost in human suffering (Hector's death, Caesar's death, and all the other
deaths and losses of the poem) as well as the greatness of
an ideal that can culminate in deification. If Dalmatian
Gus really represents the spirit of the deified Augustus
briefly returned to earth with a message for the poet, the
message should be something about the pain and struggle
involved in trying to give social and political reality to a
spiritual ideal.
Here are some further coincidences between Aeneid 8
and "One More Brevity" which tend to confirm this
reading.
The theme of hospitality in a humble home to a god in
disguise is central in both. The association with Sirius is
more than a hint of Gus's heavenly origins, and Frost
wants us to be aware of his hospitable concern for his
guest's comfort.
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
I set him water, I set him food . ..
and later,
[I] started shaping my life to his,
Finding him in his n"ght supplies
And shan"ng his mzles of exercise.
Near the beginning of Aeneid 8 Aeneas arrives at the
site of what will one day be Rome. An Arcadian exile
named Evander has found refuge there. It is a wilderness
with a stream running through the valley where the forum
will someday be, and cattle lowing on the slopes of the
Esquiline. Evander after offering Aeneas friendship and
alliance and sharing his rustic feast with him, welcomes
Aeneas into his little thatched hut on the Palatine. Hereminds him that Hercules, recently deified, had also
deigned to be entertained there, after slaying the firebreathing monster, Cacus, that was devastating the region
from his cave on the nearby Aventine. At this point
Aeneas is a refugee and a suppliant, but like the savior
hero Hercules, to whom he is repeatedly assimilated in
the Aeneid, and like Augustus, Aeneas is destined to
achieve godhood for his efforts to save humanity by realizing a golden age of peace and brotherhood. Evander welcomes both Hercules and Aeneas, savior gods in human
guise, in a little thatched hut on the Palatine hill, the very
hill on which Augustus, another savior god in human
guise, will one day have a studiedly modest residence.
The word 'avatar' (the only occurrence in all of Frost's
work) is a further reinforcement of the theme of the god
in disguise. Maybe, Frost suggests, the visitor really was
Sirius, the brightest of the fixed stars~
Not a meteorite, but an avatar.
Avatar is a Hindu term for a brief manifestation of a savior
god in earthly form, a temporary incarnation of deity.
Frost might have learned this from Emerson or Thoreau,
two favorite authors of his, both of whom were saturated
in Hindu mythology, or from Bulfinch's Age of Fable, a
work he consulted often. One of the few things Bulfinch
says about Hindu mythology concerns the nature of an avatar. Certainly the brief visit of Dalmatian Gus is associated with a brief visit to earth of a god in disguise.
Frost's description of the dog's condition, physical and
emotional, also has Hindu associations which evoke a
theme of Aeneid 8. He is "an earthly dog of the carriage
breed," who has "failed of the modern speed." He is out
of step with the world and so exhausted that he can barely
roll an eye and thump his tail. He takes a carefully indicated position of withdrawal.
He dumped himself like a bag of bones,
He sighed himself a couple of groans,
And head to tail then firmly curled
Like swearing off on the traffic world.
7
�Head to tail is the position of that image of detachment
and eternity, the "tail eater," the ouroboros. The dog in
this position, "swearing off on the traffic world" (traffic in
all its senses), is seeking "the perfect detachment from
ambition and desire that can alone rescue us from the
round of existence," that state of Nirvana which Frost
had only recently learned about. The weariness, like the
sorrow, that is inseparable from the attempt to realize the
spirit on earth through the recreation of the golden age is
another major theme of the Aeneid. The young poet of
"The Lost Follower," who is trying to realize the golden
age through social and political action experiences a comparable sorrow and exhaustion. If Dalmatian Gus is intended to evoke the spirit of the deified Augustus his
exhaustion is the exhaustion of this struggle.
Still another detail which this poem shares with Aeneid
8 is the sense of election. The poet
... was stirred
To be the one so dog-preferred.
He is then awed by the thought that Sirius himself
... Heaven's greatest star,
Not a meteorite, but an avatarhas brought him a personal, though enigmatic, message,
which he understands and accepts.
A symbol was all he could hope to convey,
An intimation, a shot of ray,
A meaning I was supposed to seek,
And finding, wasn't disposed to speak.
Aeneid 8 is about the moment when Aeneas finally
accepts election as founder of the new order. With that
acceptance comes renunciation of all earthly fulfillment,
and, ultimately, deification. He receives the message from
heaven in three forms. First Venus most unconventionally thunders in a clear sky. That she should, against all
precedent, be wielding the thunderbolt, Jove's emblem,
indicates that the message comes with his concurrence.
Aeneas' response, "I am summoned on Olympus," Ego
poscor Olympo, is both a recognition and an acceptance of
election, a decision to act and take on the frightful burdens of his mission. The second form which the message
of election takes is the poignant moment when Venus,
bringing the divine armor, briefly ("One More Brevity")
presents herself undisguised to her son, and for the first
and only time in the Aeneid allows him to embrace her.
Aeneas has two other encounters with Venus-in book 1,
where she is disguised as a mortal maiden and reveals her
identity only as she is disappearing, and in book 2, where,
though she briefly appears in person to present a vision of
Troy in ruins, she offers no contact. Only here, in book 8,
do god and man have the kind of real communion, brief
though it is, that occurs between poet and dog in "One
More Brevity." Vulcan's masterpiece bears the third form
of the message of election, the prophecy of Rome's spiri-
8
tual achievement, which Aeneas initiates when he accepts
the burden of election. The theme of exhaustion is associated in book 8 with this burden. Whether for Aeneas, or
Hercules, or Augustus, the attempt to realize the spirit on
earth is exhausting. Throughout the Aeneid, but particularly in book 8, where Hercules' victorious fight with the
monster Cacus is narrated, Vergil makes Hercules' labors,
labores, prefigure the labors of Aeneas and Augustus as
saviours of humanity, struggling to dispel chaos and darkness by giving reality to the vision of peace and brotherhood. The last line of the book, which describes Aeneas
shouldering the shield with its only half understood message, stresses in its movement as well as its sense the
strain of this effort-"Lifting on to his shoulders the fame
and fate of his descendants," attollens umeris famamque
et fata nepotum. The cost of this effort is part, but I would
like to say only part, of the message Dalmatian Gus brings
to the poet.
Another significant detail that connects Dalmatian Gus
with Augustus, is the idea of Sirius as a watch dog.
I opened the door so my last look
Should be taken outside a house and book.
Before I gave up seeing and slept
I said I would see how Sirius kept
His watchdog eye on what remained
To be gone into if not explained.
Sirius is imagined as keeping an eye on things and, characteristically, the poet is keeping an eye on Sirius. Vergil
makes no direct allusion to Sirius as a watchdog, but he
takes pains to make us aware that the rising of Sirius coincides with the feasts of the deified saviors and guardians
of order, Hercules and Augustus. Aeneas arrives at the
site of Rome on the feast of Hercules, which Evander and
his followers are celebrating, at the time of the rising of
the dog-star, which is also the date on which Augustus celebrated his triple triumph, in the month of August,
named for Augustus after the fact. This rather tenuous association of Sirius with the functions of the guardian or
watchdog is made explicit in other ancient authors. For
instance, both Manilius, a didactic poet of the Augustan
period, and Plutarch refer to Sirius as a watchdog. Whatever his source, the watchdog image for Sirius is not an invention of Frost's, but part of Sirius' ancient associations.
These are the principal coincidences that suggest that
Aeneid 8 is one of the prerequisites for understanding
"One More Brevity." It is a reading validated by the criteria I suggested earlier. When the connection is perceived,
the poem gains coherence and intensity. Every commonplace detail of dog and human behavior proves to be related to the idea of election, or of the grief and exhaustion
associated with the struggle to bring the spirit to earth, or
of the poignant brevity of an encounter between god and
man. Above all the dog's name has no other explanation.
The connection gives poetic purpose to an otherwise aimless insistence on an apparently ordinary name. I am open
SUMMER 1981
�to suggestions of a meaning that works better. This increased coherence and intensity is the best evidence that
Frost wanted us to associate Dalmatian Gus with Augustus, and through him with Aeneas, Hercules, and all the
other figures of the Aeneid who will become gods after a
brief sojourn on earth. In this series of brevities Gus
makes one more.
The context of the poem reinforces the suggestion that
Gus brings a message about the cost of trying to recreate
the golden age. In the collection in which it was first published (In The Clearing, 1962) "One More Brevity" is preceded by "America Is Hard To See," a poem about Columbus' failure to find the gold of the orient in the New
World, and his inability to envision the opportunity to create a new age of peace and brotherhood there. The poem
stresses a missed opportunity for godhood and the inevitable weariness of trying to realize the ideal.
The two poems that follow in different ways evoke the
themes of struggle and the new order. The first, "Escapist~ Never,"
is about a pursuer pursuing a pursuer and a
seeker seeking a seeker in what Frost called "an interminable chain of longing." I suggest that this is the "round
of existence," the endless and unrealizable attempt to actualize the ideal. Perhaps we should think of Orion with
his dog Sirius, forever pursuing the Pleiades across the
heavens and never overtaking them. The second poem,
"For John F. Kennedy, His Inauguration," has several explicit and implicit references to a new golden age of Augustus. I mention three. First, the opening lines-
A golden age ofpoetry and power
Of which this noonday's the beginning hour.
One further kind of confirmation. The poems Frost associated "One More Brevity" with in his Bread Loaf readings also emphasize the themes I have been discussing.
He read it with "The Lost Follower" (that poem about forsaking the gold of poetry for the attempt to realize the
golden age through social action), and with "The Gift
Outright," which is the other part of the Kennedy poem.
Another time he followed it with a passage from "Kitty
Hawk," about incarnation-
But God's own descent
Into flesh was meant
As a demonstration
That the supreme merit
Lay in risking spirit
In substantiationand commented, "See, we've got to risk spirit in substanti~
Then the explicit allusion to the adapted Vergilian
phrases about the golden age that appear on our dollar bill
(spiritual and material gold) above and below the image of
a pyramid surmounted by an eye which radiates rays of
light. Annuit coeptis (Georg. 1.40, also Aen. 9.625) novus
ordo saeclorum (Eel. 4.5)-literally, "the new order of the
ages gave the nod of assent to the enterprise." Frost's ver-
ation and we mostly fail." 5 Twice he read it with his better
known poem about Sirius, "Take Something Like A Star,"
which is also about matter and spirit. Once he prefaced it
with "How Hard It Is To Keep From Being King," a poem
about election and the attempt to realize spiritual ideals
through the art of government.
"Take Something Like A Star" brings up a final point.
Frost's lifelong preoccupation with astronomy in general
and Sirius in particular is well-known. It goes back at least
to his discovery when a boy of British astronomer Richard
Proctor's book Our Place Among the Infinities, with its
chapter on Sirius entitled "A Giant Sun." In a 1935letter,
Elinor Frost quotes him as saying he is "down here in Key
West now to find out if Canopus is as good a star as
Sirius."6 In "One More Brevity" he wonders if his visitor
sion is,
was not
Summoning artists to participate
In the august occasions of the state.
Now came on a new order of the ages
That in the Latin of our founding sages
(Is it not written on the dollar bill
We carry in our purse and pocket still?)
God nodded his approval of as good.
For "our founding sages" and for Frost, though unfortunately not for the contemporary reader, the Vergilian
context made it plain that the new order being proclaimed was a recreation of the golden age, the theme of
both passages adapted on the dollar bill. Finally there is a
reference to the challenge of the present.
It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
The star itself-Heaven's greatest star,
Not a meteorite, but an avatarWho had made an overnight descent
To show by deeds he didn't resent
My having depended on him so long,
And yet done nothing about it in song?
What is this very special relation to Sirius that would make
him say, ten years after "Take Something Like A Star"
first appeared in print, that he had "yet done nothing
about it in song?"
"Take Something Like A Star" is about what Sirius can
mean to everyone.
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
9
�Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may take something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.
"One More Brevity" is about a relationship with Sirius so
personal that the star does stoop from its sphere~ to pay a
personal visit and deliver a personal message which mcorporates the reason for this special dependence ofpoet on
star. The message is best understood m connection with
one more aspect of Aeneid 8.
Not surprisingly it is about being an artist. Aeneas'
shield which embodies the dream of the golden age restored is Vulcan's masterpiece, in Vergil's words, "an in~
describable fabric," non enarrabile textum. The inspiration for its creation is a night of lovemaking with Venus.
The thrill of love experienced by Vulcan is compared to
lightning. This simile makes Venus once again, as when
she sends the sign of election to Aeneas, the unlikely
wielder of Jove's thunderbolt. Inspired by Venus' fire
from heaven, forged in Vulcan's subterranean fires, the
shield bears on it the flaming birth portent of the new
golden age, the star of Julius. Fire is both instrument and
emblem of creation. It links the creation of the great work
of art to the act of love, and, since the thunderbolt is
Jave's instrument, both are seen as expressions of his cosmic purpose. Like Vergil, Frost often associated the impulse of love with the impulse of art, for instance in "Take
Something Like A Star."
not disposed to speak." One can reveal unsuspected ulterior meanings of a poem by finding its relation to other
poems, but, as Frost said of his star,
Some mystery becomes the proud.
I would hope that this demonstration makes it seem at
least credible that Frost wanted to be read as he has frequently compelled me to read him, by getting among the
poems (in this case ancient ones, but they are not always
ancient), and that it would further serve as an illustration
of what the abandonment of the poetic tradition can do to
poetry, even, perhaps I should say particularly, to recent
poetry. Not only the poems of Frost, almost all great
poems, ask "of us a certain height," ask us to repossess our
past so that we may experience them fully by discovering
their "ulteriority." There exists something calling itself
poetry that does not make such demands. But the great
tradition has always been to "get among the poems." The
muses are daughters of memory in more ways than we
realize.
Poets know, Frost knew, there is only one tradition of
literature. We scholars, locked in our specialties, tend to
forget. Classicists in particular should remember that not
only do we "read A the better to understand B" but "D
the better to go back and get something out of A." We
cannot read Vergil unless we know Homer, but having
read Vergil we will read Homer differently, and having
read Milton, or Frost, we will read Vergil differently. We
need to know the poets of the past to be good readers of
modern poetry, but, just as important, to be good readers
of ancient poetry we should read Frost and as many other
modern poets as we can. "Progress is not the aim, but cir-
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says, "I burn. "
Aeneas, Hercules, 1_\mp.ulus, perhaps even Augustus, will
die before the golden age becomes a social reality. It is
only on the shield, the work of the artist Vulcan! ulti·
mately of the artist Vergil, that Romans and we, theu successors, can fully experience it. So perhaps another part of
the message brought by Dalmatian Gus is about the role
of the artist in keeping alive a vision which generations of
statesmen and political idealists will exhaust themselves
trying to realize. To be "dog-preferred" is to be elected to
risk spirit in substantiation, to bring back the golden age
by making poems under the inspiration of love.
I would not like to imply that in getting among the
poems to try to understand this poem I have succeeded in
discovering the whole of the message that the poet "was
10
culation." The great poets give us back our past by forcing
us to circulate.
Poems of Robert Frost are cited from The Poetry of Robert Frost, ed. by
E. C. Lathem, New York 1972 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), with permission.
Copyright 1953, © 1962 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1969 by Holt,
Rinehart and Winston. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, publishers.
l L. Thompson and R. H. Winnick, Robert Frost: The Later Years,
1938-1963, New York 1976 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), 214.
2 "The Prerequisites: A Preface," in Robert Frost: Poetry and Prose, ed.
E. C. Lathem and L. Thompson, New York 1972 (Holt, Rinehart and
Winston), 416-418.
3 Thompson and Winnick, Frost: The Later Years, 204.
4 Reginald Cook, Robert Frost: A Living Voice, Amherst 1974 (The Uni·
versity of Massachusetts Press), 135.
5 Cook, Robert Frost, 148.
6 Thompson and Winnick, Frost: The Later Years, SOl.
SUMMER 198i
�From The Hills as Waves
Etta Blum
AT YAD VASHEM
(Holocaust Memorial)
1
2
3
The Light
Monument
Remnant
It's the first light,
the last
Upward rising stack
and huge unfurling
to black flame
We are the saved ones,
we are those
who were not slaughtered
The summer air
assaulted by blackness
Shape of darkness
like the heart,
stilled
Your faces are ours,
your eyes
We look with your eyes
The candlelight
driven by our breath,
searchingfinding loss
Hope comes oddly
with the stumbling outside
to sun,
No room for shadow
to the green
leaping at us with gold
We are living your lives for you,
we are safe
We are living your deaths
Blackness
screams into sunlight,
forever condemned
0 mightiest of shrouds
Etta Blum has just published a collection of poems, The Space my Body
Fills (The Sunstone Press, Post Office Box 2321, Sante Fe, New
Mexico). The poems that appear here come from an unpublished collection, The Hills as Waves, inspired on a trip to Israel.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
11
�STRANGER
Neither shalt thou gather the fallen fruit of thy
vineyard...
-Leviticus 19:10
I thank you, watchman of the grove,
for the fruit you did not pick,
for the grapes you left carelessly lying
in the fading sunlight when all things
glowed with a final burning, seared
to the oncoming wind of night.
You dreamed most certainly of a stranger
without vineyard or grove, who could
not calm his hand to sow, or await
as others do, the ripe harvest.
As I was passing, 0 watchman,
a stranger to every home,
I hurried over the earth as
one passing through corridors.
I picked the fruit you left,
the moist and trembling grapes.
Unseen your face, but kind as
that of perfect sister or brother.
12
SuN RisEs, SUN SETS
There's nothing spectacular
about the sunsets here:
light
slips into darkness docilely
without fanfare; the moon
and stars appear on time.
(Because here is where it started?)
Sprinkled lights on hillhumps look upward, questioning
the stars.
Dawn comes
as easily with a sliding
into unblemished brightness.
It's plain God separated
light from darkness,
working it both ways.
SUMMER 1981
�HIPPIE AT WESTERN WALL
Blue-jeaned, hair streaming
straight from the scalp (as
in the New York subway) she
leans on the Wall, forehead
resting on curve of rock
(how this stone shapes itself to flesh) and prays.
With
all of her angulariry (which
is the shape of her loneliness)
she prays to the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. Beneath
the granny glasses, tears
fall to holy ground.
Within
her palm the small black prayerbook lies, ready to succor her.
Almost, she sees the letters
flying apart, searching.
It's not
hare hare
krishna krishna now, but
ani ma'amin
.
am. ma 'amtn
Jerusalem
Note: ''Ani ma'amin" means ul believe"
in Hebrew.
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
THAN JONAH
Constantly
I flee from self.
Constantly I stare
with bitter eyes
. of hope.
In swift
kaleidoscope of lost
and found.
Tears
start from dry lids,
for I'm more prone
to self-pity
even
than Jonah who,
luckier,
fled only from God.
''THE STORY OF MY LIFE''
The room was too high
for the flies, but
the garbage smells
reached us all right.
On the narrow bed, the
beige blanket with brown
end-stripes was falling
apart. Still, it lasted
for us-a wonder.
The
door opened to the porch
where, above roofs and
treetops, we could see
all the way to Yafo Gate
and King David's Tower,
the walls of the Old City,
Mt. Zion, Ammunition Hill.
At twilight the shadows
(the Judaean Hills really)
emerged to clear foldsmore like the rumpled
cloaks of a Michelangelo.
Close by, palm leaves
tilted into sky.
It was
there you carne and spoke
of your past, the Nazi
horrors. I held your small
perfect hands in mine.
Afterwards, with childish
contentment you said,
"Now you know the story
of my life."
That room's
like a box in my brain.
13
�Soviet Hegemonism: Year 1
Raymond Aron
A year ago,* I analyzed the paradox or the contradiction
in the present situation. Thanks to her military power, the
Soviet Union approaches first place in international rela·
tions at the same time that she remains of secondary im·
portance in world trade. She is of secondary importance
not only because her vast spaces, which provide most of
the raw materials her industry needs, free her from the
kind of dependency on foreign trade characteristic of
Great Britain, Europe, and even the United States, but
also because she does not match the leading nations when
she is measured in our times' standards: gross national
product, per capita production, productivity. Because of
this contradiction, commentators hesitate. Some, obsessed
with the military power of this land empire, denounce like
China the threat that an ideocratic despotism, that relies
on arms to propagate its power and its truth, exercises
over both Europe and Asia; others, struck by the lability of
a state that excels only in missiles and submarines while
borrowing computers for Olympic games and Western
know·how for automobile production, refuse to let exces·
sive Soviet armament frighten them.
In the last years, Western public opinion has finally
come to see the change in the military balance. The abil·
ity of the USSR's heavy missiles, the SS·l8's, to destroy
every one of the United States' land·based missiles im·
presses the man in the street and some of the experts. A
Soviet first strike that deprived the United States of its
Minutemen would, of course, not disarm it. The United
States could still resort to its Poseidon submarine missiles
and its B·52 bombers. The United States has, however,
lost the nuclear superiority so long averred and main·
tained, that had made up for Soviet superiority in conven·
tiona! weapons.
Toward the end of the fifties, Mao's slogan spread
A leading thinker on world events, Raymond Aron writes a weekly column of comment in L'Express. His latest book is In Defense of Decadent
Europe (Regnery/Gateway 1979).
This article first appeared in Commentaire in autumn 1980.
14
through the world: "The East Wind is stronger than the
West Wind." The "missile gap" took up the headlines and
the speeches of presidential candidates. A few years later
the wind blew in a different direction: the "missile gap"
turned out not to exist and ceased to trouble the sleep of
the men responsible for the fate of the West. Is the alarm
today comparable to the alarm after Sputnik? What is the
outlook for Europeans and Americans, still bound in the
Atlantic alliance but not united by a common perception
of events, and by mutual confidence?
The Military Balance-A Few Figures
The defense budget of the United States amounts to
five percent of the GNP, the Soviet Union's to fifteen
percent. This disparity began in 1965, when the defense
budget of the Soviet Union started to increase five per·
cent a year; in the same period the defense budget of the
United States-apart from the bloated costs of the Viet·
nam war-declined steadily in real terms unti\1978. The
1981-82 budget foresees increases; inflation and the rising
price of fuel, however, make accurate calculations in real
terms difficult.
Not all figures are instructive** For instance, the dis·
parity in numbers between fourteen American divisions
and 165 Soviet divisions does not mean much. The Soviet
army numbers 1,825,000 men, 47 armored divisions, 118
ordinary or mechanized divisions, eight airborne divisions;
the American army counts 750,000 men, divided into four
armored divisions, five mechanized divisions, five infantry
divisions, and one airborne division. (There are in addition
a number of regiments, brigades, or battalions.) The So·
viet army, however, is divided between Europe and the
*In an article, "De l'imperialisme americain a l'hegemonisme sovietique," published in Commentaire in spring 1979.
**I refer to figures published by the International Institute for Strategic
Studies in The Military Balance.
SUMMER 1981
�Far East-and a part of it is not available for foreign intervention. But eight airborne divisions tell a different story,
whose truth many events have proven: the bear is no
longer locked in his den. The Soviet Union can now project its power far beyond its frontiers. In Europe, the Far
East, and the Middle East, the Soviet Union can deploy
more tanks, divisions, and artillery than any of its likely
adversaries.
As for the air force and the navy, the figures do not betray quantitative inferiority of the same order of magnitude. Some figures, however, highlight Soviet advances:
the International Institute for Strategic Studies records
180 American surface vessels against 275 Soviet; 80 American attack submarines (73 nuclear) against 248 Soviet
submarines (87 nuclear).
Raw figures, however, do not yield strategic judgements. The American air force and navy probably remain
qualitatively superior. In war, the mission of the United
States Navy would be to keep the seaways open; in contrast, the Soviet navy would seek to wrest dominion of the
seas from the West. Statistics do not tell the outcome of
this potential war at sea.
I think forces should be analyzed in their distribution in
various theaters. Although not entirely without significance, grand totals make for a superficial view-and a partially false one at that: the 165 Soviet divisions are not all
of the same sort or equipped in the same way-and in
peacetime, not at a uniform standard of training and readIness.
The European Theater
Europeans look first to the theater of operations that involves them directly. What is the relation of forces in the
middle of the Old World? The first figures, the figures
most often quoted, support received opinion: the superiority of the Soviets in conventional weapons. Not counting mobilization, 27 NATO divisions face 47 Warsaw Pact
divisions (among them 27 Soviet). 7,000 NATO tanks face
20,500 Warsaw Pact tanks (of which 13,500 are Soviet). In
artillery NATO inferiority is even more telling: 2, 700
against 10,000. In addition, the Soviet Union can reinforce its armies more easily than NATO. Because of the
threat of Soviet submarines and bombers to Western sea
transport, Soviet divisions stationed east of Poland will
reach the battlefields more easily than the divisions available in the United States.
The theater nuclear weapons of the two groups provoked debate upon publication of The Military Balance
last year. Does the Warsaw pact have or is it about to
achieve superiority in delivery of theater nuclear weapons? In such an event there will be no resolving the disputes about bare numbers of bombers, fighter-bombers,
and missiles. How much chance does a fighter-bomber
have of breaking through the Soviet Union's anti-aircraft
defense network? How important are the nuclear warheads of the SS-20 missile, in comparison to the warheads
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
of the medium range missiles (SS-4 and SS-5), aimed at
Europe since the beginning of the sixties?
At the risk of simplistic exaggeration: a direct, head-on,
military attack on Western Europe remains the most improbable of all manifestations of Soviet hegemonism. A Soviet attack against the heart of Europe, unless by surprise
and with all weapons including nuclear, risks unleashing
total war between the super-powers. If the Soviets resorted only to their conventionally armed divisions they
would probably win. They would, however, expose their
more or less clustered armored divisions to an American
initiative in the use of theater nuclear weapons. Immediate employment of theater nuclear weapons, and even of
chemical warfare, would make victory on the ground easier at the same time that it would increase the danger of
American resort to strategic nuclear weapons.
Do the SS-20 and Backfire bombers change the balance
in tactical nuclear weapons? If we limit ourselves to
counting nuclear warheads and megatons, not necessarily.
The Soviets can destroy some of the missiles deployed at
the beginning of the sixties, crude in comparison to the
SS-20 which has three nuclear warheads and has the same
range of accuracy as American missiles, a few dozen me-
ters from the target. NATO has nothing to compare to
the SS-20. But the American commander of NATO has at
his disposal several submarines that belong to the strategic forces, which are the subject of the SALT II accords.
Once one admits the two-fold improbability of a Soviet
attack in the heart of Europe and of a European war that
would not lead to total war, the behavior of the two camps
invites reflection. Why do the Soviets assure themselves a
crushing superiority in tanks and cannons at the same
time that their books of strategy all speak of all-out battle
with tactical nuclear weapons? The Soviets do not want
to foreclose either the option of conventional battle in
which preponderance in steel-tanks, cannons, shellswould bring victory; or of an all-out battle in which armored divisions would only play a subsidiary role, because
nuclear warheads would have destroyed vital NATO defenses beforehand. That seems to me the only answer.
In politics as well as war the West condemns itself to
the defensive. The commanders of NATO have to assume they will suffer the offensive. At the beginning of
the sixties the civilian professors around Kennedy had the
doctrine of "flexible response" officially imposed on the
military. Kennedy's team believed the doctrine of "massive reprisals" would lose credibility the more the Soviet
Union approached parity. Use of nuclear weapons only as
a last resort would reinforce "deterrence" -they thought.
In addition they tended to limit the escalation of response
either to conventional or nuclear. There was no discerni-
ble dividing line, recognized by all belligerents, between a
tactical nuclear shell and the apocalypse. This assumption, which came to be the first principle of United States
and NATO thinking, is, fortunately, arbitrary and unlikely-in my judgement.
Because of this postulate, NATO divisions are not
15
�trained in the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which are
concentrated in a small number of depots. There will be
time in a crisis to distribute the nuclear shells among the
troops-that is the assumption. Not opposed to "flexible
response," the partisans of the neutron bomb criticize the
mystical notion of a "nuclear threshold." They do all they
can to "rehabilitate" both conventional ground war and
the neutron bomb, which will neither destroy towns nor
contaminate battlefields.
What conclusions does this summary analysis afford? A
massive attack against We~tern Europe remains as unlikely today as yesterday. Limited military attacks against
Northern Europe are, for the moment, incompatible with
the policy of detente, which the Soviet Union pursues in
Europe at the same time that it expands in the Near East
and Africa. In Europe the Politburo, however, pursues a
strategy of intimidation; it increasingly strengthens its di·
visions in East Germany to maintain, even to accentuate,
its conventional army's superiority over NATO; it sees to
it that it has means for unlimited battle; it trains its sol·
diers to fight in contaminated territory; finally, its SS-20's
give it. the fearful power of destroying several hundred
crucial points in the Western defense system with re·
duced collateral destruction.
Faced with a variety of hazardous threats, the West has
come up with only two answers, one trivial, the other
more to the point. Every European country has committed
itself to a three percent increase in defense spending-a
commitment of little importance in a time of inflation and
of yearly increases in fuel prices. In addition Europe has
accepted the United States' offer to deploy, during 1983,
108 Pershing 2 and 464 cruise missiles in the Federal Re·
public of Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and perhaps in
Belgium and the Netherlands. The Soviets lost no time in
unleashing a frantic campaign against the modernization
of tactical nuclear weapons-a campaign which told on
Europeans. Does American protection alarm as much as it
reassures?
The modernization of nuclear theater-weapons does
not seem to transform the situation, militarily. The Soviet
Union has assured itself of threefold superiority: an ar·
mored army; integration of nuclear arms in its divisions;
SS-20's. In addition, it alone-and this is an enormous ad·
vantage-will choose between peace and war and decide
on the extent and intensity of hostilities. Despite every·
thmg, a head-on attack of any sort remains fraught with
perils as long as the American presence in Europe means
such a Soviet offensive runs the risk of general war. A sur·
gical operation with SS-20's and Backfires, on its merits
the least unlikely of the possibilities, increases the likelihood of a nuclear response from the United States- aresponse which would enjoy the advantage of a first strike.
In theory less vulnerable because of their mobility, the
Pershing and cruise missiles will complicate the task of Soviet strategic planners.
Will these missiles prevent "decoupling", in the jargon
of strategists? To put it plainly, will they prevent the sepa-
16
ration of the European theater from the central strategic
balance? Specialists argue opposite sides with equal passion. The truth is that everything depends less on arms
than on men: How do the Soviets size up the President of
the United States?
In Europe the balance between the forces has worsened at
the expense of the West; it has not been transformed fundamentally. The men in charge of NATO have never thought
that they could repel an all-out Soviet attack without resort
to nuclear weapons. Ten years ago these men probably
thought they would retain the initiative in escalation, if escalation proved necessary. They no longer have any reason
to assume they have any such freedom of initiative.
The Middle East and Afghanistan
With the fall of the Shah and the occupation of Afghanistan, the situation in the Persian Gulf changed completely. Pahlavi Iran was the policeman of the area; its
troops succored the emirates threatened by revolt; its
navy patrolled the Strait of Hormuz; it allowed the United
States to install on its territory the electronic listening devices necessary to verify arms control agreements; it put
six million barrels of oil a day on the world market; it furnished Israel with oil; most important of a!~ it provided
the United States, in case of a crisis, with a base from
which it could project its military power in the region.
The coup in Kabul brought home his powerlessness to
President Carter. He announced his resolve to defend the
Persian Gulf with all means, even, if necessary, with nuclear weapons-declarations received with indifference
and skepticism. A rapid deployment force was decided
upon. But it will take several years, it seems, before the
United States will be able to send several hundred thousand soldiers several thousand miles away from its shores,
to a territory only hundreds of miles from the Soviet
Union.
Do Soviet actions in Afghanistan show what the Chinese call hegemonism? Taken for a buffer state between
Russian and Indian spheres of influence, Afghanistan in
the nineteenth century saw the disastrous end of an English expedition from India. In the last twenty years Afghanistan moved more and more toward the Soviet sphere
of influence: the Soviets spent more money in Afghanistan than the United States; Afghan officers studied, not
at West Point, but in Moscow.
The first, crucial revolution occurred in April 1978.
Conspirators, with the help of a few officers, either Soviet
trained or inclined to the Soviets, overthrew the President, Mohammed Daud Khan-who himself had removed the King, his brother-in-law and first cousin, in
1973. Daud's replacement, Taraki, signed a treaty of
friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union. He
was in turn overthrown by Hafizullah Amin-a second
coup d'etat that the Soviet Union put up with in distaste.
Faced with Amin's inability to consolidate his regime and
SUMMER 1981
�to take charge in the country as a whole, the oligarchs in
Moscow precipitated still another coup with their troops'
entry. Babrak Karma] was supposed to ask the Soviet
Union for help-like Kadar's work-peasant government
against the Hungarians in revolt. Amin and his family
were killed before his successor, Karma!, leader of the Parcham faction, arrived in Kabul to legitimize, at least, in appearance, the coming of Soviet troops. A badly conceived
or badly executed scenario.
As usual, two interpretations face each other in the
West. Taraki's treaty of friendship and cooperation with
the Soviet Union, according to the first interpretation,
turned Afghanistan into a socialist country-and the
Soviet Union never stands for the desovietization of countries that have crossed the threshold of the socialist community. The military operation is more brutal and drawn
out because of the warlike people's resistance. Other commentators go further. An Islamic republic in revolutionary
ferment might have awakened religious passions in the Islamic republics of Central Asia: in the last analysis the
coup in Kabul occurred for defensive reasons. Not a piece
of 1 global strategic offensive toward the seas to the
South, the invasion of Afghanistan is a local crisis, a feud
between two factions of the popular party, the Khalq (Taraki and Amin) and Parcham (Babrak Karma!). After its exile of the principal members of Parcham, Khalq provoked
increasingly widespread revolt with its attempts at radical
reform. The Soviets returned the exiled Parcham leaders,
who were and are incapable of exercising power without
the Soviet army. The Soviet army cannot withdraw without giving the country up to chaos and anarchy.
The invasion of Afghanistan is yet another example of
the way things go. A pessimistic interpretation contrasts
with this optimistic assessment. The Soviets have completed yet another phase in their whole design, in their
continuous expansion. They are hundreds of miles nearer
the gulf. Additional airbases are at their disposal. They
threaten Pakistan, wedged between India and the Soviet
army. They are now near enough to manipulate the Baluchi tribes at the frontiers of Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. Even admitting that the Amin regime's repeated
failures drove the Soviets to forceful measures, the invasion of Afghanistan shows their confidence in themselves,
in their power, and in the weakness of their principal enemy, the United States.
Whatever the truth of either of these interpretations,
the dispatch of a hundred thousand soldiers to a country
that did not belong to the socialist community (a treaty of
friendship and cooperation does not amount to a mutual
assistance pact; it is less important) represents something
new and dangerous that perhaps presages other undertakings. President Carter retaliated: he restricted wheat sales;
suspended the sale of high-level technology, especially for
oil exploration; initiated the boycott of the Olympic
games; postponed the Senate debate on the ratification of
the SALT II treaty. To emphasize the turn in American
policy, the President proposed the reintroduction of regisTI!E ST.JOHNS REVIEW
tration to Congress-a step necessary for the eventual reintroduction of the draft.
The invasion of Afghanistan cost the Soviet Union
both in moral and diplomatic terms. At Islamabad, the
Moslem countries almost unanimously condemned Soviet
aggression, One condemnation included both superpowers, the supporter of Israel as well as the conqueror of a
people faithful to Islam.
The disparity between the "credibility," as it is usually
called, of the United States and the Soviet Union, however,
grows more marked. What does this word mean? Not prestige in its real sense; not the feelings of respect and admiration that a great power evokes. Perhaps a few incidents
will shed light on the meaning of this American word. Iranian students seized the personnel of the American embassy in Teheran and held them; the Iranian crowds that
headed for the Soviet embassy, in contrast, met with the
revolutionary militia. Pakistan contemptuously refused
American offers of help: what difference did a few hundred million dollars make? In some countries governments
hesitate to accept American protection, because it might
exacerbate the fervors of their revolutionaries and because they fear that, compromised by their relations with
Washington, they will be abandoned on the day of reckonmg.
I am not about to review the Iranian file or the file on
the fall of the Shah or the hostages. But the place of Pahlavi Iran in the Americans' world-wide diplomacy has to be
remembered. Brezhnev' s team and the emirs and kings of
the region did not imagine that the imperial Republic
would abandon imperial Iran. Incapable of believing
Washington's resignation to the fall of the Shah, the men
in the Kremlin merely looked on for a long time. Prodigal
in contradictory advice to the sick, will-less sovereign, Carter's team in the end imposed exile on him in the illusion
that they could save the regime without the man who
symbolized it. What can the King of Saudi Arabia and his
countless relatives make of this?
All these "moderate" sovereigns wish for discreet
American protection. They fear revolutionaries, Palestinians, and fundamentalists, those who look to Mecca as
well as those who look to Moscow- even as they all set
their eyes on Jerusalem.
The career of events in the Middle East provides a
touchstone for the two doctrines on use of armed force in
international conflicts, especially in the Third World, that
confront each other in the United States and also in Europe. Iran and Afghanistan appear to teach contradictory
lessons: for all its sophisticated weapons, the Shah's army
showed itself powerless before infatuated crowds and
Khomeini's propaganda cassettes. The unarmed prophet
won. In Kabul not words but Antonovs in a few hours flew
in soldiers and tanks that drove one faction (Khalq) out
and put the other (Parcham) in power. Which of these examples-Teheran or Kabul-should stay with strategists?
Both, obviously.
The example of Iran reminds us once more-if we need
17
�reminding-that in our times a change of regime often
brings a change in diplomatic orientation. The Ayatollahs
curtailed oil production. A fundamentalist or revolutionary government in Riyadh might take similar measures.
These facts lead to the belief that the destiny of the West
will be decided in the Third World, not by intercontinental missiles, but by diplomacy and economics. To a certain
extent, an indisputable teaching; but one-sided and dangerous. Arming a moderate regime shaken by popular reaction to violation of religious prescriptions and to the
weakening of tradition may speed its destabilization. In
the case of Iran the "modern" generals did not defend
their sovereign to the end; they might, however, perhaps
have saved him if they had imposed effective martial law
when still in control of the situation.
A look at the prospects in the Persian Gulf shows that
neither of the two doctrines is sufficient in itself. The Soviets can occupy the Strait of Hormuz without serious resistance if they so decide. They can also gamble on the
precariousness of the so-called traditional or moderate regimes, on the potential rebels in this region that number
in the hundreds of thousands: Palestinians drawn by the
oil riches or Mujahiddin, militant Islamic socialists or
Moslems with a Marxist veneer. Need I add that the correlation of forces, even when not employed, weighs on the
minds of all the actors, on sovereigns and masses. The
American abandonment of the Shah is not forgotten; the
contrast between the proximity of Soviet troops and the
distance of American troops is not overlooked.
Events in the Middle East have brought back to the
fore the economic stakes of the political competition. In
the last thirty years even dogmatic Marxists had a hard
time finding economic motives for the great decisions
made in Washington. The war in Korea, the war in Vietnam, were wars of defense on the edges of the sphere of
influence, and the world market, of the United States.
Neither of these two divided countries had important raw
materials either in their northern or southern halves. To
find economic motives, you had to suppose that containment of Soviet expansion aimed 1 in the final analysis, at
the preservation of the integrity of the world market for
the multinationals, who opposed Soviet armed conquest
or the coming to power of Soviet-inspired parties for the
sake of their expansion.
For the first time, in the Middle East, the doctrine of
containment does not hide an objective that takes precedence: oil. The United States now imports forty percent
of its oil; Japan imports nearly all its oil (which makes up
the largest share of its energy [75% ]). Oil still makes up
about 55% of Europe's total energy consumption. Soviet
control of the Persian Gulf would, for all that, not deprive
Europe of oil in normal times, in times of peace. But who
can underestimate the power of the oil weapon? Added to
thousands of tanks and nuclear warheads, the increased
capacity for pressure and blackmail at the disposal of the
Kremlin would not make the Mecca of Socialism more attractive, but it would make its demands more imperative.
18
Western Dependence
It might perhaps be useful at this point to touch upon a
too-often-neglected subject. It is all well and good to recall
the enormous superiority of Western economies over So-
viet bloc economies. As long as American power fashioned, not an empire, but at least an imperial area inside
of which the world market prospered, we forgot our dependence on raw materials. OPEC reminded us of it.
Economists conceive of production as the result of the
combination of work and capital. Ecologists think of it as
coming from the transformation of nature by human energy, intellectual or material. Without the raw materials to
transform, capital becomes sluggish-and human energy
by itself is no longer enough to keep up the steel and cement monstrosities where hundreds of millions of men in
the industrialized nations live.
The United States depends on other countries for
100% of its cobalt, for 95% of its manganese, for 90% of
its nickel, for 100% of its tin, for 100% of its chrome. All
the raw materials the United States must import are
found in southern Africa, especially in South Africa. By itself South Africa contains 77% of the manganese, 89% of
the platinum, 64% of the gold of the Western world. Modern armament cannot do without raw materials like
chrome, platinum, nickel, cobalt, titanium. The region
where these metals that might be called strategic lie is
another hot point in the world today. Any political upheaval in Zaire (cobalt), in South Africa (chrome, platinum, diamonds, titanium), would mortgage the West's
supply of these strategic materials.
Why Do Present Crises Divide
the Western Partners?
Regardless of whether it betrays a design to expand to
the south, testifies to growing Soviet .confidence in their
power, or comes of a faulty diplomatic move, the invasion
of Afghanistan provoked an international crisis and dissension in each camp. Rumania expressed reservations
about the Soviet operation; the Polish Prime Minister intimated his unhappiness. In the West the Europeans
showed their desire for autonomy in many ways-and not
without criticizing Washington's actions.
Let's put aside the simplistic comments of some of the
American press: the voluntary Finlandization of Europe.
Let us .also forget about the equally simplistic observations of some Europeans: the entrance of Soviet troops
into Afghanistan represented a North-South, not an EastWest conflict; we, we Europeans are not about to sacrifice
the advantages of detente for the sake of a country already
in the Soviet sphere of influence, when Washington, with
hardly any protest, accepted the coup d'etat of April1978
that eliminated Daud, who for his part had set aside without bloodshed the King, his cousin. Europeans who retain
some planetary sense know as well as Americans that
SUMMER 1981
�everything that occurs in Afghanistan interests the Persian Gulf and, thereby, the independence of Europe.
The crucial question is: Why do the present crises-in
Iran, in Afghanistan, concerning Palestine-divide the Atlantic allies instead of tending to unify them like the crises
in the past-Korea, Berlin, and Cuba? Yesterday the allies
backed each other in the face of danger, today they
bicker.
Some answers come to mind of their own accord. The
Europeans have regained their rank and station in the
world economy. The United States is still first, but without the same margin of superiority. Europe's dependence
on the United States has now turned into interdependence. The American authorities who are in charge of the
still irreplaceable international currency of the dollar must
have the cooperation of the central banks, especially of
the bank of- the Federal Republic of Germany. At the
same time, Europeans feel more dependent on the oilproducers. Already, during the Yom Kippur war, Europe
refused the American air force the use of its airports. Only
Salazar's Portugal facilitated the airlift that saved Israel.
Europe feared that joining the United States, the protector of Israel, would compromise it before the oil governments. At the risk of further weakening the only Arab or
at least Moslem leader who had thrown in his destiny with
the West, Europe did not approve the Camp David accords. By mutual consent on either side of the Atlantic
there was relatively little discussion of Europe's attitude
during the Yom Kippur war. Europe's neutrality toward
the Camp David agreements continues her attitude of
1973.
Circumstances made neutrality or indifference impossible in the instance of Afghanistan. With the Arab states
for once blaming the Soviet Union instead of the United
States, with the President of the United States, in words
at least, siding with his advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and
taking his distance from his Secretary of State, the Europeans had to condemn the coup in Kabul. Even more,
they were joyous at the resurgence of American will.
They willingly would have endorsed the sensational
proposition of The Economist: the Soviets did not hesitate
to invade Afghanistan because the United States had let
its guard down and had, since the war in Vietnam, passively put up with Soviet-Cuban activities in Africa. Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, South Yemen had not been
enough to provoke the reflex of containment. In the first
year of his mandate President Carter used to congratulate
himself on his country's readiness to rid itself of its irrational fear of communism; he stopped taking a country's
turn to communism for an American defeat. The same
Carter worried the allies more than he reassured them
when he declared that he had learned more about the Soviet Union in a few days than in the three preceding years.
A conversion in view of the elections or for good?
After several days' hesitation, Valery Giscard d'Estaing
took on the firm language of the "unacceptable". At the
same time he tried to take advantage of French diplomaTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
cy's independence from Washington. He turned down a
dinner a trois in Bonn because this "informal" meeting
had been announced ahead of time. On his own initiative
or in response to a Soviet initiative through the Polish
Prime Minister, he met with Leonid Brezhnev. Above all,
he was anxious to keep diplomatic contact with Moscow
at a moment when the current no longer passed between
Moscow and Washington.
The real novelty came from Helmut Schmidt, or perhaps one should say, from the Federal Republic of Germany. The Ostpolitik Willy Brandt initiated now unfolds
its unforeseen and at the same time logical consequences.
Before the conclusion of the treaties with the other Germany, the managers of East Germany had la\lnched the
password Abgrenzung-in other words, the solidification
of moral and political borders to compensate for the opening of the actual frontiers to visitors from the West. Abgrenzung seems to me to have enjoyed indifferent success
at best.
The Germans on either side of the line that divides
them have never been closer because of commercial exchanges, television, and personal encounters. The word
Ostpolitik recalls the expression, Ostorientierung, I heard
so often a half-century ago. A country in the middle, Germany looks either to the East or the West for a partner, for
an ally to forestall encirclement. In 1931 and in 1932 at
the Student Center in Berlin, which hummed with political discussion, some looked to the East, and, thereby, to
the Soviet Union; others toward the West and the Western democracies. Both sides emphasized their German
identity in face of the Tsarist knout or Bolshevik despotism on one side and the rationalism of the Western
democracies on the other. Helmut Schmidt would not indulge in such rhetoric or cultural hermeneutics today. He
counts himself-and the Federal Republic of Germany-unhesitatingly among the Western or pluralistic
democracies. In spite of the sincerity of its Westorientierung, the government in Bonn, however, fears
Moscow's bad temper as much as Washington's. The
withdrawal of American troops? The Germans, the Europeans already show too much docility in the face of Soviet prohibitions and commands. The withdrawal of the
American troops in Europe would turn docility into servility. Europeans know that the protection they owe America serves the interest, rightly conceived, both of protectors and protected.
The three hundred thousand Americans in Western
Europe constitute at least an unreckonable risk for the Soviet Union in the event that she envisages military aggression. For his part, Kissinger could say at Brussels-he
would have done better to keep his silence-that no President of the United States would unleash strategic missiles
against Soviet cities in the certainty that American cities
would suffer the same lot within an hour: The truth is
that no one can say with certainty what the President of
the United States would do in reply to a partial or total Soviet attack against the European members of the alliance.
19
�This goes for the men in the Kremlin, too. This uncertainty
has now become the normal, essential mode of deterrence
between the superpowers. The Americans cannot, and do
not desire to, take away this residual deterrence from their
allies, even if they are ungrateful. And the allies for their
part do all they can to supplement it with the Ostpolitik.
The Ostpolitik makes up the specifically national component in Bonn's diplomacy. As long as the Federal Republic of Germany clung to the Hallstein doctrine, she
gave herself no room for maneuver and condemned herself to the role of model ally of the United States. Because
she did not recognize the consequences of the War-the
"Polandization" of the territories east of the Oder-Neisse
and the for!Jlation of the German Democratic Republicshe remained the out-post of the Atlantic army. She was
on the front line. She dedicated herself to economic wellbeing and to the unity of Europe (Europe west of the line
of demarcation). An economic giant and a political
dwarf-as someone put it. The economic colossus in the
end lent political power to the so-called dwarf: the Ostpolitik showed her, not a field for immediate action, but prospects on the future.
The Ostpolitik has inherent limitations, to be sure. The
workers' party, which rules the GDR and which will not
submit its authority to the hazard of free elections, confounds its own and the Soviet Union's destiny. With its
military and civilian technicians the GDR does her share
in helping Sovietism to expand in Africa and the Americas. I do not think Schmidt harbors any illusions about
"peace through commerce" crusades. Nor does he count
on the mutuality of interests of the two countries on
either side of the political and ideological dividing line.
Without the alliance with Washington, cordial relations
with Moscow would turn dangerous. But alliance with
Washington has its perils when relations between Washington and Moscow grow tense.
A "cynical" analysis could -go further in this direction.
Let us look at western Europe's situation without preconceived iudgement: to the east the largest army in the world,
to the south and farther east the Arab countries who for at
least ten years have opened and closed the oil tap. Neither
the Israelis nor the American~> have oil to sell. The United
States still has enough military might to make the Soviets
think; it hardly has any means left to pressure its allies. It
can no longer dictate its decisions to them. It must come to
an understanding with them. The Americans are not yet
fully conscious of their decline.
Schmidt's team and Carter's. The Chancellor has not forgotten the episode of the neutron bomb. He will not forget the undiplomatic letter he received from Washington
just before his trip to Moscow ... The left wing of the Social Democratic Party and an important segment of public
opinion and of the intelligentsia turn away from the
United States either because the United States has disappointed them or for other reasons. They prefer detente to
confrontation with the Soviet Union.
Many top German executives, in and out of government, are severely critical of the fiscal and economic man-
agement for which, in varying degrees, all Presidents since
Johnson have been responsible. In this field they no
longer accept Washington's leadership, even though the
United States, because of its currency and importance, inevitably exercises considerable influence on all participants in the world market. For my part, the inflation, the
fall in the growth of productivity, the inability of Nixon,
Ford, and Carter to conceive and carry out an energy policy impress and disturb me less than the disappearance of
a strategic doctrine, and of leadership capable of overcoming the chaos of pressure groups and setting a goal for the
American Republic.
The East Coast establishment, which had supported
the foreign policy of the United States from 1947 to
1965-from Truman's awakening to the frustrations of an
endless war-split irremediably after defeat in Vietnam
and Watergate. To put it bluntly, it committed suicide.
Since 1975 the United States has had neither a policy nor
a president. Remember John F. Kennedy's inaugural address. To preserve liberty the Republic would shoulder all
burdens and refuse no sacrifice. Turn in contrast to the
speeches of Teddy, the last of that illustrious, tragic dynasty. In domestic affairs liberal, in the American sense,
he belongs to that group of senators who plead for reductions in the military budget and regularly vote against interventions abroad. The alliance that liberalism, the left,
made in the past with the unions to encourage resistance
to the Soviet Union is now all undone. The liberalsmany of them at least-look down with contempt on the
anti-communist obsession that inspired the American
strategy of containment.
The conversion of George F. Kennan, although it occurred before the Vietnam war, is symbolic. The man who
launched the very conception of containment, who
opened the eyes of a President of the United States who
knew nothing or next to nothing of Bolshevism, this man
repudiates himself today, is ashamed of his prophetic writings, and sees one place alone, Berlin, where American in-
American Decline?
Do the Europeans shrink from American leadership because they have come to have confidence in themselves
or because the power of the Soviet Union frightens them?
Or is there a third reason that subsumes the other two:
the decline of America?
Let's take a brief look at personal relations between
20
terests directly oppose Soviet interests. As for the rest of
the world, whether it be Mozambique or Angola, how do
Soviet actions damage the security of the United States?
Kennan does not suggest outright that the leaders of the
Republic give up their interest in regions outside of
Western Europe and Japan, its natural allies. He, however,
no longer finds it necessary to contain the Soviet Union's
expansionist whims more or less everywhere because he
SUMMER 1981
�no longer apparently believes in the inherent characteristics of the Soviet Union.
Containment is admittedly more an all-purpose word
than a doctrine. This word, however, once recalled both
the world·wide dimension of Soviet ambitions and,
thereby, of Soviet-American rivalry, and the uniqueness
of the regime in Moscow. This regime is not a banal despotism, oriental or not, but an ideocracy, animated and
run by a party which, whether it believes or not, will not
think its mission complete until its truth has reached the
ends of the universe. Principles of American diplomacy
until the disaster in Vietnam, these two corollaries of the
word "containment" are today questioned or abandoned
entirely.
The maturity and wisdom the Carter administration
boasted of in its beginnings showed themselves in the
abandonment of just these principles: a conquest of Sovietism in some far-off country of Africa no longer provoked "irrational fear," in the United States. Thanks to
this lack of "fear" events in Angola, Ethiopia, South Yemen did not disturb the serenity of the liberals come to
maturity-including a part of Carter's team. Washington
tolerated the use of Cuban troops in Africa. More than
once Zbigniew Brzezinski evoked "the arc of crisis" around
the Horn of Africa. The United States, however, only reacted unmistakably to the news of hostilities on the frontier between South and North Yemen-hostilities this
time in the immediate vicinity of Saudi Arabia.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not arguing for a return
to containment-if that doctrine was ever carried out in
the sense of resistance at any price, anywhere, to advances of the Soviet Union or communism. The distinction between the Soviet Union and communism brings
out the major difficulty: every victory of a Marxist-Leninist party does not imply a success for the Soviet Union.
The Sino-Soviet schism makes it more difficult to identify
the enemy. Is it the Soviet Union, progressivism, or communism? To some extent this ambiguity was responsible
for the Vietnam war's, and containment's, fall into disrepute.
In Vietnam, on account of something like a conditioned
reflex of containment, the Americans supported the republic in the south against the Marxist republic in the
north. Whose imperialism were they fighting? Moscow's?
Peking's? Hanoi's? We know the answer today. At different times the advisors singled out and announced different enemies. First Moscow. Then, the revolutionary romanticism of the Maoists. Nixon and Kissinger, who were
resuming contact with Peking and sought accomodation
with Moscow, blamed the North Vietnamese themselvesa version nearer the truth, although the Soviet Union supplied Hanoi with modern arms until the end. The equivocality of the cause, the brutality of the means employed
by the American air force in questionable combat, the apparent impossibility of victory, the disproportion between
what was at stake and the cost, in the end, roused public
opinion and discredited the idea of containment. In 1975,
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Congress forbade a President weakened by Watergate to
"punish" flagrant breaches of the Paris agreements. The
liberals who bore some of the responsibility for the original American intervention beat Nixon's (whom they
hated) and Kissinger's breasts with their mea culpas. After
the fact and in the light of the events that followed, no
one doubts that intervention was a political mistake. Was
it a moral error? In its defense of South Vietnam the
United States defended the lesser evil. The dominoes continue to fall.
James Carter wanted to learn one of the valid lessons of
Vietnam: he wanted to rid himself of the compulsive imperatives of containment. This break meant two things:
regimes, no matter how hateful, would no longer be supported simply because of fear of communism; everything
possible would be done to avoid sending American troops
to the aid of governments in jeopardy.
The Americans are doing all they can to apply this lesson to Central America and the Carribean. Washington
had entertained cordial relations with the petty tyrannies
(it had not made) in the little countries of this region. The
revolutionaries in Nicaragua did not distinguish in their
hatred between Somoza and his family and their protectors in Washington. After the victory of the Sandinistas,
who were close to the fidelistas, Congress desired to make
the respect of human rights a condition of a loan of seventy-five million dollars. The Sandinistas had it easy: the
senators had never shown such fastidiousness in the respect of human rights in Somoza' s time. In El Salvador
the Americans support a junta of civilians and military
men that at its beginning promised a third way between
President Romero, creature of the big landowners, and
Castroist and Maoist revolutionaries. Besieged on both
sides by the fidelistas and by the extreme right, abandoned by a number of Christian Democrats, the junta, despite its announcement of lapd reform, pursues repression.
It does not appear capable of forestalling civil war.
Successful in Korea, military containment led to disaster
in Vietnam. In Latin America, especially in Central America,
the pursuit of systematic containment-the indiscriminate
support of anti-Communist regimes-ends in either explosions or in Castroist regimes. In Africa, American passivity
allows free play to Cuban operations, whose persistence
makes for lasting influence. From Ethiopia to the frontier of
Pakistan crises intertwine without, however, losing their distinction. In the coming years, these crises will continue be-
yond present preoccupations (the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, ... the impasse in Israeli-Egyptian negotiations).
The complexity of the present career of events would
make a mockery of the slogan: return to containment. The
United States no longer holds sway over the interstate system or the world market. The revolt against the West of
the countries that produce oil and other raw materials
helps Soviet undertakings-but Moscow neither instigates
nor manipulates it. A return to systematic containment in
South America would not be better than passivity in the
face of Soviet-Cuban expansion in Africa. East-West
21
�rivalry now unfolds more and more to the south-and
crises are not always in favor of the camp with the most
arms ....
. . . Reagan with good advisers may surprise even his
supporters .... But the question goes beyond individuals .... The American people have always been more concerned with their own affairs than with the world abroad.
They had immense territory at their disposal and apparently unlimited resources. Politics did not attract the best.
Without a strong state, with a limited central authority
subject to pressure groups, society prospered. The force
of circumstances drove the United States towards an imperial role. For barely a quarter century it dominated the
world. Even in that short period the Soviet Union, inferior
in every respect, had no trouble maintaining her positions.
The United States should no longer aspire to an out-ofthe-ordinary predominance that could not in any case
have lasted. It must, however, reestablish the balance, not
so much of power, but of will. The Soviet Union holds
two cards: its armed might and the inclination toward Sovietism of some revolutionaries in the Third World. The
United States holds others. But neither the gross national
product nor the standard of living can match tanks and
missiles.
The Crucial Question: the True Character
of the Soviet Union?
The reader will probably judge this analysis too pessimistic. I agree. A commanding general knows the weakness of his own soldiers better than the weaknesses of his
enemy, as Clausewitz wrote. In the eighties, according to
all experts, the Soviet Union's economic difficulties will
increase. Economic growth in the Soviet Union has always depended on capital accumulation and expansion of
the work-force. There is, however, less and less surplus labor at the disposal of Soviet planners-and centralized
management hardly allows for the possibility of increases
in the intensity of work, in productivity. The diplomacy of
Brezhnev's team has brought China and Japan, and China
and the United States, closer. At the moment Japan only
dedicates one percent of its gross national product to defense. In equipment the army of the People's Republic of
China lags twenty years behind the Soviet army. With its
invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union alienated many
Moslem countries. She frightens many, but the fear she
occasions today will disappear tomorrow if faced again
with an America aware of itself and resolute.
... Massive swift rearmament would require unpopular
measures from any President. There are no available surpluses in the budget or in industry. An additional deficit
in the budget would increase inflationary pressures. The
acceleration of the production of armaments, whether of
tanks, airplanes, or missiles, would mean the transfer of re-
sources, an extraordinary effort, an end to "business as
usual".
Is rearmament a proper response to the challenge? On
this question perhaps more than on any other no unanim-
22
ity prevails in the United States. On the basis of the
wrong lesson learned from Vietnam, the majority of liberals cling to the latest fashionable theory, which holds that
arms are useless in the diplomatic conflicts of our time .
According to this theory, the stability or instability of the
states in the region will decide the destiny of the Persian
gulf-more than tanks and planes delivered to local
princes or installed on the spot by the United States. The
theory holds that sophisticated arms did more to undo
Pahlavi Iran than to save it. Afghanistan underlines the
limits of these otherwise valid objections. Neither rebels
nor princes are indifferent to the assumed relation of
forces between the two superpowers.
The crucial question, however, lies beyond these controversies that concern means rather than principles: What Soviet
Union are we dealing with? A great power, impatient for
recognition as such, desirous of solving its economic problems, ready to seize upon any chance for success but without
revolutionary passion and unlimited ambitions? Or an ideocratic despotism superior only in armaments, indifferent to
the low standard of living of its population, animated always by the same view of the world, always dedicated to the
same end: the spread of its ideological truth throughout the
entire world? Nobody can choose between these two interpretations on the strength of an irrefutable demonstration. In 1936 no one could prove that Hitler would go to
war. It was the same in 1938: neither those for nor those
against Munich could prove their thesis. In 1936 and
1938, those who did not take Hitler at his word and believe in his desire for peace did not lack for arguments.
The situation today is at once different and the same. The
men in the Kremlin loudly proclaim that they are still
Marxist-Leninists; that detente does not lessen the ideological conflict; that the capitalist West is destined to disappear with or without a last battle. The West of the
eighties has this in common with the thirties: a half century ago people refused to take Mein Kampf seriously; today they do not pay attention to the language the oligarchs
in Moscow use in addressing their people and their militants. There is, however, this difference today: Hitler
wanted war; the Soviets want to enjoy its fruits without
fighting.
We are not living the spring of 1914 or the thirties. In
1914 those who ruled unleashed an infernal diplomatic
machine that they proved incapable of, in fact were not
equally interested in, stopping before it exploded. During
the thirties, the West, first France and then Great Britain,
lost their cards and their arms. With or without summit
meetings those responsible for governments today keep
constantly in touch. In contrast to the men of 1914, they
know what a great war would mean. Because of his conviction that he was the only man capable of conducting it,
Hitler preferred to have the war break out when he was
fifty years old and at the height of his powers. Today,
Brezhnev and his comrades conceive of themselves as
militants in a historical movement that existed before
them and will outlive them. I am not even sure that they
SUMMER 1981
�intend to take advantage of "the window of opportunity" -at the suggestion of commentators in the West.
For the moment, as is their practice, they are doing all
they can to distract the attention of the world from Afghanistan in order to win definitive recognition and ac~
ceptance of the unacceptable.
Whether they take advantage or not of the coming
years (Will the military balance have sensibly improved in
four or five years?), they will continue their molelike activity. They will manipulate revolts against pro-Western regimes to their advantage; they will even possibly instigate
these revolts when circumstances are favorable; they will
buy Western technologies on credit; they will make advances at one moment to the United States, at another to
Europe, in order to separate them; they will multiply their
bases in the entire world; they will prepare for the war
they hope to avoid-and to survive.
The Western world has neither a common strategy nor
a firm will to oppose to this armed ideocracy. Ever since
Vietnam and Watergate the American Republic has appeared torn between a bad conscience and the fanciful
wish to pull itself together again. Without a governing
class it is driven at one moment to undertake a new
crusade (human rights) at another to retire from an incomprehensible universe. As for the Europeans, who are beginning to speak with one voice, do they profess their
rewon self-confidence? Do they spell out their independence from the Soviet Union or the United States?
I did not give this article its title, "Soviet Hegemonism:
Year I" without hesitation. I had thought of another title
inspired by Solzhenitsyn's warnings: "Western Blindness".
A friend of mine reported a remark he heard from a Soviet economist who, although fully aware of the defects in
his country's economy, proudly declared: "We would be
masters of the world if it were not for the Chinese."
Would the West have triumphed over Hitler without Stalin? Do democracies always have to count on a brother of
their enemy who hates his brother?
Translated by Nina Ferrero and Leo Raditsa
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
23
�Thucydides and Perikles
Christopher Bruell
The three speeches .of Perikles are a good place to begin
one's study of Thucydides because Perikles is -in many
respects-the most impressive human being and the most
outstanding statesman in Thucydides' book. In many
respects ... not in every respect: Perikles is not, in Thucydides' view, simply admirable. In the following remarks, I
will try to give an introduction to Thucydides' work as a
whole by speaking of the place in that work held by
Perikles and his speeches, of some differences which Thucydides points out between his perspective and that of
Perikles, and of the significance of these differences for
Thucydides' understanding of his theme.
Thucydides' theme is in the first place the war fought
between the two leading Greek cities, Athens and Sparta,
and their respective allies-the cities of the Athenian empire, and the Peloponnesians and their allies outside of
the Peloponnesian peninsula. The war lasted for twentyseven years and ended with the unconditional defeat of
Athens and the dismantling of the Athenian empire. The
Periklean speeches were speeches to the Athenians by a
great leader of Athens-a man who in both influence and
capacity was unrivalled among the Athenians of his time
(I 139.4). What were his qualities of leadership? Perikles
himself says that he was able not only to figure out what
was needed, but to explain his thought to others, that he
was a lover of his city and was above being influenced by
bribes. For, as he explains, a knower who cannot teach
clearly, is no better than one who lacks understanding;
one who has both of these abilities but is hostile to the
city, is unlikely to declare what is in her interests; while
even one who is also loyal to the city but is overcome by
his desire for money, would sell everything for this one
thing alone (II 60.5-6). Thucydides' narrative confirms
and expands on Perikles' self-assessment by incidents
such as the following. When the Spartans and their allies
first invaded the countryside of Athens, Perikles was
afraid that the Spartan king, who happened to be his
friend, might spare his estates-either out of friendship
or, on the instruction of the Spartan authorities, to
damage Perikles' standing with the Athenian people.
Perikles therefore announced to the Athenian assembly in
advance, that if the enemy did not ravage his estates
together with those of the other Athenians, he would turn
Christopher Bruell teaches political science at Boston College. He published another article on Thucydides in The American Political Science
Review (March, 1974).
24
his estates over to the public to be public property, so that
suspicion against him would not arise on their account (II
13.1). This incident not only tends to give a partial confirmation to what Perikles says of himself; it also helps to
show how he was able to make his outstanding qualitiesin this case his honesty and loyalty-visible to the Athenian people (cf. II 65.8). As a result of this, they trusted
him as they trusted no other leader who appears in the
book, though others may have been equally deserving of
their trust. Similarly, Perikles may not have been the
wisest Athenian leader known to Thucydides, but his wisdom was most visible to the Athenians-who, therefore,
respected it and deferred to it to an extraordinary degree
(I 145, II 14 and 65.2-4). As a result, Perikles' leadership
was unusually free from the necessity to flatter or please
the people to their detriment, from the necessity to give
in to their unwise wishes or whims. Thucydides goes so
far as to say that Athens was in Perikles' time a democracy
in name, but in fact or deed the rule of the first man (II
65.8-9).
Perikles' speeches-including one that is merely summarized but not quoted by Thucydides (II 13)-all concern the war, either directly or indirectly. The first urges a
policy of no compromise with the Spartans, or no yielding
to the Spartan demands-a policy which made the war,
likely in any case, inevitable. It also discusses Athenian resources for the war and addresses the question of the
strategy that Athens ought to follow to survive or win the
war. Resources and strategy are also the themes of the second speech (the one summarized). The funeral speech,
like the others, speaks with approval of the imperial
course which brought Athens to the brink of war; and the
last speech defends the decision to go to war and urges
perseverance in the chosen course. Perikles was the leader
of what we can call the war party in Athens. Insofar then
as he was partially responsible for the coming of the war,
and the war ended in complete Athenian defeat, he bears
some responsibility for that defeat, for the fall of Athens.
Thucydides, however, provides a ready defense of Perikles against this charge. He shows that the Athenian defeat was brought about by the Athenians' abandoning
Perikles' war policy or strategy after his death (Perikles
died two and one half years after the war began). Perikles
had advised the Athenians not to seek to add to their
empire during the war and not to fight the Peloponnesians-who were superior to them in numbers-on land
in defense of their homes and farms. These were to be
SUMMER 1981
�abandoned to the ravages of their enemies, while the
Athenians withdrew into the city to guard its walls and to
maintain, through their fleet, their grip on their empire
and the sea. All that Athens needed to survive could be
brought into the city from her overseas possessions by sea;
but the subject cities could not be expected to remain
quiet if the Athenians, through being defeated in a land
battle, became so reduced in numbers as to be unable to
suppress revolts (I 143.4-144.1, II 13.2-3). Some years af.
ter Perikles' death, with the war against the Spartans not
yet completely extinguished, the Athenians decided, contrary to Perikles' advice, to try to conquer Sicily. This de·
cision grew out of a political situation in Athens that had
undergone a considerable deterioration since Perikles'
death. The decline in the quality of Athenian political life,
which brought about the abandonment of Perikles' pol·
icy, also made the consequences of abandonment worse
than they would otherwise have been: not only did
Athens attempt to conquer Sicily-she bungled the at·
tempt. As a result, Athens suffered a defeat of such
magnitude that her loss of the larger war became almost
inevitable. A further deterioration in her domestic political situation-the overthrow of the democracy and the
outbreak of civil war-brought her still closer to the end
(II 65).
Perikles must be absolved then of responsibility for
Athens' fall, because it was only with the abandonment of
his policy, an abandonment brought on by the political deterioration of post-Periklean Athens, that the fall came.
But Perikles' policy itself was not without costs for
Athens-sound as it may have been with respect to the
war (II 65.6). It required that Athenians give up, perhaps
for a very long time (I 141.5), their country homes and
farms, as well as their ancestral shrines or temples, to the
ravages of the enemy. For most of the Athenians, who
were rural people, this was nothing less than the giving up
of their traditional way of life. Perikles' policy may have
been militarily sound; it may have enabled an Athens wise
and sober enough to stick by it to win the war; but it
brought about a grave transformation of Athenian life (II
14-17). In this, and perhaps other ways, Perikles may have
unwittingly contributed to the political decline which, in
the end, undid his work.
*
*
*
With this much as background regarding the place
which Perikles and his speeches have in Thucydides'
work, let me turn to the differences which Thucydides
points to between his own perspective and that of Perikles, differences which Perikles' speeches help to bring to
light. Both Perikles and Thucydides have to face the ques·
tion of what brought on the war, or who was to blame for
it. Perikles' answer is contained in his first speech. The
answer is based on a thirty-year peace treaty between
Athens and Sparta and the Spartan allies which still had
fourteen years to run when the Peloponnesian war broke
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
out (II 2.1; cf. I 115.1). This treaty called for disputes between the parties to it to be submitted to arbitration. Yet
when they began to make complaints to the Athenians before the war, and to make demands on the Athenians, the
Spartans did not ask for arbitration, nor did they accept it
when the Athenians offered it. This showed, according to
Perikles, that the Spartans were plotting against the Athenians, intending that their complaints be settled by war
rather than words (I 140.2). Nor did the demands which
the Spartans were making have any basis in the treaty
(144.2). Perikles therefore characterized the response
which he persuaded the Athenians to give to those demands
as both just and at the same time befitting the dignity of
the city: the Athenians were willing to offer arbitration, as
the treaty required; they would not start the war; but once
it was begun against them, they would defend themselves
(144.2). In short, according to Perikles, the Spartans were
to blame for bringing on the war: they were the aggressors, acting in contravention of a treaty still in force.
Perikles' position derives support from the fact that the
first blow in the war was indeed struck by the Spartan
side. Before war had been declared, the Spartan ally
Thebes launched a sneak attack on the Athenian ally Plataea, in clear violation of the treaty. It is also noteworthy
that this view of the question of responsibility for what
came to be called the first war was later, in large part, tacitly accepted by the Spartans themselves. Even before the
war, a Spartan king had ventured the opinion that it was
not lawful to proceed militarily against those who were offering arbitration, and he had opposed the Spartan decision to go to war partly for this reason (I 85.2). He had
been outvoted; but when the first war began to go badly
for the Spartans, they in turn began to feel that the illegality was more on their side and that, accordingly, their bad
luck was only what was to be expected. Afterwards, when
the first war had been brought to an end and a peace
treaty concluded, there was a reversal of this situation: it
was the Athenians who refused the arbitration called for
by the new treaty and who first committed an open
breach of it. Accordingly, the Spartans turned eagerly to
the renewal of the war (VII 18.2-3; cf. IV 20.2.).
Still, this Spartan-Periklean view of the responsibility
for the coming of the war is not Thucydides' view. According to Thucydides, the truest cause or pretext for the
war, though the one least mentioned, was that the Athenians, by becoming great (that is, by acquiring their great
empire) and frightening the Spartans, compelled them to
go to war (I 23.6, 88, 118.2). According to Thucydides,
then, the Spartans cannot be blamed for starting the war
because the Athenians compelled them to start it. Perikles' treatment of the issue was too narrow, too legalistic:
the Spartans acted out of legitimate self-defense. The
fault for the war lies with the Athenians. It lies with the
Athenians for acquiring their empire, or for expanding it
to the point that it encroached on areas of legitimate
Spartan concern. It lies with the Athenians, that is, unless
there is some reason why the Athenians cannot be blamed
25
�for acquiring or expanding their empire. In order to settle
the question of whether the Athenians can be blamed for
the war, it thus becomes necessary to look into the question of the justice of Athenian imperialism. Here then is a
second question on which we can compare the views of
Perikles and Thucydides.
Perikles barely alludes to this question. In his last
speech, he says that the Athenians now hold their empire
as a tyranny, which it "seems unjust" to have taken but is
dangerous to let go (II 63.2). So far as I know, this is the
only statement of Perikles in Thucydides, which addresses itself to the question of the justice of Athenian imperialism-if even this statement can be said to do that.
For Perikles apparently sidesteps the issue here. He does
not openly admit that the acquisition of empire was unjust; nor does he argue that it was not unjust. (There is a
connection between Perikles' sidestepping of this issue
and his position on the question of who is to blame for the
war. If he had not given the war question such a narrow or
legalistic treatment, his consideration of that question
alone-to say nothing of other reasons-would have forced
him, as it forces Thucydides, to look more deeply into the
question of the justice of Athenian imperialism.)
Thucydides examines the question of the justice of
Athenian imperialism at length. The issue is prominently
raised in the speeches of many characters other than Perikles, and it was Thucydides himself who chose which
speeches to report, arranged their order of appearance,
and was responsible, in the final analysis, even for their
composition (I 22.1); moreover, some of the characters
whose speeches are of interest here, are almost surely his
inventions (Diodotos, the Athenian ambassadors at
Melos, Euphemos). In addition, Thucydides' narrative is
designed and arranged to cast further light on the issues
raised and explored in the speeches. For example, after re·
porting what some Athenians had said in Sparta about the
acquisition and expansion of the empire, and immediately
after stating for the second time that the fear aroused by
the enormous Athenian expansion was what led the Spartans to go to war, Thucydides, in alpng digression (I 97.2),
g1ves h1s own account of Atheman growth (I 89-118).
Through both the speeches and the narrative, then, Thucydides indicates the seriousness with which he-as opposed to Perikles-takes the question of the justice of
Athenian imperialism, and therewith of justice simply. If
we wish to follow Thucydides' thought, we must follow
his treatment of this question.
Is there some reason why the Athenians cannot be
blamed for acquiring or expanding their empire? The
Athenians who speak in Sparta before the war trace the
background of Athenian growth. The great war prior to
the Peloponnesian war was the Persian war, in which two
Persian invasions of Greece had been repelled. The outstanding role in that war had been played by the Athenians, although Sparta, as the leading Greek power, held the
leadership of the alliance of Greek cities. After the invasions had been repelled, however, the Spartans withdrew
26
from active involvement in the alliance, while the Athenians were asked by the majority of the allies to take over
the leadership. The Athenians in Sparta refrain out of tact
from mentioning that the Spartans withdrew after dissatisfaction with the behavior of the Spartan commander
had arisen among the allies and turned them toward
Athens (I 73.2-75.2; cf. 94-96.1). The question of the
justice of Athenian imperialism is largely the question of
how Athens' voluntarily held leadership came to be transformed into what Perikles could describe as a tyranny over
the formerly allied, and now subject cities (75.3; cf. 97.1).
According to the Athenians in Sparta, the Athenians
were compelled to transform the alliance into an empire,
their leadership by consent into leadership through compulsion. That is, they can be excused for the same reason
that Thucydides excused the Spartans for starting the
war. But what compulsion acted upon the Athenians? According to the startling assertion of the Athenians in
Sparta, the compelling forces were fear, then honor, and
in the end benefit (I 75.3, 76.2). If we confine ourselves for
the moment to the question of fear, it is not hard to see
that the Athenian claim has some basis. For as Thucydides indicates in his own treatment of the period between the two wars, the spectacular Greek victories
which had turned back the Persian invasions had not put
an end to the Persian threat: there might be more invasions in the future {cf. I 93.7 with 138.3). Athens, whose
sufferings in the war had been unsurpassed (cf. I 74.2),
might be expected to be especially worried by this prospect. The clearest way to safety was to hold together the
Greek alliance. But as we know from more recent experience, in the absence of immediate obvious danger, few
countries are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to
maintain their military preparedness or to fulfill their obligations to their allies. So it was with the alliance led by
Athens: the allies chafed under the strict Athenian leadership, as the Athenians insisted that they meet their obligations-whether in the form of money, ships, or serviceto the full; the dissatisfaction of the allies led to revolts;
and the Athenians, putting them down, led the cities no
longer as their equals but as subjects (I 96-99). It is difficult to condemn the Athenians for this because it is difficult to know whether any other course would have been
compatible with Athenian safety. Surely the decisive defeat of the Persians in Asia, a defeat which may have
effectively ended for a time the threat from Persia, occurred, as Thucydides emphasizes, after the transformation from alliance to empire had taken place (I 100.1; cf.
93.7). And if the Persian threat ceased then to be worthy
of consideration, and with it the original need for imperial
rule, it may have become dangerous, by that time, for the
Athenians to relinquish a rule that was already widely resented (cf. I 75.4).
To this extent then, there is substantiation, even in
Thucydides' digression on Athenian growth; for the Athenian claim that they were compelled, compelled by fear, to
acquire their empire. But as one reads through the digresSUMMER 1981
�sion as a whole, one finds it increasingly difficult to account for the remarkable range and extent of Athenian
expansionist activity, activity which led them to attempt
even the conquest of Egypt (I 104, 109-IO),by recourse to
a concern for the city's safety alone, however thoroughly
pursued (cf. however Alcibiades' comment in VI 18.6-7).
We should not forget in this connection that expansion itself has risks; that growth on one side may invite growth
on another; and that Athenian expansion in particular
brought on the war through which Athens lost aiL On the
other hand, it is far from clear that an Athenian policy of
expansion inspired solely by concern for the city's safety,
and limited to what could reasonably be expected to con·
tribute to such safety, would have been sufficiently
frightening to the Spartans to force them to go to war:
they were generally quite slow to take such a step (I 118.2).
It is true that as early as the revolt of the Thasians, we find
the Spartans secretly promising to invade Attica to assist
an ally seeking to leave the Athenian alliance (I 101.2); but
this promise was given in the aftermath of the decisive
defeat of the Persians mentioned above, a defeat which
could have seemed to have ended the threat from Persia.
That is, it was given only after continued Athenian imperialism ceased to be clearly authorized by that threat; and
in any case, if only because Sparta was diverted by an
earthquake accompanied by revolution, the Spartan
promise remained unfulfilled. In Thudydides' view, it was
the Athenian reaction to a related incident, a reaction culminating in expansion of the empire at the expense of
Sparta and her allies, rather than the action of putting
down the Thasians (that is, of maintaining the empire already acquired), that first inspired the intense hatred of
Athens in Sparta's allies which eventually forced Sparta
herself to a determined effort to bring Athens down (I
101.3, 102.3-103.4; cf., especially with 101.2, 118.2).
But the Athenians in Sparta do not even claim that it
was fear alone that compelled Athenian expansion. To
the extent that it was not compelled by fear, it was com·
pelled, they claim, by honor and benefit-that is, by the
Athenian longing for these things. Can such longings act
with the force of compulsion? Can we admit such a thing
without at the same time admitting that many more
crimes than just those committed by the Athenians are
excusable (or are not crimes at all)?
Thucydides' answer to this somewhat surprising ques·
lion-which we are forced by the Athenians to raise-is
difficult. I think the heart of it is conveyed in the Melian
dialogue. The Athenians had forbidden the Melians to
raise considerations of justice: the Athenians will not be
influenced by such considerations which, in the circumstances (the vast difference in power between the two
sides) are, according to the Athenians, quite out of place
(V 89). The Melians refuse in effect to accept the separation of utility or advantage from right which they understand the Athenians to have insisted upon, for they take
justice to be a common good (V 90). This, however, opens
the way to the Athenians to demonstrate that their good
TilE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
consists now in the subjugation of the Melians (V 91-99),
to demonstrate that there was no good common to the
Athenians and Melians at this time, unless one considers
that a Melian surrender on moderate terms would have
been good for both parties (V 91.2 and 111.4). More gener·
ally, by pointing to our insistence that justice be (a common) good, the Melians point to the fact of the primacy of
our concern with the good, a fact which comes to light
even and precisely in the midst of any consideration of
justice, provided that it goes far enough. But this means
that the good compels us to its pursuit, at least to the extent that it remains always our most fundamental con·
cern. And if this is so, what appears to us good-even if it
is not truly good-may reasonably be held by us to compel
us, and thus compel us in fact. It appeared to the Athenians that what was best for them was rule over all the
Greeks (at the minimum: II 62.1-2; cf. 41.4 and VI 15.2).
For, as Perikles put it in his last speech, "to be hated and
burdensome in the present belongs to all who think fit to
rule over others; but whoever accepts envy for the sake of
very great things deliberates correctly: hatred does not
hold out for long, but the brilliance of the moment is left
behind even into the future as ever-remembered fame" (II
64.5). We can understand from this why one of the best
and most generous of Athens' opponents, even while resisting the Athenians with all his strength, refused to
blame them for their ambition (IV 61.5).
But is the Athenian ambition as free from reasonable
criticism as this seems to indicate? Having sketched the
argument we have sketched, we are obliged to add that it
is important that the good be correctly understood (cf.
Aristotle, Politics 1325a34-b3). Did the Athenians cor·
rectly understand what was good for them? If, as we have
argued, the Athenians suffered severely from their all but
limitless imperialism, the question becomes whether the
glory or fame to which it led was worth the price. That
such glory or fame is indeed worth the price was somehow
felt by Perikles and, so far as one can judge from Thucydides, by almost all Athenians of quality. But we are obliged
to accept their experience as authoritative with respect to
the human good only if it is a genuine experience, that is,
only if it is based on a clear view of themselves and of the
object of their longing. Did the Athenians in question possess such a view?
The glory for which they long and which they pursue
by their all but limitless imperialism is understood by
them as something noble (II 64.6).lt must therefore be for
something noble, for actions noble and/or just (I 76.3, VI
16.5). But are not such actions characterized at least in
part by the fact that they are not simply self-serving? This,
at any rate, appears to have been the Athenian view. In
the Melian dialogue itself, they assert that it is the Spartans who, in their relations with others, most manifestly
hold that whatever pleases them is noble, whatever is to
their advantage is just: the Athenians imply, that is, that
they themselves do not make these equations. Or, as one
can gather from remarks ofPerikles, it is the actions of vir-
27
�tue which are called noble (II 43.1, 42.2-4; cf. V 105.4),
and it is especially action taken in disregard of advantage
which is called virtuous. It was especially in praising the
non-calculating generosity of the Athenians that Perikles
claimed to be speaking of their virtue; he thus implicitly
distinguished their virtue from what he had been speaking of just previously-the Athenian capacity to act, to
take risks, on the basis of calculation leading to the clearest possible awareness of the terrible and pleasant things
(cf. II 40.4-5 with 40.3; cf. 43.1; cf. also 35.1, 36.1, 42.2-3,
45.1, 46.1, and, on the other hand, 37.1 and 45.2).
Now as this implies, and as a noble imperialism in their
understanding of it requires, the Athenians do not act, or
at least do not understand themselves to act, in a simply
selfish manner. Their spokesmen at Sparta claim that
they are more just in the exercise of their rule than they
have to be, given their superiority in power (I 76.3). And
Perikles claims that the Athenians benefit others not out
of calculation of advantage but from trust in their own
generosity. (Indeed the Athenians at Sparta argue that
Athens was hurt by her rather just or measured conduct
toward her subjects: it permitted resentments to arise
which a harsher rule might have avoided, resentments, we
might add, which helped bring on the war [I 76.4-77.5].
Similarly, according to Perikles, Athenian generosity had
the effect that the Athenians were firm in their regard for
those they had benefited rather than vice versa [II 40.4].)
On the other hand, the fact that the Athenians pursued,
as they thought, a noble imperialism seems to have been
inseparably connected with the limitlessness of their aims
(as well as with their willingness to take risks to achieve
them: V 107): it was the noble-minded Athenians, rather
than the more cynical (and cautious) Spartans, who were
led on by hopes (I 70.3-8, VI 24.3 and 31.6; cf. II 42.4)-as
if the happiness they foresaw always eluded them or lay
ahead.
But precisely because it was a noble imperialism they
wished to pursue or believed themselves to be pursuing,
and because they refused to follow the Spartans in simply
equating nobility and justice with their own pleasure and
advantage, the Athenians could not help becoming aware
of the tension between this wish, or this view of their enterprise, and the fact that in seeking through such an em·
pire above all their glory, they were pursuing what they
took to be their highest good or advantage to the exclusion
of that of all others. The attempt to defend the empire, in
the series of great Athenian statements which address the
question of the justice of Athenian imperialism, is
testimony to this awareness-especially where these
statements go beyond what a politic defense of the em·
pire may have called for in the circumstances. (Cf., for
example, what the Athenians say at Sparta with the statement of "Euphemos" at Kamarina [I 73.1, 75.3, 76.2 and,
on the other hand, 75.4-5 with VI 82.1, 83.2 and .4, and
87.2]. The Spartan ephor correctly understands that the
Athenian statement at Sparta leaves no room for SpartanAthenian accommodation or avoidance of war on terms
28
other than the subordination of Sparta, to take place
sooner or later through loss of her allies, to Athens [I 86].)
In other words, the sometimes shocking argument we
have examined justifying, or rather excusing, limitless ex·
pansion is testimony not to the callousness of the Athenians but to their concern with the noble-and to the fact
that the outstanding Athenians had reflected deeply on
this issue. For there is little doubt that this argument also
lay behind Perikles' ambiguous reference to the question
of the justice of the acquisition of empire. That is, the
conclusion which we drew from that reference and from
the lack of any other Periklean discussion of the justice of
Athenian imperialism, the conclusion that Perikles had
failed to look deeply into this issue, is almost surely false.
Nevertheless, it is not entirely misleading.
The Athenian leaders, and Perikles in particular, did
not take the question of justice seriously enough to draw
out the full implications of the argument to which their
concern to defend the empire, their awareness that their
imperialism needed defending, had led them. Their argument proved to be inseparable, as we saw, from a vindication of selfishness. The Athenians could not abandon this
argument without abandoning the attempt, called for by
their concern with the noble, to defend the all but limitless imperialism to which that same concern with the
noble had helped to lead them; they therefore embraced
the argument and proclaimed their acceptance of the
standard of conduct it sets forth (I 76.2, V 105.1-2). The
argument, however, confirms the very characterization of
their enterprise which they (still) shrink from accepting,
because to accept it is to cease to see that enterprise as
noble (V 89). Hence the strange inconsistency of their
statements, an inconsistency ranging from contradiction
to incongruity of tone: the strong never put justice before
advantage (I 76.2), but the Athenians are more just than
they have to be, even though this does them harm (I
76.3ff.); they advance to conquer without seeking to color
their intention with "noble words" or claims of justice (V
89), in clear-sighted recognition rather of the compulsion
of human nature to rule where it can (V 105 .1-2), yet they
are not so crude as to hold, like the Spartans, that whatever pleases them is noble, whatever is to their advantage
is just (V 105.4). Only the unpolitical Diodotos appears to
have faced squarely the question of what imperialism of
the Athenian sort looks like in the light of a thoroughgoing acceptance of the argument advanced in its defense
(Ill 45; cf. VI 24.3 and 31.6; cf. also Nikias' comments at
VI 9.3 and 13.1). The Athenian spokesmen whom we have
considered turned from this spectacle, if only at the last
minute, to contemplate instead what they regarded as
Athens' less selfish actions. Since these appeared to concern rather small matters (see esp. I 76.3ff.), those spokesmen did not feel the need to explain to themselves how
such selflessness is compatible with the argument they
had embraced, at the core of which is the discovery of the
primacy of the concern with the good. The Athenians
thus sought to have it both ways. Their argument authoSUMMER 1981
�rizes the unrestricted pursuit of the good, and they understood themselves to be pursuing (without significant
restriction) what they felt to be the human good. What
they felt or experienced regarding this "good", however,
was colored by the belief that their pursuit of it was noble,
by which they meant: not dominated by concern with
their own good. This appears to be the most important
ground, in Thucydides' view, for refusing to defer to that
experience, for doubting that the Athenians truly knew
what was good for them.
*
*
*
In conclusion, I wish to turn to some implications for
Thucydides' thought of the differences between him and
Perikles which have come to light.
When we compare Thucydides' book to the writings of
the classical political philosophers, we see that it has a special place among the works left to us by antiquity. While
Plato and Aristotle present us with beautiful pictures of
"ideal" cities, Thucydides describes for us the life of actual cities. Actual cities turn out to be almost always cities
at war or near to war whether foreign or civil. Thucydides
chose to write about the biggest war known to him. As a
result, as he himself notes, his book is full of descriptions
of grim and terrible things (I 23.1-3).
Because Thucydides wrote of actual cities, his book was
of special interest to the modern thinkers who wanted to
construct a new political science on a realistic basis.
Hobbes, for example, made a translation of Thucydides,
and there are important echoes of Thucydides' unrivalled
description of the horrors of civil war, in particular, in
Hobbes' Leviathan. (Compare Thucydides' account of the
Corcyraean civil war with Hobbes' description of "the
natural condition of mankind" in the light of Hobbes'
remark in the same chapter that, "it may be perceived
what manner of life there would be, where there were no
common power to fear, by the manner of life, which men
that have formerly lived under a peaceful government,
use to degenerate into, in a civil war" [Leviathan I 13; cf.
II 29].) The reaction of Hobbes, and later of Alexander
Hamilton, to the sort of description presented by Thucydides may be roughly estimated from this comment of
Hamilton in the Ninth Federalist Paper: "It is impossible
to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and
Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at
the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which
they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between
the extremes of tyranny and anarchy . ... " The "sensa·
tions of horror and disgust" were lessened only by the
conviction of both Hamilton and Hobbes that the civil
wars, at least, to which the Creek cities were subject are
due to "vices of government" (Ninth Federalist) or to "imperfections ..• of policy" (Leviathan II 29), which they
hoped their new political science would overcome. In the
words of Hobbes, when commonwealths "come to be disTHE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
solved, not by external violence, but intestine disorder,
the fault is not in men, as they are the matter; but as they
are the makers, and orderers of them" (ibid). That is, with
the right understanding, we can change things (cf. ibid II
31 ). While according to Hamilton, "the science of politics ... like most other sciences, has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well
understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients" (Ninth Federalist).
For the moderns, then, the grimness of Thucydides' account of political life was relieved by their hope for fundamental political progress. It is not difficult to show that
Thucydides did not share this hope: hence his remark that
his work is intended to benefit those who wish to understand what has happened in the past and what will, given
the way of humanity, happen in much the same form
again (I 22.4; cf. III 82.2 as well as II 48.3). What then enabled Thucydides to bear the grimness of his own account, as he did bear it, with such dignity and calm? For
not only is his work without any trace of "horror and disgust"; it is also free from taint of anger or bitterness 1
gloom or despair. The reason cannot be that he lacked
feeling for the sufferings he observed and portrayed: his
feeling shines through no less impressively for being conveyed with a manly gentleness. He was undoubtedly a
man of immense natural strength, but Hobbes and Hamilton were not insignificant in this respect either. I suspect
then that the reason has more to do with his thought: that
Thucydides saw something which the later thinkers did
not see, something which can be glimpsed by reflecting
on the difference between Thucydides' perspective and
that of Perikles. This is that human life, at least for any
human being of quality, is never free from concern for the
noble and the just. This has the result that we are dependent on the belief that we know what nobility and justice
are. We remain dependent on that belief, unless it is replaced by what we can tentatively call the search for justice, for what justice truly is-unless it is replaced, that is,
by philosophy. If I remember correctly, philosophy is
mentioned in Thucydides' work only by Perikles, who in
the same context suggests that thought and writing are
subordinate to action and criticizes the inactive life (II
40.1-3. 41.4; cf. 63.2-3, 64.4). Thucydides, who clearly
regarded his writing and thought, the substance and outcome of his search for truth (I 20. 3), as superior to any possible action on his part, quietly presents the evidence for
the alternative view. Thucydides, that is, shows us the necessity for philosophy; he shows us that human life, for all
its apparent disorder, necessarily points in this direction.
Beyond that, he shows us something of the philosophic
life in action. All that we see in Thucydides' book-battles
and speeches, intrigues and civil strife-we see through
his eyes: In looking at all these things, then, we are also
becoming acquainted with Thucydides himself. This, too,
is part of the reason why his book, despite the many grim
things that it necessarily contains, possesses also a very
great beauty.
29
�Not Quite Alone on the Telephone
Meyer Liben
not mine, but the one I
rent from the Telephone Company, and not all of it,
but just the receiver, cradled in the slightly curved
arms of the secure base, solid mother base, and I heard
not the familiar dial tone, that serene hum which tells us
that all is electronically well, and, by extension, for the
imagination is so at the mercy of the immediate, that all is
well in general, or in the words of juliana (also known as
Julian) of Norwich, moving now into the future, that "all
shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing
shall be well," I heard, not the familiar dial tone, but an
unfamiliar buzzing, rasping sound.
I picked up the telephone (the part for the wholewhat is the word for it?) and heard silence, not a golden silence, but the silence of a far-off emptiness, a silence
growing more and more ominous as time passed and no
sound came to fill the unexpected void.
I picked up the phone, and after dialing my number,
not my number, but the number I was trying to reach, the
number of the other, the phone went dead, into an extraordinarily deep silence, a silence with bells on, the way
). D. Salinger describes sexual intercourse as masturbation
with bells on, then suddenly came to life again, celebrated
I
PICKED UP MY TELEPHONE,
Meyer Liben (1911-1975), whose work has appeared in New American
Review, Commentary, Midstream, in these pages, and elsewhere, is the
author of Justice Hunger and Nine Stories, (Dial Press 1967). "Not Quite
Alone on the Telephone" is from an unpublished collection of stories,
Streets and Alleys.
30
its resurrection with a piercing whistle, a kind of locomotive, clear-the-track whistle.
I picked up the phone, dialed a long-distance number,
and instead of the voice I expected to hear, found myself
in the midst of a conversation between a bank official and
a man who was trying to borrow $12,000 to modernize a
superette (examine that word for an instant), a small supermarket in a southern border state-is there any other
kind of border state? -at least that was my guess by the
accents of the pleasantly recalcitrant banker and the cagy
would-be debtor. Feeling like the unknown and unwanted
member of an audience at a real-life drama, I quietly hung
up the receiver (not the phone).
I picked up the phone, heard a series of staccato noises,
like that of a generator crying for help, hundreds and hundreds of these noises, part of an apparently endless wave
of sound, one unit exactly like another in timbre, duration, volume-then quiet, this side of dead.
I picked up the phone. There was a click, as though two
small metal objects had come together, perhaps in a magnetic field (this is the sheerest surmise of an electronic
cretin), then the familiar reassuring dial tone, that marvelous golden hum we used to take so much for granted.
I picked up the phone and heard a shriek, imagined a
woman in extreme distress, by some monster forced, the
sound echoing as from the wall of a cave, and then slowly
dying away.
I picked up the phone, and heard, for maybe thirty seconds, the pure tones of a string quartet.
SUMMER 1981
�I picked up the phone and heard a blast, like that of a
factory lunch whistle, followed by a kind of tinkling, the
murmur of not altogether still waters .. .
I picked up the phone and heard ... but let these few
examples suffice. I decided that the phone was tapped,
and that it was tapped for no specific reason (what could
such a reason be?) but on a random basis, though no
doubt part of an overall selective process, the way you
might be chosen as a participant in the Neilson ratings or
in The Daily News straw poll. It is, I analyzed, part of the
selective policy of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., or some intelligence-gathering service that I had not yet heard of. But in
our country the most secret agencies become well-known,
we even hear of splits in the C.I.A. between liberal and
conservative factions.
trustingly, in remembrance of the reassuring sonorities of
the woman at the company, I heard, far from the dial tone
I was prepared to hear, hoping and expecting to hear, a
piercing whistle, as from a policeman who has sighted a
thief, followed by a silence not quite long enough to be
ominous, but close to it, and that followed by a familiar
click, and that followed by a voice of a woman asking me
what number I wanted. When I said that I was calling for
Weather Information in New York City, she explained to
me (more slowly and patiently than I thought necessary)
that I had reached a number in Sacramento, California,
that she would connect me with the operator, the wire
went dead, there came the sounds of a kind of electronic
music, and then, what used to be the most reassuringly do·
mestic (all that electronic chaos out there tamed) of all tel·
ephone sounds, the equable, unwavering, steady, warm,
H
AVING DECIDED THAT MY PHONE WAS TAPPED, I
called the Telephone Company (more exactly, I called
my Business Representative on the advice of the
Operator) and that was the beginning of a series of con·
versations with a series of individuals of various ranks and
in various positions in the hierarchy of the phone company's bureaucracy, individuals so numerous, so different
in character, in temperament, that the content and nu·
ances of the conversations I had, as I was plugged into this
or that hole in the huge administrative switchboard, to say
nothing of letters received and answered, plus calls follow·
ing up unanswered letters-all that would take up considerably more space (and therefore time) than I intended to
use up in my account of this episode. I finally wound up
in the hands, rather the voice, of a young woman, who, as
I understood, was in a kind of Public Relations Security
branch of the company, and after a number of conversa·
lions, reports on cable checks, electronic checks and in·
vestigations, she, without firmly saying that my phone
was not tapped, said that she was very sorry about the in·
conveniences I was experiencing, about the spectrum of
noises, silences, and interruptions, that it was all part of
the problems created by the unprecedented growth of the
phone company, that the company was in the process of
catching up with that unprecedented growth by the spe·
cia! training and employment of old and new personnel,
by the installation of new, very sophisticated equipment,
that once this newly-trained personnel was on the job and
once this new equipment was in full use, she was confident that these clicks, interruptions, whizzing sounds,
thunderous noises, hums, whistles, clangings, whirrings,
and welcoming Dial Tone.
I
HAVE ALWAYS HAD MIXED FEELINGS about the tele·
phone in my house. Rats, mice, cockroaches, those
thin silver-fish that sometimes appear in the bathtub,
are living creatures which now and then make their pres·
ences felt. They do not play dead, like the telephone,
fixed in its place forever, wherever you put it, there it
stays (never, never, has a telephone moved by itself, never
has a telephone tried to move by itself), and comes to life
only by human intervention, though not necessarily with
a human presence, for so often does a phone ring and no·
body there to answer it. It has all that coiled power, and
sometimes, when it rings, at odd hours of the night, or
when I am in an absent-minded or bemused state, it is as
though a wild beast has leapt into the room. The roach
surprises, the mouse frightens, the rat scares, the tele·
phone terrifies.
But the phone is so useful an object, brings so much
pleasure, the voices of our far-off dear ones, or those close
by, the simple pleasures of the temporarily parted, that
one grows attached to a given phone. I shall go into that.
Nevertheless it is an instrument not continually under
our control, therefore a stranger in the house, the way all
machines are strangers, no matter how utilitarian or plea-
sure-giving. And when I heard that a phone could be
bugged in such a way that it will record what is said in a
room even when the receiver is on the hook, that rein·
forced my sense of its silent and forbidding animosity, its
treacherous and inhuman nature.
me quite ashamed of my complaints, my ignorance, my
(And yet-to again point up the ambivalence-what
pleasure this same phone has given me over the yearsthe long, cozy conversations, the way on a miserable rainy
or freezing night, I might choose to stay at home, thinking
of all those I hadn't spoken to for so long, and how pleas·
ant it would be (and was) to stay at home, exchanging tele·
suspicious nature.
phonic pleasantries, confidences, ideas, jokes, gossip,
Then, when I came home that evening (I had spoken to
the telephone representative from the office where I am
employed) and picked up the phone to dial a number, all
while the wind rattled the window panes, the rain covered
these panes with crooked streams, and the phone always
available, responding to those needs, obedient, helpful,
buzzes, indeed all the varieties of noises and silence,
would disappear. Added to this was a promise to check
further, all said in a tone of voice so sweet, so agreeable, so
understanding, so sincere and reassuring, that she made
Tiffi ST. JOHNS REVIEW
31
�accurate transmitter of your words, the sounds beneath
the words, and the spirit beneath the sounds).
that the phone was tapped,
my attitude toward it moved naturally, even dramatically, in the direction of suspicion, hostility,
indeed to the limits of that suspicion and hostility. So do
we foist a kind of human nature on a manufactured object. Let me say this: it is possible to have strong personal
feelings about a telephone, but never have I heard of a telephone which has been given a name, the way a domestic
animal (or a wild animal, for that matter) is given a name,
never have I heard of a child giving a telephone a name,
one's positive feeling for it does not go so far, the way it
might go to a moving machine, like a truck (but automobiles are not given names apart from the company names),
though the phone company is now beginning to name its
phones, one being the generic name Princess. I've never
heard anyone refer to this small bedroom phone by name,
though Joyce Carol Oates has mentioned it in one of her
works, casually, the way you'd mention a random character who never appears again.
I moved toward the negative ambivalent pole, first in a
kind of respectful cautious way, the way you deal with a
mysteriously powerful enemy, used the phone as little as
possible, saw in it a new and unexpected power ... Indeed,
my next month's bill was the lowest I can remember, because of the absence of the Message Units so inexorably
used up in those long cozy conversations (isn't talking on
the phone sometimes like being in front of a pleasant fireplace fire?) which take the place of a visit, or a night at the
theatre, or just out? And how many Message Units can
you run up in a call to Weather, a call to the druggist or
cleaner?
0
NCE I WAS CONVINCED
was quite abandoned for a spell,
though it was on my mind, both configuration and
number. It is curious, by the way, how we remember, far back, our own old phone numbers, like the rock
strata which the geologists make so much of. I remember
very old numbers, ones when the Exchange was a name,
like Circle or Butterfield. When you stopped saying the
name, and slatted to dial it, you of course dialed only the
first two letters, then the first two letters and a number
(Cl-2 is quite different from Circle, though if you know
the name of the exchange, you are naturally always aware
of it). And then came the takeover by the numbers, more
of which later.
This feeling of respect, trepidation, in front of a mysterious power, particularly uncanny to one who is electronically backward, soon faded (uncanny or not) and was
replaced by an amalgam of feelings, a many-sided thronging, not too easy to sort out-anger, scorn, sense of outrage, disbelief, among others-which brought me closer
to this instrument (cannot initiate, can only be used), to
an involvement, an engagement, a kind of confrontation.
Y
32
ES, MY PHONE
The way I said it to myself was: If this phone is going to
bug me, two can play at that game (see again how I treat
the instrument as if it had a life of its own, a volitional
sense).
Let me say right off that the fact of a government
agency going to the trouble and expense of tapping my
phone indicated to me (forget the random sampling) that I
was a person of considerably more importance than I had
ever imagined myself (since the daydreams of childhood)
to be. Indeed, this situation reactivated those daydreams
of childhood. I imagined, for example, that in a confusion
of names, I was called before an Investigating Committee
of the Congress, asked my name and occupation, which I
gave, under oath. The committee members then proceeded to launch a barrage of questions at me, regarding
dozens of trips I was supposed to have taken abroad,
about contact with individuals I had never heard of, all of
which made it as clear as the most perfect sentence ever
written that I was being confused with another person
with my name and occupation. I quietly answered "no" to
hundreds of detailed questions about trips to Havana,
Buenos Aires, Hanoi, East Berlin, Hong Kong, small
towns in Cambodia and cities of which I had never heard
in countries which I could not locate nor even identify.
"You are telling this committee, sir, on your sworn
word, that you were not on the premises of the Swedish
Embassy in Jakarta on January 9, 1967?"
"I am telling you just that."
"And you are telling us, sir, that on the afternoon of
June 17, 1967, you did not meet a certain representative
of the government of Albania in a tavern on O'Connell
Street in the city of Dublin, and that certain documents
were not exchanged on that occasion?
"Sir, I am telling you just that."
After some three hours of this questioning, the form
sometimes direct, sometimes involuted or oblique, sometimes coming right at you, sometimes seeming to bank off
the ceiling or walls (so various are the deliveries), a man
suddenly moves into the room, carrying a sealed envelope
which he hands to the Chairman, after a short whispered
interchange. The Chairman halts the proceedings, opens
the envelope, reads the letter, shakes his head in a kind of
weary puzzlement, calls a recess, confers with the other
Committee members, raps his gavel, and calls the meeting
to order. He has a rather strained, awkward look. So do the
other Committee members.
"I have a statement to make," says the Chairman. "We
sincerely regret that a serious error in identification has
been made. There are apparently two gentlemen with
similar names and occupations, approximately. of the
same age, height, and appearance, one of whom lived at
an address which! with the transposition 0 f two numbers,
would be precise y the number of the house on the avenue at which the gentleman on the stand resides. It is the
other gentleman we are seeking to interrogate. Again, we
sincerely regret any inconvenience we have caused due to
this unfortunate case of mistaken identities .... "
11
SUMMER 1981
�HIS REACTIVATION of an earlier fantasy life (not
childhood) helped to break down, after a while, the
tentative reserve I had adopted toward my telephone. It was one of the factors that emboldened me in
my dealings with that instrument
In the formulation of Leon Trotsky (perhaps I shouldn't
mention his name) I have skipped a stage in my description of this process, for, before the anger, emboldenment,
etc., I went through a kind of intermediate stage, one of
easy, impersonal contact.
During that period I called Weather, Time, Dial-APoem (started to write Dial-A-Phonel)-part of the spectrum of services I plan to write about later-the most neutral calls possible. I made calls to strangers which involved
a minimum of conversation (these, of course, can be sus·
pect, on the theory that they are coded), calls to the supermarket, other merchants, to have deliveries made, to the
dry cleaner to find out if my jacket was ready, that kind of
thing. It was a warm-up, where the call had a specific, circumscribed purpose, and to enable me to get the feel of
the phone, after a period of disengagement I succeeded
in that, recovered the physical sense, the old comfort and
flexibility in handling the instrument
T
HERE FOLLOWED (that makes two stages skipped before the turnaround) a kind of cautious approach, on
a more personal level. Actually, these two intermediate stages intermingled, because, though my voluntary
use of the phone is as described above, the phone did ring,
the way it does in the normal course of events. My deduction-for it was nothing more-that the phone was tapped
(curious how tapped is a technical word, and bugged a
word from the natural world, science and nature in this
case seeming to conspire against our sense of privacy, the
inviolability of home and intimacy) naturally had no effect
on the telephone habits of my friends and associates, and
to my amazement, for I had not set myself on such a
course, I found myself reducing all the conversational exchanges to the blandest possible level, I found myself taking the sting out of all potentially partisan or politically
controversial subjects.
Talking generally, our conversations, on phone and off,
tend to fall into certain patterns, depending on so very
many factors, but it is a rare conversation which does not
include, at one time or another, mention of the day's
news, or yesterday's news, so it would not be unusual
(though, at this time of awareness, I noticed that a number of people shied away from touchy subjects, out of extraordinary prudence, a vague sense of discomfort, or
because they were not sure of the absolutely private nature of these phones, imagined maybe that their own
phones were tapped) for a friend to make mention of the
Conspiracy Trial, with the idea of passing the time of
night with a give and take on what we had both read in
the newspapers or heard on the television, the news of the
T
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
day, after all, being so staple a part of our daily conversations. But when I responded by repeating what he had
said, or referring to some totally insignificant element in
the matter, not pushing ahead to meaningful dialogue on
the merits, or even, as I sometimes did, changing the subject-"How do you like the way the Knicks are going?"(though, had I thought the matter through, I would have
seen that this kind of trivialization and change of subject
was more suspicious than the routine give-and-take of
conversation) well, the manner of my response had a way
of taking that first-mentioned particular subject off its
track. It is surprising, by the way, how most people accept
these conversational shifts, particularly if the subject
they've brought up is of no pressing importance to them,
as if it doesn't particularly matter what the topic of conversation, as long as the time passes agreeably. I am not
thinking of those who use the phone for a given specific
reason, to make an appointment, get some information,
and who, if there were no phones available, would have to
write for the given specific reason. But the phone company does not live off these limited calls, the money is in
the out-of-town business and other long-distance calls, it is
in the dawdling friendly conversations (the Message
Units!) and in such a conversation, if a friend were to
make mention of the latest development in the war, and I
would respond by asking when he planned to take his vacation, he'd accept that conversational shift, seeing it
maybe as a kind of impressionistic way of keeping the ball
rolling, of filling the void which had initiated the call.
It is amazing how many subjects are potentially touchy,
even controversial, so complex and interlocked is the
world, I mean touchy from the point of view of telephone
surveillance, though that is a visual word, and the tap or
bug is an auditory intervention, but now we are approaching that era in the communications world where we will
see the ones with whom we are conversing.
It is easy to turn away from the difficult, to reduce the
thrust of the controversial, by a process of homogenization (that recently popular word from the dairy world), so
easy to take the sting out of the thorny. You can do it by
tone, by inflection, by showing no interest, so if a political
assassination is mentioned, you swing it easily to the airplane crash (then it turns out that could have been sabotage, politically motivated). As I've pointed out, this kind
of blanding-to coin a word-this obvious change of subject from the potentially controversial to the ordinary:
"What do you think of our chances in the Olympics?"
(but this can lead to a discussion of the killed and jailed
students in Mexico City) is, to any kind of trained listener,
a most obvious indication of apprehension, and, further,
conversation becomes extraordinarily boring if you cannot discuss a subject in depth, but must leap, like a gazelle
on a mountaintop (why like a gazelle on a mountaintop?)
from one conversational ridge to another, in an effort to
throw off your trail some unknown listener telephonically
stalking you.
33
�and likely deep
down in my character structure, previously called
human nature, I am a prudent, cautionary man,
carefully weighing the next step, considering as best I can
the distant possibilities, the hazards flowing out of present behavior, I am, also, thank God, a rather fun-loving
person, who recognizes that all contingencies cannot be
taken into account, that we have all been blessed with
pleasure-possibilities, that joy attends us, that we scorn
volatility, ebullience, at peril to our bodies, to our very
lives. And, living as we do in a society full of all sorts of
freedoms, we'd have to be pretty retarded not to take advantage of some of the pleasure-possibilities that inhere in
the bureaucratic madnesses of the repressive elements.
So I decided that I'd have a bit of sport with my unknown tappers. The way to do it, obviously, was to present to these unknown listeners as wide a spectrum of
views as I could possible manage. Indeed, I sat down to
my desk and wrote a list of views, ranging from the fascist
right to the terrorist left. On second thought, I excluded
the extremes, for what would stop them from using only
the extreme statements? My revised spectrum therefore
ranged from reactionary to the limits of the constitutional
left. Who has the patience to re-enuri:terate such a list?
And then I threw in religious musings (omitting none of
the great religions of the world), anti-political statements,
all kinds of philosophical analyses on the nature of the
state, the moralities of political behavior, threw in quotations from thinkers famous and unknown, copied quotations and passages from books, encyclopedias, magazines,
newspapers. Working from this list, and from the free-as-
N
OW, THOUGH IN MANY RESPECTS,
sociational, occasional spontaneous working of mind and
imagination, I went to play.
Never had my friends, relatives, associates, even ran~
dam callers and neighborhood shopkeepers been subjected, from me anyway, to such a farrago of thoughts,
opinions, views, analyses, doctrines, probes, questions, descriptions, commentaries, on so wide a variety of subjects
bearing in any way on the political scene. Plato's Republic,
The New Republic, Tolstoy's views on non-violence, editorials from The Manchester Guardian, quotations from
Hobbes, Aristotle on Politics, passages from Fourier,
Kautsky, Eugene Debs, remarks on the Brook Farm experiment, Burke on the American colonies, comments
from The National Review, Sukhanov (Carmichael's translation) on the concept of the power lying in the streets,
critiques of nihilism, sections of the Kabbalah, Daily News
editorials, thoughts out of Thoreau, Harold Lasswell, M yrdal, Le Monde, the St. Louis Post Despatch, Mahatma
Gandhi, A. ). Muste, Thomas Jefferson, reasoned critiques of all sorts of revolutionary thinkers, opinions from
Reston, Buchwald, Mark Sullivan, Walter Lippman, Westbrook Pegler, Heywood Broun, Wechsler, A. H. Raskin,
Hentoff, Roger Baldwin (special emphasis on the great libertarians), passages from Leon Blum, Kierkegaard, Bosanquet, Yeats' airman, Freud and Einstein on war, Goodman,
Mailer, Nelson, Feuer, Macdonald, Dorothy Day, Oswald
34
Garrison Villard, Morris Hillquit, Barry Goldwater, the
New York Review of Books, William Buckley, The Louisville Courier-Journal, Henry Clay, R. H. Tawney-a motley
of names, views, magazines, books, pamphlets, dissertations, theories, manifestoes, for, against, neutral, a me·
lange of all political positions and doctrines, revolutionary
too (let them make head or tail of it). Anyway, for one
week, I made tapes of all my conversations, which I carefully dated and have filed.
and that was all. A frenetic, chaotic
week, and then one night, as I entered the apartment, the phone rang, and I had an ordinary conversation with a friend. I expressed my views as I felt
them, the madness was over, my tapes carefully dated and
filed away for any future eventuality, any legal confrontation. I was back to my old telephone, accepted the weird
noises, silences, electronic beeps, as part of the growing
confusion, part of the complexities of a growing America,
part of the struggle for a better America. And I thought:
In the old days you'd pick up the phone and put through
your call, no problems at all. Now you pick up the phone
to make a call, and the situation is fraught with possibilities. Isn't it more interesting this way?
A
WEEK OF IT,
How, after all, can one do without a phone? Years back I'd occasionally hear of a
person who could afford a phone and chose not to
have one because he didn't want his privacy at the mercy
of friends and strangers (it was before the expression "invasion of privacy" became popular). I don't hear of such
people anymore, it is not in the current style of eccentricity. A telephone is as taken-for-granted as a sink.
My old telephone (rented but not mine) has been around
for some fifteen years, indeed ever since I've been in my
apartment, my rented apartment. You don't change a
phone the way you do a car or an overcoat. The phone
doesn't have moving parts, it rarely breaks down, and
when it does, can most often be put in order from the
Central Office. Think of it! a phone put in working order
from a distance. Since it doesn't much break down, it is
usually replaced when the style changes, or because some
of us can't stand old worn objects around. I remember
only two styles of phone (maybe also the wall phone, the
one you cranked, but that likely is out of a fantasy, a
dream, a movie, or a dream of a movie). The first phone
was lanky, upright, sober, almost preacher-like, the receiver in its right-sided cradle (wonder if you could have
requested a left-handed phone?) parallel with the instrument. I remember very well that skinny phone, weathered
after a while like old Slim Summerville. It had no dial; you
picked up the receiver, and the operator answered, saying
"Hello Central" (later the name of a song, but one can
make a song too about the serene dial tone, mildly telling
you, as I've told you before, that all is in order, that all the
M
Y OLD TELEPHONE.
SUMMER 1981
�electronic complexity and circuitry await your instruction,
your move). Back to the old phone: you told the operator
the name of the exchange and the number, and waited till
she got it for you, all quite personal, not intimate. She put
through local and long distance calls ("put through" more
for long distance than for local), covered the whole electronic spectrum a one-to-one situation. We'd see the op1
erator in the movies, a pretty girl with earphones.
Then came the dramatic change (was there really
nothing in between?) to the dial phone, the one now on
my desk-solid, squat, with the receiver snuggling, nestled
in its cradle, with its round lettered and numbered face,
its ten apertures for the finger to twirl, its four feet (now
coming on to the market, into our home, is the push-button dial-farewell to the ten apertures-a swifter, computer-like mechanism, but that hasn't yet hit the city in
force).
The old, squat, solidly-rooted telephone, with its worn,
familiar number, more familiar than your auto license
number, than your checking account or Social Security
attachment attaching itself) to the numbers which replace
the name. Such an attachment must bear on pleasure
sources, so that, for example, if your public school life was
to some extent enjoyable, meaningful, mention of the
number of that school will bring a kind of glow to the features, indicating a speedup somewhere in the movement
of the body's blood. That kind of familiar, even affectionate connection with numbers could be true of all sorts of
numbers that become ours for a time-just gave such a
list-but these numbers-though conceivably related to
pleasure sources-are rarely used (your car license, Social
Security), only occasionally written, hardly ever uttered.
Not so of our phone number (curious how some cling to
the name of the exchange or the first two letters of the exchange, struggling against the spreading numeralization)
which we see staring at us every time we make a call,
which we have printed up on cards and letterheads, which
we give to people-"This is my number," or, more cau~
tiously, "Call me, I'm listed in the phone book."
number, even more familiar than your age, which changes
from year to year, and you must keep up with it. But your
phone number never changes (unless you ask to have it
changed, out of restlessness or objective need; you can
even take your old number with you if you move from one
apartment to another).
to no one's surprise,
the phone is not a living thing (what we mean by a
thing is that it's not alive), does not have a nervous
system, has wires instead of veins, does not move by voli-
A
S I'VE ALREADY POINTED OUT,
tion, does not grow, merely weathers, but, because of its
utility (forget for a moment all the complaints, such as, in
the middle of a conversation, the entrance of a whizzing
sound, as though a wind, a hurricane, were roaring over
some distant prairie), because of its familiarity, precisely
its unchanging physicality and special quality, because of
the pleasure it has given, and promises to give, is capable
of giving-for these reasons one develops a kind of attachment, not a deep, strong feeling, for the instrument, and
that carries over to the name and numbers. One of the
reasons we don't give a name to the phone is that it already has a name and number, assigned by the Company,
and the fact that names have pretty much been replaced
by numbers doesn't much alter the situation. One got so
used to the name-Circle, Wadsworth, Trafalgar, Gramercy, Endicott-not because it refers to a geometric
form, a historical figure (who Wadsworth?), the scene of a
famous naval battle, a variant of "God's mercy," a Puritan
worthy (might be interesting to make a study of the overall effects an exchange and number have over an individual, how the luck of the draw affects the course of his life)
but simply out of long familiarity, out of everyday use,
everyday contact with the unceremoniously assigned
name.
And the feeling for a name can attach itself (a feeling of
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
NE NIGHT, not so long ago, just before going to bed,
I somewhat sleepily looked into my. dictionary for
the origin of the word telephone. I believe I know
its meaning. It is, as I surmised, a Greek compound, but I
hadn't thought that it meant "sound from afar." Between
the sleepiness and the falling asleep, I considered this an
excellent word origin, and fell asleep, dreaming (after a
while, I guess, for I don't imagine you fall into dream as
you sometimes fall into sleep) of a distant voice, then of a
number of voices, all telephonically connected in error-a
0
woman pleading; a man cajoling, another woman, with a
younger voice, saying over and over again: "but this has to
stop, but this has to stop," and that was the beginning, as
far as I can recall, of a long dream, a mosiac kind of dream.
I heard the insistent, the unrelenting busy, that sound
which is like a wall cutting you off from the one you wish
to talk to, the one otherwise occupied. I saw the coming
visual phone (what will it be called?), a woman alone in a
house having to throw on a house coat before approaching the phone! I heard two of the most popular songs relating to the telephone, namely the afore-mentioned
"Hello Central" and "All Alone," and saw, in viginettes,
the opposing contents of those songs-the young man
flirting with the pretty operator, the fantasy of a date, a
conquest, and the elderly man (or was it an elderly woman) sitting by the instrument, grimly, in trepidation,
waiting and fearing for it to ring. I thought (in my dream)
that there were so many more numbers to dial now, and
wondered if the possible combination of numbers could
finally run out. What then? I asked myself. I went through
a speedy history of the use of numbers and letters-first
the numbers alone, then the first two letters of the exchange plus the numbers, and now all numbers again,
though very likely the first two numbers you'd dial (soon
to push) don't necessarily have to be the first two letters of
an exchange-farewell to Academy, Atwater, Audubon,
35
�Judson, Lorraine, Murry Hill, Sacramento, Schuyler, Rhinelander, Wisconsin, Yukon (what can LL stand for? or LT?
or LR?-not only do the numbers stand for nothing, neither do some of the letters). I saw myself, on a cold wintry
night, curled up over the Manhattan Phone Directory (the
Book Of The Living), looking up the names of friends, exfriends, acquaintances, public figures, seeing who is listed
first, and who is listed last (the stratagems, jockeyings for
position, in the Yellow Pages of the Red Book!), thought
(again) of the pleasure James Joyce used to have in listening to friends read to him from the Telephone Directory
(name after name after name), saw the thin physicist (in
our own apartment, think of it!) tear the Telephone Directory (Manhattan? Queens?) in half, remembered someone
asking me: "What are you reading?" and my answering:
"The Manhattan Phone Book," and he asking: "Who
wrote it?" and then: "How do you like it?" and my answering: "The D's were pretty good, but I'm not so crazy
about the S' s." I saw myself taking care of my phone,
washing and drying it at frequent intervals, occasionally
oiling the surface, covering it in the bitter winter nights,
keeping it in good working condition, the way you do a car
or any machine or instrument that works for you. I saw
the repair man come into the apartment, a tall Scandanavian chap, who checked out my complaint, a kind of intermittent buzz (this in the days before the Troubles) and
wondered if he planned to replace the phone. Prepared
for the change, he had a new instrument with him, which
he started to unpack. "Can't you get the old one to work
properly?" I asked. "I probably can," said the repair man,
"but it's a pretty old machine, and I can replace it." "I like
the old one," I replied, ''I'm kind of used to it." "In that
case," he said, and went ahead, made the necessary adjustments or replacements, and got rid of that intermittent hum. "The old ones are better," he said, in a kind of
confidential manner, before leaving. "They don't make
them that way any more." I thought again of the curious
dichotomy of the words bug and tap, the differences between the natural and technological worlds, saw fields
blooming with flowers, flooded with color, and saw the
steely computer, humming away in some subterranean office. I thought (partly in a dream, partly in half-awake,
half-analytic state) of the various services the phone company provided-Reporting A Fire, Emergency, or that
you could buy, like (once more) Dial-A-Poem, remembered someone telling me that in Vienna you could call
and have someone tell a bedtime story to a child, imagined a body of legal, medical advice, that could be offered,
a place to call when lonely, upset, lost, disappointed (all
such services no doubt exist), read in my mind's eye a letter advising how to deal with nuisance calls, profanities,
curious suggestions, saw the phone as a unique artifact,
the puzzlement on the faces of a crew digging thousands
of years from now amid the ruins of ancient civilizations
and coming up with this phone, squat, four-legged, cradle
and dial. I heard myself explaining to an old woman who
spoke little English that there was a difference between
36
the small o which was shown on the dial together with M,
N, and the number 6, and the large 0, above the word
Operator, and it was the large 0 you had to use when you
were dialing the number 0, and because she was dialing
the small o, she was getting a number 6, and it was a
wrong number, but the old woman had little English and
she kept getting my number, and I kept explaining about
the small o and the large 0, and she kept not understanding, and the phone continued to ring, and I continued to
explain about the big 0, the Operator 0, mentioned
Oscar Robertson, said something about the Marquis of 0.
She couldn't understand hardly anything I was saying,
and I started to holler: "Call the big 0, call the Operator,
not the little o with the M, N, and 6, but the big 0," and I
hollered so loud that I woke myself up arid stared at the
familiar phone on the desk (whatever happened to the
telephone tables?) and it was just as quiet as could be.
And in the morning mail that day was a letter from the
phone company explaining that "a low-pitched melodious
hum will replace the familiar dial tone buzz.'
with a person, or an object (such as a telephone) on this or the other side
of trauma, will permanently affect (I use the word
in its psychoanalytic sense) your connection. Your connection with the telephone! Since the bugging idea came
up, things have never been quite the same between us.
Despite my ordinary common sense, my fun-loving spirit
(akin to that of one of the Rover Boys) there is neverthe-
A
NY STRONG EXPERIENCE,
less a sense of intrusion, an invasion of privacy, surveil-
lance by strangers, not that it would be very pleasant if the
surveillance were by friends. So, now and then, when I
think of it, I talk into the phone with the sense of that
third party, human or technological, in mind. I do it by
sometimes dramatizing the subject at hand, going into an
extra bit of song and dance, pouring it on, making it memorable for the unknown listener (but how successfully
does a bug or a tap catch the excitement of a voice? Loudness is not all, it is more the vibrancy, the thrill of
interest).
One evening I explained to my Uncle Max the Kabbalistic notion of Tsimtsum, about which I had read, as I told
my uncle, in Gershom G. Scholem's work, Major Trends
in Jewish Mysticism:
"This is what it is, in an over-simplified summary. God
decided (think of it! God deciding) to make room for the
world, he contracted, and that made the space. It is the
Tsimtsum."
My uncle is a misnagid, in the rabbinical tradition, and
somewhat cool to the Kabbalistic doctrine, but he was
naturally fascinated by this notion.
"How is it called again?"
"The Tsimtsum."
'Tsimtsum. A curious word."
lsn't it? And a curious notion too."
Then we discussed further, I forgetting after a while
1
11
SUMMER 1981
�the Third Ear, but then recalling it as I imagined this interchange as part of the variegated spectrum which the
unknown listener would have to work on.
The noises continued intermittently-bleeps and
blurps and bloops, sounds difficult to imitate with letters,
delicate taps, interminable moans, riveting sounds, hammer sounds, file rasps, and the one that bugged me the
most, the busy signal which starts up as you are halfway
through the dialing. If the busy signal came when you
were through with the dialing, then there'd be a chance
that the line was indeed busy (circuits too can be busy, are
you aware of that? whole circuits busy so that when you
dial there is a nothing response, but to have the busy signal start when you're halfway through dialing, that is
somehow insulting.
(Now and then I went into double talk or pig Latin, but
that annoyed my friends, they think they're too old for
that sort of thing, so I gave up on it.)
Well, I wasn't going to give up on the phone, I wasn't
going to change to an unlisted number (such notions
flashed across the mind) and talking to my friend Irving,
with whom I sometimes swap jokes (though we are both
complaining about the paucity of jokes) I told him (on the
phone) two jokes that I had heard on two different T.V.
talk shows:
"Dizzy Dean told the story about the baseball manager
who protested a call on a play with such vigor and tenacity
that the umpire threw him out of the game, whereupon
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the manager keeled over. One of the ball players said that
the manager had been ill, that he might now be dead.
'Dead or alive,' said the umpire, 'out he goes.'
"Louis Armstong told the story about one of the guests
at a wake who touched the forehead of the deceased and
said to the widow: 'He feels warm.' 'Hot or cold,' said the
widow, 'out he goes tommorow."'
For my friend yes, but why do I tell such fine jokes to an
unsolicited listener?
Y
ES, ALL THESE MATTERS are part of the story of
what's happening with my telephone, with me and
my telephone. Things are not the same, they're
never the same (for example, I notice that recently I don't
like anyone to use my phone, find it unnerving. But since
I have but the one phone [what difference would it make
if I had two?] when a visitor asks to use it, I accede with a
graciousness which I like to think covers my disinclination). The possibility of the phone being bugged has become part of the situation, and when I think of this possibility, I either react to it or not. What starts as a traumatic
experience sometimes gets absorbed in the ongoing life
process. In our country, with its vast reservoir of freedom,
one likes to think that these inquisitorial tendencies, these
inquisitorial actualities, will sink to the bottom of the clear
waters and there dissolve.
37
�An Outline of the Argument
of Aristotle's Metaphysics
Joe Sachs
When Aristotle articulated the central question of the
group of writings we know as his Metaphysics, he said it
was a question that would never cease to raise itself. He
was right. He also regarded his own contributions to the
handling of that question as belonging to the final phase
of responding to it. I think he was right about that too.
The Metaphysics is one of the most helpful books there is
for contending with a question the asking of which is one
of the things that makes us human. In our time that ques·
lion is for the most part hidden behind a wall of sophistry,
and the book that could lead us to rediscover it is even
more thoroughly hidden behind a maze of misunder·
standings.
Paul Shorey, a scholar best known for his translation of
the Republic, has called the Metaphysics "a hopeless muddle" not to be made sense of by any "ingenuity of conjecture." I think it is safe to say that more people have learned
important things from Aristotle than from Professor
Shorey, but what conclusion other than his can one come
to about a work that has two books numbered one, that
descends from the sublime description of the life of the
divine intellect in its twelfth book to end with two books
full of endless quarreling over minor details of the Platonic doctrine of forms, a doctrine Aristotle had already
decisively refuted in early parts of the book, those parts,
that is, in which he is not defending it? The book was certainly not written as one whole; it was compiled. Once
one has granted that, must not one admit that it was compiled badly, crystallising as it does an incoherent ambivalence toward the teachings of Plato? After three centuries
in which no one had much interest in it at all, the MetaA lecture read at St. John's College, Annapolis, on Aprilll, 1980, and in
Santa Fe on April 24, 1981. Mr. Sachs is a tutor at the Annapolis
Campus.
38
physics became interesting to nineteenth century scholars
just as a historical puzzle: how could such a mess have
been put together?
I have learned the most from reading the Metaphysics
on those occasions when I have adopted the working hypothesis that it was compiled by someone who understood Aristotle better than I or the scholars do, and that
that someone (why not call him Aristotle?) thought that
the parts made an intelligible whole, best understood
when read in that order. My main business here is to give
some sense of how the Metaphysics looks in its wholeness,
but the picture I will sketch depends on several hypotheses independent of the main one. One cannot begin to
read the Metaphysics without two pieces of equipment:
one is a set of decisions about how to translate Aristotle's
central words. No translator of Aristotle known to me is of
any help here; they will all befuddle you, more so in the
Metaphysics even than in Aristotle's other works. The
other piece of equipment, and equally indispensible, I
think, is some perspective on the relation of the Metaphysics to the Platonic dialogues. In this matter the scholars, even the best of them, have shown no imagination at
all. In the dialogues, in their view, Plato sets forth a
"theory" by putting it into the mouth of Socrates. There
is some room for interpretation, but on the whole we are
all supposed to know that theory. Aristotle must accept
that theory or reject it. If he appears to do both it is because passages written by some Platonist have been inserted into his text, or because things he wrote when he
was young and a Platonist were lumped together with
other things on similar subjects which he wrote when he
was older and his thoughts were different and his own.
The Plato we are supposed to know from his dialogues
is one who posited that, for every name we give to bodies
in the world there is a bodiless being in another world, one
SUMMER 1981
�while they are many, static while they are changing, perfect while they are altogether distasteful. Not surprisingly,
those for whom this is Plato find his doctrine absurd, and
welcome an Aristotle whom they find saying that being in
its highest form is found in an individual man or horse,
that mathematical things are abstractions from sensible
bodies, and that, if there is an ideal man apart from men,
in virtue of whom they are all called men, then there must
be yet a third kind of man, in virtue of whom the form and
the men can have the same name, and yet a fourth, and so
on. You cannot stop adding new ideal men until you are
willing to grant that it was absurd to add the first one, or
anything at all beyond just plain men. This is hardheaded, tough-minded Aristotle, not to be intimidated by
fancy, mystical talk, living in the world we live in and
knowing it is the only world there is. This Aristotle, unfortunately, is a fiction, a projection of our unphilosophic
selves. He lives only in a handful of sentences ripped out
of their contexts. The true Aristotle indeed takes at face
value the world as we find it and all our ordinary opinions
about it-takes them, examines them, and finds them
wanting. It is the world as we find it which continually, for
Aristotle, shows that our ordinary, materialist prejudices
are mistaken. The abandonment of those prejudices
shows in turn that the world as we found it was not a possible world, that the world as we must reflect upon it is a
much richer world, mysterious and exciting.
Those of you for whom reading the Platonic dialogues
was a battle you won by losing, an eye-opening experience
from which, if there is no going forward, there is certainly
no turning back, should get to know this Aristotle. But
you will find standing in your way all those passages in
which Aristotle seems to be discussing the dialogues and
does so in a shallow way. Each dialogue has a surface in
which Socrates speaks in riddles, articulates half-truths
which invite qualification and correction, argues from
answers given by others as though he shared their opinions, and pretends to be at a loss about everything. Plato
never straightens things out for his readers, any more than
Socrates does for his hearers. To do so would be to soothe
us, to lull us to sleep as soon as we've begun to be distressed by what it feels like to be awake. Platonic writing,
like Socratic talk, is designed to awaken and guide philosophic thinking, by presenting, defending, and criticising
plausible responses to important questions. The PlatonicSocratic words have only done their work when we have
gone beyond them, but they remain in the dialogues as a
collection of just what they were intended to be-unsatisfactory assertions.
One commentator finds eighty-one places in the Metaphysics where Aristotle disagrees with Plato. It is not surprising that Aristotle himself uses Plato's name in almost
none of those places. Aristotle is addressing an audience
of students who have read the dialogues and is continuing
the work of the dialogues. Many, perhaps most, of Aristotle's students would, like scholars today, find theories
and answers in Plato's dialogues. Aristotle would not be
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
earning his keep as a teacher of philosophy if he did not
force his students beyond that position. Aristotle constantly refers to the dialogues because they are the best
and most comprehensive texts he and his students share.
Aristotle disagrees with Plato about some things, but less
extensively and less deeply than he disagrees with every
other author that he names. The Metaphysics inevitably
looks like an attack on Plato just because Plato's books are
so much better than anything left by Thales, Empedocles,
or anyone else.
My first assumption, then, was that the Metaphysics is
one book with one complex argument, and my second is
that, in cohering within itself, the Metaphysics may cohere
with the Platonic dialogues. I assume that discussions in
the dialogues may be taken as giving flesh to Aristotle's
formulations, while his formulations in turn may be taken
as giving shape to those discussions. One need orily try a
very little of this to find a great deal beginning to fall into
place. For example, listen to Aristotle in Book I, Chapter 9
of the Metaphysics: "the Forms ... are not the causes of
motion or of any other change .... And they do not in any
way help either towards the knowledge of the other things
... or towards their existence . ... Moreover, all other
things do not come to be from the Forms in any of the
usual senses of 'from.' And to say that the Forms are patterns and that the other things participate in them is to
use empty words and poetic metaphors." A devastating attack on Plato, is it not? Or is it? Aristotle says that positing
the Forms explains no single thing that one wants to
know. But doesn't Socrates say in the Phaedo that to call
beauty itself the cause of beauty in beautiful things is a
"safe but stupid answer," that one must begin with it but
must also move beyond it? Again, everyone knows that
the Platonic Socrates claimed that the forms were
separate from the things in the sensible world, off by
themselves, while Aristotle insisted that the forms were in
the things. Recall the Phaedo passage just referred to.
Does not Socrates say that the cause of heat in a hot thing
is not heat itself but fire? Where, then, is he saying the
form is? Aristotle taught that the causes of characteristics
of things were to be looked for not in a separate world of
forms but in the primary instances of those characteristics
right here in the world. This doctrine may seem to be a rejection of Plato's chief postulate, but listen to Aristotle
himself explain it in Book II, Chapter I of the Metaphysics: "of things to which the same predicate belongs,
the one to which it belongs in the highest degree is that in
virtue of which it belongs also to the others. For example,
fire is the hottest of whatever is truly called 'hot', for fire is
cause of hotness in the others." Do you hear an echo?
Again, Aristotle teaches that form is to be understood as
always at work, never static as is the Platonic form, or is it?
Do not the Stranger and Theaetetus agree in the Sophist
that it would be "monstrous and absurd" to deny that life,
motion, and soul belong to the intelligible things? Do they
not indeed define being as a power to act or be affected?
Does not Socrates in the Theaetetus entertain the same
39
�definition when he construes the world as made up of an
infinity of powers to act and be affected? Plato's dialogues
do not set forth a theory of forms. They set forth a way to
get started with the work of philosophic inquiry, and Aristotle moves altogether within that way. Much in his writings that is a closed book to those who insist on seeing him
as Plato's opponent opens up when one lets the dialogues
serve as the key.
We shall not hesitate to take whatever light we can find
in the dialogues and shine it on Aristotle's text, at least to
see if anything comes into the light. And this brings me to
a third assumption: the English word substance is of no
help in understanding Aristotle's word ousia. The central
question of the Metaphysics is, What is ousia? Aristotle
claims that it is the same as the question, What is being?
and that it is in fact the question everyone who has ever
done any philosophy or physics has been asking. Since we
do not share Aristotle's language we cannot know what
claim he is making until we find a way to translate ousia.
The translators give us the word substance only because
earlier translators and commentators did so, while they in
turn did so because still earlier translators into Latin rendered it as substantia. Early modern philosophy, in all the
European languages, is full of discussions of substance
which stem from Latin versions of Aristotle. Though oral
traditions keep meanings alive, this written tradition has
buried Aristotle's meaning irretrievably. We must ignore
it, and take our access to the meaning of ousia from
Plato's use of it, but before we do so a quick look at where
the word substance came from may help us bury it.
The earliest Latin translations of Aristotle tried a
number of ways of translating ousia, but by the fourth
century A.D., when St. Augustine lived, only two remained
in use: essentia was made as a formal parallel to ousia,
from the feminine singular participle of the verb to be. plus
an abstract noun ending, so that the whole would be
roughly equivalent to an English translation being-ness;
the second translation, substantia, was an attempt to get
closer to ousia by interpreting Aristotle's use of it as something like "persisting substratum." Augustine, who had
no interest in interpreting Aristotle, thought that, while
everything in the world possesses substantia, a persisting
underlying identity, the fullness of being suggested by the
word essentia could belong to no created thing but .only to
their creator. Aristotle, who is quite explicit on the point
that creation is impossible, believed no such thing, and
Augustine did not think he did. But Augustine's own
thinking offered a consistent way to distinguish two Latin
words whose use had become muddled. Boethius, in his
commentaries on Aristotle, followed Augustine's lead,
and hence always translated ousia as substantia, and his
usage seems to have settled the matter. And so a word designed by the anti-Aristotelian Augustine to mean a low
and empty sort of being turns up in our translations of the
word whose meaning Aristotle took to be the highest and
fullest sense of being. Descartes, in his Meditations, uses
the word substance only with his tongue in his cheek;
40
Locke explicitly analyzes it as an empty notion of an
I-don't-know-what; and soon after the word is laughed out
of the vocabulary of serious philosophic endeavor. It is no
wonder that the Metaphysics ceased to have any influence
on living thinking: its heart had been cut out of it by its
friends.
What does ousia mean? It is already a quirky, idiomatic
word in ordinary use when Plato gets hold of it. By a quirk
of our own language one may say indeed that it means
substance, but only, I repeat only, in the sense in which a
rich man is called a man of substance. You may safely
allow your daughter to marry him because you know
where he will be and what he will be doing tomorrow and
twenty years from now. Ousia meant permanent property, real estate, non-transferable goods: not the possessions we are always using up or consuming but those that
remain-land, houses, wealth of the kind one never
spends since it breeds new wealth with no expense of
itself. When Socrates asks Meno for the ousia of the bee
he is not using a technical philosophical term but a metaphor: what is the estate of a bee that each one inherits
simply by being born a bee? A man of substance who has
permanent wealth is who he is because of what he owns.
A bee is to his permanent and his variable characteristics
as a man is to his permanent and his spendable wealth.
The metaphor takes a second step when applied to virtue:
the varying instances of virtue in a man, a woman, a ·slave,.
and the rest must all have some unvarying core which
makes them virtues. There must be some single meaning
to which we always refer when we pronounce anything a
virtue. This is the step Socrates continually insists that
Meno must take. But remember, in the slave-boy scene,
Socrates twice entices the slave-boy into giving plausible
incorrect answers about the side of the double square. Is
there an ousia of virtue? Socrates uses the word not as the
result of an induction or abstraction or definition, but by
stretching an already strained metaphor. People have disposable goods which come and go and ousiatic goods
which remain; bees have some characteristics in which
they differ, and others in which they share; the virtues differ, but are they the same in anything but name? Even if
they are, must it be a definition that they share? Not all
men have ousia. Ordinarily only a few men do. The rest of
us work for them, sell to them, marry them, gather in the
hills to destroy them, but do not have what they have.
Perhaps there are only a few virtues, or only one.
The word ousia, as Plato's Socrates handles it, seems to
be a double-edged weapon. It explicitly rejects Meno's
way of saying what virtue is, but implicitly suggests that
the obvious alternative may fail as well. If virtue is not
simply a meaningless label used ambiguously for many unconnected things, that does not mean that it must unambiguously name the same content in each of the things it
names.
Since ousia is our metaphor, let us ask what wealth means.
If a poor man has a hut and a cow and some stored-up
food, are they his wealth? He is certainly not wealthy. On
SUMMER1981
�the other hand, King Lear says that "our basest beggars
Are in poorest thing superfluous"; no human life is cut so
fine as to lack anything beyond what satisfies bare need.
The beggar, like the family on welfare, does not have the
means to satisfy need, but need not for that reason forego
those possessions which give life comfort or continuity.
His wealth is derived from the wealth of others. The small
farmer may maintain something of the independence a
wealthy man enjoys, but one bad year could wipe him out.
He will either accumulate enough to become wealthy
himself, or his life will remain a small-scale analogy to that
of the wealthy. Wealth means, first of all, only that which
a few people have and the rest of us lack, but because it
means that, it also, at the same time, means secondarily
something that all of us possess. There is an ambiguity at
work in the meaning of the word "wealth" which is not a
matter of a faulty vocabulary nor a matter of language at
all: it expresses the way things are. Wealth of various kinds
exists by derivation from and analogy to wealth in the emphatic sense. Indeed Meno, who spontaneously defines
virtue by listing virtues, is equally strongly inclined to say
that the power to rule over men and possessions is the
only virtue there is. He cannot resolve the logical difficulties Socrates raises about his answers, but they are all
resolvable. Meno in fact believes that virtue is ousia in its
simple sense of big money, and that women, children, and
slaves can only have virtue derivatively and ambiguously.
Socrates' question is one of those infuriatingly ironic
games he is always playing. The ousia of virtue, according
to Meno and Gorgias, is ousia.
When the word ousia turns up in texts of Aristotle, it is
this hidden history of its use, and not its etymology, which
is determining its meaning. First of all, the word fills a gap
in the language of being, since Greek has no word for
thing. The two closest equivalents are to on and to chrema.
To on simply means whatever is, and includes the color
blue, the length two feet, the action walking, and anything at all that can be said to be. To chrema means a thing
used, used up, spent, or consumed; any kind of posses~
sion, namely, that is not ousia. Ousia holds together, remains, and makes its possessor emphatically somebody. In
the vocabulary of money, ousia is to ta chremata as whatever remains constant in a thing is to all the onta that
come and go. Ousia also carries with it the sense of something that belongs somehow to all but directly and fully
only to a few. The word is ready-made to be the theme of
Aristotle's investigation of being, because both the word
arid the investigation were designed by Plato. For Aristotle, the inquiry into the nature of being begins with the
observation that being is meant in many ways. It is like
Meno's beginning, and it must be subjected to the same
Socratic questioning.
Suppose that there is some one core of meaning to
which we refer whenever we say that something is. What
is its content? Hegel says of being as being: "it is not to be
felt, or perceived by sense, or pictured in imagination ...
it is mere abstraction ... the absolutely negative ... just
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
Nothing." And is he not right, as Parmenides was before
him? Leave aside all those characteristics in which beings
differ, and what is left behind? To Aristotle, this means
that being is not a universal or a genus. If being is the
comprehensive class to which everything belongs, how
does it come to have sub-classes? It would have to be die
vided with respect to something outside itself. Beings
would have to be distinguished by possessing or failing to
possess some characteristic, but that characteristic would
have to be either a class within being, already separated
off from the rest by reference to something prior, or a
non-being. Since both are impossible, being must come already divided: the highest genera or ultimate classes of
things must be irreducibly many. This is Aristotle's doctrine of the categories, and according to him being means
at least eight different things.
The categories have familiar names: quality, quantity,
relation, time, place, action, being-acted-upon. The question Socrates asked about things, What is it?, is too broad,
since it can be answered truly with respect to any of the
categories that apply, and many times in some of them.
For example, I'll describe something to you: it is backstage
now; it is red; it is three feet high; it is lying down and
breathing. I could continue telling you what it is in this
fashion for as long as I pleased and you would not know
what it is. It is an Irish setter. What is different about that
last answer? To be an Irish setter is not to be a quality or
quantity or time or action but to be a whole which comprises many ways of being in those categories, and much
change and indeterminacy in them. The redness, threefoot-high-ness, respiration, and much else cohere in a
thing which I have named in its thinghood by calling it an
Irish setter. Aristotle calls this way of being ousia.
Aristotle's logical works reflect upon the claims our
speech makes about the world. The principal result of
Aristotle's inquiry into the logical categories of being· is, I
think, the claim that the thinghood of things in the world
is never reducible in our speech to any combination of
qualities, quantities, relations, actions, and so on: that
ousia or thinghood must be a separate category. What
happens when I try to articulate the being of a thing such
as an Irish setter? I define it as a dog with certain properties. But what then is a dog? It is an animal with certain
properties, and an animal is an organism with certain
properties, and an organism is a thing with the proper-ty of
life. At each level I meet, as dog, animal, organism, what
Aristotle calls secondary ousia or secondary thinghood. I
set out to give an account of what makes a certain collection of properties cohere as a certain thing, and I keep
separating off some of them and telling you that the rest
cohere as a whole. At my last step, when I say that an organism is a living thing, the problem of secondary thinghood is present in its nakedness. Our speech, no matter
how scientific, must always leave the question of the
hanging-together of things as things a question.
Thus the logical inquiries bequeath to the Metaphysics
its central question, which we are now in a position to
41
�translate. The question that was asked of old and will always be asked by anyone who is alive enough to wonder
about anything is, What is being? in the sense, What is a
thing? in the sense, What is the thinghood of things?
What makes our world a world of things at all? We are
here at the deepest postulate of Aristotelian philosophizing: the integrity of the world as a world and of anything
in it which endures as itself for any time at all, is not selfexplanatory, is something to be wondered at, is caused.
We are taught that a moving thing, if nothing disturbs
it, will continue moving forever. Do you believe that? It is
certainly true that a heavy thing in motion is as hard to
stop as it was to set in motion, and that we cannot step
out of moving automobiles without continuing, for a
while, to share their motions. But these are evidences of
persistence of motion, not at all the same thing as inertia
of motion. There is no evidence of the latter. In principle
there cannot be, because we cannot abolish all the world
to observe an undisturbed moving thing. There is a
powerful and in its way, beautiful, account of the world
which assumes inertia, appealing to those experiences
which suggest that motion at an unchanging speed is a
state no different from that of rest. The hidden premise
which leads from that step to the notion of inertia is the
assumption that rest is an inert state. If it is not, the same
evidence could lead to the conclusion that an unchanging
speed is a fragile and vulnerable thing, as unlikely and as
hard to come by as an unchanging anything.
How can a balloon remain unchanged? It does so only
so long as the air inside pushes out no harder and no less
hard than the air outside pushes in. Is the air inside the
balloon at rest? Can it be at rest as long as it is performing
a task? Can the balloon be at rest if the air inside it cannot
be? It can certainly remain in a place, like other apparently inert things, say a table. If you pulled the legs from
under a table the top would fall, and if you removed the
top the legs would fall. Leave them together and leave
them alone and they do not move, but is the table at rest?
Surely no more so than a pair of arm wrestlers, straining
every muscle but unable to budge each other, can be said
to be resting. But can't we find an inert thing anywhere in
the world? How about a single lump of rock? But if I
throw it in the air it will return to find a resting place. It
seems to rest only when something blocks it, and if I let it
rest on my hand or my head, something will make me uncomfortable. Can the rock be doing nothing? And if we
cannot find inertia in a rock, where could it be? An animal
is either full of circulating and respirating or it is rotting,
and the same seems true of plants.
But what in the world is not animal-like, plant-like, rocklike, or table-like? The world contains living and non-living
natural beings, and it contains products of human making, and all' of them are busy. From Aristotle's wondering
and wonderful perspective, everything in the world is
busy just continuing to be itself. This is not a "theory" of
Aristotle's; it is a way of bringing the world to sight with
the questioning intellect awake. Try that way of looking
42
on for size; the world has nothing to lose by ceasing to be
taken for granted. Consider an analogy, Ptolemy is content to say that Venus and Mercury happen to have the
same longitudinal period as the Sun, and that Mars, jupiter, and Saturn all happen to lag just as far behind the Sun
in any time as they have moved in anomaly. Copernicus,
in the most passionate and convincing part of his argument, shows that these facts can be explained. Lucretius
(whom we may substitute for Aristotle's favorite materialist, Empedocles) thought that cats and dogs and giraffes
just happened to come about by accumulation, like the
sands on the beach. Lucretius' failure to wonder at a giraffe, his reduction of the living to the blind and dead, is,
from Aristotle's standpoint, a failure to recognize what is
truly one, what is not just a heap, what is genuinely a
thing.
The least thoughtful, least alert way of being in the
world is to regard everything which remains itself as doing
so causelessly, inertly. To seek a cause for the being-as-it-is
of any thing is already to be in the grip of the question
Aristotle says must always be asked. To seek the causes
and sources of the being-as-it-is of everything that is, is to
join Aristotle in his Copernican revolution which regards
every manifest _tion of persistence, order, or recurrence as
a marvel, an achievement. That everything in the world
disclosed to our senses is in a ceaseless state of change,
most of us would grant. That the world nevertheless
hangs together enough to be experienced at all is a fact so
large that we rarely take notice of it. But the two together-change, and a context of persistence out of
which change can emerge-force one to acknowledge
some non-human cause at work: for whichever side of the
world-change or rest, order or dissolution-is simply its
uncaused, inert way, the other side must be the result of
effort. Something must be at work in the world, hidden to
us, visible only in its effects, pervading all that is, and it
must be either a destroyer or a preserver.
That much seems to me to be demonstrable, but the
next step is a difficult one to take because the world presents to us two faces: the living and the non-living. The
thinghood of living things consists in organized unity,
maintained through effort, at work in a variety of activities characteristic of each species; but a rock or a flame or
some water or some dirt or some air is a thing in a much
different way, unified only by accidental boundaries, indifferent to being divided or heaped together, at work
only in some one local motion, up or down. Which is the
aberration, life or non-life?
For Aristotle the choice need not be made, since the
distinction between the two forms of being only results
from a confusion. Flesh, blood, bone, and hair would
seem inorganic and inanimate if they were not organized
into and animated as, say, a cat. But earth, air, fire, and
water, all of it, is always organized into and animate as the
cosmos. The heavens enclose an organized body which
has a size, a shape, and a hierarchical structure all of
which it maintains by ceaseless, concerted activity. You
SUMMER 1981
�may think that in believing this, Aristotle betrays an inno·
cence which we cannot recover. But not only Aristotle
and Ptolemy, but also Copernicus and Kepler believed the
visible heaven to be a cosmos, and not only they, but also,
amazingly, Newton himself. In our century, Einstein cal·
culated the volume of the universe, and cosmology has
once again become a respectable scientific pursuit Mod·
ems, for whom the spherical motion of the heavens no
longer indicates that the heavens have boundaries, draw
the same conclusion from the fact that there is darkness.
Anyone who would take the assertion that his outlook is
modern to include the denial that there is a cosmos would
make a very shallow claim, one having more to do with po·
etic fashion than with reasoned conviction. The question
of the cosmos has not been made obsolete, and the very
least we must admit is that the appearance of an inor·
ganic, inanimate nature is not conclusive and would result
from our human-sized perspective whether there is a cos·
mos or not.
If the world is a cosmos, then it is one more instance of
the kind of being that belongs to every animal and plant in
it And if that is so, there is nothing left to display any
other kind of being. Try it: take inventory. What is there?
The color red is, only if it is the color of some thing. Color
itself is, only if it is some one color, and the color of a
thing. The relation "taller than" is, only if it is of two or
more things. What has being but is not a thing must depend on some thing for its being. But on the other hand a
mere thing, mere matter as we call it, using the word dif·
ferently than Aristotle ever does, is an impossibility too.
Relatively inert, rock-like being is the being of a part of
what comes only in wholes-cosmos, plant, or animal.
And all man-made things must borrow their material from
natural things and their very holding-together from the
natural tendencies of the parts of the cosmos. To be is to
be alive; all other being is borrowed being. Any compre·
hensive account of things must come to terms with the
special being of animals and plants: for Lucretius, living
things are not marvels but a problem which he solves by
dissolving them into the vast sea of inert purposelessness.
For Aristotle, as for Plato, wonder is not a state to be dis·
solved but a beckoning to be followed, and for Aristotle
the wonderful animals and plants point the way to being
itself, to that being qua being which is the source of all
being, for we see it in the world in them and only in them.
Thus when Aristotle begins in Book 7 of the Metaphysics to ask what makes a thing a thing, he narrows the ques·
lion to apply only to living things. All other being is, in
one way or another, their effect He is asking for their
cause. At that point, his inquiry into the causes and
sources of being itself, simply as being, merges with the
inquiry in Book 2 of his Physics, where the question is,
What is nature? The answer, as well, must be the same,
and just as Aristotle concludes that nature is form, he con·
eludes that being is form. Does the material of an animal
make it what it is? Yes, but it cannot be the entire or even
principal cause. If there is anything that is not simply th
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
sum of its parts, it is an animal. It is continually making itself, by snatching suitable material from its environment
and discarding unsuitable material. Add some sufficiently
unsuitable material, like arsenic, and the sum of parts re·
mains, but the animal ceases to be. The whole which is
not accounted for by the enumeration of its parts is the
topic of the last section of the Theaetetus, where Socrates
offers several playful images of that kind of being: a
wagon, a melody, the number six, and the example discussed at most length, which Aristotle borrows, the
syllable.
.
Aristotle insists that the syllable is never the sum of its
letters. Socrates, of course, argues both sides of the ques·
tion, and Theaetetus agrees both times. Let's try it
ourselves. Take the word put, p·u·t Voice the letters sepa·
rately, as well as you can, and say them in succession, as
rapidly as you can. I think you will find that, as long as you
attempt to add sound to sound, you will have a grunt surrounded by two explosions of breath. When you voice the
whole syllable as one sound, the u is already present when
you begin sounding the p, and the t sound is already shap·
ing the u. Try to pronounce the first two letters and add
the third as an afterthought, and you will get two sounds.
I have tried all this, and think it's true, but you· must
decide for yourself. Aristotle says that the syllable is the
letters, plus something else besides; Socrates calls the
something else a form, while Aristotle calls it the thing·
hood of the thing. When I pronounce the syllable put, I
must have in mind the whole syllable in its wholeness before I can voice any of its parts in such a way as to make
them come out parts of it.
Now a syllable is about as transitory a being as one
could imagine: it is made of breath, and it is gone as soon
as it is uttered. But a craftsman works the same way as a
maker of syllables. If he simply begins nailing and gluing
together pieces of wood, metal, and leather, he is not
likely to end up with a wagon; to do so, he must have the
whole shape and work of the wagon in mind in each of his
joinings and fittings. Even so, when he is finished, what
he has produced is only held together by nails and glue. As
soon as it is made, the wagon begins falling apart, and it
does so the more, the more it is used.
All the more perplexing then, is the animal or plant It is
perpetually being made and re-made after the form of its
species, yet there is no craftsman at work on it It is a com·
posite of material and form, yet it is the material in it that
is constantly being used up and replaced, while the form
remains intact. The form is.not in any artist's imagination,
nor can it be an accidental attribute of its material. In the
Physics, nature was traced back to form, and in the first
half of the Metaphysics all being is traced to the same
source. But what is form? Where is it? Is it a cause or is it
caused? Most important of all, does it have being alone,
on its own, apart from bodies? Does it emerge from the
world of bodies, or is a body a thing impossible to be un·
less a form is somehow already present for it to have? Or is
there something specious about the whole effort to make
43
�form either secondary to material or primary? Are they
perhaps equal and symmetrical aspects of being, inseparable, unranked? Just as ultimate or first material, without
any characteristics supplied by form, cannot be, why
should not a pure form, not the form of anything, be regarded as its opposite pole and as equally impossible? Or
have we perhaps stumbled on a nest of unanswerable
questions? If form is the first principle of the science of
physics, might it not be a first principle simply, behind
which one cannot get, to which one may appeal for explanation but about which one cannot inquire? Aristotle says
that if there were not things apart from bodies, physics
would be first philosophy. But he calls physics second philosophy, and half the Metaphysics lies on the other side of
the questions we have been posing. It consists in the uncovering of beings not disclosed to our senses, beings outside of and causal with respect to what we naively and
inevitably take to be the whole world.
Aristotle marks the center and turning point of the Metaphysics with these words: "One must inquire about
(form), for this is the greatest impasse. Now it is agreed
that some of what is perceptible are things, and so one
must search first among these. For it is preferable to proceed toward what is better known. For learning occurs in
all things in this way: through what is by nature less
known toward the things more known. And just as in matters of action the task is to make the things that are good
completely be good for each person,· from out of the
things that seem good to each, so also the task here is,
from out of the things more known to one, to make the
things known by nature known to him. Now what is
known and primary to each of us is often known slightly,
and has little or nothing of being; nevertheless, from the
things poorly known but known to one, one must try to
know the things that are known completely" (l029a 33-b
ll ). The forest is dark, but one cannot get out of it without passing through it, carefully, calmly, attentively. It will
do no good to move in circles. The passage just quoted
connects with the powerful first sentence of the Metaphysics: "All human beings are by nature stretched out toward a state of knowing." Our natural condition is one of
frustration, of being unable to escape a task of which the
goal is out of reach and out of sight. Aristotle here likens
our frustration as theoretical beings to our condition as
practical beings: unhappiness has causes-we achieve it
by seeking things-and if we can discover what we were
seeking we might be able to make what is good ours. Similarly, if we cannot discern the goal of wisdom, we can at
least begin examining the things that stand in our way.
The next section of the Metaphysics, from Book 7,
Chapter 4, through Book 9, is the beginning of an intense
forward motion. These books are a painstaking clarification of the being of the things disclosed to our senses. It is
here that Aristotle most heavily uses the vocabulary that
is most his own, and everything he accomplishes in these
books depends on the self-evidence of the meanings of
these expressions. It is these books especially which Latin-
44
izing translators turn into gibberish. Words like essence,
individual, and actuality must either be vague or be given
arbitrary definitions. The words Aristotle uses are neither
vague nor are they conceptual constructions; they call
forth immediate, direct experiences which one must have
at hand to see what Aristotle is talking about. They are
not the kinds of words that books can explain; they are
words of the kind that people must share before there can
be books. That is why understanding a sentence of Aristotle is so often something that comes suddenly, in an insight that seems discontinuous from the puzzlement that
preceded it. It is simply a matter of directing one's gaze.
We must try to make sense of Books 7-9 because they
are crucial to the intention of the Metaphysics. Aristotle
has an argument independent of those books, which he
makes in Book 8 of the Physics and uses again in Book 12
of the Metaphysics that there must be an immortal, unchanging being, ultimately responsible for all wholeness
and orderliness in the sensible world. And he is able to go
on in Book 12 to discover a good deal about that being.
One could, then, skip from the third chapter of Book 7 to
Book 12, and, having traced being to form, trace form
back to its source. Aristotle would have done that if his
whole intention had been to establish that the sensible
world has a divine source, but had he done so he would
have left no foundation for reversing the dialectical motion of his argument to understand the things in the world
on the basis of their sources. Books 7-9 provide that
foundation.
The constituents of the world we encounter with our
senses are not sensations. The sensible world is not a mosaic of sensible qualities continuous with or adjacent to
one another, but meets our gaze organized into things
which stand apart, detached from their surroundings. I
can indicate one of them to you by the mere act of pointing, because it has its own boundaries and holds them
through time. I need not trace out the limits of the region
of the visual field to which I refer your attention, because
the thing thrusts itself out from, holds itself aloof from
what is visible around it, making that visible residue mere
background. My pointing therefore has an object, and it is
an object because it keeps being itself, does not change
randomly or promiscuously like Proteus, but holds together sufficiently to remain the very thing at which I
pointed. This way of being, Aristotle calls being a "this".
If I want to point out to you just this red of just this region
of this shirt, I will have to do a good deal more than just
point. A "this" as Aristotle speaks of it is what comes forth
to meet the act of pointing, is that for which I need not
point and say "not that or that or that but just this," but
need do nothing but point, since it effects its own separatiun from what it is not.
A table, a chair, a rock, a painting-each is a this, but a
living thing is a this in a special way. It is the author of its
own thisness. It appropriates from its surroundings, by
eating and drinking and breathing, what it organizes into
and holds together as itself. This work of self-separation
SUMMER 1981
�from its environment is never finished but must go on
without break if the living thing is to be at all. Let us con·
sider as an example of a living this, some one human
being. Today his skin is redder than usual, because he has
been in the sun; there is a cut healing on his hand because
he chopped onions two days ago; he is well educated, because, five years ago, his parents had the money and taste
to send him to Harvard. All these details, and innumerably
many more, belong to this human being. But in Aristotle's
way of speaking, the details I have named are incidental to
him: he is not sunburned, wounded on the hand, or Harvard-educated because he is a human being. He is each of
those things because his nature bumped into that of
something else that left him with some mark, more or Jess
intended, more or less temporary, but in any case aside
from what he is on his own, self-sufficiently. What he is on
his own, as a result of the activity that makes him be at all,
is: two-legged, sentient, breathing, and all the other things
he is simply as a human being. There is a difference between all the things he happens to be and the things he
necessarily is on account of what he is. Aristotle formulates the latter, the kind of being that belongs to a thing
not by happenstance but inevitably, as the "what it kept
on being in the course of being at all" for a human being,
or a duck, or a rosebush. The phrase ti en einai is
Aristotle's answer to the Socratic question, ti esti? What is
giraffe? Find some way of articulating all the things that
every giraffe always is, and you will have defined the giraffe. What each of them is throughout its life, is the product at any instant for any one of them, of the activity that
is causing it to be. That means that the answer to the
question, What is a giraffe? and the answer to the question, What is this giraffe? are the same. Stated generally,
Aristotle's claim is that a this, which is in the world on its
own, self-sufficiently, has a what-it-always-was-to-be, and
is just its what-it-always-was-to-be. This is not a commonplace thought, but it is a comprehensible one; compare it
with the translators' version, "a per~se individual is identical with its essence."
The living thing as it is present to my looking seems to
be richer, fuller, more interesting than it can possibly be
when it is reduced to a definition in speech, but this is a
confusion. All that belongs to the living thing that is not
implied by the definition of its species belongs to it externally, as a result of its accidental interactions with the
other things in its environment. The definition attempts
to penetrate to what it is in itself, by its own activity of
making itself be whole and persist. There is nothing fuller
than the whole, nothing richer than the life which is the
winning and expressing of that wholeness, nothing more
interesting than the struggle it is always waging unnoticed, a whole world of priority deeper and more serious
than the personal history it must drag along with the species-drama it is constantly enacting. The reduction of the
living thing to what defines it is like the reduction of a·
rectangular block of marble to the form of Hermes: less is
more. Strip away the accretion of mere facts, and what is
a
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
left is that without which even those facts could not have
gained admittance into the world: the forever vulnerable
foundation of all that is in the world, the shaping, ruling
form, the incessant maintenance of which is the only
meaning of the phrase self-preservation. Indeed even the
bodily material of the living thing is present in the worlcj
only as active, only as forming itself into none of the other
things it might have been, but just this one thoroughly
defined animal or plant. And this, finally, is Aristotle's answer to the question, What is form? Form is material at
work according to a persisting definiteness of kind. Aristotle's definition of the soul in De anima, soul is the beingat-work-staying-the-same of an organized body, becomes
the definition of form in Book 8 of the Metaphysics, and is,
at that stage of the inquiry, his definition of being.
Book 9 spells out the consequences of this clarification
of form. Form cannot be derivative from or equivalent
with material, because material on its own must be mere
possibility. It cannot enter the world until it has achieved
definiteness by getting to work in some way, and it cannot
even be thought except as the possibility of some form.
Books 7-9 demonstrate that materiality is a subordinate
way of being. The living body does not bring form into the
world, it must receive form to come into the world. Form
is primary and causal, and the original source of all being
in the sensible world must be traced beyond the sensible
world, to that which confers unity on forms themselves. If
forms had no integrity of their own, the world and things
could not hang together and nothing would be. At the end
of Book 9, the question of being has become the question
of formal unity, the question, What makes each form one?
In the woven texture of the organization of the Metaphysics, what comes next, at the beginning of Book I 0, is a laying out of all the ways things may be one. Glue, nails, and
rope are of no use for the problem at hand, nor, any
longer, are natural shapes and motions, which have been
shown to have a derivative sort of unity. All that is left in
Aristotle's array of possibilities is the unity of that of
which the thinking or the knowing is one.
This thread of the investigation, which we may call for
convenience the biological one, converges in Book 12
with a cosmological one. The animal and plant species
take care of their own perpetuation by way of generation,
but what the parents pass on to the offspring is an identity
which must hold together thanks to a timeless activity of
thinking. The cosmos holds together in a different way: it
seems to be literally and directly eternal by way of a ceaseless repetition of patterns of locomotion. An eternal motion cannot result from some other motion, but must have
an eternal, unchanging cause. Again, Aristotle lays out all
the possibilities. What can cause a motion without undergoing a motion? A thing desired can, and so can a thing
thought. Can you think of a third? Aristotle says that
there are only these two, and itllatt,moreover, the first reduces to the second. WtiemHdesire am aP,ple ii is the
fleshy apple and not tllee tHought of it toward which I
move, but it js·the thought ou<ifuagining of the fleshy ap-
45
�pie that moves me toward the apple. The desired object
causes motion only as an object of thought. Just as the
only candidate left to be the source of unity of form
among the animals and plants was the activity of thinking,
so again the only possible unmoved source for the endless
circlings of the stars is an eternal activity of thinking. Because it is deathless and because the heavens and nature
and all that is depend upon it, Aristotle calls this activity
God. Because it is always altogether at work, nothing that
is thought by it is ever outside or apart from it: it is of
thinking, simply. Again, because it is always altogether at
work, nothing of it is ever left over outside of or apart
from its work of thinking: it is thinking, simply. It is the
pure holding-together of the pure holdable-together, activity active, causality caused. The world is, in all its being
most deeply, and in its deepest being wholly, intelligible.
So far is Aristotle from simply assuming the intelligibility
of things, that he requires twelve books of argument to account for it. All being is dependent on the being of things;
among things, the artificial are derived from the natural;
because there is a cosmos, all natural things have being as
living things; because all living things depend on either a
species-identity or an eternal locomotion, there must be a
self-subsisting activity of thinking.
The fact that there are a Book l3 and a Book 14 to the
Metaphysics indicates that, in Aristotle's view, the question of being has not yet undergone its last transformation. With the completion of Book 12, the question of
being becomes: What is the definition of the world? What
is the primary intelligible structure that implies all that is
permanent in the world? Books l3 and 14 of the Metaphysics examine the only two answers that anyone has
ever proposed to that question outside of myths. They
46
are: that the divine thinking is a direct thinking of all the
animal and plant species, and that it is a thinking of the
mathematical sources of things. The conclusions of these
two books are entirely negative. The inquiry into being itself cannot come to rest by transferring to the divine
source the species-identities which constitute the world,
nor can they be derived from their mathematical aspects.
Aristotle's final transformation of the question of being is
into a question. Books l3 and 14 are for the sake of rescuing the question as one which does not and cannot yield
to a solution but insists on being faced and thought directly. Repeatedly, through the Metaphysics, Aristotle says
that the deepest things must be simple. One cannot speak
the truth about them, nor even ask a question about
them, because they have no parts. They have no articula·
tion in speech, but only contact with that which thinks.
The ultimate question of the Metaphysics, which is at
once What is all being at its roots? and What is the life of
God?, and toward which the whole Metaphysics has been
designed to clear the way, takes one beyond the limits of
speech itself. The argument of the Metaphysics begins
from our direct encounter with the sensible world, absorbs that world completely into speech, and carries its
speech to the threshold of that on which world and
speech depend. The shape of the book is a zig-zag, repeatedly encountering the inexpressible simple things and
veering away. By climbing to that life which is the beingat-work of thinking, and then ending with a demonstration of what that life is not, Aristotle leaves us to disclose
that life to ourselves in the only way possible, in the privacy of lived thinking. The Metaphysics is not an incomplete work: it is the utmost gift that a master of words can
give.
SUMMER 1981
�In the Audience
Robert Roth
For Pete Wilson
I
A man in his late forties sits on a bench in Washington
Square Park. He is disheveled and out of sorts. He gestures casually in the air as he makes his point. Ideo], ideology, ideal, he says over and over again. His manner is that
of a teacher in front of a small class. Or that of a man, a
man of opinion, being interviewed on television. A
woman not yet old rocks violently back and forth a few
benches away trying to release some violent inner pain.
4
2
It is Christmas time. On sale, green shower soap in the
shape of a microphone.
3
Maxwell throws Allison's book aside. It is a study on language. He is jealous and in a rage. Perceptions formalized.
Thoughts codified. Maxwell Berman cannot follow what
is being said. His mind is in a blur. A real emptiness is slipping through those structures, he thinks, angrily. No, a
passionate heart is beating through those structures. His
own heart beats wildly. And he lies stricken, almost as if in
love.
Inside a car. A scene remembered. In the front seat a dialogue. Karla, dark, intense, a fine public speaker, turns to
her friend Norman and says, You can always interpret
what I have to say. You make clear sense of it." Norman
suddenly pink faced answers, "You're the one with so
much to say."
Short little outbursts. Short political essays. That is the
limit of Maxwell's work. A year of thought into thirty
words, maybe three hundred, maybe twelve hundred.
And the words definitely need an easily recognizable context to give them any sort of meaning. For by themselves
they do not create a world. He cannot "invent" a world. In
such a way is his imagination limited. So he cannot call
himself a poet. He is a marginal polemicist, attached to
the moment, engaged in obscure skirmishes.
Maxwell picks up Allison's book again. Why does she
want him for a friend? Why would any of them want to
11
Robert Roth lives in New Yark City and writes fiction,
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
know him? It was as if he were a girl who had learned how
to flatter, smile, be bright. And they could imagine him as
they wished him to be. Those of the world of books. Resigned caretakers of Knowledge, he thinks; suddenly angry again. Why do they take it for granted that he knows
·
what they know?
Maybe they are drawn to him tne way social scientists
are drawn to shrewd peasants or bright-eyed black children: to accummulate and codify and pepper their works
with vignettes and little quotations of life. He is repelled
and he is frightened. He wants their acceptance.
The shutters are closed bringing the room into darkness.
"For final relaxation, everyone in the corpse position/'
the voice of the Yoga instructor, authoritative, reassuring.
"On your back, eyes closed, feet a foot and a half apart,
arms slightly away from your sides, palms up, turn your
head from side to side, until comfortable." The voice
changes: "By the process of auto-suggestion ... " It is no
longer authoritative, rather it is mechanically commanding.
A mind control machine, thinks Maxwell. More precisely
it is as if a small cassette recorder had been implanted in
his brain. "By the process of auto-suggestion you will
relax, completely relax. My toes will relax," the voice continues," my toes will relax, my toes are relaxed. My ankles
will relax, my ankles will relax ... "
Allison lies alongside Maxwell. Her toenails are painted
bright orange. The room is at rest. Maxwell lies still, sweat
from his forehead running down the sides of his face. Subtle smells released by the sweat from his groin enter his
nostrils. Maxwell remembers resting after masturbation:
Licking my semen from my fingers, I relax, completely relax.
But for the voice, the room is silent. And the voice soon
will disappear. This is the part of the class Maxwell most
looks forward to. The asanas are arranged to bring one
into a state where consciousness is altered. And the room
itself is transformed into a sanctuary, a place for meditation, reflection. Occasionally the silence will be broken,
and Maxwell jarred, by a loud noise from the street or by
the sweet chiming front door bell of the ashram itself.
Allison's thin arms rest by her side. Her fingers are relaxed, completely relaxed. She is aware of the absence of
pain. Deeply etched lines on her forehead disappear during final relaxation. Life force energy flows through her
body and she feels herself very young and supple.
47
�From the very first moment they met, Maxwell had felt
a powerful, though peculiarly limited, almost compulsive
pull towards Allison. It was as if Allison had drilled two
fingers through his chest, touching his heart but for an in·
stant, then pulled her fingers out as quickly as she could,
leaving the part that she touched burning with love. And
so a part of his heart no bigger than a quarter was totally
in love with Allison. And for the full year they have known
each other it has never increased or diminished in size.
During the first months of their friendship Maxwell
and Allison would meet every couple of weeks for half an
hour or forty· five minutes, usually in the late afternoon in
a coffee house or a restaurant. They would meet in a
space in Allison's tight, carefully structured schedule.
Maxwell who had less to do could more or less be the one
to accommodate.
Their meetings were often tense and peculiar. They
would speak past each other. They would both be dull. AI·
lison would look up at the ceiling. Maxwell would talk past
her shoulder. Allison would withdraw. Maxwell would
grow panicky and start speaking compulsively, speaking
loudly with uncharacteristic bravado. And the more Max·
well would talk the more Allison would withdraw. And the
more she would withdraw the more he would talk. Allison
would feel she was drowning or she was being consumed.
Once, in the street, she grabbed her chest and grew faint.
"Please, no more," she demanded. Whenever he left her
Maxwell would be relieved. It's not worth it, he would
think. And then half an hour later he would be flooded
with affection and longing.
The tension between them in part was over aspiration
and life style. Allison, the author of a book on linguistics,
though in the grip of a tenure struggle, was in a partial
way being rewarded for her work. She felt, however, that
she did not allow herself free rein, either in her work, for
her theories always seemed to stop at the point of break·
through, or in her life style, which was subtly but signifi·
cantly upwardly mobile. Allison in short was the very good
student who had grown up to be the very good scholar. In
turn she was to receive the proper social rewards. She was
extremely competent in her work and she would defend
her areas of competence with a ferocity that she hated,
for it symbolized her own complicity in the limits placed
on her imagination. She could not allow herself to imag·
ine herself as more than competent. She was the Prisoner
of Competence. She wanted to break free.
Maxwell in turn was not able to write a book or produce
a body of work. He didn't even try. He was the poor stu·
dent who had either been broken by the system or had
somehow managed to cut himself free from its socializa·
tion and was brilliant and daring. His essays were usually
very short, condensed, and often beautiful. They were
small meditations. To Maxwell they seem alternately slight
and deep. He wrote them only occasionadly. 'There were
long periods of inertia.
''You are either mwriter or you are not," someone once
48
told him. "And you write thirty variations of the same fan·
tasy," he replied, rupturing their friendship.
His short pieces, while having a validity of their own,
symbolized for Maxwell his own imprisonment. They Je.
gitimated his passivity. They suggested unusual potential
and yet they hid the full range of Maxwell's concerns and
understandings which if revealed might be less significant
than he wished to imagine.
And Maxwell always imagined himself on a grand scale.
Important thinker, huge recognition, tremendous respect
and influence.
Maxwell and Allison, two talented insecure people,
symbiotically locked, would meet fairly regularly. One
day, Maxwell blew up. "I'm always in the interstices of
your life," he said with a flourish. "I'm neither your friend
nor your colleague. I'm neither in your public life nor your
private life."
Allison answered, "There are certain things, very
inti~
mate things, that I can tell you. Other things I make a con·
scious decision not to. It must be painful and confusing.
Our conversations are stilted. There is something twisted
in our friendship." And with a flourish of her own, "From
now on I will be consistently less intimate."
Except for an occasional chance encounter where they
would both be polite and formal, Allison and Maxwell did
not speak for two months. One cold dismal afternoon
marching in a demonstration Allison came over to Max·
well and after a few moments asked him whether he
would like to take Yoga with her. "It might help center
you," she said with a smile. She herself had been taking it
for a couple of months and was feeling very good about it.
Maxwell came to Yoga initially to be near Allison. But
their meetings in class have been only random and occa·
sional. Maxwell came alone more often than not and the
classes themselves have taken on a certain importance.
There are moments of unease, even dread. He always
enters the room with caution. Painful memories surface
as body tension is released. Maxwell is not very loose yet
or supple. He has trouble with the asanas. His legs feel like
match sticks, thin, brittle. And he can feel naked in his
awkwardness.
.. This is not a competitive environment," an instructor
inevitably says when either Maxwell or someone else is
particularly clumsy or slow. And Maxwell can always hear
the unease just barely concealed by these words. The in·
structors' startling grace, thinks Maxwell, is not the result
of inner quiet but is achieved by sheer will. They fear
abandonment as persons and are ashamed of their bodies.
The experience in Yoga is charged and dangerous.
Bodies sweaty, vulnerable. Intense awareness and the sug·
gestion of common understanding. Something powerful
is taking place. Strange unexpected feelings surface and
consciousness is altered. Possibilities for betrayal hang
heavy in the room. A chance word, a foolish observation,
can be particularly painful. Comments such as, "We are
not a Mickey Mouse organization. The weekend retreat is
.~well organized and efficient." Or, "Yoga sure can make
SUMMER 1981
�your day," can be particularly jarring. They underline the
split in consciousness of people who are deep within a
common experience.
Contemplation, silence, community, a dark sexuality
are at the core of Maxwell's social vision. Fear of death
and of life freeze the body and the spirit. Destruction, war
machines, grinding social injustice, brutal nation states
grow out of this terror. And the social structures take on a
life and history of their own, and constrict human and social possibilities even further. In Yoga, as in absorbing
conversation, or in an intense sexual encounter, one briefly
is able to glimpse a state different from what is. It is terrifying and often not very clear. But one has stepped outside everyday experience and consciousness. Things can
be different. And even if only that has become clear,
something significant and dangerous has taken place.
And so when Maxwell distances himself too sharply
from the people in the room, seizing on their vulgarity or
their narrowness, he does so as much out of his own fear
of illumination as out of a desire to protect himself from
false experience.
Our fingers will touch, our fingers will touch, our fingers touch, a hidden smile forms inside his restful face.
Loud disco music from the street, loud frantic voices
from the street break into the room. And across Maxwell's
mind an exuberant Christopher Lasch, wearing silver
pants and a scarlet jersey, skates and dances to the pounding disco beat. And as suddenly as he had appeared, he
disappears as the music and voices fade up the block.
And somewhere in the corner of his mind a long forgotten scene emerges. And he watches as it passes before
him.
A fund raising event for the then faltering now defunct
Free University. Allison, whom he had not yet met, was
being introduced by Joan McBride, economist, workplace
fensive. And Maxwell was no exception. He admired
some of the people, basically he respected everyone, but
more often than not he was in a state of agitation.
Maxwell remembers how his mind strained that night
as he juggled hollow perceptions, idle perceptions to make
himself feel important.
Wedding ring. Worldly. Adult. Domesticated. Complacent. Worn out. Defeated. Red Star. Adventure. Break
from domestic stranglehold. Identification with people in
struggle. Anger at injustice. Sexy. Sexy symbol of entrenched state power.
The event took place three years ago, two years before
he met Allison, one year before the break up of her eight
year marriage. It is the impressions of her songs, more
than the actual words, that have remained with him.
The songs could not be easily categorized. They had
within them conflicting strains. One would emerge, then
fade, quickly replaced by another. It was as if some conflict
and struggle were taking place within the songs themselves. The songs would cut deep and then pull back, becoming almost compulsively lighthearted. Her songs had a
sad playful humor, but it was humor more debunking
than radically subversive. Maxwell sensed at the time a
tension between an almost timid venturing forth and a
wild yet still inhibited rage.
Later in the night the room broke into a chorus of song.
Folk songs, political songs, popular songs, religious songs.
As is often the case, the folk and political songs were sung
with an earnest, animated enthusiasm. And the pop and
religious songs with an ironic, self-satisfied, near manic
frenzy. There was plenty to drink, dope to smoke,. food to
eat.
And in walked Joe DePerri. Short and round, rosy
cheeked from the cold winter night, Joe DePerri joined
the chorus of voices. Someone handed him a beer. "Sono-
organizer, movement heavy.
rous music," he once wrote in an essay on mass culture,
"I would like to introduce my very dear friend who will
sing some songs that she has written."
They theorize, they organize, and they sing their very
own songs Maxwell remembers thinking.
Allison's hair, dark blonde, was cut much shorter then.
He noticed her gold wedding ring as she played her guitar.
She wore a dark blue work shirt with a red star on her collar.
Maxwell remembered how uneasy he felt as he watched
her. He hoped her songs would be good. He hoped her
songs would be bad. Never quite comfortable with the
people at the school, he would often make clumsy attempts at friendship. He, however, was very difficult. He
was insistent, often unyielding. He would polarize and
provoke. He felt beleaguered. But if there was one thing
that defined the Free University it was that everyone felt
as if they were part of a beleaguered minority. There was
much unease and rancor. But little lasting bitterness. People without much social power had gathered to form a
place to share ideas, study, and in some cases work out political strategy. The people were often paranoid and de-
"maintains routine perception by being sweet and soothing." Joe DePerri took a drink from his beer, hitched up
his pants, deepened his voice, giving it a rough edge. But
his voice soon became melodious and high pitched. Occasionally it would crack. And he would collect himself and
his voice would deepen then grow high again.
Joe DePerri's presence charged the room. Singing became more animated. People more alert. This was often
the case. Even rooms that were dull often became transformed when he entered.
Joe DePerri had a galvanizing personality. He set things
in motion. He started magazines, political organizations.
He helped start the Free University. Joe DePerri was a
fine public speaker, a good careful inspiring teacher, with
an acute social imagination and powerful analytic gifts.
He had if not a deeply poetic nature, a forceful and almost
joyous polemical style. His written work could be dense,
even labored, but more often than not it had the feel of a
working class ballad. If there were one major flaw in his
character, it would be that he was morally obtuse. He
could not be trusted.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
49
�Maxwell enjoyed watching joe DePerri when a serious
new problem arose: sensing the confusion and the shifting
opinion in the room, Joe DePerri would panic at his loss of
control, and then make up arguments on the run, leapfrogging ahead to resume his place of leadership. There
would be a slight break in his voice, a slight color to his
cheeks, revealing to Maxwell just when Joe De Perri had
lost his integrity.
Round, long-winded, shiny-faced men have always had
a special place in Maxwell's heart. He would, for example,
make it a point to be home whenever Hubert Humphrey
would defend the Vietnam War on television. Something
in his enthusiasm, in his earnestness, would draw him to
the man. Hubert Humphrey would say and, more importantly, believe whatever it was that was required of him.
He was in the fullest sense the suppliant. Maxwell imagined him as the servant of the people.
One night in a heavy rainstorm, Hubert Humphrey
greeted President Johnson at the airport. He stood there
so erect, holding his umbrella over President Johnson's
head, the rain pouring down his beautiful wet face, the
floodlights shining off his shiny bald head. He had given
himself over totally to his President. Hubert Humphrey
looked almost saintly that night, deeply transformed by
sacrifice.
Joe DePerri, charismatic, inspiring, morally obtuse, occasionally abusive, generated resentment as well as admi-
ration. People felt manipulated by him. "It's as if we were
puppets on a string, here to play out his fantasies," was a
common complaint.
In one rare and revealing outburst, Joe DePerri answered a room full of people angry at what they perceived
to be his cavalier treatment of them by saying, "The
movement is fragmented and there's no sense of commu-
nity. I know almost everyone here. I brought you all
together and there is no other way you would have met.
This project grew out of my imagination and out of my inspiration. It had to grow out of someone's imagination.
I'm limited, I'm just a person. This project can be redeemed, transformed by all of you working together. I'm
tired. And God damn it leave me alone." And he dashed
out of the room and sat on the steps trembling.
Arbyne all night stood off to one side. She did not join
the singing. Looking through slightly tinted glasses, her
eyes, clear and excited, would dart curiously from person
even saying hello. "We decided that it wasn't quite right
for our purposes," he said officially.
"What do you mean 'we'. Two days ago you said that
you liked it. Well I'm upset."
"That's tough," he said suddenly his face freezing into
the face of a tough guy. He grew silent as he savored the
force in his voice.
Arbyne wanted to cry but wouldn't. The thought of
him trying to console her, of his putting his arm around
her made her almost shake with disgust.
"I'll bring it somewhere else then."
This is not what he wanted. "If you only rework it," said
Joe DePerri. He panicked, his voice softened. "I think you
just have to fix up the beginning."
Liar, she thought. Her head pounded. She said, "I like
the beginning. And I don't want to talk about it anymore.
Besides I don't like you."
Joe DePerri grew despondent and he started to speak
very fast, charmingly.
Arbyne felt herself weaken. She tightened up her body
and her face became a mixture of anger and disdain.
Joe DePerri crumbled into sudden depression. Arbyne
walked away. Joe DePerri looked quickly, anxiously
around the room. He settled upon a young man, a psychiatrist, and soon they became locked, absorbed, in conver·
sation.
"Feel the awareness come back into your body," a dis-
tant voice reaches Maxwell. "Everybody sit up. Om. Om.
Om. Om Shanti, shanti, shanti." One final prayer. Maxwell's eyes are still half closed and he smiles at Allison. It is
not so much desire he feels, thinks Maxwell, but the need
to be near her, wake up next to her. Still imagining himself just waking up, he brushes her shoulder as he passes.
Allison quickly thanks the instructor for a very fine class.
Whoever is dressed first will wait for the other on the
stoop outside.
5
Allison, alone in her bed, strokes her belly gently. She
touches a nipple playing with it until it is firm, licks her
fingers, sucking them half unconsciously.
It is still raining hard as it had all weekend. "To be in
bed with someone on such a rainy day, huddled together
under the covers doubly emphasizes the idea of shelter,"
she thinks as she pulls the covers over her head. "Lovers
always rush to meet in the monsoon season. It is a relief
to person, taking in everyone in the room. Her curly hair,
from the barrenness."
black and gray, formed a bluish halo around her.
The communal singing ended. Allison had left much
earlier, but she was not all that important to Maxwell that
night. People moved about starting conversations. Others
went to another room where there was music to dance to.
joe DePerri moved from person to person, speaking intimately and with animation. Each conversation, however
brief, would end only after a small but significant catharsis. Arbyne came up to him. He greeted her warmly.
"What did they think about my piece?" she asked before
Her face flushes with sudden erotic feeling. And as suddenly she feels broken, dried out. "Burned out," she
thinks. Pain grips her stomach. And she does not want to
50
come out from under the covers.
The paper she will deliver comes into focus. Important
faculty members will be there. To displease them might
jeopardize even further her chances for tenure. But some
students of hers will be there as well as some faculty members who support her. She won't be totally alone.
Her hair feels stringy, damp. The fingers on her hand
SUMMER 1981
�ache. Arthritic hands and I'm so young. It can only get
worse. And the pain in her fingers, though not often se·
vere, appears to foreshadow a lifetime of pain. It is something she does not often think about. She has put it to one
side. But it is there, muted but continuous.
The weekend had been one of controlled panic. She
would look at her paper, then type up whole new pages at
a time, only to discard what she had just written. She
would read sections of her paper into her tape recorder,
and play it back imagining herself a member of the tenure
committee, sitting in the lecture hall, holding the frightened candidate's future in her hands. And she even read
the beginning of her paper into her own telephone answering machine. "This is Allison Kramer, the subject of
my paper is patterns of speech differences according to
sex and class in the urban Northeast, if you wish to critique
me please wait until you hear the tone." She had actually
done this and would not answer her phone for five hours.
She smoked dope on and off all weekend. Her mind would
float out into reverie and then crash back into anxiety.
Allison washes her hair, combing it out slowly, relaxing
herself. She smokes a cigarette, and then puts it out
quickly. She makes toast and tea. She puts on a little eyeshadow, a little rouge and some lipstick. She puts on
hooped earrings, a silver necklace and an elegant if not extravagant blouse. She flirts with herself in the mirror,
touches her cheek. Allison's hands begin to tremble. The
pain in her fingers increases, an intense throbbing pain.
She swallows two aspirin. Throws on her raincoat. And
leaves for school.
On the subway Allison carefully observes the passengers. She divides them into age, sexual, and racial group·
ings. She imagines whom she would like to sleep with,
what combinations of people and where. She knows the
stations by heart, but starts testing her memory. She feels
a brief satisfaction as each predicted station comes into
view. It was a game she had played with her brother as a
child. They would compete with each other over whose
memory was better. They liked to make faces at the passengers on the subway and at each other. Their faces so
beautiful and rubbery.
Allison's mind unexpectedly focuses on the last night
she and Joe DePerri had ever spent together as lovers. It
was not a love affair that she often thought about. It was
brief and not very memorable or painful. And it had been
well over a year since it ended. And now she can think
only of that night. The scenes of that night replaying
themselves with astonishing clarity. She has almost completely forgotton that they had been lovers. There is a casualness and affection and mutual regard that they now
have for each other. But she feels bitter as she remembers
that night.
Joe DePerri answered the door carrying a saucepan. I'll
be with you in a minute, he said, rushing back into the
kitchen. Allison walked into the living room, and she noticed herself gazing upon it as if for the first time. She had
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
been there four or five times before. Now she ..yas seeing
it in a totally different light.
The tenure pressure had been severe that week. She
had come here in order to be catered to, waited on, to luxuriate in being attended to. Joe DePerri had said, "Tonight you will just sit and relax. And you'll see what a really
fine cook I am."
But Allison could not relax. She found herself rather detached and anthropologically observant. She looked around
the room and for the first time had a real sense of unease.
For the fi<St time the bookshelves, the art objects, everything about the room seemed io be arranged for effect.
The room in fact was impressive. Everything about it suggested a person of a genuinely serious and critical intelligence, a person of fine taste.
The books were arranged by topic. Excellent books, serious topics. Allison felt cold as she made her observations. The mahogany stained bookshelves were bracketed
to the walls. The shelves on one wall contained fiction,
both contemporary and classical, while on another wall
were arranged scholarly and critical works of history and
social science. Previously she had been impressed by the
range and taste of his reading, but now she felt, and for
reasons she could not fully understand, that there was
something manipulative about it all. She tried to pull herself away from her perceptions. But she could not do so
for more than a few seconds. She felt not so much that Joe
DePerri was trying to manipulate her or any passing stranger
into outright subservience, but rather as if the structure of
the bookshelves provided a framework or scaffolding for
his own egotism. This reflected not a conscious desire to
control or manipulate, thought Allison, but rather a massive self-absorption whose effect was the same.
Allison thought of Joan McBride, whose books were
piled helter-skelter on her bookshelves, other books lying
on tables and chairs. And she thought of Joe De Perri's own
work room, his bedroom with papers scattered on his desk,
his clothes thrown on the floor and chairs. But it was the
living room that he presented to the world. Allison became upset again. There is nothing wrong with beautiful
books she told herself. His books are not detached from
his main concerns, thought Allison, they are books that he
has read, books that he has studied.
Joe DePerri called from the kitchen. 'Til talk to you in a
minute," he said. "Why don't you pick out a record." She
was relieved to be able to perform a task. But similar
thoughts came to her as she attempted to choose a record.
The records were not arranged in such impeccable order.
But they were placed on a beautiful shelf. There were
fewer records, but well chosen. The best jazz, best rock,
best blues, best classical. Pairs of names as if mocking her
flashed in front of Allison's eyes. Vivaldi and Mozart,
Charles Mingus and Charlie Parker, Bessie Smith and Billie
Holliday, Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones. A new
thought made her smile: occasionally Joe DePerri would
spend hours listening to records of social protest, mostly
militant workers' ballads, and he would sing along with
51
�them, his voice breaking as always whenever he would get
too excited.
Allison picked Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.
"Oh, The Four Seasons," joe called from the kitchen. "I
particularly like Neville Marriner's performance."
Allison checked the cover quickly with annoyance to
see if it were the Neville Marriner recording. It was. She
was both curious and upset, suspicious and off balance.
Was he patronizing her, she wondered. Was he just show·
ing off his general knowledge of music, or, as she wanted
so badly to believe, was he just expressing simple enthusi·
asm about the recording?
She smoked a cigarette but could not listen to the music.
''I'm making lemon and garlic salad dressing. Come in
and smell it as I put it together. I discovered the recipe
just a couple of days ago."
Allison went into the kitchen. "Do you like your roast
beef rare?" asked joe.
"Yes," she answered.
joe looked at the clock ''I'd better take it out within
five minutes then. While I'm making the salad dressing do
you think you could pull apart the lettuce leaves and slice
the tomatoes?"
The roast beef, the fresh lemon and garlic, the olive oil
carried her along with the impetus of their good smells.
She found herself separating the lettuce leaves and quartering the tomatoes. He said he was going to do it all him·
self. ''I'm going to do it all by myself from scratch," he had
said. And for an intense moment, Allison felt resentful
and constricted. But Joe looked so engaged and earnest,
even loving, as he prepared his dinner for her. But the am·
biguity of the situation did not leave her. For once she
was aware of the disparity between Joe's genuine concern
and interest and his massive egotism, subtly manipulative
while hardly noticeable.
Allison had been uneasy in the living room, and now
she was standing in the kitchen preparing the meal. She
was confronted by false promises subtly broken. Allison
turns over the phrase in her mind as she sits on the sub·
way still not halfway to school.
"! spoke to Robert Laszlo," Joe De Perri said as they sat
down to eat. "I told him how excited I was about your
book. He told me that he remembered Fischer's review in
my magazine and was interested in it. And he'd meant to
get around to reading it. And now that I brought it up, he
will definitely review it for The Nation."
"Robert Laszlo will review my book," Allison screamed
out, her whole face lighting up.
joe smiled at her, a smile mixed with delight and plea·
sure.
So that's my reward for being a good lay. The thought
sprang suddenly and unexpectedly. It almost choked her.
God, that's unfair. And her face turned into a mask. But
quickly the pleasure and excitement of Robert Laszlo re·
viewing her book returned.
Taking a chance, she asked, "Did you finally work
things out with Arbyne?"
52
"She's a very bright women," answered Joe, <~but she's
being totally unreasonable."
"What do you mean?'' asked Allison.
"Each new manuscript becomes crazier -and crazier. A
whole new section of this one is devoted to the occult and
astrology. She calls them the female sciences. It's pseudospiritual nonsense. She won't change a sentence. And
she's not writing metaphorically. She means every word
of it."
"Well, I'm sure there is more to it than that."
"I don't care if there is more to it. It's regressive and it's
empty."
Allison grew stone silent. You boorish pig, her mind
screamed, any creative woman is going to be driven crazy
in this culture.
As Allison now remembers her thoughts she is filled
with shame. She had been thinking like a stupid social
worker. Who was she to imagine Arbyne as crazy? Nine
out of ten times Arbyne will make wild bizarre leaps and
land on her head. Her theories are often half-baked and
compulsively thrown out. But she has also illuminated the
darkness, if only briefly, and she has penetrated, if only
randomly, areas of concern seldom if ever explored.
Allison returns to that night.
"It will be a long hard haul," Joe said speaking of tenure.
"The cutbacks, the firings, make each opening that much
more precious and difficult to secure. As radicals and as
Marxists it's difficult enough. They tell us," his voice grew
indignant, "that our ideology," he said the word with a
bitter mockery, "informs and distorts our objectivity.
They have no ideology, right? Their ideological hegemony
is so taken for granted. They think that is the world." Joe's
face grew soft. "And as a woman," he continued, ((it is
doubly and triply oppressive. Only so many positions can
be filled. No one will say it outright. But we all know that
it's true."
"Well," he said trying to be kind, "security can be its
own prison." He paused for a moment and then smiled.
"Well, if you don't get it, you can always raise a family."
Allison laughed. She answered with a retort that she
cannot remember.
And the next morning she woke all knotted inside.
Where did he get the nerve to put up bookshelves that
would be so imposing. To have such impeccable taste. To
know that it was Neville Marriner. He asks me over to din·
ner and I have to help him prepare the salad. I can always
raise a family. Very, very funny.
Jokes like that blunt the edge of sexual hatred, thinks
Allison as she nears her stop. They allow us to get through
dangerous situations. But they camouflage the social con·
flict and they obscure the true extent of oppression. She
thinks how often she would joke back, share a laugh, be
petulant. But deep down she always felt humiliation and
rage. Filled with embarrassment and self-loathing, she
thinks of how often she has acquiesced to such a process.
One more relationship down the drain, Allison remem·
bers thinking as she left Joe DePerri's apartment.
SUMMER 1981
�Allison pulls out the paper she is to deliver. This whole
fucking nightmare is going to go on forever. Any mistake,
a wrong word and it all can explode. She always has to be
careful. She has to flatter but not be too obvious about it.
Every moment she is on edge. Every step is like being on a
minefield. Every sentence is a semantic minefield. She
must mute her radical perceptions, reducing them to scattered insights. She must keep her prose stiff and dense
and be scrupulous with her references. Why don't I ditch
the whole thing, she constantly asks herself. But security
is very important to her. She does not want to float, to
flounder about. And jobs are not that easy to come by.
Allison has become edgy and paranoid. She read a crucial paragraph to four different friends. Three said it
should stay in. One said that she should cut out the whole
paragraph, that it was too politically charged. And Allison
screamed that her friend was just out to kill her.
The rain has turned into a gentle drizzle. Somewhere
between dream and nightmare Allison Kramer walks the
five blocks to the campus. Twenty minutes early the lecture hall is already half filled.
6
Sarah Kendall is giving a reading. The crowd is steadily
filling up the spacious auditorium of the Greenwich Village school. Maxwell Berman stands by the doors watching people as they enter.
"Are you still an intellectual?" Suzanne says approaching
Maxwell. She leans forward, "Or are you now into using
your hands?" She has always been this way. She would ask
a question, aggressive and intimate and totally unpleasant.
Suzanne's face looks gaunt and haunted. "God, she's
aged," thinks Maxwell. He has not seen her during the
two years since the Free University folded. "Some of us
from the old school have taken over an old precinct house,"
says Suzanne. "We're going to build a garden on the
roof." "That sounds nice," answers Maxwell, sneaking a
look around the room wondering who else had come.
"I just recovered from a nervous breakdown," she con~
tinues. "The tranquilizers have dehydrated my body. I've
lost twenty pounds" "Are you okay?" asks Maxwell, wishing she would leave. He knows he should feel concerned,
but he can't. "Do you know that I just got out of the hospital," Suzanne says, moving to a new person. 1 had a
nervous breakdown. They put me on tranquilizers that
dehydrated my body. I lost twenty pounds. Did you hear
that we've renovated the old precinct house? We don't
know whether we should concentrate on theory or practice. I think we should do both. Don't you?"
It is already twenty minutes after Sarah Kendall was
scheduled to read.
11
"There's Joe DePerri," someone shouts out. Joe DePerri
nods to the voice and scans the room.
Allison walks in with a group of friends. She waves casually to Maxwell. He has the feeling that she is still annoyed
with him. He had spoken to her on the phone yesterday
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
and read her a statement he had written. It called for the
release of Dan White, the murderer of gay rights leader
Harvey Milk, on the grounds that the type of hatred
which leads to murdering "deviants" and the fear which
leads to locking up murderers amount to the same thing.
When Maxwell asked Allison if she would sign the statement she exclaimed, "God, Maxwell, you're always trying
to provoke people. Well, this statement I'm not going to
sign." Robert Laszlo also would not sign the statement.
He told Maxwell that he didn't disagree with it, but he
said that as a gay man he wanted to talk about institutionalized homophobia, not about the nature of punishment.
Maxwell sees Joan McBride. He goes over to her and asks,
"Have you read my Dan White statement?" "I thought it
was basically amoral," she answers.
Her comment makes no sense. There is too much noise,
too much activity to ask her what she means.
Sarah Kendall enters the auditorium. The applause is
heartfelt. She responds to the greeting with a slight, almost timid wave. She seems both shy and overcome as
she makes her way to the stage. Sarah smiles broadly to a
friend, hugs two or three people, squeezes an arm.
Throughout the room people turn to friends and say,
"God, isn't she wonderful." Affection and love pour out
to her as she approaches the microphone; there is a sense
of well being. The people this night have come as much to
celebrate her for the person she is as to hear her read. She
is an artist of rare gifts and a public figure of rare courage.
She speaks with wisdom and simplicity and this has endeared her to her public. And it is these very qualities that
Maxwell Berman will focus on this night with such dark
and bitter rage.
There is a terrible defensiveness, analyzes Maxwell, as
she introduces the first story she is planning to read. He
understands the source of her defensiveness all too well.
The projected wisdom of her persona, like his own stumbling incoherence, protects her from the academicians
and the intellectually accomplished; people she at once
fears and is greatly drawn to. They in turn are often struck
by her vitality and her intelligence. But she knows that
she is not one of them; they fear her. And she herself fears
her own vitality, thinks Maxwell. She has let her folksiness
limit the full range of her subversive spirit.
When Sarah Kendall speaks, a simple anecdote, a shrug
of the shoulder can unravel the most sophisticated apologetics for injustice and death. Yet somewhere within the
simplicity of her manner there lies a rigid ideological
mind, thinks Maxwell, a mind that negotiates its way
through the world along a narrow corridor of concerns.
And for Sarah Kendall to venture outside this narrow corridor causes her terrible anxiety. In the face of a politics
that challenges her own, she can turn vicious.
Maxwell remembers a night many years before when
Sarah Kendall was asked how young men should respond
to the draft. Her voice grew thin as she answered. "It is
our moral obligation to do whatever is necessary to stop
this war. Look at the terrible sacrifices of the Vietnamese
53
�people. It is a moral obligation for young men to turn in
their draft cards." And her tone implied that there was
something unforgiveably self-indulgent about not exposing oneself to danger in the struggle against injustice.
Whether vicious or puritanical, it was very cruel, thinks
Maxwell, suddenly re-experiencing the sense of guilt he
had felt while listening to her answer. And he knew there
would have been no way for him to challenge her that
night without being humiliated, for Sarah Kendall, in
moments of panic, could treat even people of vision as if
they were agents of death.
The room has grown very hot. People throughout have
remained very attentive, engaged in the experience, deeply
responsive. And the more enthusiastic the response the
more Maxwell withdraws into himself. Each turn of phrase
repels him. Each word, each gesture, each response. The
appreciative laughter makes him cringe. The affirmation
of community further separates him from the rest of the
audience.
He thinks of Arbyne secluded in her vision, driven to
near madness by abuse. "The differences between what
you and the others have to say are significant," Maxwell
would tell her, "but not all that significant." "You'll see
some day how serious they are/' she would answer. Tiny
seemingly obscure skirmishes, she would insist, might
very well determine the whole direction and spirit of a
movement.
Sarah Kendall's voice breaks as she reads. There are
sobs in the room, and then laughter.
Headlines shape your consciousness, Maxwell's thoughts
accuse the audience. Code words substitute for thought.
You rest so secure in a closed arena of consciousness. Half
of you are always filled with new concerns: nuclear power
plants, sterilization abuse, medical cutbacks. Always instant anger, instant analysis, instant all the facts, instant
full of opinions. Instantly mobilized. And the rest of you,
the independent-minded, can't get absorbed in anything
that is new. You choose so carefully which issues will engage you, at which injustices you will draw the line. you
remain so complacent with explanations worked out so
long ago.
Maxwell's eyes grow distant as he remembers two re·
cent scenes.
At a conference on pornography a civil liberties lawyer
was talking to a small group of people who had gathered
around him. He took his pipe out of his thin, slightly op·
ened mouth and said, "You should have seen the response when I defended the Klan." There was a twinkle
in his eyes. The civil liberties lawyer was very pleased with
himself. "I recognize all the dangers and complexities of
the situation, but nonetheless I believe ... " Nonetheless
he remains so manly, willing to risk all for a principle. And
in the face of women acting so. irrationally against pornography, he knows how to maintain a consistent point of
view.
Three women against pornography appeared on morning TV in front of a studio audience made up largely of
midwestern housewives. "We have some trouble with the
54
civil libertarians," one of them said to a whole roomful of
people who had no sense of freedom. One woman from
the audience spoke about how pornography pollutes. The
three women against pornography nodded encouragingly.
They would not speak about the hidden violence of the
family. They would not speak about the everyday sexual
and psychic dread of the women in the audience.
Maxwell is enraged by his recollections. He takes out
the notebook that he always carries with him and writes:
"The civil liberties lawyer does not understand the pervasive social madness, the manipulation of consciousness.
He is secure in his homilies, for way down he thinks this is
a free society. He thinks passing ERA will solve the problem of misogyny. He goes through life with his little formulations. He turns red in the face during heated discussion.
Basically he is complacent."
Maxwell continues writing: "In the society of docile,
frightened people, largely without will, the three women
against pornography offer mind control as their program
for social transformation. Destroy dangerous images, they
say. They manipulate the fear and bigotry of imprisoned
midwestern housewives. This to build a movement!!"
The reading will go on forever. His head spins, tears fill
his eyes. He is slumped in his seat. The common understanding. The common pain. The common outrage. So
deeply connected to the people. So split off. Everything is
unraveling, unraveling. They are being thrown into different worlds. It is a rupture of love. The bond between Sarah
and the audience grows stronger. "This is my favorite
story," he hears a voice whisper. The separation is permanent.
The air in the auditorium has grown oppressively hot
and damp. Suddenly the reading is over. He files out with
the crowd. He lingers outside, breathing in the cool spring
air, resting against a car. The light from the street lamps
comes from far overhead. He feels less enclosed.
Some people gather about in small circles, others leave
quickly. He waits a while longer. Joe DePerri walks outside talking excitedly with two friends. Suzanne looks
needfully from side to side. joan McBride, busy as always,
walks away with a strong determination.
"This is the community in resistance," thinks Maxwell.
"The comic individuation of people," he writes in his
notebook. "The comic individuation of the people in the
community of resistance."
What does that mean, wonders Maxwell. Each person is
ludicrous, partly distorted yet partly free. Does it matter?
For a moment the people he knows seem like figures in a
landscape, but a landscape of buildings and human activities. They were shaped by the society, they shaped the
resistance to the society-well, he thinks, it can't be otherwise. He laughs at himself. He feels calm.
Allison calls over to Maxwell. Clearly she is no longer
annoyed at him. She and a few friends are speaking with
Sarah. "Hi," says Maxwell. Allison extends her cheek to
him. Maxwell kisses her quickly, then turns to Sarah and
says, "It was a very beautiful reading." Sarah Kendall
grabs his arm, squeezes it and smiles warmly.
SUMMER 1981
�Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance, ' '
A Model of American Eloquence
Eva T. H. Brann
The document entitled "To the Honorable the General
Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, A Memorial
and Remonstrance" is a jewel of republican rhetoric. 1 Nor
has this choice example of American eloquence gone
without notice. And yet, compared to the Declaration of
Independence and the Gettysburg Address, it has re·
mained obscure-more often quarried for stately phrases
than conned by heart, more often admired at a distance
than studied in detail. This lack of popularity can in part
be accounted for by the circumstances of the document.
Addressed to the legislature of a state rather than to the
people of the nation, it is concerned with an issue which
is critical only sporadically, though then critical indeed.
The Supreme Court has, to be sure, searched the docu·
menton several occasions for help in interpreting the "establishment" clause of the First Amendment. (See the
Appendix.) But this naturally narrow judicial mining of
the text has itself served to draw away attention from the
depth of its political precepts and the fitness of its rhetori·
cal form, discerningly lauded, for example, by Rives, Mad·
ison's nineteenth century biographer. 2 In part, again,
Madison's work has been kept off the roster of canonized
On December 3, 1784, a bill "establishing a provision
for Teachers of Religion" was reported to the General Assembly of Virginia. Its preamble said:
Eva Brann recently published Paradoxes of Education in a Republic (University of Chicago Press, 1979).
This study was written under a Mellon Foundation Grant for Individual
Study and delivered in abridged form at the Conference on Rhetoric and
American Statesmanship held at the University of Dallas on October 1618, 1980.
Whereas the general diffusion of Christian knowledge hath a
natural tendency to correct the morals of men, restrain their
vices, and preserve the peace of society, which cannot beeffected without a competent provision for learned teachers,
who may be thereby enabled to devote their time and attention to the duty of instructing such citizens as from their
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
public prose because it lacks Jefferson's heady generalities
and Lincoln's humane grandeur. But I know this: To study
it is to come away with a sense of having discovered, under the veil of Madison's modesty, the great rhetorician of
the Founding, whom John Marshall called "the most elo·
quent man I ever heard." The immediate and the histori·
cal efficacy of Madison's appeal shows that despite the
deprecating modern estimate that he "could not mesmer·
ize a mass audience" but "only those who sought ... i11umination,"3 Madison was master of that true eloquence
which sometimes turns the former kind of audience into
the latter. It is an eloquence of measured passion and sober
ardor, which knows what to say when and to whom with·
out bending the truth.
L The Circumstances Surrounding
the Remonstrance 4
55
�circumstances and want of education cannot otherwise attain
such knowledge; and it is judged such provision may be made
by the Legislature, without counteracting the liberal principle
heretofore adopted and intended to be preserved, by abolishing all distinctions of pre-eminence amongst the different societies or communities of Christians . .. 5
The author of the bill, Patrick Henry, had introduced it
with a fervent speech tracing the downfall of ancient and
modern polities to the decay of religion: the repeal in 1776
of the tithe law, which meant the end of a state-salaried
clergy and amounted to the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, was a source of such decay in Virginia. Other
eminent Virginians, even more anxious about an increase
in laxness of morals and lawlessness than about the precipitous decline of church attendance during and after
the Revolution, saw nothing wrong with the bilL Among
them were George Washington and John MarshalL
Madison, absolutely opposed, debated Henry on the
floor of the Assembly late in November. These speeches
contain revealing anticipations of-and contrasts to-the
Remonstrance. 6
Even with the bill still in committee, Madison's arguments had told. There had been a short-lived attempt to
de-christianize it extending it to all "who profess the public worship of the Deity," be they Mohametans or Jews.
The bill reported out was, furthermore, no longer the
General Assessment bill which had sought in effect to reestablish Christianity (though, of course, not Anglicanism)
by a general levy on taxpayers in support of a Christian
church. It had been transformed into a Christian education bill, designed partly, as evidenced by the reference in
the preamble to those who cannot afford private education, to be a defense against Jefferson's long tabled secular
public education bill of 1779, and partly, as is apparent
from its more restricted aims, to be a response to Madison's pressure.
Meanwhile Madison also engaged in some practical politics. In order to remove the oratorical Henry from the
scene, Madison had hit on a device both kinder and more
efficacious than Jefferson's suggestion "devotedly to pray
for his death": he had conspired to elevate him to the governorship. The proud governor-elect had retired to his
estates, "a circumstance very inauspicious to his offspring" as Madison wrote with satisfaction to James
Monroe.
Also, in exchange for the withdrawal of his opposition
to a companion bill for the incorporation of the Episcopal
Church, Madison had won postponement of final action
on the bill to 1785, so that there might be time to publish
its text for consideration by the people. This move was
crucial, since in 1784 the bill would probably have passed
the legislature with an overwhelming majority.' Here as
ever, the two facets of Madison's statesmanship-practical maneuvering and principled rhetoric-complemented
each other. He had gained a year.
Throughout spring of 1785 Madison's own inclination
was to wait quietly for the popular opposition to manifest
56
itself. The Episcopalians, as old beneficiaries of establishment naturally, and the Presbyterian clergy to their
shame, supported the bill; the laity and clergy of the dissenting sects were solidly opposed. By May several suporters, but no opponents, of the bill had lost their seats. As
late as June 21 Madison was assured enough of its unpopularity merely to echo the rebellious common feeling, that
although the legislature "should give it the form, they will
not give it the validity of a law ... -1 own the bill appears
to me to warrant this language of the people." 8
Some of his associates in the battle, however, George
Mason and the brothers Nicholas, were anxious for more
pointed action. They had reason to fear civil disturbances
if the legislature, in which the favoring tidewater counties
were overrepresented, should attempt to force the law on
the people. They hoped to deter its passage with a large
number of well-subscribed identical petitions from all
parts of the state, the best device then available for conveying the power of a public sentiment to the legislature.
They asked Madison to compose the text.
He wrote the <(Memorial and Remonstrance" sometime
soon after June 20, 1785, intending it to circulate anonymously. The few friends who knew of his authorship respected his wish, which arose, presumably, from his desire
to maintain good working relations with all parties in the
legislature. At the time some attributed the work to
George Mason, who had drafted the religious liberty
clause of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Though a
printer had put his name on a reprint as early as 1786,
Madison acknowledged only late in life, in a letter of 1826
to Mason's grandson, that "the task of composing such a
paper had been imposed upon him."
Mason had the petition printed as a broadside in Alexandria, having seen no reason for changing even one word
of the text. The Nicholases saw to its distribution
throughout the state. It met, Madison noted in retrospect,
"with the approbation of the Baptists, the Presbyterians
[who had recanted], the Quakers, and the few Roman
Catholics, universally; of the Methodists in part; and even
of not a few of the Sect formerly established by law, [the
Episcopalians]."'
The Remonstrance was solidly successful in drawing
subscribers. The thirteen circulated copies collected 15 52
signatures; 150 freeholders signed one petition in a day.
Yet, successful though it was, another, still anonymous,
petition, based on the fervently Christian argument that
the bill contravened the spirit of the Gospel, ran up more
than three times as many signatures on twenty-nine copies. All in all, about eighty opposing petitions with 10,929
signatures came in to Richmond, and only a few in support.
After a brief consideration the bill died in committee in
the fall of 1785, lost, however, by a mere three votes. Madison's petition may well have been cruciaL
On January 22, 1786, Madison reported the results of
that session to Jefferson in Paris in a modestly jubilant
vem:
SUMMER 1981
�The steps taken throughout the Country to defeat the Gnl.
Assessment, had produced all the effect that could have been
wished. The table was loaded with petitions and remonstrances from all parts against the interposition of the Legislature in matters of Religion.
In the same letter he had already told jefferson even
greater news. One element alone of Jefferson's six-year-
old revisal of the laws of Virginia had that year been
passed into an act, his bill for establishing religious freedom, 10 the most celebrated of all documents concerned
with religious liberty.
Advantage had been taken of the crisis produced by the
crushing of the religious assessment bill to carry through
the jefferson bill, as Madison put it. The two events were
closely connected. The impetus of the collapse of a regressive measure carried over-as sometimes happens-into
a sudden advance. The religious clause of the Virginia
Declaration of Rights had guaranteed the free exercise of
religion to all Christians, but it had not unequivocally
banned-witness the assessment bill-the establishment
of a non-sectarian state church. During the next nine
years the legislature had passed a patchwork of special exemptions, tolerances and particular measures favoring dis-
senting sects. jefferson's bill, which happened to attack
compulsory support of religious teachers in its preamble,
rode in, as Madison recollected in 1826, under the "influence of public sentiment" manifested in the death of the
assessment bill, as a "permanent Barrier agst. future attempts on the Rights of Conscience as declared in the
Great Charter affixed to the Constitution of the State." 11
Madison interpreted the petitions against the assessment
bill as demands for the enactment of jefferson's law concerning religious freedom; he thought it an advantage
that it had been sanctioned by what was in effect a plebiscite. The Remonstrance had advanced it as a principle
that there should be such invitations to the people to express their sentiments in the course of law-making.
II. The Arguments of the Remonstrance
The Remonstrance is a petition addressed to the General Assembly of Virginia that remonstrates on fifteen
counts (listed in summary in Note 12) against a bill before
it establishing a provision for teachers of the Christian religion. Each of these points is set forth in one paragraph in
the form of a reflection on one aspect of the right relation
between religion and politics. Madison clearly intended to
make the argumentation as complete, as principled, as
fundamental, and yet as concise as possible.
The fifteen counts are, furthermore, composed into a
symmetrical structure. The eighth, that is, the middle
point, addresses the concern immediately central to the
occasion-the fear of the decline of social stability-by arguing that state support of religion is not necessary to the
civil authority. Clustered about that-central claim are the
other prudential and cautionary points to be addressed to
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the Christian communities which hoped to profit from
the law. Points 6-7 and again 9-11 display the bill as internally and externally deleterious to Christianity in particular.
By contrast, Points l-4 and again Points 13-15 have a
wider, more encompassing matter: humanity in general.
The intoductory points proceed on the grandest scale.
The first asserts a positive theological prin9iple-the absolute priority of man's relation to God over his social
bonds-as the ground for the inalienable character of the
right to religious freedom; the second deduces from the
first the prohibition of legislative interference in religion.
The third point draws the political principle of prompt resistance to civil interference out of the uncompromisably
absolute separation of the realms, the fourth draws from
the philosophical principle of human equality the political
injunction against state support of religion.
The closing numbers cite the forms and practices of
popular government which proceed from the foundations
established in One through Four as they bear on the bill.
Thirteen warns against unenforceable laws, Fourteen
states the majoritarian principle, and the last point recalls
the principle of limited government to the offending legislature. The rhetorical force of this structure will, I think,
tell even on a reader who does not apprehend it explicitly.
III. Rhetorical Analysis of the Textu
PREAMBLE
To The Honorable the General Assembly of the
Commonwealth of Virginia
A Memorial and Remonstrance
We the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration, a Bill printed by order of the last Session of
General Assembly, entitled ''A Bill establishing
provisions for Teachers of the Chn'stian Religion, ''
and conceiving that the same iffi'nally armed with
the sanctions ofa law, will be a dangerous abuse of
power, are bound as faithful members of a free
State to remonstrate against it, and to declare the
reasons by which we are determined. We remonstrate against the said Bill,
The preamble alludes to the postponement resolution
which had requested the people of the counties "to signify their opinion respecting the adoption of such a
Bill" -the resolution is quoted in the next to last paragraph. The petition, then a common political instrument,
is intended to elicit popular opinion in the course of lawmaking. Such moments of communication between the
people and their representatives are an important part of
Madison's theory of self-government, set out in the penultimate paragraph of the petition.
57
�Not Madison but "We ... the citizens" speak. His style
could well accomodate itself to a canonical anonymity. He
had been trained in a school of rhetoric which eschewed
idiosyncracies, and he never engaged in the luxuriously indignant periodicity peculiar to Jefferson.
This petition is presented in the form of a remonstrance, that is, a protest, a protest, suggestively, of the
((faithful," but it is not a mere protest, as are most present-
day petitions. It is also a memorial, a declaration of reasons-every paragraph begins with a ~~because" -in the
tradition of the Declaration of Independence.
FIRST PARAGRAPH
1. Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, ''that Religion or the duty which we
owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging
it, can be directed only by reason and conviction,
not by force or violence." The religion then of
every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; it is the right of every man to
exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its
nature an unalienable nght. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the
evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot
follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable
also, because what is here a right towards men, is a
duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every
man to render the Creator such homage and such
only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This
duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of
the Governor of the Universe: And rf a member of
Civil Society, who enters into any subordinate
Association, must always do it with a reservation of
his duty to the General Authon.ty; much more
must every man who becomes a member of any
particular Civrl Society, do it with a saving of his
allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain
therefore that in matters ofRelzgion, no mans right
is abridged by the institution of Civzl Society and
that Relrgion is wholly exempt from its cognizance.
True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any
question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the wz/1 of the majon·ty;
but it is also true that the majority may trespass on
the rights of the minon'ty.
58
The first is the most philosophical and the most rhetorically artful paragraph.
Madison begins by reminding the legislature of its own
fundamental law; he quotes, as he notes in the margin of
his copy, from Article XVI of the "Declaration of Rights
and Frame of Government of Virginia," adopted in 1776.
Madison himself intervened crucially in George Mason's
draft of that article, though not in the clause here cited.
(The sentence he affected is given in the fourth and fifteenth paragraphs.) In accordance with the symmetrical
structure of the petition the Virginia Declaration is cited
in the first, the fourth, the eleventh, and the fifteenth paragraphs.
The quotation from Article XVI is here introduced in
the spirit of the Declaration of Independence-the Virginia Declaration has no such language-as an axiom, an
undeniable truth. The consequences of that axiom are
then developed in an enchained sequence of sentences
which has something of the quality of a liturgical responsion, a kind of ronde! of reason. The enchaining brings
with it a non-periodic style. (A period, speaking technically, is a circuit-like sentence, whose meaning is not deliv-
ered until the whole is complete.) Several sentences are
grammatically simple; conjunctions and relatives, regarded in school rhetoric as weakening the vivacity of
writing since their function should be carried by the diction, 14 are avoided; the continuity indeed comes from the
incantation-like diction.
"The religion of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man": he restates the phrase
"reason and conviction" of Article XVI alliteratively and
tactfully, avoiding the everlasting dwelling on the reason
by which some of the defenders of religious liberty had
made themselves suspect.
The recurrent phrase "every man," rather than "all
men" as in the Declaration of Independence, carries a
subtle emphasis: as Madison's logic notes from college
point out, when one turns "all" into "every," the predicate is logically distributed so that it "belongs to every individual."15 Since religion consists of "voluntary acts of
individuals singly and voluntarily associated," Madison's
use of "every" rather than "all" conveys the individual
nature of religion implied by the fundamental axiom: no
religious dogma is to be imposed and no religious exercise
interfered with-the First Amendment in germ.
Each key word is picked up and elaborated as the argument continues: " ... it is the right of every man to exercise" religion freely. "This right is ... an unalienable right.
It is unalienable, because the opinions of men" are free.
"It is unalienable also, because what is here a right toward
men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every
man to render the Creator such homage" as seems right to
him. "This duty is precedent ... to the claims of Civil Society." "Before a man can be considered a member of
Civil Society . .. ," etc.
The rhetorical form emphasizes the mutual involve·
ment of the terms. Free exercise of religion is a right and
SUi~MER
1981
�moreover an inalienable right because of an ineradicable
feature of human nature-its freedom. This human freedom, the ground of civil liberty, is understood as a bondage of the mind to the dictates of reason and evidence-a
dependency clearly expressed in the original opening
paragraph of Jefferson's bill on religious freedom, which
was deleted by the General Assembly with Madison's reluctant acquiescence:
Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on
their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed
to their minds . .. 16
Madison, who had earlier displayed a lively interest in the
philosophical question of mental liberty and misgivings
about its possibility, 17 must indeed have been sorry to see
this pertinent passage disappear from the bill, bartered
away for its passage.
The right to religious liberty is inalienable because of
man's nature, but also because of man's relation to God,
which is that of a subject bound by a duty to his Creator.
Religion as defined in the passage from the Declaration of
Rights which Madison quotes is a conflation of the Roman notion of obligatory performance and the biblical
idea of obedience to the Creator, with the Christian salvational sense, to be introduced in the middle paragraphs,
here missing.
The inalienability of the right is, then, rooted in man's
nature as free and as created; it is therefore inalienable by
the very reason which makes it a right, namely that it is a
divine duty that must be individually discharged. Succinctly put: "What is here a right towards men, is a duty
towards the Creator."
Now comes the crux of the paragraph and indeed of the
work. Man's relation as a creature is prior both in time and
in degree to his membership in a polity. Before he can be
thought of as a citizen of civil society, he must be considered as a subject under the Governor of the Universe; as
the former he has rights, as the latter duties. This priority
in time may mean that these duties were his before this or
any polity was instituted, even in the Garden of Eden, or
that they precede adult citizenship and obligate even children. Precedent in "degree of obligation" must mean that
moral duties supersede political obedience and that religion governs citizenship-indeed a creed for citizen-resisters to the usurpations of the civil powers.
Although Madison himself later cites Jesus' "own declaration that his Kingdom was not of this world" in behalf of
the separation of worlds, 18 his own remarkable theory is
quite distinct from the scriptural doctrine of the two
realms, the secular and the spiritual. That doctrine holds
this world inferior-Roger Williams, for example, demands a hedge between the garden of the Church and the
wilderness of the World. 1
'
In contrast the precedence of the religious realm set out
in the Remonstrance is not seen from the perspective of
the world beyond, but from the position of a practicing
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
citizen of this world, albeit with prior obligations. That is
precisely why the functionaries of civil society may not invade the realm of religion-because that realm is here
conceived as belonging to the active life of the world, not
to civil society but certainly to society. The suspicion and
contempt of the world, on the other hand, against whose
intrusions the soul and the church must be guarded, belongs to Christian liberty-a theological condition and not
a civil right. (The defense of religious liberty from the
scriptural point of view is rousingly made in Milton's
Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; Madison
may have known it.)
Madison is proposing a civil theology20 in which the political arena is circumscribed by religion. From the point
of view of political theory men come out of (though in a
sense they never leave) the Lockean state of nature and its
right to self-preservation; from the point of view of the
civil theology man first and last remains "a free-born subject under the crown of heaven owing homage to none
but God himself."21
Madison, however, does not advocate the cause of a
deistic super-sect with its positive rationalistic doctrines,
so confidently set out in Jefferson's bill concerning religious freedom which knows and approves "the plan of the
holy author of our religion ... to extend it by the influence
on reason alone." Encompassing all religions, whether
propagated by reason, revelation, or force of tradition,
Madison's civil theology is a genuine grounding for religious pluralism.
The conclusion is that rights of conscience are reserved
from the authority of the political power. As Jefferson
puts it in Query XVII of the Notes on the State of Virginia
(1781):
Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as
we have submitted them. The rights of conscience we never
submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them
to our God.
There follows an intricately wrought analogy containing
more subtleties than bear articulating:
As l. a member of Civil Society 2. who enters into any subordinate Association 3. must always do it 4. with a reservation of
his duty 5. to the General Authority,
Much more so must l. every man 2. who becomes a member
of any particular Civil Society 3. do it 4. with a saving of his allegiance 5. to the Universal Sovereign.
The climax of the deduction from the axiom of religion
as a duty to God is the radical proposition that "no man's
right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society andReligion is wholly exempt from its cognizance." That is to
say: l. individual religious rights are not alienated upon
entering civil society and 2. the realm of common religious observance is wholly out of its jurisdiction.
This is the seminal secular statement concerning reli-
59
�gious liberty as a civil right in the public realm, since Jefferson's law, to which Madison later gave the honor of
being the standard of expression on the subject, was,
though prior in the drafting (1779), posterior in publication (1785).
The political consequences are reserved for the last paragraph of the petition. Madison, however, here adds an afterthought which brings these fundamental principles
into the political arena. It is an antithesis acknowledging
in capsule form the paradox of majoritarianism, a clash of
truths in the world of action: 22 "True it is" that the will of
the majority alone can settle divisive differences, "but it is
also true" that the majority may try to infringe the rights
of the minority. The penultimate paragraph will counterbalance this reservation by an expression of full faith in
the majority as a last court of appeal in cases of infringements on liberty.
SECOND PARAGRAPH
2. Because zf Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be
subject to that of the Legislative Body. The latter
are but the creatures and vicegerents of the former.
Their jurisdiction is both derivative and limited: it
is limited with regard to the co-ordinate departments, more necessarily is it limited with regard to
the constituents. The preservation ofa ftee Government requires not merely, that the metes and
bounds which separate each department of power
be invariably maintained; but more especially that
neither of them be suffered to overleap the great
Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The
Rulers who are guilty ofsuch an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their
authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit
to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived ftom them, and
are slaves.
Now the doctrines of the first paragraph are applied, a
fortiori, to government: if religion is beyond the political
community, so much the more is it beyond the legislature.
For as human beings are God's creatures, so the legislature is civil society's creature. (The manner of this legislative subordination is again taken up in the corresponding
next to last paragraph.) The double limitation on its jurisdiction is stated in a succinct presentation of the theories
of checks and balances and of limited government. It displays Madison's genius for articulating a full complement
of fine but fundamental distinctions in the smallest compass: he speaks of the "metes and bounds" (a phrase possibly adapted from Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration 23 )
60
that contain the departments of government, and of the
"great Barrier" that circumscribes government itself.
That barrier, the limitation of legislative jurisdiction, is
the political palisade before the "wall of separation," in
Jefferson's famous metaphor for the First Amendment,
which is to be erected between church and state. 24
The language of the following sentences grows terse
and absolute (although Madison manages to tuck in definitions of both tyranny and slavery): the rulers who encroach are tyrants, the people that submits, slaves. The
theory of prompt resistance to be set out in the next para·
graph is prepared.
THIRD PARAGRAPH
3. Because it is proper to take alarm at the first
experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent
jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of
the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution.
The ftee men of America did not wait till usurped
power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw a!!
the consequences in the principle, and they
avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget
it. Who does not see that the same authority which
can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other
Religions, may establish with the same ease any·
particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of a!!
other Sects? that the same authority which can
force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his
property for the support of any one establishment,
may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?
The first sentence is often quoted, and "viewing with
alarm" has, of course, become a cant phrase of American
rhetoric. Here the key word "liberties" first appears; the
phrase "religious liberty" is missing from the work.
The Revolution is invoked in favor of a "noble" mode
of political response. In the remarkable phrase "prudent
jealousy" Madison conflates republican duty with the
principle of honor, the citizen's calculation of conse~
quences with the nobleman's propensity for quick offense.
The necessity for a ready response lies, of course, in the
fact that absolute principles, not compromisable interests,
are involved; "the least interference with religion would
be a flagrant usurpation." The Revolution, being the complex event of both principle and interest, was in fact slow
in coming:
... mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to
which they are accustomed. {Declaration of Independence.)
SUMMER 1981
�Nevertheless Madison here propagates the view, for the
sake of the "revered lesson" it contains, that the three-penny tax on tea moved the "free men of America" to revolt because it was a first signal of oppression, not the last
straw. 25 This view was evidently dear to him, for later he
wrote:
The people of the U.S- owe their Independence and their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence
on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprized in the
precedent. 26
The lesson he urges is immediate recognition of and resistance to breaches of principle, and especially of the principle of religious liberty, because it stands and falls as a
whole. As Locke says: "The civil power can either change
everything in religion, ... or it can change nothing." 27
Two balanced rhetorical questions next address first
the churches and then the individual citizens: as the authority to establish Christianity impks the power to
establish one sect, so the authority to touch a citizen's
property implies the power to force him into religious
conformity. This passage reveals Madison's universal view
of religious liberty. He writes here, in hopeful suppression
of the fact admitted in the eleventh paragraph, that Virginia still had a Christian establishment, as if the establishment were an incipient event to be feared by the sects.
His vigorous promotion of Jefferson's bill concerning
religious liberty shows that he knew otherwise. An episode that occurred during its consideration in the Assembly shows where his sentiments lay:
For the sake of passage Madison acquiesced in several
deletions urged by men who objected to the aggressively
deistic tone of the bill, although he thought these defaced
the text somewhat-to him its expressions were ever the
"true standard of religious liberty," even if his own inclination was to phrase that liberty as a right to the "full and
free exercise" of religion rather than to its non-exercise.
What he refused to agree to was an insertion that was attempted; as Madison much later recalled it:
... an experiment was made on the reverence entertained for
the name and sanctity of the Saviour, by proposing to insert
the words "Jesus Christ'' after the words "our lord" in the
preamble. 28
Madison, ever vigilant of words, fought the insertion and
it was dropped_ On January 22, 1786, he reported in a
spirit of modest triumph to jefferson in Paris that the enacting clauses had passed without alteration and,"[ flatter
myself, have in this country extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind." The rejection of the insertion proved, jefferson later said, that
"the jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohametan,
the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination" were
within the mantle of its protection_ Those were exactly
Madison's intentions, and indeed he was to receive expressions of gratitude from American Jews and to give encouragement to them. 29
1HE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
So, although in the Remonstrance he writes to and for
and-unemphatically but unquestionably-as a Christian, there can be no question about the universal application of his principle of religious liberty. No more can there
be doubt about his uncompromising steadfastness in its
application. Of many proofs let me choose only three.
His early draft of those amendments to the Constitution which were to become the Bill of Rights specifically
prohibit the establishment of a "national religion_''
Even in later life he retained his rhetorical vigor in
fighting Christian establishments_ He apostrophises his
country:
Ye states of America, which retain . .. any aberration from
the sacred principle of religious liberty, by giving to Caesar
what belongs to God, or joining together what God has put
asunder, hasten to revise and purify your systems . .. 30
As ever, he attacks the perverse wedlock of church and
state on the ground of Christianity itself_
The most striking, almost comical, examples of his scrupulous avoidance of even the slightest trespass are his
presidential Thanksgiving Messages during the War of
1812- Forced from him by a Congressional resolution, he
phrased them rather as exhortations to free choice of worship than to public piety_li
The strong Madisonian meaning of the word "liberty"
as applied to religion, to be adumbrated throughout the
petition, begins to emerge:
Religious liberty is a civil right which is grounded in relations of duty to God antecedent to political society and
therefore incapable of being abrogated_ These relations
are determined by the nature of the human conscience
which is free in a philosophical sense, that is, determined
not by external force but only by the internal compulsion
of evidence, be it reason or revelation; they are also determined by the original nature of the human being which is
dependent in a theological sense, that is, created by God_
(Para. 1.) Delicate because it must be maintained absolutely (Para_ 3), this liberty requires the government to abstain completely from interference, either for the purpose
of supporting or of obstructing the exercise of religious
obligations (Para_ 2)- The government must protect religion, but only by abstaining evenhandedly from interference and by safeguarding each sect from the intrusions of
the other sects (Para. 8). As a right held on the same political terms as the other natural rights which are reserved to
the individual, religious liberty stands or falls with them
(Para. 15)FOURTH PARAGRAPH
4. Because the Bill violates that equality which
ought to be the basis of every law, and which is
more indispensible, in proportion as the validity or
expediency of any law is more liable to be im-
61
�peached. If' 'all men are by nature equally free and
independent, '' all men are to be considered as entering into Society on equal conditions; as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no less,
one than another, of their natural rights. Above all
are they to be considered as retaining an ''equal title to the free exercise of Religion according to the
dictates of Conscience." Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine
origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those
whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence
which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused,
it is an offence against God, not against man: To
God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it
be rendered. As the Bill violates equality by subjecting some to peculiar burdens, so it violates the
same principle, by granting to others peculiar exemptions. Are the Quakers and Menonists the only
sects who think a compulsive support of their Religious unnecessary and unwarrantable? Can their
piety alone be entrusted with the care of public
worship? Ought their Religions to be endowed
above all others with extraordinary privileges by
which proselytes may be enticed from all others?
We think too favorably of the justice and good
sense of these denominations to believe that they
either covet pre-eminences over their follow citizens
or that they will be seduced by them from the common opposition to the measure.
The proposed bill violates the natural equality of men
affirmed in Article I of the Virginia Declaration of Rights,
now quoted by Madison. Such equality is presented here
as an internal condition of all law. The more liable a law is
to the charge of invalidity or inexpediency, the more important such equality becomes. The dictum that equality
"ought to be the basis of every law" refers to the inner
equity of the law, which ought to affect everyone equally,
not to the familiar demand for equality of treatment under the law; the law must be such as to be capable of equal
application.
A succinct statement of the contract theory of rights
which underlies this demand is given: All men being by
nature equally free, they must enter civil society on equal
conditions; they must give up and retain exactly equal
rights. "To embrace, to profess, and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin," to join, to
declare, and to exercise whatever religion seems to us to
be truly a religion, is the essence of these rights with respect to religion.
62
In the conclusion of his Letter Concerning Toleration
Locke says that "the sum of all we drive at is that every
man may enjoy the same rights that are guaranteed to
others." Madison italicizes this one word in the petition-equal-when he quotes for the first time that clause
of Article XVI of the Virginia Declaration of Rights for
whose form he himself was responsible. Equality of application was for Madison, as for Locke, important above all
else. Although it intends to preserve the "liberal
principle" of Article XVI, by "abolishing all distinctions of
pre~eminence" among the different sects, the Assessment
bill is inequitable because it burdens all in support of a religious service that will peculiarly burden non-Christians
and peculiarly exempt those Christians who do not wish
to take advantage of its benefits. The rhetorical question
what sects besides those mentioned would fall under the
latter category would have the obvious answer: above all
the Baptists, whose opposition to any kind of state intervention was a matter of theological principle.
There can never be a moral or theological pretext for interference, because the abuse of the right of religion is not
subject to human punishment. Madison had restricted
Mason's broad reservation in the original draft of Article
XVI, that the magistrate might restrain free exercise if,
"under colour of religion, any man disturb the peace, the
happiness, or the safety of society" to the condition that
"the preservation of liberty and the existence of the State
are manifestly endangered." His record shows that as a
magistrate he would have found no occasion to apply it;
presumably he was glad finally to see the whole clause
drop out. 32
A bilaterally symmetrical sentence, the only one in the
petition to contain the word "God," presents this central
point.
Early American documents mention the names of God
profusely enough to intrigue a medieval theologian. 33 In
this petition he is the Creator to whom man owes the duties of a dependent creature; the Governor of the Universe to whom man is a subject rather than a citizen
(Para. l); God before whom alone man can sin (Para. 4);
the Author of our Religion who hands down its .teachings
in scripture (Para. 6); the Supreme Lawgiver of the U niverse from whom illumination of the legislature is requested (Para. 15). Not mere unreflective Enlightenment
epithets, these names must be genuine expressions of
Madison's understanding of the facets of humanity's relations to God, for they delineate just such a God as would
be the ground of religious liberty.
In his work on Article XVI of the Declaration of
Rights, 34 the young delegate to the Revolutionary Convention of May 1776 had offered but one draft article, on
religion. Patrick Henry, who had himself sponsored it, had
quickly disclaimed it when challenged on the floor to explain whether he actually intended to disestablish the
Church. Madison had, of course, intended just such disestablishment:
SUMMER 1981
�That Religion or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the
manner of discharging it, being under the direction of reason
and conviction only, not of violence or compulsion [a stylistic
emendation of Mason's "force or violence"], all men are
equally entitled to the full and free exercise of it according to
the dictates of Conscience . ..
No man or class of men, the article continues, should receive special privileges or be subjected to special penalties
for religious reasons, a prefiguration of the two prongs of
the First Amendment, the establishment and free exercise clauses.
Madison, having been forced to withdraw his own draft,
scrutinized Mason's version, which promised "the fullest
toleration in the Exercise of religion." He alone, perhaps,
in that assembly took one word of it seriously enough to
forestall a danger. 35
That word was "toleration," which implies not a right
to religious liberty but a privilege granted. That was absolutely insufferable for Madison, for toleration accorded
with, and so confirmed, ecclesiastical establishment (as in
modern times it can accompany an anti-clerical policy). 36
Although he wrote respectfully of the Dutch "experiment of combining liberal toleration with the establishment of a particular creed," 37 Madison would certainly
have rejected Spinoza's views in the Theologico-Political
Treatise (Ch. XIX), that the possessor of sovereign power
has rights over spiritual matters but should grant religious
liberty on matters of outward observancy, only inward
piety being private and inalienable. In any case, it is unlikely that he knew Spinoza's writings, especially since
Locke, whose Letter he had probably read (as external likelihood and internal evidence in the Remonstrance indicate), admitted to little acquaintance with Spinoza's
work. 38 Although called a "Letter Concerning Toleration,"
Locke's work, by a typical cunning twist, shifts the meaning of the term: not granted to dissenting Christians by
the ecclesiastical establishment and its state sponsors, toleration is required of the magistrate toward all churchesMohammetan, Pagan, idolaters (though not-and here
Madison differed-to atheists); the magistrate has no
right to interfere with either the internal or the external
aspects of religion. This ~~tolerance" was not the notion
Tom Paine excoriated in the Age of Reason as "not the opposite of Intolerance, but. _. the counterfeit of it," but a
demand for a right under cover of a less aggressive term.
Madison might well have taken his lead from the thought
of the Letter Concerning Toleration at the same time that
he balked at the use of the term "toleration" in fundamental law.
FIFTH PARAGRAPH
5. Because the Bzl/ implies either that the Civzl
Magistrate is a competent judge a/Religious Truth;
or that he may employ Religion as an engine of
Civil policy. The first is an arrogant pretension fa/THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
sifted by the contradictory opinions ofRulers in all
ages, and throughout the world: the second an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation.
This brief but resounding paragraph ("arrogant pretension"-"unhallowed perversion") appears to have been
retained from the debate on the floor of the Assembly.
Madison's notes show that he employed his large theological erudition 39 to bring home to the Assembly, with that
muted irony of which he was capable, the politicotheological consequences of the bill. It would require a
legislative definition of Christianity: it would require that
the law-makers choose an official Bible-Hebrew, Septuagint, or Vulgate, decide the method of its interpretation, confirm a doctrine-Trinitarian, Arian, Socinian-as
orthodox, and so forth. The sentiment of the paragraph is
Lockean: "neither the right nor the art of ruling does
necessarily carry along with it the certain knowledge of
other things and least of all of the true religion."
In this paragraph alone Madison speaks of religion as a
"means of salvation," in contrast to its employment as an
"engine of civil policy." In the argument for religious liberty the obligations of religion, not its blessings, count
most.
SIXTH PARAGRAPH
6. Because the establishment proposed by the
Bzll is not requisite for the support of the Christian
Religion. To say that it is, is a contradiction to the
Christian Religion itself, for every page of it disavows a dependence on the powers ofthis world: it is
a contradiction to fact; for it is known that this Religion both existed and flourished, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of
every opposition from them, and not only during
the period of miraculous aid, but long after it had
been left to its own evidence and the ordinary care
of Providence. Nay, it is a contradiction in terms;
for a Religion not invented by human policy, must
have pre-existed and been supported, before it was
established by human policy. It is moreover to
weaken in those who profess this Religion a pious
confidence in its innate excellence and the patronage ofits Author; and to foster in those who stzll reject it, a suspicion that its friends are too conscious
of its fallacies to trust it to its own merits.
Madison leaves the universal considerations of religious
liberty to attend to the particularly Christian interest in it.
The seven core paragraphs of the petition are devoted to
that Christian point of view, an arrangement that tellingly
mirrors both the encompassing necessity for a philosophical foundation and the immediate fact that a Christian
63
�constituency is speaking. Establishment, prohibited in a
purely political context for the sake of the free exercise of
religion, is to be yet more eschewed for the sake of Chris·
tianity itself.
His notes for the floor debate show that he intended to
divert the argument from the preoccupation with the so·
cial need for religion to the utrue question": Are religious
establishments necessary for religion? The proponents'
concern with "the peace of society" were, so he implies
later, in part a cover for concern with the declining impor·
tance of the churches. The end of war, laws that cherish
virtue, religious associations which would provide personal examples of morality, the education of youth, and
precisely the end of governmental intrusion, not state in·
tervention, were the "true remedies" for the decline of re-
ligion which he recommended to the legislature. Note the
neo-classical notion that the laws should promote virtue. 40
Madison's Christian defense of liberty is in the great
tradition of Protestant dissenting writings, especially Mil·
ton's Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes
(1659), in which he shows "the wrong the civil power
doth; by violating the fundamental privilege of the Gos·
pel, ... Christian libertie," 41 that is, freedom from forcible
impositions in matters of worship. Indeed Milton's whole
argument is drawn from scripture, especially from the
Pauline letters.
Madison, too, alludes to scripture: "every page" of reli·
gion "disavows a dependence on the power of this world."
The Baptists, whose whole petition was based on the
grounds that the bill was "repugnant to the Spirit of the
Gospel," however, outdid him in this line of argument.
For them, as for other opposing Christians, disestablish·
ment dated literally from Jesus himself. "Render to
Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things
that are God's." (Mark 13, 17).
The paragraph next exposes the contradictions of the
bill's premise that Christianity cannot be diffused "with·
out a competent provision" for its teachers. The contra·
diction of fact is that Christianity has indeed flourished at
all times without aid-and Madison gives a believer's cap·
sule history of its two epochs, the era of miracles and the
era of ordinary providence. The more serious contradiction in terms is twofold: the dependence of religion, which
is pre-existent, on human policy and the failure of the
faithful to trust in God for its support. The argument is
rendered in beautifully branching and balanced cola.
Fifty years later, Madison would feel entitled to answer
the "true question" definitively from the accumulated ev·
idence of the American experience, which had "brought
the subject to a fair and finally decisive test." Left to it·
self, religion would flourish; indeed the danger lay rather
in its extravagancesY Madison insisted that "every
successful example of a perfect separation ... is of imp or·
tance," and that he regarded such success as an indispens-
ible empirical test of the principle of religious liberty. At
the same time, he was certain that the test would never
fail since "there appears to be in the nature of man what
64
insures his belief in an invisible cause ... " But what
would Madison have said in the face of an observable decline of "religious commitment"?41
SEVENTH PARAGRAPH
7. Because experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary
operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the
legal establishment of Christianity been on trial.
What have been its fruits? More or less in all places,
pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and
servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry
and persecution. Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest lustre; those ofevery sect, point to the ages prior
to its incorporation with Civzl policy. Propose a restoration of this primitive State in which its Teachers
depended on the voluntary rewards of their flocks,
many of them predict its downfall. On which Side
ought their testimony to have greatest weight,
when for or when against their interest?
Proof positive that religion could flourish on its own
was a half-century in the future, but the evidence of fif·
teen centuries, that is, dating back roughly to the Conver·
sion of Constantine, showed that legal establishments
corrupted Christianity, because they hampered freedom
of conscience, "the truly Christian principle." 44
Here, as elsewhere, Madison allows himself the most
spirited language for clerical degeneracy, without, how·
ever, giving way to that automatic anti-clericalism that
possessed Jefferson. Even in his youth, in an early letter to
his friend William Bradford (Jan., 1774), he had given a
similar catalogue of clerical and lay vice, of the "Pride ig·
norance and Knavery among the Priesthood and Vice and
Wickedness among the Laity," evident in his home coun·
try; worst of all:
That diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution rages
among some and to their eternal Infamy the Clergy can furnish their Quota of Imps for such business.
The Protestant supporters of the bill would preach the
life of early Christianity, but they do not want to live like
the first disciples, much less like the first Teacher himself.
This passage deals with church business without resorting
to the word 11 Church," which never occurs in this petition.
Madison opposed not only the "incorporation with Civil
policy" effected by a bill proposing state-salaried religious
teachers, but the "encroachments and accumulations"
encouraged by the legal incorporation of churches. 45 He
desired neither state-supported nor richly endowed
churches, but small congregations which would directly
support their ministers.
SUMMER 1981
�EIGHTH PARAGRAPH
8. Because the establishment in question is not
necessary for the support of Civil Government. If it
be urged as necessary for the support of Civil Government only as it is a means of supporting Religion, and it be not necessary for the latter purpose,
it cannot be necessary for the former. IfReligion be
not within the cognizance of Civil Government
how can its legal establishment be necessary to Civil
Government? What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some
instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual
tyranny on the ruins ofthe Civil authon'ty; in many
instances they have been seen upholding the
thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have
they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the
people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public
liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted
to secure & perpetuate it needs them not. Such a
Government will be best supported by protecting
every Citizen in the enjoyment ofhis Religion with
the same equal hand which protects his person and
his property; by neither invading the equal nghts
of any Sect, nor suffen.ng any Sect to invade those
of another.
At the middle count, Madison takes up the main point
supposedly agitating the proponents of the bill: the dan·
gerous decline of morality which the bill was supposed to
halt.
In his very first extant expression concerning religious
liberty, a youthful letter to Bradford (Dec., 1778), Madison
had asked this politico-theological question: "Is an Ecclesiastical Establishment absolutely necessary to support
civil society in a supream Government?"
In this petition Madison has prepared the ground for
answering the question in such a way that he can dispose
of it by a mere syllogism (modus tollens): Only if religion is
within the cognizance of government can the question of
necessary legal establishment arise. But it is not, by the
first paragraph. Therefore establishment is not necessary.
With equal logic, he disposes of the circular arguments of
the supporters, who say that establishment is necessary to
government only insofar as government is a necessary
means of supporting religion; since the latter contention
has been shown false by the preceding paragraph, the
former falls also.
So logical a resolution of the great question was not universally appealing. After he heard these arguments, Henry
Lee wrote to Madison: "Refiners may weave as fine a web
of reason as they please, but the experience of all times
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
shows Religion to be the guardian of morals." Not really
in disagreement with Lee's premise, Madison only disclaimed the inference that government ought to support
the churches; he certainly never went as far as Jefferson,
who claimed that "the interests of society require observation of those moral precepts only on which all religions
agree," 46 which amounts to saying that any church is unnecessary to society.
There are some instances of establishments supplanting governments, many instances of their upholding
tyrannies, none of their supporting liberty. "A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them
not," concludes Madison, in the language reminiscent of
the Declaration of Independence: "That to secure these
Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed."
How does a just government protect religious rights? It
protects them precisely as it protects property and other
rights. In a short essay "On Property," 47 written in 1792,
Madison elaborates a remarkable theory of religious rights
which goes further: Rights are property: "In a word, as a
man is said to have a right to his property, he may be
equally be said to have a property in his rights ... " And
earlier in the same essay: "He has a property of peculiar
value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and
practice dictated by them .... " Just government is instituted to secure property, in the large sense in which the
term includes anything which a person values as his own
(leaving to everyone else a like advantage), of which dominion over external things is only a part. Religious rights
so conceived establish a kind of internal personal, and external sectarian, territoriality which government is to protect by "neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor
suffering any Sect to invade those of another."
NINTH AND TENTH PARAGRAPHS
9. Because the proposed establishment is a departure from that generous policy, which, offen'ng
an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of
every Nation and Religion, promised a lustre to our
country, and an accession to the number of its citizens. What a melancholy mark is the Bill ofsudden
degeneracy? Instead of holding forth an Asylum to
the persecuted, it is itself a signal ofpersecution. It
degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those
whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of
the Legislative authonty. Distant as it may be in its
present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it
only in degree. The one is the first step, the other
the last in the career of intolerance. The magnanimous sufferer under this cruel scourge in foreign
Regions, must view the Bill as a Beacon on our
Coast, warning him to seek some other haven,
65
�where liberty and philanthrophy in their due extent, may offer a more certain repose from his
Troubles.
10. Because it will have a like tendency to banish our Citizens. The allurements presented by
other situations are every day thinning their number. To superadd a fresh motive to emigration by
revoking the liberty which they now enjoy, would
be the same species offolly which has dishonoured
and depopulated flourishing kingdoms.
Now Madison inserts two complementary considerations, humanitarian and practical, which had figured in
the floor debates under the heading of "Policy." The bill
might close Virginia as a religious asylum and also drive
out dissenters, and might thus at once prevent much-needed immigration and further thin a population already
moving westward at an alarming rate. Madison did not
have to spell out to his fellow farmers the bad economic
results of this policy: a yet greater shortage of labor power
and further declining land prices.
The politically regressive consequences, however,
needed telling. Citing again his maxim of the contiguity
of the least and the greatest breach of liberty he does not
hesitate to compare, though with reasonable qualifications, a Protestant Establishment with the Catholic Inquisition.
The springiness of style that derives from the adroit use
of the two dictions of English, the long latinate and the
short Anglo-Saxon, is noteworthy; for example: "What a
melancholy mark is the Bill of sudden degeneracy?"
ELEVENTH PARAGRAPH
11. Because it will destroy that moderation and
harmony which the forbearance of our laws to intermeddle with Religion has produced among its
several sects. Torrents of blood have been spilt in
the old world, by vain attempts of the secular arm,
to extinguish Religious discord, by proscribing all
difference in Religious opinion. Time has at length
revealed the true remedy. Every relaxation of narrow and rigorous policy, wherever it has been tried,
has been found to assuage the disease. The American Theatre has exhibited proofs that equal and
compleat liberty, if it does not wholly eradicate it,
sufficiently destroys its malignant influence on the
health and prosperity of the State. If with the salutary effects of this system under our own eyes, we
begin to contract the bounds ofReligious freedom,
we know no name that will too severely reproach
our folly. At least let warning be taken at the first
66
fruits of the threatened innovation. The very appearance of the Bill has transformed "that Christian forbearance, love and charity, " which of late
mutually prevailed, into animosities andjealousies,
which may not soon be appeased. What mischiefs
may not be dreaded, should this enemy to the public quiet be armed with the force of a law?
A crowd of notions familiar in early American rhetoric
is now brought to bear on the threat of sectarian strife
raised by the bill: Time has revealed, and America is the
stage to test and prove, the remedies to old problems; liberty once instituted, innovations may be dangerously
regressive.
The paragraph permits itself some hyperbole, in the
claim of complete religious freedom in Virginia, which
flies in the face of the fact that the same Article XVI
which Madison cites establishes Christianity, if not as a
state church, at least as the public morality; moreover, in
1781 jefferson had indignantly noted that although "statutory oppression" had ceased, common law permitting all
sorts of persecution was still on the books. 48
In this section Madison prudently suppresses his opinion that a vigorous variety of sects is an even more practi-
cally efficacious guarantee of liberty than a bill of rights, 49
and that disestablishment promotes church prosperity
very much as factions well managed produce political stability. The unstated premise is, of course, that doctrinal
enthusiasms are as much an irrepressible force of human
nature as special secular interests.
I can detect no strain in this opinion of Madison which
might equate it with the insouciant dogma that truth is a
private predilection and that everything is "true for"
them that believe it. His preference for sectarian variety
rests on the limits and necessities of observed human nature, not on a doctrinal disavowal of the search for truth.
TwELFTH PARAGRAPH
12. Because the policy of the Bill is adverse to
the diffusion of the fight of Christianity. The first
wish of those who enjoy this precious gift ought to
be that it may be imparted to the whole race of
mankind. Compare the number of those who have
as yet received it with the number still remaining
under the dominion of false Religions; and how
small is the former! Does the policy of the Bill tend
to lessen the disproportion? No; it at once discourages those who are strangers to the light of revelation from coming into the Region of it; and countenances by example the nations who continue in
darkness, in shutting out those who might convey
it to them. Instead of Levelling as far as possible,
SUMMER 1981
�every obstacle to the victorious progress of Truth,
the Bill with an ignoble and unchristian timidity
would circumscribe it with a wall ofdefence against
the encroachments of error.
In his notes for the floor debate Madison had proposed
to himself at about this place in the argument a vindication of disestablished Christianity, a "panegyric of it on
our side." He omits it in the Remonstrance in favor of an
appeal to the missionary urge. The offending bill is altogether too parochially conceived. Not only in Virginia but
throughout mankind should Christianity be propagated.
Instead the bill will act to prevent conversions by discouraging "strangers to the light of revelation," that is, infidels, (Madison had first written "light of truth" and then
christianized the term) from "coming into the Region of
it," which implies that a free America ought to be the natural ground on which revealed religion may be experienced.
The final sentence of the Christian section is reminiscent of the great peroration of Jefferson's bill establishing
religious freedom,
that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself: that she is
the proper and sufficient antagonist to error and has nothing
to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate,
except that the truth of this paragraph is truth of revelation, and the freedom here called for Christian liberty, a
very Madisonian harmonizing of the spirit of enlightenment and the claims of Christianity.
THIRTEENTH PARAGRAPH
13. Because attempts to enforce by legal sanctions, acts obnoxious to so great a proportion of
Citizens, tend to enervate the laws in general, and
to slacken the bands of Society. If it be difficult to
execute any law which is not generally deemed necessary or salutary, what must be the case, where it is
deemed invalid and dangerous? And what may be
the effect ofso striking an example ofimpotency in
the Government, on its general authority?
Again balanced phrases: "enervate the laws ... slacken
the bands," "necessary or salutary . .. invalid and danger-
ous." The rhetorical questions are intended to give pause
to legislators who are ignoring the dangerous political effects of an unenforceable law: Madison's associates antici-
pated rebellion in some counties.
FOURTEENTH PARAGRAPH
14. Because a measure of such singular magnitude and delicacy ought not to be imposed, with1HE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
out the clearest evidence that it is called for by a
majority of citizens, and no satisfactory method is
yet proposed by which the voice of the majority in
this case may be determined, or its influence secured. "The people of the respective counties are
indeed requested to signify their opinion respecting the adoption of the Bill to the next Session of
Assembly. "But the representation must be made
equal, before the voice either of the Representatives or of the Counties will be that of the people.
Our hope is that neither of the former will, after
due consideration, espouse the dangerous principle
of the Bill. Should the event disappoint us, it will
still/eave us in full confidence, that a fair appeal to
the latter will reverse the sentence against our liberties.
In accordance with the symmetry of the composition,
the penultimate paragraph returns to the beginning. The
resolution which occasioned the petition is cited, though
with a little rhetorical interjection ("indeed") reflecting on
its insufficiency.
Self-government, Madison argues, demands both that
the voice of the majority be determined and that its influence be secured. That is to say, the legislature's occasional
solicitation of petitions is not a methodical enough polling
of opinion, and electoral qualifications as well as legislative apportionment are not fair enough for either the Delegates or the Senators to be truly representative. 50 Truly
representative representatives, namely those elected from
districts fairly apportioned and responsive to their constituents, would have been less likely to support the dangerous abuse of power perpetrated by the bill. The petitioners hope, however, that even the legislature as presently
constituted can be brought to reconsider its dangerous
course. The paragraph concludes with a veiled threat of
an organized grass-roots campaign for repeal should the
bill nonetheless be passed.
Here is set out an important aspect of Madison's theory
of self-government. It is the idea that when major and
controversial legislation is in progress, the people should
be given some systematic opportunity to express themselves, because such a plebiscitic element is a trustworthy
preventive of legislative usurpation and an added sanction
for laws. (There is, however, no evidence that Madison
was proposing that this "method" for determining the
voice of the majorityj>e incorporated in the constitution.)
Accordingly, the fact that Jefferson's law .on religious
liberty had been overwhelmingly passed in the wake of
this and other petitions was regarded by Madison as a consummating factor: it had the "advantage of having been
the result of a formal appeal to the sense of the Community and a deliberate sanction of a vast Majority .... " 51
The majoritarian faith Madison expresses here is, of
67
�course, qualified in other contexts where he designs devices, "moderations of sovereignty," for protecting liber·
ties from the people as well as from the legislature.
FIFTEENTH PARAGRAPH
15. Because finally, "the equal right of every
citizen to the free exercise of his Religion according
to the dictates of conscience'' is held by the same
tenure with all our other rights. Ifwe recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature; zf we weigh its
importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consult the "Declaration of those rights which pertain
to the good people of Virginia, as the basis and
foundation ofGovernment, ''it is enumerated with
equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis. Either
then, we must say, that the Will of the Legislature
is the only measure of their authority; and that in
the plenitude of this authority, they may sweep
away all our fundamental rights; or, that they are
bound to leave this particular right untouched and
sacred: Either we must say, that they may controul
the freedom of the press, may abolish the Trial by
jury, may swallow up the Executive and judiciary
Powers ofthe State; nay that they may despoil us of
our very right ofsuffrage, and erect themselves into
an independent and hereditary Assembly or, we
must say, that they have no authority to enact into
law the Bill under consideration. We the Subscribers say, that the General Assembly of the Commonwealth have no such authority: And that no
effort may be omitted on our part against so dangerous an usurpation, we oppose to it, this remonstrance; earnestly praying, as we are in duty bound,
that the Supreme Lawgiver ofthe Universe, by illuminating those to whom it is addressed, may on the
one hand, turn their Councils from every act which
would affront his holy prerogative, or violate the
trust committed to them: and on the other, guide
them into every measure which may be worthy of
his [blessing, may re]dound to their own praise,
and may establish more firmly the liberties, the
prosperity and the happiness of the Commonwealth.
The right of religious liberty is now examined not insofar as it is grounded in transpolitical conditions, as in the
opening paragraph, but with respect to its situation in the
political realm. Madison again quotes his free exercise
clause of Article XVI, as he evidently had in the floor de-
68
bates, together with a sonorous adaptation of the full title
of the Virginia Declaration of Rights:
"A declaration of rights made by the representatives of the
good people of Virginia, assembled in full and free convention; which rights do pertain to them and their posterity, as
the basis and foundation of government."
The purpose of the citation in the fourth paragraph was
to emphasize the equal application of the right; the point
now is the equal, or even superior, standing that it has
compared with the other fundamental rights. The religious
right is equal with them in its natural origin, in its importance, and in its place of promulgation in fundamental
law. (It had in fact been given the ultimate, most emphatic,
position, even beyond the article of exhortation to virtue
and "frequent recurrency to fundamental principles.")
Since it is coequal with the other fundamental rights,
religious liberty stands or falls with them. The argument,
presented in two parallel sets of alternatives, recurs to the
all or nothing reasoning of the third paragraph which is
now extended: The least breach of the religious right endangers all the rights at once: Either the will of the legislature is unlimited or this particular right is untouchable;
either they may sweep away all rights or they cannot enact the present bill. All the phrases are precise and suggestive: "Will of the legislature" is opposed to "voice of the
people" of the previous paragraph; the "plenitude of their
authority" conveys legislative high-handedness; "sacred"
is used in the double sense of holy and inviolable. The
rights of which the legislature "may despoil us" -Madison had first written "may abolish" but then remembered
that natural rights cannot be abolished-are then enumerated from the Declaration, but their order is almost exactly reversed, ending with the most specifically political
right, a "fundamental article in Republican Constitutions,"
the right of suffrage." The whole appeal is couched in
terms of the constraints of reasonable speech: "Either we
must say . .. or we must say .. .. " It concludes determinedly: "We the Subscribers say, that the General Assembly
of this Commonwealth have no such authority."
The final pronouncement of the citizens, then, supersedes all the previous considerations. It is the principled
denial of legislative authority to enact the bill at all. -The
legislators may not arm it "with the sanctions of a law," in
the words of the preamble. Into the last paragraph of his
law concerning religious freedom Jefferson had written
just such a denial: No assembly can constrain -a future one
equally elected by the people, but it is free to shame it by
declaring that if it should repeal or narrow the law, "such
an act will be an infringement of natural right."
The subscribers' pronouncement introduces the submission of the Remonstrance in a peroration which counters the simplicity of the opening with a grand, intricately
branching rhetorical period, praying, as religious duty demands, that two coordinate illuminations might descend
on the law-makers, that they may both refrain from violating their trust, and pass measures which will make them
SUMMER 1981
�worthy of God's blessing, will procure for them the praise
of men, and will establish for the citizens liberty, prosperity, and happiness.
Observe the careful enumeration of goods in triads and
subtriads; such triples belong to the familiar rhythms of
American rhetoric: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" rise most immediately to the ear. The prayer for
the establishment of these goods echoes Jefferson's title:
"A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom," which proclaims the republican appropriation of the offending
term. The petition ends as it began, with a reference to
the Commonwealth.
was produced which indeed satisfied them: Certainly they
·
describe Madison's style with accuracy.
They were, I suppose, not so much the instigators as
the precipitates of a well-defined and uncompromising
taste-well-defined insofar as a deviation truly offended,
and uncompromising because no one, certainly not Madi-
son, lowered his language for any audience or occasion.
All the manifestos, pamphlets, correspondences, petitions,
memoranda, and memorials of the time that come in one's
way show the same educated correctness of style.
Such correctness, then called purity, that is, speech
true to its rules, is said by Campbell to be the lowest-and
indispensible-rhetorical virtue:
IV. Madison's Rhetoric
How is the rhetoric of the Remonstrance to be characterized and how is it to be accounted for, reticent and
rousing, calculated to persuade and designed for truth-telling, concisely compendious and artfully structured, as it
is?
In his essay "Of Eloquence," Hume complains of the
definciency of modern eloquence. It is "calm, elegant,
and subtile," but also lacking in passion and sublimity as
well as order and method: it is mere "good sense delivered
in proper expressions." The Remonstrance has the precise virtues and precisely lacks the shortcomings Hume
names. It is at once "argumentative and rational," grandly
passionate and carefully constructed. It is almost as if
Madison had composed to Hume's standards, standards
probably more appropriate to written than to spoken eloquence. -Unlike Jefferson, whose style failed him on the
floor, Madison, incidentally, was a persuasive though undeclamatory speaker. He seems to have addressed assemblies with just the same educated elegance with which he
wrote, suiting his matter rather than his form to the occasion.
The terms and criteria for judging style used to be fairly
fixed; they were to be found in textbooks of rhetoric,
or-the preferred word in the eighteenth century-of eloquence, and they were universally employed in characterizing and judging productions. The loss of such a set critical
vocabulary is not much mourned by modern writers on
rhetoric who regard it as meaningless and unprofitable,
and demand more fluid, sophisticated criteria. But its disappearance is a loss. To be sure, a writer was unlikely to
improve his style through learning Quintilian's maxim
that the first virtue of eloquence is perspicuity or clarity,
that vivacity or liveliness of imagery is next in order of importance, that elegance or dignity of manner is also required, and that the intellect has the prerogative of being
always the faculty ultimately addressed in speech. (My
source here is Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1776, a
work based mainly on Humean principles of human nature
and popular as a textbook in the colleges of the early Republic. 53) Yet it seems to me a suggestive fact that in the
era when these criteria were considered significant, prose
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
14
Where grammar ends,
eloquence begins." It was in such basic studies that Madison, and everyone of his class, was amply trained, and that
early, in boyhood.
At twelve, Madison recalls in his Autobiography, he was
learning Greek and Latin, studies which, if not absolutely
indispensable to good style, at least insure that knowledge
of syntax and vocabulary which prevents illogical constructions and faulty diction, while shaping the latinate
English appropriate to the political writing. "Miscellaneous
literature" was also embraced by the plan of the school he
attended. Madison devotes a special paragraph to one
such work of literature which he read early to great advantage, namely the Spectator, especially Addison's numbers, and in recommending it late in life to his nephew, he
writes:
Addison was of the first rank among the fine writers of the
age, and has given a definition of what he showed himself to
be an example. 'Fine writing,' he says, 'consists of sentiments
that are natural, without being obvious'; to which adding the
remark of Swift, another celebrated author of the same period, making a good style to consist 'of proper words in their
proper places,' a definition is formed, which will merit your
recollection . .. 54
Madison has here conjoined precepts from one writer of
satiny sweetness and another of mordant savor. Both together evidently guided his taste.
The young student apparently had an interest in rhetorical lore; at one point he copied out and annotated a long
poem on the tropes of rhetoric:
A metaphor compares with out the Sign
[Madison's marginalia: "as, like, etc."]
Virtue's A star and shall for ever shine. 55
Studies conducive to good style and rational discourse
continued in Princeton. There he filled a copybook with
notes on a course of logic, probably given by the president, Dr. Witherspoon, much of which naturally bore on
argumentation. 56 There, too, he is very likely to have
heard Dr. Witherspoon's lectures on eloquence, of which
extensive notes taken, among others, by Madison's college
friend William Bradford in 1772, are still extant. 57 Witherspoon was fully conscious that he was speaking to young
men destined for political responsibilities, who might one
day have to address "promiscuous assemblies." He tried
69
�to convey to them the dignity and efficacy of rhetorical
studies. He deals with the usual topics: types of language,
such as the sublime and the simple; the use of tropes or
figures of speech; his own set of characteristics for eloquent writing-for example it is just if it pays "particular
attention to the truth and meaning of every sentence"
and elegant if it employs "the best expression the language
will afford." Furthermore he treats of invention, organization, and style, always giving examples, and among them
Addison and Swift.
But what seems to me most likely to have penetrated to
his young auditors was his introductory list of five rules
for good writing: I. "Study to imitate the greatest examples." 2. "Accustom yourselves to early and much composition and exercise in speaking." 3. Acquaint yourselves
with the Hbranches subordinate" to eloquence, namely
grammar, orthography, punctuation. 4. Notice and guard
against "peculiar phrases," namely idiosyncracies of
speech. 5. "Follow nature," meaning, gain clear conceptions and follow the truth. Who now is bold enough to
give such good advice so authoritatively?
Rives thought that Witherspoon had had a major part
in forming Madison's style. Both show
the same lucid order, the same precision and comprehensiveness combined, the same persuasive majesty of truth an:d conviction clothed in a terse and felicitous diction,
words which surely describe Madison's style faithfully.
-Evidently good style, if not great eloquence, can be
taught.
One far from negligible feature of this early training
was the prodigious amount of studying Madison-and Jefferson as well-did in their youth. Madison reports that
he lost his health and nearly his life at Princeton through
all too successfully cramming two year's work into one.
But as a result both men were masters of their style early:
Jefferson was thirty-three when he wrote the Declaration
and Madison composed the Remonstrance at thirty-four.
Yet these efforts, being completely self-imposed, never
spoiled the savor of study for either man. Madison went
to his books throughout his life; for example, no sooner
had he been appointed deputy of the Constitutional Convention than "he turned his attention and researches to
the sources ancient and modern of information and guidance as to its object. Of the result of these he had the use
both in the Convention and afterwards in the 'Federalist'."
And later, at the close of his public life, he devoted himself to his farm and his books. 58 Such continuous, ready recourse to reading both for private pleasure and political
practice is surely a chief contributor to fluent expression.
But of course, the most minute history of his studies is
as insufficient to account for Madison's eloquence as the
most time-honored rubrics of eloquence are to describe it.
Finally, it seems to me, his rhetoric is shaped by that rare
aptitude for conjoining speech and action, which caused
Jefferson in his own Autobiography to couple in his noble
description of Madison "the powers and polish of his pen,
70
and the wisdom of his administration." That capacity was
part of a
habit of self-possession which placed at his ready command
the rich resouices of his luminous and discriminating
mind .. .. Never wandering from his subject in vain declamation, but pursuing it closely in language pure, classical, and
copious, soothing always the feelings of his adversaries by civilities and softness of expression .... With these consummate
powers were united a pure and spotless virtue which no calumny has ever attempted to sully.
In the traditional understanding the rhetorical art has
three parts: first, and least, elements of style such as copious diction and felicitous syntax; next, devices of persuasion such as Civilities," prudent ommissions and emphases
together with well-placed passion; and finally, the very
conditions of good speech, the veracity of the speaker and
the verity of his thought. By these criteria, Madison was a
consummate rhetorician.
11
1
Madison's ' Memorial and Remonstrance" seems to me
in truth among the finest of those works of republican
rhetoric in which adroit enunciation of the principles of
liberty elicits their practice. In particular, that strict separation of church and state which implies the total secularization of public life and which, when promoted with
heedless or rabid rationalism causes me, at least, some unease, is set forth in the Remonstrance with such respectful, even reverent, reasonableness that my scruples are
dissolved in a certain enthusiam for Madison's principles
and in the gratitude that a Jew and a refugee must feel for
the safe haven he made.
And yet the question obtrudes itself whether such texts,
for all their fineness, are not relics of an irrecoverable art.
A document to whose phrases the highest court of the
land has recourse in formulating decisions affecting every
school in every district of the country can, of course,
hardly be relegated to history. Nonetheless, it is perhaps
no longer a possible model of public discourse. I ask my·
self why that might be.
I can imagine four reasons which would be readily
forthcoming. It will be said that the public will no longer
listen to educated speech, and it will be said that politicians
can no longer be expected to have the requisite training.
And again, it will be claimed that the level of language itself
has fallen, and also that the complexity of our condition
precludes any grandly perspicuous statement of principles.
These may be true reasons, but they are also bad excuses. They merit indignant refutation as miserable collu·
sions with mere or imaginary circumstance. How we will
be spoken to, how we and our representatives will be educated, to what level the language will rise, how our thought
will dispose the world-these matters are not yet in the
hands of Society or the Historical Situation, but in ours.
And in the exercise of the liberties in which that truth is
realized Madison is not only a possible, but the best possi·
ble, model.
SUMMER 1981
�APPENDIX
The Remonstrance in Supreme Court Decisions
The after-history of the petition is chiefly that of its citation by
the Supreme Court. 59 The Court has recurred to the Remonstrance for elucidation of the Hestablishment" dause ofthe First
Amendment, both because the latter was also drafted by Madison and because the Remonstrance is concerned with religion in
education, as are so many cases involving that clause.
The relevant part of the First Amendment runs:
Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
It includes two clauses, one prohibiting aid, and the other obstruction, to religion. That is to say, the "establishment" clause
prohibits official support of religious institutions, while the "free
exercise" clause guarantees absence of coercive invasions of any
individual's religious practice. (Justice Clark, 1963). In this country, happily, the court has to deal far more often with putative at~
fempts at establishment than with more direct interference with
the free exercise of religion. Therefore the question of the precise meaning of the term "establishment" remains continual1y
acute.
Madison's wording of the establishment clause is not vague
but extremely careful, careful, that is, to use the most encompassing language. Thus the phrase "a law respecting" an establishment conveys a wider notion than would have been contained
in the briefer phrase "a law establishing" religion, and, as Justice
Rutledge points out, an "establishment of religion" is a wider
notion than would have been an "establishment of a church."
Such observations, however, are only the beginning of an interpretation; the central matter is the recovery of Madison's meaning
of the word "establishment" itself, and here the Remonstrance,
which was composed to combat an establishment of religion, is
naturally the most pertinent document.
The Remonstrance played its chief role in the Everson decision of 1947. Everson, as a district taxpayer in New Jersey, filed a
suit challenging a statute authorizing local Boards of Education
to reimburse parents of parochial school students equally with
parents of public school students for money expended on bus
transporation. The argument was that such state aid to religious
education constituted an establishment of religion under the
First Amendment as made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth. Although the Court held that this particular statute did
not constitute such an establishment, Justice Black in the course
of his opinion paraphrased the Remonstrance at the climax of
his argument for a very strong interpretation of the First Amendment:
The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid
one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.
Justice Rutledge canvassed the Remonstrance at yet greater
length for his dissent, to find in it that broad meaning of the
word "establishment" which would be consonant with the evident breadth of language of the First Amendment just pointed
out. He found the word to have a wider scope of application than
that current in England, where it usually meant a state church
established by law. 60 Establishment, he showed, could encom1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
pass measures of all sorts and degrees, including, above all, state
aid to any activity associated with religion, especially when coming out of tax money. He argued that all such government support whatsoever was vigorously proscribed under the name of
establishment by the Remonstrance and hence by the First
Amendment. Therefore the New Jersey statute supporting the
children's way to parochial schools was unconstitutional. Rutledge thought the Remonstrance so fundamental a document
that he appended it to his dissent.
In short, the justices who have cited the Remonstrance have
almost all understood it as enjoining an absolute separation of
church and· state, and have construed the First Amendment accordingly~a construction named by a Jeffersonian phrase the
"wall of separation" doctrine. Justice Frankfurter cites the Remonstrance once again in 1948, in the McCollum opinion, finding
unconstitutional the device of so-called "released time," which
permitted religious groups to come into public schools to instruct children who were released from the classroom for that
purpose. He alone, incidentally, had an ear for that note of the
document which could hardly get full hearing in a judicial context: its "deep religious feeling." Again, in 1963 Justice Clark
quotes from the third paragraph, that "it is proper to take alarm
at the first experiment on our liberties," to support prohibition
of even minor incursions of the state into religion, such as the
reading of a super-sectarian prayer in school
But this agreement on intent has not been sufficient to decide
cases. The Remonstrance has several times been used on both
sides, as in the Everson case and, much earlier, in the Mormon
marriage case of 1879. There Judge Waite endorsed its doctrine
that religion was not within the cognizance of the government,
but found nevertheless that it did not protect religious practices
made criminal under the law of the land, such as polygamy.
Madison himself had confessed "that it may not be easy, in every
possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of
religion and the Civil authority," 61 though he thought that the
doubts would arise on inessential points. In other words, like all
fundamental documents, the Remonstrance is necessary but not
sufficient for determining cases.
It should be noted that the one judge who wished to give the
Remonstrance and Madison's views a narrowly historical interpretation, Justice Reed in his McCollum dissent, cites as traditionally permissible involvement of the government in religious
affairs the existence of chaplains of Congress and of the armed
forces-evidently unaware that Madison had most emphatically
opposed the first and only tolerated the latter. 62 (Such toleration
is rationalized by present day courts under the category of "neutralizing" aids, breaches of the wall of separation permitted to
counterbalance restrictions on the free exercise of religion incidental to meeting governmental demands, such as service in the
armed forces.) Madison, however, excused such practices only
reluctantly by the aphorism "the law ignores trifles." 63
Furthermore the judge who rejected most forcefully "a too literal quest for the advice of the Founding Fathers" (Brennan,
1963), largely on the grounds that conditions of education have
changed, failed to recall that the two new issues he mentions,
universal public schooling and religious· diversity, were precisely
among the chief preoccupations of both Jefferson and Madison.
It is as hard to find fault with the strong interpretation of the
First Amendment in the light of the Remonstrance as it is to
deny the principles themselves of the Remonstrance. Yet one
must wonder whether, were Madison alive now, he would not
recognize certain complicating circumstances, especially where
education is concerned.
71
�Within the context of the Constitution the establishment
clause is essentially ancillary to the free exercise clause. -It is
because state aid to religion inevitably in some way restricts
someone's free exericse that it is prohibited. Furthermore, the
Court has repeatedly held that irreligion, secularism, humanism
are all entitled to protection under the First Amendment, that is
to say, they are in some manner of speaking religions, "belief systems": "the day that the country ceases to be free for irreligion it
will cease to be free for religion ... " (Justice Jackson, Zorach v.
Clauson, 1952). Consequently there is, by the Court's own ad·
mission, a sense in which secular schools are not neutral in respect to religious doctrine. ·
Might not Madison, the fairest of men in such arguments;14
have honored the point, if moderately made, that the enormous
preemption of a child's time for secular purposes implied by
modern school-attendence requirements, considered together
with the financial hardship which justice Rutledge admits the
policy of total separation imposes on parents wishing to give
their children religious schooling, amounts to a state invasion of
religious rights? Would he not have lent an attentive ear to the
admission made by Justice Black (Epperson v. Arkansas, 1968)
that non-religious schooling cannot help but be, as &Jr example
in the teaching of evolution, in some sense anti-religious, and
that the mandated secu1arism65 of the public schools is indeed in
the sense before explained, a kind of religious establishment,
possibly in need of counterbalancing by fairly vigorous "neutralizing aids?" To study Madison's writings on religious liberty is to
conceive an ardent wish that he might be here to consider these
dilemmas.
1. Printed with introduction and notes in The Papers of fames Madison,
Robert A. Rutland and William M. E. Rachal, eds., {Chicago) Vol. 8
(1784-1786), pp. 295-306.
I know of no detailed study of the Remonstrance.
2. William Cabell Rives, A History of the Life and Times of James Madison (Boston 1859), p. 632:
In this masterly paper, he discussed the question of an establishment
of religion by law from every point of view,-of natural right, the inherent limitations of the civil power, the interests of religion itself,
the genius and precepts of Christianity, the warning lessons of his·
tory, the dictates of a wise and sober policy,-and treated them all
with a consummate power of reasoning, and a force of appeal to the
understandings and hearts of people, that bore down every opposing
prejudice and precluded reply.
"This noble production of the mind and heart of Mr. Madison" is, he
concluded this _perfectly just appreciation, a triumphant plea in the great
cause of religious liberty, "never surpassed in power or eloquence by
any which its stirring influence have called forth."
3. Neal Riemer, James Madison (New York 1968), pp. 12-13. Riemer
does not rate Madison's rhetorical gifts very high, particularly when
compared to those of Jefferson and of Paine. He describes the style as
earnest, forthright, simple, unadorned, quiet. "His writings convince
but do not take fire." I think his estimate too much reduces rhetoric to
oratory.
4. Sources: Papers, VoL 8, pp. 295-98; Madison's "Detached Memoranda" in the William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, III, (October
1946), pp. 555-56; Irving Brant, James Madison, Vol. 2, The Nationalist;
1780-1787 (New York 1948), pp. 343-55; Charles F. James, Documentary
History of the Struggle for Religious Liberty (New York 1971), pp. 128-41;
Ralph_Ketcham, fames Madison (London 1971), pp. 162-68; Anson
Phelps Stokes, Church and State in the United States, Vol. I {New York
1950), pp. 339-45; Manfred Zipperer, Thomas Jefferson's "Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia" vom 16. Januar 1786, Dissertation
(Edangen 1967), pp. 24-28.
5. James, p. 129.
72
6. The speeches are extant in the form of notes; see Papers, Vol. 8, pp.
195-99.
7. Gaillard Hunt, "Madison and Religious Liberty," Annual Report of
the American Historical Association (1901), Vol. I, p. 168.
8. Rives, p. 631.
9. "Detached Memoranda," pp. 555-56.
10. Papers, Vol. 8, p. 473.
II. Papers, Vol. 8, p. 298.
12. To display the bare bones of the argumentation I have stripped it of
Madison's diction and added connectives.
1. Because of the unconditional priority of religious duties over civil
obligations, religion is wholly exempt from any secular direction.
2. So much more so is it exempt from governmental interference.
3. Therefore even the smallest infringement of religious liberty constitutes an insupportable breach.
4. Governmental aid to religion is necessarily discriminatory and
therefore violates the basic principle of equality.
5. Furthermore it constitutes officials the judges of orthodoxy and
enables them to use religion politically.
6. At the same time it weakens Christianity by making it depend on
secular support.
7. Moreover, such aid contaminates the purity of Christianity.
8. Above all, it is unnecessary to the security of a free government;
indeed it is dangerous.
9. It discourages immigration by signalling possible persecution.
10. And it encourages emigration of dissenting citizens.
11. It encourages violent animosity among the sects.
12. In thus hindering free movement it in fact restricts the spread of
Christianity.
13. The attempt to enforce so unpopular a law will undermine social
stability.
14. Therefore before the bill is enacted into law the will of the majority should be fairly ascertained and represented in the legislature.
15. Ultimately, however, religious liberty being coequal .with the
other natural rights, the legislature has in any case no authority to
abridge it, unless it is granted to have unlimited power to take away
all rights.
13. Since the texture of the Remonstrance will sometimes be best
brought out by comparison with Madison's other writings on religious
liberty, that dearest of his causes, a list of his chief expressions on the
subject is subjoined. I want to observe here that while Madison's language soon acquires a certain canonical quality it never becomes formulaic. -Iteration does not wear away its warmth.
1. 1773-1775. A series of youthful letters addressed to his friend
from Princeton, William Bradford. These were written when Madison
was in his early twenties and express in youthfully vigorous language
his disgusted preoccupation with evidences of religious persecution
in Orange County and in Virginia.
2. 1776. His first small but important contribution as a law-maker,
his amendment of George Mason's draft of Article XVI for the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Also his own rejected version.
3. 1785. The "Memorial and Remonstrance," his most extensive
writing on the subject.
4. 1788. A note on the value of a multiplicity of sects, meant for the
Virginia Convention.
5. 1789. An early version and the final form of the first article of the
Federal Bill of Rights, the First Amendment.
6. 1792. Essay "On Property," expressing a theory of rights, and par·
ticularly religious rights, as constituting personal property.
7. 1811. Presidential Veto Message, against the incorporation of the
Episcopal Church.
8. 1811, 1813: Presidential Thanksgiving Messages, with caveats
about publicly ordered prayer.
9. 1819-1822. Letters demonstrating that state support is not necessary to the religious sects.
10. 1823. Letter to Edward Eyerett, on the secular university.
ll. "Detached Memoranda" (fragmentary essayS sePai-aied from his
main works in the nineteenth century), containing historical notes
and exhortations concerning religious liberty, and an account of the
events around the Remonstrance.
SUMMER 1981
�12. 1832. A late letter to the Rev. Jasper Adams giving proofs from
American history that Christianity is not in need of state support.
The sources for these texts are: 1. Papers, Vol. I (1751-1779), pp. 100-161
passim; 2. ibid., p. 174; 3. ibid., Vol. 8, pp. 298-304; 4. James Madison,
The Forging of American Federalism, Saul K. Padover, ed. (New Yark
1965), p. 306; 5. Stokes, p. 345; 6. ibid., p. 551; 7. Forging, p. 307; 8. Adri·
enne Koch, Madison's "Advice to My County" (Princeton 1966), pp.
33-34; 9. Forging, pp. 308-10; 10. Stokes, p. 348; 11. op. eit., pp. 554-62;
12. The Writings of James Madison, Gaillard Hunt, ed., Vol. IX, 18191836, (New York 1910) pp. 484-88.
14. Gemge Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetorie (1776), Lloyd F. Blitzer, ed. (Carbondale, 1963), p. 365.
15. Papers; Vol. I, p. 38.
16. Frank Swancara, Thomas Jefferson vs. Religious Oppression (New
York 1969), p. 124.
17. Samuel Stanhope Smith sent him a disquisition "on that knotty
question ofliberty and necessity," for light on which, Madison had "frequently attacked" him. Madison's response is lost, but Smith observes in
a later letter: "I have read over your theoretical objections against the
doctrine of moral liberty; for practically you seem to be one of its disciples." (Papers, Vol. I, 1751-1779, pp. 194, 253). For Madison's theory of
human nature in general see Ralph L. Ketcham, "James Madison and
the Nature of Man," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XIX, (1958), pp.
62-76.
18. "Detached Memoranda," p. 556.
19. Wilber G. Katz and Harold P. Southerland, "Religious Pluralism
and the Supreme Court," Religion in America, op. cit., p. 273.
20. Alexander Landi, "Madison's Political Theory," The Political
Science Reviewer, Vol. VI (Fall1976), pp. 77-79.
21. John Wise in Vindication of the Government of New England
Churches (1717), quoted in Sidney E. Mead, "The 'Nation with the Soul
of a Church'," American Civil Religion, Russell E. Richey and Donald G.
Jones, eds. (New Ymk 1974), pp. 53 ff.
22. On Madison's views of the problems of majoritarian rule, see above
all Federalist, no. 10; also Landi, pp. 84 ff.
23. See Papers, Vol. 8, p. 297.
24. See Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists, 1802; On Roger Williams, see Loren P. Beth, The American Theory of Church and State
(Gainesville 1958), p. 65.
The American author of the separation doctrine was Roger Williams,
with whose ideas Madison was probably acquainted through his connection with the Baptists of his county.
25. John Adams' entry in his Diary shows how the Boston Tea Party
caught the imagination as a beginning: "This is the most magnificent
Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last
Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire .... I cant but consider it as
an Epocha in History." (December 17, 1773).
26. "Detached Memoranda," p. 557.
27. John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration, J. W. Gough, ed. (Oxford 1976), p. 149.
28. Swancara, pp. 123-32; "Detached Memoranda," p. 556.
29. To Mordecai M. Noah, 1818; to Jacob de la Motta, 1820.
30. "Detached Memoranda," p. 555.
31. Koch, p. 33; cf. "Detached Memoranda," pp. 560-61.
32. Papers, Vol. 1, pp. 172-75.
33. For example, in the Declaration of Independence there is "Nature's
God," man's "Creator," "the Supreme Judge of the World." In his law
Jefferson used one designation that ple.ased the devout, "holy author of
our religion," the very one employed by the Baptists in their resolution
against the assessment bill (James, p. 138).
34. See Papers, op. cit., pp. 170 ff.
35. See Hunt, "James Madison and Religious Liberty," op. cit., p. 166.
36. Stokes, pp. 22-26.
37. Letter to Edward Livingston, 1822; to Rev. Adams, 1832.
38. Locke started writing on toleration in the decade before Spinoza's
Treatise, which appeared in 1670, though the Letter postdated it
(1683-4). For Locke's lack of interest in Spinoza see Leo Strauss, Natural
Right and History (Chicago 1974), p. 211.
39. See, for example, the theological catalogue for the library of the
University of Virginia which he hastily tossed off at Jefferson's urgent
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
request, listing an astonishing number of church writers of the first five
Christian centuries. (Rives, pp. 641-44).
40. Landi, pp. 80-84.
41. John Milton, Selected Prose, C. A. Patrides, ed. (Penguin 1974), p.
316.
42. Letter to Rev. Jasper Adams, 1832. The opinion here expressed
seems to have been current. For example, just the preceding year Tocqueville had asked a Catholic priest whom he had met in his travels
through the Michigan Territory this very question: "Do you think that
the support of the civil power is useful to religion?" -and had received
the same answer Madison was to give to Rev. Adams, a decided negative. See George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville in America, Dudley C.
Lunt, ed. (Gloucester 1969), p. 203.
43. Evidence for such a long term decline in the second half of this century is given in Rodney Stark and Charles Y. Glock, American Piety; The
Nature of Religious Commitment, Vol. I (Berkeley 1970) pp. 204 ff. Of
course, the question would become moot, should a massive religious revival refute the sociological projections.
44. "Detached Memoranda," p. 554.
45. "Detached Memoranda," p. 556-57.
46. Beth, p. 66. Madison's own church allegiance was so vanishingly
weak a factor in his opinions about religious liberty that it can be rele·
gated to a footnote. He was, in fact, a born Episcopalian with strong
Presbyterian associations from his Princeton days, apparently a communicant of no church, who displayed unfailing respect for the faiths of
the sects.
47. Stokes, p. 551. The starting point of the essay appears to be Locke's
definition of property as life, liberty and estate in the Second Treatise of
Government, Ch. IX.
48. Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII.
49. Madison liked to quote Voltaire's Article on "Tolerance" in the
Philosophical Dictionary: "If one religion only were allowed in England,
the government would possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two,
the people would cut each other's throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace." See Koch, p. 76.
50. Jefferson, too, had complained of the under-representation in both
houses of the middle and upper counties, and of the arms-bearing population in generaL
51. "Detached Memoranda," p. 554.
52. Forging, p. 36.
53. Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, op. cit., pp. 215-16, 285, 35.
I. A. Richards, for example, in his Philosophy of Rhetoric (New York
1965), p. 70, decries the use of just such terms as "misleading and un·
profitable."
54. Rives, p. 25, n. l. It is the spirit of Swift's definitions which I. A.
Richards' rhetoric is intended to oppose.
55. Papers, Vol. 1, pp. 32-42.
56. Papers, Vol. 1, pp. 18-19.
57. Microfilm, Princeton UniVersity Library.
58. "James Madison's Autobiography," Douglas Adair, ed., William and
Mary Quarterly, Third Series, II, no. 2, pp. 202, 207. See also Robert A.
Rutland, "Madison's Bookish Habits," The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, Vol. 37, no. 2 (Spring 1980), pp. 176-91.
59. Sources: Irving Brant, The Bill of Rights, Its Origin and Meaning
(New York 1967), pp. 400-18; The Supreme Court and Education, Classics in Education No. 4, David Fellman, ed. (New York 1976), Pt. I, pp.
3-124.
60. Stokes, pp. 26-30, gives a history of the term. The contemporary political use of the phrase "The Establishment" is, of course, quite differ·
ent since it has no reference to legal confirmation.
61. Letter to Rev. Jasper Adams, 1832.
62. "Detached Memoranda," pp. 558-60; Letter to Edward Livingston,
1822.
63. Religion in America, William C. Mclaughlin and Robert N. Bellah
(Boston 1968), p. 275; "Detached Memoranda," p. 559.
64. An example is his reply to Rev. Adams, 1832.
65. For the definition of secularism, see Stokes, pp. 30-31. Just this year
the secular religion issue has again been raised in Seagraves vs. State of
California.
73
�Cicero's Teaching on Natural Law
Thomas G. West
We are in the midst of a crisis-not always evident in
the comfortable lives we lead, but a crisis nonetheless. A
sign of the crisis is the ongoing political collapse of the
West; the liberal democracies of America and Europe are
barely willing to defend themselves against the insolence
of petty tyrants and the armed imperialism of the Soviet
Union.
Why this somnolent slide into voluntary weakness? Because we are not convinced that we have anything to fight
for. We are ready to believe the worst of ourselves, and the
best of our adversaries, because we no longer fully believe
that we deserve to survive. That is because we no longer
know what the West is, and why its preservation matters
for nurturing and sustaining the noblest and best of human activities. In particular, we in America no longer
know why the United States is the best hope for the
modern world.
The core of the West is not only worth saving; it is perhaps the highest reason for living. Our best moral traditions and political institutions foster a rational thoughtfulness that enables all of us, to the extent of our abilities, to
use words, human speech, to discover and articulate the
natures of things. This unique feature of Western peoples
became most evident to me when I taught classes that
included both Americans and non-Western foreigners,
especially students from the Middle East. Because their
characters were formed by different kinds of laws and
habits, such foreigners are inclined to look upon reason
and speech as manipulative tools by which people impose
their will on each other rather than as aids to bringing
forth truth from darkness. Truth, then, is the opinion of
the stronger, of whoever has or appears to have the power
to make it stick. A Newsweek reporter expressed his bafflement over this attitude when he visited Iran in December
of 1979 and found everyone convinced that Khomeini
would make America turn over the ex-Shah to Iran-even
though our laws and our self-interest forbade it. The Ayatollah said it, so the people believed it. 1
Americans are different. You can argue with them and
get them to see, by means of the argument, what you see.
A successful argument is not just a victory of one person
over another, for what the discussion is about is never
merely personal. Even when Americans fling their convictions at one another in barroom disputes-who is the better quarterback, Bradshaw or Staubach?-they are dimly
aware that the issue they are controverting is something
real, independent of their boisterous claims, and that the
truth about it can be brought to light through words.
When students raised in non-Western traditions appear in
one's classes, they do not grasp that the purpose of talk is
insight, not power; as a result, they usually suppose that
the teacher only wants his students to remember and parrot his own opinions. On the contrary, proper teaching
provides an example of thinking which students at first
imitate; later, they begin to be able to repeat the thought
on their own, and finally, if ability and effort suffice, to
think by themselves without such help.
To learn the connection between rationality and republican political institutions, education is needed. And to
perfect one's own rationality, education is needed. But
education today most often means getting through college quickly and moving on to one's career. I do not believe such an education is enough to enable students to
withstand the assaults of positivism, socialism, and the
other defeatist doctrines that dominate current fashion in
most professional and graduate schools, not to mention
the "real world" outside. As ever, the best education consists principally of a patient, dedicated study of political
history and the outstanding Western authors, particularly
the classical authors, of history, literature, and political
philosophy-' The revival of this education-and it has already begun-is probably the only thing that can save the
liberty of our country and of our minds. Cicero deserves
inclusion in such a curriculum, no less for his admirable
statesmanship than for his philosophical work.
•
•
*
1980.
Cicero has a prominent place in most histories of political philosophy, but few scholars regard him as a thinker
of the first rank. His ideas, it is typically asserted, are
mostly platitudinous and second-hand, taken over from
second-rate Hellenistic philosophers. His philosophical
works, which educated men read as recently as the eighteenth century for rational guidance in the conduct of
74
SUMMER 1981
Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas, Thomas G. West has recently published Plato's Apology of Socrates (Cornell University Press
1979).
This article represents a revised version of a lecture given at Boston Col-
lege, Kenyon College and Wake Forest University in March and April
�life, are now studied chiefly by antiquarians engaged in
source-criticism and historical research.' Even among his
scholarly admirers, few would seriously look to Cicero for
instruction in living their own lives. His eclipse rivals that
of Xenophon, that allegedly simple-minded hanger-on of
Socrates who wrote such surprisingly charming prose. I
believe that what Leo Strauss accomplished in his interpretations of Xenophon-he rediscovered Xenophon the
philosopher by conceding to subtlety the benefit of every
doubt-can also, in part, be done on behalf of Cicero.'
Besides this scholarly depreciation of Cicero, another
and deeper critique is posed by Martin Heidegger. Cicero,
or rather Roman philosophy generally, represents for Hei·
degger an important stage in the gradual forgetting of the
Greek discovery of nature, a forgetting process which has
marked the whole history of the West. According to Hei·
degger, the very translation of Greek philosophy into
Latin effaced that insight. Roman philosophy conceived
natura, the nature of things, as present-at-hand and readily
available to easy philosophic contemplation and the formulation of ethical doctrines. It thereby failed to renew
the vibrant amplitude of the Greek physis, which embraces the emergence and coming-to-be of things no less
than their distinct standing-forth in full presence before
the mind's eye. The Roman narrowing of nature therefore prepared the way for the modern view of beings as
mere disposable resources, easily accessible to human
projects and manipulation.
The scholarly view of Cicero, being less serious, can be
addressed more easily. But Heidegger's more profound
charge can also be met.
Cicero faced a philosophical-political situation in Rome
in some ways similar to our own. As today, philosophical
writings about how politics ought to be conducted, and
more broadly, about how life ought to be lived, were
widely known. But their effect on the formation of the
characters of future politicians, not to speak of direct
influence on public life, was small. Nor did political philosophy temper the philosophers' nearly exclusive preoc·
cupation with private morals, theory of knowledge, the
nature of the gods, and the order of the physical world. By
tremendous efforts Greek philosophy had achieved its
insight into the distinction between and yet necessary belonging-together of nature and convention, being and appearance, truth and opinion, an insight anticipated in the
dark lyrics of the pre-Socratic thinkers and given its consummate expression in the works of Plato and Aristotle.
But now, in the moribund Roman republic, this grasp
upon the tense unity of nature and convention was forgotten by politicians unformed by philosophy and philosophers disdainful of politics.
In all of his writings, from the practical orations to the
theoretical excursions into epistemology and theology,
Cicero strove to reyoke the sundered pair. He sought
thereby not only to revitalize philosophy, which in its late
Greek appearance and Roman transplantation had become routinized in a set of contesting schools of thought,
1HEST.JOHNSREVIEW
each with its characteristic jargon and dogma; he also
tried to revive the wilting prospects for political liberty in
Rome, where the despotic acquisitiveness and imperialism that had long marked its foreign policy were increasingly employed within Rome itself by ambitious factions
and generals, acting against their fellow Romans. Julius
Caesar's conversion of Rome into a popular dictatorship
late in Cicero's career openly displayed whither Roman
politics were tending. Cicero's teaching on law, the peak
of his reflections on the nature of the political, epitomizes
his twofold intention: to render politics more rational and
reason more politically responsible, on the ground that
reason and politics are inseparable.
Only in the first two books of De legibus (On Laws) does
Cicero give a sustained account of his legal doctrine.
There is a famous passage on law from the third book of
his De republica (III.33), but its value is doubtful because
it is a fragment whose context is lost and because it is put
into the mouth of one of the dialogue's characters, Laelius, whose views do not always coincide with Cicero's. In
any event, Laelius's statement on law is not much different from what we find in the Laws, where Cicero speaks
in his own name and the question of law is amply developed.
At first glance the Laws offers an array of comforting
certitudes. True law is grounded in the eternal verities of
God, reason, and nature; and Rome's law, with some mod·
ifications, seems to be a fitting exemplar. Rhetorical
flights in praise of law-abidingness and piety, apparently
nothing more than variations on Stoic commonplaces,
grace the pages of the book.
Cicero is of course fully responsible for this initial impression, and if many scholars penetrate no further than
this surface, they at least grasp the first level of his teaching. The surface provides a standard for politicians and
professors who incline toward private gain at the expense
of public duty; by "private gain" I mean the pleasure of
pursuing wisdom apart from the commonwealth no less
than the acquisition of wealth and honor to its actual
detriment. For the law teaches politicians that man's end
is to know and to choose the good, which requires philosophy and "pure religion," and it teaches philosophers that
the soul is born for political society and not merely for private contemplation of eternity (1.58-62).
It takes only a modest attentiveness to the order and argument of the work to see beyond this first impression.
The Laws is a fictitious dialogue between Cicero himself,
his brother Quintus, who was active in Roman public life
and composed some tragic poetry, and Cicero's closest
friend, Atticus, the Epicurean philosopher and wealthy
Roman knight. Like many Roman political men, Quintus
is liberally educated in Greek philosophy and poetry
(11.17), though not philosophically inclined, and he is an
uncritical adherent of government by his own peers, the
aristocrats or optimates (111.17). He is possessed by a certain excess of the love of one's own that typifies the citizen and gentleman at all times and places.
75
�Atticus has the opposite defect. His very name, "the
man from Attica," signals his long removal from his native
Italy to the academic center Athens. His interest in the
conversation on law is purely theoretical-one might even
call it aesthetic, for he pursues it for the personal pleasure
it affords and the trans-political themes it develops, not
because of any practical good he might gain from it
(1.13-14, 28). He is particularly delighted by the setting of
their dialogue, in the summer shade, along the banks and
islands of a cool stream in the country (I.l4, II.6-7). In his
attention to these pleasures of body and mind he displays
himself as the unpolitical Epicurean that he is.
Cicero's two interlocutors, then, represent the two di·
vergent Roman tendencies mentioned at the outset, un·
philosophical politics and unpolitical philosophy, but with
this difference: both men are close enough to Cicero that
they can be persuaded to follow his lead-Quintus because
of his admiration and affection for his brother, Atticus
because of his friendship with Cicero and of his probable
awareness that law-abidingness protects the wealth that
sustains his philosophic leisure. Cicero comprises in
himself the qualities possessed separately by his two companions. He shares exclusively with Quintus a serious political vocation and a poetizing avocation, and with
Atticus, a dedication to philosophy and admiration for
Plato (1.1, 15, Ill.l ).
These three topics-politics, poetry, and philosophyare prominent themes in the Laws, and the conversation
opens with an exchange on the nature of poetry. Poetry, it
seems, has the capacity to immortalize what is by nature
mortal; the old oak that stands before the three men will
live forever in Cicero's poem, just as the olive tree on the
Athenian acropolis is believed to have been planted by
Athena and hence to be sempiternal. But poetry, says
Cicero, affords pleasure rather than truth; truth is rather
the standard for history. And since history too is full of innumerable fables-Herodotus is the example named-Cicero will shortly turn from history to philosophy to bring
forth the truth about law and justice (1.1-5, 17). The prefatory conversation to the Laws, then, sets forth an implicit
antithesis between poetry, pleasant but untrue, and philosophy, which is true. The contrast raises this question:
does Cicero mean that the truth exposed by philosophy is
unpleasant?
This seemingly inconsequential talk about poetry arrests
our attention as soon as we notice a possible similitude,
not explicitly stated by Cicero, of poetry to law. Poetry
renders the mortal immortal, and, more generally, it bestows life and memory on that which does not exist by
nature. By mentioning the example of Romulus's apotheosis in the context of this discussion of poetry's truth,
Cicero implies that poetry allots to the gods themselves
their being and qualities (!.3). Does not law, too, share this
capacity to implant convictions in the minds of men, convictions that surpass by far in importance and degree the
voluntary suspension of disbelief that we concede to a
well-wrought novel or poem? Poetry and law (law taken in
76
a wide sense, like the Greek nomos, to include custom and
tradition) appear to immortalize the transient or even to
bring non-being into being by touching our minds and
memories through words. If philosophy, which strives uncompromisingly to unveil the true natures of things, is the
antithesis of poetry, it would likewise seem to be the
enemy of the traditions and beliefs on which law depends
and which in some measure law is. The beginning of Cicero's Laws unobtrusively questions whether law contains
any truth whatever. Law, like poetry, may be nothing
more than a fiction that furnishes pleasure by establishing
trust in eternally binding precepts and practices.'
Cicero forestalls this positivist inference by drawing a
distinction between two senses of the word law: the popular sense, according to which law is "that which sanctions
in writing whatever it wishes, either by commanding or
prohibiting," and the more learned sense, derived from
nature itself, according to which law is "the mind and reason of the prudent man" (1.19). This explanation serves
the law's truthfulness by limiting merely arbitrary enact·
ments to the vulgar notion of law. But the unambiguous
clarity we might expect from Cicero's employment of this
distinction is not forthcoming. For he immediately adds
that "it will sometimes be necessary to speak popularly"
about law, since "our whole discussion is involved in the
people's way of reasoning (in populari ratione)" (1.19).
We wonder why Cicero must speak at all in the vulgar
manner, for he has just said that he will draw his account
of law from the heart of philosophy (1.17). We will return
to this question later, but a preliminary answer is suggested
by the parallel treatment of morality in Cicero's On
Duties. Morality (honestum) in the strict sense is wisdom,
says Cicero, possessed (if by anyone) by extraordinary
men such as Socrates. But the morality that is discussed in
Qn Duties, he says, is only "a certain second~grade morality," and the great statesmen who come to mind as examples of virtue, such as the two Scipios and Marcus Cato,
have only "a sort of similitude and appearance of wise
men." Nevertheless, "we [ordinary men] ought to watch
over and preserve that morality which falls within our
[more limited] understanding .... For otherwise it is not
possible to maintain such progress as has been made to·
ward virtue" (De officiis, III.B-17, 1.148). We infer that a
forthright presentation of morality as wisdom would discourage progress in virtue, because genuine wisdom is ex-
alted too far above the common intellectual capacity and
moral taste to be a plausible aim for most men. Most
Athenians regarded Socrates as an object more of curiosity or annoyance than of emulation. By concealing the
wisdom requisite for strict morality, Cicero allows "second-grade morality" to retain the luster that would otherwise be robbed from it. Nevertheless, the concealment is
not absolute, for part of Cicero's purpose is to explain the
truth about virtue.
The Laws treats law as On Duties treats virtue. Cicero
will indeed be seeking true law, but he will also speak with
a view to "strengthening republics, establishing cities, and
SUMMER 1981
�making peoples healthy" (1.37). Therefore he will not ad·
mit Epicureans into the discussion, "even if they speak
the truth," because by referring everything to the criterion
of pleasure and pain, they corrode the convictions of
those who believe that "all correct and honorable things
are to be sought for their own sake" (37, 39). Even the
skepticism to which Cicero adheres in other works is ex·
eluded, so that the grounds for their dialogue will not be
destroyed (39). In short, since the Laws has a twofold pur·
pose of revealing the truth about law and promoting salu·
tary political usages, Cicero will speak about law in both
the strict and vulgar sense-and he does not spell out at
what times he will speak in which sense. The truth frankly
displayed would not only cause displeasure, like poetry de·
bunked, but it would also mar the intended practical effect.
Before we pursue further Cicero's intricate weaving of
the two senses of law, let us first look at some of his ex·
plicit statements on the subject. His first is a report of the
most learned": "Law is the highest reason, seated in
nature, which orders what is to be done and forbids the
opposite. This reason, when it is settled and accomplished
in the mind of a human being, is law" (1.18). In his own
name Cicero restates the formulation as follows: "[Law] is
a force (vis) of nature, the mind and reason of the prudent
man, the standard of the just and of injustice" (1.19). In
the three other places in Book I where law is defined, it is
"correct reason" (1.23) or "correct reason in ordering and
forbidding" (1.33, 42). Law is natural in the same way that
reason is natural, as a gift of nature bestowed on every human being (1.33). But only in the prudent man, whose rea·
son is developed as far as it can be, does reason become
"correct," and so only his commands and prohibitions are
14
truly "law."
In spite of the exalted tone in which Cicero delivers
these pronouncements, we note that law is nothing more
than the reasonable orders of the sensible man. There is
no trace whatever here of a table of definite, eternally bind·
ing precepts, of the sort characteristic of the natural-law
doctrine, actually medieval, that scholars generally attrib·
ute to Cicero 6 His formulation avoids entirely the notori·
ous dilemma between inflexible rules of scholastic natural
law and the Machiavellian renunciation of any natural law
whatever. Cicero's alternative is so simple, yet so radical,
that cognizance of it has rarely been taken. True law-Ci·
cera himself persistently avoids the term "natural law"
(lex naturalis or lex naturae)-true law, then, to put it
bluntly, is whatever the wise man orders.' If he commands
you to worship Zeus, then worship of Zeus is part of the
true law. If he says, "believe that you are sprung directly
from the earth itself and that your soul is compounded of
gold or silver or bronze," then such beliefs too will be en·
joined by true law. Far from being eternal, the true law
will be subject to change whenever the sensible man sees
that circumstances call for it. And conflict between the
positive law of the actual political order, infused as it must
be with concessions to particularity, and a higher law
whose demands cannot be met in this world, need not oc·
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
cur. To the extent that the government is prudent or that
the wise orders of the original law-giver continue to fit
present conditions, the statutes on the books and the true
law will be one and the same.
In light of all this, how can Cicero maintain that law is
"one"? (1.42). What center governs the seemingly indefi·
nile latitude granted to the prudent man and prevents it
from spinning off into orderless multiplicity and caprice?
How can what is one be many? Cicero provides an oblique
resolution of these questions in the lengthy set-piece ora·
tion that occupies the bulk of Book I. The nature of the
just, he begins, must be sought in the nature of man (17),
and human nature, like the divine, achieves its peak and
perfection through virtue (25). Virtue, in turn, is the
steady and continuous rational conduct of life, in which
prudence follows the naturally honorable and avoids the
naturally dishonorable courses of action; virtue is "reason
perfected" (45). And since reason, "when it is full-grown
and perfected, is duly called wisdom" (23), prudence in·
valves the full development of man's rationality and
thoughtfulness.
From these statements we might expect Cicero to pro·
claim unambiguously that wisdom, acquired by philosophy, comprising knowledge of self as well as the nature of
all things, is the human good (cf. 58-62). Such a standard
would furnish the prudent man with a reliable guide as he
crafted his laws for a given polity, just as the legislator of
Plato's Republic looks up to the idea of the good as a pat·
tern for his artful lawmaking (484c-d). The laws would
then prescribe such educational practices and institutional arrangements as would issue in habits of body and
mind conducive to the development of reason in every·
one so far as that is possible. The variety of prudent legis·
lative codes would betoken an application of the one truth
about the human good, qualified by the vagaries of local
circumstances. Laws and customs appropriate to men
who look up to Jave and honor martial valor would be far
different from those suited to men who believe in human
equality and regard the career of a businessman as more
respectable than that of a general.
This interpretive expectation, however, stumbles over
the fact that Cicero disclaims such precise knowledge of
the good. It is true that Cicero allows us to form the im·
pression that he believes he knows not only the good but
the nature of the cosmos and the gods themselves. In con·
sidering his grandiloquent foray, however, we must not
fail to notice the light, bantering exchange that touches it
off, in which the Epicurean Atticus, who can be pre·
sumed not to believe it, agrees to Cicero's assertion of
Divine rule over the cosmos (21 ). He perhaps accepts
Cicero's teleo-theology because he is aware of its
usefulness in supporting the rights of property from
which he benefits and which provides leisure for his phi·
losophizing (cf. III.37). 8 And Cicero's own joking over this
solemn matter is far from reassuring.
We particularly wonder about Cicero's true convictions
in light of his surprising admission at the end of his long
77
�speech that the controversy over the end or highest of
goods, the finis bonorum, will not even be investigated in
their conversation (1.52-57). This theme, which provides
the title for that book of Cicero's which according to himself is most worth reading, On the Ends of Goods and Evils
(finibus bonorum et malorum, 1.11) would divert the inquiry into an extended and perhaps endless weighing of
the alternative accounts of the good. We infer this because although in that book Cicero refutes the Stoic and
Epicurean teachings on the good, he will not affirm there
any definite opinion of his own. To be sure, he finds the
Peripatetic doctrine "probable" or "praiseworthy" (probabilis), but this, he says, in no way qualifies his skeptical
stance toward all of them (De finibus, V.7, 75-76). Although Cicero does not advertise his skepticism in the
Laws, his explicit omission of an account of the good
points to his knowledge that he does not know it. Neither
here nor elsewhere does Cicero claim to have resolved
this first of all moral and political questions.
Quintus, however, is quite satisfied with Cicero's
speech, and he even believes that the nature of the good
has been sufficiently brought to light (1.56). Certainly all
those fine words about honor, virtue, and the gods lend
themselves to Quintus's sanguine conclusion, but it appears that his urgent concern for a code of law to live by
distracts him from the central question of the good, for he
now asserts that that question has nothing to do with the
subject of law (57). Quintus's urgency springs from the
same source as the urgency of law itself, which cannot
hold in abeyance its dispensations of what it holds to be
just and unjust without endangering the political order.
So Quintus calls Cicero and Atticus back from the leisure
of philosophy to the practical problems of everyday life
that demand instant attention, and thus he unknowingly
draws a veil over the unsolved problem. Cicero remarks
ironically that Quintus speaks "most prudently" (57), and
he accommodatingly closes the discussion of the highest
good.
How then are we to understand Cicero's account of
law? Or, putting the question another way, what constitutes the correctness or reasonableness of reason if no
final criterion of good is forthcoming by which reason can
orient itself?
Even if complete knowledge of the good is unavailable,
as Cicero's skepticism implies, we may infer that an approximation to wisdom is accessible through the
assiduous exercise of the understanding. Cicero's final
peroration to Book I paints a picture of perfect wisdom
that can be a standard, even if unattained, of human striving (58-62). Self-knowledge is the key. For once we
thoroughly examine and test ourselves, says Cicero, we
learn that we are equipped by nature for acquiring
wisdom, and we sense that the mind, as a sort of image of
the gods, is worthy of care and cultivation (59). But Cicero
does not promise a consummation of wisdom; using the
future perfect tense, he speaks as one not yet wise, but
aiming to become so: "when [the soul] will have ex-
78
amined ... the nature of all things .... " (61 ). Cicero's own
wisdom extends no further than the "human wisdom" of
Socrates, who, by knowing his own ignorance, is spurred
on to an active pursuit of knowledge to supply that
defect.'
The law laid down by such a man would, I think, have a
double aspect aiming at the single end of wisdom. First,
like the legal code mentioned above, it would nourish decorous moral habits and vigorous thoughtfulness by
means of appropriate rules of conduct and education.
Cicero says, "Law should be a commender of virtues and
detractor from vices" (58). Second, the law's formulation
would itself be both an example of and an incentive to,
thought. Perhaps, like the religious laws that Cicero proposes in Book II, the law's proclamations could be discerned, by a close observer, to be deliberately incomplete
or ambiguous or an image of something else. The theological preface that Cicero attaches to those laws declares at
once that "the gods are lords and governors of all things"
and that "it is sacrilege to say that any thing stands above
the nature of all things" (II.l5-16). Are the gods governed
by nature or are nature's habits subject to divine exception? The philosophic inquiry into the relation of nature
and the will of the gods is as it were built into the law itself, for a self-contradiction embedded in an authoritative
statement can only be resolved by rational consideration
of the doubtful point. 10
I would propose another, deeper sense in which law can
be an exemplary embodiment of philosophy or human
wisdom. This sense can also help to explain our earlier
questions: how the law's variety, which we attributed to
the prudent man's adaptation of wisdom to conditions,
can be reconciled with its alleged oneness, and how and
why the vulgar and precise senses of law are mingled in
the dialogue. Philosophy for Cicero is inseparable from its
beautiful presentation in particular form: "I have always
judged that philosophy to be complete which is able to
speak about the greatest questions abundantly and with
suitable adornment (ornate)." 11 One of Ciceros' characters
in de oratore identifies the complete philosopher with the
complete orator (III.56-73), since the capacity to think
well necessarily involves the capacity to speak well about
what one is thinking. Similarly, if we take a larger, synoptic look at Cicero's teaching on law, we are inclined to the
conclusion that the perfect philosopher is the perfect
legislator, and that law in the strictest sense is philosophy.
If "law is taken as one possible form of wisdom's displaying itself "with suitable adornment," then a well-crafted
legal code would be constructed like any other philosophically informed work of art. The variety and particularity of
true laws would therefore derive not only from the disparity of men and nations, but also from philosophy's inherent need to show itself forth. For reason only becomes
visible in display, and a display is always cast in particular
form. Unless the truth that is thought is given "a local
habitation and a name," it does not manifest itself and
therefore is not itself, for the essence of truth is to be the
SUMMER 1981
�unconcealment of what is naturally hidden. It has to be
brought out into the open, usually through words. And
once truth is given concrete shape, it of necessity appears
as a partial, particular, incomplete fragment or image of
what is inherently one. 12
Let us return to the two senses of law deliberately inter·
woven in Cicero's text. There is a difficulty with my
earlier argument that now must be faced. One law, the
true one, is ~~the reason and mind of the wise man for ordering and deterring," which is "eternal" and can never
be repealed (II.8, 14). About law popularly understood
Cicero says: "those things that have been drawn up for
peoples variously and for the times have the name 'law'
more by indulgence (favore) than in fact (re)" (ILl!). The
statements quoted here require that true law be eternal
and exclude from it the element of timeliness. Yet I con·
tinue to maintain that true law is whatever the wise man
orders, which will vary according to circumstances. How
can this be? Can one and the same law be both law and
not law, both eternal and temporal? Can law in truth and
law by convention be the same? I believe they can, for it
all depends upon how the one "law" is understood. Inso·
far as it is thought through from the rational perspective
of the philosophizing legislator, the law is true; insofar as
it is understood "popularly," that is, to the extent that its
rational conception and intention are missed, then the
and since correct reason is presumably reason perfected,
then law and perfected nature are one. So Cicero's ac·
count of law, his "politics/' is also his account of nature
44
and nature's end, his physics" and "metaphysics." A sign
of this is that the doubleness of law, which both reveals
and conceals, remaining one while adapting to particular
conditions, is like the doubleness of nature itself. Its prin·
ciple is one, its forms diverse; it shows itself but loves to
hide. 14 When Cicero says that law is "something eternal
that directs the whole world by its wisdom in ordering and
prohibiting" (II.8); he is personifying, for the sake of his
proposed civil law, the truth that nature aims at and that
rational man grasps in part.
Why is it that when people accept law as a rule to live
by, they rarely recover or repeat the discovery that gener·
ated its founding? Most men are blind to the single truth
that unites the variety of good institutions found in well·
governed cities and nations or in books like Cicero's Laws.
Once established, law becomes routine, obvious, boringit becomes a convention that reflects only dimly the tre·
mendous thought lying behind it and in it. Why is this so?
Cicero's comparison of law to poetry suggests an answer.
Like poetry, law as convention is sweet. We take comfort
in the simple answers affirmed in its familiar cadences,
and we do not gladly expose ourselves to the uncertainty
that goes with sustained inquiry into its truth. Even when
law is only conventionally or "by indulgence" a law, not in
we moderns, enlightened as we are, question our religious
fact.
At the moment when law is conceived in the mind of a
and moral upbringing, we mostly do so in the name of a
yet deeper unexamined faith in such received opinions as
the value of learning, compassion for our fellow men, or
the vulgar notion that wealth, fame, and enjoying oneself
constitute happiness. Seeing through convention to na·
ture, from law by indulgence to law in fact, means repudi·
ating the comforts of convention. Only when the law's
"poetry," its affirmations of eternity, are read "philosoph·
ically" does it become more than an untruthful instru·
ment of slothful pleasure.
Alfarabi succinctly epitomizes the teachings on law that
I am attributing to Cicero, as follows:
prudent man, a discovery occurs and truth becomes mani-
fest to him, so far as he grasps it, in the artifact he is about
to produce. Truth remains present in the law only when it
is being thought or rethought in its originating sense. So
its truth is eternal only equivocally, during such thought·
ful occasions, as the fruit of the mind's vigorous exertion.
It is not something lying there present at hand, open to
the view of anyone who casts an idle glance in its direc·
tion. But neither is its truth a Nietzschean contrivance of
the mind or will, that imposes itself on an otherwise
meaningless external world. The truth of the law is like
that of any well-crafted dramatic or philosophical work.
Consider the Platonic dialogue. If the reader grasps only
its obvious surface teaching, no "philosophy" will be
transmitted or rather will occur, since "the philosophy of
Plato" is an event that only happens through an active
thinking about the work by the reader, in such a way that
he repeats the thought of its author by discerning the
weave of its dramatic action and its explicit argument.
Such also is true law.
True law, as philosophy, seeks to discover what it is. 13
To the extent that it does so, law reveals nature. But
"Now these things [namely, the images representing the theoretical things, and proper convictions about the practical] are
philosophy when they are in the soul of the legislator. They
are religion when they are in the souls of the multitude. For
when the legislator knows these things, they are evident to
him by sure insight, whereas what is established in the souls of
the multitude is through an image and a persuasive argument.
Although it is the legislator who also represents these things
through images, neither the images nor the persuasive arguments are intended for himself. As far as he is concerned, they
are certain . ... They are a religion for others, whereas, so far
as he is concerned, they are philosophy." IS
nature's own end, its core, is reason perfected, as can be
inferred from Cicero's identification of virtue and per·
fected reason (!.45), and of virtue and perfected nature
(!.25). (Cicero's attribution of reason to the whole cosmos
shows that reason is not confined only to human nature.)
But since Cicero also links law with correct reason (!.23),
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Although Cicero's specific legal proposals presented in
Books II and Ill appear to be a hodgepodge of traditions
from the Roman past, they present a different aspect
when read with this twofold sense of law in mind. His
polytheistic theology in particular deserves scrutiny for its
79
�covert truth, as is indicated by his replacement of the expression "the wise and prudent man" with "highest jupiter" (ILl 0) in the context of composing prefaces to his
proposed laws. From here we begin to make sense of the
fact that the only gods mentioned by name in Cicero's religious law are jupiter and Ceres (representing, respectively, wisdom and grain from the earth), the household
gods of the hearth (the Lares), apotheosized human beings
of exemplary virtue, and deified excellences such as
Mind, Piety, and Virtue (II.l9-22). Evidently a purgation
of the Roman pantheon is in process. The very inclusion
of a god called "Mind" in the list ought to give pause,
since there is no record as far as I know of any Roman tradition assigning divinity to this name. Religion is the people's image of philosophy. It is opium indeed for those
who fail to think, but a stimulant to the rest.
We are now prepared to speak to Cicero's most profound
critic-indeed, the most profound critic of the philosophical tradition stemming from Plato-Martin Heidegger.
Speaking of the translation of Greek philosophy into
Latin by Cicero and others, Heidegger says: "The event
of this translation of Greek into Roman is nothing indifferent and harmless, but rather the first chapter of the
course of the exclusion and alienation of the original essence of Greek philosophy." The rest of the course of
Western philosophy, Heidegger claims, leads us through
Christianity and modernity to the predicament of today,
where an "emasculation of the spirit" reigns, where, in
the grip of technology, which reduces all things to raw materials and resources to be exploited for an indefinite variety of indifferent purposes, "all things reach the same
level, a surface that is like a blind mirror that reflects no
longer, that throws back nothing.""
The impoverished spirit of the present has come about
as the result of a progressive narrowing of the meaning of
being in Western philosophy. For the Greeks, being, or
rather physis ("nature"), which comprehends beings as a
whole, is that which spontaneously emerges out of itself
and endures, standing steadily by itself and manifesting
itself. Physis also designates the process of emerging, the
effort and struggle through which things become what
they are by finding their completion and end. This process includes not only the generation of plants and
animals but also and especially the bringing-forth-into-thelight achieved by our thought and speech. Heidegger
maintains that the post-Aristotelian tradition, presumably
including Cicero, was formed directly or indirectly by a superficial Platonism that forgot the becoming- and thinking-aspect of physis and reduced it to what can be gazed at
by the mind's eye (the ideas) and what can be an eternal
model for human life to imitate (the good). This forgetting
took place in part because of the incapacity of the Latin
language to capture the philosophically indispensable resonances of such decisive Greek words as logos (speech),
aletheia (truth), and especially physis. Thus they inadvertently deprived physis of its richness and depth. In its
place they installed, we may infer, a less ambiguous world
80
of concepts and facts that could be described, to the extent
that human knowledge reached, in propositional formulations suitable for dissemination in schools and treatises.
This change, in turn, which made physis far more accessible to man, became the foundation for the modern transformation of nature into manipulable material available
for an indefinite array of projects of the will. 17
If Cicero truly bears part of the responsibility, however
remote, for the degradation of man and thought that
threatens to overwhelm us today, it would be wrong for us
to defend him. But our discussion of his teaching on law
shows that Greek thinking, far from being smothered, was
recovered in Cicero's work. Cicero was no stale Platonist.
If he had contented himself with being a mere translator,
of which Heidegger almost accuses him, then he would indeed have failed to convey the thought of the Greeks, for
the Latin language simply cannot perform what Heidegger shows that Greek can do. 18 Cicero overcame this obstacle by the arrangement of what he wrote; he created
complex dialogues and double-edged speeches that retained and re-presented the Greek insight into truth and
opinion, the one and the many, being and appearance.
Cicero's teaching on law is from this perspective a restatement and rethinking of the Greek physis, which Heidegger was the first to recover in our century.
Cicero's teaching on law instances the decisive characteristic of the writings of the best philosophers, namely,
exotericism. By "exotericism" I mean a manner of writing
that presents an apparently straightforward outer doctrine which however is substantially qualified and deepened by the reader's reflection on the movement and
details of the argument. 19 By using such a twofold outer
and inner teaching as I have described in this essay, Cicero and the other thoughtful successors of Plato recapitulated in their writings the doubleness vibrating in physis
itself that was discovered by the Greeks. Nature both
shows itself and withdraws; it affords a surface appearance that comes to a stand and yet comprises an inner development, grasped in thought, that gives the lie to that
surface permanence. Similarly, the books of Plato and
Cicero in their weave of surface and thought imitate and
thereby reveal nature's nature.
Although Heidegger recovered the original sense of
physis through his rereading of the pre-Socratics, he was
unaware of the exotericism employed by Plato and later
authors, and so when he compared the early Greek physis
to the doctrines that followed in the later history of
philosophy, beginning with Plato, he plausibly concluded
that a forgetfulness of being has dogged the thinking of all
the philosophers. Whence followed his thesis that philosophy's history describes the course of a gradual withdrawal
or self-concealment of being, culminating in the present
"night of the world." 20 When Leo Strauss and Jacob Klein
rediscovered the exoteric character of the writings of
ancient and medieval philosophers, partly under the im·
petus of Heidegger's recovery of physis, 21 the Heideggerian presumption about the philosophers' forgetfulness
SUMMER 1981
�of being could be strongly challenged, The multitude of
philosophical doctrines among Greek, Roman, and Christian thinkers is not necessarily a consequence of the blind
dispensation of fate, as Heidegger's radical historcism
would aver. Some of these writers may have chosen their
doctrines quite deliberately, with a view to the changing
circumstances of the people they were addressing and as
the particular embodiment of the writers' insights. The
history of philosophy, at least in pre-modern times, may
chronicle the thoughtful responses to these circumstances and the various depictions of a ('common" truth,
rather than the shifting conceptions of being over which
the thinkers have no control. Their deepest insights may
well be the same. Hence the recovery of exotericism is the
condition for the refutation of historicism.
Cicero employed exotericism to redeem philosophy
from its Roman and late Greek tendency toward doctrinalism, which treated nature as eternally present to view,
lying open to the propositional descriptions and contented gaze of apolitical contemplatives like Atticus.
Cicero also directed his teaching toward the educated
politicians like his brother Quintus who, being ignorant of
the unity of true and popular law, saw no need to engage
in abstruse philosophical considerations as a prelude to
decent political practice (1.56-57). By directing Atticus's
attention from nature to politics and Quintus's from politics to nature, Cicero points each of them to the one truth
of which each touches only a part. He thus made available
to the Latin-speaking world if not a salvation from the impending tyranny of the Roman empire, at least an example from which a later revival of liberty and philosophy
could take its bearing.
1. Newsweek, December 17, 1979, 34.
2. See my three-part essay, "On Education," Improving College and
University Teaching 28/1 (Winter 1980), 3-7; 28/2 (Spring 1980), 61-66;
and 28/3 (Summer 1980), 99-104.
3. This is particularly so in the case of Cicero's Laws: Elizabeth
Rawson, "The Interpretation of Cicero's 'De legibus,' " in Aufstieg und
Niedergang der rOmischen Welt, ed. Hildegard Temporini, Berlin 1973,
Part I, val. ' ~40.
4. Exem]
c Strauss on Xenophon is On Tyranny, New York 1963.
5. This oL
cion on law, and the point to be pursued later connect·
ing the partJcular laws of Book II with law in the strict sense, were first
developed in part by Eric Salem in a graduate seminar paper at the
University of Dallas.
6. The scholarly consensus on Cicero has changed little since George
H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 3rd ed., New York 1961,
163-167. As for the medieval doctrine, even St. Thomas Aquinas
(Summa Theologica, 1-11.100.8) appears more rigid than he is, for although he maintains that the ten commandments are indispensably part
of the natural law, he qualifies this by admitting that the only moral
precept that admits of no exception is "that nothing undue be done to
anyone and that each one be rendered his due; for it is according to this
reasoning that the precepts of the decalogue are to be understood." The
spirit of Acquinas's doctrine comes very close to the spirit of Cicero's.
For a different account of Acquina's natural law-but one that agrees
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
with the tendency noted here-see Ernest L. Fortin, "Thomas Aquinas
and the Reform of the Augustinian Natural Law Doctrine," paper
delivered at the 1975 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, mimeographed.
7. Quintus uses the expression "law of nature" at 1.56, but Cicero himself never does. As a man of the city, Quintus is unaware of the problem
embedded in that facile formulation. As far as I know, the only other occurrences of "natural law" in Cicero are in On the Nature of the Gods,
1.36, and in On Duties, III (several times). In the former instance, the expression is attributed to the Stoic Zeno by an Epicurean critic, who may
be exaggerating the Stoic claim in order to refute if more easily. And in
On Duties Cicero has deliberately adapted the imprecise manner of
speech.about morality described on page 76 above. Apparently Cicero
himself, when speaking in his own name, hesitated to yoke nature and
law (convention) in an unqualified bond. Cicero does occasionally speak
in the Laws of ius naturae, the right or justice of nature (1.36, 40); this expression grates less because of the wide range of ius from "legal enactment" to ''that which is right." Helmut Koester argues persuasively that
there is no natural law teaching properly so called either in the pre-Ciceronian Stoics or in Cicero himself: natural law in the sense of an eternally valid binding rule of moral conduct first appears in the Jewish
author Philo of Alexandria (Koester, "Nomos Physeos: The Concept of
Natural Law in Greek Thought," in Religions of Antiquity: Essays in
Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, ed. Jacob Neusner, Leiden
1970, 521-41). Hence Leo Strauss's remarks in Natural Right and History, Chicago 1953, 15·4-55, on Cicero's relation to Stoicism are misleading insofar as they appear to attribute to the Stoics a natural law that
commands particular moral duties.
8. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 154.
9. Plato, Apology, 20d-23b.
10. The "preludes" to the laws in Plato's Laws perform a similar function, as is shown by Thomas L. Pangle, The Laws of Plato, New York
1980, 445-49, commenting on Laws 718b-724a,
11. Tusculan Disputations, 1.7. The importance of ornatus for Cicero's
thought is discussed by Raymond DiLorenzo, "The Critique of Socrates
in Cicero's De Oratore," Philosophy and Rhetoric 11 (Fall1978), 247-61.
12. The conception of truth informii:tg the latter part of this paragraph
is the Greek one, as explained by Martin Heidegger, Introduction to
Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim, New Haven 1959.
13. Cf. Plato, Minos, 315a: "Law wishes to be a discovery of being."
14. Besides Heraclitus's Fragment 123-physis kryptesthai philei {nature
loves to hide)-compare this remark made by one of Cicero~s characters
in de finibus, V.4l: " ... at first, at any rate, nature is marvellously hidden and can be neither observed nor known; as we grow older, however,
we gradually or rather tardily come, as it were, to know ourselves."
15. "The Attainment of Happiness," in Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato
and Aristotle, trans. Muhsin Mahdi, Ithaca 1969, 47.
16. Introduction to Metaphysics, ch. 1;·the quotations are on pp. 13, 45,
and 46 (translations mine); "The Question Concerning Technology," in
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, New York 1977.
17. Introduction to Metaphysics, especially ch. 2 and 4.
18. Consider, for example, his discussion of physis (Introduction to Metaphysics, 13-17, 100-101), aletheia and doxa (102-105), and logos
(119-136).
19. Leo Strauss has written widely on this topic. See, for example, Persecution and the Art of Writing, Glencoe 1952.
20. Introduction to Metaphysics; the expression "forgetfulness of being"
(Seinsvergessenheit) appears in Wegmarken, Frankfurt 1967, 243; "night
of the world" in "What are Poets For?" in Poetry, Language, Thought,
New York 1971, 94.
21. Leo Strauss, "An Unspoken Prologue to a Public Lecture at St.
John's," Interpretation 7 (September 1978), 2; "Klein was the first to understand the possibility which Heidegger had opened without intending
it: the possibility of a genuine return to classical philosophy, to the
philosophy of Aristotle and of Plato, a return with open eyes and in full
clarity about the infinite difficulties which it entails." See also Jacob
Klein and Leo Strauss, "A Giving of Accounts," The College 22 (April
1970), I, 4.
81
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<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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1981-07
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Radista, Leo
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Sisson, Barbara J.
von Oppen, Beate Ruhm
Wilson, Curtis A.
Sachs, Joe
Brann, Eva T. H.
Bacon, Helen H.
Blum, Etta
Aron, Raymond
Bruell, Christopher
Liben, Meyer
Roth, Robert
West, Thomas G.
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Volume XXXII, Number 3 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Summer 1981.
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The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_32_No_3_1981
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Annapolis, MD
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�Editor:
Leo Raditsa
Managing Editor:
Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant:
Barbara]. Sisson
Consulting Editors:
Eva Brann, Beate Ruhm von Oppen,
Curtis A. Wilson.
Editor's Note
Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome,
but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope in each instance.
Requests for subscriptions should be sent to The St.
John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404.
Although there are currently no subscription fees, voluntary contributions toward production costs are gratefully
received.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW (formerly THE COLLEGE) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Edward G. Sparrow, Dean. Published twice yearly, usually in winter and summer.
Volume XXXI!
WINTER 1981
Number 2
© 1981, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0010-0862
Cover: Library of Hadrian, west facade. Photo by Alison Frantz.
Composition: Britton Composition Co.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co.
�~HESTJOHNSREVIEWWINTER8]
1
The Libraries of Ancient Athens Homer A. Thompson
17
Guardian Politics in The Deer Hunter Nelson Lund
29
The Scientific Background of Descartes' Dualism Arthur
Collins
43
Family Pages, Little Facts: October George Dennison
49
The Latin-American Neurosis
53
The Origins of Celestial Dynamics: Kepler and Newton
Wilson
66
Recent Events in the West Leo Raditsa
82
The Streets on which Herman Melville Was Born and Died
Meyer Liben
85
DeGaulle's Le fil de /'epee
95
FIRST READINGS
Irwin's Plato's Moral Theory
98
101
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Carlos Rangel
Curtis
Will Momsey
Davtd Bolotin
AT HOME AND ABROAD
Letter from Nicarauga and Guatemala Honor Bulkley
FROM OUR READERS
t
�Figure 1. West side of the Agora; view from the southeast, 1956.
tl
WINTER 1981
�The Libraries of Ancient Athens
Homer A. Thompson
Our knowledge of the Athenian libraries is now, and always will be, exceedingly scrappy. For the Classical and
Hellenistic periods we have a little, but tantalizingly elusive,
literary evidence, supported by virtually no archaeological
remains. For the Roman period, in contrast, we can point
to a couple of actual buildings, but the literary testimonia
become extremely meager. Nor need I remind you that
none of the individual libraries known from ancient Athens can compare in fame or in institutional importance
with the libraries of Alexandria or of Pergamon, which
stand out above all others. Athens, moreover, could not
vie in the sheer number of her libraries with Rome; according to the regional census of Constantine in A.D. 350,
Rome had twenty-eight public libraries.
Nevertheless we shall find reason to believe that it was
Athens which contributed the expertise, the "know how,"
essential to the organization of the Alexandrian Library.
The kings of Pergamon, in turn, in setting up their library
a century later, undoubtedly drew heavily on both Athens
and Alexandria. As for the contents of these justly famous
libraries, there can be no doubt that the contribution from
Athenian authors was greater than that from any other
national group.
Interesting also ·is the variety in the kinds of libraries
known to have existed in ancient Athens. We read about
private collections, academic libraries, and public libraries,
ranging in date from the Archaic period into Roman Imperial times. The money for setting up and maintaining
these libraries came from various sources: private philanthropy, culture-conscious foreign princes, the Roman emField Director of Excavations from 1947 to 1967, Horner A. Thompson
has worked on the most recent excavations, since their beginning in
1931, of the ancient Agora in Athens, where clearance of the Agora of
Classic'al times is now nearing completion. He has been a member of the
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., since 1947.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
peror. The testimony of such non-Athenian writers as
Polybios and Plutarch indicates that Athens was a good
place in which to carry on serious scholarly research.
Aristeides of Mysia, writing in the second century after
Christ, observed that Athens had stocks of books such as
you could find nowhere else in the world, together, Aristeides adds, with splendid baths, race courses, and gymnasia. (Panathenaicus XIII, 188).
According to a widespread tradition the first library in
Athens was formed by Peisistratos, the tyrant who with
his sons dominated Athens for much of the sixth century
B.C. He is reported to have made his collection accessible
to the people, and after the expulsion of the tyrant's family
in 510 B.C. the people are said to have added to it. The
collection, we are told, was carried off by the Persians in
479 B.C., but was sent back to Athens after Alexander's
conquests by Seleukos Nikator. All this sounds rather too
good to be true. How many books were available anywhere in the Greek world at this time, and how many
Athenians were capable of reading in the sixth century?
We know, however, that there was a great upsurge of interest in the arts, notably architecture, sculpture, and
painting, in the time of the Tyrants. Distinguished poets
such as Simonides and Anakreon were induced to come to
Athens. Peisistratos and his son Hipparchos were credited
with bringing together the Homeric poems into their canonical form, and with making the recital of those poems
a regular part of the newly founded national festival, the
Panathenaia. In view of all this I am prepared to believe
that Peisistratos may indeed have put together a small
personal collection of books; if so, he may well, in keeping
with his genial character, have allowed these books to be
consulted by interested citizens. But I would stop short of
having this collection carried off by the Persians: if
readers were few in Athens surely they would have been
even fewer in Persepolis!
1
�Figure 2. The Athenian Agora in the 2nd century A.D.; view from the
northwest. Drawing by John Travlos.
There is little record of book collecting in Athens in the
century and a half between Peisistratos and Aristotle. The
Athenians perhaps, were too busy writing to have time
for collecting. Yet this period witnessed a marked growth
in the reading public in Athens. One of many indications
is the fact that the practice of publishing official docu·
ments such as laws, decrees, treaties, and financial accounts began for all practical purposes at the end of the
sixth century and increased steadily through the fifth and
fourth centuries. This was a costly procedure, and it was
not likely to have been followed had not a large proportion of the citizens been able to read the inscriptions. The
growing interest in the theater in the course of the fifth
century may also have been a factor in stimulating the
circulation and collection of written texts. Scripts were
needed, after all, by the performers, and they were no
doubt wanted by literary-minded citizens.
In this connection it is interesting that Euripides should
have been sufficiently well-known as a book collector to
have drawn jibes from Aristophanes in his Frogs (!. 943)
and to have been credited by Athenaeus (1, 4) with the
possession of "one of the largest libraries in the ancient
world." Another collector of the late fifth century of
whom we read was Eukleides, presumably the archon of
1
2
403/2 B.C., the year in which the Athenians turned officially from the old Attic script to the Ionic.
Let me note in passing that a date around 400 B.C. ap·
pears to have been a turning point in the history of the
state archives of Athens. Public records had of course
been kept in earlier times, but in a random way, whereas
from now on procedure became more regular. About this
time a new meeting place for the Council of 500 was
erected on the west side of the Agora, and the old Council
House seems now to have been made available for the
storage of all manner of official records. One should be
careful not to equate archives with libraries. In antiquity,
however, official documents were written on papyrus or
parchment just like books, and they were rolled in the
same way. Consequently the methods of storing and of
cataloguing must have been similar. The same feeling for
orderly arrangement was essential to success in the keeping of both records and books. (Figures 1-5.)
We are woefully ignorant of the physical arrangements
employed in the Classical period for the storage of books.
We get some help, however, from the school scenes that
appear occasionally on red-figured vases of the fifth cen·
tury. In these scenes the rolls stand upright in wooden
chests with folding lids of a type used for many purposes
WINTER 1981
�in the Greek household. It seems probable that in the
Classical and Hellenistic periods books were stored in
similar containers even in large libraries. In the Roman
period, however, we know that the rolls were stacked hori·
zontally on wooden shelves, sometimes set in cupboards.
Men of letters are often shown with book boxes by their
sides: round or rectangular cases in wich the rolls stood
vertically. (Figure 3a.)
Strabo, writing in the time of Augustus, observed of Aristotle that he was "the first man of our knowledge to col·
lect books" (XIII,!, 54: -rr:p&roo, §'v 'iop.<v, ovvor-yaywv
{3.(3f..ia). If by this Strabo meant, as he probably did, the
first to build up a library as distinct from amassing volumes, his statement is entirely plausible. Let me remind
you that Aristotle came back to Athens in 335 B.C. as a
mature, indeed a distinguished scholar. He rented some
buildings in a grove sacred to Apollo Lykeios and the
Muses, and there set up the school which took its name,
the "Lyceum," from the divinity. Various indications,
some archaeological and some literary, point to a location
in the area of the modern Syntagma Square and the Na·
tional Garden, i.e., outside the ancient city wall toward
the northeast. Here Aristotle lived and taught until he was
obliged to leave Athens because of anti-Macedonian feeling in 323 B.C.; he died the following year in Chalkis.
Aristotle's style of scholarship necessitated a new conception in the handling of books. His range was wide: the
natural sciences, moral philosophy, politics, literary criticism, to name only the principal areas. In addition to his
original writings on these subjects he put together various
lists for general use such as records of the victors at the
Delphic and Olympic festivals and at the dramatic con·
tests in Athens. He must have worked with great intensity
himself, and he also employed assistants. As an example
of the amount of research that might go into the making
of a single book let me remind you that in preparation for
the writing of the Politics Aristotle had monographs composed on the constitutions of no less than !58 states; only
Figure 3. (Above) West
side of the Agora in
the 2nd century after
Christ (view from the
southeast). Model by
John Trllvlos.
Figure 4. (middle)
Tholos and Old Bouleuterion (view from
the southeast, ca. 450
B.C.). Drawing by
W. B. Dinsmoor, Jr.
Figure 5. (below)
Headquarters of the
Council of 500 (Boule),
ca. 350 B.C .. Old Bouleuterion and Tholos
are dark, New Bouleuterion and its Propylon light. Drawing by
fohn Travlos.
Figure
3a.
Attic red.figure
Lekytho' (450-25 B.C.) attributed to the Kluegmann painter,
Louvre.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
one of these special studies has survived: The Constitution of the Athenians. From the tempo of Aristotelian
scholarship we may be sure that it was based not only on a
large, but also on a well organized collection of books.
Aristotle, we must remember, was not only a great
scholar; he was also a busy teacher and the head of an active school. We have no knowledge of where he kept his
books or of how freely they were made accessible to his
collaborators and pupils. One thing, however, is certain:
the library remained the personal property of Aristotle,
and as such it was bequeathed by him to his successor,
Theophrastos. Theophrastos added his own holdings to
Aristotle's and bequeathed the lot to a friend and fellow
3
�Figure 6. Marble
head of Aristotle,
copy (lst century
A.D.), probably of a
portrait commissioned by Aristotle's
pupil, Alexander,
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.
scholar, Neleus, who was presumably thought to be in line
for the succession. But Neleus was not appointed; he
went off home to Skepsis in the Troad, taking the library
with him. (All this we Jearn from Strabo [XIII, l, 54], and I
continue to draw on Strabo's familiar and hair-raising
account).
Neleus's heirs in the Troad were ordinary people who
paid little attention to the library until alarmed by the efforts of the kings of nearby Pergamon to collect books for
their new library. The heirs then concealed the books in
an underground vault. Here they lay, suffering from moisture and bookworms, until eventually they were sold for a
large sum to one Apellikon of Teas. The sale included the
books of both Aristotle and Theophrastos. Apellikon is described as an ardent collector but a bibliophile rather than
a philosopher. He had copies of the damaged texts made,
but the gaps were restored with many errors. The result of
all this was that the Peripatetics who came after Theophrastos had virtually no books and so were not able to
philosophize in any practical way. After the faulty copies
became available they were able once more, to be sure, to
philosophize and Aristotelize but were forced to call most
of their statements mere probabilities.
Apellikon, Strabo continues, perished in the Mithridatic Wars. The original library fell into the hands of the
Roman general, Sulla, and was taken by him to Rome in
84 B.C. There the texts suffered once again through being carelessly copied for unscrupulous booksellers. The
next step is reported by Plutarch in his life of Sulla (XXVI,
l-2). The grammarian Tyrannion, a lover of Aristotle, saw
to it that a set of copies was sent to Andronikos of Rhodes,
later to become head of the Peripatetic School. This set
was used by Andronikos as the basis for the complete edi·
tion on which subsequent Aristotelian scholarship has for
the most part rested.
4
The account given by Strabo and Plutarch is very circumstantial and seems credible. But according to another
version preserved by Athenaeus, Neleus, the heir ofTheophrastos, sold the library to Ptolemy Philadelphos, King of
Egypt (283-246 B.C.). It may well be that the collection
was in fact divided, part going to Skepsis and so eventually
to Rome, the rest going to Alexandria.
So much for the most famous of all the libraries of Athens. It has had few rivals in the number of its vicissitudes,
and fewer still in the extent of its influence on scholarship.
Strabo, after describing Aristotle as the first man known
to have assembled books, went on to say that it was Aristotle who taught the kings of Egypt how to organize a library. This is an interesting but incredible statement. We
do know, however, that Aristotle's successor, Theophrastos, was invited to Alexandria by the first Ptolemy. Theophrastos declined, and Ptolemy had to be satisfied with
Theophrastos' pupil, Demetrios of Phaleron. In inviting
to his court a distinguished scholar such as Demetrios,
Ptolemy was following a practice already familiar at the
courts of Philip II and Alexander. Such persons were commonly expected to act as tutors to the royal family, to advise the monarch on matters cultural and scientific and to
enhance the tone of the regime. Although there is little
hard evidence for the role played by Demetrios, Peter
Fraser in his masterly book on Ptolemaic Alexandria
(1972) concludes that Demetrios' advice was significant in
shaping the two closely related establishments through
which Alexandria made its chief contribution to the culture of the western world,-! mean, of course, the Museum and the Library. The Museum has been regarded in
various ways. I have heard it described as the ancestor of
all institutes for advanced study. A contemporary poet,
Timon of Phlius, however, had this to say: "In the populous land of Egypt many are they who get fed, cloistered
bookworms, endlessly arguing in the bird-coop of the
Muses" (trans. P. Fraser). But there is general agreement
with the view that the Museum of Alexandria, as a small
and intimate society of research scholars committed to
the service of the Muses, was patterned chiefly on the
Academy and the Lyceum of Athens.
A similarly close link with Athens may be hypothesized
for the sister institution, the Library, or rather the Libraries, of Ptolemaic Alexandria. The older and much the
larger of the two libraries was included, like the physical
facilities of the Museum, in the palace complex. It would
seem to have been regarded chiefly as a research library at
the disposal of members of the Museum. The smaller
library, sometimes referred to as "the daughter", was incorporated in the Sanctuary of Sarapis founded by
Ptolemy Euergetes in the third century B.C. Here again
we are woefully lacking in specific information, but there
is good reason to believe that the Alexandrian Library, in
its breadth of scope, in its aim at universal coverage, and
in its careful organization reflects Athenian, more specifically Aristotelian, practice. In its turn, the Ptolemaic founWINTER 1981
�Figure 7. Ptolemy I Soter;
obverse of a coin of Ptolemy
II Philadelphos, British Museum.
dation was to exercise a role of incalculable importance in
the preservation, editing, and dissemination of earlier lit~
erature both Greek and non-Greek.
A word about the personalities, and first Aristotle. The
marble portrait now in Vienna admirably corresponds
with the image that can be recovered from his writings: a
man of great intellectual capacity seasoned with a little affectation and a good deal of astringency. (Figure 6.)
Demetrios of Phaleron, alas, has not been recognized
with certainty in any ancient portrait. He is said to have
have been recognized. Even the extensive excavations
carried out in the Sanctuary of Sarapis in the 1940s failed
to bring to light any plausible candidate for the daughter
library.
The most probable physical remnant of the Library is
this block of granite 17 1/4 inches in length. Found in
1847 in the garden of the Austrian consulate in Alexandria, the stone is now in Vienna. In the top, as you see, is a
shallow rectangular socket; on the front is the inscription:
!lto<IKOVp[O~<I r TOfWL (Dioskourides 3 volumes). The block
has generally been regarded as a container for books, and
for over a century scholars have been exercising their in~
genuity in fitting three papyrus rolls into the cavity. As an
alternative solution I would suggest that the depression
held a carved portrait of the author, either in the round
Figure 8. Granite base found in Alexandria, inscribed: flwaKoup[O"']S
r6p.ot, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Figure 9. Ptolemy III Euergetes; obverse of a silver coin
of Tarsos, Boston, Museum
of Fine Arts.
been honored by the Athenians with 360 bronze statues
in recognition of his services to the city. But when he was
driven out on the coming of Demetrios Poliorketes (307
B.C.) these statues were pulled down, sold, cast into the
sea, or turned into chamber pots. Aristotle on being asked
"What grows old quickly?" replied, "Gratitude."
Of Ptolemy I Soter we are fortunate in having some
magniQ.Fent portraits on coins. Here we are face to face
with a Churchill-like figure: a great warrior, national
leader and serious historian. Through the compatibility of
temperament between Ptolemy and Demetrios much of
the learning accumulated by the old Greek world was passed
on to the new, and the principal channel was the Library
of Alexandria. (Figure 7.)
The structures that housed both the Museum and the
Library were in all likelihood much more modest than
their fame would imply. In any case no structural remains
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
r
or in relief, and that copies of his writings were kept nearby
in a box or on a shelf. (Figure 8.)
Under the later Ptolemies the Library's holdings continued to be built up, and the pace of acquisition became
feverish when competition developed between Alexandria and Pergamon in the second century B.C. The channels of acquisition were both regular and irregular, and
the governing ethics were all too anticipatory of the modern commerce in rare books. Let me remind you of the
well known story told by Galen of how Ptolemy III Euergetes (246-221 B.C.) acquired a set of the works of the
Figure 10. Eumenes II; obverse of a unique silver coin,
British Museum.
5
�Figure ll. Pergamon: Sanctuary of Athena Nikephoros (view from the
southwest). The Sanctuary lies between the Theater (lower left) and one
of the Palaces (upper right). Model, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
F1gure 12. Pergamon: Sanctuary
of Athena Nikephoros (A); Library
(B); Palace (C);
Theater (D); Altar
::: : ·' =
=
-···-" =
:~~:::·:
of Zem (E). (H.
Kahler, Pergamon,
66).
three Attic tragedians: Aischylos, Sophokles, and Euripides. Learning that an official copy of these texts existed
in Athens, Ptolemy asked for their loan so that he might
have them copied for his Library. By way of security he
deposited with the Athenians fifteen talents, a truly enormous sum. The copies were made on exceptionally fine
papyrus. It was these copies that Ptolemy then sent to
Athens with instructions to the Athenians to keep both
the copies and the deposit. The originals remained in Alexandria, and the Athenians could do nothing but consent. The silver coin of Ptolemy Euergetes now in Boston
6
WINTER 1981
�Above, figure 14. Athena Parthenos, Varvakian copy, National Museum, Athens. Photo by Alison Frantz.
Left, figure 13. Athena from the Library in Pergamon, Pergamon Museum, Berlin.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
shows you with what manner of man the Athenians were
dealin&. (Figure 9.)
Another distinguished personality led to the formation
of the other most famous library of the Greek world, that
of Pergamon. There is a portrait of Eumenes II (197 -159
B.C.) on a unique silver coin now in the British Museum.
It was this ruler who was chiefly responsible for making
Pergamon one of the greatest artistic and intellectual centers of later Greek time. (Figure 10.) Here, as often in the
Greek and Roman world, the library was incorporated in a
sanctuary. Above the Theater and the Altar of Zeus and
just in front of the royal palace lay the Sanctuary of Athena
Nikephoros, the patron goddess of the city. This old sanctuary was modernized by Eumenes and enclosed on three
sides with two-storied colonnades or stoas. The south,
outer side was left open so that the temple could be seen
from the lower city and the countryside. (Figures 11, 12.)
The Library occupied a suite of four rooms that opened
on the upper floor of the north stoa. Excavated by German scholars in the late nineteenth century, the structure
figures in all serious publications regarding Greek libraries. Nevertheless some problems of interpretation remain
and the ruins need to be thoroughly re-examined in the
light of our present knowledge. Without going into the
technical evidence let me state my own view briefly. The
books, I believe, were stored in wooden containers of
some sort in the three smaller rooms. The large north
room was a splendid lobby for the users of the library, and
at the same time a veritable art gallery. A massive stone
pedestal that bordered the back and two side walls was not
intended, as commonly supposed, to support book cases,
but for the display of sculpture. A central place was occupied by a great marble figure of Athena that was found
in front of the Library. (Figure 13.) The goddess was flanked
by statues of famous literary figures of the past with emphasis on those who came from Asia Minor. Inscribed
bases bear the names of Homer, Alkaios, Herodotos,
Timotheos. Dowel holes high up in the walls of the room
may have held paintings done on wooden panels. The
broad two-a isled colonnade in front of the four rooms provided a promenade where scholars might take the air in a
characteristically Greek way while enjoying a magnificent
view over the city and countryside.
Plutarch reports that Mark Antony bestowed on Kleopatra the contents of the Pergamene. library, some
200,000 volumes (Antonius 58, 9), presumably to compensate her for the destruction caused in Alexandria by the
fire of 48 B.C. Even if this account be well founded, the
loss did not put an end to libraries in Pergamon. We now
know, thanks to the German excavations of the 1930s,
that a substantial library was erected , in the time of Hadrian, in the Sanctuary of Asklepios by a woman, Flavia
Melitine. By this time the center of intellectual life had
shifted from the splendid but arduous heights to this
more luxuriously appointed establishment in the plain.
As we leave Pergamon let us glance back at the figure of
Athena which once presided over the Hellenistic Library.
7
�Figure 15. Athenian Agora: the Metroon. Draw-
ing by John Travlos.
Figure 16. Athenian Agora in the 2nd century A.D. (view from northwest). Model by John Travlos.
Figure 16a.
Athenian Agora.
Standing 3.5 meters high the statue is clearly a free adaptation, at a scale of one to three, of the image of Athena
Parthenos made by Pheidias for the Parthenon. (Figure 14.)
Such a recall is symptomatic of the close sympathy, cultural as well as political, that existed between Pergamon
and Athens. In recognition of their debt to the older city
the rulers of Pergamon one after another made splendid
gifts to Athens: a park in the Academy, a group of sculpture on the Acropolis, a stoa beside the Theater at the
south foot of the Acropolis, another two-storied stoa on
the east side of the Agora. This last building, erected soon
after 150 B.C., was reconstructed in the 1950s to serve as
a museum for the finds from the excavation of the Agora.
In Athens about the same time, in the third quarter of
the second century B.C., another major building project
took place on the opposite, i.e. the western side of the
Agora. Here the Old Council House that we believe, as
noted above, to have housed the official archives of the city
since about 400 B.C. was demolished to make way for a
large new building, the Hellenistic Metroon. The remains
are slight, but sufficient to justify the restoration which
shows the Metroon in relation to the New Council House
and to the round Club House of the councillors, the
Tholos. The primary function of the Metroon as of its
predecessor was the safekeeping of the state archives. A
wide range of material is mentioned in inscriptions and
ancient literary testimonia: decrees, treaties, public accounts, even on occasion the will of a prominent citizen.
8
Some of the old original texts of decrees were regarded as
"collector's items," and in the first century B.C. one lot
was stolen by Apellikon, the notorious collector of librar·
ies whom I have mentioned above (Athenaeus V, 214d-e).
In plan the Metroon comprised four rooms of which
the northernmost was much the largest. All four rooms
faced eastward toward the open Agora through a broad
Ionic porch. The second room from the south has the
scheme of a temple; an altar stood in the open square in
front of this room. In this compartment, presumably, we
must place the famous seated statue of the Mother of the
Gods, the "M~r~p 8t0lv," who gave its name to the building. The statue was a work of Pheidias or, more probably,
of his pupil Agorakritos. The goddess is referred to by
Deinarchos (I, 86) as "guardian for the city of all the rights
recorded in the documents." The rooms that flanked the
shrine were presumably the repositories for the storage of
documents which would have consisted for the most part
of papyrus rolls. The north room contained a small courtyard open to the sky: this, we assume, served as a cloister
where users of the archives, including research scholars,
might work quietly, emerging occasionally for a stroll in
the outer colonnade. (Figure 15.)
The similarities between this Athenian building and
the only slightly earlier Library in Pergamon are so many
and so striking as to indicate some close relationship. I
venture to suggest that the construction of the Hellenistic
Metroon may indeed have been one more benefaction
from a Pergamene ruler to the venerable city of Athens.
The kings of Pergamon were not the only benefactors
of Athens in the Hellenistic period. At some as yet unknown point near the north foot of the Acropolis and to
the east of the Agora was a gymnasium called the Ptolemaion, so named after its founder. The earliest references
to the establishment date from the middle of the second
century B.C. Which Ptolemy was responsible remains
uncertain: Euregetes (246-221 B.C.) and Philometor
(180-145 B.C.) have been proposed. For our present purpose the interesting point is that the Ptolemaion certainly
contained a library. In the Hellenistic and early Roman
periods the Ptolemaion rivalled the famous old gymnasia
WINTER 1981
�as a center both of secondary education and of intellectual
life. One would like to think that the library was part of
the original foundation. That would certainly have been
appropriate in a Ptolemaic context, but our evidence con~
sists only of a number of inscriptions beginning in the
year ll7/6 B.C. which record an annual gift of one hundred books to the library in the Ptolemaion from the
graduating class of ephebes, that is the young men who
had completed their two-year course of training in the
gymnasium. These books were presumably for school use,
and the annual donation may have done little more than
compensate for wear and tear. But the Ptolemaion certainly became more than a secondary school: describing a
day in Athens in 45 B.C., Cicero tells of hearing a morning lecture by Antiochos, then head of the Academy, in
the Ptolemaion. The Ptolemaion remains to be found.
Libraries are known to have existed in gymnasia in
other Greek cities, but it is very difficult to identify specific library facilities even when a gymnasium has been
excavateo. All the more welcome, therefore, is a bit of evidence which came to light in the Sicilian city of Taormina
in 1969. In red paint on the white plastered wall of what
was evidently the library of a gymnasium were written
short biographical notices of various writers: Kallisthenes
of Olynthus, Philistos of Syracuse, and Fabius Pictor of
Rome. The transcription of the entry for Fabius will serve
as a sample: first the name, then a brief listing of the
author's principal works: the arrival of Herakles, Aeneas,
and Askanios in Italy, the story of Remus and Romulus. A
date for the inscription about 130 B.C. is proposed by Professor G. Manganaro who has published the new find in
the Romische Frilhgeschichte of Andreas Alfoldi (1976).
We may be sure that these notices were in convenient
proximity to the book containers, and we may suppose
that similar aids were a regular feature of school libraries.
We return to Athens to consider the oldest Athenian library of which actual remains have been found. It was a
modest establishment founded by one T. Flavius Pantainos ca. A.D. 100 at the southeast corner of the Agora.
Its excavation began in the 1930s and was completed in
the 1970s. The remains on the ground are slight, chiefly
because the building was demolished in the late third century after Christ to make way for a new fortification wall
in which was incorporated much of the stonework of the
Library. (Figures 16, 16a.)
_
The Library stood just to the south of the Stoa of Attalos. Between the two buildings passed a marble-paved
roadway that led from the old Agora eastward to the Marketplace of Caesar and Augustus. The principal room of
the Library was a spacious hall measuring about 9.75 x
10.75 meters. This room opened on a colonnaded courtyard which was bordered by ranges of small rooms to
north and west; these in turn were flanked by Ionic colonnades. The main, probably the only, entrance led through
the middle of the west side. Some surely, and perhaps all
of the small rooms had no direct connection with the
Library. Certainly the suite of two rooms to the south of
TIIE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Above, figure 17. Library of Pantainos (view from north), 1975.
Left foreground, the south pier of
arch between Library and the
Stoa of Attalos.
Right, figure 18. Southeast corner
of Agora in 2nd century A.D.
(north at top). Drawing by John
Travlos.
Below, figure 19. Library of Pantainos (view from the southwest).
Model by fohn Travlos.
the entrance had served as a sculptor's studio. We came
on quantities of his marble chips and on some pieces of
his very second-rate sculpture. Some of the other small
rooms may have been shops-the location at this busy
corner was suitable. (Figures 17, 18.)
With the construction of the Library this became, architecturally, one of the most attractive parts of the Agora.
The building faced westward across the Panathenaic way
toward a small plaza that was bordered on the south by a
9
�Figure 20. Odyssey and Iliad from the Library of Pantainos, Agora Museum in Stoa of Attalos.
temple and a large fountainhouse. The west colonnade of
the Library was continued southward by the porch of a
slightly later shop building. Northward, between the Library and the Stoa of Attalos, was another small and intimate plaza partially closed on the side toward the old
Agora by an earlier monument and defined on the east
side by a marble arch closely contemporary with the Library. (Figure 19.)
Although the walls of the Library were of coarse, rubble
masonry the marble work of its porches was of good quality. The floors of the great hall and of the courtyard had
both been paved with marble, and the lower part of the
walls faced with marble. Of this revetment only the imprints remain in the mortar.
One would dearly like to know how the books were
stored in the Library of Pantainos. The walls seem too
thin to have accommodated niches such as are commonly
found in libraries of the Roman period for book cupboards. We may therefore suppose that the books were
carried on wooden shelving set against the walls as was
certainly the case, for instance, in the Villa of the Papyri
at Herculaneum.
Figure 21.
Odyssey.
Figure 23. Iliad. The right
hand held a sword, the left
probably a spear.
10
WINTER 1981
�Figure 22. Odyssey: cmass. The central figure is Scylla; on the lappets: Aiolos, three Sirens, Polyphemos.
Ancient libraries whether private or public were normally adorned with works of art, above all with statues or
busts of famous authors. Our library was no exception. Its
most striking ornament was undoubtedly a marble group
comprising a seated figure of Homer flanked by standing
figures of the Iliad and Odyssey personified. Only the two
female figures have survived and they only as torsoes
which had been used as filling in the late Roman wall that
overlay the west front of the Library. They came to light
in 1869 near the northwest corner of the Library, and they
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
are now displayed nearby in the Stoa of Attalos: robust
figures clad in armor and slightly over life size. They were
conceived of as daughters of Homer. The Iliad, traditionally the older poem, is appropriately shown as larger than
her sister. The Odyssey is signed, on one of the lappets of
the cuirass, by Jason the Athenian. Since it is altogether
probable that the statues are contemporary with the Library (about A.D. 100), they are important in the history
of sculpture as among the few closely dateable Athenian
works of imperial times. (Figures 20-24.)
11
�Figure 24. Inscribed base of the Iliad, Agora Museum in Stoa of Attalos.
The figures were Identified long ago by Georg Treu,
who recognized on the cuirass of the smaller statue
motives appropriate to the Odyssey: Scylla with her dogheaded extremities, Aiolos, god of the winds, Sirens, and
Polyphemos. The identification of the Iliad followed
naturally, especially since there are traces of a sword, her
normal attribute, held at her right side. Both figures show
marked weathering on their upper parts, and both have
the rich honey color characteristic of Pentelic marble that
Figure 25, Marble relief commemorating a victory in a literary coniest
By Archelaos of Priene, 2nd century RC, British Museum.
Left, figure 26. Arch between
Library of Pantainos (right)
and Stoa of Attalos (left),
(view from west). Drawing by
W. B. Dinsmoor, Jr.
Right, figure 27. T. Flavius
Pantainos(?), marble head
found near Library of Pantainos, Agora Museum, Stoa of
Attalos.
12
WINTER 1981
�has long been exposed to the elements. We may be sure,
therefore, that the group stood out of doors, and indeed it
was long ago observed by Paul Graindor that the bold
treatment of both torsos and drapery favored an architectural setting. (Figure 22.)
In 1953 from the curbing of a well of the Byzantine
period just to the west of the Library the excavators
recovered the many fragments of the plinth of the Iliad.
The inscription is enigmatic, but nevertheless helpful: "I
the Iliad both before and after Homer stand by the side of
him who bore me while young." This text justifies therestoration which I have already proposed, i.e. a group of
Homer flanked by his "daughters." Several such groups
are known, the most familiar being that at the lower lefthand corner of a relief of late Hellenistic date now in the
British Museum. The sculptor, Arkelaos of Priene, has
obligingly labelled all the figures. Homer seated, staff in
hand, is flanked by the Iliad and Odyssey, here shown as
small kneeling figures. (Figure 25.)
The chief question still outstanding about our group is
its original location. The Library has now been completely
excavated, and no base suitable for such a monumental
group has come to light within the building. In any case,
as we have already seen, the group must have stood outdoors. Since there is no reason to question its association
with the Library, we must look for a location outside the
building but close enough to it so that the association
would be obvious.
As a possible location I believe we should consider the
top of the marble arch that spanned the roadway between
the Library and the Stoa of Attalos. Of this arch there remain the lower parts of the two lateral piers, the threshold
between the piers, and one block of the crowning course.
We do not have time to go into technicalities, but I do
wish to point out that neither the arch nor the adjacent
colonnade of the Library would have made architectural
sense without the other. Moreover, the care with which
the Library colonnade is fitted to the arch leaves little
doubt that they are parts of one building program. (In contrast, the colonnade bordering the south side of the street
leading eastward toward the Market of Caesar and Augustus is related to the arch very awkwardly. That colonnade,
however, belongs to a slightly later building program
which, as we know from an inscription, was financed by
the People of Athens.) An arch of this type would certainly
have carried sculpture. No other candidates have been
found apart from our Homer group, and that group, as we
have seen, cries out for such a location. (Figure 26.)
Portraits of other great literary figures of the past may
well have figured among the furnishings of the Library,
and such may someday be recognized among the fragmentary sculptures found on the site. Nor is the founder
of the Library likely to have gone unhonored. As a candidate for a portrait ofT. Flavius Pantainos, I should like to
propose a marble head, well over life size, that was found
near the northwest corner of the Library in 1933. The
piece is so fresh as to indicate that it had not travelled far.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Figure 28. Dedicatory inscription from the Library of Pantainos.
The haircut and the tooling point to the time of Trajan,
and an identification with that Emperor has indeed been
proposed. But it really doesn't look like Trajan. Moreover,
the head is crowned with a laurel wreath that would be
unusual on an emperor. I prefer to regard it as representing the actual wreath or crown which the people of Athens
would surely have bestowed on Pantainos as a benefactor.
It is identical for instance with the wreath worn by
Tiberius Julius Aquila, the builder of the beautiful Library
of Celsus in Ephesus. (Figure 27.)
You may wonder how I can speak with such assurance
about the donor and the date of our Library. My source is
the dedicatory inscription engraved on the lintel from
above the entrance to the building; it now forms part of
the late Roman fortification wall. (Figure 28.) The text in
translation reads:
To Athena Polias and to the Emperor Caesar Augustus Nerva
Trajan Germanicus and to the city of the Athenians, the priest
of the Muses who love wisdom, T. Flavius Pantainos, son of
Flavius Menander head of the school, dedicated _the outer stoas,
the peristyle, the library with the books, and all the embellishment of the building, from his own resources along with his
children, Flavius Menander and Flavia Secundilla.
Figure 29. Notice
from the Library of
Pantainos, ca. A.D.
100, Agora Museum,
Stoa of Attalos.
13
�The emperor's title points to a date close around A.D.
100. Pantainos was a man of some consequence in Athens.
He is known to have held the archonship (which at this
time implied wealth) probably in A.D. 115/6, and he had
been honored for some reason with a portrait Herm. Nor
is it impossible that he was the grandfather of the Pantainos who is known as the head of the first Christian
Figure 31. Library of
Hadrian, west facade.
Photo by Alison Frantz.
Figure 32. Library of Hadrian, model in Musco della Civilta Romana,
Rome. Photo by Alison Frantz.
Figure 30. Hadrian; in the Agora excavations.
school in Alexandria and the teacher of Clement, the early
church father whose writings betray a wide knowledge of
pagan Greek literature.
The books presented by Pantainos have· gone beyond
recall. The building and all its embellishments are sadly
ruinous. What does remain to us, and that in its pristine
state, is a library notice. The text was engraved at convenient height on the shaft of a Herm. It reads, "No book
14
shall be taken out, for we have sworn an oath. The building shall be open from the first hour till the sixth." Who
were the "we" who took the oath? The expression used
here, coupled with Pantainos' description of himself as
"priest of the wisdom-loving Muses", makes one suspect
the existence of some society, perhaps a local "Museum"
such as is attested for Athens and for some other Greek
cities, the forerunner of modern Athenaeums. (Figure 29.)
Pantainos' building, modest though it may seem, is important as representing the type of public library that
must have been a normal component of the community
center of many a city throughout the Roman Empire.
We tum, finally, to a library of a quite different stamp.
The Emperor Hadrian is well known as a great philhellene, and above all as a devoted friend of Athens. His attitude toward Athens is happily symbolized in a marble portrait statue found near the west side of the Agora in 1931,
the first season of excavation. Athena, patron goddess of
Athens, stands on the back of the Wolf of Rome. The
Wolf has her fosterlings, Romulus and Remus: Athens has
her owl and sacred snake; the goddess is being crowned by
two Victories. (Figure 30.) In all her long history Athens
never had a more generous benefactor than Hadrian. The
Emperor contributed to many departments of the city's
WINTER 1981
�""
lo • • •
- ·- - - · ·
''---"'
.di:o
Figure 34. Library of Hadrian; quatrefoil church of the 5th century appears in the middle of the court.
Figure 33. Library of Hadrian; inner face of back wall of principal room,
showing niches for book shelves. Photo archive, John Travlos.
life: he completed the colossal temple of Olympian Zeus,
erected a temple of Hera and Zeus, built a sanctuary of all
the gods, a gymnasium and an aqueduct. At the end of his
well-known list of Hadrians's benefactions, Pausanias (I,
18, 9) remarked, "Most splendid of all is (a structure) with
100 columns; walls and colonnade alike are made of Phrygian marble. Here too are rooms adorned with gilded ceilings and alabaster, and also with statues and paintings:
books are stored in the rooms." (trans.). G. Frazer).
The identification of this building, the Library of Hadrian, is now securely established. It stood in the middle of
the city, just to the north of the Market Place that had
been built with the aid of grants from julius Caesar and
the Emperor Augustus. It rose a stone's throw to the east
of the Classical Agora, and it represents the final increment to that centuries-old community center. The Library was also the last fine building to be erected in
Athens in Classical antiquity and the most splendid of all
ancient libraries known to us. Although the great building
has not yet been completely excavated, and much of its
area is still cluttered with modern buildings, its visible remains, rising in a slum district of the city, startle one with
their monumental quality. (Figure 31.)
Since a good publication of the building by the English
scholar M. A. Sisson is readily available I shall be brief.
The principal facade was enlivened by fourteen monolithic columns of green marble once crowned with
statues. Through a columnar propylon in the middle of
that facade one entered an enormous colonnaded courtyard with a long pool on its axis; the open area was un~
doubtedly planted. Pleasant alcoves opened out from the
lateral colonnades, three on each side. (Figure 32.)
The richly adorned rooms mentioned by Pausanias are
recognizable at the far end of the court. A great central
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
chamber was undoubtedly the principal repository of
books. Two corner rooms, as demonstrated recently by
john Travlos, were certainly lecture rooms with sloping
floors and elegant appointments. Smaller intermediate
rooms were perhaps intended for special collections of
rare books that required greater security. Whether the
bilateral symmetry implies a division between Greek and
Latin as in the Library of Trajan in Rome we cannot say.
Enough remains of the back wall of the central room to
show that here, as in the Library of Celsus at Ephesos, the
books were stored in cupboards set into the face of the
wall on three levels. (Figure 33.)
Despite the monumental scale of the building and the
dazzling wealth of the building materials, the basic plan is
beautifully clear and straightforward. What is more, we
find here the same elements that we have observed in earlier libraries from Pergamon onward: one room of im~
pressive scale, ample provision for strolling in colonnades,
and quiet areas for more peaceful study or discussion.
The design is undoubtedly the creation of some gifted
architect chosen by the Emperor, perhaps a man who had
assisted in designing the several libraries in Hadrian's own
villa at Tibur, and surely someone who was thoroughly
familiar with the great buildings in the capital, above all
the Templum Pacis ("Forum of Vespasian") and the
Forum of Trajan.
The Athenian building may be dated in the l30s. It appears to have suffered severely in the Herulian sack of
A.D. 267. Its subsequent history is intriguing but full of
major uncertainties. Some of the surviving bases of the
main colonnade are of crude workmanship and presumably belong to some post-Herulian reconstruction. In the
propylon, high on the wall to the left of the doorway, if
you arrive when the sun is right, you may just detect a
15
�British Museum, by permission of the Trustees: Figs. 7, 10, 25
Deutschcs Archiiologisches lnstitut: Fig. 12
Alison Frantz: Figs.14, 31,32
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna: Figs. 6, 8
Museum ofl"ine Arts, Boston: Fig. 9
Pergamon Museum, Berlin: Fig. 13
Staatliche Museen, Berlin: Fig. II
John_Travlos: Figs. 33-35
Short Bibliography
Figure 35. Quatrefoil church in the court of Library of Hadrian; second
period, 7th century {view from the southeast). Photo archive, John Travlos.
metrical inscfiption recording the dedication of a statue,
apparently a large one. The honoree was none other than
the high-ranking imperial official Herculius, Prefect of [].
lyricum from 408 to 412 A.D. The one who dedicated the
statue was Plutarch, founder of the Neo-Platonic School
and its head. In the epigram Plutarch describes himself as
"steward of letters", Hercu1ius as "steward of the laws."
My colleague, Alison Frantz, has argued persuasively that
Herculius may have been responsible for the repair of the
Library. The interest shown in the undertaking by the
famous philosopher Plutarch favors the view that at this
time the establishment still served the world of letters.
This is understandable, for even at this late period Athens
continued to be one of the most active intellectual centers
of the ancient world, attracting distinguished scholars
from near and far.
Later in the fifth century the pool on the axis of the library courtyard was filled in, and a church with an
unusual quatrefoil plan was erected in the middle of the
court. The church was rebuilt, with altered plan and inferior technique, in the seventh century. It may be assumed that the whole complex had suffered, like several
buildings in the area of the Agora, from the Slavic incursions of the 580s. There is no indication that the library
facilities survived this devastation. We know from our excavations in the Agora that by the seventh century lamps
had virtually ceased to be made in Athens. One may infer
that reading had declined to the point where neither
lamps nor libraries were needed. Here then our story
ends. (Figures 34, 35.)
Grateful acknowledgement for the use of illustrations is made as follows:
American School of Classical Studies at Athens (Agora Excavations):
Figs. 1-5, 15-24,26-30
16
General
Christian Callmer, "Antike Bibliotheken," Acta Instituti Romani
Regni Sueciae X (1944) 145-193
H. Kahler, "Biblioteca" in Enciclopedia dell' Arte Antica, vol. II (1959)
92-99
J. Platthy, Sources on the Earliest Greek Libraries with the Testimonia,
Amsterdam (1968)
Athens: Library of Aristotle
W. Jaeger, Aristotle, 2nd. ed. (1948) Ch. XIII: The Organization of Research
J.P. Lynch, Aristotle's School: a Study of a Greek Educational Institution (1972)
Athens: Metroon
H. A. Thompson, Hesperia 6 (1937) 115-217
H. A. Thompson and R. E. Wycherley, The Athenian Agora XIV
(1972) 25-38
Athens: Ptolemaion
R. K Wycherley~ The Athenian Agora III (1957) 142-144 (testimonia)
J. Delorme, Gymnasion (1960) 146f.
C. Pelekidis, Histoire de l'Ephebie Attique (1962) 263f., 266f.
M. Thompson, "Ptolemy Philometor and Athens," American Numismatic Society, Museum Notes XI (1964) 119-129
Athens: Library of Pantainos
Hesperia 4(1935) 330-332: IS (1949) 269-274; 15 (1946) 233; 42 (1973)
144-146, 384-389; 44 (1975) 332ff. (excavation reports); 15 (1946)
233 and Supplement VIII (1949) 268-272 (dedicatOry inscrlpti0r1)
J. Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens (1971) 432-437
H. A. Thompson and R E. Wycherley, The Athenian Agora, XIV
(1972) 114-116
Athens: Library of Hadrian
M. A. Sisson, Papers of the British School at Rome 11 (1929) 58-66
A. Frantz, "Honors to a Librarian", Hesperia 35 (1966) 377-380
J. Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens (1971) 244-252
Alexandria
R. Pfeiffer, A History of Classical Scholarship (1968) 95ff.
P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (1972) Ch. 6: Ptolemaic Patronage:
the Mouseion and Library
Pergamon
R. Bohn, Altertilmer von Pergamon II (1885) 56-75
E. V. Hansen, The Attalids of Pergamon (1971) 272-274, 355f.
0. Deubner, Das Asklepieion von Pergamon (1938) 40-43
C. Habicht, Die Inschriften des Asklepieions (Altertilmer von Pergamon
Vlll, 3. 1969) 15-18, 84f.
Ephesos
W. Wilberge, M. Theuer, F. Eichler, J. Keil, Die Bibliothek (Forschungen in Ephesos V, I) (1945, 1953)
F. Hueber and V. M. Strocka, "Die Bibliothek des Celsus," Antike
Welt 6 (1975) 3-14: restoration of facade
W. Oberleitner eta\., Funde aus Ephesos und Samothrake (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien) (1978) 113-115
Pompeii
L. Richardson, Jr., "The Libraries of Pompeii", Archaeology 30 (1977)
394-402
WINTER 1981
�Guardian Politics
The Deer Hunter (1978)
•
1n
Nelson Lund
I
NIVERSAL PICTURES' THE DEER HUNTER is not about the
Vietnam war. The film makes no statement about
the justice or prudence of our participation in that
conflict. Instead, it dares to remind us that most Americans-soldiers and civilians alike-gave little thought to
the great questions of foreign policy raised at the time.
And it dares to suggest that they are not to be damned for
that
This seeming indifference to large issues of political
morality probably accounts for much of the hostility that
critics have expressed towards the film. But if we refuse
either to disregard this indifference or to be prejudiced by
it, we can find our way through the film's deeper exploration of the grounds of political morality.
Though The Deer Hunter is. set in an era that most of us
remember vividly, we see in it almost nothing of what that
era recalls to us. The film begins by focusing on three
young Americans as they prepare to serve in the Army
during the late 1960s; it shows a few startling scenes from
their experiences in Vietnam; and it examines the aftermath of their service. But the fall of Saigon is the only historic event that plays a part in the film; no politicians appear or are mentioned; we hear nothing of the anti-war
protests or other civil disturbances of the time; and the
film's notorious Russian roulette sequences have no
known basis in fact.
The Deer Hunter makes us think about politics and war
and our country. But because it addresses these issues
only indirectly, and because of its odd juxtaposition of
U
Nelson Lund is a graduate student in the Department of Government
at Harvard University,
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
wrenching violence and unfashionable sentiment, the
film is apt to leave the viewer shocked and disoriented. As
I hope to show, the film can lead us beyond this painful
confusion to an uncommonly true and useful view of ourselves and our society.
The film's protagonist, the deer hunter, is named for
the Archangel Michael, who guards the gates of hell,
brings to man the gift of prudence, and will in the final
judgment weigh the souls of the risen dead. The Archangel is the leader of the army of heaven, and is traditionally pictured bearing both sword and shield. As we
shall see, the deer hunter's name suits him welL
At many points in the film, Michael reminds us of the
most typically American hero, who is perhaps most familiar from the film Casablanca. The everyday manners of
this figure are cynical, independent, and somewhat disreputable. In fact, as we know, he lives by principles of
decency and is prepared in extraordinary circumstances
to sacrifice his own pursuits for the common good. Reluctant to become the hero of others, he always becomes the
guardian of decent people when they truly need him.
Most American art presents this character in his maturity and reveals enough of him to provoke our admiration
and respect. The Deer Hunter is unusual because it examines the difficulties of his genesis, and thus brings a special clarity to the complexities of his relations with the
people who rely on his virtues. Its most valuable effect is
This essay owes a great deal to my father, Horace N. Lund, who first
taught me much of what I learned again from The Deer Hunter. I am
a~so indebted to several friends who talked with me about the film, espeCially Leon Kass and Amy Kass. Larry Sonnenfeldt and Leo Raditsa read
early drafts of the essay and offered many sharp and generous criticisms;
all these suggestions were helpful, and the ones I accepted enabled me
to present my views more clearly and precisely-N.L.
17
�to help us add a new understanding to our old admiration
and respect.
about. The film's attention to this great question gives it
a significance beyond the obvious issues that are raised
by our country's experience in Vietnam or even in war
generally.
W
HEN WE FIRST MEET MICHAEL,
we are confronted
with a natural leader. He is more talented than
those around him, and more reckless. But the skill
and daring with which he drives his magnificent '59
Coupe de Ville show us that his talents and his inclina·
lions have few outlets better than those he can find at the
wheel of his automobile. He lives in a rather ordinary
working-class community in Clairton, Pennsylvania; most
of the men work in the steel mills, most of the women stay
in the background.
The mills themselves appear as a kind of earthly helL
The flames, the roaring noise, and the men's protective
garments convey a little of the sense of modern warfare.
But while war is the true earthly hell, life in the mills is
routine, depressing, and without the fascination that real
violence and sudden death can bring.
In the background, the steeple of the Russian Orthodox
Church soars above the residential part of town with cool,
distant grace. Early in the film, we enter the church to
watch a wedding that is truly majestic in its setting and
forms; but the magnificence of the ceremony appears
slightly comic because religion is so small a part of the
lives of the participants. The bride is pregnant, the
bridegroom's mother is distraught, the priest is a cipher.
Michael himself is openly amused by the rituals of piety,
and he appears truly interested only in the maid of honor,
Linda, who is also his best friend's girL
Young and restless, Michael is eager to escape the suf·
focating life that Clairton and the mills impose. But he
lacks the licentious and childish impatience for which so
many of his contemporaries of the 1960s are still
remembered. In the past he has lived for his occasional
hunting trips to the mountains, and now he has enlisted
in the Army. He wants adventure and challenge, but he
betrays no desire to rebel against Clairton or to cut his ties
with the town. The Army promises him a respectable way
out of his dreary and grimy home.
- Michael's maintenance of his ties with Clairton is emphasized by the fact that two of his friends have enlisted
with him for the war. Like him, they seem motivated by
restlessness. This desire for adventure is a private passion,
and to pursue it is to risk the protection and supports that
we find in social life. These men hope to reduce that risk
by leaving Clairton together and maintaining their friend·
ship in the Army. In this they are doing nothing unusual
or hard to explain; but they encounter unforeseen
troubles in the war.
Can men form friendships that allow them to pursue
their private passions while preserving the benefits of co·
operation and social dependence? The Deer Hunter shows
us difficulties that are easy to overlook; and it suggests
that the solution is hard to accept and harder yet to bring
18
II
on the wedding day of Stevie, one of
the enlistees. That morning, Michael proposes that
he and his friends go on one last deer hunt before the
departure for Vietnam; and he gives an odd reason for the
T
HE FILM OPENS
proposal. Upon noticing an atmospheric phenomenon in
which a kind of halo appears around the sun, he says:
"Holy shit! You know what that is? Those are sun dogs
.... It means a blessing on the hunter sent by the Great
Wolf to his children .... It's an old Indian thing." This
casual paganism is the first sign of how very different
Michael is from those around him.
That afternoon, Michael talks about the hunt with his
roommate Nick; Nick, who has also enlisted in the Army,
appears a little scandalized that they are discussing the
hunt just before Stevie's wedding. In the course of the
conversation, Michael makes a serious attempt to state
who he is. He firmly asserts his preference for the moun·
tains over the town; and he vehemently asserts the importance of killing a deer with one shot. According to
Michael, this is the right way to take a deer, and the fail·
ure to accept the principle indicates a lack of human
stature: "Two is pussy .... 'One shot' is what it's all about.
A deer has to be taken with one shot. I try to tell people
that, but they don't listen." Nick indicates that his own interest in the "one shot" ethic has declined and that he has
grown fonder of the natural beauties of the mountains.
Nevertheless, Michael insists that their other hunting
companions are defective: "They're all assholes. I mean, I
love 'em, they're great guys, but without you, I'd hunt
alone. Seriously, that's what I'd do." Nick calls Michael a
"control freak," without explaining how Michael's desire
for control is excessive; Michael responds by saying, "I
just don't like no surprises."
This scene foreshadows two of the major themes of the
film: the ambiguity of Michael's relationships to his friends
and the question of his own being. Quite clearly, he does
think of his hunting companions as friends, but it seems
that only his relationship with Nick makes his friendships
with the others possible. Michael treats Nick as an equal
because Nick has accepted the "one shot" ethic. And yet,
Nick is apparently not content that just the two of them
should hunt together, so Michael tolerates the presence
of the inferior hunters for Nick's sake. Though Michael
wishes to treat Nick as his equal, Nick is less committed
than Michael to the "one shot" ethic and more emotion·
ally dependent on those who do not accept it at all.
Michael seeks to overlook this difference between himself
and Nick; he apparently believes that they are or can be
WINTER 1981
�equals in friendship if they maintain their allegiance to a
common principle. Only later do we discover how crucial
the dissimilarity between them is; but we are enabled here
at the beginning of the film to see that it exists.
As Michael originally states the "one shot" principle, it
appears to be a statement of the right way to hunt; his
commitment to it appears as a striving for excellence, here
for the hunter's excellence. His vehement statement of
the principle suggests that only ignorance or self-indulgence could account for the failure to adhere to it. If this
is so, Nick's characterization of Michael as a "control
freak" is misleading because it tends to confound excellence with power, self-control with control over other beings. Nevertheless, Michael shows that he shares Nick's
confusion when he replies: HI just don't like no surprises."
Here Michael is obviously wrong about himself. One
who dislikes surprises does not find his greatest satisfac·
lions hunting wild game in the mountains; such activity is
anything but routine. And one who wants to avoid surprises surely does not volunteer for hunting's great
counterpart, war. Michael may believe that he wants to do
away with surprises, he may believe that he seeks power
or control in the broadest sense. But if what he is truly
seeking is excellence, he is a better man than he knows
and so should prove able to learn. Before the film ends,
Michael learns a great deal indeed.
During the subsequent hunting trip, Michael shows
that his commitment to a standard of excellence is no
mere private passion. A small base person named Stanley
has forgotten to bring some essential piece of gear; he
now expects to borrow Michael's spare. Stanley has a long
history of such irresponsibility, and Michael refuses to
lend him the gear. Stanley gets out a small revolver and insults Michael's manhood by commenting on his unaggressive behavior towards women. Michael, who happens to
be holding his rifle, takes a cartridge from his pocket and
very forcefully says: "Stanley, see this? This is this. This
ain't something else. This is this. From now on_you're on
your own." Michael slams the round into its chamber, and
the conflict continues until finally Nick intervenes; he
chides Michael for his stubbornness and gives Stanley
Michael's spare equipment. Michael angrily raises his rifle
and fires into the distance. Just before the argument,
Michael had noticed a deer running through the brush; no
one else was watching.
41
This is this" means first that weapons have purposes.
They have their proper uses, for example in hunting deer;
and they have their typical abuses, as Stanley's behavior
vividly illustrates. Michael must sense that this does not
apply only to weapons. Perhaps he sees it most clearly in
weapons because they are men's most necessary tools; the
way he drove his fancy Cadillac is enough to remind us
that an instrument's proper use is not always so easy to
see. Unlike most people, Michael insists on this standard
of what is proper when he can discern it and seeks it when
he cannot. The insistence is shown to us here at the be·
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ginning of the film; his seeking will be the spring of his
later education.
Michael's speech to Stanley has a further meaning implied in the conclusion, '(From now on you're on your
own." Those who are too ignorant or self-indulgent to
confront the world as it is become irresponsible. Like
Stanley, they tend to become derelict and apt to do unintended damage to themselves and others; as a result, such
people force others to take responsibility for them. Michael would refuse to tolerate Stanley's excess, but Nick
interferes: to prevent the group from breaking into factions, Nick has to deflect Michael from the natural course
of his principled intolerance. In frustration, Michael ap·
pears to violate his own principle by firing his rifle without a target. Were it not for his friendship with Nick,
Michael might become a solitary hunter; as we shall see, it
will be hard for him to become anything else.
.
URIN. c THE FILM, Michael becomes larger; by the end,
he would no longer insist so harshly on the "one
shot" ethic and he would not make such truthful
but difficult assertions as "this is this." But though he
does undergo an education, the film presents no educator:
nowhere in The Deer Hunter is there any man better than
Michael or any indication that such a man could exist. His
great triumph lies in his later mastery or education of himself, but the film leaves no doubt that he is superior to ordinary men from the beginning.
From the first, Michael is highly spirited; he is eager for
war, sure of his strength, and remarkably capable of doing
without the company of women. But in addition to this
raw virtue, Michael has a drive to understand what he
D
sees and hears.
An example of this drive occurs when Michael and the
other enlistees, fairly drunk and full of bravado, encounter
a Green Beret at the wedding reception. Michael inquires
about Vietnam and Nick expresses his eagerness for dan·
ger; Stevie echoes Nick's sentiments. When the soldier
snubs them by refusing to say anything but "Fuck it,"
Michael begins repeating the formulation in different
tones of voice, as though he is trying to discover what it
means: "Fuck it ... Fuck it." Finally, in a simultaneously
challenging and curious tone, he asks: "Fuck who?" While
Nick and Stevie seem surprised and worried, Michael
seems almost intrigued. He is sufficiently eager and indelicate to interrogate a veteran about his experiences, so he
must have some of the illusions common to spirited men
who have not seen combat. We would expect someone as
combative as Michael to respond to the man's rebuff with
mere anger or perhaps with awe. But Michael wonders
about the meaning of the man's behavior.
It is very rare to find a man as self-assertive as Michael
and also so ready to learn. The film offers no explanation
for the cause of this superiority and so encourages us to
infer that it has come about by nature. By calling atten-
19
�lion in this way to the natural inequalities among men,
the film commits a breach of the etiquette of our time.
Eventually the film suggests that these inequalities result
in a politically relevant hierarchy of human types; this
challenge to one of the deepest prejudices of our time has
probably caused much of the misinterpretation to which
the film has been subjected. That challenge, however, is
neither idle nor gratuitous. Events have made it necessary, and the film is careful to remind us of that fact.
Stevie, the boy who marries just before leaving for war,
is the most ordinary of the three main characters. l-Ie has
no great strengths or failings, no burning passions or re-
markable idiosyncracies. l-Ie is decent, but ineffectual-a
natural follower and indeed a natural loser. l-Ie loves his
fiancee and insists that she loves him. However sincere he
may be, his hopes seem preposterous since he has never
slept with this girl who he knows is pregnant. Stevie appears to be her dupe and perhaps also the dupe of the
child's father; later we learn that the father is almost certainly Nick. In war, Stevie proves incompetent, unlucky,
and weak. Michael repeatedly must save his life; and at
least once, he has to take a terrible risk with his own life in
order to rescue Stevie. Stevie loses an arm and both legs in
the war; and even after they return to America, Michael
has to carry him from the deadening comfort of the V.A.
hospital and force him to rejoin the town. Time after time
we are reminded that merely decent people cannot take
care of themselves.
Someone might protest against the harshness of this
view. But though the film does expose Stevie's shortcomings, it leads the viewer to see a problem rather than an
indictment. We might not have to emphasize Stevie's
weakness if his decency had sufficient support in the institutions of his community. The weakness of those institutions is the great problem raised by the film's treatment
of Stevie.
with a tanker-truck rolling into
Clairton at dawn, reminding us that the towns of
this country are connected to one another by close
ties of economic interdependence. But besides this, what
signs of a national community can we find in the film? We
see a football game on television and we hear popular
T
HE FiLM OPENS
music on jukeboxes; and there is a veterans' organization,
whose only role in the film is to provide the hall where the
wedding reception is held. These shared amusements
mark the people of Clairton as typically American; they
are typical, too, in their lack of curiosity about the nation's
public affairs. Working people, without much schooling,
they do not have much leisure or incentive to enlighten
themselves about the world beyond their city. Certainly
America's political institutions encourage this insularity.
With our complicated federal system and our traditions of
local independence, we have always inclined towards the
sort of provincialism that we see in Clairton. The fact that
20
this narrowness so often seems benign does not imply that
the nation as a whole is either unified or well-ordered.
Our own recollections of the late 1960s should be enough
to remind us that the strength of this country's social
fabric cannot be taken for granted.
Despite the lack of interest in public affairs, Clairton is
supplying three volunteers for the government's war. Obviously, then, the people here must feel that they belong
to the nation and that they owe her their allegiance. But
the United States has always been too large and too
diverse and too young to draw its greatest strength from
patriotic sentiment. At the wedding reception, the
bandleader introduces the three young men who are leaving "to proudly serve their country"; everyone listens in
respectful silence, and afterwards they cheer. But none of
the volunteers ever indicates that his enlistment has been
motivated by a sense of duty or political responsibility.
Patriotism lives in Clairton, but the people seem not to be
formed by it any more than by discussion of the affairs of
the day. And again, we can easily remind ourselves that
patriotism did not flourish during the 1960s in America's
more enlightened and vainly cosmopolitan cities.
Our political tradition, of course, has never sought the
sort of national enthusiasm to whose absence the film directs our attention. In this country, we have expected po-
litical liberty to bring the greatest possible freedom from
government intrusion into our private affairs and volun-
tary social activities. This proud tradition of individuality
and local independence has always acknowledged that direct national needs are the rightful concern of the central
government; accordingly, we hear of no draft-dodging in
Clairton. But the cultivation of citizens and decent human beings like Stevie has not been regarded as the necessary or proper concern of the government, except through
the local public schools. Moral education has been left
largely to the church and family; it is there that we must
look for the institutional underpinnings of the decency
that Stevie represents.
The looming presence of the Russian Church in Clairton reminds us that Christianity is a religion with univer-
sal claims. It addresses us from beyond all political
horizons and promises to provide a framework for human
decency that is both loftier and more solid than that provided by any merely political order. But the church in
Clairton fails miserably at its first task: helping its adherents to see the world as coherent and ultimately benign.
Stevie's mother is extemely distraught about the behavior
of her son, who is marrying a pregnant girl and volun-
teering for war. just before the wedding she approaches
her priest as he mechanically prepares the altar for the
service, and tearfully appeals to him: "I do not understand, Father. I understand nothing anymore. Nothing.
Can you explain? Can anyone explain?" The priest stiffly
embraces her but he has nothing to say. When priests can
no longer even attempt to answer the most pressing ques-
tions of an ordinary middle-aged woman, the church can
WINTER 1981
�hardly be thought to play a significant part in the moral
education of the young. A church that cannot even articulate a defense of Stevie's conduct can hardly provide
the basis for cultivating and protecting the kind of human
character that he displays. And one would have trouble
showing that any major church has recently been doing
better than this one does in Clairton.
What little family life we see in The Deer Hunter is a
mess. Stevie and his mother are without a common ground
of discourse, so they only quarrel; Nick's girlfriend is
beaten by her drunken father; Stevie's wife goes quietly
mad while he is away in the Army. Neither Nick nor
Michael seems to have any family at all.
Early in th~ film we see Stevie instinctively reaching for
the stability of family life: deprived of the psychological
protection that a strong home offers, he anxiously tries to
establish a family of his own. But his attempt is doomed.
He seems to believe that a ceremony is sufficient to establish a marriage, for he foolishly leaves for war a day or so
after the wedding. But even without this fantastic misjudgment, the prognosis for his marriage would be very
bleak. His bride's pregnancy directs our attention to the
disorder in the social institutions that surround and affect
the family. A leading purpose of the institution of marriage is to fix responsibility for the care of children. When
we see as decent a man as Stevie reduced to undertaking
responsibility for some otl1er man's child, we have to con-
clude that the private behavior of women has broken
loose from the restraints that are needed in any political
community. We might believe that he is just being generous if we were given any indication that he had much
chance of finding a more respectable wife. Since we are
not, we have to see his marriage as a pathetic, futile ges-
neither lust nor flirtation: he looks intently and thoughtfully at her, as though he is powerfully aware of some ignorance or other defect in himself. This expression comes
to his face again when he sees her at the reception. To
their surprise and embarrassment, Nick encourages them
to dance together. We see right afterwards that Nick did
this in order to free himself to pursue a sad and lonely
looking girl nearby; and then we see him repulse an earnest male friend in order to toy with this vulnerable girl.
While Michael is with Linda, he seems uneasy with himself in a way we have not seen before; he appears caught
between his attraction to her and his loyalty to Nick. He
has been drinking, and just as his attraction to Linda
seems about to win out, Nick interrupts them and she
hurries out of the room.
Unlike Michael, Nick treats Linda carelessly, as though
she is merely one of several goods that he wants but by
which he does not want to be confined. After the disturbing encounter with the Green Beret, he proposes mar-
riage to her; when she eagerly accepts, he qualifies the
proposal so severely that it becomes merely hypotheticaL
Disappointed, she remarks: "Anything that goes through
your mind comes out your mouth." After the reception,
Nick tells Michael of his attachment to Clairton and his
fear of not being able to return there from the war. We
can guess that his attitude towards Linda is similar. He
wants what she offers and he fears losing her forever, but
he desperately wants something more; and he senses that
Michael can lead him to a better life than Clairton and
Linda promise. Were it not for Michael, Nick might attempt, like Stevie, to arrange for a comfortable and regular existence; but in the presence of Michael, even Stevie
is drawn away from Clairton to the war.
ture against the social disintegration that began to be-
Though Nick's behavior towards women is more obvi-
come evident in the nation at large during the years when
ously blameworthy than Stevie's, Nick also senses more
clearly the real difficulties of doing well. We saw before
that Stevie's decency is bound up with his weakness and
blindness. Nick, on the contrary, is strongly aware of the
dangers of leaving Clairton and Linda. While alone with
Michael after the reception, he proclaims his love for
Clairton and asks Michael to promise not to leave him in
Vietnam. In order to permit Nick to keep his pride after
such a humbling request, Michael replies with a casual
formulation; but his tone of voice is quite solemn: "Hey
this story takes place. Because it points so clearly at the
weaknesses of the family, church, and government, the
film implies that those institutions are not likely sources of
the social re-integration that is so obviously desirable. And
the film certainly does not suggest that men like Stevie
are plausible agents of improvement.
NLIKE STEVIE, Nick is neither ineffectual nor very
decent. And unlike Stevie, he is quite handsome
and graceful. We have seen that he is not as emotionally self-sufficient as Michael. Neither is he as competent. Michael accomplishes feats with his car that Nick
did not think possible; Nick loses to Michael at pool; and
Michael takes the buck that we see them tracking together. But more important, and despite his admiration
for Michael, Nick is more irresponsible than his friend.
U
We can see this most clearly in their relations with Linda,
Nick's girl.
Nicky, you got it."
At this moment, Michael's dilemma becomes more
clear. As we know from Stanley's insults on the hunting
trip, Michael does not pursue women in the careless way
that Clairton's customs encourage. But his reluctance to
pursue Linda stems mainly from the conflicting claim of
his friendship with Nick. This suggests that Michael has a
normal male attraction to women, and that he restrains it
for the sake of his friendships with men. When we recall
that he would rather hunt alone than with men he dis-
As we observed earlier, Michael's attention at the wed-
dains, it appears that he is seeking in human relationships
ding is directed most forcefully at Linda. His face shows
primarily the equality that might foster sharing of the best
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
21
�experiences. The experiences that now seem most impor~
tant to him are hunting and its great brother, war.
Michael knows that his attraction to these pursuits is essentially male; hence he rather reasonably sets his attraction to women aside for the sake of his friendships with
men, and especially with Nick. And as his promise to Nick
reveals, Michael is ready to commit himself to those
friendships as firmly as one would commit oneself to marnage.
But Nick's need to hear Michael make the promise reveals the difficulty with Michael's reasoning. Nick shows
here that he is very dependent on Michael's strength, so it
is unlikely that they will prove equal in war or able truly to
share its experiences. In view of that, it might make sense
for Michael to reconsider the subordination of his interest
in women. By the end of the film, he does so. But it is a
mark of his nobility that he refuses to accept the implications of Nick's inferiority as easily as our argument sug~
gests that he might.
III
the men return to a
tavern that one of them owns. The hour is late, they
are tired and alone with each other. The tavern
owner, who sings in the church choir and regrets being too
unhealthy for military service, plays a Chopin nocturne at
the piano. The music soothes the men and provides a moment of peace between the hunt and the coming trip to
war. With an unforgettable rudeness, the film cuts suddenly to a deafening, fiery helicopter assault on a Vietnamese village. This transition vividly suggests the painful
and exhilirating shift that soldiers experience when they
truly leave civilized life by going into battle. Michael's
education begins here in Vietnam.
At the scene of the assault, we find Michael lying amid
the rubble and corpses; apparently there has been a firefight, he has been injured, and is just now regaining consciousness. As he comes to, he sees a solitary enemy soldier
hunting for survivors. Finding some civilians hiding in a
bunker, the soldier throws a grenade in among them. By
chance, one woman survives and emerges with a child in
her arms; the enemy coaly machine-guns her and the
child as she runs from the bunker. While this is happening, Michael grabs a flamethrower and charges him.
Though too late to save any of the civilians, Michael sets
the killer afire. And though the soldier has just signaled to
some other troops, Michael pays no attention to his own
safety; now in a frenzy he shoots the enemy again and
again, even after the monster is obviously dead. Michael's
anger and disgust seem to have taken control of his conduct; but though his act itself is neither moderate nor
beautiful, he is obviously moved by a deep revulsion at
the shamefully unnecessary violence.
As in the scene where he responds to Stanley's misuse
A
22
T THE END OF THE HUNTING TRIP,
of weapons, Michael loses some of his own self-control
when faced with an abysmally indecent man. But here the
goodness of Michael's anger is more clear. Michael is not
one of those eerie aficionados who are fascinated with
war, but neither does he seek to retain the equanimity
and outward dignity appropriate to most civilian situations. In this scene, Michael seems very disturbed-even
slightly deranged-but the cool efficiency of the enemy
soldier indicates the danger of carelessly importing moral
standards from one world to another.
with the murderer, more
American troops arrive by helicopter. The group
includes Nick and Stevie, and they are all taken
prisoner shortly thereafter. We now watch the VietCong
torture American and South Vietnamese P.O.W.s by forcing them to play Russian roulette against each other; the
captors amuse themselves by placing bets on the matches.
While waiting their turns, Stevie and Nick both lose their
composure. Stevie becomes hysterical and Michael tries
to calm him; Nick also needs Michael's help but he cannot
speak loudly enough to ask for it. When Michael and
Stevie are made to play against each other, Stevie flinches
and his cowardice saves him from destroying himself; but
the VietCong just throw him into a pit to die. Perceiving
the hopelessness of allowing the games to continue as
they have been arranged, Michael conceives a bold but
very dangerous scheme. He persuades Nick that they
should play against each other with extra cartridges in the
revolver; he hopes to clear two of the chambers, and then
use the gun against the captors. Quite against the odds,
the trick works. But Nick has to be coaxed and bullied
through the game: though it is his only chance of surviving, he does not have the strength to put his life so clearly
in the hands of an unfavorable chance. Michael is at least
as averse to dying as Stevie or Nick, but he can play if he
has to; and he can arrange an even more dangerous ver~
sian for the sake of overcoming the game.
Russian roulette will become the movie's most insistent
and memorable metaphor, and thr0 ugh it we can discover
some of what Michael learns. In an obvious way, the game
begins as an image of the experience of modern battle.
Nearly all articulate combat veterans speak of the terrible
disorientation caused by living where men die frequently,
violently, and with seeming total randomness. Some men
go mad, most become superstitious, and virtually all become cynical about the moral standards that regulate
peacetime life. The horror of this experience seems to
arise largely from the fact that other human beings are intentionally causing all this random death-and perhaps
too from the soldiers' awareness of their own active role in
maintaining the hostilities that make war what it is.
Russian roulette is an especially rich image because it emphasizes the participation of the victims in an activity that
makes little sense in terms of their most basic self-interest.
W
HILE MICHAEL IS ENGAGED
WINTER 1981
�Through this metaphor, the film turns our attention away
from the grand sweep of battle to the great psychological
demands of combat. Here we find the basis of the film's
statements about human excellence and its bearing on
our political life.
Since war cannot be done away with, there have to be
men who play that form of Russian roulette. The most
common way to play is probably Stevie's. Men like him
can be lured or pressed into the arena, and they can be
pressed and coaxed to participate up to a certain point.
But once they have to face what warfare brings, they in·
stinctively recoil and seek to escape it as quickly as possible. In the terrifying moments before he has to play,
Stevie screams: "I don't belong here .... I want to go
home." Though one's sense of natural justice grants his
proposition and makes one wish that his desire be satisfied, the conditions of battle usually allow very little scope
for acting on such sentiments. At least in part, Stevie's
manifest unfitness for war must account for the extraordi-
nary risks that Michael later takes for his sake; but after
Stevie has been thrown into the pit, Michael orders Nick
to forget about him and concentrate on the requirements
of his own survival. Nick thinks that Michael is playing
God, but his command has to be obeyed if Stevie himself
is to have any chance of survival.
Nick seems less weak than Stevie and he has a closer
friendship with Michael, so Michael chooses him to play
the more difficult form of the game. In order to enable
himself to go through with his plan, Michael deliberately
generates a terrific, concentrated hatred towards the captors. This hatred is not pretty, but it is necessary, as we
can see by contrasting it with Nick's paralysis. Though
Michael tries to bring out courage in his friend, Nick's attention is too focused on himself to allow him either to
hate or to respond calmly to the demands of the situation;
even with Michael's encouragement, he almost fails to
act. Michael's hatred gives him the detachment from himself that is needed to perform the unnatural act required
in Russian roulette.
As in the earlier combat scene, Michael's anger is the
engine of an appropriate though ugly action. Under
Michael's governance, Nick also manages to perform the
necessary act, but he is obviously acting beyond his own
capacities: without Michael and the inhuman ferocity
that he calls out of himself, Nick would be as helpless as
Stevie. Here Michael's spiritedness-his violent and even
savage self-assertion-is irrefutably justified. It should not
diminish our sense of that justification to point out that
Michael's hatred is not autonomous. His intelligence is responsible for the plan that he executes, and his savage
anger is therefore directed by a superior principle; but
only through his brute courage does Michael's intelligence come to rule him. Nick too can understand what
needs to be done; only Michael's stronger reserves of selfassertiveness and even brutality save him from falling into
Nick's confusion, self-absorption, and impotence. And
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
lest we think that Nick is somehow finer or more human,
the film shows him furiously beating one of the VietCong
corpses after the danger is past.
the three soldiers get separated. A
helicopter tries to pick them all up, but Stevie falls
into a river and Michael jumps off after him.
Stevie's legs are badly injured; Michael carries him out of
the jungle and turns him over to some South Vietnamese
troops who have a jeep. At this point we lose sight of
them, and the film shifts to Nick's experiences in Saigon.
Several scenes take place in which Nick shows signs of intense inner disturbance-he speaks only with difficulty,
A
FTER THEIR ESCAPE,
weeps easily, looks twice at Linda's picture, and imagines
once that he sees Michael in a Saigon bar. Finally an urbane Frenchman lures him into a house where people
amuse themselves by betting on Russian roulette matches
between men who play for money. Though Nick does not
see him, Michael is there watching the games. Unlike
most of the other people present, Michael seems neither
excited nor indifferent: his face reveals an intelligent, concentrated, absolutely serious-looking. At this moment we
know that he has been trying since we last saw him to
understand what he has been through. As soon as he sees
Nick, his concentration vanishes and he reaches towards
his friend.
When Nick sees the game, he frantically interrupts it;
after grabbing the revolver, he dry-fires at one of the players, dry-fires at himself, and rushes out of the building.
Michael chases after, only to see the Frenchman driving
Nick away in a car; with a gesture of final hopeless abandon, Nick throws a fistful of money into the air above the
crowded street.
After what Nick has gone through, the sight of men taking these risks without compulsion is too much to bear.
Nick's character has always been ambiguous or undefined: in Clairton he was discontented with the goods
within his reach, and yet unable to find principles or direction for himself. Like most people whose finest gift is a
longing for the good, Nick has tended to be dominated by
the most fascinating influence in his surroundings. So
long as that influence was Michael, Nick might safely
have sought the noble life; but once he faces Russian roulette without Michael's help, Nick cannot resist its gruesome magnetism. That magnetism is founded in war's
tantalizing suggestion that nothing good can stand up in
the violent onslaught of brute chance; when Nick sees
Russian roulette played voluntarily in the midst of civilization, he cannot resist the implication that human life is no
more than warfare, that everything is permitted, that
nothing is of enduring worth. The film later confirms this
scene's suggestion that Nick has just given himself over to
a career as a Russian roulette player; from now on he will
play for money and for love of the game. Like other men
who become enthralled by the spirit of war, Nick will live
23
�on for awhile, but only as a kind of ghost. He becomes indifferent to his own life and his own good; he moves in
our world but his eyes are open only to the incoherencies
that we all naturally resist. As a human being, Nick is now
dead.
Unlike Nick, who is captivated by Russian roulette,
Michael appears here as a student of the game. In its first
use in the film, Russian roulette was a metaphor for war as
experienced by ordinary men in battle. Most soldiers experience combat as something for which they are drafted
or for which they find that they have imprudently volunteered. The sight of war has its charms, but these are ac·
cessible chiefly to its observers, just as the pleasures of
Russian roulette are available to the spectators who bet on
the games. Seen from a distance, both follow fairly regular
patterns or rules and hence have a kind of coherence. But
these patterns so threaten the self-preservation of the participants that voluntary acceptance of life under them
appears to most men in combat as prima facie evidence of
insanity. This should not be surprising since the love of
living there is indeed conclusive evidence of insanity.
In Saigon, Michael returns to Russian roulette as a
spectator, but we do not see him betting on the outcome
and we see in him no love for the game he is watching.
Since he has not simply turned away from the game, he
must know that he may play again. Since he betrays no
desire to do so, he must also believe that playing can be
justified without reference to maxims of insanity. To sec
war as necessary and yet not as an end in itself is easy for
those who have little experience of it; it is not anticipating
too much to say that Michael's special excellence is to live
as a warrior without ceasing to govern himself. He differs
from enthusiastic mercenaries because he does not love
war; he differs from merely dutiful soldiers because he
does not take his bearings from the goals offered in civilian life. We saw Ivlichael exercising the warrior's courage
almost by nature in the first Russian roulette scene; his
looks in the Saigon scene indicate how difficult it is for
him to include such activity in his way of life; the madera·
tion he displays here enables him to appear in the film's
third and final section as the man whom justice would require to rule in Clairton.
W
he goes on a
hunting trip with his old friends; Stevie is too
crippled to come along and Nick is missing in
Vietnam. During the trip, Stanley begins stupidly
threatening another man with a revolver that he seems to
believe is unloaded. At the sight of this, Michael becomes
very angry; he takes the pistol away, discovers that it is
loaded, fires a bullet into the ceiling of the cabin, and removes the cartridges from the gun. He then chambers one
round, spins the cylinder, points the gun at Stanley's
24
rule. But in order to appreciate that conclusion, we need
to re-examine Michael himself.
Let us recall that the insanity of war is most evident
when one considers the threat war poses to the combatants' self-preservation. Any justification of war requires
IV
HEN MICHAEL RETURNS TO CLAIRTON,
head, and pulls the trigger. The gun does not discharge.
By our usual standards, Michael's conduct in this third
Russian roulette scene is unreasonable. For how could the
attempt to educate a person as vile as Stanley is be worth
the risk of committing murder? In part, Michael's action
may be an unthinking passionate objection to Stanley's
carelessness with human life; to the extent that this is so,
his conduct would resemble Nick's interruption of the
game in Saigon. But what Michael does is more measured
and purposeful. Unlike the players in the Saigon house,
Stanley is a danger primarily to innocent people; further,
Michael is tied to most of Stanley's potential victims, and
even to Stanley himself, by some ties of friendship; and
unlike Nick, Michael does not turn the gun on himself.
Above all, Michael's act is not a gesture, as Nick's is; it certainly is dramatic, but the drama points very clearly to a
simple and important lesson. After Stanley survives-and
the odds were quite high that he would-it is very unlikely that he will forget what Michael has taught. At least
he will probably stop playing with guns, and he may even
be moved to begin living in a generally more subdued and
responsible way. At the end of the film, his careful treatment of Stevie's wife suggests that he may be rising a little
from his habitual petty vanity and self-absorption.
To whatever extent Stanley is improved, we can attribute it to Michael's deliberate extra-legal coercion on the
hunting trip. Michael has stepped outside the law to exercise a rule that justly belongs to him; the film clearly and
correctly implies that unless men like Michael rule, there
will be no rest from the ills occasioned by the base and irresponsible. Since American institutions make little provision for such rule, private justice like Michael's can be
seen as a beneficial supplement to our officially political
life. But the unlawfulness and riskiness of Michael's open
assertion of rule over Stanley remind us not to expect that
such rule will ever play a powerful part in our government; and the dangers of trying to institute such domination should be obvious to us all. At the end of the film, we
shall be able to discover Michael's substitute for open
the introduction of considerations beyond the preservation of the combatants' lives. For them to accept such a
justification, they have to see their self-interest in broader
terms than those comprehended in self-preservation; and
rarely, if ever, can their motives for fighting be quite the
same as those of the army or nation as a whole. The same
difficulty arises in explaining Michael's participation in
the game of Russian roulette with Stanley. From the narrow perspective of self-interest his behavior is senseless,
even demented: he has very little to fear from Stanley, and
much to lose if Stanley dies by his hand. When we examine Michael's conduct in the light of the common interest
WINTER 1981
�Nick broke under the pressure of war. One might think
that this merely proves Nick's inferiority, and that
Michael should wait for friendship until he meets a man
truly like himself. His failure to do so indicates that he no
of Stanley and his potential victims, we can see the good
in what he does. But why should Michael risk himself for
these others? The fact that he displays such strong anger
in this scene suggests that something of his own is at
stake. In order to see what that might be, we have to look
once again at Michael as he is alone.
just before the Russian roulette scene with Stanley, we
watch Michael in solitary pursuit of a handsome buck. After some time, the animal stops at the edge of a clearing.
Michael draws a bead on it, and we expect to see his "one
activity that can be shared among equals.
Is friendship then impossible? Michael relaxes his "one
shot" ethic when he spares the deer, and he spends most
of the rest of the film caring for the people of Clairton.
His masculine virtue enables him to help them; but that
shot" virtue reconfirmed. But just as he seems about to
same virtue conflicts with his decision to care for them
take the shot, he jerks the rifle up, and shoots over the
deer. He appears agitated, and he asks in a strained vbice:
"Okay?" Though he seems to be talking to the deer, the
question must really be addressed to himself because we
then hear him answer in a long drawn-out shout: "Okay."
While the answer is being given, we do not see Michael
himself but look instead at the surrounding landscape. As
it sometimes happens in the mountains, the shout echoes
back: "Okay." This echo suggests that Michael finds himself in accord with nature.
rather than to despise or try to dominate them. The echo
in the hunting scene vaguely hints that nature supports
his decision, but the decision is also clearly a difficult one
for him to make. And we simply do not know why he
HROUGHOUT THE FIL", Michael has been a laconic
man. The fact of the film's title establishes the im·portance of this scene in which Michael chooses not
to slay his deer; but the one word he utters offers little indication of his motive for throwing away the shot. The
significance of the scene lies partly in its mystery. From
this point forward, Michael's motives are not explained to
the other characters and they have to remain somewhat
obscure to us, too. Fully to overcome this obscurity would
require knowing all that Michael knows, and perhaps
more; the film does not pretend to provide the viewer
with that knowledge, even for a moment. But we can attempt to see why this obscurity is necessary.
If we think back to the first section of the film, we can
see Michael has a kind of prisoner of his natural superi-
T
ority. His· dominant impulse was the masculine love of
hunting and war; his superiority emerged in his great com-
petence at those activities. Had he pursued his passion for
the development of his masculine superiority, he might
have become a solitary hunter or a mercenary soldier; had
he pursued this passion in his relations with his friends, he
would have tended to become a despot of one kind or
another. At times his speech suggested that masculine,
se1f-serving superiority is what he most desired: "Two is
pussy; 'one shot' is what it's all about_ ... This is this.
From now on you're on your own." But we never see him
live as though he completely accepts his own principles.
He is prevented from doing so by a different, and not specifically masculine, impulse: the desire for friendship, the
desire to share the best activities with other human beings.
Michael set aside his interest in women in order to pur-
sue that friendship with Nick in which he hoped to share
the most masculine activities. This project stopped when
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
longer thinks that the exercise of masculine virtue is an
makes it. From this point forward, we must confine our-
selves largely to examining the effects of Michael's activities in his new role as guardian-hero.
When Michael puts himself into a position to kill the
deer and then spares it, he enters into a peculiar relation-
ship with the animal. While it had previously been merely
a natural being, it now owes its freedom to Michael's
choice. Despite the deer's ignorance of Michael's responsibility for its future existence and activity, Michael now
rules it more nobly than he would have had he chosen to
destroy it. Similarly, Michael's rule over his decent
Clairton friends will be much less visible to them than his
direct but temporary domination over Stanley. For that
reason he will be able to begin establishing a community
rather than a mere reflection of the natural hierarchy
among human beings.
This change in Michael's relation to the people of
Clairton first emerges through the replacement of Nick
by Linda as the link between Michael and the others.
When Michael first returns to his hometown, he avoids a
party at his house arranged in his honor. Linda has been
living in the house, and he goes there after the others
have left in the morning. When the two meet, there are
moments of awkwardness, just as one would expect. Dur-
ing this first meeting, Linda brings out a sweater she has
made for Nick, and she tries to see whether it could fit
Michael; it is not the right size, but she is tearfully confident that she can alter it. Very clearly, Linda has little notion of the important and unalterable differences between
the two men; since she cannot truly appreciate what
Michael is, her present urge to give up Nick does not indicate that any great change has taken place in her since the
beginning of the film. When Michael offers to escort her
to her place of employment, she reveals both her appreciation of his outward appearance and her inability to understand what lies below his surface: "Mike, you're so
weird. You're always such a gentleman."
Like Nick, Michael has been attracted to Linda from
the start. Nick carried a picture of her to Vietnam, and we
saw him look at it twice just before his breakdown.
Michael carried the same picture, but we do not see him
25
�look at it until just before he returns to see her. With Nick
missing and probably dead, Michael now tentatively begins to reopen his own relationship with her. Though we
might have expected him to be offended by her confusion
in the scene with the sweater, he soon chooses to offer a
most generous and helpful interpretation of her ambivalence: "Linda, I just wanted to say how sorry I am about
Nick. I know how much you love him; I know it could
never been the same .... " We can be sure that if Nick
were to return, Michael would try gracefully to avoid standing between him and Linda. By paying such respect to the
prior claims of the old relationship between Nick and
Linda, Michael acts to preserve Linda's sense of the worth
of such claims. We know enough about Nick and Linda to
know that they are not the source of whatever strength
such claims might have; we saw before that Nick's commitment to her was less than wholehearted, and the film
hints that she has not been faithful during his absence.
But Michael knows enough about the fragility of the
bonds among human beings to be careful with those that
exist; he is opposed to overturning them for the sake of
what might be a specious improvement.
Because Linda is a woman and understands little about
Michael, she is impatient to feel the security that she
hopes he can offer: very soon, she desperately proposes
that they comfort each other by sleeping together. He
seems unoffended, but he only reluctantly allows her to
accompany him to his motel room; and we are permitted
to infer that he tries to comfort her without accepting her
offer of sex. Besides the problems that he must so clearly
recognize in establishing intimate ties with people who
cannot adequately understand him, Michael has just
learned that Stevie is alive and back in the United States.
just as Michael seeks to help Linda preserve a healthy respect for her past love, he must recognize the possibility
that she could undermine his loyalties to the friends who
followed him to war.
After the hunting trip and the encounter with the deer,
Michael returns to Linda and offers himself without his
previous reluctance; he now takes her for the first time to
his own bed at home. After she falls asleep, he looks at the
hunting trophies in his room and at the mills in the distance; now, finally, he goes out to visit Stevie. In war,
Michael was Stevie's protector. But in civilian life, friendships between men require that the natural distinctions
among them be very much obscured; this is what made
his relations with other men so difficult before he went to
war. Michael's new friendship with Linda, which is based
on the clear and acl!:nowledged natural distinction between the sexes, allows him to begin taking care of Stevie
in the artificial circumstances of civilized life. There is order in Michael's relationships with the people of Clairton,
an order made possible by his decision to relax his insistence on the primacy of his masculine, self-serving virtue.
When he visits Stevie in the hospital, Michael learns
that Stevie's wife has been receiving small carved ele-
26
phants and large amounts of cash from Saigon; she forwards the souvenirs and money to her crippled husband,
maliciously enclosing it all in socks. Michael immediately
knows that Nick must still be alive; though he does not tell
Stevie or anyone else, he also knows that Nick must be
getting the money by playing Russian roulette. Nick's sudden intrusion disrupts the order of Michael's relationships
in Clairton.
to the Communists and the
city is afire with the frenzy of America's final evacuation. Bombardment by enemy artillery provides the
flames that light the nights; the harsh light of day exposes
the desperate fever to escape among those who sense
what the victors from the north will bring. Somewhere in
this doomed city Nick, or what is left of him, continues to
pursue his private obsession. Michael is intent on finding
him, and by some miracle of cunning and daring, gets into
this earthly hell. He appears as resolute- almost as monomaniacal-as a man in Nick's occupation would have to
be.
In the course of tracking Nick, Michael encounters the
Frenchman who seduced him into his presenf career.
During their first conversation, Michael says that he
wants to find Nick in order to play Russian roulette
against him. Since we know that he has no such desire, we
have to wonder why he expresses it. He could as plausibly
have said that he wanted to see the famous American play
the game; in fact, one would think that the European
could more easily have understood such a motive. But
Michael must know more about Russian roulette than we
do. The first time he played, he not only won but he overcame the game itself. We have seen him studying its mercenary variety, and we have seen him use the game as a
tool of education in the United States. What began as a
metaphor for war has been subtly expanded so that it
points towards greater questions about the responsibilities
of human beings to themselves and one another. By so
mastering the game that he can play it usefully in civilian
life, Michael revealed that his own relation to it is one of
aversion and attachment. He never shows any love for this
purest form of exposing one's own well-being to dark and
uncontrollable forces. In this way he has shown that his
S
AlCON IS ABOUT TO FALL
early statement about his aversion to surprises has a core
of truth: in his heart, Michael has remained more a deer
hunter than a warrior. At the same time he appears to
have concluded that bravery and skill in Russian roulette
are conditions of the excellence he has always sought. He
plays it not only when it is obviously necessary, but
also-as with Stanley-when he judges that it can bring
some important good. In the last deer-hunting scene,
Michael appeared to turn away from the solitary pursuit
of his own excellence; he is a member of the Army's elite
Rangers, and the film gives no indication that he intends
to leave the military now that the war is over.
WINTER 1981
�Knowing so much about Russian roulette, or war
broadly conceived, Michael has to know that Nick's life
since he disappeared will have put a great deal of distance
between the two of them. We see him taking great risks to
find Nick; he must know that he will have to take greater
risks to bring Nick back. Michael has gone into hell after
his friend and he must somehow foresee that he is going
to have to play yet another round of Russian roulette
before he returns.
When Michael finds him, Nick shows no recognition.
He is intent on the present; except for the strange fact
that he sends elephants and his winnings to Stevie's wife,
he seems to have lost all touch with his past. In a desperate attempt to give Nick back his memory-to bring this
ghost back to human life-Michael arranges to play the
next game against him.
When he first came into the house where Nick plays,
Michael had been visibly distressed to see another player
kill himself. Now, at the table with Nick, Michael begins
urgently trying to talk him back to himself: "We don't
have much time .... Don't do it." When the spectators
have finished placing their bets, Nick still has not heard
Michael. Nick takes the first turn; the hammer drops on
an empty chamber. Since mere speech has failed, Michael
picks up the pistol and asks, "Is this what you want?"
After saying sadly, "I love you, Nick," Michael's face twists
up with a terrible dread that we have seen in no professional Russian roulette player. He puts the revolver to his
head and pulls the trigger; again, the weapon fails to discharge. But Nick remains oblivious to Michael's efforts to
reach him. As Nick picks up the gun again, Michael grabs
his wrist, sees track marks on his arm, and begins talking
urgently of home, of their friendship, of the mountains.
Now at last, what Nick would most remember about
Michael returns to him: he says, "One shot," laughs
softly, and blows his brains out. Screaming with grief,
Michael grabs the corpse and starts shaking it in an
instinctive effort to bring it back to life.
This scene invites us to interpret it in terms of
Michael's love for Nick. That love is surely what enables
him to risk himself in the game. But what is the basis and
framework of the love? Michael must know how small are
the chances that Nick could be retrieved from the living
death in which he finds him. By virtue of what principle
did he take upon himself with no visible hesitation this illicit 12,000-mile trip to hell in search of a man who is not
sane enough to return from there by his own will? And by
virtue of what principle does Michael risk Nick's life in the
round of Russian roulette they play?
In this scene, love is the passion that carries Michael
through the hardest part of the game, just as hatred or anger carried him through the previous games he played.
But in no case do these passions simply rule Michael's
conduct. In the other games, Michael was ruled by his insight into the justification for his participation. Here the
only visible justification for the risks he takes is the old
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
promise he made to Nick not to leave him in Vietnam. By
holding himself and Nick to that promise, Michael affirms
the gravity of a human relationship to which he has committed the word of his honor; he thus establishes the superiority of the relationship implied by a promise over
either of the human beings who participate in that relationship. We see in this last Russian roulette scene how
much Michael dislikes what he has to do; not once does
he seem tempted to protect his own human feelings with
callous notions about imperatives of abstract duty. Still,
he does set the authority of his promise above himself and
others, and he thereby brings that authority into being.
The Deer Hunter correctly teaches us that love and decency would not exist as goods were it not for this
harsh-and painful-insistence on self-respect.
As we saw before, Michael's earliest and highest hopes
have not been met: he has not found his equal and has not
found perfected friendship. Nor has his struggle against
the rule of chance in human affairs been wholly successful. It would be hard to imagine a man who takes firmer
responsibility for himself and for his own activity; because
of this he can be said to have done as much as one can do
to prevent chance from living within oneself. But in order
to achieve this victory, he has had to live where chance
does virtually rule: he has had to face enemies out beyond
the protecting conventions and institutions of civil society. In the film this is presented through his experience of
war; but the contrast between him and the other two soldiers shows that what truly distinguishes him is his understanding of what war reveals about himself and others. To
reach that just estimation of men, Michael has had to take
enormous risks and exercise great courage and moderation. Men with his natural talents and inclinations are rare
to begin with, and they are more likely than most others
to die in battle. The blessing of his survival will enable
him to help others more than they can fully appreciate.
After Nick's funeral, his
friends go to the old tavern to have breakfast alone
together. The scene is similiar to the one just before
the first transition to Vietnam. But this time it is day, now
there· are women present, and one of the group is very
conspicuous by his absence. While in the kitchen preparing the food, the tavern owner tries to choke back his tears
by humming and singing a little of "God Bless America."
In the earlier tavern scene, the orderly motion of his
music helped provide a brief but satisfying relief from
struggle; now, however, the pain that Nick's death has
brought seems as likely to break out in violent weeping as
in the reconciliation of song. Sensing that a critical moment is at hand, Linda begins to sing with a shaking voice:
"God bless America/Land that I love .... " Nick has lost
his life, Linda and the others have lost him; this prayer,
with its patriotism and its assumption about the cosmic
supports for patriotism, might allow those present to
T
HE STORY ENDS IN CLAIRTON.
27
�believe that these sacrifices were worthwhile. But their
hesitation to join in the singing betrays their doubts about
the song's credibility.
One man can ease those doubts. Michael once said that
these others were "assholes"; there is nothing to indicate
that they have changed much during the film. Michael
has always been skeptical of piety, adhering to a pagan
hunting religion if to any at all; nothing in the film indicates that he has found in the world the coherence that
could make this song even remotely plausible. Whatever
Michael may once have felt towards the others, and whatever he may now believe about the world, he joins in the
singing. As he is thereby ratifying their belief in the comforting words, his attention seems directed mainly at
Linda; but he performs the function of a priest for them
all. Michael has always had a natural air of authority, and
now his credentials are strengthened by the fact that he
has been with open eyes where none of them could go.
Without Michael's assent the singing would be ludicrous-by joining in, he protects the others from having
to admit how much reason there may be for despair. And
he protects them, too, from having to admit how dependent they are on him for protection from the horrors he
has survived. He bestows on them what freedom they are
28
capable of, much as he did for the deer he spared in the
mountains. The image of the deer should remind us that
one of the dangers he protects them from is his own urge
to dominate them by force.
At the last moment, Michael reminds his friends-and
us-that the reconciliation provided by the song is a little
too easy. The edifying words of "God Bless America"
could not be said to foster bad beliefs, but by themselves
they are empty. So at the conclusion of the singing,
Michael raises his glass and says: "Here's to Nick." By reminding the others of the importance of keeping the
memory of the friend who died, Michael tries to prevent
them from going too far into the refuge of comforting sentiment: he imposes on them at least a little of the difficult
work of cultivating the grounds in which a noble sense of
freedom and community can grow. They respond by repeating the toast in unison, and the film ends. Michael
knows how costly this communion has been, and how
fragile are the supports that make it possible; his work has
only begun, and may never be completed. But if we have
gained a greater understanding of the deer hunter and of
his place in our community, the film has achieved its principal purpose.
WINTER 1981
�The Scientific Background of
Descartes' Dualism
Arthur Collins
Dualism is the thesis that all the finite individual things
that exist in the universe are either minds or bodies.
Bodies are material things whose principle and defining
feature is extension or the filling of space, and minds are
nonmaterial things and their principle and defining
feature is thinking or being conscious. The most important aspect of Descartes' dualism is its characterization of
a human being as a composite entity. In an individual
man, mind and body are closely associated. In some sense
they are united. However, they cannot lose their distinctness as two separate substances, that is; as two entities
each of which endures through time, undergoes its own
changes, and thus accumulates its own history. Changes
the mind undergoes are changes in thought and consciousness, and the history of a mind is a sequence of
mental states, mental contents, and mental activities. The
body undergoes physical changes and has a physical history, the history of a material object. The crucial claim of
dualism is that the body is not the thing that thinks in a
man. The fundamental nature of body is being extended
and this contrasts with and excl!ldes being conscious.
Descartes' philosophical arguments for this dualism are
most fully rendered in his Meditations on First Philosophy.
It is worth reminding ourselves that this work bears the
subtitle, "In which the existence of God and the distinction between Mind and Body are demonstrated." 1 The
same arguments are prefigured briefly and partially in
Part Four of the Discourse on Method. They are recast in
Part One of the Principle of Philosophy, and they appear
elsewhere in Descartes' writings.
Although Cartesian dualism still exerts an immense influence in philosophy, Descartes' arguments for his dualism, from their earliest presentation, have been found
wholly inadequate by most readers. Even those who ac-
Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York, Arthur Collins has published articles in numerous philosophical journals on epistemology, philosophical psychology, and the history of philosophy.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
cept or share his dualist convictions have found his
defense of them quite unsatisfactory. The inadequate
arguments represent an effort to frame definitive demonstrations for convictions that were deeply held by Descartes and that were understandably compelling to him.
But the thinking which actually led Descartes to these
convictions is remote from the matters that figure in the
official proofs of his late metaphysical works.
Descartes' Argument
The Meditations can be divided into two unequal parts
at the end of the second day's thinking. Under this division the first part contains the initial encouragement of
systematic and radical doubt, culminating in the two general skeptical hypotheses: the dream hypothesis, and the
deceiving demon hypothesis. This first part also contains
the cogito argument by which doubt is at last halted in the
unshakeable self-knowledge of the thinking subject. It
concludes with the recognition in the latter part of the
Second Meditation, that the immediate contents of consciousness, construed only as "ideas" in the mind, all
share the indubitability of the cogito. At this point, the existence of the thinking subject and the existence and content of all his ideas are guaranteed. Preparation has been
made for the survey and classification of ideas in the
Third Meditation. Everything but this sphere of consciousness remains in doubt. The existence of a material
order and of the thinking subject's own body remain to be
argued for. Even the simplest mathematical propositions
have yet to attain standing as truths.
To this day, every philosophical intelligence feels the
power of this representation of the subjective starting
point for philosophical thinking. Although modern philosophers owe so much to the phenomenological starting
point discovered in the first two Meditations, almost nothing in subsequent thought has been influenced by arguments and claims found in the second part of the work.
29
�But the whole of Descartes' official defense of dualism is
found in this second part.
In the Third Meditation Descartes turns to God in devising an escape from the threatening prison of solipsistic
consciousness. Few have followed him in his view that the
idea of God is the first for which we are able to know a
corresponding existence. Of empiricist philosophies, only
Berkeley's accords comparable prominence to theological
premises in moving from the flux of immediate
experi~
ence to a more stable independent reality. Empiricism has
generally rejected the uses of theology on which Descartes relies.
The function of Descartes' theology in the Third Meditation is precisely to prepare the ground for the proof of
the existence of material things. The causal argument,
there mounted, claims that the existence of God is implied as a needed causal antecedent both by the existence
of an idea of God and by the subject's possession of that
idea. This reasoning is supplemented in the Fifth Meditation by Descartes' version of the "ontological argument"
for God's existence. The intervening discUssion concerns
the nature of human error and establishes the compatibility of man's imperfection with the conclusion reached in
the Third Meditation: Man's creator is an infinite and perfect God. This is Descartes' highly intellectualized version
of the traditional problem of evil. His solution emphasizes
human freedom and places responsibility for human deficiencies on men themselves, while God is asserted to have
made men capable of correcting all the errors to which
they are susceptible;
This reconciliation of divine perfection and human inadequacy is not original. Saint Augustine presented much
the same argument, although he vigorously rejected optimistic attitudes concerning man's power to correct his
shortcomings. Augustine adverts to the freedom of man
in order to deny God's responsibility for human vices. In
his proof of the existence of a material world and its distinctness from the mental, Descartes exploits an aspect of
the argument never contemplated by Augustine: If God is
absolved from responsibility for human failings only because man is free and, thus, responsible for himself, then,
insofar as man is not free, it should follow that God is
responsible for him. As we shall see, it is just this contrapositive entailment of an earlier solution to the problem
of evil that Descartes invokes in moving from our ineluctable belief in the existence of a material world to the justification of that belief.
The very same pattern-exploitation of an old argument for new ends-recurs in the use of the ontological
argument in the Fifth Meditation. This argument is best
known in the eleventh-century formulation of Anselm of
Canterbury and in the framework of its later rejection by
Thomas Aquinas. Descartes has proved the existence of
God in the Third Meditation. Is another proof added as
reinforcement? No, in the Fifth Meditation, the material
world is Descartes' real objective. The ontological argument serves to focus the discussion on the concept of es-
30
sences that Descartes requires in his subsequent reasoning. The discussion consists in an extended comparison of
our idea of God and our ideas of material things. Both are
construed as formulations of essences. For our purposes,
we can think of an essence as a cluster of characteristics
that define an entity of a certain type. In the case of extended things such as triangles, the investigation of essence
provides answers to the question, What must an existing
thing outside the mind be like if it is to be a triangle?
Then theorems about triangles are said. to be entailments
of the essence of triangles. Such propositions, formulating
geometrical knowledge, do not assert the existence of
anything. In the example considered by Descartes, knowledge of essence yields only an entirely secure but hypothetical statement: If there is actually a triangle
somewhere, then it has an angle-sum of two right angles.
A parallel examination of the essence of God as indicated
by our idea of God reveals, according to Descartes, that
the proposition "God exists" is entailed by this idea, just
as the angle-sum theorem is entailed by the idea of a triangle. Descartes' interest in the ontological argument really
lies in the contrast it affords between the essence of God
that sustains an existence claim and the essence of matter
that does not.
In the last Meditation the existence of material things is
proved via complicated appeals to the known essence of
material things and the now-known existence and character of God. Because his power is infinite, God could have
given us the ideas that we have of material things in our
geometrical thinking and in perceptual experience even
though there were no such material things outside our
thought. He could have planted ideas of external things
directly in our consciousness, or he could have induced
them through some intermediate reality, sufficient for the
production of those ideas, but entirely unlike a material
world. Such possibilities, however, would be inconsistent
with God's infinite goodness. For we have an irresistible
disposition to refer our perceptual ideas to material things
outside us. If no such material things were in fact the
source of those ideas, our disposition would be a systematic misinterpretation of our experience that we could
never correct. Just here Descartes employs the optimistic
principle introduced in the Fourth Meditation: God enables us to correct any errors to which we are susceptible.
This justifies the proposition that there is a material world
which is the source of our perceptual experiences and
which is the nonmental subject matter of which geometrical truths are true.
The dualism which is the final objective of the Meditations now requires only the proposition that bodies and
minds, both of which are known to exist, are also distinct
existences. Descartes argues that, though it may be that
every mind is an embodied mind, minds could exist without bodies and God could have made our conscious minds
just as they are without equipping us with bodies at all.
He seems to regard this appeal to God's power as a
needed premise for the distinctness of minds and bodies.
WINTER 1981
�This is likely to be confusing to his readers. After all, if the
essence of triangles is to be three-sided, and of pentagons,
to be five-sided, then, obviously, existing triangles cannot
be existing pentagons. But Descartes writes as though he
takes seriously the possibility that the thing that is conscious might be a corporeal thing, even though its essence
is consciousness, while the essence of corporeal things is
extension, and even though these are distinct essences.
We notice that the essence: being conscious, does not obviously exclude the essence: being extended, on logical
grounds, as three-sidedness and five-sidedness exclude
one another. But this difference is not the only foundation for Descartes' conviction that further reasoning is
needed.
Prevailing scholastic-Aristotelian conceptions explicated the relationship between mind and body with the
help of a ubiquitous form-matter distinction. Applied to
human existence, the soul is taken by this tradition to be
the form of the body, so that the animated body is a single
substance, and not a composite of soul and body, each
possessing an independent substantial existence. In light
of this doctrine, the immortality of the soul and its survival of the dissolution of the body in death became special problems for scholastic philosophers.
In addition to this tradition, Descartes takes into
consideration common-sense intuitions which make it difficult to think of a person as a mere association of a
spiritual being and some inert clay. In the famous phrase,
he allows that "I am not present in my body merely as a
pilot is present in his ship," 2 and he draws attention to
pains, which are experienced and not merely observed as a
pilot might observe events damaging to his vessel. This intimacy with the corporeal nature of one's own body arises
"from the mind's being united to and, as it were, mixed
up with the body." In a letter to his sometime disciple
Regius, Descartes says that an angel inhabiting a body
would perceive impinging motions but would not feel sensations as we do 3 An angel would be like a pilot in a ship.
In this letter Descartes expresses a confusing vacillation
between the accepted scholastic view that a man is an ens
per se (a substantial unity) and the view that a man is an
ens per accidens (a composite being) which an angel inhabiting a body would be. Descartes' vacillation is partly due
to his desire not to offend other religious thinkers and
authorities needlessly. He recommends qualified endorsement of the prevailing view to Regius as a matter of prudence. But his intellectual uncertainty is also apparent.
Descartes never reaches a satisfactory understanding of
the "mixing" of mind and body in human existence.
Descartes' demonstration of dualism amounts to these
propositions: (1) We have indubitable knowledge of the
existence of ourselves as thinking beings, and of the content of our conscious thought and experience. (2) The
idea of an infinite, perfect, and independent being, which
is the idea of God, is found among our conscious
thoughts. (3) We know that God must exist as the required
cause of the idea of God. (4) Some of our ideas are clear
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
and distinct, and propositions involving clear and distinct
ideas can be known to be true. (The seeming mutual dependence of this and the previous proposition is the foundation of the common charge that Descartes' reasoning is
circular.) (5) Mathematical truths are prominent among
those certified by their clarity and distinctness. (6) Perceptual ideas of sensuous qualities are confused ideas of
things external to our minds. (7) Geometry is clear and distinct thinking about extended things, without the confused sensuous aspect, but with an essential imaginative
component that connects geometry with perception. (8)
The goodness of God assures us that there is an external
world corresponding to and causing our perceptual ideas,
and that this reality exemplifies the truths of mathematics
in the form in which they are imagined in geometry, but
not as represented in perceptual experience. (9) From our
ideas alone we know that the essence of mind is consciousness and the essence of body is extension, and that
these are distinct essences. (10) The power of God certifies the real distinctness of existing minds and bodies,
though the thinking subject's mind is intimately connected
with his body in a way that is not entirely intelligible. (ll)
The distinctness of minds and bodies is confirmed by the
reflection that a mind is an indivisible thing, for example,
there is no such thing as half a mind. Bodies are all essentially divisible.
The striking thing about reactions of Descartes' early
readers to this argument for dualism is that so much of it
is ignored. The standard response to Descartes, one might
say, has been to accept his dualism and to pay little attention to his demonstration of its correctness. The authors
of "Objections" published with the Meditations write as
though Descartes has based his dualism on the first two
Meditations alone. In criticisms addressed to the Second
Meditation, Hobbes and Gassendi, authors of the third
and fifth set of Objections, respectively, both complain
that Descartes has only assumed that the mind is not corporeal.4 In replying, Descartes points out that he did not
claim to have proved the incorporeal status of the mind
until the Sixth Meditation. In the earlier context, where
these materialists find an unsupported assumption of dualism, Descartes merely notes that he can imagine that
there are no material things at all, though he is at the
same time conscious of his own existence. He cannot
imagine that there are not minds for his own conscious~
ness is incompatible with that supposition. Then he says
1
But perhaps it is the case that these very things which I suppose to be nonentities [that is, bodies imagined not to existL
and which are not properly known to me, are yet in reality not
different from the "I" of which I am aware. I do not know and
will not dispute the point. 5
At this point he does not dispute the view that the thinking
thing may be corporeal. It may be the body that thinks.
It is not only the predictably critical materialists who
31
�respond as though Descartes had rested his dualism on
the first two Meditations. The preponderance of readers
incline to look for, and to find, in the first part of the text a
more direct, less ornate argument for the nonmaterial
status of the mind. Then they find this simpler argument
inadequate; but it is not an argument that Descartes has
presented. The "diverse theologians and philosophers"
whose views Mersenne assembled as the second set of
Objections say
ous but still skeptical. Her attention is quite properly
focused on the desperate problem of mind-body interac·
tion that is imposed by the acceptance of dualism. She
writes to Descartes
Up to this point [the Second Meditation] you know that you
These critical reactions are at least partly a conse·
quence of the order of the argument in the Meditations.
We start with assurances about the mind and mental contents. The question at the beginning of the Third Medita·
lion is: What else exists? What is there in addition to this
mental reality? And the answers: God and the material
world naturally seem to be an articulation of further
realities outside the mind. There is an awkward turn of
thought in the reflection that the mind itself might be a
constituent of this further material reality. Managing the
awkward turn of thought, readers come to imagine that it
has eluded Descartes and that he rests his dualism on the
natural presumption of the otherness of body that derives
simply from the skeptical subjective starting point. When
we correct this misinterpretation, however, we are left
only with Descartes' unconvincing theological arguments.
Descartes' demonstration of dualism is, then, inadequate. Empiricists have generally eschewed any religious
foundation for metaphysics, and even the firm believers
among Descartes' first readers and critics found little to
convince them in his theological premises. This is under·
standable. However great our faith, how could we pre·
sume to have so fine a grasp of the implications of the
goodness and power of God as to rest upon it our confi·
dence that outer reality does fit our spatial intuitions and
does not fit our perceptual experiences? The response to
Descartes' argument shows that his premises are less attractive than his conclusions. We cannot avoid asking, Are
there not other reasons for his acceptance of a dualism
that, in itself, has seemed correct to so many philosophers?
are a being that thinks; but you do not know what this thinking thing is. What if it were a body which by its various mo-
tions and encounters produces that which we call thought?
For granted that you rejected the claim of every sort of body,
you may have been deceived in this, because you did not rule
out yourself, who are a body. For how will you prove that a
body cannot think, or that its bodily motions are not thought
itself?6
Even the judicious Antoine Arnauld either ignores or re·
jects out of hand the whole elaborate argument we have
summarized. In his, the fourth set of Objections, Arnauld
says
I can discover no passage in the whole work capable of effecting this proof, save the proposition laid down at the outset: I
can deny that there is any body or that any extended thing exists, but yet it is certain that I exist so long as I make this denial, hence, I am a thing that thinks and not a body, and the
body does not pertain to the knowledge of myself. But the
only result I can see this to give, is that a certain knowledge of
myself be obtained without knowledge of the body. But it is
not yet quite clear to me that this knowledge is complete and
adequate, so as to make me sure that I am not in error in excluding the body from my essence.7
It is true that Descartes does not give any fuller reason
for his contention that the essences of mind and body are
distinct than the clear and distinct separability of these
ideas in our thought. We can suppose all bodies nonexis·
tent but we cannot suppose all minds nonexistent. How·
ever, this is not Descartes' argument for dualism. He
invokes theological premises three times in moving from
this thought-experiment to the conclusion that the mind
is not material. The existence of God is needed to assure
me of the truth of what I think clearly and distinctly, by
ruling out the deceiving-demon hypothesis. The goodness
of God is appealed to in assuring me that my propensity
to refer perceptual ideas to an outer material reality is jus·
tified. Finally, the power of God is cited to certify the dis·
tinction between minds and bodies, however intertwined
their real instances.
Even Descartes' friendliest critics such as Father
Gibieuf and Princess Elizabeth do not find his reason for
the distinction between mind and body satisfactory, and
in their hesitations they pay no attention to theological
niceties. Gibieuf thinks that the claim to have established
the real essence of mind may have been accomplished by
an illegitimate abstraction. 8 Elizabeth's response is gener-
32
The senses teach me that the soul moves the body but neither
they nor the imagination nor the intellect teaches me how.
Perhaps there are properties of the soul unknown to us which
will overturn the conviction of the soul's nonextension which
I acquired from the excellent arguments of your Meditations.9
The Scientific Background
In the Meditations, we are invited to consider the
securely known conscious mind and then to ask, Could
this consciousness turn out to be a corporeal thing? Could
it be the body that thinks? It is instructive to consider a
parallel question that is not represented in the Medita·
tions at all. Suppose that we could, somehow, start from a
secure knowledge of material things and then ask, could
these material things themselves manifest intellectual ac·
tivities and consciousness? Could it be minds that are extended? No such question can arise in the Meditations
because, following the skeptical method, "the mind is
more easily known than the body." 10 These unfamiliar
questions, however, would far better reflect the order of
WINTER 1981
�discovery in Descartes' own attainment of a dualist metaphysics than the artfully organized questions and answers
of the Meditations. He is convinced that matter cannot
possibly think long before he attempts to prove that mind
cannot be extended. It is his scientific thought about the
material world, unencumbered by systematic metaphysics, that is the source of Descartes' conviction that mind
and matter are distinct essences and distinct existences.
The metaphysical doctrines for which he is famous did
not receive any formulation in Descartes' writings and
played no part in his thought for many years after he had
begun systematic study of the physical world. It is easy to
read the philesophy of the Meditations and the Principles
of Philosophy back into Descartes' earlier thought as expressed in his youthful scientific writings, in Le Monde,
and in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind. Etienne
Gilson's studies of Descartes have done much to correct
this error. 11 In the Discourse on Method, Descartes tells us
that after he had resolved on a life of search for truth and
had begun to construct scientific explanations on the
model of mathematical understanding
... nine years elapsed before I had yet taken any position con·
ceming the difficulties commonly disputed among the
learned or begun to search for the principles of any philosophy more certain than the common variety [plus certaine que
la vulgaire.] 12
Descartes identifies the success of his physical researches with the gradual elimination from his own thinking of a prevailing tendency to ascribe intellectual functions to mere physical things and events. Aristotelian
physical explanations fail, in his opinion, just because
they confuse mental and physical things and they ascribe
mental powers and functions to matter. These are the
scholastic accounts in terms of substantial forms and real
qualities that Descartes attacks in letters to other thinkers.
Writing to de Launay he says
The earliest judgments which we made in our childhood and
the common philosophy later, have accustomed us to attribute to the body many things which belong only to the soul,
and to attribute to the soul many things which belong only to
the body. So people commonly mingle the two ideas of body
and soul when they construct the ideas of real qualities and
substantial forms which I think should be altogether
rejected. 13
And to Princess Elizabeth
... we have hitherto confounded the notion of the soul's
power to act on the body with the power one body has to act
on another. We attributed both powers not to the soul, whose
nature we did not yet know, but to the various qualities of the
body such as weight, heat, etc. We imagined these qualities to
be real, that is to say to have an existence distinct from that of
bodies, and so to be substances, although we called them
qualities. 14
Descartes overcame these confusions by developing a
conception of material things that excludes mind. In his
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
replies to the sixth Objections, offered by anonymous
theologians and philosophers, Descartes says that his own
reasons set out in the Meditations for the view "that the
human mind was really distinct from the body and was
more easily known than it," were not fully persuasive,
even to him, when he first thought of them. He was like
an astronomer who could not stop thinking of the earth as
larger than the sun after possessing demonstrations that it
is much smaller. Then Descartes says that, to reinforce his
assent he "proceeded further," 15 keeping his ideas straight
until
I observed that nothing at all belonged to the nature or
essence of body except that it was a thing with length, breadth
and depth, admitting of various shapes and various motions.
[Such shapes cannot exist apart from the bodies that have
them and, in contrast,] ... colors, odors, savors, and the rest of
such things, were merely sensations existing in my thought,
and differing no less from bodies than pain differs from the
shape and motion of the instrument which inflects it. Finally,
I saw that gravity, hardness, the power of heating, of attracting and of purging, and all other qualities which we experience in bodies consisted solely in motion or its absence,
and in the configuration and situation of their parts. 16
One aspect of dualism emerges here from the concept of
the subjectivity of the sensuous. Descartes reports his appreciation of the fact that a shape cannot exist separately
from the body shaped, while color does not exist in the
shaped body and, therefore, must exist in some other substance. So a nonmaterial mind is implied here as the locus
of secondary qualities which have some reality somewhere but cannot be referred to the physical world. It is
often said that the mind for Descartes is a receptacle for
sensuous characteristics which have been removed from
bodies. There is justice in this interpretation. The last
clause in the quoted passage, however, leads to a deeper
reason for the thesis that the mind is nonmaterial.
l(Gravity, hardness, the power of heating" and other
~~qualities" are prominent in Descartes' examples of spurious scholastic explanations that purport to know about
the substantial forms of things and the real qualities they
contain. Descartes thinks of his own attainment of a far
superior conception of physical objects and events as
conditioned by the rejection of these concepts. The scholastic explanations Descartes discards are those often ridiculed for their vacuousness by later critics: burning wood
heats because the wood contains the power of heating;
opium induces sleep because of its soporific virtue. This
charge of vacuousness is not all Descartes' objection. He
finds the scholastic explanations defective because they
import a psychological dimension into the physical order
where explanation should only be mechanical. Qualities
and substantial forms are psychologically intelligible determinants of change. They are like souls.
Writing to Mersenne in 1643, Descartes says that there
are two principles that need to be established:
33
�The first is that I do not believe that there are in nature any
real qualities, attached to substances and separable from them
by divine power like. so many little souls in their bodies.
[Claims involving such qualities make assertions that we do
not understand, and] . .. the philosophers invented these real
qualities only because they did not think they could otherwise
explain all the phenomena of nature; but I find on the contrary, that these phenomena are better explained without
them.
The second principle is that whatever is or exists remains always in the state in which it is, unless some ulterior cause
changes it. . .. 17
The first principle excludes the psychological from
physics. The second rejects intrinsic causality, and it is
the foundation of Descartes' law of inertia. 18
The two principles of physics Descartes expounds to
Mersenne are closely connected and both focus on the re·
pudiation of mental functions in accounts of physical
change. Real qualities and substantial forms were con·
ceived by the scholastics as self-contained causes of motion, in the general sense in which both qualitative
changes and movements were called motions. If every
change of state (and motion is itself a state for Descartes)
must have some ((ulterior" cause, that is, external cause,
as the second principle requires, then there will be no selfinduced motions to be ascribed to the real qualities and
forms that are rejected by the first principle. But we still
have to ask why it is that Descartes construed the prevailing explanations as psychological and why he says they
amount to projecting "little souls" into material things.
The concept of substantial forms rests on Aristotle's
distinction between form and matter. Any existing entity
must be composed of something and that matter of which
it is composed must have some organization or other making it the particular thing it is,for the same matter has the
potential to figure in the constitution of many different
particular objects. So Aristotle thinks of rna Iter as potentiality which is realized in a particular being by form or
actuality. This pair of metaphysical concepts reflects a
Platonic influence and it was much exploited by medieval
thinkers. Unlike Plato, Aristotle usually says that forms do
not exist by themselves, apart from any matter, any more
than matter exists by itself without being anything in par·
ticular, that is, without any form at all. 19 The real qualities
and substantial forms of scholastic science are derived
from this basic concept of form and matter. To under·
stand them we should appeal to a further Aristotelian distinction between natural objects and artificial colloca·
tions, and to the Aristotelian emphasis on organisms as
the paradigm illustration of existing substances.
A natural entity for Aristotle is precisely one that con·
tains within itself the causal initiative for its own motions
and changes. 20 It is the possession of such self-realizing
potential that makes something into a substantial unity in
the fullest sense. 21 For Aristotle, this concept is the faun·
dation of the difference between artifacts and self-repro·
34
clueing things that are made by men 22 The intrinsically
caused motion that is best illustrated by reproduction
marks an entity as a natural object. Reproduction leads us
immediately to the emphasis on organisms that is characteristic of Aristotle.
We should note, however, especially because it is directly relevant to Descartes' thinking, that natural objects
manifesting natural motions are not confined by Aristotle
nor the scholastic tradition to living things. The down·
ward motion of heavy things toward ·the center of the
universe is a natural motion according to Aristotle. This
coheres with common sense in that one does not have to
do anything to a heavy thing to induce its fall except
remove obstacles. 23 One does not have to remove obstacles and then push the heavy thing downward. It is,
then, as though the push comes from within as part of the
nature of the heavy thing which will be manifested in selfinduced changes when inhibiting forces are removed. In
the same way, light things recede from the center and,
generally, the four elements have their proper places in
the universe, which is where they tend to go. The empirically observed universe has a layered structure, earth
mostly at the center, water for the most part next closest,
and so on. This seems obvious confirmation of the conception of natural motion since it appears that things
have mostly gone where they belong. 24 And Aristotle has a
theory of the transmutation of elements from heavy to
light and from light to heavy, which could account intelligently for the fact that a permanent stasis is not reached 25
Within the setting of this theory of natural motion, to say
that a body is heavy is just to say that it contains within
itself a causal factor that originates motion toward the
center. As we shall see, Descartes' contention that scho·
lastic physical explanations psychologize inanimate material things is especially clearly articulated in connection
with weight and gravitational motion. 26
In Aristotelian thought, the motions and changes that a
thing can induce in itself in virtue of its formal nature are
all construed as realizing an innate potentiality or attaining an objective. Such objectives are ascribed to the ob·
jects that are able to move themselves. The power to initiate motion is thus an intrinsic directedness. The motions
which result from this in-dwelling causal initiative are,
therefore, susceptible to teleological explanations citing
final causes. The natural motion that the contained quality gravity induces is a directed motion toward the place
the heavy object seeks to occupy.
This finalism connects the inanimate physical world
with essentially biological understanding. Gravitational
motion is assimilated to the pattern of explanation that
seems so natural for motions, like those involved in respiration, which have a legible goal in the welfare of the
breathing animal. So the paradigm of a substance is a living organism. The Aristotelian doctrine articulating four
types of explanatory question, usually called the theory of
four causes, can be thought of as an implicit definition of
an individual substance. For a thing that is a true substan·
WINTER 1981
�tial unity, each of the four questions, including the question that calls for a purpose or objective, has an answer.
Physicists as well as biologists investigate final causes of
phenomena. Although in some cases the efficient, final
and material causes collapse into a single factor for Aristotle, finality is never absent from natureP
The various souls that Aristotle finds in plants, animals,
and men are among the forms capable of initiating motions with obvious natural objectives. The organization of
complex organisms is intelligible in terms of hierarchies of
such forms. In De Anima, the rational soul is the highest
form of the body making up a man. It is "the first actuality
of the body," a doctrine taken over by Thomas and other
scholastics." Aristotle considers the possible separate existence of souls, which seems to be excluded by his formmatter conception of individual things. "Suppose the eye
were an animal, sight would have been its soul . .. ". 29 A
sightless eye could exist as a material object with a lower
form, though not really as an eye, while sight could not exist at all without some material embodiment. In a passage
that has reverberations in the Meditations, Aristotle goes
These Aristotelian-scholastic views are the occasion for
Descartes' contention that forms and qualities are like
"little souls" in material objects. The conscious rational
soul of man, in this tradition, is the substantial form of
man. It accomplishes in a consciously articulated way the
initiation of movement toward ends just as substantial
forms and qualities in inanimate objects initiate directed
changes in phenomena like combustion and the fall of
heavy bodies. The heat generated in combustion, as Descartes reads scholastic accounts, is the realization of a con~
tained goal-like potential in the wood. For Descartes, the
production of heat is not the goal of a material object. Nor
is burning a self-caused action in which a piece of wood
can engage. Nothing happens but the turbulent motion of
minute particles, progressively disturbing the stabler
structure of the unburned wood. Heat is merely a subjective feature of our perception of these particle motions,
which are not directed from within the particles that
move. In "La Traite de la Lumiere," tactfully summing up
his rejection of scholastic explanations of combustion,
Descartes says:
on to say
Though another may imagine, if he wishes, that there is in
From this it indubitably follows that the soul is inseparable
from its body, or at any rate that certain parts of it are (if it has
parts)-for the actuality of some of them is nothing but the actuality of their bodily parts. Yet some may be separable because they are not the actualities of any bodies at all. Further
we have no light on the problem of whether the soul may not
be the actuality of the body in the sense in which the sailor is
the actuality of the ship.3o
I want to emphasize that, in Aristotle's thinking, souls
are like the qualities gravity, heat, and attraction in that
they are originative causes of motion and change. Intrinsic causal agency is found in gravitational fall, in the
growth of plants, in the locomotion of animals, and in consciously directed human actions. Behavior-directing factors which are mental by Descartes' criterion are, for Aris~
totle, sophisticated versions of the same inner determina~
tion of motion that is manifested by heavy objects.
The Aristotelian model of explanation, invoking forms
as causes of motion, was accepted by the scholastic thinkers to whom Descartes reacts. 31 In scholastic terminology,
forms are qualified as substantial not because they are
thought to be independent substances. Substantial form
contrasts with accidental form. The substantial form of a
thing comprises its essential nature. Accidental forms
have the same status as intrinsic causes of change, al~
though possession of them is inessential:
... [T]he substantial form differs from the accidental form in
this, that the accidental form does not make a thing to be absolutely, but to be such, as heat does not make a thing to be
absolutely but only to be hot. 32
An existing thing could lack an accidental form that it has
and yet remain what it is. Accidental forms include the
real qualities that Descartes repudiates.
1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
this wood the Form of fire, the Quality heat, and the Action
which burns it, as entirely distinct constituents, for my part,
since I am afraid of error if I posit anything more than what I
see must be there, I content myself with conceiving in it only
the movement of its parts. 33
The burning wood manifests only externally caused motions of particles. The realization of self-contained potentialities and the attainment of objectives, which do characterize actions of minds, are absent in combustion.
In the Fourth Meditation, Descartes says that he finds
"final causes to be wholly useless in physics," 34 for the reason that the purposes of an infinite Divinity are largely
opaque to men. But his scientific investigations have
given him a more fundamental reason for excluding finalism. He actually finds teleological explanations defective
even in cases where our assessment of purposes and ends
is quite correct.
This rule-that we should never argue from ends-should be
carefully heeded. For. .. the knowledge of a thing's purpose
never leads us to knowledge of the thing itself: its nature remains just as obscure to us. Indeed, this constant practice of
arguing from ends is Aristotle's greatest fault. 35
For example, when we rightly understand that the heart
beats in order to circulate the blood, we do not thereby
know anything at all about what makes it beat as it does.
We still need a causal explanation that purpose does not
provide or even suggest.
Descartes' most instructive criticisms of mental con~
cepts in physics concern weight and gravitational motion.
He portrays the evolution of his own thought about gravity as a gradual emancipation from a universal propensity
to mind-matter confusions traceable to childhood inter-.
pretations of experience:
35
�... I noticed that from infancy I had passed various judgements about physical things, for example, judgements which
contributed much to the preservation of the life I was then
entering; and I had afterwards retained the same opinions
which I had before conceived touching these things .... [And
although the mind was at the time] conscious of its own
nature and possessed of an idea of thought as well as extension, nevertheless, having no intellectual knowledge, though
at the same time it had an imagination of something, it took
them both to be one and the same and referred all its notions
of intellectual matters to the body. 16
The primitive theory of childhood springs from the intimate connection between phenomena and the conditions
for our survival as organisms. Sensations of pleasure and
pain succeed in the function of assuring survival precisely
through our inclination to identify pleasurable and painful sensations with the outer objects that stimulate them.
As a consequence of this biologically useful merging of
physical cause and mental effect we naturally develop a
mentalistic conception of physical reality.
Reconstructing his own intellectual biography, Descartes explains how the scholastic-Aristotelian explanation of the fall of heavy bodies springs from this childhood
imputation of "intellectual matters to the body." Gravity,
conceived as a real quality, is the self-contained cause of
motion in a heavy thing. This quality is a soul-like constituent, in the first instance, because it cannot be located inside the heavy thing as a part can be, just as the conscious
mind of a man initiates his movements but is not locatable
in some particular place within his body. The soul is able
to focus all its causal efficacy at a single point and so, too,
the formal quality "gravity" can exercise its causal force at
a point. In the case of the efficacy of the soul at a point,
Descartes means that, in the transition from intention to
behavior, a single part of the body can be moved in a particular way while the rest is unaffected. The heavy body
seems to mimic this in that, wherever a rope is attached,
all of the contained gravity acts at that one point "as if the
gravity resided in the part along which the rope touched
and was not diffused through the others." 37
Descartes' physics, however, rejects the concept of gravity as a space-filling quality of body that can act at a point.
Effectiveness at any selected point remains the right idea
when we are thinking about the operation of minds in
bodies that do have minds: "Indeed it is in no other way
that I now understand mind to be coextensive with body,
the whole in the whole and the whole in any of its
parts." 38
Descartes finds the most telling evidence of a confused
assignment of mental functions to matter in the alleged
directedness of gravitational movement.
The chief sign that my idea of gravity was derived from that
which I had of the mind, is that I thought that gravity carried
bodies toward the center of the earth as if it contained some
knowledge of this center within it. For it could not act as it did
without knowledge, nor can there be any knowledge except in
the mind. At the same time I attributed also to gravity certain
36
things which cannot be understood to apply to the mind in
the same sense; as, e.g., that it is divisible, measurable, etcYJ
In other words, the internal source of motion must be
understood within the scholastic explanation, not only as
an agency capable of inducing movements that express
the whole power of the inner cause at any one point in
the body, but also the inner agency must know where the
center is from the place the heavy body happens to occupy. Given a spherical universe, heavy bodies may reside
in any direction whatever from the center. It follows that
the same quality, gravity, is able to induce motions in one
body in any direction whatever. A body will move in a certain direction along a straight line through the center of
the universe, if it is on one side of the center, and it will
move in exactly the opposite direction along that same
line, if it is on the other side. How does this inner determinant manage to cause diametrically opposed motions?
The supposition that it does requires that the inner causal
factor be able to discriminate from one another the positions a body may occupy relative to the center. By analogy, a bird's nest is its natural place, and a bird is able to
and does move toward that nest, if the obstacles are not
too great. But this ability would be quite unintelligible if
we were not willing to ascribe to the bird something like
knowledge of the location of the nest. It would be unintelligible just because the ability imputed is a plastic disposition that issues in variously directed flight, depending on
the relative positions of bird and nest. It is not a brute tendency to move in some set way. Thus, the theory of
natural place and natural motion, widely accepted by such
prominent scholastic scientists as John Buridan and Albert of Saxony, does interpret gravity on a pattern suitable
for animal and human behavior that exhibits discrimination and intelligence. 4<l
In the last analysis, Descartes assigns even the intelligent performances of birds and all other nonrationalliving
things to the world of mindless mechanical interactions. A
man knows where his home is, and his knowledge together with his conscious control of his own movement
does indeed explain his homecomings at the end of the
day. The explanatory schema here, however, is grossly
misapplied, Descartes believes, in accounts of free fall,
and it is misapplied in accounts of the behavior of brutes
as well.
The uncompromising segregation of human actions
which do support psychological explanations and animal
behavior which does not is simply the consistent workingout of the implications of the rejection of mental factors
in elementary phenomena such as gravitational fall. The
essence of mind is consciousness. Where there is no consciousness, mind-like functions have no footing in scientific explanation. The deeply rooted inclination that we
possess to read psychological activities into nature is most
obvious in our thinking about animals that share so much
with us from the point of view of physiology. Even this almost irresistible psychologizing is the elaboration of the
WINTER 1981
�confused thinking of childhood wherein the inner conscious affective and sensuous representation is hopelessly
mixed up with the outer things that are both the causes
and the objects of the ideas that we have in perception.
Descartes adheres firmly to the view that physiology is
just mechanical physics applied to intricate structures and
elaborately organized functions that are found on a very
small scale in living things.
Contemporary materialist philosophers of mind rely on
the complexity of the brain and the nervous system to
lend plausibility to their hypothesis that neural events
may be identical with conscious experiences and thoughts.
No simple. working of levers and gears could produce a
feeling. But, perhaps, somehow, the billions of nerve cells,
each with its delicate electrical activity, interconnected in
hierarchical networks, containing a world of feedback
mechanisms, graspable as a maze of information chan~
nels, controls, dampers, and amplifiers-pei-haps mere
physical activity at this level, still dimly, partially, and provisionally understood, can amount to conscious thought.
Descartes is unattracted by this kind of speculation. He
was deeply impressed by physiology, and his visionary program for a physiological psychology in The Passions of the.
Soul is in the spirit of contemporary neurophysiology
even though the details of Descartes' neural science are
now but picturesque misconceptions. He is never tempted,
however, by the hypothesis of mind-brain identity. Complex physical events are only physical events.
This intuitive conviction that the intricacy of the physical cannot convert it into consciousness was well expressed
by Leibniz. In the Monadology, he suggests that the
microscopic size of things in the nervous system gives a
spurious aura of feasibility to materialism. But if the
mind-machine were enlarged to the size of a mill we could
enter it and would "find only parts which work upon one
another, and never anything by which to explain a perception [that is, a conscious experience.]" 41
Descartes' rejection of materialist conceptions of mind
rests on his conviction that his own gains in understand~
ing have been possible only because he has eliminated a
mental aspect from even the subtlest physical activities.
La Description du Corps Humain begins with the theme
of self-knowledge. Man's understanding of himself should
extend to anatomy and physiology and not only to the
moral dimensions of human existence. From this self-
study Descartes envisions unlimited practical results for
medicine in the cure and prevention of disease, and even
the retarding of old age. But these results will be forthcommg
... only if we have studied enough to understand the nature
of our own body and do not attribute in any way to the mind
the functions which depend only on the body and on the disposition of its organs. 42
Again Descartes cites patterns of thought developed in
childhood as an obstacle to understanding. We know we
have conscious control of some bodily movements and,
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
therefore, we incline to ascribe a mental principle to all
the others. Ignorance of anatomical structure and the mechanics of physiology permits us to extend the psychological explanatory idiom to the motions of the heart, the
arteries, and digestive organs, ''though these, containing
no thought, are only bodily movements." 43 One body is
moved by another, not by anything non bodily. Where we
do not consciously experience the dependence of
move~
ment on the mind, we should not ascribe it to the mind.
... [A]nd even the movements that are called voluntary proceed principally from the disposition of the organs, since they
cannot be excited without those bodily dispositions, whatever
volitions we may have, even though it is the mind that determines thern. 44
The physiology of bodily movements, then, reveals that
even for movements under the control of the will, physical effects must have physical causes. Here the question
of a final reconciliation of a thoroughgoing mechanical
viewpoint with mental control is left open.
La Description will try to explain, Descartes says, "the
machine of our body" and to show that we have no more
reason to ascribe its physiological workings to a soul than
we have to impute a soul to a clock. 45 A clock plainly has
no soul, although its inner workings and outer behavior
are elaborately organized in ways that reflect the intelligence of its maker and the human objectives in its use.
These relationships to conscious mental activities are not,
in the case of a clock, the occasion for a confused imputa-
tion of thinking to the mechanism itself. But it is just this
confusion to which we are susceptible when we think
about the workings of an animal's body or our own.
Descartes' lifelong interest in automata, 46 clever prod-
ucts of engineers devised for the amusement of kings, provides him with another telling analogy with which to
expose the error of mentalistic explanations in physiology.
Automata seem to react to stimuli, to have goals, and,
generally, to move as though directed by a contained intellect. A naive spectator will actually believe that a mechanically operating automaton is guided by some kind of
conscious appreciation of the environment, and that it
manifests a will of its own and thought-out responses.
When we understand that such things are accomplished
by cleverly rigged magnets, or gears, or hydraulic valves
the illusion of mental control vanishes. 47 Descartes believes that the appearance of a mental element in the
natural machines that are animal and human bodies is just
as much an illusion, although it is much more difficult to
dispel.
The finest and most consistent expression of a mechanical conception of human physical existence extending to
all of the inner. and outer manifestations of mind appears
at the end of the posthumously published fragments of Le
Monde. Descartes has exploited throughout the book a
curious rhetorical device that is both prudential and intellectually liberating. He expressly offers, not an explanatory picture of our "world" and the human race to which
37
�we actually belong, but, instead, the complete science of
an imaginary world located somewhere in the reaches of
extension far from our skies.48 Suns and planets are
· formed by an evolutionary process commencing from an
initial chaos from which everything develops in strict obedience to permanent laws of motion. Living things and
the analogs of men, in this imagined world, come into existence in the same way. In the "Traite de L'homme",
these are "men of clay whom God has made to be as like
us as possible."49 Descartes does ascribe a mental constitution to these umen". Like US 1 they have ideas, appetites,
passions, and memories. The physical aspect of their existence is absolutely mechanical and wholly explicable
without any appeal to a mental constitution. Insofar as
Descartes believes that we are in fact such men, he
ascribes to us, here, a complete physiology without mindbody interaction.
I would like you to suppose that all the functions I have attributed to this machine, such as the digestion of food, the pulse
in the heart and arteries, the nourishment and growth of the
members, wakefulness and sleep; the reception of light, of
sounds, or odors, of heat and similar qualities, by the external
organs of sense; the impression of ideas from them on the
organ of common sense50 and of imagination, the retention or
engraving of these ideas in the memory; the interior movements of appetites and of passions; and finally the exterior
movements of all the members, which are so well suited both
to the action of objects presented to the senses and to iriner
passions, that they imitate as perfectly as possible those of a
true man: I say I would· like you to consider that these functions follow entirely naturally in this machine, from the mere
disposition of its organs, neither more nor less than the movements of a clock or other automatoh follow from the disposition of its counter weights and wheels; so that there can be no
reason at all to conceive in it any other vegetative soul, nor
sensitive soul, nor any other principle of movement and of life
than its blood and its spirits, excited by the heat of the fire
which burns continually in its heart, and which is of no other
nature than all the fires which burn in inanimate bodies. 51
Of course, Descartes does not mean that the workings
of the human body do not show any indisputable marks of
mind and intelligence at all. God is responsible for the
constitution of men and his workmanship manifests a
standard of creative intelligence that no engineer can approach. The human body reflects, therefore, the mind of
God, but in the creation of the body-machine God has utilized only extended particles interacting according to
fixed laws. From this point of view, all of the motions of
the human body, molar and microscopic, including all
those that go into voluntary actions, have their sufficient
physical causes. Only this exceptionless principle could
justify the corresponding claim that no motions of the
"men" of Le Monde require explanations that invoke a
mental function.
Descartes drew back from this wholly mechanical man.
He mars the consistency of his insight by allowing a
38
unique locus of mind-body interaction in the pineal
gland. In this tiny gland, the animal spirits, which are the
most rarefied blood-like constitutent of the nervous
system, are affected by the mind. Descartes invokes the
fragile support of the fact that the pineal gland is not double and is, to that extent, a plausible site for a central integration of the functions of the many dual parts of the
sensory system and brain. 52 The animal spirits are only
deflected by mental influence, according to Descartes' aC:
count, so that the total quantity of motion of physical
things can remain constant.
Had Descartes retained the rigorously consistent view
he formulated at the end of Le Monde, he might have been
led to abandon the concept of a substantial mind altogether. The idea of deflection of the animal spirits re·
quires a quasi-physical influence and leads at once to a
"paramechanical" conception of mind. 53 And the interac-
tion creates a fundamentally unintelligible leakage from
the self-sufficient sphere of physical activity. Mental deflection of particles, however subtle they may be, violates
a crucial feature of a mechanical system like that which
Descartes' physical universe is supposed to comprise.
This is expressed by later science as violation of the conservation of energy. If nonphysical agencies can cause any
movement or deflection at all, that movement or deflection could, for example, compress a spring or raise a
weight, thus causing an increase in total energy. Defects
in his understanding of force leave Descartes without an
appropriate concept of energy in terms of which he might
have grasped this criticism. However, his limitation of the
supposed influence of the mind to deflections that leave
"the quantity of motion" unchanged reveal Descartes'
own qualms concerning the compatibility of conservation
and mind-body interaction. His clear grasp of inertia, requiring uniform motion in a straight line, should have but
did not reinforce those qualms considerably.
But for the pineal gland Descartes' dualism would have
a very different force. The tendency of his total scientific
effort is the elimination of mental direction as a factor in
explanations of physical changes and motions. Beliefs,
acts of will, desires, and intentions do not move parts of
the body any more than an inner quality, gravity, moves a
heavy thing, or inner self-realizing heat creates changes in
a piece of wood. Of course, we are left with the fact that
men do act, execute their intentions, and gratify their
desires.
The uncompromised vision at the end of the "Traite de
L'homme" rejects the idea that the relationship between
psychological explanations of human behavior and physical explanations of the motion of bodily parts can be expressed as any kind of interaction between substances.
Beliefs, desires, and the like, figuring in psychological accounts, are not physical causes and only physical causes
can move material objects. All motions, even of "the
blood and the spirits" have sufficient physical causes
although we do not have a complete account of these
physiological events. "No other principle of movement" is
WINTER 1981
�required, not in the case of a man's body any more than in
the case of an automaton.
For myself, apart from the outmoded scientific details, I
think this view of bodily motions is correct. The right way
of capturing intellectually the relationship of mental concepts and physical events is at present the subject of
scientific investigation and of unsettled philosophical
reflection. At present, a materialist philosophy of mind
that identifies beliefs and desires with neural states and
processes is dominant. Like the theory of the pineal gland,
this contemporary materialism assigns a causal role to
mental things. For Descartes' paramechanical events materialism substitutes a frankly physicalist interpretation of
mental functioning. The theory gets undeserved support
from association with the sophisticated physiology and
anatomy that has replaced Descartes' curious conceptions
of the facts. As far as I can see, materialists have not offered anything at all to make it intelligible that a physical
occurrence in the brain can be a belief, or a desire, or a
thought. 54
There is a strange irony in the mechanical perspective
on the body expressed in Le Monde. It is as though we
start wanting to know how a certain miracle occurs the
miracle of mental control of movements in the physical
world. How does a desire and a belief move a hand? We
know that muscles, not thoughts, move hands. Nervous
impulses, not desires, move muscles. The ironic explanation of the miracle that Descartes reaches, at least on this
occasion, is that the miracle does not occur. Beliefs and
desires and other mental things simply cannot be attached
to motions as their causes. The same irony appears in
Descartes' account of the miracle of vision. How do we
manage to get a conscious picture of the external world
through the organs of sense? In the Optics Descartes explains what happens when we see, invoking as a helpful
analogy a blind man feeling his way with a stick! Descartes
particularly wants to reject the idea that "intentional
species," which scholastic philosophers took to be tiny images, leap into the eye and somehow migrate to an inner
center of conscious reception. He interprets the transmission of light as a kind of pressure which does not involve
the entrance of anything into the eye, 55 just as pressures
in the blind man's stick do not involve a flow of things
through the stick and then into the hand. This is the
thinking that lies behind the Second Meditation when
Descartes says
1
1
But it must be observed that perception of the wax is not
sight, not touch, not imagination; nor was it ever so though it
formerly seemed to be; it is a purely mental contemplation . ... 56
In other words the miracle of real contact with outer reality does not occur at all. So vision is like blindness and
mental control is really automatism.
These understandings would be grotesque but for their
profound appreciation of the idea that elements in our
discourse about conscious experience are not to be iden1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
tified with stages in physiological processes. The positive
thesis that Descartes adopts is unsatisfactory. Because he
thinks of the mind as a second substance with its own independent footing in reality, he is left with a "two-worlds"
view and the quagmire of unintelligible interaction that
leads to bizarre Occasionalism or idealist elimination of
the physical world altogether. Although he rightly rejects
confused interpretation of mental discourse that assigns it
physical referents, Descartes precipitates these difficulties because he posits an inevitably mysterious nonphysical mind.
The question remains, why did Descartes construct the
metaphysical proofs presented in the Meditations which
reflect the true foundations of his thinking so inadequately? There is a strand of reserve and secrecy in Descartes' writing. As a young man, Descartes described
himself with some aptness as entering on the stage of public life masked like an actor, so that his audience will not
see his true state of mind. 57 He intentionally published his
geometry in a form difficult to follow lest others, grasping
his discoveries too easily, claim to have possessed them already. He was always concerned about the reception of
his scientific innovations by religious authorities. He withheld the publication of Le Monde upon hearing of the
condemnation of Galileo by the Inquisition. He always organized his presentations as prudently as he could. His life
and letters show an exceptional desire for privacy and
avoidance of embroiling controversy. Leibniz and others
complain that he conceals the sources of his ideas which
often contain unacknowledged influence of the writings
of others. The first concern of Descartes as a writer is not
the artless expression of his personal thought.
Descartes, however, certainly did believe that the
many-sided insights of scientific works needed a coherent
metaphysical foundation to replace the discarded Aristotelianism. The theological turn of his arguments rests on
sincere religious commitment. Furthermore the metaphysical arguments do involve as their first stage the articulation of the subjective point of view, which has great
power and from which the metaphysical arguments are
mounted with a certain naturalness. It is worth emphasizing that this systematic subjectivism is not part of the context of scientific investigation for Descartes. Egocentric
skepticism is absent from the methodology of the Rules.
There is no hint of the method of doubt or of the phenomenological resolution of doubt by the cogito argument in
the scientific work presenting the findings that motivate
Descartes' dualism.
Finally, the metaphysical demonstrations constitute a
conservative and backward-looking project for Descartes,
relative to the progressive content of his scientific
thought. The crucial arguments are reconstructions and
new employments of ideas taken over from existing traditions. Starting from the cogito argument, the Meditations
are full of Saint Augustine. The ontological argument is
Anselm's. In discussing causes that contain the reality of
their effects ''eminently" versus "formally", Descartes is
1
39
�employing traditional scholastic distinctions. 58 The concepts of essence and existence, as Descartes employs
them, are taken over from Saint Thomas and Aristotle.
None of this battery of terms, concepts, and arguments
appear in the scientific contexts that really motivate Des·
cartes' dualism.
We can see the late metaphysical works as a restatement
in which Descartes tries to connect his radical conclusions
to existing traditions of thought. This understanding does
not confer any greater merit on the tortured theology of
the official proofs of dualism. I should say that the influence of dualism, which is certainly not due to these arguments, rests, first, on the appeal of the subjective starting
point of the Meditations and, second, on a rough, wide-
spread, frequently unstated appreciation of the tendency
of Descartes' scientific thinking which I have tried to describe here.
Conclusions
The philosophical issues to which Descartes' dualism is
addressed are still at the center of metaphysics and epistemology. In contrast, the relevance of Cartesian science
diminished rapidly following the appearance of Newton's
superior theories. Descartes has retained prestige as a
mathematician, although his mathematical work is read
chiefly by historians. But Descartes' metaphysical writings have always been studied, and they have exerted a
decisive influence on modern thought, especially through
Berkeley, Locke, and Hume. It is Cartesian metaphysics,
separated from the context of scientific thought, that has
influenced empiricism.
In assessing Descartes' dualism we should restore its sci-
entific setting. We should also ignore the deficiencies of
his outmoded conceptions. This does not mean only that
we should overlook Descartes' beliefs that a fire burns in
the heart and that animal spirits are a rarified form of
blood. More important, we have to ignore his limited conception of physical objects and his reduction of physical
events to motions and impacts among particles. Even his
idea of causality ill fits contemporary physics wherein
The seeming difficulty is clear. If mental things like
beliefs and desires are not physical causes, and if only
such causes can account for physical changes and motions, then what is the connection between beliefs and
desires and human actions to which beliefs and desires are
patently relevant? Under the pressure of this question,
Descartes allowed an exception to his otherwise rigorous
mechanism, a unique channel connecting two metaphys-
ically incommensurable worlds, namely, the pineal gland.
This is a mistake. The mistake is engendered by a
substance-conception of mind. Descartes patterns his
thinking about mental concepts on material things and
events, as though, by somehow subtracting materiality,
we arrive at nonmaterial things and events. This kind of
thinking is encouraged by the methodological outlook of
the Meditations. We are more or less forced to conceive of
the mental as a realm of things and events. The phenomenological perspective seems to certify the reality of mental goings-on, and then raises the question: What is all
this? By this we mean: What is the metaphysical status of
mental things, the existence of which is assured? When
the materialist identification is rejected, mental things
and events necessarily appear to be another kind of reality.
Then the problem of interaction is generated and Descartes' compromise, so destructive of his principle insight,
is motivated_
We have to ask: What is a conception of mentality that
does not generate a second realm of things and then lead
to the hopeless problem of interaction? This question
from Descartes' perspective is, What are we to make of
the phenomenology of the Second Meditation, if we
neither identify mental things with neural things nor posit
any substantial res cogitans. It is helpful here to focus on
truth where Descartes focuses on reality. The thinking
subject, tentatively repudiating all empirical knowledge,
finds that his own beliefs and desires, as such, are not
jeopardized. Though the outer world may all be illusion,
he believes, for example, that he is in a room with an open
fire, and he desires to warm himself. Belief and desire arc
thus insulated from empirical skepticism. Descartes reads
this, in the idiom of realities, as demonstrating the ex-
istence of certain things (ideas in the mind) or the occurrence of certain events (thinking). Though there may be
causal relations are expressed in equations that do not
break up reality into discrete consecutive events. Let us
no firelit room, my believing-that-there-is is something
just imagine all of Descartes' old-fashioned ideas replaced
by some up-to-date conception of the physical world. We
want a conception that is free of psychological and teleological ideas. We do use such a conception of physical
this mode of expression we can retain the insights of the
subjective point of view by saying that "I believe I am in a
reality in our thinking and it corresponds to, in fact it is
the heir of, Descartes' mechanical universe of extended
particles.
Given such a conception of the physical world, I believe
that Descartes is right to exclude explanations that introduce nonphysical factors as causes of physical events.
He is also right to refuse a materialist reduction of the
mind to the body. The joint assertion of mechanism and
rejection of mind-brain identity can appear paradoxical.
40
that does exist, and my desiring does occur. Abandoning
firelit room" and "I want to warm myself by the fire" are
true, and these truths are independent of the existence of
the room and the fire. Though these subjective reports
are true, what their truth implies about realities is not obvious. In particular, it is not obvious that believing and
desiring are things that are present in, or go on in men.
Elsewhere I have argued that any account of belief that
identifies believing with an inner something, whether material or nonmaterial, cannot be correct. 59 At the least, reflection on mental concepts creates serious questions
WINTER 1981
�about the unargued-for interpretation of these concepts
in terms of inner realities, that is, the inter¢retation that
Descartes shares with contemporary mind-brain materialism. If this interpretation is set aside, we can try to
overcome the illusion that mental states must be identified with brain states lest they be identified with states
of some unscientific and intrinsically mysterious nonmaterial mind. This illusion is one of the pillars of mindbrain materialism.
In the "Conversation with Burman," Descartes is close
to the kind of understanding I recommend here. Explanations that state the purpose for which things take place do
not give a causal account even if the claim about purpose
is correct 60 Applied to psychology, Descartes' insight
amounts to this: We ask a man why he has done something, fired a gun, for example. The answer tells us that he
desired something (to scare the birds away from his field)
and that he believed something (that firing the gun would
scare away the birds.) So a combination of a desire and a
belief explains the action by displaying the purpose of the
behavior explained. If Descartes is right, however, this
leaves untouched all physical questions of the form: What
caused this object to move? And is it not clear that Descartes is right? Assuming the correctness of the psychological explanation, we know the man's intention and
the point of his behavior. But none of this sheds light on
causes of the movement of his finger on the trigger, any
more than it sheds light on causes of the movement of tlie
·
bullet in the gun barrel.
There is something naive in the idea that a man's believings and wantings are states and events inside him that
are capable of moving parts of his body, as contracting
muscles can move fingers and expanding gases can move
bullets. It would be preposterous to say that "wanting to
scare birds" might directly cause the motion of a bullet.
Nor could wanting something directly cause the motion
of a finger. As Descartes puts it, motions of fingers depend on "the disposition of the organs", which means
that there are physical events and conditions in the nerves
and muscles which explain the motion of the finger.
These physical causes are certainly not what is referred to
as "wanting to scare birds." When we are subject to materialist inspiration, we are tempted to place the causal efficacy of mental things further along in remote neural
stretches of the sequence of physical events. "Wanting to
scare birds" then becomes a posited neural cause, the immediate effect of which also has to be posited. A vague
sense of the fabulous complexity of the brain helps us to
imagine that this transaction that would be preposterous
out in the open is easily accomplished in the nervous
system. But, in fact, "wanting to scare birds" does not
belong anywhere in a sequence of causally intelligible motions of things. Nor are wantings spiritual occurrences.
We must formulate the truth-conditions for "He wanted
to scare the birds" without making wanting into any occurrence at all.
The difference between the Cartesian theory of the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
pineal gland and the materialist theory is that the materialist asserts that the relevant mental things are
themselves physical states and events. He does this precisely to make them eligible as causes of motions while
saving the principle: physical motions must have physical
causes. That is the principle that Descartes adopts and
also compromises. But the trouble with mental things as
candidate causes is not just their vexed metaphysical
standing. From the point of view of physics "knowledge
of a thing's purpose never leads to knowledge of the thing
itself."" Here, knowledge of the thing itself means knowledge of the causes of physical changes. Beliefs and desires
explain actions in terms of purposes and goals. As Descartes believed, these explanations, even if they are correct, leave all questions of physics unanswered.
Translations are from the English"language versions cited in these
notes. Wherever there is no English reference the translations are mine.
No references are given for well-known themes of the Meditations except where passages are quoted. For my general understanding of Descartes I am much indebted to other writers and most indebted to
Etienne Gilson.
The following abbreviations are used in these notes:
AT I-XI C. Adam, and P. Tannery, Oeuvres de Descartes, Nouvelle
presentation, Paris 1964.
HR I-II E. S. Haldane, and G. R. T. Ross, The Philosophical Works of
Descartes, London 1911.
AG
E. Anscombe, and P. Geach, Descartes: Philosophical Writings, London 1964.
K
A. Kenny, Descartes' Philosophical Letters, London 1970.
*'*
l. This subtitle appears first in the second Latin edition, 1642; HR I,
144; AT VII, xxi.
2. AG 117. See also note 30.
3. January 1642, AT III, 491; K 127-8.
.
4. For Hobbes' view, HR II, 61; for Gassendi's, HR II, 142. Descartes'
replies: HR II, 63, and 211.
5. AG 69.
6. HR II, 25.
7. HR II, 83.
8. K 123: AT Ill, 474.
9. K 144.
10. The LJhrase is part of the title of the Second Meditation.
11. See Etudes sur le rOle de la pensee medievale dans la formation du
systeme Cartesien, esp. zeme pt., 1.
12. Discours, Ill, AT VI, 30; P. Olscamp, Discourse etc., Indianapolis
1965, 25.
13. July 22, 1641, K !09; AT III, 420.
14. May 21, 1643, K 139; AT III, 667.
15. "Postquam autem ulterius perrexi ... ,"AT VIII, 440; HR II, 253.
This suggests a temporal order in Descartes' thinking that cannot be
taken literally.
16. HR 11, 253-4.
17. April26, 1643, K 135-6; AT III, 648-49.
18. Compare Principles, pt. 2, art. 37: "The first law of nature: that each
thing as far as in it lies, continues always in the same state; and that
which is once moved always continues so to move." Art. 39 asserts that
"all motion is of itself in a straight line." HR I, 267. For an illuminating
account of Descartes' concept of inertia and its influence on Newton,
see A. Koyre, "Newton and Descartes," in his Newtonian Studies, Cambridge 1965,69-76.
19. Metaphysics, Z, 8, l033a-4a. But compare L, 4, 1070a. 'I'his passage
seems to allow a possible exception in the separate existence of the
41
�forms of natural beings and, in particular, of the rational soul of man.
The same kind of suggestion is made at H, 2, l043b, "Whether the substance of destructible things can exist apart is not yet at all clear; except
that obviously this is impossible in some cases; e.g., a house or a utensil.
Perhaps, indeed, neither of these things themselves, nor any of the
other things which are not formed by nature, are substances at all; for
one might say that the nature in natural objects is the only substance to
be found in destructible things," W. D. Ross, Oxford 1908. It must be
noted that Aristotle speaks here of forms by themselves as "substances."
On this confusing alternative usage he does not apply the term to composites of form and matter, although this is commonly his practice
elsewhere. 'At 1070b-la, Aristotle states flatly, "Some things can exist
apart and some cannot, and it is the former that are substances." These
passages very much conform to the conception of soul-like separable
constituents, capable of causing motions in things of which they are
forms, that is, the very conception that Descartes ascribes to the
scholastics and then rejects.
20. Metaphysics, H, 3, 1043a-b.
2l. Metaphysics, H, 6, 1045a-b.
22. Physics, I, A, 1, l93a.
23. On the Heavens, Bk. I, 1, 7-8, 276a-b; and Bk. 3, 2, 300a.
24. On the Heavens, Bk. 1, l, 8.
25. On the Heavens, Bk. 3, 7, 314b-6b, and On Generation and Corruption, Bk. 2, 4, 33la-2a.
26. Holders of the sort of view to which Descartes refers are not limited
to Aristotle and the Schoolmen of the thirteenth century and later who
were so deeply affected by the rediscovery of Aristotle's works. Even
Saint Augustine voices both the idea that heavy things are directed to
goal-like natural places by their weight, and the idea that this activity of
heavy bodies resembles human desire-guided behavior. Augustine says,
"Our body with its lumpishness [Augustine has merely 'corpus pondere']
strives towards its own place. Weight makes not downward only, but to
his own place also. All things pressed by their own weight go towards
their proper places ... Things a little out of their places become unquiet.
Put them in their order again and they are quieted. My weight is my
love. By that I am carried wheresoever I be carried." Confessions, Bk. 13,
Ch. 9; trans. W. Watts, London 1912, 391.
27. Physics, Bk. 2, 3_~nd 7.
28. Physics, Bk. 2, 1, 4l2a-b; and Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q 76, a 4.
29. De Anima, Bk. 2, 1, 412a-b; trans. J. A. Smith.
30. De Anima, 413 3 • I take this to be the precedent for Descartes' pilotship analogy in the Sixth Meditation.
31. Gilson shows that these doctrines are prominent in the manuals
from which Descartes was taught as a boy at La Fleche. See Etudes, 155
and 161 n. For a full survey of the Aristotelian concept of form and substantial form in patristic, scholastic, and Renaissance thought, see
"Form und Materie," in Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, ed. J.
Ritte<, Basell971, Vol. 2, 978-1015.
32. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q 76, a 4, Dominican trans.
33. Le Monde, AT XI, 7. See also Gilson's discussion of this passage,
Etudes, 152-53.
34. AG 94.
42
35. Descartes' Conversation with Burman, J. Cottingham, London 1976,
19.
36. HR II, 254. The view that self-preservation is the biological function
of our confused experience of pleasure and pain is also presented in the
Sixth Meditation, without reference to the inadequate theories that
Descartes thinks this confusion tends to promote. HR I, 197.
37. HR II, 255.
38. HR II, 255.
39. HR II, 255.
40. See Crombie, A.C., Medieval and Early Modern Science, New York
1959, Vol. 1, 128, and Vol. 2, 46 and 68ff. Crombie also reports medieval
theories involving natural place influenced by Plato's Timaeus and
incorporating the on-Aristotelian notion of multiple worlds (no one
center) such as that of Nicolas of Cusa. Such accounts are part of the
historical background of Descartes' vortex theory of planetary motion.
Insofar as these alternative medieval cosmologies accepted some version
of the idea of natural motion, they are simply further illustrations of
what Descartes took to be a universal error.
41. Art. 17, Latta, R., The Monadology etc., Oxford 1898,228. Latta also
quotes Leibniz's "Commentatio de Anima Brutorum," (1710): "Whence
it follows that, if it is inconceivable that perception arises in any coarse
"machine" whether it be made of fluids or solids, it is equally inconceivable how perception can arise in a finer 'machine' ... ," Gerhardt, ed.,
Phil. Schriften, Vol. 7, 328.
42. AT XI, 223-24.
43. AT XI, 224.
44. AT XI, 225.
45. ATXI,226.
46. For a survey of Descartes' discussions of automata and an interpretive investigation, see F. Alquie, La decouverte metaphysique de I' hom me
chez Descartes, Paris 1950, 52-54.
47. See Discourse, HR I, 116; and Principles, IV, art. 203-04, HR I,
299-300.
48. AT XI, 31.
49. AT XI, 120.
50. That is, the sensus communis, a hypothetical organ or faculty which
integrates the input of the several senses according to Thomas and
other scholastics.
51. AT XI, 201-02.
52. Passions, art. 32, HR I, 346.
53. This is Gilbert Ryle's penetrating epithet, from The Concept of
Mind, London 1949, 19.
54. See my, "Could Our Beliefs Be Representations in Our Brains?"
Journal of Philosophy, 76, 1979, 225-44.
55. Dioptrique, I, AT VI, 84.
56. AG 73.
57. Cogitationes Privatae, AT X, 213. See also H. Gouhier, Premieres
pensees de Descartes, Paris 1958, 67.
58. For example, Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q 4, a 2.
59. Summa Theologica, I, q 4, a 2.
60. Cottingham, 19.
61. Cottingham, 19.
WINTER 1981
�Family Pages, Little Facts: October
George Dennison
W
E LIVE AT THE NORTHERN EDGE
of the hardwoods
in central Maine, a region of hills and mountains,
ponds, lakes, streams, rivers. Most of the homes
lie scattered in the intervale below us, a flat, narrow valley
that IS freshened and sometimes flooded by a rocky
stream, but a few rest on the sides of hills, as does ours. It
is the second week of October. The slopes across from us
catch the morning sunlight and have become dazzling
banks of reds, oranges, and yellows, all the more intense
because of the shadowed evergreens around them. A
week ago delicate sheets of ice covered the puddles between our sheds, and the children lifted them entire and
looked at one another as through panes of glass, but now
the days are so warm that Patricia goes into the garden
without shoes. The insects are gone. Most of the birds are
gone. Long, gleaming filaments of airborne spiders drift
across the fields and over the ponds.
What a mood we are in! We are torporous, yet restless;
restless, yet free of discontent, as if walking through the
landscape of a dream. I drove to the lakeside mechanic's
this morning and saw a broad-backed, red-faced country·
woman emerge from her car and stand looking at that motionless water. "Oh God!" she called to me, though we
were strangers, HAin't it some weather!" An hour later I
saw her again, sleepwalking, as are the rest of us, staggermg past the bank and the grocery store.
I look out the window of my bedroom workroom and
see Patricia going slowly up the hill, deep in thought. She
the wood's edge, one
throws herself on the tall grass
ai
arm across her eyes.
I should be working.
Wherever I look one, two, or several leaves with
.
.
'
mg motions, fall to the ground.
rock~
The table is covered with yellow paper. On the topmost
sheet I read:
He is sleeping in the wheelchair, his small bald head hanging
all the way forward. . . .
·
-a description of my former neighbor, Dana Tomlin
who is in a nursing home now. But my eyes go again t~
the sunlit window, where flies that were dead last night
are buzzing violently. Their wings are twisted. Nothing
works. Theu flights are wild arcs ended by collisions.
It is impossible to sit here.
As I leave the room I hear a far-off barking and think of
yesterday's sight of the Canada geese, whose honking, in
the distance, had sounded like dogs, but we had heard it
agam, closer, and had realized what it was. They were
right above us, not in a V but an undulant long line, noisy
and rapid. How powerful and grand they are! Everything
about them is forceful and grand. They passed out of
sight qmckly, honking noisily and stroking like rowers
with their powerful wings, and I was surprised by the longing and sadness I felt.
Ida's class at school has been reading poems and she
had been asked to write some at home. She is ten. The
geese in flight, she had said that evening looked like the
fishermen's buoys we had seen at the ~cean. She was
right. The geese had drifted up and down in their formation as if long, gently heaving swells were passing under
them. She composed aloud, dictating, and I wrote the
words for her:
Geese, when they are flying south
look like strings of buoys
bobbing up and down
on the deep, wide ocean.
Geo:ge Dennison recently published Oilers and Sweepers and Other
Sto~ws {Random House 1979). In 1969 he published The Lives of
Chddren: The Story of the First Street School.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Liza, her .sister, who is two years younger than she,
began chantmg all kinds of things, and some of these too
we wrote as poems:
43
�When the days are orange
leaves are falling down.
As I come out of the house the geese, the poems, the
girls-and four-year-old jacob, who had sabotaged everything that evening-mingle in my thoughts with images
from long ago that have been coming into consciousness
of late: fields of brown grass, a yellow brick building in
which certain sisters lived, twelve and thirteen, with
brand-new breasts.
If I had thought that I was going somewhere, this stepping out of doors into the mild, bright sunlight turns out
to be an arrival, and I realize abruptly that I don't know
what to do. I stand there indecisively and look across the
yard at the three dogs, who are sprawled in the grass with
as deep a lassitude as my own, and who lift their heads to
look at me, but do not alter their positions.
The dirt road ends in our dooryard. Across the road are
the barn and the shed, and between them, nose to nose
and bathed in light, stand the two drowsy, half-wild ponies. They are a sight to see. They have been gorging for
weeks. Our crop of corn had ripened progressively and
had been husked in the grass near the cornfield, and the
ponies had attended every session. They had eaten all the
husks, all the silk, many unfilled tips of ears. They had
consumed whole bushels of cooked cobs. After that had
come the apples, a flood of them, and once a feast of
slightly rotten pears. The ponies are so fat now as to be
comical, yet they are handsomer and more vigorous than
ever, and are enchanting to watch when they sprint in the
evening, as they do without fail before dark, just as the
fork-tailed swallows, all summer long, had sped around
and around the house at sunset. They gallop madly, apparently with abandon. They toss up their heads and then
plunge downward, kicking both heels high. They whinny
and veer off through the small orchard and come drumming back again, their curved haunches bunching and
thrusting powerfully. Their winter coats are almost complete: richly colored, deep-piled hair that is almost fur, a
mixture of soft and coarse that will bring them through
nights of twenty below, and a few of forty. They lift their
heads as I approach, and move them from side to side
looking sharply at my hands, which are empty of apples. I
stand there a moment scratching the powerful jaw of the
chestnut male, and he drops all the weight of his head into
my hands, either playfully or simply for the enjoyment of
resting. Without quite realizing what I am doing I close
my eyes and breathe deeply his mild, clean, yet pungent
aroma. And then I become aware that this streaming of
heated odors from his mouth and barrelled sides is consoling and deeply reassuring. Only a few seconds have
elapsed, but the jealous dogs are trotting toward me and
the foremost, a golden retriever, is barking querulously.
Now ponies and dogs follow me into the orchard, the dogs
gamboling competitively around my feet and the ponies
ambling lazily, moving their bodies as if in sections.
Only eight apple trees are left. Once there were four
44
hundred and the orchard went uphill into what is now a
stand of maples and pines. A few apples still dangle from
their twigs, plump and generous, and wonderfully decorative against the blue of the sky. I throw a stick and three
come down, and the alert ponies draw near. While I feed
an apple to the chestnut gelding, I hear again-actually I
imitate it in my throat-the slurred, dense, attractive
voice of old Eddie Dubord, who ten days ago helped me
split wood with a rented hydraulic splitter. He had fed an
apple to the pony in just this way, scratching the working
great muscles at the base of its jaw, saying, "Yeah,
Starbright, you put your firewood inside you, don't you!
Yeah-uhhh .... "
The ponies stay, the dogs follow me to to the vegetable
garden which is just uphill of the house. I lean on a rail of
the crude fence and look thoughtfully at the surviving
greens.
meant something! My
thoughts are scattered like leaves. I am scarcely a
person. There in front of me are the late crops that
must be harvested, the broccoli, Swiss chard, collard
greens, Brussels sprouts, survivors of the first frosts, and I
do actually see them, but I see the children, too, made
quiet by the stillness and the mild sun, wearing puffy
orange vests, kneeling in the canoe while I move us glidingly over the reflections of clouds and colored trees. It
was only yesterday, but these are remembered things now
and are almost on a par with other memories; exciting Fall
weather and I'm running home past lighted windows,
tossing a football. Again now, as repeatedly in recent
weeks, I see my mother's exhausted brave face the day
before she died, almost four years ago. The disease had invaded all parts of her body. She had become too weak to
hold a spoon or lift a cup. Early that morning it had spread
again and she could no longer form words. A young nurse
had been coming to the house. She had just changed the
bedsheets and gently lowered my mother's head to the
mound of pillows. My mother spoke to her, but a blurred,
gutteral sound came from her mouth, shocking to hear.
Without expressing annoyance, my mother closed her
lips, raised her hand and stroked the young woman's head.
The nurse had grown fond of her and was weeping as she
left us. We heard the opening and closing of the front
door. My mother looked at me and held out her hand. I
went to her. She took my hand and laboriously drew it to
her lips, and with a steady, grave look held it there a long
while, kissing it. Three years later my father too was dead,
not on the anniversary of her death, as he had hoped.
Now that they are gone I hear my mother's voice in my
own, and notice outbreaks of my father's temper. There
are glimpses of his face in Liza's brow and chin, and in
Jacob's eyes. Ida resembles my mother. Several days ago,
in the afternoon, when already this motionless time had
begun, I gave up stalking partridge in the shaggy high
fields of a neighbor and lay down in the sun by a stone
A
S IF THIS PURPOSIVE GAZE
WINTER 1981
�wall that made me think of loaves from an oven, and was
pulled under instantly. I slept deeply and for a long time,
and then did not awaken at once but passed into a waking
dream in which I imagined that I was coming into the entranceway of our present house, making noise, and my fa-
ther leaned around through the inside doorway angrily.
He was talking on the phone. He covered the mouthpiece
and began to upbraid me, but I forestalled him by indicating my apologies with gestures. I noticed that I had set
aside false pride and had not responded to his anger with
anger of my own. I began to feel buoyant. The actions of
the dream took on the quality of revelation. I put my arm
around him and kissed his forehead, and he blushed and
smiled happily. I too was happy, and I felt the excitement
of liberation that comes with understanding. The dream
changed now entirely into insight, a train of thought, the
gist of which stirred me as deeply as had the images. I
understood that touching, affectionate touching would
ease our relationship of its angers and relieve his need for
tokens of esteem. I thought of the times he had responded to affection with just this melting surprise,
blushing and smiling.
But a terrible unease invaded all this reasoning. Something was wrong. I became aware that I was not awake,
then opened my eyes and sat up in the cooling shadows of
the wall and remembered that my father was dead. The
ground was damp. The sun was low and the sky was white
with clouds. The sadness I felt was a child's sadness. I remembered things I had forgotten for decades, and could
see the faces of my parents in their youth, good-looking
and far younger than I was now. The images were so nu-
merous that I could scarcely register them ... and in the
very instant that I became aware of their abundance, they
vanished. I wanted to stop their going but could not, and
when I tried to call them back I found that my mind was
blank. I set out through the woods, which soon began to
darken, and walked the long way home without thought
at all.
who had been lolling at my feet while
I gazed at the garden, suddenly leaped up and
whirled around, barking explosively. They ran to the
road, arrayed themselves across the brow of the hill, and
with legs braced and heads slightly raised, barked without
cease. The sound of a lightweight motor grew louder, and
then a battered blue Volkswagen parted the dogs, who
bounded stiff-legged beside it, barking obstreperously as it
rolled to a stop under the locust trees.
Justine was nursing her baby. She smiled at me and
waved and looked down at the inconspicuous head. Her
somewhat pretty husband waved too, and sat there
behind the steering wheel watching them. A few minutes
later the chortling infant was clinging to its mother's hip,
wet-lipped and bedazzled, and I bent over to admire it,
really to bask for a moment in Justine's heady aura.
She asked for Patricia. I said that she was sleeping and
T
HE THREE DOGS,
1BE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
offered to get her. "No, no," said Justine, stopping me
with her hand, "we're not going yet . ... "
We carried five sacks of apples into the barn. The huge
space was dim and cool and was striped gorgeously with
gleaming blades of sunlight between the boards, vertical
in the walls and horizontal in the gables. Other bulging,
lumpy sacks, smelling of apples and hempen fibers, leaned
against one another in the hayloft. Beneath the loft and to
one side of it stood the massive press of roughhewn
beams. In a week or two we would gather here, perhaps
twenty of us. The sacks would be lifted and the apples
dumped noisily into a narrow high trough, along which
they would be hurried by hand to the belt-driven grinder.
A worker with a wooden rake would shove the emerging
pulp down another trough, steeply pitched, onto the
square platform of the press. There it would be levelled in
layers and covered with strong cloths stained a rich sienna
from many years of pressing. When the layers were complete, still other friends, pushing three or four abreast at a
stout lever, like sailors at a capstan bar, would crank the
giant screw slowly tighter, and the sweet smell of apples
would grow more intense. There would be ten or a dozen
children and several unengaged adults standing around or
sitting on the edge of the hayloft, legs dangling. After the
first pale flowing into the wax-lined barrel everything
would stop. Cups and glasses and dippers of this finest,
purest juice would be passed around, and many voices
would comment on its quality.
Justine and Henry would be missing all this. They were
going home to Albany for the winter. Patricia had offered
to press their cider and send it down by a mutual friend.
Before they left they stopped in the high doorway of
the barn and glanced at each other.
"The weirdest thing happened that night we did the
lambs," Henry said. I had helped him butcher two ewes.
They owned a ram as well, but had let it live, intending to
board it for the winter.
"We were just ready to go to bed," he said, "when we
heard this knocking at the door. ... "
"It was a pounding," said Justine. "It was strong."
"I said, 'Who's there?' -but there wasn't any answer,"
said Henry, "only this pounding. I thought, wow, what is
it? I opened the door, and my God, I couldn't see
anything ... but I heard something, and then I felt
something rush past me .... "
"It was the ram," Justine said. "He was wild. He ran
through the whole house. He pushed open the hall door
and went to the woodshed and stood there butting the
door . ... "
''That's where the ewes were," said Henry, "they were
hanging from the rafters in the woodshed."
-which I knew, as I had helped him carry the carcasses, and had myself draped the skins over the neat
stacks of split wood.
After they had gone I went to my room and wrote the
story of the ram in a notebook, appending it to a description of the slaughtering and cleaning of the ewes.
45
�I
SAT THERE A WHILE
reading earlier entries in the note-
book-descriptions, ideas, quoted words. There are
many such notebooks in this room, and journals as well,
and diaries, saved letters, clippings, unfinished literary
projects ... so much of it, finally, that I can scarcely avoid
seeing that its real purpose all along has been to stop the
draining away of time.
My parents' photograph album is here, on a shelf
among books. It ends in their early adulthood. I was six
then, my sister five, my bwther four. I seldom open it.
Those ochre and ivory images are as if imprinted on my
mind, one especially, of my mother as a young woman,
just twenty-two, extremely pretty, with something innocent in her face, a leftover glow of childhood. She wears a
skirted bathing suit. Her legs are curled to the side and she
is leaning on one arm in shallow water, on a sandy beach.
She seems to be happy and is looking trustingly into the
camera. Her arms and legs are long, yet are handsomely
rounded. Her abdomen, too, is slightly curved, but I
myself, in embryo, am the cause of that. How strangely
this image affects me! Here is the woman herself, who
later vanished into that beloved invention called mother!
And here, invisibly, is the young man, the mere youth
holding the camera. What was he like, free of me? Here
also am I, before time has begun. This picture astonishes
me. It entices and baffles me ....
vigorous, brash and tender. The strap of her canteen
crosses her chest diagonally, and she wears a headband,
from which a large fern sweeps back rakishly, like a plume.
She looks adventurous and dashing. The leader of this
trio, however, is observant, bright-faced Ida, who moves
along so lightly that one might expect her to turn a cartwheel at any moment, or take leave of the ground
entirely.
The children's faces are intent and serious. Having
greeted the dogs, they are silent again. They cross the
yard ... and Jacob deserts his sisters. "Mommy! Mommy!"
he calls. They have not seen Patricia, who is standing in
the grass now and is fully dressed. I hear the opening of
the front door, and hear it slamming backwards, and hear
the voice again, "Mommy! Mommy!" suddenly babyish.
This summons, and the flood tide of demand held in
readiness behind it release me from the doting happiness
I had been feeling. I become defensive. I let him call
Mommy! Mommy! and though I haven't moved, the fact
is, I am hiding. I say to myself He'll reject me if I go down,
it's Patricia that he wants-but I know that this is not the
reason. The reason is that this present mood, in which the
feelings are so close to words and the words to feelings, is
precious to me and must be defended, especially against
Jacob, whose demands are innocent and boundless. And
so I sit at my table and take up my papers. From the window to my right I can see the roadside trees of the valley.
Most are not large, but spaced among them are the
stumps of elms that once were large indeed. How handsome that road must have been when the huge trees towered over it, and wagons and horses went along in their
I
of the dogs again, and go
to the window. They have not run to the road, but in
the opposite direction, to the woods. Now I hear the
HEAR THE CHALLENGE BARKING
children's voices, and in the same instant, with a shock of
embarrassment, I see Patricia, entirely naked, sit up in the
tall grass and with hasty, guilty movements shake out her
red blouse and blue skirt. After the embarrassment, I feel
affection, admiration, and compassion for her middleaged longings, her large and stately, slightly dumpy, oddly
childish middle-aged body.· Then small anxieties appear. ...
But now the children come into view, who have long
been the antidote to my own desperations, and such happiness leaps within me as is almost frightening. How could
I deserve these three? They come through the wagonbreak in the low stone wall, where years ago cattle came
and went. They step out of the shadows of the trail into
the open sunlight of the yard, bare-legged, as in the
depths of summer. All three, even four-year-old Jacob,
carry walking sticks picked up in the woods. I can see the
barbaric whorls and streaks-red and blue Magic
Marker-Jacob had applied to his arms and cheeks after
breakfast. His shorts are cut-off jeans. Someone-Ida,
probably-has placed the stems of ferns under his belt.
The ferns cross his chest and flutter as he strides along.
He goes beside Liza, his great love, who is stalwart and
46
shade! The past is everywhere. There are cellar holes deep
in the woods, inexplicable stone walls, farm roads that are
now deer trails, rows of grayed apple trunks crumbling
among maples and pines. The papers on my table are de·
scriptions of these things, and of some of the surviving
elders, whose rural graciousness and sweet modesty have
often astonished me. The topmost pages are of Dana
Tomlin, whom I have seen twice this week at the nursing
home, and who is ninety-eight now. Three years ago, late
in the summer, I saw him standing in line at the bank
looking shyly all around him and smiling continually. He is
the eldest of the town's elders, and his manner showed a
consciousness of his status, but his wrinkled face was as
shy and sweet as a child's. His look of grateful happiness
affected everyone. People came to him and greeted him,
and he returned their greetings, though it was clear that
he did not know who they were. He was well-knit, or had
been-of a middle size and workaday substantiality. He
wore an old gray suit, a gray fedora hat, and button-up
shoes of a soft black leather. When he came to the teller's
window, he tweaked open a pouch-like leather purse,
looked down into it soberly, and rummaged about with his
thumb and forefinger. He was walking well then and must
have weighed thirty pounds more than he does now. He is
confined to a wheelchair, and his thighs and shins have
become mere rods of bone.
WINTER 1981
�I
HAD WRITTENo
... He was asleep in the wheelchair-rather, there in the
chair was a heap of old clothes out of which a hairless speckled head hung forward alarmingly. The young woman shook
him gently and said, "Dana ... Dana .... " There were other
patients in the community room. Some had been studying me
from the moment I had come in. Now at the sound of her
voice most of the others turned their heads. "Dana .... "
There was a stirring amidst all that clothing, as when some
small, shy forest creature stirs under a covering of leaves. He
braced himself with his hands. The cords of his neck tightened, and his shoulders and back slowly straightened. At last
he was looking at us. His small speckled face was anxious.
"Dana," the young woman said, "your visitor is here. You're
going out in the car today. Have you forgotten? It's a beautiful
day, Dana."
His face relaxed and took on its characteristic sweetness,
and he said, "Yes," very faintly, but he was still confused.
She spoke to him once more, in the loud, clear voice of nurs·
ing homes. He blinked laboriously while he listened. The
doughy, almost liquid folds around his eyes merged so thoroughly that it was surprising to see them part again.
"You can take him to his room. Call me if you need help,"
the young woman said, adding quietly, "He can't turn the
wheels."
I guided the chair down the corridor. He was looking at the
hands in his. lap. Presently he raised his head and said whisperingly, "Oh ... it's funny ... you know ... I can't always
think of what I want to. Tell me again where you live."
"I live in the house your sister lived in. You brought her
over one day about five years ago."
I was not sure he had heard me. He lifted his hand to his
watery triangular blue eyes and patted it with a handkerchief
was shearing sheep, so dad said to me, 'Would you rather haul
milk, or shear?' and I said,"-here he turned to me, smiling
wittily and peering goodhumoredly out of that triangular blue
eye-"I said it didn't make no difference, they was both work.
So that's when I started. I was sixteen years old .... "
I heard footsteps, then a rapping of knuckles on my
door, at no great height. The door moved inward, and
there in the doorway stood strong, diminutive Jacob, grinning expectantly. I could see that he had been primed
with a speech. His eyes danced on mine and he shouted
happily, "Hurry up, daddy, we're starved t' death!" Before
I could answer, the smile faded from his face, and his fouryear-old eyes darted omnivorously about the room. "What
are you doing?" he said-a temporizing question. By the
time he had reached me his fingers had handled half-adozen things. Someone-Patricia or Ida-had washed his
face and hands. He leaned against me and said, "Can I
see ... daddy, can I see the hunting knife and the pistol?"
He went by himself to the drawer where these things were
kept, and opened the drawer slowly, looking back at me
over his shoulder. I stood behind him and watched him
unsheath the knife, and unwrap the soft cloth from the
-automatic. The pistol awed him. He had scarcely any idea
what it could do, nor was it a symbol of anything in his
eyes, though certainly its sequestered place had given it
status. It was the object itself that impressed him, so
weighty and handsome. He turned it in his small
hands ....
There came a pounding on the downstairs wall that was
obviously Patricia, Liza, and Ida pounding in unison, and
we put away the knife and gun and went down to supper.
that had been balled in his fist. The other eye, the left, is blind
with cataracts.
"I had four brothers ... two sisters ... and a mother and
father," he said falteringly, "now I'm all that's left."
He sat there just breathing for a moment, apparently recovering from the effort of talking; and then with cautious, trembling movements he extracted a handkerchief from the breast
pocket of his flannel shirt, unwrapped a set of dentures and
fixed them into place.
"They drop out very easily now," he said, "so I keep them
in my pocket." The lines across his forehead deepened and
his single good eye grew brighter. He was smiling. "I lost two
teeth out o' them," he said. ''I'm afraid o' losin' the whole
thing." His entire face brightened with shy humor, astonishing to see, and in this very moment of finding pleasure in his
own wit he remembered that we had planned to go out, and
that I was the one who was writing something about the early
days of the town. Fifteen minutes later we were driving in my
car along a hilltop road in the most delicious sunlight and air.
There were woods to the left of us, and long vistas of pastures,
woods, and distant hills to the right, and he was telling me of
the milk route he had serviced for sixty years. His melnories
were geographical. He could recall the time of a thing once he
had established the place of it.
"We got started because the old creamery failed," he said.
"My dad went around to the farmers and asked if they'd let us
haul their cream to the North Folsom creamery. They said
they would. It was March. My dad took ill, and my brother
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
with autumn colors. One would
think that by now they would be familiar, but they remained astonishing, and our eyes, as we ate, at least
Patricia's and mine, went back to them again and again.
Glowing, blazing, flaming . .. one uses fire words. No
others are accurate. It is not only that the colors are intense, but that the leaves are translucent, the light passes
through them, and the colors are lit from within. It is due
to this effect, too, and to the profuse scattering of the
leaves in space that one receives so little sense of discrete
surfaces, but sees instead a vibrating haze of color.
The dining-room door was open, and the doorway
framed three bands of color. The topmost, a narrow band,
was a soft, rich blue. Then came the wide band of the
saturated reds and ochres. And finally-the widest band
of all-the bronzed greens of the dying grass.
VERY WINDOW GLOWED
E
blood
cranberries
pomegranate
Morocco leather
red apples
dark roses
hot magentas
rose madders
47
�-these are the reds of the red or swamp maple, some of
whose leaves also turn orange. The clouds of saffron,
slightly rusted, are poplars and birches. Here and there
one sees the dull purples of white ash, and the buckskin
and tobacco shades of red oak. But the flaming oranges
and lighter reds, the saturated ochres and the deep, sal·
mon pinks are sugar maples, intensified in color by the
pine, spruce, fir, and hemlock that surround them.
We ate quickly, almost heedlessly, so drawn were we to
the lingering warmth and light at the open door. Jacob
was the first one out. And as often happens, he gave immediate, naive expression to impulses we others felt as
well as he but were too inhibited to act upon. He began to
leap and twirl and throw out his arms. He kept it up even
after we others came out. Ida and Liza joined him at once,
and so did the three dogs, who barked in high-pitched,
complaining voices and ran from one whirling child to another. Patricia glanced at me and laughed. She was still
barefoot. She pranced out into the midst of the capering
figures and began to swing her arms and lift her knees. I
followed behind her, in spite of my self-consciousness. By
now the dogs were barking hectically. They plunged
against one another, sideswiping and nipping. A rubber
ball was lying there in the grass, and I threw it toward the
front of the house. All three dogs sped after it. They centered on it, growling in strange, plaintive tones. The aging
retriever picked it up ... and here one must say Ia and
behold! for just as the dogs turned, the brown pony and
the black one emerged from beyond the house, and all
five animals, side by side, wheeled together in a momentarily perfect flank, and came prancing towards us abreast.
Ida shouted with delight. Liza turned to see what was hap·
pening, and she shouted too. I glanced at Jacob. He hadn't
noticed a thing. He was still dancing. He was chanting or
talking to himself, was whirling and jumping, and kept
throwing out his arms, first one and then the other, m
marvelous, mighty gestures . ...
woods to my left. Had there really been a melting sun that
afternoon? There was no illusion now: winter was coming.
All this landscape that had seemed to be an emanation of
one's own torporous dream was real again. There were
real chores to do, real wood to split, carry and stack, real
cabbages to hang in the root cellar, chard and collards to
be picked and frozen, screens to be taken down, storm
windows to be installed, hay to be covered in the barn so
that the cider-makers wouldn't wet it ....
Earlier in the year I had tried to follow the spring thaw
in daily notes, and had brought my notes through May,
having kept track, though certainly skimpily, of returning
birds and returning green, and of the sequence of the
wildflowers. On the last day of May I wrote:
... more rain. Lilacs everywhere. The locust leaves are wellestablished, but are not full size. Dandelions are going to seed,
though the yellow heads are still plentiful. A few lightning
bugs ...
-and there my journal ended. Which is to say that it was
at this moment that I was carried off in the flood of sum·
mer, aware only that everything was shooting upward,
was spreading outward, was beautiful, and that I myself
was spinning like a top. Now in the dwindling of the cold
it all becomes perceptible again. Within a week the lavish
colors were gone, and the last leaves, as usual, did not fall
of their weight, but were pulled away by the wind and
knocked down by rain. Soon the hills had darkened to the
shadowed greens that would last until spring. The coldness of the nights persists into the days, and there comes
an afternoon that "spits snow," followed by a morning of
whiteness, which the sun transforms into vapors and fat
drops of water at the eaves. In the woods I notice a small
moth beating this way and that, apparently haphazardly,
and I wonder where it is going and how it survived the
freeze of the night before. And then, driving in the dark·
ness over wet asphalt roads, I see in the headlight beams,
as always this time of year, every quarter-mile or so in the
intervale, a little frog, or several, hopping across the road.
WALKEDALONE after dark up the lumber road that passes
for a mile through woods and then emerges into fields.
It was cold and the wind was moving briskly through
the trees. I wore a sweater and a woolen jacket. There had
been stars, but now the ~ky was overcast. Two screech
owls were screaming back and forth in the dark stretch of
I
48
They are so purposive, so doomed, so pathetically ineffi·
cient, going up laboriously in high Gothic arches just to
move forward a foot or two! I laugh and shake my head at
the wretches, yet slow the car so as to avoid crushing
them. They had been sitting on the heat-retaining road,
fending off the cold. Soon enough that glistening black
surface will be white with snow and ice.
WINTER !981
�The Latin-American Neurosis
Carlos Rangel
The political ground of Latin-American society has not
yet gotten over the earthquake of the Cuban revolution;
for that matter, no recovery is possible. What happened in
Cuba since 1959 marks at least as much of an era as the
Wars of Independence in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and as the enunciation of the Monroe
Doctrine in 1823.
The Monroe Doctrine's Perverse Results
For about one hundred and thirty-three years, Latin
America, a mosaic of sovereign states, existed in an infantile way in the face of the complexities of international
politics. Only Bolivar and a few other statesmen of the
generation of the struggle for independence grasped the
differences between the imperialistic powers and the risks
run by the small and the weak in a world where power settles essential questions. European affairs directly involved
this handful of untypically clearsighted men born under
Spanish rule. They lived high international politics intensely, often at a distance, but sometimes, like Miranda
and Bolivar, on the scene of events. France between 1789
and 1815 fascinated them like everybody else. They came
to understand strategic power-above all the naval power
that had decided events in England's favour. They kept in
touch with England, sometimes at the highest level-contacts favored by Whitehall's early concern at the crumbling
of Spain's empire in America. Because with Napoleon's
downfall they immediately perceived the danger of a
A Venezuelan, partly educated in the United States {at New York University), Carlos Rangel wrote The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship With the United States (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1977), a
book that has become something of a classic in France.
This article first appeared in 1980 in the spring issue of Commentaire.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
restoration of the ancien regzme in their America also,
these men greeted President Monroe's declaration enthusiastically. Only Bolivar, however, grasped that LatinAmerica was exchanging the certainty of subjection to a
North American protectorate for the "open" risk run by
the other weak regions exposed to conquest, intervention,
or colonization by the great powers of Europe.
The external protectorate suffered one noteworthy
breach. Absorbed in their Civil War, the North Americans
did not check France's violation of the Monroe doctrine
when it sent troops to support Maximilian, installed by
Napoleon the Third on the throne of Mexico. But this
was merely an episode. The higher ranks of Latin-American society soon forgot that in the world as it is, the sovereignty and security of weak countries run permanent
risks. They took Monroeism for a part of the landscape
without anyone noticing, for a long time, that it diminished sovereignty and encouraged irresponsibility. Here is
the deep, perhaps irreparable harm that the United States
did Latin America-not the grievances habitually listed
under "imperialism."
Political maturity, the realism necessary for reasonably
effective policy, springs from the recognition of the precarious character of all security and from the consequent
recognition that survival requires unremitting efforts to
increase a society's margin of safety with its available ways
and means. Real military power matters-not a comic
opera army-and a serious, consistent, not excessively inept foreign policy. A society that meets these minimal
conditions will probably find itself upon the way of modernization and economic development. For economic development and modernization are the consequences
rather than the causes of political maturity. But Monroeism deprived Latin America of the "natural selection"
that makes political maturity the necessary condition of
49
�survival. With Monroeism (except perhaps in Brazil,
which would explain a great deal) the creole class suddenly regressed to the state of irresponsibility it had lived
in before the North-American and French revolutions
brought the "abnormal" generation of Independence.
The combination of Monroeism with traditions of slavery,
of a feudal-mercantilist economy with parish-pump politics, the legacies of three centuries of Spanish rule, pro-
duces after 1830 widespread mediocrity, specifically, the
"political underdevelopment" thaf)ean-Fran9ois Revel
has rightly underscored. 1 To explain the deep frustration,
-of a sOciety othCrwise fortunate in its endowment -you
have to look, as Revel suggests, to this "political underdevelopment." With its predominantly western character
this body of human beings should not theoretically offer
major obstacles to modernization, to economic and social
development, or to stable democracy. Some of these
countries even enjoy an urban infrastructure and "modern" institutions, such as universities, that are older than
those in the United States. In addition, the region enjoys
exceptional advantages in natural resources; in a living
space ample for its population; in a varied climate (which
cannot, therefore, be held accountable); in navigable
rivers, in a supply of fresh water unequalled elsewhere
which affords considerable resources for hydroelectric
power, etc. These relative advantages distinguish LatinAmerica from the rest of what is called the "Third World."
After 1945 with the complete realization of the "interAmerican system" and with the United States' assumption not only of hemispheric but of world leadership, the
security guaranteed South America free of cost even
made wars between Latin-American countries inconceiv-
-able: The activation of the "system" could stop outbreaks
of hostilities within a matter of hours (for instance in Honduras and El Salvador in 1969). But with the new era inaugurated by the Cuban revolution and the coincident
Americans. With astounding reasoning the Mexican
philosopher, Leopolda Zea (whom Jean Fran9ois Revel
cites), takes not only Washington's former complicity with
Latin American dictatorships for a manifestation of
Yankee imperialism, a truism, but he also calls the Carter
administration's pressure on right-wing dictatorships that
torture, diabolical neo-imperialism. Wicked and powerful,
the United States can do anything. We can do nothing.
After twenty years the embargo and the malevolence of
the United States still serve to excuse Cuba's failure in
everything except its resolute and lasting defiance of
North American predominance in the hemisphere -a defiance that lends the Cuban revolution prestige and measureless importance.
The Latin-American Neurosis
On a visit to Argentina in March 1979, in all likelihood
on business for the Chase-Manhattan Bank, David Rockefeller had a curious exchange with an Argentinian journalist at a press conference:
Journalist: You say that you have come to Argentina for meetings with bankers, but I have here a list of ten business enterprises, ostensibly Argentinian, actually controlled by your
family. Were you ignorant of this fact?
Rockefeller: Perhaps, if you show me the list, I may be able
to reply.
): (Reads a list)
R: Well, the International Basic Economy Corporation
(IBEC) is a company founded by my brother Nelson, who
died recently, and now directed by his son. Other companies
on your list are subsidiaries of IBEC. So it's correct that my
family has connections with them. But what are you driving
at?
): The Rockefeller family controls the policies of the
world, serious conflicts like the barely avoided war between Chile and Argentina over the Beagle Channel
again became possible in Latin America. Prolonged and
United States whatever the party in power. I should like to
know if you also intend to control Argentinian and Latin
American politics thanks to the companies you own i:n our
country, and the several score of others that belong to you in
Latin-American, such as Exxon and others on this other list.
bloody civil wars like the recent one in Nicaragua occur.
(Reads it).
All this happens with only the most cautious involvement
of the United States and without the activation of the
R: Your question is somewhat absurd. My family owns
none of the companies you have just mentioned. We are dealing with joint-stock companies in which one or other of us
from time to time may hold one percent or less of the shares.
The only exception is Rockefeller Center, which belongs entirely to us. My grandfather founded E:X:xon a hundred years
ago, but today we have almost nothing invested in it. You are
mistaken in supposing that we strictly control the businesses
on your list
widespread erosion of North-American power in the
"inter~American
system."
·with the crisis in Monroeism, denied by Washington
for some years but today recognized even in Presidential
speeches, Latin American leaders have experienced, with
dread, the inherent precariousness of the internal make-up
of their states and even of their survivaL' The bankruptcy
of the alibi that attributed every disagreeable occurrence
in Latin-America to outside interference (North-American
imperialism or-the obverse of the same false coin-the
international Communist conspiracy) should finally be
evident. Latin America, however, continues to be the last
region of the globe where educated men, with access to all
the available information, continue to pretend to believe
·in the omniscience and all-powerfulness of the NI;>rth
50
In his subsequent article (from which I drew the previous quotation) our insightful journalist delighted in his
success in making David Rockefeller admit his family was
sole owner of Rockefeller Center. 3 For this "holding com,
pany" could be presumed to own in its turn one hundred
and thirty-two companies in Latin America, including the
Exxon subsidiaries. Obviously, this fairly influential jourWINTER 1981
�nalist does not know what Rockefeller Center is. But what
need is there to bother about details of this kind, when a
member of the clan leaves the fortresses of Wall Street to
descend upon defenceless Argentina:
These people don't travel to far-away countries like ours
merely to inspect a bank branch. They come to have conversations with the Minister of Finance (an actual reason, it appears, for l\!Ir. Rockefeller's trip) and to receive information,
confidential information, about our economy-information
not vouchsafed the people of Argentina.
In politics and economics paranoia serves to keep a cer-
tain number of Latin-American leaders at the level of the
most out-of-date and ill-informed of their colleagues, in
countries undeniably poor and just out of colonialism.
The Latin-American neurosis, in face of the United
States, corresponds less and less each day to the facts. For
the weakening and inconsistency of the country, so long
the guide and protector of Latin America, can no longer
go unrecognized. With the Cuban revolution, however,
the United States' interest in this region reached its highest point in an intense but short-lived blaze. An interest, I
should add, always faint in public opinion and even
among North-American leaders-with the exception of
certain statesmen from Henry Clay (Secretary of State to
Monroe) to John Kennedy, for whom Latin America was
not only a private preserve that the United States maintained in face of European lusts, but also a sister region
that came to independence in the same surge of history
as, and in the wake of, the United States; and that embraced republican and democratic government, at a moment when that innovation survived only in the Western
Hemisphere.
Monroeism had two components: first, without the
close guardianship of the United States and her intervention if necessary in Latin America, other powers outside
the Hemisphere would necessarily intervene-with serious strategic consequences and dangers unacceptable to
the United States. Secondly, the real though condescending sympathy that idealistic North Americans have always
held for peoples whom they see attempting to better their
lot by adopting political institutions which they regard as
virtuous, because inspired by the North American
republic. The weapons revolution with its ICBM's and
nuclear rocket submarines that, for instance, made possession of the Panama Canal strategically inconsequential,
have made it bluntly clear that the second component was
much less important than the first. American public opinion's resistance to President Carter's attempt to part with
the Canal, came not of any interest-almost non-existent-in Panama or in Latin America, but because of the
legendary exploits, taught to Americans in school, of the
engineers and doctors who dug the canal. For Americans
the canal is not the Panama Canal but a North American
canal that crosses Panama (as a Senator put it). A man
who knows what he is talking about described the actual
attitude of the United States toward Latin America:
THE ST. JOHNS REVffiW
One of the more conspicuous hypocrisies of the (North)
American way in foreign affairs is the combination ofritualistic solicitude about the inter-American system with visceral
indifference to the Latin American ordeal. On ceremonial occasions United States leaders talk lavishly about hemisphere
solidarity. When a United States company is nationalized or a
United States diplomat kidnapped, Latin America creates a
brief stir in the newspapers. But one cannot resist the conviction-certainly Latin Americans don't-that deep down most
North Americans do not give a damn about LatinAmerica. 4
The United States now plainly displays the lack of interest
in Latin America as a whole (for instance, President Carter's speech of April 14, 1977) that before was "at the bottom" of its attitudes. From now on the Americans will
deal with particular situations, like relations with their
neighbor, Mexico, illegal immigration, and other problems
directly connected with them, that they cannot help seeing. They want to continue to count in Latin Americabut without acknowledging, still less affirming, the special
responsibility and the fraternal bond that existed in the
past.
After 1966 (when Johnson in the last spasm of Monroeism sent the Marines to the Dominican Republic), the
countries of Latin America found themselves more and
more abandoned by the power that had for so long "overprotected" them. Abandoned, just in the years when they
had to struggle to come to terms with the vast upheaval
triggered by the Cuban revolution.
With the most firmly established and the most cunning
political system of Latin America, Mexico alone weathered the storm, relatively unscathed. Mexico alone stood
up to the United States in the economic and diplomatic
ostracism of Cuba and refused to sever relations with the
Castro regime. As a result, it preserved its "progressive"
image abroad and kept the extreme left at home isolated
and insignificant-at the same time that it mercilessly
crushed not only the occasional underground guerrillas
but also, in passing, dissenting students, massacred in
their hundreds in 1969, during a demonstration right in
the center of the capital. Only Venezuela, which came
out of a military dictatorship just before the fall of Batista
(1958), found leaders capable of founding and defending
undeniably democratic institutions in the face of the double challenge from the militarists of the right and from the
armed extreme left, inspired and actively encouraged by
Havana.
Elsewhere the rising wave of the Cuban revolution
made for enduring upheavals, without anywhere establishing a truly socialist regime, or even a "military socialism,"
since the ((Peruvian model" betrays a kind of perfection in
economic and political failure. Everywhere it provoked
tragic civil wars; undermined long-standing democracies
(in Uruguay and Chile); spurred a new right authoritarianism, based as in the past on military power, but more
implacable, because for the first time since the establishmenfof professional armies in Latin America the "military
party" faces the problem of survival, in a hemispheric and
51
�world-wide political context that, in Cuba, brought the
dissolution of the regular armed forces and the execution,
imprisonment, or exile of all their officers.
This new situation is nowhere more discouraging than
in Argentina, a country once indisputably (and still essentially) the most advanced in Latin America. Sunk in its
present nightmare, Argentina shows how hard it is for
Latin America, more specifically, for Spanish America
(for, although analogous, Brazil is too distinct for automatic inclusion in generalizations about Latin America) to
overcome its political underdevelopment. Quite comparable to a serious neurosis, this difficulty in overcom-ing
political underdevelopment comes, essentially, because it
is our lot to share the "New World" with the United
States and because up to the present (in our inner conviction) we remain the dark panel in the diptych of the great
American enterprise.
The Paradoxical Prestige of Castro
back for the Cuban people and even for Latin America as
a whole; his submission to the strategic plans of the So·
viets, like his only noteworthy contribution to the business of our time. To the Soviets he handed over the youth
of Cuba, first for an army of disproportionate size, afterwards for an expeditionary force-a project that the Soviet Union must have conceived and guided for quite
some time, at least since 1965. But Latin America counts
what strikes any non-Latin-American as a shameful business for the Cuban nation and a bloody hazing for its
young people, forced to play the "Senagalese of the Soviet empire," as an additional plus for Fidel. Pro-Soviet or,
more generally, "leftist" circles are not the only ones not
to find fault with Fidel in this regard. Social Democrats,
liberals, and even Latin-American conservatives (and
many military men including officers) take secret pridethe pride of "decolonized men" -in the fact that our
home-grown soldiers have, for the first time in history,
trodden the soil of Africa, the Maghreb, Arabia, Vietnam,
Afghanistan, and Cambodia.
Everyone acknowledges the bankruptcy of the Cuban
I do not dare expect that political evolution in the near
revolution-except ill Lclfh1-Amefica. No one dreams any
future will deliver our America from permanent crisis and
longer of denying that the Cuban jails hold a very large
number of political prisoners, who receive unspeakable illtreatment.5 But when Fidel paid an official visit to Mexico
in May 1979, President Lopez Portillo greeted him at the
airport as "one of the men of the century." At the same
time hypocritical and sincere, Lopez Portillo's hyperbole,
reportedly, did him enormous service with the public
opinion of his country. Over the past twenty years, four
from swinging between economically incompetent populist democratic regimes with suicidal tendencies, and
equally or more incompetent authoritarian regimes-with
exceptions like the '(Mexican system," and with eccentric
deviations like the totalitarian regime in Cuba. Almost
without exception, the most gifted and educated LatinAmerican intellectuals (almost all, since 1960, "of the left"
and admirers of Castro) carefully evade profound critical
reflection about our society, and ardently persist in the
contrary enterprise: they reinforce all about them the
paralysing idee fixe that external agencies cause all of
Latin America's problems and that The Revolution will
provide their solution-revenge. The economists of Latin
America have, for instance, made an inordinate contribu-
tion to the theory of economic dependence as a sufficient
explanation for political underdevelopment. They are not
at all bothered by the fact that countries like the United
States, first of all, but also Japan, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and Spain, have each in their different ways
come through this ordeal, and that countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore are doing the same at
tliis very hour.
Not surprisingly, Fidel Castro and his revolution continue to enjoy measurelesS prestige and deep influence in
Latin America-prestige difficult for a European observer, even a Marxist sympathizer, to grasp. To such an
observer, Castro now looks like a pretty contemptible tyrant, unmasked; his revolution, like a fearfully costly set-
52
managers of the
44
Mexic'an system," quite different in
other respects (Presidents Lopez Mateos, Diaz Ordaz, Etcheverria and, now Lopez Portillo) have all sought to bolster their position and the dubious legitimacy of the only
Mexican party (Institutionalized Revolutionary Party) by
showing an unchanging desire to please Fidel Castro.
That makes one think.
Translated by Hugh P. McGrath and Leo Raditsa
l. Jean Franc;:ois Revel, "L' Amerique La tine et sa culture politique,"
Commentaire, Autumn 1978, 261-266: in English translation, "The
Trouble with Latin America," Commentary, February 1979.
2. For inStance, President Carter's speech berore the Organization of
American States on Aprill4, 1977.
3. Redaccion, Buenos Aires, 73, March 1979.
4. Arthur Schlesinger, "The Alli:mce for Progress: a Retrospective," in
Latin America: The Search for a New International Role, New York 1975,
58.
5. Of epochal importance in France: Pierre Golendorf, Sept ans d Cuba,
Paris, Belfond 1978; Armando Valladares, Prisonnier de Castro, trans·
lated, annotated and edited by P. Golendorf with an afterword by
Leonid Pliouchtch, Paris, Gmsset 1979.
WINTER !981
�On the Origins of Celestial Dynamics:
Kepler and Newton
Curtis Wilson
I wish to consider two moments in the emergence of
celestial dynamics, a Keplerian moment and a Newtonian
one, seeking to explore what the development of such a
dynamics meant to its authors. Before Kepler, astronomy
was a branch of applied mathematics, employing arithmetic and geometry, but having nothing to do with
physics or forces (in Greek, dynameis). It was Kepler who
introduced forces into the heavens, and thus founded
celestial dynamics. David Gregory, a follower of Newton,
writing in 1702, spoke of the new celestial physics that
"the most sagacious Kepler had got the scent of, but the
Prince of Geometers Sir Isaac Newton brought to such a
pitch as surprizes all the world." Actually, the Keplerian
dynamics and the Newtonian dynamics differ in important respects, but Gregory's singling out of Kepler- and
Newton makes sense. Kepler introduces a dynamics into
the heavens in the sense of hypothesizing a quantifiable
influence of one celestial body on the motion of another,
and Newton's universal gravitation does the same kind of
thing. Moreover, the mathematical results Kepler arrives
at by pursuing his hypothesis nearly coincide with
Newton's results, derived from a different dynamics.
Meanwhile, in the period intervening between the
appearance of Kepler's hypothesis in 1609, and the appearance of Newton's Principia in 1687, there were various attempts at proposing what may be called mechanical
causes for the celestial motions, but none of them allowed
of mathematical formulation, or led to an astronomical .
calculus, a way of predicting positions of planets. The
egregious Thomas Hobbes imagined that, as the southern
and northern hemispheres of the Earth differ with respect
A revised version of a lecture given at St. John's College in Annapolis in
May 1971. Curtis Wilson is at work on an article "Predictive Astronomy
in the Century after Kepler," to appear in Volume II of The General
History of Astronomy, Cambridge University Press.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
to the proportion of dry land and ocean, therefore the
aethereal vortex or whirlpool that moves about the Sun,
having now more solid land to press against and now more
of the yielding ocean, would drive the Earth in a path
differing from a circle, perhaps approaching an ellipse.
Descartes figured out a reason why the suns or stars are
off-center in their vortices, so that in the solar vortex the
planetary paths are eccentric to the sun, but as in
Hobbes's case, the hypothesis did not lend itself to mathematization; on the contrary, because Descartes believed
the universe to be packed with vortices inclined at various
angles to one another, vortices that fill all space and interact with one another by transference of matter and motion, any simple mathematical rule for the planetary orbits
and motions becomes implausible.
In Kepler's and Newton's cases, we can ask how the
dynamical hypothesis and its quantification come about,
what they presuppose, what they mean to their authors.
The first sprouts of Kepler's celestial dynamics make
their appearance in his first venture into print, his
Cosmo~
graphic Mystery of 1596, published when he was just turning twenty-five. Since April 1594, Kepler had been holding
the position of district mathematician in Graz, with the
task of teaching mathematics to the boys in a Protestant
school, and making up an annual astrological calendar for
the province. The calendar was to show when to plant
crops, and what to expect of the weather and the Turks.
He was, let me mention, marvelously successful with his
first calendar: the cold spell he had predicted was so
grievous that herdsmen in the mountains lost their lives
or their noses from frostbite, and the invasions of the
Turks he had predicted were also grievous; the provincial
magistrates therefore added a bonus to his stipend. But
Kepler was not satisfied with this kind of astrological
hackwork. Beginning on the Sunday of Pentecost in 1595,
we find him concerned with, and indeed thinking unceasingly about, three large cosmological questions.
53
�At the start of the Cosmographic Mystery, Kepler says,
"there were three things above all of which I sought the
causes why they were thus and not otherwise: the number, size, and motions of the planetary orbs. That I dared
this was brought about by that beautiful harmony of the
quiescent things, the Sun, fixed stars, and intervening
space, with God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
That is, Kepler sees the spherical layout of the cosmos,
with the Sun at the center, and the stars at the periphery,
as an image or signature of the triune God, the Creator,
His Being, Knowledge, and Love. And with this vision
in his head, he makes bold to seek the number, spacings,
and motions that the Creator gave to the mobile bodies,
the planets, occupying the intermediate space between
Sun and stars.
Obviously, Kepler is at this point a Copernican, a heliocentrist. But he does not have a thorough knowledge of
the details of Copernicus's planetary theory. As he begins
his speculations, he has not read and does not even possess
Copernicus's book; he does not even know Rheticus's
Narratio prima, the book in which, in 1540, three years
before the appearance of the De revolutionibus, Rheticus
had communicated to the world the major outlines of
Copernicus's theory and given an account of its superi~
ority over the Ptolemaic theory. Kepler says that he had
learned partly from his teacher Maestlin at Tubingen, and
partly from his own thinking, the mathematical advantages
that Copernicus has over Ptolemy. The Copernican
arrangement, simply by its layout, accounts for certain
phenomena that are left unaccounted for, are left as coincidences, in the Ptolemaic arrangement. Why do the
Sun and the Moon not retrograde, while the other planets
do? Why do Mercury and Venus always keep relatively
close to the Sun, while the other planets can be at any
angular distance? Why are the superior planets always
lowest in their epicycles, when in opposition to the Sun?
For these questions and a few more, the Copernican
arrangement provides an answer; the Ptolemaic does not.
By the time he had finished his Cosmographic Mystery,
Kepler had apparently read the famous tenth chapter of
Book I of the De revolutionibus, where Copernicus says,
in his brief commendation of the heliocentric arrangement, Hwe find in this arrangement a marvelous symmetry
of the world and a harmony in the relationship of the
motion and size of the orbits, such as one cannot find
elsewhere." But even before, Kepler was asking not
merely in what the symmetry and harmony consist, but
also: On what are they founded? How does man come
to recognize them? And already at the start, Kepler has
answers to which he will always adhere: The world carries in itself the features of the omnipotent creator and is
his copy, his signature. To man, God gave a rational soul,
thereby stamping him in His own image. It is with that
soul that man can recognize the symmetry and harmony
of the Copernican world. Seeing that spherical Copernican world in terms of an idea of Nicholas Cusanus, as a
54
kind of quantitative representation of the indissoluble
triune essence of God, Kepler is encouraged to raise and
pursue his bold, naive questions.
One of the questions was not new. If you were a
Copernican, there were six circumsolar planets, not seven
planets as with Ptolemy, since Copernicus leaves the
Moon as a satellite of the Earth. Rheticus in his Narratio
prima had explained this sixfold number by the sacredness
and perfection of the number six: six is the first perfect
number, i.e., equal to the sum of its factors, l, 2, and 3.
A little later in the sixteenth century, Zarlino will be
using this same idea to explain the role of the first six
numbers in musical consonances; he will be the first musical theorist to include thirds and sixths among the consonances, as they needed to be included for polyphony's
sake. Kepler will be the second such musical theorist, but
here as in the case of the number of the planets he will
reject the notion of particular numbers as causes. He rejects number-mysticism in that sense. Numbers for him
are only abstractions from the created things, and hence
posterior to Creation; they could not therefore be used
by God as archetypal forms for cosmopoiesis, the making
of the world. Not satisfied with Rheticus's answer, Kepler
has to face the question afresh: why are there just six
planets, no more and no less?
The second and third of Kepler's questions were new.
They had to do with the causes for the relation of the
Sun-planet distances to one another, and for the ratios
of the planetary periods. In August of 1595 Kepler wrote
to Maestlin, his former teacher at Tubingen, telling of his
investigations, and asking whether he had ever heard or
read of anyone who went into the reason of the disposition
of the planets, and the proportions of their motions. In
the margin, Maestlin wrote in answer: "No."
Let me remark here that no analogous questions are
likely to arise in what can be called, and indeed came to
be called, the Ptolemaic system, which was what Kepler
had been officially taught at the university. By this term
I mean not the set of planetary theories in Ptolemy's
Almagest, but rather the world picture, current in the
Middle Ages and Renaissance, according to which the
planetary spheres are nested to fill exactly without remainder the space between the highest sublunary element,
fire, and the fixed stars. There is no trace of this picture
in the Almagest, but in 1967 it was discovered that it is
given in Ptolemy's Hypotheses of the Planets, the relevant
passage having been omitted from Heiberg's standard
edition of Ptolemy, apparently from some confusion
among the translators; most of the work, including this
passage, exists only in Arabic MSS, of which Heiberg
gives only a German translation.* What I now say is based
on this recovered portion of the Hypotheses.
*The discoverer was Bernard R. Goldstein; see his "The Arabic Version of Ptolemy's Planetary Hypotheses", Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society vol. 57, Part 4 (1967).
WINTER 1981
�be made to fit in such a sequence of nested spheres, using
the Ptolemaic numbers. In further justification Ptolemy
adds that "this arrangement is most plausible, for it is not
conceivable that there be in Nature a vacuum, or any
meaningless and useless thing."
!
'
/
F'i'gure 1
The Ptolemaic system, Ptolemy freely admits, involves
conjecture, but he also insists on its plausibility, as did his
followers through the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Tycho Brahe was still accepting it in the 1570s. The piau·
sibility is as follows. Ptolemy ·gives certain arguments in
the Almagest, and again in amplified form in the Hypoth·
eses, for a certain order of the planets, beginning Moon,
Mercury, Venus, Sun, and going on to the superior
planets;) won't repeat the arguments here. (The Sun,
note, is the central one of the seven planets or wandering
stars.) He had a very good value for the maximum dis·
tance of the Moon from the Earth, determined from
observations, namely 64 Earth radii. Assume now that
the maximum distance of one planet from the Earth is
equal to the minimum distance of the planet next above
it; take from the Almagest the ratios of nearest approach
to farthest distance for each planet, and start constructing
outward, using the Ptolemaic order. After the Moon
comes Mercury and then Venus. The maximum distance
of Venus turns out to be 1,079 Earth-radii, and the Sun
is to come next. But there was an independent method
for determining the relative distances of the Sun and the
Moon, a way invented by Hipparchus, described in the
Almagest, using eclipses. The method is unreliable, but it
did not come to be distrusted till the seventeenth century.
The result of that method, reported in the Almagest, was
that at its closest approach to the Earth, the Sun was
1,160 Earth-radii distant, 81 Earth-radii beyond the high·
est point ofVenus's orb. Is this a big gap? Ptolemy shows
in the Hypotheses, that by a very slight change in the data
of this determination, a change within the limits of obser·
vational error, the Sun at nearest approach will be found
to use up the extra 81 Earth-radii, and everything fits.
Moreover, this is the only order in which the planets can
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
This Ptolemaic system was very well known during the
sixteenth century, owing to the description of it in
Peurbach's Theoricae planetarum, which went through
many editions. I suspect it was widely accepted as filling
out the heavens, and allowing for the strange motions of
these divine beings~motions which, according to
Ptolemy, follow from the essence of the planet and are
like the will and understanding in man. Copernicus, and
also Kepler in the Cosmographic Mystery, explicitly reject
this system, but I do not think any really forceful argu·
ment was made till Kepler showed, some years later, that
the Hipparchic method for the Sun's distance, based on
observation of lunar eclipses, and in particular of the
width of the Earth's shadow, was practically useless, a
small error in the observations leading to an enormous
error in the final result.
The question of the reason of the spacing of the plane·
tary orbs does not, then, arise in the Ptolemaic system,
because all the available space has been used up in the
placing of the orbs. In the Copernican theory, on the con·
trary, there are unused spaces, not only a huge one beyond
Saturn, separating the solar system from the stars, but
also unused spaces between the hoop-shaped regions of
space that the individual planets pass through in their
motions (Figure 1). That is the effect of the economy of
the Copernican system, the elimination of the large
epicycles. Copernicus speaks of planetary orbs and
spheres; whether he believed them to be real or imaginary,
solid bodies or merely geometrical figures, remains a subject
of scholarly debate. Kepler thought Copernicus believed
the spheres to be real and solid, but in the Cosmographic
Mystery he is already pointing out some of the difficulties
with this conception. By what chains or struts is the Earth
with its atmosphere held within the solid spherical shell to
which it belongs? We are already in the heavens, and they
aren't solid. But in either case, whether the spheres are
real or not, there have come to be apparently functionless
spaces, and the question can be raised as to the reason of
the spacing of the planetary orbs.
Copernicus does not raise this question. He is apparently
seeking to redo not the cosmography of Ptolemy's
Hypotheses of the Planets, an exercise in geometrical
arrangement or layout, but the mathematical, predictive
astronomy of Ptolemy's Almagest, and he wishes to do
this job in a manner consistent with the first principles
of the astronomical art. A primary principle is that there
must be only uniform circular motion; this is required if
there is to be strict periodicity, if the motions are not
sometimes to fail, owing to their dependence on a changing
and thus changeable motor virtue. The intellect abhors
such an idea, Copernicus says.
55
�The Copernican insistence on uniformity of circular
motion will be taken up by later astronomers-Tycho,
Longomontanus, Bullialdus, and others-and echoed for
a hundred years and more by both heliocentrists and nonheliocentrists. Not only had Ptolemy failed to keep to the
principle but new phenomena, discovered since Ptolemy's
time, showed that there was an inequality in the precession of the equinoxes that Ptolemy had not suspected.
This was called the trepidation, supposedly proved by
observations of the Arabs collated with those of Ptolemy
and Hipparchus. According to one scholar (). E. Ravetz),
it was this supposed phenomenon that pushed Copernicus
into setting the Earth in motion. For, argued Ravetz, if
the precession of the equinoxes is due to the motion of
the stars, if this motion is non-uniform, and if the standard of time by which equality is judged is provided by
the diurnal rotation of those very same stars, then the
standard of time has been vitiated, and the entire system
has become logically incoherent.
The Copernican revolution, Ravetz wanted to argue,
was a logical necessity, forced on Copernicus if he was to
avoid logical incoherence in the measurement of time.
But this is wrong. The truth is that the uniformity of the
diurnal rotation would be vitiated slightly whether one
assigned the trepidation to the Earth or to the stars; in
either case, one would have to calculate one's way back
to a uniform measure of time-something astronomers
had long been doing with respect to the apparent diurnal
motions of the Sun. Fortunately, the trepidation is unreal.
Sometime after 1588 Tycho Brahe convinced himself
that it is merely the effect of the large errors in the times
of the equinoxes that Ptolemy reports in Book III of the
Almagest; and this is the conclusion of modern astronomy.
As for Copernicus, it was not the supposed inequality
56
in the precession, or the problem of measuring time, that
led him to cast the Earth into motion.
No, Copernicus's original motive appears to have been
opposition to the Ptolemaic equant-that point, not the
center of the circle, about which Ptolemy assumes the
motion on the deferent circle to be uniform. This violated
the first principle of the astronomical art, the assumption
of only uniform circular motions. With this idea primarily
in mind, Copernicus redoes the Almagest. Year after year,
from the time he first sketched out his idea until his death,
he labored over the revision of numerical constants, trying
to obtain an astronomy that would be accurately predictive, fitting all the available, recorded observations.
One recent biographer (Arthur Koestler) has judged him
to be timorous and myopic. What is more certain is that
in his efforts he met with discouragement: he could not
get the numbers to come right. And in any case, he is not
primarily looking at the emergent system with the eye of
a cosmologist; and he is not, like the young enthusiast
Kepler in 1595 and 1596, asking for the archetypal, a priori
reasons in the mind of God that will account for the layout of the heliocentric world.
Between Copernicus's death in 1543 and 1596, the
date of Kepler's Cosmographic Mystery, there were very
few Copernicans who spoke. out. The ill-fated Bruno; a
poet or two in the entourage of Henry III of France; Benedetti, Galilee's precursor in mechanics; a mystically minded
Englishman named Thomas Digges-they were few.
An overwhelming chorus of denunciation opposed
them. Melanchton (1497-1560), Luther's lieutenant and a
professor at Wittenberg, referring in 1541 to the Copernican doctrine, said, Hreally, wise governments ought to repress impudence of mind." Maurolycus, a very competent
and indeed innovative mathematician of Messina, said
that Copernicus "deserves a whip or a scourge rather
than a refutation" (Opera Mathematica, Venice, 1575).
Pyrrhonist skeptics like Montaigne and his followers were
fond of citing Copernicus and Paracelsus to show that
there can be found people to deny even the most universally accepted principles. In these references they desired
to show that we are so ignorant that it is even excessive
to assert that we know that we know nothing. And Tycho
Brahe wrote: "What need is there without any justification to imagine the Earth, a dark, dense and inert mass,
to be a heavenly body undergoing even more numerous
revolutions than the others, that is to say, subject to a
triple motion, in violation not only of all physical truth
but also of the authority of Holy Scripture, which ought
to be paramount" (Progymnasmata, 1602). And the list of
denunciations could be greatly extended.
Kepler turns out to be one of the early Copernicans,
one of a handful, to speak out; he does so before Galileo
does, and before his own teacher Maestlin. Maestlin
praises Kepler for his first book, saying, " ... at last a learned
man has been found who dared to speak out in defense of
Copernicus, against the general chorus of obloquy." And
WINTER 1981
�Kepler's defense has a unique character, starting as it does
from the notion of the spherical, Sun-centered world as
symbol of God, a geometrical reflection of His triune
essence, a signature of the Creator in the created world.
It is this symbol, Kepler explicitly states, that encourages
him to seek the reasons of the number, spacings, and
ratio of motions of the planetary orbs. This symbol of God
remains central in Kepler's thought; every one of his
major undertakings and achievements can be related to it.
Let me mention in passing that, just as Kepler's question about the spacings is inappropriate to the Ptolemaic
system, so it is unlikely to arise for a follower of Tycho's
system, which resembles the Copernican except that the
Earth remains stationary, and the Sun with the remaining
planets moves about the Earth (Figure 2). In letters written
in the late 1580s, Tycho says that he was induced to give
up the Ptolemaic system by the discovery, from measurements of the parallax of Mars when it is in opposition to
the Sun, that it is closer to the Earth than the Sun is. This
is possible in the Copernican system, but not in the Ptolemaic; the Tychonic system accommodates the fact by preserving the Copernican spacings (see Figure 2). Actually,
Kepler found later that Tycho could not have determined,
from his observations, the parallax of Mars; it was too
small for observational discrimination by the means at his
disposal. And poring over Tycho's MSS, Kepler concluded
that some assistant of Tycho had misunderstood instructions and computed the parallax, not. from observation,
but from the numerical parameters of Copernicus's system. In any case, if you do accept the Tychonic system,
then the path of Mars cuts across the path of the Sunnot impossible, because Tycho knows by now from his
study of comets that there are no solid orbs, but still
inelegant. And the entire set-up lacks the centered symmetry that provoked the Keplerian inquiry.
The answer Kepler finds to the first two of his questions, concerning the number and spacing of the planets,
is well known (Figure 3); the discovery comes after he has
tried many different schemes, and it comes, he tells
Maestlin, accompanied by a flood of tears. It is based on
the five regular solids or polyhedra. That there are just
five polyhedra, with all faces consisting of equal, regular
polygons and with all solid angles convex and equal, was
one of the discoveries of Theaetetus, and the proof of it
forms the culmination of Euclid's Elements. A beautiful
paradigm, this, of completeness of understanding: we can
prove that there are these five, and we can see why there
are no more.
Kepler's answer as to why there are just six planets is
a structure in which the regular polyhedra are encased in
one another like Chinese boxes, but with spheres in between, and with a sphere circumscribing the largest polyhedron and another sphere inscribing the smallest
polyhedron, so that there are six spheres in all (Figure 4).
His arrangement is: sphere of Saturn-cube-sphere of
jupiter-tetrahedron-sphere of Mars-dodecahedronTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Figure 3
'
I', ___ r'lcosct.\..e.d,..0l'L - --------G.a.or+\,
------------
Vt..Y\\1.!)
Figure 4
sphere of Earth-icosahedron-sphere of Venus-octahedron- sphere of Mercury. Each solid is inscribed in a
sphere which passes through all its vertices, and at the
same time has inscribed within it a sphere which touches
the centers of all its faces. The structure is not built outward from the Sun: it is built inward and outward from
the Earth's sphere, which divides the five regular solids into
two groups. The cube, tetrahedron, and dodecahedron
Kepler calls primary; each has vertices formed by three
edges, each has its own special kind of face-square,
triangle, or pentagon. The other solids, called secondary
because built out of the primary, are the octahedron and
icosahedron; these have their vertices formed by four and
57
�five edges, respectively, and have triangular faces. The oc·
tahedron is formed from the cube by replacing square
faces by the points at their centers; the icosahedron is
similarly formed from the dodecahedron. A similar transformation performed on the tetrahedron yields only
another tetrahedron.
Kepler therefore speaks of the secondary bodies, octahedron and icosahedron, as offspring of the cube and
dodecahedron, respectively; and he calls the latter bodies
their fathers, as the chief determiners of their forms. But
he also calls the tetrahedron their mother, as the one from
whom they receive their triangular faces. The tetrahedron,
meanwhile, is hermaphroditic in its production of tetrahedra. Of the primary solids, the cube has to come first,
because, Kepler says, it is "the thing itself," meaning, I
believe, that it presents to us the very idea of corporification, the creation of body by the regular filling-out of space
in the three dimensions. The transformation of cube into
tetrahedron is carried out by subtraction, replacing each
square face by one of its diagonals; the transformation of
cube into dodecahedron is carried out by addition, roofing
over the cube, turning each edge into the diagonal of a
pentagon.
Out of the 120 possible orders of the five bodies,
Kepler can say that he has chosen the one that singles
out, as a starting point, the very notion of corporification
or the creation of body, that singles out the Earth's sphere
as the very special place it is, the home of the image of
God, and that, given these conditions, has the most complete symmetry. And it shows at once why the number of
the planets must be just six; there are only five regular
solids, as Euclid proves, hence only six circumscribing
and inscribing spheres; the number has been deduced from
the very idea of the creation of body, of the world, by
an ever geometrizing, and let me add, echoing Kepler,
a playful God. And man was meant to understand these
things. Kepler says:
As the eye was created for color, the ear for tone, so was the
intellect of humans created for the understanding not of just
any thing whatsoever but of quantities . .. It is the nature of
our intellect to bring to the study of divine matters concepts
which are built upon the category of quantity; if it is deprived
of these concepts, then it can define only by pure negations.
Thus the five regular solids, the being of which depends
on quantitative ratios, form the basis of the layout of the
world; and man, the contemplative creature, was meant to
see and appreciate this beautiful structure.
But is it true? To know that, we must know that the distances in the construction jibe with the distances determined by the astronomers, and moreover, jibe rather
exactly. Kepler at different times ~xpresses the thought
that the imposed forms might not fit the world quite
exactly, but in that case he hopes to find reasons even for
the deviations.
58
F
Figure 5: The squares in the ·octahedron are ABCD, BDEF, and AECF.
The problem Kepler faces in testing his hypothesis is,
first of all, to know which distances to take from the
Copernican theory. The sphere of each planet must be of
such a thickness as to accommodate the planet's approaches
to and recessions from the Sun; but should one, for instance, allow space for Copernicus's equatorial epicycle,
which sticks out beyond the planet's path at aphelion?
And can one trust Copernicus's theories for Venus and
Mercury, which involve some peculiar hypocyclic and
epicyclic motions that keep time with the Earth's motion?
Moreover, Kepler thinks it incongruous that Copernicus
computes the planetary distances from the center of the
Earth's orbit rather than from the Sun itself. It is with
such considerations that Kepler begins his critique of the
details of the Copernican theories. But in disallowing the
equatorial epicycles, and in shifting to the real Sun as
reference point, Kepler is able to make a preliminary comparison of distances. The ratios for the intervals between
Mars and Jupiter and between Venus and the Earth come
out with zero percent error; for the Earth-Mars interval
the error is 5 percent, for the Jupiter-Saturn interval about
9 percent For the Mercury-Venus interval, with Copernicus's numbers, the error is unfortunately 20 percent
Kepler persuades himself-on the ground of Mercury's
very unusual situation and motion-that for Mercury the
sphere to be used is that inscribed, not in the octahedron
itself, but in the three squares formed by the twelve edges
of the octahedron-the octahedron is the only regular
solid that can be sliced through along its edges in such a
WINTER 1981
�way as to yield regular polygons (Figure 5). With this
concession, the Mercury-Venus error is reduced to 2
percent; the largest error remains that for Saturn, whose
distance is the greatest and therefore most difficult to
measure; the next largest error involves the Earth, and
a
Figure 6
c
Kepler has reason to believe that Copernicus's theory of
the Earth is in need of a major revision; and the average
error for all the intervals is but 3.3 percent. Seeing how
closely the numbers derived from observation and those
derived from his model agree, Kepler has his initial moment of elation; later on, as he calculates, there are doubts,
and then again moments of elation. He writes to Maestlin
that he suspects a tremendous miracle of God. Older,
more cautious, Maestlin, widely known as a competent
astronomer, comes to agree with him, comes to suppose
that it will be possible to obtain the distances of the planets
a priori, from Kepler's model. He assists extensively in the
preparation and publication of the book, in which Kepler
calls upon all astronomers to help in working out the details of the hypothesis. Among the readers were those who,
like Johann Praetorius of Altdorf, said that even if the
numbers came out exactly, it would not mean a thing:
astronomy should go back to its practical business of predicting the planetary positions on the basis of observations.
Tycho's reaction was less hostile: of course there are harmonies, he said, but one must work out the planetary
theories on the basis of exact observations first, before
investigating the harmonies. Tycho understands here
that the theories must employ uniform circular motion,
in accordance with the Copernican insistence on that
principle; and in contrast to Kepler he assumes that the
Earth is at rest.
This brings me to another theory that is contained in
Kepler's book, one which Tycho will object to, and which
even Maestlin finds, he says, too subtle. From the very
beginning, Kepler had had a third question: he had wanted
to account not only for the number and spacing of the
planets, but for the proportion of their motions. From the
very beginning, he had noted that the periods of the planets increase more rapidly than the distances, so that the
period of the planet twice as far from the Sun is more than
twice as great. This observation had been one of Kepler's
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
encouragements in the investigation of the reason of the
distances, because, he says, if God adapted the motions to
the orbs according to some law of distances, then surely
He also accommodated the distances to some rule.
The first mathematical rule Kepler proposes for the
periods is given in a diagram (Figure 6). Note that the diagram is pretty. Sis the Sun, ACB the sphere of fixed stars.
AEC and BFC are quadrants of circles with radius equal
to the radius of the stellar sphere, SC. To a given distance
of a planet from the Sun, SP, Kepler imagines that there
would correspond a "vigor of motion" or speed, proportional to the line EF. In the Sun would be the moving
soul, and an infinite force of motion; at the periphery
are the motionless stars, providing by their distance the
space for the planetary motions, and by the non-unifonnity
of their distribution, a background against which the contemplative creature, man, can locate the planets.
The difficulty with the scheme is that Kepler has no
clue as to the radius of the cosmos, SC, and without a
value for that radius, there is no possibility of calculating
the consequences of the hypothesis, and so subjecting it
to empirical test. This hypothesis, for Kepler at this point,
has a status similar to that of the other one about the five
regular solids, in the sense that it arises from the same
thought, of the world as symbol of God. The five-regularsolid theory had the assumed fact of spacings to work
with; this hypothesis has the assumed fact of some kind
of inverse relation between distance and speed.
Kepler tries another hypothesis for the motions which
is more testable, and in a rough way correct, although it is
not the right one (the right one is the third law that he will
discover only in !618). I shall not describe it, but will only
remark that here again Kepler is looking for a pure mathematical form, graspable by the mind because mathematical. He is looking for a form which will somehow make
the action of the Sun on the planets a symbol of the creating and radiative activity of the Godhead. He will therefore speak of the decrease in motive vigor with increasing
distance from the Sun as suitable; it was fitting that God
should have arranged matters thus.
Kepler also begins to compare the spreading-out of the
motive virtue to the spreading out of light from a center;
light, as he will say later, is a kind of mediating thing, intermediate between bodies and souls. Kepler is the first to
quantify light's intensity, to say that it varies inversely as
the square of the distance. It is by a similar quantification
of the Sun's motive virtue that he will arrive at his celestial
dynamics. He is already onto an important clue to it, in
eliminating Copernicus's equatorial epicycle, which was
totally incompatible with the five-regular-solid theory, and
in thinking about the individual planet as slowing up at
aphelion, in some proportion that he is not sure of.
Between the time of completing the Cosmographic
Mystery in 1596, and going to Prague to work with Tycho
Brahe in 1600, Kepler became involved in the study of
musical harmony, and a word must be said about this
59
�investigation as it relates to his study of the planets. Kepler
loved polyphonic music, which he regarded as one of the
dence between the soul and the bodily, as for instance,
when the interval of a sixth following on certain disso-
most important discoveries of modern times, ranking with
nances triggers a particular perception of sweetness; but
the compass and printing. In his Harmonic of the World,
published in 1619, he will write:
the bodily, in Kepler's view, does not account for the
psychic in the sense of constituting its intelligible cause.
Kepler's explanation for the correspondence between
soul and body takes us back to the sphere, image of the
triune God. By creative radiation from the center, one
gets the straight line, the element of bodily form, the beginning from which all body comes to be. A straight line,
rotated about one of its points, describes a plane, representing in this image the bodily. When the sphere is cut
by the plane, the result is a circle, the true image of the
created mind, which is assigned to govern the body. As
the circle lies both on the sphere and in the plane, so is
the mind at the same time in the body, which it instructs,
and in God as a radiation which, so to speak, flows from
It is no longer a marvel that at last this way of singing in several
parts, unknown to the ancients, should have been invented by
Man, the Ape of his Creator; that, namely, he should, by the
artificial symphony of several voices, play out, in a brief portion of an hour, the perpetuity of the whole duration of the
world, and should to some degree taste of God the Creator's
satisfaction in His own works, with a most intensely sweet
pleasure gained from this Music that imitates God.
Kepler refers here to the potentially infinite structure of
the polyphonic music he was familiar with; the Missa
Papae Marcelli, for instance, like a rope of many intertwined strands, might be imagined as going on indefinitely;
nothing in the internal structure requires that it come to
an end at this point or that.
Now for the production of polyphony, one needs to be
aiming at thirds and sixths as consonances; and these
intervals involve the ratios 4:5, 5:6, 3:5, and 5:8. The ancient derivation of the consonances, as for instance in
Plato's Timaeus, does not treat these ratios as consonances.
The trouble with Plato and the rest, Kepler says, is that
they didn't listen carefully enough, before setting out to
make their theory. Kepler sets out to make a new theory,
without invoking the causal efficacy of numbers, or the
perfection of the number six (Zarlino, we recall, had
claimed to derive the consonances from just this perfection of the number six). Kepler's solution involves the regular polygons constructible with straight-edge and compass,
which divide the circumference of the circle into equal
parts. If one imagines the circle stretched out into a
straight line, and transformed into a monochord, one has
the divisions giving the consonances required for polyphony, including thirds and sixths, fundamentally because of the constructibility of the pentagon.
The pentagon depends for its construction on the division of a line in extreme and mean ratio, the golden section. If you are familiar with that division, and know how
it can be indefinitely reproduced by subtracting the
smaller from the greater segment, or by adding the greater
to the whole, you may understand why Kepler views this
division as imaging sexual generation, and you will thus
gain an explanation of the tender feelings that accompany
thirds and sixths in polyphonic music. Kepler did not
suppose, and I do not believe that any theorist before
him supposed, that the inquiry into the physical conditions for the production of certain intervals would account
for the shades of feeling that those intervals arouse in
consciousness. On the one side we have instruments like
the monochord, from which we can get numbers; on the
other, we have subtle perceptions of harmony, dissonance,
restoration of consonance. There is a strange correspon-
60
God's countenance. Since now Kepler conceives the cir-
cle as the bearer of pure harmonies, and believes these
harmonies to be based in the nature of the soul, he comes
to speak of the soul as a circle, supplied with the marks of
the constructible divisions, the divisions that can be concluded with ruler and compass. It is an infinitely small
circle, a point equipped with directions, a qualitative
point. This is no doubt a metaphor or symbol, but it is by
such means alone that we can understand (insofar as that
is possible) how body, soul, and God are related.
The harmonic divisions of the circle apply, of course, in
the heavens, as well as in music; it is from these divisions
that Kepler develops his astrological doctrine, and also
his harmonic theory for the planetary eccentricities. I cannot take time to describe these here. Kepler comes to see
the five-regular-solid theory as inexact, an archetypal form
used to determine the number of planets, but not thereafter used in its exact quantitative relations by the
Creator, but slightly modified in order to jibe with the harmonic theory of the eccentricities. A playful God, ruled
by the necessities of geometry, may be forced to such expedients.
All these parts of Kepler's work are omitted, to say the
least, from the corpus of scientific knowledge recognized
today. Meanwhile, his great achievement in remaking
planetary theory, accomplished first for Mars in the years
1600 to 1605, is praised, sometimes on the mistaken
grounds that it is purely empirical. It is not. It involves
assumptions that are rejected today. Alternative paths to
the so-called Keplerian laws are conceivable, but neither
could they have been purely empirical. The empirical
evidence is too inexact; some reasoned guesses are required.
Kepler's study first of optics and then of the motions of
Mars in the years 1600 to 1605 leads to the development
of a possibility already. present in his thought. He is the
first to quantify the intensity of light, in accordance with
the inverse square of the distance from the source. (This
is a purely a priori derivation, involving no experimentaWINTER !981
�tion.) He does not regard light as material or corpuscular;
that would have meant Epicurean philosophy, which
like most good Christians of the time he abhorred. Rather,
he says, light is quantified according to surface, not according to corporeality. It is one of a group of immaterial
emanations, whereby bodies, which are isolated from
each other by their bounding surfaces, are enabled to be
in communication with one another. The motive virtue
issuing from the Sun, Kepler finds, must be another such
emanation, distinct from light, for as Kepler discovers in
about 1602, its intensity varies inversely as the distance
from the Sun, not as the square of the distance. The empirical support consists in what is known as the bisection
of the eccentricity, which he had been able to verify from
Tycho's observations in the case of Mars and the Earth.
A further step is taken in 1605 when he discovers that
that component of the planet's motion whereby it approaches and recedes from the Sun, can be regarded as
simply a libration, or what we would today call a simple
harmonic motion: this, he says, smells of the balance, not
of mind. By this he means that it is a pattern not chosen
for its aesthetic or mathematical beauty but determined
by the law of the lever and the nature of matter. Here is
introduced something that one can perhaps call mechanism: matter turns out to have inertia in the sense of
being sluggish, and it turns out to be pushed by an immaterial something in an incomprehensible way. As
Kepler clearly realizes, the mechanism or quasi-mechanism
could not, in principle, account for everything. It accounts for the actions but it does not account for the
initial conditions, the sizes of the orbits and their eccentricities. These must be works of mind, harmonically determined.
Kepler's Harmonies of the World (Harmonice mundi) of
1619 will remain his final testament. And indeed it is
through the spherical symbol, ultimate source of the harmonies that he calls archetypal, that Kepler was first
enabled to accept Copernicanism, and then, developing
the emanative aspect of the symbol, to banish from the
sky the celestial intelligences, the planetary movers of
Aristotle and Ptolemy, ultimate relics of paganism (as he
calls them), and to regard the planets as material, subject
to quantifiable forces that man from his moving platform
can measure.
Kepler wanted to dedicate his Harmonice mundi to
James I of England. For years, very naively from a political
point of view, he had looked to this monarch as the hope
of Europe, the one who could bring a religious peace out
of the strife of Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
The relevance of the Harmonice mundi to this end was
that it was a work of the liberal arts, the arts of peace as
Kepler called them, setting forth the principles of the harmonies with which the world had been adorned by its
Creator. Kepler thought that, could these things but be
seen, men would be raised above the level of doctrinal
dispute. But it is doubtful that James I read far into the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
book. And indeed, no one in the seventeenth century
that I know of accepted either Kepler's dynamics as a
whole (Leibniz undertook to revamp it), or his harmonic
even in part. And as the book first appeared for sale in
the market stalls, the Thirty Years War had already begun
its terrible course.
Turning to Newton, we will probably not expect to find
effusions about the celestial harmonies in his writings.
True enough, in the second edition of the Principia, explaining his rules of reasoning in philosophy, Newton says
that Nature is ever consonant with itself; and so we might
imagine it as emitting some single, deep organ tone. But
this is from the second edition, 1713, and the first edition,
1687, does not contain the rules of reasoning, at least in
their final form, and such as it contains, it labels "hypotheses". We are thus led to suspect that Newton's understanding of his great discovery when he was in the midst
of making it, was rather different from the understanding
he later came to have of it, when he was defending it before the world.
Shortly after the publication of the first edition, Newton
began a series of revisions, pertaining particularly to the
early part of Book III. He wrote a series of scholia to accompany those propositions, 4-9, which lead to the establishment of universal gravitation. I wish to quote to you
from the proposed scholium to Proposition 8.
By what proportion gravity decreases in receding from the
Planets the ancients have not sufficiently explained. Yet they
appear to have adumbrated it by the harmony of the celestial
spheres, designating the Sun and the remaining six planets ...
by means of Apollo with the Lyre of seven strings, and measuring the intervals of the spheres by the intervals of the tones.
Thus they alleged that seven tones are brought into being ...
and that the Sun strikes the strings. Hence Macrobius says,
"Apollo's Lyre of seven strings provides understanding of the
motions of all the celestial spheres over which nature has set
the Sun as moderator." And Proclus (commenting) on Plato's
Timaeus, "The number seven they have dedicated to Apollo
as to him who embraces all symphonies whatsoever, and therefore they used to call him ... the Prince of the number seven."
Likewise in Eusebius' Preparation of the Gospel, the Sun is
called, by the oracle of Apollo, the king of the seven-sounding
harmony. But by this symbol they indicated that the Sun by
his own force acts upon the planets in that harmonic ratio of
distances by which the force of tension acts upon strings of
different lengths ...
The same tension upon a string half as long acts four times as
powerfully, for it generates the Octave, and the Octave is produced by a force four times as great. For if a string of given
length stretched by a given weight produced a given tone, the
same tension upon a string thrice as short acts nine times as
much. For it produces the twelfth [i.e. an octave plus a fifth],
and a string which stretched by a given weight produces a given
tone needs to be stretched by nine times as much weight so as
to produce the twelfth ...
Let me briefly review the mathematical relation here (Figure 7). Imagine a series of six strings with length propor-
61
�But he taught that the sounds were emitted by the motion and
attrition of the solid spheres, as though a great sphere emitted
a heavier tone as happens when iron hammers are smitten.
And from this, it seems, was born the Ptolemaic System of
orbs, when meanwhile Pythagoras beneath parables of this
sort was hiding his own system and the true harmony of the
heavens.
Figure 7
tiona! to the distances from the Sun to the six planets;
let equal weights be hung on the strings; we thus obtain
six different tones-very dissonant with one another, let
me add, but Newton does not mention the fact. These
tones betoken different forces, which can be measured by
taking strings of equal lengths and hanging on them different weights, so as to give the same tones. Any two of the
weights will be inversely as the squares of the corresponding
lengths. Newton continues:
Now this argument is subtle, yet became known to the ancients,
for Pythagoras, as Macrobius avows, stretched the intestine of
sheep or the sinews of oxen by attaching various weights, and
from this learned the ratio of the celestial harmony. Therefore,
by means of such experiments he ascertained that the weights
by which all tones on equal strings [were produced] ... were
reciprocally as the squares of the lengths of the strings by
which the musical instrument emits the same tones. But the
proportion discovered by these experiments, on the evidence
of Macrobius, he applied to the heavens and consequently by
comparing those weights with the weights of the Planets and
the lengths of the strings with the distances of the Planets,
he understood by means of the harmony of the heavens that
the weights of the Planets towards the Sun were reciprocally
as the squares of their distances from the Sun. But the Philos~
ophers loved so to mitigate their mystical discourses that in
the presence of the vulgar they foolishly propounded vulgar
matters for the sake of ridicule, and hid the truth beneath
discourses of this kind. In this sense Pythagoras numbered his
musical tones from the Earth, as though from here to the
Moon were a tone, and thence to Mercury a semitone, and
from thence to the rest of the planets other musical intervals.
62
I have to say: Newton's interpretation of the ancient
texts is not a little dubious. Contrary to what all seventeenth-century Copernicans believed, the early Pythagoreans were not heliocentrists; Philolaus, a contemporary
of Socrates and the first Pythagorean to write down doctrine (for which he is supposed to have been appropriately
punished), did not in fact know the Earth to be round,
and his Central Fire was not the Sun. Again, so far as
anyone knows today, the law relating weights and stringlengths for different musical intervals was first discovered
not by Pythagoras but in the late 1580s by Vincenzo
Galilei, the father of Galileo Galilei. Indeed, the discovery
of this law, which can be verified very precisely if one has
a good ear (and Vincenzo was a musician)-this discovery
may have been what set Galileo on his course of experimentation, seeking exact numerical ratios in nature; he
started with pendulums (again, weights hung on strings),
and proceeded to motion down inclined planes, in order
perhaps to analyze the motion of the pendulum.
But the incorrectness of Newton's interpretations is not
my concern here. The sheer volume of the manuscripts,
the many variants and revisions, in all of which Newton is
seeking to show that the ancient philosophers before
Aristotle understood the Newtonian system of the world,
demonstrates that these views were important to Newton.
Can we make that fact intelligible to ourselves or must we
conclude simply that it is one of the queernesses of genius?
I want to speak briefly about the discovery of universal
gravitation. I have recently changed my mind on this matter. My previous argument (which I unfortunately published) was that before !684 Newton did not have his
"proof' of universal gravitation, therefore was uncertain
about the universality. I now suspect that before !684
a good deal more was missing than just the "proof'; I
suspect that the idea itself, as a clear and cogent proposal,
was not yet present to his mind.
The idea of universal gravitation can seem more paradoxical than we perhaps realize. For a long time, since the
1720s, it was generally thought that Newton already in
1666 had all his principal ideas, and was held up from producing his masterpiece by the lack of a good value for the
Earth's radius, or according to a nineteenth-century suggestion, by the lack of a certain mathematical theorem.
That interpretation is supported by no solid evidence
whatsoever; there is no sign that Newton entertained the
idea of universal gravitation before 1684. And up to !679,
all of Newton's statements about planetary motion imply
either Descartes' theory of vortices, and/or an aethereal
theory to keep the planets from receding from the Sun.
WINTER 1981
�Newton uses Descartes 1 term1 conatus recedendi a centro 1
the term which Huygens in 1673 replaces by the term
centrifugal force. Newton's thought about planetary motion during these years, like that of Huygens, remains confined to Descartes' analogy of the stone in the sling.
There is no evidence that, before 1679, Newton ever conceptualizes the orbital process as the falling of the planet
out of the rectilinear path it would follow if left to itself,
a falling towards a central attracting body.
Now this does not mean that during these years Newton altogether rejected the possibility of attractions and
repulsions as possible physical causes. He was not a Cartesian; he did not believe space to be identical with matter, and all transfer of motion to be by contact. He was
familiar with Gassendi 1 s counter-argument1 according
to which not everything that is, is substance or accident;
thus time and space need not be the accidents of anything,
but may independently subsist, and so space need not be
the space of something (namely body). This argument
may not have satisfied Newton, but given Torricelli's experiment with the barometer, he was willing to grant the
vacuum. While this discovery does not in itself lead to the
granting of real attractions and repulsions, it opens up
the possibility and even the desirability of hypothesizing
them. If there are spaces free of matter between the smallest parts of bodies, or the corpuscles of which ordinary
bodies are composed, then in order that the parts of these
ordinary bodies should cohere and various substances
should have the various chemical and physical properties
they exhibit, we may well be led to postulate "intermolecular" forces. No doubt, to hypothesize such forces was to
depart from the accepted norm of natural philosophy
established by Descartes. But Robert Hooke was doing
it, and Newton began doing it, speaking of the sociability
and unsociability of bodies in chemical reactions and cohesions. The forces he considered seem to have been
forces acting over very small distances; his alchemical
experiments were probably meant to find out about them.
In 1679 comes the famous exchange of letters between
Hooke and Newton, a polite fencing between bitter enemies. Here Hooke explicitly proposes that Newton work
out the path of a body under an inverse-square attraction that pulls the body away from its rectilinear trajectory. So far as the evidence goes, this is the first time that
Newton faced the planetary problem in such a form. And
under this provocation, he makes the great discovery that
a force of attraction, directed toward a fixed center, implies the equable description of areas, Kepler's so-called
second law. He applies this law, which allows him to use
area to represent time, to the ellipse with center of attraction in the focus, and finds that the force follows an
inverse-square law.
At one point I thought that it was Hooke who first placed
in front of Newton the idea of universal gravitation, so
that if Newton had not grasped it before, he did so now,
and proceeded to look for a way to test it. But the fact is
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
that Hooke himself did not believe gravitation to be universal, that is, applicable to absolutely all matter. He had
generalized gravitation more than any previous author.
Earlier authors like Kepler had regarded attraction as belonging to cognate bodies, that is, closely related bodies
like jupiter and its satellites, or the Earth and its moon.
Thus Roberval could talk of a lunar gravity, a terrestrial
gravity1 a solar gravity 1 a jovial gravity 1 and so on.
Let me quote Hooke's view in 1678; he is here explaining
an hypothesis about comets:
I suppose the gravitating power of the Sun in the center of this
part of the Heaven in which we are, hath an attractive power
upon all the bodies of the Planets, and of the Earth that move
about it, and that each of those again have a respect answerable, whereby they may be said to attract the Sun in the same
manner as the Load-stone hath to Iron, and the Iron hath to
the Load-stone. I conceive also that this attractive virtue may
act likewise upon several bodies that come within the center
of its sphere of activity 1 though 'tis not improbable also but
that as on some bodies it may haVe no effect at all, no more
than the Load-stone which acts on Iron, hath upon a bar of
Tin, Lead, Glass, Wood, etc., so on other bodies, it may have
a clean contrary effect, that is of protrusion, thrusting off,
driving away ... ; whence it is, I conceive, that the parts of the
body of this Comet (being confounded or jumbled, as 'twere
together, and so the gravitating principle destroyed) become of
other natures than they were before, and so the body may
cease to maintain its place in the Universe, where it was first
placed.
Now Hooke is an inductivist of a sort, but induction is not
here leading to universal gravitation. That is, Hooke is not
concluding that every particle of matter attracts every
other in exactly the same way. In his correspondence with
Newton in the following year, Hooke suggests that Newton
may be able to think of a cause of the gravitating principle: now in Hooke's understanding-and I think in Newton's, too-to say that was to imply that gravitation is not
universal, for the material cause of gravitation could not
itself be subject to gravitation.
In view of the passages cited and others I shall refer to
later, I suspect that the idea of a truly universal gravitation became effectively present to Newton only after he
had discovered the "proof." Why propose a theory which,
by its very nature, precludes any mechanical explanation,
which seems to preclude being tested, and which, moreover, as Newton actually suggests once he has begun to
entertain it, would seem to put the calculation of a planetary orbit beyond the power of any human mind?
There is the problem, also, of explaining Newton's
delay for five more years after 1679. The best explanation,
I believe, is that Newton does not yet think he has discovered anything very important, and sees no direction in
which to pursue his discovery. Then Halley appears, probably in August of 1684, and persuades him that his discovery of the logical relation between the inverse-square
law and the Sun-focused elliptical orbit is important, and
63
�that he should publish it, to secure the invention to himself. Newton sets to work, and we have a series of MSS
which can be arranged in temporal order on the basis of
internal evidence.
In the first MS, there is no sign of the notion of universal
gravitation. Newton speaks of gravity as one species of
centripetal force-the term "centripetal force" making its
first appearance here (it is Newton's invention). There is
no hint of the problems of perturbation, the disturbance
of the orbit and motion of one planet by the attraction of
another planet. The inverse-square law is derived from
Kepler's third law as applied to the planets and to the
satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, that is, from the fact that,
for both the satellites and the circumsolar planets, the
squares of the periods are as the cubes of the mean distances from the central body. Newton shows that the revolving bodies must be subject to a centripetal force toward
the central body which varies inversely as the square of
the distance. The orbits are simply said to be elliptical.
The entire development, I believe, is up in the air, in the
sense that Newton does not know the cause of the attraction, does not know how exact Kepler's third law may be
(he had questioned its exactitude at an earlier date), and
is merely proceeding mathematically without knowing
what may underlie his derivation of the inverse square law;
it could be something that might lead to the results needing to be qualified.
To mention just one possible explanation, one that
Newton had thought up in the 1660s and proposed to the
Royal Society in 1675: the action of the Sun on the planets
might be due to the inrushing of a subtle aether, which
would serve as fuel for the Sun's burning. A similar but
different aether might be rushing into the Earth to produce terrestrial gravity; this aether might be transformed
chemically within the Earth, then issue forth as our atmosphere. The satellite systems of Jupiter and Saturn
might be sustained by similar circulations of aether.
These several centripetal forces would be explicable
mechanically, that is by impacts; gravitation would not
be universal, for the in-rushing aether would not itself
be subject to the forces it caused in other bodies.
In the second MS the notion of perturbation appears.
Newton is now assuming that all the bodies of the solar
system attract one another, just as Hooke had before.
Can the planetary orbits still be said to be elliptical? Hardly,
if the ellipses are drawn badly out of shape by the perturbations, the attractions of the different planets toward
one another. What must be done is to evaluate the relative magnitude of these perturbations. How is that going
to be possible?
Newton does it by considering the accelerations of the
satellites of Jupiter towards Jupiter, of the Moon towards
the Earth, of Venus towards the Sun_ Each satellite is
being accelerated towards the body round which it goes,
and that acceleration depends on the power of the central
body to attract, and so may be able to serve as a measure
64
of that power. Of course, to be comparable measures, all
three satellites ought to be at the same distance from
their central body, and they aren't. But we can shift them
in thought to the same distance, by using the inversesquare law. What we get, then, are the comparative attractive powers of Jupiter, the Earth, the Sun. That of the
Sun is overwhelmingly larger than the others.
But do we really have attractions here or not? Thus far
there has been no evidence that Newton's aethereal theory
for the planets is wrong. What then happens, I think, is
that Newton realizes a consequence of something he has
been assuming. In his derivation of the comparative attractive powers of Jupiter, the Earth, etc., he has been assuming that the quantity of matter of the satellite or test body
didn't (if you will forgive a pun) matter; it didn't matter
what mass it had, it was accelerated to the same degree
anyhow, the differences between the masses of the test
bodies could be ignored. Is that right?
Is it so on the Earth? Did Newton know the downward
acceleration of all bodies on the Earth, at a given place,
to be the same? Not at this moment. Earlier we know he
had assumed the rates to be slightly different for different
bodies, depending on their micro-structure, and the way
the downflowing aether affected them. Now, in the third
MS, Newton sets out to test the constancy, and this is
the most precise experiment reported in the Principia.
He takes equal weights of nine different materials; encloses each of them-gold, salt, wool, wood, and so onin boxes of equal size and shape, to make the air resistance
the same; and uses these boxes as the bobs for nine different pendulums, with very long but equal suspensions.
The pendulums, he says, played exactly together for a
very long time. The accelerations of these different materials, he concludes, cannot differ from one another by
more than one part in a thousand. Essentially the same
experiment, the EotvOs experiment, has been performed
in this century with a precision of one part in one billion.
Another way of stating the result, you may know, is that
inertial mass is proportional to weight.
At this point in the manuscript series, there appears
for the first time in history, so far as I know, a statement
of Newton's third law of motion, the equality of action
and reaction. Let me now put these two results together-Newton's Eotvos experiment, and his third law,
as they are put together in the Principia. The first implies
that bodies on the Earth are accelerated downward by a
force that is strictly proportional to what Newton now
calls their mass, by which he means their resistance to
being accelerated. (If the proportionality had not been
exact, the pendulums would not have played together,
would not have had the same periods.) If the same thing
holds with respect to Jupiter, with respect to Saturn, and
with respect to the Sun, then one can compare the
attracting powers of these different bodies in the way we
have already seen: by taking a test body, it doesn't matter
of what mass, placing it at a fixed distance from the attracWINTER 1981
�ting body, and seeing how much it is accelerated. Newton
couldn't do this physically, as we've said, but assummg
the inverse-square Jaw he could find from the actual acceleration of a body at one distance what the acceleration
would be if the satellite were placed at any stipulated
distance.
Now comes the final step. Since the mass of the test
body can be ignored, in the comparison of the attracting
forces of two bodies, one can use each as a test body for
the other. Then
A's power of attraction
B's power of attraction
acceleration of B
acceleration of A
By the third law of motion, these accelerations are inversely as the inertial masses:
acceleration of B
acceleration of A
mass of A
mass ofB
Putting the two results together,
A's power of attraction
B's power of attraction
mass of A
mass of B
All right, that's it. The gravitational force is proportional
to both the mass of the attracting and the mass of the
attracted body. Inertial mass belongs to bodies merely
because they are bodies. Therefore gravitational force
goes with all bodies; all bodies attract gravitationally.
Gravitational attraction is therefore inexplicable by any
mechanical model of matter in motion. The mechanical
philosophy, Newton concludes in the 1680s and 1690s,
is dead; he has rediscovered the ancient mystic Pythagorean truth of the harmony of the spheres. Gravitation,
he concludes, is the result simply of the immediate action
of God.
There was a tradition in seventeenth-century England,
pursued particularly by the so-called Cambridge Platonists
Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, having to do with the
prisci theologi or ancient theologians-Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Thales, Plato, and so on-whose
pagan wisdom, it was claimed, was really derivative from
that of the Hebrew prophets, especially Moses. More
and Cudworth· developed their interpretation of these
ancient doctrines into a justification for a new and revolu-
tionary natural philosophy, that is, for modern science
as it was coming to be in the works of Galileo and
Descartes. Newton, influenced by these men in earlier
years, now believes he has found the right interpretation
of the ancient wisdom precisely because he has found the
right natural philosophy. And so he writes:
Since all matter duly formed is attended with signs of life
and all things are framed with perfect art and wisdom and
nature does nothing in vain; if there be an universal life and
all space be the sensorium of a thinking being who by immediate presence perceives all things in it, as that which thinks
in us, perceives their pictures in the brain; those laws of motion
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
arising from life or will may be of universal extent. To some
such laws the ancient philosophers seem to have alluded when
they called God Harmony and signified his actuating matter
harmonically by the God Pan's playing upon a Pipe . .. To the
mystical philosophers Pan was the supreme divinity inspiring
this world with harmonic ratio like a musical instrument and
handling it with modulation according to that saying of
Orpheus "striking the harmony of the world in playful song".
But they said that the Planets move in their circuits by force
of their own souls, that is, by force of the gravity which takes
its origin from the action of the soul. From this, it seems, arose
the opinion of the peripatetics concerning Intelligences moving solid globes. But the souls of the sun and of all the planets
the more ancient Philosophers held for one and the same
divinity exercising its powers in al1 bodies whatsoever ... All
[their gods] are one thing, though there be many names.
And so Newton goes on to argue, using passages from
Plato and Lucretius and many other ancient writings, that
the philosophers of antiquity-Thales, Anaximander,
Pythagoras, Democritus, and so on-were really agreed
upon the atomicity of matter, the inverse-square law of
gravitation, the universality of gravitation, and further,
true mystics that they were, held the true cause of gravity
to be the direct action of God. The unity of physical,
moral, and theological wisdom is thus shown to have been
present in the beginnings of the world, transmitted from
Adam and Eve. That unity and that wisdom were gradually
lost, after the corruptions of the sons of Noah; but now
they have been recovered and restored by Newton, who
thus takes his place among the prisci theologi, the ancient
theologians. Newton is even able to find in the biblical
book of Daniel the prophecy of his, Newton's, rediscovery
of the truth.
So the first beginnings of a mathematized celestial
dynamics came, with Kepler, out of a trinitarian symbol,
the three-foldness of the Sun, spherical shell of stars and
intervening space in a Sun-centered world; Kepler had
his main idea from the beginning. With Newton it was
different, and the crucial justifying discovery came late,
with a precise experiment to test the exactness of the
constancy of the acceleration of gravity, and a new realization of the meaning of that constancy. And in a world that
has now lost its geometrical center, Newton accepts this.
discovery as a revelation of a mysterious, omnipresent,
unitarian God, to discourse of whom from the appearances,
as he will tell us in the General Scholium to the second
edition of the Principia, does certainly belong to Natural
Philosophy. But the most famous statement of the General Scholium, presented there as the outcome of inductivist caution, "f do not contrive hypotheses" (hypotheses,
that is, as to the cause of gravitation)-this statement
disguised rather than expressed the deeper ground of
Newton's original and I suspect persisting view, that gravi-
tation was indeed universal, and the result of the direct
action of God, so that no hypotheses for it could be successfully contrived.
65
�Recent Events In the West*
Er will mein Leben und mein Glueck; und fuehlt nicht,
dass der schon tot ist, der um seiner Sicherhett willen lebt.
Leo Raditsa
Introduction
After five years of evasion there is now something like
the beginning of awareness that in 1975 Soviet actions
changed fundamentally. In 1975 the Soviet Union began
to separate Europe from America by taking over countries, openly and through proxies, that border on trade
routes and have natural resources without which neither
Europe and the United States can survive. At the same
time the propaganda war, now carried on largely by countries of the so-called Third World, and the attack on international traditions (seizure of embassies, murder of
nations, murder of refugees, murder of political exiles,
and terrorism) intensified. The object of this apparently
chaotic and "spontaneous" second war is not only to distract attention from the strategic significance of recent
Soviet advances but also to destroy international public
opinion by making it complicit with murder-the public
opinion that Solzhenitsyn says has been destroyed in Russia and has left people helpless against themselves and
others. The Soviets aim to win control of Europe without
actually fighting a total war by exploiting the Free World's
fear of nuclear disaster and its present reluctance to fight
small wars-and even to defend itself by openly stating
the truth. But their success, if it can be called that, would
probably bring only bitterer wars.
'
.
This article is first in a series dealing with the United States in the
world-a series, in part, provoked by Raymond Aron's recent remark:
"Le peuple america in s'est toujours plus preoccupe de lui-m~me que du
monde exterieur." I write here in my own name, not as editor. My views
do not represent the editorial policy of The St. fohn's Review. L R.
66
In the United States and Europe the sense of crisis appears now widespread but mixed with resignation and bafflement. Both the bafflement and the resignation come,
probably, most of all from unacknowledged fear, but they
also come from lack of policy. The simple return to the
"containment" of the late forties and fifties does not
make sense, even if it were possible, for containment, especially the passivity and rigidity it tended to foster, has
had a lot to do with bringing us into the present danger.
Also, more importantly, containment focuses too much
on the future at the expense of the present struggle which
will decide the future. Policy must be more active, more
daring, more courageous, and what amounts to the same
thing, more modest. Above all, the government must not
be afraid to speak the truth.
In its further reaches the crisis we are now living started
in 1914. The struggle against totalitarianism is always in
part a struggle against ourselves, for totalitarianism sprang
from our thought and the distortions of our traditions. It
is not alien to us. We know it all too well-and until recently it has won widespread allegiance in the Free World.
What passes for totalitarianism's strength (actually, nothing more than force) comes from our weakness. Because
totalitarian regimes exist off our weakness, they are not
enemies which countries and in.dividuals can respect. As a
result, war with them is unceasing when it is not total and
self-destructive. Because we fear ourselves to some extent
in them, struggle with totalitarianism tends to undo reLeo Raditsa recently published Some Sense About Wilhelm Reich (Philosophical Library 1978). He writes frequently on current events in the
world for Midstream and other publications.
WINTER 1981
�spect for virtues otherwise selfevident, such as courage.
But it is from those who have lived under these regimes
and remained true to themselves that courage can be relearned. "Pygmies in power-the Mussolinis, Stalins, and
Hitlers-seem like giants; mediocrities like men of genius;
men of genius like madmen" (Lev Kopelev).
l. The Recent Background
Since 1975 seven countries have succumbed to commu~
nist aggression. In all instances the Soviets were involved.
Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, South Yemen, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan. (The situation in Mozambique is not
clear.) In Angola and Afghanistan resistance, mostly ignored, continues. Until recently only Solzhenitsyn dared
keep count. The end of 1975 made it plain that defeat in
Vietnam was not an isolated instance but a general route,
especially a psychological route that involved the whole
free world, profoundly.
Abandoned to a three-sided civil war in the collapse of
Portuguese self-confidence, Angola was invaded in 1975
by Cuban troops with East German and Soviet advisorsa clear violation of the self-determination of nations, open
aggression. Kissinger resorted to covert aid to the Angolans fighting the Cubans, but at the same time forbade
Moynihan to bring the aggression against Angola before
the UN. Once exposed, Kissinger's secretiveness pro~
voked a congressional prohibition against aid to Angola.
Had the opposition to the Vietnam War been rational, disinterested and forthright, against one specific, miscon~
ceived war, it would have been able to distinguish
between Indochina and Angola, and it would have known
the danger to the free world, especially to its raw materials
and trade routes, in the attack on Angola and on the Horn
of Africa.
But behind 1975 and the fall of Saigon lies 1973, and
1968 and 1967. These mark even more fundamental turning points whose importance begins to be perceived, dimly,
only now.
In 1967 Israel won a war and it conquered territory. It
struck first (because its survival depended on it) when it
became clear that Nasser was about to attack. But victory
and, worse still, inadvertent conquest as a result of the
readiness to fight for one's life (a "right" whose assurance
in article 51 of the UN Charter only serves to hamper its
exercise) violates all contemporary sensibilities, which exist on their denial of the most obvious experience of the
past.
Nobody knew what to do with this victory and this
strength. Above all it embarrassed us, especially our government. Like our own victory in the Second World War
we could not cope with it, especially in its contrast to our
incapacity to face either victory or defeat in Indochina.
Our government (for instance in 1969), in accordance
with the unmistakably expressed desire of people and the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Congress, helped Israel with economic and military aid;
but on condition that it show "flexibility" and assume
something like sole responsibility for the war-that it appear to deny itself. That there was a place for courage and
heroism in our world, and that it could be effective, was
more than we could bear: At the same time we could not
deny it outright, for that would be too obvious a self-betrayal. As a result of this victory of 1967, even the UN in
resolution 242 had to acknowledge, grudgingly, Israel's
"right" to survival. The ambiguity, really the ambivalence,
that shows itself in this resolution's refusal to accept the
victory it had to acknowledge, provided the basis for the
continuance of the war of 1967.
Inspired by the PLO's example, the terrorism which
started in a big way after Israel's victory in the 1967 war
represents a continuation and extension of that war
throughout much of the free world in order to undo its
victory and prevent negotiations for peace. 1 The terrorists
sensed they could win in the great cities of the free world
and in the UN the victory the Arabs had been denied on
the battlefield. This violence has worked. People who
before 1967 had never heard of the "Palestinians" or the
PLO now speak dimly of their "right" to "self-determination".' This capacity to carry on a war throughout the
world in random violence-a war that has been lost in
open battle-tells something of the character of the war
we are involved in throughout the world. Our world allows courage on the battlefield to be undone by cowardly
murder.
Without Soviet support and training this war would not
have been carried out in such a highly professional and organized manner. To my knowledge no government in the
free world has spoken out openly about Soviet involvement in terrorism. Yet it has been known in the West at
least since 1973 that since 1967 the Soviet Union has
been training foreign terrorists in Moscow. President Carter in his State of the Union message after the Soviet attack on Afghanistan never mentioned it.
With some exceptions (Israel, Italy since the murder of
Mora, Germany at least once, Britain lately) Western governments have negotiated with terrorists. Because of their
unwillingness to make public the Soviet Union's involvement in terroriSm, these governments have acted as if
each nation's terrorism was its own "personal" problem
that had no relation to the common danger they feared to
identify. In fact the terrorists are often native sons. This
capacity to make nations turn in on themselves (as if they
were alone in the world), in the illusion of looking out for
themselves, has been one of the worst effects of terrorism.
With its demonstration of the West's weakness and lack of
cohesion, the effectiveness of terrorism has probably surprised the Soviet Union. Events since 1967 have shown
that we, at least our governments, will put up with international wars as long as those that fight them (for instance, the terrorists) do not show undeniable courage.
1968 brought the open Soviet crushing of Czechoslovakia, which, unlike Hungary in 1956, had neither defied the
67
�Soviet Union in the name of democracy nor taken to
arms. An event that hardly affected Europe's and the
United States' relations with the Soviet Union: 1969 was
the beginning of so-called detente in Europe. By their
readiness to negotiate with the Soviet Union as if nothing
had happened, the governments of Europe and, three
years later, the United States, showed the Soviet regime
that despite their mild protestations they were indifferent
to the breaking of Czechoslovakia.
1969 also brought johnson's refusal ·to run for reelection. Within six months of Nixon's accession to office at
the beginnng of 1969 the first troops were withdrawn
from Vietnam-a change in policy which despite Nixon's
and Kissinger's intentions to the contrary eventually led
to the abandonment of South Vietnam-the necessary
consequence, in Hanoi's view, of Nixon's and Kissinger's
desire to lessen American commitment.
The 1973 war in the Middle East, which began with a
surprise attack on Israel on all fronts, and which Israel
barely survived, by luck and extraordinary courage, marks
another turning point. Its consequences were obvious,
though they were denied even by a publication of the
courage and the intelligence of The Economist.
Perceived accurately as a renewed outbreak of the continuing war in the Middle East, the War of 1973 also intensified and extended the war that had continued almost
unnoticed outside of Israel since 1967. Its chief feature
was the Arab oil-producing nations' and Persia's extortion-
ary resort to the oil embargo and the formation of an oil
cartel that included Venezuela and Indonesia.
Such a cartel represented a direct attack on the Atlantic
Charter, which had laid the basis of the prosperity of the
world since 1945 by insisting on the freedom of trade between nations, including specifically trade in natural re-
sources. The oil embargo threatened the world free trade
had made, in which the fiercest competition exists between nations rather than within them. Suddenly, states
which had nationalized their oil industries, or at any rate
controlled them, resorted to monopoly and artificial price
fixng, with not a murmur of protest from the Western industrialized nations.
Because it undermined Western leadership by attacking its guarantee of free and unrestricted trade between
nations, this extortionary action helped the Soviets more
than they could help themselves. The Arabs, some of
whom said they hated communism, were in fact undermining "capitalism". Consciously or not, they acted in
accordance with Stalin's understanding that held that
"revolution" could be brought about not only within nations but between them, by putting the poor and undeveloped nations against the industrial nations.
By allowing the Arab nations and Persia (which was primarily responsible for the second doubling of prices in
1973) to get away with this extortion, the United States
and its allies were not only undoing themselves but help1
ing the oil producing countries to undo themselves. Barely
five years later, the collapse of Persia showed this self-de-
68
structiveness to a world baffled because it had too long
told itself its paralysis would have no consequence. The
collusion of the blackmailed with the blackmailers blinded
them both to obvious facts. Neither the Shah nor the government of the United States, even after they had been
warned by what was left of the CIA and by Israeli intelligence, faced the opposition to the Shah within Persia.
The passive acquiescence. to oil extortion also immedi-
ately allowed the gap between America and Europe to
widen. It encouraged Europe to make her own arrangements. With the exception of Portugal-which allowed
American planes flying to the aid of Israel to refuel-and
the Netherlands, Europe indulged in a display of cravenness. Italy, which had been deeply moved by Israel's courage in 1967 and strongly supported it, held its silence in
1973. Its once leading newspaper, the Carriere della Sera,
shifted to a pro-Arab line.
The Arab resort to the use of oil as a weapon intensified
the extension of the Middle East War, which the terrorists
had begun after 1967, to every individual in the free
world. Within less than two years the extortion succeeded
in winning the acceptance of the PLO, with observer
status and in some sessions with the attributes of full sovereignty, at the UN.
Nor did the United States help Europe, which is dependent on the Middle East for about seventy percent of its
oil and, therefore, for its riches. (A one percent increase in
production brings with it something like one percent increase in oil consumption.) Acting as if its relation to Eu-
rope was of little importance, it has increased the pressure
on Europe by allowing its oil imports to increase staggeringly-by about forty percent in the period of 1973-1978.
The evasiveness of the United States and Europe toward oil extortion has also weakened their relations with
their own citizens, for they dared not bring home the grim
realities of their citizens. By 1978 on the average only
twenty-two percent of the real rise of the price in oil had
shown up in the price of gas and heating fueJ.l The rise in
inflation in almost every major country in Europe to levels
not easily controlled comes in part from this evasion.
The evasiveness about oil brought with it an evasiveness about the Soviets. Few in office spoke openly of
growth in Soviet conventional and nuclear armaments.
Only Margaret Thatcher has spoken with anything approaching forthrightness and conviction about the danger
facing the West, both the economic danger and the threat
from the Soviet Union.
In these years (after 1969) of great and obvious danger
in which we acted as if there was no danger, Kissinger
managed to persuade us that the time had come to negotiate with the Soviets. He even managed to persuade us to
think that they would help us out of our difficulties in
Indochina, that they could be made to cooperate at a time
of our obvious weakness. This willingness, initiated by the
government, to think the Soviet regime would behave
"more reasonably", that "super-power" relations could
WINTER 1981
�improve in the midst of obvious Western weakness, is the
most striking feature of the period.
The last decade shows that the Soviet Union and its satellites, for instance, Hanoi, will play upon our fear of nu·
clear destruction, which we call our yearning for peace,
until we are weak enough to be overrun. By abolishing
conscription, our government appears no longer willing to
risk our lives in our defense.
In the instance of Europe this subjection may not re·
quire direct Soviet conquest but simply neutralization.
Giscard d'Estaing's and Schmidt's readiness to meet with
the Soviet leaders as if nothing had happened, a few
months after the Soviet attack on Afghanistan, show this
process to have started already. Strangely, the economi·
cally weaker of the larger nations of NATO, Italy and
Britain, have shown themselves our bravest allies. The
governments of France and Germany are rich enough to
risk betraying their countries-and the rest of Europe.
American confusion allows them such indulgence. Would
Giscard and Schmidt have dealt with the Soviet regime if
Muskie had not preceded them with his meeting with
Gromyko in Vienna?
2. 1979
Afghanistan in 1980 showed Soviet brutality unmistakably to men who had mistaken their forgetfulness of the
invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 for the illusions of
detente. 1979 had already told something of what the fu·
lure could hold. It was in 1979 that we began to understand the actual consequences of the war in Indochina in
the four years after the fall of Saigon.
For immediately after the fall of Saigon, Cambodia,
Laos, and Vietnam slipped off the map. First there was a
deadly silence, then dim suspicions of murder in Cam·
bodia, confirmed in hearings before a Congressional com-
mittee (July, 1977) and by Cambodian refugees in France.
The information was received numbly-there was nothing like a public outcry. It took Carter, as Paul Seabury
noticed, more than a year in office before he even mentioned, and then only meekly, the murder there.
The last we had seen was the bloody conquest of
Phnomph Penh in which patients were left to die on the
operating table. The New York Times reporter confessed
to a seizure of
~'double
vision": the butchery of conquest
and a whole population driven out into the countryside
was not at all what he had meant by "revolution". Faced
with slaughter before his eyes, he could tell the difference
between his aspirations and fantasies and murder: but he
had to see the slaughter. Knowledge, the experience of
the past, had not been enough. It must be this that drives
Solzhenitsyn to say that the West will not wake up until it
too has been through the camps.
The silence in the four years since the fall of Saigon
tells something about freedom and what free countries do
to the world. Without their presence there is no informaTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
tion. You only find out when it is too late and at the risk of
the lives of those who dare bear witness.
And the murder of those who bear witness goes on right
now. In Persia, a young woman of thirty dared speak in
her own name, in the spring of 1980, of the murders of socalled government troops in Kurdistan and call for French
intervention. She was murdered almost immediately after
publication of her testimony in L'Express-murdered by
those readers of the international press, the "holy revolutionaries" of Teheran.
In 1979, with the boat people in flight from the North
Vietnamese regime and hundreds of thousands of Cambodians trying to cross into Thailand, the murder of the
previous four years broke before our eyes. 1979 started,
really, at Christmas of 1978, with the Vietnamese attack
on Cambodia. Numbering an estimated six hundred thousand men, the Vietnamese army is one of the largest in
the world, battle-hardened and arrogant in a victory won
not on the battlefield but in the newspapers, radio, and
television of Europe and the United States. Vietnam's
attack on Cambodia occurred in the days of President
Carter's recognition of the regime in mainland China (an-
nounced December 16, 1978, for January I, 1979). On
February 17, a few days after the visit of the Chinese
Vice-Premier to Washington, China attacked Vietnam.
The American government's apparent surprise showed
the good faith that informed the new relationship.
Since notlii"ng much worse than Pol Pot could be imagined, the first reaction to_ the Vietnamese invasion of
Cambodia was bafflement, even involuntary relief. At last
somebody had done something about Cambodia-had
made it possible to speak, even perhaps to think of it
again. Even McGovern had advocated intervention the
summer before (August 21, 1978).
But after baffled involuntary relief came doubt. The
North Vietnamese attempt to conquer Cambodia not only
substituted one totalitarian regime for another but, as
Prince Sihanouk' s voice suddenly clear from Peking reminded, threatened the extinction of Cambodia forever.
In its self-righteous support of the invasion, the Soviet
regime implied that opposition to the Vietnamese con·
quest amounted to support for Pol Pot. They did not even
have to remind us that Pol Pot had murdered for three
and a half years without even a word of protest from
Western governments. Or from the people. Nothing-no
demonstrations, those fabled demonstrations that just a
few years before had been taken for the most important,
even the only exercise of genuine freedom.
The State Department expressed its displeasure at the
Vietnamese and at the same time attempted to keep its
distance from Pol Pot. He was, after all, supported by the
Chinese regime which we recognized. The so-called
movement of the non-aligned (despite Castro's maneuvers later in 1979) did not recognize the Vietnamese regime in Cambodia, thereby implying Pol Pot had some
claim to 14 legitimacy."
With the Chinese attack on Hanoi about six weeks later
69
�It was in the Red Army, from the lips of General Korotayev,
that I first heard the stupefying thought, not entirely alien to
me: when Communism is victorious the world over, then
wars will be fought with the ultimate bitterness. Hadn't I had
similar thoughts that night after our disaster on the Sutjeska
River? Hadn't I reflected that forces stronger than ideology
and interests had thrown us and the Germans into a death
struggle amid those wild ravines? And now a Russian who was
also a Communist, Korotayev, was entertaining the thought
that wars would be especially bitter under Communismthough under Communism, theoretically, there would be no
classes and no wars. What horrors gave rise to these thoughts
in Korotayev and myself? And how was it that he had the
boldness so late at night, after supper and a cordial conversation, to express his thoughts, and I to listen in mute remembrance of horrors and reflections of my own?4
we again faced a war in which it was impossible to take
sides. The Chinese regime had at least responded to
Hanoi"s attack, which meant they took it seriously when
the West ignored it. But the Chinese were not combatting
aggression for the sake of the self-determination of Cambodia. Conquerors first of all of themselves (and of Tibet),
they were simply contesting Soviet and Vietnamese domination of the area (a Soviet-Vietnamese "friendship" treaty
had brought Vietnam nearly to the status of an "East-European" satellite barely a month [December 3, 1978]
before the Vietnamese attack). Mainland China was quite
comfortable with Pol Pot and supported him. Like the
Soviet regime, it takes murder to be the stuff of history
when it is merely the stuff of civil wars, or "revolutions".
Milovan Djilas, associate and victim ofTito, asked himself
recently when reliving his wartime: "Killing is a function
of war and revolution. Or could it be the other way around?"
The State Department sought a quick end to hostilities
in which the Chinese regime appears not to have done
well, but did nothing about the continuing Vietnamese
conquest of Cambodia.
We did not count. We were effectively shut out. For
four years we and the world we lead had meekly put up
Against this background of wars in which the United
States could take neither side but only intervene against
both, the President recognized mainland China. The expected recognition came unexpectedly and without pub-
with not knowing what was going on in those nations, and
lic discussion. Congress was not in session, and only the
now that they did not hide their actions, we did nothing.
Another fact came clear. The war for Indochina would
continue; it had continued. Since the United States had
been assumed to be the cause of the fighting, people
imagined that with its withdrawal, the violence would
cease. There would be no freedom, no peace, but fighting,
at least, would cease. Instead the fighting continued with
briefest notice (something like twenty-four hours) was
given to the Republic of China (Taiwan). In evading the
Senate's criticism, Carter deprived himself of its moderating support, which might have told in his dealings with
China. The Senate might have given him the strength to
recognize China without breaking relations with Taiwan
and without suspending, unilaterally, the treaty of alliance
with a year's notice-legally correct but certainly not
within the spirit of alliance, which is not made of paper.
After a few weeks the Senate passed a motion that expressed its support of Taiwan without explicit mention of
the readiness to defend it. In response, mainland China
made it as dear as it makes anything, that it limited its
greater furor and brutality, with plain murderousness, be-
fore the whole world, a war now of conquest between
communists where free men could discern nothing at
stake except destruction for destruction's sake. And it
spread. It threatens Thailand. It intensified, almost unnoticed in its international dimension, in Europe, in terrorist
attacks in Italy, in Turkey, in Ireland, in Spain where
every step towards a constitution and freedom encountered terrorist violence. But men did not connect the increasing domestic violence in the countries of Europe
with their incapacity to bring the destruction of Indochina to an end.
When Djilas visited the front lines on a visit to Moscow
in 1944, a Soviet general shocked him with his remark
that the worst and most destructive wars would come
with the triumph of "socialism" throughout the world.
Then the murder would start in earnest. The murder in
Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge, the conquest of South
Vietnam by the regime in the North, the attempted conquest of Cambodia by North Vietnam, as well as China's
attack on Hanoi, all show the beginnings of that world of
bitter wars with no discernible object. The defense of
freedom in the world, which the totalitarian regimes call
unforgivabie aggression, gives the world its only stability.
Such a stability is not to be maintained without facing
danger frequently.
70
3. The Recognition of Mainland China
((commitment" not to attack Taiwan to a few years.
By repudiating Taiwan in shameless fashion at the moment he recognized China, Carter made it dear that the
United States took recognition of the regime in mainland
China for something like an affirmation of its "legitimacy."
Recognizing the regime in China a generation after it
seized power in civil war made sense, since it was about
time we looked that reality in the face; but making recognition amount to something like approval meant appearing to disown our previous thinking-our friends and
ourselves.
Our policy towards mainland China runs the risk of repeating all the mistakes of our war-time association with
Stalin and the Soviet Union-a policy that came from the
weakness of the democracies and has put us since 1945 in
a situation of fighting, and not knowing we are fighting, a
war, in Brian Crozier's phrase, called ({peace."
In their recent insistent coupling of the United States
and China, and their significant omission of Europe in
their propaganda about Afghanistan, the Soviets betray
WINTER 1981
�full awareness that association with China can compromise the United States and separate it from Europe and
NATO. They may not be as afraid of China as they
pretend-and we assume.
The worst part of the China policy is its motive. According to well-founded rumors it comes from a desire of
some high officials in the government to exploit this assumed Soviet fear of China. Instead of deluding ourselves
that we could exploit Soviet fear of China, we ought to
fear that such actions might provoke the Soviet Union to
irrational acts.
Any thought of using the Chinese to make up for our
government's lack of courage and forthrightness shows little common sense. The men in power (not office) in the
Soviet Union are accustomed to murder and imprisoning
without compunction. It is self-destructive to expect that
Western statesmen could manipulate these men. Especially American men in office, with their professors as advisors, who in most instances in the last fifteen years have
been incapable of addressing their own citizens effectively (and, therefore, of distinguishing their citizens'
capacity to think from the "public opinion" of the newspapers, television, and the polls).
Because in contrast to Hitler (who wanted to get back to
his drawing), the Communists in Russia and China are
not in such a hurry and appear, as an aide to Schmidt put
it (before Afghanistan), "predictable", there is a tendency
to assume they are not self-destructive, not at any rate as
self-destructive as the Nazis in Germany or the Fascists in
Italy. But events in Indochina especially since the fall of
Saigon in April 1975 have shown again that Communists
when left to themselves cannot control their self-destructiveness.
... The twentieth century has also shown us that evil has an
enormous urge to self-destruction. It inevitably ends in total
folly and suicide. Unfortunately, as we now understand, in
destroying itself, evil may destroy all life on earth as well.
However much we shout about these elementary truths, they
will only be heeded by people who themselves want no more
of evil. None of this, after all, is new: everything is always
repeated, though on an ever greater scale. Luckily, I shall not
see what the future holds in store.S
Nobody can tell whether the Communists in China and
Russia will continue to turn against each other or again
join together against the countries that manage to enjoy
the consent of the governed. An eventual rapprochement
between the Communists in China and in Russia may
well be more likely than continued name-calling-and in
any case rapprochement is compatible with some namecalling. In his interview in Time at the beginning of 1979,
Brezhnev winked more than once at the Communists in
China. 6 There are talks, probably insignificant, now going
on. Totalitarian regimes can neither distinguish between
friends and enemies nor between war and peace.
The worst of it has been the kind of euphoria that has
greeted opening relations with China. From hearing travTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ellers return you hardly dare remember that China is a totalitarian country that has criticized the Soviet Union for
the slight distance it has supposedly taken from Stalin and
for not using nuclear weapons.
There is hardly any real information coming out of
China. There are np real voices like those now speaking
for Russia throughout the whole length and breadth of
the world, and those coming out of what has come to be
called "Eastern Europe". We know little; and we should
never act and think as if we know much.
One of the two books I know of on the Chinese camps
(Prisoner of Mao) shows them to be more terrifying than
the Soviet camps, for unlike the Soviet camps they are intent on destroying the power to think.'
He (Pasqualini, one of the writers of Prisoner of Mao) confesses that after a few years in the labor camps, he came, if
not exactly to love the system which was methodically destroying his personality, at least to feel gratitude for the
patience and care with which the Authorities were trying to
re-educate worthless vermin like himself. 8
Instead of deluding ourselves that we could effectively
exploit Soviet fears of China, we ought to take the Soviet
regime's fears of China seriously: they may know what
they are talking about. And they are not only the fears of
the Soviet regime, but of Russians, of men who can teach
us a thing or two about freedom. In 1974 Vladimir Bukovsky in Vladimir Prison, met a Chinaman, Ma Hun, who
had fled death in China in 1968 during the so-called "cultural revolution". He had been arrested by the KGB.
They took him for a spy after their failure to turn him into
one, because they could not conceive of anybody fleeing
to the Soviet Union for refuge:
... The boys used to ask him:
"Well now, Ma Hun, how do you like it here?"
"Velly good," he would say. "Velly, velly good."
"What do you mean, good? This is prison, starvation."
"What starvation?" Ma Hun looked astonished and pointed
at the flies flying about the cell. As if to say, if there had been
real starvation, this wildlife would long since have disappeared. The boys got a fit of the shivers-what do the poor
sods call starvation back in China?
In time Ma Hun was able to tell us about the starvation in
China, when they ate all the leaves off the trees and all the
grass. For fifty miles around you couldn't find even a dung
beetle .
. . . The more he told us about China, the more it reminded
us of our own 1920s and 30s, under so-called "Stalinism". But
if anything, it was worse in China: more cruelty, cynicism,
and hypocrisy. They didn't need any concentration camps
there, they simply killed off their undesirables. For instance,
all the Chinese volunteers who had been captured in Korea
and returned by the Americans were simply wiped out, to the
last man. But they were far from being the only ones. There
were the "class aliens," the "wreckers" and the "opportunists." And above all, of course, the intelligentsia. The rest
were herded into stafe farms and communes to be reeducated by work.
71
�... Soviet life still seemed like paradise to him: you were
paid money for your work, which you could use to buy food
and clothing without restriction. Not like in China, where
you got nine yards of cloth per person per year. As for hypocrisy, he was used to it. Soviet hypocrisy struck him as child's
play compared with the Chinese variety. 9
Because our policy does not come of sliength it cannot
support such individuals who live in China, who understand and love government by law and democracy and
speak out. The new regime has arrested some of these
men, after a few months in which they spoke their mind;
there has been no notice, as far as I know, from the governments of the West. 10
4. The Murder of Peoples
You now have to go to the refugee camps in Thailand
or in Malaysia, among the dying or those about to be returned to their death, if you want to hear the words of
john F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address of 1961 ("Let every
nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall
pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and
the success of liberty") said with a straight face:
We got to know that the Thai govt have sent thousands of
refugees back to Cambodia. We feel very sorry and disappointed about the news.
We have tried all our best to escape from Communist Cambodia to look for freedom.
Dear sir (President Carter), your Anierican people have
fighted for liberty with tears and blood. You realize very well
about the worth and happiness of freedom. We will rather die
in a freedom country than being sent back to unhuman Communist Cambodia. . . 11
In june 1979 in Vienna when Carter brought up the
"problem" of the refugees of Indochina, he met Brezhnev's icy silence. That silence means: these people will die
like flies and you will do nothing about it; words do not
mean much and you can talk all you like-we know you
do not mean it. 12
Who got the governments of the West finally to pay a
semblance of attention to the refugees? Thailand and Malaysia and Singapore. How did they do it? By blackmail, by
declaring they would let the refugees perish, by threatening the United States and Europe with their own
ideals-by actually driving something like forty thousand
refugees back from Thailand into western Cambodia to almost certain death-before everybody's eyes. The once
great nations of Europe and the United States called an
international conference in july 1979 in Geneva. What
happened at this conference? They asked Vietnam to
stop the flow of refugees sent to death on the South
China Sea. They thus accorded the regime in Vietnam,
72
not recognized by the United States, a kind of recognition. Cambodia was not even represented, because the
"nations" could not agree on its representation. At the
conference only the Chinese spoke open words-the
Chinese, who had backed and still back the murderous regime of Pol Pot. From them we took lessons in interna·
tionallaw! The Soviet Union kept silence except when it
accused China of driving men into the sea and blaming
Hanoi for it. 13
In effect the large nations of the West indicated to Hanoi that it could do what it wanted with those it wished
away as long as it did not involve the West in their extermination by putting them on the seas. (In june 1979 the
immigration minister of Australia estimated that two hundred thousand Vietnamese had died at sea in the previous
four years. In Hong Kong offici;Jls estimated Hanoi might
finally extort several billion dollars in gold from the Chinese and Vietnamese whom it allowed to take to the uncertain mercies of the seas.jl"' And the flow of refugees
stopped-for a time. The newspapers could turn to easier
subjects.
When the freespoken President of Italy, Pertini, sent
three Italian ships, which together could hold one thousand refugees, to the South China Sea in july, 1979, Hanoi savagely accused Italy of aggression. In answer the
Italian commander spoke in what sounded like embarrass·
ment of "humanitarian" considerations. Ships of the
United States were also active at this time pulling men,
women, and children out of the South China Sea. In an
unaccountable callous misreading of British public opin·
ion, Margaret Thatcher, by declaring she would not honor
the custom of first refuge, encouraged British merchant
men, at considerable expense, to avoid waters where men
were drowning.
The United States took on about half the cost of caring
for the refugees who had survived, but the United States
did not speak out in defense of the traditions of refuge
that reach back at least to the Odyssey and the earliest
books of the Bible. This catastrophe is as serious, and will
haunt us deeply, as the murder of twelve million individuals by the Nazis. This time nobody will be able to say he
did not know.
Solzhenitsyn, especially in the third volume of Gulag
Archipelago, and Bruno Bettelheim, in a remarkable essay
on Linda Wertmuller's Seven Beauties printed several
years ago in The New Yorker, show over and over again
that the readiness to do anything to survive in concentration camps-which is called "appeasement" in international relations-invites murder because it makes individuals helpless 1 5 The war now waged on an international
scale not only in Southeast Asia but in much of Europe
through terrrorism, in the Middle East, in South America
and, especially at this moment, Central America, may well
instill this camp attitude everywhere, both in government
and individuals.
Meanwhile, the Afghans fight the Soviet army with almost their bare hands.
WINTER 1981
�5. The Recognition of Terrorists
In 1979 the terrorist war against the West which had in·
tensified since 1967 began to culminate in the world-wide
effort of the fedayeen to achieve diplomatic recognition
as the representative of the Arabs of Palestine, and in the
success of Persia in forcing the world to take its collapse
for a ('revolution". Khomeini showed the connection
between the two events immediately upon his arrival in
Teheran when he embraced Arafat for all the world to
see, put the PLO in the Israeli embassy in Teheran, and
stopped all oil shipments to South Africa and Israel,
thereby increasing Israel's isolation and dependence on
the United States.
The "official" recognition of terrorism now threatens
to become the subject of international negotiations both
in the instance of the PLO and of Persia. Terrorists are
acting as if they were governments.
Ordinary terrorists are trained in Libya, Algeria, Syria,
Czechoslovakia, Moscow, and God knows where else (often by Cuban and East German as well as Soviet instruc·
tors). The terrorists in Teheran, in contrast, besides taking
lessons from the fedayeen are in some sense self·
taught-on American campuses.
In its most recent phase this use of "revolution" to at·
tack nations from without by undoing international law
started with the subjection of the UN to PLO propaganda
and "Third World" ways of not-thinking. Here the guilt·
riddling superstition that the hard-working countries were
responsible for the poverty of the poor countries would,
but for the courage of Moynihan's intelligence, have gone
unnoticed.
Inconceivable without the resort to the sale of oil as a
political weapon, which touches all important nations,
this "revolutionary" attack on international traditions accompanies inflation, which, especially in Europe, comes
from the forced rise in oil prices. Lenin knew that the
quickest way to destroy societies that obey their laws is to
undermine their currency. Inflation makes men feel their
work does not count enough even to make for a fair exchange. This kind of inflation too is an attack from without.
Supplied and supported by the Soviet Union, the PLO
and the so-called radical states like Libya have attacked internationally, especially in Europe. They have realized
they could better get at the United States through Europe
than through Egypt and attacking IsraeL For the United
States, as Joseph Churba manfully stresses, provides the
link between the Arabs of Palestine, which the PLO
claims to represent, and the peace treaty between Egypt
and IsraeL 16 Not mentioned in the treaty itself, the Arabs
of Palestine (called "Palestinians") appear in the appended agreement which Carter negotiated at Camp
David.
The attempt to win diplomatic recognition for the PLO
is an attack not only on Israel but on all legitimate governments. For Israel has a government which enjoys the deep
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
consent of those it governs. It is also one of the few
governments in the world whose policy toward terrorists
has been unambiguous from the start, and fearless.
The fedayeen's recent successes are not to be taken
lightly. Their representatives have been received in Portugal, in Spain (by the King in the fond illusion, almost immediately undone, that the PLO would restrain its
murder). In defiance of the best opinions of his countrymen who wanted him to support the peace between
Egypt and Israel, Giscard d'Estaing on a trip to the Middle
East called for the independence of the Arabs of Palestine, and found something like support from the government of Germany. The Council of Foreign Ministers of
the Common Market, in a Europe which rarely speaks in
unison on foreign affairs, especially in regard to the Soviet
Union, has issued repeated declarations favouring the
fedayeen: In Turkey the PLO, through the violence of
another fedayeen terrorist organization, won something
approaching diplomatic recognition. In Brazil in the summer of 1979 the Vice President of Kuwait demanded recognition of the PLO under the threat of cutting off the oil
on which Brazil depends for all but ten percent of its
needs. In his threatening speeches in Brazil, the Vice
President called openly for the destruction of Israel and
praised Nazism. This praise appalled his audience, for the
war still counts in Brazil, the only country in South America whose soldiers fought and died with the Allies in the
war for freedom. Arafat, too, received in July 1979 in an
official manner and in public buildings in Vienna by
Kreitsky and Brandt-although he was a guest, not of the
government of Austria, but of the Socialist International-openly declared the readiness of the PLO to use
the "oil weapon". Throughout these attempts to win diplomatic recognition on the basis of its past violence, the
PLO has never repudiated its desire, openly stated in its
"charter", to destroy Israel.
All this fury of activity comes because the peace between Israel and Egypt of March 1979 threatens the PLO.
The peace has made things more dangerous, for it can
make things better or much worse.
A real peace would threaten all regimes that do not
obey their own laws. (The move towards peace has in fact
encouraged Sadat to undo some of the authoritarian character of the Egyptian regime-and the tensions that will
come to the surface in Egypt if the peace takes hold may
undo him.)
Peace in the Middle East would represent a major triumph over the totalitarian powers, who after all have
made peace impossible in Europe. The tendency, however, to put pressure on Israel rather than on Egypt and
the other more accessible Arab states runs the clear risk of
turning the peace into a more effective means of undoing
Israel than war. Unequivocal American support for
Israel's distinction between self-rule for the Arabs actually
living in the West Bank and Gaza and an independent
fedayeen state might have strengthened Sadat, by helping
him face down the rest of Arab "opinion." Such policy
73
�might bring some of the Arabs to the recognition that in
attacking Israel they are attacking themselves, for without
Israel they would be helpless before the Soviets. 17 Without
Arab support the fedayeen could not make such an impression on the West fearful for its oil. The turning point
will probably come when Israel gives up the irreplaceable
Sinai air bases in 1982.
6. "Revolution" in Persia
In its capacity to involve the world in its troubles, Khomeini's Persia outdoes even the fedayeen. Without the
participation and the extorted approval of "international
opinion," the collapse of authority in Persia might not
have occurred-and it certainly would not have been able
to pass itself off as a "revolution."
This capacity of Persia to involve the whole world in its
collapse comes not because events in Persia had anything
to say to the world, but because of the West's servility in
its dependence on oil and because of Persia's geographical
an accurate assessment, attention would have necessarily
turned also on the Communist Party and the Soviet
Union who are "professionals" in using the fantasy of
"revolution" to seize power.
Nor did it impress people that Khomeini immediately
took Soviet positions in foreign policy; that he attacked
the "imperialism" of the United States; that he showed an
unseeing world he thought like a Marxist, not like a Mohammedan, when he released the blacks and the women
among the American hostages-since when have Mohammedans shown sensitivity to blacks and to women; that he
took weeks to criticize the attempted Soviet conquest of
Afghanistan, and then attacked both the United States
and the Soviet Union as equally "evil."
Writing in L'Express about eight months after Khomeini's alightment in Teheran, jean Fran<;:ois Revel
showed that almost all of the points of the program of the
Communist Party of Persia, announced six months be-
fore, had found fulfillment: nationalization of the banks,
removal of "undesirable elements" from the police, the
judiciary, and the army. All except the formation of an
position.
open coalition regime including the Communists.
Except for the West's servility in its dependence on it,
the facts that count about Persis are old. The sights that
the precipitous oil riches brought recalled Herodotus, es-
The seizure of Americans in the United States embassy
in Teheran represents another development in the open
effort to destroy international opinion. The "leaders" of
pecially his sense of grandeur's violation of proportion
Persia, some of whom had studied at American universi-
and, therefore, of rationality. Two thousand trucks rusting on the side of a road because of the lack of trained
drivers who finally had to come from abroad, from Korea
and Taiwan; harbours with their approaches clogged by
six months of ships because Persian stevedores would not
work (again men came from Korea and Taiwan), soldiers
kissing the Shah's feet in an embarrassing misunderstand-
ties, sensed the American administration would put up
with any violence short of murder. With his frequent
boasts that no American in his time in the White House
had died in battle, Carter invited violence short of murder. Upon Cyrus Vance's resignation after the failure of
the long-delayed attempt to rescue the captives, the news-
ing of ancient Persian custom.
Invested on january 6, 1979, by the Shah, the Bakhtiar
government tested the illusion that there was an impulse
to liberty in ancient Persia, strong, and thereby rational
enough in the midst of chaos to find viable expression in a
constitution. A veteran of the French Resistance and of
the Shah's arrests, Bakhtiar made the mistake of getting
the Shah to leave the country on january 16, 1979. This
was the moment to make the transition to a constitutional
autocracy (not a constitutional monarchy, for the Shah
was no king in any European sense). It was also the moment for the United States to back openly the Shah and
his new Prime Minister-who faced crowds, sometimes
papers repeated his associates' characterizations of the
Secretary of State as a man who never said an angry word,
who never gave way to his actual feelings. Soon after the
seizure of the captives, an editorial writer for the Wall
Street Journal described the men in the White House as
worrying most about the reaction of the American people
as if the mob were not in Teheran, but here.
The seizure of the Americans in Teheran meant to
show the whole world that there was no difference between diplomats and anybody else; that there was no such
thing as a government capable of protecting its own officials and, therefore, its citizens; that nobody, whether rich
or poor, was safe; that passports were pieces of paper. The
attack on diplomatic custom, by '~students", unprece-
nary unwillingness of newspapers, radio, and television to
dented except as deliberate act of war, was taken as a
novelty.
But the attack is deadly serious. It undermines the
world's recognition that something underlies both war
and peace which allows nations to distinguish between
them and negotiate with each other even when at war. In
his second inaugural address (in the importantly different
pay attention to the Communist Party of Persia and So-
circumstances of civil war), Lincoln referred to this com-
viet involvement, even in the face of fairly reliable reports
mon underlying recognition of something fundamental
that transcends war and peace when he spoke of both
Northerners and Southerners reading the same Bible.
manipulated, everywhere and strikes in the oil-fields skillfully timed by the Communists, to undermine the new
government. 18 The United States did nothing. It did not
support Bakhtiar by opposing the return of Khomeini.
The readiness to accept "revolution" as a label for
events in Persia found its telling match in the extraordi-
of KGB involvement with the "students" who had seized
the American Embassy. For had "revolution" represented
74
WINTER 1981
�The attack had immediate consequences. The Soviets
showed the increase of their influence in Persia: they
warned the United States not to attempt rescue. American paralysis in Persia in the face of outrage probably also
encouraged Soviet effrontery in attacking Afghanistan a
few weeks after the seizure of the hostages.
In the third volume of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitzyn tells of local populations refusing succour to fugitives, in fear of reprisals. He remarks that the Soviet regime
had not only destroyed public opinion in Russia but also
undermined customs-the unwritten Jaws.
These people have everything-they have food and they have
water. Why don't we just knock on the door like beggars:
"Brothers! GOod people! Help us! We are convicts, escaped
prisoners!" Just like it Used to be in the nineteenth centurywhen people put pots of porridge, clothing, copper coins by
the paths through the taiga.
I had bread from the wives of the village
And the lads saw me right for makhorka.
Like hell we will! Times have changed. Nowadays they turn
you in. Either to salve their consciences, or to save their skins.
Because for aiding and abetting you can have a quarter slapped
on you. The nineteenth century failed to realize that a gift of
bread and water could be a political crime. 19
7. Nicaragua, Central America-and
the Americas
Unlike Persia, where collapse with much murder came
from crowds supported by world-wide opinion in their
hatred of the Shah, Nicaragua suffered full-scale civil war.
Announced several years before it occurred, civil war
came as if on schedule-with regular announcements
from guerrillas, otherwise in hiding, to the major newspapers.
Faced with a long-awaited civil war that afforded no
meaningful alternative in Nicaragua, and therefore required outside arbitration and intervention (like Henry L.
Stimson's arbitration upon request of the warring factions
in 1927 in Nicaragua), Brzezinski remarked to jean Franyois Revel, at the moment of the victory of the Sandinistas
in july, 1979, that nobody yet had found out how to
fashion democracies. 20
The truth, however, comes a little closer to home. In
announcing the "Alliance for Progress" on March 13,
1961, meant to face the threat of Castro's seizure of
power in Cuba to the rest of South America, Kennedy
connected economic aid to democracy and the rule of law.
Such an emphasis led to the public appreciation of democratic statesmen like Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela
and Alberto Lleras Camargo of Columbia 21 After a few
years the connection grew forgotten. A general neglect of
South America followed. Some years later Kissinger, without any embarrassment, disparaged its strategic "geopolitical" significance, even though Castro's destruction of the
Monroe doctrine had brought all of South America closer
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
to the civil war raging in the minds of men-and in many
places, not only in their minds.
In the absence of a forthright persistent American policy to support the constructive forces in South America,
confusion deepened the polarization Castro incited in
South America. Hatred of the United States drove much
of South America (with the important exception of Brazil)
to take itself, incredibly, for part of the "Third World".
The polarization that this hatred encouraged helped destroy freedom in Chile and Uruguay and further undermine Argentina, the Canada of South America at the
beginning of the century. In its turn the destruction of
freedom in Chile (which Kissinger had ignored along with
the rest of South America until a few months before
Allende won a plurality in September 1970) became a test
of conscience throughout the world second only to the
war in Indochina. It brought South America further into
the struggle for Europe which rages throughout the world
-while Europe (with the exception of France in Africa)
tends to local riches, and the United States yields to the
distraction of the "big" problems like mainland China and
negotiations to limit arms and the danger of "nuclear
holocaust".
Civil war broke out in Nicaragua after the passage of
the Panama Canal treaty. Despite the provisions of the
treaty that allow the United States control of the canalunti1 the end of the century, an increase in instability in the
entire Caribbean followed its approvaL
Panama, which benefited most from the treaty, made a
show of its efforts to train and supply fighters for Nicaragua. (In Costa Rica there was training also, but only because the government could not prevent what it would
not openly endorse: individuals of vacillating allegiance,
probably within the government, warned the training
camps when the police sought to move against them.)
Panama, in its open encouragement of civil war in Nicaragua, which violated South American traditions of not
taking sides in the civil wars of neighbors, took the place
of Cuba, which denied involvement-until victory 22 As in
Persia, the amateurs at "revolution" took the place in public of the professionals in the seizure of power.
The war for Nicaragua began the civil war for Central
America, the only region in South America where the
United States has intervened directly (and repeatedly) to
insure freedom of the seas in the access to the canal. Reporters told of youths, or teenagers, sometimes posing as
Nicaraguans, coming to Nicaragua from all over South
and Central America-most of all from Chile, Uruguay,
Colombia and Panama. They came because they wanted
to bring a war like the war for Nicaragua home.
Propaganda crosses frontiers more quickly in South
America than anywhere else in the West. So does fear.
For men there, especially capable and important people,
often do not harbour loyalty to the lands of their birthand they keep much of their money abroad. In January
1979, people in Guatemala, where property is more evenly
distributed than in Nicaragua, said nothing like Nicaragua
75
�could happen to them for fifteen or twenty years. By De·
cember 1979 they estimated two, at the outside, five
years. El Salvador is deeply at war. In 1980 there was violence from all sides in Guatemala-more or less unreported and ignored abroad. In the immediate region, the
prize is Costa Rica, the other democracy, besides Venezuela, left in South America. Law abiding and courageous,
for instance in its votes at the UN, it is a country that
astonishes sensitive travellers in its contrast with the rest
of the region.
Other prizes are of even more consequence than Costa
Rica. Totalitarian self-conquest (for totalitarianism spreads
with the, in appearance, uncontrollable self-destruction of
states) of Central America in civil war would isolate South
America from the United States even more than the
countries of South America and the United States have
isolated themselves from each other. Self-conquest of
Central America would also mean pressure on the canal,
on the surrounding waters-an freedom of the seas, hardpressed elsewhere: by means of the willful extension of
territorial waters, by the increasing presence of the Soviet
fleet on the oceans, by Kadafi's designs on Malta (for instance, his recent attempt to keep an Italian company
from exploring for oil off its coast). An inheritance from
the eighteenth century, freedom of the seas means not
only trade and the riches it brings, but the movement of
individuals and words. Like OPEC's attack on trade, the
threat to the freedom of the seas endangers freedom
within nations, for there cannot be much freedom within
at least some nations without free movement between
them.
As his situation worsened Somoza suddenly grew, like
the Shah, unbearable to people who had hardly thought
of him before. Nobody defended him (only a few men in
Congress, who still clung to the old phrase, "He's a son-ofa-bitch, but our son-of-a-bitch"). Nobody remembered
Somoza's loyalty at the UN: Nicaragua had voted in defense of Israel, when the Shah had not. The murder of the
courageous newspaper editor, Chamorro, was connected
with Somoza. When informed of the murder, Somoza, according to people close to events, expressed astonishment genuine in appearance. The murder may have been
the work of his henchmen who killed without his knowledge as danger increased.
Unlike the Shah, Somoza and his army fought in total
disregard of international opinion, and in spite of the
United States government's refusal to supply him with
arms and spare parts after the beginning of 1979 (February 8). He was a tyrant with a tyrant's courage, mixed in
with brutality and cowardice. Unlike his successors, however, he had set a date for elections in the near future.
In some sense the extent of Somoza's dominance over
Nicaragua brought the civil war, for it made it impossible
for another caudillo to replace him with a coup in the
fashion usual in much of South America. His predominance also helped turn opinion outside Nicaragua against
him. At a time when visitors to Nicaragua itself reported
76
numbing terror in which all who did not flee were compelled to choose sides, people elsewhere hoped destruction would bring democracy. The devastation in Nicaragua with forty thousand dead still has not left its imprint
on the world's senses.
There is no way in such a situation for the United
States not to influence events. The refusal of the American government to supply arms and spare parts to Somoza
and the later refusal to intervene without the support of
the OAS (June 21-23, 1979) helped bring Somoza down
and discouraged negotiations to stop the civil war. Refugees from Nicaragua received little attention except from
newspapers in Spain and Central and South America.
With Soviet backing, the victors called for the "extradition" of Somoza after he fled; as if he, like the Shah, were
an ordinary criminal. As in Persia, there were to be no visible exiles, for exiles mean there is another side. A civil war
in which no side was entirely right came to be taken for a
"revolution." And men abroad hoped for democracy and
the rule of law.
Within Nicaragua too, hopes for democracy sprang
from terror. Towards the end almost everybody who
would say anything was against Somoza-but not, in most
instances, for the Sandinistas. Trained and armed abroad,
the Sandinistas, however, did the fighting-until towards
the end when they were joined by volunteers, many of
them adolescents. The people who tried to tell themselves
the fall of Somoza would occasion democracy were not
doing the fighting. Those who fought did not want democracy. This division between those who fought and
those who did not persisted after the cessation of open
hostilities, for the victors did not disarm themselves.
Many young people in Sandinista uniforms (which are not
distinguishable from those of the police) are said to be on
the streets of Managua and, presumably, other cities in
Nicaragua. Rebelo, a non-Sandinista member of the
Junta, remarked upon his resignation in April 1979, "How
can you have genuine pluralism under a gun?"
The coalition (the Junta) of the guerrillas and the democratically-minded individuals amounts to a truce which
allows those who fought to hold something like the acquiescence of those who did not. The guerrillas need this
truce because their aim-the self-conquest of all of Central America-can only be achieved if the rest of Central
America and the world persuade themselves that their seizure of power is actually a "revolution for democracy".
The truce also helps win credits-which are coming from
Germany (Federal Republic).
At the formation of the coalition, the armed guerrillas
also went about the country organizing the same kind of
capillary neighbourhood and local organizations that
help'ed the Communists take over in East Germany. The
recent campaign against illiteracy probably reinforced this
local control. In the spring of 1980 the guerrillas increased
their representation in the Council of State. There are indications that they, not the coalition, have come to an
understanding with the Soviets. There have been execuWINTER 1981
�tions without trial and murders and disappearances; at
least sixty-five hundred men are in prison without due
process. Although reported, these facts receive little
attention.
Civil war in Central America intensifies not only because of Western, especially American, paralysis in Persia
and Afghanistan but also because of the instability in
Cuba. Within hours after the inadvertent removal of
Cuban guards from the Peruvian embassy in the spring of
1980, something like ten thousand men sought asylum.
The misery in Cuba was plain for the whole word, including South America, to see. Costa Rica with her usual cour·
age declared her readiness to receive them, until the other
South American nations agreed about who would take
how many. The refugees would have been living witnesses
to Castro's Cuba in South America, where, in contrast to
the United States, Castro still fascinates people in spite of
themselves. Desperate to keep the refugees in the Peruvian compound out of South America, Castro allowed
thousands of others to leave for the United States to distract attention from them. He managed to make it look,
not as if they were fleeing, but as if he were "dumping"
them on the United States. To discredit them he flung
among them in unabashed spite common criminals, undesirables, and the sick unto death.
In a few weeks something like a hundred and twentyfive thousand reached the United States. Castro had
turned a responsibility that touched each of the Americas
into an embarrassment in appearance forced upon the
United States. A fitting nemesis for a President who had
announced himself a patron of ''human rights" -and who
had withdrawn his support from Somoza in their namebut had discovered he did not have the guts for it. In this
at least Kissinger recognized his limitations-without,
however, acknowledging them.
War of subversion and self-conquest abroad-in this instance, in Central America-to face down instability at
home-in this instance, in Cuba-is that the future? In
the next ten and twenty years, Soviet-supported self-conquest through chaos abroad, especially outside of Europe,
could be matched by rational struggle for liberty in "Eastern Europe". For the courage of resistance and the love of
liberty in Russia and the other countries to the east can
only be publicly ignored-as it has been in Poland in recent days by the governments of the West-at the expense of Western self-knowledge and self· respect. "Inside
the country (Russia), these are times of ever greater
repression. '' 23
8. Europe-and Us
I have said little of Europe. Our-and Great Britain'sincapacity to bring the Second World War to an end in a
real peace with the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Europe has made the history of Europe our history.
But Europe, the Europe of the West, acts as if it does
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
not know that the war throughout the world is for Europe. Even when terrorists attack her innards, in Spain,
Turkey, Italy, Ireland, and Germany, her governments,
for fear of offending the Soviets and because of guilt at
previous weakness before violence, act not as if Europe is
under attack, but as if terrorism is their own domestic affair. Even a man of the intelligence and courage of Raymond Aron says that Soviet nuclear predominance is
"only" important because of its "political effects." As if
"political effects," in this instance the disintegration of
daily life and the death-like yielding up of the courage to
live, were not what is at stake in the struggle! Surrender
threatens to take place without struggle and, therefore, is
more likely to lead to self-destructive violence and the resignation which leads to total war.
Not recognizing the war now going on means expecting
that a brutal civil war, in which communist trained and
supplied forces brought down the tyrant, will bring de·
mocracy to Central America. It means taking it for
granted that totalitarian regimes can interfere in civil
wars, but not free governments.
The European civil war (for with no apparent limited
objectives the war that started in 1914 has turned into a
civil war-into a war to undo governments and even to
change "human" character) that came to a halt but not to
an end in 1945 has continued outside of Europe, first of
all in 1950 with the Soviet-supported attack on Korea. But
somehow because it was only Europe that really counted,
Europe that center of so much to love and so much to
hate, so obviously destroyed and wrecked, we and especially Europe, Western Europe, did not realize that the
European civil war, the World War in the twentieth century, continued-because it continued outside of Europe.
The war continued also in Eastern Europe with the Soviet slaughter of six hundred workers in Berlin in 1953 and
of unnumbered Hungarians in 1956 and with the tanks in
Prague in 1968. Yet Western Europe, at least its governments, forgot these events.
Without any reference to the rest of the world, NATO
centered on the defense of this Europe of the West, and
the United States' commitment to it. In the beginning
there was some pretence that NATO was directed against
Germany-the treaty names no enemy, for fear of offend·
ing the Soviet regime. In those very years the Soviet
Union sent many of its veterans from the Second World
war to the camps because Stalin feared the courage they
had learned in battle. He thus showed that he could not
bring the war to an end abroad, because he feared to end
it at home.
No matter what the Uriifed States did, Europe could no
longer hold its sway abroad. More than any country Britain showed the extent war had undone Europe. Had undone victors as well as defeated-the unmistakable mark
of a civil war-for, although she had stood alone and victorious, she suffered a loss of confidence similar to the defeated and conquered. With the intelligence that comes
of courage, she helped Greece save herself from herself
77
�until the beginnings of civil war, in the latter half of 1946.
Then she astonished Marshall, Acheson, and Truman at
the end of February 1947 with the announcement that
she would withdraw from Turkey as well as Greece in six
weeks. She no longer looked outward upon the world. She
turned herself on herself. Her political life threatened to
turn into an ideological struggle. This struggle eroded the
consensus that makes possible law-abiding opposition, in
which sides respect each other enough to criticize each
other. As in many countries in the rest of Europe, parties
in Britain threatened to turn into factions. They spoke
words incomprehensible to each other, and acted as if
only domestic strife counted, as if there were no world
elsewhere. This was especially true after Parliament's inability to get the truth out of the government after the
failure in the Suez 1956.
The withdrawal of Europe, encouraged by the United
States, freed the rest of the world to imitate the worst of
Europe, in the name of ridding itself of Europe, to continue the civil war and slaughter that had brought Europe
to exhausted dependence on the United States. The more
much of the rest of the world denied Europe, the more it
imitated Europe servilely. As everybody knows, huge portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin hang in the main
square of Peking. The world knows neither how to get
along with Europe or without it. Except for the United
States.
The United States showed an answer to the questions
that had been tearing Europe apart-a way of recovery
from the civil war that the French Revolution had
brought to Europe. This capacity to cope with Europe
because they could distinguish themselves meaningfully
from it drew Tocqueville. His book on Democracy in
America tells as much about Europe as about America.
Mindful of the security two oceans gave the Federation, Tocqueville wondered whether its open way of life
would withstand conflict with other nations once its success drew it into the world-into Europe. With a constitution centered on preserving men from themselves, could
it cope with others, especially with wars, which are the
stuff of history?
Tocqueville called the United States a democracy, not a
republic, at a time when egalitarian aspirations had not
yet overcome experience of Republican sobriety. This
emphasis on the egalitarian temptation in the American
way of living that Tocqueville took to be irresistible told of
his experience of Europe's levelling and the reaction
against it which appeared to force a choice between
equally outrageous alternatives. At the same time that he
saw the future in the United States, Tocqueville wondered whether they could remain free of the struggles
that were at Europe.' Egalitarianism and thirst for direct
participation might undo representative institutions
based on the recognition of differences in ability and character; The Federalist's distinction between ancient, direct
democracy and a federated, representative republic might
give way to the pressure of men's aspirations and words.
78
To some extent, especially in recent years, his doubts
have shown themselves in our life. But we remain a Republic in some sense in spite of ourselves.
The Europeanization of the politics of the United
States occurred, to an astonishing extent, during the Indochina war, which produced a kind of extremization, "politicization," and polarization of attitudes. There were
fearful analogies to the polarization that in many European countries prolongs the European Civil War brought
to a truce in Europe in 1945.
In some sense it was difficult to tell whether the United
States was being Europeanized or Europe Americanized.
In the United States there was the collapse of many in the
groups taken for the "Establishment" in the face of the
threat of disapproval of crowds (made up to some extent
of their sons and daughters and their friends) in the years
1968-69. A collapse Kissinger powerfully describes in his
memmrs.
The declarations against the war in Indochina often
took exaggeration for conviction. They often rang hollow,
because they served to deny, rather than to admit, individual responsibility and error. A few years later, in 1978, the
international show "trial" and murder of Aldo Mora with
his ambiguous forced confessions further emphasized the
relation of these testimonials to totalitarian self-accusations. Above all the "times" required you to bear witness
against yourself by attacking yourself in others.
... Special attention must be paid . .. to clandestine activities
since a person is inclined to forget something if it is not waved
in front of his eyes. The West and developing countries are
filled with citizens who by reason of their positions are able to
promote Soviet influence and expansionist goals.
Some of them are motivated by ideas that at least merit discussion. After all, in the Soviet Union, the ideological epicenter, and in China as well, Communist ideology is not a
complete fraud, not a total delusion. It arose from a striving
for truth and justice, like other religious, ethical and philosophical systems ...
There are others among such people who conduct themselves in a "progressive" manner because they consider it
profitable, prestigious or fashionable.
A third category consists of naive, poorly informed or indifferent people who close their eyes and ears to the bitter truth
and eagerly swallow any sweet lie.
Finally there is the fourth group-people who have been
"bought" in the most direct sense of the word, riot always
with money. These include some political figures, businessmen, a great many writers and journalists, government advisers, and heads of the press and television. Over all, they
make up quite a group of influential people. 24
Recently, one of the most courageous journalists of
Europe, Indro Montanelli, founder of the important
newspaper, II Giornale Nuovo, took the measure of the
confusion of American and European ''public" opinion
that passed itself off as agreement. In the midst of criticizing Carter for vacillatioll, hypocrisy, and weakness, he
suddenly asked himself: Whose president is this, anyhow?
WINTER 1981
�This is our president, he answered himself. We made him
with our demonstrations and protests against the war in
Vietnam. What did we have in Italy to do with that war?
Nobody asked us to fight and die in it.
Montanelfi' s observation helps us understand why the
confusion of America and Europe occurred. It came of
the United States' evasiveness towards its allies as well as
towards its own citizens. For who has ever heard of a socalled "imperial" power undertaking a war without the
help, without even the strong public support of almost all
its major allies? Kissinger writes in his memoirs of the em-
barrassed desire of European leaders to avoid Vietnam,
even in private conversation.
The present dangerous ambiguity in Europe is connected with the crisis in American leadership, that is, in
American self-knowledge and capacity to remember and
to distinguish its responsibilities from those of others. To
my knowledge some of the Israeli leaders are the only men
in office who can reason coherently in public with reference to what actually happened in the past, with a living
grasp of international law and the distinction between war
and peace. Kissinger in his memoirs attributes occasional
examples of admirable lucidity to Nixon, but they are always private words-not even words for his cabinet.
Since 1945 it has become clear that it takes much
longer than a generation for countries and governments
destroyed in war, to rebuild confidence, good sense, and
readiness to take responsibility for themselves and their
defense. Expectations in 1945-1948 overestimated the
difficulties of economic recovery and underestimated the
difficulties of political recovery. Individuals were too
stunned by the slaughter and destruction to take in its
political consequences.
There was even a tendency to take economic recoverywhich has turned out to be much more than recoveryfor political recovery instead of as the necessary but not
the sufficient condition for political recovery. In fact
Europe's prosperity has made Europe's lack of political
self-confidence and fear of self all the more brutally apparent. This contrast between well-being and lack of confidence in government and politics had much to do with
the crisis in Europe in the seventies. A similar terror of
self took hold in the United States.
There are dramatic signs that things are changing deeply
in Europe-or could change-if leaders in the United
States woke up and exercised leadership (like the leadership General Haig exercised at the risk of his life when he
led NATO). Europe in the last years appears to have admitted to itself that its grasp of events at home and abroad
is weak. This is most obvious in France (which still counts
in matters of intellectual leadership) but it appears to be
happening also in Italy and elsewhere. We see a readiness
to drop Marxist ideology and to admit that it has served
largely as an evasion of reality and of hard study for something like a generation. We see also a refusal, after the
euphoria of the past, to entertain illusions about the Communist parties in the West. This readiness to drop pretenTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
sions means there is less shouting, and a good deal of
emptiness. But it is an emptiness in which fundamental
facts stand out in their isolation.
It is time to return to the less pretentious authors;
Cavour, Tocqueville, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, The
Federalist, Mirabeau:_and the road to them, oddly, leads
through the Russian writers. For we have had to learn
common sense in blood, other people's blood.
In Italy individuals in their late teens appear more lithe
and resilient than people of the same age twenty years
ago. About ten years ago teenage couples openly holding
hands appeared on the streets of Rome. These young people seem more pragmatic, much less, if at all, given to the
self-immolation in ideology which characterized many of
those fifteen and twenty years older. But they need to
hear common sense. The man and woman in their early
twenties who wrote the remarkable pornographic novel
that is also a love story, Porci con le Ali (Pigs with Wings),
show more clearheaded understanding of life in Italy in
the last fifteen years than most of the men now in their
late thirties or early forties who are coming into the center
of Italian politics. The generation that went through the
war and the destruction of freedom in the twenties and
thirties, which had in some sense neither fathers nor sons,
also appears finally on the verge of coming to terms with
itself. Those in most trouble are those in between, those
in their late thirties and forties who wish to belong to the
new world but refuse to admit they are caught in the
breakdown of the old.
France has awakened to the realization that she has become a serious contemporary nation, ready to work and
compete in international markets. In the face of an organized attempt to destroy her government in terrorism,
Italy shows remarkable courage and unanimity. Many of
her public men and her journalists do not flinch before
death or disablement in the streets. This war has cleared
heads: the Socialists have distinguished themselves to
some extent from the Communists, and the Christian
Democrats, in response to the electorate and with continuing internal struggle, are facing the Communists instead
of entertaining coalition with them.
The debate in the fall and winter of 1979 about receiving Pershing and Cruise missiles was fierce throughout
Europe, even in France which, with its forces not directly
under NATO command, had nothing to decide. In Italy,
Cossiga's government openly braved Communist opposition to win acceptance of the missiles in a debate comparable in intensity to the decision to join NATO and the
West in 1949. During the debate, Gromyko visited Bonn,
and Ponomarev, in charge of subversion abroad, appeared
before an Italian Parliamentary committee. Such interferences in "internal affairs" were unthinkable ten years ago.
The first direct elections to the Parliament of Europe in
June 1979 showed something like sixty percent participation (thirty percent in England). Despite the presentation
of issues, in many countries, in terms of domestic politics,
people knew the vote was for Europe. It was not clear,
79
�however, whether Europe meant also Europe to the east.
By his visit to Poland at the time of the election, Pope
John Paul II reminded western Europe of Europe's larger
disaster-especially in his distinction between nation and
regime.
There is also a darker possibility. Under threat of Soviet
SS 20 missiles, already pointed at every major city in Eu·
rope, and new installations every week, Europe, despite
its denials, threatens to take its distance from the United
States. It is an open secret that relations between the
United States and Germany have been troubled.
In the face of the courage and responsibility of Poland,
western governments did little. Perhaps necessarily, but
not wisely, for weakness does not amount to the prudence
of restraint. And Poland's renewed struggle is only in its
beginnings. Taken more or less for granted, Soviet domi·
nance of Poland violates both the Yalta agreements,
which centered on Poland, and the more recent Helsinki
agreements. The response of the governments of Europe,
with the exception of Britain, to the Soviet attack on
Afghanistan was weak. It did not lead to economic sane·
lions to match those of the United States. (Australian, Argentinian, Canadian, and Western European surpluses
largely undid the American refusal to sell seventeen million tons of grain to the Soviet Union). It did not even lead
to a boycott of the Olympics-with the exception of Ger·
many and Japan. (The governments of Great Britain and
Italy could not persuade their Olympic committees to
withdraw.) There was more resistance to Persia's under-
mining of international custom. The readiness of the governments of Europe to let things drift in indecision shows
itself in their slowness in admitting Spain and Portugal
into the common market and Spain into NATO (while
the Soviet Union hints that Basque terrorism will cease if
Spain stays out of NATO).
The drift of some of the governments of Europe towards unacknowledged accommodation undermines the
confidence of their best citizens. Except for the Commu·
nists the whole French press criticized Giscard's readiness
to meet Brezhnev in Warsaw soon after the Soviet attack
on Afghanistan.
At a moment when there are indications of the political
recovery of Europe from the devastation of the World
War, Europe is most threatened. Its life defies Soviet policy, which since 1945 has assumed that the political recovery of Europe could not take place. With the brutality that
he took for realism Stalin said at Yalta that after such a
war there had to be an intermission for something like
fifty years. He did not think the destruction could be done
away with, that there could be a real settlement; only a
pause before the next round. Such a Soviet attitude as·
sumes that the West, especially the United States, is not
in earnest about freedom but needs to talk of it for the
purpose of its vanity. It also assumes that the defeat, dev·
astation and humiliation of Europe divide it irrevocably
frojil the United States, despite the disguise of a genera·
tioil of enterprise, hard work, and riches. The constant re-
80
call in Soviet propaganda of the destruction of the World
War, which makes visitors to Moscow think time has
stood still, testifies to the grim, but in some ways realistic
assumption, that Europe and the United States-but es·
pecially Europe-cannot recover politically from its selfdevastation.
Such an attitude amounts to holding that there is no
way of avoiding the consequences of "history" or stopping its drift, that the destruction of one generation continues after it. Just such an attitude informs Soviet refusal
to do anything about the murder in Indochina, its determination to "let it work". Sakharov writes:
A nation that has suffered the horrible losses, cruelties and
destruction of war, yearns above all for peace. This is a broad,
profound, powerful, and honest feeling. Today, the leaders of
the country do not, and cannot, go against this dominant desire of the people. I want to believe that in this regard, the Soviet leaders are sincere, that when peace is involved they are
transformed from robots into people.
But even the people's deep wish for peace is exploited, and
this is perhaps the cruelest deception of alL The deep yearning for peace is used to justify all the most negative features in
our country~economic disorder, excessive militarization,
purportedly "defensive" foreign policy measures (whether in
Czechoslovakia or Afghanistan) and lack of freedom in our
closed society ... 25
But a little later:
... The dogmatic bureaucrats and the new people replacing
them-anonymous and shrewd cynics, moving in the many
"corridors of power" of the departments of the Central Committee, the K.G.B., the ministries, and the provincial and regional party committees-are pushing the country toward
what they consider to be the safest path but that is in reality a
path to suicide.
Everything is as is was under the system of power and economy created by Stalin. The leaders carry on the arms race,
concealing it behind talk of their love of peace. 26
And elsewhere:
But the world is facing very difficult times and cruel cataclysms if the West and the developing countries trying to find
their place in the world do not now show the required firmness, unity, and consistency in resisting the totalitarian challenge.
. Europe must fight shoulder to shoulder with the transoceanic democracy, which is Europe's creation and Europe's
main hope. A certain lack of unity, of course, is the reverse
side of the coin of democratic pluralism, the West's major
strength. But this disunity is also caused by the systematic Soviet policy of driving "wedges", a policy that the West has not
resisted adequately because of carelessness and blindness ...
Western unity is one of the main conditions for international security, unity that will promote resistance and ultimately lead to rapprochement and the convergence of world
systems, averting thermonuclear catastrophe. 27
More serious than any crisis since the thirties, the present crisis comes not only because of Europe's weakness
WINTER 1981
�but also because Europe threatens to grow stronger. It
comes also because the United States has for something
like ten years been unable to exercise effective leadership.
Europe's strength still depends on our leadership.
also betrays remarkable grasp of the functioning of democracies, for instance, for the significance of Nixon's resignation in 1974 and of De
Gaulle's withdrawal in 1969.
II. From a letter addressed to President Carter from one of 40,000
Cambodians forced back into Cambodia at gunpoint after they had
sought asylum in Thailand. Henry Kamm, Internl1tional Herald Tribune,
june 16-17, 1979.
12. Neue Zuercher Zeitung, June 18, 19, 1979. At this meeting Brezhnev
said:
l. For the connection of the rise in terrori~m with an international dimension throughout the West with the 1967 war, Paul Wilkinson, "Terrorism: International Dimensions", Conflict Studies, 113, November
1979. For Soviet and East European involvement in terrorism since
1967, Brian Crozier, Strategy of Survival, London 1978. Between 1968
and 1977 more than two hundred American diplomats and more than
five hundred simple citizens and businessmen suffered at the hands of
terrorists. Fifty were murdered. Israeli intelligence found three maps of
an East German training camp with one of the terrorist's names written
on the back after a PLO attack near Tel Aviv on March II, 1978 in
which thirty four Israelis were murdered. In October 1971 Dutch authorities at Schipol airport seized four tons of Czech anns destined for
the Provisional IRA.
See now Robert Moss, "Terrorism," The New York Times Magazine,
Sunday, November 2, 1980. Claire Sterling's book on terrorism in its international dimension will appear in the spring (Holt Rinehart &
Winston). International Terrorism-the Communist Connection, Washington, 1978. See also, Stefan T. Possony and L. Francis Bouchey.
2. The Security Resolution (242, November 22, 1967) does not mention the fedayeen but speaks simply of "achieving a just settlement of
the refugee problem."
3. The Economist, December 22-28, 1979, 7-8 and 49-50. In 1979 imports of foreign oil were thirty percent above 1973.
4. Milovan Djilas, Wartime, New York 1977, 384-385.
5. Nadezha Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, New York 1970, 289.
6. Time, January 22, 1979.
7. Baa Ruo-Wang (Jean Pasqualini) and Rudolph Chelminski, Prisoner
of Mao, New York 1973 (Penguin Books 1979); see also Lai Ying, The
Thirty-Sixth Way, New York 1969.
8. This is Simon Ley's {"Human Rights in China", National Review,
December 8, 1978, 1537-1545 and 1559) characterization of Prisoner of
Mao.
9. Vladimir Bukovsky, TO Build A Castle-My Life as a Dissenter, New
York 1979,414-416.
10. See the statement of Wei Jingsheng, introduced by Simon Ley, "La
lutte pour Ia liberte en Chine", Commentaire 7, 353-360. Imprisoned
recently, Wei Jingsheng shows similarities between Teng Hsiao-p'ing's
way of dealing with the past and Mao Zedong's way of operating. He
The Soviet Union opposes any interference in the internal
affairs of any other country. We are persuaded of the principle that every people has a right to determine its own destiny.
What is the point of the attempts to make the Soviet Union
responsible for the objective course of history and to use
them as pretexts for worsening relations?
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
13. NZZ, july 24, 1979.
14. NZZ, June 19, 1979; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 19,1979.
For the Vietnamese among the boat people, NZZ July 25, 1979, 3.
15. Bruno Bettelheim, "Reflections", The New Yorker 52, August 2,
1976, 31-36.
16. Joseph Churba, The Politics of Defeat, America's Decline in the Middle East, New York 1977.
17. Sec Paul Eidelberg, "Can Israel Save the U.S.?", Midstream, December, 1978, 3-9.
18. See Robert Moss, "The Campaign to Destabilise Iran," Conflict
Studies 101, November 1978. In the summer of 1978, Navid, a weekly
published in Persia with the covert sponsorship of the KGB, called for
an "anti-dictatorial broad front" with the mullahs playing an important
role:
We are ready to put at the disposal of our friends from other
political groups all our political, propaganda and technical resources for the campaign against the Shah.
19. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gult1g Archipelago 1918-1956, 3,
New York 1978, 161.
20. Henry L. Stimson, American Policy in Nicaragua, New York 1927.
21. See President Kennedy's Message to Congress of March 22, 1961.
Also Carlos Rangel, The Latin Americans, New York 1977, 55-57.
22. For the Cuban and Nicaraguan admission of Cuba's role in Nicaragua, NZZ july 28, 1979, 3.
23. Andrei D. Sakharov, "A Letter from Exile", The New Yorl< Times
Magazine, June 8, 1980.
24. Sakharov, "Letter", The New York Times Magazine, June 8, 1980.
25. Sakharov, "Letter", The New York Times Magazine, June 8, 1980.
26. Sakharov, "Letter", The New York Times Magazine, June 8, 1980.
27. Sakharov, "Letter", The New York Times Magazine, June 8, 1980.
81
�The Streets on Which
Hertnan Melville Was Born and Died
Meyer Liben
Suddenly a file card showed up among my papers, and
on it was written:
Herman Melville
Born-6 Pearl St., NYC
Died-104 East 26th St., NYC
I live midway between these two streets, each is within
walking distance, and it struck me as proper (walk or no) to
visit both these locations.
Very few of our classic American authors were born in
New York City, and Melville is the only one I can think of
who was born and died in New York City, on Manhattan
Island (which I unfairly equate with New York City).
Henry James was born in New York City and died in
London.
I know that Pearl Street is close to the Battery, and I
had no particular difficulty in finding it. Walking east on
the street, the numbers were growing (!) higher, so I
turned around, walked west, and found 6 Pearl Street. It is
on the south side of the street, Pearl Street lying between
State Street on the west and Whitehall Street on the east.
Six Pearl Street is now a rather handsome modern building, the Seaman's Church Institute of New York, which is
located at 15 State Street but swings around the corner
onto Pearl. On the side of the Institute building, next to a
garage entrance (one leading down) is a plaque with the
following inscription:
Meyer Liben (1911-1975) was a New York writer much of whose work
remains unpublished. (See "From Our Readers")
82
"Heritage of New York"
A house on this site was the birthplace
of the novelist and poet
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
"Moby Dick," among his numerous sea-tales
attained enduring recognition
in American literature
Plaque erected 1968 by the New York Community Trust
Two things struck me particularly. One was the transposition of his birth and death dates (first wrote birth and
life dates), and I wondered what were the statistical possibilities for such a transposition, and whether among the
Pythagoreans or the Kabbalists, whose emphasis on numbers is so well known, such a transposition has a special
meaning. It is a kind of reverse symmetry, adds an eccen-
tric or mysterious dimension to the fixity, the unalterableness, of the dates of birth and death.
The other thing that struck me was the emphasis on
Melville as a teller of sea-tales. Although so much of his
writing is about the sea (Pierre and Bartleby are two notable exceptions that come to mind) I don't think of him as a
writer about the sea, because, I guess, of the power of his
psychological and· metaphysical ruminations, or maybe
because so many of his great works are not exactly "sea
yarns," though a deep and intricate narrative pulses
through them.
The place of Melville's birth is now surrounded by skyscrapers. A huge office building takes up all of the other,
WINTER 1981
�the northern side of the street. It is I Battery Park Plaza,
as well as 24 State Street.
Next door to the birthplace is a fairly new restaurant
building with some offices in it, and then a huge office
skyscraper, almost completed, extends to Whitehall, and
goes back to State, kind of surrounding the Church
Institute.
Pearl Street is fairly narrow. It is just off Battery Park, a
few blocks away from the Battery itself. One can see the
Bay (if that's what it is at this point) and smell the sea.
To get the feel of the street (on which Melville lived for
the first five years of his life and which, according to
William Earl Dodge, in a speech delivered on April 27,
1880, entitled "A Great Merchant's Recollections of Old
New York," and reprinted in Valentine's Manual, 1921,
was the wholesale dry goods center of the city in 1818
when he, Dodge, worked there as a boy, at a time when
the city's population was less than 120,000, and the
Battery a favorite promenade), I walked east, past the U.S.
Army building on Whitehall Street (now the city's main
induction center, and the scene of many disturbances
against the Vietnam War). A short distance from
Whitehall is Moore Street. There are a number of old
buildings on the north side of Pearl, though it is difficult
to guess their age, and I saw none dated. One of the old
row of buildings is:
E. Bergendahl Co.
Ship Chandlers
Down to Broad Street the buildings are quite modern.
On the corner of Broad and Pearl is the Fraunces Tavern,
scene of Washington's Farewell to his officers (is this another famous farewell address?).
Still heading east on Pearl Street, there is a row of quite
old buildings between Broad and Coenties Slip, which
buildings seem to be coming down, and on the corner of
Pearl and Coenties Slip is
Carroll's Bar & Grill
Est. 1856
the bar closed and padlocked.
(Melville mentions Coenties Slip in Redburn:
"Coenties Slip must be somewheres near ranges of
grimlooking warehouses, with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old anchors and chain-cable piled
on the walk. Old-fashioned coffee houses, also, much
abound in that neighborhood, with sun-burnt sea captains
going in and out, smoking cigars, and talking about
Havana, London, and Calcutta."
Curious in the above paragraph is Melville's change
from umust," as though he were writing about a place he
had heard about, to an actual description of the neighborhood in which he was born.)
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Continuing east, close to Hanover Square (that's a
name you'd think would have been changed during the
Revolution), at 93 Pearl, is an old building with the sign
The Hamilton Press, then a street unnamed, going north
(the car traffic, that is) which a passerby told me was Wall
Street, then Pine, Maiden Lane, John, mostly full of huge
office buildings ....
I walked back on the north side of Pearl, but saw nothing new from this perspective, and sat down on a bench in
Battery Park.
So this was Melville's block as a kid. The stones tell you
nothing. Why should they? They're not even his stones.
And if they were his stones? Knocking your head against a
stone street.
I wondered if Hawthorne's choice of the name Pearl for
the ethereal illegitimate girl in The Scarlet Letter had anything to do with the name of the street on which his
friend was born.
So much social and physical change in this century and
a half, but Pearl Street probably winds as ever, with the
s.rme contours.
I heard the cries of boys playing ball in the park, glad-some cries winning me away from this search for spirit in
stone.
(Still wondering what the neighborhood was like then, I
later looked into the New York City Guide-seeking spirit
in paper-put out in 1939 by the Federal Writers Project.
There is no mention of Melville being born on Pearl
Street. The origin of the street name is given thus: " ... so
named because of the sea shells found there in the days
when the East River almost reached this street."
So Pearl Street goes right across Manhattan Island.
The Guide notes that Melville is buried in the
Woodlawn Cemetery, 233rd Street and Webster Avenue,
in the Bronx. But there are hardly any cemeteries in
Manhattan.)
104 East 26th Street is between Park Avenue South
(4th Avenue) and Lexington Avenue. I often pass the
street on my way to the Belmore Cafeteria, a few blocks
away on 4th Avenue, a favorite haunt of taxicab drivers.
104 is at the end of the Armory which fronts on Lexington
Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets and then swings
around toward 4th Avenue. The site of the house in
which Melville died is about the same distance from the
corner of 4th Avenue as the house on Pearl Street in
which he was born is from State Street.
I walked the block, whose buildings are mostly fairly
new, except for the Elton Hotel, at 101 East 26th Street,
right across the street from 104, and this hotel could easily
have been there when Melville was alive. It looks kind of
run-down now. The street is a stony one, a block of unrelieved stone. Spirit is buried in stone, the way spirit and
heart are buried in a body. I looked at the stones on East
26th Street, as though for a sign from the household gods.
Shall these stones live?
83
�Walking back toward 4th Avenue and the Belmore Cafeteria (after looking at the front of the Armory), I noticed,
next to the number 104 on the Armory wall, that someone
had scrawled, in black crayon on a whitewashed section of
the wall:
Herman Melville lived here
which Melville was born had come down. Stones come
down, cities of stone come down, countries disappear
'from sight (the way Atlantis sank to the bottom of the
sea), books and papers turn to dust, we have memories
and die with them. Such was the conventional nature of
the melancholia, gloom, which passed over and through
me at thought of the dissolution of our human-made objects by the combined presence and labor of time, air, water, fire, and man.
not
Herman Melville died here
What will outlast stone, paper, and the memory of
man? Spirit, we hope, and the spirit, for one, of Herman
Melville Lives!
Had I a black crayon in my pocket, I could have scrawled
that on the wall, knowing full well that it would have been
rubbed off one day, sooner or later, or might conceivably
last as long as the building (for why would anyone want to
erase from an armory wall the. notation that Herman
Melville lived here, that he lives?), disappear when these
stones came down, the way the stones of the building in
84
Melville, whose books, the paper on which they are written and printed, will surely dissolve, the memory of
Melville and his works maybe disappear, but the word (we
hope) which was in the beginning, lives through to the
end (of some new beginning), maybe (I imagine) in some
flaming scroll that neither time nor the elements can destroy, and so back to the imagination and memory of man.
But who knows where or if it is, and it is not our business
to seek (doesn't seem to be here on 26th Street between
4th and Lexington Avenues), likely not even to think
about it (much).
WINTER 1981
�De Gaulle's Le fil de /'epee (1932)
Will Morrisey
N !927, optimism pervaded the world. The international
Left admired Stalin; the Right applauded Mussolini;
centrists remembered Wilson fondly and put their faith
in the League of Nations. Non-ideologues could afford to
ignore the political enthusiasts, for there was money to be
made and Lindbergh's exploits to celebrate.
The French shared the fashionable sentiment of the
day, but contrived a unique expression of it: the Maginot
Line, a series of fortifications built along the German
border in hope of suppressing whatever ambitions their
former enemies might still harbor. The French government, including its military leaders, believed that a defensive strategy was more prudent than one of counter-attack; in the Great War they had learned (too well) that the
strategy of attack-at-any-cost brought exhaustion and
stalemate. Thus pacifism, another aspect of optimism,
provided buttressing for this sentiment, a place for humanitarian worship.
But the country was not free of heretics. Marshall
Henri Petain dissented, albeit with discretion; he was fortunate to have a less cautious protege who could be sent
out for the riskier acts of sacrilege. Major Charles de
Gaulle, at Petain's insistence, was allowed to read three
lectures to higher-ups at the Ecole Superieure. Being
higher-ups, they doubtless found the young officer's subject provocative:
I
The more he spoke, the more uncomfortable and angry the
professors in the front row became. For de Gaulle's theme was
the vital role of leadership, and the picture he painted of the
leader was at once a criticism of his superiors, a justification of
himself and a veiled but unmistakable tribute to the Marshall. I
A freelance political writer, Will Morrisey is an associate editor of
Interpretation-A Journal of Political Philosophy. This article comes
from om unpublished book, De Gaulle/Malraux: Reflections.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Petain, who introduced each lecture, must have enjoyed
himself. De Gaulle's career was not advanced, however,
and a repeat performance at the Sorbonne later that year
did not even cause resentment-only indifference. The
lectures were, to use Nietzsche's word, untimely.
Later, de Gaulle revised them, added a 1925 article on
military doctrine and a new essay on the relationship of
the military to politics, and published them in 1932 under
the title Le fil de I'epee. At the time, few cared to read this
apologia of an obscure man. But twelve years later the
man was no longer obscure, and the second edition sold
well. The book had turned out to be not only an apologia
but, as Stanley Hoffman has written, "a self-portrait in anticipation."' De Gaulle would become the leader he had
imagined.
*
*
*
HE FORWARD'S EPIGRAPH IS: "Etre grand, c'est soutenif
une grand querelle," *a line taken from Hamlet. But
the epigraph omits the second half of Hamlet's original sentence:
T
Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw,
When honor's at the stake.
For de Gaulle, the object of contention-France-is not
at all trivial, but honor is indeed at the stake, along with
survival.
He begins:
*All quotations from Le fil de !'epee (Paris 1944), "Le Livre de Poche"
edition (Paris 1973). All translations are the author's.
85
�Incertitude marks our epoch [as it marks Hamlet]. So many
denials ["dementis"; also "disappointments" or "contradictions"] of conventions, -previsiOns, doctrines, so many trials,
losses, deceptions, so many scandals, shocks, surprises have
shaken the established order.
The military, being part of that order, suffers from
"melancholy"; de Gaulle notes that this is usual after a
period of effort. But this usualness consoles no one;
everything in "the ambiance of the times appears to trouble the conscience of the professionals". The masses, having endured the cruelties of force, "react with passion"
against it. A "mystique" arises, which not only causes men
to curse war but "inclines [them] to believe it out-of-date
[perimee: also, "no longer valid"], to such a degree as they
wish that it were." Men try to exorcise this "evil genie";
"to inspire the horror of sin, a thousand painters apply
themselves to representing [war's] ravages." They evoke
"only the blood, the tears, tombs, not the glory with
which people consoled their sorrows." They deface "History's" traits "under the pretext of effacing war," thus attacking the military order "at its root." In his first book, La
discorde chez l' ennemi, de Gaulle showed how immoderation and imbalance undermined the legitimacy of the
German rulers during the Great War. In Le fil de ['epee he
warns that immoderate fear of war threatens the
legitimacy of the French military and, ultimately, that of
the state.
De Gaulle finds this ambiance "only too easily explicable"; it is
... the instinct of preservation of enfeebled Europe, which
senses the risks of a new conflict. The spectacle of a sick man
who shakes his fist at death can leave no person unfeeling.
He also discerns a rhetorical strategy. Those who would
establish an "international order"-obviously, he refers to
the League of Nations and its publicists-in the name of
the people (who are, de Gaulle remarks tartly, "temporarily
made wiser"), need "a vast collective emotion" to do it.
"Now one does not rouse crowds other than by elementary sentiments, violent images, brutal invocations."
Clearly de Gaulle does not lack rhetorical skill either; here
he accuses the internationalists of the same sort of
rhetoric that they decry. He also reminds them of other
sentiments:
Without disavowing any hope, where do we see that the
passions and the interests that cause armed conflict silence
their demands? that anyone renounces willingly what he has
and what he desires? that men, finally, cease to be men?
Given human nature, internationalists cannot depend on
voluntary consent when building a peaceful world order.
If such an order appears, it will appear because it was imposed. And one cannot impose anything so ambitious
without the aid of the very military force that internationalists decry. "Whatever direction the world takes, it will
not dispense with arms."
86
Indeed, de Gaulle goes beyond the negative, force-asnecessary-evil argument: "Without force, in fact, can one
conceive of life?" Only in an "immobile world." Force is
the "resource of thought, instrument of action, condition
of movement."
Shield of masters, bulwark of thrones, battering-ram of
revolutions, one owes to it, turn by turn, order and liberty.
Cradle of cities, scepter of empires, gravedigger of decadences, force gives the law to the people and regulates their
destiny.
Like Nietzsche, de Gaulle sees force as that which,
through its role in causation, pervades and unifies the
world. He may not see it as the only such entity. Force
underlies both order and liberty, for example, because it
can serve masters and revolutionaries alike. But, obviously, order and liberty are distinguishable states; they imply certain ends, not merely means. De Gaulle does not
present force as an end. It is a resource, shield, and battering-ram; it enables and regulates-but does not prescribe.
What does, then?
In truth, the military spirit, the art of soldiers, their virtues
are an integral part of the capital of humans. One sees them
incorporated in all phases of History .... For finally, can one
understand Greece without Salamis, Rome without the
legions, Christianity without the sword, Islam without the
scimitar, the Revolution without Valmy, the League of Nations without the victory of France? And then, this abnegation of individuals to the profit of the ensemble, this glorified
suffering-the mental stuff of which one makes soldierscorresponds par excellence to our esthetic and moral concepts:
the highest philosophical and religious doctrines have not
chosen another ideal.
Actually, some have-as de Gaulle knows very well. Of
the two religions mentioned here (coincidentally, he places
them in the middle of the list,- paired as if equivalent),
Christianity does not teach self-abnegation for the glory
of the ensemble, so much as it does self-abnegation for the
glory of God-and force is not the way one goes about it.
But de Gaulle will come back to this point later.
Returning to the contemporary world, de Gaulle contends that if French military strength declines, that decline would imperil/a patrie and "the general harmony" as
well. Whether it is thought to be good or bad, if military
and political power "escapes the wise, what fools will seize
it, or what madmen?" In the end, responsibility involves
power. "It is time that the military retake the consciousness of its preeminent role, that it concentrate on its object, which is, simply, war." To do this, "to restore the
edge to the sword," it must "restore the philosophy proper
to its state"; for de Gaulle, a "philosophy" both energizes
and provides the ends which energy, force, and power
serve.
Le fil de !'epee, then, contains a military philosophy, not
a "philosophy of life" -although the one implies the
WINTER 1981
�other. The book has five chapters, of two, three, three,
three, and four sections, respectively; fifteen in all.
•
•
HE FIRST CHAPTER'S TITLE- "The
T
*
Action of War" -de·
picts war as a thing one engages in, and suggests de
Gaulle's thesis that war is essentially active, not sus·
ceptible to what he calls "a priori" planning. Consonant
with this, he uses a Faustian epigraph: "In the beginning
was the Word? No! In the beginning was the Action."
Faust, like Machiavelli and Bacon, aspired to the domina·
tion of things, and this chapter studies the opposition be·
tween the autonomous flow of events, and those men
who would dominate that flow-Heraclitus versus Machi·
avelli, if you will.
"The action of war essentially comes to the character of
contingency": the enemy's strength and intentions, the
terrain, events, the direction, speed, and manner of one's
strike, men and materiel, atmospheric conditions. "In war
as in life one can apply the ["everything flows"] of the
Greek philosopher; what has taken place will no longer
take place, ever, and the action, whatever it may be, might
well not have been or been different." He quotes Bergson
(a friend of de Gaulle's family), who revived and metamorphosed Heraclitean metaphysics twenty years earlier, on
the intelligence's discomfort when it attempts to grasp
what is not constant, fixed, and definite, but is instead
mobile, unstable, and diverse. Logic doesn't work there; it
is, de Gaulle writes, like trying to catch water in a fishnet.
Intelligence does have its function: "elaborating in advance the givens of the conception, it clarifies them,
makes them precise, and reduces the chance of error". It
defines the problem, and formulates hypotheses on how
to deal with it. But the faculty that gives us "a direct con·
tact" with Hthe realities" is intuition, "the faculty which
links us most closely to nature." Intuition gives us not only
"profound perception" but the "creative impulse"; for
life (inconceivable without force) produces, and the intui·
tion, by linking us to life, enables us to be productive.
We participate in what it is possible to find there of obscure
harmony. It is by instinct [de Gaulle uses "instinct" and "intu-
ition" interchangeably] that man perceives the realitY of
conditions which surround him and that he experiences the
corresponding impulsion.
Military inspiration is analogous to that of the artist; in
either case, as de Gaulle quotes Bacon, "It is man adding
to nature." De Gaulle apparently means that man adds to
external nature by linking himself with it. He then draws
upon its productive force, which expresses an obscure in-
herent harmony; this force, filtered through man, re·
emerges in the world in order to master it. Alexander's
"hope," Caesar's "fortune," and Napoleon's "star" were
"simply the certitude of a particular gift putting them in a
strict enough relation to realities to dominate them
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
always." One might recall Bacon's observation that to
master nature one must know and use nature's laws. But
de Gaulle, unlike Bacon, promises no utopias brought by
the advancement of learning. Human nature has limits,
and de Gaulle recognizes that fact more clearly than
Bacon does. The most J:!e asserts is that such great men
give others "the impression of a natural force which will
command events"; they possess, as Flaubert said of Han-
nibal (in Salammb6), "the indefinable splendor of those
destined for great enterprises." (Nevertheless, despite his
assertion that such men can dominate realities, the ex-
amples he chooses are of men who could not dominate
them "always," as he surely realizes.)
· The intelligence takes what instinct gives it and makes
those "givens" coherent, definite.* This enables the
military leader to set goals and priorities, decide timing,
and placement, coordinate the various operations and
their phases-in a word, to synthesize.
It is why all the great men of action have been meditative.
All possessed to the highest degree the faculty to retreat into
themselves, to deliberate inwardly.
Some critics exalt instinct, claiming that there is no true
art of war because chance alone determines battles. De
Gaulle cites Socrates, who, he claims, told Nichomachides
that the popular assembly's choice of a leader was unim·
portant because a dishonest and incapable citizen would
lead the army no worse than a skillful and conscientious
general. But that is not what Socrates says in the pass~ge
de Gaulle alludes to. In Xenophon's Memorabilia, Book
III, chapter 4, Nichomachides complains that the assembly elected Antisthenes, a man without Nichomachides'
military experience to be a general. What Socrates con·
tends is not that the choice of commanders doesn't matter, but that military experience doesn't matter. He claims
instead that what matters is the ability to rule. Antisthenes
had managed a chorus well, even though he had no musi·
cal skill, because he found the best masters to do his work
for him.
Xenophon's words could not be innocently misread as
de Gaulle misreads them. A slip of memory is just as
unlikely, for de Gaulle's memory, which he trained since
childhood, was nearly infallible when he wanted it to be.
As if to prove it, de Gaulle next correctly recalls Socrates'
remarks to Pericles (son of the famous Pericles), which oc·
cur in the following chapter of the Memorabilia. "It is
true," .de Gaulle writes, "that the same Socrates, inter-
rogated by Pericles on the cause of the indiscipline of the
Athenian troops, held responsible their leaders, who were
incapable of commanding them." De Gaulle has good
reason to be "forgetful" concerning the Socratic defense
*Although de Gaulle writes that the iritelligence attributes form to the
"givens" instinct provides, it's important to recall that the givens are not
inchoate, but possess "an obscure harmony" of their own. To what extent that harmony must match the form attributed to the givens by intelligence is not clear; obviously, there must be some relationship, or the
battle-plan wouldn't work.
87
�of amateurism in war; as we've seen, de Gaulle wants
France to have a professional army. De Gaulle prizes
military experience. His book is an attack on the notion
that anyone who can rule well can also rule an army. The
last chapter, "Politics and the Soldier," gives a more subtle view of the relationship between politicians and
soldiers than Xenophon's teaching. Perhaps de Gaulle
cites Xenophon falsely-as Bacon, in his Essays, cites the
execution of Socrates under the oligarchy-to seem
authoritative to the ignorant and to stimulate those who
are not ignorant.
De Gaulle's mention of Socrates' teaching to Pericles'
son also has a point for those who know that passage. In
their conversation, Socrates and young Pericles consider
how one may lead the Athenians so as to enhance the city's
fame and to defeat its enemies. Notable among these ene·
mies are the Boeotians, "who formerly did not dare, even
on their own soil, to meet the Athenians in the field
without the aid of the Spartans and the other Peloponnesians"; the Boeotians now "threaten to invade Attica
single-handed."' They can do so because Athenian
military affairs are commanded by "men who are greatly
deficient in knowledge." To counter this threat, Socrates
suggests that the Athenians, "if equipped with light
arms," could "do great mischief to our enemies, and form
a strong bulwark for the inhabitants of our country" by oc·
cupying the mountains on the frontiers of Attica,
especially those bordering on Boeotia.
The parallel between democratic France, threatened
(according to de Gaulle and Petain) by Germany, and ancient democratic Athens, threatened by Boeotia, is suggestive. France, it is true, has no mountains on the German
border; but in a 1928 essay called "The Historical Role of
French Places," de Gaulle described the military uses that
French terrain had and could be put to. He praised the
use of fortifications, but also insisted on the need for
mobility-precisely the combination of a strong defensive
bulwark and a maneuverable attack force that Socrates
recommends to Pericles.
De Gaulle ends this "epistemological" essay by noting
that military men sometimes neglect the cultivation of intelligence, especially when afflicted by the "depression of
spirits" which follows a "great victorious effort." But
more frequently they make the opposite error, longing to
''deduce the conception of known constants in advance"
-what de Gaulle calls "a priorism" -an activity which
''exercises a singular attraction over the French mind."
The "speculative and absolute character" of such dogmas
"render them seductive and perilous."
In section ii de Gaulle turns to the non-intellectual
faculties of the leader. Petain, he tells us, said that giving
orders calls for the greatest effort of any part of an action.
"In fact," de Gaulle continues, "the intervention of the
human will in the chain of events has something ir·
revocable about it"; from this derives the military leader's
responsibility, one of "such weight that few men are
capable of supporting it entirely."
88
It is why the highest qualities of mind do not suffice.
Without doubt, the intelligence aids, without doubt, instinct
pushes, but, in the last resort, the decision is of the moral
order.
An officer must act, and not conceal his incapacity by
claiming that he has no specific orders, or by looking after
details only, as certain French generals did during the
Franco-Prussian War. The other extreme, the exaggeration of initiative "to the point of violating discipline and
smashing the convergence of efforts," was exemplified by
the German general, Alexander von Kluck, during the
Battle of the Marne; such indiscipline usually occurs in
"the absence or the softness of the decisions of the
superior echelon." (De Gaulle studies the von Kluck inci·
dent in his 1924 book, La discorde chez l'ennemi and later
discusses the Franco-Prussian war in La France et son
armee, published in 1938.)
The mean between these two extremes is "the spirit of
enterprise," necessary if the leader will "win over the
others." He must do so, for he needs not only to know
what he wants to do and to order it done, but to have the
authority that ensures his men's obedience. Army discipline helps-it is a sort of contract wherein subordinates
pledge their obedience-"but it does not suffice for the
leader to bind the executants by an impersonal
obedience.''
It is in their souls that he must imprint his living mark. To
move their wills, to seize, to animate them to turn themselves
toward the purpose that he has assigned them; to make grow
and to multiply the effects of discipline by a moral suggestion
which surpasses reasoning; to crystallize around himself all
that there is in their souls of faith, of hope, of latent devotion
(but not, apparently, of charily)-such is [the nature of] his
domination.
Training of leaders is part of the preparation for war;
such preparation can occur during a war or during
peacetime. But peacetime is a poor time to prepare for
war (although obviously, one should not wait until the
enemy attacks), because it produces second-rate leaders.
Good leaders are hard to recruit in peacetime: "the pro·
found motive of the activity of the best and the strongest
is the desire to acquire power," and the peacetime army
offers ambitious men no place to command, and slow advancement. De Gaulle, again echoing Nietzsche, defines
"power" broadly. After 1815, when the French saw many
years of peace ahead of them, those men desirous of
power-Thiers, Lamennais, Comte, Pasteur-went into
politics, law, speculation, and the arts. They did not go into
the army. A Pasteur does not desire power in the vulgar
sense; he desires power in that he wishes to accomplish
something worthwhile. If power is what the best men
want, it would seem that they are inspired by that
"Bergsonian" intuition mentioned earlier, which 1inks
them with the forces of life. They have what Bergson called
''l'energie spirituelle.''
WINTER 1981
�Today, it is toward affairs that ambitions turn; money is, for
the moment, the apparent sign of power and the French
nourish willingly the conviction that international laws and
ententes will succeed in preventing war.
De Gaulle does not camouflage his skepticism about this
"conviction," and the desire for money that underlies it.
Not only do ambitious men shun the peacetime
military, but peacetime military leaders tend to promote
the least-gifted men in their ranks. They select their successors by observing field exercises, which test superficial
cleverness, the ability to grasp the immediate features of a
circumstance, and flexibility of mind-rather than real ap·
titude, the power of seeing the essentials of a circumstance, ahd genuine understanding.
Finally, "powerful personalities" often lack "that superficial seductiveness which pleases in the course of ordinary life." The mass may admit their superiority, but
does not love them, and they are not chosen for advancement at times when no danger seems near. Of all the
young major's statements, this may have angered his
superiors most. Not only was de Gaulle just such a "personality," criticized for his supposed arrogance, but he
dared to suggest that his superiors are of the mass, men
who recognize his excellence but will not reward it.
De Gaulle's conclusion: "Our times are little propitious
to the formation and selection of military leaders"
because the intensity of the Great War led to "a relaxation
of wills, a depression of character," which led to "moral
lassitude." War and soldiers are held in little esteem.
*
C
*
*
"Of Character," concerns Gaullist
ethics. De Gaulle's epigraph-"The smell of the
world has changed" -comes from Georges Du-
HAPTER TWO.
hamel; to choose a sentence from one of the era's best-
known pacifists probably amused de Gaulle, especially in
writing on the "spirit of his age."
The French army has had "powerful life only by the effect of an ideal, issuing from the dominant sentiments of
the epoch and drawing from that harmony its virtue and
radiance." Ethics, it would seem, derive from sentiment,
not reason-and fashionable sentiment, at that.
As de Gaulle rehearses his examples, this "spirit of the
age" explanation of ethics seems accurate. In the seventeenth century, Louvois's reforms unified the military so
as to serve the interests of the sovereign, who was en-
gaged in unifying the country. The Republican army of
Hache was possessed of a "rather ostentatious contempt
for honors and rewards," an affectation that "went well
with glory."
When de Gaulle comes to the contemporary state of
things, we detect a tone of irony, for de Gaulle has already
noted that today's ambiance is anti-militaristic. Presumably, the army most consonant with "the times" would be
the army the French have now: torpid, defensive, hard for
de Gaulle to get promoted in. There have been improveTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ments in institutions, equipment, and, he admits, in
military thinking, but these aren't sufficient. To achieve
"efficacity" the French army needs "a moral renaissance."
The "rejuvenating ideal" of this epoch is "character,"
"the virtue of difficult times." The second chapter studies
the opposition between the ambiance of the times as seen
by most people and the ambiance de Gaulle presents,
which excludes those aspects of fashionable thought and
sentiment which tend to undermine the security and the
grandeur of France.
"The man of character," the Gaullist leader, has recourse
~'to
himself." "His impulse is to impose on action
his mark ... to make it his affair." "He has the passion to
will, he is jealous to decide." Uninterested in profit, this
"gambler. .. searches less for gain than to succeed, and
pays his debts in his own money." If he loses he reacts not
with sorrow bUt with "some bitter satisfaction." The man
of character "confers nobility to action; without him [action would be] the dismal blemish of the slave, thanks to
him, [it is] the divine sport of heroes."
He doesn't act alone. Subordinates assist him; their virtues are self-sacrifice and obedience. Counsellors and
theorists help him plan. But his "character" is "the supreme element, the creative part, the divine point." We
recall that intuition perceives the creative and forceful
realities; character, too, links a man to that in life which is
creative and forceful~ more, it is itself creative and force-
ful. On the level of ethics, of human action, it corresponds
to the "obscure harmony" of nature.
This property of vivifying the enterprise implies the energy
to assume the consequences [he may be thinking of Bergson's
"energie spirituelle"]. Difficulty attracts the man of character,
for it is in gripping [the difficulty] that he realizes himself.
But whether or not he vanquishes, it is an affair between it
and him. Jealous lover, he never shares what it gives him, or
what it costs him.
What it gives him is "the austere [or harsh: apre] joy of being responsible." This paradoxical phrase epitomizes the
Gaullist balancing of opposites in the domain of ethics.
De Gaulle is now far from Machiavellian success-philosophy; the telos of Machiavellian virtu has little to do with
true austerity. De Gaulle combines the individualism of
such
~·moderns"
as Machiavelli and Bacon with the au-
sterity of the "ancients." Self-realization in struggle and
the austere joy of being responsible: one thinks of Nietzsche, or, perhaps, of Aristotle's great-souled man.
In peacetime the man of character has detractors, "but
in action, enough of criticism!" And in a passage reminis-
cent of Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics, Book IV, Chapter 3), de Gaulle writes:
Reciprocally, the confidence of the small exalts the man of
character. He feels himself obliged by this humble justice rendered to him. His firmness increases in measure, but also his
benevolence, for he was born a protector. If the affair sue-
89
�ceeds, he distributes advantage generously, and, in the case of
a reverse, he does not allow reproach to descend on any but
himself.
Esteem and loyalty exchanged for security: to "ancient"
and "modern" themes, de Gaulle adds a "medieval" one:
the ideal relationship of the vassal and his lord. With intuition, de Gaulle wrote, one "participates" in reality's ere~
ative force; with character, he might have added, one
participates in the reality of other men, calling up their
creative force, as well as one's own.
In ordinary times, the man of character's superiors
often dislike him, calling him "arrogant and undisciplined." De Gaulle writes from experience. "But when
events become grave" he receives justice; "a sort of
ground swell pushes to the first level the man of character." He "does not abuse" his moment, scarcely tasting
"the savor of revenge, for the action absorbs everything."
Not quite Aristotelian magnanimity-which eschews revenge because revenge is small and it is large, rather than
because action preoccupies it-but de Gaulle's man of
character comes nearer to achieving it than do most of the
men of his time.
De Gaulle shows that "character" is not an exclusively
military virtue, any more than intuition is. He finds it in
Alexander, Richelieu, Napoleon, Bismarck, and Clemen<;eau, but also in Galilee, Columbus, Boileau, and Lesseps.
He fails to list a religious leader (unless one would so
characterize Cardinal Richelieu).
. . . the success of great men implies multiple faculties.
Character, if accompanied by nothing, only gives daredevils
and stubborn personalities. But inversely, the highest qualities
of mind (alone) cannot suffice.
Sieycs and Talleyrand were notable for their qualities of
mind, de Gaulle contends, but they were not great men.
De Gaulle writes more against the ambiance of his
"time" than with it. In the third section of this chapter he
"reconciles" this ambiance with his notion of "character."
The pre-1914 world, he observes, was an era of stability,
economy, and prudence. It is gone. "Competition, aided
by technique," comprise the "allegorical group which
symbolizes the new age." The postwar generation, adventurous and money-conscious, take initiative and self
reliance as their virtues. The army should "reflect" these
virtues, but obviously de Gaulle would have it "reflect" a
judiciously modified version of them; he does not advocate money-consciousness in soldiers and, as he has
already written, these are bad times for the military. The
"dominant sentiments" of an epoch, in de Gaulle's view,
are really those among the popular sentiments which the
man who would dominate his epoch selects-because
they most nearly resemble his own virtues. There are
epochs in which such a man cannot advance, and undominating men predominate. De Gaulle waits, writing books.
While the army waits, it will be paralyzed if its leaders
smother initiative, along with "the taste to be responsible and
90
the courage to speak plainly." De Gaulle wants "character" respected. Each individual should have responsibility
on his own level. (This idea anticipates the "participation"
that de Gaulle advocated in 1969, wherein capital, labor,
and technocrats would share power on the governing
boards of industry, and whereby local governments would
have more responsibility.) If "character" is respected, the
army will have fewer regulations, get better results. Better
men will adopt the military career, and continue in it, because the army will allow them to exercise"their capacity
to act," which is what such men want.
' '0
*
*
*
the central chapter of Le fil de
l'epee, consists of de Gaulle's final diagnosis
F PRESTIGE;·
of, and prescription for, the epoch's disease.
Prestige is usually a matter of appearance only, but de Gaulle
chooses as this chapter's epigraph a phrase from Villiers de
L'Isle Adam-"In his breast, to carry his own glory" -a phrase
which links prestige to character.
Authority has decayed in the postwar era. Men are either
reticent and unsure, or overconfident and obsessed with
forms.
This decadence follows the decline of the moral, social, political order which, for centuries, held sway in our old nations.
By conviction and by calculation, one has for a long time at·
tributed to power an origin, to the elite rights which justify
hierarchies. The edifice of these conventions has collapsed .
Deference fades; perhaps this is the other, negative, side
of the taste for initiative de Gaulle cited before.
But the crisis can't last.
Men cannot, fundamentally, do without being directed.
These political animals have need of organization, that is to
say of order and of leaders.
Ancient sources of authority no longer exist, but "the
natural equilibrium of things will bring others, sooner or
later, better or less good, proper in all cases to the establishment of a new discipline." Even as he dismisses the
old, de Gaulle affirms something ancient: the idea, discarded by Machiavelli and Hobbes, that man is a political
animal, by nature and not by convention. The "new discipline," of course, will be in large part conventional; still, it
responds to a natural requirement, and will be "better or
less good" than its predecessors-not merely "historically
relative."
De Gaulle sees the beginnings of the new discipline in
"the individual value and ascendence" of certain "new
men." Once, the mass accorded credit to a man's function
in society, or to his birthright. Now it respects "those here
who know [how] to impose themselves"-dictators, technicians, athletes-men who owe success to their own efforts. In the army today, rank has some importance, but
upersonal prestige" has more.
WINTER 1981
�In section ii, the central section of the central chapter,
de Gaulle writes frankly of prestige. Prestige is "a sort of
sympathy inspired in others," comprised of affection, sug·
One can observe, in fact, that the leaders of men-politicians, prophets, soldier-who obtain the most from others,
identify themselves with high ideas . ...
gestion, and impression, which depends on ((an elemen-
tary gift, a natural aptitude that escapes analysis." Not
dependent on intelligence, it is undefinable, although one
can isolate "some constant and necessary elements" of it.
Mystery is one of them; "one reverses little what one
knows well." Mystery doesn't come from isolation~the
most isolated man is unknown, not mysterious-but from
reserve, which contributes to the sense that the man
The prophets' centrality on the lisi suggests that they do
not differ from secular leaders, at least in their self-identification with "high ideas." In view of the assertion that
this is a selfidentification, one may wonder if such men
are models of evangelical perfection, but at the least we
can say that all of them embody ideas rather than argue
possesses a "secret," or a "surprise" with which he can in-
for they are "renowned less for utility than for the extent
of their work" ~sentiment glorifies them. Useful men appeal to our rationality, but great men do not strive for
tervene at any time. "The latent faith of the masses does
the rest."
for them. "Whereas, sometimes, reason blames
them"~
Prestige also involves an outer reserve, one of words
and of gestures-"appearances, perhaps, but according to
usefulness.
which the multitude establishes its opinion." Great sol-
even so, he shows an ethical seriousness, an elevation,
diers have always taken care to appear in a certain way; de
that Machiavelli lacks. De Gaulle's exemplary leader does
not "enjoy himself." Indeed, the suffering that comes of
his solitude-among-men partly explains why some leaders
"suddenly reject the burden." Years later Andre Malraux
·would remember this passage as he considered de Gaulle's
final retirement. De Gaulle completes this section with an
anecdote: Bonaparte (he usually calls him Napoleon, but
Gaulle reminds us of Hamilcar in Flaubert's Salammb6,
Caesar in his Commentaries, Napoleon. "Nothing enhances authority more than silence"; for action demands
concentration, and speech dissipates strength. There is a
necessary correspondence between "silence and order,"
and de Gaulle quotes the Roman phrase, Imperatoria brevitas. Aristotle's human animals are political due to their
capacity of reasoned speech or logos. De Gaulle, with his
intuitionism (a distrust of verbal depictions of reality), apparently does not believe that the natural order, including
human nature and the politics it necessitates, can be comprehended through the use of language. Politics becomes
as much the art of silence as the art of speaking, and Gaullist rhetoric emphasizes brevity and symbolism instead of
elaboration and argument.
There is liberated from such personages a magnetism of
confidence and even illusion. For those who follow them, they
personify purpose, incarnate aspiration.
This is de Gaulle's most Machiavellian chapter. But
here, in a personal moment, his given name seems more
appropriate), regarding "an ancient and noble monu-
ment," agreed with a companion who thought it
sad~
"comme la grandeur!" he added.
The third section of "Of Prestige" is the eighth of the
book's fifteen sections, the central one. It extends the previous treatment of individual authority to the army. The
ambiance of the time damages corporate as well as individual authority. "For recovering (prestige), the army has
little need of laws, demands for money, prayers, only a
vast internal effort." "The military spirit" needs distance
and reserve, as does the great man; such partial isolation
contributes to prestige, because military rigor and cohesion have always impressed men.
To become such a personification or incarnation, the
leader responds to "the obscure wish of men" who are imperfect, who therefore "accept collective action with a
view that it tends toward something great." Whereas the
great man realizes himself by participating in a difficult
action, lesser men complete themselves by participating
in a collective action, under the direction of a great man.
The leader needs "the character of elevation," but leader·
ship
... is no affair of virtue, and evangelical perfection does not
conduct the empire. The man of action scarcely conceives of
himself without a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, ruse.
This chapter thus examines the opposition between
means and ends. In de Gaulle's view, it is ends, results,
that count; if the leader uses the means of realpolitik for
"realizing great things," those means will be forgotten because he satisfies "the secret desires of all."
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Some current trends favor the development of military
spirit. "Individualism is in the wrong" today: trades unionize, political parties and sports are mass-oriented, as well;
Ia machinisme has increased and the division of labor intensifies, leading to less eclecticism and fantasy; labor and
leisure are equalized; standardization exists in education,
housing, and fashions. (Earlier, de Gaulle wrote that individual initiatives were fashionable; but the contradiction
is less de Gaulle's than that of his "time." Again, we notice de Gaulle's selectiveness.)
As important as these current trends may be, the army's
self-esteem matters more. The military must not only appear firm; it must feel "confidence in itself and in its des·
tiny." "The day when the French nobility consecrated its
ardor to defending its privileges rather than to conducting
the State, the victory of the Third Estate was already certain." The military should therefore avoid reacting to the
public's anti-militarism by a selfish defense of its privileges. This won't happen if the military reminds itself, and
91
�the public, that anti-militarism is understandable, even
good-(for men should not want to destroy each other)but nevertheless inadequate. Foreigners envy French
prosperity, and France's geography renders her vulnerable to invasion; therefore the French need a shield. The
military serves the French, not only itself.
And war is not purely evil. "The desires of conquerors"
have brought riches, advances in science and art, "marvel~
lous sources of wisdom and inspiration." "With what vir-
tues [arms] have enriched the moral capital of men!"
Courage, devotion and "greatness of soul" are among
them. Armies have transported ideas, reforms and religions; Hthere would have been no Hellenism, no Roman
order, Christianity [the central item on the list], Rights of
Man, modern civilization but for their bloody effort."
Pacifists and bellecists are both right:
the age of Descartes' Discours de Ia. Methode, Bossuet's
Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle, Richelieu's "realistic
politique," the "practical administration" of Colbert, and
the "objective strategy" of Turenne. The French mind
then "constrained itself by the rule of mesure and of the
concrete." At his best Napoleon shared this sense of
mesure and the ability to adapt strategy to circumstances;
but more often in French history-especially in the eighteenth century and in the generation that fought Germany in 1870- "a priorism" dominated. And failed.
Although military strategy and ethics are not the same,
de Gaulle sees a relationship between them. "A priorism"
in strategy habituates leaders to disregard circumstance;
this makes them intellectually and ethically weak, for "a
doctrine constructed in the abstract" has often "rendered
blind and passive a leader who, in other times, had made
proof of experience and audacity."
Arms have tortured but also fashioned the world. They
have accomplished the best and the worst, begetting infamy
as well as the most great, by turns groveling in horror or radia ting in glory. Shameful and glorious, their history is the history
of men.
The central section in "Of Doctrine" is an analysis of
the doctrine employed by French leaders in the Great
War.
Military thought turned toward the offensive. This orientation was salutary . ... But the strategy went too far.
The history of men is not a tale of evangelical perfection.
And de Gaulle repeats: if an international order comes, a
military force will "establish and assure it."
It is not merely a "pragmatic" argument. The army's
greatness, like that of individuals, depends on virtue-if
not evangelical virtue. This military virtue can be described with a paradox: the army's pride would be worthless were it not accompanied by self-sacrifice. There is "a
French strategists propounded "an absolute metaphysic
of action" modeled on Prussia's offensive drives in 1870.
That strategy worked against an inactive opponent; but
the Great War demonstrated that a mobile and resolute
opponent can resist such an attack-strategy.
Colonel Petain had objected to this doctrine of attack,
curious relationship, but incontestable, between the re-
arguing for the importance of circumstances and the need
nunciation of individuals and the splendor of all."
Most Frenchmen give their energies to profit-making,
and it's difficult to find soldiers who don't imitate civil-
for maximum obtainable fire support at the time and
ians. Here also, however, balance will assert itself; "in a
fracas of bankruptcies, scandals and judicial prosecutions"
the forgotten "moral values" will return to "the great daylight of public respect." With this return, and a natural
pulling-back from extreme corruption, the army's prestige
will return also. For its prestige rests on such virtues.
' 'I
*
*
*
N WAR, there are principles, but they are few,"
wrote Bugeaud, the unsuccessful defender of
Paris in 1848. De Gaulle uses this remark as the
epigraph for "Of Doctrine," the simplest, if not the shortest,
chapter of Le {il de I'epee. De Gaulle here outlines a stra-
tegic doctrine, not an ethical one, because war is not ex-
clusively a problem of ethics. Battle plans count, too.
Once more, de Gau1le insists on the importance of circumstances. A statesman will fail, despite will, hardness,
national resources and alliances, if he "does not discern
the character of his times." The French military tends to
ignore war's empirical character, he claims. But in the sev-
enteenth century it did not; that was, de Gaulle observes,
92
place of attack ("concentration of means" forms Hthe
basis of execution"). He proved the validity of his thesis in
the Battle of the Marne. But his superiors persisted in advocating, and practicing, an attack-strategy; only after the
failure of their "systematic audacity" during the April
1917 offensive did they relent. As we know, de Gaulle
thinks the present French military stance is too defensive.
He has praised a military strategy of action and leadership.
Nevertheless, he is careful to warn against any "a priorism "-of attack, or of defense.
De Gaulle turns to the defense-strategy in the third section. The new doctrine may end in "abstract deductions
and foreclosing conclusions." Obviously an extension of
Petain's teaching on firepower, it involves the concentra-
tion of firepower, coupled with the siting of offensives
only in those places where the terrain is best suited. Unfortunately, this strategy neglects other variables-most
notably, the enemy, who may not decide to occupy the
sites that French guns can most easily fire upon. "May
French military thinking resist the age-old attraction of
the a priori, of the absolute, and of dogmatism!" It should
instead "fix itself in the classical order," the "taste for the
concrete," the "gift of mesure" and the "sense of realities."
*
*
*
WINTER 1981
�studies the opposition expressed in
its title, "Politics and the Soldier" ~specifically, the
tension between politicians and soldiers. Like the
fourth chapter, it addresses the practical question: What
should leaders think and do?
Politicians and soldiers may, as the epigraph from Musset claims, "go two by two/Until the world ends, step by
step, side by side." But they'll rarely go amicably. In
peacetime the politician has the dominant role; in wartime he shares it with the military leader, and interdependence is not conducive to friendship. Politicians and
soldiers are different men, and not especially compatible
T
HE FIFTH CHAPTER
ones.
The politician attempts to udominate opinion"-
whether it be that of the monarch, the council or the people (the one, the few, or the many)~because he can do
nothing except insofar as he acts in the name of the sovereign. Pleasing and promising, not opposing and arguing,
lead to advancement; "to become the master he poses as
servant. ... " After acquiring power he must defend it~
convincing prince or parliament, flattering passions, aid~
ing special interests. It is a precarious career in an unstable world.
Unlike that of the soldier, whose world is built on hierarchy, discipline, and regulations, he advances slowly, but
with slight worry of demotion. As de Gaulle knew only too
well, the off-battlefield danger for a military man is stagnation, being "posted" to nowhere and forgotten.
The two men act differently. The politician reaches his
goals by governing himself; the soldier is direct. The politician's eyes are far-sighted (and beclouded) because for
him reality is complex, mastered only by calculation and
ruse. The soldier short-sighted (but also clear-sighted) because for him reality is simple, controlled by resoluteness.
The politician asks, "What will people say?" The soldier
asks, "What are the principles?" That such men find one
another distasteful seems predictable.
Nor is it entirely bad. Soldiers who make laws alarm
1
neighboring countries, and politicians who intrude into
the army corrupt it with partisan doctrines and passions.
The public interest is best served by their collaboration in
defense of the country from external dangers~and their
separation in defense of the country from internal
dangers.
Before elaborating on that suggestion, de Gaulle devotes two sections to the difficulties of enacting it. In
peacetime the two "sides" bicker (especially in those
regimes where public opinion has influence). Arms are expensive, and are therefore unpopular except among soldiers, who are "only too ready" to believe war will come,
because wartime brings their chance for glory and advancement. Civilians, who have no reason to want war,
who fear it, refuse to believe that another war approaches.
When war comes, soldiers and politicians unite, ini-
tially. Later, if the war lingers on, the civil government
feels its own impotence, becomes frustrated. The public
also becomes irritable. Reverses of fortune excite recrimiTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
nations. Soldiers and politicians are men who want power,
and do not want to share it. If one group succeeds in subordinating the other, the destruction of the balance may
ruin the country~as it did in 1793 and 1870, when the
French politicians dominated the military and caused battlefield defeats, and in 1917 when the military undermined
civilian authority in Germany.
A country avoids that predicament, not by hiring pleasant fellows to run the government and the army, but by
finding leaders who are not pliable or docile. "It is
necessary that les maitres have the souls of maitres, and it
is a very bad calculation that excludes from power
characters accused on the pretext that they are difficult."
Nor can the two groups of men separate entirely. As
always, circumstances differ, sometimes from day to
day~personalities, the phase of the war, and so forth. No
a priori compartmentalization works. But their purposes
are separable. "The most just glory" that a statesman can
win comes from his success in maintaining the "national
will" during war. Soldiers, however, should deal with the
fighting.
In the fourth and last section de Gaulle explains the
ethical and institutional bases for the balance and partial
separation of power between civil and military authorities. Although fluid, changing with circumstance, the relationship between the two does not depend on "chance"
to "inspire" leaders. It depends on the institution of a
system that educates men of character to lead well.
"Other epochs assured [this] by a social and political
regime which mingled in the families and in the councils
all the sorts of servants of the State": Roman patricians
and Prussian nobles held both civilian and military posts;
French nobles served in one branch or the other, but understood the problems of both. Too, the sovereign "personified all the powers, symbolizing their harmony."
"Resulting from this perpetual osmosis was a reciprocal
understanding between toga and arms which is no longer
in the spirit of the times" ~although de Gaulle would like
to revive it. De Gaulle implies that parliamentarism lacks
the unifying sovereign who would compel politicians and
soldiers to think of shared ends, if only by symbolizing the
harmony of all state powers.
Nonetheless, today's military leaders retain "the secret
esteem of the strong for the strong." The "man of character" wants things his way and remains alone among subor-
dinates. But as he protects helpful inferiors and attacks
his enemies, he also esteems others of his kind; he may
conceal this esteem, but he acts in accordance with it.
Relations between great-souled equals are productively,
not injuriously, tense. With classical moderation, unmen-
tioned in this section but presumed by it, the secret
esteem of the strong for the strong prevents the selfdefeat brought on by petty squabbling that de Gaulle
found in the German leaders during the Great War, as
described in La discorde chez l' ennemi.
De Gaulle now proposes an institutional basis for this
concordia discors. He does not as yet propose a political
93
�revision for France, although he has hinted that one may
be needed. He suggests an educational reform:
One could conceive, it is true, of a providential State
wishing to prepare a political, administrative, and military
elite, by studies done in common, to direct, if such should be
the case, the wartime effort of a nation.
De Gaulle's civic education would increase the accord
between the two domains in wartime and clarify discussions and laws concerning military power in peacetime. It
would not "solve" the problem because the problem isn't
susceptible to rules. But it would help.
Intuition and character aren't teachable assets. "One
does nothing great without great men," the "ambitieux of
the first rank ... who want nothing in life but to imprint
their mark on events and who, on the shore where they
spend their ordinary days, dream only of the surge of
History!" These are men who know that an illustrious
military career must serve "a vast policy," that a states~
man "of great glory" defends his country.
*
*
•
of his time's "incertitude" and the
"melancholy" of the army, de Gaulle attempts to
restore the mental balance of his contemporaries by a
defense of power. Many writers who lament the disappearance of authority in the modern West prefer to avoid
discussing power. Not de Gaulle.
In the first three chapters he begins with epistemology,
and therefore metaphysics, moves to ethics, then to
politics. In the fourth and fifth chapters he discusses more
immediate concerns: military doctrine and educational
reform. One may say that he moves from the theoretical
and timeless to the practical and immediate.
Gaullist epistemology reconciles, without blending, the
"flow of events" -and the need to adjust to them-with
the attempt to dominate events. The leader intuitively
perceives the nature of things (which is creative, forceful
and possesses an "obscure harmony"), using his "intelligence" to translate these perceptions into effective actions. This intellectual process complements the ethical,
decision-making faculty, the "spirit of enterprise" which
balances the extremes of passivity and rashness.
I
N THE FACE
Gaullist ethics reconciles, without blending, the "spirit
of the age" with "character," under the aegis of the will to
power (broadly defined), which animates the best men. In
94
selecting, ordering, and directing certain aspects of "the
ambiance of the times," the leader realizes himself, feeling "the austere joy of being responsible" -the joy of the
great-souled or magnanimous man. Intuition and intelligence, plus character, yield grandeur.
Gaullist politics reconciles, without blending, the
means and the end. Authority's present disrepute can't
persist for long, because men are by nature political
animals, by which de Gaulle means that they need leaders
and an ordered life. Prestige is that which enables the
leader to lead. De Gaulle associates it with the use of
words, with actions, and with the personification of
aspirations and purposes. The end of politics is grandeur,
and the means are not those of evangelical perfection.
Such means are forgiven, however, because they serve
"the secret desires of all." War, which is not politics but
shares some of its characteristics, embodies the tension of
means and ends in the extreme, having both tortured and
fashioned the world. As with all products of human
nature, perhaps as with human nature itself, it is both
shameful and glorious.
Gaullist military strategy depends on balance, mesure. It
is anti-dogmatic because dogmatism encourages leaders to
be passive, complacent, and blind to circumstances.
Gaullist civic education reconciles, without blending, the
politician and the soldier. Though the two are by nature
different-the one speaks in order to gain power, the
other acts in order to gain power-their mutual will to
power and consequent attempts to achieve it cause
discord. But their natural similarity can make possible the
concordia discors that is Gaullist reconciliation. That similarity is the secret esteem of the strong for the strong.
Both serve the country, realizing themselves by selfsacrificing patriotism. If its members participate in common studies, this elite will suffer less discord.
De Gaulle concerns himself, on each "level" of human
life, with the problem of establishing a concordia discors
which does not sacrifice, but rather enhances, the integrity of the participating elements. He thus avoids the extremes of totalitarianism and egalitarianism and provides
a basis for republicanism, in a century wherein republicanism has declined.
l. Aidan Crawley, De Gaulle, Indianapolis and New York 1969, 53.
2. Stanley Hoffman, Decline or Renewal? France Since the 1930s, New
York 1974, 217.
3. Xenophon, Memorabilia, Book 3, Chapter 5.
WINTER 1981
�FIRST READINGS
Plato's Moral Theory: The Early and
Middle Dialogues, by Terence Irwin, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977.
Terence Irwin's book is an attempt at a
critical exposition of the moral theory in
Plato's early and middle dialogues. It is intended to show that Plato's questions concerning morality are "legitimate moral
questions" (285; cf. 266), and that his
"questions and answers, right and wrong,
are not of purely historical interest. ...
that they raise issues which justify the effort to decide for or against his views" (4).
Some readers might regard the continuing
significance of Plato's moral thought as being so obvious as to need no discussion.
But anyone familiar with the neglect of the
ancients among contemporary academic
philosophers must welcome Professor Irwin's efforts. Moreover, Plato's admirers
and followers themselves might profit from
a careful, yet critical, discussion of his
moral teachings. Indeed, even the legiti~
macy of Plato's questions, let alone the
truth of his answers, is not so obvious as it
may seem. It is not self-evidently legitimate
to ask-as Irwin rightly emphasizes that
Plato does ask- "whether it is worthwhile
to do what morality is normally supposed
to require", e.g. to benefit other people
(251, italics mine; cf. 249-50 and 265-66).
According to Professor Irwin, Plato's
moral thought centers around three Socratic questions: What is morality (i.e., virtue)? What sort of morality is worthwhile
for a rational man? What is the right
method for reaching knowledge about
morality? Socrates and Plato both assume,
acCording to Irwin, that a genuinely moral
man will be able to understand his own
morality, to defend it against criticism, and
in particular to justify it as being ultimately
worthwhile for him. Because of these demands, Socrates and Plato agree that any
genuine virtue must be in the virtuous
man's self-interest, and must be understood by him to be so (5). Socrates and
Plato disagree, however, in their further
thoughts about the character of virtue and
about the correct method of justifying it.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Irwin distinguishes between Socrates and
Plato on the basis of the difference between those dialogues thought to have
been written first and those thought to
have come later. He accepts the conventional scholarly opinion that we can trace a
development from Plato's early dialogues,
which present the thought of Socrates, to
the middle (and late) ones, in which Socrates becomes a spokesman for Plato himself.
What is most noteworthy about Irwin's
argument, and what has aroused most controversy, is his interpretation of Socrates.
According to Irwin, Socrates held that vir~
tue is a kind of knowledge, a knowledge
that is first glimpsed as the result of crossquestioning, but which is also a teachable
expertise or craft (159). Irwin's boldness
shows itself above all in the latter claim,
namely that Socrates thought of virtue as a
teachable craft.
As for cross-questioning, or the Socratic
elenchus, Irwin gives an illuminating outline of its typical features. Socrates tests
some rule of conventional virtue in terms
of our beliefs about examples (i.e. whether
this or that kind of action would be virtuous), and especially in terms of our general
assumptions that virtue is always admirable, and worthwhile for the virtuous man.
"The elenchus," says Irwin, "adjusts our
conceptions of the virtues to our view of
what is worthwhile over all" (6, cf. 39, 47).
Thus, the method of cross-questioning is
not merely negative or critical, but is intended to yield positive results.
As Irwin points out, however, there are
shortcomings in this elenctic approach to
moral knowledge, Although the elenchus
yields valuable positive insights (40), it
must rely on the interlocutor's own convictions about disputable moral questions. Is
it clear, for instance, that admirable or noble action is always good, in the sense of being worthwhile for the agent (49, 117)? The
elenchus, with its demand that we try to
justify our moral beliefs, helps bring our
deepest moral beliefs to light (40, 70; Compare Kant, Critique of Practical Reason,
Part One, Book Two-especially Chapter
Two, Section Five, "On the Existence of
God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason"). But a clearer awareness of our deepest moral beliefs is not yet knowledge that
they are true. And there are radical critics,
like Thrasymachus, who seem to reject all
morality, or at least all recognized morality,
on the grounds of its not being worthwhile
for the moral man himself. "Socrates
notices that moral questions raise disputes
with no acknowledged arbitrator, and may
cause skepticism about whether there is an
authoritative answer to be found" (75).
And the method of cross~questioning does
not go far enough to remove such skepticism.
According to Irwin, Socrates tries to
answer this skepticism by pointing to the
contrast between our many differences
over moral questions and our universal
agreement about the arts and crafts. "If
Socrates could show that virtue is a craft,
these doubts [about the possibility of moral
knowledge] would be silenced" (75). Now a
craft, as Irwin understands it, is knowledge
of the means to produce some product-a
product distinguishable from the productive activity itself, and for which we have a
previously recognized desire. There is little
controversy among craftsmen, or between
craftsmen and other men, since the craftsmen accept the ends of their craft as previously given, as goods that the non-craftsmen
already desire. Accordingly, if virtue, or
true morality, were merely a knowledge of
the means to produce some further good
that everyone already desires, it would no
longer be a matter of irresolvable dispute.
(There need be no dispute, at any rate,
about what it is.) In particular, if true
morality were a knowledge of the means to
produce some definite kind of happinessdistinct from moral action itself-that all
men necessarily desire, then even the radically nonmoral man could be taught to become moral. He could be taught to choose
true morality as the most efficient means
to achieve the same nonmoral good he had
previously been pursuing without it (84).
And as a consequence, the skeptic, if he is
to be distinguished from the nonmoral
man, would be compelled to acknowledge
95
�that moral questions admit of rational solutions.
Irwin elaborates at length the implications of treating virtue as a craft-above
all, the implication that virtue {i.e., moral
knowledge) is of merely instrumental
value. Though Socrates never says so explicitly, Irwin offers indirect textual evidence, and he argues at length that the
need for consistency with the craft-analogy
must have led Socrates to accept this implication. And yet the overwhelming impression one gains from Socrates' life, and
especially from his death, seems to oppose
Professor Irwin's suggestion. This evidence
suggests instead that Socrates must have
regarded virtuous activity as its own (highest) reward. Irwin himself points to Socrates' emphatic assertion that one should
always prefer justice to injustice, no matter
what the future consequences (58; cf. 240).
And Socrates even contends, according to
Irwin, that virtue is in itself sufficient to
ensure happiness for the virtuous man
(100; Compare Ap. Soc. 4lc8-d2, and cf.
Chapter VII, Note ll, page 326). Now it
may be logically possible for a merely instrumental good to be of such boundless
worth. Yet how could a man in his senses
have absolute confidence in the goodness
of any state of soul that wasn't somehow
good in itself? (cf. M. F. Burnyeat's review,
in the New York Review of Books, September 27, 1979) Irwin himself draws attention
to this great difficulty (!00-01, 26!, 28182), and he later speaks of the identifica·
tion of morality with some craft-knowledge
as being "intolerably over-simplified" (17576). Why then, without the compulsion of
unambiguous evidence (cf. Chapter VI,
Note 63, page 323), does he claim that Soc·
rates made this identification?
According to Irwin, Socrates identified
virtue with craft-knowledge in order to provide "objective" justification for his moral
doctrine (73-75). Now it is true that Soc·
rates often contrasts his interlocutor's inability to teach his "virtue", or even to
show its worth, with the craftsman's ability
to teach an obviously useful trade. Moreover, Irwin quite rightly insists that Socrates is serious about the superiority of
craft-knowledge, as knowledge, to our socalled knowledge of what virtue is. But it
does not follow that Socrates believed that
"real virtue-not fully embodied in anyone
96
at the moment-will be a craft" (75).
Socrates had no illusions that moral controversy could ever be laid to rest by an authoritative craftsman, or with the discovery
of some new craft (see ·especially Crito
49cl0-d5). To be sure, he sometimes pretended otherwise (Charmides 165c4-e2;
Laches !84c4-!85d2). But Socrates' inten·
tion, in pretending to seek a teachable
craft-knowledge of virtue, was to awaken
some of his listeners to genuine awareness
of their own ignorance. Here, as elsewhere
(notably in Chapter IV on the l'rotagoras),
Irwin fails to appreciate Socratic irony.
This failure may stem in part from his belief that the non-moral man, or the radical
critic of conventional morality, raises legitimate questions, and makes demands that
Socrates must have hoped to satisfy (35-36,
73, 175). But Irwin's disregard of Socratic
irony stems also from his failure to see the
need for it, to see the serious obstacles that
hinder any attempt to share one's knowledge of ignorance with others (cf. Ap. Soc.
2lc7-e2 and Republic 492a5-c2. Consider
also Irwin's apparently unquestioned claim
to know that "the common [unplatonic]
conception of justice", or at least one of its
key elements, is truly "justice", or the "virtue" that is "real justice" [246-47, 2!!-12;
cf. 67-68, 98, !63, 253).) According to lr·
win's interpretation, Socrates' moral theory contains a deep conflict-between the
very great good he expected a virtue to be,
on the one hand, and his attempt to transform his moral beliefs into knowledge, on
the other. But what Irwin calls a conflict
within Socrates' moral theory is instead
Socrates' way of raising a fundamental
question about morality, or the moral
world-view, itself.
According to Irwin, it was Plato (i.e. the
Socrates of the "middle" dialogues) who fi·
nally concluded that the attempt to treat
virtue as a craft could not succeed. Instead
of regarding morality as a merely instrumental good, he saw that it must be viewed
as a good in itself, and as a necessary component, if not the whole, of human happiness. But how could he justify morality, so
understood, against its radical critics? Plato
seems to have decided-and rightly, according to Irwin (175-76; cf. I)-that the
demand for a defense of morality in terms
of some nonmoral final good "cannot plausibly be met" (Compare Aristotle, Eudemian
Ethics l248b9-!249al7). As an alternate
justification, Plato developed his own most
characteristic, and paradoxical, doctrines.
His Theory of Forms, his Theory of Recollection, and his teaching about the ascent
of "rational desires" are all intended, in
part, to explain how we can acquire knowledge of the highest moral good as being
good.
Irwin's interpretation of the middle
dialogues contains quite a few valuable
insights. He is right to emphasize the continuing relevance of Socrates' moral questions in the later dialogues, even in some of
their seemingly most metaphysical passages. And he discusses clearly and cogently some important difficulties {e.g.
about the separation of the Forms from the
particulars, and about the Republic's seemingly equivocal use of the term "justice")
that enthusiastic Platonists tend to ignore
or else slough over. But his horizon is severely limited by inadequate attention to
the drama of the dialogues, to what happens as distinct from what is said {3). And
partly because of this, Irwin is far too ready
to assume that Plato failed to see certain
major, and rather obvious, problems in his
own arguments (cf. 3-4, !0, 155, 163-64,
233, 242, 258). He thus never considers
that Plato might have chosen, or felt compelled, to leave these problems as questions
for his readers. As a result, he fails to recognize some of the most important questions
that Plato intended his readers to ask.
To illustrate this claim, I limit myself to
what Irwin says about philosophy and the
philosopher-king. Irwin contends that Plato
was mistaken, even in terms of his own argument, to suggest that "the philosopher
in the Republic will want to stay contemplating the Forms and will not voluntarily
undertake public service" (242). Now the
philosopher in the Republic is indeed a
public servant, but not because he wants to
be one, but rather because he is compelled
to, out of necessity. And yet Plato's overall
argument, as Irwin interprets it, requires
instead that the contemplative philosopher
also value virtuous action, including public
service, as a good in itself (243). According
to Irwin, Plato was inconsistent on this key
point, and he never faced the problems
that his attraction to a "solipsist [i.e.,
selfish] contemplative ideal" creates for
the rest of his moral theory (257-58; cf.
WINTER 1981
�255). This criticism presupposes, of course,
training
that Irwin has correctly understood Plato's
moral theory as a whole. But Plato's moral
theory, as Irwin presents it, culminates in a
vague and obscure teaching-about the
virtuous man's "rational desires"- that Irwin himself seems to regard as just barely
defensible (246-48; Compare 278-79 and
285-86). And there is no reason to think
that Plato could ever have been satisfied
with this theory that Irwin attributes to
him. Perhaps, then, Plato was not being
inconsistent when he acknowledged the
power of the "contemplative ideal".
Wouldn't it have been better for Irwin, instead of dismissing that ideal as an aberration, to admit that he couldn't yet make
sense of the whole of Plato's thought?
According to Irwin, Plato's conception
of the philosopher also contains a more
serious flaw than the mere one-sidedness
with which it stresses his contemplative
nature. This other flaw, which Irwin regards as part of the deepest weakness in
Plato's moral theory, is the "bizarre" conclusion that only philosophers-indeed
only those wise men who have beheld the
Forms (Republic 517b7-519a)-possess genuine virtue (283-84). As Irwin sees it, Phito
was led to this conclusion in the following
manner. Plato agrees with Socrates' "basic
demand" that a genuinely virtuous man
must be able to justify his way of life with
good reasons, and not merely with the "sec·
ond-hand support" of "custom, authority,
training, and the rest" (284). And he "rightly
insists", as Irwin interprets him, "that it is
worthwhile in itself, and can fairly be expected of a virtuous man, to try to defend
and justify moral beliefs rationally" (284).
But he then makes what Irwin calls the
"mistake" of thinking that "this kind of justification [sic] requires the capacities and
Republic" (284).
(284, italics mine) is not necessarily "worth-
Irwin argues as follows to try to show
that Plato was mistaken in limiting genuine
virtue to successful philosophers. He
claims that "the most plausible defense" of
Plato's basic demand [for justification of
one's moral beliefs] presupposes a respect
for persons as "autonomous agents" (274).
It requires us to regard "an individual's efforts to find a rational justification for his
own beliefs" as being intrinsically worthwhile. Accordingly, a man's attempt "to ex·
amine, understand, and justify his beliefs
as far as he can" -even though he may
possibly find "the wrong an~wers" and
have "the wrong beliefs" -is sufficient to
make him "more virtuous" and even "virtuous" (284-85). Plato "does not notice",
however, that his demand for knowledge,
or at least "the most plausible defense" of
its legitimacy (284-85), requires such great
respect for the very attempt to understand.
Instead, he mistakenly limits true virtue to
successful philosophers, or to the wise.
In fact, however, Plato's conclusion
about true virtue is not a result of any such
oversight (cf. also 164). Plato could never
have remained satisfied with Irwin's "de·
fense" of the "demand for knowledge and
justification," or with Irwin's implicit assumption that virtue requires little more
than the loss of innocence. Plato was well
aware that he was saying something surprising when he limited genuine virtue to
the wise. But once a man has asked, with
Glaucon and Socrates, why virtue (or justice) is worthwhile or good for him, it is no
longer so easy to dismiss Plato's conclusions about it. Plato's strict teaching about
virtue follows from his awareness that a
man's attempt to justify his moral beliefs
might indeed not be good. Merely "to try to
while in itself', nor even useful. Attempts
that fail to lead to insight, or at least to
right opinion, could easily be worse and
less worthy of esteem than the morality
that relies on the "second-hand support"
of "custom, authority, training, and the
rest".
We can be grateful for Irwin's straightforward attempt to distinguish the true
from the false in Plato's moral thought. Irwin's posture toward Plato's thought is
more fruitful than either the patronizing
"veneration", or the open contempt, of
those who treat it merely as a part of theirrevocable past. And Irwin clearly brings a
superior intelligence to his work. But his efforts to be open to Plato's thought are
thwarted from the beginning by his own
patronizing, for instance by his thoughtless
belief that Plato is "more concerned to present and recommend his views ... than to
argue for them or explore their consequences in any detail" (3). Because he accepts this caricature of Plato as primarilyat least in his writings-a mere spokesman
for certain opinions, Irwin fails even to
glimpse the full beauty of Plato's writing or
the full range of his thinking. The failure of
Irwin's interpretation stems from his inability to accept the guidance that the dialogues can offer if one begins by looking up
to them, as to a possibly competent
teacher.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
of the
philosopher in
the
defend and justify moral beliefs rationally''
David Bolotin
David Bolotin recently published Plato's Dialogue on Friendship: an Interpretation of the
''Lysis'' (Cornell University Press 1979)
97
�AT
HOME AND
ABROAD
Letter from Nicaragua and Guatemala
At the airport, customs and immigration
officials wear green fatigues and shiny
black boots. Guards in the same uniform
carry rifles. A sign on the wall reads "Welcome to Free Nicaragua." The capital,
Managua, bears traces of the war alongside
other older ruins. Empty and barren except
for tall grass and a few inhabited ruins,
central Managua still shows the devastation
of the 1972 earthquake. Despite all the
reconstruction money from abroad, Somoza
appeared not to rebuild, to the anger of
many before his fall. Instead, Managua
spread out with new construction on the
perimeter of this area.
Everywhere there are reminders of the
war: damaged buildings, cars with bullet
holes and broken windows, shelled-out
factories. Each neighborhood tells its own
story. In the poorer areas younger residents
recount battles in graphic details that
sound a bit exaggerated. People speak of
Nicaragua's sufferings under Somoza, the
"inhuman tyrant": he bombed the poorer
neighborhoods of Managua, killing many
more civilians than Sandinistas; he ordered
doctors in city hospitals not to let wounded
Sandinistas survive.
But the victory of the Sandinistas in
July 1979 now overshadows the memory of
the war's suffering. The names of streets,
schools, hospitals-entire neighborhoodshave been changed to commemorate
victory: the A. C. Sandino Airport, the
Lenin-Fonseca Hospital, the Highway of
the Resistance, and more. Monuments to
Somoza or his family have been destroyed
or defaced. New ones have been erected
to commemorate the Sandinista war heroes
and civilians who gave their lives. The red
and black flag of the FSLN (Sandinista
Front of National Liberation) is everywhere.
People praise the Sandinistas for "making
the revolution possible" and for "giving
the victory to the people." They mean not
just victory, a year ago, but all that has
happened since. When an American-type
grocery re-opened, selling basic foodstuffs
98
instead of luxury goods, housewives praised
the "revolution" and the Sandinistas for
making it possible for everyone, not just
the rich, to shop there. This praise was
typical; hardly anyone I met had any criticism of the Sandinistas after their first year
in power. Most Nicaraguans I met seemed
to be in a kind of euphoria which came
of surviving a brutal war in which so many
died for the "liberation" of their country.
They appeared willing to work hard to
reconstruct their country and "continue
the revolution."
The remains of July's anniversary celebration of victory were still in evidence on
the streets of Managua in early August.
Banners proclaimed that "In NicaragUa, it
will always be the 19th of July." Billboards
and posters all over the city repeated a few
key slogans: "Sandino yesterday, Sandino
today, Sandino forever"; "An armed people
is the guarantee of victory"; "People,
Army, ... unity guarantees the Peace";
"Cuba yesterday, Nicaragua today, El
Salvador tomorrow." Others advertise new
government programs. The faces of Cesar
Agosto Sandino, the legendary rebel hero
of the 1920's and 30's (from whom the
FSLN took its name) and of the late Carlos
Amador Fonseca, Cuban-trained guerrilla
and founder of the FSLN, appear in all
shapes and sizes. The most dramatic are
their portraits in lights on Managua's two
tallest buildings, the Bank of America and
the Intercontinental Hotel.
Many songs that are popular now grew
out of the war; they are also heard in other
Central American countries, though only
in homes, not on the radio. For Nicaraguans, they are now for entertainment, but
perhaps for other Central Americans, they
serve a more serious purpose. Many are
about guns and other weapons. "The
Garand", for instance, is about how to
load, aim, shoot, and disarm the Garand
M-1 rifle; it lists its specifications and praises
its accuracy. There are also hand grenade
songs and homemade bomb songs. Other
songs tell of the heroic deeds and sometimes tragic ends of Sandinista guerrillas.
With catchy slogans, the songs are sometimes moving in their revelation of the
passion and hope of the Sandinistas' long
struggle. A song commemorating Carlos
Fonseca begins "When we were in jail, a
member of the National Guard. full of joy,
came and told us that Carlos Fonseca had
died. And we replied, 'Carlos Fonesca is of
the dead that never die!' ... "
Carlos Fonseca had promised that when
the Sandinistas took power, all Nicaraguans
would have the opportunity to learn to
read and write. The Sandinistas claimed
that there were 669,000 illiterate adults
(forty percent of the population), of whom
ten percent were considered "unteachable."
So, the Sandinistas formed the "Popular
Army of Literacy" (EPA). According to the
newspapers, 50,000 young people from all
over the country left their homes and
families to teach their "comrades" to read
and write. Members of the Sandino Army,
students, even some volunteers from
abroad made up many of the literacy
"brigades"; all the "brigadistas" that I met
were under thirty. In exchange for their
services, they received room and board.
Classes were held in homes, factories,
farms, whenever the students had time. By
August, newspapers claimed that 464,500
people had learned to read and write, 70%
of their goal.
The crusade received an enormous
amount of publicity. In the official Sandinista newspaper, headlines declared towns
and districts "liberated" and "victorious
over ignorance" as more and more areas
reached their goal. A billboard-sized chart
set up in front of the Palace of the Revolution showed the progress of each region.
The media called the brigadistas "sons of
Sandino''. They claimed service in the
EPA amounted to fighting for the FSLN in
the war, because the EPA was "fighting"
the "next phase of the revolution." They
published simple handwritten letters from
WINTER 1981
�the newly literate that thanked the brigadistas and praised the Sandinistas and
the "revolution" for bringing them "out of
the darkness and ignorance." The two
television stations (now controlled by the
"Sandinista System of Television") showed
people who had just learned to read and
write, reading newspapers and talking
about how it felt to be able to read. When
only a little short of their goal, the government planned a "victory" celebration in
Managua, in honor of EPA's workers.
Independent and openly critical of the
Somoza regime, La Prensa for decades
stood for political life in Nicaragua. The
murder in 1978 of editor Pedro Chamorro,
allegedly on Somoza's orders, set off the
public protest and wide-spread strikes that
led to full scale civil war. Fifteen months
later, Somoza had La Prensa-which had
kept printing after Chamorro's murderbombed and burned. A month later, shortly
after the Sandinista victory, La Prensa, using another newspaper's facilities in nearby
Leon, was back on the streets. Chamorro's
widow was named to the five-member ruling junta (resigning less than a year later to
go back to La Prensa). Left in the hands of
another family member, Xavier Chamorro,
the newspaper all but lost its independence. Editorial comments suggesting that
reporters distorted facts in the service of
"imperialism" prefaced articles critical of
the Sandinistas or communist countries. In
the end, under pressure from the board of
directors, Xavier resigned-to start his own
newspaper with workers who had struck to
preserve La Prensa's pro-Sandinista line.
Members of the Chamorro family now
run all three major newspapers in Nicaragua: La Prensa is run by Jaime Chamorro,
El Nuevo Diario by Xavier, and the official
FSLN paper, La Barricada by Carlos
Chamorro. La Barricada, named for the
way battles were fought behind barricades
in the streets, features Sandinista propaganda above all. Much of the content of
El Nuevo Diario, while not strictly propaganda, is nevertheless pro-Sandinista and
against the U. S. Only La Prensa-which
prints much of the same news as the
others-also prints letters from readers
which question Sandinistas about friends
or family members who have disappeared
from jail or from the streets. The other
newspapers refer to La Prensa as the
"bourgeois" paper. All three comment on
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
each other's "inaccuracies" and "misrepresentations". When an article head·
lined, "Elections? The People have not
asked for them!" appeared in La Barricada,
La Prensa responded the next day with the
results of its own poll that showed that
roughly eighty percent of the people questioned wanted elections. Most of the criticism now centers on La Prensa for its
articles mildly critical of the Sandinista
regime.
All three newspapers print the regime's
column, "Our New Trench-Lecture for
the Literate". Printed in extra large type
with only a few lines to an installment, it
tells the story of A. C. Sandino and the
beginnings of the rebel movement in a
simple kindergarten style especially tailored
to the reading ability of the newly literate.
This column claims that the peasants were
Sandinistas too because they served as the
"ears" of Sandino and his men. According
to the column, even the children helped
the "revolution". With their noise, they
prompted the "traitor" (Somoza's father)
and the "invaders' (the U. S. Marines) to
overestimate the number of rebels.
The victory of the Sandinistas is told
everywhere in Central America. In tiny,
overpopulated El Salvador, the violence
has become unpredictable; some call it
open civil war. I found the situation too
dangerous and continued north to Guatemala. Guatemala, too, has seen a great
increase in political violence in the last
year, but the situation is not yet as bad as
in El Salvador. Still, when I think of Guate·
mala, I am afraid-afraid of what is
happening now and what is likely to
happen soon. As one U.S. congressman
put it, Guatemala is a bloodbath waiting to
happen.
In Guatemala, what there is of a middle
ground, a moderate side, is shrinking
rapidly. There are many factors involved in
the situation, but it is the extremist violence
from all sides that polarizes the country.
While the government may in fact be on
the middle ground, opposition groups feel
that it arid any groups that support it also
support-or at least condone-extremist
violence. Although the government at least
outwardly condemns violence, some of
their methods~i.e. killing Indians suspected of collaborating with the guerrillas-tend to have fhe opposite effect. The
Indians, alienated from the government by
these acts, turn to the guerrillas. The government seems to be doing itself in. Conservative groups, on the other hand, see
the opposition-i.e. any group that does
not support the government-as supporting the Marxist guerrillas and therefore opposed to peaceful means of reform or
change. The extreme conservatives take
matters into their own hands, as they hold
the government to be ineffective. There is
an all-pervasive attitude of being anti-anticommunist, anti-fascist, anti-government.
Although the terms "left" and "right" are
used by the different groups to label their
opposition, it is not that simple, since
different groups on the same "sides" have
different ideologies.
Extremist violence takes standard forms:
assassination, murder, and kidnappingsometimes for ransom, but more usually
the victims' bodies are discovered days
later. There are many groups, each with its
own targets. Some, particularly the Marxist
guerrilla organizations, claim public responsibility for their acts-especially kid·
napping, since the guerrillas usually ask for
ransom. Most terrorism, however, is face·
less, with perpetrators identified in the
newspapers as "unknown men". These
"unknown men" murder labor leaders and
organizers, student leaders and professors,
opposition party officials, journalists, and
priests-anyone suspected of "leftist"
sympathies. That these "unknown men"
operate as groups is apparent from their
methods; that they are radically "rightwing" is clear from their choice of victims.
It is widely believed that they are govern·
ment supported. The arguments for this
are compelling, though not conclusive.
First, in the late sixties-another peak in
guerrilla activity in Guatemala-the Army
and other government security forces
openly killed and terrorized the same
people in the same way. Many believe that
the government now operates underground
to protect itself from being accused of
resorting to terrorism. In several incidents
some connection with the government has
been established. In June, an unsuccessful
murder attempt took place on the national
university campus, which has seen much
terrorism. Two snipers shot at a student,
wounding him seriously. The two men did
not have time to make their getaway, however, and other students saw them and
chased them down. The students burned
99
�one alive and then lynched them both.
The wounded student was rushed to a
government hospital, but his family, fearing
for his safety, removed him to a private one.
Within 24 hours, more "unknown men"
tried unsuccessfully to gain entrance to
the hospital, shooting up windows and
doors with machine guns. As soon as his
health permitted, the student sought asylum in Costa Rica. The two snipers were
said by the newspapers to have been "confidential agents" of the Army. The Army
acknowledged this but denied any connection with their actions. In other
incidents, vehicles used have been traced
to branches of the government, such as the
judicial department. That some members
of these groups have been members of
government security forces does not prove
that they were acting on orders from the
government. The government, however,
raises suspicions, because it appears to do
little to prevent or investigate these incidents. The vice president, Villagran
Kramer, protested the continuing violence
by threatening to resign, but was reportedly
silenced by threats on his life. Eventually,
however, he did resign and went to the
u.s.
There are four main Marxist guerril1a
organizations now operating in the country.
Mainly involved in shoot-outs with the
Army in the mountains and in urban
terrorism, they say they aim at total ''revolution". These groups are underground:
your next door neighbor could be a member
and you'd never know. I was taken into the
confidence of some people who claimed
membership in one of these organizations.
Cautious and not ready to answer many of
my questions, they did, however, tell me
a great deal. Comparatively successful in
their everyday working lives, these people
still lived in the poor neighborhoods they
grew up in. They say they want someday
to "liberate" the people of Guatemala, the
poor and the Indians, from the "oppression" of the government. And when they
say this, their dedication to- the cause
becomes apparent. They are willing to die
for it like heroes, knowing that it may be
without glory, in anonymity.
The guerrilla group of the men I talked
to is separated into two main divisions. The
larger is the guerrilla army-in-training hiding
in the mountains. These men claim that
Indians make up thirty percent of the army.
100
(Even a few Indian enlistments would
terrify conservative Guatemalans, who
have up to now taken Indian passivity for
granted.) Smaller, and up until recently,
more active, the second division is made
up of independent units, each with a
specific mission: procuring arms, making
explosives, trailing prospective targets,
gathering information, stealing vehicles,
etc. Their arms and money come from
ransoms and bank robberies-and other
less easily identifiable sources. Guns and
ammunition are stolen from Army depots
and outposts. They receive, they told me,
arms, money, and training from Nicaragua-one of them received instruction
in the use of new weapons at a Sandinista
training session in southern El Salvador a
few months ago. (Aid from Cuba and from
the P.L.O. is also suspected. See Robert
Moss, "Terror: A Soviet Export," New York
Times Magazine, 8 November 1980.) They
have an overall plan which is known by all
members, but its specifics are revealed only
little by little. Unlike the Sandinistas, the
leaders of the organizations have not yet
made themselves known publicly. Members
of units, I suspect, know only their immediate superiors. Although they call themselves Marxists, they are much better at
saying what's wrong with the current
government and what it stands for than at
explaining their own political ideas and
their plans. What is important to them now
is "bringing the revolution," without imposing their ideology. They believe that, as
in Nicaragua, those who do the fighting
will end up in power.
To prevent further polarization of the
country, the government has launched an
expensive advertising campaign. There are
radio, newspaper, and television ads with
the theme "Let us maintain the peace in
Guatemala." One ad tells Guatemalans
that their brothers, the soldiers of the
Army, protect them from "foreigners" and
"traitorous" Guatemalans who want to
steal their land. Another ca11s upon "citizens" to stand up against terrorism for the
sake of their and their children's future.
Another shows Cubans upon their arrival
in the U. S. speaking of the hardships of
life under communism. To my surprise,
many Guatemalans doubted that the
Mariel boatlift brought more than a few
hundred refugees to the U. S. They dismissed accurate reports in the newspapers
of more than 100,000 refugees as propaganda of the government and the rich.
There is also a big campaign to promote
the government of General Lucas Garcia
as "progressive" and humanitarian. Ads
show hospitals, roads, and public housing,
some already built, and some under construction, other planned-but too few, too
late, in the opinion of many Guatemalans.
In August, the guerrillas succeeded in
sharply cutting down public attendance at
an important rally in support of the government and against terrorism. A few days
before the rally, bombs exploded all over
Guatemala city. The biggest one, which
killed eight persons and wounded many
others, went off in the park in front of the
National Palace, where the rally was to
take place. Guerrilla groups publicly
claimed responsibility for the bombs, and
the turnout (forty thousand in a country
where twice the number is not unusual)
was not nearly what had been expected.
The country's wealthy elite seem determined to fight the "communist threat,"
in the government's phrase. These people
do not believe that the "leftist movement",
as they can it, is popular and spontaneous.
They claim rather that it is directed and
financed by outside parties, namely Cuba
and Nicaragua. A rancher on the Caribbean
coast explained that he let the Army maintain and train several hundred soldiers on
his property in order that they might guard
the coast. He claims that boats carrying
arms from Cuba have been intercepted.
People like this rancher feel that they've
got their backs against the wall, and that
they must-and will-fight to preserve
what they feel is theirs.
In the face of such violent conditions,
life goes on, but there is more and more an
atmosphere of fear, and a feeling of
impending disaster. Killings by extremists
leave no one untouched. While each side
has its own targets, innocent people who
are in the wrong place at the wrong time
lose their lives. People who have reason
to believe that they are on somebody's
"list" try to insure their safety. Dealing
with these threats alters everday life-as
Salvadoreans who have fled to Guatemala
because of death threats can attest. In some
instances, it means having bodyguards,
although this is not always very effective.
For most, it means never keeping a regular
schedule. It means never taking the same
WINTER 1981
�route to work, using different cars, coming
and going at irregular hours. It means not
always spending the night at home but
going to the homes of friends and family
to keep from establishing a predictable
pattern. For many, many Guatemalans, it
means carrying a gun-especially at night.
A woman who fears for her husband, an
economics professor at the university, says
he's being watched and followed. She says
she knows what happens to professors
suspected of "leftist sympathies"-if they
do not flee to Mexico, or "join the guerrillas in the mountains," they are murdered
or they disappear.
When I left Guatemala in August, friends
on all sides felt that the situation would
wait for the outcome of the U. S. elections
in November. Even large business deals
were pending the results of the elections.
More conservative Guatemalans have
been infuriated with the Carter administration and its human rights policy. They
feel that the State Department and the
administration have supported the "leftist
movement", if only by not unequivocally
supporting the current government. From
the way they talked about the U.S. election,
one would think they could vote. The
guerrillas I spoke with hinted that if Carter
were reelected they could take their time,
but if Reagan won, they might have to
speed up the implementation of their plan.
The elections are sure to be front page
news, just as the conventions were, reflecting their importance in Guatemala's
affairs. Among the conservatives, although
there is an anti-Carter attitude, they are
not anti-American. Some people even believe that if anything drastic happens, the
U. S. will step in. The only strong antiAmerican attitudes I encountered were
among students and guerrillas. On the
whole, Guatemalans are still fairly friendly
to the U.S. This may change in the future.
In Nicaragua before the war, there was not
nearly the widespread anti-Americanism
that one encounters there now. For while
Washington and the Sandinistas deal with
each other, the Nicaraguans do not forget
the verse of the FSLN hymn that replaced
their national anthem: "The sons of
Sandino/Not to be sold nor surrendered~
Ever!/We fight against the Yankee/Enemy
of humanity."
HONOR BULKLEY
A student at St. John's College, Annapolis,
Honor Bulkley has made three extended visits
to Central America in the last three years, most
recently for three months in the summer of 1980.
FRoM OuR READERS
To the Editor:
Thank you for publishing the marvelous
"Three by Meyer Liben" in the July The
College/The St. John's Review.
In your note on the stories, you quote
George Dennison's description (1976) to
the effect that he [Liben] was "an unknown
first-rate writer." In my book, The Ordeal
of Civility: Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss and
the Jewish Struggle with Modernity (Basic
Books 1974) on page 208, you will find an
attempt to appraise the greatness.
july 18, 1980
jOHN M. CUDDIHY
The passage Mr. Cuddihy refers to reads:
All these considerations come to mind
when we reflect on Malamud's most
recent novel, The Tenants (1971). Why
the vogue for Malamud's stories, rather
than those incomparably better stories
of Meyer Liben, for example? Liben's
characters are precisely observed; they
resist, with the stubbornness of stones,
being blown up into Malamudian emblems. They are thus culturally unavailable; obviously, this is "minor fiction."
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
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Radista, Leo
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Sisson, Barbara J.
von Oppen, Beate Ruhm
Wilson, Curtis A.
Thompson, Homer A.
Lund, Nelson
Collins, Arthur
Dennison, George
Rangel, Carlos
Radista, Leo
Liben, Meyer
Morrisey, Will
Bolotin, David
Bulkley, Honor
Brann, Eva T. H.
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FIL.E
ULY1980THECOLLEGET
IESTJOHNSREVIEWTHE
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�ECOLLEGETHESTJOHN
1
Kepler and the Mode of Vision
Curtis Wtlson
16
Affirmative Action and the Rights of Man
25
John Paul II and the World of Tomorrow jean Lafoy
29
0
"Plato's Theory of Ideas"
Fred Baumann
Eva Brann
38
Three by Meyer Liben
45
Scientific Discovery, Logic, and Luck Sttliman Drake
49
On Sophocles' Ajax David Bolotin
58
FIRST READINGS
Leven's Creator George Doskow
Eyes of His Own-and Words Leo Raditsa
61
AT HOME AND ABROAD
Letter from Moscow
64
Stephen Deane
FROM OuR READERS
Editor: Leo Raditsa
Associate Editor: Wilfred J\.1. 1\lcC\ay (July I)
l\.lanaging f.ditor: Thomas Parmn, Jr.
f.ditorial Assistant: Barbara J. Sisson
THE COLLEGE is published by the Office of
the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, 1\larylancl 21404. Richard D. Weigle, President, Eelward G. Sparrow, Dean. Published twice yearly,
usually in July and January.
Consulting Editors: Eva Brann, Beate Ruhm
von Oppen, Curtis A. Wilson.
Volume XXXII
)ULYl980
Number 1
©1980, St. John's College. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN
0010~0862
Composition: Britton Composition Co.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co.
�Kepler and the Mode of Vision
Curtis Wilson
How do we see?
Opening our eyes, looking outward from the eye sockets in our heads, we perceive-unless perhaps we are being subjected to an experiment by a psychologist, or are
about to faint away~we usually perceive objects in a
world: chairs, the floor, walls, windows, trees, houses,
automobiles, dogs, cats, birds, people; each object situated
at any moment in some place in an environment that
spreads out from here, that is, from wherever we happen
at the moment to be. Visual perception, almost always, is
of persisting, stable, space-occupying things or objects,
things not only extended and shaped in length and width
but modelled in depth, and located with respect to certain
background surfaces, like the floor or walls of the room, or
the terrain outside, or the surface of the bay. The solid
objects look solid, the square objects look square, the horizontal surfaces look horizontal, and a person who approaches me from 100 feet away does not grow to ten
times his previous size. The visual world with its stable,
meaningful objects remains patiently there for my inspection, in all its meaningful known-ness and unknown-ness.
It is all so familiar. And yet the performance of seeing,
all of you surely know, is a complex affair. It depends on
certain organs or instruments and conditions. In order for
anyone to see, there must be light to see by; the eyes must
be open, and must focus and point properly; certain sensitive cells of the retina of the eye must react to light in certain ways, nerve fibrils must transmit impulses to certain
nerve ganglia, and these must transmit impulses on to
what has been called the enchanted loom, the brain. Let
anyone of these conditions not be fulfilled, and seeing will
not occur. Yet, seeing does not "feel like" a. complex,
physical process. Rather, it "feels as if' things are simply
An earlier version of this essay was read by Curtis Wilson in September
1974 at the Annapolis campus, the traditional Dean's opening lecture
that year.
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
there when we open our eyes. The fact that, on the basis
of physiological processes occurring in my head, I should
see a world out there, a world that I believe I share with
you, though at any moment I acknowledge~and I think
you acknowledge~that we are seeing it under different
perspectives: this, when I start to reflect on it, seems little
short of miracle.
Please do not expect me to explain away that miracle.
The world that I perceive before me, into which I enter
perforce, and where I meet you on a basis of essential
equality~that perceived world I take to be a primary
datum. Its existence seems to me to be presupposed, in
one way or another, in whatever I may say, on any subject
whatsoever, even when, seeking to philosophize, I pretend or imagine that it is not so. My language and hence
my thought are deeply rooted in the human experience of
the humanly perceived world. My seeing and my knowing
seem to be from within that world. True enough, I can be
persuaded that the humanly perceived world is not the
world simply. It differs from a eat's world or a rabbit's
world, painted only in shades of gray; it differs from the
world of an arthropod, a bee, say, with its compound,
movement-sensitive eyes. The human eye, we are told, responds only to a narrow band in the spectrum of radiation
frequencies. Does this mean that our seeing and hence
our knowing are fundamentally perspectival and partial?
Is there some act of prestidigitation, whereby I can gain a
perspective on my seeing and my knowing as though from
outside my world?
Such questions were raised in antiquity. One is reminded, for instance, of Protagoras' assertion that "each
thing is as it appears to him who perceives it" Protagoras
is identifying perception with what is. He is attempting to
surmount the paradox presented by earlier cosmologists,
for example the atomists, who on the one hand insisted
on a sharp disjunction between appearance and reality,
between what appears and what is, while on the other
1
�claiming sensation or perception as the basis of their theories. Protagoras proposes, in contrast, that there are no
abiding elements underlying the world, but that the world
consists of motions. Such motions, encountering one another, produce both the thing perceived and the perception. Neither the perception nor the thing perceived exists
of itself, but only each for and with the other. Where
nothing is perceived, nothing exists, and conversely, whatever is perceived, exists. Protagoras concludes, "my perception is true for me, since its object at any moment is
what is there for me, and I am judge of what is for me,
that it is, and of what is not, that it is not." Protagoras is
asserting that it is impossible to err. The implication,
unfortunately, is that the notion of truth is empty, no
statement being controvertible. Protagoras attempts to
encapsulate his doctrine in the famous formula, "Man is
the measure of all things." But it seems to be human beings in the plural he is referring to, and they disagree.
Moreover, it is not dear why other creatures, say cats or
crustaceans, should not be the measure of all things. How
maintain the Protagorean thesis against one who denies
it, since he, too, is a 'measure of all things'?
Issues of this kind were being talked about and argued
over at the time modern science came to be. Skepticism
with regard to the possibility of true knowledge arose out
of the religious conflicts of the 16th century; out of the
discovery and exploration of the New World, which revealed the existence of plants, animals, and peoples unknown to Aristotle; out of certain challenges to traditional
medicine and astronomy posed by Paracelsus and Copernicus. The men most notably responsible for setting modern science on its way, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, were
each of them aiming to make a new beginning, to lay new
foundations for human knowledge. The attempt at a new
beginning becomes most radical and far-reaching in Descartes.
It is with the theory of visual perception as it relates to
the emergence of Cartesian thought that I am here concerned. My account will begin with the development of
Kepler's theory of the eye as an optical instrument,
including his discovery in 1603 of the formation of the retinal image. I shall go into some detail as to how this discovery came about, as an example of learning and discovery.
Then I shall turn to the Cartesian interpretation of the
Keplerian result. For Descartes, Kepler's theory of the optics of the eye becomes an inspiration and vindication of
Cartesian physics and philosophy. In the final section, I
shall undertake a brief critique of the Cartesian interpretation.
Prior to the publication of Kepler's theory, from the
13th through the 16th centuries, the generally accepted
theory of vision in the European universities was that due
to an Arab optician of the 11th century, Ibn al-Haythamthe Europeans referred to him as Alhazen. Without describing this theory in much detail, let me say, first, that,
following Galen, the Greek physician, Alhazen supposed
the sensitive organ of the eye to be the crystalline humor,
2
what we how call the lens. This crystalline humor was
supposed to be right in the center of the eye, a notion not
challenged till the second half of the 16th century. The
ciliary muscles and ligaments, connecting the lens to the
coatings of the eye, were thought by Galen to be nerves,
and this was a reason for supposing the crystalline humor
to be the sensitive element. Secondly, Alhazen assumed
that not all the light rays entering the eye were effectual
in producing vision, but only those rays which started
from the surface of the object, crossed the surface of the
eye perpendicularly, and came to an apex in the center of
the crystalline humor, thus forming a pyramid. If more
rays were to take part in the production of vision, Alhazen
thought, the result would be indistinctness and confusion.
He had no notion of the bringing to a focus of a bundle or
'pencil' of rays within the eye, nor did anyone before Kepler; it was Kepler who introduced these terms pencil and
focus into optics. Thirdly, as to what the soul senses, Alhazen essentially followed the Aristotelian account. The
soul senses the sensible form of the thing seen, without its
matter. This is not a copy theory; no images are involved;
it is an identity theory. To perceive the sensible form of a
thing is to perceive the object as it is. The soul is passive;
it receives the sensible form. What is received' in the eye
must travel along the optic nerve to the brain, according
to Alhazen, in order for sensation to be completed. But already in the eye, the motion of light has somehow brought
about a sensation, that is, the reception of the sensible
form.
How did Kepler come to break with this optical tradition of the universities? Certain anatomical discoveries
played a role. In the latter half of the 16th century, it was
discovered that the crystalline humor was far forward in
the eye, and that the cutting of the ciliary processes does
not prevent vision. But at a crucial point, I believe, Kepler
was dependent here on a tradition that was not an academic one, the tradition of perspectiva pingendi. In this
term, perspectiva means not what we mean by uPerspective," but rather the same as optics, the science of vision.
Optics as studied in the universities went under the name
"perspectiva"; thus the standard university textbook of
optics for 300 years up to Kepler's time was Johannes Peeham's Perspectiva communis, where the adjective "communis" or "common" apparently meant merely that the
text was the standard one. Perspectiva pingendi, in contrast, was the optics of painting, the science that forms
the basis of the art of drawing in perspective, to use the
term in the sense that it has now come to have. Perspectiva pingendi was sometimes referred to as a "secret art,"
with its rules passed orally from one painter or draftsman
to another in the 15th century. But Kepler was able to
read about it in a book by Albrecht Durer published in
15 38, and entitled Instruction in Mensuration. I shall be
pursuing this connection shortly.
The starting point of the train of thought that led Kepler into an intensive study of optics was an astronomical
anomaly. In April of 1598, Tycho Brahe, the famous obJULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE
�servational astronomer, wrote to the professor of mathematics at Tilbingen, to report his observation of a solar
eclipse earlier that year. What was especially remarkable
was the apparent size of the moon when eclipsing the
sun.
Truly [Tycho wrote], it must be recognized that the moon
when it is
the ecliptic and when it is new [this means it is
going to eclipse the sun] does not appear to be the size which
it is at other times at full moon, even though it is then at the
same distance from the earth; but it is, as it were, constricted
by about one part in five, from certain causes to be disclosed
elsewhere.
on
The causes were to be disclosed elsewhere, but not by
Tycho, who was totally ignorant of what they were. The
only thing he did conclude for sure was that there could
never be a total eclipse of the sun, in which the sun was
completely covered by the moon, and in this he was
wrong.
Kepler read of the anomaly in a letter from Maestlin,
his former teacher at Ttibingen, in july. He was at this
time 27 years old, and employed as a school teacher in the
Duchy of Styria in Lower Austria. The report of a twenty
percent shrinkage of the moon during solar eclipses perplexed and intrigued him. He imagined various hypotheses to explain the appearance, for instance that the moon
had a transparent atmosphere. He also studied medieval
books on the perspectiva of the schools, seeking an optical
explanation. On july 10, 1600, there occurred another
eclipse of the sun, and Kepler observed and measured it
with special apparatus set up in the marketplace of Graz,
in Styria, By the end of the month he had correctly resolved the Tychonic paradox in terms of optics. As he reported a little later to Maestlin:
Figure l
the wall, through which the rays of the sun are admitted
(Figure 1). The idea of using the camera for quantitative
astronomy goes back at least to the 13th century, but its
common use for the measuring of eclipses dates from the
1540's. The figure is from a book on astronomical measurements published in 1545. It shows a double cone of
imagined light rays passing through the tiny aperture in
the wall, and it clearly depicts the inversion of the solar
crescent on the wall. Let me incidentally call your attention to the fact that the depiction is in focused or linear
perspective, that is, the lines that we take to be receding
perpendicularly from the plane of the drawing are so oriented as to intersect at a point, called the vanishing point.
... I have been fully occupied in calculating and observing
the solar eclipse. While I was involved in preparing the special
instrument, setting up the boards under the sky, some fellow
took the opportunity to observe another shadow and it produced not an eclipse of the sun but of my purse, costing me 30
Gulden. A costly eclipse, by God! But from it I have deduced
the explanation why the moon shows so small a diameter on
the ecliptic at new moon. And so in what was left of July, I
have written a "Paralipomena" to the Second Book of the Optics of Witelo.
Witelo's Optics had been written about A.D. 1270, in
northern Italy, and was based largely on the Optics of Alhazen. Paralipomena means "Things Omitted." When
Kepler's book on optics finally appeared, in 1604, it had
swollen from a brief explanation ofTycho's paradox into a
450 page treatise, the foundation of modern optics, the
science not of vision but of light. But it still carried the old
title, Things Omitted by Witelo.
Now what was Tycho's paradox, really, and how did
Kepler resolve it? You must first understand that in Tycho's time, eclipses were being observed by means of the
camera obscura, a dark room with a single, small hole in
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Figure 2
Kepler's eclipse measuring instrument in 1600 was not
an obscure room, but an obscure tent (Figure 2). It consisted like the camera of a small aperture and a screen for
receiving the image. The bar carrying the screens could
be adjusted so that the receiving screen would be perpendicular to the rays of the sun. When an observation was in
progress, the whole apparatus, including Kepler himself,
not shown here, was covered by a black cloth.
Now Tycho's shrunken moon is actually a shrunken
shadow. To understand the shrinking, we have to understand how a luminous object forms an image behind an
aperture that is not a point, but has a finite Size. In the
camera obscura, it won't do to use a very tiny aperture,
because then the image is feeble, and its boundaries be-
3
�I
I
Figure 5
cil, which in his day meant painter's brush or pencil. The
medieval analysis takes the object as its starting point;
Kepler's analysis takes the point source of light rays as its
starting point. Although the pencils and the pyramids encompass exactly the same rays, the analysis in terms of
pencils is probably the more helpful in letting us see what
the shape of the image will be. In the case of the luminous
crescent of the partially eclipsed sun, for instance, it will
be a crescent with rounded horns. The quantitative analy-
Figure 3
come indistinct. But let the aperture be the size of a pea,
as Kepler did, and the size of the image will be affected in
the way shown by Figure 3. On the left imagine a luminous triangle. The rays of light emerging from any given
point of the triangle, and passing through the round aperture in the middle, form a cone. On the right you can see
that the illuminated portion of the screen will not be triangular, but will be of such a shape as one obtains from a
triangle by augmenting it on all sides by a border of uniform width; that is, it will be a three-sided figure with
rounded corners. The width of the border depends on the
distance of the object and on the distance and size of the
aperture. If the luminous object is distant enough so that
the rays of light coming from any point of it and passing
through the aperture are very nearly parallel, then, very
nearly, the width of the border will be half the diameter of
the aperture.
I
I
e:>AI~
Figure 4
Actually, there are two ways of conceiving the formation of the image. One can think of the whole luminous
object as being projected through each point of the aperture, as in Figure 4, to yield innumerable overlapping images on the screen. This was the standard medieval way of
analyzing the rays coming from an object: that is, to think
of them as forming a pyramid with base on the object,
apex in the eye, or in the case here, in the aperture of the
camera. The other way of analyzing the image formation,
the one Kepler used, is shown in Figure 5. Here one considers all the rays emerging from each point of the object.
To the cone of rays emerging from a given point and passing through a round aperture, Kepler gave the name pen-
4
Figure 6
sis of Tycho's paradoxical phenomenon is now easy; see
Figure 6. The crescent image of the sun has been augmented on all sides by a border of width equal to the
radius of the aperture, while the shadow of the moon has
been diminished by a border of the same width.
This Keplerian solution to the Tychonic paradox happens to have been very important in the history of 17th
century astronomy, but it is so straight-forward that I do
not anticipate your being moved to rapture over it. It
simply makes a rigorous application of the rectilinear
propagation of light to the camera obscura. Had this never
been done before? It had, (by Alhazen), but the correct
solution was unknown in Europe before Kepler. The
medieval treatises discussed a special form of the problem, namely, why it is that, behind an angular aperture,
when the screen is sufficiently distant, the image cast by
the sun is round. The most common solution among the
medieval opticians was to say that light has a tendency to
round itself out, that it contains an active power which
brings this about. Light, it was said, was the bearer of all
creative and causal action, and thus had this power.
Kepler read these medieval discussions. He was even attracted to the neoplatonic theory of light that they contained. He has left us a very explicit account of the way in
JULY 1980 • 1HE COLLEGE
�Figure 7
which he came to reject the notion that light could round
itself out, in violation of rectilinear propagation.
A certain light (he writes in the Paralipomena) drove me out of
the shadows of Pecham several years ago. For, since I could
not comprehend the obscure sense of the words from the diagram on the page, I had recourse to a personal observation in
three dimensions. I placed a book on high to take the place of
the shining body. Between it and the floor I set a tablet having
a many-cornered aperture. Next, a thread was sent down from
one corner of the book through the aperture and onto the
floor; it fell on the floor in such a way that it grazed the edges
of the aperture; I traced the path produced and by this
worked out, at least in part, in ancient times, apparently in
connection with the painting of scenery for dramas. It was
the Greeks who first entered upon the path of trying to
produce, on a flat surface, the illusion of three-dimensional figures and scenes; in the painting of other ancient
peoples before they come under Greek influence, there is
almost no evidence of an interest in such illusion. The difference seems to be connected with the Greek interest in
fiction, epic and drama freed from ritualistic constraints.
So on countless Greek vases and mixing bowls, one finds
painted scenes in which something wicked and interesting is going on. The photograph of Figure 7 shows a scene
from the ambush of Dolan in the Iliad.
The mastery of techniques for producing the three-
method created a figure on the floor similar to the aperture
... [He goes on to describe the tracing of the aperture from
each salient point of the book]. And so it became possible for
solving the problem to bring in circularity, not of the rays of
light, but of the sun itself; not because the circle is the most
perfect figure, but because it is the figure of the shining body.
were mastered over a period of some centuries. Ancient
So it is a thread that leads Kepler out of his perplexity,
and to the vindication of rectilinear propagation of light,
and of the invariant size of the moon. It may seem preposterous to ask where the idea of using the thread came
from, but Stephen Straker, a recent student of Kepler's
optics, has made an interesting guess. It has to do with
perspectiva pingendi.
What is perspectiva pingendi, focused or linear perspective, Renaissance perspective, as it is variously called? The
rules of linear or focused perspective seem to have been
authors who write of the history of painting, like Pliny and
Quintilian, record it as a series of triumphs in the produc·
bon of progressively more persuasive illusions. In the final
stages of the Greek progress, the paintings were painted
not on vases, which tend to be preserved, but on walls
which tend to crumble. However, the accident of the
eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79 has perserved for us some
of those paintings in the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Such signatures as one finds on the paintings are
Greek. A large part of the art lay in learning to rely on the
imagination of the beholder, which is very obliging, and
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
dimensional illusion was progressive. Foreshortening, con-
sistent handling of light and shade, the increasing mistiness
with distance-the various tricks of illusionist painting
5
�Figure 10
Figure 8
assures us that the young woman in Figure 8 is a creature
of grace and beauty; we can never know whether it is good
luck or bad that she can never turn around. In Figure 9 we
have an imaginary, sacred landscape, in which spatial re·
cession is suggested by an adroit handling of light and
linear perspective. Also present is what Leonardo will call
Figure 9
aerial perspective, the increasing indistinctness as the
scene recedes into the distance. But linear perspective
emerges most clearly in wall decorations from about the
middle of the first century B.C., that represent theatre
sets, apparently a common form of wall decoration for
homes. In Figure 10 the lines of the colonnaded court,
seen above the facade wall, recede to a single vanishing
point, as they should because of their parallelism.
6
That a mathematical theory of linear perspective had
been worked out in antiquity is suggested by certain pas·
sages in the book on architecture written by Vitruvius
about 25 B.C. He describes "scenography" as the sketch·
ing of the front and of the retreating sides of buildings and
the correspondence of all lines to a fixed center, the 'van·
ishing point' of the later theory of linear perspective. "It is
necessary," he says, "that, a fixed centre being established, the lines correspond by natural law to the sight of
the eyes and the extension of the rays, so that certain images may render the appearance of buildings in the painting of stages, and things which are drawn upon certain
surfaces may seem in one case to be receding, and in another to be projecting."
During medieval times the interest in visual illusion
faded, to be revived in the late 13th and 14th centuries by
the artists that Dante praises, Cimabue and Giotto. But it
was not till the early 15th century that a mathematical
theory of perspective reappeared. It was the work of
Brunelleschi, the architect of the great dome of the cathedral in Florence, and a reader of Vitruvius. Brunelleschi' s
procedure started from the architectural ground-plan and
elevation; lines were drawn from every salient point of
these plans to the position of the eye as projected onto
the same plane; the intersection of these connecting lines
with the picture plane gave the dimensions to use in the
perspective construction. Brunelleschi's procedure came
to be called the costruzione legittima. Other, less timeconsuming procedures for producing a similar result were
later introduced. The first treatise on painter's perspective was written by Leon Battista Alberti in 1435, and
Alberti makes much of the sottilissimo vela, shown in
Figure 11 in a somewhat uncomfortable representation by
Durer. It is a grid of threads through which the object to
be drawn is looked at from a fixed point. It has sometimes
been asserted that a curvilinear system of perspective
would be more correct than the linear perspective used in
JULY 1980 • 1HE COLLEGE
�Figure 11
the Renaissance. Panofsky, the late historian of art, endorsed this notion, claiming that Renaissance perspective
was a mere convention, comparable to the conventions of
versification in poetry. This is surely wrong. Linear perspective is based on certain constraining assumptions,
namely that only one eye is used and that the head is kept
immobile. But given these assumptions, it does what the
Renaissance artists thought it did; it sends to the eye the
same pattern of lines and points as the object itself would.
It has nothing to do with the shape of the retina or with
neurophysiology or psychology; it is simply a matter of
rectilinear light rays and projective geometry.
The rectilinear light ray is materialized in the procedure
represented in the picture by Durer in Figure 12. A perspeCtive picture of a lute is being constructed. A needle or
nail having a large eye has been fastened into the righthand wall. A heavy thread is led through the needle, a
weight being attached to the lower end of the thread. Between the needle and the lute, a frame is set up which has
a little door hinged to it that is free to move in and out of
the plane of the frame. Crossing the rectangular space enclosed by the frame are two other threads which the picture does not clearly show; they are free to be moved
across the plane of the frame; they intersect at right
angles and so define a point of the plane. The free end of
weighted thread is led through the plane of the frame and
held on a point of the lute by the man on the left. The
threads crossing in the frame are moved till their intersection coincides with the point at which the weighted
thread cuts through the plane. The weighted thread is
then taken away, the little door bearing the paper is shut,
and a mark is made on the paper where the movable
threads intersect. The process must be repeated for other
points of the object-as many as the draftsman feels are
necessary for its proper portrayal. The finished picture
will show the lute as it would be seen by a single eye situated at the position of the needle in the right-hand wall. It
was a standard problem for Renaissance artists to avoid
the undesirably sharp foreshortening that results when
the beholder's eye is only an arm's length from the plane
of the picture. Durer's apparatus solves this problem
mechanically.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
It is Stephen Straker's conjecture that Kepler's thread
was the direct offspring of Dtirer's thread. Whether this is
so or not, Kepler's choice of the pencil of light as the element of his analysis of the camera obscura surely stems
from perspectiva pingendi, the projective geometry of light
rays, rather than the perspectiva communis of the schools,
according to which the light rays had the capacity to
round themselves out. Later on Kepler himself, as we
learn from a letter of 1620 from the English ambassador
Henry Wotton to Francis Bacon, used a ·camera obscurain this case a black tent with an aperture for admitting
light-to obtain projections of landscape scenes from the
Figure 12
outside; ensconcing himself within the tent, Kepler proceeded to copy the landscapes in detail, producing drawings "not as a painter but as a mathematician," to Wotton's
great wonder and admiration. The evident principle was
rectilinear propagation.
Rectilinear propagation had resolved Tycho's paradox
and accounted for the operation of the camera obscura.
But Kepler did not stop here. His Paralipomena is a big
book. In the fifth chapter he went on to consider the operation of the eye.
7
�The eye evidently resembles a camera obscura: the substances within are transparent, and the external coverings
exclude light except where the pupil or aperture is. But
the eye could not be a camera obscura, because as Kepler
had learned, the larger the relative size of the aperture,
the fuzzier the image, and the pupil of the eye was large
enough to produce a total confusion of overlapping images at the back of the eye.
Kepler turned to the accounts of the anatomists. All but
one held to the standard view, according to which the
crystalline humor was the sensitive element. A certain
Felix Plater, however, had learned that what were supposed to be the nerves to the crystalline humor could be
cut without loss of vision, and further that the crystalline
humor was far forward in the eye. To him the eye looked
like a camera obscura with a magnifying glass in front.
Such instruments had been constructed in the late 16th
century. It was left to Kepler to explain how a lens forms
an image. Convex lenses had been in use as burning and
magnifying glasses for centuries; eye-glasses had been in
use since the 13th century. But Kepler was the first to account for their operation in terms of geometrical optics,
the paths of light rays. He recognized that there could be
a one-to-one correspondence between luminous points
outside the eye, and illuminated points on the retina, provided that the cornea and crystalline humor were understood to act as lenses which refract the diverging pencils
of light from each bright point outside, and bring each of
them to convergence to illuminate a single point on the
retina. With a globe of glass containing water, he constructed a model of the eye to show how it worked. He it
was who first formulated the simple quantitative rules
governing the distances and sizes of images formed by
lenses. He was the first to be able to give an account of
nearsightedness and farsightedness, the function of eyeglasses in correcting these defects, and why, despite the
finite size of the aperture, a sharp image can be formed.
And he always describes the geometrical optics of the eye
in terms that remind us of painting: the image he calls a
pictura; he speaks of its production as a process of painting
the world outside on the retina of the eye; and for the conical bundles of light rays that do the painting, he introduces the term pencil, meaning painter's brush.
What about the upside-down-ness and left-for-right reversal of the retinal image? Kepler regards these as simply
necessitated by the behavior of light. How, given the
retinal image, vision then occurs, he does not offer to say:
I leave it to be disputed by natural philosophers (he says) how
this picture is put together by the visual spirits that reside in
the retina and nerve . ... The impression of this image on the
visual spirits is not optical but physical and wonderful (ad-
mirabilis).
Kepler is saying that what happens in the retina and optic
nerve and brain surpasses the powers of the mathematical
optician; not being reducible to mathematics, it seems to
8
be, in Kepler's view, ultimately inexplicable, analogous to
the mystery of creation.
Just as the eye was made to see colors (he writes), and the ear
to hear sounds, so the human mind was made to understand,
not whatever you please, but quantity .. .. It is the characteristic of the human understanding which seems to be such from
the law of creation, that nothing can be known completely except quantities. And so it happens that the conclusions of
mathematics are most certain and indubitable.
Kepler's view of the world was profoundly affected by
the theory of perspectiva pingendi. The theorists of perspectiva pingendi had resurrected the famous formula of
Protagoras, "man is the measure of all things." But they
meant by it not the denial of the possibility of knowledge,
but in a special way, the contrary. Seeing is perspectival,
no doubt, but the perspective can be understood. Perspective measures space; space is known through quantities; quantities measure the permanent order of nature.
At the center of every perspective system is man himself,
who becomes the judge and standard for all comparisons.
It is he, for instance, who apprehends and judges the
beauty of things, as consisting in harmonious proportions.
(This is almost a quotation from Alberti).
Kepler shared these ideas. He viewed the whole cosmos
as a divinely created, three-dimensional work of art, an im-
age of the Divine Trinity, the structure of which we can
determine from the perspectives we have of it. Man, cre-
ated in the image of God, is the contemplative creature,
the measuring creature, as Kepler repeatedly calls him.
He is placed on the midmost planet, so that by taking account of his changing position he can carry out triangulations, like a surveyer, and determine the distances of the
primary cosmic bodies and their harmonious arrange-
ment. Travel, Kepler explains, is broadening. We view the
cosmos always by means of a continually changing perspective, but by calculating for our own displacement, we
can use that very perspective to determine the cosmic dimensions and harmonious order. And so doing, Kepler
says, the soul which is like a point, becoming contemplative, expands as it were into a circle. The sphere is re-
served as the image for God himself.
I turn now to Descartes. In a letter of 1638 to an acquaintance, Descartes acknowledged Kepler as his "first
master in optics." Descartes was not in the habit of admitting intellectual indebtedness; I do not know of another
case where he did so. But for Descartes, the Keplerian
theory of the eye as an optical instrument was both an inspiration for and vindication of Cartesian physics and
philosophy. With Descartes, optics displaced astronomy
as the key science for the understanding of the world.
The Keplerian theory of the eye as an optical instrument presents itself to Descartes as banishing mystery
from the eye. Following Kepler, it becomes possible to
construct a model of the eye, complete in just about every
detail, down to the image at the rear that one may catch
JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE
�on a translucent piece of parchment. Of course, we do not
see the inverted, reversed, perspectival images on our own
retinas. For that, there would be needed an eye behind
the eye, and there is no such eye. As to what happens in
the optic nerve and brain, in order that vision may be
completed, Kepler leaves this mystery as deep as he
found it.
The Keplerian theory of image formation means, for
Descartes, that the traditional Aristotelian and scholastic
theory of visual perception is wrong. Sensation is not the
reception of the sensible form of a thing without its matter, because, in the first place, visual sensation is perspec~
tival. At the very beginning of the first book he completed
for publication, a book entitled The World, Descartes
wrote:
It is commonly believed that the ideas we have in our
thoughts entirely resemble the objects from which they proceed ... but I observe, on the contrary, several experiences
that ought to make us doubt it.
One of the experiences Descartes has in mind here is that
of looking at pictures:
... you can see that engravings, being made of nothing but a
little ink placed here and there on the paper, represent to us
forests, towns, men, and even battles and storms, even
though, among an infinity of diverse qualities which they
make us conceive in these objects, only in shape is there actually any resemblance. And even this resemblance is a very imperfect one, seeing that, on a completely flat surface, they
represent to us bodies which are of different heights and distances, and even that following the rules of perspective,
circles are often better represented by ovals rather than by
other circles, and squares by diamonds rather than by other
squares; and so for all other shapes. So that often, in order to
be more perfect as images and to represent an object better,
they must not resemble it.
But Descartes' critique of the traditional account of
perception goes deeper. According to Aristotle and the
schoolmen, things were very much what they appeared to
be. The objects perceived were themselves colored; heat
and cold were what in ordinary experience we apprehend
them as being; the qualities of objects were the specifications of the things that made each one of them to be what
it was. But how can such perception occur? The traditional theory fails to explain how such resemblance or
identity is physically achieved. The proponents of this
theory cannot show us how sensations "can be formed by
these objects, received by the external sense organs, and
transmitted by the nerves to the brain."
Now if the traditional assumption of resemblance between sensations and their objects is questionable or without warrant, then the traditional attempt to found the sciences by a step-wise advance from sense perception is also
questionable or without warrant. In that case, how are the
sciences to be founded?
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
At the beginning of his book The World, Descartes proposes to construct a fable of a world, "feigned at pleasure."
Matter in this feigned new world, Descartes proposes,
should be something of which we cannot even pretend ignorance. This requirement is met by extension, for "the
idea of extension is so comprised in all other things which
our imagination is able to form, that it is necessary for you
to conceive it, if you imagine anything whatsoever.'' Having seized upon this first principle, Descartes proceeds to
frame in terms of it a fabulous account of the world and of
man. All is to be accounted for in terms of matter, that
is, figured extension, shaped portions of space, in motion. Some features of this system can be deduced from
the first principle, others must be constructed. The fabulous world that results is scientific in the sense that it
involves only what can be clearly conceived; it thus embodies the rigor of mathematics.
In this fable of a world, Descartes is able to provide a
clear conception of the way sensations are formed by their
objects, received by the external sense organs, and transmitted to the brain. First,
All the external senses ... serve in a purely passive way, precisely in the manner in which wax receives shape from a seal.
We have to think of the external shape of the sentient body as
being really altered by the object precisely in the manner in
which the shape of the surface of the wax is altered by the
seal.
This description applies not only to touch but also to
sight, in which light, conceived as a pressure transmitted
through a. medium, plays the same role as a blind man's
stick. Since with our two eyes we apprehend a single
thing, with our two ears a single sound, with our two
hands a single body, when we are touching one, Descartes
concludes that there must be a center in which the incoming stimuli are coordinated; this he identifies with the
single organ in the upper brain which he knew to be single
and central in position, the pineal gland. The whole process of vision Descartes now describes as follows:
If we see some animal approach us, the light reflected from its
body depicts two images of it, one in each of our eyes. The
two images, by way of the optic nerves, form two others on the
interior surface of the brain which faces its cavities. From
these, by way of the spirits (or subtle fluids) which fill these
cavities, the images then radiate towards the small gland
which the spirits encircle, and do so in such fashion that the
movement which constitutes each point of one of the images
tends towards the same point of the gland as does the movement constituting that point in the other image which represents the same part of this animal; and in this way, the two
brain-images form but one on the gland, which acting immediately on the soul, causes it to see the shape of the animal.
The Keplerian optics of the eye is thus interpreted as a
mechanism for transmitting pressure, and this same
9
�clearly 'and distinctly conceived, provided it fits all the
facts, is true. 1 shall not pursue this argument here, my
concern being rather with our perception of the visual
world.
Nor shall I deal further with the detailed mechanisms of
perception in Descartes' fabulous physics. Action by pressure is not regarded today either as the mode of action of
light, or as that of the impulses in the nervous system.
Among neurophysiologists today there is considerable
doubt that anything is to be gained by supposing that the
nylon ball
perspex stalk
neural processes copy or are isomorphic with the contents
of consciousness, are for example triangular in some way
when one sees a triangle. Nevertheless, we still hear from
neurophysiologists such statements as the following one
by Lashley:
All phenomena of behavior and of mind are ultimately describable in the concepts of the mathematical and physical
sciences.
contact lens
The problem about how we are in or related to the world,
so insistently posed by the Cartesian theory, here recurs.
Descartes' great achievement, it would appear, was to
make the world safe for mathematical physics; but this
achievement has left us outside, puzzled and questioning
·eye
Figure 13
mechanism is imagined as transmitting the patterned
pressures onward from the retinas through the nerves to
the brain, with final composition of a single image on the
pineal gland, or sensus communis or imagination as Des~
cartes calls it. The entire process, up to the final apprehension by the soul of the image on the imagination, is to
be considered as consisting simply in the alteration of the
spatial disposition of the parts of the body, not less, says
Descartes, than the movements of a clock or other auto-
as to what we are.
Once more, in this final section as in the beginning, I
must ask you not to expect me either to do miracles or to
explain them away. What I can attempt is to point in directions in which non-Cartesian perspectives open up.
term, as Descartes does, sensations. Between our sensa-
Let me begin by citing a certain number of results of recent studies of human visual perception.
(I) To begin with, it is worth noting that the eye is in
constant motion. It has a tremor with a frequency of between 30 and 80 cycles per second, and with an amplitude
such as to shift a focused pencil of light from one retinal
cell to the adjacent one. There are also wider flicks of up
to a third of a degree, coming at irregular intervals of up to
five seconds, with slow drifts in between the flicks. The
apparatus shown in Figure 13 is attached to a contact
lens, and because it moves with the eye, it produces a stabilized retinal image. The effect of this is, first, within a
few seconds, distorted vision, and shortly afterward, the
complete breakdown of vision, in the sense that the
viewer can no longer see anything at all, although a clear
tions, on the one hand, and that which provides the occa-
image is being focused on his retina. Vision is thus an ac-
sions for these sensations, namely the patterned pressures
tive process, and fails altogether when it ceases to be so.
(2) Next, let me point out that the clues to depth are
maton.
Readers of Descartes' Discourse on Method and Meditation are familiar with the course of reflection whereby he
undertakes to justify, and to lay unshakeable foundations
for, this fabulous physics and physiology. According to
this physics and physiology, we, that is our Souls, have immediate knowledge only of our ideas, including in this
on the pineal gland, there opens an abyss. On one side is a
qualityless world of matter in motion; on the other, worldless qualities in a consciousness that is out of the world, is
extramundane. Between world and self, Descartes attempts to construct a metaphysical bridge, taking for
starting point his certainty that the isolated, extramundane self, even when it doubts everything it can, at least
exists as the source of the doubt. He calls it a thinking
thing. The central arch of the construction is theological;
it finally enables Descartes to conclude that what can be
10
multiple, more, in fact, than can be reviewed in brief compass. There is, to begin with, linear perspective, as in
Figure 14. Note also here a size-distance relation, which
reminds us how drastically the perceptual system transforms what is presented to it. As the little man walks into
depth he appears to increase in size, although the three
images in fact take up the same size on the plane surface.
This has to do with what is called perceptual constancy,
which I shall discuss in a moment.
JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE
�Figure 16
There is motion perspective, the differences in apparent relative velocity of different parts of the visual field
as one moves one's head. The diagram in Figure 17 is for
the more drastic case of an airplane pilot approaching the
landing field.
Figure 14
Gradients of texture immediately produce in us the
sense of continuous surfaces stretching backward (see Figure 15). Such surfaces generally provide the background
against which we locate objects.
oCcG&:«m
/
Figure 17
Figure 15
Then there is lighting. Light usually comes from one
side, so the surfaces facing in different directions are differently illuminated. In late antiquity, four-tone mosaic
floors like the one shown in Figure 16 seem to have been
popular, despite the treacherous appearance of being
other than flat.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
There are also binocular clues, impossible to illustrate in
a single picture. There is the convergence of the two eyes,
for example, and the accommodation of the lens in each.
By far the most important is binocular disparity, a fact
which only came to be recognized after Charles Wheatstone's invention of the stereoscope in the 1830's. The
retinal images received by the two eyes are not simply
superposable, but are notably different; and this difference by itself can produce the visual perception of depth.
(3) Scenes may be ambiguous. In particular, pictures
being stationary and flat cannot provide motion perspective or the binocular clues to depth, and since the different three-dimensional shapes that can give the same
projection on a plane are unlimited in number, it is evident that two-dimensional shapes can be ambiguous. The
surprising thing is that we are so seldom misled or made
aware of the ambiguity; the perceptual system quickly
adopts the interpretation that satisfies the available clues.
Shown, however, in illustration 18 is a figure called the
Necker cube, which forces its ambiguity on our attention.
No clue is offered as to which is the back face and which
the front; both squares are of the same size. By an act of
11
�yet we interpret the former as a black piece of coal in the
sunlight, and the latter as a white piece of paper in the
shade. The colored light with which the retina is presented is analyzed in perception into a constant surface
color belonging to the object, on the one hand, and the illumination to which the object is exposed, on the other,
the latter being drastically variable. Besides color constancy, there is shape constancy and size constancy. Size
constancy, for instance, means that when an object doubles its distance from us, so that the retinal image of it is
halved in size, we perceive it not as shrinking but as retaining its objective dimensions. To experience this, look
at your two hands, one held at arms' length and the other
at half the distance. They will probably look almost exactly the same size. But if the near hand is brought to
overlap the far one, then they will look different in size, in
the way the laws of perspective require.
Figure 18
concentration on one square or the other, we can cause
the perceptual shift from one to the other of the two possible interpretations of the figure as cube; we can even, by
putting the mind to it, cause ourselves to see the figure as
flat, though the spontaneous interpretation is a threedimensional one. But suppose we gaze at the Necker cube
steadily, without any attempt to have one perception or
the other: then the perceptual shift occurs spontaneously.
It is as if perception were a matter of suggesting and testing hypotheses; of the two most satisfying ones, each is
entertained in turn; but since neither is more successful
than the other, neither is allowed to stay.
Figure 20
Figure 19
The ambiguities of two-dimensional representatives
have been used by Escher and others to depict wonderful
and impossible places and objects. Figure 19 shows an impossible object. Perception shifts back and forth, making
sense of each part of the object, and trying but failing to
make sense of the whole as an actual object.
(4) Perceptual processes exhibit a characteristic called
Perceptual Constancy, and this is another indication that
perception is ceaselessly and actively oriented toward the
interpretation of impressions in terms of objects. A piece
of coal in bright sunlight sends to our eyes maybe 100
times more light than a sheet of typing paper in the shade;
12
(5) Certain well-known distortion illusions turn up
ever and again in psychology textbooks. These, too, appear to be explicable in terms of the perceptual system's
orientation towards interpreting patterns as objects in a
world. In Figure 20 the upper horizontal bar appears
longer, though it is of the same length as the lower one.
The explanation that now seems likeliest is that the perceptual system is set to measure lengths appropriately to
the normal world of three-dimensional objects as seen in
linear perspective. The bar that would be more distant is
scaled up on size in accordance with constancy scaling.
That we do not see the inclined lines as parallel, receding
railroad tracks is due to the countermanding of the threedimensional interpretation by textural features of the surface on which the figure appears.
The same kind of explanation can be made for the famous arrow illusion, in which two identical lengths appear
different because of added fins (see Figure 21). If the two
lines with fins here pictured are constructed of wire,
painted with luminous paint, and looked at in the dark,
the left-hand one appears as an inside, receding corner of
JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE
�lures beyond the immediately sensed ones. They have
pasts and futures; they have hidden aspects that manifest
themselves under special conditions; they change and interact with one another. How is it possible, on the basis of
the fleeting clues,-to perceive the objects? Our perceptual
system, faced with multiple, fleeting clues, in effect
makes a guess, launches into belief. Taking into account
its previous beliefs, it hypothesizes that an object of suchand-such a kind is the invariant something of which the
fleeting clues are perspectives. In some moments, some
few of our perceptual processes may become conscious
processes; for the most part, it is only the results that we
are aware of.
And where are we, and what are we, in relation to this
world that our perceptual processes lead us to posit? Is it
not our primary experience that we find ourselves in the
world, turned toward the world, in direct encounter with
an Other that is over against us? Our observing is not neuFigure 21
a rectangular room, the right-hand one as the outside projecting corner of a rectangular block or building, with
sharp foreshortening. Even when, because of surface texture, three-dimensional depth is not perceived, it seems
that constancy scaling goes to work on the basis of the
clues that would normally indicate depth, to produce the
illusion.
(6) Finally, consider the famous Distorted Room constructed by Adelbert Ames some 25 years ago (Figure 22).
The far wall slopes back to the left at an angle of 45°, and
the floor also slopes downward to the left, but linear perspective is used to make this oddly shaped room give,
from a viewing point in the center of the front wall, the
same retinal image as a normal rectangular room. The person in the far left-hand corner looks too small because the
image is smaller than would be expected for the apparent
distance of that part of the room. Evidently our perceptual system has so accommodated itself to rectangular
rooms that we accept it as obvious that it is the objectshere twin sisters-that are of odd sizes, rather than that
the room is of an odd shape. The perceptual system has,
as it were, made a bet, the wrong one, but then, the experimenter has rigged the odds by choosing such an extremely odd shape for the room. Familiarity with the
room gained by touching its walls with a long stick, or a
strong emotional relation to the persons seen in the room,
will reduce the distorting effect of the room on other objects until it is finally seen for what it is-a distorted room
in fact.
From all the foregoing, I conclude: Our perceptual system seems to be-behaves as if it were-an instrument
acting purposively with a view to identifying, placing,
classifying, and judging objects in a world. What the
senses initially receive are but the slenderest and most
fleeting of clues, varied and varying patterns of energy.
Objects, on the other hand, have indefinitely many feaTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Figure 22
tral, from behind centimeters of bullet-proof polaroid. We
are beset by what we see; we are affected, caught, seized
by what confronts us. Wind, heat waves, rain, and sleet
obtrude themselves upon us. Things appear attractive
and repulsive.
What is presented has inherent distance, depth. The
object is apprehended as over there in its suchness and
thusness. The perceived object reveals itself insofar as it
presents a surface. But while surfaces reveal, they also
hide. Beyond what is directly revealed, in any experience,
there remains that which is hidden, the substance of
things.
Depth and distance are not merely visual. We are mobile-indeed, we believe ourselves to be self-moved. We
can be purposeful, adopting goals, moving up or down or
along paths, going from a Here to a There and from a
13
�well as pushes. But whether we take the Cartesian or the
Newtonian or even a more recent quantum mechanical
version of the geometrized world, we become puzzled if
we try to place ourselves in it; how do we connect with it?
Descartes supposed that the soul-the "thinking thing"could act upon the extended world, namely by influenc·
ing the direction of motion without changing its quantity,
which he believed to be conserved. That supposition was
shown to be impossible when Newton and others demonstrated that the conserved quantity is vectorial or directed.
So natural science in its advance always appears to aim at
an account from which we would be absent, a silent, nonhuman world of deterministic connections. Conscious life
could only be explained away, in such an account. There
is something odd about the totalization of the Cartesian
geometrical view of the world.
Long before Descartes, already in the 13th century,
Henry of Ghent characterizes those in whom the geometrical imagination dominates over the cognitive faculty as
suffering from an ailment:
Whatever they think, is a quantity, or is located in quantity as
is the case with the point. Therefore such men are melancholy, and become excellent mathematicians but very bad
metaphysicians, for they cannot extend their thought beyond
location and space which are the foundations of mathematics.
This very melancholy is pictured in Durer's famous engraving of 1513 or 1514, the Melencolia !(Figure 23). Here
we see a winged, presumably celestial being, staring fixedly,
evidently in despair. The scene is lit with an eerie light
Figure 23
from the moon, a comet, and a lunar rainbow. Strewn
Now to a Then, with changing perspectives. This is our
primary mode of being. But our being is then a becoming
in relation to an Other, the Other that is the world
stretching out in depth before us, in its manifold familiar·
ity and strangeness. We seek the unity or unities underlying the varied, perspectival perceivings, the invariant
somethings of which we would conceive the world to be
made. We are ever potentially learners; each of us, in Kep·
ler's metaphor, a point seeking to expand into a
circle~
some of us no doubt more ardently than others.
Can the circle become a sphere? Kepler, you will recall,
denies it. Descartes would push on, geometrizing as he
goes. In the geometrized and mechanized world that he
imagines, everything that happens, or almost everything,
is to be accounted for in terms of displacements, pushes.
Later, with Newton and his successors, we get pulls as
14
about in bewildering disorder are the tools of geometrical
and architectural construction. She, the celestial being, is
afflicted, we surmise, with a sense of spiritual confinement, of insurmountable barriers separating her from a
higher realm of thought.
Diirer's conception of that highest realm is presented in
another engraving which he made at the same time as the
Melencolia, and distributed with it as its appropriate counterpart: St. Jerome in his Cell (Figure 24). Here Jerome,
comfortably seated in his warm, sunlit cell, which he
shares with his contented animals, is absorbed in his theo·
logical work. Even the skull looks friendly. Jerome's incorporation into the strictly mathematical projection of our
perspectival system, though it reveals his contentment, in
no way reveals the secret of it, which may remain for
some of us inaccessible.
I would acknowledge the perspectivity of human know-
JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE
�ing-using the term perspective here in an extended and
metaphorical sense. Accordingly, I would not disregard
the fact that natural science is formed by human beings.
Natural science does not simply describe and explain
nature, it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of
questioning.
Is this a skeptical conclusion? I think not. For all we
know, the perspectivity revealed by the fact that we
opine, and that opinion is not knowledge, may be the correct perspective. In any case, our perspectival viewing
reveals a world into which we, along with others, are
launched as essentially equal citizens. We recognize
others, equally with ourselves, as potential measures of
the truth. The claims of others call us out of our particularity into discourse, into the search for Right Opinion.
This is a category unknown to skeptics, a human category
revealing both our poverty and our power.
For the account of Kepler's Paralipomena I have depended very heavily
on S. M. Straker's analysis in his unpublished work, Kepler's Optics: A
Study in the Development of Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy
(Indiana University Ph.D. Dissertation, 1971). Other works to which I
am much indebted are: E. Cassirer, "The Concept of Group and the
Theory of Perception," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research V,
1944, l-35; Hiram Caton, The Origin of Subjectivity, An Essay on Des·
cartes; James]. Gibson, The Perception of the Visual World; E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion; R. L. Gregory, Eye and Brain; William H. Ittelson,
The Arne.~ Demonstrations in Perception; Erwin Panofsky, Albrecht
DUrer; Erwin Straus, The Primary World of the Senses and Phenomenological Psychology; John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space;
and J. S. Wilentz, The Senses of Man.
Figure 24
Notes on Figures 1-24.
I. Gemma Frisius, De radio astronomico, 312, as reproduced in Stephen
Straker, Kepler's Optics: A Study in the Development of SeventeenthCentury Natural Philosophy, Indiana University Ph.D. Dissertation,
1971, 319.
2. Kepler, Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena, Frankfurt, 1604, 338.
3. Straker, Kepler's Optics, 19.
4. Straker, Kepler's Optics, 24.
5. Straker, Kepler's Optics, 23.
6. Straker, Kepler's Optics, 26.
7. British Museum, London.
8. Museo Nazionale, Naples.
9. Musco Nazionale, Naples.
10. Museo Nazionale, Naples.
II. DUrer in E. H. Gornbrich, Art and Illusion, New York, 1960, 306.
12. Oiirer, Underweysung der Messung, in Gombrich, Art and Illusion,
251.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
13. Ditch burn Experiment, R. L. Gregory, Eye and Brain, 2d ed., World
University Library, New York, 1973, 46.
14. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 280.
15. Gradient of texture, James J. Gibson, The Perception of the Visual
World, Boston, 1950, 86.
16. Mosaic floor, Antioch, 2d century A.D., in Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 41.
17. Motion Perspective, Gibson, The Perception of the Visual World,
121.
18. Necker cube (source unknown).
19. Impossible object, Gregory, Eye and Brain, 235.
20. Scaling illusion, Gregory, Eye and Brain, 137.
21. Arrow illusion, Gregory, Eye and Brain, 136.
22. Ames' Distorted Room, Gregory, Eye and Brain, 178.
23. Diirer, Melencolia I, in Panofsky, Albrecht Diirer, 2d ed., Princeton,
1945, 11, 209.
24. DUrer, St. Jerome in his Cell, in Panofsky, Albrecht Diirer, 11, 208.
15
�Affirmative Action and the Rights of Man
Fred Baumann
To the memory of my late friend, Victor Baras
According to its spokesmen, among the present administration's proudest accomplishments is raising the issue
of human rights to the fore in its foreign policy. Leaving
aside the host of questions about the execution of that
policy, the administration is right to be proud.
Human rights are universal because they claim to apply
to all men as men. Moreover, it is a striking fact of con-
temporary politics that this claim to universality is accepted, at least in the abstract, even by the worst tyrants
of the day. Human rights are, however, the particular
in UNESCO of establishing support for government control of the press, in the name of the right to information.
So-called "second and third generation" human rights
have been discovered such as the right to equality of income, or even, simply, peace. This redefinition of the
content of human rights has not been the exclusive preoccupation of undemocratic, unliberal regimes. The
American Bar Association (with initial funding from the
Ford Foundation) has now set up a committee on human
rights that sees its purpose as spreading knowledge of, and
product of our own tradition, part of the inherited custom
acceptance for, the "international" standard of human
and natural vocabulary of liberal democracies. To raise
the standard of human rights is to define debate in terms
rights in America.
congenial to ourselves, and to do so, for once, in a way
to hold the conduct of all nations to their own traditional
standards. They also can be, and increasingly are, a vehicle
for transforming the principles and self-understanding of
the liberal democracies themselves. In their adoption of the
concepts of human rights and in the understanding of the
content of these concepts, which follows logically from
these terms of reference, the liberal democracies differ
fundamentally from other kinds of regimes, traditional or
modern. For the United States, the seminal documents of
our polity, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill
of Rights to the Constitution, root themselves in concepts
of human rights. The famous Declaration of the Rights of
Man and the Citizen of 1789 is the foundation not only of
French but of all continental European liberalism and
even social democracy. It is also the titular referent for the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is now the
text that United Nations debates and resolutions on
human rights undertake to gloss. Although human rights
that meets no direct opposition.
Vigorous efforts, however, are underway in the world to
redefine the contents of human rights in order to make
them more comfortable for the despotisms that pay them
lip service. Even Mrs. Gandhi, who never quite arrived at
full-fledged despotism, in a striking formulation, once justified her policy of compulsory sterilization with the assertion of the "human right" of the nation to survive. Third
World nations have in recent years been pursuing a policy
This essay is based on a paper given at a symposium in memory of
Victor Baras in October 1978 at the Telluride House on the Cornell
University campus.
From 1974 to 1977 Fred Baumann worked for University Centers for
Rational Alternatives ami the Committee on Academic Nondiscrimination and Equality where he investigated the effects of affirmative
action on the universities. At present he works as a program officer at
the Institute for Educational Affairs in New York City.
16
Human rights serve as a means for 1ibera1 democracies
JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE
�claim, and are claimed by, all, we are their special familiars. If they are changed fundamentally, then so are we.
The redefinition of human rights in America to meet
the "international" standard is, however, by no means
simply an accommodation to the countermeasures of
unliberal nations defending themselves against the painful imposition of liberal standards. In at least one cmcial
respect-affirmative action-we have, completely on our
own initiative, undertaken to redefine human rights in a
radical way. (For present purposes, affirmative action only
means preferential treatment on the basis of race, religion, ethnic group, or gender, in selection for places. It
does not here mean "quotas" or ogoals" or "underutiliza-
tion studies" or "special recruitment efforts," all of which
play a role in its ungainly structure).
This redefinition of human rights did not come about
suddenly, but in timid, gradual steps that long concealed
its fundamental character. Consequently, the whole subject of affirmative action, not least its name, chokes in
euphemism, jargon, and exoteric language. Some of this
evasive language arose through misunderstanding and
careless thought. Some of it, I believe, was purposefully
devised to mislead.
To define affirmative action as preferential treatment is
unlikely to shock anymore. But it is worth remembering
that just five years ago it would have been highly controversial. Five years ago, the supporters of affirmative action
(especially those in government), denied that affirmative
action involved preference. Either they got angry at those
who said it did, or just pitied their naivete.
The case of Alan Bakke, decided in 1978, marked a
turning point in the argument. A white, Bakke sued the
University of California Medical School at Davis, claiming
racial discrimination. The case involved the clearest sort
of preferential treatment, since black applicants were
treated separately as a group and judged by lower standards than white applicants. Despite the previously general denial that affirmative action involved preference,
most defenders of affirmative action took the line that a
decision favorable to Bakke would mean the end of affirmative action, including those forms where preference
was not, or less clearly, involved. As a result of the discussion surrounding the Bakke case, the fiction that affirmative action did not actually involve preference was
wholly exposed and consequently, for the most part,
quietly dropped.
In the Bakke case, and the Weber case that followed it in
the next year, the Supreme Court was faced with a fundamental constitutional question, which, given the Constitution and the Bill of Rights' dependence on assumptions
about human rights, was also a fundamental question of
human rights: can preferential treatment by skin color be
brought in harmony with the right to equal treatment by
the laws? The specific constitutional arguments of due
process and equal treatment have been rehearsed in hundreds of amicus briefs and scores of articles. To cast some
light on the more general perspective of human rights, let
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
us take the admittedly artificial step of consulting a nonAmerican document, The Declaration of the Rights of
Man and the Citizen, which is, again, the grandfather of
the present "international" standard of human rights.
Article I of the Declaration says that "men are born and
remain free and equal in rights." Article 2 holds that "the
aim of every political association is the preservation of the
natural and imprescriptible rights of man." These rights,
it says, are liberty, property, security, and resistance to op~
pression. Since everyone's rights must be protected, they
must be protected to the same degree. Consequently law,
we learn from Article 6, "must be the same for all whether
it protects or punishes. All citizens being equal in its eyes,
are equally eligible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacities, and without
other distinction than that of their virtues and their
talents." 1
Equality before the law remains the core of the traditional democratic position on the rights of citizens. It was
the fundamental argument of the American civil rights
movement, from Frederick Douglass to the passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and in many cases thereafter as
well). The principle of equality before the law not only
gave the movement an unshakeable confidence in the justice of its cause, it also paralyzed the will and conscience
of its opponents, themselves liberal democrats with a
"But." Equality before the law seems to rule out all forms
of race, sex, ethnic, or religious preference in selection, no
matter the excuse. And the principle of equality before
the law remains, for principled liberal opponents of affirmative action, an arsenal of telling theoretical and practical arguments in polemic. These arguments tell not
because they are self-evidently true. Many nations and
teachings would find artificial and even bizarre the intellectual context from which they emerge. These
arguments tell because they appear self-evidently true,
because most of the proponents of preference agree, or
think they agree, with them in principle.
Obviously, in depending on theories of natural right,
the Declaration of the Rights of Man, like the Declaration
of Independence and the Bill of Rights, depends on
assumptions one need not share. Perhaps there are no
such things as "natural and imprescriptible rights." Consequently, perhaps civil society has some other character
than a mechanism designed by men to assure them of the
maximum feasible exercise of these natural rights. Perhaps the state is merely the formal expression of the particular state of the class stmggle reached at present, or
perhaps it is the formal expression of a nation's eternal
racial character. If so, we know that the "bourgeois rights"
defined by the two Declarations will find themselves
swiftly relativized and superceded by the supreme right of
class or race, as represented customarily by the even more
supreme right of the party leadership. That is, if the end
of the class struggle requires class dictatorship, and within
that class, dictatorship by the party, or if the end of Aryan
dominance requires absolute allegiance to the will of the
17
�Leader, then equality before the law will yield. And to the
extent that it continues to exist, it will be justified as furthering the class struggle or the race's strength, not as expressing those natural and imprescriptible rights of the
indjvidual that the regime teaches are a naive and malignant myth.
The Civil War may be said to have settled in principle
that the words of the Declaration of Independence about
the creation in equality of all men, meant what they said.
America was, its history determined, to be the first nation
founded and created by agreement on an abstract principle, a principle that America's existence made increasingly less abstract: states exist to allow men to fulfill their
natures, and more specifically to exercise their natural
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The outcome of the Civil War settled the issue in principle; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made that principle a
practical reality. With its passage, America became the
nation where citizenship transcended nationality most
purely. While ties of family, language, common ancestry,
and culture remained strong (if not quite so strong as in
other multi-national countries such as, for instance, Canada), still, from 1964 on, America asked everyone to put
aside the advantages of group membership and, in the
public realm, to take their chances on fair treatment from
the great and anonymous society.
The demand of equal opportunity involves a great gamble for society because it involves a great gamble for each
of its citizens. The demand that people generally live up
to their legal and moral responsibilities only becomes feasible if there is strong faith in the reality of equal oppor·
!unity. The risks inherent in equal opportunity inspire
anxiety precisely about its reality. (For along with a power·
ful interest in equality, there goes at least as powerful an
interest to cheat).
Viewed from this perspective, it is hardly paradoxical
that in the fifteen years since the passage of the Civil
Rights Act there has been a revival in affirmative action of
group consciousness and group competition. Superficially, it might seem that the American project was simply
too ambitious, too frightening, and that affirmative action
therefore merely represents a retreat to easier, less just
days. The renewed search for legally based group ad van·
!age, however, emerged from the thinking of those who
imagined themselves most wholly devoted to the principle
of equality of opportunity.
In name and purpose, affirmative action was not meant
to reaffirm group membership in defiance of the attempt
to neutralize it in the public realm. It was understood originally as something vague but extra-a helpful shove to a
too-timid liberalism. One of the chief formulators of early
affirmative action policies, when he was employed by the
Labor Department in the Nixon administration, Lawrence Silberman, described nine years later the anxious
desire he had originally shared with his colleagues to find
some way to make concrete the abstract equality of opportunity guaranteed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and at
18
the same time •to avoid the practices of racial preference
the Act had rightly prohibited. Silberman and his colleagues had developed "goals" which were meant to be
fundamentally different from discriminatory "quotas."
These goals, their inventors had asserted, did not legislate
preference, but only encouraged attentiveness to the existence of well-qualified minority members. Nine years
later, Silberman concluded, ''goals" were indistinguishable from "quotas." He and his colleagues had failed. 2
Eventually, almost all had to admit that affirmative action, understood as "goals", meant at least some kind of
preference, if not exactly "quotas." One could not draw
up most favored ethnoi lists, and urge their selection,
without making ethnicity a criterion of selection. However genteelly one did it, one lent the authority of the law
to discrimination based on ancestry or gender. Interestingly, only a few, like Silberman, drew back in remorse.
Most pressed on, seeking to justify preference if it worked
in a direction opposite to older forms of preference. Mr.
Justice Blackmun, in his dissent in Bakke, spoke candidly,
if with disregard for legal principle shocking in a Justice of
the Supreme Court:
I yield to no one in my earnest hope that the time will come
when an 'affirmative action' program is unnecessary and is, in
truth, only a relic of the past. ... At some time, however, beyond any period of what some would claim is only transitional
inequality, the United States must and will reach a stage of
maturity where action along this line is no longer necessary.
Then persons will be regarded as persons, and discrimination
of the type we address today will be an ugly feature of history
that is instructive but that is behind us. 3
It is not surprising that there was something tentative
and uneasy in the formulations of those who came to
praise affirmative action as a distasteful but medicinal
poison. Not all of Blackmun's utopian posturing and nostalgia for the future could wholly blind him and those who
shared his views to the injustice they were doing, according to their own principles, in the present. As a result, the
task of justifying affirmative action reached a new stage.
The embarrassment of pursuing equal opportunity by discriminatory means suggested the argument that the discriminatory results of these discriminatory means were
only apparently discriminatory. Begun without excessive
deliberation and meant to be something "extra," affirmative action now began to place a heavy burden on the dialectical skills of its advocates. It was a burden they would
in turn pass on to the liberal tradition out of which they
came.
How could someone who is Taking Rights Seriously, (to
cite the title of Ronald Dworkin's popular book), take
rights seriously and at the same time show that race and
sex could legitimately be added to "virtue and talent" as
criteria for admission to "public dignities, places, and
employments?" A number of arguments were adopted
that merely begged the question. A typical example was
the notion that by establishing a minimum for "qualificaJULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE
�tion," (so that above that minimum no gradations of merit
could apply), one could thereby avoid the moral issue arising out of race or gender preference, since officially one
would not be allowed to know that the better candidate
had been denied the position.
A number of other arguments were raised that, however various, in the end all rely on the claim of utility. For
instance, it was alleged that the state had a compelling interest in overcoming the de facto separation of the races,
or the underrepresentation of women; or that minority
members needed role models from their own groups in
places of respect and authority; or that there is urgent
need for professional services in the inner city that only
minority professionals can reasonably be expected to supply. These arguments coexist fairly comfortably with
Blackmun's hope in the merely transitory character of affirmative action, but rely on the claim of utility, not just
on hope.
Arguments of utility must be addressed at two levels.
First, they must be correct on their own terms. Not only
must the advocated policy actually produce the intended
results, but those results must actually be beneficial, given
the general standard of social utility the advocate adopts.
But second, every regime, by its fundamental laws and traditions, erects a standard of what is right and seemly. If
the means suggested to achieve the social utility the advo·
cate suggests violate that standard, then it must be shown
that this violation is less important than the good that is
being done. This can of course be done in two ways: first,
by emphasizing the comparative urgency and benefit of
the advocated policy; second, by denigrating the worth
of the regime's inherent standards of what is right and
seemly.
A strong case has been made that the arguments for the
utility of affirmative action do not even meet the first set
of tests. Some of the most powerful and striking counterarguments have been made by scholars like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams who themselves happen to be
black. In a paper presented to the United States Civil
Rights Commission and later published in a revised form
in The Public Interest, Professor Sowell demonstrated that
in universities-chief among the targets of affirmative action enforcement in the early nineteen-seventies-great
advances towards equality, in terms of salary and repre·
sentation, occurred among faculty between the passage of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the advent of affirmative
action around 1971, whereupon, for whatever reason,
they ceased. 4 The evidence of these writers suggests that
the factual premise of affirmative action, that equality of
representation and living standard could not come about
given mere legal equality of opportunity, may not have
been correct. Critics (and recently, even advocates) of affirmative action point out that in many areas the chief
beneficiaries of affirmative action have not been the
group whose plight inspired affirmative action and seemed
to justify it-the blacks-but women, in particular middle
class women. For critics like Professor Sowell, the price in
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
cynicism, revived racial hostility, and apparent confirma-
tion of paternalist racial stereotypes typified by the
thought that blacks cannot make it on their own and must
be given something, is far too much to pay for the few
marginal rewards that affirmative action offers its "beneficiaries."
I share the critics' views on this point. Given the fact
that affirmative action, by moving beyond the abstract
standard of the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights
Act, involves an ever more active governmental interven-
tion in, and interpretation of, concrete equality of opportunity, and given the fact that the groups that are to be
the beneficiaries of affirmative action are still, as groups,
relatively weak in American politics, one would think that
the long and even middle term dangers of preference
would outweigh its short term charms to those primarily
concerned with the interests of those groups. For what
can be given by an act of policy by the strong to the weak
can also be taken away. And if no generally accepted
moral or constitutional principle remains to prevent it,
even more than was given can also be taken away.
Let us grant, for argument's sake, however, that affirmative action really does create new benefits for its beneficiaries. Does it meet the second test of not violating the
fundamental principles of the American regime? At first
sight, given the identification of the American regime
with principles of the Rights of Man, it would seem to do
so. Article I of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and
the Citizen says that "social distinctions can only be based
on public utility." 5 But in fact, we must first ask what the
standard of a human rights regime is for judging utility.
One could imagine a regime, for example, that sought by
its laws and traditions to encourage a warlike character in
its citizens. Such a state might find that public utility coincided with the constant repression of a servile, helot
class or race. That regime would not find public utility
represented by affirmative action for the helot class.
The betterment of previously oppressed and victimized
groups seems self-evidently to promote public utility in
the United States. Therefore, affirmative action would
seem not to conflict with our fundamental principles. But
while our sense of the self-evident justice and practical
benefits of the claimed results of affirmative action clearly
does betoken affirmative action's origins in a characteris-
tically liberal, characteristically American outlook, it does
not settle the question whether the means whereby those
results are achieved do not conflict with our most fundamental principles. When the Declaration of Independence speaks of natural and inalienable rights to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or when Article 2 of
the Declaration of the Rights of Man says that the aim of
all political associations is to preserve the natural and imprescriptible rights of man, they state those fundamental
principles. They are the preservation of rights, and among
them, of course, the right to equal treatment by the laws.
Unless it can be shown that the race and gender preference involved in affirmative action does not violate these
19
�fundamental natural rights, then, no matter how attractive the benefits of equality and harmony it promises, it
stands in conflict with the most basic principles of the
regime. The claims of utility, understood as material advancement and greater social equality, cannot by themselves carry the day. Their advocates must show either
1) that the necessary means do not, despite appearances
to the contrary, violate the right to equal treatment by the
law; or 2) that the violation is outweighted by the benefits;
or 3) that the violation is itself a good thing, or at least a
matter of indifference.
Let us take the easiest argument first. If one admits, like
justice Blackmun, both that the natural rights standard is
a good and important one and that affirmative action does
violate it, how good must affirmative action be to justify
the violation? The words "natural and inalienable" and
"natural and imprescriptible" of the two Declarations suggest the obvious answer: there is no immediate good that
justifies the alienation from citizens of inalienable rights.
Or, at best, there is only one. If the regime that is the living embodiment of those rights is mortally threatened and
can be preserved as the preserver of those rights only by a
unique violation of them, then perhaps such a violation
would be justified. Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus
during the Civil War could perhaps be justified as violating the Constitution in order to save it. Clearly, no such
case can be made for racial quotas.
But may it not be the case that rights, while fine and
socially useful things, are not really "natural and imprescriptible," and that, therefore, a much weaker standard
of measurement may be adopted for affirmative action?
Here we must recall the theoretical origins of rights. Only
then will it become clearer why the right of equality
before the law is peculiarly important to liberal regimes, in
contrast to the traditional states of the ancien regime
which found neither natural rights nor equality before the
law to be self-evident or even very sensible.
Living amid the rich intellectual complexity of traditional states, where religious, feudal, and national strands
of argument and allegiance intermingled, the great theorists of modern natural rights, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, brought a remarkable abstractness of perspective to
the subject. They looked beyond the welter of passionate
and conflicting allegiances of their times to a natural state
where men were and states were not. These apolitical,
natural men are dominated by their most fundamental desires. To these desires correspond their natural rights. The
right to life is for Hobbes and Locke natural and imprescriptible because, as a rule, the desire to survive is the
strongest and most basic desire. But if man wants life,
then consequently he must want the means to assure himself of survival. Therefore, liberty, the liberty to assure
oneself of the means to live, is also a natural right. But
while these natural rights are limited by no governing
state in nature, their actual fulfillment is severely limited
by nature itself. These desirous men, therefore, come together to construct civil society, as a mechanism that is to
20
assure each of them much of what they want in and by
nature. The right to equal treatment and equal opportunity is thus derived from the natural liberty to provide for
oneself. It assures men they have not been singled out for
special deprivation in exchanging their natural rights for
their political, civil equivalents.
If the right to equal treatment, although derivative, is
grounded in natural and inalienable rights, and is in fact
the chief guarantor of the acceptability of a society's
founding principles and of its claim to be just, then it is
plain that a law that violates equality before the law does
enormous damage to that society's legitimacy. If in contrast the rights that citizens enjoy are not correspondent
to natural and inalienable rights that express the most
fundamental desires of men as men, then civil rights
themselves lose all compulsory power on us and either
have to be allowed to decay or have to be refounded on a
new basis that either reinterprets nature or abandons it
altogether. If the right to equal treatment under law is not
grounded in natural and inalienable rights, the very ends
that affirmative action seeks to achieve as a matter of selfevident public utility, could and would be called into
question. For, as argued above, those ends depend upon a
standard for utility that is part and parcel of the natural
rights tradition.
At the heart of the claim of utility is a failure to take itself seriously enough. This is evident when affirmative action is defended as an urgently needed corrective for a
basically racist society. Whoever argues this, and many do,
simply cannot really mean what he says. For in order to
mean it, he must actually believe that the consent for
equal treatment for minorities like blacks is so solid that it
will not be imperilled even by laws that mandate preferential treatment for those minorities, and thus arouse resent-
ment from the others. If he genuinely feared, as I do, that
the consent to across-the-board equal treatment (much
less affirmative action) is by its very nature fragile, he
could hardly be oblivious to the possible consequences of
laws that violate equal treatment by the law in the name
of equality of opportunity, and thus inevitably damage
the very name of civil rights and equality of opportunity.
His actions bespeak a blind confidence in the tractability
of the majority before laws that disadvantage them; his
words accuse them of the very opposite, of racism.
In view of the weakness and self-contradiction of the
simple appeal to utility, it is not surprising that the case
for affirmative action has sought to show that the preference in which it engages is actually only apparent, and
that it can be reconciled with the right to equal treatment
by the law. A simple version of the reconciliation begins
by noting that the law can be the same for all only
metaphorically. An agricultural law affects farmers and
non-farmers differently, and affects small farmers differently from large. By analogy, could not apparent differences of treatment by race still perhaps not violate
equality? Might not racial preference be in accord with
equality of treatment under law?
JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE
�There is a vital difference between laws whose results
apply differently to farmers and consumers, and laws that
apply differently to races or genders. Professions and oc·
cupations, as the words suggest, are chosen; race and sex
are unchosen. When we recall the Declaration's familiar
description of liberty as the power to do anything that
does not injure others, so that "accordingly the exercise of
the natural rights of each man has no limits except those
that secure to the other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights," 6 the difference between the
two cases becomes clearer. A law that regulates farmers
excludes no one, at the outset, legally, from birth, from
trying to be a farmer. By contrast, a law that regulates selection to schools by race fundamentally limits an individual's opportunities legally and from the outset. It creates
places for which it is impossible for some to compete.
That is, it violates the natural right to pursue happiness.
For the right to pursue happiness must be just that, the
right to pursue. It cannot be the right to attain, for the
right of one to attain must be the denial to another of the
right to pursue. Where an agricultural law establishes
rules for a competition that the law prevents none from
entering, a law entailing racial preference establishes rules
that prevent some from competing and thus from exercising their natural right to pursue, to act.
Once men are conceived as active, energetic beings,
who accept the necessary limits of civil society in order to
pursue their activities more securely, and once, therefore,
rights are conceived as recognition of their inevitably active, desirous nature, it becomes very difficult to mount a
satisfactory challenge to accomplishments, virtues and talents as the only standards for selection. For it will appear a
fundamental injustice to check some and not others in
the pursuit of their activities, unless they thereby are preventing others from acting. (We must keep in mind here
that acting means competing for a place, not enjoying it).
Because of the impossibility, within the framework of
our inherited thinking about natural rights, of arguing for
selection on the basis of race and gender instead of ability
In reply, Dworkin separates equality of treatment into
two parts: Hequal treatment" and "treatment as an
equal." 8 Kurland and Bickel think DeFunis deserved
"equal treatment." Actually, he only deserved "treatment
as an equal," since "treatment as an equal" turns out to be
our deepest natural right.
What then are "equal treatment" and "treatment as an
equal?" Their names are similar, but they are sharply opposed in content. Equal treatment means just that, equal
treatment. Treatment as an equal, however, means "the
right to be treated with the same concern and respect as
anyone else." This right does not extend to not being excluded on grounds of race.
Dworkin's immediate explanation sounds familiar. In
an article in The New York Review of Books, "Why Bakke
Has No Case," he denies that the use of the racial standard is in principle different from the standard of intelligence, or, in the case of a basketball player, skill.'' None
are chosen qualities and whoever is excluded by their criteria may not be being excluded by prejudice "but because of a rational calculation about the socially most
beneficial use of limited resources for racial classification."10 Only if racial classification expresses contempt for
the excluded group as a group is it illicit.
Here Dworkin seems merely to suggest another version
of the utilitarian argument we have already ruled out.
We are once again before the question of the standard of
utility. If, on one view of the social good, it is permissible
to discriminate in favor of blacks, may not another view of
the social good make it possible to discriminate against
them? How would one choose between these conflicting
views of the social good? Neither would appear to be
rooted in the natural and inalienable rights of man.
Aware that utilitarian arguments could be turned against
him, Dworkin seeks to ground his view of the innocence of
"reverse discrimination" on something stronger than util-
ity, and concedes by the way too that without this grounding the criterion of contempt also falters. At this point the
right to treatment as an equal, to equal respect and con-
and talent, recently some have striven to reinterpret
cern, comes into its own. For Dworkin has discerned in
natural rights doctrine radically to allow the use of racial
criteria in selection. In Taking Rights Seriously, Ronald
Dworkin devotes a chapter to the case of Marco DeFunis,
the forerunner of Bakke. Dworkin desires to refute the
traditional liberal position, argued in the DeFunis case in
the classic brief amicus curiae by the late Alexander Bickel
of Yale and his colleague from the University of Chicago,
Philip Kurland, on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League
of B'nai B'rith.' Bickel and Kurland argue that discrimination against a white because he is white is legally indistinguishable from discrimination against a black because he is black. DeFunis, who was excluded from consideration for a number of admissions places in the
University of Washington Law School, was therefore
denied the equal treatment by the law as much as if a
black had been denied consideration for some places
because he was black.
john Rawls and adopted from him the "deep theory" that
the fundamental natural human right is equality, 11 in the
sense of a right to equal "concern and respect in the design and administration of the political institutions that
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
govern" men. For Dworkin, equality is not, as in the Dec-
laration of the Rights of Man, a derivative because postcontractual right, a civic right designed to guarantee the
contract and justly to distribute the legal capacity to enjoy
individual natural rights. In its new meaning it has become the most fundamental, primary, and natural right of
all. Consequently, social policies that bring about greater
equality, though they may seem to violate the traditional
meaning of equal treatment, in fact exemplify its deeper,
its natural, content. 12 "Benign" or "reverse" discrimination, which promotes "treatment as an equal" in its result
and exemplifies it in its action, can therefore justify itself
in terms of this deeper content. Those who would dis-
21
�cnmmate against a disadvantaged minority like blacks
may well raise utilitarian arguments in favor of their policies. They cannot, however, support them with the ideal
argument of furthering equality. Reverse discrimination,
in contrast, rests on the firm foundation of egalitarian
natural right.
In his review of Taking Rights Seriously,Il Thomas
Pangle strikes at the root of Dworkin's project when he
notes the absurdity of Dworkin's claim to have discovered
"natural" rights "through a reflective process that never
steps beyond the conventional horizon of contemporary
culture," since that amounts to an unexamined assump-
tion that those particular conventions of our culture faithfully represent nature from which all conventions spring.
Pangle is right in questioning what is natural, i.e. true to
nature, about Dworkin's theory of rights. In Dworkin's
own view "the assumption of natural rights is not a metaphysically ambitious one .... " It requires no more than
the hypothesis that "the best political program, within the
sense of that model, is one that takes protection of certain
individual choices as fundamental. ... " 14 But to demonstrate why any individual choices are fundamental and,
beyond that, why particular choices should be looked on
as fundamental, requires enormous !!metaphysical ambition" if it is to end in something more than a scheme of
the author's wishes. Moreover, one may wonder about the
implications of those wishes, since Pangle also rightly suggests that Dworkin's defense of reverse discrimination
could equally be used to justify a compulsory program of
levelling eugenics, since both policies would seem to be
justified by the deep principle of promoting equality.
It seems to me that, in reinterpreting the natural rights
tradition to make the conflict between race preference
and natural rights seem to be only seeming, Dworkin has
fundamentally departed from that tradition in two ways,
one regarding form, the other content.
The natural rights Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau talked
about had to do with the most fundamental drives of men.
Because it was folly to oppose these drives, politics had to
accommodate themselves to natural rights. Despite all the
problems Hobbes faced in dealing with obligation, he still
thought that the Leviathan was the best possible political
arrangement for passionate, unruly, fearful men who,
above all, desired to live and stay alive. Rousseau insisted
on the natural right of liberty and its recognition by states,
because he denied that man can possibly consent to slavery since thereby he yields control over his very existence
to others. Right or wrong, the natural rights teachings of
Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau have power as an account
of the world because they rest on assertions about what
men are really like and what they really want.
Does Dworkin mean, therefore, when he speaks of a
fundamental natural right to equal respect and concern,
that, if there is one thing to know about human beings, if
there is one irresistible force that drives them, it is their
desire to be treated with the same concern and respect as
everyone else? Of course not. Yet what then does he
22
mean by calling the wish to be treated with equal respect
and concern a "natural" right?
Dworkin defines a right as an interest that men are entitled to protect if they wish. Rights are "not the product
of any legislation, or convention or hypothetical contract,"15 and their status as "natural" comes from an
assumption the philosopher makes in order to unite and
explain "our political convictions." 16 It is just ''one basic
programmatic decision." As far as I can tell, Dworkin
thinks that a natural right is an opinion, found on examination to coincide with our other political opinions, that a
claim to protect a certain interest is simply valid and may
not be relativized. It would seem then that Dworkin happens to entertain the opinion of the unquestionable validity of equality. A Carl Schmitt, however, might, with
equal attention to his own political convictions, assert as a
unifying and explicating assumption, the unquestionable
validity of inequality. In the guise of natural right,
Dworkin has reintroduced the very kind of ungrounded
claim, based on political opinion, that natural rights
thought had tried in the first place to evict in favor of an
account of what men are really like. Hobbes contended, in
his polemic on "Darkness from Vain Philosophy" that the
Grecian schools were unprofitable because of just such
ungrounded claims:
The natural philosophy of those schools was rather a dream
than science and set forth in senseless and insignificant language . ... Their moral philosophy is but a description of their
own passions. For the rule of manners, without civil govern·
ment, is the law of nature; and in it, the law civil that determines what is honest and dishonest, what is just and unjust,
and generally what is good and evil. Whereas they make the
rules of goad and bad by their own liking and disliking; by
which means, in so great diversity of taste, there is nothing
generally agreed on, but everyone does, as far as he dares,
whatsoever seems good in his own eyes, to the subversion of
commonwealth.17
There is no teaching of right that does not at least imply
an understanding of what men are really like. Let me
assume that Dworkin is right in asserting that our most
fundamental right is obtaining "equal concern and respect in the design and administration of the political institutions that govern" us. What does the assumption of a
right to "equal concern and respect" tell us about ourselves and about the "political convictions" that lead us to
make that assumption?
We know something of Hobbes's and Locke's natural
men. Struggling in labor or in battle with their surroundings, taught by hard experience to set voluntary limits on
their actions and on their capacities to compel others and
nature to their individual ends, they come cautiously, mistrustfully, to civil society, because the exercise of their
faculties is life itself to them. Liberty, as much as is compatible with the preservation of life, is understood as
natural, irrepressible, and primary. Equality, in contrast,
lives in the service of liberty because equality guarantees
JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE
�that liberty to pursue one's happiness and enjoy one's
rights will be preserved. What kind of men reverse the
order and place equality before liberty?
In contrast to the rights of Hobbes and Locke, which
have to do with what men do or want to do, with living,
getting, pursuing, the fundamental right to equality, in
Dworkin's formulation, is strikingly passive. In contrast to
Hobbes and Locke, and especially Rousseau, for whom
natural man existed without government, in Dworkin's
quasi~state of nature, government already exists since
there men enjoy respect and consideration from government and its institutions. What this government does, we
know: it administers. But what do Dworkin's natural men
do? Like their cousins, Rawls's unpersoned wraiths, who
can only be trusted to choose for themselves when they
do not know who they are, they seem curiously insubstantiaL These men do not seem to want to do anything in particular, except possibly to make sure their neighbors are
getting no more or less consideration than they. Who are
these good children, these model citizens?
After the worker's revolt in East Berlin in 1953 had
been crushed, Bertolt Brecht, who had returned there
from corrupt and capitalist America to live as a free man,
made a famous quip. Since the people had lost the confidence of their government, he remarked, the government
should dissolve the people and select a new one. Dworkin's men, it seems to me, are just the people that government would have selected. They are pure political
subjects, asking for no more than to be properly arranged,
ordered, and regulated. They are the pipedream of the
social engineer and the tyrant's delight, bloodless, identical, undemanding, distinguished only serially, in the most
administratively convenient way.
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after.
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand.
Procrustes, too, was like the tyrant Auden describes:
devoted to the aesthetic ideal of symmetry. And here are
the men of their dreams.
If I am interpreting Dworkin's implicit anthropology
correctly, we have learned something about "our political
convictions." Equality of opportunity-Dworkin's "equal
treatment" and what the Declaration means by the stan·
dard of virtues and talents in selection-is the concept of
equality from the viewpoint of the citizen, the active, living individuaL Equality of respect and considerationDworkin's "equality of treatment" and what others have
called the equality of result-is the concept of equality
from the viewpoint of the ruler. From the citizen's viewpoint, politics fundamentally means deliberating, per·
suading, and voting. From the viewpoint of the ruler,
which Dworkin shares, politics fundamentally means administering, ordering, and manipulating. From that perspective, mere equality of opportunity is too messy, for it
lets the chips fall where they may. Government is called
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
upon to arrange the chips symmetrically, in the most aesthetically pleasing way.
It would be a mistake to think that the exercises of theorists like Dworkin or Rawls have no correspondence to developments in the political world. The gulf between ruler
and ruled, governor and citizen, is becoming wider on this
issue, precisely along Dworkinian lines. Affirmative action
is a deeply unpopular policy, at least according to public
opinion polls. According to one Gallup poll, eighty-three
percent of all Americans object to preferential treatment.
Strikingly, a majority of the very group that are the bene·
ficiaries of affirmative action agree with their fellow citizens.18 At the same time, there is an unmistakeable and
unmistakeably growing tone of hostility towards political
democracy among officials responsible for developing and
administering affirmative action. It is as though we were
coming to the final alternative sketched above. If the violation of natural rights principles cannot successfully be
justified by the benefits that violation brings, and if the at·
tempt to explain away the conflict also fails, (or rather succeeds only by radically transforming and denaturing the
natural rights tradition which it seeks to reconcile to racial
preference), then only the third alternative remains,
which is to denigrate or dismiss the tradition itself.
A straw in the wind blew by when Dr. Mary Berry, then
Undersecretary for Education at the Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare, gave a speech upon her
return from a trip to Communist China in 1977. (The
Department of course is deeply involved in supervising affirmative action programs). In her remarks, Dr. Berry expressed enthusiasm about almost every aspect of Chinese
life, including the practice of employing grade school children at productive manufacturing. She also praised the re·
gime's frank and rational administration of its system of
ideological and class discrimination in education, which
excludes the children of former "bourgeois" in favor of
the children of "untainted" class elements. The most
charitable, and probably correct, interpretation of her en·
thusiasm is, I believe, that she came to admire in totalitar·
ian China the social engineer's freedom to get on with the
work, unhampered by "near-hysteria and confusion," that
is, by public opinion, 19 which has hampered those who
must implement affirmative action policies in the United
States today.
In sum, the attempt to fashion a theoretical defense,
within the liberal tradition of natural rights, for affirmative action, which was viewed as only a minor refinement
on traditional human rights liberalism, has led, step by
step, from the refinement of liberalism to its abandon·
ment, to the abandonment of everything but the mere
name of natural rights, and is now apparently leading to
the eventual abandonment, first of liberty and then even
of politics itself, in favor of administration. There is something deeply disturbing in observing the gradual awakening
into self-knowledge and self-confidence of this anti-political
politics.
The rejection of the liberal human rights tradition may
23
�seem to be a matter of merely academic interest to those
who are not liberals. But liberalism has a special importance for Americans.
I spoke of the peculiar abstractness of Locke and Hobbes
as they articulated the state of nature. It is an abstractness
that has been criticized since Rousseau. Undoubtedly
there is something fictional, (more fictional perhaps even
than the historical status of the state of nature), about the
liberal idea, stated in Hobbes and Locke, of what men are
by nature and how they com·e, without race, culture, or
prior history to create in equal partnership a free and civil
society. But if it is a fiction, it is one of very special significance to us, for it tells our story, and has thus, astonishingly, ceased to be, in crucial ways, a fiction.
America is the liberal state par excellence. Precisely
through our historical struggle with the question of race,
we came close to vindicating our claim to be a state based
on the rights of man as man, and not on the history of a
particular people. Of course that does not mean that we
do not form a people, but rather that, paradoxically, our
peoplehood is grounded on liberal ideals, embodied in the
Declaration of Independence, and thus on the denial of
the primacy of peoplehood. Our history, as Tocqueville
knew before Louis Hartz, is the history of liberalism, and
our greatest historical test has been living up to liberalism
in the hardest case. Unlike the Declaration of the Rights
of Man and the Citizen, which in some sense is still a par-
makes it only the more, not the less astonishing. For it is
ultimately only by recognizing the fundamental precariousness of our situation, by recognizing how fragile must
be the consent to transcend family, race, and heritage,
that that precariousness can be prevented from forcing
itself on our attention by the breakdown of that consent.
Affirmative action sprang from a contemporary liberalism confident enough of its foundations to forget them
and even radically to undermine them for the sake of a
temporary and minor structural improvement. By now affirmative action has revealed itself as straightforward race
arid sex preference and thus a fundamental threat to liberal principles of the rights of man as man. Paradoxically,
it is because our paradox, our enduring paradox, no longer
seems a paradox, because the transformation of the liberal
idea into a liberal people, a liberal nation, has been so successful, that that transformation now threatens to be
reversed, as we fall apart into the ancient, pre-American
and pre-modern quarrels of sect and race for political
dominance and possession of the power to promote our
own and harm others.
A few years before affirmative action began to gestate in
the Nixon administration's Department of Labor, I heard
the president of Cornell University give his annual Com·
mencement address. As I recall the speech, he sketched out
for us his view of the structure of politics. I remember he
told us there were always three groups: the majority, the
tisan document in France, all Americans can take pride in
minority, and the managers. He was a manager, he said.
the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
Assimilation into the American people is relatively easy,
not because there is no such thing as an American people,
This memory, with all its unhappy resonances and prefig-
but because liberalism's willful ignorance of men's origins,
their family, nation, and religion, has allowed assimilation
to mean essentially no more (and no less) thai) becoming a
citizen, one with rights who believes in rights along with
the citizen's responsibilities they imply. This willful ignorance, which justice Harlan called the colorblindness of
the Constitution, lies at the heart of America's peoplehood, its nationality.
At one point, in his discussion of reverse discrimination, Dworkin astutely observes that the phrase I just
cited-the colorblindness of the Constitution-means
"just the opposite of what it says: it means that the Constitution is so sensitive to color that it makes any institutional racial classification invalid as a matter of law."20 Here
Professor Dworkin is perfectly right, and he thereby draws
attention to the extraordinary daring involved in trying to
create and preserve a country where one is limited only by
one's own capacities in what one attains, and not by acci-
dent of birth. His remark also illuminates the necessity of
the severity of those restrictions, especially equality
before the law, that alone can make such a rash undertaking feasible. A liberal people, based on the rights of man as
man, is a paradox, because it makes particularity out of
universality (not, as with countless historical peoples, universality out of particularity). That our paradox is a paradox of two centuries more or less successful duration,
24
urations, both particular and general, may serve as a pro-
phetic emblem for the America in which affirmative
action will have taken full hold. Citizenship will have
been even further devalued; instead only coalitions or
racial, ethnic, religious, gender, and social-condition
groups (like the handicapped) will matter. For they will
contend, not as now, for marginal advantage within a
framework still generally guaranteeing equal treatment by
the laws, but precisely for the political control of that
framework. This will naturally be a desperate struggle, because failure could mean loss of both liberty and equality,
even subjection and deprivation. Meanwhile, serenely arbitrating the grim battle, much like Botticelli's Venus regulating the dance-battle of the Graces in the Primavera,
will be the Managers. For them, that struggle will be an
administrative, or rather, more fundamentally, an aesthetic problem, a matter of arrangement and manipulation. For they will easily be able to give all they consider is
really being asked of them, they will give "equal concern
and respect" to each group, each force, precisely for what
it is, a force, a part of the Big Picture.
1. Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History
of France, 1787-1907, ed. Frank M. Anderson, New York, 1908, 59-60.
2. Lawrence Silberman, "The Road to Racial Quota·s," The Wall Street
Journal, August 11, 1977, 14. ''I now realize that the distinction between
goals and timetables on the one hand and the unconstitutional quotas
on the other, was not valid. Our use of numerical standards in pursuit of
JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE
�equal opportunity has led ineluctably to the very quotas, guaranteeing
equal results, that we initially wished to avoid."
3. Regents of the University of California, Petitioner, v. Allan Bakke,
Opinion of Justice Blackmun, June 28, 1978, 1-2.
4. Thomas Sowell," 'Affirmative Action' Reconsidered," The Public Interest, Winter 1976, 47-65. See especially 54, 57, and 63-64.
5. Constitutions, 59.
6. Constitutions, 59.
7. Alexander M. Bickel and Philip B. Kurland, Brief of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith Amicus Curiae, In the Supreme Court of the
United States, October Term, 1973, #73-235, 19. "The Court is, nevertheless, asked here to hold that the exclusion of a non-black applicant
from the law school of the State of Washington, solely because of his
race, is a valid racial classification. We respectfully submit, that the rule
of equality mandated by this Court in Sweatt v. Painter compels the
reve~~al of the judgment of the Supreme Court of Washington in this
case
8. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, Harvard University Press,
1977, 227.
9. Ronald Dworkin, "Why Bakke Has No Case," New York Review of
Books, November 10, 1977, 13-14.
10. "Why Bakke Has No Case," 14.
11. Taking Rights Seriously, 180-181.
12. Taking Rights Seriously, 231-239, especially see 239.
13. Thomas Pangle, The Public Interest, Winter, 1977-78, 157-160.
14. Taking Rights Seriousl)', 176-7.
15. Taking Rights Serious!)', 176.
16. Taking Rights Seriously, 177.
17. Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan, Parts I and II. Hobbs-Merrill, 1958,
6-7.
18. Measure, {the bulletin of University Centers for Rational Alternatives), number 42, April, 1977, I. The reference is to The New York
Times, May 1, 1977. 64% of non-whites objected to preferential treatment in the poll.
19. Measure, number 46, April/May 1978, 4-5, article by the author. On
November 17, 1977, Dr. Mary Berry gave a lecture in Chicago called
"The Chinese Experience in Education: What America Stands to
Learn." In discussing the Chinese use of quotas, she said: "In this last
respect, the Chinese are moving rationally and realistically in a field that
has led to confusion and near-hysteria here."
20. Taking Rights Seriousl)', 229.
John Paul II and the World of Tomorrow
Jean Laloy
Readers of the encyclical letter, Redemptor Hominis, of
John Paul II 1 divide into at least two groups: those that
delight in his teachings on social justice and the rights of
man and those who find his affirmations (but perhaps not
his warnings) in doctrine and moral matters of more importance. But it is the relation between the two sides of
John Paul II's teaching, between the teachings on social
justice and on doctrine, which counts. Taken as a whole
the letter strives to encompass the two aspects of John
Paul II's teaching and to define their relationship.
This letter is not only an encyclical, it is also circular in
its mode of composition. It begins with the reforms instituted in the Church since Vatican II. It sounds the mysJe;m Laloy is a retired French diplomat who while on active duty concentrated on cultural relations with eastern Europe. This article first
appeared in 1979 in the Summer issue of Commentaire.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
tery of God who has become man and returns to man in
the world of today to end with the Church-a community
of the friends of God whose presence makes itself felt
beyond its visible borders.
Set in the context of the other papal speeches and remarks of the last six months, this tightly written, sometimes difficult letter shows the Pope trying to answer the
question everyone asks him. What do you have to say to
us that we have not heard already? We have heard that it
is better to be good than evil; to help rather than kill one
another. But who really believes that? What about you?
Before addressing myself to what is to be done, the
Pope answers, let me tell you what is. "Man cannot live
without love" (RH II, 10). God whom your heart seeks has
come to you. Turn toward him and you will know what to
do. I testify that he is here among us.
I leave it to those more competent than myself to dis-
25
�cuss the theology of the letter. Any discussion would have
to underline the letter's constant insistence on its fidelity
to the thought of )2aul VI and, with somewhat less emphasis, to that of john XXIII and to the two constitutions
of Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes-on the Church
in the world-and especially to the second, on the Church
Lumen Gentium. It would also have to show the letter's
central emphasis on the mystery of a God who makes himself man in order to save all men and who remains among
men in order to associate all men from this moment in his
divine work. Everything in the letter is clearly stated,
without murkiness. Free from the jargon of contemporary
ideologies, the language tells of God's transcendence and
the transience of the things of the earth. It frequently
appeals to, or warns, theologians (III, 9), married couples,
priests, catechists (III, 21), those of a critical turn of mind
or those who dream of an ideal past, (I, 6) and some others.
"Classical theology"? "Worn-out cliches"? "Nothing
new"? These are the judgements of an editorial in Le
Monde (March 16, 1979). The writer was perhaps too
much in a hurry.
Seen against the background of the everyday life of
men today, the great truths, enunciated in the papal letter
we are studying, show the originality hidden in the affirmation (which is after all not as banal as it appears) of the
actual existence of a God, creator and saviour, who is a
friend of man.
*
*
*
What does the Pope from Cracow say about this world?
Does he curse communism? Does he reject the exploitation of liberalism? Does he advise each individual to fulfill
honorably the duties of his station in life without prejudice
to his moral obligations to his neighbor? That is not the
way he talks.
"I would like most of all," the Pope said on March II,
1979, "to join the mission of the Church with the service
of man in his unfathomable mysteriousness-to join them
in the same way in which I see and feel the relationships
between the mystery of the redemption in jesus Christ
and human dignity. Here is the central task of my ecclesiastical ministry."' The Pope has taken the trouble to point
out that we are here at the heart of the letter.
"Way" is the somewhat surprising word john Paul II
uses to designate the relation between the Church and
man-four billion men. It appears twenty times in the
third part of the letter: "Christ on everybody's way,"
"Every way of the Church leads to man," "Man is the way
of the Church." There are several meanings hidden in
this image taken from the gospels.
The way is the way of Salvation, the movement which
leads man, individually or collectively, towards the truth,
first as an object of faith, and one day as an object of
vision. In this meaning, "jesus is the way of the Church"
and everyone moves on it toward him. This is the way
when it leads to an end. But the way can also be a means,
the necessary point of passage for redemption. In this
26
sense, "the way of the Church is man." This means the
church is responsible for all men-"every single man."
The Church cannot ignore anything that happens to
man; her mission in space and time is limitless. But what
does "mission" mean? It means, "the way that unchange-
ably passes through the mystery of the Incarnation and
the Redemption." Not only does the Church proclaim
these mysteries, it lives them out. The more these mysteries take root in the lives of men ("individual. .. Family ... society ... nations ... peoples ... humanity"), the
deeper the life of man becomes, the more it opens up, the
more it is transformed and the more those mysteries take
on meaning and reveal previously hidden powers. As a
result the Church is answerable for all men, she is touched
by their history (to say nothing of what happens to them
individually). She is capable also, indirectly and almost as
an incidental by-product, of aiding men to find proper
orientation for their actions in the world. She will pay
attention to the "opportunities" that beckon, to the
gathering "threats"-in short to "everything that appears
contrary to the effort to make human life always more
human."
These words amount to a description of the possibility
of progress, not a progress without mistakes, falls, or even
collapse, but, nevertheless, an invisible or spiritual progress, a deepening and interiorization of life. Another
progress, temporal progress, the "construction of the
world" spoken of in Gaudium et Spes, might come from
this spiritual progress. But in contrast to Vatican II which
appeared at times inclined to describe contemporary man
with optimism, "as on the way to a fuller development of
his personality and an ever increasing assertion of his
rights," 3 john Paul II, fifteen years later, above all remarks
on the ambiguities of "progress." Contemporary man is
terrified of the consequences of his activity. "Today's
man appears always threatened by what he makes-by
the works of his hands and even more by his intelligence
and the directions taken by his will" (III, 15).
Now that man has the means to destroy the whole
human race, he can annihilate the natural environment
in which he lives. Above all he can follow "the tendency
to use all material, technical, and productive progress to
dominate others" (III, 15) and thereby smother moral
progress. By insisting on this matter the letter affirms the
ambiguity of the movement of history-an idea that
appeared in the parable of the wheat and the cockle, that
St. Augustine developed in The City of God. Forgotten or
perverted in modern times and flatly denied by modern
ideologies, this idea has been rediscovered and deepened,
notably in France, by several currents of philosophical
and theological thought since the beginning of the century.4 This idea of progress as a movement in two directions, toward evil as well as good, of progress as a tension
between two unattainable but real poles, springs unmistakeably from the experience of our century. This idea
basically challenges all fanatical political systems: there
is no perfect city! The other side of a city where no one
JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE
�hungers is a society where men are glutted. A society that
achieves perfect equality turns into a world in which no
one moves. And so on.
Do we have to settle for an overfed city? Is man's history no more than a blind struggle for more or less elevated
but always limited goals? The answer is that progress is
possible but that it occurs for all intents and purposes
above the level of history and most often without human
awareness. Temporal progress does not move straight
ahead. At best it zig-zags. The horizontal movement
ahead runs into a vertical movement descending from
above it: purpose. Historical space is measured in two or
three dimensions.
The Pope uses this idea of "progress or threat," of
progress that becomes a threat, of a threat that can lead to
progress, in two ways.
He first turns to the dramatic result of the progress that
accentuates the inequality between rich and poor nations.
Citing the parable of Lazarus and the wicked rich man
(Luke 16, 19-31) and even more the scene of the Last
judgement (Matthew 25, 31-46) "For when I was hungry
you gave me nothing to eat. .. ," John Paul II takes up
with energy the topics he developed in Mexico. Even
though fundamental "structures and mechanisms are
under accusation," there are possible solutions. His sketch
of such solutions stresses compromise, the necessity of
bringing economic "competition" and "redistribution"
of riches, and "planning" and "freedom" into harmony
(III, 16). He speaks out against the money swallowed up in
the arms-trade.
For two reasons I do not agree with Father Cosmao, the
successor of Father Lebret, who sees the turning point of
the letter in this part. First, the Pope in his letter as well
as in his speeches looks forward to a slow progress, marked
by interruptions and all sorts of starts forward and backward. Secondly, I do not think John Paul II shares either
Father Cosmao's view that "Man makes himself on earth
... and in making himself ... moves toward God" 5 or his
notion of the "collective autocreation of man." Both of
these ideas of Father Cosmao neglect the ambiguities of
progress, the fact of evil in history. As a result they run the
real risk of leading to myths different from the perspectives shown in the letter. There is a difference between
the "autocreation of man" and the Pope's clear unwillingness to settle for the present situation.
Conversely, the Pope greets the Universal Declaration
of the Rights of Man as real progress but progress that is
far from achieving all its desired effects. For at the same
time that we have made progress in achieving human
rights, the "great totalitarianisms" have spread, the "letter" of the Rights has been accepted at the expense of
their "spirit," "powers are imposed by a limited group on
all other members of a society," the "fundamental right"
of "religious liberty" is denied. Because of these abuses
there is danger of war, for in the final analysis peace rests
on respect for the inviolable Rights of Man-opus iustitiae
pax-while "war springs from the violation of these rights
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
and brings in its wake even greater violations" (III 16, 17).
Here there is the unmistakeable ring of the experiences of
the Archbishop of Cracow. Not a word about Marxism or
communism but the call for respect for man, for the
fundamental rights, for the elementary rights for the sake
of peace between citizens, between nations, and between
religions. Without respect for those rights, peace is impossible. "The principle of the rights of man touches profoundly on the area of social injustice and provides a basic
standard for testing for its presence in political institutions."
*
*
*
What does john Paul II mean by the "new Advent" at
the beginning of his letter? He means that the passing
world, however rich and varied, however many new and
unheard of things emerge in it, depends on something
other than itself. As soon as this dependence is recognized,
even simply sensed, or more modestly still, not denied,
then the "dignity of man" has a foundation. The more the
Church concentrates on the mystery of its beginnings and
its final goal, the more it serves men even in their tem-
poral existence-the more it opens up "ways" that lead
not to the abyss, to nothingness, but somewhere.
The "new Advent" means the end of the time of ideologies. It opens up the possibility of a new time, a time that
will also have its light and darkness but combined differently. This coming age will probably learn something
from contemporary disasters. The twentieth century was
supposed to have given individual liberty, social justice
and the light of reason their definitive foundation. To
some extent it has. There is more of this in our societies
than ever before. But there is more of something else
also that has sprung up at the same time like the cockles
in the wheat field. Faced or even burdened with the
weight of this other fact, men today turn away from the
repetitious monotony of political speeches. They search
high and low for something else. According to John Paul
II, the Church, in the fullest sense of the word, must become more and more itself in order to help men see.
"The Church crosses beyond the borders of temporalty
and at the same time looks with anxiety to everything
within the dimensions of this temporalty that affects the
life of man, the life of the spirit of man ... : the search
for truth, the insatiable craving for the good, the hunger
for freedom, the yearning for the beautiful, the voice of
conscience ... " (IV, 18).
In the letter the three themes of the speech at Puebla
reappear: first, the service of the truth which in its turn
allows the unity of man and provides the foundation for
his self-respect. Otherwise, the world drifts aimlessly in
the manner of Vladimir Soloview's dictmn, "Since we are
all descended from monkeys, let us love each other."
The letter would teach something else. "Since we come
from elsewhere and are going elsewhere, let us try better
to understand what we can do." Such words answer to the
expectation of a new period when temporal action, desa-
27
�cralized and without pretensions to absoluteness, will
nevertheless retain its own coherence-a coherence at
the same time important and unimportant. Very important because of its reference to absolute values which
every man sees we cannot do without, unimportant
because condemned to fleetingness. Temporal action
never succeeds fully, never realizes more than an approximation of justice, peace, equality, liberty. It never realizes
justice itself nor peace itself nor anything whole or wholly
reliable.
In this perspective it is surprising that the Pope nowhere
touches on the necessity of limiting the "absolute sovereignty" of states in order to make a little progress toward
ending violence,- even if it does not lead to peace itself.
But the Pope could not speak about everything. The
chapter on the rights of man implies limitations on sovereignty.
*
*
*
A comparison of john Paul's letter, Redemptor Hominis,
with Paul VI's first letter, Ecclesiam Suam, published
August II, 1964, shows their similarities and differences.
The spirit is the same in both letters. Paul VI speaks of
openness and dialogue, john Paul II of presence and
"caring." But Paul VI's letter is calmer and gentler, john
Paul II's is more abrupt and full of fire. Both letters address the world in an entirely new way. The Church is no
longer to rule or command in the traditional manner. In
both the Church is simply there, radiating less by its instructions than in its presence, which allows the light to
shine through.
This new relationship between the Church and the
world makes greater demands on each. Purer and more
transparent, the Church is also more vulnerable, less
protected. More open and less self-important, the world
is also more aware and less confident. There is nothing
easy in the relationship between the two.
Because of the letter's original approach to the world, I
do not share the worries of Paul Thibaud who, writing in
Esprit, fears lest the letter-despite the merits he acknowledges-define "a spiritual authority above politics"
and lead to ''ecclesiastical interventionism.'' 6 Responsible,
of course, for facing the future, john Paul II, in my judgement, wants first of all and above all to let a light that
does not come from him shine through. To take his stand
where the vertical and horizontal intersect-that is his
conception of the mission of the Church and its service of
man. As a result of this conception, he limits himself, in
relation to the world, to indicating directions in the area
of rights and inequality and of the stmggle against poverty.
He does not dictate. He notes points of reference. He
indicates some of the ways.
Because of his past, however, he belongs to that class of
men who have known modern prometheanism and its
frustration, who know you have to look elsewhere. He
has no need to reason and to cast about in search of direction now that he has unique and universal responsibilities.
28
The way is there, open, self-evident. But the masses of
men do not see it yet. So he says what he is there to say.
And his words are heard. There are already answers,
even from Poland. For example, Adam Michnik, in name
of the lay left:*
Religious freedom is the most visible sign of the actual exercise
of civil liberties. For the state's attack on religious freedom is
always a sign of the totalitarization of intellectual life. 'l'here
are no exceptions to this rule, because totalitarian power alone
cannot accept St. Peter's exhortation to the apostles: We
must obey God rather than men (Acts 5, 29). In the language of
the lay left these words mean that man's human nature endows him with rights that no power has the authority to
annul. 1
Here Michnik echoes Bukharin who said in a conversation with Boris Nikolaevsky in Paris in March, 1936, that
the "ten commandments of Moses" provide the foundation for all humanism-' He also echoes Benjamin Constant, who wrote in I 815:
L'universalite des citoyens est le sou vera in ... II ne s'ensuit pas
que l'universalite des citoyens, ou ceux qui, par elle, sont
investis de Ia souverainete, puissent disposer souverainement
de la liberte des individus ... L'assentiment de la majorite ne
suffit nullernent dans taus les cas pour legitimer ses actes: il en
existe que rien ne peut sanctionner ...
There are indications that something very different
from what many French Catholics had made out is occurring in the world. Among these indications is John Paul
II's letter which distinguishes between "the mission of the
Church and the service of man" in order to show the inspiration that unites them, without confusing them in
practice.
Translated by Brother Robert Smith
*The phrase "la gauche lai"que" means the left that is not dogmatically
atheistic.-tr.
--
--------c~
1. Redemptor I--lominis, text in La Documentation calholique, 7, April
1979,301-323.
2. La Documentation catholique, 7, April!, 326.
3. Ecumenical Council Vatican II, L'Eglise dans le monde, Paris 1966,
ch:IV, section 41, 1, Ill.
4. Especially Jacques Maritain, Pour une philosophie de l'histoire, Paris
1959. Henri de Lubac, Catholicisme, les aspects sociaux du dogme, Paris
1941. Henri Marrou, Theologie de l'histoire, Paris 1968.
5. V. Cosmao, Redempteur de l'lwmme, Lettre encyclique de Jean-Paul
II, un guide de lecture, Paris 1979, 21.
6. P. Thibaud, "Vcnu de la dissidence," Esprit, t\prill979, 3-10.
7. A. Michnik, L'£glise et la gauche, le dialogue polonais, Paris 1979,
170.
8. Boukharine et !'opposition d Staline, Sotsialislitcheskii Vestnik, 4, New
Ymk 1965, 93-94.
JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE
�"Plato's Theory of Ideas''
Eva Brann
My subject, as proposed, is "Plato's Theory of Ideas".
Whether that subject actually interests you, or you think
that it ought to interest you, you will, I imagine, regard it
as a respectable topic. And yet I have to tell you that every
term in the project is wrong-headed. Let me therefore be·
gin by explaining why that is.
First, Plato's Theory of Ideas is not a subject at all. I
mean that it is not a compact mental material to be pre·
sented on an intellectual platter. Plato himself refrained
from making it the direct theme of any of the twenty-five
or more dialogues which he wrote. Instead, the ideas ap·
pear in the context of conversation, incidentally and in
scattered places. He gives the reason directly in a letter:
There is no treatise of mine about these things, nor ever will
be. For it cannot be talked about like other subjects of learning, but out-of much communion about this matter, and from
living together, suddenly, like a light kindled from a leaping
fire, it gets into the soul, and from there on nourishes itself.
[Seventh Letter 341 c]
It follows that my lecture, like all the similar scholars' efforts, is an outsider's attempt to short-circuit a required
initiation, an attempt which betrays my lack of genuine
participation in the truth I am conveying as a molded mat·
ter. There is, however, also much in Plato's works which
invites such an exposition of his doctrine: much explicit
and provocative argumentation and many promises of an
explicitly communicable way to insight.
I have another reason for thus boldly ploughing in. Two
summers ago there died that man, that teacher in this
school, who, as it seemed to many of us, best knew the
way into the Platonic dialogues. His name is jacob Klein.
While he was alive, I, for one, resting secure in the fact of
his existence, postponed a bald confrontation of my own
with this ultimate philosophical matter, the "Platonic
A lecture delivered at St. John's College in Annapolis on Septem·
ber 14, 1979, and in Santa Fe on February 15, 1980.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ideas." But now, I thought, the time had come to be bold
in acting on the advice Socrates gives to his friends in the
course of the last conversation of his life. When he is asked
where they will find someone to charm away their fears
that philosophy is impossible once he is dead, he tells
them that not only among the Greeks, but also among the
barbarians-that, of course, includes us-there are many
good people who can clo this for them. But then he adds:
And also you must search for them among yomselves, for
probably you will not easily find people more able than you are
to do this. [Piwedo 78 a]
We speak of "Plato's Theory", and let me now say
something about that. Its chief sources are, to be sure, the
works of Plato, and he is its ultimate master.' Yet within
ll!S works, theDialogues, it is not Plato but his teacher Socrates who originates and maintains the theory. Plato presents Socrates as having a life-long hold on it, though he
speaks of it under continuously changing aspects. There is
a so-called "late" dialogue, the Parmenides, in which the
elderly author imagines a boyish Socrates-a wonderful
turnabout-and in which Socrates' claim to authorship of
the ideas is elicited by the father of philosophy, Parmenides, himself (130 b). There is another dialogue, also written late in Plato's life, the Sophist, in which an old Socrates,
just a few weeks away from death, listens silently while a
stranger brings the theory to its height with the solution
of its deepest difficulty. And finally there is a "middle" dialogue, the Phaedo, in which Socrates, in the last conversation of his life, addresses the theory more directly than
anywhere else. Plato, at least, wished the world to think of
"Socrates' Theory of Ideas".
But then, more accurately, he would not have had us
think of a "theory" at all. By a theory we usually mean a
conceptual construction designed in principle to yield satisfying explanations for every problem brought before it.
A theory ought to be falsifiable, which means it should be
capable of being made to reveal its incompleteness or in-
29
�consistency by strenuous formal reasoning so that if
need be, it may be discredited and discarded. Therefore it
is its author's responsibility to present it in the most impregnable form possible. Scholars do find such difficulties
aplenty in the Theory of Ideas. But here is a curious circumstance: they are all anticipated in their boldest form
in that very dialogue, the Parmenides, which represents a
boyish Socrates as first proposing the Ideas.' Can you
think of another philosophical theory which is presented
from the very outset in terms of a series of devastating dif.
ficulties, never to be explicitly resolved?
The point is, the Ideas are not a theory.' Socrates calls
his bringing in of the Ideas a "supposing" (Phaedo 100 b);
the Greek word for a supposition is a hypothesis. A hypothesis is, literally, an underpinning, a prop. It comes to
him and he comes on it at every departure and at every
turning. It is a condition he acknowledges so that he can
carry on as he must; it is not a conclusion presented for
verification but a beginning which then becomes as well
the end of inquiry. It is at first the condition that gives
him heart for a search by making it possible for him to
launch a question that has in it an arrow making for an
answer. One might say that it allows him to turn the unknown into a suspect to be interrogated (Meno 86 b).
Thereafter, however, the Idea-hypotheses-for the hypothesis is not the proposition that there are Ideas, but
each Idea is itself a hypothesis-are to be used as stepping
stones to their own conversion into something not merely
supposed but truly beheld, "seen" (Republic 511 b). Such
suppositions are surely not fruitfully accosted by formal
hammer-and-tongs argument, though they are, of course,
amenable to careful and critical inspection. 4
I keep calling these Socratic suppositions Ideas. The
word idea is a transcription of a term Socrates himself
uses idea. Nonetheless it is an infelicitous term. For ask
yourselves what we usually mean by an idea, for instance
when we say: "That's her idea of a good lecture." Clearly
we mean an opinion or a mental image or a concept
something "in our minds," often in opposition to Hthe real
thing." This modern notion of an idea, the result of an
earth-shaking intellectual upset, is that of a mental representation, something before or in the organ of ideas, the
mind. The use of the term would cast my exposition into
a false, albeit familiar, frame, and I would only make things
worse were I to insist that Socrates' Ideas are ''real", and
worse yet, "really exist."
Socrates' own chief word is eidos. Like the word idea it
is built on the simple past stem of the word to see, which
signifies the act of seeing once done and completed.
Scholars have collected the many meanings of eidos which
flow continuously from the broadly ordinary to the narrowly technical: shape, figure, face form, characteristic,
quality, class, kind. But, of course, when we dwell on the
multiplicity of Greek usages, we are standing the matter
on its head, for they are all revealing differentiations from
the dead-center of meaning. Eidos means sight, aspect,
looks, in that eerily active sense in which a thing that has
1
1
1
1
1
30
looks or is a sight presents itself to our sight and our looking. "Looks", then, and not idea or form, is the most faithful rendering of eidos. 5 But it sounds too curious, and so I
shall tonight speak simply of eidos. The plural is eide.
Eidos, then, is the word Socrates chooses for his hypothesis. For that choice he might, for this once, be called a
"Greek thinker", since he cherishes and yet overturns the
wisdom of his language which associates seeing and
knowing: "I know" in Greek is built on the stem of "I
saw." Eidos is a choice full of witty depth, for Socrates'
eidos is invisible, and that is surely the first of all those notorious Socratic paradoxes.
So let me convert the falsely familiar title "Plato's Theory of Ideas" to "Socrates' hypotheses: the eide". I shall
pursue the Socratic eidos under seven headings, for it
shows as many aspects as there are beginnings to Socrates'
inquiry. Indeed, that is what makes his hypotheses compelling: that such diverse roads lead to the eidos 6
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
Excellence and Commonness
Speech and Dialectic
Questions and Answers
Opinion and Knowledge
Being and Appearance
Same and Other
Original and Image
L Excellence and Commonness
"Philosophy" means literally the love of wisdom. Therefore it begins in desire (Republic 475 b, Symposium 204 a),
in desirous love, in erotic passion, the most acute of all
passions. That is what we might call the young beginning
of philosophy.' It is that love which arises when another
human being appears "all-beautiful in aspect," in eidos, as
the Greek phrase goes (Charmides 154 d). We might simply say that this love arises when someone suddenly becomes visible for us. For beauty, Socrates says, has the
part of shining out eminently and being most lovable, and
of coming to us through sense, through the most acute of
senses, the sense of sight Beauty is brilliance, attractive
visibility. Beauty is sightliness par excellence, and a sight is
that which, without going out of itself, draws us from a
distance. But such a sensual sight, such a bodily idea
(Phaedrus 251 a), which draws us from afar, affects us with
an exciting and utterly confounding sense that it is a mere
penetrable veil, a mere representation of some divinity beyond. That is why we speak of such love as adoration. It
draws us not to itself but through itself-the enchantedly
attentive fascination with sensual looks goes over into
something on the other side of that surface. Desire drawn
through distance is called love, and if what beckons is on
the further side of surface sight, it is called philosophy.
For, Socrates says, there is a road-whose first station is
the beckoning irritation aroused by one beautiful bodywhich leads us to develop an eye first for all kinds of beauty
and finally to sight its self-sameness everywhere in the
JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE
�world and in the soul (Symposium 210 a). And that sight,
the very source of visibility, is beyond sense, and is the
eidos itself.
There is another beginning in what is extraordinary and
captivating, a little duller in its visible aspect, though its
luster is life-long (Phaedrus 250 d). It is the outstanding,
the excellent. All of us are at some time overcome by admiration for the fullness of being of certain people and
their deeds, or even by an animal or a tool (Republic 353 b,
601 d). Such potency of being, such authentic goodness, is
called in Greek arete, which means effective excellence,
potent capability (Laches 192 b). It is more than ordinary
usefulness or humanity or sincerity. It is rather a kind of
superlativeness-it's name is related to aristos, the best. It
is competitive, ('agonistic," as the Greeks say, and uncom-
mon, although we speak rightly and yet paradoxically of a
"standard" of excellence; we recognize the rare as the ex-
emplary. Excellence and how to engender it is a topic of
pervasive fascination. It interests the good, the crafty, the
curious, parents, citizens, the corrupt-perhaps them
most peculiarly (Meno ), them and the young.
But again, as in the case of beauty incarnate, every outstanding human being, every fine deed, appears as a mere
instance, a mere exemplification of excellence. It is spuri-
individuality, that inarticulable deviation from the common which he never thinks of as a source of particular
fineness. He pursues the common eidos because it is more
revealing than the world's idiosyncracies.
For we do not learn of this eidos by looking at individual
things; on the contrary, we can look at them only because
they display this eidos, this look. For example, Socrates
would agree that equal objects-say, scratched lines of
equal length-are needed to call up in us the thought of
equality (Phaedo 75 a). But they do that only because they
take part in that eidos which makes them look equal to us,
even though they are but uncertainly, passingly, approximately equal, and from them we could never gather the
sharply precise idea of equality, anymore than we can
identify goodness by watching human actions from now
till doomsday. That look of things which not one of them
has fully or purely but which is common to all, that is a
wonder to Socrates.
Both outstanding and common sights, then, point to an
invisible eidos beyond.
II. Speech and Dialectic
We have a passing strange power of reaching the things
that share a look, all of them, at once. We can say the
word, their name. When the eye sees a sight, the tongue
can utter a sound which is the sensual appearance of a
word, of speech (Third Letter 342 b). One word reaches,
picks out, intends what is the same in many things. One
word presides over many things (Republic 596 a). A word
is not a symbol for Socrates, for it does not stand for
something by reason of some sort of fit between it and the
thing; rather it reaches toward something utterly other
than itself: it intends, it has meaning. Socrates thinks that
what words mean is precisely that common eidos. Further-
ous for being a mere instance and not the thing itself, deficient in being abstracted from the complete complex of
virtues, deformed by being bound to a particular setting.
We all know that even the best-founded hero-worship
eventually loses its edge and luster as the admirer gains
perspective. But the longing to see excellence and be excellent is for that ever-bright, undeformable shape which
looms behind each tainted earthly example.
The beautiful and the best, the fine and the goodthrough these is the enthusiastic first access to the eidos.
But there is also a more sober beginning, one by whose
implications Socrates himself was a little put off in his
first youth, because of their meanness (Parmenides 130 c).
Besides the high and shining eidos of what is beautiful and
ramic familiarity of daily sensory sights leaves obscure:
that the visible world, particularly the natural world, ap-
excellent, there is also a common eidos, or better, every-
pears to be compounded of more and more encompassing
thing, from a small bee to a grand virtue, displays or "has''
an eidos. (Meno 72). Everything we see, everything that appears in any way at all, looks (or sounds or smells) like
something-excellences, elements, animals, tools, perhaps even mud. Everything wears the aspect of being of a
sort. Unless it has the looks of something, we cannot see it,
for it has no coherent shape to draw us; we cannot point
to it or name it. To see is always to re-cognize; just imagine trying to focus on something-! shouldn't even say
"something" -which is truly unique and looks like nothing. Whatever wears a look at all wears that look in common with other things. One look presides over numerous
things and that is why we can "identify", that is to say,
make out the sameness, of things, of people, elements,
animals, tools. It is not in their multifariousness and difference that we lay hold of things but "by their being
bees" or beds or excellences (Meno 72 b). Socrates is far
more interested in this common look than in what we call
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
more, in fixing on speech he discovers what the pano-
visible "sorts," rising finally into totally invisible kindred
groups. The Greek word for a visible sort is, of course,
eidos and for a kindred group, genos. The Latin word for
eidos is species. Socrates discovers the organization of the
world into species and genus,s and that things can be
placed, defined, by thinking about the meaning of names
and connecting them properly in speech. All the world
seems to be at the roots akin (Meno 81 d), and that kinship,
is articulable in complexes of words.
Such connected speech is what the Greeks call logos. It
is, first of all, inner effort, movement, attention, intention;
indeed, it is the same as thinking (Sophist 263 e). It is always an activity of discerning and picking out on the one
hand, and comprehending and collecting on the other; in
fact that is what the verb legein means: to select and collect. Socrates thinks that such speech can reveal the interconnections of the world, but only if it "looks to" (e.g.,
Republic 472 b, 532 a) the interweaving of the invisible
31
�eide. Meaningful and true speech is speech in accordance
with the eidos (Phaedrus 249 b); names reach for the eide
singly and sentences for their interconnections. Socrates
calls such reaching speech dialectic, "sorting through"
(266 c).
But he uses that word in another, wider, sense also. Dialectic is serious, and, if necessary, uncompromising conversation with oneself or with another, argument. (I might
say that if the enthusiasm of love is young philosophy,
argumentative dialectic might be called the youngest philosophy because bright children make lovely dialecticians.)
Now dialectic does not only reveal the articulated unity of
the world. It can also shake our easy acceptance of its oneness. Speech can rake up the obtuse self-contradictoriness
of things. Such self-opposition comes out when speech is
used in a very original way, in "telling," as the old term
goes, in counting. Take this index finger. It is larger than
the thumb but smaller than the middle finger. It is both
small and large. It has both looks at once. They coincide in
the thing and yet we can tell them apart and count them
as each one, and two together in the thing. Whoever takes
the deliverances of words seriously will find this provoking~provoking of thought (Republic 523). Socrates
can account for this revelation only by supposing that the
eidos greatness and the eidos smallness, which are each
one and forever separate beyond the finger, can be fused
in the finger. Even if the finger is confounding, the eide
are pure and intelligible. The eidos saves the telling power
of speech.
III. Questions and Answers
Socrates asks questions, of himself and of others, and
he urges them continually: try to say the answer. His questions are not quite the usual kind, namely requests for
information or provocations of acknowledgement. Nonetheless people see charm or dignity enough in them to try
to respond. Socrates' kind of question is preeminently
framed to elicit speech. He asks after that in things which
can respond, which is answerable, responsible. The Greek
term for what is answerable in that way is aitia, the
responsible reason. Socrates thinks that such a responsi-
the cause is not to be reduced or evaporated in inquiry
but kept in sight and pursued; that granted, the answer
can then be safely elaborated (Phaedo 105 b). For it poses
a new and deeper question: What is beauty~or excellence
or knowledge?
I should say here that Socrates does not go about idly asking what scholars like to call the "What is X? question." His
questions are not one function with variable objects, but
each is asked differently in each conversation, for each is
set differently into Socrates' life and each reaches toward
a unique aspect of the complex of being. We all know that
the answer to the question what something is can take
many forms. Socrates sometimes begins by showing people
that they quite literally don't know what they are talking
about and can't mean what they are saying~a charming
but dangerous business for the young (Apology 33 c,
Republic 539 b, Philebus 15 a). Sometimes he proposes a
startlingly revealing, seemingly paradoxical, and dubiously
convertible identification, for instance that excellence is
knowledge. And once in a while he does what Aristotle
(Metaphysics 987 b) persuaded people to think of Socrates
as doing first and preeminently: he looks for a definition
by genus and species and differentiae. There is no one
method for interpreting all the dialogues, as Mr. Klein
used to say. 9 And yet it is equally the case that Socrates is
always after the same end, on a trail of speech on which
the one-word answer is a trail blaze. The trail, however,
approaches its goal without meeting it, asymptotically.
This goal is the eidos named in the simple-minded but
safe answer to a Socratic question. Ultimately, to be sure,
the eidos toward which the word points cannot be attained through speech but only by itself and through itself
(Cratylos 439 b), for it is not speech which determines the
eidos but the eidos which calls forth speech (Parmenides
135 c). Logos is utterly diverse from eidos since its very nature is to be merely about being; it might be said to climb
along the eidetic structure, articulating, so to speak, the
lattice of an impenetrably crystalline complex.
But meanwhile the question which is steadfastly answered as it itself directs, focuses the soul on the eidos as
responsible cause.
ble reason-we smnetimes say "cause" -cannot be some
external linkage of events. It is a trivializing answer to the
IV. Opinion and Knowledge
question "Why is Socrates sitting in prison?" to say that
he is flexing his joints in a certain way in a certain place.
Although he is too modest to say so, he knows he is there
because of his peculiar kind of courage. Similarly, if the
question is "What makes this face beautiful?", the answer
he insists on is that it is beautiful not by a certain incidental shape or color, but "by beauty." He calls such answers unsophisticated but safe (Phaedo l 00 d).
They are indeed so simple-minded as to seem at first futile~ they are answers for those whose ambition is not to
go onward but inward. For their safety is in keeping us to
the question, in directing us through its words to a word.
To accept that things are beautiful by beauty means that
Socrates comes to grips with the strangest of human
scandals: that we are able to talk without speaking and to
believe without acting. Human life is peculiarly capable of
glorious heights and excruciating failures, and it is these
heights and depths we most avidly chatter about and have
powerfully ineffective beliefs about. Indeed, public talk
about them is obligatory. It is an incantation to keep the
spirit of excellence from fading. It consists of certain partial lopsided truths whose deficiency is obscured by their
familiarity. Socrates calls such speechless talk, such logoslike utterance without present thought, belief or opinion.
(D6xa. Our favorite phrase signal that an opinion is coming is: "I feel that ... ".) He thinks further that it is be-
32
JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE
�cause we do not know what we mean when we talk of
excellence, that we fail to be excellent.
By "knowing" he does not mean being familiar with
certain arguments and definitions or having some sort of
competence or canniness in getting what one wants (1-Ii(Jpias minor 365 d). He means that our souls are alight with,
are filled with, what truly is. He means a knowledge so live
and rich that it goes immediately over into action without
leaving room for the mediation of a wavering or perverse
will. Socrates' first interest in knowledge is therefore practical, but I should say here that that knowledge vivid
enough to pass immediately into deed will also be an end
in itself, a realm in which to dwell beyond all action, and
that this is yet another one of the great Socratic paradoxes
(Phaedo 66 b, Phaedrus 247, Republic 517 b).
To be cured of being caught in mere opinion we must
know how this state is possible. Socrates finds only one explanation plausible. What we have beliefs and opinions
about cannot be the same as what we think seriously
about (Republic 477). The name of our object may be the
same, but we cannot have the same thing in mind when
we just talk and when we truly speak. We are using our
powers so differently when we have opinions and when
we think that they amount to different powers and must
have different objects. That is not really so odd an idea:
We seem to switch mental gears when we pass from pontificating to thinking, and the matter we have gone into
deeply is no longer what it was when we "knew" it superficially, just as the friend well known is often a wholly different person from the friend of first acquaintance. The
superficial glance is reflected by a mirror-like surface of
seeming that masks the depths which thinking seeks and
in which it becomes absorbed.
That first aspect of the world that is the object of opinion, the world whose very nature it is to seem and then to
vanish before closer inspection, Socrates calls becoming,
because it is always coming to be and never quite what it
is. It is the world which is before our eyes. Our first fascination is with the shifting, inexact, contradictory things
before our eyes, or with the obtrusive opinions of our fellows. These are our unavoidable beginnings (Phaedo 74 a).
But as we penetrate the visible surface and search into
those opinions, a new world appears, now not to the eye
of sight but of thought, steadfast in being such as it is, of a
powerful "suchness," shapely, unique. Socrates calls this
world being. l-Ie understands it to be all that knowledge requires. In knowing we have a sense of being anchored,
rooted in something stable and lucid that the eye of the
soul can behold (Phaedo 99 d). It is the world of the eidos
understood as the object of knowledge, the knowable
eidos (Republic 511 a).
Yet Socrates by no means regards the knowable eidos as
a mere contrivance for granting himself knowledge_ On
the contrary, he thinks that we are, all of us, capable of
the experience of going into ourselves in thought, led on
by the beckoning eidos, a process so vividly like the raising
of a memory that he calls it, mythically, "recollection,"
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the calling-up of a primordial memory (Meno 81, Phaedo
73). The way to the eidos is by a passage through our own
souls, not by a penetration of external things-or better,
these two ways are one.
The eidos, I must add, is knowable, but it is not knowledge. It confronts the soul and is not of it. To put it in
modern terms: It is a presence to the. soul, but not a representation within it. We might say that Being is for us irreduceably aspectual: We look at it and move among its
articulations for it has a power of affecting the soul and
being known (Republic 511, Sophist 248 e). We may even,
speaking figuratively, comprehend it. But we cannot pass
into it. For Socrates philosophy, the desire for being, remains forever literally philosophy-an unfulfilled longing
for knowledge.
V. Appearance and Being
The eidos is steadfast and lucid. But the world which
envelops us is shifting and opaque. Yet the Greeks call
what appears before our eyes the phenomena, which
means ''what shines out," "what shows itself," for the
things that appear glow and ensnare us by their kaleidoscopic spectacle: we are all lovers of sights and sounds (Republic 475 d). I should note here that although I cannot
help talking of "things," the appearances are not things in
any strict sense since they have no "reality" (which is but
Latin for "thinghood"), no compacted, concrete character.
Socrates sometimes uses the word "business," "affairs"
(prdgmata), for our world. The "phenomena" sparkle busily,
but it is all surface.
Now the systematic illusions and the serried variety of
appearance can be mastered by various sciences, for example, the sciences of measuring, numbering, and weighing (Republic 602 d). Yet there is still a recalcitrant
residue, an incorrigible phenomenality that shows itself as
a two-fold multiplicity. First there are always many irreducibly diverse items of a kind: many different beautiful
things, many different just acts. And second, no particular
beautiful thing and no particular just act is that way
perfectly, unbudgeably, purely, but each changes as our
perspective on it changes in time or place. Appearance as
appearance is scattered and shimmering, fragmented and
iridescent.
But most of all it is not what it shows, or to put it plainer:
Appearance is appearance of something, it points beyond
itself_ What is that whose refracted form appears to us in
appearance? What appears in appearance must be in itself
invisible. This invisible eidos is what Socrates thinks of as
the being behind appearance, and appearance is becoming regarded as a manifestation. This eidos which is a
being, is all that appearance and becoming are not: not
scattered but one; not multiform but of a single look
(Phaedo 78 d); not mixed but pure (66 a); not passive but
potent (Sophist 247 e); not elusive and illusory but steadfast and true; not for busy show but the thing in its verity,
the very thing (to auto pragma); not self-contradictory but
33
�self-same (Phaedo 78 d, Cratylos 386 e); not dependent
and of something, but itself by itself, absolved from
subservience, or uabsolute" (as later commentators render
Socrates' deliberately naive term "by itself"); unique, immortal, indestructible (Phaedo 78 d), outside time and
beyond place (Phaedrus 247 b). All that lies in Socrates'
simplest expression: the just, the BeautifuL
Whatever has this characteristic of potent, shapely,
and, one might almost say, "specific", self-sameness is
called a being. It provides such "beingness" (ousia, Craty-
los 386 e, Meno 72 b) as appearances have, and it does this
by somehow "being by," having presence in them,
(parousia, Phaedo 100 <.1)- The eidetic beings are responsible for the fact that the question "What is it?" asks not
only what the thing is but also what it is: every
"whatness," all quality, brings being with it.
Beings, once again, are not ''real," for they are not
things and do not move in the categories true of things,
nor do they "exist," for to exist means to be here and
now. 10 But they are not unreal or non-existent either.
They are, in the way described, and as they appear they
give things their looks, their visible form (Phaedo 104 d).
VI. Same and Other
The being I have named so often is not Socrates' discovery. It comes to him from those so prejudicially called
Presocratics, in particular from Parmenides who entered
the sanctuary of being in a blazing chariot. Thus it comes
to Socrates already fraught with established controversy
and difficulties. Even he has an inherited legacy of "problems," that is to say, of questions posed in terms of his
predecessors' inescapable doctrines. Questions posed in
this way, as problems, notoriously have resolutions which
pose more and tighter problems, and thus is launched the
tradition of professional philosophy. Socrates does notescape this unfresh beginning.
This is the problem Socrates takes up when still almost
a boy: the being Father Parmenides discovered is and
nothing else. It is, one and only, without distinction or difference, for we cannot think or speak what is utterly not.
There is no sentence which does not contain, audibly or
latently, an "is", an assertion of the truth of being. Such
austere attention to what speech always says is not primitive. Listen to W. H. Auden:
Words have no words for words that are not true. ["Words"]
What Parmenides says-that what is, is, and in merely being is without inner distinction, all one-is compelling
since we have no immediate speech with which to deny it;
we cannot say: "Being is different from itself; being is not
being; being is not-being." But it is also monstrous: it negates both our multifarious world, the one in which we
are at home, along with the very possibility of articulate
speech itself, since we may never say anything of any-
thing other than that it is. Because Parmenides' grand insight brings all articulating speech to a halt, his zealous
34
follower Zeno does not attempt to defend his position,
but, instead, cleverly attacks the opposition, who continue
to talk and say that being is not one but many. He understands the claim that being is many to require that being
be at once like and unlike itself, self-contradictory, unthinkable. But Socrates knows both that the visible world,
at least, is like that and that thoughtful speech cannot
bear such self-contradiction. He offers a supposition
which saves at the same time the integrity of that which
speech is always about, namely this "is" which is at the
heart of every logos, and the manifest multiplicity and inconsistency of appearance as it is revealed in speech. He
saves Parmenides from sinking into the white silence of
being.
Socrates' supposition is the e!dos, which is not being itself but a being. His resolution is that being is many, but
not confused. The eide are each self-same, as being should
be, but they are also diverse from each other. The appearances somehow ('participate" in these beings in such a
way that the diverse beings intersect in them and are superimposed. Thus the appearances become self-opposed;
the eide save at once the purity of being and the alloy of
becoming. Young Socrates shrugs off Parmenides' problem .about multiplicity with the phrase: "Where's the
wonder?" (Parmenides 129 b), the universal paean of those
who have resolved another's perplexity. An older Socrates
will say that philosophy is wonder.
Socrates' solution, that there are several and diverse beings, of course poses new problems. The most telling of
these is that each being is also a non-being-at least it is a
not-being; it is not what the other beings are. Hence
Zeno' s problems with the self-opposition of the world of
appearance has been but raised into the realm of being. A
few weeks before the end of his life Socrates is present at
a great moment in the course of philosophy when a visitor
from Parmenides' country presents, by way of resolving
this higher problem, a momentous elaboration of Socrates'
supposition which, while turning it almost irrevocably
into a "theory," advances it greatly. For if Socrates had
shown how we can come to terms with the inherent and
unavoidable self-opposition of the world of appearance,
the visiting stranger will go on to show how we can account for the spurious being deliberately invoked in false
and fraudulent human speech.
The stranger begins his solution of Socrates' problem
by establishing that all the eide are beings, and that they
must therefore all take part in being itself; they all belong
to a highest eidos, the eidos Being. But then the stranger
boldly claims that there is also another, unheard of, eidos
which ranges in a peculiar way through all the eide. This
eidos is indeed not-being, but not-being rightly understood, understood as a being (Sophist 258 c). He calls it the
Other. The eidos of the Other runs through all beings and
makes them other than each other-not what the other is.
By being scattered through all being the Other is the cause
of its pervasive distinction and difference. It is a peculiar
principle which relates by opposition and unifies by diverJULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE
�sity, for since all have otherness in common, their very
community makes them different. It makes all beings confront each other. It is the very eidos of relativity. It is not a
new name for non-being that the stranger contributes but
a new view of the world as articulated and bonded through
difference. It is a world in which the fact that we take one
thing for another and speak falsely, as we surely do, is accounted for: to say what is false is not to say nothing or
what is not, but to say something other than what is the
truth.
The stranger mentions in passing also another principle, evidently not itself an eidos among eide, but comprehending, surpassing and beyond all being. He calls it the
Same (254 e), in antithesis to the Other. It is that which
gives the eidos of Being, and through it all the beings,
their very own nature, their steadfast abiding by themselves, their being what they are through and through: the
Same gives the eide their self-sameness. It is the culminating principle. Depending on how it is approached, it is
also called the Good, because it gives beings their vividness and fittingness (Republic 509 a), and in Plato's "Unwritten Teachings" -recall that he declined to write
down the most central things-it seems to have been called
·the One, because it is the first and final totality. Socrates
speaks of it explicitly, though in metaphor, but once,
likening it to the sun because it gives the eide their luminous sight-likeness (Republic 509 b).
Aristotle told a story of Plato's famous lecture on the
Good, which he held at his school, the Academy. People
came in droves, expecting to hear something fascinating
to themselves, about health or wealth or power. But it was
all about arithmetic and how the eide are a certain kind of
number, ending up with the just-mentioned revelation
that the Good is the One. So they got disgusted and drifted
off (Aristoxenus, Elements of Harmony II, 30). Mr. Klein
used to add-as if he had been there-that only one person stayed, comprehending and critical. That was Aristotle
·
himself.
What Plato spoke about then was what is called dialectic
in the last and strongest sense, thinking by and through
the eide (Republic 511 C, 532), attending to their grouping, hierarchy, interweaving or "intertwining" (symploke,
Sophist 240 c). Such dialectic, the ultimate use of the logos
and the philosophical activity proper, appears in the dialogues but once, namely in the Sophist, and scholars have
not succeeded in recovering much of it. There is, I might
add, a chapter in Mr. Klein's book on Greek mathematics
which engages in true dialectic and tells how the eidos Being can be understood as the number Two. 11
VII. Original and Image
There is one greatest, almost overwhelming, perplexity
about the eide which Socrates knows about from the very
beginning (Parmenides 131 c). How can an eidos do the
very business for which Socrates has submitted it to us?
Are not the eidos-units,
THE ST. JOHNS REVJEW
being each one and ever the same and receptive neither to bec;oming nor to destruction, ever steadfastly the same? But having entered into becoming, must such an eidos-unit not be
posited either as scattered and having become many within
the things that are becoming, or, if it is still whole, then as separated from itself, which latter would be the greatest impossibility-that one and the same thing should be at once in one
and many? [Philebus 15 b]
Then how can the eidos be the source of the appearances ·
around us, how can it have truck with what is always
changing and multiple? This question can be called the
"lower participation problem" since it deals not with the
community the eide have with each other but with that
which is below them. How do we understand the working
relations which the eide-once we suppose them to behave to the variety, the passages and the contradictions of
our world of appearance? It is the most pressing Socratic
problem.
Socrates uses a number of terms to name this relation.
He speaks of the partaking, the "participation" (methexis,
Phaedo 100-102) of the appearances in the eidos, but, of
course, he does not mean a part-taking as when people take
up a part of an awning they sit under (Parmenides 131 b).
He speaks of a community of the eidos, and the appearances, of the appearances being named after the eidos, of
the presence of the eidos in them (e.g. Phaedo 100 c,d,
103 b). These terms indicate that the two realms are
strongly related, but they do not reveal what the appearances can have in common with beings, or why they merit
being named after beings, or how the beings can be present in them.
But Socrates does use another group of words which
tell more. He speaks of participation through similarity,
likeness, imaging, imitation (Phaedrus 250 a, Phaedo 74 e,
Timaeus 39 e and, above all, Republic 510 b).
The thought that our world should stand to the realm
of eide as copy to exemplar (Parmenides 132 d, Timaeus
48 e) has a certain high plausibility. It conveys a falling off
from the fullness of being, an imitative, derivative mode.
It suggests that one original eidos will have many imageappearances, and that no appearance can stand free, but
most appear, like all the images with which we are familiar,
incarnate in some stuff, as the statute of Socrates is worked
in marble (Timaeus 52 c). It indicates how every appearance could be doubly dependent: on the eidos for being
visible, and on our sight for being seen. If the appearances
somehow image the eide, their inferiority, multiplicity,
materiality, and sensuality becomes comprehensibleand so does the fact of their inescapably beguiling books.
There are, however, apparently devastating difficulties
with this primordial imitation. Of these one is most vulnerable to formal argument: If the eidos is what is originally beautiful, and beautiful things are copies, and if the
likeness of copies to their originals comes from their sharing the same quality, then both have the quality of being
beautiful. It follows that the eidos of beauty is beautiful, as
the eidos of justice is just-and Socrates does not scruple
35
�to say just that (Protagoras 330 c, Symposium 210 c). But
that way of speaking, that beauty is beautiful, is an insup·
portable redundancy, called by scholars "self-predication".
Furthermore, if the function of the eidos was to account
for the fact that anything is beautiful, then another eidos
beyond will have to be posited to account for the fact that
the eidos itself has been said to be beautiful. Aristotle calls
this dilemma the "Third Man", because behind the man
and the man-like eidos of mankind there must appear a
third man-eidos (Metaphysics 9~0 b).
But these terrible perplexities, whose various versions
Socrates knows about (Parmenides 132 d, Republic 597 c),
miss the point. Socrates so often chooses to employ the
phrase "the beautiful" rather than the noun of quality
"beauty," not because he is simply deaf to the fact that in
Greek, as in English, the former phrase sounds as if it
meant a beautiful thing, being an adjective turned into a
substantive. He speaks that way because he means to
make us face the self-same "suchness" of the eidos, to divert our desire from the apparent beauty of the appearances to a better but invisible beauty, to convey its greater
desirability, to persuade us to "look to" it. The turns of
speech that call the eidos verily beautiful, through and
through beautiful, the beautiful itself, are philosophical
rhetoric. They intend to evoke a new kind of longing, so
that we may turn more willingly from that which appears
as beautiful to seek that hidden sight which first makes it
possible for us to see and say that anything on earth is
beautiful. The eidos beauty is certainly not ugly, but no
more is it to be described by the adjective "beautiful;" it is
rather such as to be itself the sole source of the attribute
in others. The word "beautiful" does not describe this
suchness, but it reaches for it.
How then can beautiful things be images of beauty if it
is not, as seems indeed to be impossible, by likeness, that
is, by sharing the same quality? It is because imaging, mirroring, turns out to be the deepest capability of being, the
accompaniment of the pervasive otherness which haunts
it, that non-being which dogs every being. Each being
confronts another as its other, and its own otherness is
mirrored in the others.
For the image nature of an image is not really caught
when we point out similarities, say of conformation and
color, between it and its original. The closest we can come
to telling what an image is, is to say that it is, in truth, not
what it images, and then again it somehow is. We are apt
to say of a little statue of Socrates looking like a pot-bellied
satyr: "That's Socrates", but we know at the same time
that it is not. We mean that Socrates is in some sense pres~
ent in the stone-"represented" -but not genuinely, not
in truth. For an image is that which in its very nature is not
what it is; it is an interweaving of being and non-being
(Sophist 240 c).
Now among the beings, the eide, each is self-same and
truly what it is, and also other than and not what the
others are; its not-being is only with respect to the other
beings; the interweaving of beings is not a commingling:
36
the strands of being and non-being remain distinct. But
becoming, Socrates explains, is an amalgam, a blending,
of being and non-being (Republic 477 a). The appearances
commingle within themselves non-being and being; they
have neither steady self-sameness nor fixed difference,
and yet they seem somehow enduring and definite. In
their very nature they are not what they are, and might on
that account be called images of being. So here is a formal
way of conceiving the claim that appearance images the
eidos. But it must be said that it in no wise solves our
greatest problem: how the eidos drops down from the context of being to become entangled with non-being in a
new and world-making way-how there can be an eidos
incarnate (Phaedrus 251 a).
Socrates ascribes to us an initial power-most startling
to see in children-of image recognition (eikasia, Republic
51! e), by which we identify a counterfeit as a counterfeit
at the same moment that we recognize the original lurking in the imitation (510 b). In its developed form it is a
sense for what Mr. Klein once called the "duplicity of being." It is our capacity for philosophy.
I have said what I think Plato's Socrates thought, but I
do not want this lecture to be what is, wonderfully, called
an "academic" exercise, so I must now say what I think.
But before I do that, let me make mention one last time of
the name of jacob Klein to whom this lecture is most certainly dedicated in loving memory and who-so good a
teacher was he-taught me nothing but what l could
straightway recognize as my own.
Socrates himself says of the eide that they have become
buzz-words (Phaedo 100 b); there are even those people
known, a little absurdly, as "the friends of the eide" (Sophist 248 a). That kind of thing comes from being drawn and
fascinated by Socrates' sights without having ourselves
seen them. What is more, Plato does not reveal, indeed
conceals, in the dialogues the answer to the question: did
Socrates himself view the eide? did anyone ever?; in short:
are there accessible eide?
Therefore our attention naturally turns to the Socrates
through whom we hear of these matters and to his trustworthiness. And I find the man who is commemorated in
the Dialogues trustworthy beyond all others. I trust his slyness and his simplicity, his sobriety and his enthusiasm,
his playfulness and his steadfastness, his eros and his dignity. Yet it is not mainly his character that I trust, but his
presuppositions, and I think that they must have formed
him more than he did them.
I make Socrates' presuppositions out to be these: That
there is that in human life which stands out, that there are
heights and that there is a way to them, an ascent. That
what is desirable is at a distance, by itself and in itself, and
therefore sight-like and yet invisible, and that there must
be a means for reaching it. That this mediating power is
speech, which is able to shape our irritable wonder at
common things into that springboard of thought called a
JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE
�question. And first and last, that where there is a ques·
tion, an answer has already been at work, and it is our hu·
man task to recollect it.
These presuppositions are not at all necessary. Our spe·
cific human work does not have to be thought of as arising
from enthusiasm about the extraordinary or marvelling at
the common, as Socrates says philosophy does (Theaetetus
!55 d). It can come from a cool, sober sense that the ways
of the world should be exposed and explained, its myths
dismantled and its depths made plane; that not what is
best but what is individual, not what is common but what
is ordinary, should preoccupy our efforts; that we should
not view but master, not play but work, not suppose but
certify, not ask but determine, not long but draw limits. I
am describing that self-controlled maturing of philosophy
which is responsible for all that we call modernity. I do not
think for a moment that we should play truant from this
severe and powerful schooL But I do think that Socrates'
suppositions are that philosophical beginning which can
be forgotten but never superseded.
l. Let me add here that the next most important source of the Theory
of Ideas, very difficult to use, is Aristotle, who reports its technical elaborations and problems and looks at it, as it were, askance.
2. I am thinking of the so-called problems of participation and separation, of self-predication, of the Third Man, and of eidetic structure. Incidentally, in the Parmenides Socrates is portrayed as the supporter of that
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
very version of the theory-that the ideas are "separate" from thingswhich Aristotle explicitly denies he held. Aristotle makes this claim in a
puzzling passage which is the prime source for all denials of Socrates'
authorship of the theory (Metaphysics 987 b).
3. The meaning of theoria in Greek is, however, that of a viewing, a
sight seen, contemplation, and in that sense the Ideas are very much a
"theory."
4. A Socratic hypothesis is unlike a post-Baconian hypothesis in not being a conjecture to be verified by observations, that is, experience. It is a
little closer to an astronomical hypothesis such as Plato is said by
Simplicius to have first demanded. He required of astronomers an intellectual construct, a mathematical theory, devised to "save the phenomena," that is, to display the anomalous appearances as grounded in
regularities acceptable to reason. A Socratic hypothesis, however, is not
a postulated constmct hut a discovered being.
5. Nor is the translation "form" quite good, because it is too reminiscent
of the Aristotelian distinction between form and matter. The eidos may
"produce" a form in a thing (Phaedo l04 d) but it is not its form.
6. I have given this presentation a questionable coherence by ranging
through the dialogues as if Plato's works constituted a planned-out
whole. But then 1 believe that they do, and that what scholars consider
the "development" of Plato's thought from early to late dialogues is
largely the advancing of one or the other of these different beginnings
and aspects.
7. Accordingly the Phaedrus, in which this beginning of philosophy is
preeminently set out, was once, probably wrongly, thought to be Plato's
earliest dialogue.
8. Of course, the visible things do not constitute the eidos, nor is the
eidos their concept, that is, an abstraction from a class or the definition
which selects its members.
I want to mention also that, although it is not his fixed usage, Plato
does refer to the greatest eide as gene, genera, kindred groups (Sophist
254 d), thereby indicating that in the highest reaches eidetic shapeliness
yields to associative characteristics.
9. For Socrates methodos means a path of inquiry (Republic 533 b) indicated by the inquiry itself, not a pre-set investigatory /Jrocedure.
10. (a) The word ousia did play a role analogous to modern "reality" in
common language. As we speak of "real" estate, Greeks used ousia to
mean one's property or substance.
(b) Scholars attribute to Socrates the distinction between two uses
ofthe verb "to be," the predicative and the existential. In its predicative
use "is" acts as a copula, a coupling between the ~ubject of discourse
and what is said of it, as in "This face is beautiful." The existential "is"
occurs in the chopped-off sentence "Justice is," meaning "is to be found
sometimes, somewhere in the world;" but "Justice exists." But distinctions in verbal usage are not Socrates' aim. When we say that "this
face is beautiful," he will ask what beauty is, or, again, when we assert
that "justice exists" he may want to know in what realm-and it will not
be one which has time and place.
II. Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (The M.I.T.
Pcess) 1968 7 c, 79 ff.
In brief, it goes like this: According to the stranger the eidos of Being is
composed of two eide, change and stillness (Sophist 254 d), since first of
all everything that is, is either in motion or at rest, though never both at
once; these eide never mingle. Being is not either of these alone, or their
mixture, but precisely both together. That, however, is just how number
assemblages behave; Socrates himself draws attention to this fact in that
favorite formula: each one, both two. (H.ippias major 301 a, Phaedo 97 a,
Republic 476 a, Theaetetus 146 e). Each unit in a number remains what it
was, one, but both together have a new name and nature, two; they are
together what neither is by itself. Being, the highest eidos, would then be
the eidetic Two-not anything above or beyond the two eidetic units,
change and stillness, which constitute it, but simply their being together.
Aristotle reports the Academy's interest in the arithmetic organization
of the eide. (Metaph)'sics 987 b). He also points out that the eidetic units
are not, like arithmetic units, indifferent, and so capable of being
"thrown together" any which way, that is, added, (1081 a). They can
only associate into unique eidetic numbers, each according to its nature;
such eidetic counting, which drives speech to and then beyond its
limits, is dialectic proper.
37
�Three. by Meyer Lib en
from
New York Street GamesStories and Memories
LADY, I DID IT
in a moment of dissatisfaction and restlessness. It was a
late evening in early spring, darkness swarmed softly over
sidewalk and stoop, softly filled in the cracks of light, remnants of a day forever gone.
We had finished an afternoon of hard and concentrated
play and had enough of that, prefiguring the days not too
distant when our play would be put off as a childish thing,
opening up long periods of dissatisfaction and restlessness, for nothing rushed in to fill the vacuum created by
the lost possibilities of play.
We wanted adventure, activity outside the internecine
play on which we had fed for so many years.
"Let's have a track meet," one of us suggested, but nobody budged.
"Let's find the !15th Street Gang," one of us suggested,
but nobody budged.
"Let's play Lady I Did It," one of us suggested, and that
was just right, being midway between the play we could
not leave and the power of the outside world we did not
quite dare approach, for the ll5th Street Gang was an
older gang, all-powerful in the area stretching from the
Harlem to the Hudson between l!Oth and !16th Streets.
So we started to play Lady I Did It.
This is a game which stands midway between the play
and fantasy spirit of childhood and the demands of the
outer world. It is a group testing of the Reality Principle.
It is a simple and insolent game. Any number can play.
We approached a ground-floor apartment in a house up
the block and one of us rang the bell. There was the sound
of footsteps, and a woman opened the door, looked out at
us.
"Lady I Did It" and we ran off.
Though any number (more than one) can play this
game, it requires at least five to work up the necessary
gang spirit, bravado, and sense of protection of the guilty
one to give the game its interest.
Part of the interest is in the woman's surprise at the
number of kids, also as to the reason for our presence.
This was the insolence of the game, that we stayed to
tell her what we had done, that we had done it. This was
much different from the antics of the little kids on the
block, who played the game of Ringing Doorbells, then
ran off before anyone answered.
Meyer Liben (1911-1975) was a New Yark writer. I remember him in
the names and the sights of the various neighborhoods of the times of
his life: the West Ill th Street in Harlem of his childhood, the Washington Heights of his youth, the Village and Chelsea of his adulthood. He
went to City College ('32) where he was editor of the college newspaper,
The Campus, and played on the basketball team. Trotsky, he told me
they used to tell him at City, was really a City graduate. Unprepossesing
and simple, he had a life in his eyes which I will not forget, and a gentleness which was quite capable of letting you know when you were un"
fair-without scolding. He knew where he came from and where he had
lived and did not forget or hide it, which meant he was loyal with a loy-
alty that was never a burden to others. Every word of his I have ever
read tells you that.
For more than thirty years he published in many magazines. In 1967
he published a collection of nine short stories and a short novel, Justice
Hunger, that went unnoticed. Shortly after his death, George Dennison
described him (New York Times, August I, 1976), probably correctly, as
"a writer of a kind most of us don't believe exists, an unknown first-rate
writer." Most of his work remains unpublished. The three stories published here come from an unpublished collection of twelve stories and
an essay on New York street games called, New York Street Games, Stories and Memories.-L.R.
A bunch of us were standing on the corner,
future-bound,
38
JULY 1980 • TilE COllEGE
·.
�With us the confrontation was the game-the band of
us, emboldened by numbers, staring down the confused
woman in that instant of silence which preceded the disclosure.
Properly speaking, the disclosure did not answer the
woman's question (which we rarely gave her the chance
to ask), that question being:
"What do you want?"
Before she could ask that question, for which we had no
formulated answer, one of us announced his guilt and off
we scooted.
The announcement by the guilty one made it no easier
for any one of us who happened to be caught, because we
were all equally blamed.
This was one of the hazards of the game, we came up
against it on our very next venture, when a man answered
the ring.
"Mister I did it," one of us said feebly, for the heart was
not in the formulation, partly because it was an irate man
facing us and partly because it was not the formulation
and so violated the rules of the game.
Quick as a flash, he went after us, just missed the trailing one with a kick which, had it landed, would have pro·
pelled that trailer much closer to the front of the line.
Our next ring was answered by a little girl of about
three years old, whose smile and interested surprise was in
sharp contrast to our nervous belligerency. She looked
around from one to the other, pleased at our numbers, un-
aware of our defiance, which, under her infant scrutiny,
withered fast. We felt very foolish, standing there with
our stored energy directed against a target insensitive to
our needs and power.
When she called out:
((Ma, boys are here," the spirit of the gang softened
more. Grumbling and cursing, we broke up, moved away
aimlessly, disregarded the door which was slammed
behind us.
"Baby I did it," one of us yelled, and we laughed, recovered our spirits a bit, tried our luck in another apartment
•
house.
Here we were again disappointed, for there came to the
door a very old man, he was wearing a yarmulke, and
peered at us through eyes half-shut, without saying a
word .
We were again at a loss, stymied by the presence of
another impervious object, for even had he asked us, in a
voice cracked and torn, what it was that we wanted, and
had one of us announced that he was the culprit, the daring bellringer, the old man surely would not have reacted
with any resentment or even any interest to this disclo-
sure, which, for an instant, bound the guilty one to us
with the feelings we reserved for the hero in danger. But
there was no danger. We had nothing to say, and the old
man only looked and shrugged at this unexpected image
of adolescent solidarity, now breaking up before his bleary
eyes, for with mumbled imprecations we again scattered,
while the old man swiftly, and in a voice much clearer
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
than any one of us imagined he owned, uttered an incomprehensible prayer, probably of deliverance.
Then, on our next venture, our game succeeded per-
fectly, we were pleased the way a troupe is pleased when
after all the rehearsals, all the fumblings and imperfections, the play is suddenly performed to the utmost limits
of its meaning and its form.
We chose, by one of those random universal choices
where the inclinations of the warring individuals are for
the moment subsumed in a joyful group harmony and
solidarity, a top floor apartment and stood for a moment
in front of the chosen door, enjoying the possibility of the
imminent appearance of the key figure and the swift completion of our curious game.
During this pause we chose, by an intangible stirring, a
movement of the group spirit, a series of lightning calculations, stray memories, movements of withdrawal, by the
prominence in the foreground which one of us suddenly
assumed, by a curious exigency of space, by the discipline
of a gang, by a (finally) unanimous inclination-we chose
one amongst us to step forward and commit, for all of us,
the predetermined act.
He stepped forward swiftly, with a courage partly determined by the presence of the rest of us, partly by the role
towards which he advanced, and partly by the ordinary
amount of the spirit of play which he possessed, and
pushed the button. He stepped back into the anonymity
of the group, and we closed ranks about him, as a .protective cover, until the moment when he would step forward
and expose himself as the culprit. The bell rang and
almost immediately we heard the footsteps, vigorous, of
the person coming towards the door, down the long hallway into which were built the bedrooms. We were quiet
jn the moment. before the confrontation, one of us looked
back towards the head of the stairs, measuring the distance to safety.
This was in a way a very satisfying moment-the thing
had been done, for better or worse, together we awaited
the issue, bound communally in face of the danger which
we ourselves, by our collective will, had brought into being, for we didn't have to be in front of this door, awaiting
the answer to our insolent summons. We could have been
playing in the street, in some violent opposition to each
other, or been standing on the corner, talking of the
heroes of the world, those who had left their blocks and
made their ways in far-off realms, figures shadowy and
real, gods we dreamed of approaching and rivalling. Instead we stood in front of this door, our rivalries, jealousies,
and dreams buried for the moment in this unified thrust
against the adult world.
The door opened, and there appeared in the doorway,
slightly harrassed, interrupted in household work, a rather
young woman, who gazed quizzically, without fear, at the
band of boys who formed a semi-circle in front of her
door.
She was genuinely puzzled, not the suspicious type
who assumes that because strangers are at her door, harm
39
�is meant, and shuts the door swiftly before the harm is
done.
Nor was she one of those who recognized this game,
like the smart-alecky woman, who seeing us crowd her
door, exclaimed:
"Lady I did it" with the hysterical glee which some
show in destroying the pleasures of others.
No, the woman now at the door was genuinely puzzled,
could not imagine what it was that we wanted, tried in
fact to collect her thoughts, to shake off her household
distraction, to concentrate on the meaning of this little
gang which stood defiantly in front of her, betraying an
excitement which she could not understand was created
by the imminence of a disclosure which in itself would be
rather pointless to her, though certainly annoying.
Then, when the pause had reached its fullness, not too
early, before the suspense had been built up, and not too
late, after the novelty had worn off, our chosen one, before the lady had a chance to make a comment or ask a
question (and it was always more dramatic when we broke
the silence) shouted out, in a voice of triumphant selfconfession:
Lady, I Did It,
and we all beat it down the stairs to the street, where we
exulted for a moment in our victory.
KING OF THE HILL
Because of the date of his birth and because of the regulations of the Board of Education (lucky for this story)
Davey Flaxman entered public school in midterm, February. He was not quite six, and had been in this strange
new world of school no more than a couple of weeks when
the teacher, Miss Dawson, announced that the next day,
February 22, was a holiday, to celebrate the birthday of
our first president, George Washington, and there would
be no school. Indeed, the school would be closed (but
Davey's best friend, Chick, wise in the ways of the world,
said that the school custodian, Mr. Ogden, would have to
come in to take care of the furnace).
Miss Dawson was not one of the strict ones. She was
tired and kind. She said that George Washington was the
father of our country, that he led us in both war and
peace.
Davey was puzzled by the idea of a holiday. There was
no school on Saturday and Sunday, but it was not called a
holiday. He was of course aware that not all days were the
same, that his parents fasted on a certain day in the year,
that firecrackers were shot off on another day. These
were some of the unusual days in the changing daily
scene, but here after going to school regularly, he was told
that he would not have to go to school because tomorrow
was a holiday, and a Thursday. A holiday meant that you
did not have to go to school, just the way, for his father, a
holiday meant that he did not have to go to the store. But
he usually went to the synagogue on those days.
40
"Do we have to go anywhere on George Washington's
birthday?" Davey asked his older brother Daniel.
"Are you crazy or sumpin'?" asked Danny. "you don't
have to go anywhere, you just don't have to go to school."
There was an assembly and a big picture of George
Washington on the wall. He looked very serious, but not
angry.
If he is the father of our country, thought Davey, who is
the mother of our country. He asked his brother that, but
his brother thought that was very funny. He even laughed,
and didn't bother to answer. Davey thought it was maybe
because he didn't know, but most of the time his brother
answered Davey's questions.
Nor had Miss Dawson said who was the mother of the
country, but she had said that our country used to be a
colony, that it belonged to England, and then came the
Revolutionary War to make America free from England.
Davey repeated it at the supper table that night.
"Of course," said his father, "he was like Moses, he led
his people to freedom."
"Is there a holiday for Moses' birthday too?" asked
Davey.
Although he had only been in school for a few weeks,
and although Miss Dawson was not strict, like some of the
other teachers, but tired and kind, Davey liked the idea of
no school somewhere in the middle of the week. He did
not find it much fun to sit in one place for about five
hours every day.
Mr. Flaxman laughed at Davey's question. It seemed
that most questions about holidays made people laugh.
"Passover is the celebration of the freedom of the
Jews," he said. "I don't know about Moses' birthday. I
don't know if it's written in the Bible or not."
On that day, in that year, February 22 was cold. It had
snowed the day before, snowed heavily and steadily, and
then, in the early hours of the morning, it had stopped
snowing, a bitter wind quieted down, and snow lay evenly
on the streets, with the far-off quiet of snow.
The kids came out early, lured by the snow, the heaviest snow of the season. Some of the bigger kids carried ice
skates, on their way to the park, from which news had
spread that the lake was frozen, kids of all ages came out
with sleds, the older ones off to Snake Hill in the park, the
younger ones to belly whop on sidewalk and in gutter,
racing one another, or seeing who could cover the most
distance (complexities of time and space). In those notexactly pastoral days, play in the gutter was conceivable,
actual.
Davey, like most of the little kids, came out to play in
the snow-filled streets; they made curious designs in the
snow, wrote their names, and the names of others, in the
snow, wrote random numbers or showed their arithmetic
powers in more detail, made little houses and other architectural shapes, made snowballs and hurled them at likely
targets, including one another.
Snow is not a pervasive element for New Yorkers, some
winters there is hardly any snow at all, not enough to
JULY 1980 • TilE CO!l.EGE
�make a firm snowball, to say nothing of a minihouse, and
to say less than nothing of the great hill which was slowly
formed by the work of many hands, a firmly-packed hill,
with a solid base, not so much soaring as rising to a height
of eleven, twelve feet, no Mount McKinley, but a fine,
even impressive hill in the eyes of Davey and his friends
to play on, and what game is more likely to be played on
such a hill than King of the Hill?
Of all the simple, basic games in the world, what can
compare (for basicness and simplicity) with King of the
Hill? Someone, by decisiveness or speed, or after formal
choosing, gets to the top of a hill, most often stone, but
the material is indifferent, snow is just fine. Why should
he be on top of the hill? Why should he have the greater
view? And above all, why should he look down on everyone else? Why should he be alone up there, even in splendor, and the rest milling about on the flat earth, hardly
possessing that ground, sharing it, certainly not in control,
and he up there King of the Hill? These were some of the
questions that went through the minds of Davey, of
Chick, Richie, Benjy, and the other kids, as they looked
up at Allie, secure atop the snow hill, gazing down in disdain at the groundlings, daring them, by his presence and
manner (for few on top of the hill will act in a modest or
casual way, in an unkingly manner) to dislodge him from
his lofty perch.
That is not the most difficult of tasks, it sometimes
takes time, there are repulses, the would-be king can be
pushed off, even tumbled ignominiously down the hill,
but after a while, in the fullness and necessity of time, by
a swift ascent, by curious distractions, by a planned movement, maybe flanking, of two or three aspirants ("you go
slow up that side, you start to holler, I'll sprint up the
other side") the king was dethroned, and a new King was
in command of the height. No one of them was king
forever.
Now, while these efforts were being made (the succession was always violent, not hereditary), jerry appeared on
the scene. He was one of the big guys on the block,
Chick's older brother, a sophomore at CCNY, and a keen
and eager analyst of any situation at all. He paused to
observe the scene and then to comment on it.
"Some day to play King of the Hill."
"Whatdya mean?'' asked Benjy.
"I mean," said Jerry, "that today, as you well know, is
George Washington's birthday, and there were some people in America who thought that he ought to be made
king, forgetting the nature of the colonial struggle."
Jerry, in making his point, forgot that he was talking to
six year olds, then remembered that he was talking to six
year olds, and said:
"I mean, some people forgot that we got rid of one King
George by fighting a war, so what was the sense of having
another king. It turned out that his name would have
been George, too."
"A president is better'n a king," said Benjy.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
"Why?" asked jerry, suddenly seeing himself as
Socrates.
"Because," said Benjy, ((he's elected."
"So what's so great about being elected?" asked jerry,
suddenly seeing himself as the Devil's Advocate.
Benjy seemed puzzled, couldn't come up with an answer, so Chick chimed in:
"If you're elected, it means you know what the president stands for, he has to tell you, a king doesn't have to
tell you nothing if he doesn't want to."
Benjy made a swift movement up the snow hill, was
easily repulsed, just about managed to come down on his
feet.
"That's very good," said jerry to Chick, suddenly seeing
himself as the Encouraging Older Brother, rather than
the older brother.
"Yah," said Benjy, "all you have to do to be a king is to
be a king's son."
Noting that Allie seemed bemused up there on top of
the hill, Richie sprinted up, but Allie shook off his
bemusement at the sound of approach and thwarted this
new challenge, more than ever King of the Hill, though
truth to tell, he was becoming a bit bored with the loneliness of his position and somewhat yearned for the company, commonplace though it was, of the groundlings
down there. He was no doubt ready to be toppled, but
aware of his own vulnerability, he showed the greater
determination in a fierceness of mien, a stubbornness of
posture, to remain King of the Hill.
jerry was a Freudian, and he thought, watching the
game, that here was another illustration of the theory of
the Primal Horde, the banding of the brothers (though on
a somewhat individuated basis) to topple the father from
his throne and then to win the mother, though she seemed
to be nowheres in the game (murder, he also thought, is
much less of a taboo than incest).
Chick moved up the hill warily, and while Allie covered
his movements, Davey sprinted up, pushed Allie (who was
ready to be overthrown) off the top of the hill. He slid in a
babyish way down the slope, and now Davey was King of
the Hill.
jerry was also a Marxist (it was before the time of the
Freudo/Marxists) and he saw this game as another illustration of the endless struggle for power that was going on
everywheres, but the kids would soon be finished with
this game, and start on another, for it was George
Washington's birthday, no school all day.
THE RELAY RACE
On a late afternoon in june 1924, a group of kids were
coming to the end of their track meet on a street in the
North Central Park area. It was a contest between the upthe-blocks and down-the-blocks, not one block against
another, but these internecine struggles can be the bitterest of all.
It was close to the median point between the end of the
war (not which war) and the beginnings of the depression,
41
�and these are always the greatest points. Calvin Coolidge
was filling out Warren Harding's term, and jokes about
the New Englander's taciturnity were heard:
"Mr. President," said a woman reporter, "I've wagered
that I can make you speak three words."
"You lose," said the unsmiling Cal.
But these youngsters were more interested in the
Olympic games which were coming up in Paris, and were
following avidly the exploits of Jackson Scholz, DeHart
Hubbard, Harold Osborn, to say nothing of Paavo Nurmi,
the "Phantom Finn/' who, stop~watch in hand, was run~
ning all competition into the ground.
Considerations of a technical and human nature
restricted the scope of these street track meets. The high
jump, for example, proved impractical in competition
because it was not possible to trust the steadiness (or the
neutrality) of the two rope-holding lads. And nothing
could be thrown. That cut out the javelin, the shot-put,
the discus, the hammer. But most everything else was
in-the sprints, the jumps, the middle and long-distance
runs, the relays, even the Marathon (which was omitted in
this particular meet for lack of time, it being a race ten
times around the block). The pole vault had not yet penetrated the popular athletic consciousness.
Though Davey and Chick lived in the middle of the
block and considered themselves middle-of-the-blocks, for
purposes of competition they allied themselves with the
up-the-blocks, partly because that area was less populated
than down-the-block, for up there was the Yiddish theatre, whose side wall took up space which otherwise
would have been taken by apartment buildings.
The meet was over, except for the relay race, and it had
been very close. The running broad jump had just ended,
and the contestants were crowded around the scorekeeper, who was keeping count, chalking up the score in
the gutter.
"What's the score? What's the score?"
"Lemme alone, Iemme figure," said the scorekeeper,
Pimples, who had been chosen not so much for his arithmetic ability, but that he was one of the older guys, and
therefore in a sense above the battle, and mostly because he was around and willing to take on the job. The
starter and judges were picked out of the same complex
of reasons.
Pimples was scribbling away furiously. The scoring
was spread 10-5-3.
"It's 84-78," he said, "the score is 84-78."
11
Favor who?"
"Favor the down-the-blocks," he said, "who do you
think?"
What he meant was that anyone who had been keeping score wouldn't be asking such an idiotic question,
but certain of the up-the-blocks argued, from what he
said, and from the tone of his voice, that he was obviously on the side of the down-the-blocks.
"Whats the difference who's ahead?" asked Davey, "it
all depends on the relay anyway."
42
That was because the relay counted lO points for the
winners, 0 for the losers. This procedure had been agreed
on, that is, it had ostensibly been agreed on, for now
there came forth a champion from the lists of the downthe-blocks, one Wally, to ask since when did the relay
count 10 points, when from time immemorial the relay
had always counted 5 points.
But Wally was so obviously trying to pull a fast one
(the combined weight of the scorekeeper, the starter,
and the judges being against him) that even his own
teammates pulled him back.
"He's just kiddin'," said one of them, but nobody took
it very humorously.
"Cut the stallin'," cried one of the spectators, "and
let's get the relay started."
There were spectators: girls, non-running boys, older
kids, even a few stray adults. They sat on the curb, or
stood on the sidewalk. There were viewers too, from the
apartments; they leaned out the windows, silently watch·
ing, or crying out encouragement to their favorites.
The relay race was a four-sewer race, each contestant
running one sewer, which was 331/3 yards, that is, if three
sewers made up 100 yards, which was the popular notion. This notion rested on a legend that many years
back, someone (long grown and moved into the great
world off the block) had actually measured three
sewers-though it was pretty clear that the sewers were
equally spaced-and had come up with the 100 yard figure. It was, of course, a fine figure, the classic sprint
distance and all that. We always thought it was pretty intelligent of the city authorities to figure the distance between the sewers that way.
So this relay wasn't much of a race from the point of
view of distance covered. But two sewers each man was
out because there weren't enough sewers on the block.
There was another possibility: each man running two
sewers and then the third man doubling back. But this
had led to many arguments in the past-the third man
tended to overextend his welcome to the oncoming runner, meeting him before he had completed his stint.
There was another reason why this double-back relay,
where you ended up at the start, was not favored. It
lacked a significant character of a relay race, whose
primary charm is in the fact that distance is cooperatively covered, that the precious stick has been carried
further into the distance. The circular track, of course,
has helped to destroy this aspect of the relay race.
They were getting ready for the relay race. There was
jockeying for position-both sides trying to anticipate the
other's line-up, to put a strong man up against a weak
man, etc. The general procedure was to put your fastest
man last; in the case of up-the-blocks, that would be
Benny, a stocky lad who ran like a streak, with absolute
absorption, everything propelled him forward-legs, arms,
and heart. Davey was a brilliant starter and the obvious
choice for lead-off man. In so short a race, a slow start
could be fatal. Chick and Allie were running second and
JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE
�third, in that order, though it was difficult to say what
motivated this choice. Allie was the fastest runner, so you
had double strength at the end of the race, but it was as
easy to argue that it was more important to get off to a
strong start, and then depend on the last runner to make
up for the third man's weakness. The line· up of the teams
always led to interesting, and sometimes vehement discussion, with undertones of character analysis. There always
seemed to be one weak man on a relay team.
"Why don't they get started?" asked a bystander.
"They're getting the sticks," said another.
The "sticks" were tightly-rolled sections of newspaper.
The officials were rolling these papers, making sure that
both "sticks" were the same weight, and the same length,
for they had to meet the extraordinarily detailed scrutiny
of both teams.
"] hate the relay race," said one of the kids watching,
and there was some agreement. They thought it was
somehow not a real race, it being the only non-individual
event in the track and field program. After the first runner, it became a kind of continuing handicap race.
"You're making a great mistake, kids," said Chick's
older brother, Jerry, a sophomore at City College. He had
just come out of the candy store with a pack of cigarettes
in his hand; he lit one of the cigarettes with the awkward
nonchalance of a beginner. He was I 7, having skipped
twice and then gone to Townsend Harris Hall. He was
standing down the block, near the finish line.
"A great mistake, kids/' he said, "the relay is something
special."
"What do you mean special?"
By now the "sticks" had been analyzed, measured, and
approved, and the eight runners were moving slowly towards their places at the manhole covers. Some of the
runners were limbering up.
"I mean," said Jerry, and you could see he was torn be-
tween not talking over the kids' heads and showing off his
newly-won knowledge and vocabulary, "that the relay is a
cooperative event, people working together for something."
"What's so great about that?" asked one of the kids.
"Plenty," said Jerry, "that's how things get accomplished in the world. Take science-one scientist does the
work, and then he dies. So another scientist carries it on.
It's like a relay race. Copernicus to Galileo to Newton to
Einstein. What a team!"
"I'll take the Yankees," said another kid, who was working with a soft ball, trying out different positions with his
fingers, for curves and drops, perhaps dreaming of the
fade-away and double shoot.
"Where do you think the word relay comes from?" enquired the young collegian.
There was a pause devoid of expectancy.
"It comes from the French," he went on, "it has to do
with relays of dogs and horses, you've seen in the movies
how a team of horses and carriage comes into an inn, the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
horses are exhausted, foaming white spit, then a new
team of horses takes over. It's a relay."
"Now that we have autos," said a youth, "who needs
those relays?"
"That's not the idea," said Jerry, "it's one man taking
the load from another, carrying on. And let me tell you,
it's much faster too. Do you know what the mile record
is?"
"That's Nurmi's record."
"It must be about 4:11."
The kids were interested.
"That's pretty close," said Jerry, "It's 4:10.4 and it's
held by Nurmi all right. And let me tell you what the mile
relay record is. It's 3:16.4. Almost a minute difference."
"Well naturally," said one of the kids, "there's four guys
running."
11
"That's just it/' said Jerry, doing it cooperatively, cut-
ting down the time almost a minute."
He introduced the word "cooperatively" in a rather
gingerly way, but nobody paid too much attention, because up the block you could see Davey and his opposite
number, Mitch, take their places at the starting line.
Now the relay race we are about to describe is one of
those events where the description will surely take a
longer time than the duration of the thing described
(unless, in the utmost baldness of narrative, we were to
say, simply: the up-the-blocks took the lead, kept it on the
second leg, lost it on the third leg because of faulty passing of the stick and then regained the lead on the anchor
leg to win the race. That is what happened, and takes less
time-to read or write-than the what? 30 seconds it
takes to run this race).
In the first place, there were two false starts, one by
Davey, the other by his opponent. This was blamed on
the starter: seasoned observers contended that there was
too much of a pause between the Get Set and the Go, that
the kids were too nervous and bound to "break" in the
long interval. Then, as they got set for the third try, an
automobile turned the western corner of the block. Now
there were guards at each end of the street, and had the
race started, the car would have been stopped (as cars had
been stopped during the running of the other events) until the race was over, but since the relay had not started,
the car was allowed to proceed, and then all the runners
started limbering up again, some of them quite desperately, as though their muscles were undergoing some
unusual tensing as the car travelled over the stadium.
"No more cars," cried the starter. This message was
heard by the traffic official up the block and was relayed
to the one at the other end of the street.
"It'll get dark by the time this race starts," grumbled
one of the spectators, but he was talking of a race whose
duration was-what? 30 seconds?-and the afternoon
sun, though sinking, was quite a way from its home in the
Hudson.
The starter cupped his hands around his mouth.
"On your marks . .. "
43
�"Get set . .. "
and taking to heart the criticism which had been hurled at
him, he pushed ahead of his natural inclination, with a
swift
"Go"
and off went the two lead-off men. They got off to a
pretty even start Mitch, a little taller, had a longer stride,
so he took the lead. But Davey was a fleet lad, a form
devotee, he would not hesitate to see a movie through
again so as to get back to the newsreel which showed
Charley Paddock streaking off to another sprint victory.
Davey flailed his arms, plunged forward towards the
waiting Chick, whose hand was outstretched. In such a
short relay, the handling of the stick is, of course, fundamentaL Moving slowly away, Chick took the stick
smoothly (the fruition of long practice between the
friends) and tore off towards the third man, Allie, with an
edge on his rivaL This was an edge that Chick maintained,
but when he came to pass the stick, there was a moment
of confusion. The handling was not smooth-either
Chick was anxious, or Allie held on, the timing was bad,
the transitional instant was prolonged, so that Allie was a
couple of steps behind his opponent He strove valiantly,
ran with a kind of stubborn chagrin, picked up a step, and
then made a perfect relay to Benny, who tore after his
rival as though he had been shot from a gun, and, head
bobbing, came even with him, passed him in the last few
yards, and kept running almost down to the end of the
block. Then he turned around and ran springily to the
finish line, for the plaudits of the crowd.
Th')t was how the up-the-blocks won the track meet;
44
then most of the kids stood around in front of the candystore, discussing the various events, the turning points,
the key performances.
"You kids ran a terrific relay," said Jerry, "and that pass
from Allie to Benny, that was perfect."
"Yeah," said Chick to his older brother, but the relation
between affirmation and agreement was not clear. "Benny
ran some race."
He was in this way lowering the importance of the passing of the stick (because of his difficulty in that maneuver)
and contradicting the cooperative point of view of his
brother by fastening on to the exploit of the anchor man.
He was also just contradicting his older brother.
Jerry waved off his kid brother.
HWhat do you know?" he asked, in the immemorial way
you treat a kid brother who is disputing you in public.
HPlenty," answered Chick, in the immemorial way a kid
brother stands up to an older brother who is putting him
in his place in public.
"The worst thing that can happen in a track meet," said
Jerry, "is when one of the runners drops the stick, particularly when it's a close race. You don't realize how important that stick is till you drop it The runner is ashamed,
angry, the crowd's sympathy is spontaneous. And when
the runner picks up the stick and starts on his hopeless
quest, the crowd is with him."
HFor a minute/' said Davey, "then they forget him."
"Certainly," said Jerry, "their attention then falls on the
ones who are carrying on their task victoriously. That's
natural.''
Then the kids began to drift home, for supper.
JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE
�Scientific Discovery, Logic, and Luck
Stillman Drake
Innovation in science frequently appears to have started
from mere hunch or chance observation. But when one
man introduces several innovations, it might seem that in
science luck is not random, which is a contradiction in
terms. The books written about "the logic of discovery"
was Galileo. It contributes nothing to an understanding of
his achievements to say that he had many precursorsmen who saw, or were on the brink of seeing, the law of
free fall but did not assert it and develop its implications;
or who invented telescopes but did not turn them to the
have been by logicians, not discoverers, and have been
heavens; or who did, but saw no more than many unre-
more of interest to philosophers than of use to scientists.
corded fixed stars; and so on. Nor does it diminish Galileo's
physics to note that full recognition of the law of inertia,
Since an element of luck enters into every scientific dis-
covery, and luck does not lend itself to logical analysis, the
most that has been concluded is that "fortune favors the
prepared mind."
There is nevertheless a sound reason for the invariable
presence of some element of luck in scientific innovation,
and that reason also has a bearing on the curious historical
pattern in which, time after time, an era of brilliant inno-
vation has been followed by one of methodical progress
before another burst of discovery. The reason, and the
pattern, depend on the fact that science is developed by
logic, of which the rules must never be violated, but it is
also suddenly advanced by unexpected innovation. What·
ever can be rigorously deduced by logic from things a].
ready established cannot require luck in any useful sense
of that word. An enormous amount can be deduced from
a single basic discovery-usually more than the discoverer
lives long enough to work out, and often enough to keep a
whole generation of scientists busy. That is why we do not
regard a product of rigorous logical deduction as a startling new discovery, at any rate for the most part. Innova-
tion requires something more than logical development of
things already established-and that "something more,"
being itself not logical, lends itself to classification as
hunch, insight, chance, or luck.
It has often happened that a scientist has made an ob-
servation or has hit upon an idea that he himself did not
follow out, but which later, at the hands of another, became extremely fruitful. We have then the case of the
"precursor" in science, usually a man who was too logical
to pursue anything not previously established, or was too
weak in logic to perceive all possible implications of his
observation or idea.
In contrast, there appear from time to time men extraordinarily fruitful in scientific discoveries, one of whom
Stillman Drake's latest work is Galileo at Work: I-Iis Scientific Biography, (Chicago, 1978).
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
or surface tension, or strength of materials came only
later. The discoveries that the pendulum is not precisely
isochronous in large and small oscillations, and that the
path of a projectile is not truly parabolic, improved Galileo's science after his death, without thereby detracting
from the value of his initial approximations.
In cases of men who made several innovations in orie
field, or new discoveries in several fields, it seems to me a
poor procedure to charge those contributions off one by
one to good fortune-although if my view is correct that
can always be done, inasmuch as there is some element of
luck in every innovation. I think that instead we should
accept the adage that luck favors a prepared mind, and
then see how the mind of a Galileo was prepared for so
many strokes of luck by watching how he worked when
confronted with one. As an example I shall use not a
famous discovery of Galileo's, but one that is hardly
known except to specialists-one that did not require
genius, and that anyone can easily follow. At the same
time it was not trivial, having both scientific and practical
implications.
On 7 january 1610, Galileo noted some tiny stars that
on the next night seemed to have moved; within a week
he knew them to be revolving around jupiter. By a habit
of mind now common among scientists, Galileo soon
opened a journal of observations, putting down each time
of observation, a diagram of the satellite position, and a
numerical estimate of their separations. It is anything but
clear what use for such detail Galileo had in mind, but
thinking quantitatively is how scientists prepare, even
when they know not for what.
By 12 March Galileo's Starry Messenger was already in
print, announcing telescopic discoveries that at once be-
came the subject of widespread popular admiration and
vehement philosophical contradiction. Having had so
short a time to study his observations, Galileo contented
himself with saying that the closer a satellite was to jupiter, the more rapidly it went around, and that the period
45
�of the most remote one was semimonthly-he prudently
preferring at this early stage a noncommittal word to any
number.
In September the German astronomer Johann Kepler
confirmed the existence of Jupiter's satellites by observations of his own and remarked that, though Galileo had
assigned a fortnightly period to the outer one, the periods
of the others were not known and might never be. Kepler
was by far the most expert, practiced, and imaginative
astronomical calculator of the age. One would think that
if anyone could discover all four periods it would be Kepler, and that he would have known how to do it, had he
thought it worth the bother. Yet all he ever offered was an
estimate, in April-May 1611, that the next lowest satellite
had a period of eight days. By that time Galileo not only
knew the approximate periods of all four satellites, but
had begun predicting their future positions.
Kepler's pessimism was surely not based on inability to
think of a logical and systematic way to find the periods,
for even I can do that. Rather, Kepler was pessimistic because he knew all too well the practical difficulties of
carrying out the obvious logical procedure. This obvious
logical procedure would begin with determination of the
exact period of the outer satellite, now called IV, in the
same way that Galileo had first estimated it. The outer
satellite conveniently separates itself visibly from all the
others by moving much farther east and west than any
other. After many recorded observations, one could find
two times of greatest departure from jupiter either way,
and derive from them the hourly advance of IV in its rota-.
tion around jupiter, assumed uniform. Armed with this,
by the simplest trigonometry, one could next remove IV
from all the previously recorded observations. In such diagrams, III (the next lowest) would have the previous unique
qualities of IV. But in cancelling IV from the original diagrams, some other satellite that occasionally had happened to be in line with IV might also be eliminated, and
real difficulties might also arise in deciding which of two
satellites to eliminate when another one was near IV. The
ensuing steps would simply repeat the process; but here is
where Kepler, from long experience, foresaw problems
that might be insuperable. Thus, as jupiter is more closely
approached, the number of unintended cancellations and
mistaken identities increases; innumerable trials might
turn out to have been in vain, and hence the logical
method seemed hardly worth the trouble.
Galileo read Kepler's remark and. was not a bit discouraged. He had gone on making observations as regularly as
he could, despite his move from Padua to Florence, a new
job, other activities, cloudy nights, and the inevitable
period each year when jupiter is too close to the sun to be
observed (or requires one to get up too early). He continued to record observations as exactly as he could, but
did not attempt any systematic search for the satellite
periods, at least so far as any of his surviving notes show.
This was not aimless; Galileo knew very well what he was
doing. Unkindly put, he was waiting for some lucky
46
+
Galileo manuscript
Figure 1
chance in order to save needless labor; more kindly, he
was biding his time and watching, like a cat at a mousehole. The only difference is that a cat knows what it expects-a mouse-and Galileo did not know the exact
form the clue he needed would take. Nevertheless, he was
confident he would recognize a valuable clue when he
saw it.
On 11 December 1610, Galileo wrote to the Tuscan
ambassador at Prague, through whom he had been previously in touch with Kepler: "I hope I may have found the
method of defining the periods of the four Medicean
stars, deemed with good reason by Sig. Kepler to be
almost inexplicable." Now, what kind of a way is that to
talk? How can you announce possession of something and
at the same time attribute good reason to someone who
doubted its existence? Only by recognizing the logic behind Kepler's pessimism and by having found a completely
different solution to the problem. After a quarter-century
of attending closely to Galileo's exact words, I took these
particular words to mean that Cali leo had hit on a method
of approach that could not reasonably have been known to
anyone else. I therefore examined his journal of observaJULY 1980 • THE COllEGE
�tions to see if anything had recently shown up, and sure
enough, there was Galileo's "mouse."
Beside Galileo's record of the observation on the night
of 10 December 1610, he placed a cross. The only other
such marking among his observations stands beside the
entry for the night of 3 December, just one week before
(or to be exact, one hour less than a week). Those two observations provide the key to the "method" that Galileo
said, in his letter of the next day, might lead him to the determination of the periods of all the satellites.
To understand this key, you need to know the meanings of the markings in Figure 1. First, Galileo entered the
day and the hour of observation; the month and year are
found by looking through his journal. He gave the hour
after sunset at Florence (not a casual, but an astronomical
point in time each day). He represented jupiter by a circle
and each satellite by a star. Between each pair he put his
estimate of separation, in units of one visual diameter of
jupiter. Above each star Galileo generally placed another
number, which represented his judgment of its telescopic
magnitude on the traditional scale of six for naked-eye observations. His reason for doing this was that before he
could systematically calculate satellite positions, he had
no possible clue to their individual identities except relative brightness-not a very good clue, but one that might
turn out to be useful.
If we add up the indicated separations between adjacent pairs to get the distance of each satellite from jupiter's nearest edge, east or west of jupiter as the case may
be, Galileo' s reason for having marked these two particular observations with crosses (and for writing his optimistic letter the next day) becomes clear:
3 Dec., Hour 5
10 Dec., Hour 4
El4
E6
E6
0
W4
WlO Wl4
0
W4
W10
Galileo had made about ninety observations before
3 December, but nothing like this had previously occurred. It was the kind of clue he had been waiting for.
We might say, "What luck, hitting on these two similar
positions just a week apart, so that they came close
together on the same page!" We might equally well say,
"What luck, the cat pouncing on the mouse the very moment it came out of the hole!" But if we knew that the cat
had been sitting beside the hole for an hour waiting for a
mouse, we would not say that; we would say, "What patience!" Galileo had not been wasting his time making
useless observations, even though nothing had previously
turned up that he could see how to use. The observation
of 3 December had not been remarkable by itself, and I
am sure the cross was placed beside it on lO December,
not when he first recorded the position. What Galileo had
felt confident about was that sooner or later something
must turn up that he could get his teeth into. But it was
not exactly this arrangement he was awaiting rather than
some other, such as the remarkable situation which we
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
shall see occurring on 15 March. It was mere luck, purely
random, that produced the particular pair of similar observations which Galileo actually used as his start on the
serious work of determining periods, but it was not mere
luck that he recognized its value for that purpose.
Recognition is the act of a prepared mind.
Next comes the place at which I fear that logicians will
merely throw up their hands in despair at Galileo's credulity. No other satellite than IV had ever been seen near
another one at such a distance from jupiter as 14 diameters, and none at all had been seen beyond 15 diameters.
Galileo now assumed that while IV had gone nearly from
one extreme position to the opposite, each of the others
had returned to its previous position. Of course, all kinds
of possibilities of interchanges might have occurred,
whence logicians would have advised Galileo not to jump
at such a conclusion. He, on the contrary, jumped even
further-because it is more efficient to go as far as you
can with any clue to scientific discovery than it is to proceed with great caution. The important thing is not to be
cautious, but to be ready to back down, or even throw the
whole clue away, if it fails to produce.
Galileo reasoned that if the period of III, which he
could not logically identify in his diagram, was one week
(or rather 167 hours), then that of II was probably half a
week, or about 84 hours, since if it made more than two
revolutions in one revolution of III, II would be going awfully fast. The period of I was probably a quarter-week, or
about 42 hours, since if it made only three revolutions in
one revolution of III, it would have an even chance of being out of phase with it, and it was not. Galileo did not
write this down, but what he did next shows that he
tested this· idea and it worked.
The immediate problem was to find a starting point for
testing the idea. Only IV could be safely identified, and
only when that satellite was very distant from jupiter. To
test his idea, he had to identify others. On 17 December,
one week later, it was probably cloudy, since Galileo recorded no observation. On the 24th he again saw all four,
but no longer in similar positions, which showed that the
periods were not exact submultiples. Galileo would hardly
have expected them to be, in the light of his many previous observations. It was on 29 December that Galileo was
first lucky enough to identify a satellite at perigee. That
was very important, since maximum elongations were not
good for close timing, partly because thus far Galileo' s estimates of distances from Jupiter were not very accurate,
and partly because the greater its elongation, the more
slowly the satellite appears to move. Here was his next valuable clue:
0
29 December, Hour 2:30
7,00
m2o
' 2'
'
*
6
2
2
'
'
'5/6
2'
5
0
3
5
0
2
'
'
3
'
47
�One satellite disappeared in the middle observation,
passing across Jupiter's disc. When it reappeared on the
other side, Galileo could assume uniform speed for it
when so close to Jupiter, and could estimate when it had
passed the center. Its westerly direction showed that it
had passed in front of Jupiter, so at center it was at perigee. Galileo wrote this note: "At 5:30 a satellite was at
perigee," and then added the words, "that is, satellite !."
He could be fairly sure it was I because that is the swiftest
and in nearly eight hours it had moved about 4 diameters,
including one across Jupiter. In the same time, those to
the east approached Jupiter by only about one diameter,
and the one to the west moved only three. The next day
Galileo wrote to Father Christopher Clavius, mathematician at the Jesuit College in Rome, describing these three
observations, though he did not reveal his own analysis of
them. Fair play, but no favors. To check his hypothesis,
Galileo still needed one more disappearance of I.
On 6 January, at the 6th hour after sunset, two satellites
could not be seen; the two that could be seen were far to
the west (at 5 and 13 diameters). Hence one of the two not
seen was probably satellite L Galileo noted that the night
was cloudy, making this observation anything but certain.
The hours that had elapsed since 5:30 on 29 December
came to 192; dividing this by 42 gives a little over 4 1/z, so
that if I was at perigee on the earlier date it should be a
short distance past apogee at this time. As a matter of fact
it was, just about at the minimum distance from Jupiter
that Galileo should have been able to see it. But the night
was cloudy and he did not see it, so he now made out the
first little table of predictions found among his notes. It is
a simple listing of times during the next two weeks at
which satellite I should reach apogee, perigee, or maximum elongation, obtained by adding 10 1/4 hours repeatedly to the 6th hour on 6 January 1611. No observation
Galileo made during that period conflicted with his list,
though of course many positions listed came during
daylight hours and could not be checked. The period of I
is in fact not 42 hours, but 42 1/z, as Galileo found out in
March.
On 24 January an observation enabled Galileo to time
the apogee of III, duly confirmed by looking back at observations made previously on the 17th and 20th, which until
the 24th could not be definitely associated with the disappearance of IlL He judged the period to be 170 hours; it is
really 172. On 12 February he wrote to Paolo Sarpi, mentioning his belief that he knew how to get all the periods. I
think it likely that Galileo had already anticipated apogee
of II for the following night, which was then observed and
indicated a period of 85 hours, only twenty minutes short
of the modern figure. On 7 March he caught IV in conjunction with Jupiter and by the 9th knew that this had
been at perigee, since it had moved far to the west. The
approximate period of IV had presented no problem, as
mentioned earlier; Galilee's first surviving close estimate
was recorded late in March, and was within a very small
margin (eight minutes in over 16 days) of our modern value.
48
In this way the problem Kepler had judged hopeless of
solution six months earlier was cracked by Galileo. Satellite periods were found, not in the logical order IV-III-II-I,
but (except for a very rough estimate for IV) in the order
I-III-II-IV. To improve his estimates, Galileo needed an independent set of apogee or perigee times to apply to each
satellite. This he got at one fell swoop on 15 March 1611,
when all four satellites became and remained aligned with
Jupiter for four hours at a stretch. Or rather, Galileo
thought that to be the case, and proceeded as if it had
been, though during this "great conjunction" (as he called
it) there were also eclipse phenomena and confusing
periods during which a satellite was merely too near
Jupiter to be seen by Galileo. But science proceeds by the
method of successive approximations, and the information gained on 15 March 1611 enabled Galileo to improve
his previous findings so that he could soon calculate
satellite positions forward and backward at will.
There is much more to the story, but this suffices for
my purposes here. The historical problem was to discover
how Galileo had known enough about the periods of the
satellites to be able to proceed as rapidly and as systematically as he did from 15 March 1611 on. If we were to
rely on logic alone, and had no clues from letters and
Galileo's journal of observations, we might perhaps assume that he proceeded in the only obvious, logical, and
tedious way; that Kepler had been mistaken in his pessimism about reaching success in that way, and that Galileo
must have thrown away his earlier notes. That would be
what I call "constructed history," very logical and persuasive, but unrelated to actual facts. Constructed history
must be accepted when we have no other recourse. What
we want instead is what I call "structured history" -not a
mere chronicle of events, but a documented and credible
account of discoveries and their subsequent development.
Logic alone seldom explains discoveries. They do not violate the laws of logic, but to understand them we must
also credit early ·scientists with common sense.
Thomas Henry Huxley, in the nineteenth century,
characterized science itself as "organized common
sense." That is what the science of his day was, and that is
how Galileo's science was born. It is all too easy for historians to forget this, now that science has again become a
logical and philosophical enterprise of looking for the
ultimate secret of the universe through technical jargon
and logical virtuosity, as was much of medieval science.
Galileo, breaking away from that, turned to observation,
calculation, and common sense. Respect for logic-with
always an eye on the main chance-led him to discoveries
in which fortune, as always, favored the prepared mind.
To catch Galileo's method, biographers and historians
must watch patiently like a cat at a mousehole, confident
that something will emerge from his notes which will be
recognized, much as James Bernoulli had recognized an
anonymous proof of Sir Isaac Newton's when he said: "I
know the lion by his paw."
JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE
�On Sophocles' Ajax
David Bolotin
Ajax's Third Monologue (vv. 646-692)
Ajax: All things does long and uncountable Time
Bring forth unclearly, and once they have come to light, it
buries them.
And so there is nothing not to be expected, but even
The dreadful oath and the obdurate heart are found out to be
weak.
For indeed I, who once was so tremendously steadfast,
Like iron from dipping, had my edge softened
By this woman here. I feel pity
To leave her a widow among enemies and my son an orphan.
But I shall go to the bathing places
And the seaside meadows, so that cleansing my stains
I may escape the heavy wrath of the goddess.
And going where I can find an untrodden place,
I will bury this sword of mine-most hateful of weaponsAnd dig it into the earth where no one will see.
But let Night and Hades preserve it below.
Since from the time when I received it in my hand
As a gift from most hate-filled Hector,
I have not yet obtained anything dear from the Argives.
But it is true~ the saying of mortals" Gifts of enemies arc no gifts;" they are not profitable.
Therefore, for the time left I will know to yield
To the gods, and I will learn to revere the Atreidae.
They are rulers, so one has to yield. Why not?
For even things dreadful and most steadfast
Yield to offices. Thus snowy·pathed winters
Give way before fruitful summer.
The gloomy vault of night stands aside for
Day with its white colts to kindle light.
The blast of dreadful winds puts to sleep
The moaning sea. And among these, all-powerful Sleep
Releases what it has bound, and once it has seized, it does not
hold on forever.
And as for us, how shall we not learn to be sound of mind?
1 will. For now 1 understand that
We must hate the enemy so much as is suited
To one who will also love us some day; and toward the friend.
In doing service I shall wish to benefit him so much
As is suited to one who always is not going to remain (such).
Since for the many
Of mortals the haven of friendship is not to be trusted.
Yet concerning these things it will be well. But you,
Woman, go inside and pray to the gods
That my heart's longing may be completely fulfilled.
And you, friends, honor as she does these wishes of mine
And tell Teucer, if he comes,
To have care for us and at the same time to be well inclined
toward you.
For I shall go where my fourney must be made.
And you do what'l tell you, and you may well learn,
Though I am now unfortunate, that I have been saved.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
A
fter Achilles' death at the siege of Troy, the Achaeans
decided to award his armor as a prize of excellence to
the best remaining warrior. One might well have expected
that this award would go to Ajax, the son of Telamon.
Homer, or his Muse, speaks of Ajax as by far the most ex·
cellent of the Achaeans, after Achilles (Iliad B 761-69).
Yet the Achaean judges chose Odysseus instead of Ajax to
receive Achilles' armor. Ajax was enraged at this decision,
and in retaliation he attempted to kill, under cover of
night, all the other chieftains of the army. But the goddess
Athena thwarted him by driving him insane. Instead of
killing his enemies he merely butchered the; army's live·
stock, under the delusion that these cattle were the
Achaean chieftains.
Sophocles' Ajax, which begins on the morning after
these events, falls into two halves. The first half of the
play leads up to Ajax's suicide, and the second half culminates in his burial. A brief retelling of the play's story will
suffice to bring out the difference in character between
these two halves. Early in the play, after Athena has
shown the still deluded Ajax to Odysseus, Ajax recovers
his sanity. He despairs of revenge, and he soon resolves
upon suicide as the only noble action left to him. His mis·
tress, the captive Tecmessa, pleads with him to live, and
for a moment it appears as if she has succeeded. In a pow·
erful monologue, whose theme is the necessity for accept·
ing the changes that time brings, Ajax leads her to believe
that he will live. But his apparent yielding turns out to
have been a deception. Soon we see him give a final
speech, and then he falls upon his sword.
The second half of the play presents the aftermath of
Ajax's suicide. It is largely occupied with an ugly dispute
over whether Ajax is to be denied burial in punishment
for his treasonous attack. This question is debated be·
tween Menelaus and Agamemnon, who prohibit the bur·
ial, and Ajax's brother Teucer, who tries to change their
minds. Nothing is accomplished, however, until Odysseus
reappears on the scene. Although Odysseus had recently
David Bolotin read an earlier version of this essay at St. John's College
in Annapolis on January 7, 1977. His book, Plato's Dialogue on Friendship: an Interpretation of the Lysis, has recently been published (Ithaca,
New York, I 979).
49
�been Ajax's most hated rival, and his intended victim, he
openly defers to his rival's superiority (1339-41) and persuades Agamemnon to allow Ajax to be buried with the
highest honors. The play ends as Ajax's corpse is being
carried out for burial.
The theme that binds together this seemingly disjointed story is the theme of friendship. (The word
"friend" will be used throughout this essay to correspond
to the Greek <jJCAos, which has a wider range of meanings
than the English word "friend" normally does. The Greek
word </>iAo< was used not only for friends in our sense, but
also for relatives, especially those in one's immediate family. Moreover, Ajax's mistress Tecmessa, and his comrades-in-arms of the Achaean army, are referred to in the
play as his "friends." Friendship in this wider Greek sense
exists among all those acquaintances who live together as
a community, and who may be expected to continue to do
so.) More particularly, the play's theme is that of justice
and injustice, or loyalty and disloyalty, to friends. In keeping with this, the first half of the play centers around
Ajax's response to Tecmessa's plea that he not desert, and
thus betray, her and their infant son. And throughout the
second half, the quarrel concerns how to respond to
Ajax's treasonous disloyalty as a comrade in the army.
Although Ajax does turn against his comrades and later
desert his nearest ones, these facts alone give a quite mis-
leading picture of his character as a friend. The play reminds us that Ajax had been an unusually valiant and
trustworthy soldier when the army was in its greatest
danger (1272-82). And Ajax shows himself within the play
to be deeply concerned about what is owed to friends. In
his view, the Achaeans who failed to award him Achilles'
armor were ungrateful comrades, violators of the Hcorrect
law" (3 50) of friendship. His turning against them stems in
part from his very attachment to friendship and from his
awareness of the demands that it imposes (cf. Aristotle,
Politics l327b4l-l328a 18). Friendship, and the difficulties that accompany it, are of central importance to Ajax.
Accordingly, it is not surprising that his third monologue,
which stands out within the play by its conspicuous beauty,
should culminate in a thought about the weakness of
friendship. 1
The purpose of this essay is to examine the Ajax as a
whole, with a view to a better understanding of Ajax himself and his relations to his friends. But in order to do this
properly, we must first note that a concern with friendship was not the core of Ajax's character. He had always
wished above all to be excellent (or virtuous), to show his
excellence through victory in battle, and to crown his victories by receiving the aristeia, the army's prize for supreme virtue (434-40; 470-72). His chief ambition was the
Homeric one: aifv &pwnUcw xed. inrcipoxov 'i/1/1EVCXt
0:-AA.wv, p:qOE 'YE'vos 1rTx.T€pwv o:iaxVvEJLEv-a1ways to be excellent and to be pre-eminent above others, and not to
bring shame upon the family of one's fathers (Iliad Z
208-09; cf. A 784). Ajax could not be satisfied unless his
excellence gained him victory and honor, but he was too
50
noble to settle for any undeserved success. And since he
knew that intervention from the gods could give occasional victory even to a worthless man (455-56; 766-67; cf.
IliadP 629-32)2, he openly scorned such easy gains. By his
noble reluctance to be indebted even to the gods for his
victories, Ajax angered the goddess Athena (758-76); and
it was Athena's anger that led to the failure of his attempt
to retaliate against his comrades.
Ajax's concern for friendship, although subordinate to
his attachment to excellence and nobility, was closely
bound up with it. His striving to be excellent went together, for most of his life, with an attachment to friendship, and to friendship as something permanent. Now the
primary reason that Ajax had been a true friend is simply
because of his love, since it is only natural for human love
to want to continue. But the natural bonds of friendly
love were greatly strengthened for him, as he expected
them to be strengthened for his friends, by the concern to
be noble. Human nobility, as Ajax understood it, demands
both excellence in war and loyalty in friendship. And Ajax
did not foresee that his noble attachment to excellence
could ever come into conflict with his love, or with his
duties, as a friend.3
T
his essay will show how the Ajax calls into question
the understanding of friendship, and of virtue, that
has just been sketched. The argument of the essay has
two main sections, corresponding to the two halves of the
play. The first section focuses primarily on Ajax's third
monologue (646-92), for that is the peak of Ajax's own
thinking about friendship and virtue. But since that
monologue is Ajax's response to an unprecedented situation, we must first look briefly at the events and speeches
that lead up to it. Finally, the second section of the essay
will examine the dispute over whether Ajax is to receive
burial.
What is especially striking in Ajax's first monologue
(430-80) is his speedy recovery from the shame of having
slaughtered the Achaean cattle (contrast 364-66, and
·'400). He is confident that Achilles himself, if he had been
alive to judge, would have awarded him the highest prize
for valor. And it is only Athena's intervention, her afflicting him with madness, that prevented him from taking revenge upon the chieftains. Ajax implies that the temporary
madness during which he mistook cattle for the hated
chieftains was no true failing on his part, since a god can
enable "even a base man to escape from a worthier"
(455-56).
Although Ajax's humiliating madness does not cause
him to doubt, for very long, that he is noble, he is nevertheless at an impasse. He can hardly remain with the
army, for he is a public enemy. And he cannot return
home, where he must face his father Telamon, without
having won a prize of excellence such as Telamon had
once won. He also rejects the alternative of a singlehanded, and suicidal, attack against Troy, on the grounds
that such an attack might benefit his Achaean enemies.
JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE
�But some such enterprise, he says, must be sought for in
order to show his father that his nature, at least, is worthy
of his ancestry. The enterprise that Ajax has in mind is
suicide. Suicide is apparently his only choice, since "a no-
ble man (Eiryev~) must either live honorably (xaAGls) or else
honorably (xaAws) be dead" (479-80). By killing himself
now, thinks Ajax, he will show his father and others the
nobility of his nature. He will show a noble refusal to accept any consolations for his single greatest defeat, his
defeat in contest for the armor of Achilles. Ajax's first
monologue thus ends with a reaffirmation of his claim to
be noble.
Ajax's mistress Tecmessa responds to his monologue
(485-524) with a challenge to the view of nobility that
leads him to seek death. She pleads with him to live, and
her plea has several aspects, including an appeal for pity.
But it culminates in a demand for his gratitude.' "A man
ought," she says, '(to remember if he has received any
delight" (520-21). And she gives a reason for this claim.
"For kindness is that which brings forth kindness (or gratitude) always" (xapn x<'<pw -yap kanv ~ Tinoua'aei, 522).
But this thought of hers, though beautiful, does not seem
to be wholly true, as we can see from her own threatened
situation. Accordingly, Tecmessa adds a further argument: a man who does not hold in memory the benefits
he has received would not remain-whatever he was before-a noble man (eu-yev1)s <h~p, 524; cf. 480). 5 Tecmessa
here appeals to Ajax's sense of the noble, and she points
to what may well be his greatest failing-ingratitude, or
the thoughtless disregard of help received (cf. Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics 1124b12-15; contrast especially
ll32b31-1133a5). Ajax, who prides himself on the great
things he has done, does not easily remember those benefits he has received from others. But Tecmessa compels
him to acknowledge what she, the mother of his son, has
given to him. Is he not obliged to her and to their son?
And wouldn't it be ignoble for him to fail to give in return
for what he has received? Ajax himself has said that a noble man must either live honorably or else honorably be
dead. But would it be honorable for him to flee, in dying, a
debt to the living?
Ajax's second monologue, however, gives little evidence that Tecmessa's appeal has moved him. His resolve
to die, and his confidence that this is noble, remain un·
changed (550-51). He does show concern for his infant
son, and he expresses confidence that his brother Tencer
will be able to take care of the boy. But he offers nothing,
not even any hope, to the captive Tecmessa. In her alarm,
Tecmessa implores him in the name of the gods not to
betray them. The suggestion that Ajax is about to betray
the gods, as well as herself, strengthens her earlier rebuke
that he is being ungrateful,' and it provokes him to his
most extreme statement: he claims that he no longer owes
any service to the gods, since they too now hate him. Tecmessa warns him not to blaspheme, but he ignores the
warning and commands her to leave. Tecmessa's last
words to Ajax are a renewed appeal in the name of the
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
gods that he relent. But he replies that she is a fool if she
intends at this late date to school his character.
The chorus, which consists of Ajax's followers from his
homeland Salamis, next calls into further question the nobility of his intended suicide. They sing of him as a man
still afflicted by madness (611; 635; cf. 278-80, and contrast 274). In their view, the self-absorbed Ajax no longer
lives up to the excellence of his former deeds, and he does
not maintain the noble disposition of his race (616-20;
636-40). By choosing a death that serves no one, except
perhaps himself, and that brings grief to his friends
(614-16), Ajax appears to his followers as a man no longer
worthy of his ancestry.
L
et us now turn to Ajax's third monologue, in which
he reveals that Tecmessa's plea has shaken the foun·
dations of his way of life. The breadth of his thought is in·
dicated by the opening word c¥7rav0c_all things. 7 "All
things does long and uncountable time bring forth unclearly, and once they have come to light, it buries them"
(646-47). Ajax does not mean by this that all beings come
into being and then perish. For his reflections encompass
immortals as well as mortals-' Rather, his contention is
that time denies to all beings an uninterrupted pre-eminence and an unshakeable trustworthiness. Permanence
in visible excellence and permanence in friendship have
been Ajax's two deepest desires, and it is the claim to
these that he now attempts to renounce.
"And so there is nothing," continues Ajax-and in particular no change-"beyond expectation, but even the
dreadful oath and the obdurate heart are found out to be
weak." A solemn oath had bound Ajax to serve Agamemnon and Menelaus. Yet this oath was broken by his traitorous attempt to kill the Achaean chieftains. And Ajax's
obdurate heart has yielded, or so it seems, to Tecmessa's
entreaties. "For indeed I," he goes on, "who was once so
marvellously steadfast. .. , had my edge softened by this
woman here. I feel pity," he says, "to leave her a widow
among my enemies and to leave my son an orphan."9
Ajax's new feeling that pity forbids him to leave Tecmessa
is the crucial change that makes his entire speech possible, and indeed necessary. 1 For it is this pity that prompts
his apparent decision to live and thus to learn all that is
implied in coming to terms with the world of gods and
chieftains.
Ajax's next words are, "But I shall go to the bathing
places and the seaside meadows, to cleanse my stains and
so to escape the heavy wrath of the goddess." Apparently,
he now intends to perform a ritual of cleansing and purification, in the hope of appeasing Athena's anger. He must
make peace with Athena if he is to live, and he now seems
°
to want to live in order to care for Tecmessa and their son.
To be sure, it might appear that this interpretation is excessively straightforward and that it rests on a superficial
reading of his ambiguous words. For like much of the
51
�monologue, these phrases about "cleansing" have a hidden aspect that points to his eventual suicide (cf. footnote 9). But I hope to show that Ajax's surface meaning,
rather than the complex undercurrents of his language, is
the necessary beginning for an understanding of his deep.
est thoughts as well.
Ajax next resolves to bury the sword he had received in
the exchange of gifts that followed his famous duel with
Hector (cf. Iliad H 54- 312). And be gives a reason for doing so. "For from the time when I received it in my hand
as a gift from most hate-filled Hector, I have not yet obtained anything dear from the Argives. But it is true-the
saying of mortals-'Gifts of enemies are no gifts'; they are
not profitable. Therefore (rotyap, 666), in the time remaining I will know to yield to the gods, and I will learn to
revere the sons of Atreus." By his use of the word "therefore," Ajax implies that his willingness to yield to the gods
and to his commanders follows directly from the fact that
the gifts of enemies are unprofitable. 11 What can this
mean? To answer this question, we must go back a little.
Ajax has just decided, it seems, to seek continued life for
the sake of Tecmessa and their son. In order to live, he
will try to appease Athena's anger. But Ajax, even when
moved by pity, cannot bring himself to live solely for the
sake of a captive woman and a child. If he is to live, he too
wants to receive those benefits that would make life attractive to him. He wants above all to receive honors, such
as the armor of Achilles he has recently been denied. And
he now blames his failure to win Achilles' armor on his
comrades' resentment at his exchange of gifts with the
enemy Hector. Consequently, he now goes to bury Hector's sword, which had been such a costly gift. In other
words, he seeks to become reconciled with his own community, and he decides to yield to the gods and to his
commanders. All this is for the sake of his own benefit,
which he seeks because he chooses to live; and life in turn
he chooses out of pity for Tecmessa. What his pity
teaches him is that to be concerned to live is to be concerned with what is profitable-for oneself and for one's
intimates-and that one must therefore be on good terms
with the divine and human leaders of one's community.
F
or a better understanding of Ajax's decision to bury
Hector's sword, and to yield to his commanders, we
should look more closely at the duel and exchange of gifts
with Hector. The encounter between Ajax and Hector figures prominently in the play (815-20; 1026-35; 1283-88)12
Much of this prominence can be attributed to the following consideration: victory in a single combat is a less
ambiguous sign of excellence than success in a public
competition, such as the contest for Achilles' armor. As
opposed to those who depend upon judges for their
honors, the contestant in a duel can obtain his reward
directly and by his own unaided efforts (cf. Iliad H 77-83).
And more importantly, there is little uncertainty about
the standards of judgment in a duel: victory, or even an
52
honorable standoff, against a great rival is a clear sign of
excellence. Judges who award public honors, by contrast,
have every temptation to favor their friends and benefactors at the expense of the most excellent man. Although
public honor is said to be awarded for excellence, even in
the best case it is awarded primarily for those excellences
which most benefit the community (compare Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics 1123b35 with ll63b3-8). The enemy, though he may win respect, receives no medal of
honor. The community honors its benefactors and speaks
of them as being the men of excellence (cf. Xenophon,
Hellenica VII 3. 12). Less justly, a community may honor a
potential benefactor in hope of future services (cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric l36la28-30). And what is worse, those
whose excellence most benefits a community may also
serve it through secret baseness, and yet they are typically
not dishonored on this account (cf. Philoctetes 78-85, 119,
1049-52). Since the men who award public honors often
allow their concern for the community's advantage to out·
weigh their attachment to excellence itself, public honor
is always something suspect; it is ambiguous evidence of
virtue. Accordingly, Ajax's duel with Hector can be seen
in part as an attempt to win a more truthful sign of his excellence than the army could bestow. And the sword he
received from Hector can be regarded as such a sign.
Just as Ajax's duel with Hector involved a certain defiance of the army's judgment, so his decision to bury Hec·
tor's sword is an act of submission to it. It is not, however,
complete or wholehearted submission. One sign of this
fact is that Ajax shows no sense of guilt over his recent attempt to kill his chieftains. In his view, the Achaeans did
him an injustice in the contest for Achilles' armor; his attempt to kill the chieftains was merely retaliation. And in
yielding, he goes no further than to abandon his claim to
revenge. Life as Ajax now sees it does not allow the "luxury" that the community honor excellence truthfully.
Rather than do harm to all around him, Ajax seems to
have accepted his place in an imperfect community. To
do this, he must bow before the gods and his com·
manders, and he must content himself with only so much
honor as they choose to award. Hitherto, Ajax's loyalty to
the Achaean cause had been subordinate to his deeper
wish to be excellent, to show his excellence in battle and
in single combat, and to receive the high honors he be·
lieved himself to deserve. Though he had not been fully
aware of it, his loyalty as a friend had been limited by the
condition that his friends be noble enough always to
award the highest honor to the highest excellence. But
now this impossible condition will be removed. Now for
the first time, Ajax appears to have become a true member of his community; he appears to have learned to
accept the union, or alternation, of self-interest and selfsurrender demanded by public life and its friendship.
Ajax lessens somewhat the pain of yielding to his rulers
by observing that "even things dreadful and most steadfast yield to offices" (Ttf'CX!s lnrEix«, 670). "Thus snowy·
pathed winters give way before fruitful summer. The
}ULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE
�gloomy vault of night stands aside for day with its white
colts to kindle light. The blast of dreadful winds puts to
sleep (by abating) the moaning sea. And among these, all
powerful Sleep releases what it has bound, and once it has
seized, it does not hold on forever." 13 The most important, and most difficult, word in this passage is np.a<s,
which may be translated as "offices," or "honors." It
refers in the first place to the rulers, or to their offices,
before which Ajax must yield. But the word also refers to
Ajax's own motive for yielding to his rulers. Only by yielding before np.c{ts, or uoffices," can he hope to win again
those public honors, or np.<is, which the army bestows.
For Ajax to yield before honors is in large part to yield
before his own desire to receive honors. And in order to
receive honors, Ajax will accept the terms under which
honor is generally awarded. His yielding implies an agreement that the excellence that most benefits the army is
most honorable, and most worth striving for. His yielding
also implies an admission that the lawful commandershowever they should decide-are the authoritative judges
of honorable action.
T
here is still, however, a barrier in Ajax's way before
he can expect reconciliation with his Achaean rulers.
He has been a traitor to the army, and as such he deserves
to die. The threat of public stoning, as punishment for his
night attack, had been hinted at earlier in the play. How
can Ajax submit to the sons of Atreus if they intend to execute him? Yet perhaps there is a way out of this impasse.
The main argument by which Menelaus and Agamemnon
will later condemn the dead Ajax is that behavior such as
his threatens the establishment of law and the preservation of armies and cities (1071-83, 1246-50). But on those
very grounds, in the interests of the army, it would obviously be prudent for them to accept the submission of a
still living, still useful, and still dangerous (721-32) Ajax.
Moreover, no serious harm came to the army from Ajax's
abortive attack. Perhaps, then, the chieftains can forget
his fault, just as Ajax himself is willing to forego his hopes
of revenge. If the Achaeans could disregard his excellence
when they awarded Achilles' armor, why wouldn't they
disregard his brief attack in consideration of the services
he might yet perform? The threat of stoning is probably
not a serious one. Tecmessa and the men of the chorus, at
any rate, once they have been persuaded that Ajax intends to yield, give no further sign of being afraid for him
(693-716, 787-88).
Since it is apparently to everyone's advantage to let
bygones be bygones, no external obstacle seems to prevent Ajax from making his peace with gods and men 14 If
even the mightiest immortal powers-continues Ajaxcan yield and submit, "then how shall we (mortals) not
learn to be sound-minded?" All Ajax must do is to learn to
be uw</>pwv, sound of mind or sane. Now this lesson of submission is admittedly difficult for Ajax, and events will
show that he even finds it intolerable. But why? Ajax himTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
self hints at an answer in his following words: "For I have
lately come to know that we must hate the enemy as
much as is appropriate to one who will also love us some
day; and toward the friend, in doing service I will wish to
benefit him so much as is appropriate to one who always
is not going to remain a friend. Since for the many of mortals the haven of friendship is not to be trusted." These
lines are striking in their bitterness. And at first, such bitterness seems strange, since it follows immediately upon
Ajax's avowal that he will learn soundness of mind-the
way of life that is dearest to the gods (677; cf. 132-33,
757-77). On further reflection, however, we can see that
Ajax is merely elaborating the hidden implications of his
decision to yield to his community.
The extremity of Ajax's bitterness can be best seen by
contrasting his remarks with oth-er versions of this same
maxim about friends and enemies (Aristotle, Rhetoric
l389b24-25; cf. Bias, as reported in Diogenes Laertius I
5.87). What is most strikingly unique about Ajax's statement is his avoidance of the verb </>tA<'iv, to love, when he
speaks of his relations to his friends. By contrast, he does
not hesitate to speak of the possibility that an enemy
might some day come to love him (</>t'A~uwv, 680). Moreover, he is quite willing to speak of the need for his group
to hate, and not merely to harm, its present enemies.
When he tells of his own posture as an individual toward
his friends, however, his roundabout mention of services
and benefits makes all the more noticeable the absence of
the simple verb "to love" (contrast Oedipus at Colonus,
1615-19).
T
o better understand Ajax's new attitude toward
friendship, one must recall that his willingness to
return to the Achaean community followed from a wish
for benefits from the group (665-66). He now sees friendship, or at least the friendship among fellow soldiers, as an
association held together against its enemies in the expectation of mutual benefit. Toward this end, it may require
forgetfulness of earlier hatred and oblivion of former love.
Those who may cause future harm must now be treated as
enemies, and only those who can bring future benefits are
to be treated as friends. Who can be sure that old enemies
might not some day find it profitable to do a good turn?
And who can be sure that old friends will remain useful?
The mutability of friendship is not merely a fact; it is a
reasonable fact. A sensible man will therefore refuse to extend an unconditional loyalty to his friends. Because of
the world's instability, and the apparent primacy of selfinterest, Ajax is now unable to regard himself as a loving
or trustworthy friend (cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric 1395a31-32).
Ajax's coming to know the weakness of friendship is especially painful for him at this moment, since he has just
promised to return to the Achaean community and to renounce the higher claims that had kept him apart. Previously, his striving for excellence, together with his
demand for appropriate honor, had been in tension with
53
�his loyalty to his Achaean friends. This tension had come
violently to the surface after he failed to win Achilles' ar·
mar. Ajax's readiness to bury Hector's sword has shown,
in contrast, a new appreciation of the claims of the com·
munity. It has shown him to be willing to be a true subordinate to his army's officers. Yet the renunciation of his
higher demands, which was to have brought him closer to
his comrades, instead makes him unable genuinely to love
them at all.
There is one further, and still more abhorrent, aspect to
Ajax's new understanding of friendship. The same reasoning that leads to a withholding of genuine love might on
occasion lead to active treachery. The Achaeans themselves abandoned Philoctetes from such motives. Similarly, an individual might find it safer or more profitable to
betray one or more of his friends. This thought, however,
is especially intolerable to Ajax. Though he was not
ashamed of his attempt to retaliate against the Achaean
judges, he could never stoop to cold-blooded and calculated treachery. Yet his proposal to yield to his rulers
has implied a readiness even for that. For this reason,
more than for any other, Ajax rejects the proposed yielding and silently renews his earlier decision to die." Ajax
thinks that he can free himself from the baseness of life
only through suicide.
Even suicide, however, will not offer Ajax an entirely
noble alternative to life's meanness. His suicide will itself
be an instance of betrayal. In particular, it will be a
betrayal of Tecmessa. Though she has served him faithfully, he will leave her unprotected in a hostile Achaean
army. Moreover, the manner of his leaving her is unchar-
acteristically deceptive. He is never explicit, in this last
speech to her, about suicide, and he concludes the speech
in such a way (684-92) as to encourage her wishful thinking that he will live (cf. footnote 9). Not only does Ajax
desert Tecmessa, but he does so deceptively (cf. 807-08).
Even in his dying, he is not wholly free of the baseness he
despises.
Ajax himself, to be sure, does not admit that his suicide
is in any way ignoble. He does not acknowledge the justice of Tecmessa's reproach that to abandon her would be
base (524). Some words of his own, however, may hint
that Sophocles disagrees with him. In the speech preceding this third monologue, Ajax had prayed for his son to
be more fortunate than himself but like him in all else.
"And then," he continues, "you would not be base" (w
1rcd, "{€:vow 1fetrp0~ tUrvxEarepos, r& 0' fx'AA Op..oto'!i. xed
"(Evot' ih
"co'6', 550-51). What Ajax means is that although he is unfortunate he is still noble-as noble as he
could wish his son to be. But perhaps these words convey
a further thought as well, one that contradicts Ajax's own
meaning. Both parts of Ajax's prayer might have to come
true in order for his son not to be base. Sophocles may be
suggesting that Eurysaces must combine his father's character with a better fortune if he is to become, and to re-
ou
main, "not base."
Might there not be misfortunes in which it is impossi-
54
ble for anyone, no matter what his character, entirely to
avoid baseness? Hasn't Ajax himself fallen into just such a
situation, in which any action he chooses will be base in
some respects? And hasn't this impasse arisen in part as a
consequence of his very nobility (consider 763)? To act
nobly, and to avoid basenesS: is impossible without ex-
ternal supports, supports that nobility itself tends to undermine. Though Ajax does not see this far, the truest significance of his death is that it reveals this weakness of
nobility.
A
jax's suicide, and the reflections that lead him to
it, present a deep challenge to the Achaean community. Though Ajax hopes to become reconciled, in death,
with the divine order of the world (692, 865),"' he seeks no
reconciliation with his fellow Achaeans. His final speech
even contains a prayer that the sons of Atreus may die
miserably, and he extends this curse to the whole
Achaean army. Ajax has suggested, more generally, that
human communities are above all the homes of faithlessness and treachery (677-84; cf. Philoctetes 446-50 ff.).
What are we to think of this? Ajax's death not only leaves
the question of whether he deserves, despite his faults, an
honorable burial. 17 It raises the still more important question of whether the Achaean community can bestow any
but the most hollow honors. Does the community even
have enough strength to withstand Ajax's curses? Does it
deserve to withstand them? just as the Achaeans must
judge Ajax in deciding whether he is worthy of burial, so
they too are being measured.
It might be objected that Ajax's failure to become reconciled with the Achaeans is his own fault. Even his temporary readiness to yield to the commanders might seem
to have been less than he owed them. This readiness did
not stem from a sense of duty, but from his awareness
that submission was the more profitable course, for himself and for Tecmessa. Admittedly, he was briefly willing
to forego his claim to vengeance, but is it entirely certain
that he deserved to win Achilles' armor? What kind of
submission would it have been for him merely to forego
vengeance over a decision that was possibly correct?
Should he not instead have asked forgiveness for his
treasonous attempt to kill the other chieftains? And is it
not outrageous of him to curse the entire army?
The case against Ajax, however, or rather the army's
title to make that case, is seriously weakened by its commanders' behavior in the aftermath of his death. By refusing to allow him burial, Menelaus and Agamemnon disregard the divine laws that forbid this form of punishment
(1029-32, 1343-48). Moreover, their arguments to Ajax's
brother Teucer, when he protests the denial of burial, attempt to reduce the question of justice to that of what
serves the army's interests. So limited is their perspective
that they condemn Ajax's disloyalty to the army without
even mentioning that he was bound by a sacred oath to
serve with them (cf. 648-49; 1111-14).
'
JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE
�Menelaus, who is the first to condemn Ajax, makes only
one strong argument against him, an argument based on
the interests of the army. An army, he says, (like a city)
cannot be ruled soberly without obedience to authority,
without fear, and without shame. He emphasizes the
need for fear. But he forgets that an army also needs men
of outstanding virtue (1273-82), and he ignores any obliga·
tion to honor such men truthfully. When Teucer later ac·
cuses him of having cheated Ajax in the contest for
Achilles' armor, Menelaus refuses to discuss the matter.
He doesn't even claim that the judging was honest, let
alone that the outcome was correct; instead, he threatens
to punish Teucer unless he drops the subject ( 113 5-38).
By his failure to respect either human excellence or divine
law, and by the arrogance he shows in other ways, Mene·
Teucer to abandon his brother's corpse. But since he himself does not defer to anything higher than the army, he
can hardly ask Teucer to do so. He is therefore compelled-just as Menelaus was-to make the dubious suggestion that the army's interest coincides with the private
interest of each soldier.l9 He accompanies this suggestion
with a warning for Teucer to watch out for himself. Indeed, his argument for loyalty to the army comes to little
more than a threat of violence. Teucer, however, who is
too noble to submit before such a threat, claims that he
would rather die for his brother than obey Agamemnon's
order (1310-15). The unyielding severity with which
Agamemnon tries to strengthen the army seems instead
to weaken it.
Apart from his main argument on the basis of the
laus undermines respect for the army. He seems to con-
army's interests, Agamemnon does offer one further argu-
firm the low view of human communities that had
emerged in Ajax's third monologue.
Although Menelaus looks up to nothing higher than the
ans are as much "real men" (~vOpH, 1238) as Ajax ever
army's interest, he is aware that he must offer an incen-
tive for men to subordinate their private interest to that of
the group. Threats of punishment for disobedience are
not forceful enough without a promised reward for obedience. Menelaus therefore accompanies his threats with
the (dubious) assertion that obedient fear and shame guarantee an individual's safety, as weli as that of a commu-
nity (1077 -80). 18 His demand for loyalty to the army is
thus ultimately based on an appeal, questionable even on
its own terms, to the individual's desire for security.
T
he commanders' attempt to deny any higher claims
than the army's interest, and the consequent weakness of their appeal for loyalty, are even more apparent in
Agamemnon's speech than in his brother's. Agamemnon
is less indignant than Menelaus at Ajax's unsuccessful attempt to kill them. And he regards the prohibition of
burial less as a punishment of Ajax, who is already nothing
in his eyes (1231, 1257; contrast 1068), than as a useful
warning against future offenders (1250). Agamemnon
does, to be sure, refer in passing to the "justice" (1248) of
the award of Achilles' armor, but he probably means by
this no more than adherence to established procedure.
Agamemnon is so little concerned with the question of
who deserved Achilles' armor that he confuses the judges'
decision in that contest with his own decision to prohibit
Ajax's burial. He seems to identify Tencer's protest
against the denial of burial with Ajax's rebellion against
the award of armor (1239-56). In Agamemnon's view, one
decision is the same as another, and of equal validity; to
object to either is equally to challenge established authority within the army. The army's interest, as he sees it, requires that the rulers' decisions always be accepted as
final (1246-47).
Agamemnon knows that his interpretation of the
army's interests is not a strong enough motive to persuade
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ment. He contends that he and the others of the Achae·
was. And in addition to denying Ajax a higher place than
the rest of the army, he tries to assign Teucer to a lower
one. He even challenges Teucer' s right to speak publicly
in support of his brother, by alleging that Teucer, whose
mother was a foreign captive, is not of free and noble
birth (1229, 1235, 1259-60).
Tencer's response, in addition to deploring the army's
ingratitude to Ajax, is to hurl back some shameful truths
about Agamemnon's own ancestry (1290-98). And this reproach is not merely name-calling: it calls directly into
question Agamemnon's title to deference and respect.
Unlike Ajax, who had insisted on showing his nobility
through his actions, Agamemnon apparently thinks it
enough to have a noble family name. But Agamemnon's
family was never so noble as he would have men believe.
And respect for that family does not keep Teucer from
threatening forcible resistance to the decree against burying Ajax.
A
t this point Odysseus reappears on stage. It is he
who prevents bloodshed and who secures an honorable burial for Ajax. More importantly still, it is he whorestores the commanders' authority and the integrity of the
army. Odysseus begins his appeal by establishing his posi·
tion as Agamemnon's best friend among the Achaeans
(1331). He then gives three arguments, which, taken together, succeed in persuading Agamemnon to allow
Ajax's burial. We will consider each of these arguments
separately.
Odysseus' third and last argument is that he (Odysseus)
himself will some day be in want of burial. Agamemnon
interprets this statement simply as a sign that every man
is out for himself. Odysseus, though in all likelihood he
was moved more by pity than by such a calculation (cf.
121-26), does not openly object to his commander's low
interpretation of his remark. He even adds that it is reasonable and proper for him to labor for himself above all.
To give Odysseus his due, we should note that the self-
55
�interest he speaks of is a farsighted self-interest. It is the
higher aspect of that view of the world which to Ajax had
meant primarily the denial of true friendship (1354-61).
Odysseus, in accordance with this farsighted self-interest,
offers friendly service to a recent enemy. More than that,
he offers to serve a dead man, from whom he can hope
nothing in return. And in this, too, Odysseus acts in accord with his long-range interest. It is not prudent to help
only those who can be expected to return the service,
since everyone will eventually be in want of a service he
cannot return. Everyone dreads the prospect of lying unburied, and so it is wise for all to permit, if not also to
assist in, the burial of all others. To do this sets an example of humanity which serves everyone's interests. This
last argument, by which Odysseus seeks to "enlighten"
Agamemnon's self-interest, seems enough to overcome
the commander's faltering resistance. But it fails to resolve the most important questions that have been raised
within the play. It says nothing about what honor is owed
to Ajax in particular, and it suggests too little about the
sources of authority within the army.
A second argument of Odysseus is his appeal in the
name of the gods and on the basis of divine law. Divine
law forbids the prohibition of burial, no matter whether
the dead man was an enemy or a friend, a bad man or a
good one (1332-33; cf. 1129-32, and Iliad TI 453-57;
667-75). The laws of the gods, says Odysseus, could be
ruined by denying burial to Ajax (1343-44). And although
Odysseus doesn't say this, showing respect for divine law
might help Agamemnon to preserve the army's respect
for him. In a number of ways, the argument from divine
law goes further than the one based on self-interest. But
this argument, which would hold equally no matter who
had died, is overshadowed by Odysseus' repeated references to the goodness, nobility, and excellence of Ajax
(1340, 1343-45, 1355, 1357, 1380; cf. 1415-16).
Odysseus' chief argument in support of burial, the argument in terms of Ajax's own worth, is amazingly silent
about the question of his innocence or guilt. Odysseus
divides the world into friends and enemies, but there is
not a word about traitors or disobedient subjects. He
never says anything against Ajax for having tried to kill
him and the other Achaean chieftains. But neither does
he try to mitigate the gravity of Ajax's treason by recalling
the outcome in the award of arms. Odysseus is silent also
about the great services Ajax had done for the Achaeans
while he was still a friend. He does not try to balance
Teucer's case for gratitude to Ajax (1266-82) against
Menelaus' desire for revenge.
Odysseus, who never even thanked Athena for saving
him from Ajax (cf. 45 ff.), 20 does not always show gratitude
to friends. But together with this, he does not expect it
always in return. He does not allow the confident hope of
friendly service to inspire in him the angry sense of disappointment at having been betrayed (1052-54, 1266-67).
Because he knows the weakness of friendship, as well as
the reasons for it, Odysseus has a certain distance from
56
both gratitude and the desire to punish. And though his
lack of gratitude stems in part from self-interest, he at
least knows not to confuse one's true interest with the
seeming profit in revenge.
R
ather than defend Ajax's claim to burial in terms of
his past services to the Achaeans, Odysseus d'oes so
simply on the grounds of his excellence. Odysseus, the
winner of the disputed prize for excellence, claims that
his rival was plainly (or in his eyes) the one best man
among the Argives, after Achilles (E"v '&vop' !oeiv '&pwrov
'Ap-yEiwv, 1340). Perhaps because he knows that the one
warrior who is openly the best is not always best for, or of
most service to, the army as a whole, Odysseus does not
reproach the judges who had awarded him the prize. But
he does say that it would be unjust now to dishonor Ajax.
justice, he says, forbids men to harm-that is, to dishonor-a good man who has died (1343-45). Odysseus
never claims that it is unjust to harm a good man while he
is still alive. Such a man might be an enemy (cf. 1347), and
it would be dangerous if not fatal to believe that one must
never harm a good man who is an enemy. If he should die,
however, it becomes a demand of justice to honor him, or
at least not to dishonor him by withholding his corpse
from those who would bury it.
Odysseus explains his intervention on Ajax's behalf by
saying that virtue "defeats" him, or that it weighs far
more with him than hatred (vtx?c -yixp &per~ I'' rii' 'Ex8pa'
1roAv, 1357; cf. 1355). Not friendship or love, but virtue,
prevails over the hatred between Ajax and the Achaeans.
Odysseus' suggestion that virtue "defeats" him seems also
to imply that his rival, or at least the virtue to which his
rival had been dedicated, has won the most important victory. Yet his homage to Ajax's virtue could also stem in
part from a sound calculation of the army's interest, and
his own. For although Odysseus implicitly acknowledges
that public life usually has more urgent demands than the
demand for truthful honoring of virtue, he may also have
understood that loyalty to one's community cannot be the
supreme law. He may have seen that the principle of loyalty, whenever it is separated from virtue as a whole, tends
to be supplanted by the rule of private self-interest. A
community that looks up to nothing higher than its own
law, and its own interests, is always prone to disintegra-
tion. There is admittedly a danger to any community from
excellence, and from individuals' attachment to it. But
not to give excellence its due is also dangerous-dangerous to the whole community, and especially to its rulers
(along with their closest friends). Through their disrespect
for Ajax, the Achaean commanders endanger their own title to respect, and to any obedience more reliable than
that from self-interest. And this threat to their ruling offices is not sufficiently met by reliance on the nobility of
their family names (cf. also 1093-96). Odysseus' success in
persuading them to show a noble respect for Ajax is therefore necessary for the army's stability. His generous honJULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE
�oring of Ajax's virtue helps to maintain the threatened
Achaean community in its integrity, whether or not his
primary aim was to do so. By openly deferring to his rival's
excellence, Odysseus complements that excellence with a
more serviceable, and unobtrusive, excellence of his own
(cf. 1356-57).
As Ajax's body is being carried out for burial, his
brother Teucer makes a final public statement about him.
He says that Ajax is, or was, a good man in all respects (rQ
1ravr' Cx'"(cx8Q, 1415). The play itself, however, has raised
serious doubts about such a boast. Even apart from the
question of political loyalty, the mere thought of
Tecmessa (who is probably on stage until the end) would
make us doubt that Ajax had been entirely virtuous. Yet it
may be necessary for the Achaean community, and for
any healthy community, to disregard some failings in its
heroes.
l. Compare B. M. W. Knox, "The Ajax of Sophocles," Harvard Studies
in Classical Philology lxv, 1961, l-37. See also Heinrich Weinstock,
Sophokles, Leipzig, Berlin, 1931, 50-51, and Kurt von Fritz, "Zur Inter·
pretation des Aias," Rheinisches Museum 83, 1934, 124-25.
2. The importance of this fact and its relation to the whole question of
heroic virtue is examined in "The Aristeia ofDiomedes and the Plot of
the Iliad," AGON, Journal of Classical Studies 2, 1968, 10-38, by Seth
Benardete.
3. Compare Achilles' self-reproach upon learning ofPatroclus' death; n
iad I:98-104. On the importance of loyalty as a Homeric virtue, see also
Hugh Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus, Berkeley, 1971,26 et passim.
4. The weight ofTecmessa's argument, and of her character, has been
recognized by G. M. Kirkwood, A Study of Sophoclean Drama, Ithaca,
1958, 105-06.
5. Tecmessa does not assert that gratitude suffices to make a man noble; rather she says that an ungrateful man would no longer remain noble. She admits, in other words, that nobility has some higher source
than the memory of benefits received.
6. 588; cf. 522. For the kinship between gratitude and loyalty, consider
1267: xttpts Ow.ppE~ xai 1rpoOolh' &A~axt:7m. Gratitude, or the recollection of good things, may be at the root of our acceptance of the duty to
be loyal. Consider Xenophon, Cyropaedia I 2.6 and Anabasis V 8.26.
7. The word order, as well as the sense, suggest that we treat the word
'cX071Aa as a proleptic adjective and translate it as "unclearly."
8. Contrast Knox, "Ajax" 2, 19, 20.
9. As Jebb has noted, the normal meaning of this sentence is "Pity forbids me to leave her", though it could also imply that his leaving is imminent. Here a word is necessary about the much-disputed question of deception. According to Knox, if Tecmessa and the chorus are deceived by
Ajax's speech, "they have no one to blame but themselves" (14). Yet
misleading phrases such as this one argue in favor of the older view that·
Ajax deliberately deceives his hearers-or at least deliberately encourages their self-deception (See Jebb's Introduction, 124; and compare
Stanford's Appendix D, London, 1963). Now it could well be, as Knox
argues (10-14), that Ajax begins his monologue without thinking of his
listeners. But he is surely conscious of their presence by the end of his
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
speech. Then, at least, he has renewed his resolve to die, and yet he encourages Tecmessa and the men of the chorus to believe otherwise.
That he should encourage the wishful thinking of Tecmessa and the
chorus is, of course, compatible with the veiled truthfulness of his
words.
10. Compare I. Errandonea, "Les quatres monologues de l'Ajax et leur
signification dramatique," Les Etudes Classiques 26, l, January, 1958,
34. See also Kirkwood, 103-04.
11. H. D. F. Kitto, in Form and Meaning in Drama, London, 1956,189,
194-95, has called attention to the importance of the word 70t"(i:tp in line
667. I do not, however, follow his interpretation, which ignores the simplest and most obvious train of thought.
12. Compare Kitto, 194.
13. On these lines (669-76) see especially Kamerbeek, The Aiax,
Leiden, 1953, 140-42.
14. To suggest that Athena is willing to forget her anger is one of the
dramatic purposes of Calchas' warning to Teucer. For a fuller interpretation of this warning, see M. S. Wigodsky, "The Salvation of Ajax",
Hermes 90, 1962, 149-58.
15. Compare the somewhat different analysis of Weinstock, 51. Kitto,
194-95, among others, has argued that these maxims about hate and
friendship are not so much ignoble as enlightened and humane. But to
argue this, and to turn attention away from the acceptance of betrayal
among friends, Kitto has had to focus on the surprising beneficence to
Ajax of his former enemy Odysseus. (See also Bowra, Sophoclean
Tragedy, Oxford, 1944, 41.) Yet before interpreting Ajax's statement in
the light of subsequent events, we must first understand it as it appears
in its own context.
16. Martin Sicherl, "Die Tragik des Aias," Hermes 98, 1970, 14-31, especially 29-30. Compare also Wigodsky, and cf. footnote 9.
17. Bowra, 47.
18. Kamerbeek, 210, finds the logical sequence of Menelaus' argument
here to be unsatisfying, and Stanford, 195, even suspects misplacement
or interpolation at 1077-80. But while Stanford is right that "Menelaus
jumps back and forth from the individual person to the 11"0>-.n, without
warning of a change of subject, in 1081," this confusion mirrors precisely the inner flaw in Menelaus' position.
19. In lines 1250-52, and especially in the words &.u¢aAf.(J7a.7ot (1251)
and xpa.7oi.lut (1252), it is unclear whether Agamemnon is referring to
armies or to individual men. In the light of the preceding argument,
these lines seem to justify the award of arms by the claim that men like
Odysseus, rather than Ajax, contribute most to the survival and success
of the army (cf. Kamerbeek, 238). But in connection with what follows
they look more like a warning to over,confident. men like Ajax-and
Teucer to watch out for themselves.
20. It could be argued, indeed, that Odysseus did not really owe gratitude to Athena, since in her punishment of Ajax she may not have cared
that this would also save the lives of the other chieftains. James Tyler, in
"Sophocles' Ajax and Sophoclean Plot Construction," AJP 95, no. 1,
1974, 24-42, has noted the absence of any mention of such concern on
her part. To Tyler's argument one could add that Athena never claimed
to be punishing Ajax for his violation of an oath to serve the army. Yet
despite Tyler's careful discrimination between the avowed motives of
Ajax's divine and his human adversaries, it is strikingly fortunate for the
army, to say the least, that Athena chose the moment she did to intervene. This coincidence alone might be enough to keep alive at least the
hope that the gods, while hating those who are bad, also love and care
for those who are sound-minded (cf. 132-33).
57
�FIRST READINGS
LEVEN'S CREATOR
Creator, by Jeremy Leven, 450 pp., Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc, New
York 1980.
Creator, Jeremy Leven's first published
novel, is cast in the form of a series of notebooks written during the last year of his life
by Dr. Harry Wolper (born Jan. 1, 1900, died
December 25, not inappropriately Christmas, 1969), and published by his son as a
condition for receiving his father's legacy.
The notebooks themselves are a record of
the experiments, reflections, autobiography,
family history, philosophical meanderings,
sexual exploits and fantasies, marriage, paternity (both literally of sons and daughters
and metaphorically of a son in a novel he
has been writing) and, most importantly,
the attempt by Dr. Wolper to recreate parthenogenetically his dead wife (he has
been culturing a number of her cells for
many years), and of his thoughts about
what creation, both biological and artistic,
means, hence the title of the novel. Harry
Wolper, then, God, creator as parent, biochemist, and novelist, and ultimately, the
creation himself, perhaps, of the protagonist of the novel he has been writing, is the
medium through which Mr. Leven, himself, reflects on the meaning of creation
and the philosophic questions which fall
out of such a concern.
The book is multi-layered and subtle,
and it is clear that Mr. Leven has read
widely and carefully and made good use of
what he has read. I Gannot, in a brief
review, do justice to the care and wit with
which the book is worked out, but I will
look at several of the opening journal entries with some attention to detail to give
an indication of the way our creator works.
The first journal entry is for January l,
1969, Harry's 69th birthday and the first
day of a new year. The sixty-nine is both a
sexual allusion and the age of Socrates
when he was condemned. Socrates is im-
58
portant in the novel for a number of reasons, but first as the narrator of the m'yth
of the cave, for "The World's Oldest Operating Metaphor" (january 13) is one of the
more important recurring images of the
book. The New Year and the new beginning it represents begins a comic version of
Genesis. It opens:
lst. To begin with, there is no earthly
reason to begin. Heaven knows.
and, one hopes, a day of rest. But we find
that Harry is not as efficient as God, and although he apparently disposes of the first
tasks in one sentence each in the journal
entries for Jan. 1-5, problems arise on the
sixth day.
6th. Ah yes. And now for the beginning.
Damn, I forgot to mop the floor. Where
the hell is my list.
Harry is not the tidiest of creators (his
Harry's creation does not begin with 'laboratory we see later is near chaos, a conearthly motives, or at least none that he is dition he sees as particularly appropriate
aware of. Perhaps Heaven knows, but for creation), the water is still sloshing
there is a strong suggestion later that even around, and hell and damnation enter the
God wasn't too sure of what he was doing picture very early. It becomes clear that he
when he created man. The question of will not do the job in a week, and the book
what man as creator knows, however, is will not end with the enfry for the 7th.
opened, and the rest of the novel wrestles
7th. What a lousy week this has been. I
with this central question.
haven't accomplished a damn thing. I
After some mention of his advancing
need a rest. Badly.
years and consequent decrepitude, Harry
observes, "Together, body, mind, and soul
And we do, in the novel, get a temporary
are in the last lap of a sweepstakes to see
who will be the first to his agony's jack- rest from his creative labors as we move
pot," which reminds us of that other thinker back to his first meeting with his Eve,
who mulled over that problem of the rela- Lucy, to whom he indeed cleaves in a variety of positions as they become one flesh
tion of mind, body, and soul, and recreated
his world in the seven days of his Medita- (though not without some hellish interruptions, Descartes, who enters the novel tions) and engender Arnold, their Nioses
explicitly in the entry for Jan. 18 in a reflec- (jan. 20).
The final entry for January once again
tion on man's relation to nature and of his
raises the issue of the relation between
soul to his body.
Harry, faced with the emotional and God and man and poses it in a way which
physical disorder of his own life, begins his informs the rest of the novel.
journal, he then tells us, to protect himself
31st. Here's another thing about God.
against Boris, his fictional protagonist, his
I do not accept that God made man,
creation, who has gotten out of hand and is
as my mother told me when I was six,
asserting his independence. Harry observes
because he was lonesome. My mother
that he "must get organized" and sets out
had an alcoholic husband, and she was
his "week's chores."
lonesome. God created man as a joke.
l. Pull up shades.
He was bored.
2. Do Zodiac.
Take, for example, Adam and Eve,
3. Mop floor. Water plants.
reaching all over themselves to hide
4. Replace lightbulbs (outdoor spots and
their nakedness, ashamed, and quaking
nightlights).
at the very thought of being banished
from their garden.
5. Check incubator. Fill birdfeeder.
It has always seemed to me that if
6. Create life.
Jehovah, in his omnipotence, had really
7. ?
not wanted man to eat the apple, He
So we get Harry's version of the creation
would not have made a man who does
in Genesis, the creation, in order, of light,
exactly the opposite of what he's told.
the firmament, the gathering together of
Man is God's practical joke. Believe me.
the waters to allow the dry land to appear
Here's another joke. God made man
and the creation of plant life, the lights in
in his image.
the firmament, the creation of all animal
I'm concerned With the Almighty's
life other than man, the creation of man,
sense of humor tonight because I'm
JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE
�convinced that I'm only days away from
discovering the secret of life. God must
be in hysterics.
The relation of God to man is reflected
in the relation of man to the things he
makes. If man is God's practical joke, so are
our creation, our practical jokes, or, at
least, the novel tells us, they often turn out
that way whether we intend it or not. Our
children turn out to be made in our image
though recalcitrant in ways we never intended. Our works, novels, poems, inventions, destructions, reveal us and tell us
things about ourselves we might not have
wanted to know. And, finally, if we could
find out how to make life, if we could really
be Godlike, would our creations, too, think
that we made them as a practical joke?
Harry does discover the secret of life. He
finds out how to implant cells of human
beings into the unfertilized ovum of a
woman and return the egg to the uterus to
grow. The young woman, Meli, whom he
hires to be the incubator turns out to be a
major character in the novel. Starting as a
totally ignorant post-adolescent, she acquires by extensive reading in Harry's
library and by long, sometimes very interesting conversations with him, a good
liberal education. And she finally ends up
as his second wife, carrying in her womb
not only his first wife but, as a twin, Harry
himself who will have gone Oedipus one
better. Counterpointed with Harry's
drama is the life of Boris, his fictional
Stephen Dedalus (entry for January 9)
whose life resembles in many ways Harry's
own and whose arguments with Harry, his
creator, are implicitly those between Harry
and his God.
I hope I have given some suggestion of
the formal and intellectual complexity of
the novel-a novel which discusses and
embodies many of the most interesting
questions. The discussion is witty throughout, the structure ingenious and well executed, and the novel is certainly intelligent
and sharp and perhaps profound.
George Doskow
George Doskow teaches at St. John's College in
Annapolis.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
EYES OF
His OwN-
AND WORDS
Oilers and Sweepers and Other Stories,
by George Dennison, Random House,
New York 1979.
Dennison's work is important because
he knows himself as an artist, because he
knows how to make things and how to let
things happen. He knows how to live with
his mistakes; he knows what he can do and
when the works he fashions call for things
he cannot do. This means his faults
strengthen his work rather than distort it,
as they would if he tried to hide them-or
worse still, pretend they were not there.
His work has the intelligent ambition of restraint, not the stupid ambition that takes
recklessness for freedom. Because his stories do not give false assurances, they make
you love the world, and hate things worthy
of hate:
There was one human intelligence, one
human pride, one human integrity and
giving-forth.
How wonderful mankind was, that
monster!
Tears were standing· in his eyes, though
he was filled with rejoicing.
These four stories and a "Vaudeville
Play," which together make up a whole
that is all the more one because unplanned, could appear in a newspaper, if
our newspapers employed reporters who
could see. Dennison's accounts tell "news"
that The New York Times looks desperately
for in its "human interest stories"-"stories" which tell of no city on heaven or
earth and make the Victorians look worldly
because, in contrast to many of us, they
knew when they were afraid and when
they were embarrassed, and knew that
there were things that were rightly embarrassing.
Of Dennison's accounts, the strongest
are "Oilers and Sweepers," which deals
with looking, but with a remoteness that
approaches coldness; "The Author of
Caryatids," which addresses itself to creation, a creation good enough to remind you
of the creation of Ivlichelangelo's God
touching Adam or Rodin's hand opening
with a man and a woman unfolding like an
embryo within it-but with daring laughter; and "The Smiles of Konarak," which
tells of success in love and art and their
relation, in the streets of the lower East
Side of New York, and almost ends with a
recreation of Coriolanus in Tompkins
Square Park:
What would you have, you curs, that
like nor peace nor war? The one affrights you, the other makes you proud.
He that trusts to you, where he should
find you lions, finds you hares; where
foxes, geese.
The vaudeville play, "The Service for Joseph Axminster," wants the severity and
solace of the rites of death and burial, is
somehow empty, perhaps because it needs
a living audience rather than silent readers.
Set somewhat awkwardly in a France too
familiar to be recognizable, really the
France of the American expatriates in the
20's, "Larbaud, A Tale of Pierrot" tells of
the ravages of superior powers of intelligence on those who struggle to let them
come to something.
At a carnival a mime enamored of Ivlinot
Larbaud makes a casting of his face and
head and moulds a mask on it. There is no
hint of a death-mask, but you cannot help
thinking of it. Wearing this mask of himself
Minot discovers he has a gift of jumping
high-of soaring. The discovery of this gift,
although unexpected, does not entirely
surprise, for there is something with the
hint of the god-like about Larbaud: "He
could not divest himself of authority."
The leaping shows him forth, quite unexpectedly, as a man who knows enough of
life to live without self-imposed limits,
without self-restraint. "It was a joy to leap,
a joy to give way utterly to my powers," he
writes later in recollection to the narrator.
And the public, at least his first public,
recognizes this giving way utterly and the
strength that rises from it: "When Minot
leaped now, our cheers expressed more
than mere enthusiasm. Some deeply lodged
hope, if hope is the right word, had been
stirred into wakefulness."
After the carnival J'vlinot becomes a
champion in international competitions.
To his delight, at the circus clowns with
springs on their feet imitate his leaps. But
in the newspapers and at radio round-
59
�tables charges, never challenged by those
who knew them to be lies, are voiced that
Larbaud uses a trampoline. When a few
spectators "boo" him, Larbaud leaves the
amphitheater, never to jump again. Even
earlier, the narrator had counseled withdrawal: " ... I urged him to put an end to
this career. For I had come to believe that
his talent was a meager thing compared to
the rare intelligence he possessed; compared to his character which was perhaps
the rarest thing of all."
Minot leaves the South for Paris where
he prospers with the establishment of an
electronics factory. Suddenly, he collapses:
his self vanishes. This collapse, an astute
young psychiatrist recognizes, shows a
struggle for self-cure, rather than sickness:
His face [the face of the psychiatrist]
came alight. "He [Minot] is vital," he
said. "He is extraordinary. He is like a
baffled animal who gathers himself
within his fur and waits. l'vly treatment-." Here he smiled in such a way
as made me want to take his hands. It
was a smile that told me much. It lit his
face with an expression that men inherit
from their mothers; and I understood
that this austere young aristocrat had
come from a working-class home; I even
fancied I could see his mother bending
at her work, harassed, overburdened, vehement in opinion ... and intellectually
free.
"-my treatment," he said. "is to keep
away. No drugs. No talk. He is curing
himself. I know he is."
As Minot comes again into himself, he
studies birds and their flight, their soaring.
Two important works come from him and
he dies-farseeing the time of his death
like an ancient hero. There follow like an
elegy a few pages of the narrator's boyhood
recollections of Minot.
This story is of greatness, shyly about
greatness but about greatness. It is also
about strength and the fearfulness of giving in to it. It amounts to the story of a life.
Its own strength comes from its modesty
which has all the resilience of assurance.
For this modesty comes of the author's respect for what he does not understand but
will not ignore-life itself, moving of its
own sweet will.
All of these accounts have real subjects
and real content, because Dennison hardly
ever tries to instruct, but simply surprises
60
without appearing arbitrary. When he contrives, it is with the assurance of convention, of a convention he does not always
acknowledge. The clarity with which he
sees New York, with which he can distinguish the few actually murderous from the
many fearfully struggling to come to life
owes something to distance, the distance
of a gentleman in Russia in the 19th century who could always leave the city for the
country. Without breaking into a smile he
can describe a man in his late thirties living
off a trust fund on the lower East Side going to Sixth Avenue for "greens" and University Place butchers for steaks. But the
revolution he remembers is the Mexican,
which, ten years before the Bolsheviks
seized power in Russia, took its own course
without ideology and without the lust to
export its sufferings (one million dead)and is, therefore, now largely forgotten.
He can describe death with enough compassion to make you weep. There is a place
for children in his work, unobtrusive but
unmistakable. He can describe the sky, the
sun on the trees. He can make you hear
The Magic Flute. He does not quot~·
Moliere or even Shakespeare but lets them
speak. The test of all that has gone before
in "The Author of Caryatids" is the capacity to describe the dawn at the end without
great and wordy preparations (except for a
moment of forced quaintness), just because his account leads him to it.
Dennison's capacity to describe these
simple and obvious things comes from his
respect for the surface. In this respect for,
no, love of, the surface, from which he
never asks more than it can give and so receives more than you expect, Dennison is
like the Impressionists, but like an Impressionist painter after the Cubists, the Futurists, Suprematists, Abstract Expressionists,
and so on. He is like a man who can return
to his eyes and see, because he has been
through all the complications without mentioning them, a silence that tells of hard
passages. He does not restore the surface
but discovers it anew: he comes upon the
simple things because he has gone through
all the complicated brilliance and been left
with the simple things almost self-evident
before his eyes.
Dennison's capacity to alternate between
real thought and seeing and not to confuse
one with the other shows that his love of
surface does not come of a fear of depth.
Dennison's thought reaffirms the world
and leads you into it. It makes you capable
of seeing, just as his seeing encourages you
to think. He knows, in the way few people
dare know, that a work of art" ... is a large,
bold, dazzlingly energetic manifestation of
self in which intelligence and feeling [support] each other."
In all this Dennison owes something to
Goethe, w.ho never thought anything he
could not see. But he would not have been
able to learn from such a master had he not
been smart enough to take Paul Goodman
as a teacher. For in this Goodman (in his
stories, poems, plays, and novels) was great
without qualification, in that he could
learn from the masters and teach you to
learn from them-and, thereby, put naturalism in perspective, the naturalism many
writers rebel against but cannot get rid of.
Like Goodman's style, Dennison's is classic; that is, it respects facts, knows the difference between words and action (and
their relation), between thought and
brooding, between imagination and fantasy, and it does not flatter. Without Goodman's learning, Dennison is also without
his coldness, which in Goodman was a fear
of feeling, a fear that he would tear up the
world if he got too close to it.
Yau cannot have intelligence, surface,
and depth, in short content as well as feeling, thought as well as sight, without experience of art, which will guide you when
you are fashioning a work. Without an apparent esthetic theory, Dennison has an artisan's practical esthetic awareness, rare
these days, that at other times might have
been called taste. This awareness allows
him to discover instead of "experiment."
More importantly, its clarity of outline and
the excitement it occasions awaken the
reader to active attention. Every one of
these stories shows respect for the reader
and knows his presence in give and take.
LEO RADITSA
JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE
�AT HOME AND
ABROAD
Letter From Moscow:
A Rude Introduction
On the sixth day of my stay in the Soviet
Union, on my way to meet fellow American students of the Pushkin Institute for
dinner, I was stopped and questioned for
about two hours by a man from the KGB.
For the next several weeks the recollection
of the ordeal gripped me. I told myself that
I had not been in any real danger and that
the incident might have ended quickly had
I had my passport (school officials had collected them to prevent theft). But reasoning didn't help. I hated life in the Soviet
Union, and I knew I had to stay there for
the next four months. It turned out that
this incident was not repeated and that I
greatly enjoyed my stay, thanks to the
friends I made. But I did not know that
then.
On my first trek downtown, I noticed
that policemen stand on every corner, and
I was awed to see droves of soldiers and officers in uniform. They were everywhere,
in the subways, in restaurants, on the
streets. The city seemed an armed camp in
which an invading army had set in-yet it
was the Soviets' own army.
On November 7, the anniversary of the
Revolution, we students, and probably
most of the nation, watched on television
as soldier after soldier marched and tank
after tank, missile after missile rolled onto
Red Square and past the Politburo members, who stood at attention and saluted.
On that day, the regime celebrated brute,
awesome military might instead of the supposed ideals of the revolution.
The Propaganda
The propaganda-strong in all the cities
we visited (Leningrad, Kiev, Tallinn, and
Lvov) but most incessant in Moscow-depicts a world of the past: the central hero is
Lenin and the main events are the Revolution and World War II. A visitor who knew
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
no history would imagine that these events
had just happened. This frozen concentration on the past, this attempt to fix it forever in the present, continually amazed
me. The Paradise-bound tone of idealismof building Communism and the New Soviet Man-is curiously out of place in the
fast-paced, apathetic world of present-day
Moscow.
The war is the subject of countless books
and movies with one-sided heroes and villains; Germans from World War II are
never called "Germans" or "Nazis," but
only "Fascists;" a common slogan declares,
"Nothing is forgotten, no one is forgotten"
who perished in World War II-but where
is one word, where is one statue to the millions whom Stalin had murdered? A common street poster saying, "The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is the honor,
mind, and conscience of the 20th Century
-V.I. Lenin" angered me whenever I saw
it; I thought of Stalin henchmen and Hitler
youth.
Lenin is portrayed not merely as the
founder of the Soviet Union but as a prophet
and god-infallible, just, and virtually immortal. Our visit to Lenin's corpse (skeptics
say, only a wax imitation), enshrined in the
temple-like Lenin Mausoleum, left us with
an eerie feeling of having taken part in a
pagan rite of worshiping the dead. Lenin's
body, dressed in coat and tie, is protected
by immaculately clad honor guards with
long rifles and bayonets and deadly serious
faces. A hushed silence reigns. On most
days hundreds of Russians and foreigners
pay homage to Lenin, like :Moslems on a
pilgrimage to Mecca; many newlyweds
come straight from the wedding ceremony
to lay wreaths at his feet. Often the line
stretches along the Kremlin Wall, past Red
Square, past the Historical Museum, and
onto Gorky Street. His diminuitive yet
commanding figure seems to prove true
the street slogans which declare, "Lenin
lived, lives, and always will live;" "Now he
is more alive than the living."
_l_'he unrelenting barrage of posters and
billboards that line the streets dazzles the
newcomer, but Russians have developed a
faculty for tuning it out. In a private conversation with one of my teachers, who
naively but sincerely believes in the Soviet
regime, I mentioned a poster which said,
"A driver-an interesting profession!" My
teacher said she had never seen the poster,
and when I teased her, she insisted vehe·
mently that I had made the whole thing
up. This struck me: the poster was, in fact,
one of the most common in the city, yet
even my teacher, despite her conventional·
ism, had blocked it out of her mind. I can
only wonder how many other posters she
blocks out as well.
How much of the propaganda do the
people believe? We students met numerous Russians who consider the United
States aggressive and the Soviet Union defensive. They stressed that the Russian
people want peace because their suffering
in World War II has taught them the horror of war. They insisted Americans do not
understand because they never really suffered in World War II and now they have
forgotten altogether (the title of the documentary "The Forgotten War," which was
shown in the Soviet Union, convinces
many of them of this). Some of these persons were elderly, simple, kind-hearted folk
who had little education. Others were 20
and 30 year-olds who worked instead of going to college. And several of my teachers,
who were sophisticated and well-educated,
expressed these opinions in candid conversations with me.
But many other Russians whom I knew
held contrary views. They were all deeply
ashamed of their country for its invasion of
Czechoslovakia in 1968. Many told me,
"The United States has fallen greatly in
our eyes," because it has not retaliated
militarily against Iran. To prove to me their
own country's militarism, one couple
showed me their 14 year-old son's text·
book, with pictures on how to clean a rifle
and how to protect it while crawling
through fields on your belly.
Despite-or because of-the propaganda
against the decadence of the West and the
attempt to prevent contact with it, a cult
does exist, particularly among the young,
of things Western, a cult so intense that, in
our eyes, it amounted to a worship of anything with Roman lettering on it. The
black market in jeans, watches, records,
and American dollars is fierce and the
prices exorbitant. Jeans, which sell for 200
rubles each (equivalent to almost two
month's average salary) are a special status
symbol: at a party in honor of a man about
to emigrate (parties common enough to
have a special name in Russian), the guests,
who were all formally dressed, considered
61
�the best dressed among them a scientist in
jeans and blue denim jacket. Russians
shower Americans with questions on the
latest trends in rock and jazz, in theater,
and in clothes. Elvis Presley is a favorite of
the young Russians I met, who showed me
a half-dozen "obituary" columns that had
seized the occasion of the singer's death to
denounce him for "hourgeois decadence."
The attempt to insulate Russia from the
West shows the meaning of the Russian
proverb, "The forhtdden fruit is sweet."
Many Russians. hov.:ever, do consider
the West corrupt. One man, a professor
deeply impressed by his recent travels on
his own in America, insisted to me that the
American government should censor pornography and reports of crime, since their
incessant repetition in sordid detail depresses individuals and society. Another
man, upon learning of an attempt on Senator Kennedy's life last fall, told his son, who
was planning to apply for permission to
emigrate, "America is ahead of us in many
things, in many things. But there is so
much crime there, so many murders. They
killed Kennedy, their own president, they
killed his brother, they killed Martin
Luther King. Why do you want to go
there?" This man's views deserve consideration because he feels deeply the injustices of the Soviet regime, and like his
son had once considered emigration. He
told me that the Soviet constitution is good
on paper but not in practice. Soviet citizens have the right to file charges against
discrimination, but no case of antiSemitism has ever been brought to court.
In contrast to Tsarist Russia (Vera
Zasulich) and Nazi Germany (in connection with the Reichstag fire), no court in
the Soviet Union has ever acquitted a
political defendant. His passion grew with
each example and culminated in bitter
anger in his account of the first trial of
Alexander Ginsburg. Defense lawyer Zolotukhin had submitted his speech to the Bar
Association for censorship and received
permission to deliver it in its entirety. After
the trial, the Bar Association had his membership in the Communist Party revoked
and disqualified him from the further practice of law. The Bar Association warned
fellow lawyers who protested to keep silent
if they wished to avoid similar punishment.
The man telling me these stories was in a
position to know their authenticity.
62
The propaganda works not just through
false assertions, but through silences and
omissions. One of our teachers, a highly
educated woman, was astounded to learn
that Solzhenitsyn is still alive, and she
showed intense curiosity to learn what he
is saying and writing today.
Other Russians I met knew Solzhenitsyn's works, all of which-including Gulag
Archipelago, First Circle, and Cancer
Ward-circulate privately in smuggled or in
clandestine domestic editions. l\!ly friends
knew Solzhenitsyn's speech at Harvard
University in detail. An elderly couple who
had never before criticized the Soviet
Union said at the farewell dinner they held
for me: "We respect Solzhenitsyn for his
role as citizen: he said the things that
everyone feared to say but that needed to
be said." The two other Russians present, a
professor and his wife, agreed.
To obtain banned books is difficult, to
own them fraught with danger. A friend
who showed me drawers full of poetry
from the 1920's and Bulgakov's short
novel, The Heart of the Dog, said that these
works "are deeply anti-Soviet," and that he
kept them despite his fear. The teacher
who did not know that Solzhenitsyn is still
alive perhaps hints at a Russia in which
many remain in ignorance because their
genuine interest in the truth does not outweigh their fear. Nor does the availability
of the banned books console the Russians
who dare to read them: a graduate student-who had previously gotten in trouble for the books he owned-told me that
the necessity for secrecy fills him with
shame for his country, with a gnawing
sense of indignation, and has led him to
decide to emigrate to America.
The Living Conditions
In the face of the difficult daily living
conditions, the propaganda, with its praise
of the Revolution and its blessings, struck
us with its irony. Living was a struggle: to
some extent physical, since nourishing
food was hard to find, and to a great extent
psychological, since daily conditions exasperated us. Adjusting to Russia took aU our
energies. And the Russians' way of dealing
with the conditions exasperated us more
than the conditions themselves. They constantly pushed and shoved and shouted at
each other (and at us). They had reason to
do so: cashiers were desperately overworked
and customers were tired and hungry;. one
teacher ~whom we considered the kindest
of all our teachers-once told me that she
had no shame in pushing others out of her
way to get into a bus, since the alternative
was to wait in the cold for an extra hour
and be late for class.
Living conditions disgusted almost
everyone in our dormitory-students from
Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, and
North America. Only the Vietnamese
looked upon the Soviet Union almost in
awe as a miracle of modern industrialization and as a friend which had helped
them in need. At our Institute's Party of
Friendship, an informal get-together in
which students from each country performed on stage, the Vietnamese alone
sang patriotic Soviet songs and shouted out
Soviet slogans with fervor.
l told myself l had to tolerate these conditions for four months only-the poor
Russians had to suffer them for a lifetime. I
realized the luxury of the conditions I had
taken for granted in America.
Russia Disguised: The Tourist's View
While the real living conditions drained
me of energy and patience, the false view
of them purveyed to tourists filled me with
indignation. They stay at plush downtown
hotels-which they do not select-such as
the Rossiia, a huge hotel whose single
rooms cost 100 dollars a night. Its guests
may dine at any of the hotel's twelve
restaurants, never having to wait in line at
a cafeteria for a typical meal of greasy soup
and exceptionally fatty meat. The hotel
has its own Beriozka, a special store where
foreigners alone may shop-no Russians allowed-and where they must pay in foreign currency only-no rubles accepted.
The stores for Russians display some of the
high-quality merchandise found in the
Beriozkas, but sell none of it. Taken on of.
ficial tours, guests are shown only the very
best of Russia and hear its worth exaggerated by the rapturous and mendacious
speeches of the tour guides ("The Olympic
stadiums show that Soviet technology is
the greatest in the world-America had
better learn a lesson from us"). Several
times when I tried to enter the hotel-to
JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE
�dine at the main restaurant or to go to the
post office-the doorman denied me permission-guests only. Some tourists take
the carefully constructed facade for the
country itself and leave the U.S.S.R.
satiated and impressed. Our trip had the
opposite effect on us: most of us came with
not-too-unsympathetic a view of the Soviet
Union and left detesting it. At our Thanksgiving dinner we raised our -glasses to
patriotic toasts we would have scoffed at
just a few months earlier.
Incidentally, that dinner was held at the
Natsional restaurant, the very place in
which I was questioned by the KGB in the
first week of my stay. By my second visit, I
had learned that the restaurant, perhaps
the best in Moscow, serves only top Party
officials and foreigners who pay in their
own currency, not rubles. On that first
visit, I had been chased through a large
chandelier-lit dining room where elegantly
dressed foreigners ate five-course meals
with champagne and caviar as a live singer
and band performed romantic Gypsy songs
in the background. On my return visit, I
was treated to the hospitality lavished on
foreigners and to a meal of turkey, cranberry sauce, and other extravagances.
Our Own Isolation
As a rule our friends in Moscow did not
visit us in our dormitory. They were not officially banned, but they knew visits to us
could get them into trouble. Our dormitory was monitored by kind maternal old
ladies (dezhurnaias) who took turns guarding each floor around the clock, and who
wrote daily reports to the KGB. Two Russian males who were our age hung out on
our floor, professing great interest in the
West, speaking excellent English and German, ingratiating themselves among the
Westerners, and taking careful note of the
few Russians who did visit us. They said
they had been expelled from the university
and were unemployed but independently
wealthy. And my American classmates believed them!-and called me paranoid for
saying the two were spies. "Are Americans
really still that naive!" said a Japanese
diplomat. The dezhurnaias allowed the pair
to carouse freely, but they stopped a Russian friend who tried to visit us discreetly
and demanded to-know her identity, occuTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
pation, and nationality ("Ahngleesh," said
our friend, in her attempt at English).
The friend told me that the wealthiest Russians are the managers of restaurants and
clothes stores who deal on the black market and trade through blat.
Blat
Often I wondered how the Russians
manage to survive in such intolerable conditions. (Some do by drinking, as we saw on
the streets daily at all times of the day and
night.) I learned the answer only gradually
because a large part of the economic life is
hidden from public view.
Some things in the Soviet Union are
built impressively: hotels and restaurants
for foreigners, the Olympic stadiums, tanks
and missiles. Besides these priority items,
however, no one and nothing appears to
work: outside our dormitory piles of bricks
crumbled unused; one morning we saw
construction workers lean on their shovels
and lie down in the field to go to sleep. The
Soviet professor who had been to America
told me that his greatest impression, along
with the friendship Americans offered him,
was their "pure attitude toward work." He
said he saw carpenters accomplish in one
day what a brigade in Russia would struggle to achieve in a month-and, if they did,
would be awarded medals of honor. Russians, who have jokes for all the absurdities
of Soviet life, have one that captures the
national attitude toward work: "In Russia
two groups know how to make believethe Party, which makes believe that it pays
people real wages for their work, and the
people, who make believe that they work
for their pay."
But outside the public view exists a dazzling world of barter known in Russian as
blat. A waiter and a shoe salesman will
quietly exchange quality meat and fruit for
a new pair of shoes-commodities almost
impossible to get otherwise; factory managers will keep their plants running by
trading indispensable materials that official
suppliers fail to deliver on time. My roommates helped our dormitory's construction
chief by hauling mattresses for several
hours, and in return he gave us the parts to
a closet which we assembled on our ownthereby getting one three months before
our neighbors did. An artist painted portraits ofBrezhnev's physician and foot doctor in exchange for their medical servicesor so surmised a Russian friend of mine
when we saw the portraits in an exhibit.
Our Friends
Although our Russian friends could not
come to us, we could go to them. (We
never had any real problems in doing so,
although one of my friends said that, on
the night after my first visit, his father, a
lawyer, could not sleep because he expected the KGB). As I would leave the bedlam and coldness and rudeness of the
streets and enter my friends' homes, I felt
as though I were entering another world,
one of warmth and generosity and kindness. They always fed me extremely well
with large and tasty meals, never letting on
what sacrifices it took to get the food.
Once I offered to help make the meal but
confessed that I didn't know how to.
"That's okay, you don't need to," said my
friend. "To make up for it, you eat very
well."
My Russian friends had a special depth.
They talked over disappointments and
larger problems, listened to others' and my
own, and were ready at a moment's notice
to help out a friend, no matter what the
sacrifice. We Americans felt that our
friends had protected us from the cold
world of Moscow.
One of my friends never took a music
lesson but taught himself to play jazz by
listening to songs on the radio, and now he
is Russia's leading jazz musician. He has a
total purpose in life: to bring jazz to Russia
and to make a Russian contribution to it.
To do so, he tours the Soviet Union constantly, choosing this grueling life over the
easy one he could have playing schmaltzy
music in Moscow.
Another friend, a twenty-eight-year old
graduate student, thought-and did not
shrink from telling me-that I had the
habit of setting overly ambitious projects
for myself, that I would begin feverishly,
and soon abandon them in frustration with
nothing accomplished. He thought I had
potential but needed discipline. And that
he had: he was the most organized person I
have ever met, thriving in the face of obstacles.:_ Russian living conditions compounded by intractable bureaucracies-
63
�which would overwhelm and devour lesser
persons. The evening before we departed,
he gave me and one of my roommates a
paternal farewell lecture, urging us to set
intellectual goals and to woik in spite of all
obstacles to achieve them. If we forsake intellectual endeavor, he warned, our lives
may seem satisfying, or fun or financially
rewarding, but when we grow older we will
recognize them as empty.
Nly teachers knew they could not become our friends outside the classroom,
and perhaps to make up for that, they put
themselves into their work inside the classroom. The core courses, those on Russian
phonetics, conversation, and grammar,
were the best I have ever had (and I have
been to three of the best colleges in
America that teach Russian). Our teachers
not only felt the language's nuances, but
knew how to articulate them. One of them
told me that a teacher must always strive to
improve, must never be self-satisfied. Although they were supposed to address us
on the formal vy, several of our teachers
switched to the informal ty when they got
to know us.
In the homes of my friends I discovered
that Russians live in two distinct, even opposite worlds-a public and a private one.
If my experiences had been restricted to
the public one my sojourn would have
been unbearable. It was the personal,
private world of Russia that redeemed my
stay.
STEPHEN DEANE
---~~--
Stephen Deane spent four months in the Soviet
Union (September-December, 1979) after completing his studies in the Soviet Union Program
at Harvard University.
FRoM OuR
This is a venture which should succeed as
well or better than the Kenyon or Sewanee
Reviews of yore and serve as a splendid introduction to St. John's for that diminishing but still wide community of thoughtful
citizens who still don't know what we're
doing.
Let me confess, incidentally, that I was
particularly and quite personally taken
with two pieces in your issue-Fehl's
reminiscences of Vienna in 1938 and your
own "Letter from Budapest and Pees." I
am a survivor of that same dreadful time in
Vienna and indeed was moved for general
examinations (admission to, in my case,
rather than graduation from, the Gymnasium) to the same all-Jewish school Fehl
describes. I'vly impressions of the place
were of a generalized terror contained
within the forms of propriety and rationality of a dimension which strikes me with
dread forty-two years later. There was
more laughter among the inmates of a
Vichy French concentration camp that I
experienced in 1940 than in the corridors
of the Chajes Gymnasium.
In that c_onnection your aside about the
rapt attention of the Viennese audience to
a performance of Nathan der Weise was
most telling. If today's Viennese remember
1938 and after, it is in clandestine and
secretive ways. The overt attitude to those
days is best described by a Viennese folk
expression, which incidentally long predates the twentieth century: "Das ist ja
nicht mehr wahr (that isn't true any
longer)," an expression with which all unpleasant memories may be dealt in the interest of contemporary Gemiitlichkeit.
Submersion is so complete that Vienna's
best circulated yellow rag, the Kronenzeitung, can offer caricatures of Nienachem Begin and of Austria's (Jewish) Chancellor Bruno Kreisky in the style of Der
StUrmer without arousing commentary, let
alone protestations.
READERS
BERNARD fLEISCHl\IANN
New York City
February 16, 1980
To the Editor:
To the Editor:
... I was most pleased ... to read in this
month's Reporter that the last issue you
edited was no one-time accident but in fact
heralds the birth of a St. John's Review.
In "Prometheus Unbound: Karl Marx on
Human Freedom" (The College, January,
1980), Mr. Simpson speaks of a new freedom that Marx suggests but cannot detail
64
in advance because history alone can reveal it. Marxism has no "schema," he tells
us, but history will show its veracity and
significance. We are justified, then, in
judging Marxism by that history.
The century since Marx's time has
shown "present suffering ... (and) the
depths of human bondage" (Mr. Simpson's
words) in the Soviet Union. In the name of
Marxism, the self-styled dictatorship of the
proletariat has arrested and murdered millions; and it has deprived Russia of the
liberties it gained in 1905, dismissing them
as merely "bourgeois." Yet Mr. Simpson
exercises the liberty enjoyed in America to
praise "Marx's concept of human freedom" and to criticize our "society (for) ...
deny(ing) real freedom." He says: "Marx
prizes highly ... political freedoms," but I
read differently the Communist Manifesto's call for "centralization of the means
of communication ... in the hands of the
state." By insisting that historical action
alone can really define the new social and
political structure, Marx opens a Pandora's
box of tyranny. Because many of the old
Bolsheviks deemed historical action the
progressive unfolding of dialectical materialism, they could say nothing when the
"wi1l of history" turned its terror on them.
Mr. Simpson says we could attain enormous productive capability "if we turned
over our present factories and skills to production for rational human ends." But who
is to determine those ends? Without answering that question, Mr. Simpson lacks
justification to state:
We are Prometheus, fully able to foresee
a new order, but pinned to a system
which denies us the realization of all that
lies within reason's grasp.
The irrationality, inefficiency, and
worker alienation that in Mr. Simpson's
view characterize our economy are incomparably worse in the Soviet economy.
When I lived in Moscow, I saw how poor
Russians are (and how comparatively
wealthy Westerners are) and how thoroughly alienated (and often dnjnk) Rus~
sian workers are-precisely because they
own nothing and have no competitive
incentive to work. Power, not supply and
demand and price, determines who gets
what: scarce items are low-priced, but high
officials alone can obtain them.
JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE
�Mr. Simpson says: "Our major single national effort. .. is the continual preparation
for ... nuclear warfare. And the target. .. is
'communism.' " That assertion, as well as
the belittlement of our "bourgeois" freedom, reminds me of the propaganda I
heard in the Soviet Union. The United
States has nuclear arms not to wage war
against the U.S.S.R. but to deter it from
waging nuclear war against us. When the
U.S. alone owned nuclear weapons, it did
not use them against the U.S.S.R. According to General Haig, the U.S.S.R. worked
feverishly to catch up to the U.S. in nuclear arms-and after it did so, it has continued at the same pace. The Chinese are
no better: in the 1960's they castigated the
Soviet Union for not putting nuclear
power to political advantage and declared
that nuclear war would result in Communist victory.
America has deep problems. Marxism,
however, would not solve them, while it
would take away our prosperity and freedom.
STEPHEN DEANE
Regional Studies-Soviet Union Program
Harvard University
Mr. Simpson replies:
I appreciate the opportunity to respond
to Stephen Deane's critique of my "Prometheus" article. Perhaps in so doing I can
clear up positions which were unclear to
other readers as well, and even carry the
argument one stage further. My purpose in
the College lecture from which the article
was taken was to track down Marx's concept of human freedom, as well as I could,
and to look for relations to our contemporary experience. If there is any doubt about
it, let me make clear now that I do not
know of any society on earth today which
exemplifies those freedoms J\!Iarx envisioned. I certainly did not intend an apology
for the Soviet Union. The concepts Marx
advanced do not stand or fall by the test of
the Russian society, which has been twisted
and distorted from the original intention
of socialism into the horrors of Stalinism
and all of its contemporary legacies. These
are consequences of one specific history,
not the least part of which is the initial fact
that at the time of the revolution Russia
was one of the countries least prepared to
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
move into a socialist future. The first
point, then, is that the Soviet Union is
nothing like the free society Marx describes, and it is not useful to the discussion
to bring it forward as a model for comparison with our own or other societies.
The question remains, however, whether
the Soviet tyranny is an inevitable outcome of any attempt to achieve Marx's
goals. It is commonly assumed, as Mr.
Deane argues, that since history is proposed
by Marx as the only forum in which political thought can advance-history is the
arbiter-then an historical outcome must
be accepted as the decisive verdict upon
any political experiment. By this reasoning,
Marx is held responsible for the Soviet
Union, and the conclusion is drawn that
socialism leads to the Stalinist tyrannies.
Now, of course, anyone who sees the
praxis of history as the true vehicle of dialectic, must take every aspect of that dialectic very seriously. We cannot turn our
backs upon historical consequence. But
the motions of that intricate dialectic resist
this sort of simplification: we do not get
"A leads to B" in history any more than we
do in the Meno. Certainly there is historical
consequence, but it must be traced with
more care. We cannot validly conclude,
from that one dark train of events out of
the October Revolution into the present
Russian tyranny, anything in general about
the inherent implications of Marx's concept of human freedom. "History" is a
theater much too large to admit of easy
inferences. J\!Iankind is seeking freedom:
we do not yet know where to look-we
have not yet even got the question well
formulated.
I invoked the concept of a society which
directs its efforts to rational human ends,
and I take it as a manifest that to a very
large degree, ours does not. I did not address the question, which many people
have quite properly raised, how those ends
are to be defined. Behind the mask of
reason, we suspect tyranny. Let me try to
speak to that question now.
It is characteristic of our time to be
disillusioned with democracy, but I do not
share that disillusionment. We are plausibly
skeptical of "government", which we have
seen merge with the ubiquitous business
corporation; we doubt the efficacy of a
voter's choice between essentially equivalent options; we have watched public rela-
bans and communication technologies
preempt the political forum. But is it not,
nevertheless, historically premature to
despair of democracy? New democratic
forms emerge in the midst of the rigid
frameworks which are no longer responsive
to the popular mind. These initiatives
should be welcomed: they are the living
tradition of democracy, which necessarily
has its true roots at the bottom, not at the
top, of a political structure. Can the people
be trusted to make valid judgements of the
complex, technical issues of the modern
world? For my part, I trust the people far
more than I do the experts of the Pentagon,
the National Security Council, or the
ancillary universities. We have to ask again
the classic questions: how can the heterogeneous collection of popular judgements
take shape as a reasoned policy? Well,
there is always something rough-and-ready
about reason in its freshest form. We need
that fresh, human reason. The old patterns
of metered confrontation among nations
have become stale; they are locked into
arrays of madness. There are not i!-lst two
ways open to the world, "capitalism" and
"communism." We must be open to third
possibilities. I lectured on Marx, and I
urge the reading of his texts, as an opening
to that larger conversation.
I should like to add a word about St.
John's, because the College has been on
my mind as I formulated these last
thoughts. I think the New Program at St.
John's was established to open a stale academic conversation to new possibilities.
Our rejection of conventional scholarship
was designed to invite new readers to the
books, with new questions and new
readings. We proposed a special kind of
responsibility: responsibility to the conversation itself, a dialectic in which every
voice was welcome to be heard. I think that
was a deeply democratic impulse, and an
intentional move in the direction of the
rational democracy I have tried to suggest.
How far does that conversation, which in
this case begins at the seminar table,
extend? I guess I am saying that it is inclusive, finally, of all honest human discourse.
Much of that discourse in the world today
has been deeply moved by Marx. I think
we should recognize its community with
our own questions, and be prepared to
listen, and respond. We really may have
something to learn, even about ourselves.
65
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Radista, Leo
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Brann, Eva T. H.
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THE COLLEGE
St. John's College
•
Annapolis, Maryland-Santa Fe, New Mexico
REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT, 1979-1980
Richard Daniel Weigle
President, St. John's College, 1949-1980
October 1980
�The College
Report of the President
1979-1980
TO THE BOARD OF VISITORS
AND GOVERNORS
This is the final report of my presidency of St. John's College. The year just ended was a gratifying one of accomplishment and of promise for the future. The single most
important event was the election of Edwin J. Delattre as the
nineteenth President of the College. He was the overwhelming choice of members of both Faculties and of the Board.
His education in philosophy and the liberal arts, his work as
Director of the National Humanities Faculty, his experience
with foundations and with secondary schools, and his extensive writing and speaking all augur well for the future of St.
John's under his leadership. I heartily endorse the Board's action in selecting him, and I have done what I could to effect a
smooth transition of office.
The Deans
Dean Edward G. Sparrow states that morale on the Annapolis campus seemed high, as evidenced by comments of
campus visitors and by tutors' remarks in don rag reports. In
the course of the year yet another transcript was devised by
the two Deans in response to what they considered legitimate
objections to the one composed last year. A statement concerning the meaning of grades and procedures for objecting to
them was adopted by the Instruction Committee. A new student periodical appeared, the Gadfly, conceived as a complement to the Collegian. It met with a generally favorable
reception. Finally, Mr. Sparrow comments upon a remarkably improved Reality Weekend. In recent years this celebration of the rites of spring had degenerated into bacchanalian
mindlessness. This year both tutors and students worked together to produce events of real fun. The climax was a new
and lively production of the Perils of St. fohn's by faculty and
staff members and their spouses. Re-named Perils before
Swine, the musical comedy was an adaptation of the earlier
version written in the late 1960's by Jeremy Leven, 1964,
with music by Michael S. Littleton, Tutor.
Dean Robert S. Bart writes that the College in Santa Fe
gained in stability during the year. Let me quote from the first
paragraph of his report:
This was to be seen in part in the comparatively smooth functioning of classes under the leadership of increasingly more experienced and effective Tutors; it was also to be seen in the resiliency
of the community of learning in the face of a number of very
diverse changes in personnel and challenges to its life within and
without. The College addressed itself in an orderly and confident
way to the supreme challenge in choosing a new President at a
time when only a handful of Tutors could remember what the
College was like before Mr. Weigle was President; on a much
smaller scale but one intimately felt by all, the departure of Mr.
Nordstrum as Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds created a
set of problems that daily revealed how heavily the whole campus
had depended on him and Mrs. Nordstrum. In these and other
similar radical interruptions in its routines the College at this
campus showed the strength of its organic life as an institution. It
faced the challenges, went on unaffected in all of its usual activity, while feeling the shock and adapting to it successfully in its
own context. ... Accustomed as it is to living on the brink of
financial disaster, th€ faculty devoted itself to its work respbnsibly, not without deep sympathy for the President's burdens, but
trusting in his leadership as demonstrated through his extraordinary past achievement. In short, while there were several
occasions that could have turned into crises, the fundamental
well-being of the College was manifested in them all, as it developed its inner ~;esources to an ever-increasing maturity and selfassurance.
The Tutors
Two new endowed tutorships were created by the exceedingly generous gift of a million dollars from Mrs.
Elizabeth Myers Mitchell, of Annapolis, whose brother, the
late Philip A. Myers II, graduated from St. John's in 1938.
The Fund, to be known as the Philip A. Myers II Endowment Fund, establishes chairs in the names of Stringfellow
Barr and Richard D. Weigle, in accordance with the request
of the donor. The Reverend J. Winfree Smith, former pupil
of Mr. Barr's and member of the Faculty since 1941, was
�October, 1980
designated the first Stringfellow Barr Tutor. Douglas Allanbrook, who was initially appointed Tutor in 1952, was named
the first Richard D. Weigle Tutor. At the same time Laurence Berns was designated the Richard Hammond Elliott
Tutor and Brother Robert Smith an Andrew W. Mellon
Tutor. To accomplish all of this, Mr. Smith relinquished his
Mullikin Tutorship and Mr. Berns his Mellon Tutorship.
The Annapolis campus was awarded a significant grant of
$150,000 for faculty development by the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation. These funds, to be expended over a three-year
period, w~re given to make possible faculty study groups on
released time, as well as individual projects of auditing and
studying. Various awards to tutors were made upon recommendation of the Dean and the Instruction Committee. A
shidy g~o~p of four or five tutors on Einstein's general theory
of relativity has been constituted for the coming academic
year.
Last September there were six new appointees to the Fac-
ulty, Charles Collier, Marilyn Douville, joseph de Grazia
(who had previously taught at Santa Fe), William J. Lenkowski, Thomas ). May, and Jonathan S. Tuck. For the second semester Georgia Knight of the Santa Fe Faculty taught
at Annapolis, and Thomas A. McDonald transferred to the
western campus. Four tutors were on sabbatical leave, Wye
Allanbrook, Laurence Berns, William W. O'Grady, Jr., and
John Sarkissian. Tutors Douglas Allanbrook, Saul Benjamin,
and Harry L. Golding were on other leave, as was Thomas
McDonald for the first semester. For 1980-81 two new tutorial appointments have been made, William Mullen who received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas in classics and
has been teaching at Boston University since 1974, and
Robert Raphael, who received the Ph.D. from Harvard University in physics and is currently an Associate Professor at
Emory University. Scott Stripling and Kent Taylor of the
Santa Fe Faculty will teach at Annapolis during the coming
year; Robert Drueeker, William W. O'Grady, Jr., and David
Starr of the Annapolis Faculty will teach on the western campus. Louis Kurs, Thomas Slakey, David Stephenson, and
John S. White will be on sabbatical leave, and joseph de
Grazia, Jr., Thomas Mark, Deborah Renaut, Brother Robert
Smith, Beate Ruhm von Oppen, and Curtis A. Wilson will
be on other leave. Finally, it should be noted that David
Bolotin and Michael Comenetz were granted tenure ap-
pointments as of July I, 1980. There are now 29 tenured
tutors out of a total full-time faculty of 52, or 56%.
At Santa Fe there was one new tenure appointment, that of
Stephen R. Van Luchene, who currently both teaches and
serves as Director of Admissions. As of July I, 1980 this
bnngs to 27 the number of tenured tutors out of a total fulltime faculty of 40, or 67%. It is an interesting commentary
that the Santa Fe Faculty on the average now presents slightly
longer experience in teaching the St. John's program than its
parent Annapolis Faculty. One new appointment was made
in January at the start of the second semester, that of Cary
Stickney, a 1975 Annapolis graduate, who had been studying
philosophy in Germany.
During the academic year three tutors were on sabbatical
leave, Dean Haggard, Philip LeCuyer, and Elliott T. Skinner; three were on other leave, Charles G. Bell, Richard B.
Stark, and David Townsend. At the end of June Alfreda Verratti Goodrich completed her appointment, and Philip Chandler and Richard B. Stark resigned from the Faculty. Three
new appointments were approved for the coming year: Char-
lotte H. Gray, a member of the 1972 Class at Santa Fe who
subsequently received her B.A. degree from the University of
Colorado at Boulder and the Ph. D. degree in classical studies
at :Soston University; Michael C. Dink, honor graduate on
the Annapolis campus in the Class of 1975, who is completmg work for the Ph. D. degree in philosophy at the Catholic
University, and Peter Pesic, who holds a doctorate in classics
from Boston University and has been teaching in the struc-
tured liberal arts program at Stanford University. During the
year ahead W1lham A. Darkey, Michael Ossorgin, and Roger
S. Peterson will be on sabbatical leave, and Charles G. Bell
and David Townsend will be on other leave.
Mr. Bart reports that the Faculty continued its own development in teaching unfamiliar areas of the program. He
wrote, however, that he tended to encourage tutors to gain
strength from repeating a class they had just taught for the
first time. The Dean hoped that a proper balance would thus
be maintained "between the enthusiasm and fresh insight of
the amateur and the riper but more authoritative control of
the expert." Routine teaching, he wrote, must be combated
by exploring new areas or by penetrating deeply into subject
matters to reveal anew their intellectual substance. In this
connection the Dean expressed a modicum of envy for the
Annapolis faculty development grant. He concludes:
There ~a~ be no 9uestion that the faculty in Santa Fe badly
needs mmlar occasiOns to work together in deepening their understanding of the disciplines, topics, and texts we teach. This
campus needs above all encouragement to truly liberal scholarship. It has the intellectual leaders who could focus such efforts. It must be said by the Dean that it suffers from an excess of
classroom teaching under trYing circumstances. The life of a
Tutor at St. John's may well be the best human life. Only, however, by the renewal that comes from study groups, independent
shldy, and sabbaticals can the College maintain the intellectual
vigor which is ultimately the source of its teaching power.
�The College
The Students
filled by mid-May. Late applicants were encouraged to con-
Enrollment remained surprisingly high and steady in a
period when many colleges and universities are reporting decreased numbers. The statistics for the two campuses show a
total of 663 undergraduate students in the fall, as compared
with 646 a year ago. The spring semester figure was 673, as
compared to 654 in 1979.
Annapolis
Fall
Spring
105
99
31
123
114
84
79
79
78
391
401
Freshmen
January Freshmen
Sophomores
Juniors
Seniors
Totals
Santa Fe
Fall
Spring
96
84
18
79
73
45
46
52
51
272
272
On May 18th, 76 seniors received their diplomas at Commencement exercises in Annapolis. One week later 52 B.A.
degrees were awarded to graduating seniors at Santa Fe. On
both occasions by request of the class the speaker was the
retiring President of the College. The Board's silver medals
for highest academic standing were awarded to Joshua Laurence Kates of Queens, New York, at Annapolis and to Anne
Wu of Worthington, Ohio, at Santa Fe. Duane L. Peterson
Scholarships for academic achievement, constructive membership in the college community, and commitment to postgraduate work were won by two juniors, Jamie Scott Whalen
of LaSalle, Indiana, on the eastern campus and John Watkins
of Mt. Ida, Arkansas, on the western campus. Two Annapolis
sophomores were awarded Harry S. Truman Scholarships,
thus carrying on the tradition started last year by Mary
Filardo, of the Class of 1981, who was named Truman
Scholar for the District of Columbia. This spring Rae H. Ely
of Gordonsvi1le, Virginia, was named Truman Scholar for
Virginia and Joel Weingarten of Nashua, New Hampshire,
was designated Truman Scholar for his native state. A
Thomas J. Watson Fellowship was awarded to Anita Norton
of Annapolis, Maryland, a Danforth Fellowship to Wilfred
McClay, 1974, of Annapolis, Maryland, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Eric Salem, 1977, of Bronxville, New York.
Admissions
During the year the two Directors of Admissions, John M.
Christensen and Stephen R. Van Luchene, made highly
commendable progress in giving effect to a joint admissions
operation and cooperative recruitment strategies. Common
promotional materials were developed. A nation-wide mass
mailing was undertaken to 130,000 prospective students
whose names were obtained from the Student Search Service
of the College Entrance Examination Board. Considerable
travel by the Admissions staff and by Tutors Geoffrey Comber
and Howard Fisher reinforced the other efforts of the Admissions Office. As a result the Annapolis Class of 1984 was
z
sider enrollment at Santa Fe or to defer admission to January.
The Santa Fe class filled more slowly but gave every evidence
of exceeding last year's figure of 96 students. The comparative
figures on admissions show the following trends:
Santa Fe
Annapolis
1978 1979 1980
1978 1979 1980
210 205
241 Applications
128 157 154
205
Approved
115 135 138
188 184
116 106
108
Enrolled
81
96
97
10
6
17
Rejected
5
11
3
Withdrawn
78
92
97
38
36
38
5,888 7,522 12,361 Material Sent
6,049 4,982 8,705
295 354
372 Campus Visitors 128 167 175
An interesting study was undertaken on the Annapolis
campus to discover sources of applications for last fall's and
winter's freshman classes. The largest number of applicants,
some 29%, stated that they had learned about St. John's from
friends or relatives. Twenty-two percent heard about the College through direct mail in the student search. Alumni,
tutors, and students prompted 19% to apply, and teachers,
counsellors, and professors accounted for 11%. Only 4% of
the applicants discovered St. John's in a college guide and
only 3% in a book, notably Mortimer Adler's How to Read a
Book. Only three students learned about the College from a
newspaper article, while another -three came as a result of an
admissions visit to a high school or a college night. The St.
John's catalogue provided an introduction to St. John's for
nine students. One applicant even credited "a lady at a bus
stop" with giving the word.
Another study analyzed the reasons that applicants withdrew after submitting their applications. Thirty-two simply
transferred to a subsequent St. John's class, and another
eleven went to Santa Fe. A total of 31 enrolled at another
college, two each at Columbia, Dartmouth, Reed, Swarthmore, and the Universities of Chicago and Virginia. Ni.ne
said that financial considerations prompted their decision to
withdraw. Nine were uncomfortable with the St. John's program and wished to major. One wanted an accelerated B.A.
program, one a more complete sports program, and nine gave
no reason.
Student Financial Aid
Mrs. Marsha Drennon more than fulfilled our hopes and
expectations as Director of Financial Aid on the western
campus. At Annapolis it became necessary to replace the Di-
rector of Financial Aid in November. The person appointed
was Mrs. Caroline 0. Taylor, who had had useful experience
in student financial aid at Goucher College. She did a remarkable job in assuming her responsibilities in mid-course.
The College was truly fortunate in having two such able,
�October, 1980
cragc these students received $4,190 in grants and jobs and
borrowed $918, thus making a total of $5,108 in average aid.
Two-fifths of all recipients were independent students, which
caused a heavier drain on College resources in Santa Fe than
in Annapolis. Mrs. Drennon was successful in appealing the
allocation of College Work Study funds and received from
the federal government $15,671 additional for 1979-80 and
$12,767 for 1980-81. On federal loans St. John's default rate
at Santa Fe is 3.4%, that at Annapolis 1.6%. Both are well
under the national rate of 17%.
Health and Counseling
imaginative, and understanding individuals to administer a
record flow of financial aid, as summarized in the following
table:
Federal Programs
Educational Opportunity Grants
Basic Grants
Supplementary Grants
College Work Study
V ctcrans & Social Security Benefits
Annapolis
Santa Fe
$148,493
74,753
140,176
15,570
$140,935
76,343
116,500
32,190
55,440
12,000
188,867
66,050
43,204
$732,553
219,833
29,800
42,607
$670,208
$ 64,975
186,090
$251,065
$983,618
$ 81,719
65,000
$146,719
$816,927
State Programs
State Student Incentive Grants &
Scholarships
College Programs
CoHcgc Grant~
Endowed Scholarships
Other Scholarships
Total Grants, Scholarships and Jobs
Loan Programs
National Defense Student Loans
Federally Insured Student Loans
Total Loans
Total Student Financial Aid
At Annapolis 210 students were recipients of financial aid
in the course of the year, or just over half of the student body.
The average demonstrated need of this group was $4,830. In
order to distribute available funds as equitably as possible, the
College sought to meet all but $250 of each individual's
demonstrated need. This meant that the average grant and
job to each of the 210 aid recipients came to $3,415, and the
average loan to $1,195, or a total of$4,610. For the coming
year increased fees and new federal eligibility rules will cause
a larger percentage of the student body to qualify for aid.
Moreover, the average need will rise by between $1,094 and
$1,639. A growing problem is the so-called independent student, one who does not live with his or her parents, who is
not claimed by them as an income tax dependent, and who
receives no more than $750 in assistance from parents. Onequarter of the students receiving financial aid at Annapolis
belonged in this category, thus shifting a greater share of responsibility from the family to the College.
At Santa Fe the College was able to meet the full need of
!59 students or 57% of the full-time enrollment. On the av-
The Assistant Deans in Annapolis report that the campus
had more than its share of student emotional and mental distress. One in six students was apparently disturbed enough to
seek professional help from the College Psychiatrist or the
Student Counselor. just over three-fifths of these students
were women. The problems which seemed to loom largest in
the minds of the students seeking help were among others
sexuality, depression, fear of failure, family relationships, and
alcoholism.- Various steps were taken in the course of the year
to improve the mental health of the students. Fortunately,
these seemed to be effective.
At Santa Fe Stuart Boyd, the College Psychiatrist, saw 79
students for a lesser number of hours than in the preceding
year. What he termed predictable peaks of tension and unease
occurred during October and February, the first being the
month when the full force of the academic program is felt
and the second being the month when mid-winter doldrums
often set in. Mr. Boyd did considerably less work in career
counseling, thanks to the appointment of Mrs. Janet Lange as
Director of Placement. He nevertheless continued with some
interviews and gave psychological tests to determine specific
capacities of students.
The Harrison Health Center was again greatly appreciated
by all who used the building. Mrs. Marilyn B. Mylander, the
College Nurse, reported nearly 1,900 student visits to the Infirmary, over a third of them for upper respiratory problems.
Mrs. Mylander writes that all three of the physicians served
helpfully, Dr. Charles W. Kinzer as College Physician, Dr.
Sigmund Amitin as College Psychiatrist, and Dr. Thomas M.
Stubbs as Gynecologist. Miss Glynis Smith served as Resident
Nurse, replacing Miss Carol Lachman.
Mrs. Peggy Elrington continued to serve diligently and well
as College Nurse at Santa Fe. Dr. Donald Romig, whc
shared the responsibility of College Physician with Dr. Alfred
W. Pinkerton, wrote at the end of the year about Mrs. Elrington's "unique abilities of handling the students and other
problems that arise. Her communication has been impeccable and the information she imparts is quite to the point and
useful to the physician." Both College Physicians in Santa Fe
withdrew at the end of the college year. They will be replaced
by Dr. Weng Ssu and Dr. Donald A. Paul, both primarily in
the field of adolescent care. The Dean predicts that their approach is likely to be more individual, tending to include
3
�The College
longer discussion with each patient about his or her health
problem. It is interesting to note that Dr. Weng will be the
first woman doctor on the College staff.
Career Counseling
Dean Bart reported that a great step forward had been accomplished in the appointment of Mrs. Janet Lange as Director of Placement. He wrote that students flocked to her
office and that they were given sound advice as to meeting
employers' expectations and as to assessing personal
capabilities in a realistic way. Mrs. Lange was able to draw on
the special talents of faculty members in the counseling process. She also assembled a reference collection of basic information about graduate schools, internships, and job opportunities. In the ten months of her service, the Dean states that
Mrs. Lange has added a new focus to student life.
At Annapolis Mrs. Marianne Braun, the Director of
Placement, reported a large number of visits from every class
as well as over a hundred contacts with alumni. In her report
she categorized the visits as follows: graduate and professional
schools (213), fellowships (131 ), jobs (200), career counseling
(94), resume writing (29), internships (94), personal problems
(21), and foreign study (12). Mrs. Braun served as a permanent member of the Faculty Fellowship Committee and also
supervised the Student Employment Office. During the fall
and winter she sent survey cards to all the alumni of the College and received responses from over one-quarter. They are
enabling her to set up a useful and accessible file which will
benefit future seniors considering careers.
voted much of her time and energy to increasing the book
endowment and to acquiring books by purchase and gift. The
generous offer of Eugene Thaw, 1947, Chairman of the
Board's Visiting Committee, to underwrite the book budget at
a $15,000 figure for two years made it possible to concentrate
all efforts on building the book endowment toward a
$300,000 goal. By action of the Board and with permission of
donors, certain rare volumes and items not needed for the
library collection were auctioned or sold. The result was an
addition of $31,227 to the endowment through sales and
gifts. Permanent memorial funds were established in the
names of Bert Thoms, John Parker Gilbert, 1946, and Jacob
Klein. An endowed fund was also created in the name of
Hilyer Gearing Shufeldt, 1955, through the auction sale of a
rare four-volume Pitt English Atlas, donated by the Henry
Shufeldts several years ago. Throughout the year the Library
received much appreciated gifts of books and mementos from
The Libraries
Mter ten years of loyal and professional administration of
the Library at Santa Fe, Mrs. Alice H. Whelan retired from
the position of Librarian at the end of June. James M. Benefiel, Assistant Librarian, becomes Acting Librarian until a
permanent appointment is made. Mrs. Whelan will continue
to work on a part-time basis. In her final report she writes that
her years at St. John's have been "a happy privilege, stimulating and rewarding." She states that she finds "some solace
from the fact that I shall be able to continue, under less responsibility, to serve in this community which I so enjoy."
The main collection at Santa Fe now numbers 45,673
catalogued volumes, 5,392 phonodiscs, and 1,500
phonotapes. Holdings are strongest in American and European literature, in science, in music, in philosophy, and in
history. During the past year only 1,384 books were added to
the collection, but cuculation significantly increased by 40
per cent to over 17,000 items. The Library is now quite
adequate for the college community, but it would still benefit
from more funds for book purchases. Dean Bart writes that
many alumni and friends. Over 2, 300 volumes were added to
the colleciion by purchase or gift; some 300 volumes were
discarded; circulation exceeded the 15,000 figure. Finally, it
should be noted that revision of the main catalog to conform
with the new Anglo-American cataloging rules was com-
pleted.
The Staff
The entire college community in Annapolis was deeply
saddened in August by the death of Mrs. Leanore Rinder, the
Registrar. Mrs. Rinder had fought valiantly against cancer for
many long months. She first came to St. John's in 1969 to
work as secretary to the Dean. Four years later she was appointed Registrar. She enjoyed the respect, admiration, and
love of tutors, students, and staff members alike. In October
Mrs. Nancy Winter assumed the position of Registrar. She
gives promise of carrying on the office in Mrs. Rinder' s high
tradition.
As noted above, Mrs. Caroline Taylor succeeded Philip
Aaronson as Director of Financial Aid in November. Mrs.
easily to be defined. He writes that it will "depend on the
Ann Cruse, 1976, was appointed Development Officer in the
early fall. Mrs. Linda Cruciano, who had succeeded Au-
restoration of an adequate sum of money for acquisitions and
gustine Uleckas as Administrative Assistant in the Business
the consequent search for the best available Librarian."
At Annapolis Miss Charlotte Fletcher, the Librarian, de-
Office, left in April to have twins. Her position was then
filled by Svend Schmidt. Mrs. Susan Mark served as a labora-
the directions of major future changes in the Library are not
4
�October, 1980
The Alumni
tory assistant during the year. Miss Jean Monroe became secretary to the Graduate Institute in December replacing Miss
Rita Bahus. Mrs. Mimi Koeppen, Miss Cynthia Miller, and
Mrs. Marion Slakey all served at various times as secretary in
the Development Office; Mrs. Mary White was part-time secretary in the Admissions Office.
At Santa Fe the College suffered a great loss when Stanley
Norclstrum retired as Superintendent of Buildings and
Grounds on November I st. He had served the College faithfully and well for fourteen years, keeping the physical plant in
top shape, utilizing his green thumb on campus shrubs and
trees, riding his tractor or snowplow ad the season dictated,
and, with his gracious wife, serving cookies and conversation
to student visitors to the Nordstrum campus apartment. His
place is not easily filled. Special acknowledgment of loyal
service to the College is also due Seferino Quintana, who
retired as Head of Security in September after fifteen years of
protecting the campus and the students. The new Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds is Carlos Vigil, senior staff
employee, who had been Assistant Superintendent for fifteen
years. In a reorganization of the plant operation, the Assistant
Superintendent position was abolished and the position of
Head Custodian created for Lawrence Martinez. Dolores
Vigil, for twelve years a staff employee, was named Secretary
and Assistant to the Superintendent.
In other staff personnel actions, Margaret Twyman was appointed Coordinator for the Fund for the 1980's campaign;
Mrs. Barbara High and then Mrs. joan Allen became secretary to the Vice President, Lucinda Victor resigned as secretary to the Treasurer and Payroll and Benefits Officer and was
replaced by Priscilla Singleton for three months and then by
Lee Tzu Chan. Mary Lou Neal returned to the College as
Accountant, succeeding Ann Ferkovich, who resigned.
Marcy Ridgeway was appointed to the new position of Accounting Clerk, but was shortly succeeded by Katya Clark.
Miquela Sanchez was named Word Processing Machine
Operator; Suzanne Gill, 1979, became secretary to the Director of Financial Aid; and Martin Stone served as clerktypist in the Library. Finally Gurutej Khalsa was appointed
Chief of Security in October, succeeding Seferino Quintana;
and Margaret Allen became Assistant Book Store Manager in
August, replacing Judy Kistler, 1978, who resigned to pursue
graduate study.
Thomas Farran, Jr., 1942, Director of College Relations
and Alumni Activities, reports that the Annapolis Homecoming was "a most enjoyable and enthusiastically attended
event. The memorable reunion of classes of the '40's, the
honoring of Stringfellow Barr as President Emeritus, and the
presentation of the Alumni Award of Merit to President
Weigle combined to make it a weekend to remember." In the
business meeting of the Association there was discussion
about possible ways of reorganizing so as to make the Association more useful to all alumni. Already the efforts of Samuel
Larcombe, Jr., l968S, as Santa Fe Director of Alumni Activities are succeeding in activating alumni groups in the
West and Mid-West. Dr. David Dobreer, 1944, and Francis
S. Mason, 1943, both completed their second consecutive
three-year terms on the Board of Visitors and Governors. To
replace them the alumni elected: Gay Singer Kenney, 1967,
of Concord, Massachusetts, and Stephen L. Tucker, l969S,
of Santa Fe.
It is encouraging to report that Annapolis alumni giving
rose to $68,967, an increase of some $5,000 over last year.
The number of contributors made an eVen more substantial
gain-760, as compared to 655 in 1978-79. In addition,
alumni gifts for endowment amounted to $82,698 and for
plant to $4,783. From Santa Fe alumni $9,737 was received
in current gifts and $7,915 in additions to endowment.
Though alumni on both campuses made progress over last
year, their giving records fall far short of what is needed for
supporting the College's ongoing academic program.
Graduate Institute
The Graduate Institute in Liberal Education was originally
designed to provide a unique educational opportunity for public school teachers. It continues to direct its energies toward
this goal, while acknowledging the beneficial participation of
students from other backgrounds. This emphasis-is appropriate because many teachers have a professional and economic
motive for pursuing studies which lead to an M.A. degree.
But, as David ]ones, the Director of the Institute, points out,
St. John's College believes that its educational aims and
methods have a fundamental correctness not limited to undergraduate collegiate education. In choosing to concentrate
on recruitment of teacher as students, the Institute tests this
supposition in the context of graduate education. At the same
time it acquaints persons of diverse education with the College in a direct and thorough manner.
The 1979 session of the Institute enrolled Ill students at
Santa Fe and 41 at Annapolis. Of these totals 74 in the west
and 18 in the east were actively involved with education as a
career. The others represented a wide range of' professions and
jobs. At Santa Fe one-fifth of the student body were members
of racial minority groups. Middle Eastern countries were well
represented on both campuses, thanks again to funding by the
International Communications Agency, the Reader's Digest
5
�The College
1980. To replace him the Board appointed David E. Starr,
who moves from Annapolis to the Santa Fe campus for the
two years of his directorship. At Annapolis Geoffrey Comber,
who had effectively established the Institute in the east, indicated his desire to be relieved of the associate directorship at
the end of this summer's session. Both Mr. Jones and Mr.
Comber have earned the College's gratitude for jobs well
done.
The Campuses
Foundation, and the DeWitt Wallace Foundation. Twentynine students received the M.A. degree during the academic
year, 22 in August at Santa Fe, three at the Institute's first
Commencement in Annapolis, one in December, and three
at Commencement in May. The total number of Master's
degrees awarded now stands at 274. During the thirteen-year
history of the Institute 679 individuals have enrolled, of
whom I 06 are still active ongoing students. This means that
56% of all who entered the Institute are either graduates or
active shtdents.
For the second time, a year-round Graduate Institute program was offered on the Santa Fe campus with 23 students
enrolled. One segment of the curriculum was offered each
semester, philosophy and theology in the fall and politics and
society in the spring. The year-round plan enables a person to
complete the work for the M.A. degree in two summer sessions and the intervening academic year. At Annapolis Geoffrey Comber, Associate Director of the Institute, succeeded in
obtaining approval from the Maryland State Board for Higher
Education for the eastern branch of the Institute to award its
own degrees.
The National Endowment for the Humanities granted
$50,000 to St. John's to fund the Extended Teacher Institute.
This enrolled twelve participants at Santa Fe and seven at
Annapolis during the summer of 1979. To become an
N.E.H. Fellow a teacher from either a public or private
school was required to submit a proposal for significant
change in his or her school, classroom, school-community
relationship, or method of teaching. During the single year of
attendance at the lnstitute.projects were discussed and refined
as part of the curriculum. Then the teacher was subject to
evaluation through an on-site visit during the following
academic year. Group workshops were also arranged to discuss a book and to exchange reports on projects.
In addition to the grants already mentioned, the Institute
received greatly appreciated fellowship support from the Vincent Astor Foundation, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, the Edward W. Hazen Foundation, the Henry Luce
Foundation, the Edward John Noble Foundation, and the
New York City Riot Relief Fund.
David C. Jones, who graciously agreed to return to the directorship in the fall of 1979 when the director suddenly resigned, performed his duties in exemplary manner. As originally understood, he serves only through the summer of
6
Final plans and specifications have been approved by the
Board and the Historic District Commission for the renovation and addition to Paca-Carroll House and to Randall Hall.
A contract was signed in the early summer of 1980 with J.
Vinton Shafer and Sons, Inc., of White Marsh, Maryland, at
a figure of $1, 110,810 to complete the work on Paca-Carroll
House by the fall of 1981. The Randall Hall project was expected to be let out to bid in the early fall. An anonymous
pledge of $500,000 from a generous friend of the College
made possible undertaking the Paea-Carroll House reconstruction. Another welcome grant of $155,000 from the Hodson Trust of Morristown, New Jersey, completes the funding
for Randall Hall.
Thanks to a favorable financial year, when Charles T. Elzey, the Treasurer, performed miracles with the College's reserve funds in the high-interest money market, many needed
items of equipment were purchased and much deferred maintenance was accomplished. TI1e Key Memorial Auditorium
was greatly improved by new stage lighting controls, a stage
backdrop curtain, and an excellent 16mm. sound projector.
In the Print Shop a color head and an expensive collator were
installed, thus considerably enhancing the capabilities of
Chris Colby, the College Printer. A new station wagon,
truck, and Gravely lawnmower were also purchased. In the
area of maintenance, the six blind music practice rooms in
the Key Memorial were converted into four enlarged rooms
with windows; photo-electric cells were installed on campus
lights; control valves were replaced on old-fashioned radiators;
and the entire rotted cornice of Chase Stone House was replaced. Electrically operated smoke detectors were placed in
all buildings and centrally wired to the fire alarm system. Finally, brick walks were constructed to provide access to all
buildings for the handicapped in conformity with Section 504
of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
The major campus project at Santa Fe was the re-roofing
of Evans Science Laboratory and Santa Fe Hall, necessary
after sixteen years of service. Metal capping was installed on
the parapets of Santa Fe Hall and Weigle Hall in an experimental effort to stop the leaching of lime into the stucco
of the walls. This proved successful so other buildings will be
done as funds become available. Replacement of carpeting
with vinyl tile in the dormitories was continued and should
be completed by the end of the summer. Monies for this work
came from the repair and replacement reserve established in
accordance with regulations on federal dormitory loans. Fi-
�October, 1980
nally, a word processing machine was purchased during the
year and installed in the Admissions Office. This greatly
facilitates the reproduction of form letters for all college offices.
Saga Food Service did a superior job during the first year of
their contract with the College. Particular commendation
should go to Wayne Chinander, who proved an effective and
imaginative manager, and who established excellent rapport
with the students. In fact, the experience with Saga Food
Service has proven so satisfactory that the Annapolis campus
has decided to retain Saga for the coming academic year.
College Finances
I am especially pleased in the final year of my presidency to
report that both campuses completed the fiscal year with substantial surpluses. At Annapolis expenditures of $4,015,084
were more than offset by revenues of $4,063,223, thus creating a surplus of $48,139 that was added to the reserve for
future operations. Higher enrollment, savings in financial aid
co1lege grants, and excess interest income on current funds
accounted for the favorable situation. At Santa Fe gifts and
grants of over a million dollars, substantially higher income
from endowment, and the sale of certain excess land and
other unneeded assets all contributed to the total current revenues of $3,463,470. Expenditures of $3,402,045 exceed the
budget by over $62,000, but the year nevertheless ended with
a surplus of $61,425. This sum reduced the cumulative deficit of the Santa Fe campus from $123,779 to $62,3 54.
An analysis of all gifts and grants received by St. John's
College over the past twelve months follows:
Donors
Board
College Community
Alumni
Parents
Friends
Foundations
Corporations
Government
Totals
Annapolis
Santa Fe
$1,008,596
3,368
156,648
12,031
131,013
294,538
61,060
257,588
$1,924,842
$ 485,561
10,175
17,652
10,386
126,913
541,072
28,409
130,711
$1,350,879
$ 461,137
$ 897,386
99,099
31,417
100,934
266,748
54,394
$1,350,879
Purposes
Unrestricted
Restricted for Libmry,
Scholarships, etc.
Graduate Institute
Endowment
Plant
Totals
1,204,785
159,821
$I,924,842
). Bu~chenal Ault, Vice President, reports that the College
received generous support from the citizens and businesses of
its two communities, Annapolis and Santa Fe. In the east a
volunteer group of Friends of St. John's raised $22,622 in its
second annual drive, double the amount pledged a year ago.
Credit is due Thomas Parran, D{rector of College Relations,
and Edda Peter, Development Officer and Director of Community Relations. The growing awareness and support of the
College can be attributed in large degree to the various events
scheduled by Mrs. Peter to involve local citizens. The ongoing continuing education program of the College and the policy of expanded use of college facilities by local organizations
have also helped to build good will. Significant impact came
too from the tireless and imaginative work of Rebecca Wilson
in the field of public relations. She has effectively presented
the College through newspaper articles, radio and television
exposure, and interesting issues of The Reporter.
The seventh annual sustaining campaign in the west
yielded $91,289 f"om 369 Santa Fe residents. Mary
Branham, Director of College Relations, earned high praise
for what Mr. Ault characterized as "her remarkably successful
efforts to integrate college and town. Hers have been absolutely critical labors, conducted deftly, with the lightest hand,
and in a warm and pleasing style." Miss Branham has worked
with the Library Committee on Book and Author luncheons
and Evenings with Writers, with the citizens' Fine Arts
Committee, with the Music Library Committee, with the
monthly Indian Table, and with the Arnold Schoenberg Festival for Santa Fe. All these efforts, coupled with media assistance from Newsome and Company, have produced the
splendid financial backing of the College in its annual sustaining campaign.
Endowment
Fayez Sarofim & Co., of Houston, Texas, continued to do
an excellent job on managing the portfolio of the College's
7
�The College
pooled endowment funds. Earnings for the year represented a
6. 67% return on book value, or a 5. 8% return on market
value. As of June 30, 1980, the endowment principal at Annapolis totaled $9,229,244 in book value and $10,611,092 in
market value. At Santa Fe the endowment principal totaled
$1,826,596 in book value and $2,186,974 in market value.
In an effort to discover whether the College's extensive land
holdings in Santa Fe might yield a helpful source of new
income, the College commissioned Stephen Fiance and Associates to compile a land inventory and to analyze all basic
data. This first phase was completed in May at a cost of
$18,562. The second phase will call for identifying a
builder-developer-architect who might suggest imaginative
ways in which the land could be utilized without sacrifice of
admired educational program, with a strong teaching faculty,
with a talented student body, and with a firm administrative
and financial base. St. John's is now a larger college on two
campuses with effective interchange of persons and ideas between them. Women are no longer excluded from its life and
learning; their introduction in 1951 was a wise move. The
Graduate Institute in Liberal Education has brought the substance and the teaching methods of the Program to hundreds
of teachers and other adults. The College and the Reporter
enable St. John's to communicate ideas and news to an everexpanding constituency of alumni, parents, and friends.
In looking back over these three decades, I thought that the
Board, the alumni, and friends might appreciate reviewing
several charts that chronicle in perspective the progress of the
aesthetic and environmental values. A grant from the Inde-
College on its two campuses. The first set of appended charts
pendent College Funds of America was awarded to St. John's,
whereby the services of New Sources of Funding, Inc., of
New York City will be provided to aid the College in de-
shows enrollment, class by class, and year by year. It is amaz-
lineating its possible future courses of action.
shows revenues and expenditures with resulting surpluses or
Fund for the 1980's
As the terminal date of December 31, 1980, approaches,
the Fund for the 1980's stands at $15,078,119 in gifts, grants,
pledges, and bequests. This constitutes an increase of better
than $4,000,000 over the total of a year ago. It is unrealistic
to hope that the goal of $25,000,000 can be achieved, but the
College can be proud of achieving at least three-fifths of the
ambitious objective it set for itself in 1976. At Annapolis
three-fifths of the endowment goal was realized, but at Santa
Fe less than one-sixth of the $10 million endowment goal was
raised and none of the funds needed for the last three buildings to complete the physical plant. It should be noted that a
concerted effort was begun in the spring under the leadership
of Mr. Ault and of Campaign Coordinator Margaret Twyman
to endow a permanent chair at Santa Fe, to be named for
John Caw Meem and his wife, Faith. The first $65,000 to
this end had been obtained by the end of the fiscal year. Finally, it is worth noting that the four-year campaign expenses,
which were shared by both campuses, amounted to
$376,835, or only two and a half cents for each dollar raised.
Again I should like to express the deep gratitude of the College, as well as my personal thanks, to all who contributed or
pledged so handsomely, to all who worked in the campaign,
and to all who expressed their confidence and support of St.
John's
by serving on its National Committee.
Thirty-One Years
It has been my good fortune to preside over the destinies of
this College for thirty-one years. Little did I realize that it was
to be a life-long commitment when I arrived on campus September 17, 1949, to meet the Visitors and Governors after
they had elected me President. I believe that I have discharged my stewardship responsibly. I now feel that I can
turn the College over to my successor with a respected and
8
ing to think that St. John's only enrolled 40 freshmen and 85
other students in the fall of 1953. The second pair of charts
deficits for the entire period. They also record the growth of
the College's endowment. It is a sobering thought that the
combined budgets of the two campuses today amount to $7.5
million, about sixteen times the modest budget of $462,000
which I inherited in my first year. And the endowment too
has grown tremendously, from $247,000 in 1949 to an aggregate book value of $11 million and a market value of $13
million. The last two charts summarize the gifts, grants, and
bequests which the College has received since the inception
of the Santa Fe campus in !961. If one includes gifts, grants,
and bequests for the twelve-year period prior to 1961, the
grand total of funds raised exceeds $40 million. The figures
are a remarkable demonstration of the commitment and dedication of the members of this Board of Visitors and Governors
and others to the College.
*
•
'
As Mrs. Weigle and I take leave of the College, we express
to all Board members, past and present, our heartfelt appreciation for the concern they have showed for St. John's and the
friendship they have expressed for us. For these thirty-one
years we have been blessed with wonderful people to work
with on the Board, in the Faculty, Student Body, and Staff,
and. among the alumni and friends of St. John's. We wish
that there were some way to thank each one individually.
This general acknowledgment of a debt of gratitude will have
to suffice.
Let me end this final report with some excerpts from my
commencement address of last May, which was at the same
time a personal testarrient, a valedictory message, and a chal-
lenge to the graduating seniors:
What attracted me originally to St. John's College was the matter
and the manner of the Program. It seemed to me that St. John's
provided much that my own education had neglected. There was
a wholeness to it rather than a fragmentation. There was full
participation rather than somewhat passive exposure to great lee-
�October, 1980
turers. Most important of all, there was a clear delineation of the
liberal arts, which I had previously wrongly equated with subject
matters like the humanities . . . .
I have come to have great respect for St. John's Tutors and for
their willingness to engage in study and conversation far outside
their fields of expertise. For me there has been a great opportunity to learn from both the faculty members and the students. In
turn, I have sought to spread "the gospel according to St. John's."
. I guess that the College has generated in me the evangelistic
fervor of an educational missionary.
As you leave this college, I would hope that you had eXamined
your beliefs and developed for yourself a philosophy that will
stand you in good stead throughout the balance of your life. Each
of you should be able to say as Luther did, "This I believe." In
my own case I hold to the Christian position, the fatherhood of a
loving God, the redeeming grace of his Son, and the brotherhood
of man. In my actions I have tried, not always with success, to be
true to this position.
I hope that you wi11 hold to three commitments for the future.
The first of these is a commitment to principle. You have now
read many books and discussed many theories. Only if theory is
put into practice will your education have ·been of any value ...
Your second commitment, I hope, will be to liberal education.
This means that you must continue to be intellectually alive, that
you will fi.nd a wise use of leisure in reading good books, in
attending good lectures and concerts, in carrying on meaningful
conversation.
Finally, I hope that you will cherish a commitment to this College.
Do not forget that you remain members of the St.
John's community through the provision of the College Polity,
which states that alumni are lifetime members of the College.
For this is a community not limited by geographical location or
fixed periods of time. You have an opportunity and an obligation
to make a St. John's education possible for future generations of
young men and women by guiding prospective students here, by
contributing your time and substance to the College, even if it be
the widow's mite, and by exemplifying in your own lives what the
books and the tutors at St. John's College have meant to you.
I suspect that you and I have a devotion and a loyalty to this
place from which we can never willingly escape. It has changed
my life. I am sure it has done the same for you.
Hail and farewell!
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
Student Enrollment-1949-1980
Annapolis
Freshmen
1949-50
1950-51
1951-52
1952-53
Sophomores
71
47
63
36
42
41
29
54
42
40
1953-54
66
80
27
30
32
Total
20
21
12
139
166
179
212
225
107
104
1959-60
1960-61
1961-62
1962-63
1963-64
115
122
117
126
131
1964-65
196s.66
1966-67
1%7-68
1968-69
123
84
59
55
116
119
102-19
128-22
107
65
61
53
1969-70
1970-71
1971-72
1972-73
1973-74
125-21
117-21
125-20
128-20
105-22
1974-75
1975-76
1976-77
1977-78
1978-79
107-29
105-34
106-31
I 10-27
I 16-30
103
118
115
107
%
1979-80
105-30
123
Sophomores
1964-65
1965-66
1966-67
1967-68
Freshmen
84
86
73
55
1968-69
1969-70
1970-71
1971-72
119
125
106
107
58
81
1972-73
1973-74
1974-75
1975-76
108-15
92-22
97-20
85-15
1976-77
1977-78
1978-79
1979-80
83-18
62-16
81-16
96-18
47
44
53
61
72
74
23
18
29
30
33
Seniors
33
36
28
20
24
1954-55
1955-56
1956-57
1957-58
1958-59
94
30
Juolors
45
38
46
49
92
93
44
56
82
64
22
27
24
35
40
38
42
196
173
151
133
125
257
280
293
313
319
93
85
56
54
321
341
333
316
71
62
40
323
"'
59
110
66
51
54
98
85
45
105
110
69
84
70
70
368
353
373
392
391
72
85
77
71
81
74
74
399
404
415
390
401
84
79
421
Juolors
Seolors
41
40
35
Total
84
148
168
178
31
28
55
47
32
33
30
27
240
262
269
262
71
45
"'
32
63
69
36
33
26
46
276
78
80
68
79
63
63
83
76
82
611
Santa Fe
62
54
40
76
78
89
86
72
45
51
54
52
52
275
295
301
293
275
289
290
Richard D. Weigle
President of St. John's
College, 1949-1980
Annapolis, Maryland
August 25, 1980
The Report of the President to the Board of Visitors and Governors is published annually by the Office of College Relations, St.
John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. Thomas Parran, Jr., Director of College Relations.
Picture credits: Cover, page 7, Tom Parran; page 1, M. E. Warren; page 3, John De Journett; pages 5 & 6, Betty Lilienthal.
9
�The College
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
Summary of Financial Reports-1949-1980
Gifts and Grants-1961-1980
(All Figures in Thousands)
(Figures in thousands)
Annapolis
Annapolis
Foundation
Endowment
1949-50
1950-51
1951-52
Revenues
$ 459
Expenditures
Surplus/(Dcftclt)
Board
Members
{B(Hlk Value)
$ 462
$ (3)
$ 247
455
433
456
414
(I)
19
274
350
1952-53
1953-54
1954-55
500
529
484
484
555
16
(26)
504
(20)
672
759
1,428
1955-56
528
565
675
532
622
679
(4)
(57)
(4)
1961-62
1962-63
1%3-64
1964-65
I%H6
1966-67
1967-68
1956-57
1957-58
1,602
1,951
2,190
1968-69
1969-70
1970-71
1971-72
1958-59
800
923
965
785
914
1,030
(6~
6,281
6,193
1961-62
1,077
1,051
1,140
1,248
26
26
26
6,307
6,490
6,679
1959-60
1962-63
1963-64
1,166
1,274
1,244
15
9
5,650
1960-61
1964-65
1965-66
1966-67
1,228
I ,378
1,339
16
6,948
1.396
1,344
18
5
7,926
8,205
1967-68
1968-69
1%9-70
1,457
1,523
1,702
1,482
1,508
1,716
(25)
15
(14)
8,667
9,218
8,776
1970-71
1971-72
1972-73
1,844
1,981
2,204
1,844
1,992
2,201
(II)
3
8,333
8,702
8,700
1973-74
1974-75
1975-76
2,345
2,479
2,614
2,237
2,458
2,647
108
21
(33)
8,803
8,087
7,766
1976-77
1977-78
1978-79
2,971
3,137
3,473
2,931
3,190
3,432
40
(53)
41
8,057
8,045
7,900
1979-80
4,063
4,015
48
9,229
Santa Fe
1964-65
1965-66
1966-67
Revenues
$ 474
Expenditures
902
1,021
$ 491
835
1,172
1967-68
1968-69
1969-70
1,203
1,436
1,276
1970-71
1971-72
1972-73
Surplus/{De6cit)
$ (17)
Endowment
$
(151)
22
27
33
1,199
1,429
1,528
4
7
(252)
63
1,644
1,784
1,862
1,640
1,781
1,940
3
(78)
1973-74
1974-75
1975-76
2,128
2,344
2,528
2,125
2,343
2,527
1976-77
1977-78
1978-79
2,652
2,402
3,202
2,621
2,763
3,058
1979-80
3,462
3,402
10
67
4
41
50
62
136
254
337
I ,234
1,332
(31)
(361)
144
61
I ,340
1,478
1,541
I ,826
1972-73
1973-74
1974-75
1975-76
1976-77
1977-78
1978-79
1979-80
Totals
16
9
4
2
I
14
Alwnol
$ 33
41
19
II
29
44
10
189
4
143
10
10
209
147
61
418
395
99
10
10
7
105
57
40
75
_____1Q_!Q
$1,651
157
137
147
244
411
157
$2,834
Friends &
Community
$
39
17
7
6
243
39
&
Corporations
'
44
144
$1,078
80
80
80
119
99
199
190
131
124
681
280
93
574
1,052
12
173
"
234
166
179
456
249
430
2%
$3,646
Totals
$
263
62
195
134
154
37
60
49
61
Government
$ 80
201
364
61
89.
31
41
41
23
46
31
43
21
25
289
84
809
25
253
753
325
35
377
50
429
478
865
719
1,042
1,864
$11,145
"
108
108
117
257
$1,936
Santa Fe
1961-64
I%4..S
1%5-66
1966-67
1967-68
$ 429
1968-69
1%9-70
1970-71
1971-72
1972-73
1973-74
427
284
650
735
693
547
202
684
393
501
123
200
$ 628
3
4
(Included
129
5
5
42
50
61
106
146
126
81
159
223
134
172
225
434
174
236
217
13
$
80
with
1974-75
1975-76
1976-77
1977-78
1978-79
1979-80
Totals
G=d
Totals
691
friends'
gifts)
652
2
I
4
4
166
138
$
$ 1,260
18
32
28
777
45
36
156
663
1,869
1,115
1,189
1,058
2,057
1,147
1,120
792
1,219
1,180:
$17,862
$29.007
52
575
5
482
285
769
421
$ 8,768
10
7
9
18
$ 1,042
982
145
102
74
1!9
139
$3,292
289
242
487
$3,369
214
284
194
137
80
115
$1,391
$10,419
$3,876
$4,370
$7,015
$3,327
332
420
821
500
675
�October, 1980
BALANCE SHEET
June 30, 1980
ASSETS
LIABILITIES AND FUND BALANCES
CURRENT FUNDS
CURRENT FUNDS
Annapolis
Unrestricted
Cash ........ .
Investments .
Accounts receivable, net
Other receivables ....... .
Inventory-bookstore-at cost ......... .
Prepaid expenses and deferred charges
Due from other funds ...
Assets held pending sale.
3,020
566,184
19,898
62,203
41,934
38,243
3,503
$
$
81,424
185,495
44,469
47,402
734,985
Restricted
Cash ...
Investments ......................... .
Due from other funds ..
Accounts receivable ...
35,614
26,835
461,303
$
$
370,794
89
36,851
76,506
7,823
523,752
$
121,269
$ 1,258,737
$
7,785
$
333,606
11,841
20,416
391,895
$
341,391
425,152
$
10
LOAN FUNDS
Total Loan Funds .....
Total Endowment Funds
1,000
146,755
128,771
68,054
14,665
74,903
.. . . . . . . . .. .' .. ..
$
443,148
$
Restricted Fund Balance
Total Current Funds ..
.................
89,391
734,985
$
$
.............
$
$
Fund Balllllce
Reserve for future operations
(cumulative deficit)
645,594
523,752
$
121,269
$ 1,258,737
$
492,063
340,560
$
400,847
24,305
(62,354)
370,794
National Direct Student
Loans balance . . ........... .
College Joan fund balance ................... .
Total Loan Funds
$
831
$
341,391
$
425,152
$
3,502
9,229,244
8,200
$
415
1,826,181
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
$
8,253,496
987,220
24,057
1,667,047
135,492
220
$ 9,240,946
$ 1,826,596
ANNUITY FUNDS
Due to other funds ..
Fund balance ...... .
Unexpended income
Total Endowment Funds
$ 9,240,946
$ 1,826,596
ANNUITY FUNDS
$
7,079
156,772
$
Due from current unrestricted funds
Due from plant funds
163,851
Liability under life estate agreements
$
Total Annuity Funds .
163,851
163,851
PLANT FUNDS
PLANT FUNDS
Unexpended ...................... .
Investment-retirement of indebtedness
Investment in plant
Land and Improvements
Buildings .
Equipment ..................... .
Land and improvements-California
$
24,706
97,253
62,332
461,303
.............
LOAN FUNDS
$
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
Cash
Investments ............................. .
Receivables ..... .
Pledges receivable
$
Santa Fe
492,063
$
Cash ............ .
St. John's College Loans ..... .
National Direct Student Loans .
United Student Aid Deposit ..
Annapolis
Unrestricted
Notes payable-bank
Accounts payable ........
Student advance depoSits .
Deferred income.
·
Due to other funds
12,004
$
Total Current Funds
Sllllta Fe
824,491
394,929
5,685,207
394,221
584,000
$
7,451
274,924
523,644
5,906,741
799,294
Total Plant Funds ............. .
$ 7,882,848
$ 7,512,054
Total Funds ...
$18,723,922
$10,419,716
Unexpended ............. .
Retirement of indebtedness .
824,491
Inve~:~~ igtC!~%nds ..... .
Notes payable-other ............ .
Loans payable to Annapolis campus
Dormitory bonds payable .
Due to Annuity Fund ...
Net investment in plant
$
7,451
274,924
15,626
1,000
7,058,357
800,000
1,406,000
156,772
4,850,281
Total Plant Funds.
$ 7,882,848
$ 7,512,054
Total Funds
$18,723,922
$10,419,716
II
�The College
CONDENSED STATEMENT OF REVENUES
AND EXPENDITURES
ANNAPOLIS ENDOWMENT FUNDS
June 30, 1980
Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1980
TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENTS
Annapolis
Total Educational and General
Auxiliary Enterprises
Bookstore ...............
Dining hall and dormitories ............ .
Summer Coffee Shop, vending machines .
Outside summer programs ............. .
Dorsey House
............ .
Santa Fe
$1,937,350
479,457
300,391
619,056
90,897
$1,401,871
305,092
899,026
180,295
78,323
$3,427.151
$2,864,607
78,268
507,200
19,493
20,054
8,800
$
80,041
462,328
Total Auxiliary Enterprises ..
$ 633,815
$ 542,369
Total Revenues ............... .
$4,060,966
$3,406,976
EXPENDITURES
Educational and General
Instruction ...
Research . . . . . . . .
. ......... .
Academic support
Student services ....
Institutional support ........... .
Plant operations and maintenance
Student financial aid .. .
Mandatory transfers .. .
$1,296,217
37,025
96,343
308,316
747,183
366.116
383,077
4,862
$1,005,702
Total Educational and General
$3,239,139
77,012
195,447
37,077
379,537
236,122
79,001
Total Auxiliary Enterprises
$ 773,688
$ 624,659
Total Expenditures and Transfers
$4,012,827
$3,349,929
103,396
271,964
628,196
208,048
459,316
48,648
$ 313,432
$
2,679,845
1,000.000
1,989,954
150,216
500,000
150,000
$ 313,432
2,679,845
1,000.000
2,489,954
300,216
$3,329,845
$6,783,447
$
$
SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENTS
1,217
15,000
25,000
27,500
3,070
8,672
87,933
15,050
13,705
Annapolis Graduate Institute .
. ............ .
Annapolis Self Help ...................... .
George M. Austin, 1908 .
WalterS. Baird, 1930 .
Chicago Regional .
Class of 1897
Class of I898 ....... .
Richard F. Cleveland
................. .
Dr. Charles C. Cook ......... .
Corp. George E. Cunniff, III ..
Clarence L. Dickinson. 1911
Faculty ............................. .
John T. and Gertrude L. Harrison, 1907.
Richard H. Hodgson, 1906 .....
Alfred and Ruth Houston, 1906
Houston Regional .................. .
Jesse H. Jones and Mary Gibbs Jones
Robert E. and Margaret Larsh Jones, 1909 .
John Spangler Kieffer .
Jacob Klein . . . . . . . ..................... .
Arthur E. and Hilda Combs Landers, 1930 .
Massachusetts Regional . . .
. ............. .
Phillip A. Myers, II,- !938.
Rev. Theo O'Brien
Oklahoma Regional ......... .
Thomas Parran Memorial, 191 I
Pittsburgh Regional ....... .
Readers Digest Foundation .
Leanore B. Rinder .
Clifton C. Roehle ....................... .
Joan and Bela Ronay ............................... .
Murray Joel Rosenberg Memorial
Flora Duvall Sayles ....................... .
Hazel Norris and J. Graham Shannahan, 1908
Clarence W. Stryker ....... .
Frederick J. von Schwerdtner
Richard D. Weigle .
$2,725,270
$ 88,348
274,352
23,646
7,805
Richard Hammond Elliott, 1917 ....... .
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grants .
Phillip A. Myers, ll, 1938 ..
Addison E. Mullikin, 1895 ..
Arthur de Talma Valk, 1906
Donor
$3,453,602
REVENUES
Educational and General
Tuition fees
Government programs and grants .. .
Private gifts and grants .......... .
Endowment income .
Other sources
A. W. Menon
Fouildatlon Total Fund
Matching Girt Principal
Gift of
15,000
25,000
3,070
1,217
30,000
50,000
27,500
6,140
8,672
87,933
15,050
13,705
135
270
1,000
2,359
20,025
150,250
2,500
135
1,000
52,909
154,676
150,250
42,787
55,268
174,701
300,500
45,287
500
500
1,000
36,000
50,481
4,250
3,862
36,000
72.000
50,481
4,250
3,862
21,000
45,370
39,262
19,023
52,000
6,465
1,120
12,500
5,165
7,056
70,845
5,189
1i:~
22,685
9,000
30,262
19,023
26,000
6,465
26,000
560
560
12,500
5,165
7,056
70,845
5,189
2,000
3,664
2,000
3,664
3,843
1,552
16,514
3,413
7.367
7,256
1,552
23,881
$ 948,320
$ 323,864
$1,272,184
LIBRARY ENDOWMENTS
Auxiliary Enterprises
Bookstore . .. . . . . . .. . .. . . ......... .
Dining hall and donnitories
Outside summer programs .
Dorsey House .................. .
Plant operations and maintenance,
allocated costs ..
Mandatory transfers
Alumni Memorial Book Fund .......... .
Charles Edward Stuart Barton Memorial
Library Fund ..................... .
Benwood Foundation Library Fund ... .
Faculty MemoriallJook Endowment ....... .
John P. Gilbert, !964, Memorial Book Fund ..
Mary Safford Hoogewerff Memorial Library
Fund ................................ .
Jonathan D. Korsbin, 1966, Library Fund ..
Oliver M. Korshin, 1963, Library Fund ............ .
Margaret Lauck Memorial Library Fund ..
Library Fund ............................ .
Charles Gomber Mantz, 1875, Library Fund.
Eugene and Agnes Meyer Library Fund ..
Ellen C. Murphy Memorial Library Fund
Henry H. and Cora Dodson Sasscer Newspaper Fund
Hilyer Gearing Shufeldt, 1955, Library Fund .......... .
Bert Thoms Memorial Library Fund ......... .
Ehna R. and Charles D. Todd Memorial Library
Fund .............................. .
Luther A. and Clara B. Weigle Meniorial
Library Fund ........................... .
The Jack Willen Foundation Library Fund in
Memory of Murray Joel Rosenberg
$
455
455
$
500
500
25,000
25,000
50,000
151
151
1,070
1,070
31,683
31,683
200
200
1,000
200
200
1.000
15,313
2,200
10,000
1,500
1,500
!6,000
1,400
1,500
19,500
15,713
2,200
10,000
3,000
1,500
16,000
19,500
400
1,400
39,000
3,600
3,600
1,000
1,00!
$ 132,272
$
46,400
$ 178,672
$
24,081
7,180
$
20,000
1,470
44,081
8,650
$
31,261
$
21,470
STUDENT LOAN ENDOWMENTS
George Firedland .............. .
John David Pyle, !962, Memorial.
12
$
52,731
�October, 1980
ALUMNI MEMORIAL ENDOWMENTS
1,100
9,500
600
25
1,039
1,165
125
1,569
855
2,638
1,000
58,683
3,590
1,000
1,000
1,000
1,135
2,000
500
16,556
40
1,000
1,000
658
100
100
18,357
1,000
5,140
23,223
1,_020
5,400
Granville Q. Adams, 1929 ................ .
Charles Edwards Athey, 1931 . ,
1
W~r~-F~~~~~~e~ai~l'3 .1 ~~ . . ·
Drew H. Beatty, 1903
RobertA. Bier, 1919 ..... .
Dr. William Brewer, 1823.
Ford K. Brown, 1970 ....
Frederick W. Brune, 1874
Benjamin Duvall Chambers, !905.
Henry M. Cooper, Jr., 1934,
Walter I. Dawkins, 1880 .. , .. ,, .. , .. , ....... .
Robert F. Duer, Jr., 1921 .
. .. , ..... , .. , ..... .
Douglas F. Duval, 1891
Edmund P. Duval, 1905 ..
Richaffi J. Duval, 1892 ......
Dr. Phillip H. Edwards, 1898
.................... .
Joseph W. Fastner, Jr., 1960 .. , .. , ........ .
Allen Lester Fowler, 1915 ..... , .. , .
Edna G. and Roscoe E. Grove, 1910.
Charles W. Hass, 1927 .....
John M. J. Hodges, 1904 , ..
Carl B. Howland, Jr., 1937 ...
Dr. Amos F. Hutchins, 1906 ..
Clarence T. Johnson, 1909.
Clifford L. Johnson, 1911 ............... .
Helen B. Jones and Robert 0. Jones, 1916
.......... .
Francis A. Katz, 1929
Dr. W. Oscar LaMotte, 1902.
John H. E. Legg, 1921
William Lentz, 1912 ................ .
Leola B. and Thomas W. Ligon, 1916.
Col. Harrison McAlpine, 1909.
James R. McClintock, 1965, Prize Fund.
Vincent W. McKay, 1946.
. ....................... .
H. Boyns MacMannis, 1924 ..................... .
Robert E. Maddox, 1876
................... .
Wi11iam P. Maddox, 1921 .
William L. Mayo, 1899 ..
Ridgely P. Melvin, 1899 ............. .
Wm. S. Morsel\, 1923, Athletic Fund .
John Mullan, 1847 ......... .
Walter C. Mylander, Jr., 1932 ............... .
M. Keith Neville, 1905
Dr. John 0. Neustadt, 1939.
JohnS. Price, 1931 .....
Blanchard Randall, 1874 ..
Susan Irene Roberts, 1966
Leroy T. Rohrer, 1903 . .. .
. .......... ..
Elliott A. Rosenberg, 1963.
Harrison Sasscer, 1944 .
Charles H. Schoff, 1889
........... .
Henry F. Sturdy, 1906 ........ .
Rev. Enoch M. Thompson, 1895 ........... .
Col. Guy D. Thompson, 1916 .
John T. Tucker, 1914 ....... .
Dr. RobertS. G. Welch, 1913.
Dr. Willis H. White, 1922 .....
Amos W. W. Woodcock, 1903
$
125
625
1,000
1,100
9,500
600
25
1,239
1,165
250
1,569
1,362
2,638
2,000
58,683
3,925
1,000
1,000
1,000
2,120
2,000
1,000
16,556
40
1,000
1,000
1,291
100
100
25,920
1,000
5,140
23,223
2,040
5,400
650
491
22,906
4,500
1,650
2,000
12,219
225
10,000
20,000
7,978
2,000
1,189
2,600
1,181
1,417
200
5,315
4,550
1,000
28,633
6,000
700
2,500
250
1,250
3,000
200
125
507
1,000
335
985
500
633
7,563
1,020
325
325
491
22,906
4,500
1,650
2,000
12,219
125
5,000
10,000
7,978
1,000
1,189
2,600
851
1,417
100
5,315
4,550
500
28,633
3,000
700
2,500
125
625
2,000
100
5,000
10,000
1,000
330
100
500
3,000
$ 284,417
$
34,973
$ 319,390
60,000
4,685
1,000
308
20,250
5.820
25,125
10,000
3,000
$
60,000
500
1,000
300,000
1,000
50,000
10,000
2,250
75,192
124,349
2,000
25,000
1,668
518
1,250
120,000
4,685
1,000
308
20,250
5,820
25,125
10,000
6,000
103
500
1,000
300,000
1,000
50,000
10,000
2,250
75,192
124,349
2,000
25,000
1,668
518
1,250
275
275
25,900
1,000
25,900
1,000
2,500
6,219
4,500
~jle ~~h~o~~~;~~~~~:~ -~~~~-
Afojph W. Schmidt Fund ....................... .
Richard Scofield Memorial Fund ...... .
Mrs. Blair T. Scott Memorial Prize Fund ..... .
Kathryn Mylroie Stevens Memorial Prize Fund
Luther and Caroline Tall, 1921 Fund ...
Clare Eddy and Eugene V. Thaw, 1947
Lectureship Fund ................ .
Millard Tydings Prize Fund .......... .
Daniel E. Weigle and Jessie N. Weigle
Memorial Fund ............... .
Richard D. and Mary Weigle Fund ................... .
Charles R. and Nancy Zimmerman, 1929 .. .
186,309
$1,551,961
Loss on sale of securities ............ .
19,868
219,181
547,525
19,868
405,490
547,525
$ 249,334
$1,801,295
($1,171i,475)
$5,223,358
Total endowment .
($1,178,475)
$4,005,886
$9,229,244
SANTA FE ENDOWMENT FUNDS
June 30, 1980
Gift of Donor
TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENT
Nonna Fiske Day Fund .....
John and Faith' Meem Fund
$ .500,000
46,468
$ 546,468
SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENTS
150,000
200,000
12,500
25,000
1,875
40,000
51,573
7,000
.50,000
19,356
492
Helen and Everett Jones Fund .
Nonna Fiske Day Fund ...... .
Readers Digest Foundation Fund
Evelyn Mitchell Memorial Fund .
. .......... .
Nina Otero Warren Memorial Fund.
C. Michael Paul Fund . . . .
. ............................. .
Thorne Foundation Fund .
Henry Austin Fund
Lapides Fund .......... .
General Scholarship Fund
Graduate Institute Fund . . . ........................ .
$ 557,796
LIBRARY ENDOWMENTS
50,975
1,118
217,149
l, 150
2,000
800
1,350
1,000
54,026
Margaret Bridwell Bowdle Fund.
Emlen Davies Fund ...
Norma Fiske Day Fund ...... .
Angeline Eaton Memorial Fund
Nina S. Garson Memorial Fund ...
Duane L. Peterson Memoria! Fund ..
Richard D. Weigle Fund ............ .
Victor Zuckerkandl Memorial Fund..
. ........................ ..
Memorial, Honor, and Life Membership Funds
$ 329,568
OTHER ENDOWMENTS
2,500
6,219
4,500
OTHER ENDOWMENTS
Hertha S. and Jesse L. Adams Concert Fund
Philip L. Alger, 1912 Fund ... .
Henry Austin Memorial Fund .... .
Philo Sherman Bennett Prize Fund
George A. Bingley Memorial Fund
Scott Buchanan Memorial Fund ................ .
Helen C. and George Davidson, Jr., 1916 Fund .. .
The Dunning Memorial Fund ...... .
Fund for Tomorrow Lectureship ... .
Floyd Hayden Prize Fund ............... .
Robert Maynard Hutchins Memorial Fund ..... .
Joseph H. Hazen Foundation Lectureship Fund.
William R. Kenan, Jr., Fund ............ .
John S. Kieffer Memorial Prize Fund .... .
Lapides Fund ......... .
Maid Compensation Fund . . . .. . . . . .. .
. ........... .
Monterey Mackey Memorial Fund .... .
Emily Boyce Mackubin Fund ....... .
Victor Zuckerkandl Memorial Fund.
Alumrii Endowment . .
. ................. .
General Endowment .
$
78
3,000
25
!,037
1,500
50,b51
1,300
1,141
8,881
35,000
3,341
1,250
_2,535
1,86.5
1,000
13,228
10,000
2,500
117,083
2,038
85,831
Bromwell Ault, Sr., Memorial ...
Henry Austin Poetry Fund.
Barr-Buchanan Fund . . . . . . . . . .
. ............. .
Fletcher Catron Memorial Fund
Margo Dawn Gerber Prize Fund ................ .
Elizabeth R. and Alvin C. Graves Memorial Fund .
Margaret Milliken Hatch Fund ..
Prank Patania Memorial Fund
Junior Prize Fund ................... .
Winfield Townley Scott Memorial Fund
E. I. "Tommy" Thompson Memorial Fund.
Millard E. Tydings Prize Fund .
Marion Beeson Wasson Fund ..... .
Clara B. and Luther A. Weigle Fund
Jessie N. and Daniel E. Weigle Fund ...... .
Richard D. and Mary Weigle Retirement Fund
Weigle Senior Prize Essay Fund
Other Funds
$ 340,181
FOUNDATION ENDOWMENTS
$
47.994
3,600
$
Los Alamos Ranch School Fund ..
Other Foundation Endowment Funds
51.594
574
Gain on sale of securities ..
Total endowment funds
$1,826,181
13
�The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Non-profit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Permit No. 66
Lutherville, Md.
�
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St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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President's Report
Presidents
The College
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Text
THE
ST. JOHN'S RE\' w
St. John's Coli ge
~
•
Annapolis, Maryland-:-Santa Fe, New Mexico
.-;-I
'
I
\.(
-r-
(
January, 1980
'
��THE COLLEGE:
Volume XXXI
January, 1980
Number2
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
For Progress, by Raymond Aron
1
Prodigal Father (a narrative), by Charles G. Bell
9
The Birth of a Literary Language, by Giuliano Bonfante
16
On the Discovery of Deductive Science, by Curtis A. Wilson
21
Life Beyond the Reach of Hope, by Philipp P. Fehl
32
Kant's Imperative, by Eva Brann
40
Boyle, Galileo, and Manifest Experience, by Martin Tamny
46
Prometheus Unbound, by Thomas K. Simpson
55
Memorials for Simon Kaplan
64
Aristotle Gazing, by Michael Platt
68
Plato's Euthydemus, by Samuel Scolnicov
75
Between the Old and the New
Memories of John Dewey Days, by Sidney Hook
79
First Readings
Ancient Astronomy and Ptolemy's 'Crime',
by Curtis A. Wilson
Carrillo and the Communist Party in Spain,
by Gary Prevost
89
At Home and Abroad
Letter from Budapest and Pees, by Leo Raditsa
92
Notes
84
Inside back cover
�Editor: Leo Raditsa
Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant: Barbara J. Sisson
Consulting Editors: Eva Brann, Beate Ruhm
von Oppen, Curtis A. Wilson.
THE COLLEGE is published by the Office of
the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Richard D. Weigle, President, Edward G. Sparrow, Dean. Published twice yearly,
usually in July and January.
ISSN 0010-0862
Front cover: copy of a Galileo manuscript at
the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence.
©1980, St. John's College. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
�For Progress
After the Fall of the Idols
Raymond Aron
Marx is not dead; in the secondary schools, in the lycees, even
in the universities, he remains very much alive, an inexhaustible
mine of quotations, concepts, and dogmas, an almost inevitable
reference, if not an undisputed master. In England, sociologists
have never read and discussed him so much. Althusser has disciples, almost a school there. He enjoys the same popularity in the
United States. I open the june 29 issue of the New York Review
of Books; I come across a remarkable article, "Inescapable
Marx," by Robert L. Heilbroner, dedicated to an impressive list
of books on Marx, his life, his theories of history and revolution,
his heritage, and the meaning of his thought today- not to mention a magazine entitled, Marxist Perspectives, which reminds me
of the collection of the 30's, In the Light of Marxism.
Much of this work amounts to Marxology, rather than Marxism, although the majority of Marxists, even members of the
Communist party, justify their position through an interpretation of the master. What distinguishes the "new philosophers" is
the simultaneous condemnation of Marx, Gulag, and the Soviet
Union (even if they also have to condemn capitalism and socialism
at the same time). A fraction of the high- or presumably highlevel Parisian intelligentsia, today as yesterday, does not distin-
Raymond Aron's latest book, In Defense of Decadent Europe, has recently appeared in English (Regnery/Gateway). He writes a valuable
weekly column of political commentary in L'Express. He is one of the
sponsors of the important new quarterly, published in France, Commentaire, where this article first appeared in the Autumn of 1978.
guish between l\!Iarx and the Soviet Union with an inverted
accent of value. The approach of hell is replacing the hope of
paradise.
Alexis de Tocqueville had foreseen that the superficial agitation of democratic society would not spare intellectual life. Paris
is the capital of fashionable ideas, no less than fashion. Gurus are
revered for a few years or months, make their rounds and then
move on. The new gurus who kill the gods of yesterday are not
fundamentally different from the gurus of the 50's or 60's.
Whether one discovers a structuralist Marx or excommunicates
the philosophers of German idealism by dint of collages of quotations amounts to the same thing in practice. The style changes,
the talent varies; sometimes the good news-the 1977 vintage
guaranteed-reaches the general public and the international
weeklies; later the s_ect returns to the obscurity from which the
press had snatched it.
Does the present moment-the death of l\!Iarx by and for "the
princes of intelligence" -have a different historical significance
from the preceding ones, the quarrelsome association between
the existentialists and the communists, the Camus-SartreMerleau-Ponty debates, the rise of Louis Althusser and his
decline, the Maoists in Paris? I hesitate to answer. The books
that reveal the truth of the day do not seem to me, as works of
thought, superior to -those of the recent past. Quite the opposite.
But I do not trust my judgemerit, because of my probable bias in
favor of the men of my generation.
Moreover, it matters little. What interests me is that a prolonged phase of economic crisis coincides, not with a revival of
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Marxism, but, at least in appearance, with a completely opposite
reaction. The delayed recognition, under the influence of Solzhenitsyn, of Soviet reality has provoked a sort of total rejection in
some people, not only of Marx, Marxism, and the Soviet Union,
but of the master thinkers of modern civilization. The ambition
of philosophers to change the world by interpreting it is becoming the primal sin, and, since its source was historical materialism, we find these young people ready to charge intellectuals and
their optimism with all the crimes of the century, from the
slaughters at Verdun to Gulag-a word emptied of meaning by
misuse. Even the Bastille of Louis XIV is baptized "Gulag."
Radiant socialism in opposition to sordid capitalism? There is
no longer any question of it: both of them, avatars of the same
capital, would show two barely different faces of the same barbarism. Let us read a few lines from the book that enjoyed remarkable success:
It is therefore meaningless to "criticize" the idea of
progress. It is also meaningless to attack its "illusions."
And it is meaningless again to set up other mechanisms
and other real processes in opposition to it. We must
believe in progress, believe in its infinite power, and
grant it all the credit it asks for. But we must simply denounce it as a reactionary mechanism which is leading
the world to catastrophe. We have to say what it says,
see the world as it does, record the signs of its devastation wherever it rules. And it is precisely for that reason
that we must discredit it, and only in that sense that it
must be analyzed, as a uniform and linear progression
toward evil. No, the world is not wandering nor lost in
meanders of possibility. It is heading straight for uniformity, the shallows, the mean. And in order to protest
against that, now, for the first time, we must proclaim
ourselves antiprogressive. 1
This sort of prophecy defies the old practice, dear to French
education, of the explication de texte. Progress, I suppose, designates economic development, more or less identified with science, technology, and industrialization. Has this progress
become reactionary? How? Why? Is it a one-way road to Evil?
What Evil? Is it leading the world to catastrophe? What catastrophe? The catastrophe foreseen by the Club of Rome? ls it
producing uniformity, levelling, and mediocrity? Levelling or
mediocrity? There is no longer any choice or hope. Progress, like
Marxism, leads inexorably to catastrophe, but, in distinction to
Marxism, it promises no after-catastrophe.
To this abdication before a mysterious and pitiless destiny, I
still prefer the optimism of the rationalists of the recent past.
The eloquent and naiVe voices that irritated me so much a half
century ago are recovering some freshness for me:
The history of human industry is rightly the history of
civilization and vice versa. The propagation and discovery of the industrial arts both was and still is fundamental progress. It permitted a happier and happier life
for ever greater masses over ever vaster territories. It
was the industrial arts, through the development of
2
ideas and societies, that made possible the development of reason, sensibility, and wilL It was the industrial arts that made modern man the most perfect of
animals. The industrial arts are the Prometheus of ancient drama. Keeping them in mind, let us read the
magnificent verses of Aeschylus and let us say that it
was the industrial arts that made men out of those weak
ants that haunted dark caves, out of those children who
did not see what they saw, did not understand what
they heard, and who, throughout their lives, blurred
their images with the phantoms of their dreams ... Beyond any doubt, it will be the industrial arts that will
save humanity from the moral and material crisis in
which it is struggling. Science and industry are superior
to fate rather than subject to it. They are the third God
that is putting an end to the gods, to the tyrants of
heaven and earth ... 2
As soon as I left the sheltered 1itt1~ world of the university, I
collided with the calamity of the Germans, their nationalistic
delirium. I revolted against the faith of these men of good will; I
no longer shared their confidence in the capacity of science to
save humanity from its moral and material crisis. To reflect on
the course of human history is to become conscious of the
human condition,. of an incoherent world, torn by conflicts
among classes, nations, and ideologies. A dramatic condition that
forbids immoderate hopes but does not justify resignation.
Forty years ago, I meditated on history in the shadow of the
Great Depression, my glance turned toward World War II,
whose warning symptoms only the blind did not perceive. Today
I am writing in the shadow of an economic crisis, completely different from that of the 30's. The "undiscoverable" war, the war
of Superpowers, remains improbable. Ever since the cultural
revolt of the 30's, however, modern civilization in its entirety has
been on trial. If socialism is no better than capitalism, where
does the blame fall if not on science, progress, technology, and,
indeed, economic development? An accusation as old as the
accused: Rousseau against the Encyclopedists; the counterrevolutionaries against the Enlightenment and the Revolution; Nietzsche against the petty bourgeoisie or socialism. Was it with the
Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, or in 1789, at the time
of the French Revolution, that the West took the fatal turn? I
leave to others this historical trial and its verdict.
Today there is no longer any point in unmasking Marxist mystifications. It is nihilism, the opposite of the Marxism of yesterday, one has to denounce today. The death of Marxism or the
defeat of the left threaten to carry off hope as well. As early as
twenty years ago, Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote that Marxism
was not one philosophy of history among others, but historical
Reason itself-which he condemned along with Marxism. A generation later, the same line of argument goes even further. The
failure of Marxism would reveal modern civilization in its entirety as irresistible progress toward Evil. We who remain faithful
to democracy, science, and liberalism, let us accept the challenge.
Let us have no polemics, but begin to examine our consciences.
Let us think back to the years immediately following the War.
No one raised his voice against growth or industrialization, either
�January, 1980
on the left or the right. The left blamed the Malthusianism of
French bosses. Statisticians compared the number of persons
nourished by the French peasant and by the American farmer.
For years, the Soviet growth rate challenged West Europeans.
Ordinarily more clairvoyant, many economists foresaw the imminent lowering of the iron curtain by Westerners themselves,
incapable of bearing the comparison between the lot of the
workers in France and that of the liberated proletarians to the
East.
If the French economy had not kept pace in the race, or if it
had progressed in the manner of Great Britain~that is, half as
fast as the German Federal Republic-the French, in their humiliation, would again, as they did in 1938, denounce the inefficiency of capitalism and capitalists. After the War, we had no
other choice than to give up forever or to renew our old structures through science, technology, or industry.
A nation that was one of the greatest in Europe, and which
still desires to maintain its rank in the world, had to submit to the
imperatives of work and productivity. (Let us say progress if
others prefer the word.) Are we to call this kind of progress "reaction"? Quite evidently, it does not lead us backwards, it leads us
toward a society without precedent~a society that no one is
forced to prefer to those of the past. But toward which societies
of the past are we to turn our glances and regrets?
Those who knew the France of 1938 do not miss it: the condition of the worker was incomparably harsher, and peasant life
was narrower and more painful; only the children of the bourgeoisie and a few hundred or thousand scholarship-holders had
access to secondary and higher education; the establishment
jealously guarded its powers and privileges; more closed in on itself than ever, France was unaware of the universe and feared
the future, Germany, and war.
Do we wish to go back farther, to the France of the peasants
who elected Napoleon III by plebiscite? Or had those French_men, eighty percent of whom lived still in the countryside or little towns, already been wounded by "progress/' because the
intellectuals believed in the Enlightenment, and because individuals no longer accepted, as a decree of God or nature, their
place in society or the established order? I do not believe that
those who call progress "reaction" go so far as to eliminate, in
their nostalgia, the equality of individuals before the law, the citizenship of all, as formal as it may be, and, with them, the liberties that were baptized the rights of man.
Promethean ambition and the rights of man (or universal citizenship) have nothing in common, one will probably object.
Logically, the objection is valid. The will to become master and
possessor of nature in no way explains the participation of all in
the government of the city and the respect for individuals. But,
historically, these two movements of ideas and events are interrelated. Learned men are eroding the prestige of men of quality
or birth. Certainly, Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed or foresaw
the corruption of morals by the arts and sciences; citizens as he
conceived them, poor and virtuous, do not resemble those of today, producers, consumers, taxpayers, and television viewers.
The Encyclopedists and Saint-Simonians both applauded the
future, our present, of which they had a presentiment. Rousseau
detested it in advance; he liked the Ancien Regime no better.
Civil liberties, in an austere city~a dream on the edge of the historically possible.
I would not, however, say that progress, as it is unfolding,
leaves no way out. If we suppose that progress embraces "science, technology, and economic development," it is absurd to
decree it "a one-way road to Evil." If, in their recovery from ideology, these philosophers will no longer permit the sacrifice of
the humble to the constructions of the master thinkers, why do
they forget that the science that produced the bombs and nuclear centers also eliminated epidemics and, for the majority of
mankind, famine?
Goats have devastated the terrain of civilizations more often
than pollution. And knowledge has a greater chance of arresting
the spread of the desert in the Sahel than prayers to the gods and
invectives against science. I am ashamed of these remarks, worthy of Mr. Homais, but those who beat their mea culpa on the
chests of others and replace their delirium of yesterday with
another, opposite in kind, arouse my bile from time to time.
There is no good, in history, that does not include a share of evil.
The least costly and most effective investments are perhaps
those of hygiene. They save millions of lives; they do not assure
the means of living decently. Teaching every child to read and
write does not suffice to elevate him to culture. Are we to prefer
the illiterate to the semi-cultivated? Are we to prefer the peasant
who, a century ago, hardly left his village, to the agricultural producer of today who drives a tractor, knows the world through television, and whose daughters desire an urban style of living?
Understand me well: I take the quarrel with industrial society
seriously, whether it comes from the Club of Rome (shortage of
energy, nonrenewable resources, and pollution) or from thinkers
who fear the deterioration of man or of the quality of life. Serious questions ca1l for inquiries and answers. What I am attacking
is cheap pessimism, historical fatalism, and "irresistible progress
toward Evil."
Toward what "evil" is "progress" leading us? War, totalitarianism, concentration camps, mediocrity, or egalitarianism? The
wars of the nineteenth century were bloodier than most wars of
the past, but, at the same time, they have left fewer traces from a
material standpoint. In 1920, Spanish influenza wiped out the
lives of about ten million people, as many as the war. The voids
were rapidly filled and no population was bled as that of Germany during the Thirty Years' War (reduced by half). Perhaps, in
terms of percentage of population, losses in combat have risen in
the twentieth century. Some estimate at a million the number of
Algerian victims between 1955 and 1962. The Algerian people
today exceed fifteen miilion. At the time of the conquest, Algeria
numbered two or three million souls. Must we weep for the dead
of the conquest and the liberation? Yes. Must we imagine what
Algeria would be today if the French had not conquered it in the
preceding century? That would be an exercise in counterfactual
history, devoid of meaning. No one can answer. How can we
compare the evils inflicted to the benefits disseminated, even
involuntarily?
Wars always assume the form of the societies from which they
emanate. Weapons depend on industry; military organization
depends both on social organization and on weapons. In 1914,
universal suffrage was in accord with conscription; weapons, still
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relatively simple, permitted the mobilization of millions of combatants. The growing cost of arms now tends to reduce the number of combatants. Some of them, the pilots, need gunner-mates.
We are free to prefer other military institutions, for example,
those of the Ancien Regime, with the recruitment of officers
from the nobility, and of simple soldiers from the lowest classes
of society. If we condemn war on moral grounds, we must condemn it also when politico-technological circumstances limit its
ravages.
War, the settling of conflicts among political entities by force,
is not an invention of modern civilization. Democracy, nationalism, technology, and science make possible the mobilization of
millions of men, the manufacture of tens of thousands of cannons, and wars of peoples and of propaganda. But the same
capacity to produce and act in common permits the reconstruction of material ruins in a few years. Let us compare the Western
Europe of 1955-ten years after the end of the Third Reichwith that of 1935; aside from the concentration camps, tombs,
and the massacre of the innocents, the Europeans of the West
found themselves freer, less divided, and more prosperous than
twenty years earlier.
A materialistic and cynical reckoning? I agree. Each person is
"unique and irreplaceable." How many Menuhins perished at
Auschwitz before revealing their genius? How many Cavailles or
Lautmans whose deaths deprived humanity of the works they
bore within them? Who can forget? Who can forgive? But
neither history nor the species, judging from the experience of
centuries, cares about individuals. As for peoples, the decline in
the birth rate threatens them with extinction more than warwith the exception of the holocaust, which is without example.
Conquerors have more than once run their swords through hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, but never was
the extermination of a human group conceived cold-bloodedly,
never organized and executed so methodically, and, I dare say,
so rationally.
Are we to incriminate rationality, because it can be made to
serve life and death indiscriminately? Similar methods of organization apply to the movement of armored divisions and of
drivers on vacation, to concentration camps and to the camps of
the Club Mediterrane. No, rational organization does not bear
its soul within itself. In a famous lecture, at the 1965 Congress in
Heidelberg, to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the
birth of Max Weber, Herbert Marcuse denc:unced the distinction between formal and substantial rationality, or more precisely, the incompatibility between the two. He denounced "the
neutrality of technical reason with regard to all external affirmations of substantial values."
Marcuse imagines the reconciliation of formal and substantial
rationality in automated production, which would liberate man
from socially necessary but dehumanizing work. Until today, he
admits, Max Weber has had the last word. The rational organization of production does not, as such, determine its goals: private
or public, production serves ends imposed upon it from without.
And rational bureaucracy risks being subjected to the irrationality of a charismatic leader.
According to Marcuse's criticism, Max Weber had at the outset assumed private enterprise and the market, along with das
4
Gehiiuse der GehOrigkeit, that is, the edifice of power or the servitude of the majority. The experiments with public enterprises
and planning have all crystallized das Gehiiuse der GehOrigkeit. It
is therefore, Marcuse argues, necessary to imagine enterprises
that would remain efficient without the separation of labor and
management, or even to imagine automation that would combine formal and substantial rationality without submitting it to
political, and therefore, often irrational, will.
Herbert Marcuse's polemic against Weberian rationality,
which was acclaimed in 1965, reminds us of the debates of the
Weimar Republic. Capitalism or socialism, privately- or publiclyowned property, the market or planning: these antitheses set the
terms of debate and discussion at that time. But now the demystification of Soviet reality strips the old notion of the nationalization of the means of production of its charms. Utopia has to be
sought at the farthest reaches of progress in a technology that is
liberating in its own right-and even then data processing occasions nightmares as well as rosy dreams.
The case against rationalism turns -easily into the case against
totalitarianism. Do not the means of communication figure
among the conditions indispensable to totalitarianism? Only
those regimes deserve to be called totalitarian in which a single
party holds a monopoly of activity or political legitimacy-a
party that professes an ideology, that the State decrees a
political, indeed, a human, truth. The Soviet regime comes
closest to the perfect example, because, in the name of atheism
and materialism, it combats the faith of the Church, the Christian religion: The claim of the State-party to possess the supreme
truth explains the monopolization of the means of communication. The State ideology must not, in the main, be called into
question.
Does such a regime require radio and television? The founders
of the Soviet State, Lenin and his companions, had neither at
their disposal. Marxist-Leninist fanaticism, the kind that animated Lenin and his companions, characterizes certain features
of our civilization; it presupposes the weakening of transcendent
faith, the de-Christianization of the masses; perhaps the pseudoscience of Marxism borrows its authority from the cult of true
science. Even Hitler's racism covered itself in scientific ragged
finery. In this sense, these totalitarian ideologies have some affinity with modern civilization. They caricature science at the
same time that they mimic religion or the Church. Toynbee defined Marxism more than once as a Christian heresy: the proletariat will save humanity; the most disinherited will rise to the
top for the good of all; the way of the cross-"the class
struggle" -will end with the reconciliation of men with one
another and with nature. Alain Besan~on interprets Leninism as
a gnosis, with the perfect ones (the party) confident in their election and in the abyss between them and the others, between the
corrupt world and the world that will emerge from the revolution.
I doubt that any century has been spared the superstitions and
sects that swarm around Churches. The media did perhaps facilitate Hitler's rise to power; Lenin owes his victory above all to
the war. Totalitarian ideologies (I am thinking of Marxism and its
derivatives) mingle half-truths, vestiges of Christianity, ancestral
dreams, and scraps of science and science-fiction. As for the
techniques of communication, they do not seem to me to be
�January, 1980
either the origin or the supporting pillar of totalitarian regimes
(as is often said). Of course, they provide power with additional
instruments; they make it possible to mislead crowds, to broadcast the litanies of the State's truth or Philippics against the eternal, forever elusive enemy, capitalism or imperialism, to the last
village, and into the brush. But before television or the computer, the police, denunciations, and bureaucracies functioned
with pen and paper.
I even wonder, at the risk of paradox, whether State propaganda does not bring saturation and, indeed, provoke rejection.
Hitler did succeed in casting a spell over crowds with his
voice-but not Stalin, hidden in the Kremlin and in his cunning.
After the attack of the Nazi armies, when he finally brought himself to address the country, he appealed to perennial sentiments,
to patriotism, to the defense of Holy Russia. In the countries of
Eastern Europe, not even governments dare to use stiff, emotionless language any longer. In Hungary, the scaffolding,
mounted in ten years by the conquerors and their servants, collapsed in a few days in the year 1956, and free of a carapace of
lies the Hungarians came to themselves. In an even more spectacular, non-violent manner, in Czechoslovakia twelve years
later, the truth broke out in a storm. In spite of all technical
means, the State had not convinced its subjects. Perhaps
millions of men had lived in two universes at the same time, the
universe of the official truth that they heard, and the universe of
the other truth that they harbored deep inside themselves without even knowing it.
Was the totalitarian outcome in some way predetermined by
the intellectual origins of modernity? If the answer is, "yes," the
Enlightenment, liberalism, capitalism, socialism-those moments
of thought and of Western history-would form a necessary sequence and the verdict is final. I myself wrote the following
words that I have not yet retracted:
The philosophy of the Enlightenment, liberalism,
naturally, if not necessarily, ends in socialism, indeed,
in Marxism, just as rivers end in the sea.
Words probably dictated to me by Montesquieu's formula: monarchies tend toward despotism. In appearance, nothing is more
contrary than the thought of the Enlightenment, of Montesquieu or of Voltaire, to socialism or Marxism. By what route did
Spengler, and many others with him, embrace, in a single historical movement, the Enlightenment, liberalism, and socialism?
Simplified to the point of risking caricature, the path is traced as
follows.
The philosophy of the Enlightenment exalts reason and even
individual reason; it destroys the authority of the Church and, at
the same time, the authority of religion, although belief in a
clock-god or a vague theism survives. It is an optimistic philoso.
phy, which preaches the education of the human race, roots out
superstitions, and places trust in science. The liberalism Of the
economists accords with the inspiration of the Enlightenment;
the image of an organic society-each of the states or persons occupying an appropriate position, and together forming a coherent and hierarchical whole-gives way to a completely different
image: a society constantly agitated by thousands and thousands
of individuals in pursuit of their interests, wealth, and advancement. These individuals no longer obey higher authority,
whether God or legitimate or semi-sacralized powers.
Once man has rejected masters and gods, once all possess the
same right to happiness, socialism dogs liberalism. For a long
time biological analogies (the survival of the fittest) or the invisible hand (from the clash of egoisms emerges what is best for all)
justified economic liberalism. For a long time political liberalism
sought justification in the efficacy of dialogue: by exchanging
vpinions, by bringing together their knowledge, citizens would
arrive at the truth or right decision. But the argument continues:
what remains of the utilitarian or rationalist foundation of liberalism? Free competition among individuals does not assure the
rise of the fittest: the starting points are too unequal. Qualities
that favor success are not those that inspire respect and obedience. In commercial or electoral competition, victory does not of
itself turn the victor into un homme de qualiti-unless public
opinion considers success a criterion of worth. Once success is
taken to be arbitrary or unfair the less favored demand not so
much the right to the pursuit of happiness as the guarantee of a
piece of it.
Political debates focus more and more on the national product
and its distribution. The richer the societies, the more bitter the
struggle for the standard of living. Can our civilization rise above
the alternative of commerce or tyranny? Or is it actually in the
throes of both extremes which it falsely sets in opposition? The
commercial and monetary order of the West means also multinational corporations, tentacular bureaucracies. "Prometheus
putting an end to the tyrants of heaven and earth?" Yes,
perhaps, but perhaps also:
No one knows who will live in this edifice; whether at
the end of this transformation entirely new prophets
will emerge; whether the old ideas and ideals of yesterday will regain new vigor, or whether, on the contrary, a
mechanical petrification, adorned in its shrivelled importance, will prevail. In that case, for the "last men" in
this evolution of culture, the following words would become true: soulless specialists, heartless men of pleasure; this nothingness boasts of reaching a summit of
humanity never yet attained. (M. Weber)
Let us abandon these distant perspectives. Promethean and
organized, our societies continue to contain das Gehause der
Geh6rigkeit, the structure of material production and bureau·
cracy in which more than eighty percent of the population-the
wage-earners-spend their working hours. Outside of this edifice, do not our societies resemble Tocqueville's vision: family
cells, exclusively concerned with their little affairs, reading the
same books, watching the same programs on television, unaware
of, and yet imitating, each other.
I see a countless crowd of similar and equal men on
treadmills, in pursuit of vulgar little pleasures with
which they fill their souls. Each man, aloof, is like a
stranger to the destinies of all the others: his own children and personal friends constitute the whole human
5
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race for him; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is
next to them but does not see them; he touches them
but does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for
himself alone, and, if he still has a family, we can at
least say that he no longer has a country.
How many times this text has been cited as proof of the prescience ofTocqueville! Let us translate into sociological jargon: the
nuclear family, the narrow horizon of the petty bourgeois,
egoism set up as the norm of life, in short, a hardened humanity,
a swarm of mediocre men, each concerned with himself and unaware of his nothingness. What does their number matter, since
all are cut on the same model; how much they resemble one
another without knowing it! The same scorn came of Nietzsche's
pen a few decades later. Less blinded by hatred of capitalism
than Marx, too aristocratic to love the democracy of the common
man, both Tocqueville and Nietzsche saw the rise of the class
whose numbers economic progress was to inflate. Let us call this
class the petty bourgeoisie, which ranges from the most skilled
workers to average white-collar employees. The peasantry is disappearing; what remains of it is being transformed into wheat
and meat producers~into machine operators. Are we to condemn this society without precedent, whose urban style reaches
into what used to be called the country, this society that is striving to teach all its children to read and write? In the name of
what are we to condemn it?
Did the peasants that Balzac described represent a human
type superior to our farmers who know how to draw up the budget of their enterprises and how to respond to the market? Are
white-collar workers victims of progress? Can we call progress
"reaction" when this progress reduces the number of blue-collar
employees; when it multiplies middle-class wage-earners, those
who deal with figures and symbols, and reduces the number of
paid laborers, those who grapple with matter? What right do we
have to scorn these ordinary men? Who has the right to scorn
them? Faced with these kinds of questions, I feel paralyzed. One
man says the great majority will, of course, be mediocre. Another
says the few will save humanity. He goes on: I prefer the wisdom
of the illiterate peasant to the semi-cultivated, who catch, in
passing, at bits of ideas, at the favorite phrases of journalists, and
discuss the world's future.
Civilizations have always had an aristocracy of thought, if not
of position. Today, it is the scholars, the authentic scholars, who
constitute, along with the great artists, the aristocracy of the aristocracy. But these aristocrats do not offer a model of how to be a
man that other men would try to imitate. As for those surrounded
by the the clamour of popularity and considered the priviledged
par excellence (from singers, movie actors, or writers, to corporation executives or government ministers), they permit millions of
fans vicariously to live prestigious lives, but they themselves have
almost nothing in common, and do not teach the same lesson.
I wonder whether Tocqueville's two affirmations are self-evident. In what way do men of our societies resemble one another
more today than yesterday? Do they know less about their fellow
men, their neighbors, and their country than our ancestors? Universal education has suppressed dialects. The customs of cities
are spreading to the countryside, and city-dwellers are buying
6
the old furniture that villagers replace with Grand Rapids. This
sort of homogeneity of language, maintained by the diffusion of
the same words, of a few fashionable ideas, hides entirely different existences. Did villagers once differ from one another more
than office workers do today? Were the habitues of the court of
Louis XIV, as we know them from Saint Simon, better than the
courtiers of the President of the Republic or the president of a
corporation?
Close-knit families, near their peasant origins and still far from
the fashionable neighbourhoods, differ from their parents or
grandparents less in the narrowness of their life styles than in
their ambition. The curse (or merit) of modern civilization is to
shake the rules of tradition and the inheritance of trade and status, to make parents aware of social competition, of the opportunity for some to rise and of the risk that others will fall. Even if
social mobility is less than our ideals suggest, it dominates the
thought and conduct of families. It creates the obsession for education and, at the same time, it makes disappointments inevitable. Not all the young can win in either the genetic or the social
lottery.
Endowed with consciousness, and therefore aware of their interests, have these atoms lost their country, and are they, as Tocqueville foresaw, concerned exclusively with their well-being?
Certainly, our civilization tends toward a utilitarian or hedonistic
morality. Who still evokes the categorical imperative? To the
superficial observer, everything in our Western societies happens as if the distribution of the national income constituted the
only stake in political quarrels, as if citizens no longer conceived
any goal other than the improvement of their standard of living.
This impression rests on well-founded il1usion and, to some extent, on reality. But the "materialism" of democratic politics is
the result of the separation of religion from the state, and of
ideology from the State. Lay or neutral, the State does not give
citizens reasons for living. It leaves to individuals the freedom or
the burden of finding them of themselves. The partisan State,
whether Soviet or Nazi, broadcasts a message, sometimes
arouses enthusiasm and devotion, presents itself as "idealistic",
and indulges in murder. Is there less authentic "idealism" in the
commercial societies of the West than in the tyrannical societies
of the East? Solzhenitsyn detests slovenliness, sexual licence, the
noise and vulgarity of public life or of the press in the West. But
he does not confuse these evils with Evil par excellence, namely,
the absence of law and the institutional lie of totalitarianism. He
does not announce, as predestined, the triumph of Evil, and the
fall of the West.
I belong to the school of thought that Solzhenitsyn calls ra·
tiona! humanism, and says has failed. This rationalism does not
imply certain of the intellectual or moral errors that Solzhenitsyn
attributes to it. Montesquieu maintains a balance between the
Eurocentrism of the Enlightenment and historicism. Science's
universal vocation is not incompatible with a diversity of cultures. It is the leaders of the Third World who desire the spread
of Western technology throughout the entire planet. Who refuses the instruments of power and wealth? Now become the
Far West, Japan will perhaps better safeguard her identity than
other countries whose masters would like to separate machines
from the thought which makes them possible.
�January, 1980
In what sense can we decree the failure of rational humanism?
The rationalist is not unaware of the animal impulses in man,
and of the passions of man in society. The rationalist has long
since abandoned the illusion that men, alone or in groups, are
reasonable. He bets on the education of humanity, even if he is
not sure he will win his wager.
The West has ventured further than any other civilization in
pursuit of the moral and intellectual freedom of the individuala freedom in apparent contradiction with the structure of organizations, das Gehiiuse der GehOrigkeit. There is a growing discordance between the culture of the West and its economic
institutions.
Pitilessly, Solzhenitsyn notes the symptoms of weakness of the
West, and finds their profound cause to be the eradication of
faith. "In itself, the turning point of the Renaissance was ineluctable; the Middle Ages had exhausted its possibilities, the despotic crushing of the physical nature of man to the benefit of his
spiritual nature had become unbearable. But, this time, we leapt
from the Spirit to matter, in a disproportionate and exaggerated
manner."
The history of Europe, since the Renaissance, is full of adventures and battles that only a simplistic Marxist would reduce to
the passion for profit or the love of gold. Religious wars and wars
of the French Revolution witness more to men's attachment to
truth as they see it than to an exclusive concern for money and
comfort. In the final analysis, Solzhenitsyn reproaches the West
for its loss of Christian faith, where Tocqueville, after the fall of
the Ancien Regime, saw and foresaw societies stirred more and
more by the envious and universal pursuit of well-being.
To reproach a person or a society for having lost faith seems as
ridiculous to me as calling a believer "still a prisoner of superstitions." The rationalist of today is not unaware of the limits of scientific knowledge. He neither scorns nor condemns those who
populate the world beyond knowledge with the images of their
faith or the ideas of their intelligence. He does, however, condemn ideologies with totalistic pretensions, ideologies which are
but poor replicas of religions that once gave a civilization a deep
unity. The clericalism that had to be fought yesterday now
assumes the form of the partisan State or of State ideology. At
least initially, the totalizing ideology calls for devotion, sacrifices,
and self-abnegation on the part of the faithful or militants. Are
the young people who followed Hitler-young people that I
knew in 1931-and even a number of today's communists to be
called idealists?
Neither the historian nor the philosopher, and even less the
futurologist, possess the answer to the questions that the West
and, in particular, Western Europe, is asking itself. Can a civilization prosPer without a faith shared by the great majority? Will individuals tolerate the moral desert from which they are suffering
and for which they reproach "society," that elusive entity that is
blamed fot everything, including the crimes individuals commit?
Many intellectuals are enraged by capital punishment, though
murderers, thugs or political commissars once did, and sometimes still do, leave them indifferent or indulgent. In the name of
ideas, terrorists usurp the right to execute-a right the state is no
longer supposed to exercise. The liberal applauds the desacralization of the State; he is uneasy at the contempt displayed for
laws, for he knows that without laws men cannot live together
peaceably. He is disturbed too at the contradictions of the loudest, roughest and most widely-listened-to speakers of the market
place-speakers who expose power and attack it wherever it still
exists and who, at the same time, advocate the immunity of the
individual who is to be sole master of himself. At what point of
the disintegration of the state will men be held accountable for
their acts?
Certainly, individuals are moulded by their families, their
social milieu, by chance encounters, and by the schools they
happen to attend. Regardless of the strength or weakness of the
state, individuals interiorize the norms of the city and draw a
winning or losing number at the social lottery. In Western societies, they still, nevertheless, have the opportunity to fashion their
characters in the benignity of liberty, and not at the risk of liberty
or life in defiance of official truth.
The European nations haVe populated the New World; they
have spread their science and their weapons of production and
destruction across five continents, but have not, for all that, converted the other civilizations to their true gods. (Europe has had
greater success with its idols.) In one sense, Europeans have exhausted the historical mission which Auguste Comte or Karl
Marx, in a different sense, entrusted to them at the beginning of
the last century. Because the passions that set them against one
another almost destroyed them, they even doubt the- words for
which their grandfathers endured four years of martyrdom in
1914-18. Today, Gulag, the emblem oftotal tyranny in the name
of total liberation, weighs, a remorse and a threat, on Communist parties (at least in Western Europe) and paralyzes mass ideological movements of the left or the right. The memory of Hitler
and the persistence of Soviet totalitarianism do not protect the
European West from its own demons: workers revolt against the
rationalization of production, against the uprooting of communities that are the victims of economic growth, and against the disintegration of society under an invading State. Better than any
other, the Italian people can survive without a State and in a
kind of anarchy. But for the Italian people also, there are limits
to patience-limits that France or Germany would rapidly reach.
With their mission accomplished (on the assumption that this
teleological or quasi-theological language is acceptable), have the
European nations no longer anything to say or do? Are they condemned to vegetate in the mediocrity of comfort and of the middle class, slaves of progress-reaction? Drawn into themselves,
half-united for the purpose of prosperity but incapable of acting
together on the world-stage, will they submit willingly or be
forced to submit to an Empire which utilizes science but
disowns its inspiration? An Empire at once despotic and ideocratic that will at all costs combine scientific method in arms
production with a pseudo-scientific superstition in order to perpetuate an omnipotent oligarchy?
In spite of everything, "progress" leaves us with one hope.
Despotism requires an educated work force: scientists, engineers. It cannot close its borders to radio and television, to the
images coming from the world outside. To be sure, data processing will permit control of the entire population, individual by individual-it makes possible the nightmare of 1984. But Europe's
progress has not been solely or essentially that of machines; it
7
�The College
has also been the progress of science and individuals. Thanks to
Prometheanism, a growing portion of the population is gaining
access to the opportunities of liberty.
The pressure of technical rationalization and the religious
desert incite and renew revolts. Are Europeans perhaps better
immunized against the totalitarian temptation than others?
More and more isolated within a league of States that scorn the
rights of man as we conceive them, in action and often in
thought, Europeans appear weak in the face of the totalitarian
empire. But they retain a strength that Solzhenitsyn underestimates, the strength of liberalism, tried and vigorous, which rests
on no foundation other than the conscience of the individual.
Perhaps Spengler is right, and pitiless decadence is striking at
formless and godless urban and commercial civilizations. Per~
haps Toynbee is right to hope for a Christian and even a Catholic revival to rescue the West from the final fall toward which it is
moving. The forecasts of historians are no more certain than the
8
prophecies of sooth-sayers. Science and economic prosperity
have given societies the means to enlarge their circle of citizens.
The ideas of the Enlightenment that stem from the Greco-Christian tradition are still alive in the theory of the rights of man. They
recover their lustre and youth in the experience of revolutions.
Reason "will not put an end to the tyrants of heaven and
earth", but her struggle with them will endure as long as a
strange animal species aspiring to humanity.
translated by Violet M_ Horvath
I. B. H. Levy, Barbarism With A Human Face, New York 1979, 130.
2. Marcel Mauss
�Prodigal Father
Charles G. Bell
She was sitting on the sidewalk scrunched up in a doorway, on
a pad with a pale sick-looking boy. Her father walked up and
stood smiling. Carla, pasty and undernourished, a belly bloated
by hunger or enlarged liver, her feet bare, the rest of her draped
in loud-colored gypsy rags, Carla looked up with a blankness that
might have been his-she the ghost to be recognized. Then light
broke; she sprang up and fell on his shoulder, hugging him,
laughing and weeping, while she said to the pale companion: "I
told you about my Daddy? Well this is my Daddy, my real
Daddy."
Had he overplayed the self-interest of her responses? She had
never been much at letters, and it was often need that had got
her over the hump, most of all after she threw herself from marriage into Fillmore and drugs; though by that time the pleas from
jail or lawyer's office for bail or fees used to come by phone, collect. But there had been scrawls not so aimed, "love-you's" on
yellow or blue torn notepaper postmarked from crashpads of her
wandering.
Right now anyway she expected nothing of him, support,
salvation or a fix; and what was he on pilgrimage for but to quit
his proprietary perch, sit down on her spitty pavement, and ask
about Berkeley and the Street?
"You should've been here last night. I was on that corner
when about two hundred people in Halloween costumes came
running, with a blow-torch and wire cutters, yelling about the
People's Park. We all stormed up and they cut the fence and the
police came with helmets and gas masks. They came down the
street real slow; but the people had brought their children; so
they didn't gas them this time. Because last time they gassed
everybody."
A sleep-dancing powerful Black leaned in: "You see anybody
wants anything, let me know."
"Sure will, honey. Meet my Daddy."
Far off it had seemed plots of the murderous Mafia. Was this
the eye ofthe storm? "That's my true love Zulu. Only man ever
got me to a climax, and he never could do it but once."
"A fate worse than death," the Delta judge her grandfather
would have moralized, though he had taken a black sharecropper's case to the Supreme Court and been vexed by Time's irreverence: "Independent as a hog on ice." Gone, that First
A tutor at St. John's in Santa Fe, Charles Bell has published two books
of poetry (Songs for A New America [1953], and Delta Return [1956]), and
two novels (The Ma"ied Land [1962], and The Half Gods [1968]).
Kingdom of the Law. Second Kingdom seeker for these Holy
Ghost children of the Third (the smoky flame on their forehead
and gabbling in tongues), to her black hustler? fixer? lover?, he
smiled.
"Come on, I'll show you the People's Park."
She led him past the bulletin board by the old bookstore, the
apocalyptic pictures under glass: the occupied city, bayonet
men, gas-spraying aeroplanes, a slugged priest, guards firing
buckshot into the watching crowd, James Rector, observer, fatally
wounded on a roof. Goodby hometown U.S.A.
Down a cross street she guided him to the galvanized barrier
around the new blacktop with the window-dressing basketball
goal. Communal hopes gone underground. "So that's the People's Park."
"And it was so beautiful. All flowers and sandboxes, and over
here a huge deep pit with an ever-burning giant fire and a
cauldron with soups boiling. I slept there every night. The cops
would come and ask everybody how old they were. But I've been
here so long they know me. They wave and say 'Hi, Frankie, how
are you today?' And I say 'Fine, I'm fine. How are you?' I can't
help liking them. Behind their masks and guns they're people."
A big black dog wagged over, Park exile too. "Hi Bucky!" She
gave him a pat. A police car sirened past. "And there was our
rock-and-roll band, and a huge hole, man, with big fish; And
there we had dug the underground palace and the caves, all
kinds of groovy things for children, nothing like it anywhere in
the world. And they came and destroyed it." Her voice a Gospel
whisper: The blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be
forgiven unto men.
"What's that up there?" He was looking at the top of one of
the eight-foot steel fenceposts. "There's an old rag up there.
Above you. Somebody's thrown a quilt on top of the fencepost."
She raised her eyes from the ground. "That's mine," she cried.
She was climbing the forbidden fence, her toes in the two-inch
lattice.
"Hey, let me go up." Faustian fathers vaulting since childhood
into forbidden places.
But she had got the tousled comfort off the pole. It was ripped
and charred from some Halloween prank of the night before.
He dropped to the ground. She flung it to him in a cloud of
dust, all in his face, eyes, hair. "Wooh! It's dirty. I say, that bed·
ding's in bad shape."
A louder siren. "Here they come. Get on down."
She lowered her toes slowly, musing: "Somebody's burnt it. I
wonder who did that?"
9
�The College
"How' d they get it? Where do you keep it?" The siren was on
them. He wheeled. Ambulance. "Well, that one's on a mercy
call."
She was turning the rag over: "At least I have a blanket now.
Because I was sleeping in those bushes." She pointed across the
street to some fir trees in the yard of a proper white gingerbread
establishment of ancient widow or maiden aunt. "Right over
there, behind that hedge, there's a little cubby hole. I used this
for my pillow and mattress, it was so torn up. And I had a sleeping bag. They were gone last night. But it's weird I'd find the
q1.1ilt on the fence of the People's Park."
:'You mean you live under those bushes? Wouldn't it be better
up in the hills?" He waved at the green amphitheater above the
town. Though her friend Chuck Abrams had told him not an
hour ago, in the crowded restaurant of the Street's most broken
block, of finding her on the pavement, black and blue, robbed in
those hills by goons she had guided there.
Her voice betrayed none of that. "Oh, it's beautiful. Real big
trees and woods and everything. In the summer I used to meet
people on the Street and they'd say 'You know any place I can
stay? I can't sleep on the street, I'd get arrested.' I'd say, 'Don't
you worry; I got a sleeping bag and five blankets' -cause that's
what I had, and now all I've got is just one blanket; so I'd take
everybody up and show them the woods and say 'Whenever you
need to sleep, you come up here'" She waved. "It's right at the
top of this street, and you can see the whole Bay area.''
She was bundling up her quilt. ''I'm going to put this back in
the cubby hole."
"It's too burnt," he said. And then, "Watch your step on the
road."
She thrust through the hedge, her walk a writ of ownership.
He had read them Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn almost from infancy, and now she was Huck Finn herself- though how everything had hardened, Jim, the raft, the river.
The old bard squinted at the sun, weatherwise. Carla ran back
through a traffic thickening all the time. "Why don't we go up
there," he said, "before it clouds up." But they hadn't gone half
a block when she turned toward the Street.
Her face was sad, as when in the pain of adolescence she had
made up those blues that still stirred in the soul. "Have you got a
guitar? I want to hear you play while I'm here."
In the loss of everything, even her regret had a kind of dreaming joy: "I had a guitar. I had a beautiful guitar. Until they closed
the Park and I went back on junk."
Her backward gaze reminded him of Chuck, waiting in the
restaurant. "Maybe we ought to go back and eat with Chuck, like
I told him, and then go up the hill."
The loophole she was after: "Maybe I better go back myself
and make some money.''
"How you gonna make money?"
"Sell some dope.''
"How much money you need?"
Silence, then low: "Twelve dollars.''
"How often?"
"Not too often.''
He glanced at the misty hills. What a plucky walker she had
been when she could hardly toddle up the rocky hill past Prince·
10
ton, when he would cyde them out, Octavia in the basket and
Carla behind, and the day he swerved and chewed her foot in
the spokes, and she, responding to the shock in his face, stifled
her sobs. Such hopelessness took him. "So you can't. You'd pass
out with the shudders before you ever got to the top."
Challenge reached her always: "I wouldn't at all. I'm strong."
"If you need your dope, you'd go nuts."
"I haven't had it all day. It's only a desire."
A desire. Well, he had desires too-as to climb those hills. "Is it
possible, from where we are, just to walk up there?"
"Uh huh.''
"Then let's go right now, and let Chuck and lunch wait."
They worked through jammed cars. What were they all there
for? That ambulance a while back, sirens. He asked a guy and a
girl in a red convertible, "What's up?" Like bug-eyed fish they
stared at anybody who didn't know that- they tricked in blazers
and pennants like cheerleaders- "The football game!''
Crowd-happy boosters. As in the 'thirties at Virginia, when it
was the style of Our Town; but he had turned his back, heading
for the trails of the Ragged Mountains; so they started in earnest
up the sloping street, he pushing the pace, his blood and lungs
set for the Rockies, looking at her.
Whatever her cough meant, she must be undernourished, her
liver bad, diabetes maybe; but she never lagged or complained,
pegged on, panting, chattering.
A glance at her opened past and future. She had always been
strange and overcharged, smiling, kissing, pouting, sobbing. The
time she came crying: "0 Momma, Momma, Tavia hurt myself.''-"Tell her you're sorry, Tavia;" it was she who ran to Octavia, blubbering, hugging: "I'm sorry, Tavia; I'm sorry." Her
future: his mother in the bad time, out the long west street of the
alien city, praying, smiling, dying in the old folks home for
strangers. He reached for Carla's hand, and there was another
link; he should have brought the nail clippers, as when he went
to the nursing home.
"Don't those nails break and bother you?"
"They never bother me. Only when I play guitar I have to cut
them.''
A measure how long. "But to be hooked and have to trap other
people to make your fix ... "
She found a bright side: "It was worse at first, when I was
hooked bad and prostituting myself." (When clap fulfilled the
curse of Lear: Dry up in her the organs of increase.) "But I won't
do those things any more.''
"If you want to beg and bum like God's folk in old Russia-all
right, but not this slavery."
"I know. It's so dumb, when I'd stayed off for years."
-My God: their worst encounters in those rosy years, when
he brought her from California to escape the psychiatrist who
had got her unhooked, but by using amphetamines, and she
flung off the plane in her rags with her tousled sleeping bag and
into his arms, desperately needing a father's rescue, but too far
gone for him to know how to give it-off heroin, but onto anything that would dodge the accommodations of the real, convinced reality was nothing but a congeries of psychic trips.
She had lived for him in a solitude no actual voice could penetrate, from which she emerged only to the extent of going to the
�January, 1980
dentist to have her teeth pulled, the front pair neglect and drugs
had rotted, and a little bridge made, of which he, crass materialist insisted: "That bridge is not imaginary; it belongs to the world
in which the bill will come and I will pay, the world you countenance by wearing it."
It was then, when he had told her, as teacher and father of the
younger two, that drugs were out either at the school or at home,
that she went straight to the former and returned to the latter
ripped on marijuana; and in protective rage he almost called the
cops, but shook her instead (as his grandmother and father used
to say) until her teeth rattled (those costly new pearls); then
phoned friends in Baltimore and gave her a chance at therapy
for herself and work with handicapped kids at John's Hopkins
hospital; but she opted for New York, wandering on her own,
and as he had promised not to hold her if she came, he put her
on the bus and paid her fare_
And then the phone call, remember, the loving child-rapture:
"0 Daddy! I've run into a friend named Merrie from Reed College and I'm staying at her aunt's beautiful penthouse high over
Greenwich Village, and they're so nice to me and let me do
whatever I please. And thanks, Daddy, for the teeth; I'm all
pretty again."
He growling at so much easy transport and that she hadn't
buckled down for the cure, could hardly keep from telling her,
"Wait and see. You're going to bust it. I give you three days in
that lovely penthouse doing what you please, before you get
thrown out."
And sure enough, next thing he heard she was on the streets;
so he phoned his writer friend Hanrahan, who lent her the key to
his downtown studio. But it wasn't many days before the landlady called the police_ Carla must have run an open house for
Village bums, and the place was a shambles. When the cops
came the rest had vamoosed, but not Carla; she was on hand,
and she tangled with the sergeant as if he were the offender
against law and order- would have mauled him too, if they
hadn't ganged up and toted her off to Bellevue.
Which was where the paternal dignity saw her next-a horrible madhouse, she more frenzied then ever, though he took her
an old guitar and talked with a young doctor there, so moved by
her case he wanted to take her home for special care; but next
day she climbed out somehow and split.
So if that was when she was off heroin, God help her now she
was on. {Though she seemed to have grown more sane-or was it
the old prodigal who had come round?)
She stooped for an orange somebody had dropped in the gutter. There was a jingle on the road. "Hey,'' he said, "you're dropping your money." He bent down.
She brooded: "What might save me is my music. Because
when I take heroin I don't feel music. I don't feel anything
but-Arrgh!" She hawked up a Iunger. "I'll have to go to the
hospital, but on my own ... " She took the quarters, nickels, pennies as carelessly as she had thrown her college money into junk.
Her being, alien to him before, was clearing and opening, a sad
human light shed on what had seemed dark and sinister.
"What about that time you used to phone from New Yark in
the middle of the night-weren't you on something then? After
Bellevue; and those big parties roaring and banging. I thought
you were with the Mafia or lord knows what."
"No, no. It wasn't a very big party, and I hate the Mafia with
all my heart." It came back over her, and her voice sang, as when
she had phoned and he thought she was stoned: "It was a juke
box, in our very house. I tried to tell you on the telephone: 'And
we have a juke box in our own house.' But you wouldn't listen."
He had been so sure that tie was criminal. "But what about
the telephone? You said they had a private line the company
didn't know about-not a credit card, you said- and I thought,
that must be the gangster ring to end all rings."
She laughed until she coughed. "They were Yippies, college
Yippies (I told you they were going to the Convention); they
knew about phones, so they plugged into the main line-I don't
know how-and we didn't have to pay."
"What about that sailor who phoned afterward, said he'd
found you beat up on a roof, and now his ship had to sail, and
would I help send you west? 'That phone-pluggin gang has
dumped her,' I thought, 'and it's a wonder she's not dead.'"
"But that didn't have anything to do with it. That was after I
came back from Boston, and I met this black guy, a biker, on the
street, when I was high. 'Hey you're awful handsome,' I told
him. So I went off and fornicated with him, and I must have
made him mad, because he said something and I hit him and he
hit me; and that was how !lost those teeth you paid for. But the
Yippies were kind and gentle."
"Pity you didn't stay with the Yippie~ instead of taking up
with some motorbiker."
"I only met him one evening; and I was lousy drunk on wine
and cough syrup, which'll kill you a lot faster than heroin.''
It must have hit them both together, that was in the time she
had talked of being free: When I had stayed off for years.
"I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't like the way I feel
naturally, so I want to drink something, or take something to feel
better. Dumb, I guess.''
They were panting now, the steepest part of the hill, her bare
feet padding the road, the hiss of his corduroys. Her face had
come full cycle-the mask of gloom. "You got a steep hill here,"
he said.
She raised her eyes to the green crown. "A little more and you
see the whole Bay Area."
"You won't see it today; it's too misty.''
She looked back for the first time. "Aw, that's a pity."
But you could see plenty: the smoky bowl, the Bay and industrial cesspool, surrounding hills slashed with highways, powerlines; and everywhere through old forested slopes bulldozed bare
earth for new apartment towns, shopping centers. The derogate
body of the landscape as a nude. And Carla in her rags, with her
lost teeth and fish-belly skin: I bruised myself. .. calcined myself. .. no reason . .. the ways of my love.
"Where's the ocean?" he said.
"Ocean? You don't see any ocean. It's behind that big range
across the Bay."
The paved road ended among lanes and private estates. She
led him down a path to the left which plunged into a little valley
dense with leafy evergreens_ The steep earth gave; she slipped.
They caught each other, leaning on the sheer slope. "We're
sliding."
ll
�The College
To a little stream tumbling clear over sedimental black dirt,
where a rope hung from an arching limb. "I made that for some
children. They had the rope, so I climbed up and tied it where
they could swing over the stream."
He looked at the dark foliage. "Must be live oaks."
"Oaks?"
He crushed a leaf. "No, you're right. Myrtle, I guess. Smell."
Their voices in the grove hushed and low.
Hers: "Like some sort of menthol, only super-good. But where
are the Eucalyptus?"
He saw them up the other bank, soaring over the myrtle, mottled green and pale. "There."
She was searching the ground. "No, no. Here." She pressed
through a tangle of briars-bare feet and legs.
"Look out for the thorns."
She never noticed. Bending she scooped up a handful of
scented balls. "These are what really smell good." She poured a
bunch in his pocket. "Take some to Cheryl"~the youngest, on
whom they had dreaded Carla's sway.
Up the other slope she drew him to a burrow under a peelybarked Eucalyptus-Melusinda in the hollow tree. "I dug it
out," she said. "It's my Hobbit Hole. It was good to sleep here;
but some boys found it. .. A real Hobbit Hole."
It might have served a rabbit or a fox, but a person couldn't
have squeezed in out of the rain. "You'd need a roof on it
though."
"The roots of the tree would be the roof," she said. "But I'd
have to dig it way down. A gigantic cave." The throaty ecstasy of
those elf-tales she would make up when she was tiny for her sisters. "But those kids were sure to tell."
He was searching her black eyes under the tow-headed mop of
hair for a way: "You like living like that? You like it better than
trying to go back? To get in the deal?''
Mounted on Pegasus. "Ugh! I wouldn't want to get in the
deal."
He pulled the noose: "You're in the deal anyway, like it or
not."
It brought her down. "That's what's creepy about it. I'm right
in the deal. It's what everybody tells me. And six months ago
they couldn't have said it, because I was a new child. And now
I'm working for them again, police and junkies and capitalists."
(The birds that wait on the rhinoceros; the little fish that clean
the shark's teeth.) "If you oppose a power," he said, "you have to
keep clear of it."
She sat down, her feet in the Hobbit Hole. "The only thing
that strung met out again was the power."
"You mean when they broke up the Park?"
"When I saw how the messed up majority that run things can
send armies with guns and gas to destroy what's beautiful, it
freaked me out. And Dona kept coming to my basement some
people had left me and shooting up and asking me if I didn't
want some (because when you're clean, just the scraping of a wet
spoon makes you more loaded than they are), and I thought I'll
forget those robots. And I didn't care any more, and since then
I've never stopped. And it's really sad. But if I could have stayed
off three years after being hooked the way I was, it can't be that
hard; it's just a matter of going and doing it."
12
"Let's go, while I'm here. It's not like Cheryl in Washington.
You're no child."
"I don't know. Maybe it's easier for a child. At least a child
thinks there's something to live for."
She brought out the orange. "Want some?"
"Better you."
"Well, I'm thirsty when I sweat so much." She peeled it into
the Hobbit Hole.
"You've got to go through with it. And then clear out. You
said your friend Dona helped hook you. You can't stay with
these street people and not fall back."
"The Street People," she pronounced with a mouth full of orange, "are very pure and very beautiful. They smoke grass and
they take a little acid, and they play a lot of music. Those are my
people. The Junkies," she spat seeds, "are another thing. They
live in apartments and have money; they come on motor bikes
and hustle all the time."
A hopeful separation for pilgrims of the Third Kingdom, but it
seemed to leave no place for her. "Then who hustles the acid the
Street People use? Don't you hustle?"
"It's not real. You think what I'm selling when I make my
money ... ? I don't sell no dope. I sell you a vitamin pill and get
your money. I'm a burn artist."
He stared. "No wonder the police don't bother you: embezzling from the poor to pay the Mafia to pay them."
She got up, her coat trailing. The money fell out, this time into
the pit. Hardly worth picking up, in a life of loss, but he bent
down. She knelt too, and he saw a patch of scab and blood on
her scalp. "What's that? You've knocked a hole in your head
somehow.''
"When I shoot smack I claw my head." She fingered it: "Oh!
What a horrible hole."
The sky was Overcast as they walked down. She went to the
Street and he to his room ...
He had given his lecture in that University which had closed
the Park. It was louring dusk. Carla had hustled and got her fix, a
"cotton" of somebody's leavings. Queened in a blue evening
dress of cast-off voluminous sateen, she led him down the fierce
Street: Hell's Angels gunning motors, Krishnas dancing in eternal drugless joy, a pack of acid Red Rockets howling, beating a
mailbox like a tom· tom. They settled down on her usual packing
case in shadowed talk~ something about her worst years and a
"beautiful old Spade man" ~back when he was wondering if his
duty was to come with his father's pistol and track her down.
Gentle tall Dona, of the brown eyes and hair, swayed in, unstrung in every joint, a carton of orange juice loosely held: "I
bought a big bottle cause I thought you'd like some, and you
weren't even here, you bum." She had been Carla's excuse lately
for stalling on the cure: "I'll go as soon as I can persuade my girl
friend; she's worse strung out than I am."
That anyway seemed a statement of fact.
If he was going to do anything before he left, there was only
tomorrow. "Why don't we get a meal and you come to my place?
There's an extra room and a mattress. In the morning Abe
Shahn can drive us to Mendocino. Dona can come tonight or
meet us in the morning, whichever she wants."
Euphoric Carla noted the address, hugged him, said she would
�January, 1980
come later for a sleep before the ride.
In the upstairs apartment lent him through friends, furniture
unpacked, crates and boxes, on a mattress thrown on the floor he
tossed as formerly-after the day's appeasement the night's
remorse, and the debate of "Why remorse? You tried righteous·
ness. Time you found another way." Hours he listened for Carla,
while police sirens of the beleaguered city screamed. Before
dawn he gave up, dozed into the day. At ten he met Abe and
Chuck in the restaurant. Ride available but not the rider. It was
two when she appeared, hung over as on other days, but in
proud pace beside the sagging Dona.
And Dona, for a wonder, had decided it was time for a cure.
She had been nagging Carla all morning to get her started. Now
the others pitched in, with Dona saying hurry before her shot
wore off.
"But I don't want to be taken; I want to go on my own."
"You mean your own feet? We're only offering you a ride."
No. Zulu had mentioned an underground movie about the
People's Park showing at six. Outcry had named Carla the
star-in fact:
"Sqper-star Frankie, mad toothless Frankie, pregnant ragamuffin of the streets, infant of a civilization which murders its
children because they dare to dance and sing, because they dare
to plant a flower in a muddy parking lot." Carla had promised to
get Zulu in free.
Dona turned on the klaxon: "I've got to get up there. I'm going out of my mind, see. If I wait around here I'll get the fuckin
creeps." She snivelled off, Carla calling after her, calm as a
church and as crazy: "It'll be over by seven, and we'll go then."
Zulu never showed. That didn't upset Carla. Only the ticket
girl's refusing her a pass. Sugar Daddy was about to pay. "Pay for
yourself; I'm the star." She strode past the booth, down the dark
aisle, flung herself into a seat. He took his place beside her.
The Park blossomed around them. The daughter he had come
to help yielded to the other on the screen, in her fanciful robes,
singing, playing with the children, swinging upside down from
the crossbar, sleeping with the rest by the ever-burning fire.
"The joy and anguish of being human at any cost." Her moody
guitar yields to the closing voice: "On this flowering square block
of sanity in civilization's asphalt madness, the bitter, the disgusted, the sick and wretched still huddle together; and if the
National Guard of Fear should peek through the bushes, they
will still find us smiling, still saying: 'Let a thousand parks
bloom!'"
They left arm in arm, her scarred and shell-pitted landscape
wrapped as in a softening shower of tears. And there stood the
great-bearded Abe in front of his M.G.; Dona hove into sight
through the crowd, swinging an almost finished bottle of the ~
grim white port. "Afraid of the creeps," she murmured; "no fix
since morning." Chuck hurried from the bookstore to wave
goodbye, looking in at Carla with a deserted smile. Even speedblasted black-genius Zulu floated up from somewhere: "Don't
worry about Mendocino, honey; it's a good trip."
And now they had slipped north past rowed flashes of mercury
and neon; the city fell behind; they were headed for redwood
country under moonlight, a long night drive.
Nestled in the back, under the hum of car and road, the two
could talk together, hearing only from the front a murmur of indistinct words. A time for memories. Should he keep them
smiling?
The summer at Long Beach Island, a circle of kids crouched
around a wave-stranded jellyfish as big as your head, incited by
whom but three-year Carla, crying: "Poker-man, poker-man,
poker all the way"-jabbing it with their fingers until it melts
into a muck of foam. Or night in the little cottage, the scribe
with a lamp in the low garret wording his Earth Epic, to the
rhythm of Carla's chants from below, and the smothered laughs
of the others.
No-what was needed were the dark secrets of her life: the
year she slashed her wrists and was sent back East.
"Before you came to us that year, your mother wrote-!
wasn't supposed to tell, but we're past that now-about a
rape-a child you bore dead, and buried?"
Her voice a duck's back that sheds the water of tears: "Yeah."
"You were a virgin until then?"
"No. That was the worst of it. The boy J' d really loved, took
me out there for the others, three guys; told me there was a party
and then pulled me into the loft.
"I didn't want the child. As it grew I kept hitting myself in the
stomach. I killed it. And only after it came I knew how much I
wanted it. I'd been in labor for about a week and never told anybody. And that night-! must have been in shock-! took it
down the bluff, ran all the way to the stream, and rolled that
huge stone over it-when they wanted to check, it took two men
to move it-and I ran all the way back up. I think I stayed in
shock a long time after."
"Why didn't you tell your mother?"
"I never could tell her anything. As if she lived in a dreamboth of us-different dreams."
"And then you came to us ... "
"You wrote that already," she said, "in that novel. 'The seed
you sowed in Sibyl's darkness.' I thought of it often when I was
hooked: is this what you wanted, what you prophesied?"
(As if to write were to spring the trap. No transmoral art; no
lives probed without effect. He was doing it still.)
"You remember the night the marine brought me home latethe one I ran off with the next day-and you scolded and said if I
kept on you'd have to send me back to IVIother-when it was
Mother who'd sent me to stay with you and Lucy."
(His eyes adjusting to the moonlight by the door, until her face
shows dim around the Maya cenote pools he had known in Sibyl
also and been divorced from: "Two loves have I, of comfort and
despair" -as if to banish from the new Married Land those eyes
of Eve in the garden, serpent-lured to forbidden fruit.)
"You remember what I told you? That since I was a child I
hadn't been loved. Since you went off and left me with Mother,
and now she had sent me to you, and you were threatening to
send me back to her-as if I didn't have a horne.''
"You didn't make it easy. Lucy's mother dying in the next
room; and to nm off with a Marine you didn't even know, and
have the police phoning in the night ...
"So you went back to your mother, and your allergy got
worse."
"I was clawing myself all the time, raw and burning."
13
�The College
(Yet how her music had grown, as if only anguish could pluck
those strings.) "So we found that ranch school, in the desert."
Abe had stopped at a park-in; they rode on washing down
clam-burgers: Dona with white port, Carla with red, Hollowdaddy with a tenth of Zinfandel. Carla lowered the bottle, wiped
her mouth with her hand and let fly at the Arizona school: "Terrible place. Coldest man I've ever seen. No more feeling than a
snake. All he wanted was money ...
"Then I met Carlos, and we were in love. I came back to you
for the summer, to be near his boot-camp. You were on our side
then, persuaded his parents."
(Her only hope; and who could have reasoned her out of it?)
"So we married, and my skin cleared up. Even now it's clear,
except when I shoot smack I claw my hair, freaky."
Thus the miracle of housekeeping Carla, in the graduate student bungalow squeaking to each other like lovely mice-three
years, until the plunge into the Berkeley ferment of Free
Speech, action, four-letter words, Carla like a tuned receiver, vibrating it: she began to slip off nights, weekends, then out of
sight altogether, her husband hunting in whatever locales rumor
guided him to, sometimes with a loaded gun, whether for her or
the locale unclear; until her married sister Octavia joined in the
search (unarmed), and they found her in Fillmore with what Octavia called a horrible old Black Man, her contact, Carla burnt
out on heroin, with the whoring and stealing to earn twohundred bucks a day (besides gonorrhea), lucid only a few hours
after her shot, then down again in a sickness from which she surfaced next day not remembering what had occurred-days blotting into weeks, months, a year, under the chronic agony of
trying to get her off: state hospitals, Synanon, which she had
tried twice and left, calling it a fake scene.
And now her other sister Monique flew in from mystical pursuits in India, fresh to the conquest of soul over matter, took
Carla to the house of a Zen friend, seemed to be succeeding, until Carla swallowed an overdose of sleeping pills, and Monique,
finding no pulse, panicked. So it was the emergency hospital,
Carla coming to, sobbing "I'm a junkie; I'm a junkie. Help me!"
The cloudy seer wrapped her in his arms, as if body's hold
might resist the downward power. "Like a nightmare, it must be, ·
that time, that horrible Black Man Octavia begged and threatened and got nowhere with." Instinct should have told him it
would be the one she had spoken of before: "A beautiful old
Spade man."
"Octavia didn't know anything about him."
Had she none of the antibodies of blame? "But he was the one
you were giving two hundred a day for dope, and prostituting
yourself?"
"Uh-huh. But he helped me get off, when he knew I really
wanted to. He'd let me come to his house and he'd shoot up in
front of me, but he wouldn't give me any; and I got to where I
could watch him without going crazy for it. He used to say: 'Yau
look beautiful now, and your soul is beautiful; but when you're
strung out, you're mean and ugly.'"
The front seat talk had died down. The car-noise privacy of
the back yielded to Dona's chime-in: "It's true, you change completely." (She, who had offered the ruinous cottons.)
The terrible thought hammering itself home, that for Carla, as
!4
for society maybe, the only safety would be in righteous and repressive rage: to shun all touch of that past, never go back, even
in mind to that ambiguous old Spade, but to indict him, hound
him, hang him; be moral, vindictive, bourgeois, forewarned. The
salutary hypocrisy of law, against the soul's range.
All the ride (and sipping port) she had grown more amenable,
hopeful, human. She who had been so stubborn against leaving
the Street, now nestled up to him like a child, her tousled head
on his cheek, saying how happy she was, how glad he'd taken her
away, that back there she had seen no future but dope and hustling, and now it seemed a delirium from which she might awake.
"That's why you've got to find a new life," he said, "get away
from that Street, not just heroin, but all those cough syrups and
acids ... "
Her voice had never been more open, more sure: "0, I love
acid. I'll always take acid. It saved my life. That's why I kicked
the first time. I took some acid when I was strung out and everything came clear."
The car threading the moonlit valley of giant redwoods, he
wondered why love and nature should fail to be enough. Though
he too sipped Zinfandel. ..
"I have to take acid to play really good music. At People's
Park, before I messed up again, my music was so beautiful, my
own kind of Mississippi blues. It flows in rivers, hardly out of me
at all. I feel guilty: people crowd up and ask for more; they think
it's me, but it's not. But heroin kills sex and love and music."
Standing on the hopeful verge of cure, she looked back on the
badlands of pain. "If I don't get dope enough, I wake up in
cramps, coughing and vomiting, with diarrhea and sick sweat;
and every morning chills, and the blankets wringing wet."
He groaning: "But what a price, my God, and not to be much
higher than soul and spring water will get you.''
"Right. For two years I'd wake up rejoicing, because I didn't
have to run out and get a shot. And the third year I forgot, can
you imagine? I could still wake up rejoicing; and I never did
when I was young. So there's some gain, if I could just keep it."
"The hardest thing to understand," he said, "is how you could
leave Carlos and your boys and go to that Spade in the first
place."
Though he knew what she would say: "jealousy."
"But you had run around yourself?"
"Only when he did. It's true I didn't know. But I felt it, like a
snake coiled round my throat. That was when I had an affair,
and then I found out what I had already known, that he'd done it
before. I wouldn't feel that way now. But I was so young. I didn't
know about jealousy."
" 'As cruel as the grave.' Your mother and I should have
taught you."
"If only I had married him later. Such a trivial thing-as he
told me, it meant nothing at all; yet to me it was doomsday.
That's my great sadness. It's what ruined my life. And there's
nothing I'd love more than to go back with him, but he's scared
and doesn't want me any more ... Though I will love him always,
and deep down he still loves me."
(And when there is nothing but ash ... the mill of grinding
wheels we have built and are setting the torch to, calcined
-would that ghost of love remain, a luminous lost inwardness?)
�January, 1980
They turned off the highway into the hospital drive-a lawn
of trees under the moon. Dona's siren whine filled the car: the
hospital fears they cultivated on the Street, of being penned in
vomiting convulsions; she couldn't stand it, she would go crazy;
while Carla said nonsense, they had come on their own; they
knew what the program was; everybody said it was a good trip.
At the office Abe went in. They saw him through the window
gesturing at the receptionist. Something must be wrong, and one
could guess what: they had come without papers, banking on appeal. In the dread, after so much buildup, of offering nothing but
return to the Street, the Old Guy went in too.
Abe's doctor friend had been sent for. He appeared, one of the
blessed Blacks. They would take them tonight as guests and
worry about legality tomorrow.
In the car the girls had almost lost heart. Now they were
brought in, but there was a long wait while the secretary filled
out forms. Ox-eyed Dona sat in a blue funk, no fix since morning, the wine wearing off, the red barbiturate she had gulped as
they waited outside not taking effect, the horror of prison coldturkey come on her; she reached a trembling hand in a graylipped mouth, caught one of her snaggly carious teeth, pulled
half of it out and dropped it into the metal waste-basket.
The doctor called her to the examining room-the routine
needle-scar check to confirm junky status. She had worried he
might not believe her, since she was using her fingers, where the
marks didn't show. Though as he would tell them, one had only
to pull up her sleeves to see why she was shooting under the fingernails: every vein blown with scar tissue.
Carla Was waiting alone, her father and Abe phoning Berkeley
for the neglected referrals. And now she, who had seemed
strong, heard a cry somewhere far off down the hospital corridors, and everything came flooding back, as from before birth,
the soul's claustrophobic fear of bolts, chains, cave-walls, an archetypal hell-dread enforced by years of bad jails and barred asylums (to have usurped a word of refuge for those thronging
snake-pits she had hardened in and escaped from).
The secret sharer entered to see her being change with her
face. She was levelling, as at an enemy, at the black doctor, her
friend. "Then I won't stay. I ask you a straight question and you
don't answer straight." A defiance known from his own youth,
against father, law, police, all canons of coercion and restraint,
most of all the army's absurd claim to brutalize his acts. But in
her case, wide of the mark.
Though the doctor's smile was vaguely equivocal: "Frankie, I
don't know how you listen. I said it's hard enough to get you in
anyway, that you're a guest here and you choose your own program. But it's a hospital and I'm the doctor, and I can't say
you're free to do whatever you please."
"Then it's a creepy bad place-a jail-and I won't be locked in
like a crook when I came on my own."
The wanderer's hand went out, groping. He could no more tell
than the blind what it would reach: the nestling daughter of the
car, the chemical body of rage. He touched her cheek. She shied,
his hand in league with tyranny and rape. He tried again, caressing. "Carla, love. Listen. Don't act crazy. You can see he's a fine
man. He's on our side. You know I love you. You think I would
leave you in a jail? But it's what you came for. A new start."
She moved toward the door, repeating under the Medusa
stare: "I put a straight question and he won't give a straight
answer." But softer. As in Gluck's taming of the infernal spirits.
So once again the Orphic lyre: "Carla. Remember: the hustling, always hustling, and sweats and sickness. You're no child.
Stay on and work with them. I'll get you a guitar. Think of your
music..Sad, to back out now."
She sank into the chair with a gesture of profound defeat.
Bending over, he kissed the red-chapped scales of her streetsleeping harried face. In her cloudy vault she did not stir. He
walked out tormented, as through all the years, with the first and
last denial: at the tree of life, the sword turned every way. He put
his hands to his father-aged face under a tumbling whiteness of
hair ...
And in four or five days or a week, when the methadone was
tapered off and she fled (redemption so rare, however clewed and
rainbowed with tears) and she hit the Street bleak under November rain; when Chuck would shelter her in the bookstore, the
drug scene spilling in, and as threatened before he would get the
sack, and the promised sleeping bag and guitar would have gone
the way of all Carla's possessions; when poor Dona would be
back shooting heroin into the veins under her tongue-it would
be easy to say "I told you so" -almost ashamed of hopeful sentiment, almost swayed by the law-and-order hardening, willy-nilly,
toward a police state and purgative euthanasia. Though all it
would have proved in the end was that a little love might go a little way.
So if a total love should offer itself in total sacrifice, it might
once more be written: " 'Come out of the man, thou unclean
spirit!' And they were amazed and said, 'What is this? With authority he commands the unclean spirits, and they obey him.' "
Even for Carla. Even for the earth she images.
15
�The Birth of a Literary Language
Giuliano Bonfante
Romanticism (already wonderfully anticipated in the eighteenth century by Giambattista Vico) held sway throughout the
nineteenth century and still exerts its influence in the twentieth;
unfortunately, as often happens, mostly with its more secondrate characteristics: fascination with madness, dreams, fantasy,
interest in science fiction and horror stories. Among its many
great accomplishments, Romanticism taught us how to study
history and the development of languages, i.e., historical linguistics. We owe it a great deal.
But no movement, no man can be complete or perfect. In its
disproportionate enthusiasm for the spontaneous, for all that
came from the people, for the "vOlkisch," the Romantic movement neglected, when it did not outright despise, "literary languages." It held literary languages to be artificial constructions
which arbitrarily troubled the natural flow of the people's unwritten speech. You can see this romantic attitude in the suspicion with which historical grammars handle so-called "learned"
words as distinct from words of spoken speech or of"direct tradition." (For example, words like the French chose, which made its
way into French from the Latin causa directly through spoken
speech, handed down for generations from father to son, in contrast to the French word cause, which also comes from the Latin
causa, but was introduced into the written language by medieval
or Renaissance scholars.) But great civilizations live in written
languages.
What is a Literary Language?
What is a literary language? How is a literary language born?
Incredibly, because of Romanticism's uneasiness with literary
languages, no one has studied this question.
l. When Americans and British use the commercial term,
An Indoeuropean linguist, Giuliano Bonfante concentrates on what
languages tell of history. His most recent works include I dialetti Indoeuropei, 1976, Latini e Germani in Italia, 1977, and Studii Romeni, 1973.
He left Italy in 1931 to teach in Spain and from 1939 to 1954 in the
United States at Princeton. Upon his return to Italy in 1954 he taught
first at Genoa and then until 1978 at Turin. He now lives in Rome.
This article represents a revised version of "Come nasce una lingua
letteria," published in Atti dell'Accademia dei Lincei, 1978.
16
"standard English," they mean the same thing as the Italians
who, following their aesthetic tendencies, call their national, official language a "literary language." Standard English, like any
"literary language," looks to its best authors for models. (In Italy,
Manzoni above all is the Bible for whoever desires to speak Italian well. In English, we look up correct usage in the Oxford
English Dictionary.) Standard English, and every literary language, follow stricter rules than dialects and spoken speech. For
instance, proper English usage will not allow, "I don't know
nothing about it," which can be heard on occasion. In Italian
you should not say as some do, incorrectly, "ci b dato illibro" instead of "glib dato illibro." Without clear rules, there can be no
such thing as literary language.
2. Literary languages exist, despite differences in usage, in geography, and even in nationality. The Spanish used in Spain and
South America is a single literary language, for example. So also
are British English and American-although a foolish nationalism on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, of the "pond" as the
Spaniards used to call it, would distinguish the two. There are
always grey areas in life: to deny the existence of any real "literary languages" because of slight differences means to deny the
existence of night and day because twilight intervenes. When we
speak of German, English, French, Italian, or Russian, we have a
clear idea of a language in mind; we know exactly what we mean.
To be "literary," a language must be written. There are, of
course, borderline cases, especially of languages that were once
literary, but which have since broken down into spoken languages or dialects: Provenc:;:al, "Folksmdl" (the spoken language
of the Norwegians), dimotike (contemporary spoken Greek),
Catalan, Basque, Sardinian, Venetian. The doge of Venice once
said to an ambassador reluctant to go to Turkey because he knew
no Turkish: "Va dal Gran Turco e parlighe venexian." (Go to the
Sultan and speak Venetian to him.) 1 He meant that even the Sultan would understand Venetian. There are also instances of
languages that had once little or no literary stature, but enjoy today the status of literary, national, and official languages: Gaelic,
Albanian, Lithuanian, Lettish, and many other languages of the
peoples within the Soviet Union.
Another borderline case is the famous lingua franca, derived
from Venetian, and spoken widely in commerce throughout the
Mediterranean until the last century. It was never written. The
�January, 1980
French troops that conquered Algiers in 1830 carried a little
booklet of instruction in lingua franca, which today is one of the
most valuable sources for that idiom. You only have to read the
end of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme to learn that lingua franca is
not French, as a well-known French scholar argued years ago.
Pidgin English-"pidgin" is the Chinese pronunciation of "business" -until recently widely spoken in the Far East, represents
another instance of a widely-spoken commercial language that
was never written.
As I have said, a literary language above all is written. Dialects,
instead, are usually spoken. When Sardinians, Calabrians, the
Piedmontese, or the people of Friuli have to write a letter to a
compatriot (a "paesano"), they do their best to write in Italian-an often very incorrect Italian. They resort to Italian when
they write, because no one has ever taught them to write the
dialect they speak among themselves.
Learning to write is difficult. Even a child who does not speak
a dialect learns at school to write a language somewhat different
from the one he is used to speaking. For instance, an American
schoolboy may learn to write he is not instead of he ain't, man instead of guy, father rather than daddy. Frequently, especially
when they speak dialect, children learn to write a language entirely different from the one they usually speak. For sixteen centuries the Basques spoke Basque but wrote in Latin; and then
they wrote in Spanish. Certainly already spoken in the time of
Julius Caesar, Basque did not come to be written down until the
sixteenth century.
3. A literary language-which is the way a civilization knows
itself and makes itself understood-has many more words than a
dialect. A dialect has, at most, some ten thousand words, words
necessary for the daily life of country folk. A literary language, in
contrast, numbers about sixty thousand words. F. Palazzi's Italian Dictionary (2nd edition, Milan 1957) contains roughly this
number. Webster's Dictionary of the American language boasts
five hundred fifty thousand words. But most of these are technical terms from architecture, chemistry, physics, mathematics,
astronomy, linguistics, and so on, terms used only by specialists.
Like Italian, "Standard" English in fact counts about sixty thousand words. When men who speak dialects come to cities, they
learn words from the literary language. In schools, teachers try
(or used to) above all to teach students new words.
D' Annunzio boasted he had used, in his works, forty thousand
words; Dante used seventeen thousand, Anatole France, four
thousand. To these we must add scientific and technical words
like bronchitis and carburetor, which anyone with an average
education knows, though they are more rarely used in literature.
D'Annunzio surely knew more than forty thousand words~and
Anatole France more than four thousand, but they consciously
limited themselves to this number in their writing.
In addition to being written, and having a greater number of
words, a literary language is usually much more widespread than
a dialect. Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, English, and Russian were written and spoken over large parts of the world. A literary language
also nearly always extends to foreign-speaking peoples who learn
it in school.
4. Lastly, a literary language, in contrast to a dialect, has a
written grammar with precise rules, elaborated by grammarians
and taught in schools. Someone who does not know these rules,
or violates them, suffers ridicule and contempt. He cannot obtain public (or, for that matter, private) employment. A person's
way of speech and the words he knows betray his social. standing,
as is shown beautifully in Shaw's Pygmalion. These grammatical
rules, which some take for mere prejudice, ·keep a language from
breaking down into dialects. They make it possible for an
Australian to understand an American, and so on. Dialects, in
contrast, with no fixed rules or written grammar, change rapidly
and within small areas. The dialect of Prato differs significantly
from the dialect in Florence, only a few miles away.
There are instances where a literary language is written but
not spoken. In German Switzerland, for instance, everyone
speaks SchwizertUtsch, which is the name for various closely related German dialects of Switzerland, but writes in literary German, bon allemand (the name implies that German dialects are
bad German). In Italian Switzerland farmers who speak the
Lombard dialect learn Italian in school, but they never speak it!
Attempts to fashion a new literary and official language to substitute, in a small area, for an already established language which
holds wider sway usually fail, because of the difficulty of singling
out a single dialect as the national and literary language. In
Switzerland the attempt to fashion a Swiss koine failed because
there was no way of choosing between the different dialects-between the speech of Berne and of Zurich. In the end
the official and literary language remained le bon allemand, das
gute deutsch: that is, literary German. The people in FaerOer
Islands attempted to fashion an official language to substitute for
Danish, but they could not agree on which FaerOrish dialect to
adopt. In 1977 the writer Gavino Ledda, in an interview after the
release of the film Padre padrone, based on his best-selling novel,
pointed out that it made no sense to speak of a "Sardinian language," when the people in the south of the island of Sardinia
could not understand those in the north. In Norway, since about
the beginning of the century, the attempt to substitute the indigenous spoken language, the Folksm.9.l, for the official Danish
language, failed for a different reason: the written language,
Danish, is the language of Ibsen and Bjornson as well as of all
modern Norwegian literature. You would expect to have more
success in instances where the language which is to substitute
for the official literary language differs entirely. But this was not
the case in the attempts to substitute Welsh for English, Breton
for French, Irish Gaelic for English, Basque for Spanish- all of
which failed.
There is a continuous borrowing between the literary and the
spoken language, whether this· is a dialect, as in Italy, or jargon,
which in the United States tends to take the place of dialects.
Usually the written language contributes more to the spoken language than it takes~ and the words it does take are of not much
practical use. When a trolley car conductor tells you, for example, that he has seen an "atomic blonde" (bionda atomica), he is
borrowing the Greek word "atom," which everybody understands, from the written literary language. Something similar occurs when we use technical terms like "gastritis" or "nephritis"
in spoken speech. They come from the written language where,
at first merely specialized terms, they gradually won themselves
a place.
17
�The College
PARADISO
II
Beatrice to Dante:
Dentro dal ciel de Ia divina pace,
si gira un corpo ne Ia cui virtute
l'esser di tutto suo contento giace.
Drawing by Sandra Botticelli
How is a Literary Language Born?
How is a literary language born? Someone once said that a literary language is a lucky dialect. There is much truth in this,
especially if we keep in mind that luck comes usually to the deserving. Among the European languages Italian was the first literary language of importance. How was Italian born? From the
Florentine dialect. But the Sicilians say, "The Tuscans robbed
our language." And there is much truth in this too.
In the thirteenth century, down to 1266, Sicilian poetry was
read and imitated, as Dante observed, throughout peninsular
Italy and beyond; in Genoa it was used by Percivalle Doria, in
Bologna by Guido Guinizelli. With the defeat of the Swabian
kings in 1266, Sicilian, which had been their principal court language, disappeared. By that time, however, Sicilian poetry had
been read and imitated by poets of the Dolce Stil Novo in Tuscany, including Dante. These poets read .Sicilian poetry in
'~tamed" manuscripts where the Sicilian had been "Tuscanized"
enough to make Dante imagine that the language he was inventing already existed.
All these poets incorporated many Sicilianisms in their poetry.
But it was Dante's greatness which gave his native Florentine
pre-eminence. After the publication of the Divine Comedy no
one doubted the superiority of Florentine, even though certain
dialects like Venetian continued as official languages for some
time after. (From 1500 on even Venetian ambassadors write their
accounts in excellent Tuscan.) In fact it was a Venetian, Pietro
Bembo, who gave the Italian language its definitive form.
From Dante onward all great non-Tuscan writers write in
Florentine. They strive to rid their language of all regional peculiarities. Ariosto wrote three versions of Orlando Furioso
before he succeeded in writing Tuscan quite well in the third.
18
Several writers (Alfier~ Foscolo, Manzoni) went to live for awhile
in Florence to perfect their language, "to rinse their clothes in
the Arno," as Manzoni said.
But how did Florentine turn into Italian? In the Divine Com·
edy Dante uses a great number of words unknown to the common people of Florence, unknown too to the tradesmen and the
aristocracy. At one stroke he enriches his native Florentine and
turns it into a full-blown literary language, capable of coping, as
it does in his poem, with physics, astronomy, psychology, theology, philosophy, history, and much other knowledge. Where
does he find these words?
Dante knew French and Provenc;al very well, but he avoids
them when he can. His new words come from Latin. He gives
these Latin words Florentine phonetic and morphological forms
and weaves them into the everyday language. The Italian literary
language is thus born. Before Dante it did not exist; after him it
exists. It is the child of a "lucky" dialect (Florentine) and of the
imitation of another literary language, in this instance Latin.
(Dante did not know Greek.) The case of one man creating a literary language is not rare-think of Mohammed and Luther.
A literary language, then, is born of a dialect through the imitation of one or more literary languages. Born on the lie de
France,2 French first drew from Latin, 3 and then after 1500 from
Italian, became a full-fledged literary and official language which
extended to the whole of France. At this time (1500-1600) Italy
exercised great influence in France, in music, the arts, literature,
navigation, war, gardening, court etiquette, in all that makes life
pleasant and refined, including war-"ed indite arti a raddolcir
Ia vita" (Carducci, "Alle Fonti del Clitunno'').'
Something similar happened with Spanish. There the "lucky"
dialect came from Madrid and Toledo. After absorbing, during
the Middle Ages, some words from Arabic, Provenyal, and
�January, 1980
French, 5 aU literary languages in their own right, Spanish
reached its classic form, in imitation of the Italian literary
language, in the seventeenth century. All this occurred under
the impact of the Spanish conquest of Italy, in the sixteenth century. Previously dedicated more to Mercury than to Minerva, as
a Spaniard observed -more to commerce than to the artsSpain was overwhelmed by Italian superiority in the arts and
sciences.6 In Horace's words:
Graecia capta ferum uictorem cepit et artes
intulit agresti Latio.
In the three centuries after 1066, French was the official language of England. It has left very deep traces in the English of today: "commerce," "industry," "university," "author," and so on,
are all words that came from French. During these centuries
Latin was also widely used. In the fifteenth century English developed out of the dialect of London and the imitation of the
Latin and French literary languages. English is also full of Italian
words; nearly all of which (except musical and artistic terms, like
opera, chiaroscuro), however, came through French and have a
French form. In contrast to the indirect influence of the Italian
language, the direct influence of Italian arts and sciences was
enormous, from Chaucer who took inspiration from Boccaccio,
to Shakespeare, described by an American as "a geographically
Italian poet" (with the exception, of course, of his historical
plays) 7
Both in England and France, I should like to add parenthetically, this strong Italian influence in the arts and sciences
found opposition: "A gentleman Italianate is a devil incarnate."
The Anglican Church's break with Rome, like Protestantism in
France, meant in some respects also a break with Italian influences, which had reached the point of threatening national characteristics. Among German Protestants the cry was: Los von
Rom ("Away from Rome!").
Literary German grew very slowly, to reach full stature with
Luther in the sixteenth century. Beginning in the Carolingian
period, German took much from Latin. Masked by German
renderings of Latin words, called "loan-translations," this influence of Latin is still perceptible today. For instance, Barmherzigkeit was modeled after misericordia, Gewissen on conscientia,
Eindruck on impressio, Begriff on conceptum. There are countless other such words. They all look German, but they are really
renderings of Latin words. Ancient literary French, primarily
through Alsatia (Gottfried of Strassburg, The Nibelungen, etc.)
also exercised an influence on German, from the tenth to the
fourteenth centuries. It brought the new phoneme tsch into German, as in putsch, or kitsch. The Scandinavian languages first imitated Latin, and then German, because of the immense importance of Germany's culture in that area. 8
I now can hear myself accused of begging the question. If, as I
have said, a literary language is formed by imitation of one or
more literary languages, how did it all start? Where was the first
literary language born?
We have worked back to Latin, which inflUenced, directly or
indirectly (especially through .French and Italian), all the languages of Western and Southern Europe. On what language was
Latin modelled? On Greek, more precisely on Classical Greek,
the language of the philosophers, the historians, and the orators
of the fifth and fourth century B.C. 9
Cicero, Caesar, and Sallust did not look to their Greek contemporaries, the Graeculi of their contempt, but to the great
authors of the classical period: Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides,
Xenophon, Lysias, Demosthenes. After Cicero, Lucretius's repeated complaint of the meager resources of his native tongue,
patrii sermonis egestas, is no longer possible. Cicero, before he
died so tragically, fashioned for Rome a great literary language,
modelled on Greek. On the model of the Greek word poi6tes,
fashioned by Plato from pofos, Cicero made up qualitas; on the
model of Plato's mes6tes he made medietas (Timaeus, 720: Vix
audeo dicere medietates, quas Graeci mesotetas appellant); on the
model of Aristotle's word pos6tes, the Latin word quantitas was
later formed, following Cicero's example. 10 Likewise from the influence of Greek in Latin, the word human us took on the meaning of philCmthr6pos, ingenium of physis and so on. 11 When you
shop and ask for "quality meat" or speak of "quantity," you are
in debt to the Greek philosophers.
In the East, where the Byzantine church dominated, the process was only slightly different. Russian, Bielorussian, Ukrainian,
Bulgarian, Serbian, and Romanian also took the Greek literary
language as their model, specifically the Christian literary
language of the ninth century A.D. The alphabet itself betrays
this late influence [Cyrillic H (eta) is pronounced il as in Greek at
that period]. The Slavic languages borrowed from Greek in the
same way that German borrowed from Latin-through so-called
loan translations. In the former case, the spirit is Latin, the matter Germanic; in the latter, the spirit is Greek, the matter, Slavic,
as my teacher Matteo Bartoli put it. 12 On the model of the Greek
word zogrilphos, the Russian language formed Zivopisec; syneideia
'conscience' is s6vesi.
My conclusion should not surprise anyone. Western and
Eastern, in a word, all of Europe, is indebted to Greek for all of
its-often very different-sounding-literary 1anguages. 13 Greece
alone made a literary language out of nothing, a language which
all European peoples, directly or indirectly, took as their model.
When we drop Greek from our schools' curriculum we are cutting ourselves from our roots. 14
Translated by Alessandra Bonfante Warren
l. I have been unable to trace the source of the Venetian cited above,
bu.t B. Dudan in Il dominio Veneziano in Levante, Bologna 1938, 268,
note 2, cites a similar phrase (along with other important material).
2. Mis langages est bans, car en France fui nez writes Garnier de Pont
Saint-Maxence in Thomas le martyr, 168, 10 between 1170 and 1173. By
"France" he meant the region around Paris, now called Ile de France.
3. A perceptive anonymous Lorrainer chronicler wrote, around 1350:
Pour tant que laingue romance et especiaulment de Lorenne
est imperfaite et plus asseiz que nulle autre entre les laingages
perfaiz il n'est nulz tant soit bon clerc ne bien parlans romans
qui lou latin puisse translateir en romans quant a plusour
mots dou latin, mais couvient que per corruption et per
19
�The College
diseite des mots franr;ois que en disse lou romans selonc lou
latin sicom 'iniquitas' iniquiteit, 'redemptio' redemption,
'misericordia' misericorde et ainsi de mains et plusours aultres
telz mas que il couvient ainsi dire en romans comme on dit en
latin.
(Lothringischer Psalter, published by F. Apfelstedt, 1. Cf. also MeyerLiibke, Historische Grammatik der FranzOschen Sprache I, Heidelberg
1934, 13.)
4. For Italian influence on French, B. Migliorini, Storia della lingua
italiana, Florence 1961, 417, 495, 582, 666, 743; see also W. MeyerLi.ibke, Grammatik, Heidelberg 1934, 14 ff, and Brunot, cited therein.
My lamented colleague and friend, Professor Franco Simone, whom I
remember always with affection and sorrow, has written beautifully on
Italian influence on French literature. See also F. Brunot, Histoire de fa
Langue franqaise, II, 209 and following, and B. H. Wind, Les Mots ita·
liens introduits en franr;ais au XIVe siecle, 1928.
It appears that the very word franr;ais, the national name of the
French, is derived from the Italian pronunciation, cf. Meyer-Lobke, 81.
The name Fran<;:ois, instead, is authentically French. The Italians had
difficulty pronouncing (raswe. This is the opposite case from that of
"Buonaparte": the French had difficulty pronouncing the uo, and the
name became "Bonaparte." It is simply a mistake (no doubt an oversight) to say, as docs the etymological dictionary of 0. Bloch and Von
Wartburg, that franr;ais is found in the Chanson de Roland (where we
have franceis): cf. instead, Gamillscheg's Etymological Dictionary, 2nd
edition, under franr;ais. The Italian form triumphs because Italian is the
language of the court (one has only to think of Catherine de Medici).
5. On the, at times, enormous influence of French literature in Italy,
England, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Holland, etc., see also MeyerLilbke, 31 ff. But here too, Meyer-Lilbke does not go far enough: the
pronunciation ts, still in use today, for example, for c in Latin words in
Germany (censur for our Latin censura), is a result of Carolingian influence, which he does not mention, and the introduction of the
phoneme C (written tsch), which today gives a jocular connotation to its
words (and is very wide-spread: kitsch, klatsch, putsch, rutschen, etc.) is
also a result of French influence.
On French words in Italy see R. Bezzola's laudable and accurate, albeit somewhat neogrammatical study, Abbozzo di una storia dei gallicismi italiani nei primi secoli dal750 al1300, Zurich 1924.
6. On the Galla-Romance influences in Spanish, seeR. Lapesa, Historia
de la lengua espafwla, Madrid-Buenos Aires 1942, 96, 110, 207, 213,
217-9,262. On Italian influence there, 139, 142, 153, 199-200,211,213,
219-20, 262. On Latinisms see 141-2.
7. On the acquaintance with Italian in England, see S. Gamberini, Lo
studio dell'italiano in Inghilterra nel Cinquecento e nel Seicento, MessinaFirenze, 1971. John Florio in 1598 published the first bilingual dictionary of two living languages, Italian and English, A Worlde of Words,
reprinted in 1611 under another title, and again in 1659 and 1687-88.
8. In a communication to the Xllth international congress of linguists,
held in Vienna August 28-September 2, 1977, J. Konsg~rd showed the
ways Danish absorbed Latin before 1300.
In the Edda (ninth century), too, there are Roman pagan elements as
well as Christian Latin influences: a Scandinavian scholar has observed
that the opening of the Thrymskvidha:
20
Angry was then Vingthor (Thor) when he awoke and did no
more find his hammer (stolen by Loki).
imitates Horace, Odes I, verses 10 ff.:
. ........... puerum minaci
uoce dum terret, uiduus pharetra
risit Apollo.
Here, Mercury has stolen a quiver and corresponds to Loki, who has
stolen a hammer.
9. Augusto Rostagni makes a valuable observation here. Latin literature
is a direct continuation of the Greek literature of the fourth and fifth
centuries, except for the poetae noui, a group of queer people who inspired no one.
10. For this process, Antoine Meillet's splendid Esquisse d'une histoire
de la langue latine, Paris 1933, 208 ff.
Direct Greek influence through the spoken language is likewise frequent.
II. Meillet, Esquisse, 316:
Pour 'parler' on se sert soit de paraboldre (franyais parler, etc.)
soit de {dbuldre (esp. hablar, etc.); c'est ce qui arrive quand, en
fran<;:ais populaire, on dit: "Qu'est-ce que tu racontes?" pour
"Que dis-tu?". Si !'on remonte en arriere, parabola, dont le
verbe Paraboldre est derive, est un mot tres savant; c'est un
terme de Ia rhetorique grecque passe tel que! en latin; les
demi-lettres qui ant Ccrit I'Evangile s'en sont servis pour nommer les enseignements donnCs par Jesus sous forme de recits,
de comparaisons; et de Ia langue du christianisme le mot a
passe dans !'usage populaire.
The history of cause and chose is analogous (Italian: causa, cosa;
Meillet, Esquisse, 346). We are also indebted to these "demi-lettrCs" for
the penetration of the Aramaic periphrastic form, Jj'v (h0&uJlwv, common to Italian, Spanish, English, and Old and Middle French.
12. The Polish jakoSC and the Bohemian jakost, both culturally Western
languages, are formed on the model of qualitas; the Russian word
kiiCestvo, documented in the eleventh century, derives instead directly
from the Greek poi6tes (but was much strengthened by its frequent
usage in Western languages).
13. There is no need to insist on the well-known fact that the modern
European vocabulary of all the sciences is full of Greek words, more so
every day.
14. Greek influence on the Romance languages was great. The Romance languages were born out of the special kind of Latin spoken by
men who were used to speaking Greek. The article, the present perfect,
the conditional, the new future tense with habere are all due to Greek.
Sanskrit, a pure Indo-Aryan creation, is to the East what Greek was to
the West. It became the sacred language, and often the vehicle for culture and literature, in Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos,
Vietnam, Tibet, Turkestan, China, Korea, and Japan. The resemblance
between the creation and diffusion of these two great languages is stunning.
�On the Discovery of Deductive Science
Curtis A. Wilson
rr
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How did the notion of deductive science-science based on
definitions, postulates, and axioms, science consisting of a sequence of propositions, each of which is deduced, either from
previously deduced propositions, or from the definitions, postulates, and axioms initially set out-how did this notion first come
Figure I This illustration is taken from van der Waerden,
Science Awakening I (1971), Plate 5, facing p. 44; also W. W.
Struve, Mathematical Papyrus des Museums in Moskau,
Quellen und Studien A l.
to be thought of, and then realized? For there seems to have
been a particular moment in which this idea was first conceived;
so far as we can tel1, it did not make its appearance at different
times and places, independently. Can we learn anything about
the original conception? I am going to pursue this question,
although as you will at once realiZe, it is not the sort of question
that is likely to receive a non-conjectural answer. The ground
here has been worked into a deep and slippery mud by the
trampling feet of contending scholars; mere non-classicists or not
yet classicists like myself are liable to stumble over the mouldering carcasses of defunct theories, not yet decently interred. Certain questions of historical fact that are material to this discussion I am able to answer only conjecturally. At the same time, I
wish to affirm that my primary aim is not to establish historical
facts, nor yet to hypothesize possible causes for those facts, but
rather to locate the meaning of facts that, it seems to me, come
nearest to being reliable. 1
I want to begin by saying something about pre-Greek mathematics. The oldest mathematical documents known from any
place on this earth are Egyptian papyri stemming from the Middle Kingdom, 2000-1800 B.C., and clay tablets dug out of the
sands of Mesopotamia, and stemming from about 1800-1600
B.C.
A lecture read at St. John's College, Annapolis, on September 14, 1973.
Curtis Wilson has just finished Perturbations and Solar Tables from
Lacaille to Delambre, being published by the Archives for the History of
Exact Sciences.
In figure l you see a transcription from a papyrus now in Moscow, showing the computation of the volume of a truncated pyramid with square base and top. The base is four cubits on a side,
the top two cubits on a side, and the height or distance between
base and top is six cubits. The text says: "Add together this 16
with this 8 and this 4. [16 is the area of the base, 4 the area of the
top, and 8 the product of the side of the base by the side of the
top.] You get 28. Compute one-third of 6 [the height]; you get 2.
Multiply 28 by 2. You get 56. Behold: it is 56. You have found
right."
Now the result is right. It is something you might want to
know if you were building pyramids; but by the time of the Middle Kingdom the Egyptians had ceased building pyramids, enjoyable though that occupation seems to have been, as we gather
from the inscriptions of rival work gangs. It is not clear that there
was any immediate practical reason for anyone in the Middle
Kingdom to know the rule for computing the volume of a truncated pyramid. But the real puzzle is how this rule was discovered in the first place. It is a complicated rule, and there is no
plausible empirical way of arriving at it by, say, weighing certain
objects; therefore reasoning was involved. But on the other
hand, the Egyptian mathematicians would not fall back on algebraic transformations in the modern manner, since their mathematics dealt explicitly only with particular numbers. There are a
number of hypotheses as to how the Egyptians' procedure could
21
�The College
have been arrived at, the most plausible, I think, involving a slicing of the pyramid into parts.
Let us take another example.
always numerical. Are the problems practical problems? Once
again, yes and no. Here is an example from the time of Hammurabi, 1700 B.C.:
"A square and a second square whose side is 2 + 4 of
the first square, have together an area of 100. Show me
how to calculate this." 2
"Take a square of side I, and take 2 + 4 (3/4) of I as
the side of the other square.
"Multiply 2 + 4 by itself; this gives 2 + 16.
"Hence, if the side of one of the areas is taken to be l,
and that of the other is 2 + 4, then the addition of the
areas gives 1 + 2 + 16.
"Take the square root of this; it is 1 + 4.
"Take the square root of the given number 100; it is 10.
"How many times is l + 4 contained in 10? Answer 8."
The two squares then have sides 8 X l = 8 and 8 x
3/4 ~ 6, the sum of their squares being 100.
"I have multiplied length and width, thus obtaining the
area. Then to the area I added the excess of the length
over the width. The total result is 183. I have also added
the length and width, with the result 27. Required:
length, width, and area."4
Now Egyptian mathematics has certain general characteristics. First, Egyptian mathematics, whatever it is dealing
with-areas, volumes, numbers of bricks or loaves of bread or
jugs of beer-is always a matter of numerical calculation. The
mathematician is a computer who uses both integers and fractions. Second, there are no explicit proofs whatever, but reasonings have to have been employed in the solution of problems.
Finally, while the problems presented in the papyri seldom appear to be actual practical problems, they give the general impression of being the sort of problems that an instructor might
think up for his students, in order to prepare them for solving
practical problems. Instructors seldom succeed in being strictly
practical, but the Egyptian ones appear to have understood their
activity as occurring within the horizon of the practical.
Aristotle claimed that the mathematical arts had been founded
in Egypt, because there the priestly class was allowed leisure; but
this is incorrect. The Egyptian calculative art was the possession
not of a priestly class, but of scribes who had practical functions
in the state, and among whom there was rivalry. So we find one
scribe ridiculing another:
You come to me to inquire concerning the rations for
the soldiers, and you say 'reckon it out.' You are deserting your officet. ... I cause you to be abashed when I
bring you a command of your lord, you who are his
Royal Scribe. A building ramp is to be constructed, 730
cubits long, 55 cubits wide, 55 cubits high at its summit .... The quantity of bricks needed for it is asked of
the generals, and the scribes are all asked together,
without one of them knowing anything. They all put
their trust in you .... Behold your name is famous ...
Answer us how may bricks are needed for it? 3
It seems likely, then, that the mathematical papyri were textbooks used in the school for scribes.
In Babylonia, the mathematical texts appear to have been produced by a similar class of scribes. The texts give problems with
their solutions; proofs are entirely absent; the procedures are
22
I omit the solution. For us it would involve the solution of a
quadratic equation. This Babylonian problem does not strike me
as a practical problem, or a near neighbor to one. The adding of a
length to an area seems to me decidedly impractical, perhaps
even nonsensical This is mathematics gone a bit haywire: a
pedagogue might invent it to bemuse his pupils, always
understanding, of course, that calculating is a good thing.
Babylonian mathematics, however, is a good deal more powerful than Egyptian mathematics. When the Babylonian scribe
wrote:
.J2 -
I; 24,51,10
(I am using the Indian numerals in place of the Babylonian), he
meant
This is the Babylonian approlimation to the square root of 2, or
diagonal of a square of unit side. The Babylonians definitely
knew and used the proposition we call the theorem of Pythagoras, which is involved in getting this approximation, but nowhere do any of the clay tablets that have been deciphered give a
proof of this or any other theorem. The approximation, which is
probably the result of a series of successively closer approximations, is good to one-millionth. Ptolemy will still be using it, having acquired it probably indirectly from the Babylonians, when
he computes his table of chords in the second century A.D.
Now if we turn to other civilizations besides the Egyptian and
the Babylonian, but still uninfluenced by Greek thought-the
civilization of the Yellow River valley, say, or Mayan civilization-I think we shall once again find a computational art, often
highly developed, but not explicit deductions. You may on occasion find the contrary asserted. Joseph Needham in his Science
and Civilization in China (II, p. 22) gives a passage from a Chinese mathematical text which perhaps originated as early as the
4th century B.C.; it is accompanied by a diagram which he labels
"proof of the Pythagoras Theorem" (See Figure 2).
I quote from the text:
"Of old, Chou Kung addressed Shang Kao, saying, "I
have heard that the Grand Prefect [that is Shang Kao]
is versed in the art of numbering. May I venture to inquire how Fu-Hai anciently established the degrees of
the 'Celestial sphere? ... I should like to ask you what
was the origin of these numbers?
�January, 1980
J
/
/
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......
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,L
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Figure 2
'
.....
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[In the course of his reply Shang Kao says:]
"Let us cut a rectangle diagonally, and make the width
3 units, and the length 4 units. The diagonal between
the corners will then be 5 units long. Now after drawing
a square on this diagonal, circumscribe it by half rectangles like that which has been left outside, so as to
form a square plate. Thus the outer half rectangles of
width 3, length 4, and diagonal 5, together make two
rectangles [of total area 24]; then the remainder [that is,
of the square of area 49] is of area 25. This is called 'piling up the rectangles.'
"The methods used by Yu the Great in governing
the world were derived from these numbers ... He who
understands the earth is a wise man, and he who understands the heavens is a sage. Knowledge is derived from
a straight line. The straight line is derived from the
right angle. And the combination of the right angle
with numbers is what guides and rules the ten thou~
sand things.
"Chou Kung exclaimed, 'Excellent indeed!' "
Nothing here, I would urge, has really been proven, certainly
not the theorem of Pythagoras, so-called. Needham has shown in
overwhelming detail that between the 5th century B.C. and the
15th century A.D. no people on earth exercised more technical
ingenuity than the Chinese. Long in advance of the West, they
possessed cast iron, an escapement clock, the navigational compass, gunpowder, printing by movable type, the segmental arch
bridge. But as for deductive science, the Chinese would not encounter it until the Jesuits came to China in the late 16th cen-
tury, bringing the textbooks of their fellow jesuit, Christopher
Clavius. It is a curious fact that, for some centuries thereafter,
Chinese students reciting their Euclidean theorems out of
Clavius would finish not with our Q.E.D. but with the Chinese
word for "nail." Apparently they were citing their authority:
"clavus" being the Latin word for "nail."
It is conceivable that some day, in the investigation of early
civilizations uninfluenced by Greece, evidence will turn up for
the existence of some pieces of deductive mathematics. On the
basis of what is known today, the prospects for such a find are
dim. Deductive mathematics is a rare bird, which first settled, so
far as we know, in Greece.
How did it happen? What did it mean that it happened? Seeking an answer, I turn to a document of late antiquity, a commentary on the first book of Euclid's Elements written by Proclus in
the middle of the 5th century A.D. Proclus was a member of the
Platonic Academy in Athens during the last century of its
900-year existence. The commentary includes a kind of catalogue of ancient geometers which is based on an earlier history
of geometry, now lost, by Eudemus, a disciple of Aristotle writing in the late 4th century B.C. The account begins by saying
that geometry was first discovered among the Egyptians, and
originated in the remeasuring of their lands necessitated by the
annual flooding of the Nile. Proclus then proceeds as follows:
Thales, having travelled in Egypt, first introduced this
theory into Hellas. He discovered many things himself,
and pointed the road to the principles of many others,
to those who came after him, attacking some questions
in a more general way, and others in a way more dependent on sense perception.
After mentioning the names of two other ancient geometers,
Proclus continues:
After these, Pythagoras transformed the philosophy of
this (geometry) into a scheme of liberal education. He
surveyed its principles from the highest on down, and
investigated its theorems separately from matter and intellectually. He it was who discovered the doctrine of irrationals and the construction of the cosmic figures.
A little farther on we read:
Hippocrates of Chios, who invented the method of
squaring lunules (crescents formed from arcs of circles)
and Theodorus of Cyrene became eminent in geometry. For Hippocrates wrote a book on elements, the first
of whom we have any record who did so.
With respect to Hippocrates of Chios, there is no reason to
doubt what Proclus says. A fragment of Hippocrates' work on
lunules still exists, and it shows a high level of rigor. Thus Hippocrates may very well have written a book on the elements of
geometry. At the time Hippocrates was teaching geometry in
Athens, around 430 B.C., the process of turning geometry into a
deductive science was in all probability well advanced.
23
�The College
Thales, who was active about a century and a half before Hippocrates of Chios, is a much more shadowy figure, and it is
unclear how we should interpret what Proclus says about him.
Proclus attributes to Thales the discovery and proof of five
propositions:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
A circle is bisected by any diameter.
Vertical angles of intersecting straight lines are equal.
The base angles of an isosceles triangle are equal.
Two triangles such that two angles and the included side
of one are equal to two angles and the included side of the
other, are themselves equal.
(5) The angle at the periphery of a semicircle is right.
Now these are general, theoretical propositions, theorems,
propositions to be contemplated rather than mere rules for solution of problems. The enunciation of them may therefore mark a
decisive step in the emergence of theoretical science. But how
were they proved? The usual guess is that it was by superposition, the visual showing that one figure or part of a figure would
coincide with another. If this is right, then it is unlikely that we
have here the notion of a logically constructed theory which begins with expressly enunciated premises and advances step by
step. Thales need not have enunciated any premises explicitly.
He pointed the road to the principles, as Proclus says; the extent
to which h~ laid out principles is totally unclear.
As for Pythagoras, whole books have been devoted in recent
times to showing that the ancient accounts of his mathematical
exploits are unworthy of trust. 5 These accounts stem from
members of the Platonic Academy from the 4th century and
later, men who saw in the 6th-century Pythagoras a forerunner
of Plato, and who tended to attribute to him discoveries that had
been made later on in the Pythagorean tradition. Pythagoras
cannot have known all the five cosmic figures, because two of
them, the octahedron and the icosahedron, were first discovered
by Theaetetus, a contemporary of Plato. Contrary to what Proclus says, there is no good evidence that Pythagoras knew
anything about the doctrine of irrational lines. The old verse
quoted by Plutarch, according to which Pythagoras, on making a
certain geometrical discovery, sacrificed an ox, cannot be true,
because it is well attested that Pythagoras was a vegetarian, who
believed in transmigration of souls and was opposed to the killing
of animals. What we can be fairly sure of, with regard to Pythagoras, aside of course from his having had a golden thigh, is that he
had made the flight to the Beyond and had become the leader of
a cult, a medicine man, a shaman. He can well have taught that
odd numbers are male, even numbers female; that five is the
marriage number; that ten is perfect, being the sum of l, 2, 3,
and 4. Somewhat similar beliefs have been found all over the
world, in connection with rituals and creation myths, and have
not led to deductive mathematics. Pythagoras' thought seems to
have been cosmogonic, concerned with the coming-to-be of our
world out of something prior and more fundamental. There is no
trustworthy evidence that Pythagoras ever carried out an explicit
proof.
On the other hand, the transformation in the character of
mathematics that Proclus attributes to Pythagoras may well have
been brought about by Pythagoreans. The old accounts speak of
24
a split within the Pythagorean tradition; the Mathematikoi,
those who wished to discuss and teach openly the mathematical
disciplines, separated off from the secret cult, the Akousmatikoi,
the hearers of the sacred and secret sayings. Reliable 4th-century
sources speak of the arithmetical studies of the 5th-century
Pythagoreans. Aristotle says that the so-called Pythagoreans were
the first to deal with mathemata, mathematical disciplines. According to the Epinomis, a dialogue written either by Plato or a
follower of Plato, the first and primary discipline or mathema of
the Pythagoreans was arithmetic. Now it is possible to make a
plausible reconstruction of some of this early Pythagorean arithmetic. When this is done, we find ourselves before a piece of
deductive science, quite possibly the earliest that ever was; it is
the science of the odd and the even. It is a science in which the
principles are explicit, and in which the theorems are, to use Proclus' terms, investigated independently of matter and intellectually.
The reconstruction necessarily starts from Euclid's text,
which appears to be, to a certain extent, a compilation from
earlier texts which it drove out of circulation, and which are now
wholly lost, so that we know of them only from certain references by Aristotle or Plato or other ancient authors. The
reconstruction proceeds by a kind of literary archaeology.
Permit me to give here a set of not very reliable dates.
Flourishings
Thales
Pythagoras
Parmenides
Hippocrates of Chios
Archytas of Tarentum
Theaetetus
Plato
Aristotle
Euclid
!lor. 585 B.C.
!lor. 550 B.C.
flor. 475 B.C.
flor. 430 B.C.
!lor. 400 B.C.
c. 415-369 B.C.
c. 428-348 B.C.
384-322 B.C.
flor. 300 B.C.
Flourishing was something Greeks did as a rule at age 40, just
as they often died at 80, to suit the taste for symmetry of a certain 2nd-century B.C. chronographer named Apollodorus.
Euclid wrote about 300 B.C. There are good grounds to believe
that much of geometry had been organized as a deductive
science by the time of Hippocrates of Chios, about 430 B.C.; and
there are plausibilities in assuming that portions of arithmetic
had been organized deductively even earlier. In discussing this
development, I shall want to refer to Parmenides, who lived in
the first half of the 5th century; to Archytas of Tarentum, a
Pythagorean and friend of Plato living around the turn of the 5th
and 4th centuries; and to Theaetetus, another friend of Plato,
who died as a result of battle wounds in 369 B.C., and was one of
the great mathematicians of antiquity, being the author, in all
probability, of nearly all of books X and XIII of Euclid's
Elements.
In 1936, Oskar Becker pointed out a number of peculiar facts
concerning Propositions 21-34 of Book IX of Euclid. These theorems are for the most part so obvious that it is hard to imagine
why anyone would be so fussy as to want them proved. "If as
many even numbers as we please be added together, the whole is
�January, 1980
even." Certainly. "If from an even number an even number is
subtracted, the remainder will be even." Who will doubt it?
The proofs, with one exception, do not depend on any previous theorems in Euclid's Elements: they depend rather on certain definitions given at the start of Book VII, the first of the
arithmetical books. The one exception, IX.32, depends on IX.l3.
But Becker suspects the proof as we now have it to be Euclid's
emendation of the original proof; he shows that IX.32 follows
quite straightforwardly from IX.31. Thus Propositions IX.21 to
IX.34 are a selfsufficient set of propositions dependent only on
certain definitions. Moreover, with one curious exception nothing else in Euclid's Elements depends on these propositions. The
exception is the last proposition of Book X, which modern
editors delete as not fitting into the argument of Book X. It is the
ancient proof of the incommensurability of the side and diagonal
of the square, and what it depends on is the doctrine of the even
and the odd, and more specifically, Propositions 32~34 of Book
IX.
Becker believed that, originally, before incorporation in
Euclid's Elements, the doctrine of the even and the odd had led
to another consequence, the traces of which have been left in
Euclid. Propositions 21~34 of Book IX are followed by two final
propositions, 35 and 36; 35 is used for the proof of 36, and 36
shows how to construct a perfect number-perhaps all perfect
numbers, but that I believe is not yet known. Euclid's proofs for
these two propositions depend on propositions in Book VII having to do with ratios of numbers. Becker shows that 35 and 36
can be proved on the basis of the immediately preceding propositions of Book IX, independently of any reference to ratios. Thus
Becker's conjecture is that, long before Euclid, there existed a
treatise on the even and the odd, including Propositions 21-36 of
Book IX and the last proposition of Book X; that out of piety
Euclid or some ancient editor added this treatise to the
Elements, then, in an effort to integrate this addition with the
whole, changed some of the proofs (32,35 and 36), making use of
propositions on numerical ratios from Book VII. This hypothesis
at least accounts for the peculiarities of Book IX that I have
cited: the fact that, with an easy revision of the proof of IX. 32,
propositions IX.21 to IX.34 form a treatise independent of the
rest of Book IX, to which IX.35 and 36, with revised proofs, can
also be added.
Such, then, is Becker's reconstruction of the doctrine of the
even and the odd. That such a doctrine existed in the fifth century is supported by the fact that Plato defines arithmetic as the
doctrine of the even and the odd, and refers to this doctrine as a
familiar discipline.
Following Becker, van der Waerden has argued that most of
Book VII of Euclid had also been worked out in the fifth century. One of his arguments is that Archytas of Tarentum, in a
work on musical theory written about 400 B.C., depends on
propositions found in Book VIII, and these propositions depend
in turn on propositions found in Book VII. Since Archytas is
punctilious in working out the most trivial syllogisms, it is unlikely that he merely assumed the propositions he needed; he
must have known them to be already proved. If the propositions
of Book VII existed in any form in Archytas' time, then van der
Waerden concludes that they must have been in almost exactly
their present form and thus in apple-pie order; for Book VII is
worked out with great care and in such a strictly logical fashion
that no step can be removed without the whole collapsing.
There are other clues that lead van der Waerden to believe that
most of Book VII was complete before Hippocrates of Chios
wrote on lunules about 430 B.C.
These two pieces of deductive arithmetic-the doctrine of the
even and the odd, and what became Euclid's Book VII-along
with Hippocrates' quadrature oflunules, constitute the available
presumptive evidence for the character of fifth century deductive mathematics. Can we learn anything from them, which
might throw light on the question of what it meant for them to
come to be? I want to take up, first, the demonstrations, then,
the premises on which they are based.
Every Euclidean proposition ends with the stereotyped formula, hoper edei deixai, meaning: the very thing that it was
necessary to show. The infinitive here, deixai, seems to have had
the original meaning of showing visually. Thus in Plato's dialogue Cratylus Socrates says:
"Can I not step up to a man and say to him, 'This is
your portrait,' and show him perhaps his own likeness
or, perhaps, that of a woman? And by 'show' (deixai) I
mean, bring before the sense of sight." (430e)
Early geometry must have been primarily a kind of visual showing, the pointing out of a symmetry, or the possibility of the coincidence of two figures, superposition. But in Euclid's text every
effort is made to reduce the dependence on superposition to a
minimum. We come to suspect that there was present a kind of
anti-illustrative, anti-empirical tendency in mathematics, as it
was being transformed into deductive science. This tendency is
detectible in arithmetic as well as geometry.
Pythagorean arithmetical doctrines seem to have been originally worked out and taught with the aid of calculating pebbles.
There is a fragment of the comic poet Epicharmus, written prob·
ably before 500 B.C., that runs as follows:
"When there is an even number present, or, for all I
care, an odd number, and someone wants to add a pebble or to take one away, do you think that the number
remains unchanged?''
"Not mel"
"Well, then, look at people: one grows, another one perhaps gets shorter, and they are constantly subject to
change. But whatever is changeable in character and
does not remain the same, that is certainly diffenint
from what is changed. You and I are also different people from what we were yesterday, and we will still be
different in the future, so that by the same argument
we are never the same." 6
Presumably the sly rogue goes on to argue that he need not pay
the debt he contracted the day before.
Aristotle, too, speaks of the Pythagorean pebble figures, the
triangles, squares, and rectangles formed of pebbles with which
the Pythagoreans taught arithmeticfll truths. We can easily see
25
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how they could have satisfied themselves, with their pebble figures, of the propositions concerning the even and the odd. Take
Proposition IXJO: if an odd number is the divisor of an even
number, then this same odd number is also the divisor of half the
even number. (See Figure 3).
•••
••• •••
I• •• •••
I•••
ct
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
~-
even number
Figure 3
The number will be a rectangular number, with our odd number, the divisor, represented by the pebbles forming one of the
sides. But the number as a whole is even, hence divisible in half,
as by the vertical line. We see at once, then, that our odd number
is a side of the half rectangle, hence a divisor of the half.
The proof of this in Euclid is quite different. The numbers are
not represented by points, but rather by lines. We know that
Archytas represents numbers in this way, by lines, as a matter of
course, and presumably, therefore, this mode of representation
had become conventional before his time, that is, already in the
5th century. Now by looking at a line which represents a number, one cannot tell whether the number is even or odd, since
any line can be halved; consequently, Euclid's visual representation of the numbers does not help us at all to see why the
proposition is true. A pebble configuration could only represent
visually a particular number; the new representation has the advantage of generality, but it also has the disadvantage that it
forces one to look for an entirely new proof. The new proof that
Euclid gives us involves the famous reduction to the absurd, or
indirect demonstration. The important step is to show that the
odd number a, the divisor, measures the even number (3 an
even number of times, or in other words, that the quotient, 'Y is
even. Euclid's argument runs as follows: I say that 'Y is not odd,
for if possible, let it be so. Now a multiplying 'Y makes (3, and
a was taken at the start to be odd, and an odd number multiplying an odd number yields only an odd number, as Euclid has previously shown. Therefore it would be odd, which is impossible
(adunaton), because it was taken at the start to be even.
The anti-illustrative tendency brings with it the reductio ad absurdum proof. It is surprising how many reductio proofs occur in
the arithmetical treatises that, according to Becker and van der
Waerden, stem from the 5th-century Pythagoreans. In propositions 21-36 of Book IX there are six such proofs, or eight if we
accept Becker's reconstructions of 32, 35 and 36. In the first theorems of Book VII there are 15 such proofs. Moreover, the proof
26
of the incommensurability of the side and diagonal of the square
is also a reductio, and in this case we have to do with a truth
which is altogether non-visualizable. Let me pause to review the
strategy of that proof.
Suppose, if possible, that the side and diagonal of a square are
commensurable. Then there would be a length that measured
both, and also a largest such length. Let this largest such length
measure the diagonal a times, and the side (3 times, where
a and (3 are integers or whole numbers. Now a and (3 cannot
both be even, for otherwise our unit length could have been doubled, and the numbers halved, contrary to the assumption that
the unit length was the largest possible; so at least one of the
numbers must be odd. The sequence of the proof then shows
that both must be even, or as Aristotle says in referring to this
proof, that the same number must be both even and odd. For
cl = 2(32; therefore cl is even, whence a is even. Let a = 2')'.
Then a 2 = 4')'2 = 2(32 , or (3 2 = 2')'2 • Therefore (3 2 is an even
number, and so (3 is an even number. Adunatonf 'The only alter·
native left is to relinquish the original assumption that a and
(3 exist, or that side and diagonal are commensurable. In this
demonstration human reason exhibits a rather astonishing
power, the power to discover what eyesight could never in any
way disclose. This discovery would encourage the anti-illustrative tendency, and the recourse to indirect proofs. It also implies
that geometry cannot be subsumed under arithmetic, and needs
therefore to be built up as an independent science on its own
right, for magnitudes if incommensurable do not have to one
another the ratio of a number to a number, while surely having a
relation with respect to size. But the relevant point at this moment is that the emergence of deductive science appears to be
connected with an anti-illustrative tendency, and with the
closely-connected introduction of reductio proofs.
What about the principles or premises of Pythagorean arithmetic? I have already mentioned that the premises of the doctrine
of the even and the odd are to be found among the definitions of
Euclid's Book VII, and only there. The same thing goes for the
doctrine concerning divisibility and proportionality found in
Book VII itself. And fundamentally, all the definitions of Book
VII rest on the first two definitions, the definition of number-a
number is a multitude composed of units or monads-and then
the definition of monad: monad is that according to which each
of the things that are, each of the beings, is called one. What
these definitions do, above all, is to limit the following discussion
to whole numbers. Comparing this Greek arithmetical theory
with Egyptian and Babylonian numerical work, we see that the
Greek theory is sharply distinguished by its careful avoidance of
fradions; and the first definition, whatever else it is doing, is expressing this prohibition against fractions, this insistence on the
indivisibility of the one or unit. This insistence was already traditional in Plato's time.
In the Republic Socrates speaks of "the teaching concerning
the one" (he peri to hen mathesis), and explains what he means
by it:
... You are doubtless aware that experts in this study,
if anyone attempts to cut up the 'one' in argument,
laugh at him and refuse to allow it; but if you mince it
�January, 1980
up, they multiply, always on guard lest the one should
appear to be not one but a multiplicity of parts ... Suppose now ... someone were to ask them, "My good
friends, what numbers are these you are talking about,
in which the one is such as you postulate, each unit
equal to every other without the slightest difference
and admitting no division into parts?" What do you
think would be their answer? This, I think-that they
are speaking of units which can only be conceived by
thought, and which it is not possible to deal with in any
other way.
Socrates' explanation tells us why the indivisibility of the one
had to be insisted upon; if the one were divisible, then it would
be a multiplicity of parts, hence many, not one. In other words,
the thought that the one is divisible is self-contradictory. Thus
the insistence on the indivisibility of the one, which is Euclidean
and also, according to Plato's Socrates in the Republic, prePlatonic, is the conclusion of an indirect demonstration, a reduction to the absurd: The one is indivisible; for if not, then it is
divisible, and therefore a multiplicity of parts, hence not one;
therefore, etc.
I have not yet taken up the principles used in early deductive
geometry, but let me recapitulate what I have said, and consider
what it suggests. The earliest deductive science, as far as we can
tell, was the arithmetical theory of the so-called Pythagoreans of
the 5th century. Their science differs from all earlier mathematics, first, in exhibiting an anti-empirical tendency, which sought
to eliminate mere visual showing, as with the pebble figures;
secondly, in making use of indirect demonstration, or proof of
something by reduction of its opposite to absurdity; thirdly, in
insisting upon the indivisibility of the one, on the ground that
admission of its divisibility would contradict the very meaning of
the word "one." Now these features call to mind certain lines
that remain of a poem written early in the 5th century, the poem
by Parmenides of Elea; and to no other author of this time can
these features be related. I must try to say some words about the
poem of Parmenides.
Only fragments of it remain. Their interpretation is thoroughly controversial There is widespread assurance that, whatever it was that Parmenides meant, he was wrong. On the other
hand, it will be little contested, I believe, if I say that Parmenides
was the founder of Dialectic. Aristotle says that Zeno of Elea,
Parmenides' pupil, was the founder of dialectic; but I think that
may be because Zeno wrote out arguments in prose, whereas
Parmenides wrote a poem in epic verse, while dialectic has essentially nothing to do with verse. I believe there is also rather
general agreement that Parmenides, in composing his poem, was
responding to, and attacking, earlier cosmogonies, which sought
to derive all the variety and diversity of the world out of some
underlying stuff, understood to be the real stuff of the world.
The poet begins by describing his journey in a chariot, drawn
by mares that know the way, and escorted by the Daughters of
the Sun. They arrive, high in the sky, before the gates of Night
and Day. The Sun Maidens persuade the Goddess Justice to
open the gates, and Parmenides is welcomed by the goddess who
takes his hand and assures him that it is right and just that he, a
mortal, should have taken this road. He must now learn both the
unshaken heart of well-rounded truth, and the unreliable beliefs
of mortals. The goddess describes three ways of inquiry: first,
"That it is (esti), and cannot not be; this is the way of Persuasion,
for she is the attendant of Truth;" second, "That it is not (ouk
esti), and must necessarily not be; this I tell you is a way of total
ignorance;" third, "That it is, and it is not, the same and not the
same; this is the way that ignorant mortals wander, bemused."
An initial difficulty that we face is tha~ although the pronoun
"it" is not expressed in Greek, we can hardly resist the impression that there is something that is being talked about, and we
should like to know what it is. The next fragments may be
helpful.
"It is the same thing that can be thought and can be."
"What can be spoken of and thought must be; for it is
possible for it to be, but it is not possible for nothing to
be. These things I bid thee ponder."
In a preliminary and superficial way I think I can conclude
that the subject of the verb estin is: that which is intended in
thought, what we call the object of thought. The goddess is
presenting an argument: that which thought intends can exist;
but nothing cannot exist; therefore that which thought intends
cannot be nothing; hence it must exist.
The syllogism holds, I believe, although at that point in time
logic had not been invented. But what does it mean? That which
in no way is cannot be entertained in thought. Thought always is
of something, it is intentional in character. Hence I must accept
the Goddess' rejection of the second way, or non-way, of inquiry.
But the Goddess means something more. Some of this "more"
emerges as she proceeds to dispose of the third way of inquiry.
This is the way whereon, she says, mortals who know nothing
wander two-headed; perplexity guides the wandering thought in
their breasts; they are borne along, both deaf and blind, bemused, as undiscerning hordes, who have decided to believe that
it is, and it is not, the same and not the same, and for whom
there is a way of all things that turns back upon itself. "Never,"
says the goddess, "shall this be proved: that things that are not,
are; but do thou hold back thy thought from this way of inquiry,
nor let custom that comes of much experience force thee to cast
along this way an aimless eye and a noise-cluttered ear and
tongue, but judge through logos (through reasoning) the hard·
hitting refutation I have uttered."
"It is necessary," adds the Goddess, "to say and to think that
Being is."
Now in one way, this is all simple and undeniable. When I entertain an idea, when I use a word to signify some idea, I intend
what I am thinking of as a constant, invariable. Never mind that
my thought, my intending of what I am thinking about, is a shifting and not very controllable process. What is thought and
named is intended as having a certain fixity. Otherwise, as Aristotle puts it, to seek truth would be to follow flying game. We
would be reduced to the level of Cratylus, who did not think it
right to say anything, and instead only moved his finger, and
who criticized Heracleitus for saying that it is impossible to step
twice into the same river, for he, Cratylus, said that one could
27
�The College
not do it even once. On one level, the words of the Goddess are
simply telling us what the prerequisites and necessities are for
speech and thought that will be free of contradiction. Parmenides' poem is the earliest document preserved from the past
which speaks explicitly of the logical necessities of thought.
Yet the discourse of the Goddess is more strange and frightening, or insane, or as Whitehead might say, important, than I have
been making it out to be. The Goddess is not concerned with
just anything that might be thought; she is concerned-she says
so again and again-with Being.
What is all this silly talk about Being? What else is there for Being to do but be? "It is necessary," says the Goddess, "to say and
to think that Being is." Is it? Then is it necessary to say and to
think that rain rains, that thunder thunders, or that lightning
lightnings, and are not these parallel cases? I shall later come
back, very briefly, to this question. It is just here that the poem
becomes exasperating and impossible, prompting Aristotle to say
more than once: the premises are false, and the conclusions do
not follow. From the fact that Being just is, the Goddess proceeds to conclude that Being is precisely One, and contains no
plurality, no mriltiplicity or differentiation within it, and no motion. In particular, and to Aristotle's great disgust, the Eleatics
claim to have discovered the self-contradictory character of motion. It is Zeno, Parmenides' pupil, who formulates this discovery in the most memorable way. The flying arrow is in every
instant exactly where it is, is at rest in the space equal to itself,
and since this is true of every moment of its flight, it is always at
rest, it does not move. Never mind the mortal wound we think it
can inflict; this does not answer the argument, it does not tell us
how motion can be consistently thought. The question is not
whether Zeno is wrong but how. It is still being debated in the
philosophical journals.
In the case of Parmenides, a more insistent question is what
he can have meant by his poem. There is a second part to it,
called the Way of Seeming or Opinion, of which 40 lines remain,
and this speaks of the coming-to-be of the visible things of our
ordinary world out of Fire and Night. Did Parmenides intend the
Way of Opinion to have any validity at all, or only to present the
bemused and erring beliefs of mortals? Plutarch remarks that
Parmenides had taken away neither fire nor water nor
rocks nor precipices, nor yet cities ... for he has written
very largely of the earth, heaven, sun, moon and stars,
and has spoken of the generation of man.
Traditions credit Parmenides with having given laws to the city
of Elea, and with having been the first to say that the Earth is
round, that the Moon shines by reflected light, and that the
morning star is identical with the evening star- momentous discoveries every one of them. But such actions and discoveries do
not seem easily compatible with the teaching about Being that
the goddess has set forth, with such emphasis, such imperial absolutism. The heart of well-rounded truth, Being which is precisely and only One appears to have no place in it for human law,
for the earth's rotundity and its conical shadow, for Venus and
her irregularities, or for Parmenides or you or me.
The speech of the Goddess is nevertheless fateful. With Par-
28
menides, as I have said, dialectic takes its start. The age of those
called sophists begins. One of the earliest of them, Protagoras, is
clearly reacting to Parmenides when he makes his famous statement: man, he says, is the measure of all things, of the things
that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they
are not. Who but Parmenides had raised these questions about
Being and not-Being? Protagoras has concluded that the
Parmenidean standard of truth, that is, freedom from contradiction, is unreachable; thought, he thinks, inevitably involves contradiction. Therefore he turns to sense-experience, and asserts
his right to say that the same thing can at one time be, and at
another time not be, according as he, Protagoras, holds it to be or
not to be. In Protagoras' time and later, there will be other objectors with other formulations, rejecting the speech of the
Parmenidean Goddess in other ways. Gorgias, for instance,
argues, first, that nothing is; second, that if anything is, it cannot
be known; third, that if anything is and can be known, it cannot
be expressed in speech.
Among the Parmenidean sequels, I want to suggest, was deductive arithmetic. For according to Aristotle, Parmenides was
the first to speak of the One according to logos, according to definition; and arithmetic seems to have become deductive just
when the Pythagoreans set out to found the doctrine of the even
and the odd on the definition of the One, on its essential indivisibility, and proceeded in Parmenidean style to formulate proofs
which relied no longer on visualization but rather on non-contradiction of the logos.
Of course-and this is a crucial qualification-no arithmetician could fo11ow the teaching of the Parmenidean Goddess
strictly. When the deductive arithmetician took his start from
the indivisibility of the One, he was proceeding in accordance
with a Parmenidean necessity of thought. When he went on to
multiply the One, in order that arithmetic might be, he was violating the Parmenidean Way of Truth. Parmenidean-wise, how
could there be many ones, each exactly the same as every other,
and yet each retaining its identity to the extent of remaining
separate from the others? The way in which these many ones
can be, or are in being, is a question not for arithmetic, but for
meta-arithmetic, but apparently the arithmeticians recognized
that their discipline depended on the question about being. The
Euclidean definition of Manus, One, reads: Monas is that in accordance with which each of the beings i::. called one. A plurality
of beings-what they are remains unclear-is here presupposed.
As for geometry, the violations of the Parmenidean logos that
are necessary in order for it to become deductive are more
drastic. The definitions of point and line with which Euclid
begins Book I were no doubt modelled on the definitions of One
and Number, but there is a world of difference between the
cases. The definitions tell us that a point is without parts, that a
line is without breadth, but we cannot go on to derive any geometrical proposition from these rather problematic denials. It
was the questionable character of the geometrical things that led
Protagoras to reject the possibility of geometry altogether: a
wheel, he said, does not touch a straight pole in one point only;
therefore geometry is impossible, Q.E.D. But even if the geometrical definitions are granted, they do not provide a sufficient
basis for the organization of geometry as a deductive science.
�January, 1980
At the beginning of Euclid's Elements three kinds of principles
are set out. First, definitions or horoi; second, postulates or
aitemata; third, common notions or koinai ennoiai. About a century ago, it was argued that the term koinai ennoiai had to be of
late Stoic origin, and therefore not due to Euclid. Was there an
earlier Greek term? It may well have been axiomata; this is the
term that Proclus constantly uses instead of koinai ennoiai, and
it may have been the term in front of him in his Euclidean text.
Instead of horoi for definitions, Proclus commonly uses
hupotheseis; this usage is found earlier in Archimedes, and earlier
still in Plato's Republic, where the odd and the even, and the
various kinds of figures and angles are said to be treated in the
sciences that deal with them as hupotheseis. All three of these
terms, hupotheseis, ait?!mata, and axiomata, were connected at
one time with the practice of dialectic.
The term aitemata, postulates, comes from the verb aiteo, to
require, to ask. "Whenever," Proclus tells us, "the statement is
unknown and nevertheless is taken as true without the student's
conceding it, then, Aristotle says, we call it an aitema." The term
axiomata comes from axioo, which can also mean to require, to
demand; it is often so used in the Platonic dialogues. To be sure,
Proclus says of the axioms that they are deemed by everybody to
be true and no one disputes them. I believe this statement
reflects an Aristotelian and post-Aristotelian usage. Aristotle
himself refers to the earlier, dialectical usage when he says: axioO
is used of a proposition which the questioner hopes the questioned person will concede.
As for the term hupotheseis, there is perhaps little need to
mention its dialectical use. At a certain point in Plato's Republic,
Socrates speaks of the principle of non-contradiction, the presumably unshakeable principle according to which it is not possible for the same thing at the same time in the same respect and
same relation to suffer, be, or do opposite things. And having
enunciated the principle, he says, "Let us proceed on the hypothesis that this is so, with the understanding that, if it ever appear otherwise, everything that results from the assumption shall
be invalidated" (437a). And as even the not-so-dialectical Aristotle recognizes, this principle can only be established controversially, that is to say, dialectically, against an adversary who offers
to say something.
My general point is a simple one. The first book of the elements of geometry of which we have record was written in the
middle of the fifth century, by Hippocrates of Chios. An antivisual, anti-illustrative tendency that had first emerged, so far as
I know, in Parmenidean dialectic, is already present in the geometrical proofs of Hippocrates of Chios that have come down to
us, e.g. proofs of inequalities that would be obvious to visual in·
spection. The fact that at an early stage the terms adopted for
the premises of geometry were terms of dialectic, terms referring
to assumptions or concessions that do not entirely lose their pro·
visional character but are required in order that a discussion
might proceed, reinforces the impression that the transformation of geometry into a deductive science was carried out in a
context determined by the practice of dialectic.
It is also important to realize here that the premises of geometry had to be concessions: propositions needed to derive what
not only geometers but even surveyors and carpenters knew, yet
propositions which violated, in the most obvious way, the canons
of the Parmenidean logos. Two things equal to the same thing,
Euclid tells us, are equal to each other. But what is equality but
sameness, and how can three things that are exactly the same be
three? How, moreover, are we to perform the absolutely impossible feats that the aitemata require-to draw a straight line from
point to point, to extend a line, to describe a circle? Part of the
paradox here is described by Socrates in the Republic: "The science (of geometry)," he says, "is in direct contradiction to the
language spoken by its practitioners. They speak in a ludicrous
way, although they cannot help it; for they speak as if they were
doing something and as if all their words were directed towards
action. For all their talk is of squaring and applying and adding
and the like, whereas the entire discipline is directed towards
knowledge" (527'b). It is probably this peculiar mixture that
Timaeus is referring to when he speaks of geometry as apprehending what it deals with by a bastard kind of reasoning.
I should like to conclude with a short summary of and comment on what I have been saying, followed by a brief epilogue.
Deductive science appears to have been first discovered by a
few Greeks; so far as I know, this discovery remained unique.
Knowledge of it fell into oblivion during certain times; at whatever later times the possibility of deductive science has been
recognized, the recognition has come through the recovery of
Greek deductive science.
What did the original discovery involve, what did it mean, for
those who made it? That is the question I have sought to examine. From a plausible reconstruction of Pythagorean deductive
arithmetic, I am led to conclude that the essential moves were (l)
the turning away from visualization and taking recourse in logos;
(2) the application of a negative test, the method of indirect
proof or reduction to the absurd. Now these two steps are dialectical steps, they are the steps of the method that Socrates in the
Phaedo describes as his own: "I was afraid," he says, "that my
soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my
eyes or tried to apprehend them only by the help of the senses.
And I thought I had better have recourse to the logos . ... This
was the method I adopted. I first assumed some principle, which
I judged to be the strongest, and then I affirmed as true whatever
seemed to agree with this, and that which disagreed I regarded as
untrue." But in all the features that Socrates mentions, Socratic
method is essentially Eleatic, Parmenidean dialectic. The search
for the sources of Pythagorean deductive arithmetic thus leads
us back to Parmenides, or to someone else, who lived about the
same time, and whose utterances had the same effect
What was so special, so peculiar, about the discourse of the
Parmenidean Goddess, that it could precipitate what followed?
"Thinking and the thought that it is," says the Goddess, "are
one and the same. For you will not find thought apart from that
which is ... ; for there is and shall be no other besides what is,
since Destiny has fettered it so as to be whole and immovable."
"It is necessary to say and to think," the Goddess adds, "that
Being is." These words are spoken not by Parmenides but to
Parmenides. He is being called upon to say and to think, and the
saying and thinking are not separated, although the order in
which the Goddess names them is worth noticing, being the opposite of that which we moderns tend to choose. The thinking,
29
�The College
we had better remind ourselves, is Greek thinking; the verb is
noein, which once meant: to perceive by the eyes, to observe, to
notice. It is not to conceive, to analyze, to grasp, to attack in our
thinking. And that which Parmenides is asked to say and to
notice, what will it do for him to say and to notice it? The
sentence, "Being is," does indeed offer nothing to grasp, nothing
to conceptualize, nothing to attack in our thinking, nothing to
analyze. Except-there is a twoness there. There is the noun
and the verb, essentially, of course, the same word. Yet, there is
that which is present, and there is its presence. To say and to
notice not only what is present but its presence is to be arrested
in front of something. It is to be, at least a little bit, astonished. It
is to respect what lies before us. It is to think appropriately, as
befits the matter. At some point Greek thought ceased asking:
Out of what do the many things come to be? and began to ask instead: What is the Being of that which is in front of us? Ti to on is
the Greek: what is the being? In this question, there are implicit
the so-called laws of logic: A is A, A is not not-A. Deductive
science, I am proposing, takes it start here. What seems to have
been important, for these beginnings, was not answering the
question but pursuing it. Even Aristotle, from whom we have
received more answers than questions, nevertheless says:
Both formerly and now and forever it remains something to be sought and something forever darting away:
Ti to on?
Suppose, if you will, that the account I propose is something
like the truth. Then deductive science came to be and perhaps
still comes to be as a result both of a logos from beyond the gates
of Night and Day, and of the fracturing of Being and of the Motion going on in the Realm of Fire and Night. Or can deductive
science proceed on its own way, simply leaving behind what triggered its coming-to-be? It has sometimes attempted to do this: to
become, for instance, purely formal, with the specification of
every element and every rule of operation, and the exclusion of
every bit of explicit or implicit ontology, with the intent of insuring logical completeness and consistency. The effort has led to
many refinements; but the odd result of modern metamathematical study is that the effort cannot succeed in its original intention. Mathematics does not succeed in being completely in
itself and for itself. Its triumph lies not in isolated grandeur, but
in coping as best it can with necessities that appear.
Deductive mathematics, not quite a century after coming to
be, underwent a crisis with respect to its foundations. The
discovery of incommensurability can well have been early in the
5th century. It implies, rather obviously one would think, the
falsity of the old Pythagorean doctrine that all is number,
whatever that doctrine may have meant. But if the discovery was
early, an important consequence of it was somewhat slow in being realized. The teaching concerning ratios of magnitudes was
originally conceived in a numerical fashion: four magnitudes are
proportional when the first is the same part, parts or multiple of
the second that the third is of the fourth. That definition was
still being used by Hippocrates of Chios. Archytas, around 400
B.C., was saying that logistic, the doctrine of ratios of numbers,
has the highest rank among the arts, and in particular it is
30
superior to geometry, "since it can treat more clearly than the
latter whatever it will." Archytas thus fails to notice that the fact
of incommensurability sets a new task for mathematics, the formulation of a new definition of proportionality, one which will
apply to magnitudes that may be incommensurable.
The problem is solved by the early fourth century, possibly by
Theaetetus; at least he is the first we know to have used the new
definition, and he did so extensively. The new definition of same
ratio or proportionality is not the one embodied in Euclid, the
definition due to Eudoxus, but a precursor of the latter, one
which we can argue Euclid excised from Book X as it came down
to him from Theaetetus. The manner of the new definition is
worth noting. At the beginning of Book VII of Euclid, a method
is given of determining the greatest common divisor of two numbers; it has come to be called the Euclidean algorithm.
What is the greatest common divisor of 65, 39?
65 - 39 ~ 26
39 - 26 ~ 13
But 13 measures 26.
Ans: 13 is g.c.d. (65,39).
The lesser of the two numbers is subtracted from the greater
until a yet smaller number remains. This smaller remainder is
subtracted from the preceding subtrahend in the same manner,
and so one continues, obtaining a series of decreasing remainders, until one arrives at a remainder that measures the preceding remainder. In the case shown, this number is 13, which is the
greatest common divisor of 65 and 39.
This same procedure of successive, in-turn, subtractions -its
Greek name was antanairesis-can be applied to magnitudes, in
order to determine their common measure. But suppose they are
incommensurable; then the subtractions would go on forever,
without any remainder being found that measured the preceding remainder. A particular such situation is shown in the following diagram, which shows the side and diagonal of a square: (See
Figure 4).
A
DE
~
EB (symmetry)
CD (isosceles rt. 6]
CD~ AC- AB
CE ~ AB (or CB) - CD (or EB)
And so on ad infinitum.
~
Figure 4
�January, 1980
First the side is subtracted from the diagonal, leaving CD; CD is
then subtracted from the side CB twice, and so on; I will not go
into the proof of incommensurability here, which necessarily involves a reduction to the absurd; but one can get a hint from the
diagram as to why the process would be infinite. Nevertheless,
this infinite process of antanairesis would go on in a determinate
way, for a given pair of original magnitudes. The nth remainder,
for example, might subtract two times from remainder n-1; and
remainder n-1 might subtract three times from remainder n. The
two and three, along with the corresponding numbers for all the
other subtractions, would characterize and define the antanairesis as a whole. Then same antanairesis could be the definition of same ratio: a first magnitude would have to a second
magnitude the same ratio as a third to a fourth if the first and
second magnitude had the same. antanairesis as the third and the
fourth. With this definition, it is possible to prove, for example,
that rectangles under the same height are to one another as their
bases, because one sees that the antanairesis will go on in the
same way with the rectangles as with the bases, even though the
antanairesis be infinite.
There are other mathematical exploits of Theaetetus, embodied in books X and XIII, and they are of a kind with the formulation of the definition of proportionality that I have just
described. Using theorems about numbers in new ways, Theaetetus succeeds in rendering what was inexpressible expressible.
Such achievement, I would suggest, should be put down under
the rubric of Pascal's esprit de finesse, rather than under his esprit
de geometrie, the geometrical turn of mind, which Pascal so
berates for its blindness to the problem of the principles. The
Pythagorean mathemata, arithmetic, geometry, and the rest, are
not liberal arts merely or primarily in being deductive, in pro·
ceeding stepwise in accordance with certain rules. Their liberality, it seems to me, has an essential relation to the awareness not
merely of logical necessity, but of that necessity with which they
are designed to cope: we are free men when we are aware of that
necessity and can begin to cope with it. The liberal arts become
fully liberal only as we turn toward the problem of the principles,
toward the matrix of necessity in which those principles are
embedded, toward the question of being from which those arts
take their rise.
1. This lecture owes everything, or nearly everything, to a number of
studies by historians of mathematics, particularly; 0. Becker, "Die
Lehre vom Geraden und Ungeraden im neunten Buch der euklidischen
Elemente," Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik . .. ,
Abt. B, Band 3, 1936, 125-145; B. L. van der Waerden, "Die Arithmetik
der Pythagoreer," Mathematische Annalen, 120, 1947-1949, 127-153,
and Science Awakening, New York, 1971: G. Vlastos, "Zeno of Elea" in
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, VIII, 370; 0. Neugebauer, The Exact
Sciences in Antiquity, 2nd edition, 1969; and above all articles by Arpad
Szabo: "Zur Geschichte der Dialektik des Denkens," in Acta Antiqua
Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, II, 1954, 17-62, and "The Transfor·
mation of Mathematics into Deductive Science and the Beginnings of
its Foundation on Definitions and Axioms," in Scripta Mathematica, 27,
1964, 28-48 and 113-139. For the Proclus text I depended on Procli
Diadochi in Primum Euclidis Elementorum Commentarii, ed. Freidlein,
Teubner, 1873, and the recent translation by the late Glenn R. Morrow,
A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements, Princeton, 1970.
In the section on Parmenides there may be recognized a certain inspira·
tion, much diluted, of Martin Heidegger's What is Called Thinking?, tr.
Wieck & Graz, New York,: 1954.
2. I note that Egyptian fractions, with one exception, are unit fractions,
fractions we would write with l as numerator. They are written by put·
ting a line above the number we call the denominator. The exception
was 2/3, written by putting two of these lines above the numeral 3.
3. Quoted in 0. Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, 2nd edition, Dover, 1969, 79.
4. Paraphrased from van der Waerden, Science Awakening I, 63.
5. In particular, see Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism.
6. Quoted by van der Waerden, Science Awakening, I, 109.
31
�Life Beyond the Reach of Hope:
Recollections of a Refugee, 1938-1939
Philipp P. Fehl
For Katharine and Caroline
The central Jewish cemetery in Vienna is composed of two
very large fields of land which are narrowly planted with graves.
Located at the outskirts of the city, it forms part of the constantly
busy, huge municipal cemetery which, at the time of its founding nearly a century ago, was a model of enlightened planning in
the matter of regulating the public inconvenience of the disposal
of the dead in a large city teeming with progress and expansion.
Even today the effects of this foresight make themselves felt.
There is a steady coming and going on the streetcars of somberly
dressed people, women whose eyes are red from crying, and embarrassed men clutching garden tools or flowerpots. A small colony of women selling candles and flowers has sprung up at the
principal gates; long rows of stoneyards line the last stretch of
streetcar rails and display the wares of the monument makers. It
is an awkward city of the dead, clumsily, perhaps, but lovingly
cared for by the living who come to it from inconvenient distances, handicapped, burdened, and sometimes also upheld by
the anonymity of a well-regulated public service in which even
the individuality of grief obtains the form of a cliche.
The Jewish sections of the cemetery, such as I remember
them from the few visits on which I was taken as a child, were
not really touched by this flow of traffic; one came and went
Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois, Philipp Fehl is author of The Classical Monument: Reflections on the Connection between
Morality and Art in Greek and Roman Sculpture, New York 1972. After
serving in the U.S. Army from 1942-1946, he was an interrogator at the
Nuremberg trials for a year.
32
with it but was detached from it upon entering the gates of the
Jews. There was even in the air a certain touch of surprise as one
left the crowds and went, as it were, the wrong way. Inside the
cemetery an air of discreet prosperity prevailed. I remember the
gleam of gold buttons on the frock coat of an attendant at the
gate, the simple dignity of the architecture of the old ceremonial
hall, and above all, the impression of stability in the form of the
old fashioned tombstones, and their substance. Out of respect
for the second commandment there were hardly any figurative
pieces. Instead, the tombstones spoke with lettering: the names
of the dead, honorific titles, often antiquated and now quaint,
and the sentiments of the survivors in German; pious sayings in
Hebrew. The magic of certain family names more or less peculiar to Austrian Jews enhanced, in the very place where death
ruled, a sense of belonging, of lastingness, and the continuation
of family. Stones bearing the names of famous men filled us with
pride joined to melancholy, as did the names of rabbis we knew
and revered. One grave was that of the rabbi who had married
my parents and whose father (as my father was fond of pointing
out), my grandparents. Visitors ever seemed to be few in comparison to the vast expanse of the Jewish graveyard. It is against the
Jewish law except under strict necessity to bury more than one
body in a grave, or to move bodies to make room for others. This
explains the disproportionate size of the premises. On many
graves one could see a few pebbles, tokens of a pious visit, which
relatives and friends would leave at the tombs instead of flowers
for, among conservative Jews at least, flowers counted as a vanity. From time to time one could hear the voice of a man who
was somewhere near, but could not be seen for the dense rows of
�January, 1980
stones, in the familiar chant of the prayer for the dead. On one
occasion as we were visiting family graves my father said to me
quietly, "Remember those graves; you must learn to find them
on your own." I was still quite young and the realization that he
thought he must instruct me, and that I would lose him as a
guide, pained me. I could think of nothing better to say but that
the graves all had numbers, and that the plan of the cemetery
was readily comprehensible, but he repeated what he had said
and spoke no more of it.
This was long before Hitler's annexation of Austria. To me the
world seemed stable and at least as predictable as the security of
the well-kept cemetery. My father, who was a practical man, had
no such illusions and I remember I was a bit ashamed of that. His
sentence had an echo in it of an ancient Jewish caution regarding tombs; we may have to leave the graves behind, but we
should remember where they are and, times permitting, be able
to find them again and put them in order, we or our children. It
was, I thought, not only unwarranted but ungenerous, uncomprehending of the spirit of modern times, even to consider the
possibility that we might have to flee, like our ancestors, when
they were ruled by the whim of princes. These were not the Middle Ages.
I have gone back on occasion to the old cemetery and inevitably remember this unfinished conversation. The cemetery is
now deserted; the streetcar no longer even stops at the farther
gate. It is extremely difficult to find a grave that is not on a main
road; the section markers are in part lost, impenetrable thickets
of underbrush obscure the boundaries between individual
graves. There are also great holes in the ground, piled high with
tombstones that slipped or fell into them. Some of these holes
are the results of erosion, others of artillery fire. A battle was
fought across the cemetery as, at the end of the war, the Russian
troops advanced on Vienna. In the early years after the war, now
and then one could see the marker of the grave of a Russian soldier with its Soviet star incongruously placed among the Jewish
tombs. The Russians buried their dead where they fell. There
also were signs of the desecration of the cemetery during the
Nazi years; the ceremonial halls were burnt out shells. Like the
synagogues in the city of the living, they had been put to the
flames. One of them is now rebuilt, the other, in the oldest part
of the cemetery, has become a picturesque ruin. The inscriptions on the old tombs are hardly legible anymore-only here
and there one sees a new tracing of the old lettering or a lawn actually cared for; they stand out incongruously against the mass of
lonely graves and stones slowly tipping over or sinking into the
ground. Here and there an added inscription on an old tomb recalls people who were murdered in faraway places or who died
abroad as refugees. And there is a section of graves with little
wooden markers, the names long worn off, where those who died
in Vienna during the war, before the deportations were effected,
found their burial. The markers were improvised, often from
shop signs of Jewish stores, and one can now read on them
fragments of texts announcing wares or skills. There also are a
number of small gravestones erected after the war by mourning
relatives, to take the place of these impermanent signs. The
cemetery authorities, quite justly, do not permit large stones in
this section. Quite at the border, in a no-man's land between
Jews and Christians, but marked with crosses, are the graves of
Christians of Jewish descent who were buried in the Jewish sector because what was called their 'race' denied them access to
the cemetery of their co-religionists.
Remarkable in the Jewish cemetery proper are also islands of
neat rows of old tombs carefully straightened, many of them
with inscriptions entirely in Hebrew. These are the tombs transferred to Vienna since the end of the war from ancient Jewish
communities in the provinces where there are no Jews left and
where the Jewish cemeteries continued to be exposed to vandalism or were in the way of local building expansion. Everywhere
the grass grows over the cemetery. It is a gentle wilderness, a
seemingly endless expanse of melancholy peace. Birds are at
home there as if it were a nature preserve and on and off a rabbit
will be startled by our steps into running.
Some years ago my wife and I took our two children there. Adventuresome as they were, and willing to help find graves we
could no longer find, they soon were out of our sight. They could
not have been far but we both felt a strange, sudden fear that
they would be gone forever, as if they had been given to us in a
dream from which we were now awakening. But they soon came
back to us, with their sweet American voices, and we awoke from
the awakening. It was then that I decided to write down these
memories, but it took years before I actually began.
What I have to say is in praise of silence. The terror of the German persecution and finally the mass murder of the Jews of Eu·
rope is a matter of record~even of German record that boasts of
it. I saw very little of it (if it had been otherwise I would, probably, not have lived to tell the tale) and I do not, at any rate, want
to speak of that, but rather of moments in which a kind of insight
was communicated that escaped words. My memory holds them
up to me in the form almost of pictures that fill me with an in·
finite longing, and with gratitude that I can still see them. It was,
I am tempted to say, my privilege to see how people I loved prepared themselves for death-and I saw it with open eyes for I
was young and so wanted to learn-not at the time when death
was actually upon them, but when there was still time to reflect,
during the lull, when normal life had come to a halt for Jews but
no one knew, perhaps not even the eventual devisers of mass
murder, just what the end would be, or how long it would take.
We knew, however, that those of us who could not emigrateand there were not many who readily could: there were no countries open to refugees at the time; at best, they had only restrictive quotas-would be doomed to a cheerless existence without
means of support and at the mercy (if that is the word) of a hostile government, to a life without a future. Suddenly, there was
time on our hands, and the opportunity, the invitation, to marvel
about the purposes of life, to wonder how to support each other,
and to prepare for death.
I do not know how those who stayed behind when I finally
escaped met their death. It must in its horror and panic and fatigue have been incongruously different from what they anticipated. I cannot speak of that but I do want to recall, such as I
could discern it in the silence, what they discovered about the
dignity of man when they still had the leisure to do so and hold
on to it in the lull of the months that preceded the outbreak of
the war.
33
�The College
The Germans moved into Austria suddenly. Their arrival took
us quite by surprise, though, in hindsight, it seems quite astonishing that we had not expected it. The invasion threats, the invectives, the call for a new order, had been going on for years.
But they were not taken seriously because they kept on being repeated. It was only journalism, it seemed, just words~the deed
was against the law of nations; it was unreasonable, if not scandalous, to expect it. In the view of many-certainly in mine (I
was then a high school student of seventeen)-this kind of violence no longer was possible; the modern democracies would not
tolerate it. But the surprise came.
There was to be an important announcement over the radio.
We knew the political situation was tense; and suddenly there
was the tired voice of the Austrian chancellor, abdicating and acceding to the German demands in order to prevent, so he put it,
Gen'nan blood from being spilled-that is the German blood of
the Austrians as well as the German blood of the Germans, a
kind of fratricide. And then there was music, variations on the
Austrian national anthem by Haydn, and then the voice of the
new chancellor-designate Seyss-Inquart (he later became the
German governor of the Netherlands and after the war was
hanged at Nuremberg), addressing his audience as 'fellow Germans'. He represented a new law and order, and in a strained,
passionate way, invited the German troops to enter Austria. And
then suddenly we knew we were trapped, that the conditions of
our lives had changed, that we had no future in the terms of living as we had been living, that aU was insecure, that our days_ had
turned to night.
We had a neighbor, a gentile woman who had come in to listen
to the radio with us. She was a devout Catholic and a devoted
partisan of the Catholic party that ruled Austria. She was disconsolate and almost fainted during the broadcast, and we, the
obviously doomed victims of the invasion (the others, the
German-blood Austrians as they would say, were now being liberated from the presumed dominance of the Jews), we the Jews,
had to comfort her and take her home. "My Franz," she said of
her son, who was a minor civil servant, "Will he keep his post,
will they now refuse to promote him because he is a faithful
Catholic?" We said, "there, there," to her and as we said it we
knew that our exclusion from the sharing of speech with our
compatriots, or new ex-compatriots, had begun. From that day
on the same woman, a lonely, pleasant enough elderly widow
whose son Franz was her only purpose in living, cut herself off
from talking to us and avoided my mother, whom for a long time
she had made a not altogether willing but tolerant partner of
daily conversations about her hopes for her son. But now she
would not talk to the old neighbor who suddenly, without changing, had become a 'Jewess,' a controversial figure. But some
weeks after the invasion she appeared beaming at the door, and
announced, "My Franz told me it is all right that I talk to you
again ... it won't harm him in his career." She had wanted to
come for days, she said, to invite my mother to her apartment.
She had taught her parrot to say "Heil Hitler!," and he did it so
well. For some reason she thought-if thinking is the word-that
this would please my mother.
The German invasion was masterminded quite impressively.
Soon after the announcement of the surrender on the radio-
34
which the very next speaker turned into a liberation and a welcome to the new times-the German air force, flying very low,
was over Vienna. For days a carpet of airplanes with their low
drone was spread over the silent city, and the hum of these gray
machines and the finality of their threat went on and on and
with its reverberation affected every thought, every word one
spoke; it was an object lesson in the 'facts of life'. These airplanes, clearly equipped for spreading death, dropped little pink
leaflets, friendly jubilating messages, "the German air force
greets German Vienna"; and as the sky was filled with the view
of death so the ground was covered with these confetti of national fraternization.
But upon Jews a new reality was imposed-there was not a day
that did not bring vilifications in the ugliest language that the
press and radio could devise. It was so astonishing to me that
people in order to express their joy, their professed hopes for the
good, should join with it so much hatred, that scorn could be so
alive. But there it was, a simpleminded brutal explanation of the
nature of evil in the world: there were Aryans and Jews, and the
ones were good, shining examples of what man could be, and the
others evil. The world, they said, needed a 'solution of the Jewish
problem'. And my former compatriots, with the exception of
those who now became as shy, as cautious, as lonely as the Jews,
and saddened unto death by the shame of the country, readily
accepted this formulation. Antisemitism, which before had been
regarded as vulgar, now was indulged in by high and low, gladly
and pompously. It became the natural expression of a new patriotic highmindedness. No appeal was possible, not to reason nor
loyalty.
I remember a conversation with one of my fellow students
who had been a friend. He was now a genuinely converted Nazi
but, as a former friend, he felt the need of securing my approval
of his now having to hate me. It was something that I, too, would
have to honor, as it were, for we were natural enemies of each
other. But I did not understand and argued, not to defend myself but to reach, such as I could, for what we both, however
dimly, had comprehended in our studies, and above all, in the
love of literature which we shared, especially that of the German
classics, for the definition of what made life worthwhile, something that I now loved and needed with a new urgency, to accompany me and hold me up in the loneliness unmitigated by
friendship and the sharing of trust that was now before me. He
listened to me as if I were presenting a siren's song and nodded
like one who understands what he must reject, and concluded
not coldly but sadly that what I said was quite right, as long as it
was seen from my position, but that I could not rise to his and we
could not argue the matter out because our blood was different.
No matter what I thought, my understanding would be governed
by my blood-my very argument showed it-and I could neither
see nor feel the truth of what he advocated because in him spoke
the knowledge of nature and God that. suited the German mission in the world. And so on. We never spoke again.
Short of the flood of official vilification and occasional, policeinspired acts of murder and vandalism against Jews, nothing
much happened to change the routine of our lives. My father
continued to work in his store, my brother and I continued going
to school, doing homework. But we knew we were no longer citi-
�January, 1980
zens. Our presence in our city was, for the time, being tolerated
but also scorned, and we were no longer protected by the law.
We lived on grudgingly bestowed sufferance, provided we were
not 'noticed'. And going out meant that you no longer could be
reasonably sure you would come home again. Apart from other
obvious distinguishable traits Jews could readily be identified in
the streets because their lapels were not decorated with the ubiquitous swastikas, and, more readily than that, by their sadness,
the loneliness of the unjustly persecuted for whom there was no
hearing, in the midst of a city now teeming with a new jollity filled
with that joie de vivre, a veritable delirium of pleasure, that had
descended upon Vienna where everyone was making, collectively, a new start in life. We disturbed the millennium that was
just dawning upon the others. And there were so many petty insults to Jews to accompany the obvious great threats with which
we now had to cope. You could no longer sit down on a park
bench unless it was marked as one particularly reserved for Jews,
on streetcars you were not allowed to take a seat, and the conductor when he collected your fare would no longer say "Thank
you." And every visit we made had the aspect of a last farewell.
There were so many suicides. There was not a day when we
did not hear of a friend, an acquaintance, a relative, who chose
so to end his life, and the news was acknowledged not with the
shock that normally accompanies one's hearing of such an end,
but with a nod of the head, an understanding, even a hushed
envy, or a gesture of loving respect, for we knew they died because they would no longer be offended. The news of these
deaths came and fell like soft snow, drifting, and enveloping us
with a great loneliness. It even brought a kind of comfort, an affirmation of the dignity of man that defined itself in choosing
death. And similarly it could define itself in the choice of staying
alive and in mourning, and in the choice of one's words, and in
the listening to what was barely spoken.
One day soon after the "liberation" there was to be a great parade. Our house was situated on a road traditionally taken by
processions. Every year, on Corpus Christi Day, a temporary
altar was erected directly across the street from us. I remember
that we always left our places at the window when the celebration of the Mass was begun there; it was not right to watch it for
the sake of curiosity. But this time the street and the windows
were festively decked out with swastika flags and across from our
window someone had decorated his window with a huge picture
of Hitler framed elaborately with flowers. It was an official holiday and we were all at home. There was no place to go. And
there was nothing to say. We did not speak until my father, who
had been looking absentmindedly and yet with a kind of fascination at the Hitler picture, said with such an astonishment in his
voice, as if he had hit upon the solution of an enigma, "Look,
that guy-dieser Kerl-parts his hair on the wrong side of the
head_" And then after a pause he added, quietly, "If they will
only let me keep on working ... ''That same evening was the parade. It seemed as if all of Vienna was marching below our windows. Among the neatly divided groups with banners there was,
of course, a contingent of children; then there came a huge
group of little boys dressed in T shirts and very short knee pants,
a sort of freedom through fitness demonstration, marching with
anxious adroitness. They were much applauded in the streets as
at regular intervals they cutely went through the exercise of giving the Hitler salute in unison. When they came by our windows,
which were identifiable as Jewish windows because they were
not decorated, they broke into a chant rehearsed for such occasions: Wenn's Judenblut vom Messer spritzt~a threatening invocation of a day of reckoning yet to come: "When Jewish blood
will drip from our knives ... "-and marched on, ever so many. It
was a cold night in March, and my mother looked down with
such a sadness, and in the same matter-of-fact way in which my
father, before, had spoken of Hitler's hairdo, she .said, shaking
her head, "These children down there will catch cold ... "
I do not think many Jews in those days 'explained' themselves
to each other. Everybody knew that the other was moved by the
same loneliness. A certain intimacy of loving understanding held
the victims together without words; looks sighed and then withdrew into themselves, out of politeness, perhaps, mingled with
compassion, so as not to break out in fruitless tears and disturb
the other's grief with one's own. We began to learn to live with
desperation, to be social in solitude.
There was a Jewish old age home in Vienna that was also a
home for the incurably ill My mother had long made it a practice to go there once a week, to speak to people, to bring them little gifts. She always dressed for the occasion, it was festive, and
she often took my brother and me along. Once she was introduced to a very old lady and she kissed her hand, because this
was the way to honor old age. It was no longer done in the new
time, that of the Republic of Austria that was then 'my time',
and the gesture which was spontaneous, natural, and so obviously well mannered surprised me in its beauty and touched me
as it still touches me.
We continued these visits under Hitler, and there were now
many people visiting in the home. Many were paying a last call
to relatives, some were on the verge of emigration or flight,
whether abroad or into death. All had time on their hands because they had lost their jobs_ The old and the infirm in the
home were more lively, and the visitors dejected; the roles had
been reversed, the old now comforted the young. For they were
already marked for death-only waiting-and now almost grateful, that they (as one then thought) could no longer be disturbed.
They were so sorry for us because our lives were threatened unnaturally, by the society of our fellowmen, rather than illness and
the death that cuts off old age. The dying blessed the living and
wept for their fate. There was so much love alive in the sunlit
courtyard of the ancient building when I went there for the last
time to bid my farewells, shortly before I left Austria. And the
peace of a world retreating into the tomb.
My first and lasting lesson in loneliness was imposed upon me
in the first week after the invasion, when I still rebelled against
accepting the obvious fact that we were proscribed people and
outside the protection of the law. It was the first Sunday under
the new state of affairs and my father was anxious to find out
how his relatives were faring. It clearly was not wise to be seen in
the streets, but I argued, with too much acerbity, that Nazis or
not, the nation lived by laws, and if we observed them-even
though we obviously could not endorse them-the authorities
would have no reason to harm us. I remember insisting with
what now would be called teenage defiance that it was coward-
35
�The College
ice, feebleness, to give in to fear and sit at home when we had the
tight to use the streets. If one gave it up, no wonder they would
riot concede it to us, etc. My father, more to stop the noise of the
argument though also irritated by his son's sharpness, merely
said to me, "Come, let's go." And off we went. It was a peaceful
Sunday morning and many Viennese were in the streets, walking
their dogs, chatting, all or almost all wearing a swastika in their
buttonholes. In their festivity they looked at us with joy, ready to
greet us, and to be greeted with a hearty Heil Hitler! but as we
looked away they realized we did not belong and looked at us
oddly before they looked away themselves. "See," I said to my
father, "it works."
From time to time we saw small crowds in the streets, gathered
about a central group; we did not venture nearer to find out
what was going on; it would have been a provocation so to become a part of a group. But it did not take us long to find out. A
young man pu1led up a bicycle near us; he wore a red arm band
with a swastika in the center of a white field, a young believer recruited into the auxiliary police. He stopped us and, without
meanness, as if it were a merely diagnostic routine, addressed
both of us, "The gentlemen will please excuse me for stopping
them, but are the gentlemen by any chance Jews?" And upon
our saying yes-it was as if we were admitting to a crime-he
pointed~ his finger at me and said, "The young one" (he was
himself just about my age) "comes along with me!" He made me
run in front of his bicycle, and he wanted me to run smartly,
"Chest out," he cried, and "move your arms!" Soon we arrived
at one of those circles of onlookers my father and I had noticed
before. It was a particularly large gathering, and together we
pushed our way into the center. I saw some people squatting on
the ground, obviously all Jews, who were scrubbing the pavement on which slogans had been written only a few days ago,
when Austria was still free, exhorting people to unite behind the
government i11 a plebiscite that was to demonstrate to the world
that Austria treasured its independence. It was now proposed
that the Jews had conspired to bring about this show of resistance and the Jews therefore had to clean the words off the pavement. It was oilpaint and we were not given any solvents or soap,
just brushes and water. All of us squatted there, and scrubbed,
and when we ran out of water one of the overseers poured more
on the pavement, caring to be careless, and splattering us with
the water. There was no jeering, just hundreds of eyes glued on
us in silence, a wicked, fascinated curiosity to see how we would
'take it'. And take it we did. From time to time a new victim was
brought in, and an earlier one duly released, the crowd making
way for him, not courteously but as if he were infecti0us or a
ghost.
There were women in the crowd, beady-eyed. "I know a really
bad Jew," said one, with the eagerness of a witch, "really bad."
And one of the young attendants: "Where do I find that Jew?"
And two or three women crowding around him, gave the address, dtsputing the quickest way to get there. Once an old man,
a rabbi, aged and infirm, was pushed into the circle: "No, let him
go," murmured the crowd, "he is too old." "No, make him do it,"
said others, "he is only pretending." "Beat it," said the guardians
to him after a quick consultation, "beat it and never show your
dirty face around here again." And so it went.
I worked there, with a fierce eagerness, in anger first, and then
36
in silence, concentrating on the pavement, and from time to
time looking up, still marvelling whether this was real, and for
the very marvel of it wanting to see it all. I so well remember the
eyes turned on me that even now, as I write this down, I can see
some eyes turning away, as I look up to see, to remember, to
comprehend. And then someone tapped me on the shoulder, a
guardian; a new victim had been brought in. "You can go now."
He said it almost tenderly. I had served my turn, the ordeal was
over, and they were not, he seemed anxious to assure himself by
this arrogation of the aspects of fairness, members of a gang, but
police: if their measures were harsh they were just also because
they were administrated in an orderly fashion.
I walked off quickly, moving towards the line of houses so as to
have their cover, a protection of anonymity, as near the wall as
was practical. And I heard my father's familiar whistle from a
doorway. He had followed me from a distance, waited, and been
at the ready to help if help were needed, if help he could, all this
time. It had been perhaps two hours. We then walked on
through side streets, like shadows, my father guiding my steps,
for he knew, from his service in the war, how to be on one's own
on patrol. When we came to his brother's house they were astonished to see us and even reproachful ("How dared you venture
out?") when they heard the story.
And so we lived. The adventure cured me of arguing. It also
made me very silent, as were the rest of us. I sometimes still see
that silence in old passport photographs. So many of tis had to
have pictures taken, for all sorts of documents that were needed
for the rigamarole of applying for passports, emigration visas that
one knew only in the rarest cases would be granted. But one left
nothing untried. Almost everyone spent day after day standing
in long queues before embassy doors, only to be given a form to
apply which was but a prelude to rejection. This practice of foreign governments to protect their labor market from a sudden influx of penniless Jews weighed heavily on us. One expected
nothing from the Nazis who breathed murder and contempt in
every one of their utterances regarding Jews, but outside there
was what one called "the world". The world at best, however, responded grudgingly to our desperate need for help and reassurance, exactly because our needs were so desperate.
But to return to the photographs. There is such a sadness in
those pictures. It was then still customary that the photographer
would try to make you smile for your picture-and no one, no
one ever smiled. The picture, one knew, might well be the last
record of one's life. When mine was taken by a cousin who dabbled smartly in amateur photography he took me outside and
lined me up against a wall for the obligatory neutral gray background. As I stood and waited and looked at the camera I saw
one of the slogans of the new regime written in large letters on
the wall opposite: "Juda verrecke," a singularly brutal exhortation to Jews to just up and die. We saw and heard things like that
all the time, and no one spoke to us.
I do want to report one silent act of kindness that probably
saved my life. It all happened as if in a silent movie, in slow motion. I was on my way to school, and, as often happened to me,
nearly late-the presence of horrors in the streets had not
changed the bad habits I had lovingly acquired in the years of
coping with school.
�January, 1980
As I hurried along with my books under my arms I saw a young
woman standing in the doorway of a house, looking at me insistently, anxious to catch my attention. It was the first time since
the disaster had occurred that a non-Jew had looked at me, wanting to be noticed, to be recognized. I saw her, with her mouth
open as if she wanted to scream, beckoning me to come over to
her, into the house. I wanted to walk on, but I saw the terror in
her eyes, and crossed the street. Quickly, quickly, she motioned,
and when I came into the house she was gone. As I turned
around I saw a whole row of storm troopers walking in step along
the width of the street, a net of men spread out to catch Jews, to
arrest them as they came upon them. There were quotas, I
learned later; so many victims to be brought in per day, to be interrogated, perhaps to be sent to concentration camps, just to
keep the Jews in line, I suppose, and themselves busy.
We kept on going to school becaUse there was nothing else to
do and because the habit of working for the final certificate, the
Matura, which.in normal circumstances would have entitled us
to enter the University, was ingrained. At school, Jews and Gentiles now sat apart. Our teachers, with the exception of the Jewish ones who had been replaced, were the same we had before.
Some, dearly and shamelessly traitors to their teaching of just a
few weeks before, now aired Nazi convictions with a sternness
full of contempt for us, the Jews. They ignored us as if we were
not in the room. Before this they had preached other sermons
with the same tones of highmindedness that now accompanied
the new texts.
We watched ever so carefully, hoping for a word of recognition, a sign of secret support, but none really came, though we
saw that some of our old teachers were embarrassed when, according to their instructions, they began every day's lecture with
the Hitler salute. As far as dealing with Jews was concerned,
they-the best of them-found refuge in an exacting correctness; the grading (as it always had been in our school) was strict
but fair. In that respect there was no change. Only conversation
had died, and with it the occasional corrective or encouraging
comments on our papers, ever sparse though they had been, that
would have invited a discussion with the teacher.
Nor was there talk with our gentile fellow sh1dents. Some were
now members of Nazi youth outfits and came to school in uniform. All, with a strange solicitude, watched each other's behavior, especially vis d vis the Jews. Any civility would have
amounted to a protest against the regime.
And so did we watch them, furtively and amazed. Our fellow
students were still the boys we had known, but there was now a
new element of optimism in them. Even if they remained playful
they now knew, with an unbecoming resolve, where they were
going. They felt liberated and proud to be members, participating members, of that great political and military machine
represented by Greater Germany: formerly citizens of a small
contemptible state that had no power, they had suddenly become members of a nation which, they were sure (and for reasons more formidable than hindsight now is capable of seeing),
would inherit the world. They were not, or not just, opportunists
but idealists who had learned or were learning to see the duties
of man in a new way, a more joyful and life-assenting conviction
that turned the lust for power into a moral asset. Instruction at
school took on a new direction; education served the new state
and affirmed new values.
We, the Jews, received the same instruction, the same assignments as the other shldents, but were treated as if we were
shadows. By and large the teachers turned their faces to where
the gentiles sat. With some it was shame, with others a veritable
lust to humiliate. Small clues would show a world, and young
eyes see keenly. As far as my Jewish friends and I were concerned it was now the teachers who were being tested. But I took
no pleasure in seeing them fail; sadness overcame me, and a new
kind of loneliness that came of the effort, I think, to escape from
disgust. Some of our old teachers, however, I loved, or learned to
love, because an occasional accent of regret or a sigh of fatigue
indicated how troubled they were. I could see, or thought I could
see, that they were mourning the death of Austria and that they
lived in silent pain. I felt sorry for these elderly men to the point
of tears, because of the burden they carried within, because they
were compassionate when it was stylish to be hard.
Two encounters in school, not in themselves lovable, but
quaint, stand out in my memory for their indefinable oddity, a
result of the contrast between the habits of civilization that still
made themselves felt, like dead weight, and the order of the new
orientation. One of the substitute teachers we had (he took the
place of our beloved teacher of German who was a Jew and was
now gone, replaced without explanation) was a thoroughly interesting figure. His name was Thiel, he was young but was what
one then called an 'old Nazi'. He had, so gossip among us had it,
been living for years as a political refugee in Germany, making a
living as the conductor of a jazz band. He had, in fact, something
of the politesse of a musical performer about him.
It was the rule that students would get up when a professor
entered the room. Every time this man met his class he performed a ritual he had himself invented. Like the other teachers
he turned towards the gentile side of the classroom and gave the
Hitler salute, very smartly, but then he turned to us, the Jews,
and responded to our having stood up for him with a polite, elegantly clipped bow. He was the only one in the whole crowd of
professors who openly acknowledged our existence.
The other moment of courtesy occurred after we had taken
our final examination, the Matura. By that time Jews and Gentiles had been altogether segregated into separate schools. The
school I had been attending was now a school for Jews only, the
empty places filled up by Jewish students who were moved to
ours from other districts of Vienna. The Matura was a solemn, if
not awesome event in the life of students and the school upheld
all the appearances of tradition. The examinations were rigorous
but fair, except that the Ministry of Education had decreed that
in case of doubt a Jewish student should receive the worse rather
than the better grade. It was an effort to be just in the full rigor
of the law, uncornpromised for members of the accursed race, by
charity. The chairman of the commission that administered the
examination was, as usual, an outsider to the school; in our
instance a man who had been called back into service from retirement, to replace someone who because of his origins or his
allegiance to the former regime had been removed from the
board. He was, so gossip had it, known for his very old Nazi sym·
pathies, and for his tried antisemitism. He turned out to be a
37
�The College
very old gentleman, with nice, easy manners, a little deaf and, if a
Nazi and antisemite, still formed by the old ways of civility. His
antisemitism was more a matter of private prejudice than a manifestation of civic pride, a sort of crabby dislike of what was alien
that has a tradition all its own and that was, before it merged
with the rabid, modern hatred of the Jews, more ridiculous than
monstrous.
Our man presided fairly, if with some disdain, over our examinations. The time for the festivities having arrived, we filed into
the assembly room and the professors took their seats. He rose to
give the speech for the occasion, which he may easily have given
fifty times before. He was fond of that speech, one could see. He
began, "Gentlemen!" And then he looked about the room-it
was a part of his initial speaking gesture-and disappointment
spread about his face. He had forgotten we were all Jews and
now he remembered and his speech would not fit the occasion-which was a first (and probably also a last) in the history of
Austrian education. There was nothing for which he could express a pious wish. Our certificates, though valid, did not entitle
us to enter the University, because we were Jews. And what
would we be doing in the world? If anything good or prosperous,
could he as a loyal civil servant of the new order wish for it?
"Gentlemen!", he began again, and his embarrassment grew
quite visibly, as did our keen attention. And then he spread his
arms, palms upwards, with a gesture of polite helplessness.
"Well, gentlemen, I congratulate you." He sat down. The ceremony was over.
In this school, during the last weeks of classes, I made a new
friend, a young man who stood apart. He had just recently come
to our school to take his final exams with us. One day we stood
on a balcony looking into the school courtyard teeming with students, none of them knowing what the next day might bring, all
perhaps too busy talking about the exams because there was no
future beyond that, most of us still very much schoolboys in the
slang we spoke, the old ways still about us and no longer fitting
our new situation which was not a situation at all, our lives altogether undefined, and each one of us unspeakably insulted, and
each in his own way trying to cope with it. As we stood there
then and talked of what it meant to be alone, and I looked for
words, or images, in the plays of the German and Greek and
French classic authors which we were rereading for the examination, and which I had always loved and which now began to
mean so much more, he told me that he had come to this Jewish
school by his own choice, that he was in fact not a Jew but
wished to become one.
His story was singular. His widower father, a prosperous
farmer, had brought him up as a regular country boy. "It was
natural, among young people in our part of the country," he explained, "to be active in the illegal Nazi gangs. It was, so to speak,
a sporting activity; once we broke the windows of the one Jewish
store in our little town. When Hitler moved into Austria, heroes
of the underground movement were needed. It was suggested
that our gang be inducted into the storm troopers as a special
unit. It was an honor for the entire village. In order to fulfill the
entrance requirements everyone of us had to show proof of his
German (i.e. non-Jewish) ancestry to the fourth generation.
When I asked my father for my dear mother's birth certificate he
38
had to break down and tell me that she had been jewish. It was
as if a whole world had collapsed, and I ran away from home and
lived in the fields for weeks. There I figured things out, and now
I want to become a Jew, and take my examinations in my capacity as a Jew, and at the first opportunity I shall go to Palestine
and live there."
I do not know what became of him. I do remember that I wondered at the time, as I wonder now, whether his desperate rejection of his father, who had betrayed the rllemory of his mother
because, I presume, he had wanted the child to grow up happy,
adjusted, as it were, to his environment, was not a continuation
of his original commitment to fight things out in the terms of
whatever happened to be your origins, as if that determined
what was right, and not justice. But I do know that his reasoning
was earnest and original and brave and that he was touched by
sorrow as we looked down upon our schoolmates milling about
and that he was sorry-not just because he had changed sides or
fortune had changed sides on him-but because he had learned
about compassion and the nature of guilt only when he himself
was a victim.
I also want to record a story I only heard. As is well known, on
November lOth, 1938, all or almost all the synagogues in Germany and Austria were blown up by order of the government
and many Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. I
was then no longer in the country, though my parents and my
brother were. Our family had a good friend, an elderly gentleman who was a pious Jew and made his living as a Hebrew
teacher. On the day after the burning of the synagogues there
was a knock at his door early in the morning and he thought he
was going to be arrested. But instead he found a young gentile
woman at his door with a bundle in her hands which she pressed
upon him. She knew he was a good Jew, she said-she and her
husband had often seen him go to the synagogue nearby. After
the fire the two of them had poked about the remains and they
had found the object in the bundle. It was a Torah scroll; it
would bring them no luck. "It was a pity what was done," and
she asked his blessing and wept and left. Our friend and his very
old father, another Hebrew scholar, examined the scroll and
found it charred and in places torn. So they went to the Jewish
cemetery with their bundle and, as the Jewish law prescribes,
buried the Torah scroll. I sometimes see them in my mind's eye
standing there in the loneliness of twilight, two small huddled
figures furtively burying a book.
Once in the night after a number of terrible things had been
reported and friends had disappeared, I all of a sudden was
seized by a desperate fear. I lost all nervous control. I so desperately wanted to be saved. I don't remember what I said-or
shouted-at my parents, but I do know that I asked, demanded,
that they must save me, that I was afraid of death, that I did not
know what to do. They had already gone to bed and I startled
them from their sleep, from their own sadness. My father listened and then to stop the terror and to state the truth spoke
ever so quietly, with a disappointment in his voice that was only
too genuine. "But," he said, calling me by my name, "have you
forgotten that we all share the same danger?" I had, indeed, forgotten, and I was changed, I think, in my manner from that
moment on and tried to learn, to learn as best I could, to live con-
�January, 1980
siderately in a world full of fears and beyond the reach of hope.
Still hope there was for me once again, when I fled to Czechoslovakia. But my cares followed me, and my hope was never free;
it had no wings. It was more like wondering how it would all turn
out, when the night would cease. Would anyone I cared for be
left?
Escaping to Czechoslovakia was a relatively easy thing if you
found the right corrupt connections, and if you had the money
to pay for the assistance you needed. Perhaps it was the fear I
had exhibited so rudely that moved my parents to decide on the
matter. But also I was, in fact, the most exposed member of our
family. The Nazis especially had it in for young Jews about my
age-for at that age people can be hotheads and cause trouble. It
was clever police minds at work that first, on any pretence, singled
out the unpredictable young for detention and worse. Visitors'
visas to Czechoslovakia that normally were not made available to
Jews because, of course, they could not go back to Austria, could,
however, be bought, on a kind of black market in which lives
were for sale. At a great sacrifice, such a visa was secured for me
and I left the country very hurriedly. I remember the farewells,
the dazed realization that I might never again see the beloved
faces of the members of my family. I was tempted very much not
to go and yet, for their sake even, saw that I must.
My mother took me to the station. It was my first railroad trip
on an express train. There was all the excitement of the journey
before me and the well~wishing conversation, to take care not to
catch cold, and all the things one says when one sees a child off
in ordinary times. As the train pulled out of the station I bent out
the window ever so far to see my mother once more and she,
who had kept her poise all along and was tall and beautiful as she
stood there talking to me-so she wanted to be rememberednow was a lonely figure on the platform, her hands clasping her
face and weeping. I had seen her weep only once before, when
her mother died. I sat down in my compartment, and was all
alone.
(to be continued)
39
�Kant's Imperative
Eva Brann
I have called this lecture "Kant's Imperative" so that I might
begin by pointing up an ever-intriguing circumstance. Kant
claims that the Categorical Imperative, which is the Moral Law,
is implicitly known to every fullyformed human being. And yet
its formulation is absolutely original with him. Thus to study that
hard philosophical gem, the Foundations of the Metaphysics of
Morals, the little work in which Kant first sets out his imperative
in its various versions, is to be in the curious position of laboring
to acquire an utterly new principle which yet makes the almost
persuasive claim of having been always in our possession. Out of
this arises a common experience which, I am sure, you will have
-or are already having-with the Categorical Imperative: you
will probably find yourself ultimately unable to accept it, but you
will never be able to forget it. But what we can neither accept
nor ignore, it only remains for us to understand. The purpose of
this lecture is to offer you some help with Kant's Imperative.
Let me waste a few of our numbered minutes by setting out
what kind of help I can try to give you. You might at first smile to
hear it, but I think if it is put to you rightly, you might eventually
agree that Kant is an easy author, easier, say, than Plato or
Nietzsche. He is easy precisely because he seems difficult: laboriously explicit, forcibly systematic, rigorously technical. This is
the kind of ruggedness meant to make a text accessible to
straightforward explicatory industry. I shall engage in just so
much of such explication of terms and their connections (gratifying though it be) as is necessary for our common discourse.
There is, however, another kind of help I can offer, though it
might be a little premature. Some people might say that we
should go farther in unravelling the text before coming to this
part of textual interpretation. It also has to do with the precise
sobriety, the systematic self-sufficiency and the deliberate authority of our writer. For these qualities all work to veil from view
the real roots of the system~the stupendous assumptions that
are packed into its technical terms, the strange abysses opening
up beyond its well-delineated foundations, and the human
pathos implied in its projects. To raise these roots is not, in my
opinion, the worst way to begin to understand the system, and is
probably the most profitable way to use our short time together.
A lecture read at the University of Chicago in March, 1979, at the invita·
tion of Leon Kass in a series sponsored by the Dean of the College and
the staff of "Human Being and Citizen."
40
Let me end these introductory remarks by pointing out that it
is precisely because they have such a rewarding surface and such
unsettling depths that Kant's works have attracted the most effective explications and the most pertinent criticisms, among
both of which I shall mention only the one full-scale commentary on the Foundations, which is by Robert Wolff and is called
The Autonomy of Reason.
I shall make a straightforward beginning, then, by giving a
brief explication of the literal meaning of the terms "categorical"
and "imperative."
The word "categorical" comes from a Greek verb which
means to say something of something or somebody, and to say it
flat out, without modification, without ifs and buts, as in accusation. A categorical assertion is an unconditional assertion.
The word "imperative" means a formulated command. A
command, marked by an exclamation point, is the irruption into
the world of an intention, an intention to change the course of
events by an imposition of purpose, to cause a re-routing of the
flow of events. Not every command, however, has a formula,
since it may take the form of an imperious gesture, or an only incidentally intelligible sound, like "Heel" to a dog, or "Let there
be light" to the elemental darkness. Obedience to such commands is a measure of the bidder's power to be an efficient
cause, to have an irresistibly powerful purpose. An imperative,
on the other hand, not only articulates a projected move, it also
gives a reason for it. It conveys not only the what, but also the
why, of a command. It is an order directed to a rational being.
To understand what a Kantian imperative is, then, we must
know what a rational being, a being having reason, is. Reason is
the chief of those terms which carries in it far more than Kant's
bone-dry and matter-of-course presentation exposes. Indeed, it
carries within it the whole system.
Reason, then, in its rock-bottom aspect, is first of all a faculty,
a power. A rational being is above all a being capable of functioning to some effect. Next, reason is a faculty for laying down the
law, for law-giving. Reason is a legislative power.
What, next, is a law? A law is an instrumental formula that
subjugates, or brings under itself, those elements that are
reached by it. Yet it does not accomplish this in the wanton, arbitrary manner of a despot, but in the mode of universality. The
law commands, for it binds (indeed, that is what the word
means), but it binds universally, or better, by means of universality, so that in binding it unifies. To say that reason is legislative
�January, 1980
is to say that it is the unifying power of universality. That, in
turn, means that it is a power of principles, for "principle" is the
name in logic of a first law, a law of thought which in unifying all
that we have in mind applies universally to whatever may come
before us. Let me interject here an observation: Nothing in
Kant's system seems to me more difficult to penetrate than his
legal metaphor for reason as judgment given under law. I shall
bypass that problem here, because its resolution is not immediately required.
An imperative, then, is a command given to a being that is
itself a source of lawlike commands.
Such a command, to be acceptable, must therefore take the
form of a law, a universal rule of reason, or more simply, of a
reason why that command should obligate any and every rational
being. It follows immediately that, strictly speaking, no com·
mand can be externally issued to such a being; at most a law may
be suggested to it for its own internal adoption. What is mofe, if a
law is truly rational, namely unexceptionably universal, it will be
adopted by any perfectly rational being, and will thus scarcely
need to take the form of a command. It will be a principle of
reason simply.
In sum, therefore, a categorical imperative is an unconditional
law-like command, formulated so as to be fit for adoption by a
being which by its very nature deals in universals.
The next question must then be: Is there such a command?
To be sure it may seem a little back-to-front to define a formula
and then to ask whether it has a matter. The question has a point
only because we are all already aware of the fact that the Categorical Imperative is Kant's term, taken from logic, for the Moral
Law. Therefore the question really is: Is there a moral law and
does it and it alone have the form of a categorical imperative?
Or, in brief: What is morality?
You may have found the title of the first section of the Foundations, "Transition from Common Rational Knowledge of
Morals to the Philosophical," a little strange, because it expresses
the intriguing circumstance to which I have already referred, the
fact that Kantian moral philosophy claims to be nothing but an
elaboration of common knowledge. Note that this beginning
means that the principal problein of most moral inquiries-are
there moral rules and whence are they known?-is settled before
philosophy ever begins: Kant claims that we all know that there
is morality; we are all directly acquainted with the fact of
morality.
This moral fact consists merely in the experience we have (all
of us, Kant means, even the most hardened sinner) of having
said to ourselves: "I ought ... ;" I ought to do this or that, quite
apart from profit or pleasure, quite against my desires and inclinations. I must say that Kant's claim seems to me to ring true:
We have all heard that contrary inner voice of command, and
the moral monster in whom it is dumb is simply not imaginable
to most of us.
Now notice that Kant does not begin with the highest good,
nor with virtue, nor with habits, customs, good deeds or tables of
commandments. (To be sure, we have already anticipated the
fact that Kant will maintain the tradition linking right behavior
to commands which is established in the Bible, but their number, source, claim to authority will all be radically altered.) Kant,
one might say in sum, takes the path of morality rather than
ethics, where I mean by ethics the concern with right conduct
and by morality the concern with good intention.
Morality, then, or better, moral worth, is the next term to attend to. Moral worth is what is to be valued in the agent's mode
of action. "Nothing in the world-indeed nothing even beyond
the world-," Kant begins, "can possibly be conceived which
could be called good without qualification except a good will."
To begin like that is precisely to begin with morality, for it is only
the agent's faculty for initiating action-that bejng what the will
is-which is good in itself. All other possible goods, the actions
themselves, talents, acquisitions, circumstances, or, above all,
the end to be achieved. are only conditionally or relatively good,
since they might all be in certain situations, productive of harm.
I want to say in passing that it is a very deep assumption that
only the will and never its object can be simply good.
At any rate, the will is clearly the central notion of morality.
The perfectly good will, which Kant calls a holy will, is one
which always obeys its own "ought." Human beings do notalways do as they know they ought. That is Kant's second moral
fact. The first was that we all experience an inner obligation to
certain actions; the second is that we by no means always discharge it. Kant never confuses, as he is sometimes accused of doing, the universality of the moral command with the frequency
of its execution.
When the kind of being that knows an "ought" but does not,
from merely knowing it, necessarily obey it-when such a being
does do as it ought, it is said to be doing its duty. Duty is the morality of beings whose will is handicapped. "The concept of
duty." Kant says, " ... contains that of a good will though with
certain restrictions and hindrances." When, however, such a being, a human being, can be said to do its duty, it must do so from
no ulterior motive but out of mere respect for its own inner
voice, not by compulsion of command but for the sake of the law.
Here I must go outside of the Foundations to deal with two related matters: the reason why Kant founds his philosophy on the
good will rather than on an objective good, and what it means to
be a human being, a being with a defective will.
This necessary tangent requires me to set out in the briefest
way Kant's system as reflected in the major texts. You know that
the central works are all called "critiques": There is a Critique of
Pure Reason, a Critique of Practical Reason, and a third critique I
shall barely mention at the end of the lecture. The word "critique" is used by Kant for an inquiry into the grounds of human
knowledge, and that means for him, into the human faculties.
The purpose of each critique is to certify some knowledge or activity which is already ours, to give us certain guarantees of its
possibility-the desire for certainty is the guiding motive of
Kant's enterprise.
The Critique of Pure Reason inquires into the faculty of ex·
periential knowledge; it grounds what for Kant is the sole mate·
rial knowledge we can have, the science of nature. The second
critique gives the grounds of moral action for which the term
"practical" is reserved; later we will see why.
Each of these texts is preceded by a short preliminary work
which analyzes respectively the established natural science and
the common moral experience to discover what faculties we
41
�The College
must possess to make them possible. The Foundations of the
Metaphysics of Morals, the work we are at this moment studying,
is one of these; it was actually published three years before its critique, in 1785. The critique itself is named from the faculty
which is disclosed in the last section of the Foundation, the
"practical reason," of course. (Just for the sake of systematic
completeness, I might mention here that both critiques are followed by works giving the actual metaphysical systems grounded
in the faculties, namely the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural
Science and the Metaphysics of Morals.)
The main point of this sketch of Kant's works is to document
their all-determining, fundamental division into theoretical and
practical philosophy. To quote from the first critique: "The lawgiving of human reason (i.e. philosophy) has two objects, Nature
and Freedom, and thus contains both the law of nature and the
law of morality, initially in two separate, but eventually in one
philosophical system.''
Now I think that the practical reason is the centerpiece of
Kant's philosophy, but that it is circumscribed and negatively defined, silhouetted, so to speak, by the pure reason. Morality begins where nature ends. So I must try to do the impossible and
supply a three-minute review of the Critique of Pure Reason,
which contains the account of nature.
The account of nature and the account of the science of nature are for Kant identical. That is because the system of nature
is determined by the way our Sensibility forms and our Understanding functions over the sensations that come to us. This
Understanding is a sub-faculty of the Reason, and its function is
the structuring of appearances so as to unify them into a lawful
system of things, the system of nature and natural laws. What is
here relevant to the exposition is that while we ourselves are the
legislators who constitute nature, we are not so freely and consciously; our understanding does its regulating, as it were, behind
our backs; we cannot alter or abrogate its dispositions.
What is more, we ourselves are a part of rule-bound nature.
For nature consists of ordered external appearances, the physical
appearances of space, but also of inner appearances, the
physchological events of our temporal consciousness. So, as
human beings, we are at least partly of a piece with nature. Our
behavior is controlled by inexhorable psychic mechanisms, akin
to the laws of nature in being invariable sequences of cause and
effect. Our desires and inclinations are as tendencies to motion,
psychic lunges, incited by an object of desire or fear, as bodies
are attracted or repelled by other bodies; we go after our natural
ends not because of their intrinsic worth, but because they push
or pull and bend us systematically-by inclination, as Kant says,
using a physical term. Consequently, Kant has a most melancholy understanding of happiness: It is simply the-ever elusive-sum total of achieved desire, the successful completion of
all psychic motion. (Let me, incidentally, remind you that this
theory of happiness was set out within a decade of the Declaration of Independence and its inalienable human right to the
"pursuit of happiness," a pursuit which has been understood as
a similarly infinite chase.)
As natural beings we are, then, in Kant's term, "pathological,"
meaning that we suffer rather than act, that we are passive
rather than "practical" (Kant uses the word practical to signify a
willed action, a deed.)
42
Now we can see why our morality is a morality of duty. The
Will, our power of initiating action, is defined by Kant as a faculty for causing the reality of objects through ideas, that is to say,
a faculty for realizing our conceptions. But our conceived object
is naturally a wish or a desire. Yet by a desire, as I have just
pointed out, we are but passively drawn; our motion toward its
object is but a pseudo-action, not a genuine exercise of the Will.
(Kant has a special word for such an object-determined choice:
Willkuer, usually rendered in English "will" with a lower case w.)
Aristotle says in the Ethics: "If anyone says that the pleasant or
the beautiful exercise compulsion on the ground that they are
external to us and compel us, we must answer that this would
make everything compulsory, seeing that we do everything we
do for their sake." Kant wants to say just that, namely, that all
motion after external goods is compulsive, but he also wants to
assert that we do not do everything for the sake of an external
object.
He proceeds, in sum, by conceiving human beings as rational
and natural beings, as double beings with a double will, a pathologically affected faculty of choice as well as a practical faculty
for initiating action. This latter, pure Will, is lead by no external
purpose, aim, or object, but only by its very own laws and ends.
Therefore, to act from duty is to follow the internal command,
the Ought of the pure will and to resist the pull of desire. Duty
is, to begin with, to be negatively apprehended as resistance to
the mechanisms of nature. We can never experience ourselves as
doing as we ought except when we deny ourselves as natural beings, for only nature has sensible appearances and can be experienced, and we can feel the will only as thwarted happiness. That
is by no means to say that morality lies in opposing our natural
inclination-only that its sole evidence is of this negative sort.
All we can know of our willing is that we are capable of doing our
duty. But how can we know even that?
Here, half way through the exploration, let me recapitulate.
We saw what a categorical imperative in general was, namely an
unconditional command so formulated as to be capable of adoption by any rational bf:':ing. Next we saw that Kant's moral philosophy is a philosophy of intention, and begins with the moral fact
of the sense of duty, an internal command of the will; furthermore morality takes the form of duty for those rational beings
who have a will whose agency is sometimes blocked by the
rriechanism of their nature, namely the pull of desire. Finally we
saw that human beings are beings of just that kind, for whom to
will means to come into conflict with the natural self.
What remains to be articulated is the positive aspect of morality. How is it that we nonetheless believe ourselves able to exert
our will freely? And what actually is the command it issues?
That, after all, comes near the problem with which we began:
Does the moral law, which, as we have seen, appears as the
Ought of duty, have the form of a categorical imperative?
Now is the moment to draw together the two terms, Will and
Reason. The Will, Kant repeatedly reveals, is nothing but the
Reason in its practical capacity. It is not merely associated with
rationality; it is reason. Note that this identification is another
crucial juncture, a tap root of the system. Will is reason initiating
action, or, as Kant says, determining itself to action: By being
"determined" is meant being pulled together out of the laxness
�January, 1980
of abeyance to become a spring~board for specific deeds. Recall
that the subfaculty of reason called the understanding constitutes and consequently knows nature and that therefore natural
science is certain. The upper reason, however, Reason proper,
has no object of knowledge; the critique of pure reason is, among
other things, a criticism of the unwarranted uses of reason as a
faculty of knowledge. Instead it is a power of action, a practical
faculty. The understanding regulates appearances, but unconsciously; the practical reason, on the other hand, consciously
legislates. To make laws for itself is, as we have seen, for Kant the
very essence of reason and to enforce them its very life. Reason
is self-controlled, self-determined, self-legislating. It is autonomous: the word means simply "self~legislating."
Such autonomy is what Kant calls Freedom. We have a free
will; we can obey the command of duty because it is our innermost, supersensible self that issues it.
The idea of freedom and the will as a faculty of freedom are
discovered as necessarily implied by the fact of morality in the
third and last section of the Foundations. Note that I am holding
the great middle section in abeyance for the moment.
What, then, is freedom? Negatively it is what is not nature-a
mystery, namely a non-natural causality, an invisible, supersensible source of change in the time- and space-bound sensible
natural sequences and connections, the occasion of natural motions with supernatural significance.
Positively, freedom is nothing but that very autonomy, that
power of being a law unto itself, which characterizes the practical reason. What makes freedom possible is beyond all knowing, but what makes the moral law possible-that is to say, what
makes it possible to obey the moral law-is freedom itself. The
fact that we have a faculty of freedom is the critical ground of
the possibility of morality. The moral law is in need of such
grounding because, while a mere analysis of the concept of desires will inform us that we will follow them, nothing in the mere
concept of a moral law tells us that we can obey it. It therefore
needs a ground on which the command form "You ought!" is ef~
fectively conjoined to the thing to be done. (Incidentally, Kant
calls such a proposition in which terms are conjoined on grounds
other than their mere meaning a synthetic proposition, and
when it is given from beyond experience, he calls it a synthetic a
priori proposition.)
Morality, therefore, demands freedom and freedom grounds
morality. We can now collect all the chief terms of Kant's moral
discourse: Freedom is the radical power of the Reason to become
practical, to determine itself as a Will, a supersensible cause of
natural events. The human being is a rational being that can,
however, appear to itself only as a part of nature. Therefore it apprehends the rulings of its will as an "Ought," as a command to
do its duty in the face of the compelling mechanisms of its nature. The injunction of its will is the moral law.
That law, being laid down by reason for reason, must have the
form of rationality. It is therefore an imperative. Furthermore, it
must command an action in no way contingent on external circumstance. It is therefore a categorical imperative. Finally, it
must as a law of reason have the mark of universality, of covering
all cases, and hence it must be unique. It is therefore the Categorical Imperative.
And now, at last, I return to the middle section where it is actually formulated in three main versions. The first formulation
is:
"Act only according to that maxim by which
you can at the same time will that it
should become a universal law."
Let us see what this formula contains. It contains a new term,
"maxim." A maxim is my private, individual, "subjective" reason
for a choice. It is intelligible enough, but it is individual in being
contingent on my desires. A maxim is whatever subjective reason articulate beings give themselves for acting.
Now the imperative says precisely that those private reasons
must be regulated. It says that they must always be required to
have the character of a law of Reason. They must not be merely
subjective but must be capable of being universalized. TheCategorical Imperative commands only this: that every action should
be performed for a reason having the character of a law. It does
not command this or that particular action. It does not even lay
down this or that specific law. It only requires lawfulness itself.
The first version of the moral law simply requires the will to act
as a Will, namely in accordance with its character as Practical
Reason.
Let me right here forestall what seems to me to be a niggling,
logic-chopping objection to this grand rule. It is said that anyone
can undercut its authority by so particularly specifying a maxim
that the class of actions to which it applies contains only his own,
and its universalization is emptily guaranteed. For example, I
can take the maxim that I, standing at precisely my co-ordinates
at precisely the present moment, may tell you lies. The universalized version of this maxim will then say that anyone in my precise position may tell lies, there being, however, no one else in
that class. But of course, Kant intends no such craftiness. The
working import of his severe and noble rule is plain enough:
Never take the easy way; never make an exception of yourself!
The illustrative cases he immediately furnishes make that per·
fectly clear.
Another immediate criticism, derived precisely from a loose
reading of one of these cases, is a simple mistake. Kant says that
a maxim may fail to be a fit rule of moral action for one of two
reasons. The first is because its universalization is self-contradictory: If I lie, and so all may lie, speech itself, the instrument with
which I meant to deceive, is destroyed. The second is because
the universalization is clearly undesirable: If I will not aid others,
they need not aid me. Now it has been argued from the latter example that Kant's morality is after all enmeshed in a calculus of
convenience and desire. But the desire for help from others is
not the reason why we ourselves must not adopt a maxim of
selfishness. The reason for rejecting that maxim follows from the
pure formalism of the Categorical Imperative: It is that we cannot reasonably universalize such a maxim, whether we ourselves
will ever need help or not.
Clearly, the major problem connected with this version of the
imperative arises from the framing of maxims and the testing of
universalizations. I shall return to it at the very end.
43
�The College
Let me now go to the second version. It says:
"Act so as to treat humanity, whether in
your own person or in that of another,
always as an end and never as a means only."
It is almost unnecessary to remark that however repellently severe Kant's moral law may seem, this version at least goes
straight to our republican hearts. The reason is plain: It is clearly
the rule which gives the moral basis of our own political disposition, our democratic way of life, which requires that we accord
others the respect belonging to self-determined beings capable Of
making their own decisions for themselves, and that when we
use them, as Kant knows we sometimes must, we do not only use
them. Indeed, in the afore-mentioned sequel to the critical inquiry, the Metaphysics of Morals, justice, the principle which
binds human beings into a political system, is directly derived
from this version: Justice is so dealing with others as to make my
freedom compatible with theirs.
For that is precisely what it means to regard others as ends in
themselves. It means considering them not as things but as persons, not as the means to our happiness, but as, in their turn, independent, ultimate law-givers, free beings whose will consults
no end but its own. That is also precisely how Kant connects the
first and the second formula. And that is where trouble starts.
For, to begin with, there is in the Kantian system no external
appearance by which to recognize a fellow will in its interiority.
One may only conjecture that some exemplar of the natural species homo sapiens is in fact a rational being. But let that deep
problem of intersubjective recognition be. What is more immediately to the point is this question: Why should I, and further, how
could I, take another free being as an end? For that it is an end in
itself cannot logically make it an end for me. Furthermore, its
very worth lies in the performance of its duty even to the point
of thwarting its own happiness; what sense does it make for me
to meddle with its external well-being, which plays no part in its
self-sufficiency? (You may immediately be reminded of a problem in political morality that is always with us, namely how to
minister to the welfare of human beings while preserving their
self-determination.) The most appealing version of the Categorical Imperative is also the most shaky in its systematic derivation.
Let me do no more than read the third version, because you
will see right away that it is nothing but the sum and substance,
plainly stated, of all that has gone before. Significantly it is not
even framed as an imperative, but simply as a condition, the condition that the will must harmonize with universal practical reason, or as an idea, namely "the idea of the will of every rational
being as making universal law." It is the ultimate formulation of
Kant's Moral Law.
I invite you to consider how remarkable it is that a principle so
formal, so empty of specific content, gives rise to so characteristic a morality. Indeed, all the criticisms accusing it of excessive
formalism or excessive flexibility seem to me misconstructions.
Kantian morality issues in concrete kinds of conduct and definitely predictable deeds: uncompromising adherence to principle; the exclusion of any sentimentality from the effort to do
good; unwillingness to let circumstances, private or social, lift
44
responsibility for his deeds from the individual. Accordingly
literature, especially German literature, abounds in vividly
severe Kantian characters who perform their duty in the face of
their natural humanity; they are evidently drawn from life,
especially from the Prussian military and officialdom whose
harsh virtues came from a Kantian training.
Therefore, the most telling criticisms of Kant's moral philosophy have to be dredged up, it seems to me, from the substructure of the system itself. Although I must be very brief, I do want
to run through some of those difficulties, because, as I mentioned in the beginning, this sort of critical rooting-about in a
system is not the worst way to work one's way into it. Besides,
you have probably already formed suspicions of your own which
I might help you articulate.
Clearly all the difficulties begin with Kant's idea of reason itself as a law-giving function. (There are, of course, other conceptions of the intellect, for instance as a receptive capability-such
a conception precludes, to be sure, epistemological guarantees of
certainty.) Band in hand with the radical self-determination of
Kantian reason goes the pathological mechanism of the temporal consciousness, a sharp opposition of freedom and nature
which disallows in principle the possibility of any object of desire
which is also good in itself, and so forestalls the very inquiry
which interests most of us above all.
Again bound up with the uncompromisingly mechanistic view
of desire is Kant's repellent view of happiness as the unattainable
satisfaction of all desires. Now that conception is belied by any
moment of real happiness we have ever had, not only by the fact
that we have attained it, but also by its quality: fulfilled desire is
not what happiness feels like. Besides, in being quite disconnected from the performance of duty, such happiness is related
to moral goodness only through the worthiness to be happy and
the cold comfort of that strange exception to the strict separation of reason and the emotions which Kant has contrived, the
moral feeling of self-respect. (The guarantor, by the way, of an
ultimate concurrence of moral worthiness and pathological happiness, is a mere hypothesis, a god posited to serve just this function.) But some direct connection between acting well and living
well seems to me to be both required and indicated by human
experience. Virtue is the realization of morality in a living disposition, and therefore the notion of Kantian virtue will display the
quandary in the disconnection of morality from the good life.
For, just as one might expect in view of the stern demands of
Kantian morality, human virtue is presented in its place, the
Metaphysics of Morals, as essentially fortitude, strength of
character acquired by rigorous ethical training. But what possible role can such an acquired, habitual disposition of the phenomenal consciousness play, when the Categorical Imperative
requires precisely a radically rational response to every case? Indeed, one would think that there could be no direct, positive,
persisting external structure of Kantian morality, no visible
and exemplary virtue-no such thing as the firmly and finely
moulded moral excellence of antiquity. The Kantian mah of
duty does, to be sure, bear the strong stamp of his morality in his
respectability, but that is the consequence and not the source of
his deeds. The emphasis on the continuously radical agency of
the will shapes moral life as a succession of knife's edge decisions
�January, 1980
and of crucial moments in which our self-respect is forever in the
balance. It seems to me that there are such moral moments,
when all comfortable contexts, all decent habits, fail and our
naked integrity is at stake. For such crises the Categorical Imperative is made, but not for the continuous stream of reasonable
life which it seems to me that a moral science ought to shape.
Instead of a conclusion let me end with a coda of a slightly
technical but also of a consolidating sort. Almost by the way, and
not counting it among the standard versions of the Categorical
Imperative, Kant offers the following formulation:
"Act as though the maxim of your actions
were by your will to become a law of nature."
The formula appears in the Critique of Practical Reason with
much more emphasis under the title of "Typic of pure practical
judgment." It is essentially a rule of instruction for forming maxims, or rather for testing maxims to see if they can be made into
universal laws. In sum, it is the founding rule for the-very
necessary-moral science ef maxim-making. For obviously to do
as I ought, I must, albeit incidentially, also know what to do; the
"So act" must have a content. So we see that although for Kant
virtue is not knowledge, yet the decisions of the practical reason
are imbedded in the judgments of pure reason. We must know a
criterion for deciding what maxims bear universalization.
Such a criterion, the formula informs us, is to be derived from
the science of nature. We must know nature's works, its interactions and reciprocities, its harmonies and balances well enough
to be able to make a speculative projection of our maxims, and to
imagine what the world would be like if the contemplated choice
occurred inevitably, mechanically and universally, as a law of
nature. What, for instance, would a world governed by a maxim
of selfishness look like, a world deterministically devoid ofbenev·
olence-a question which we require a certain experience of
nature to answer. Thus, as Kant had promised, there is a reapproachment of the science of nature and what he calls the
"casuistry" of morality. And that was to be expected.
For first, we ourselves are, through the structuring functions
of our understanding, the makers, and immediately also the
knowers, of nature. Yet the rules of our understanding, the fac-
ulty which structures appearance in its basic reality, do not determine particular occurrences, but only the general system of
things and their relations, which is precisely what Kant calls nature. That indeterminacy enables us, as knowers of nature, to
turn her to our own puTposes, to move mountains and manipulate people. Such acts of applied science are performed according to what Kant calls a technical or a hypothetical imperative,
which is the very contrary of a categorical imperative, since it always has the form: "If you desire such and such a result, do such
and such because it is technically or prudentially appropriate:" If
you would level a hill, lay a charge of dynamite; if you would win
a crowd, promise things.
Such technical interferences with nature are certainly phenomenal, in both senses-apparent and sometimes spectacular.
They appear because they are, after all, but the interaction of inner psychic and outer physical nature; they are not deeds of practical reason. Moral action, on the other hand, is a true irruption
of rational purpose into the course of natural events. It is a second law-giving which grafts upon nature a second, an invisible
order which is yet of the "type" of a natural law-a system of
harmonious lawfulness. The act of nature-making which the
understanding accomplishes automatically is to be consummated by practical reason consciously. But the effects of the free
will can never be evident as such: however our moral purpose
may re-route nature, what appears will still be the course of
nature. First and last, there can be no phenomenal morality.
And yet there is at least a visible symbol of the possible unity
of the two law-givings. It is an appearance which stands for the
possible harmony of natural and moral lawfulness. Kant introduces it in the last critique, the Critique of Judgment. It is the
beautiful. For beauty raises in us a pleasure, which is without desire, at the harmonious interplay of our free sensual imagination
and the lawful nature produced by our understanding. Therefore
a thing of beauty is analogous to a moral deed in which our free
will, without regard to inclination, must work in the world of
determined nature. So, although beauty is only a symbol, it is yet
a source of hope for the possibility of effective obedience to
Kant's Imperative and for its product: a morally informed
nature.
45
�Boyle, Galileo, and Manifest Experience
Martin Tamny
The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century is properly viewed as overturning the Aristotelian tradition which had
dominated the thought of the West for nearly 500 years. But
there is disagreement as to what, precisely, is meant by Aristotelian ism. It was a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, containing a variety of schools, each with a large number of differing
tenets. We could, with some difficulty, find some doctrines that
were shared by all these schools (e.g., the four qualities, five substances, four causes, etc.) and identify this core of doctrines as
Aristotelianism, and I do think it is just this sort of thing that is
generally meant when historians and philosophers speak of the
Aristotelianism that was overturned by the new science. But
even this core Aristotelianism is complex, consisting of a large
number of claims. For this reason, accounts of the scientific
revolution differ widely in which claims they center on. And
these differences, in turn, affect our understanding of the remaining claims.
Differences about the core of Aristotelianism, however, are
not limited to those who write about the history of the scientific
revolution. They were also problematic for the very people who
overthrew Aristotelianism and brought about the triumph of the
new science. Many of them, indeed, were self-conscious revolutionaries, and wrote a variety of polemics against Aristotelianism.
Two of the most articulate of these polemicists were Galilee and
Boyle.
Living in Italy, Galilee was familiar from his childhood with
nUmerous schools of Aristotelian thought, from the relative
spirituality of Averroism to the stricter materialism of Alexandrism. Yet, when he launched his polemics on Aristotelianism
it was not a particular school he attacked, but rather that amorphous core of Aristotelianism-the doctrines held in common by
a wide variety of thinkers.
In England Boyle was almost certainly less familiar with the
numerous schools of Aristotelianism and thus, perhaps, had a
Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The City College of The City University of New York, Martin Tamny is at present preparing (with J. K
McGuire) an edition of one of Isaac Newton's early notebooks, Quaes·
tiones quedam philosophiae.
46
more amorphous view of it from the outset, though doubtless
the texts from which he imbibed the dominant view in his childhood did represent some particular school or other. 1 In any case,
we shall see that Boyle's characterization of Aristotelianism appears to have been largely derived from his reading of Galilee.
Galilee did, of course, create an Aristotelian, Simplicia, to argue
against. Simplicio is perhaps the sole Italian representative of the
amorphous core of Aristotelianism he espouses in the Dialogue
and the Discourse, but he is not on this account a straw man. He
represents a legitimate conflation of widely accepted Aristotelian
views. What is more, he has an English brother in Robert Boyle's
creation, Themistius.
Simplicia first appeared in 1632, in Galilee's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Themistius, a younger
brother, first appeared in 1665, in Boyle's New Experiments and
Observations touching Cold or an Experimental History of Cold
Begun. Themistius seems clearly to be modelled after Simplicio,
and shares with him the same basic v'ie'w of Aristotelianism.
What I wish to do is, first, to identify one feature of this core
Aristotelianism, a feature that I will refer to as the "Doctrine of
Manifest Experience" and the associated method of "Ocular
Demonstration," and then, to examine how both Galilee· and
Boyle understood this doctrine and how it influenced not only
their attack on Aristotelianism but also their conception of the
new science.
When we look back at Aristotelianism we don't think of it as
being characterized by the appeal to experience. Aristotle, of
course, did use sense experience as the foundation of his scientific methodology in that one begins with sense experience and
moves "upward" to more and more general statements until one
reaches the most general statements that characterize that
science. But when we wish to draw the lines of demarcation
between Aristotle's own thought, on the one hand, and Aristo·
telianism, on the other, we usually do so on the issue of the relevance of sense experience to knowledge. The Aristotelians,
believing that Aristotle had discovered the most general truths,
no longer bothered to test the tenets of their thought against experience. This approach to Aristotelianism is quite correct as far
as it goes but it ignores one important point. The Aristotelian
�January, 1980
picture of the world is remarkably consistent with ordinary experience. One might even say it has a kind of common sense appeal which is lacking in Newtonian mechanics, for example. It
was precisely this aspect of Aristotelianism that made it so pervasive for so long. We, of course, find it difficult to recover for
ourselves that feeling of plausibility, since we have grown so accustomed to regard Aristotelianism as wrong.
Thus, although the Aristotelians were convinced that their
basic doctrines had the force of necessity, they nevertheless supported them when under attack by referring to their common
sense consistency with experience. These references were to
what they termed "manifest experience," and they believed that
by these references they had offered an "ocular demonstration''
of certain of the truths of Aristotelianism.
Both Simplicia and Themistius are presented as making such
appeals to manifest experience. Which shows that both Galilee
and Boyle saw such appeals as part of core Aristotelianism.
From early in the first day of the Dialogue Concerning the Two
Chief World Systems Simplicia continually opposes Salviati's
Copernicanism with references to experience.
SIMP .... He [Aristotle] held in his philosophizing that
sensible experiments were to be preferred above any
argument built by human ingenuity, and he said that
those who would contradict the evidence of any sense
deserved to be punished by the loss of that sense. 2
And again, after Salviati has called several Aristotelian principles
into question,
SIMP. There is no doubt whatever that since you wish
to deny ·not only the principles of the sciences, but
manifest experience and the very senses themselves,
you can never be convinced, nor relieved from any preconceived opinion. 3
In the same way Themistius supports the Aristotelian doctrine
of antiperistasis4 by affirming it on the basis of manifest
experience.
THEM. As for Antiperistasis, the truth of it is a thing so
conspicuous, and so generally acknowledged, that I
cannot imagine what should make some men deny it,
except it be, that they find all others to confess it. For
though in other cases they are wont to pretend experience for their quitting the received opinions, yet
here they quit experience itself for singularity, and
chuse rather to depart from the testimony of their
senses, than not to depart from the generality of men. 5
And continuing a page later, Themistius says,
And as if nature designed men should not be able to
contradict the doctrine of Antiperistasis, without contradicting more than one of their own senses, she has
taken care, that often times the water, that is freshly
drawn out of the deeper sorts of wells and springs,
should manifestly, as I have seen it, smoke, as if it had
been but lately taken off the fire. And this may be said,
without a metaphor, to demonstrate ad oculum the
reality of Antiperistasis ... 6
These references to sense experience introduce an interesting
problem. It is commonly thought that the scientific revolution
introduced sense experience as the arbiter of the acceptability of
scientific claims. But this is an oversimplification. The Aristotelians of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. were viewed by
our revolutionaries as supporting their false claims with sense experience. What Galileo and Boyle show us is that it is not
experience that is the arbiter of truth but experience properly
interpreted.7 The Aristotelians' appeal to sense experience as
such is not to be attacked, but rather their notion that such experience is ever manifest, evident, or obvious.
Both Galileo and Boyle attack this concept of manifest experience by having Simplicia and Themistius support an Aristotelian
doctrine by reference to manifest experience and then undermining that support not by contesting the sense experience
itself, but by showing that the same sense experience is consistent with the denial of the Aristotelian doctrine in question.
Two examples show this kind of attack on manifest experience: Galilee's demonstration that sense experience is not inconsistent with the doctrine of a moving earth; Boyle's demonstration that sense experience is not inconsistent with the denial of
antiperistasis. I think that a comparison of the two arguments
and their respective participants will reveal that it is very nearly
certain that Boyle's dialogue is a product of his reading of
Galileo's Dialogue in the sense that both the characters and the
issue of manifest experience as well as the arguments used are
borrowed with little change from Galileo.
Galileo's Dialogue contains three characters. In addition to
Simplicia, the Aristotelian, there are Salviati, the Copernican,
and Sagredo, the intelligent, uncommitted layman, who listens
to both views and is moved only by the truth.
In The Second Day Salviati and Simplicia construct an argu·
ment for the non-rotation of the earth. If a stone is dropped from
the ceiling within a high tower and it is observed that the stone
does not hit against the walls but falls parallel to them, then the
earth does not rotate. For if the earth rotated the stone could not
fall perpendicularly. The argument can be reformulated as
follows:
A. If the earth rotates, the body cannot fall perpendicularly.
B. But the body does fall perpendicularly.
therefore,
C. The earth does not rotate. 8
Salviati, after getting Simplicia to accept this argument, then
argues that it is really a paralogism. The minor premise (B) presupposes the conclusion in the sense that what we see (the stone
not hitting the walls of the tower) is an indication that the stone
falls perpendicularly only if we assume that the tower (and thus
the earth) is not moving. And, since this is the conclusion that is
claimed to follow from the premises, the argument is flawed by a
47
�The College
petitio principi. We do not ''see'' the stone fall perpendicularly to
the earth. All we see is that the stone fails to hit the walls of the
tower.
Not content to show that the simple-minded Simplicia can
misinterpret experience without his realizing that he is interpreting anything at all, Galilee goes on to show that even quickwitted Sagredo can make the same mistake, in a more sophisticated way.
SAGR. As to the simple movement toward the center,
depending on gravity, I think that one may believe absolutely without error that it is a straight line, exactly as
it would be if the earth were immovable.
SALV. As to this part one may not only believe it, but
experience renders it certain.
SAGR. But how does experience assure us of this if we
never do see any motion except that which is composed
of the two, circular and downward?
SALV. Rather, Sagredo, we never see anything but the
simple downward one, since this other circular one,
common to the earth, the tower, and ourselves, remains imperceptible and as if nonexistent. Only that of
the stone, not shared by us, remains perceptible; and of
this our senses show that it is along a straight line
always parallel to a tower which is built upright and perpendicular on the surface of the earth. 9
Simplicia did not see motion perpendicular to the earth but
Sagredo did, while Simplicia thought that he did and Sagredo
thought that he did not. But this apparent paradox is removed by
recalling that Simplicia began by assuming the earth did not
move while Sagredo assumed that it did. In short, the difference
in Salviati's (Galilee's) description of their respective experiences
depends upon their different presuppositions. Once again the
point is that the experience is not manifest; it is dependent upon
the correct interpretation.
In order finally to drive home this point, Galilee presents the
bewildered Simplicia saying,
But, good heavens, if it moves slantingly, why do I see it
move straight and perpendicular? This is a bald denial
of manifest sense; and if the senses ought not to be
believed, by what other portal shall we enter into
philosophizing? 10
It is indeed a denial of "manifest sense" but not in the way
that Simplicia means. Galilee simply has Salviati state the interpretation of the experience which makes it relevant to the
philosophical point at issue.
With respect to the earth, the tower, and ourselves, all
of which all keep moving with the diurnal motion along
with the stone, the diurnal movement is as if it did not
exist; it remains insensible, imperceptible, and without
any effect whatever." 11
In this way Galilee has shown that our experience of the fall-
48
ing stone is consistent with the Copernican view and there is
neither manifest experience nor ocular demonstration. Before
we go on to look at our example from Boyle, let us look at
another way that Galileo has approached this problem and
which has misled some scholars into thinking him a believer in
the Platonic theory of anamnesis. 12
Seeking to convince Simplicia that the earth reflects more
light than the moon, Salviati claims, "What you think is a cause
making the earth unfit for illuminations, Simplicia, is really not
one at all. Would it not be interesting if I should see into your
reasoning better than yourself?" 13
Salviati begins by asking a question about Simplicia's experience, viz., "Tell me, when the moon is nearly full, so that it
can be seen by day and also in the middle of the night, does it appear more brilliant in the daytime or at night?" 14 Simplicia
answers, "Incomparably more at night." 15 And describes how he
has seen the moon in the day among the clouds and no brighter
than them. Then Salviati asks a question concerning the interpretation of the experiences described by Simplicia, "Do you
believe that the moon is really brighter at night than by day, or
just that by some accident it looks that way?" 16 Simplicia
answers that it shines in the day the same as in the night and that
it is in comparison with the dark night sky that it seems brighter
at night. Salviati then points out to Simplicia that we never see
the earth lighted in the night, i.e., we have had no experience to
refute the claim that the earth shines more brightly than the
moon. If knowledge is to rest on experience, we must compare
the experiences of earth and moon we have had, which is to say
as seen in the daytime when both are illuminated. But Simplicia
has already reported his experience of the white clouds around
the daytime moon shining as brightly as the moon itself, and
Salviati adds,
More so, if you will recall in memory having seen some
very large clouds at times, white as snow .... If we were
sure, then, that the earth is as much lighted by the sun
as one of these clouds, no question would remain about
its being no less brilliant than the moon. 17
Sagredo then ca~ls Simp1icio's attention to the fact that the
moon has risen and its brightness is less than the third reflection
of the Sun's light upon a wall within a room. Salviati then makes
the following Platonic sounding statement:
If you are satisfied now, Simplicia, you can see how you
yourself really knew that the earth shone no less than
the moon, and that not my instruction but merely the
recollection of certain things already known to you
have made you sure of it. For I have not shown you that
the moon shines more brilliantly by night than by day;
you already knew it, as you also knew that a little cloud
is brighter than the moon. Likewise you knew that the
illumination of the earth is not seen at night, and in
short you knew everything in question without being
aware that you knew it. 18
This is not Platonism, but a parody of it. All the things already
�January, 1980
known by Simplicia are matters of comicaHy simple experience-that the moon appears brighter at night than during
the day, that a little cloud appears as lucid as the moon in the day
sky, and that the earth (the part we see of it) is not illuminated at
night-not matters of rational principle as in Plato's Meno. What
Galilee is showing us is that these experiences are not, by
themselves, sufficient to give us this knowledge; what we need is
not more experience, but a way of "looking" at the experiences
we have already had. Galilee parodies the notion that Simplicia
already knew that the earth shines more brightly than the moon,
but is quite serious in believing that he could have known it
earlier if he had interpreted his experience correctly. This, then,
is an answer to Simplicia's earlier statements that Salviati is arguing contrary to manifest experience.
Experience is not a simple notion. For it involves both perception and interpretive judgment. The problem is that these
judgments a,re often "transparent" and made without our
awareness. We must become aware and somehow make only correct interpretations. Therefore, after we have looked at Boyle's
similar arguments against manifest experience we must return to
the question of how we are to precede so that our interpretations
will be correct.
The dialogue section of Boyle's History of Cold is titled, "An
Examen of Antiperistasis as it is wont to be Taught and Proved."
There are three interlocutors: Themistius, an upholder of antiperistasis and spokesman for the schools; Carneades, a natural
philosopher of the modern school, who does not reject antiperistasis outright, but shows that there are no arguments that
establish its truth; and, Eleutherius, a quick-witted philosopher,
who neutrally listens to both sides and is convinced by
Carneades. In short, Themistius is Simplicia, Carneades is
Salviati, and Eleutherius is Sagredo.
The doctrine of antiperistasis as applied here consists of the
claim that naturally hot bodies will become hotter when surrounded by cold bodies in order to preserve their heat against the
onslaught of cold; while naturally cold bodies, on the other hand,
will become colder when surrounded by hot bodies in order to
preserve their coldness.
Themistius begins with the attack on doubters of antiperistasis
quoted above; he asserts that they doubt the evidence of their
senses merely to be different-to depart from the established
view. He claims that he has conclusive arguments for antiperistasis derived first, from authority (viz., Aristotle); second,
from reason; and third, from experience. Themistius decides to
forego the arguments from authority, because he feels that it was
precisely the revolt against authority that led his adversaries to
deny antiperistasis.
His arguments from experience are simply the recounting of
various "manifest experiences" such as the steaming of water
when drawn from a well in winter, the warmth of such water to
the hand, the coolness of cellars in summer and their warmth in
winter.
Concerning these experienced phenomena, Themistius
asserts,
These phaenomena ought the more to be acquiesced
in, because they may safely be looked upon as genuine
declarations, which nature makes of her own accord,
and not as Confessions extorted from her by artificial
and compulsory experiments, when being tortured by
instruments and engines, as upon so many racks, she is
forced to seem to confess whatever the tormentors
please. 19
This statement comes as close as any to Boyle's definition of
manifest experience, and provides a hint on how we are to overcome the errors of manifest experience, for the very method that
Themistius rejects, Carneades accepts.
Eleutherius casts doubt on the significance of the claim that
well water feels warm when freshly drawn in winter on the
grounds that the same water that feels warm to a cold hand will
feel cold to a warm hand. He says,
For I frankly confess to you, that when I consider what
interest the unheeded dispositions of our own bodies
may have in the estimates we make of the degree of
cold and heat in other bodies, I should not lay much
weight upon the phaenomena, that are wont to be
urged as proofs of Antiperistasis ... 20
I call your attention to the term "unheeded" in the foregoing,
for it characterizes both Boyle's and Galilee's attitude toward
manifest experience. They don't deny the experiences, only the
naive claims made on the basis of them. The claims are naive
because they fail to heed various critical factors.
When Carneades joins the discussion he claims not to be attacking the doctrine of antiperistasis but rather the grounds
upon which it is maintained, or as he puts it, "I have not been
wont to deny an Antiperistasis, as it may be, but only as it was
wont to be, explicated." 21 Carneades deals quickly with
Themistius's arguments from reason and turns to the arguments
from experien~e, of which he says,
I might represent, that of those examples, some are
false, others doubtful; and those, that are neither of
these two, are insufficient, or capable of being otherwise explicated, without the help of your hypothesis-"
Our interest here is not in those experiences that Carneades
says are false or doubtful, for they could not be called manifest
experiences. Rather, we are concerned only with those he says
are true and certain, btit can be "otherwise explicated," than by
recourse to antiperistasis.
For example, Carneades accepts Eleutherius's contention that
water freshly drawn from a well in winter will seem to be warm
because the observer's hand is cold. He goes on, however, to use
this to explain the supposed coldness of cellars in summer. He
says,
In summer our bodies having for many days, if not
some weeks, or perhaps months, been constantly environed with ~n air, which, at that season of the year, is
much hotter than it is wont to be in winter, ... our
senses may easily impose upon us, and we may be
49
�The College
much- mistaken, by concluding upon their testimony,
that the subterraneal air we then find so cool, is really
colder than it was in winter ... as they that come out of
hot baths think the air of the adjoining rooms very fresh
and cool. .. 23
A similar argument is offered for the supposed warmth of cellar~
in winter.
The testimony of our senses ... may in this case easily
and much delude us. For those places being sheltered
from the winds, and kept from a free communication
with the outward air, are much less exposed than
others to the action of those agents, whatever they be,
that produce cold in the air. So that our bodies being
constantly immersed in the air refrigerated by the
winter, and consequently brought nearer to the temper
of that air, when we bring those bodies into cellars, the
subterraneal air must seem warm to us, though in itself
it were unvaried as to its temper.2 4
Among the manifest experiences that were to prove antiperistasis there remains only the steaming water drawn from
wells in winter. This last argument from experience is answered
by Carneades as follows:
The smoking of waters drawn from deep places in frosty
weather ... does not necessarily conclude such water to
be warmer in winter, since that effect may proceed not
from the greater warmth of the water in such weather,
but from the greater coldness of the air. For we may
take notice, that a man's breath in summer, or in mild
winter weather, becomes very visible, the cold ambient
air nimbly condensing the fulginous steams, which are
discharged by the lungs, and which in warmer weather
are readily diffused in imperceptible particles through
the air.2 5
In the foregoing the notions of ocular demonstration and
manifest experience are clearly as much at stake as antiperistasis.
And here, as in Galileo' s Dialogue, the attack is not on the visual
or tactile "facts" but on their interpretation. Carneades does not
deny that the phenomena described by Themistius occur but
shows, instead, that they can be explained without reference to
antiperistasis.
The similarities between Boyle's dialogue and that of Galileo
should be clear from what has been said. There is a strong
similarity between the characters of the two dialogues, as well as
a concern with the same issues. On the other hand there is a
naturalness in Galilee's dialogue that is absent from the
awkwardness of Boyle's style. Further, whereas there are arguments against antiperistasis itself in Boyle's dialogue, there are
no experimental arguments for Copernicanism in Galileo's. But
this is in the nature of the case, since there existed readily accessible evidence against antiperistasis and none for the motion
of the earth (the coriolis effect and foucault pendulum were not
discovered until some time later). Thus the similarities are more
50
telling than the differences, especially in light of the accepted
fact that Boyle read the dialogues of Galileo in both Italian and
Latin. Thomas Birch writes in his biography of Boyle, with
which he prefaces his standard edition of Boyle's Works in 1744,
that "The rest of his spare hours he [Boyle] spent in reading the
modern history in Italian, and the new paradoxes of the great
star-gazer Galileo, whose ingenious books .. were confuted by a
decree from Rome."26
Although I contend that Boyle was strongly influenced by
Galilee's arguments against core Aristotelianism, I do not mean
to claim that their attack on manifest experience was unique.
The philosophic and scientific thought of the sixteenth and
early seventeenth century was much influenced by the publication in 1562 and 1569 of the works of Sextus Empiricus and the
rediscovered Pyrrhonian scepticism that emerged from them. 27
Pyrrhonian scepticism, both the ancient variety and that of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, can be characterized as
the belief that both those who claim that absolute' knowledge is
obtainable and those who claim that no knowledge is obtainable
have weak arguments for their positions and that one should suspend judgment on all matters where conflicting evidence can be
evinced, including the issue of whether or not knowledge is
possible. Reason and sense experience are both attacked as
faulty grounds upon which to base knowledge claims.
Nearly all of the figures of the early scientific revolution were
familiar with the new Pyrrhonism; 28 it presented them with both
an opportunity and a problem. On the one hand, the sceptical
arguments helped to undermine the prevailing Aristotehanism,
including its claim of ocular demonstration by manifest experience. On the other hand, it seemed also to undermine all possible alternatives to the Aristotelian views. Yet both Galileo and
Boyle clearly believed that their own views were safe from sceptical arguments.
This strange mixture of scepticism and optimism was not,
however, unique to Boyle and Galileo. It had a tradition going
back tO Erasmus, Montaigne, Charron, and others, but reached a
peak in joseph Glanvill's The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661), a
book which is almost a caricature of the seventeenth century's
form of this "doctrine."
Glanvill writes at one place that, "to say, the principles .of
Nature must needs be such as our Philosophy makes them, is to
set bounds to Omnipotence, and to confine infinite power and
wisdom to our shallow models. " 29 And at another, "The last Ages
have shewn us what Antiquity never saw; no, not in a Dream." 30
Glanvill's scepticism, which was rooted in Pyrrhonism, led
him to distrust the senses. He writes, for example,
It is conceiv' d to be as certain, as our faculties can make
it, that the same qualities, which we resent [represent]
within us, are in the object, their Source. And yet this
confidence is grounded on no better foundation, then a
delusary prejudice, and the vote of misapplyed sensations.31
Yet he believed that there existed, at least in principle, an antidote against these errors of "misapplyed sensation." This belief
becomes clear in his extremely interesting notion of Adam as
�January, 1980
observer.
Glanvill presents Adam before the fall' as an ideal observer.
Since Adam originally had all the perfections of which man is
capable he had no need for all the devices we use to improve our
senses.
Adam needed no Spectacles. The acuteness of his
natural Opticks (if conjecture may have credit) shew' d
him much of the Coelestial magnificence and bravery
without a Galileo's tube: And 'tis most probable that
his naked eyes could reach near as much of the upper
World, as we with all the advantages of art. ... and 'tis
not unlikely that he had as clear a perception of the
earth's motion, as we think we have of its quiesence.
Thus the accuracy of his knowledge of natural effects, might probably arise from his sensible perception
of their causes .... And whereas we patch up a piece of
Philosophy from a few industriously gather' d, and yet
scarce well observ' d or digested experiments, his
knowledge was completely built upon the certain, ex·
temporary notice of his comprehensive, unerring
faculties. 32
All of which makes it sound as if there is a manifest experience-albeit not manifest to us-which allows for immediate
knowledge of causes. Yet such a conclusion does not really do
justice to Glanvill's position. In the Preface to The Vanity Glanvill deals with some possible objections he fears may be raised
regarding the perfection of Adam's senses.
Granting Adam's eye had no greater Diametrical
wideness of the pupil, no greater distance from the Cornea to the Retiformis, and no more filaments of the Optick nen~es of which the tunica Retina is woven, than
we: the unmeasurable odds of Sensitive perfections
which I assign him; will be conceiv' d mechanically
impossible. 33
Glanvill attempts to get round these objections by arguing that
although the image on Adam's retina was the same as that on
ours his critical faculties were so much better that he saw as
through a telescope or microscope. But if the perfection of
Adam's sensibility was a product of his critical faculties, then it is
clear that we are no longer dealing with manifest experience but
with the interpretation of sensations.
It would, however, be a mistake to take Glanvill's Adam too
literally. His function is not that of a piece of history, but as an
ideal against which man's shortcomings are to be measured. The
quality being measured is not excellence of vision but the ability
to acquire knowledge of the world through what Glanvill takes as
the only possible method, namely, empirical science. As an ideal
observer, Adam is capable of knowing all that man might know
were it not for his imperfections.
Why Adam, rather than God, as the model of perfection?
Because Adam, unlike God whose omniscience is unconditioned, obtains knowledge through sensation. Adam knows the
cause of gravity and magnetism through the sensations that
mechanical causes produce in him. God simply knows how he
made the world.
We can now return to the questions we previously raised. Why
do Galileo and Boyle believe we can make correct interpretations of experience? What methods can we use to recapture that
critical power of Adam?
Here we shall find a fundamental difference between Galilee
and Boyle. For the mathematically minded Galileo, the method
that guarantees correct interpretation is a quantitative oneanalysis and synthesis (or something much like it). For the nonmathematically minded Boyle, it was a non-quantitative notion-experiment, the rack on which the truths of nature would
be extracted. The methods are not inconsistent, of course, since
experiment can use quantitative methods and Boyle crudely did
so from time to time.
To the question, "How is one to go about interpreting experience?" Galileo's rather broad answer is the method set forth by
Aristotle himself-not that of the Aristotelians of the sixteenth
century. Galileo clearly distinguished between Aristotle and the
Aristotelians and emphasized the difference over and over again;
he asserts that had Aristotle looked through a telescope he would
have become a Copernican. 34
In the Dialogue, Galileo has Simplicio assert,
Aristotle first laid the basis of his argument a priori,
showing the necessity of the inalterability of heaven by
means of natural, evident, and clear principles. He
afterward supported the same a posteriori, by the senses
and by the traditions of the ancients. 35
To which, Salviati responds,
What you refer to is the method he uses in writing his
doctrine, but I do not believe it to be that with which
he investigated it. Rather, I think it certain that he first
obtained ft by means of the senses, experiments, and
observations, to assure himself as much as possible of
his conclusions. Afterward he sought means to make
them demonstrable. That is what is done for the most
part in the demonstrative sciences; this comes about
because when the conclusion is true, one may by making use of resolutive methods hit upon some proposition which is already demonstrated, or arrive at some
axiomatic principle; but if the conclusion is false, one
can go on forever without ever finding any known
truth-if inde~d one does not encounter some impossibility or manifest absurdity. And you may be sure that
Pythagoras, long before he discovered the proof for
which he sacrificed a hecatomb, was sure that the
square on the side opposite the right angle in a right triangle was equal to the squares on the other two sides.
The certainty of a conclusion assists not a little in the
discovery of its proof ... 36
The last sentence in Salviati's statement makes it appear that
Galileo has merged the physical and the mathematical in a way
tl:1at is not typical of Aristotle. It also seems to assert that Pythag-
51
�The College
oras was a follower of Aristotle's methods, which is either a sim·
pie mistake or a profound insight. We shall assume the latter.
The method here ascribed to Aristotle is that of resolution and
composition-a method which moves from sensory experience
of particulars to general principles and then explains those par·
ticulars by deducing them from the principles.37 There existed in
mathematics a structurally similar method known as the method
of analysis and synthesis, but it is quite clear that Aristotle, at
least, saw these methods as distinct. 38 What we will try to show is
that Galilee conceived of himself as having combined the two
methods and having thereby created a notion of a mathematical
physics.
The Dialogue makes it quite dear that it is a mathematical
method that allows us to go beyond Aristotle in both the interpretation of our experience and in the ability to acquire demonstrative knowledge. Aristotle's claim in the Metaphysics" that
one should not always expect necessity of the mathematical sort
in dealing with nature is reiterated by Simplicia and then ironically echoed by Sagredo.40 But the Dialogue as a whole refutes
this view.
Galilee's belief in the central role of mathematics in the correct interpretation of experience is also made evident through
the irony of Sagredo who, in criticizing Chiaramonti, says,
Now if, from the observations mentioned and from all
the calculations made on these, the height of the star
can always be inferred to have been less than that of
the moon, this would suffice the author to convict of
the crassest ignorance all those astronomers who,
whether they erred in geometry or in arithmetic, could
not deduce the true conclusions from their own observations.41
The application of Aristotle's method of resolution to our
physical sensations resulted in natural laws or principles. But the
method of analysis, on the other hand, resulted in mathematical
statements. Such statements could never serve as explanations
of our physical sensations, inasmuch as, according to Aristotle,
mathematics lacked any force regarding efficient and material
causes. Mathematics was not of the physical or material but of
the abstract. To use Aristotle's favorite example, the results of
resolution are to those of analysis as "snub" is to "curved."42
What Galileo does in the Dialogue is to attack this difference at
its root.
He shows Salviati and Simplicia discussing the applicability of
mathematics to the material world. Salviati has just completed a
demonstration of the fact that a sphere touches a plane in a
single point and Simplicia responds by saying, "This proves it for
abstract spheres, but not material ones."43 Salviati asks that an
argument be given why what holds "for immaterial and abstract
ones" should not hold for material spheres. Simplicia identifies
the immaterial and abstract sphere with the perfect, and the material with the imperfect, saying, "doubtless it is the imperfection of matter which prevents things taken concretely from corresponding to those considered in the abstract." 44 It is thus being
maintained by Simplicia that the immaterial, abstract and
perfect are logically identical. Salviati, however, argues that the
52
perfect is logically independent from the abstract and immaterial. It may be the case that there are no perfect spheres, but
it is not a necessary truth that there are none. What keeps a
material object from being a perfect sphere is not its material nature but certain ''accidents" whose effects might (depending on
the particular case) be discounted. Salviati says,
I tell you that even in the abstract, an immaterial
sphere which is not a perfect sphere can touch an immaterial plane which is not perfectly flat in not one
point, but over a part of its surface, so that what happens in the concrete up to this point happens the same
way in the abstract. It would be novel indeed if computations and ratios made in abstract numbers should
not thereafter correspond to concrete gold and silver
coins and merchandise. Do you know what does happen, Simplicia? Just as the computer who wants his calculations to deal with sugar, silk, and wool must discount the boxes, bales, and other packings, so the
mathematical scientist (filosofo geometra), when he
wants to recognize in the concrete the effects which he
has proved in the abstract, must deduct the material
hindrances, and if he is able to do so, I assure you that
things are in no less agreement than arithmetical computations. The errors, then, lie not in the abstractness
or concreteness, not in geometry or physics, but in a
calculator who does not know how to make a true accounting. Hence if you had a perfect sphere and a
perfect plane, even though they were material, you
would have no doubt that they touched in one point. 45
Galilee's point here is that when we consider the net weight of
the sugar in a bag we are not dealing with abstract or immaterial
sugar~not even an abstract or immaterial bag of sugar. The
analogy we are supposed to draw is that when we are considering
a frictionless inclined plane we are not considering an abstract or
immaterial inclined plane. Thus mathematics, though of the
perfect, is applicable to the material world, suitably considered,
and not only the abstract and the immaterial After having
shown in this way that the perfect-imperfect distinction cuts
across the material-immaterial distinction, Galilee has Sagredo
and Simplicia push the point by claiming that any material object has the shape that it has, perfectly.
The mathematical method is, then, a way of obtaining certain
knowledge of the material world. Galileo tempers his oPtimism,
however, not by denying the certainty of our knowledge but by
restricting its range. His optimism concerning human understanding is put over against the view that man knows practically
nothing (which he identifies with Socrates and the oracle). Galilee marks a difference between intensive understanding and extensive understanding. The few things that man can know he
can know perfectly, but compared to the number of things that
are to be known he knows little. Referring to mathematics, he
has Salviati say,
Such are the mathematical sciences alone; that is, geometry and arithmetic, in which the Divine intellect in-
�January, 1980
deed knows infinitely more propositions, since it knows
all But with regard to those few which the human intellect does understand, I believe that its knowledge
equals the Divine in objective certainty, for here it succeeds in understanding necessity, beyond which there
can be no greater sureness.46
Boyle's solution to the problem of how to correctly interpret
experience was experimentation. This can be seen first in
Themistius' very definition of manifest experience as what
nature freely gives of herself in perception over against what can
be tortured out of her by experiment. But this constitutes evidence for experiment as the method only on the grounds that
what Themistius the Aristotelian rejects, Boyle, the new scientist, accepts. More positive evidence is to be found in Boyle's
postscript to the dialogue, which is titled, "A Sceptical Consideration of the heat of Cellars in winter, and their coldness in
Summer," in which he writes,
The foregoing discourses of Carneades seem to have
sufficiently shaken the foundation of the vulgar doctrine of Antiperistasis, so far forth as it is superstructed
upon the vulgar observations and phenomena, whereon
men are wont to build it. . . for as to the obvious phenomena, that nature does, as it were, of her own accord
present us, they seem to have been perfunctorily considered, and our senses only being the judges of them,
we may easily, as Carneades argues, be imposed upon
by the unheeded predispositions of our organs. And as
for contrived and artificial experiments, there scarce
seem to have been any made to clear the difficulties ... 47
Boyle is generally optimistic about the ability of science to discover truth. This optimism seems grounded in his belief that we
can overcome the mistakes of mere observation through experimentation. Boyle qualifies observation with the term "vulgar"
which is not meant to tell us how the observations are carried
out but rather to point to the fact that they are, by their very
nature, uncontrolled. But experiments, because they are
controlled, will somehow free us from the errors of "manifest
experience." Boyle is not, of course, telling us to shun mere observation when nothing else is possible, but rather to use experiment whenever possible. The problems of perception to which
Boyle draws our attention are not, then, meant to dissuade us
from the enterprise of science; on the contrary, they are meant
to point the way. What is called for is not mere observation but
wary experimentation. Scepticism regarding our sense experience becomes a method for Boyle.
This view of method leads Boyle to reject investigations into
metaphysical problems as a proper part of science, or physiology,
as he calls it. Indeed, he appears to have defined the metaphysical as that which lies beyond the reach of experimentation. In
The Spring of the Air, he writes,
And the reason why there cannot be a void, being by
them taken, not from any experiments, or phenomena
of nature, that clearly and particularly prove their hypothesis, but from their notion of a body ... seems to
make the controversy about a vacuum rather a metaphysical, than a physiological question .... 48
The means presented by Galileo and Boyle as solutions to the
problem of the interpretation of experience-the conflation of
mathematical and physical methods of discovery and proof, and
the method of controlled experimentation-are surely the most
important methods of contemporary science. They are not1 ·however, the answers to Pyrrhonian scepticism that Galileo and
Boyle thought them to be. The answer to scepticism lies not in
the search for certainty, but in the recognition that today's
claims may be refuted by tomorrow's considered experience. If
this itself sounds like scepticism it is because we have accepted
so many of the sceptic's premises. The truth is that our considered experieJ:)ces can be trusted over the long run, for it is experience itself that reveals our past errors. These errors, once
revealed, refine our consideration of future experience and we
move toward the truth. In so far as Galileo and Boyle thought of
their methods as yielding certain truths, irrefutable by any future
experience, their position was as assailable as that of the Aristotelians they attacked.
I. Boyle was educated at Eton (only two years), and in Switzerland by a
citizen of Geneva named Marcombes who seems to have been a rather
remarkable educator. It was under his tutelage that Boyle was introduced to Aristotle.
2. Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems,
2nd edition. Edited and translated by Stillman Drake, Berkeley, 1967,
32.
3. Galileo, Dialogue, 34. I have replaced Drake's words "palpable experience" with the more literal "manifest experience" for Galileo's words
"esperienze manifeste."
4. The doctrine holds that resistances or reactions are roused in a body
against actions, and that this fact can be used to explain various kinds of
change, including projectile motion and the behavior of hot and cold
bodies.
5. Robert Boyle, The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, ed. Thomas
Birch, vol. 2: New Experiments and Observations Touching Cold or an
Experimental History of Cold Begun, London, 1772, 659.
6. Boyle, History of Cold, 660-661.
7. The emphasis given to interpretation is not unique to Boyle and
Galileo. It is, in fact, one of the cornerstones of Baconianism. Galileo
and Boyle, however, present us with the opportunity to see how working
scientists view the role of interpretation.
8. Santillana reformulates the argument in essentially the same way in
Galileo Galilei, Dialogue on the Great World Systems, Introduction and
revisions by Giorgio de Santillana, Chicago, 1953, 154.
9. Galileo, Dialogue, 163.
10. Galileo, Dialogue, 171.
ll. Galileo, Dialogue, 171.
12. See, for example, Alexandre Koyre, Metaphysics and Measure.
ment, London, 1968, 42-3.
13. Galileo, Dialogue, 87.
14. Galileo, Dialogue, 87.
15. Galileo, Dialogue, 87.
16. Galileo, Dialogue, 88.
17. Galileo, Dialogue, 89.
18. Galileo, Dialogue, 89-90.
19. Boyle, History of Cold, 660.
20. Boyle, History of Cold, 661.
21. Boyle, History of Cold, 662.
53
�The College
of Cold, 664.
of Cold, 670.
of Cold, 671.
of Cold, 676.
26. Robert Boyle, The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, ed.
Thomas Birch, vol. 1: The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle, London,
1772, xxiv.
27. The rise and influence of the rediscovered Pyrrhonian scepticism
that emerged has been chronicled and masterfully dealt with in Richard
H. Popkin's The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes, New
Ymk, 1968.
28. It is possible that Galileo was not directly aware of Pynhonism and
the writings of Sextus Empiricus since, as the tradition has it, he was not
a "bookish man." There is, however, ample evidence of his knowledge
of the major sceptical arguments, whether he arrived at them on his
own, or in discussion, or in his reading.
29. Joseph Glanvill, The Vanity of Dogmatizing: The Three Versions, ed.
Stephen Medcalf, Hove, Sussex, 1970, 212.
30. Glanvill, Dogmatizing, 188.
31. Glanvill, Dogmatizing, 89.
32. Glanvill, Dogmatizing, 5-6. Compare this with the last paragraph of
Francis Bacon's Novum Organum, where he writes,
For man by the fall fell at the same time from his state of in·
nocency and from his dominion over creation. B9th of these
losses however can even in this life be in some part repaired;
the former by religion and faith, the latter by arts and
sciences.
33. Glanvill, Dogmatizing, Preface.
34. Salviati rhetorically asks Simplicia,
Is it possible for you to doubt that if Aristotle should see the
new discoveries in the sky he would change his opinions and
correct his books and embrace the most sensible doctrines,
casting away from himself those people so weak-minded as to
be induced to go on abjectly maintaining everything he had
ever said?
(Galileo, Dialogue, llO.)
35. Galileo, Dialogue, 50.
36. Galileo, Dialogue, 51. I have replaced Drake's words "analytical
method" with the more literal "resolutive method" for Galileo's words
"metoda resolutivo." It is curious that both Santillana and Drake have
used the term "analytical method" where Galileo has clearly written
"resolutive method." Salusbury in his translation of 1661 writes
"resolutive method" and Santillana, whose translation is presented as a
revision of Salusbury's, has replaced it with "analytical method." I
believe that both Santillana and Drake thought that Galileo must have
meant analytical rather than resolutive, since the method he describes
22.
23.
24.
25.
54
Boyle,
Boyle,
Boyle,
Boyle,
History
History
History
History
more properly corresponds to the analytical method of mathematics
than it does to the resolutive method of Aristotle. However, one could
argue the other way since Galileo clearly attributes the method of which
he is writing to Aristotle. It is my opinion that Galileo was quite consciously conflating the two methods here and was surely aware of the
fact that they were commonly distinguished, therefore I will take
Galileo at his word.
37. The method of resolution and composition has its origin in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. The Italian Aristotelians claimed that they
derived the terms "resolutio" and "compositio" from Galen, Cicero, and
Boethius. But the Arabic commentator on Galen, Hali ('Ali ibn
Ridwan), writing about 1060 describes its source as Aristotle's Posterior
Analytics. For a discussion of the history of this method see John Her·
man Randall, Jr. The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modem Science, Padua, 1961, 27-67; also, A. C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and
the Origin of Experimental Science 1100-1700, Oxford, 1953.
38. The method of analysis and synthesis is attributed by Proclus (410485 A.D.) in his Commentary on Euclid to Plato. T. L. Heath in The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, New York, 1956, val. I, 137-138, indicates that a definition of analysis and synthesis is to be found interpolated into the MSS of the Elements. This definition, as given by Heath
on page 138 of the Elements, is as follows:
Analysis is an assumption of that which is sought as if it were
admitted <and the passage> through its consequences to
something admitted (to be) true.
Synthesis is an assumption of that which is admitted <and
the passage> through its consequences to the finishing or attainment of what is sought.
Heath argues in his A History of Greek Mathematics that the method of
analysis was known to the Pythagoreans.
39. Aristotle writes in the Metaphysics, Book a.2, 995~15,
The minute accuracy of mathematics is not to be demanded
in all cases, but only in the case of things that have no matter.
Hence its method is not that of natural science; for presumably the whole of nature has matter.
40. Galileo, Dialogue, 14 and 410 respectively.
41. Galileo, Dialogue, 281.
42. See Aristotle's Physics, Book 11.2, l93b30.
43. Galileo, Dialogue, 206.
44. Galileo, Dialogue, 207.
45. Galileo, Dialogue, 207-208.
46. Galileo, Dialogue, 103.
47. Boyle, History of Cold, 683.
48. Robert Boyle, The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, ed.
Thomas Birch, vol. I: New Experiments Physico-Mechanical Touching
the Spring of the Air, London, 1772, 37-38.
�Prometheus Unbound
Karl Marx on Human Freedom
Thomas K. Simpson
Rumor has it that toward the end of his life Marx read through
the works of Aeschylus in Greek every year. This has the feel of a
biographer's exaggeration, but even if it does to some extent
strain the facts, it is one of those fictions which ought to be true:
many of us reading Marx are, I suspect, intrigued by the sense in
which Marx is drawn to the Greeks, most obviously to Aristotle,
but to Aeschylus as well. Marx is writing at a time-his time and
ours-which is in some ways at the greatest possible distance
from Athens, a time in which reason in the sense of the use of
mind in the pursuit of the human good is in eclipse. Marx
devotes his own enormous energies, culminating in his great
work, Capital, to the formulation of the theory of this darkened
period, a period in which rational man is in bondage to what
Marx calls the fetishism of a commodity society. But out of that
very theory comes the perception that the pendulum, now at the
extreme of its negative swing, is destined to swing back once
more, toward a restoration of the rational polity. Hence, in anticipation, Marx is already close to Aristotle. And the poignancy
of the foresight of release from present suffering, out of the
depths of human bondage, is an Aeschylean principle. Consider
the opening line of the Oresteia trilogy, in which the Watchman,
paradigmatic figure for both Marx and Aeschylus, cries out:
I pray the gods release from aU this suffering ...
Ow Us p,€v lnrW ;WvO lx1rcxAAcx"(~V 1r6vwv . ..
Both the burden, 1r6vos, and the release, the reversal, b-JrcxAXcx"f~,
are seen together, the one nested in the manner of the Greek
genitive within the other, rWvO' &1rcxAAcx"(~V 1rdvwv. The release
comes slowly, through the long cycle of the tragic development,
in the final persuasion of neccessity in the Eumenides. Marx, in
the same way, will see the nesting of a future release in the very
laws of operation of a mindless economic order-and like that
Protagonist, who is first the Watchman, but ultimately Agamemnon and Orestes, he reads the signs of an era yet to come.
But the figure who seems to me to come closest to Marx's
sense of man's position is Prometheus. Prometheus is the old
god, the Titan, who has been bound to a rock cliff by Zeus, as
punishment for giving to mankind the symbolic gift of fire. He
Thomas Simpson, a tutor at St. John's College, read this lecture at Santa
Fe on Aprill4, 1978.
appears in on1y the one play Prometheus Bound, the rest of that
trilogy having been almost entirely lost. In this case, then, we see
only the first phase of the trilogy, that of bondage, and must
envision for ourselves how Aeschylus would have composed the
release: but I think it is in any case in that bondage that we best
grasp, through the figure of Prometheus, Aeschylus' definition
of man. And that definition, it seems to me, can be very helpful
to us in attempting to understand Marx's vision of man as
well-both in his bondage, and in the state of freedom which is
implicit in the powers the bondage reveals. If I am not mistaken,
Aeschylus and Marx are very close to one another in this vision
of the Promethean spirit in history.
Let me explain before 1 go further the objective 1 have set for
this discussion. 1 want, if I can, to formulate Marx's concept of
human freedom. In a way, considering all the dimensions of
Marx's concerns, this single focus on his concept of freedom
would seem a very limited objective. But of course a concept of
human freedom lies at the very center of any political enterprise,
so that if we can understand this one concept we are well on the
way to understanding the whole. Therefore, we do have, after
all, a major undertaking before us. And this question may be of
special interest to us, here at the nuclear center of America in
these last dark decades of the twentieth century. For our major
single national effort, to which our science, our technology, and
our national economy are directed, is the continual preparation
for ever-more-advanced nuclear warfare. And the target of all
this preparation, the offense which is so terrible that we are
ready at any moment to destroy life on a large part of our
planet-is what we call "communism." It seems, then, that it
would be well to knoW, before we go, what it was we were objecting to. And it is precisely because Marx is officially anathema to
us, that it is probably more difficult in this country than in most
to get any perspective on his writings, and in particular to grasp
his concept of human freedom. I do not, of course, mean to imply that many Marxists understand Marx much better than we
do, or that those societies which today call themselves "com·
munist" represent the goals he intended for men. But there is
the very real, and disturbing, possibility that some do understand
something we don't-and that if we and they understood each
other better, we could at least have a more interesting conversation before we proceeded to destroy a large part of the human
race, or all of it, over our differences.
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Let me go back to Prometheus. I digressed because I wanted
to make clear the particular sense in which I am interested in
him tonight. I think he stands, both for Aeschylus and for Marx,
as the figure of man himself, and that in that figure we can find a
characterization of the essence of human freedom.
First, then, who is Prometheus? Prometheus is, as I have said,
a Titan, which means that he is one of the oldest of the gods,
older perhaps than Zeus himself. At the outset of the play, Zeus
has completed a revolution against his father, Cronos, with Prometheus' aid; but as the new tyrant of Olympus, Zeus has attempted to annihilate mankind, by denying them, or us, the arts
by which to exist. Prometheus, as man's friend among the gods,
philanthropos, has thus in his turn revolted against Zeus, on our
behalf. He has stolen fire from Hephaestus, as the principle of all
the rational arts, and passed it on to us. In punishment for this
transgression-that is, for insisting on the continued existence of
mankind-Prometheus at the outset of the drama is being
riveted by Hephaestus to a rock-face in Scythia. We, as spectators of the drama, become witnesses in effect to the crucifixion
of that god who has saved us from destruction: he is the source
of our rationality, and he is impaled precisely because he has
dared to stand on our behalf against Olympus. The last spike is
driven through his breast, but he cannot die; as a Titan, son of
Earth herself, he sees beyond Zeus, both before and after, and it
is his doom to endure. His is not simply the rational mind, but
the historical mind: he in effect has Zeus bracketed, first having
lent him reason, the secret weapon, to overthrow old force-but
now knowing, as Zeus does not, the contingent fate of the new
regime as well. Zeus is to be overthrown, in his turn, by a son of
his own-a potential fourth in the terrible cycle of gods which so
preoccupies Aeschylus-if Zeus consummates a marriage
which, unbeknownst to Zeus himself, has been proscribed by
Fate. In time, over the ages, the thousands of years, Prometheus
will trade that knowledge of Zeus' fate for his own freedom, and
during that unimaginable span of punishment, Prometheus will
all the while be fortified to unending defiance of Zeus by the
knowledge that ultimately pro-methean mind will prevailmind which knows ahead, -promanthanei. It is this bold and
unrelenting, principled defiance of Zeus which constitutes
Prometheus' special fascination for Aeschylus. As a play, Prometheus Bound is a tour-de-force of the dramatic art, a drama in
which the Protagonist, literally pinned to the earth, cannot so
much as offer a gesture or change his position from beginning to
end: action, then, is distilled to pure will Prometheus, as mind
riveted in time and space and forged by Zeus' repression to sheer
will, becomes the fixed center of the world for both men and
gods. He becomes, I think, a self in a unique way-a center of
energy, willing and reasoriing his way into a future which he in
part foresees, and in part designs, and which will bring not only
his own release, but through his defiance of tyranny, a new order
in the cosmos. He will in time be released, he foreknows that. He
will reveal to Zeus the secret of the forbidden marriage, and will
thus in the nick of time prevent Zeus from fathering the son who
would have overthrown him; and in exchange for that cosmic
tip-off, Prometheus will be given his freedom. Thus in a way Prometheus becomes the surrogate for that Fourth God, successor
to Zeus-the god who never was. As surrogate successor to
56
Zeus, then, we have Prometheus himself, unbound.
Though Prometheus is a god, and a timeless god, a Titan, I
think we must recognize that he becomes for Aeschylus not
merely philanthropos, the friend of man, but man himself, and
Prometheus Unbound is man in his fuJI powers, free man. This is
not, I think, ho eleutheros, the free man of Aristotle's Politics or
the Platonic Republic. Aeschylus, Promethean himself, seems to
have reached beyond the rational soul which contemplates eternal forms, to a new kind of soul in which will is primary, and in
which reason does not intuit forms, but rather thrusts into an
historic future in which things will be new, and of its own making. At least, I suspect it is this new definition of man, a Promethean principle of will and act, which Marx finds in
Aeschylus, and identifies with his own.
When the pendulum of dialectical history swings back to rationality, then, I think Marx foresees it will be Promethean man,
not the philospher of the Republic or the statesman of the
Politics, who will inherit the new era. And this succession Marx
will see as a higher order of personal freedom, more radically individual and, yes, creative, than freedom within the Aristotelian
polis.
I. SELF-ACTIVITY
With Prometheus, we seem to have foreseen a world-change: a
leap out of the ancient world, into the modern, from the world of
forms, to the world of will. Another figure comes forward,
parallel to Prometheus, namely Faust: and indeed there is one
precise moment in which Goethe permits us to watch Faust
weighing that world-change, appropriately enough, as an act of
translation. Faust is re~translating the opening line of the Gospel
According to John: lev b:exii ~v b AO-yos-"in the beginning was
the ... "what? Faust, taking on our behalf that fateful step into a
new world, senses that it can no longer be translated "in the
beginning was the word." He concludes by translating: "in the
beginning was the deed." His German is "am Anfang war die
Tat." Tat is the noun-form of the verb tun, to do or to act. It will
help us with our study of Marx if we tentatively take that shift
from word to act as the key to the new world. What will it entail?
Faust abandons his study-a library which is not merely his
own, but is inherited, and full of wisdom stored in books out of
the long western tradition-to commit himself to action. This is
not an abandonment of his rational effort, but a thrust of restless
mind into a new mode. Clearly Goethe is inviting us to a new,
dramatic model of the workings of human reason-reason which
works itself out not in relation to a form written with finality, but
anew, through act itself. But perhaps, as with Prometheus, the
crux of the difference is in the notion of self. Faust is radically a
self, in a sense in which the rational soul for whom Aristotle
writes the Politics and Ethics is not. If men are individual simply
as instances of a species, differentiated by their "matter" as Aristotle says, but so deeply alike that in the act of understanding
two minds become, as it were, fused into one undifferentiated
intellect-then words reflecting forms are true vehicles of understanding: form is then first in the comos. But Faust is to be
understood in terms of that Creator God, the Lord, who,
through Mephistopheles, in effect gives Faust his assignment in
�January, 1980
the drama, his own role, unique in history. Such a created self is
in a different world from the individuated soul inhabiting the
Aristotelian cosmos. This new self, radically individual, radically
important, radically alone, we might say, has its own way to
make in the world, and this is freedom in a new sense. It is a self
with terrible options.
We have been a long while getting to Marx, but the transition
through Goethe will, I believe, be helpful. The centerpiece, the
keystone, of Marx's thought is a word built out of Faust's word
Tat. Since it has no direct English counterpart, it will be worth a
minute to trace the expansion of that little word Tat into Marx's
own larger term. Tat, which, as we saw, means act, in its first expansion becomes Tiitigkeit, the abstract noun, activity. A second
expansion identifies that activity with the self, in German,
Selbst. The result, a German mouthful, is Marx's term: Selbstbetiitigung. The most literal translation would be self-activity, and
that is the term the translators give us. But of course that is a
manufactured term, for we have no such word in English, so that
the most central of Marx's words does not convey much in our
language. We have to circumnavigate it with words like initiative, vitality, restlessness, or spontaneity. I take the liberty now of
suggesting that this is the very Promethean principle, that drive
which will not let the self rest in chains, or under tyranny: thus
where we lack a word, Aeschylus, looking beyond his own world,
may have provided us with an image.
"Self-activity" sounds a little like Aristotle's physis, nature: an
indwelling principle of motion. Marx is immensely drawn to Aristotle's terms and concepts, and indeed he calls the opposite of
self-activity "accident," very much as Aristotle does, as if he were
simply transcribing the Physics. But we must be careful, and indeed it will be instructive to contrast physis, nature, and
Selbstbetatigung, self-activity. One way to do that will be to set
Aristotle's notion of making, craftsmanship, against Marx's account of what he calls the "labor-process."
Aristotle sees art, techne, as a rational process in his own sense.
The competent craftsman has first a form in mind. This is the
telos, the end of the work. The artist, in short, knows in advance
what he is doing; there will be a word for it-let us say he is making a chair-and there will be a definition to go with the word.
Form is primary, here as everywhere in the cosmos, for. Aristotle.
The crux of techne, the art, is to confront matter, the formless,
with pre-existing form, and to know how to shape matter so as to
bear form as fully as possible. The more complete the techne, the
more smoothly and effortlessly this motion of poiesis, this making, takes place. If ships grew by nature, says Aristotle in his inimitable way, that effortless process would be like the work of a
fully competent shipwright.
Some of the things Marx says about the labor-process sound
very much like this, but as the account unfolds (in Chapter VII
of Capital, a chapter which we might regard as J\!Iarx's Physics)
we begin to recognize signs of the world-change. Form and matter suddenly reveal a certain curious symmetry: not only the object, but the workman undergoes change-work and workman
develop together in the unity of the work-process. Marx says,
"The work is objectified, as the object is worked." The work has
clearly taken on a new sense, as something in its own right, something subiective, which finds expression in the objective result.
What does this introduction of the terms "subject'' and "object''
do to our understanding of art? There was not such subject/
object split in Aristotle's account of techne, or in his cosmos.
Aristotle's workman was not a subject, but merely a rational mind
going about its business in an orderly way.
Marx has turned craftsmanship into Faustian drama: what was
simply telos, an intelligible end, has become Zweck, a goal, and
the artist is characterized, not by the easy competence of his
work, but by what Marx calls der zweckgemiisse Wille, the goaloriented will. The instruments of labor, which for Aristotle were
merely rational methods of the prudent mind, are now Leiter der
Tiitigkeit, conductors, perhaps lightning rods, of the artist's activity. For Marx, then, art has become process, in which the goalseeking will of a subjective self finds its way to objective expression, a product which is partly foreseen but at the same time
something new, while in this process the artist discovers himself
objectively as something he had never known, perhaps had
never been, before. At the seat of this drama is self-activity. We
need only contrast this with Aristotle's quiet remark, "Art does
not deliberate," in order to sense the full measure of the worldchange, which will reflect in turn upon the contrast between
physis and self-activity. We have, incidentally, witnessed the
birth of our modern word art, which today leans so far on the
Faustian, Promethean side that we cannot safely use it to translate techne, a pregnant difficulty which often troubles discussion
in our seminars and tutorials. The making of the world in the
Timaeus, for example, is a craftsman's job, not a work of Promethean art. In his account of the drama of the labor-process, Marx
shows us in effect how we can understand art as creative, without misusing terms: something genuinely new, not an imitation
of a pre-existing form, is emerging. Similarly freedom of speech
is important to us today, and troubles us in our reading of theRepublic, because free speech is vital when there is the possibility
that something new may need to be said.
That little word ·~new" perhaps contains it- all. Aristotle in the
Physics argues convincingly that time does not exist (that is what
he means when he says that it is nothing but the measure of motion); it is contrary to reason that there be anything new. For if it
is anything at all, it must be an instance of being that always was.
By contrast, one way Marx has of epitomizing the labor-process
is to say that in it, Unruhe leads to Sein-out of restlessness
comes being. Self-activity leads to new being. Marx is not joking
-he really means this. There are forms ... but we make them.
The forms have a history. And among the forms, is the form of
man. Yes, man has made man: what man is to be is a question
not yet answered, a question for history.
Marx did not invent this notion, or this new world. He inherits
it from many sources-from Goethe, as we have seen, and even
from Aeschylus; but above all he takes it to a large extent from
Hegel. Hegel, Marx says, must be stood on his feet: where Hegel
sees the making as ideal, in man's self-consciousness, Marx sees it
as real, in man's practice. But Hegel, while being stood right side
up, remains, I suspect, to some important extent intact.
As you can see, we are now in momentous conflict with those
most powerful arguments out of the Platonic dialogues. Has being been reduced to becoming? Becoming what? If forms change,
how can words mean? What of justice, and the moral choice? If
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there are no unchanging standards, have we not fallen into
moral chaos, slipped completely into the hands of the lonians~
is all, then, relative? Marx says, in effect: brace yourself! He and
Hegel are not speaking of chaos, there is a way in which reason
can be reconciled with history-in which the new can be meaningful, and in which the moral can be unfolding.
Theses on Feuerbach:' Theses I- IV
·There is always a difficulty, of course, in lecturing about books
which only Seniors have read in the course of the Program. In
order that we have some common ground, I have distributed a
selection from Marx's so-called "Theses on Feuerbach". Feuerbach, I should explain, was a student of Hegel, who after a couple of years became disaffected and left to try to say as completely as he could the opposite of what Hegel was saying-for
Hegel's idealism, Feuerbach substitutes a thoroughgoing materialism. What Marx says in the "Theses" is essentially that Feuerbach did not go far enough. I suspect you may not have been
able to make much of these Theses out of their context, but let
us see now whether they will help us as a response to our concern about a mode of human reason which proposes to join being and becoming, and for which the forms have a history.
Thesis I.
The main trouble with "materialism" ... up to the
present time is that it thinks of its subject matternamely, reality, the domain of the senses-always as an
object, or an observation. It thus has not included action
-tangible human activity, or praxis . ...
In this first thesis, Marx appears to be defining a new "materialism," "materialism" in a sense which he says has never before
been ascribed to the term. Other materialisrns have always dealt
with things as objects, objects, he says, to be looked upon (an·
geschaut); this is, of course, pretty much what we mean by objective science. Marx's new proposition is this: our own, subjective
selves take objective form in the working out of our activity-in
doing things. (Marx-uses the Greek word, praxis.) This is what we
have just seen in his account of the labor-process, in art. In such
praxis, the self makes itself objective, visible. Hence, Marx says,
human activity, Tiitigkeit, must be recognized as belonging to
the domain of the senses, and in this way the active self becomes
the concern of an inclusive materialism. All that Marx means
here by "materialism" is that discipline whose subject-matter is
the domain of the senses, whatever enters sensation. Evidently
this one realm of reason, or science, is very far from "materialist"
in any ordinary sense: it does not confine itself to inert objects,
matter, bodies subject to laws of motion, but it includes all that
enters the real world, especially men, not as objects, but as subjects, selves, manifest in their actions. The subjective and the objective coalesce as the concern of one science of the real
Thesis II.
The question whether human thought attains to objective truth is not at all a question for theory, but a
practical question. We have to establish the truth of our
58
thoughts in praxis: the truth, that is, the reality and the
power, the this-sided-ness, of our thoughts ....
In the first thesis, Marx looked at reason in terms of its object. In
this second thesis, he looks at the thinking process itself. Is there
objective truth? This is very much like our question from the
Dialogues: does dialectic have an object-do the forms exist?
Marx shifts the ground of the question:
Man must establish the truth ... of his thinking in
praxis.
What is it to have a thought? Marx is suggesting here, I believe,
that we have the thought (the German word might mean, we
manifest the thought, establish it, prove it, or show it) in praxis.
When we do so, it will be real, powerful, and as he says, "on this
side" -that is, on the side of our real lives. The thought will be
part of our lives; in that way we have the thought. Thus, the first
thesis argued the significance of praxis as object: through his action, we see the self of the artist. This second thesis argues the
significance of praxis as the vehicle of thought: in praxis, our own
action, we manifest to ourselves our own thought. In this second
thesis, we might say, the thought-process and the work-process,
art, have coalesced. The new science does not regard human activity with detachment: its very mode of knowing is action, it is
inherently involved.
Thesis III.
The (old) materialist doctrine of the changing of circumstances and of education forgets that circumstances are themselves changed by men, and that the
educator must himself be educated ....
This third thesis shifts the ground again, from the individual
thought process, to history. Evidently, at any given moment in
history, today, for example, we live in the midst of circumstances
given to us in the form of social relations, social institutions inherited from the past. It is not clear how much we might be able
to do about this, but on the whole we have to work out our lives
as best we can in terms of these given conditions. A crude materialism-the old materialism-would say that they determine our
lives. Feuerbach has said, "Man ist was man isst"-"Man is what
he eats". Marx does not say this. He reminds us that "circumstances are changed by men" -that is, that history consists of an
interplay, self-activity acting through and upon conditions.
When he speaks in this thesis of the "fusion of the changing of
circumstances with human activity," I understand him to be saying that history is praxis, art, writ large. Elsewhere he speaks of
our inherited social structures as "material" or <(inorganic", and
of our own activity upon them as "organic". Hence, acting in history, we are the workman as artist, giving scope to his own purposeful will-and if we combine this insight with that of the
second thesis, we see that history has become for Marx our
thought process writ large. To think seriously is to act boldly, in
history-that is, to seize inherited social structures as material on
which to work, and to change them, to turn them to our own
goals. Such action Marx calls not just praxis, but revolutionary
praxis.
�January, 1980
Thesis IV.
Feuerbach begins with the fact of religious selfalienation, the doubling of the world into one which is
religious, and another which is worldly. His task is to
dissolve the religious world into its worldy foundation.
But the fact that this worldly foundation takes off from
itself and establishes for itself an independent realm in
the clouds, can only be explained in terms of the inner
strife and self-contradiction of this worldly foundation
itself. ...
This fourth thesis turns to religion. Marx is not only a materialist, he is an atheist. However, just as his "materialism" embraces
self and the subjective, and the praxis of his "materialism" becomes the medium of thought itself, so his atheism takes religion
extremely seriously. Christianity suffers the same fate as Hegel:
it too must be stood on its feet, but, like Hegel, to an impressive
extent it is preserved as an invariant of the rotation. The Christian dream Marx sees as a transformed projection of the real
world-a realm in the clouds. The Christian brotherhood of man
is a wish and an idea, born of the violence and contradiction of a
dark phase of the world's history. Christianity is thus a dialectical
insight, a moment of thought, but the real task for thought is to
establish that insight in praxis, to realize the vision of brotherhood, in our lives.
The fact that the suffering and negation of a commercial, class
society generates the idea of its opposite illustrates the dialectical
progress of thought, in history. As in a Platonic dialogue,
thought advances through refutation. In the dialogue, Gorgias,
for example, learns what he is by discovering, through the anguish of refutation, that he is not what he thought he was-he is
better than he knew. In history, we make our way by discovering
that the institutions we have inherited in fact deny ourselves.
Historical praxis is dialectical thought. That is why Marx says
that it is inherently revolutionary praxis: it questions, and dares
to change, inherited forms.
II. ALIENATION
Thus there is, in our modern society, a general sense of frustration, dismay, and something we tend to call in a vague way
"alienation". We sense that the world of modern technology,
modern finance, class-divisions (however covert), and nuclear
warfare is not really a proper home for man: the self sees in the
world in which it lives not its own image, but its opposite. This
extreme negative swing of the pendulum, away from the valid
expression of the human self, is a dialectical crisis for us. Let us
leave the examination of the "Theses on Feuerbach" for a mo·
ment to consider this situation of alienation more carefully.
Although everywhere the processes of our society are devastatingly rational in detail-to say that they are "computerized"
sum its up-the net result makes no sense for man: senseless and
increasing devastation of the earth's resources, escalation of poverty and hunger in the face of growing quantities and concentrations of food and wealth, the proliferation of unsought and
unwanted technologies, and, most serious, most unbelievable of
all, the world poised at every moment for instant nuclear de-
struction. We sense that we live in a world gone mad, but we
sense, too, that there is nothing we can do about it. No available
act of political decision will have any significant effect on itnobody is asking our opinion about the real questions. So we are
left with a sense of alienation, and possibly a heightened will to
make a better world for man if there is any way to do so.
Already in the midst of the nineteenth century, Marx experienced essentially these feelings, which he diagnosed technically
as "alienation", and he traced them to their source in the structure of society. As so often, here too Marx brings Aristotle forward as consultant, and I think it may help us to look with Marx
at a passage he quotes from the first book of the Politics. Aristotle
is here helping us to locate the art of economics by making a
basic distinction between economics (oikonomike, housekeeping)
properly so-called, and something else, a spurious economics,
which he calls chrematiske, "chrematistic,'' from the Greek word
ta chremata, money.
One kind of acquisition therefore in the order of nature is a part of the household art (oikonomike), in accordance with which ... that art must procure ... a supply of those goods, capable of accumulation, which are
necessary for life and useful for the community of city
or household. And it is of these goods that riches in the
true sense at all events seem to consist. For the amount
of such property sufficient in itself for a good life is not
unlimited ....
But there is another kind of acquisition that is specially called wealth-getting (chrematiske), and that is so
called with justice; and to this kind it is due that there is
thought to be no limit to riches and property. Owing to
its affinity to the art of acquisition of which we spoke, it
is supposed by many people to be one and the same as
that. ..
This distinction between true economics, which is rationally limited and measured by the httman good, and spurious economics, or chrematistic wealth-getting, which is uncontrolled by any
rational measure, but moves only from quantity to greater quantity, already seems to point to the central fault of our society.
Aristotle's analysis continues to the fundamental distinction between two ways of appraising goods; this becomes the foundation of Marx's analysis of our capitalist society.
With every article of property (Aristotle goes on)
there is a double way of using it; both uses are related to
the article itself, but not related to it in the same manner-one is peculiar to the thing, and the other is not
peculiar to it. Take for example a shoe-there is its
wearing as a shoe, and there is its employment as an article of exchange . ...
To say, then, that we live'in a society which has gone chrematistic, is to say that our processes of production and distribution are
ruled not by use value but by exchange value-that is to say, we
make things not because they are good, but because they will
sell. Our society is governed, Marx stresses, not by considera-
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tions of the good life-human use, or human purpose-but by
the infinite and essentially irrational criterion of ever-increasing
quantity. There is no limit to increase of quantity, since one
quantity is as such exactly like another, and we are always at the
same starting-point, driven by the same urge, to make another
cycle of profit. What we caH "economics" is therefore not the
choice of effective means to achieve human ends, but that false
"art or skill" of getting more, and more, and more. Progress is
measured by growth in the GNP. In these terms, we already see
the roots of alienation in the separation of life from human ends,
and that this alienation is intimately associated with our capitalist society, a society which is "economic" only in the chrematistic, and not in the true, sense.
Beginning with this distinction out of Aristotle, Marx lays the
foundation for a scientific study of the modern economic order
in his book, Capital. Capital is as a scientific work in many ways
strikingly analogous to Newton's Principia, and I shall point out
one of these ways in a moment. But we should notice also one
huge difference: Newton writes of eternal natural laws; Marx
writes the theory of a passing set of social relations, a moment of
history, and his theory reaches to the very laws of their passage.
In this sense, Capital belongs to the new understanding of reason: it analyzes, not timeless truth, but truth incorporated in
man's praxis. The Theses have shown us that praxis bears man's
self-expression, and his understanding of himself-his knowledge-so that the study of a passing social structure is in no way
to be despised. Nor is it a matter of regret that, if Marx is right,
his great work, Capital, will one day have no object. Thought belongs to history.
With this disclaimer before us we can observe that the first
and fundamental likeness between the Principia and Capital is
that each is built on a strict and universal mathematical quantity.
Where Newton first defines quantity of matter, and thereafter
secures all of his analyses of the physical world on this one quantitative foundation, Marx defines exchange value equally quantitatively and exactly, and thereafter constructs all of his analyses
of the functioning of the capitalist economy on this one fixed
ground. It is ironic that our contemporary economists tend to
fault Marx most for his preoccupation with this supposedly unnecessary foundation-it is as if one were to fault Newton for his
insistence on a firm definition of the "quantity of matter"! We
cannot, of course, deal adequately with this concept tonight, but
let me say simply that Marx adopts from such radical predecessors as Adam Smith and Benjamin Franklin the postulate that
the exchange value, or simply value, of any commodity arises
from the investment of labor in it. Value is then measured in
hours of labor time. To be strict, as Marx is, we must reduce
energetic and lazy labor, efficient and inefficient, highly trained
and simple, to one common unit: thus, more exactly, Marx defines the value of any commodity, such as Aristotle's shoes, as
the amount of socially necessary, socially average simple labor
time which has gone into its making. Money is merely an expression of this labor value. Almost everything we can point to in our
surroundings is an object of exchange in our chrematistic world,
which means only that it has, or has had, its money price-and
that in turn means that it has been reduced by the appraisal of
the market process to equivalent labor hours. Why else do we
60
pay for a book, or for shoes, or for a house-or an educationwhat we do, except that ultimately they, and the materials and
machines which have gone into their making before them, have
a common measure-have cost so much of human time?
Aristotle, Marx is very much interested to point out, balked at
just such an analysis-pricing, Aristotle decided, was simply irrational, for he could find no common measure between a coat
and a house. That historic aporia which Aristotle faced, Marx
says, was highly significant: Aristotle was right to stop where he
did. For in his time, in a society including slave labor, there was
no common measure. Only when men become socially equal do
their labor hours constitute a common measure. Hence our political statement that men are created equal, and our economic
principle of the universal exchange of their products as commod~
ities in one single network of markets, reflect each other, and,
more deeply, correspond to our conviction of the universal
worth of the human self. Beginning with Aristotle, we have once
again taken a major step beyond him, and that step, towards a
universal, quantitative chrematistic of our commodity world, is
at the same time the passage from use value-a society which is a
home for man-to exchange value, and a society of total alienation.
When a man makes a product, as we found in our consideration of self-activity, his purposeful will shapes an object in which
he as worker finds expression: the self knows itself, and finds satisfaction, in the product. We assumed when we spoke that way
that the product was indeed the object of the worker's will-that
it was for him a goal, a good thing, a use-value. If on the other
hand, he makes it as a commodity, not because he prizes it but in
order to sell at the highest price he can command, the product's
significance for him is evidently eroded. And if, finally, he works
not for himself but for someone else, so that the product is not
even his own to exchange, the bond between the worker and the
work is altogether severed. He may or may not in some distant
way approve the product, but if his labor-power has been purchased and commanded, and he does not work out of free will,
but from necessity, the significance of his work is lost. This is the
deeper root of modern alienation, according to Marx. Still further, the man who sells his labor-power to another has himself
become a commodity. Not only is the product not his own, but
his very time, his energy, and his will are not his own-in short
his life during the hours he has sold to an employer, is not his
own. The ultimate analysis of alienation is not, then, that the
product of man's work is not his own, but that his own activity,
his life, has been alienated. That is not just a matter of hours.
What is lost is the opportunity for the expression of self, which js
at the ce~ter of Marx's concern for human freedom, and no
doubt the center of our own concern as well. When we make
ourselves commodities, we perform the original act of alienation,
reducing what is most personal, what is most original and strictly
creative, self-activity, to common coin. When we market ourselves, we do that-and every one of us who works for another,
has performed that act of alienation.
We might at this point pause to correct some false impressions
about Marx. It is commonly supposed that Marx is concerned
with fair, or uniform, distribution of the product of labor. He is
not unconcerned with that; however, we see that this js not the
�January, 1980
center of his concern, which is rather the free command of one's
own time, one's own life. It is commonly supposed that Marx
recommends a uniform or regimented society, in which the individual is engulfed in a mass. We see that the situation is precisely
the opposite, for Marx takes as his measure the total freedom of
the creative individual. Marx, looking at us, says that the
freedom we imagine we possess is to a large degree illusory,
precisely because we do not freely command the hours of our
working days-we alienate ourselves in a way he regards as a
fundamental violation of personal freedom. Finally, readers of
Capital often make the initial mistake of supposing that Marx
recommends the reduction of all labor to a homogeneous measure, while, on the contrary, he describes with surgical precision
what in fact he observes happening in the commodity society,
our society, for which he is building the theory. Marx does not
write Capital because he loves capitalism! He writes it to show us
our own situation, to help us see where we are in history, and
hence to determine where, in strict realism, we may expect to advance. We do not always reflect on the fact, but whenever we
turn to the classified ads in the local paper to begin the process
we call "getting a job," we alienate ourselves. Marx is not recommending this, but simply pointing it out.
III. HUMAN SOCIETY
In the logic of dialectic, recognition that we are alienated from
our true selves in an automated, chrematistic society leads not
only to a sense of human frustration, but at the same time to a
growing perception of what a genuinely free human society
might entail That is the way we learn. It is not Marx's mannerindeed, it would not be compatible with his account of the operation of human reason-to begin by writing down a prescription
for a new society: we must find our way to it, according to Marx,
in and through a commitment to new praxis. Readers of Capital
who seek in that work a schema of a proposed life under socialism come away disappointed; in that respect, it would be much
more useful as a handbook for readers of the Wall Street Journal.
Yet it is possible in Marx's writings-and out of our own experience, if Marx is right-to identify a new direction. Let us see
what guidance we can get from Marx, turning back to certain of
the remaining Theses on Feuerbach.
Thesis VI.
Feuerbach dissolves (or "resolves") religious essence
into human essence. But this human "essence" is no
abstraction dwelling in each individual person. In reality, it is an ensemble of social relations.
When Marx says, here, that " ... the human essence is no abstraction dwelling within each single individual," -what really is
this proposition which he is rejecting? It is, I believe, different in
an important way from Aristotle's understanding of the form of
man. Aristotle's forms are not "abstract," and for Aristotle the
form of man draws man essentially into the community-he can
be himself only in the polity. Feuerhach .speaks instead of abstract form, a universal separately present in each individual
man. Marx denies the existence of such abstract form, but he
does not go back to Aristotle either. What, then, is man for
Marx? Our essence (or perhaps now, we should translate, our be~
ing) is the ensemble of our social realtions. What am I? I am not
man simply: I am late twentieth-century American man, in a
number of more particular social relations which are quite decisive for me. Does such a social definition limit me arbitrarily?
No, I think Marx is saying that it is simply a realistic appraisal of
the fact that I essentially have a place in society, and in history,
and that to grasp that reality for what it is, is to gain new and
more human power. Note in particular that it does not cut
modern man off from his predecessors~it shows the way back to
the ancients, for that way is part of the historical, social relation
which defines us. Does man have a nature? Only in the sense
that we are reshaping our nature, as we are reshaping the rest of
the natural world: man is not limited by his nature; we are full of
possibilities, and we cannot at any point know what they might
yet be, though we can in part foresee them. In place of an eternal
form, a definition of man-whether Aristotelian, or abstract, in
the modern manner-we have Prometheus: the unity and direction of the rational principle, the unrelenting self What keeps it
on course? Not eternal forms, but one inner principle, about
which Hegel and Marx seem after all not to be in such fundamental disagreement: mind, finding its way to new forms embodied in new modes of human society, new Republics-and
with them, new possibilities for human freedom,
If we understand the term "materialism" in the very special
way discussed in connection with the earlier Theses, we can give
this course of striving through history the name, dialectical
materialism.
Thesis VIII. Let us move on now, directly to the eighth Thesis:
All social life is in its essence practical. All mysteries
which turn theory into mysticism find their rational
solution in human praxis and in the understanding of
this praxis.
What does Marx mean here by "mysteries which lead theory to
mysticism," and the claim that such mysteries "find their rational solution in human practice?" I think we can illustrate this,
and thereby clarify it, with a rather familiar example.
We in the United States have had a long-standing desire to
bring freedom to peoples of other parts of the world. I think at
our best we have, over the years, been quite sincere about that.
We have given loan~. sent technicians, established trade, made
investments, even dispatched armies and waged fearful wars.
Yet we have seen over the years a widening gap between our~
selves as "haves" and other nations as "have-nots;" and we have
discovered that what we thought would be "development" has
proved the systematic development of underdevelopment, as
third-world economies have retrograded, and those nations have
grown to be ever deeper in debt. The theory of freedom has thus
become a mystery: we continue to speak of the "free world," but
we know that it is everywhere marred by political police of our
own training, dictatorship, corruption, and economic distress.
The idea, thus floating over reality like Laputa, becomes a mysticism. Marx here gives us a piece of direct and sound advice: the
61
�The College
solution will not be in the domain of theory or abstract ideas-a
rational solution will come in and through concrete human practice, and in the comprehension of that practice. Promethean reason will in time work its way around such mysticism. Of course it
is not we, but other, revolutionary, forces which are breaking
through the fetters of an ineffective, confining theory. And of
course, it is not by accident that we keep finding ourselves on the
wrong side of such issues.
Thesis IX.
The highest point to which observational materialism
attains-that is, materialism which does not grasp the
domain of the senses as practical activity-is the observation of single individuals and civil sOciety.
We spoke earlier of the contrast between an "old" materialism,
which was that of objective science, seeing reality at a distance,
as an onlooker, and the "new" materialism proposed by Marx,
which is involved in praxis, and sees human reason as moving in
and through concrete activity. Marx now knits that earlier consideration of two forms of materialism-which are really simply
two ideas of human reason itself-to two corresponding political
ideas.
When the old materialism looks at society it will see man "objectively": that is, it will see abstract man, man as an isolated individual Of course, the social scientist will see huge numbers of
such men, but their groups will be simply aggregations of isolated individuals, heaps of social atoms. By contrast, when the
new reason looks at man, it sees him as an inherently social
being, social in his very essence-and the new reason itself will
operate dialectically, through its own involvement in these social
processes. The old reason is objective, cold, distant; and it sees
abstract, isolated objects-things. The new reason moves
through involvement, and it will see man as a social being, whose
groups are not accidental to him, but essential.
What society will the old mode of reason describe? It will be a
society in which people relate to one another competitively, for
individual gain, or group together out of convenience or necessity; this is what Marx calls "civil society." The corresponding
political motto will be, "The best government is the least government." Each citizen will be as independent as possible of others.
The highest aim of the political structure will be to guarantee
equal individual rights, meaning the right of each individual to
this independence. The political unity will thus be formal, unifying a daily reality of practical life which is as free-that is, as
atomic-as possible. We see this as coming close to describing
our own political ideals, and our own society-and of course we
have seen the corresponding "old" materialism as characterizing
our concept of "objective" science. Marx prizes highly such
political freedoms, and the rights we enjoy under our Constitution; he suffered immensely under the denial of such rights in
his own time. But they yield the alienated society we have described, and we are thus caught in a contradiction. Politically
and legally, the individual self in our society is treated with great
formal respect, and is set as free as possible. But the realities of
civil life in the same society leave the self alienated, without a
home, and thus deny it real freedom. This very contradiction is
62
teaching us dialectically, Marx would suggest, that our society is
not yet the highest form. Any move from our present form must
preserve political and legal freedoms inviolate, but it must at the
same time shift from the irrationality of isolated civil life to a new
rational polity-a polity rational in the new sense of "reason,"
reason which does not merely collect statistics and turn the
handles of existing mechanisms, but which is prepared to learn
through dialectical commitment.
We can say very simply, in a general way, what that change
would be. Man would reshape existing social structures so as to
turn them to serve human purposes-but to do that would be a
social effort, and could only be consequent upon man's recognizing that he is not in essence an isolated entity, but an inherently
social being, who cares not only for his private castle, but for that
social home in which we all collectively live. To take such effective social action toward freedom, man must learn, Marx says,
that he is both a Promethean self and, like Prometheus, a social
being whose thinking, to be effective, must take social form. Individual freedom and social thought and action are not contradictory; they are two aspects of a single Promethean principle.
Prometheus chained in isolation, gives all his thought to the
future of the polity.
Thesis X.
The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society;
the standpoint of the new is human society, or social
mankind.
We had given a name to the old polity; now Marx names the
new. Where the old society, our own, is called civil society, the
new he names human society-one in whose structures man can
recognize himself and his own purposes. When he calls the
members of this society "social mankind," he clearly does not
mean mass society as in the caricatures of socialism. He means
individuals, freer than we are, who have won that freedom by
recognizing that it cannot be gained through retreat from so·
ciety, but through rational social commitment.
Thesis XI.
Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various
ways; the point is to change it.
This final claim, in the eleventh thesis, is a corollary of those
which have preceded. Objective reason looked upon the world,
and interpreted it; real reason, the new philosophy, which knows
that theory is fused with practice, and that the object of reason is
form which is evolving, will know that it can only learn by entering upon practice. Its modus operandi will thus be practice, dialectical practice which does not accept but questions old forms.
Hence its "point will be to change the world." Not for the sake of
change, but because history is a dialectical argument, and that
argument has not yet reached its end.
CONCLUSION
It might well seem that Marx is merely a dreamer, and that by
insisting on a serious definition of freedom as self-activity, full
�January, 1980
command of one's own time, and envisioning this as realized to a
new extent in something called human society, he has left realistic possibility behind. There are, I think, two modes of response
to this objection. One is, that the technological possibilities now
in our hands are almost unlimited, and certainly at least beyond
anybody's present reckoning. It is impossible to say what might
be accomplished if we turned over our present factories and skills
to production for rational human ends. Vast quantities of unwanted products could be quickly eliminated, vast hours of time
now wasted on efforts to persuade ourselves to buy things we do
not want, could immediately be saved. Public transportation
could be re-invented; we could rebuild our devastated cities, and
restore the blessings of life to the pedestrian. The list of such rational transformations, which are physically within our present
grasp, is virtually endless. Beyond these immediate possibilities,
we have before us the almost unlimited ability to set machines to
work for us, and through automation, to release ourselves from a
very large part of the labor we now perform, even with respect to
necessary or wanted functions. The length of the working day
could certainly be cut to a fraction of the present hours. From an
engineering point of view, these things are available to us. What
is it which stands between us and the redirection of our society
toward such rational, human ends?
The obstacles are not physical. We have all the Promethean
arts at our command-except perhaps one, the real fire: the ability to reorganize our society so as to make these physical possibilities socially attainable. We are Prometheus, fully able to foresee
a new order, but pinned to a system which denies us the realization of all that lies within reason's grasp. This is perhaps the most
acute form alienation takes for us, and the sharpest goad to dialectical thought. At least, so Marx might diagnose our case.
The other answer is that Marx is in much of his work a scrupulous realist, and he labored with enormous energy for years to
come to grips with the realities of the system within which we
live. The result is his book, Capital, certainly a powerful analysis
of the structure and function of the capitalist system. This
theory is perhaps Marx's Promethean secret. Capitalism has of
course taken new forms over the century since Marx wroteabove all, the corporation has become the capitalist of first instance, and monopoly capital has absorbed much of the market
process which Marx, like Adam Smith before him, tends to presuppose. But beneath this, his analysis may remain sound, and
the laws of motion which he derived, implying secular trends to
ever-increasing crises, may be holding true. The consequence
that Marx drew was that capitalism is not a system which can remain viable over the very long run; it contains inner contradictions which will force a move to new social forms. In other
words, Marx is not so much a dreamer as a Promethean analyst,
and there may yet be reason to take his predictions into account.
He foresaw as inevitable a revolution in which the chrematistic society, capitalism founded on private ownership of the
rrleans of production, would be replaced by a use-value society,
in which human reason would master rather than serve its instrument of production. How man would guide the forces of production to human purposes if he had such a chance, there is no
way for Marx to say, since man has never been in that position.
Man has never had command of his own time, has never been
asked to decide how he would use it. Social forms of a free society would have to be developed almost from scratch, through the
excruciating dialectic of praxis. But the Promethean principle is
constant: Man will not accept life under conditions of contradiction and alienation forever without rebellion, and he will
contrive new ways to bring reason to bear on social forms, in
something like what Marx calls, "human society." Marx asks us
to move from an individualistic society to a commitment to human society, and thereby to advance to a new understanding of
ourselves; not as isolated beings but as what Marx calls speciesbeings-that is, human beings. The free human self-the Promethean self, unbound-ends its alienation, and finds itself at
last free by being in a society in which it can be at home. The individual is then both a free self, and truly a member in good
standing of the human race. Only by endorsing our common life
together in this way as truly our own can we be individually free,
or can we achieve rational lives directed to human goals.
Marx says somewhere that Prometheus' greatest gift to man is
that he showed him the way out of the darkness of the cave in
which he had always lived, and gave him a "dwelling full of
light." In that image, I think, we come as close as we can in this
brief discussion to Marx's concept of rational human freedom.
l. To be found in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, (New York 1965), 197-199.
63
�Simon Kaplan
Bam: December 5, 1893, Libau, Russia
Died: March 13, 1979, Annapolis, Maryland
Texts from the Memorial Service
m the Great Hall of St. John's College,
Annapolis, April 22, 1979
J. Winfree Smith
Simon Kaplan was during all the time that I knew him a living
challenge to the Christian teaching about original sin. Few people whom I have known have in their lives exhibited as he did
such simple goodness, a goodness consistently maintained and
unmarred by self-righteousness.
I believe that he was what he was because he was a Jew with a
clear and profound understanding of what that meant. He would
sometimes disclaim being a really good Jew. As far as I could see,
his failure to be a really good Jew consisted in his teaching at St
John's College instead of meditating on the Torah day and night.
Mr. Kaplan and I came to St. John's at nearly the same time.
Scott Buchanan thought that St. John's students were mistakenly, however understandably in the circumstances, making a
religion of the St. John's program, and that the College itself
should do something about that. Consequently, he encouraged
Mr. Kaplan and me to undertake extracurricular classes in the
Bible. I remember that there was a question of how the classes
were to be announced. Mr. Kaplan obviously would not want his
called "Old Testament," and I would not want mine called anything that would imply that the New Testament was not Bible.
So his came to be called "Bible" and mine "New Testament."
We attended each other's classes for a certain time. What I
learned from him was of inestimable worth to me. It was a corrective of the mistaken views of Judaism that Christians so easily
fall into, such as the view that the six hundred and thirteen precepts that a Jew is bound to observe can only be a woeful burden
leading to nothing but despair. I can remember the glow in Mr.
Kaplan's eyes when he would say, "The law is grace," or "The
law is life" or when he spoke of "living in the law."
Our friendship was based in large part upon the common recognition that Judaism and Christianity are irreconcilable, that
there is no neutral "theistic" religion that might unite Jews and
Christians provided that they slough off the things that divide
them from one another. I did not pretend that a Jew could remain a Jew and reduce the law to a few ordinary and easily
64
acceptable rules of human decency, and he did not pretend that
a Christian could begin to attain some reconciliation with Judaism by weakening the traditional Christian claim that God is
truly and altogether identical in person with one who is truly and
completely human.
Year after year almost up to the very present he gave a preceptorial in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason from which his students
profited greatly. His interest in Kant was in some way of a piece
with his Judaism. As a Jew he believed that God had given man
the Bible not to be a starting point from which the speculative
reason might come to know God as He is in Himself, but rather
as a law showing him what he ought to do. He, therefore, found
something congenial in Kant who sought to remove man's claim
to any knowledge of God through speculative reason and who
sought to establish the primacy of practical reason as directing
man in what he ought to do. Of course, it goes without saying
that Mr. Kaplan would not identify "the moral law within" with
the Torah. Once he humorously proposed a revised St. John's
program which went as follows: First year: Bible with beatings;
Second year: Kant to show the limitations of reason; Third year:
Hegel to show how reason can go astray; Fourth year: Bible without beatings.
We remember him today as a man who was lovely and pleasant in his life, good in word and deed, in whom we have lost one
who gave something unique to this community.
Harvey Flaumenhaft
Remembering Mr. Kaplan brings to mind Samuel Johnson's
dictum that we more often need to be reminded than instructed.
Mr. Kaplan's presence made it harder to forget what needs to be
remembered.
He was born into another age. You students here are some-
�January, 1980
Petrograd, 1922
what younger now than Mr. Kaplan was when cataclysmic war
broke over Europe, and, amid that great destruction of a world,
the Russia of the tsars collapsed in revolution. I am somewhat
younger now than Mr. Kaplan was when the last European war
erupted, destroying all except a tiny remnant ofJewry in Europe,
and ending the hegemony of Europe in the world. Over the prostrate middle lands where Mr. Kaplan had matured, there stood
in fateful post-war confrontation the masters of the eastern land
in which he had been born and spent his childhood, and the
leaders of the western land in which he'd found a refuge.
The national socialism most cruelly incarnate in the Stalinist
regime and in that of Hitler did not get Mr. Kaplan as a victim,
though it got at him by getting at many of those dear to him. The
storms that battered down the old world brought Mr. Kaplan to
the new, where he found his work in helping keep alive some
portion of the decency and devotion from of old which new horrors had not managed to obliterate.
In addition to his regular classes in the program that's required
at this college, Mr. Kaplan regularly taught an outside class devoted to the Bible, particularly to the Torah. Torah is, the Torah
teaches, wisdom of a kind, and particularly from Mr. Kaplan did
students learn to seek that kind of wisdom. Peculiar might have
been the source of such instruction; parochial it was not. Torah,
it is written, will go forth from Zion; for the righteous, it is written, light is sown. Under Mr. Kaplan's guidance, many became
familiar with the Torah as a guidebook to the source of righteous
living. Mr. Kaplan with his students sometimes also read writings
of Yehudah Halevy. Greek wisdom may adorn our life with
flowers, wrote Yehudah, but it does not bear the fruit that
nourishes our life. The wisdom of the Bible is a tree of life. But
its fruits that nourish us are nourished by its roots. To sever the
roots of the faithful city is to sever the roots of the city of
righteousness. Mr. Kaplan was a cosmopolitan; rootless he was
not, uprooted though he may have been by deadly storms that
burned or blasted many others.
Annapolis, 1974
Settling safely on this distant shore, he did not turn his mind
away from those grim deeds which make of history a slaughter
bench. He solemnly recalled the victims, and admonished the
potential victims, of murder and oppression. Mr. Kaplan was a
stern critic of American naivete and complacency. Marvelling at
the abundant wealth, mechanical ingenuity, and unrestrained
pursuit of pleasure in this country, he had doubts of its capacity
to withstand for very long a ruthless and relentless foe respecting
only strength and resolution.
He was especially a critic of his people in America, who ought
to know what need only be remembered. At worship in the S}nagogue during the Days of Awe last autumn, Mr. Kaplan whispered: "In America the Jews are rich, they are contented, they
look as if Messiah has already come-it's an affliction."
It was also then, and in my hearing only then, that Mr. Kaplan
praised a prayer. During the chanting of the Unetanneh Toke{,
which is recited during the service on the Jewish New Year and
also on the Day of Atonement, more than once he said: "This
prayer is good!"
The prayer, envisioning the Judge of all the world before an
open book remembering all the things forgotten, tells us that on
Rosh Hashannah it is written and it's sealed on the fast of Yom
Kippur: who shall live and who shall die-who by fire and who
by water, who by sword and who by wild beasts, who by hunger
and who by thirst, who by earthquake and who by plague, who
by strangling and who by stoning-who shall rest and who shall
wander, who be at ease and who afflicted, who be made poor
and who enriched, who be brought low and who exalted. This
catalogue depresses, but there follows an encouraging reminder
that those who've gone astray may yet, according to the ancient
triple formula, by return, and prayer, and righteousness, affect
what is to be-for the Power that is highest wishes not the death
of him who strays, but rather that he turn and live; that Power
waits for him to turn until the very day he dies. But that day
comes, sooner or later, and the prayer comes to a close in con-
65
�The College
With Mrs. Kaplan, Annapolis, 1973
templation of the death that finally must close our life: man's
foundation is of dust-it says-and return to dust, his end; his
bread he earns at peril of his life; he is like a fragile potsherd, like
the grass that withers or the flower that fades, like the wind that
blows or the dust that's blown, like a vanishing dream. The
prayer's last word, however, is not a whimper, nor even a sorrowful sigh; its last word elevates the spirit, affirming that over flesh
and blood there is a higher Power that fosters righteousness and
gives it life-and itself is ever-living.
What was it in this prayer that so appealed to Mr. Kaplan?
Two things, it seemed.
"In Russia," he remarked as the prayer was chanted, "in
Russia when they said it people cried; the poverty was not the
whole of it-there were also the terrible pogroms." It should be
noted now that at the time of Mr. Kaplan's birth Alexander III
was tsar. To borrow words from one historian: "It was under
Alexander III and thanks to Alexander III that anti-semitism in
Russia became institutionalized, respectable~and violent'';
"Jew-beating and killing-the organized pogroms ... distinguished
Alexander's reign," and, indeed, "for a time the pogroms ...
were supported by certain revolutionaries, brimming with
ideals,'' who argued "that in killing the Jews the masses had embarked on the course which would end in the killing of all oppressors everywhere." The historian finds it "not too much to
say" that "the official attitude towards anti-semitism and pogroms ... contributed as much as any other single factor towards
encouraging and perpetuating that paralyzing lawlessness from
above which was to do so much to undermine the dynasty and
then to set the tone for the successor regime."
But it was not just by reminding him of sorrows such as these,
and of the later versions of the same old story, that the prayer
moved Mr. Kaplan. I believe that he was moved as well by feeling the joyful trust the prayer so well expressed~joining to a
66
Annapolis, 1974
vivid sense that human life is frail a love profound of this our
earthly life, holding as inseparable this love of life and righteousness, and confident that while a man has earthly life a way for
him is open to return for his renewal to the source of all our
righteousness.
Indeed, the only passage from the Bible that within my hearing Mr. Kaplan ever urged to be included in the common reading that is required at this college was the eighteenth chapter of
the Book of Ezekiel; Ezekiel 18 speaks about this threefold
theme of righteousness, return, and life.
When Mr. Kaplan's dear friend Jacob Klein was buried, Mr.
Kaplan said, at the gathering right after, to someone who did not
feel much inclined to eating or to drinking then: "A Jew should
eat and drink after burying the dead-we are obliged to-for the
sake of life.'"
Mr. Kaplan on the following night invited to his home a few of
us his younger friends to share with us his memories of the prime
of jacob Klein. It troubled Mr. Kaplan that we only knew his
friend in his declining years, when we could not see that extraordinary philosophic intellect most fully at its work, or that extraordinary philosophic generosity in its abundant overflow. The
years that we knew Mr. Kaplan cannot be called the years of his
decline; for though his vigor had by age been much diminished,
age had raised him somehow to his peak. We seem to think not
quite of Mr. Kaplan if we try to think of Mr. Kaplan without his
seeming venerable. Not that he tried in any way to make himself
appear ·so; the dignity with which he bore himself excluded anything of vanity. He was humble with no vain show of humility. It
was, indeed, with proper pride that he recounted all the youthful
skill that placed his name forever (or for what passes for forever)
on the wall display of one of Heidelberg's most eminent establishments for playing billiards; when he was eighty-four years old,
he said that someday he'd retire, and then become a real teacher-
�January, 1980
if the college would provide him with a title and equipment, he
would give instruction, as an expert, in the art of billiards. Mr.
Kaplan was a man with a past he chuckled to reveal.
He was formal but not stiff; he was firm although not harsh;
he was kind but he was not sentimental The twinkle in the eye
of that lovely old tease deflated any puffed-up self-importance;
but he teased without malice or envy. Pettiness diminished near
him: whenever in his company, one had to take a wider view and
try to be a bit more upright.
He did not bow to what was low; he elevated those whose privilege it was to know him; he had reverence for what is high. He
was loyal to the people from which he grew, loyal to the culture
in which he was educated, loyal to the government by which he
was protected, and loyal to the institution at which he was employed-but concerning each of them he harbored no illusions.
He had a gift for friendship that was extraordinary. We first
met when he was seventy-five years old. By that time, many men
have lost both interest in the world's news and capacity to interest newer men who fill the world-not, however, Mr. Kaplan.
Almost till the time _he passed away, he passed his time a neighborly citizen of the world, reading Kant and the Bible with his
newest students, telling his friends of the newest Russian books,
exacting home-made apple pies from the newest of the college
wives, and finding out about the newest of the children. He
inspired affection and respect for him in many very different
people.
We'll better remember what we should remember, because we
cannot forget Mr. Kaplan. His memory will be, as we say, for a
blessing.
Laurence Berns
Part of Simon Kaplan's success as a teacher stemmed from the
fact that he never ceased being a student. He never ceased to be
fascinated by the great problems of philosophy, theology, ethics,
religion, and in particular the meaning of Jewishness, the Jewish
tradition. His clarity of mind and love of learning was communicated to all those with whom he conversed. His students enjoyed
a rare blend of graceful old age with a youthful spirit of inquiry.
He taught as much by what he was, as by what he said. One of
his favorite words was the word "appropriate''. It is difficult, if
not impossible, to describe appropriately the unusual combinations of characteristics that made him what he was. His courtesy
was unfailing. But as many people came to know, his courtesy
was more than courtesy; in a perfectly natural way it reached
over into friendship. His capacity for friendship was extraordinary. He seemed to have a universal sympathy for everything
healthy and decent. Yet as I came to see and to wonder at, he
was utterly unsentimental. Warmth, kindness, and gentility were
joined in perfect blend with dignity, wit and abundant good
humor. He could at times be impish, but still dignified. It also
took me some time to realize how acute and critical he could be:
acute, critical and witty, but never unkind. He seemed to have
whatever virtues a cynic could have with none of the vices.
He was not inclined to take himself or his views too seriously,
but if asked about himself he sometimes replied, "I am a refugee
from Bolshevism." It argues much for the essential rightness of
this college and this country that men like Simon Kaplan can
find here a congenial refuge. Yet with something akin to the
same fatherly and grandfatherly regard many of us experienced,
he was concerned for the land of his refuge. What troubled him
has been called many things: pseudo-sophistication, permissiveness, moral decline. His own way of putting it was much simpler,
barbarism, and most dangerous of all for America, hedonism.
What seemed to bother him was the fact that when people cease
to observe and impose limits on themselves, it becomes natural
to think more about having limits imposed by others from above.
Democracy with no clear sense of hierarchy, he said, is on the
way to tyranny. And tyranny, for him, was no abstraction. Tyranny meant and means countless acts of human cruelty, personally suffered and personally perpetrated. The Russian experience
and the experience of European Jewry, he thought, had alerted
him to dangers of which Americans in general were dangerOusly
innocent. We Russians, he once said, have an enormous political
experience of tyranny behind us, of which you Americans have
not the slightest idea. It was with a certain sad but bemused pity
that he looked upon those who thought that this tyranny in its
latest form was, as he once said, "just one step on the way to the
millenium."
At once tender-hearted and cool-headed, he was also learned,
cosmopolitan, and beautifully simple. As Mrs. Kaplan, who so
appropriately shared his interests, concerns, and life, said, he was
truly a man of a pure heart, no vanity and no petty ambition. He
was and is for us a model of civilized humaneness. We were
enriched and gladdened by his presence, we keenly feel his loss,
but we also cannot help somehow being cheered by our memories of him.
67
�Aristotle Gazing
Michael Platt
Illustrations: Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, Rembrandt
Harmensz, van Ryn. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchased with
special funds and gifts of Friends of the Museum, 1961.
Pendant with head of Alexander (detail)
What should arrest us about Rembrandt's Aristotle is his gaze.
To reach the original in the Metropolitian Museum in New
York, however, we must be in motion. We must make our way to
and then through a modern city. There is no way to approach
this painting on foot and in silence. No wonder then that when
we arrive at the original we find it hard to enter into the solitude
of Aristotle. Nor does the museum always help us. The voices of
the paid guides are hard to ignore; and their loud familiarity is as
distracting as the silent familiarity of the guards who shift from
foot to foot, vacant·eyed. Meanwhile, the crowds shuffle past.
Most are disappointed. These visitors to Rembrandt's Aristotle
are attracted or they would not visit, and yet they move on. 1
Perhaps philosophy always disappoints mere visitors. We learn
from Aristotle himself of a visit which some curious men made to
Heraclitus:
An anecdote tells of an explanation that Heraclitus is
said to have given strangers who wanted to approach
him. Upon approaching they found him warming
himself at a stove. They stopped surprised and all the
more so because as they hesitated he encouraged them
and bade them come in with the words: 'For here too
there are gods present.' (de part. anim., A5, 645a 17)'
Professor of English at the University of Texas, Michael Platt has re·
cently published Rome and Romans According to Shakespeare (Salzburg
1976).
68
Heidegger has stressed the important things about this passage:
The group of unknown visitors in its inquisitive
curiosity about the thinker is disappointed and puzzled
at first by his abode. It believes that it must find the
thinker in conditions which, contrary to man's usual
way of living, show everywhere traits of the exceptional
and the rare, and, therefore, the sensationaL The group
hopes to find through its visit with the thinker things
which, at least for a time, will provide material for
entertaining small talk. The strangers who wish to visit
the thinker hope to see him perhaps precisely at the
moment when, sunk in profound meditation, he is
thinking. The visitors wish to experience this, not in
order to be affected by his thinking, but merely so that
they will be able to say that they have seen and heard
one who is reputed to be a thinker.
Instead, the inquisitive ones find Heraclitus at a
stove. This is a pretty ordinary and insignificant place.
True enough, bread is baked there. But Heraclitus is
not even busy with baking at the stove. He is there only
to warm himself, and so he betrays the whole poverty of
his life at this spot which is in itself prosaic. The glimpse
of a freezing thinker offers little of interest. And so the
inquisitive ones at this disappointing sight immediately
lose their desire to come any closer. What are they to do
there? This ordinary dull event of someone cold and
�January, 1980
standing by the stove one can find any time in his own
home. Then, why look up a thinker? The visitors are
about to leave again. Heraclitus reads the disappointed
curiosity in their faces. He realizes that with the crowd
the mere absense of-an expected sensation is enough to
make those who have just come leave. Therefore, he
heartens them. He especially urges them to enter with
the words ELVm ycxp xm tvTcxv8cx Ot:ovs. 'There are Gods
present even here.'
This statement puts the abode [~8os] of the thinker
and his doing in a different light. Whether the visitors
have understood the statement immediately or at all
and then seen everything in this different light, the
story does not tell. But that the story was told and transmitted to us today, is due to the fact that what it reports
is of the bearing of this thinker and characterizes it. xm
EVTcxv8cx 'Even here,' at the baking oven, at this common place, where all things and every condition, each
act and thought, are familiar and current, i.e., securer,
'even there' in the sphere of the secure HPm Otovs, it is
so 'that even there there are gods present.' 3
Yet the disappointment ancient visitors felt before Heraclitus
differs from the disappointment modern visitors feel before
Rembrandt's Aristotle. Rembrandt's Aristotle is not freezing and
precisely this may disappoint the modern visitor. He would
prefer to find the philosopher beside a stove in a bakery or a hut,
or in the garage, the hospital, or the bedroom, or along the barricaded streets. Everywhere but in a study.
To disappointment may be added offense. Nothing offends
the modern visitor of Rembrandt's Aristotle more, I think, than
the philosopher's rich dress. Is it not enough to be handsome?
Need one dress so splendidly? Look at the speckles of gold which
shine from his large dark beret. Need a philosopher or any man
adorn himself with rings and earrings and drape an expensive
glittery chain across his breast? How well his jewelry is set off by
his dark garments. This splendor is deliberate. But for the
modern visitor the most offensive glory is likely to dwell in the
sleeves with their thousand hand-sewn folds, the work of many a
seamstress for many an hour. I learned how offensive the rich
dress of Aristotle is to the modern visitor from an outspoken student a few years ago who announced that such dress is incompatible with philosophy. He wanted, I think, philosophy to be
clothed in the rags of St. Francis or the overalls of Marx. Or in a
combination of rags and overalls: the dress befitting Simone
Wei!. The sight of the wealthy, handsome, and richly-appareled
philosopher is not edifying.
If we want the world all denim and corduroy and no silk, we
are bound to be offended or disappointed by Rembrandt's
Aristotle and our preference in dress will also insure that we are
not arrested by Aristotle's gaze. Today he who would live the vita.
contempla.tiva. has a bad conscience; he will be shy, and he must
be furtive. To others he must pretend that time spent walking
with friends and with thoughts is "for the sake of health.'' Finally, he will believe it himself and taste leisure only along with a
bad cold. That solitude is a pleasure must not be mentioned
among those who cannot bear to be alone with themselves.
Where in antiquity one was embarrassed to labor or enter
business, today one is embarrassed to loaf and invite thoughts. 4
We moderns know perfectly well how to hurry. Our life is filled
with errands, engines, and phone calls. What is hard for us is to
sit still and gaze. To learn how to gaze we must strain against
what prevails around us-crowds in museums, and not only in
museums.
Tonight I am looking at Rembrandt's Aristotle not in the
museum but in my study, but I do so after a day spent taking
apart the engine of my Old car. 5 A more modern machine or a
more modern activity I cannot think of. (Couldn't the superiority
of modernity over antiquity be stated rather simply: the ancients
did not have motor cars?) An engine is an exacting teacher, and
it dirties all its pupils. I have bathed and put on fresh clothes to
approach Rembrandt's Aristotle. Still, under my nails some dark
thick grease remains, a m·ark of the day's immersion. Heraclitus
might say, "There too, in the garage, the gods are dwelling.'' 6
But Rembrandt's ancient Aristotle would reply, "Elsewhere as
well. He who has an old car or an old house in the country has
need of clothes in which he cannot pull a head, grind a valve,
mow a field, hoe nine bean rows, or tend the honey bees."
Dressed as Rembrandt's Aristotle is, there are very few things
you can do. Dressed as he is, one is almost compelled to think
and to gaze.
Titles are meant to guide our eyes, but the title this painting
now bears, "Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer,''
troubles our eyes as much as it guides them. If we look at Aristo·
tle and carefully trace imaginary lines from his eyes, we readily
discover that his eyes do not rest upon the bust of Homer at alP
A minute ago he may have been looking at the bust, but now he
looks beyond it, not elsewhere or at random but in a mental
direction suggested by the bust. Aristotle's hand lies on the bust,
while the thought which put it there goes beyond it (as it should).
So perhaps Aristotle contemplates Homer but certainly not the
bust of Homer. Let us leave until later the adequacy of the word
"contemplation" and turn instead to the word "Aristotle" in the
title with a beginner's question: is the title correct? Is this really
meant to be Aristotle? Evidence from the time of the painting's
commission suggests that this is indeed meant to be Aristotle. 8
From faraway Sicily a wealthy nobleman named Don Antonio
Ruffo sent to Amsterdam to commission from Rembrandt a
"philosopher." The family records) only recently brought to
light, confirm that the philosopher here depicted is Aristotle, for
they mention "copia del costa e spese del quadro dell'
Aristotle." 9 The choice of Aristotle to fulfill the general instruction of Don Ruffo's c;ommission seems to belong to Rembrandt
himself. 10 Perhaps also the inclusion of Homer (in the bust) and
of Alexander as well (for the image of Aristotle's most famous
pupil appears on the pendant which hangs from the chain he has
given to his teacher). Don Ruffo seems to have responded
favorably and discerningly to these inclusions, for a few years
later he ordered both "a Homer" and "an Alexander" to go with
his "philosopher." It is not unnatural to think that he meant
them to hang on either side of Rembrandt's Aristotle.
What then is the correct title? The family records speak of an
"Aristotle.'' Do we need more? Perhaps what is enough for the
family record-keeper, enough to say "yes, that one" and pass on
69
�The College
these two, Aristotle, wrote as "a teacher of those who know" (in
Dante's phrase) and the founder of a school. Raphael's "School
of Athens" is Aristotelian in its emphasis upon school for while
the pupils of Plato or of Socrates differ quite a bit from each
other, the pupils of Aristotle naturally make a school. By showing
Aristotle gazing, Rembrandt shows philosophy and Aristotle in
quite a different lightY
What most strikes us about Aristotle is his gaze. As we gaze at
him gazing, we begin to find out something about gazing. Gazing is not staring. To look steadily at something, to stare at it, is
not at all easy. As children we engaged in staring contests. To
win them you had to make your opponent turn his eyes away,
either by embarrassing him, making him laugh, or simply outlasting him. To keep your own eyes staring, you must go blank,
not see what is in front of you; the trick is to keep one's lids open
and one's mind shut. 14 Our natural way of looking at things
seems to require that we move our eyes around, move from
feature to feature, and also alternate periods of resting our eyes
on some thing with periods of looking away:
Wahrend ich einen Gegenstand sehe, kann ich
ihn nicht vorstellen.
Aristotle Contemplating
down the list rapidly, is enough for us too, even though we do
not intend to pass on rapidly. While we are looking we do not
need titles; only later and far away, in the course of a conversation far from the Metropolitan Museum do we need something
short to call up the right image to the mind's eye. For such occasions Rembrandt's "Aristotle" will do. But if we wish something
more inviting and something which will encourage the right expectations, in ourselves as well as others, then I believe we will
do better to refer to Rembrandt's "Aristotle Gazing." Meanwhile, seated here gazing, we can ignore the title.
Rembrandt stood before this very canvas many times. When
he first stood before it, it was blank. What questions faced him?
The commission from Don Ruffo said, "give me a philosopher."
Very well, which one? Which philosopher would we choose to
paint or choose to commission? Descartes? II Machiavelli? Plato?
Shakespeare? Nietzsche? 12 Galilee? Bacon? Rembrandt chose
Aristotle. (Or if indeed Don Ruffo himself asked for Aristotle,
then Rembrandt, in accepting the commission, chose Aristotle.)
Perhaps we will understand Rembrandt's choice of Aristotle better if we ask another question he must have faced: how is a
philosopher to be portrayed? How is philosophy made visible?
Could one paint a man in such a way that, even without the title,
everyone would know him to be a philosopher? The most
famous pictorial answer to these questions, before Rembrandt, is
Raphael's "School of Athens," a picture in which Aristotle
figures prominently. It is a crowded scene. Several figures seem
cloaked in the walking solitude of thought, but the emphasis falls
upon activity, upon teaching and learning. It really is a school.
Such an emphasis is proper to any attempt to make ancient
philosophy visible. Socrates may have philosophized without
forming a school, Plato may have written without ever revealing
his true teaching (Letter VII), but still the pupil and inheritor of
70
While I am looking at an object I cannot
imagine it.
Wittgenstein, Zettel, 622
Hence, to reflect upon an object in front of us, to think about it,
we usually look away from it as well as look at it. In conversation,
for example, eyes make contact but not all the time; so the person who looks you in the eye all the time is just as deficient as the
one who never looks you in the eye. Then with persons or objects there are those moments, not the least pensive, when we
put our eyes to the side of the person or object, leave them open,
but really look with the mind's eyeY'
This is exactly what Aristotle does. He looks away from the
bust of Homer; while he rests his open eyes a bit past the bust, he
views Homer with the mind's eye. To think of Homer or dwell
with him, you must look away from the bust of Homer. The bust
is an image, something which invites its viewer to "look for
Homer" elsewhere than in stone.
While I have been writing tonight I have been "looking away"
from the painting. In order to write I must look down at the
page, but my mind is not wholly where my eyes are; in my mind's
eye I see the painting. I both imagine it and in addition think
about it. Thinking about it, I treat it as an image, as an invitation
to understand Aristotle and to understand this very "looking
away" which characterizes Rembrandt's image of him. In other
words, this painting shows a certain way of looking and does so
so as to provoke that very way of looking in its beholder. This
provoking is not the least way in which the painting shows us
what it would mean to be Aristotle.
When the beholder asks, what does Aristotle see? or what kind
of seeing is this?, questions which the painting provokes, he is
beginning to understand what it means to phi_losophize.
Philosophizing, here painted in the person of Aristotle, is visible
in a certain kind of looking, one which is ocular and direct but in·
�January, 1980
complete without a looking away which helps the mind's eye
open.
According to Rembrandt, philosophy cannot be made truly
visible except if it be painted so as to arouse a philosophic gaze.
Any description of philosophy which does not incite to philosophy must be made from the outside, from the vantage point of
a non-philosopher or of a philosopher who has forgot himself,
who adopted the stance of a visitor when he knew better, when
he knew that there are no visitors in philosophy, only dwellers.
Rembrandt chose to portray Aristotle philosophizing, and to
do so he has recourse to something common, to the look in a
man's face which we call a "faraway" look. We look at such a
man, and we know he is seeing something else than what is right
before his open eyes. Certain landscapes, ones which lift the
valley-dweller's eyes to ridges and mountains, make this look
more common among one people than another. While walking
with friends or thoughts in alpine landscapes, one's eyes involuntarily alight on some peak or high meadow. Such sights not only
draw one's steps on but also one's thoughts, giving eye and mind
something faraway to feed on. The Italian painters love to place
such clear Alpine landscapes in the distance behind their Madonnas and other Biblical scenes. Not only distant but pointless
things are conducive to thought. Everyone knows the contribution which a flickering fire can make to conversation, permitting thoughtful silence which would otherwise be awkward.
Smoke curling gracefully from a teacher's pipe has made many a
silence in a class productive. In Moliere's Misanthrope one man
explains that he came to despise another when he watched him
"spend three-quarters of an hour spitting into a well, so as to
make circles in the water," not appreciating, perhaps, the
wonderful thoughts which can arise from spreading circles in a
pool. Here too there may be gods dwelling. Amsterdam, of
course, does not provide such views; nor does Aristotle need
them to look as he does.
What is important is that the gaze of the philosopher is the
deepening of something common, or something commonly
available. Here as elsewhere in his work Rembrandt works the
same way; to understand and make visible the rare, remote, or
past, he has recourse to the immediate, available, and common.
To discover what Christ looks like, he inspects the faces in the
streets of the Amsterdam Ghetto. To show what Aristotle looks
like, he looks at the way a faraway thought overcomes a man.
Because he saw what was in front of him, he could see the
faraway and because he saw what was far away, he could see
more thoughtfully what was in front of him. In this respect he
and his Aristotle are alike; both gaze. But while an Aristotle
without hands is possible, a Rembrandt without hands is not.
Rembrandt has not given us a familiar Aristotle. We do not see
"the Stagarite,'' an epithet which the too familiar always employ.
Nor do we see the famous teacher and law-giver, "the teacher of
those who know." The Aristotle of Raphael's School of Athens is
such a teacher and law-giver. One admires and even worships
philosophy in his person, but one does not understand it from
within, and indeed one is not invited to. Only in Rembrandt's
Aristotle do we see the source of these impressive and effectual
teachings. Before teaching there was learning, before school
there was thinking. To non-philosophers philosophy is a
teaching which makes a school, and they value it especially for
those of its consequences which make ordinary life more amusing (paradox), more secure (astronomy), or more comfortable
(mathematical physics). Raphael has portrayed philosophy
primarily from this point of view. It remained for Rembrandt to
uncover the source of all these things, a source which like a fountain running over takes no thought of the basin it falls into or of
the citizens who draw daily water from it. To the question "how
should the philosopher be portrayed?" Rembrandt answers,
"how else but philosophizing." In a way it is an obvious answer,
but also one which can only be given by someone who has it in
him to philosophize.
By exhibiting philosophy as a certain look in the eye Rembrandt characterizes philosophy as a way of looking at all things
human, divine, and natural. This way of looking is something
chosen, cultivated, and habitual with Aristotle. A whole way of
life goes with it, supports it, ~nd in turn is crowned by it. That
philosophy is a way of life Rembrandt has emphasized by reminding us of other ways of life which differ from the philosopher's. The bust of Homer reminds us of the life of the poet, and
the image of Alexander reminds us of the life of the political
man.
How right Rembrandt is to include these ways of life and just
these persons. The very theme of the most choiceworthy way of
life is often treated by Aristotle himself. Early in the Ethics (IV),
it seems that the palm will go to the gentleman or great-souled
man; leave out the eyes of Rembrandt's Aristotle, and you have a
portrait of such a man. Put those eyes back in, and you have a
visible gloss on the last books of the Ethics where something
higher than the gentleman or great-souled man appears, the man
who cultivates the divine nous in himself, the philosopher
(1177a-1179b). Nor are poetry and Homer out of place in Rembrandt's Aristotle. In the course of his instructive treatise on
poetry, Aristotle most often and most highly praises Homer. The
same is true of politics and Alexander. Aristotle treated the political life in his Politics and his Ethics, and his relations to Alexander are manifold. Alexander was first his pupil and later his
benefactor. That Rembrandt's Aristotle wears a gold chain from
Alexander reminds us that it was Alexander who endowed the
Peripatetic School in Athens. Nor is the rank which these three
lives have in Aristotle far off from the rank suggested by Rembrandt's painting. The eyes tell us the ranking. The pensive eyes
of the philosopher find no answering light in the dim eyes of
Homer, while the eyes of the political man, Alexander, are not
visible at all beneatp. his miniature visor.
Since Aristotle is turned toward Homer, we may well do the
same. The opposition of the blind Homer and the deep-eyed Aristotle seems an absolute one. Most men with eyes find the sight
of a blind man discomfitting; they feel both privileged and vulnerable, and both feelings make them uneasy. 16 What makes
most men uneasy prompts a philosopher to thought. Aristotle is
not discomfitted by the blind Homer; instead he thinks about
sight. In order to be a poet, you need not have eyes; blind Homer
shows this. To be a philosopher, need one have eyes? It is hard to
say. Aristotle has eyes, and we know of no notable example of a
philosopher without eyes, yet there seems no necessity in this
coincidence. (There is a man for whom eyes are necessary, but
71
�The College
Bust of Homer (detail)
we will speak of him later.) Isn't the blind Homer only a more absolute case of "looking away" (as we were saying of the philosopher); isn't Homer only a more striking case of a man with a
"faraway look" in his eyes, and if so, then is not poetry akin to
philosophy? Something of the kind is suggested by the fact that
Aristotle has a bust of Homer in his study, by the sensitive way
he touches the bust's head (not with a flat hand, but with the
heel and the finger tips), and of course by his thoughtful turning
in the direction of the bust, but the precise nature of the kinship
is elusive. The stone bust of Homer manages to convey both the
blindness of Homer and at the same time his intelligience and
nobility, to show us both the vacant eyeballs of Homer and at the
same time the marvelous mind's eye from which flowed those
clear, beautiful images. Is it the quality of that mind's eye which
justifies the admiration of Aristotle and constitutes the kinship
of philosophy and poetry?
A few years later Rembrandt painted a separate Homer; even
more than the bust of Homer, this painting shows us the mental
concentration on some faraway thing which constitutes the
kinship of the poet and the philosopher. Yet two differences remain. Judging from the painting of Homer dictating, 17 the concentration of the poet is not pure. He concentrates in order to
make something present; for the gazing Aristotle, some thing
simply is present. Homer waits for and at the same time invites
and welcomes the Muses. He is like a man who awaits a rider on
a white horse in the distance and by so doing welcomes him
closer. In this respect Rembrandt's Homer reminds us of his
Matthew with the angel at his ear. (What Rembrandt's Aristotle
72
thinks of such muses and such angels is by no means clear.) One
difference remains. The gazing Aristotle is silent, and Homer
speaks. What Homer speaks, his scribe records on a scroll, while
to writing and teaching the gazing Aristotle pays no heed
whatever.
The relation of poetry and philosophy has long been characterized as a quarrel. The teacher of the teacher of Aristotle was
Socrates, and as he explains in his Apology, the first attacks
against philosophy in his person were brought by poetry in the
person of Aristophanes. The counterattack by the immediate
pupil of Socrates is well known, as also is the reconciliation offered by Aristotle's Poetics. Rembrandt's Aristotle accords with
that reconciliation. There are differences between Aristotle and
Homer, but not enough to make a quarrel.
In writing of this painting I have used the word philosophy
and the word philosopher, and the other pair, poetry and poet.
These words come easily to one's pen; they are familiar and especially familiar as opposites. Already, however, in the course of
our gazing together, that thoughtful gazer and maker Rembrandt has taken us beyond that familiar opposition. For he indicates a higher ground which unites the two. In Homer we see a
wonder which speaks, in Aristotle a wonder which gazes. Each of
these wonders shares something. Each is a certain kind of attention: perhaps we should say they both behold something, the one
with the eye and mind's eye, the other with the ear and mind's
ear. Who is to say which is higher or- more comprehensive?
Aristotle the philosopher turns to Homer ... perhaps Aristotle's
writings are only a spelling out of Homer's poems. Perhaps
Aristotle's works are only long footnotes to Homer. This would
make Rembrandt's view of Aristotle something like Heidegger's
view of himself, for Heidegger contemplates the bust of
1-Iolderlin. It is surely a long question. In any case Homer and
Aristotle, poetic wonder and philosophic wonder, sh~re more
than the old quarrel of poetry and philosophy would suggest. In
what follows then, while I use the old words "philosopher" and
poet, we must remember that while the one gazes and the other
hearkens, they are united in wonder.
In addition to poetry there are two other arts present in Rembrandt's Aristotle. The bust of Homer is the fruit of the
sculptor's art, while the painting as a whole is the fruit of the
painter's art. For their appreciation and for their production,
both arts require men who are not blind. Something of the quality of a sculpture can be appreciated by touch alone, but the
blind cannot judge how the light falls on a figure. It is possible to
be a blind poet or even a blind philosopher, but not a blind sculp~
tor or a blind painter. Yet while blindness is equally to be feared
by sculptor and painter, sight is not equally appreciated by both.
Sculpture lasts longer than painting; it is more readily copied; it
can be walked around; it can be touched; it has a physical
presence; it succeeds beautifully in representing bodies, their
solidity and weight, and the sens·e of presence which goes with
these. But sculpture cannot equal painting in the representation
of the most expressive part of a man: the eyes. All sculpture is a
little like the bust of the blind Homer. The light, the expressive~
ness, the intelligence, and spiritedness which come from the soul
and give motion and liveliness to the body are found most often
in the eyes, and !tis painting which best represents them. If it is
�January, 1980
just to call Rembrandt tlw painter (as Aristotle is called tlw
philosopher), it is because he so excels in the representation of
the eyes. The painter understands the philosopher to gaze in the
very way he does. Indeed, to paint the gazing Aristotle, Rembrandt must have gazed as his Aristotle does.
The kinship of the way of life of the philosopher to the poet
and to the painter is further emphasized by Rembrandt's inclusion of a way of life which is distant from all these-the life of
the political man, represented by the image of Alexander which
hangs from the chain which adorns the philosopher. The
philosopher's left hand touches this chain, the gift of his pupil,
but there is no sign in his disposition or in his hand to suggest
that the pleasures of the political life merit comparison to those
of the philosophic life. It is fitting that the prince offer gifts to
the philosopher, that he see that he is adorned with rich attire,
and see that his school is amply endowed. The suggestion that
such chains bind philosophers to princes is, in this case, 18 a misinterpretation. Alexander was the happy exception among
princes, one who knew how to honor philosophers because he
esteemed philosophy above politics.
Rembrandt's Aristotle is a portrait of antique philosophy in a
truly antique setting, with the philosopher flanked by his chief
rivals, the poet and the prince; and it is composed so as to emphasize the difference between antiquity and modern Christianity, for the figure of Aristotle in his study with a bust should
remind us of all those pictures, by Rembrandt and others, of the
saint in his study. These modern Christian saints do not contemplate a bust of Homer; in its place we find a skull. 19 Of course
Homer is dead, and perhaps this contributes to the pensiveness
of the philosopher, but it does not disappoint or agitate him. It is
a Christian conviction that "death is the wages of sin," that
death is unnatural, that it does not belong to our original Edenic
condition, and that, consequently, the ways of God need to be
justified to man (Milton). The skull is a fitting image of these
convictions, one quite "foreign to antiquity which pictured death
as a "sleeping youth" and called it "the brother of sleep"
(Homer). 20 The sobriety of ancient convictions are fully represented in Rembrandt's Aristotle.
Rembrandt's portrait of antique philosophy is also to be distinguished from Jewish Biblical religion. Rembrandt often paints
Rabbis conversing together or studying alone; almost always they
have their precious books with them. The relation of antique
philosophy to books is not less serious, but it is both less exclusive and less absorbed. Not knowing or acknowledging a book revealed by God or a god, it did not subordinate all books to one
and study it alone with fervor. So, the shelf which we see behind
the bust of Homer in Aristotle's study has more than one book
on it.
Rembrandt's Jews are students and readers of their precious
book, but he does not show us the moment of its divine revelation. To understand such revelation, we must look at one of his
Christian portraits, his St. Matthew, where the rapt gospel writer
listens to a beautiful angel. The angel whispers, and he writes.
No such angel visits the antique philosopher's study, for Rembrandt's Aristotle trusts to unaided human powers Jo appreciate
this sunlit world and fathom the mysteries which border it.
Now the antique Aristotle speaks of wonder, but not of
Bust of Homer (detail)
mystery, and this should suggest to us that Rembrandt's Aristotle
is not purely antique. The antique Aristotle appreciated the sunlit world of appearances, and he ascended from them to the even
brighter sun of mind (nous) itself. The clear sunlit air of
Raphael'~ School of Athens (all is clear and sunlit, even though
the school is set in the new St. Peter's imagined by Bramante21 )
better accords with the antique Aristotle than Rembrandt's. An
Aristotle with light pouring in a window and a more tranquil look
upon his face, an Aristotle by Vermeer, would capture the antique Aristotle better. Here, as so often in Rembrandt, the setting for the study is cavernous, and here not even the usual faint
or baffled light of day shines in. We cannot tell whether Aristotle
contemplates in the day or in the night. Here, as elsewhere in
Rembrandt's work, light stands out from darkness; it does not
vanquish the darkness or sweep it away; it dwells uneasy and also
more bright in a darkness from which it cannot separate itself utterly.ZZ Judged by natural understanding, this light is mysterious.
Without a natural source, it arises from page, hand, face, and
cap, from both the mind and the thing it ardently sees. Perhaps
the soul of Rembrandt's Aristotle is taught to burn more bright
in darkness by Biblical religion 23 with its sense of silent depths. 24
If Rembrandt's Aristotle is truly antique, then it is the antique
Aristotle as discovered by Heidegger, one who points to the hiddenness of Being as much as to its unhiddenness.
In his Aristotle Rembrandt has portrayed the spirit of ancient
philosophy. For the spirit of modern philosophy according to
Rembrandt, we must turn to his Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaas
Tulp. 25 Ancient philosophy begins in wonder and dwells in won-
73
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der; it gazes like Rembrandt's Aristotle. Modern or scientific
philosophy begins with a corpse and dwells in the fear of death;
it calls for a conquest of Nature, and fashions weapons for the
coming war, weapons like the method of Descartes, the mathematization of physics, and the scalpel of Dr. Tulp. The modern
philosopher proposes to relieve man's condition, while the ancient philosopher proposed to understand it. 26 The latter dwells
in the study; the former will be found in the palaces and senates,
in garages and laboratories, in the streets and in the hospital.
The cool competence of the modern philosopher is well exhibited by Dr. Tulp, but for his fundamental restlessness we may
look to Rembrandt's print of Dr. Faustus in his study. Modern
philosophy according to Rembrandt is the hand of Tulp with the
soul of Faustus.
In his Aristotle Rembrandt has portrayed not only the spirit of
ancient philosophy but philosophy itself, for the vividness with
which he represents Aristotle gazing suggests that this way of
looking and living is not dependent upon the times but available
everywhere and always. Even if one begins with a corpse instead
of a bust of Homer, one may gaze as Aristotle does. The man
beside the corpse in his later Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deyman
holds in his hand a section of the corpse's skull; meanwhile he
gazes with a faraway look. This "faraway" look is closer to the
look on Aristotle's face than to the look on the face of the distracted Dr. Tulp.
1. This essay was delivered to the Philadelphia Political Philosophy
Seminar at Bryn Mawr, The Independent Journal of Philosophy in Vienna, at the University of Dallas, Dickinson College, and Russell Sage
College; I would like to thank my hosts and these audiences for the occasion to share and perhaps improve these reflections.
2. The translation of this passage from Aristotle's Parts of Animals is
from Edgar Lohner's translation of Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism"
in Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, ed. W. Barrett and H. D. Aiken
(New York, 1962), 296ff.
3. Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, Mit einem Brief iiber den
"Humanismus"(Bern: Francke Verlag, 1947), paragraphs 76-78; again
the translation is that of Edgar Lohner.
4. Here I follow Nietzsche, Frohliche Wissenschaft, 329.
5. For supervision in this task and for many a good conversation, I wish
to thank my friend Lee Gohlike.
6. So, too, might Robert Pirsig whose Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance (New York, 1974), has much to say about techne and its
place in our modern Western lives.
7. See the sensitive observations ofJulius Held in the title essay from his
Rembrandt's Aristotle and Other Rembrandt Studies (Princeton, 1969);
throughout, I am indebted to his observations and his learning; his
dedication to the task of preserving our precious heritage by ardent
study is, to my mind, exemplary.
8. Held, 5ff.
9. Held, 12. These words are "found in a copy written in November
1662 of the original shipping bill of 1654."
10. Held, 12-13.
11. Would it be possible to paint Descartes in accord with his own
teaching? As a thinking ego and a mechanical body? Frans Hals's portrait of Descartes may be the solution; the solitary thinking ego stares
out of a pale face itself engulfed in darkness; towards the bottom of the
painting an awkward hand appears; it is so awkwardly placed that it
hardly belongs with the face above. This reminds us that in Descartes'
teaching the relation between the thinking ego and the body is quite
perplexing.
74
12. Edvard Munch's ideal portrait of Nietzsche places the philosopher
on a bridge beside an abyss; he listens to the scream which pierces
nature but he does not join it. See Reinhold Heller, Munch: The Scream
(New York, 1973).
13. According to Otto Benesch, Rembrandt (New York, 1957), 92, Rembrandt was familiar with Raphael's image of ancient philosophy.
14. Here the contestant might be aided by modern accounts of sight
which regard sight as merely a matter of "cones and rods." By repeating
"it is only cones and rods," one may succeed in ignoring what one sees.
15. This expression is Shakespeare's gift to all English speakers (Hamlet
1.1.112 and 1.2.185); its Italian equivalent is Dante's gift to his people
(Paradiso X).
16. Consider the way the one-eyed stare of Julius Civilus in
Rembrandt's "The Oath of the Batavians" affects his potential coconspirators and also the viewer. For grants which helped me travel to
Stockholm to study this painting I wish to thank NEH and Franklin and
Marshall College.
17. Part of this painting, a part which seems to have included two
students taking dictation, has been cut away. Held, 11. See also Herbert
von Einem "Rembrandt und Homer," Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuck (KOln,
l 952), XIV, 182-205.
18. Here I disagree with Held's interpretation of the thoughts which
this chain brings to Aristotle. Held adduces many examples of scholars
who felt they were chained to princes whose chains they accepted.
These examples tempt us to forget something unusual in the relation of
Aristotle and Alexander. Alexander was the pupil of the· man he rewarded. The chain is not a temptation; just as Aristotle acknowledges
with his right hand that philosophy is stimulated by poetry, so does he
acknowledge with his left hand (touching the chain) that philosophy
needs to be supported by politics. While lower than philosophy or
poetry, politics cannot be ignored.
19. True of other painters, but of only one Rembrandt I have discovered (#175, Bauch).
20. See Lessing's essay, "Wie Die Alten Den Tod Gebildet," Gesammelte Werke, Zweiter Band (Muchen, 1959), 963~1015.
21. Kenneth Clark in his Civilization series. That Aristotle and Plato
stand in the place of Christ crucified seems to me an unavoidable conclusion.
22. The contrast of darkness and light seems in accord with the empha·
sis which Rembrandt has given to the contrast of blindness and sight. So
far as 1 know, Aristotle himself never refers to the blindness of Homer.
23. It should be noted that Rembrandt's Christianity seems in turn to
be sweetened by something which may be antique, for unlike so many
others, he never, or almost never (see Note 19 above and also his etchings of St. Jerome in his Study) o.ffers us a skull for contemplation.
24. In the first cha_pter of his Mimesis, (Princeton, 1968) Erich Auerbach
contrasts the narrative intention of Homer, who wishes to make everything visible, with the narrative effect of the Biblical story of Abraham
and Isaac, whose every brief word is surrounded with silence and
fraught with depth. Cf. the remarks of Paul Valery on the sense of inner
depth which Rembrandt likes to create around his shut-in philosophers,
in his essay "The Return from Holland," Collected Works in English
(Princeton, 1968), IX, 82.
25. For a fuller exploration of this painting and what it suggests about
modern scientific medicine, see the present author's dialogue, "Looking
at the Body," Hastings Center Reports, V, 2 (April, 1975), 21-28. The
contrast of Tulp and Aristotle might serve to remind us that the current
discussion of medical ethics should not be confined, as it largely is, to
isolated situations, quandaries, and cases, but must, for the very clarification of these cases, include consideration of the way of life of the participants. Often we do the deeds we do because we have long ago
chosen to be who we are. If we find the conduct of modern doctors
wanting, we should examine not only their conduct, but the education
which formed them. So, too, if we are discontented with modern medicine, we should ask what we most desire from medicine and whether a
contented way of life can be based on this desire.
26. In terms of Plato's image of the cave, as Allan Bloom has stressed in
his commentary on the Republic (New York, 1968), 403, the ancient phi·
losopher is a guide: he leads a few cave dweflers out of the cave; while
the modern philosopher is a torch-bearer: he brings light into the cave.
�Plato's Euthydemus
by Samuel Scolnicov
The Euthydemus is a caricature, to be sure. But, as all good
caricature, it has a serious intent. It shows the degeneration of
the Sophistic approach to education, in some of its aspects.
More importantly, it distinguishes Socratic education from the
methods and effects of its Sophistic counterpart.
Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, the two sophist brothers, are
reminiscent of the great Sophists of the Protagoras in more than
one way. They are polymaths like Hippias, and, at one time or
another, have taught a variety of arts, from forensic rhetoric to
armed combat. Also, they have Prodicus' penchant for linguistic
analysis. But most of all, they are Protagoras' epigones, down to
the smallest details: they walk around the courtyard with their
entourage of disciples, who follow them from city to city; they
promise to teach human excellence with speed and efficiency;
with the change of fashions, they have come to think of the
other sciences (apart from the teaching of excellence) as valueless; they deny the possibility of contradiction; they can argue
equally well either side of a case. 1 But where Protagoras had intellectual stature and moral integrity, the two brothers are no
more than unscrupulous quacks. Nevertheless, Euthydemus and
Dionysodorus are a direct and presumably inevitable product of
Protagoras' views, much as Callicles is a product of Gorgias'.
For the two brothers, philosophy has become the science of argumentation. They are experts of verbal fight, capable of refuting
any position, true or false. It is significant that the brothers had
previously taught the pancration. In this Greek variety of"catchas-catch-can" almost anything was permitted, regardless of
whether the opponent still stood or had already been downed.
The brothers' type of argumentation is not much different. As in
the other types of litigation which they practiced, such as forensic oratory or armed combat, victory over the opponent is the
only goal, and means are evaluated solely in respect to that goal.
The brothers too, like Socrates, equate virtue with knowledge.
But their concept of virtue is the knowledge of how to succeed at
all costs; of how to get the better of others in any circumstance.
As a result they teach mockeries of the traditional excellences:
litigation instead of justice, techniques of fighting instead of
courage, and above all eristic instead of wisdom.
The brothers' logic is purely formal and argumentative,
equally appropriate to any content or circumstance. Since the
Samuel Scolnicov is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem. He is at work on a study of Plato's thinking on
education.
technique of argumentation is presumed to be indifferent to the
content of the argument, refuting the truth is, for the Sophists, a
live possibility. There is a technique of refutation that works
equally well on either side of the case. Not so for Socrates: "If I
am not mistaken," he says to Dionysodorus, "even you will not
refute me, clever as you are." 2
Socratic elenchos is the refutation of false or confused ideas.
But truth cannot be refuted. There are two sides to each argument only so long as we do not know on which side truth lies.
Socrates, indeed, claimed not to know. He therefore kept both
sides of the argument as possibilities. But this did not preclude
the supposition that one side was right and the other wrong.
Protagoras claimed to be able to teach excellence, and to make
his students better "from day to day." Socrates, not less than !socrates, doubts the claims of that "new-found art of making good
men out ofbad." 3 For him, education is too complex a matter to
be summarized in a collection of foolproof techniques. But the
two sophists promise even more: they are capable of"delivering"
or "handing down" excellence "in the quickest way" (273D 8-9).
Indeed, as Socrates remarks at 2728 10, "last year or the year
before they were not yet wise."
Plato is drawing an exaggerated picture, but his point is valid:
there are no shortcuts in education, no crash-courses in virtue.
Instant wisdom is a sham; the way of education is long and difficult (presumably somewhat like the curriculum of the Republic),
and, what is worse, its results are uncertain until one reaches the
very end of it-if one ever does reach it.
It is true that Socrates seems now and then to achieve some
encouraging results with his method of interrogation, but he
never claims, for instance, that Clinias in the Euthydemus, or the
unnamed boy in the Meno, have actually attained wisdom or
knowledge. He only prepared Clinias for learning, aroused his interest. It would be a good thing if excellence and wisdom could
be handed down. 4 But these are not the sorts of things that can
be transmitted; they can only be slowly developed by each person for himself, with some outside help and no guarantee of
success.
The first question raised by Socrates, as soon as the conversation gets going, is the question of motivation. Should the student
be willing to learn, or be convinced that he can or should learn,
from his particular teacher, or is this unnecessary? 5 If teaching
and education consist chiefly in the impersonal handing down of
certain beliefs, then the student's learning is indifferent to any
involvement with a teacher. Learning is then somewhat like re-
75
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ceiving an object which is given to the learner: there need not be
much, if any, activity or initiative on the part of the receiver. To
hand down intellectual content requires at most suitable preparation. In such instances arousing interest means removing the
emotional or intellectual elements which block the way to new
information. It does not mean bringing the student to seek or
produce knowledge himself. There need, therefore, not be any
personal relation between teacher and student.
When asked if the brothers Would mind conversing with Clinias, Euthydemus answers that it doesn't matter to them, so long
aS the boy is willing to answer their questions. They merely need
a respondent. 6 They are not worried, as Socrates is, by the possibility that the boy's studies may do him harm rather than good.7
For them, all respondents are equal, and, to a certain extent, the
questioners too are interchangeable. It does not matter too
much who leads the questioning, the one or the other, so long as
he abides by the rules of the art. 8 Socrates, in contrast, refused
students. He felt that some persons would not profit from him,
on grounds of intelligence or of character. A personal relation·
ship between teacher and student was for him a necessary condition of education.9
Once the sophistic display has actually started, Socrates' first
words stress his interpretation of the elenctic, in distinction to
the sophistic, process. At 275D, Euthydemus asks young Clinias
a question not unlike Meno's: "Who are those who learn, the
wise or the ignorant?" 10 As Clinias seems perplexed by the question, Socrates entreats him to answer "courageously, whichever
answer it seems to you. For," he says, "maybe you are to get the
greatest of benefits."
Socrates ironically presents the two brothers' sophistry as on a
par with his own elenchus. Each question requires a courageous
answer, no matter which, so long as it is what really seems to the
answerer to be the case. In contrast Dionysodorus immediately
makes it clear that Clinias' answers do not matter in the least.
Whatever the boy says, the outcome will be the same: "And I
foretell you, Socrates, that whichever way he answers, the boy
will be refuted."
The technique is so set up that the interaction of teacher and
student plays no significant role in it. There is only a sequence of
steps to be followed that can be mastered with relative ease. It is,
in effect, a teacher-proof and student-proof method. In the
Sophistic elenchus, there is no way in which the answerer canalter the course of the argument.
Despite its superficial similarity to the Sophistic interrogation,
Socratic elenchus differs from it in a crucial respect, not immediately apparent in the written dialogue. In the Socratic dialogue each of Socrates' questions brings the answerer to a fork in
the road. At each point in the conversation the answerer himself
must decide which way to take: The course of the dialogue is
jointly determined by Socrates' presentation, and his partner's
choice, of alternatives. Socrates' emphasis on the joint search for
an answer is not mere rhetoric. He leads the search, but his partner confirms or denies the suggestions Socrates makes. When
this is done in good faith-and it is not always so-both sides are
responsible for the outcome of the dialogue. Because the
dialogue is always carried on withi~ a context, not all possible alternatives are explored in one dialogue. Frequently only one pro-
76
posed solution or one type of proposed solutions is examined.
Alternatives not followed in one dialogue are sometimes
developed by Plato in another, sometimes dropped altogether.
Taken as a whole, the schema of all possible bifurcations provides a sort of matrix of possibilities to be explored. Rarely is
such a schema to be found in one single dialogue. 11
Socrates conceives of instruction in earnest as essentially an
individual matter. It depends on the personal convictions of the
learner at each stage of the discussion, and for different people
the discussion branches off differently at different points. No
two processes of instruction can be alike, not only in regard to
how instruction is conducted, bu! also in their content, in what
actually is learned or discovered.
Socrates correctly sees the two sophists' verbal equivocations
as degenerate offspring of Prodicus' insistence on the correctness of names. He considers all such linguistic distinctions mere
play. They do not teach us anything about the world itself. Such
knowledge allows us to make rather broad fun of others, but little
else.
The brothers' view of language is none too subtle: the function of language is to designate; to speak truly is to succeed in
designating, to speak falsely, to fail. But if one speaks, one obviously succeeds in doing something, namely speaking, which is
supposed to be just a way of designating, like pointing. Obviously, if one points, one has succeeded in pointing. Therefore,
if one speaks, one necessarily speaks truly. Such a simplistic approach is bound to break down.
Ctesippus spots the flaw in the argument. "Speaking" is not a
two-place predicate, like "pointing," but a three-place predicate,
like "naming" or "identifying." Not "A speaks of x," but "A
speaks of x as N" (cf. "A points at x," and "A names x 'N'," or "A
identifies x as N"). To speak falsely is then not to fail to speak of
x, but to speak of x as M (when x is in fact N). To call a spade a
spade is to speak truly. To speak falsely is to call it something
else; it is not to fail to speak.IZ
But Dionysodorus and Euthydemus will have none of this interpretation. They stick to their view of "speaking of" as a twoplace predicate, and accordingly allow modifiers such as "truly"
and "falsely" to be understood only adverbially, i.e., as referring
to the act of speaking or designating. Speaking truly means
speaking in a certain manner, like speaking slowly or loudly. Further, if to speak truly is to speak of what iS as it is, then, on their
view, this amounts to speaking of each thing in a manner appropriate to it, for instance, speaking badly of bad men, and tastelessly of tasteless men. 13
Consistent, as far as it goes, the sophist brothers' argument is
self-defeating, as Socrates points out: 14 if there is no contradic·
tion, or alternatively, if one cannot speak falsely, then refutation
too is impossible. But Plato does not seem to think that there is a
formal contradiction in the argument, only a circumstantial one
which depends on the particular speaker. When Socrates points
out to Dionysodorus that on his own view refutation is impossible, Euthydemus takes over. Since the contradiction is between
the proposition "Refutation is impossible," and Dionysodorus'
demand that Socrates refute him personally, a change of
speakers should take care of the problem. It should be noted that
if cor,ttradiction is impossible, so is error and teaching. This is, of
�January, 1980
course, Protagoras' view. Only Protagoras is· much subtler.
Circumstantial contradiction can be ignored if one is stubbornly prepared to disregard the need for consistency in one's
several utterances or between one's utterances and one's actions. The price would seem too high. But Dionysodorus sees
himself at liberty to disown what he has said before. He considers each argument in isolation. There is no overall coherence
(or even consistency) in his argumentation and no commitment
to the issues that he raises. 15
Socrates too changes his views in the course of many a dialogue, at least apparently (for instance, in the Protagoras, or in
the Meno), and he certainly causes his respondents to change
their minds, but he always stresses the consistency of the argument as a whole and the commitment to finding out what the
case is. When one changes one's views, this should be done in
honesty and with responsibility for one's utterances, not merely
because of expediency in argument.
Because Dionysodorus' approach is purely verbal and formal,
with no regard for either the coherence of the argument or for
the matter discussed itself, the discussion degenerates into
personal insult. If one is not committed to one's answer, and conducts the inquiry on a purely verbal level, without paying attention to things as they are, then there is nothing ridiculous, or
shameful, or absurd one cannot say. Once semantic criteria have
been discarded as not formal enough, even the rules of syntax
are not of much help. Language itself breaks down. 16
The consequences of such an education are obvious~a spurious art of argumentation. Its results can be seen in the exchange of insults between Ctesippus and Euthydemus, earlier in
the dialogueP Ctesippus makes progress indeed in the argumentative art, and manages in a short time to master it well enough
to engage the sophists in their own game. His youthful
impetuousness prevents him from reaching Clinias' stage of proficiency, however. Ctesippus can see through the sophists'
tricks, but because of his psychic make-up he is unable to participate in serious discussion.
In contrast, Socrates gives an example of conversation which
will move a mind to pursue wisdom. 18 As usual he begins with
the obvious and close-at-hand. All men desire happiness. He at
first describes this happiness in conventional terms: the possession of the goods of the body, such as health and beauty; good
birth, power and honour; the virtues such as temperance, justice
and courage. But on further examination it is found that only
wisdom brings success. All the so-called goods turn out not to be
good or bad in themselves. 19 If accompanied by wisdom they are
good and bring happiness. Without it they are liable to be misused. This is an example of the protreptic argument Socrates
had asked for at 275A.
Clinias is now at least initially moved to philosophize, to seek
wisdom, insofar as he thinks it is to his advantage. The question,
whether wisdom is teachable, is passed over (282C), since it
would require a full examination of the nature of wisdom and its
relation to happiness~to which a great part of the Republic is
devoted.
Even without going into so long an inquiry, a second, more
limited question now arises: Is wisdom the whole of knowledge
or is it a specific knowledge? In other words, is there a science of
happiness and excellence, or is the aim of education encyclopedic knowledge? The Republic will claim that these are
not alternatives, but that wisdom, the knowledge of the right
conduct of one's affairs and of the affairs of the state, is in fact
synaptical (but not encyclopedic) knowledge. The difference be·
tween encyclopedic and synaptical knowledge will be made clear
only in the Republic and in the Phaedrus. 20
Now philosophy, Socrates summarizes, is the acquisition (or
possession)21 of knowledge. He does not explain how this acquisition comes about, or what such a possession consists of. He implies such an acquisition occurs not in receiving information, but
in the process Clinias is undergoing at that very moment. Some
analytical discussion of this process-one of Socrates' few successes in educating an interlocutor in the early dialogue 22 ~is
undertaken in the Meno.
Here Plato is interested in the nature of the knowledge that
constitutes wisdom, i.e., of the knowledge they had earlier
agreed was worthwhile. Socrates resumes the utilitarian line and
suggests that knowledge worth acquiring is knowledge that will
benefit us. So far this is nothing but an explication of the utilitarian assumption of the argument. But the interlocutors had
earlier agreed that nothing is beneficial unless wisely used.
Knowledge worth acquiring must, therefore, be knowledge of
using things, not of making them, or getting them. 23
The argument now turns to the need for a hierarchy of crafts
and sciences. Such a hierarchy makes it possible to distinguish
between the encyclopedic knowledge of the sophists, and the
synaptical knowledge Plato favours. The organizing knowledge
is the art of kingship, identified with politics. Individual educa·
tion thus becomes inextricably linked with political thinking.
There is here a prefiguration of the Republic: not only is the
Philosopher-King presented both as the final outcome of education and himself the educator, but also there are hints of the
hierarchical relations among the sciences, dialectric and the political art 24
The art of the Philosopher-King as the art of educating men,
however, occasions some difficulties. For one thing, unlike the
other arts, it does not seem to have a product of its own. The
ruler as educator gives the citizens a share of knowledge. 25 His
art consists in infusing the state with knowledge, in the different
degrees which the capacities of each citizen allow. The art of
kingship is to make others good. There can be no separation between politics and education, no ideologically neutral education.
In what way does the art of kingship make us good? In what
way is it different from the "newly discovered art of making good
men out of bad"? We cannot answer that it makes us capable of
educating others, and these still others, etc., for such an answer
does not help us find out what the art is. A characterization of
education in terms of "initiation" or preservation and continuation of the patterns of the society or of the culture will not do
without further specification. Plato is after the cqntent of such
art
But apparently the analogy to the other arts, which leads us to
look for the content, is misleading. Its content cannot be universal, "carpentry, and cobbling, and all the rest," and it cannot
be the knowledge of itself. 26 These questions cannot be adequately discussed in the context of this dialogue and they are
77
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merely hinted at, as a demonstration of the Socratic method.
Socrates' inquires in the Euthydemus reach an impasse, and
seem to lead nowhere. The sophists' tricks too lead nowhere.
Yet, these two negative conclusions are of different types.
Socrates' aporia shows the need for further investigation, and incites the partner to such investigation. The sophistic quandary
puts down its victim and makes him despair of inquiry.
The Euthydemus' aim is to set out the difference between the
Socratic and the sophistic method. But Plato is well aware that
the difference is not easy to grasp. Many felt Socrates also put
down people, led them in circles by means of sophistic tricks and
in the end paralyzed them with questions from which there was
no escape. At the end when the dialogue returns to the framestory, Crito tells of an outsider to whom Socrates appeared
ridiculous and embarrassing. Crito himself-no fool, but a man
seriously concerned with his sons' education, and Socrates'
friend-agrees, to some extent, with this appraisal of SocratesP
It takes a keen eye-the eye of Plato, presumably-to spot the
difference between Socrates and the sophists, and to be aware of
the problems in the Socratic method. The Socratic method can
often be misused or mistaken for ridicule. Socrates more than
once, not the least in the Euthydemus, was taken to be indulging
in such ridicule. 28 An educational approach which uses irony is
bound to be limited to the few. For Plato, the political man, the
difficulties would be obvious. But Plato could also appreciate the
positive value of Socrates' irony when properly understood.
l. Polymathy: Euthydemus 271C 6 with Hippias maior285B ff.; linguistic analysis: Euthydemus 277E; peripateticism: Euthydemus 273A 3 with
Protagoras 314E 4; instant arete: Euthydemus 2730 8-9 with Protagoras
318A 5 ff.; disregard for other types of knowledge: Euthydemus 273D
l-4 with Protagoras 318D 5 ff.; denial of contradiction: cf. Euthydemus
285D ff; arguing both sides: Euthydemus 275D ff., and for Protagoras, cf.
above. Cf. also Socrates' introduction of Clinias to the two brothers, at
275AB, with his introduction of Hippocrates to Protagoras, at Protagoras
3168C.
2. Euthydemus 287E 4-5.
3. Euthydemus 2858 4-5.
4. Protagoras 319A, Euthydemus 274A.
78
5. Euthydemus 274D 7.
6. Euthydemus 2758C.
7. Euthydemus 275AB; cf. Protagoras 313A ff.
8. Cf. Euthydemus 297 A
9. Cf. Theaetetus 150E-151B.
10. The second horn of the dilemma is developed as a variation on this
theme: see 276D.
11. The second part of the Parmenides is perhaps the best example of
an exhaustive presentation of a field of discourse-achieved there at the
cost of extreme formalism.
12. Euthydemus 284C 7-8. Cf. also Meno 82B 9-10, Cratylus 429E,
Republic 477-478. See further G. Prams, Platon und der logische Eleatis·
mus (Berlin, 1966), 125 ff.; S. Scolnicov, Plato's Method of Hypothesis in
the Middle Dialogues (Ph.D. Thesis, Cambridge University, 1973), ch.
VI. Problems notoriously do arise in further analysis, as Plato shows in
the Sophist.
13. 284C 9 ff. A similar doctrine appears in the Cratylus; cf. the previous
note.
14. 286E 2 ff. One has to presume a sullen silence on the part of Diony·
sadorus after Socrates' words at E2-3.
15. 287 A 5 ff. Contrast with Socrates' insistence on the coherence and
the unity of the personality.
16. JOJA 7-8.
17. 2988 ff.
18. 278E ff.
19. This was later to be an accepted Stoic doctrine.
20. Meno 810 l-4 already enunciates briefly the Platonic counterpart
of Euthydemus 294A 2-3: if only one knows one single thing, one knows
all.
21. Ktesis. The Greek is ambiguous.
22. Socrates' brief interchanges with Clinias in the present dialogue is
another limited success.
23. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics l098b 32.
24. For a discussion of the Philosopher-King in this passage and in other
dialogues, see R. K. Sprague, Plato's Philosopher King: A Study of The
Theoretical Background (Columbia, S.C., 1976).
25. "To give a share" translates 292B 8 metadidonai; cf. 273D 8
paradidonai, ''to hand down."
26. Cf. the Lysis.
27. 305A ff. Cf. 307A l-2. It is difficult not to suppose that the reference is to !socrates, although other identifications have been proposed.
Crito himself is, of course, quite close to this description.
28. I cannot follow Leo Strauss' analysis ("On the Euthydemus," Interpretation, I (1970), 1-20.) which leads to the conclusion that "In the
Euthydemus Socrates takes the side of the two brothers against Ktesippos and Kriton.''
�BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEw
Memories
of John Dewey Days
An Autobiographical Fragment
Sidney Hook
John Dewey, by Diego Rivera, from the Special
Collection, Morris Library, Southern Illinois
University, Carbondale, with permission.
I have related my memories of John Dewey in many places
and on many occasions. 1 Sometimes I suspect that these reveal
more things about me than about him. But this seems unavoidable because, among other reasons, Dewey was and remains one
of the most controversial figures of his age, despite the mildness
of his manner, the softness of his speech, and his kindly disposition. When I got to know him well-which was after my student
days-we fought in so many "causes" together that he himself
and the ideas he stood for became one of the central "causes" in
my life. In some quarters this earned me the sobriquet of
"Dewey's bulldog" because of my efforts to clarify his views and
to defend them against the misunderstandings of critics and
sometimes the misstatements of fancied disciples.
In these pages I shall write of my experiences and observations
as a graduate student at Columbia from 1923 to 1927. The time I
spent in classes and on the campus was limited until the last year
when I received a University Fellowship. Since I was shouldering
a heavy economic burden and found it necessary to teach in a
Brooklyn Williamsburgh public school from 9 A~! to 3 PM and at
the East Side Evening High School from 7:15PM to 10:15 PM, I
took my courses in the afternoon hours. In the first years in consequence I missed Dewey's lectures because of scheduling disparities and enrolled in courses with W. P. Montague, F. J. E.
Woodbridge, and Irwin Edman.
I had first heard of john Dewey when I was a high school stu·
dent. Casual references were made to him as an educator. That
didn't mean very much to me at the time and for some years to
Sidney Hook is at work on his political autobiography, Out of Step.
His latest book, Philosophy and Public Policy, will be published in the
spring by Southern Illinois University Press.
come. As a young Socialist I was almost automatically an advocate of progressive education or of anything that would break
the educational lock~step. My own educational experiences,
looking back, were devastating confirmations of Dewey's criticisms of conventional education. Elementary school was a
period of prolonged boredom and high school was a succession
of nightmares and persecutions.
My familiarity with Dewey's writings began at the College of
the City of New York. I had enrolled in an elective course in
social philosophy with Professor Harry Overstreet who was a
great admirer of Dewey's and spoke of him with awe and bated
breath. The text of the course was Dewey's Reconstruction in
Philosophy which we read closely. (Before I graduated, in connection with courses in education, I read some of Dewey's
Democracy and Education and was much impressed with its philosophy of education without grasping at that time its general
significance). Overstreet was a colleague of Morris Cohen with
whom I studied at the same time. In marked contrast to Cohen,
Overstreet was a devoted follower of Dewey and a teacher of
great charm and histrionic talent. But I was taken aback by the
weakness of Overstreet's defense of Dewey's views. His enthusiasm outstripped his philosophical sophistication. What did impress me about Reconstruction in Philosophy, and later in other
writings of Dewey, was the brilliant application of the principles
of historical materialism, as I understood them then as an
avowed young Marxist, to philosophical thought, especially
Greek thought. Most Marxist writers, including Marx and Engels, made pronouncements about the influence of the mode of
economic production on the development of cultural and philosophical systems of thought, but Dewey, without regarding himself as a Marxist or invoking his approach, tried to show in detail
79
�The College
how social stratification and class struggles got expressed in the
metaphysical dualism of the time and in the dominant conceptions of matter and form, body and soul, theory and practice,
truth, reason and experience. Even at that time, however, I was
not an orthodox Marxist. Although politically sympathetic to all
of the social revolutionary programs of Marxism and quite sympathetic to Dewey's commitment to far-reaching social reforms,
I had a much more traditional view of philosophy as an autonomous discipline concerned with perennial problems whose solution was the goal of philosophical inquiry and knowledge.
I was prepared to grant that the acceptance of philosophical
ideas, and possibly their origin, could be explained by the social
interests and struggles of the time rooted in the economic substructure of society~just as the emergence of certain scientific
problems and the motives for some types of scientific theory
could be related to extra-scientific causes and considerations~
but I denied that this had anything to do with the problem of validity or truth in either field. I recall doing a piece of homework
for Overstreet, subsequently published in the Open Court Magazine, a philosophical dialogue between Pragmaticus, whose position was Dewey's in Reconstruction in Philosophy, and Universalus, for whom philosophy was the vision of the world sub specie
aeternitatis in which time and place had no role.
While taking work with Overstreet I was also studying with h~s
colleague, Morris R. Cohen. My stimulating bitter-sweet experiences with him I have described elsewhere. 2 Cohen was a highly
articulate and harsh critic of pragmatism. For him pragmatism
was primarily the philosophy of William james and the philosophy of William James was primarily the doctrine of the will to
believe. And the doctrine of the will to believe was simply indulgent wish thinking, and damned as a transparent piece of intellectual dishonesty. Although in his writings Cohen distinguished
between the views of James and Dewey, remaining critical of
both, in class he lumped them together. He mocked the
categories of "life," "experience," "the dynamic," associated
with pragmatists and their writings. He dragged in references to
pragmatism at every opportunity but I do not recall him ever assigning us any specific text in the writings of James or Dewey.
"Pragmatism," he would declare, "is a philosophy for people
who cannot think."
I embarked on the study of philosophy at Columbia University
completely unsympathetic to the philosophy I expected to be
professed in the classrooms of its most noted figure.
*
*
*
*
A student wandering into a class given by John Dewey at Columbia University and not knowing who was delivering the lecture would have found him singularly unimpressive. But to those
of us enrolled in his courses, he was already a national institution
with an international reputation~indeed the only professional
philosopher whose occasional pronouncements on public and
political affairs made news. In that period he was indisputably
the intellectual leader of the liberal community in the United
States, and even his academic colleagues at Columbia and
elsewhere who did not share his philosophical persuasion acknowledged his eminence as a kind of intellectual tribune of pro-
80
gressive causes.
John Dewey's classes were always full but never really
crowded for long. There was a considerable number of students
of mature years in his audience who had come to Columbia from
various regions of the country to study with him. Those from foreign countries were most likely to be enrolled in his courses at
Teachers College which, to the best graduate students in the
Faculty of Philosophy, was intellectually off limits.
As a teacher Dewey seemed to me to violate his own pedagogical principles. He made no attempt to motivate or arouse the
interest of his auditors, to relate problems to their own experiences, to use graphic, concrete illustrations in order to give point
to abstract and abstruse positions. He rarely provoked a lively
participation and response from students, in the absence of
which it is difficult to determine whether genuine learning or
even comprehension has taken place. Dewey presupposed that
he was talking to colleagues and paid his students the supreme
intellectual compliment of treating them as his professional
equals. And indeed if the background and preparation of his students were anywhere near what he assumed, he would have
been completely justified in his indifference to pedagogical
methods. For on the graduate level students are or should be
considered junior colleagues. But when they are not, a teacher
has an obligation to communicate effectively. Dewey never
talked down to his classes, but it would have helped had he made
it easier to listen to him.
Dewey spoke in a husky monotone, and although there was a
sheet on the desk at which he was usually seated, he never
seemed to consult it. He folded it into many creases as he slowly
spoke. Occasionally he would read from a book to which he was
making a critical reference. His discourse was far from fluent.
There were pauses and sometimes long lapses as he gazed out of
the window or above the heads of his audience. It was as if he
were considering and reconsidering every point until it was
toned to the right degree of qualification. I believe it was Ernest
Nagel who first observed that Dewey in the classroom was an
ideal type of a man thinking. Despite the fact that his listeners
sometimes feared that, because of his long pauses, Dewey had
lost the thread of his thought, if they wrote down and then reread what Dewey had actually said, it was amazingly coherent.
But at the time, because of the absence of fluency or variation of
tone in his speech, except for an occasional and apparently arbitrary emphasis upon a conjunction like "and" or "but," which
woke most of his auditors with a start, the closely-argued character of his analysis was not always apparent.
Every experienced teacher knows that because of the vicissitudes of life, he or she sometimes must face a class without being
properly prepared. This is not always educationally disastrous.
Some individuals have a gift for improvisation and a skillful
teacher can always stimulate fruitful discussion. Dewey never
came to a class unprepared and there were plenty of family crises
in his life. Rarely did he miss a class. There was an exemplary
conscientiousness about every educational task he undertook, all
the more impressive because it was so constant His posthumous
papers reveal draft upon draft of lectures and essays.
Despite the distracting extrinsic features of Dewey's teaching,
it was impressive. The high seriousness of his concentration, un-
�January, 1980
relieved by any irrelevant humor, affected us in the same way as
it did his colleagues. Dewey seemed to exemplify not only man
thinking but nature itself thinking. In some letters that have recently come to light by Bertrand Russell to his inamorata, Lady
Ottaline, after his first meeting with Dewey in 1914, when their
paths crossed at Harvard, he wrote, "To my surprise I liked him
very much. He has a slow moving mind, very empirical and candid, with something of the impassivity and impartiality of a
natural force". (Royce he dubs "a garrulous old bore"). In a sub·
sequent letter, he refers to Dewey's criticisms of a paper read
before the New York Philosophical Club at Columbia on "The
Relation of Sense-data to Physics" as very profound, and all
others as worthless. This turned out to be the high point of
Russell's appreciation of Dewey. From that time on, save for an
extended article on Dewey's Essays in Experimental Logic in
1918, Russell's strictures on Dewey were an expression of misunderstanding and malice.
*
*
*
*
During the first year of my study with Dewey-the course
may have been Types of Logical Theory-! constituted myself, so
to speak, the official opposition. I did the apparently unprecedented thing of interrupting him from time to time with questions that reflected the metaphysical and logical standpoints, as I
understood them, of Russell and Cohen. This annoyed some of
my fellow students whom I awoke out of their somnolent
drowse. Others informed me with some acerbity after class that
they had paid money to hear John Dewey speak, not to hear me
ask him questions. But Dewey showed not the slightest annoyance or impatience. Before the year was out there were others,
too, who had questions. What I remember only about these
questions is that whenever they caught him up on a terminological inconsistency or on a purely dialectical difficulty, he would
smile and with a twinkle in his eye resolve it. Years later I asked
him whether he had resented my persistent questioning which
must have sometimes interrupted his trend of thought. "No", he
replied, "it was obvious to me that you were eager to find out,
and struggling to come to grips with a position unfamiliar to
you." He had easily divined the quarter from which my questions had come. He made an invidious comparison between me
and another student, who had studied with him shortly before
my time, whom he characterized as an exhibitionist who asked
questions only to parade the answers to them before Dewey
could respond.
Nothing Dewey said in class convinced me of the validity of
his general position. It was only at the end of the year when I sat
down to write a definitive refutation of pragmatism that I discovered to my astonishment, as I developed my argument, that I was
coming out in the wrong place. Instead of refuting Dewey's
views, I was confirming them! They involved judgements of perception,_ the nature of theories, and the ultimately existential
character of the laws of logic. My point of departure was Peirce's
fallibilism and his theory of leading principles to which I had
been introduced in my CCNY days by Morris Cohen. I was intellectually distressed by this outcome, and the first thing I did was
to repair to Cohen to find out what was wrong with the way the
argument was coming out. He shrugged off my complaint that
he had not done justice to Dewey's views about the nature of the
"practical" -which made the practical synonymous with the
"experimental" and not with the "useful"-and that in some respects he had not sharply enough differentiated Dewey's theories of meaning and truth from those of James. After he read the
draft of my article, to my astonishment Cohen said: "What you
have written is true enough. If that's pragmatism, I'm a pragmatist. But it isn't Dewey."
I then went to see Dewey, whose office I had been reluctant to
visit until then because of my critical role in his class, and said in
effect: "I started out to criticize your positions but I seem to
have come to the conclusion that they can very well be squared
with Peirce's arguments, his rejection of Cartesian dualism and
his doctrine of leading principles. I think something is wrong, for
instead of refuting your views here I am confirming them." I can
still remember his grin as he took the paper and suggested that I
return later. When I did, he handed the paper back to me with
the smiling observation: "I don't see anything wrong with it."
Subsequently I was to come to the conclusion that Dewey
rarely found anything wrong with the position of anyone who
philosophically was moving in his direction. At the time it was
clear to me that although kindly and amused, Dewey was rather
impressed with my development, not so much perhaps because
it strengthened his convictions of the validity of his own views as
because someone who had been close to Cohen and sympathetic
to Russell's Platonic realism, and who had advertised himself as a
resolute opponent of Dewey, had found some of Dewey's most
formidable critics wanting. To outsiders it looked as if Dewey
had won over one of Cohen's disciples. It certainly looked that
way to Cohen himself who never forgave me for my defection
despite his expressed gratitude for my published encomia about
him as a teacher and philosopher. It had a bearing on our subsequent relations. We rarely met without heatedly disagreeing with
each other about Dewey whenever his name came up.
During those years we never socialized with our professors.
What we got to know about them was largely hearsay or inferred
from public prints, reviews, association meetings, sometimes
news stories. Dewey and F. J. E. Woodbridge dominated the Department, too much so, and the degree of their agreement and
difference on key issues was the subject of much speculation and
debate among us, something which we could easily have ascertained had they and the other members talked back to each
other in joint meetings with us. Only William Pepperil Montague would occasionally in his classes venture on indirect criticisms. But he was the odd man out and I believe remained in a
state of genuine puzzlement about the strange doctrines his eminent colleagues propounded. Montague was devoted to Dewey
as a human being, supported all his liberal views, but was baffled
by his technical philosophical doctrine. Cohen truly remarked of
him: "What he sees he sees clearly but what he doesn't see, he
doesn't see at all."
The primary difficulty with the teaching of philosophy when I
was a student was that it was insufficiently systematic. WOodbridge was a thinker of deep insight thoroughly steeped in the
history of philosophy who was convinced that epistemology was
81
�The College
a mistake. He was always asking "simple" questions that had, he
insisted, "simple answers" but it required considerable philosophical sophistication to understand the meaning of the questions, and preternatural powers of intuition to grasp the answers
~which we did by guessing. Dewey at the time was challenging
the confusion between cosmic and ethical issues on which the
Greek classical tradition in philosophy rested, and the mistaken
theories of experience on which the whole of modern philosophy rested. Long before Wittgenstein, he denied that there was
any philosophical knowledge and dissolved questions like the existence of the external world, the traditional mind-body problem,
etc., by showing that on their own assumptions they were insoluble or question begging. This approach as well as that of Woodbridge would have been stimulating and challenging to students
already well trained in the analysis of the traditional problems,
but to the miscellany of theological students, ·social workers,
teachers, seekers of wisdom or beauty or social salvation that
constituted during those days a considerable part of the classes
in philosophy, Dewey and Woodbridge were obscure.
But to return to the teaching scene, I doubt that the teaching
staff got much philosophical stimulation or challenge from those
they taught except in a few small seminars. There was not
enough intellectual kick-back. Woodbridge enjoyed asking questions that stumped his class but didn't fancy getting them. Montague was always wary of the philosophical quarter from which
they came. The younger men were suspicious that someone was
trying to catch them out. Everyone except Dewey and Montague seemed to me to be trying to understand why the philosophers of the past said the things they did, not whether what was
said was true or even formally valid. In later days, when linguistic
analysis became the rage, the pendulum may have swung to
other extremes, and the historical dimension of philosophical
problems not sufficiently appreciated. No one who was genuinely interested in philosophy, however, was discouraged, but if
he caught fire intellectually, it was from an outside source, usually from something read. A few of us kept abreast of the professional periodicals which in perspective seemed more exciting
than those today, possibly because the issues discussed seemed
larger and not so specialized.
Dewey was the soul of kindness· to questioners whenever they
were bold enough to interrupt him, which they did as the course
wore on. He never put any student down. If a question was obscure or made no apparent sense, he would find an intimation of
relevant significance in it that encouraged some students to take
themselves more seriously as thinkers of profound grasp than
was warranted. As a rule I have discovered that students seem to
resent their classmates who ask questions more than their teachers do.
In my own case I recall an act of extraordinary kindness on
Dewey's part which was all the more surprising to me since at
the time I had little contact with him During that period, to
qualify as a doctoral student, one had to pass a preliminary oral
examination of two hours on four philosophers, two from the ancient and medieval period and two modern. I selected Plato,
Plotinus, Schopenhauer, and Charles Peirce. We were required
to hand ~n questions or extended topics on each of them which
would indicate the area and range of our interests although the
82
faculty could question us about anything it chose. Usually I am
in good form with interlocutors but for the first hour and a half I
was conscious that I was not doing well. I tangled with Montague on Plato-he was nettled by my rejection of the subsistence doctrine of universals to which he subscribed. I answered
inadequately a question from Woodbridge on the relation between Plotinus and Christian theology because I had concentrated on some of the more difficult points in the Enneads (the
course on Plotinus was the first one I took at Columbia with Irwin Edman whom, I fear, I terrified because I had read the same
secondary sources he consulted. Neither of us knew Greek).
Some quirk impelled me to antagonize Woodbridge, who had
been quite friendly to me in his classes since I could guess the
answers to his "simple" questions better than others, by differing
with him on his view of Schopenhauer's Fourfold Root of the
Principle of Sufficient Reason. What was worse, I outraged him
by gratuitously revealing in one of my answers that I believed
that Book II of Spinoza's Ethics was not logically out of order
although I knew that for Woodbridge it should have preceded
Book I. We can find our way up to God but if we begin with Him
we cannot come down. Woodbridge's own position was fundamentally materialistic and I really agreed with it, but his textual
reading of Spinoza seemed to me arbitrary. By the time Dewey
began the questioning on Peirce I was rather rattled. Dewey began in words that I still recall at least in part: "I wish I could take
the time to read the questions Mr. Hook has submitted on
Peirce's doctrines. They reveal a thoroughgoing grasp and mastery not only of Peirce's doctrines but of their revolutionary impact on traditional philosophy." And he went on in this vein for
a minute or two before he put his own questions. It restored my
nerve and I finished with some fine rhetorical flourishes about
Peirce's seminal ideas that I owed to Cohen.
I am confident that Dewey would have done the same thing
for any other student in the same position. Some years later Edman told me that he and Dewey had carried the day for me, and
that his own contribution had been to assure them that having
heard me give a report on Plotinus' theory of space and time
(aspects of Plotinus that he was profoundly uninterested in), he
had no doubt about my philosophical competence. I was never
able to confirm Edman's account. Nor was it necessary. I began
publishing while a graduate student and reactions from Harvard
and elsewhere were favorable. Woodbridge beamed on me more
and more as my powers of divination in responding to his "simple questions" increased. By the time I faced the Department at
the final examination in defense of my dissertation The Metaphysics of Pragmatism, which I had stitched together out of the
articles I published, everything went smoothly. Only Montague
held out. He tried to tax me, unfairly I thought, with having committed the fallacy of the undistributed middle term in one of my
arguments. I was startled when Woodbridge broke in on our
wrangle to say: "Maybe, but it is not important to the
argument." I was startled because I still had-and have-enough
of Cohen's training left in me to believe that anyone capable of
making such an elementary logical error was not qualified to
teach philosophy. Dewey's kindness to me extended to his willingness to write an introduction to my dissertation which
enabled me to find a commercial publisher for the volume.
�January, 1980
Although at the time the world seemed in turmoil, looking
back from where we are today, and despite the hurried quality of
our student days, Columbia during those golden years seemed
an island of peace and calm and yet of intense intellectual excitement. We were filled with hope and a tremendous expectation
that great things were in the offing and that the ideas we were
debating would play a role. Memories of the First World War and
the inglorious post-war years in America (1919-1921), when the
worst cultural excesses in American history had occurred, were
receding. The Palmer raids and deportation proceedings against
radicals as well as hysteria against the German language (sauerkraut became "Liberty cabbage"), literature, and music had
characterized these years. We sensed the presence of intellectual
giants on the campus-not only Dewey but Robinson, Beard,
Mitchell, Boas, and others. The only extra-academic issue that
mildly stirred the campus was the Sacco-Vanzetti case. Together
with a few other students and the help of a young woman from
the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee I organized a demonstration for Sacco-Vanzetti on the steps of the Low Library. It
was a mild and tepid affair which attracted few passersby, drawn
more out of curiosity than sympathy. One of the junior members
of the Department of Philosophy was outraged by our action although in sympathy with our views. Such things, he told me,
"were in bad taste." I replied "To hell with taste when men's
lives were at stake."
At that time I was convinced that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent but ten years or so later Carlo Tresca, the Italian-American anarchist leader, who ought to know, told me that Sacco was
guilty. It was indisputable, however, that they never got a fair
trial, and like many radicals, then as now, I was prepared to believe the worst about American justice. I recall that Dewey was
deeply moved by their fate. As events were moving towards the
end, he once said to me in a tone of wonder and despair, "She
was right after alL She kept telling me that they would never let
them go regardless of the appeals." I didn't know to whom
"they" referred. "She" was Celia Polisuk who had come to see
him to enlist his aid in the defense of Sacco-Vanzetti.
I don't know how the no~ion got about those days at Columbia
that I was a dangerous radical I never concealed my strong interests in Marx, whom hardly anyone read or cared about, and
whose views were considered irrelevant to any particular philosophical issues. Dewey had never read Marx systematically and
was inclined to judge him by the doctrinaire vulgarisms of his
orthodox proponents. Again and again I was struck, in studying
Dewey, to find worked out in detail certain views that Marx had
expressed in cryptic and undeveloped form. Dewey was at first
non-commital when I communicated my impression to him. A
few years later he was inclined to be more sympathetic to my
reading of Marx than to Max Eastman's, with whom I was engaged in furious controversy, and who caustically reviewed my
books on Marx under the title "What Karl Marx Would Have
Said Had He Been a Student of John Dewey's." But after
Dewey's experience in Mexico at the Trotsky Hearings, Marxism
for him meant Marxism-Leninism, the state philosophy and religion of one of the most terroristic regimes in human history. Hedevoted a large part of the last fifteen years of his life to combatting it, a struggle in which, our differences forgotten or shelved,
Max Eastman and I loyally and cooperatively participated.
I leave to others the assessment of the validity of my interpretation of Marx's philosophy and its anticipation of the key doctrines of pragmatic naturalism. I cite here only one point which
seems central to my view. Neither Marx nor Dewey's philosophy
would hold water if one believed, as so many philosophers have,
that we have immediate and certain truths of fact. The most apparent of such truths are allegedly immediate truths of sense perception. Marx denies that there are such truths on the basis of
his Hegelian heritage but since he rejects Hegel's theory of
Mind, he offers no supporting analysis. Dewey, however, in a
complex and suhtle analysis argued that despite Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, and a long line of distinguished thinkers which indude philosophers as divergent as Husserl, Carnap, and Russell,
that there are no immediate truths of perception in our observation. Tradition for him has more to do with the actual starting
point of knowledge than what is apparently given in anything
called sense-knowledge. Sense perception as a distinctive activity occurs within a subject matter which is primarily determined
by a social tradition. That is to say, the whole system of customary beliefs as they are handed to us from one generation to
another, not only by speech patterns but also by the patterns of
overt action, enter into what we observe. Sense perception tends
to be dominated by the beliefs, meanings, and habits which individuals incorporate into their own reach for knowledge while
reacting to the speech and behavior of others. This analysis does
not deny or reduce the value of sense perception, but establishes
that it is in a derivative and mediate position. It is a deliberately
used activity to check on the validity of the primary subject matter of belief, but is not itself warranted knowledge.
Finally, there was Dewey's denial of the autonomy of anything
that can be called philosophical knowledge, the view that all genuine knowledge was scientific in the broad experimental sense
and involved an element of activity as integral to the knowing
process, that all philosophical problems which were not problems of the special sciences or disciplines and of their assumptions, were problems of value that were open to rational analysis
and possible solution. This brought philosophy centrally into the
area of public affairs where both Marx and Dewey believed it
belonged.
I have travelled some distance philosophically since the days
of my youth when I thought I could fuse Marx and Dewey-a
journey that has taken me further from Marx than from Dewey.
In the fifty odd years that have elapsed since then, the world it
seems to me has changed more radically with respect to beliefs,
manners, and morals than in any other comparable time span ip
history. It would be odd if I h::H:l not learned something from the
transformation of our youthful socialist dream into a totalitari~~
nightmare abroad, and from the spectacle at home, not only of
heartening social and political reforms, but of riotous excesses of
students, abetted by a goodly number of their teachers, against
the background of bombed and burning libraries and classrooms.
All this and more I shall discuss elsewhere.
l. cf. Chap. 6 in Pragmation and the Tragic Sense of Life, originally
written in 1952, and John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait, N.Y. 1939.
2. "Morris Cohen-Fifty Years Later," American SchoWr, Summer 1976.
83
�FIRST READINGS
ANCIENT AsTRONOMY AND PTOLEMY'S 'CRIME'
A History of Ancient Mathematical As~
tronomy, by 0. Neugebauer, 3 vols., 1458
pp., Springer Verlag 1975.
The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy, by Rob·
ert R. Newton, 411 pp., Johns Hopkins
University Press 1977.
Ancient astronomy had its culmination
in the writings of Ptolemy. So Delambre, a
great astronomer (the first to apply the for~
mulas of Laplace's celestial mechanics) and
in his last years an indefatigable historian
of astronomy, wrote at the start of his Hisloire de l'astronomie moderne (1821 ):
The most exact and the most scrupulous investigations have not enabled us
up to now to discover any other [premodern] astronomy than that of the
Greeks. Everywhere we rediscover the
ideas of Hipparchus and Ptolemy; their
astronomy is that of the Arabs, the Persians, the Tartars, the Indians, the Chinese, and that of the Europeans until
Copernicus.
This statement would today require some
modification, but it retains a large measure
of truth: astronomy on the Eurasian landmass from the second century A.D. to the
16th was predominantly Ptolemaic in content and method. Delambre also contended-again correctly, as I will maintain
-that Ptolemy fabricated many of his
observations.
Until 1975, the most extensive and thor·
ough account of ancient and medieval
astronomy was provided by Delambre's
volumes: Histoire de l'astronomie ancienne
(2 vols., 1817) and Histoire de l'astronomie
du moyen age ( 1819). For the period up to
A.D. 700, Delambre's work has now been
superseded by Neugebauer's monumental
History of Ancient Mathematical Astron·
amy (hereinafter abbreviated HAMA). And
Neugebauer, like Delambre, gives a pre-
84
eminent place to Ptolemy: Book I of his
history (some 420 pages in all, counting 100
pages of expertly drawn figures) is devoted
to a close analysis of the mathematical content of the Almagest, along with its immediate antecedents in the work of Apollonius
and Hip parchus. "In general", Neugebauer quotes from Jacob Burckhardt's
Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen, "one
should begin in one's studies with the beginnings, but not in history." In ancient
astronomy, Neugebauer would argue, the
beginnings are so obscure that one can get
one's bearings only from the final achievement, which is Ptolemy's. In Book V of
HAMA, on astronomy during the Roman
imperial period and late antiquity, Neugebauer devotes another 200 pages to the
other works of Ptolemy, includings his
Planisphaerium, Planetary Hypotheses, Geography, and Handy Tables. All told, more
than forty percent of the entire history is
devoted to the achievement of Ptolemy,
which Neugebauer regards as decisive in
shaping geography till Columbus and as·
tronomy till Kepler.
In his treatment of the ancient astronomy that is not Hipparchan or Ptolemaic,
Neugebauer goes far beyond anything that
Delambre could have achieved; and while
the work of some other scholars like Schiaparelli (who reconstructed the homocentric spheres of Eudoxus) and Kugler (who
first discovered the astronomical content
of the Babylonian cuneiform tablets) plays
an important role here, it is above all
Neugebauer's own scholarship, extending
over fifty years and into every aspect of ancient Babylonian, Egyptian, early Greek,
late classical, and oriental astronomy, that
makes the difference. A large number of
published analyses and carefully prepared
textual editions (of which the Astronomical
Cuneiform Texts, 3 vols., 1955, and with
Richard A. Parker, the Egyptian Astronomi·
cal Texts, 3 vols., 1960, 1964, 1969, are the
chief) bear witness to Neugebauer's enormous industry and care, his persistent devotion to factuality to the exclusion of
every premature attempt at generalization,
and his insistence on thorough understanding of the mathematics involved. Into
HAMA go thousands of the analytical re·
suits of this scholarship. None ofthem are
more important than those resulting from
the decipherment of the Babylonian astronomical texts, begun by Kugler at the
beginning of this century and carried to
completion by Neugebauer and his students. Book li of HAMA is devoted to
Babylonian astronomy.
In the last three to five centuries before
our era, the Babylonians, using the sexagesimal notation which their scribes had
developed a thousand years before, worked
out arithmetical procedures of surprising
ingenuity and precision for the prediction
of lunar and planetary 'phase' phenomena,
such as first and last visibility following and
preceding immersion in the Sun's rays, station points, and lunar eclipses. Absent here
were geometrical models of the solar, lunar, and planetary motions; as far as the
evidence goes, the Babylonian astronomers
were solely interested in prediction of the
phase phenomena, and their predictive devices were purely arithmetical algorithms.
Their results were influential. With the
decipherment of the cuneiform texts and
the resulting identification of the numerical constants used in the Babylonian procedures, it has become possible to trace
their influence as far as India, where they
were still being used in the 18th century
for the prediction of lunar eclipses. But
their most consequential effect may have
been that on Greek astronomy.
Prior to Apollonius and Hipparchus,
Greek mathematicians like Eudoxus and
Aristarchus constructed geometric models
of the heavenly motions, or wrote about
procedures for determining solar parallax,
but no attempt that we know of was made
to apply the procedures to accurate data or
to render the models quantitatively predictive. Hipparchus, using Babylonian numerical constants, appears to have been the
first to endeavor after a geometric model
that would fit the phenomena with quantitative accuracy. Is it not probable that
recognition of the success of the Babylonian predictions was here the triggering
cause? The drive towards an exact geometrizing science, based on accurate data and
capable of exact predictions, probably
dates from this moment.
�January, 1980
Neugebauer's analysis of the complexi- emy's equinox and solstice observations believe, be plausibly maintained. The
ties of Babylonian procedures occupies had to have been fabricated, and in general times for all of them are too late by about a
some 240 pages (counting the figures). He dismisses the charges against Ptolemy's in· day or more; the errors as deduced from
then turns to Egyptian astronomy, which tegrity. The interest and importance of Bryant Tuckerman, Planetary, Lunar, and
he dismisses in the eleven pages of Book Ptolemy's work, in Neugebauer's view, lie Solar Positions, A.D. 2 to A.D. 1649 (AmeriIII: for despite the ancient and ever resus- in the structure of the theories; I cannot can Philosophical Society, 1964), are as
citated claims of the wisdom of the Egyp· disagree. Still, the charges of dishonesty follows: 1
tian priests, Neugebauer, who has examined every surviving document of Egyptian
Times of equinoxes and solstices reported by Ptolemy
astronomy, finds in it nothing in the way of
Year
Day
Hour
Error in Hours
technical achievement. To the Egyptians
A.D. 132
Sept. 25
14
+ 33.2
we owe the 24-hour day, and astrology
A.D. 139
Sept. 26
7
+ 34.4
owes the decans; there is little else. A more
Mar. 22
13
A.D. 140
+21.5
extensive treatment is accorded early
A.D. 140
June 25
2
+37.0
Greek astronomy, the subject of Book IV
(225 pages, counting the figures). Although
Hipparchus' observations of equinoxes, in
the Greeks introduced geometrical meth- cannot be swept under a rug.
ods and models into astronomy, their work
Serious doubts concerning Ptolemy's contrast, seldom err by more than a quarup to the second century B.C., as Neuge- prowess as an observer were already rife in ter of a day; and the errors in the spring
bauer shows, takes the form of mathe- the 17th century. Tycho Brahe in his Pro- and fall are opposite, as one would expect.
matical exercises, and aims largely at gymnasmata (published in 1602) showed For any instrument aligned so as to give
demonstrating the abstract power of math· (253-256) that the observational deter- the fall equinox late, would give the spring
ematics. Book V, on astronomy during the minations of the longitude of the star Spica equinox early, and vice versa, but would
Roman imperial period and late antiquity, by Hipparchus, Albategnius, Copernicus, not affect the time of the solstice.
Faced with this puzzle, Longomontanus
occupies more than 300 pages; but with and himself lead to a strictly uniform rate
the exception of 200 or so pages devoted to of precession of the equinoxes over the in the early 17th century and Euler in the
Ptolemy's 'minor works', the story is of centuries, while the observations of Timo- early 1750's proposed adjusting the dates
charis and Ptolemy diverge markedly from that Plotemy gives by a day. But as the asdecline and non-achievement.
In Neugebauer's treatment the impor· this uniform rate and hence (so Tycho con- tronomer Tobias Mayer explained to Euler
tant developments in mathematical astron- cludes) are suspect; later astronomers have in a letter of 22 August 1753, 2 an interomy between 700 B.C. and A.D. 700 followed Tycho in rejecting the Ptolemaic calated day would change the longitude of
reduce to: (I) the Babylonian work from observation. Gassendi in the middle of the the Moon by 13 ° and so introduce an unabout 500 B.C. onward, in which 'phase' century and Flamsteed in its last decades acceptable discrepancy between modern
phenomena such as first visibility of moon found modern values for the obliquity of theory and ancient observations of lunar
and planets after immersion in the Sun's the ecliptic to be in fair agreement with eclipses. Mayer preferred to conclude that
rays, are rendered predictable by means of one another but in decided disagreement Ptolemy had "borrowed the solar motion
periodic arithmetical functions; and (2) the with the larger ancient value that Ptolemy from Hipparchus without any particular
Greek introduction of geometrical models attributes to Eratosthenes (third century investigation." Hipparchus' year was too
and development of plane and spherical B.C.), and which he claims to have con- long by about 7 minutes, which in 260
trigonometry, with their application, in the firmed by his own observations. Even after years adds up to the I 1/4 days by which
period from Apollonius (200-170 B.C.) and 18th-century observations and Euler's the- the Ptolemaic equinoxes are found to be
Hipparchus (fl. 150-130 B.C.) to Ptolemy ory had established the hypothesis of a too late. "It can be that Ptolemy perceived
(ca. A.D. I 00-178), to the construction of slow uniform diminution of the obliquity, this error of his solar tables in his observageometric, kinematic hypotheses yielding Ptolemy's alleged observation of the arc tions of the equinoxes, which are the very
quantitative predictions as to the where· between the tropics had simply to be re- last of all his remaining observations; only,
abouts of celestial bodies, not just at partic- jected as some 20' too large, and so because he had already built his whole sysular phases, but at any time.
irreconcilable with the rest of what was tem upon it, perhaps he had rather wanted
In regard to the question of Ptolemy's known. Most disconcerting of all were the to discard his observations than to attempt
accuracy as an observer and his integrity as "very accurate observations" that Ptolemy to revise his system from the outset. Since,
a reporter of observations, Neugebauer has claimed to have made of equinoxes and however, no one could object to it, he preoddly little to say. Following the work of solstices. From Brahe and Kepler onward it tended that the erroneous equinoxes of his
some earlier scholars such as Boll, he con- was recognized that the acceptance of tables were true and observed."
cludes that it is not plausible to assume these observations as genuine would throw
In 1819 Delambre showed in detailed
that there was an Hipparchan star cata- the computation of the length of the trop- calculations what Mayer had surmised:
logue from which Ptolemy's star catalogue ical year into total confusion.
Ptolemy's alleged observations of the equiThe genuineness of these alleged obser- noxes follow computationally, to the hour,
could have been derived. He passes over in
silence Delambre's argument that Ptol- vations of equinoxes and solstices cannot, I from the equinox observations of Hippar-
85
�The College
chus together with Hipparchus' erroneous
value for the length of the tropical year. 3
For instance, Ptolemy's allegedly observed
equinox of 26 September A.D. !39 at 7
a.m. was just 285 Egyptian years (each of
365 days), 70 days, and 7 hours after a fall
equinox observed by Hipparchus. According to Hipparchus, the length of the
tropical year was 365 114 - 11300 days.
But 285 (1/4 - 1/300) ~ 70.3 ~ 70 days,
7.2 hours. The other two equinoxes and
the solstice that Ptolemy claims to have
observed are similarly derivable from observations of Hipparchus and Meton. In a recent, careful review of the situation, John
Phillips Britton states: "The conc;lusion
that Ptolemy's equinox observations can
have been scarcely more than the results of
computations is unsatisfying but I can find
no other explanation of the errors in his
reported times and their agreement with
Hipparchus' observations and length of
year." 4
That not only the equinox and solstice
observations, but also a large number of
other observations that Ptolemy claims to
have made or claims that others made, were
fudged or fabricated so as to agree with
Ptolemaic theory: this is the conclusion of
a series of detailed analyses published in
the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1973 and 1974, and now
drawn together and amplified in a book,
The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy, by Robert
R. Newton. Ptolemy's 'crime', according to
Newton, included deriving his star catalogue not from observation as he seems to
claim to do (Almagest VII, 4), but by calculation from an earlier catalogue no longer
extant, that was constructed about 130
tion of the fractional parts of degrees used departures from the expected distribution
in reporting the longitudes of the 1028 can be accounted for if we assume that the
observer's eye allotted more space on the
stars in the catalogue.
The arc of the original instrument of ob- arc to the whole and half degree divisions
servation was probably divided into whole than to the other (unmarked) divisions.
or half degrees, without finer subdivision,
The distribution for the longitudes, he
so that smaller fractions of degrees had to goes on to argue, is inexplicable if we
be estimated. Some of the longitudes and assume it resulted directly from observalatitudes are given simply in whole degrees, tion. The fraction l/4 occurs only four
without fractional addition; for the others, times, and the fraction l/2 + l/4 never;
Ptolemy uses the Egyptian-style fractions whereas probability would require that
1/6, 114, 113, 112, 2/3, 112 + 1/4, 1/2 + each of these fractions occur about l/12 of
l/3. Expressing these fractions in minutes the time, or about 1027/12 ~ 86 times.
of arc, we shall have 10', 15', 20', 30', 40', But what if Ptolemy derived his catalogue
45', and 50'; and we see that they do not from an earlier catalogue, constructed in
divide the interval of the degree into equal Hipparchus' time, about 130 B.C.? The
parts. Let us assume that the positions of derivation would consist in adding 2°40' to
the stars are randomly distributed, and that each of the longitudes, for this is the
the observer in assigning longitudes or lati- amount of precession that, according to
tudes uses the nearest of the above Egyp- Ptolemy, had occurred between Hippartian fractions. Then the stars reported as chus' observations and the epoch of his
having a longitude of some whole number own catalogue (20 July 137). Now adding
of degrees plus 116 ° will have longitudes of 40' to one of the Egyptian fractions 116,
between 5' and 12 112' beyond the whole 1/3, 112,2/3, 1/2 + 113leads to a sum exdegrees; those reported as having a longi- pressible in terms of one of these same
tude of some whole number of degrees fractions. But adding 40' to 114 and to 112
plus l/4° will have longitudes between + 114 yields 55' and I 0 25' respectively,
12 112' and 17 112' beyond the whole which are not expressible in terms of the
degrees; and so on. The number of stars Egyptian fractions used. Let us assume
falling in one of these intervals can be ex- that Ptolemy rounded the 55' up to I 0 , and
pected to be about the same fraction of the rounded the I 0 25' down to I 0 20'. (He
total number of stars, that the interval is of could have rounded in the other direction
the whole degree. But the interval from 5' in each case; but hold on!) Assume further
to 12 112' is 1/8 of the whole 60'; the inter- that the distribution of fractions in Hipparval from 12 112' to 17 112' is 1112 ofthe chus' catalogue was about the same for the
whole 60'; and so on. The expected num- longitudes as for the latitudes. Add 40' to
bers of cases with the several fractions, as such a distribution of fractions as you find
compared with the actual numbers re- in the latitudes, carry out the roundings
ported by Ptolemy, are given by R. R. mentioned, and compare the resulting disNewton (245) in the following Table:
tribution with the distribution of fractions
among the longitudes as given by Ptolemy;
the result is shown on the following page
Number of cases with this fraction
(R. R. Newton, 250) (See next page).
In the
Fraction
In the
The agreement looks too good to be
(minutes)
longitudes
latitudes
Expected
mere coincidence. Another hypothesis
226
0
236
171
may account for the facts; but R. R. New10
!82
106
128
ton's proposal at least cuts the ground from
4
15
88
86
under the earlier arguments of Boll and
179
20
112
128
Neugebauer. The likelihood that Ptolemy's
88
198
30
171
catalogue was derived from Hipparchus'
246
40
129
128
catalogue is very strong indeed.
45
0
50
86
Newton's study makes it evident that
!02
50
107
128
none of the observations reported in the
1027
Totals
1026
1026
Almagest-of Moon and planets as well as
of Sun and stars-can be trusted as gen·
Newton urges that the distribution for uine, unless reliably attested by indepenB.C. probably by Hipparchus. The evidence emerges from the statistical distributhe latitudes should cause no surprise: its dent sources. It further shows that Ptol-
86
�January, 1980
Fraction
(minutes)
0
10
15
20
30
40
45
50
Number of cases with this fraction
With 40' added
In original
sample
& suggested roundings
236
106
88
ll2
198
129
50
107
emy's solar, lunar, and planetary theories
would have been considerably better, that
is, more empirically adequate, if they had
been based on but a modest number of observations accurate to, say 10' of arc.
Newton concludes (379): "I do not know
what others may think, but to me there is
only one final assessment: The Syntaxis
[Almagest] has done more damage to astronomy than any other work ever written,
and astronomy would be better off if it had
never existed. Thus Ptolemy is not the
greatest astronomer of antiquity but he is
something still more unusual: He is the
most successful fraud in the history of
science."
That Ptolemy lied about his observations-as this reviewer believes to have
been sufficiently shown-is deplorable. 5
But R. R. Newton goes further: he implies
that Ptolemy fabricated data in bad faith,
in order to support theories he knew to be
false or inadequate. Newton's picture is of
a scientist greedily seeking fame by means
of fraud. To this reviewer, the portrait
seems anachronistic and implausible: Ptolemy was not a modern scientist, nor was
the community for which he wrote a community imbued with the aims and ethos of
modern science. By his detailed analyses
Newton has done a great service; but in his
general interpretation he has given too little attention to a number of considerations
that-in our immense ignorance of the
particulars of motive and circumstancemust not be ignored.
(l) A first fact to keep in focus is that
Ptolemy, by writing the Almagest, the
Planetary Hypotheses, the Geography, the
Handy Tables, consolidated ancient astronomy and geography. Can we assume that,
had he not done this, it would have been
done? The available evidence is negative.
If these textbooks had ancient rivals, they
are unknown to us today; in their kind they
200
198
0
179
107
236
0
106
In star catalogue
226
182
4
179
88
246
0
102
were either unique or uniquely successful.
There is no evidence that Ptolemy be·
longed to a community of active scientists,
with a vigorous, ongoing tradition. He appears to have been an isolated figure, in his
own time and also during a stretch of many
centuries. The more 'immediate' predecessors he mentions are: Theon, who may
have been his teacher; Menelaus, who
lived a few decades earlier, and whose
theorems enabled Ptolemy to do spherical
trigonometry; Hipparchus, two and a half
centuries earlier; and Apollonius about a
century earlier still. The seven centuries
spect to observations. No astronomer
before Tycho Brahe made the accumulation of accurate observations a primary
goal, taking precedence over every effort at
theory construction. A promising start was
made by the Islamic astronomers in Bag-
dad under the Caliph al-Ma'mun in A.D.
829-830; the tradition there begun of
building large instruments for solar observations continues into China in the 13th
century under the Mongols and into Samarkand in the 15th century under the
Tartar Ulug Beg. Already in the late 9th
century Albategnius (al-Battani) by observations at Aracte and Damascus had detected the necessity of revising Ptolemy's
solar and lunar constants: Ptolemy's value
of the obliquity was badly off; contrary to
Ptolemy's claim, the solar apogee was not
immobile with respect to the ecliptic but
was moving eastward; the annual precession was more nearly 55" than 36". These
discoveries implied the need for a thorough revision of all Ptolemy's numerical
constants; for his planetary theories and
observations depend upon solar and lunar
that followed Ptolemy yield no sign of sig- theory.
'Nhy was that thorough revision never
nificant theoretical activity in astronomy.
And from the 9th century to the 16th, little carried out during the middle ages? We
theoretical work is done in astronomy that suspect: a lack of cash, patience, interestis not minor variation of Ptolemy's hypoth- and not merely conservative traditionalism, powerful though that may have been.
eses.
Planetary tables were used primarily to
The transformation of ancient astronomical theory carried out by Copernicus draw up horoscopes, and horoscopy did
and Kepler involves specific geometrical not presuppose a highly accurate positransformations of the Ptolemaic theories: tional astronomy. And if Ptolemy seems to
we cannot understand that revolution have shown insufficient concern for obserunless we understand the Ptolemaic vational accuracy, the same has to be said
theories, nor can 'we imagine in detail how of nearly every astronomer before Tycho.
It is significant that the concern for ob·
modern astronomy could have come to be
servational accuracy became urgent for
had there not been the Ptolemaic consolidation of theory to learn from, to work on, Tycho under new circumstances, and with
the prompting of a dramatic event. Coperto oppose. Truth, says Francis Bacon, is
nicus had but recently carried out an exmore likely to emerge from error than from
tensive revision of astronomical theory,
confusion. And Kepler says: it is perhaps
relying strictly on the accuracy of ancient
better to have a wrong theory than none at
observations as well as later observations
all. Alternative histories are no doubt including his own. In his earliest observathinkable, sans Ptolemy. Given the rare- tions Tycho learned that both the
ness of innovation in traditional societies, Copernican and Ptolemaic theories failed
there can be no assurance that the way to miserably in predicting such an event as a
modern, Keplerian astronomy would have planetary conjunction. Then in 1572 a
proved shorter rather than longer. Mean- nova appeared, and Tycho was able in
while, the historical development that ac- three weeks of observation to show that it
tually occurred has Ptolemy as an essential was free of parallax, contrary to the Aristo·
starting-point.
telian doctrine about the immutability of
(2), Secondly, we must take note of the the celestial realm. From that moment
ancient and medieval situation with re· Tycho was a revolutionary. His turn to ob·
87
�The College
servation occurred at a juncture in which
the available theories had been tested and
found Wanting.
Concerning the pre-modern attitude towards astronomical observation, we would
add these further remarks:
(a) A reasonable choice of instruments
for naked-eye observation requires considerable trial and error, and hence expense,
as Tycho's example shows.6 We can seriously doubt (despite R. R. Newton's claim
to the contrary) that the instrument Ptolemy calls an "astrolabe", essentially an armillary sphere provided with sights, was a
reasonable choice; the machining tolerances were in all likelihood low, and the
alignment of the polar axis and the ecliptic,
poor. The instrument is too complicated.
Ptolemy here falls prey to the temptation
to design an instrument which will mirror
the imagined coordinate circles in the sky,
rather than make possible the most easily
checkable and repeatable determinations.
(b) Even if the available instruments are
supposed accurate and easy to use, good
naked-eye observers, with the requisite
acuity of vision and patience, are yet few
and far between. Not all who have believed
themselves to be making the best observations possible were in fact doing so; Riccioli
in the mid-17th century, for instance, with
the example and precepts of Tycho before
him, still commonly made errors of 10' or
more.
(c) It should further be realized that the
observations most easily made, for instance
of altitude and azimuth, required mathematical reduction in order to yield the position in ecliptic coordinates; and these
reductions in turn presupposed such numerical constants as the obliquity, solar
parallax, and refraction (the latter was first
taken into account by Tycho). Such constants were likely to be taken over from tradition. A true "starting from scratch" is exceedingly arduous, and even Tycho did not
succeed in going the whole way;· for instance, he accepted the ancient, erroneous
value for solar parallax without adequate
testing. It was Huygens, Auzout, and Picard at the Paris Academie in the 1660's
who made the first thorough attempt to
start over again from the very beginning,
without assumption (find north!). That
Ptolemy did not make such an attempt is
clear; he relied again and again on unreliable transmitted constants.
88
(d) The understanding as to how theory
is to be based on observation was different
in ancient astronomy from what it is in
modern astronomy. The statistical approach used since Laplace was absent. The
attempt was to derive a theory from a very
few cleverly chosen, and supposedly decisive, observations. The constants of solar
theory were derived, for instance, simply
from the lengths of the seasons: a tour de
force, it must have seemed. There was no
doubt a sense of power and pride in such
achievement.
Given the difficulties of observing well,
the lack of motivation and funding for
such activity, the trust in numerical con·
stants furnished by tradition, and the premodern view of the way in which theory
was to be founded on fact, one should not
wonder if fudging and fabrication occurred; and indeed Willy Hartner has assembled evidence that it was common
enough. 7 The tendency to find what one is
looking for, to obtain the results one wants,
is strong in any time. Kepler in a letter to
Galilee in 1597 says that, if he cannot win
astronomy for Copernicanism by valid
arguments, he will not hesitate to use
fraudulent ones. Isaac Newton, in Book III
of his Principia, arrives at the accepted
value of annual precession by an incorrect
argument and the most unconscionable
fudging of data. 8 In an earlier time the
restrictions imposed by scientific rivalry,
the restraints felt because there are two or
five or twenty pairs of eyes on the lookout
for one's least misstep, were not yet sharply
felt.
Ptolemy, in his time, iS on the verge of a
country he has not imagined to be there.
He is setting forth the first extended
geometrical science of phenomena; he cannot have even dimly guessed at all the
progeny that the Greek effort of geometrization would have in a later time, and in
particular he cannot have guessed how
precise the science of celestial things, the
only science that the ancients thought
capable of mathematical precision, would
in the end become. He claims to have
observed cmefully. He presents his science
as exact, as more exact than it could have
been, although its exactness could have
been much improved with further effort.
He seems to have taken it as his task to save
astronomy from doubts and confusions.
He notes, for instance, that the constancy
of the tropical year was doubted by Hipparchus, whom he refers to as "that truthloving man". He proceeds to assert the
constancy of the tropical year, using observations that surely are fabricated. I would
conjecture that the theory that enabled
him thus to fabricate had worked fairly
well for him, in his earlier planetary studies; he was not supposing that it was in error by as much as it was, a whole degree. It
was a case of wishful thinking.
(3) Finally, we should give attention to
what Ptolemy says about his subject-matter
as a whole, and his motives for studying it.
He wrote as a pedagogue, presenting the
astronomical topics in the "order of knowing", seeking to lead the student "out" and
"up" from his natural, provincial standpoint to a cosmic standpoint, whence the
Earth appears as a point in relation to the
heavens. The stars, in his view, were divine
beings.
At the start of the Almagest Ptolemy provides a general characterization of his subject matter, and hints at his motives for
studying it. Of the three genera of the
theoretical part of philosophy (as distinguished by Aristotle in Metaphysics El),
theology, the science concerned with the
''outermost" original source of motion ''up
high somewhere with the loftiest things of
the cosmos", and physics, the science of
material qualities like warm and cold, dry
and moist, within the sublunary sphere,
have a largely conjectural character; for the
one deals with the totally invisible, and the
other with what is always in flux. Only
mathematics represents a certain and irrefutable science. "By these thoughts [says
Ptolemy] we were led ... to study to our utmost ability a theoretical discipline of such
a sort, especially insofar as it concerns
divine and heavenly things, for it alone is
involved in the inquiry concerning things
which are always as they are and because
of this is able, since the kind of apprehension proper to it is neither unclear nor disorderly, to be always much as it is- which
is the peculiar property of science ... " 9
But the divine things, the gods, cannot
really be circumScribed by our mathematics, Ptolemy implies. In the Planetary
Hypotheses, he compares the motions of
the planets to the flight of birds. And in
Chapter 2 of Book XIII of the Almagest,
devoted to the latitudes of the planets,
which are horribly complicated in a
�January, 1980
geocentric frame of reference, Ptolemy
says:
Let no one, seeing the difficulty of our
devices, find troublesome such hypotheses. For it is not proper to apply
human things to divine things nor to get
beliefs concerning such great things
from such dissimilar examples. For
what is more unlike than those which
are always alike with respect to those
which never are, and than those which
are impeded by anything with those
which are not even impeded by themselves? But it is proper to try and fit as
far as possible the simpler hypotheses to
the movements in the heavens; and if
this does not succeed, then any hypotheses possible.
Thus our mathematical devices are not to
be imagined to be copies of heavenly
mechanisms. Yet the mathematics qua
mathematics has the character of certain
knowledge, according to Ptolemy; it has for
him a divine character; our initiation into
it, in his view, is a way of approaching the
divine things.
What else can we say of this Ptolemy?
He was an astrologer, though temperate in
his claims for this discipline, admitting its
lack of certainty. It is likely that his
Aristotelian doctrines came to him through
Stoic channels, and one may conjecture a
kind of Stoic religiosity in this contemporary of Marcus Aurelius. He was a modest man, a traditionalist, who regarded
mathematical astronomy as a cumulative
affair: "And so we ourselves try to increase
continuously our love of the discipline of
things which are always what they are, by
learning what has already been discovered
in such sciences by those really applying
themselves to them, and also by making a
small original contribution such as the
period of time from them to us could well
make possible" (Almagest I, preface).
Judging by the number, size, and complexity of the books he wrote, we must
acknowledge that he was a hard worker.
He was a summarizer, a putter-together of
results, one who completed symmetries
and rounded out theories, a defender of
the constancy of the divine things. And in
the process of neatening up his pedagogy,
he told what he no doubt regarded as little
fibs about his observations.
We cannot make of this intellectual forebear of ours a giant or hero or profound
thinker. It seems equally presumptuous to
rate him a criminal. To be sure, his fabricated equinoxes put Copernicus to an
enormous labor, the devising of the theory
of the "twisted garland"; and his unreliability as a reporter is frustrating to an R. R.
Newton who would seek to use ancient observations to determine the secular accelerations of the Earth and Moon. But
ancient theoretical astronomy as consolidated by Ptolemy was an essential beginning for the coming-to-be of modern
astronomy, and without it there is no saying where we would be.
Malcolm Miller, lecturing on the stained
glass and the statuary at Chartres, reminds
the tourists that, according to medieval
Christian doctrine, the whole of the consequences of a man's life and actions will not
have accumulated until the end of time,
the day of judgment, when all will be
known. Perhaps the judgment of Ptolemy
should be postponed until that time.
CURTIS A. WILSON
l. The errors as given by Robert R. Newton in
The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy, 87, are 28.1,
28.4, 27 .6, and 36 hours, respectively; these
numbers imply a larger eccentricity than that
embodied in Tuckerman's tables. The errors
derived from Tuckerman agree very nearly with
those calculated by John Phillips Britton, On
the Quality of Solar and Lunar Observations and
Parameters in Ptolemy's Almagest (Yale University Ph.D. Dissertation, 1967), 26.
2. Eric G. Forbes, The Euler-Mayer Correspondence (1751-1755) (New York: American
Elsevie,, 1971), 73-76.
3. Delambre, Histoire de l'astronomie du moyen
age (Paris, 1819),lxviii.
4. Britton, op. cit. in Note 1, 44.
5. In the March, 1979 issue of Scientific
American, 92, it is claimed that on the basis of
arguments by Noel Swerdlow, Victor Thoren,
and Owen Gingerich, "Newton's case against
Ptolemy collapses because it is based on faulty
statistical analysis and a disregard of the
methods of early astronomy." Since writing the
present review, I came across Noel M. Swerdlow's "Ptolemy on Trial" (American Scholar for
January, 1979, 523-531). Swerdlow argues that
R. R. Newton's use of statistics is wrongheaded
and misleading, and that his scholarship in
some further respects is untrustworthy. Swerdlow's critique seems to me largely justified, but I
do not believe that the main propositions argued in this review anent the reliability of
Ptolemy's reported observations~that in all
likelihood he fabricated the observations of the
equinoxes and solstice of A.D. 139 and 140, and
that in all likelihood he derived his star catalogue from a previously existing one constructed two and 2/3 centuries earlier~are
thereby undermined.
6. See Victor Thoren, "New Light on Tycho s
Instruments", Journal for the History of
Astronomy, IV (1973), 25-45.
7. Willy Hartner, "The Role of Observations in
Ancient and Medieval Astronomy", Journal for
the History of Astronomy VIII (1977), I-ll.
8. See Richard S. Westfall, "Newton and the
Fudge Factor", Science CLXXIX (23 Feb. 1973),
751-758.
9. For the translation as well as the paraphrase
that precedes ,it, I have depended on Jacob
Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the
Origin of Algebra (tr. Eva Brann; Cambridge,
Mass.: M.l.T. p,ess, [cop.) 1968), 256-257.
CARRILLO AND THE CoMMUNIST PARTY IN SPAIN
Eurocornrnunism and the State, by
Santiago Carrillo Laurence and Hill
Co., Westport, Connecticut 1978
A strong argument can be made that
Santiago Carrillo's Eurocommunism and
the State is in large measure simply a codifi~
cation of the political practice of the West
European Communist parties since the
1930's. More specifically, however, it is a
response to attacks on the Spanish CP
leadership from two directions-from
those who argue that its avowal of demo-
89
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era tic principles is only a cover for plans to
seize power by force, and from those who
accuse it of presenting Social Democratic
views.
While the tactics of Eurocommunism include a greater willingness to enter into
coalitions with the Social Democrats, the
Communist Parties of Western Europe
continue to insist on their difference. In
Spain, in particular, the CP, which receives
only about a third as many votes as the Soci~l Democrats, must avoid being swallowed
up by its rivals-a problem not encountered by the large Communist Parties in
France and Italy.
At the same time that he argues that advances in culture and social organization
are changing the capitalist states, Carillo
also maintains that the capitalist state can
now be transformed without a violent revolution-because of the change in the relationship of forces in the world brought
about by the Russian Revolution, the appearance of new workers' states in Eastern
Europe after the Second World War, and
the collapse of the old colonial empires
under the impact of the colonial revolution:
What is the concrete reality today? The
reality is that despite the power imperialism still has as a social system, it has
been destabilized, first by the great October socialist revolution, and subsequently by the advance of socialism,
with all its limitations, failings, and imperfections-which we do not hide and
have no interest in hiding-in Europe,
Asia, Africa, Latin America; and by the
whole process of decolonization. This
destabilization increases continually
and is stimulating currents of change in
the countries that have until now dominated the world.
Carrillo's view that the gradual transformation of the capitalist state has been
made possible by the increase in the power
of the Soviet Union and other workers'
states that arose in its shadow is clearly an
offspring of Stalin's conception of "socialism in one country": worldwide revolution
depends on the progress of the Soviet Revolution. For many years Stalin justified the
subservience of the Communist Parties
around the world to Moscow with this policy. Critical of the Soviet Union in some respects, Carrillo, however, reaffirms the link
between Moscow and the West European
90
CP's.
At the same time that he argues that the
new world relationship of forces makes the
capitalist state more susceptible to change,
Carrillo maintains that the division of the
world into blocs dominated by the two nuclear "superpowers" rules out revolutionary processes of the "classical" type that
would overthrow the existing systems by
force. In the past all such revolutionary upsurges have been by-products of the defeat
of the capitalist state in war, but in lhe nuclear age no such possibilities exist because
nuclear war would destroy all the gains of
humanity.
Because violent revolution is not a plausible option, Carrillo argues that the
system must be changed by "getting the
representative democratic institutions
which today fundamentally serve capitalism to serve instead the causes of socialism." In the Spanish context this means
working to make the capitalistic system
more "rational." As one party leader told
me in an interview, "Our main goal is to
make Spain more like Sweden, an advanced
welfare state." 1 To achieve such a transformation the PCE goes out of its way to
demonstrate that the party is willing to
work within the framework of the Spanish
parliamentary system and also to accept
the monarchy.
Carrillo's view that revolution is unlikely
and undesirable in the advanced capitalist
countries corresponds entirely to the Soviet leadership's conception of peaceful coexistence. Identical positions, down to the
details, have been put forward by the
Kremlin and representatives of such superloyal Stalinist parties as the American CP
for many years. The Spanish CP head
does, however, pose this non-revolutionary
perspective in a somewhat different way
from Communists in the past.
The notion of the continuous "transformation'' of the state allows him to drop the
prospect of socialist revolution in the distant, hypothetical future. This approach
reassures West European industrialists and
political leaders that the Eurocommunist
CP's are not thinking of revolution or of
spreading revolutionary propaganda among
workers.
At the same time, the concept of an uninterrupted process raises the possibility in
the immediate future of structural reforms
going beyond the framework of capitalism.
This approach allows the PCE to respond,
with more success than the French and
Italian CP's, to ideas popular among radicalizing youth in the universities and the
factories. By taking more radical stances on
women's liberation and nuclear power, the
PCE has won the adherence of some radical workers and youths, In addition, Carrillo argues that capitalism, rotten through
and through, is on the decline.
Carrillo builds his case for the decline of
the capitalist state on alleged changes in
major establishment institutions such as
the Church and the Army. He cites bishops
who state that the principles of capitalism
are contrary to Christian morality. Such
playing up of the Catholic hierarchy's
demagogy has been standard practice of
Stalinist parties throughout Western Europe and Latin America for more than a
decade.
In an effort at "national reconciliation,"
in the mid-fifties Carrillos' PCE made positive gestures toward the Church. Carrillo
called religion not the opium of the people
but, "objectively," "the yeast of progress."2
"We will build socialism with a crucifix in
one hand and the hammer and sickle in the
other." 3
At the trade union level, direct contact
between the Church and the PCE occurred
with important results in the early sixties,
Cooperation between Catholics and Communists was crucial to the development of
the Worker's Commissions which have become powerful trade unions since Franco's
death and a major source of support for the
PCE.
Carrillo also sees change in the Army
and the police. In discussing the events of
the May-June 1968 crisis in France, he observes that the police began to balk at the
"repressive" role they were assigned, and
started to develop a notion of serving the
society as a whole rather than the privileged
few. He argues that such a trend must be
encouraged in the police and spread to the
Army-which can be transformed into an
instrument of reform. He says the left
should create "an identification between
the Army and civil society ... That will
overcome the historic equation that the oligarchy plus the armed forces equals conservatism and reaction."
Because, in his and the Soviet conception, the world relationship of forces cannot be rapidly altered without risking a
�January, 1980
nuclear disaster, Carrillo virtually excludes
the possibility of exploiting a confrontation
between workers and soldiers to break the
army. In his view, the military must be
maintained as social necessity but must not
be allowed to be the exclusive instrument
of right-wing elements in Spanish society.
Carrillo envisions the Communists coming to office like any other party, "if
through a vote the majority of the population grants them such a mandate." Aware
that many conservative political figures
and members of the Spanish public question the democratic credentials of the
PCE, Carrillo stresses the Party's "democratic" internal functioning, its openness
to criticism, and its critical stance toward
the socialist states. In an unusual move for
a Communist Party, the Party, in fact, per·
mitted factions to form in the period before its Ninth Congress in 1978. With less
than ten percent of the vote the opposition
within the Party, however, did not seriously
challenge Carrillo's leadership. 4 Carrillo
would probably not be tolerant of a more
substantial challenge to his dominance.
Carrillo has to face Spain's past. A significant minority has positive memories of
PCE's role in the Civil War, especially its
participation in the heroic defense of Madrid in the early months. A greater number
of Spaniards from the generation of the
Civil War, however, remember the PCE as
a party that used its connections with Moscow for its own factional gains and resorted
to violence against its opponents in the
workers' movement, particularly the anar·
chists and the Trotskyists. During the Second Republic in the thirties, the PCE had
almost no base in the trade union move·
ment, dominated by the Socialists and the
anarchosyndicalists.
During the early 1930's, under direction
from the Comintern in Moscow, the PCE
shunned any cooperation with other workers' parties. Beginning in 1935, the party,
however, in accordance with Stalin's policy
of alliance with Western democracies,
began a "popular front" strategy which involved electoral alliances with socialists
and cooperation in the youth and trade
union movements. The party grew rapidly
but it did not hesitate to weaken its opponents through the denial of Soviet arms
shipments to some of the forces defending
the Republic. The party probably undermined the war effort and definitely gained
the enmity of its political opponents within
the workers' movement. Although the socialists and particularly the anarchists are
less strong today than during the Civil
War, "political memory" in Spain makes it
necessary for the current PCE leadership
to dissociate itself from its most negative
acts of the past. 5
Although it denounces some isolated
Communist acts of the Civil War period,
the PCE does not, however, accept blame
for the defeat of the Republic. On the contrary, Carrillo argues that the outcome in
Spain would have been different if the
other leaders and Parties had allowed the
CP to participate in the Republican government from the beginning. With the CP
in the government, he argues, the fascist
uprising might have suffered defeat before
the Civil War. He adds that if the CP in
France had been in the French popularfront government, "the fate of Spain and
Europe might have been different." For
F ranee might not have denied aid to the
Republican government. Many observers,
however, think the PCE in its refusal to
support all political forces opposing Franco
damaged the Republican cause more than
the absence of the French. 6
In his campaign for a more positive
image for the PCE, Carrillo praises the
economic gains of the socialist countries
but goes on to say that "there mlist be
channels for- criticism and it must not be
repressed by methods that are intolerable."
In this regard, Carrillo has gone beyond
the criticisms of the French and Italian
parties who concentrate largely on the Soviet handling of dissidents.
Carrillo is certainly aware that the Spanish CP is not going to convince anyone
that it is not a totalitarian-minded party if it
denies the facts of the bureaucratic dictatorship in the USSR, which have long been
obvious to anyone who cares to look. "The
October revolution has produced a state
that is obviously not a bourgeois state, but
neither is it yet the proletariat organized as
a ruling class, it is not yet a genuine workers' democracy." Recognizing that such
criticisms are heresy in the world Communist movement, Carrillo defends himself by
saying that the PCE "cannot be the last to
face the facts."
Carrillo specifically rejects the Soviet
Union's argument that the future of the
CP's in Western Europe depends on de-
fending the prestige of the USSR. The
Spanish leader strives to dissociate his
party from the totalitarian socialist states,
because the Spanish workers he appeals to
are not interested in a Spain without democratic rights:
I think that all this will confirm for our
friends and honest enemies that the
"Eurocommunist" phenomenon is not
a "tactical maneuver by Moscow ... "
Anyone who judges us impartially must
recognize that this strategy is not designed to "extend the influence of the
Soviet Union" or shift the relationship
of military forces on our continent. On
this level, it is designed to mitigate the
policy of blocs and assure the independence of each one of our countries, and
of Europe as a whole, within a socialist
perspective, and to increase the weight
of Europe in maintaining peace, international cooperation, as in establishing
more equalitarian and democratic inter·
national relations, especially with the
Third World.
The current stance of the PCE is not a
mere tactical maneuver. Carrillo and other
PCE leaders have for most of their political
lives worked to forge alliances with nonCommunist forces for the purpose of reestablishing "bourgeois'' democratic forms in
Spain. The party is not about suddenly to
become a revolutionary party. It has too
much to lose-especially a dominant position in the Spanish labor movement. To
state, however, that the PCE is sincere in
its commitment to the parliamentary pro·
cess in Spain is not to say that it has become liberal or social democratic. The ex·
amples he gives of democratic pluralism,
the Spanish Republic during the Civil War
and governments of the "people's republics" in Eastern Europe, show the limitations of Carrillo's notion of a "democratic
state." In spite of its criticisms of the Soviet
Union, the PCE retains a special relationship to Moscow and the October Revolution which will not allow it simply to
become a liberal or social democratic party.
Gary Prevost
Assistant Professor- of Government at St. John's
University in Minnesota, Gary Prevost spoke
about Carrillo and the Communist Party in
Spain at the meeting of the American Political
Science Association in Washington, D.C., last
September.
91
�The College
1. Interview with Refael Ribo, member Central
Committee, PSUC, Barcelona, Spain, July 13,
1978.
2. Carrillo, quoted in Guy Hermet, The Communists in Spain, Lexington, MA 1974, 156.
3. Carrillo, quoted in Jon Amsden, Collective
Bargaining and Class Conflict in Spain, London
1972, 93.
ism in the Spanish CP," Intercontinental Press,
june 5, 1978.
5. For the PCE's role in the Civil War see Burnett Bolloten, The Grand Camouflage, North
Carolina 1978.
6. See Pierre Broue and Emile Temine, The
Revolution and the Civil War in Spain, Cambridge 1970.
4. Michael Rovere, "The Debate Over Lenin-
AT HOME AND ABROAD
Letter from Budapest and Pees
I came to Budapest after a few days in
Vienna. In Vienna I saw a production of
Lessing's Nathan der Weise good enough to
let you feel the strength of reason, and a
play about Freud which betrayed embarrassing niggardliness of soul in facing
home-grown greatness. In its overgrown
familiarity-Freud at home blustering
about "academic" charlatanry-the play
told of a city that could not remember
Freud because it dared not remember itself. To Lessing's play, the prosperous, formally dressed audience listened with a
naked eagerness that told of a deprivation
other than economic, of living too long
without words that make sense enough to
show the world in its danger and beauty.
Lessing's words, and his actors moving
with the proportion that inhabits Italian
painting, sounded bolder, more straightforward and, therefore, more intimate (because not "personal") than any of the
words of the Freud play which so obviously
sought refuge in the commonplaces of private chatter because they feared strength
and the necessary plain spoken ness that accompanies it. I left for Budapest with
eagerness and apprehension: no city I have
seen tells more of what Europe has done to
itself in this century than Vienna, which
now shamelessly introduces herself as the
home of OPEC in her official brochures.
If Vienna tries to behave as if it had no
past, like an immigrant to the new world
who still feels the impress of the sounds of
his native tongue but no longer recognizes
their meaning, Budapest instead feels like a
city with nothing between itself and its
past. A city with no time, with no present,
92
where without warning and without choice
you could fall back to 1956, to 1945, to
1939, a city that cannot forget anything,
but must act as if it does not remember. At
the International Congress of Classical
Studies I attended, I was embarrassed to
the quick to hear my American colleagues
talk breezily of Hitler (but not of Stalin),
classes, and economic causes, for Budapest
is a city where those words still draw
blood-and silence. They did not fear to
make fools of themselves. That was admirable. But their assurance depended too
much on not acknowledging what was going on before their eyes.
In the city the first thing that hit me
hard was something I had often thought
but was startled to see before my eyes: the
was is not over. You could touch it with
your eyes, not so much in the obviously rebuilt buildings or in those still shell-scarred,
but in something unmistakable in the air
everywhere, that nothing appeared capable of resisting, in an unearthly quiet pervading everything that tells of deprivation
and subjection.
Something else came to me that I had
not understood before: this was Europe, as
much Europe as the rich and active countries to the West. If you think of Europe at
all, you have to think of all of Europe. Areluctance to think of all of Europe may explain why there is little thinking about the
political (as opposed to the economic) unification of "Western" Europe-which is
nothing but a geographic expression for a
historical accident. But the "Western
Europeans" I saw (with the exception of
the Germans) acted as if Hungary were on
BoczGyula
Flower, 1971
another continent, as if its history were not
a part of theirs, as if it had less to do with
them than with us. At a reception a Hungarian scholar told me in a way I shall not
forget "We are European-we feel European; that will not go away." I do not think
he believed me when I told him I knew
that.
The light on Budapest is soft and thick,
not unlike the light of Turner but more
yielding, for it does not have the sharpness
and cutting glister of the sea. In the morning it wraps the city in a glowing haze that
softens more than blurs the shapes of the
buildings and makes the nineteenth century gothic parliament on the edge of the
Danube look as if it were in Venice. The
river, the Danube moving through the
center of the city at its own sweet will,
lends the city strength and the proportions
of nature. It opens it to the soft but powerful movement of light and air. In contrast
to Buda with its wooded green hills that
rise like waves, Pest stretches flat in streets
with remarkable buildings dating from the
end of the nineteenth century and the
early twentieth. They are the only streets I
have seen anywhere in which architects
�January, 1980
managed to make the surface of a building
much more than a facade, so that the sides
of the sometimes cave-like streets are not
merely flat walls but undulate. These
buildings have gone for decades without
repair so they look much older than they
are, almost at moments like ancient ruins.
The decay occurs more slowly than almost
anybody can tell, but irresistibly as if it
were the only way to mark time. I found
myself looking with the eyes of an archaeologist, for the life there had been-with
the aid of bits and phrases I had gathered
in New York which remembered Budapest
before the war as "elegant" and "with the
best service in Europe." It was as if time
had stood still.
In all its beauty the city feels empty and
abandoned, like an intruder from another
world, as if nobody dares look upon it with
full eyes, as if all the former inhabitants
had left and some others unknown to us
and to each other had taken their places. It
looks like a conquered city, that is made,
daily, to conquer itself. For the Soviets, unlike the straightforward empires of the past
to which careless and ignorant writers compare them, pretend that those they subject
rule themselves. It looks like a city with the
stuffings pounded out of it, that knows it
and exists in the knowledge of it and has
dignity because of that knowledge-and
because it has not given up but is only waiting. That is the sense I got, constantly, of
waiting and silence. In contrast I ca1led up
the confusion of Italy, of Western Europe,
of the United States that cannot tell when
it is in danger. But not to know danger is
the nemesis of those who do not aid the
brave. 1956 came sharply to my mind.
In offices of the most modest sort, at the
state airline, at the hotel, you could feel
fear of responsibility, palpable, in the face
of almost any question. There was evasiveness and secretiveness which felt like a
habit acquired to replace civility. The rudeness and sullenness aimed at making you
feel you were of no importance. On a
transatlantic call when I spelled my name
an operator who had before spoken in
broken English, suddenly said with clear
sarcasm, "Yours is obviously an American
name." You began to understand you were
not a customer but a visitor who paid the
state for permission to stay overnight or eat
a meal-a permission "they" could at any
moment withdraw or refuse. You sus-
Barta Lajos
pected you had no control over anything.
I was struck at how few Hungarians I
met in museums, in stores, or on trains
spoke major European languages. That
tells something of a generation of isolation.
In some instances, especially with German,
I had the sense they knew the language but
would not speak. But when you attempted
a word of Hungarian they were sometimes
overwhelmed. Towards Americans they
app~ared indifferent, even sullen but not
hostile, as if they wanted to keep their
country to themselves, to hide in it and its
language-but knew there was no way of
doing it. Tourism from Western Europe
and the United States does not mean contact with Hungarians, necessarily. I had the
sense that some were pretending they
could not see me. But the concert I heard
left its mark on me forever. Music tells in
the silence-you learn to listen. When my
wife and I ate at a canteen for ordinary
people, not a restaurant for tourists, the
cook who worked hours that took my
breath away came out from behind the
counter to embrace us. It was the deepest
welcome we got.
I knew enough to know I had to get out
of Budapest (a city of more than two mil·
lion in a country where no other city numbers much over one hundred and fifty
Wave, 1960
thousand) if I was to have even the barest
sense of the country. I chose Pees in the
south, because I had heard its museums
showed the work of Csontvary (1853-1919)
and contemporary Hungarian painting and
sculpture.
I left Budapest just after dawn with a
thick, blue softening mist just beginning to
glow over the country. The train at first followed the Danube which, even more magnificent in the countryside than in a city,
looks like a moving sea. The light over the
country, growing brighter, moved and billowed. Fields of corn and sunflowers
stretched out in the flat Hungarian plain
whose vastness made me wince at the absence of the sea. There were many horsedrawn farm wagons.
From the first moment I stepped out on
Lenin Square, Pees made me aware of the
extent Budapest kept up appearances. In
Pees there was no pretence, no posturing,
but a nakedness, the nakedness of a coat
turned inside-out. There was the same uniform plainness as in Budapest but the people kept their distance from it. They were
courteous, courteous with warmth. The
young people in the central square on the
steps of what had once been the Turkish
mosque looked less subdued, more energetic than those I had seen in Budapest-
93
�The College
simpler, openly baffled as if not knowing
where to turn, alone but not isolated from
each other. The friendliness, the absence
of pretence made the city worldly, more
worldly than Budapest which was so obviously, and so obviously not, just another
European city.
One of seven museums scattered
through the center of Pees, the Museum of
Contemporary Hungarian Art, fills three or
four good-sized rooms in a country house
on what must have been the outskirts of
Pees fifty years ago. About six sculptures
like rocks in the sea lay in the grass surrounding it. It is hard to tell the joy I felt
coming upon these works which were unmistakably alive and unplanned, looking in
fact almost as if they had sprung from the
ground. The work was obviously good.
There was no bragadoccio, no sawing the
air, and it knew its limits. Above all these
artists knew how to learn from masters like
Brancusi without aping them and confusing their talent with his genius.
Inside the museum there is a collection
of painting and sculpture from around
1900 to the present, a collection obviously
selected (in contrast to the collection of
contemporary art in Budapest) by people
who can see and dare to look, for there is
hardly a work in it that does not have its
own life. I spent most of my time with artists born since 1944. There were only one
or two works for each artist, so I could not
get a sense of their consistency or range.
But almost everything I saw had real content, sometimes more content than the
masters whom it had taken for teachers. All
this work told unmistakably of living-in a
world I knew. I blushed shame even to
have wondered whether Europe was here
too: every work in this museum told of
painters and sculptors who throughout the
century knew the work of Paris, Vienna,
Rome, Berlin, and Oslo and knew how to
remain true to themselves in the face of it.
There was little posturing, no drive to impress, little impatience, no fear of modesty.
The museum taught me something about
arrogance. My own.
LEO RADITSA
94
Kmetty Janos
Woman with Tumbler, 1916
Pictures from the Gallery of Hungarian Modern Art, Pees.
�NOTES
"1784: The Year St. John's College
Was Named"
Charlotte Fletcher, The Maryland Historical
Magazine 74, 2, June 1979, 133-151
In honor of whom was St. John's named?
St. John Chrysostom? The College at Cambridge, itself named after St. John the
Evangelist? Or was the name given as a
compliment to a Masonic fraternity-a St.
John's Lodge-in Annapolis at the time of
the College's founding, a theory proposed
by Bernard Steiner in 1894? In such a case
the College could have been named either
for the Evangelist or St. John the Baptist,
since the Masons honored both. Charlotte
Fletcher dismisses St. John Chrysostom,
argues against Cambridge and denies
Steiner's theory. She concludes that some
special influence-perhaps Masonic-at
work within the General Assembly during
December of 1784 determined the College's name.
On December 27, the feast day of St.
John the Evangelist and a festival day for
Masons, the Maryland Assembly, after
working with a Virginia delegation headed
by George Washington, an active Freemason, passed the first piece of cooperative
legislation of the Confederation following
the Definitive Treaty of Peace of 1783the Potomac Bill to improve navigation on
the Potomac River. Three days later, on
December 30, the Assembly approved the
College's charter and named the College
St. John's, perhaps to commemorate the
date of this remarkable legislative performance.
LEO PICKENS
�The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Non-profit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Permit No. 66
Lutherville, Md.
�
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Radista, Leo
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Brann, Eva T. H.
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�THE COLLEGE
Volume XXXI
July, 1979
Number I
The Great Electrical Philosopher, by Howard J. Fisher .................................. .
Odysseus Among the Phaiakians, by William O'Grady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
14
Kant's Empiricism, by Arthur Collins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Some Classical Poems of the Tang and Sung Dynasties, translated by Julie Landau . . . . . . . . . . . 25
For Bert Thoms, by Eva Brann, Janet Christhilf O'Flynn,
Patricia Pittis Sonnesyn, Leo Raditsa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30
Don Giovanni, or the Triviality of Seduction, by Wye Jamison Allanbrook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
36
Inner and Outer Freedom, by Eva Brann..................................... . . . . . . . . . 43
The Collapse of Democracy at Athens and the Trial of Socrates, by Leo Raditsa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
German Resistance to Hitler: Elites and Election, by Beate Ruhm von Oppen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
56
R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography, review by Fred Baumann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
R. F. Christian, ed., Tolstoy's Letters, review by Laura Bridgman..........................
62
Talking With Pictures: 'Les Bandes Dessinecs', by John Dean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Letters ............................................................... Inside back cover
Editor: Leo Raditsa
Managing Editor: 1-1IOmas Parran,
Ten Years
Jr.
Consulting Editors: Eva Brann, Beatc Ruhm von
Oppen, Curtis A. Wilson.
THE COLLI:<~Gg is published by the Office of the
Dean, St. John's <Allege, Annapolis, Maryland
21404. Richard D. Weigle, President, Edward G.
Sparrow, Dean. Published twice yearly, usually in
January and July.
Front cover reproduced from Michael Faraday,
Experimental Researches in Electricity III, London,
!855.
© 1979, St. John's College. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
With this issue The College completes its first ten years. Whatever
good will become of it in the future will owe a good deal to the skill
and tenacity of my predecessors, Laurence Berns, Malcolm Wyatt,
Robert Spaeth, and Beale Ruhm von Oppen-and to Tom Parran,
who has seen to the demands of organization for the past six years. I
have opened several departments: Between the Old and the New which
deals with books that are not forgotten but are not or are not yet classics; At Home and Abroad which means to look both at the world right
around us but not in our books, and the other worlds beyond the seas
and to the north and south of us whose distance tests the understanding; Recent Readings which will look at books new enough to start the
critical faculties of the plainspoken. I should like to publish a series of
essays on almost forgotten authors of genius, of which there are a great
many (Clarendon, Simon Bolivar, Cavour, Giannone, Lucan,
Mirabeau-to name a few at random), and on authors more remembered than read. There is space for poems and narrative.-L.R.
�The Great Electrical Philosopher
Howard J. Fisher
In 1965 I attended a gathering whose guests also included
tremendous weight in his account to two of its aspects: first,
Jacob Klein. During a quiet moment in the evening, so quiet
the establishing of natural laws; and second, the application
there was no possibility that the incident could escape unnoticed, Mr. Klein fixed me in his sight and demanded,
to natural phenomena of analytic mathematics. So impressive
"Who is your hero?"
have become in our time the almost unquestioned paradigms
of our intellectual powers.
Now I did not then believe that I had any heroes; moreover,
I had been educated, if that is the word, according to a fashion which he1d that there were no heroes-there were opinions and deeds, to be sure, and these were to be judged, affirmed or denied-but the individuals who happened to affirm those opinions or to accomplish those deeds had only a
very loose, accidental, and dispensable relation to them. Had
one of their number never been born, it was sometimes af-
have been the achievements of these twin endeavors that they
Though I cannot easily explain why I think these are false
paradigms, why they are at best narrow and at worst stultifying, I can at least invite you to share with me the reading of a
scientific work which is utterly different in character yet no
less a part of our own time. In Faraday's laboratory, experiments do not generally issue in "laws." In his writing,
moreover, descriptions of things are always in English prose,
firmed, someone else would have come upon the scene, with
never in that pure syntax of symbols which is algebra. If I
about the same effect upon the world's history.
What a surprise, therefore, to hear myself reply to Mr.
Klein's question, after only slight hesitation, with the name
"Thomas Jefferson." This answer actually proved to be a good
one. Jefferson has turned out to be one of my heroes indeed,
remember rightly there is not a single equation to be found
anywhere in the Experimental Researches, or even (it has
and there are others too. I am here tonight to say something
about one of the others-that is Michael Faraday, styled
"the great electrical philosopher" by the man who is responsible for Maxwell's Equations.
Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity is the title
of a three-volume collection of reports of his experimentation
and speculation about electrical matters during the period
been said) 1 a statement of the kind that one would want to
put into the form of an equation! Instead there are
accounts-reaHy, histories-of the actions of electric and
magnetic powers. These are not forensically arranged so as to
eliminate this hypothesis while confirming that one, nor are
they linked as the confirmations of predictions which were
deduced from stated premises. But they are episodically
linked, one theme or subject continually evolving, suggesting
another, reappearing in a new form or with new associations,
until at last we begin to feel that the story told gives a likely
from 1831 to 1855. It is a remarkable record of discoveries
and also of the designing and construction of all sorts of ingenious experimental apparatus. It is the account of a mam-
account of what the actors and agencies did; but, more important, it reveals who and what they are.
moth investigation into things in the heavens and under the
out equations, without proofs or theorems-why, anyone can
Someone might say, patronizingly, "A physics book with-
earth-things which, as I hope to show you, defy in every
read it!" If it is true that anyone can read Faraday, that is of
way the notions of science which were then, and stili are, in
vogue.
If someone were to give an account of what the scientific
course a good thing. And if true, it is not because the absence
of algebra makes Faraday's book an easy book. It is at least as
difficult to read the Experimental Researches as it is to read
Don Quixote. Or, for another comparison, Thomas Simpson
once said that Faraday wrote like no one so much as like
enterprise is, I suppose he would be unusual who did not give
A lecture read on January 16, 1976, at Annapolis, and on MayS, 1978, at
Santa Fe.
Aeschylus. That remark was, for me, the single most helpful
guide to the study of Faraday's writings.
Our knowledge of nature has become for us nearly the
same as our mathematical and symbolic understanding of na-
�The College
lure. We can, I think, just barely imagine what it might be
like if things were otherwise, by conceiving the bygone age of
forms, and disposes both before our eyes and in secret. If we
can only view the exercise of natural agencies we will have
which Socrates told Phaedrus: 2 "a time when men were con-
science~that
tent to listen to oaks and rocks." (That is, I understand, a
known.
is, knowledge in the presence of the thing
time when our apprehension of nature and divinity was im-
mediate.)
In our time we don't do much listening to the oaks and the
rocks, but we speak, powerfully and often beautifully, about
them. This our speech has become our science. Like all
speech it is symbolic~but where do the symbols, with which
we weave prize-winning explications of nature, come from?
Since the rise of the- scientific laboratory as a social institution, this question has only one answer: the symbols adequate
to natural appearances arise out of experience.
This pronouncement is the manifesto of the scientific labo-
ratory, and from it follows the genesis of the laboratory as an
institution dedicated to the deliberately artful and exhaustive
production of experience and its interpretation.
II. Seeing
At the very opening of the Nineteenth Series of experimental researches, in the year 1845, Faraday takes the
Indeed what we really want is the one true physical
signification of that which is rendered apparent to us
by the phenomena and the laws governing them.
(3303)
But it requires the exercise of considerable ingenuity to put
ourselves in the position where we can observe nature, and
more ingenuity still to read aright the fascinating interplay of
powers and effects, to see them as they really are and not just
as a list, however accurate, of descriptions and laws about
them. For Faraday, science requires more than accuracy or
even generality. It demands a species of "agreement" between
nature and our representations of it, an agreement which I
think it is fair to say has for Faraday nothing less than visual
similarity as its paradigm. A visual emphasis is meant, I
think, by the word "agree" in his declaration:
opportunity to correct a misapprehension that had arisen over
his use of the title, "The Illumination of Magnetic Lines of
Force." Apparently it was thought that he claimed to have
rendered the lines of force luminous. "This was not within
my thought," he explains.
I intended to express that the line of magnetic force
is iJluminated as the earth is iJJuminated by the sun,
or the spider's web iJJuminatecl by the astronomer's
lamp. Employing a ray of light we can tell, by the
eye, the direction of the magnetic lines through a
body; and by the alteration of the ray and its optical
effect on the eye, can see the course of the lines just
as we can see the course of a thread of glass, or any
other transparent substance, rendered visible by light;
and this is what I meant by illumination . . . .
(Zl46n.) 3
Thus does Faraday express, in a footnote, what is in fact for
him the paradigm of science: to make visible to the eye the
powers of nature. In the almost comical misunderstanding
which called it forth we can glimpse a striking difference between Faraday and the scientific community at large, for
while some of his readers thought he was announcing the
achievement of a new electrical effect, namely "glowing
lines" -and this was scarcely an unjustified expectation to
have of the most celebrated experimentalist of the day~
Faraday's real intentiori. was to announce a new exhibition of
magnetic actions which up to then had been hidden; it is just
this disclosure of what was formerly only surmised that marks
the opportunity for scientific knowledge. Nature acts, trans-
z
When the natural truth and the conventional representation of it most closely agree, then are we most
advanced in our knowledge. (3075)4
Now the science of the philosophers-of-science usually
turns out to be divided into two steps. First the facts, the
"data"; and second our reasonings and analyses upon them.
The "data" are not general, or even intelligible, that is to say
they are low. And yet they are supposed to have the authority
of Minos to consign the "high" inteJlectual theories either to
long life or to oblivion. This, .I say, is the science of the
philosophers-of-science, but the science of the philosophers is
not like this. Though Faraday certainly respects a difference
between "speculation" and what he calls "the strict line of
reasoning" (3243), this is not the difference that is alleged to
obtain between theories on the one hand, and facts on the
other. I think that for Faraday the scientific enterprise has,
really, only one part, and that I would call interpretation.
What is interpretation? First, it is sightful. It is concerned
with things that are before us and which lay hold of us, calling forth surmises and anticipations. Second, it is re-creative,
for the things which unfold to interpretive sight represent
themselves in images which collect and associate the multiple
articulations of appearance into a rhythm of emphasis, as the
accented syllables both collect and articulate the spoken
word. Thirdly, it is rhetorical, for it attempts to elicit for the
things of nature the assent and trust of the intellect. The activity by which we interpret is not homogeneous, it is not
always strictly under our control. Sometimes we have to construct new arrangements of things, sometimes we only attend
to what is already there. But we are always, always looking.
�July, 1979
The deliberate exercise of the senses, aided by appropriate
.\
artifice, for the sake of interpretation of nature, is the express
mark of the scientific laboratory.
Ill. The Image
The single most powerful, influential, and controversial
image in the Experimental Researches is certainly that of the
"line of force." With respect to this image, I am going to
assert a claim which will seem excessive and romantic, and
about which it will b~ difficult to be persuasive. For I will
claim that this image of the line of force has a career. It does
not remain the same with itself but evolves, and through it
the magnetic phenomena from which it derives show more
and more their true identity. Furthermore I will claim that
this evolution of imagery is found within the phenomena
themselves, and not introduced from the outside by the
Figure 2:
(Adapted from Faraday).
writer's craftiness or prejudice. At every stage, including the
last, the imagery that Faraday employs constitutes a vision in
the first shows a single "line of force" being traced with a
which the natural powers proclaim themselves to us; so that
compass needle by moving the compass always in the direc-
science is achieved when the phenomena explain themselves.
tion to which its needle points (Fig. I). The second shows a
Later I will return to his view of the phenomena, but now
let us mark the first stage in the story of the lines of magnetic
force. When they first appear in Faraday's accounts the lines
are thought of as nothing real. They are only the materials for
complete pattern of lines as indicated by iron filings scattered
a simile, a mere construct by the imagination out of the successive orientations of iron filings or smal1 compass needles in
regions surrounding a magnetic body. Here are two pictures:
over a sheet of paper that conceals a bar magnet beneath it
(Fig. 2).
These are lovely and intriguing shapes; but of course we
hasten to remind ourselves that there is nothing really there
that has shape; no more than when a bouncing ball leaves
behind it, as its wake, an ethereal series of inverted parabolas.
So at least is the teaching of Newtonian mechanics which
holds, rightly, that form without material is not physical but
purely mathematical; but holds wrongly, in my opinion, that
"material" is little hard massy particles which are capable of
sustaining forces-so that where there is no matter there are
neither forces nor shapes.
Newtonian principles teach us that each end of the compass needle is subject simultaneously to two forces, one attractive and one repulsive, and that it is the combination of
these, in their action upon the needle, that in every place
establishes the direction of attraction. The "shape" that we
find in the curve is not the shape of anything, and therefore
not a shape at all, but only a kind of continuous chronicle of
the successive directions in which a needle may be urged.
The actual forces are completely dependent upon the presence, in each position, of a material body for them to act
upon.
So according to the Newtollian way the magnetic curves
are nothing in themselves. They are neither powers nor the
vehicles of powers. They are not even appearances, for they
can never be made wholly apparent-they can at most be
indicated piecemeal by discrete bits of matter. To the physicist they are useful, possibly, as a mnemonic or as an aid to
the imagination; but no more than that.
This view of the lines of force as a merely temporary aid to
the thinker is a view which-excepting a few of Faraday's
readers such as Kelvin and Maxwell-remained dominant in
Figure 1
the scientific world during his lifetime. We will now ignore
3
�The College
that Newtonian assessment, and return again to view the
line-patterns of the magnet, for in truth they are very inviting,
and interesting questions arise concerning them.
First question: In what do the lines terminate? Are there
active puddles or points within or on the surface of the magnet? If we could make a magnet small enough, would the
lines all come together at two points, as the "magnetic pole"
theory seems to hold?
Second question: Where do those lines go which extend
beyond the limits of the drawing? Do they eventually return
to the magnet, or do they terminate somewhere else? Need
they terminate at all?
Third question: Why don't the lines cross or touch each
other? Can they move? If one moves, do they all move?
Even if we admit that the meaning of the lines of force at
this stage is only a pointing, we may still ask, at what do the
pointers point? The Newtonians have their answer: the pointers attempt to point at the (distant) sources of force that act
upon them; only, because they are simultaneously acted upon
from two different directions, the needles point to neither one
but to some direction in between, favoring whichever pole is
the nearer.
But I think we can admit another interpretation, not only
in harmony with the shapes of the curves, but even suggested
by them: namely, that the needles point, but not to some
distant center of attraction; rather they point along the axis of
some structure or process which exists right where they are, in
their own neighborhood, and which also has a character
everywhere else, though the needle not be there to show it. A
compass needle would in this way be interpreted more nearly
like a weathervane. A weathervane does not really point at the
distant source of the wind, you know, but it turns so as to lie
in whatever direction the wind happens to be blowing in its
own immediate vicinity.
To make this comparison is to reverse the order of discovery and to make the curves in some sense prior to the -iron
filings! Those doctrines of scientific methodology called
"operationalism" would be most censorious of this reversal.
But why shouldn't we do it? If we attend to the curves themselves, and do not continue to give decisive weight to the
accident that they were first understood only through the actions of compass needles, who would fail to be moved by
their legible character of form, or fail to respond to them as
he would to any other interesting natural object?
Faraday makes just such a response, and he is moved to do
so by the discovery of a new kind of magnetism, "diamagnetism," which differs from ordinary magnetism in this way.
When an ordinary magnetic body, such as an iron filing or
needle, is placed within the influence of a magnet and left
free to turn it will "point," as I have said, along paths which
ultimately tend toward the polar regions of the magnet. What
Faraday discovered was that whereas needles of iron, nickel,
platinum, and other materials which had been recognized as
magnetic would point axially, toward the north and south
poles, there were a number of substances (2253, 2996) which
pointed in the perpendicular direction, that is, equatorially
(Fig. 3). A compass needle made not of iron but of bismuth,
4
Eguotoviol~
Axially
Figure 3
for example, would always point east-and-west! It is even true
that most materials turn out to be of this "diamagnetic"
character, although their pointing tendencies are so weak it is
not surprising that it was the magnetism of iron~from now
on called "paramagnetism" by Faraday-which people
noticed first. Other diamagnetic materials listed by Faraday
include water, iodine, caffeine, sealing wax, bread, apple,
leather, mutton, and fresh beef (2280). All of these substances
point equatorially when formed into tubelike shapes and suspended between the faces of a magnet. How is this "pointing"
to be understood?
One of the reasons I delight in reading Faraday's experimental histories is that he is so sure-footed in asking questions. His writings also betray an instructive caution about
what a question is. He very seldom asks a question in words,
and when he does it its usually in a context that he calls
"speculative." When he engages in "speculation" it is always
with cautions and warnings to the reader. Questions asked in
words arc dangerously self-moving; because they have the appearance of rightly dividing the world and its alternatives,
they give rise to disputes and doctrines that have a logic of
their own and leave nature behind. It is far better to ask questions without words, and this is what Faraday does again and
again, and it is this activity that really constitutes "experiment": he asks questions in practice.
The "question" about diamagnetism is, whether pointing is
the key to its understanding. Is diamagnetism (or' paramagnetism, for that matter) essentially a power to point, or is it
something else? The question arises tacitly, because while observing the pointing behavior of a bismuth bar he noticed also
another effect, a recession of the bar as a whole from the magnet's pole faces (2259), (Fig. 4a).
�July, 1979
By "conducting power" Faraday intends to express-with
the usual cautions about hypothetical speaking-the "capability which bodies may possess of effecting the transmission of
magnetic force" (2797). So we should judge those to be the
better conductors which sidle up towards the places of greatest
magnetic force, and the poorer that are displaced from there
(2798). Quickly, however, the imagery of the lines of force
begins to direct the discussion; to effect the transmission of
magnetic force is to conduct the lines of force; so those conductors are better which gather up the lines of force, conveying more of them onward through a given space. And those
conductors are worse which gather up fewer, or even disperse
the lines of force within themselves (2807). Here is a picture
to show the difference (Fig. 5).
I
I
I
I
I
I
(a.)
(b)
Figure 4: In (a), bar does not hang vertically but recedes from the pole. In
(b), ball cannot "point" but nevertheless recedes.
v
Are the causes of pointing and of recession one and the
same? If so, under which aspect will we see most clearly the
meaning of diamagnetism? This question is not even spoken:
instead Faraday proceeds immediately to substitute a small
bismuth ball (2266, 2298) in place of the bar (Fig. 4b). A ball
is radially symmetrical and hence cannot "point," but it can
approach or recede as a whole; and in a series of trials Faraday succeeds in formulating what he calls the "ruling principle" of the motion: that diamagnetic material tends to go by
the nearest course from stronger to weaker points of magnetic
force (2300). Diamagnetism under this aspect, the aspect of
migration from strongly-magnetic regions to weaker ones,
takes precedence over and interprets the action of pointing,
for if the portions of material dispose themselves into the
weaker regions the result will be, in an elongated body, that it
points away from the strong, polar regions. Faraday explicitly
subordinates pointing to migrating in this passage:
The cause of the pointing of t11e bar ... is now
evident. It is merely a result of the tendency of the
particles to ~110ve outwards, or into the position of
weakest magnetic action. (2269)
In the same way, paramagnetism is viewed as migration
towards the regions of strongest magnetic action. Yet the account docs not rest here. The interpretation of diamagnetism
and paramagnetism as migration is itself transcended, this
time with the aid of another image according to which bodies
are viewed as magnetic conductors. The refinement of this
image of "conducting power" accomplishes finally that reversal of priority which I indicated before, namely, that reversal
by which the lines of force acquire more explanatory power
than the bodies which first made them manifest.
"
a.\
0
\
j/
aI I
Figure 5
Faraday does not take pains to distinguish them, but there
are two different manifestations of this gathering power. If the
conducting bodies be stable and fixed, inspection shows that
the lines of force are drawn towards the better conductors
(2807), while, if the bodies are free to move, they will migrate
as described before, the better conductors occupying those positions in which the greatest concentrations of lines of force
are found. I think I know why Faraday does not labor to distinguish the two cases: it is because to do so would require
license to promote matter over lines of force, or lines of force
over matter; and he has no cause to do either. Material body,
on the one hand, and the lines of force, on the other, stand
forth on a perfectly equal footing. It is as much correct to say
that lines of force are drawn along by the iron as it is to say
that the iron is enmeshed and entangled in a web of force.
We have completed a miniature Odyssey of successive reinterpretations, viewing the magnetic actions first as instances of
pointing, then of migration, then under the image of conducting power, and finally as a gathering up of the lines of
force. In this evolution the image of the lines of force has
become increasingly dominant and indispensable; while the
role played by matter in the magnetic story has correspondingly diminished. Even the image of "gathering up"
does not exalt the gatherer over the gathered, for as I have just
explained, the materials march to the tune of the lines of
force just as readily as do the lines of force follow the lead of
their material partners. The relations between matter and
lines of force are those of mutual action, stress, and equilib-
5
�The College
rium. They are no different from the relations that obtain
between matter and matter, or between one line of force and
another.
The new-found equality between material bodies and lines
of foree is the heart of a thoroughgoing reinterpretation of
matter. The same considerations, moreover, will lead equally
to a reinterpretation of space. All the magnetic experiments
prior to the Twenty-eighth Series of experimental
researches-that is, prior to the use of the Moving Wirerepresent moments in the evolution and employment of the
image of the "gathering and dispersing" of lines of foree; and
they culminate in the simultaneous reinterpretation of matter
and, by necessity, space.
When I speak Of a reinterpretation of matter, I should
make clear that I mean in respect of its relation to force. In
the Newtonian mechanics, matter was always invoked as the
seat of action of, and reaction to, any force. Even when
forces were thought to act "at a distance," as in gravitation,
the primary phenomena to which the laws of foree applied
were the actions of bodies upon bodies. This situation might
have sufficed if the only "distance" force had been the gravitational one, for all matter gave rise to and was subject to gravitation. But the attempt to include magnetic and electric
forces into Newton's mechanics, forces to whose influence
not all bodies were subject, naturally 1;1ade it imperative to
formulate a theory of the relation between certain species of
matter and the forces that were specific to them.
In his 1854 paper' on magnetic philosophy Faraday expounded and criticized three theories of magnetic action, two
of which are what I have been calling Newtonian, for they
portray matter as the foundation of relations of force. One of
these Newtonian treatments is Coulomb's theory which,
positing active powers of matter, comes under conscientious
scrutiny by Faraday. Coulomb's polar theory is that of "two
magnetic fluids, which being present in all magnetic bodies,
and accumulated at the poles of a magnet, exert attractions
and repulsions upon portions of both fluids at a distance, and
so cause the attractions and repulsions of the distant bodies
containing them" (3301) 6
Coulomb's theory is uncomfortably hypothetical, because
no one has ever seen this magnetic fluid or demonstrated its
properties. Nevertheless, the theory is in perfect harmony
with the great Newtonian principle that Foree is ultimately
dependent on Matter.
Now the imagery of the "gathering up" of lines of force
leads us to an interpretation of polarity that is completely different. According to this image, the disposition of lines
through an elongated sample of paramagnetic material, like
an iron needle, looks like this (Fig. 6):
The ends of the needle, under the influence of the dominant magnet, appear to take on the character of origins or
seats of force; but we now see that this is the necessary result
of the gathering up of the lines of foree by the iron. Sinee the
lines pass through the needle and are not severed, their increased concentration within the iron results in their mutual
approach and increased concentration in the areas near its
two ends, where they enter and exit.
6
s
N
Figure 6
The meaning of "pole," therefore, is a plaee of concentration of force, and not a fountain of creation or a place in any
way distinguished in kind from its surroundings. We see that
Coulomb's theory embodied an important assumption which
the "gathering" image escapes: Coulomb's theory had identified the cause of origin of the foree with the fact of its localized action. But these are two distinct topics, as -Faraday
perceives: "My view of polarity," he writes, "is founded upon
the character in direction of the force itself, whatever the
eause of that force may be ... "(3307). Thus any disposition
of conductors which results in regions of more and less concentrations of lines of force will approximate to the appearance of "poles," and artful fashioning of the shapes of conductors can establish fields which run the whole spectrum
from near-uniformity (no poles) to near-perfect polarity. Here
is a picture to show how changing the shape of the conductor
also changes the course of the lines of force external to the
conductor (Fig. 7).
Figure 7:
Left: ncar-uniformity; right: ncar-polarity.
In this way the imagery associated with the lines of force
performs an indispensable interpretive function: it reveals the
character called "polarity" as a geometrical one (since it has
�July, 1979
to do only with the pattern of disposition of the lines) and at
the same time makes matter quite irrelevant to the question
of the origin of the lines of force. This no longer takes us by
surprise; we are becoming accustomed to the idea of the
equality of matter and force, and so we no longer look to the
former for an explanation of the latter.
The view of magnetic matter as conductive, and especially
the interpretation in these terms of diamagnetism, leads to
highly interesting questions regarding the role of space. For
under the image of conducting power, of different degrees of
gathering or dispersing of the lines, space itself becomes a
conductor; for it stands midway between paramagnetic and
diamagnetic materials. One of Faraday's early classifications
of materials in their magnetic order from paramagnetic to
diamagnetic lists "vacuum" (that is, space 7 ) right in the middle (2424):
Figure 8
Is "mere space" magnetic? There is no doubt that it is a
conductor and in this respect it does not differ in kind from
0°
Iron
Nickel
Cobalt
Manganese
Palladium
Crown-glass
Platinum
Osmium
Air and Vacuum
Arsenic
Ether
Alcohol
Gold
Water
Mercury
Flint-glass
Tin
Heavy-glass
Antimony
Phosphorus
Bismuth
This serial order of magnetic power was ascertained by repeated "pointing" experiments of the kind I first described.
The image of gathering-power interprets what experiment had
already shown; that the "paramagnetic" or ~<diamagnetic" behavior of materials is relative to the surrounding medium in
which they are immersed. Any material will appear
paramagnetic, that is, it will move towards the concentrations
of force, if it is placed in a medium having poorer gathering
ability than itself-look at Figure 8 to see this-for then the
lines of force flock to the sample and, if constraints permit,
orient both it and themselves so that the greatest number of
them may pass for the greatest distance along the superior
conductor. Likewise any material will appear diamagnetic if it
is placed in a medium which has greater gathering ability
than itself (2348). Even a bubble of air or vacuum, if suspended in or adjacent to another material, can be made to
exhibit at will either of these two magnetic characters.
iron or bismuth, standing as it does midway between them!
But is space really a middle degree, itself a kind of material?
Or is it a zero state, falling between the two great classes of
materials but belonging to neither of them?
Whether space should be counted as one of the materials is
a question which, I think, Faraday was never able to ask in a
"practical" way to -his own satisfaction. His views shifted tentatively over a seven-year period. In 1845, for example,-the
year of the pointing experiments, he declares himself unwilling to follow the experimental intimations that would include
space as one of the materials:
Such a view ... would make·mere space magnetic,
and precisely to the same degree as air and gasses.
Now though it may very well be, that space, air, and
gasses, have the same general relation to magnetic
force, it seems to me a great additional assumption
to suppose that they are all absolutely magnetic,
rather than to suppose they are all in a normal or
zero state. (2440)
The possibility of a material interpretation of space is there,
I believe him to be saying, but the experiment lacks the compellingly luminous character which would present the image
directly to us. It remains only a "great additional assumption." In 1850, no new experimental articulations of the
question having been achieved, he is even stronger in his insistence that space is a state between materials, and not a
material itself. He says, "mere space cannot act as matter
acts" (2787). But what is this "acting" power which matter
has but space cannot have, and in the name of which we are
asked to hold back from embracing a world-picture which is
through-and-through material? Faraday has already undercut
the Newtonian notions of matter's alleged power to originate
force-why does he hold on to a supposed power of gathering
it?
He needs another experiment. Not the so-called "crucial"
experiment that purports to decide between alternative
7
�The College
theories, but an interpretive, illuminating experiment which
was really the only kind Faraday ever performed: an experiment that will teach us how to talk about space (3159).
Such an experiment Faraday never found, but I believe he
did find enough to cause him to cool somewhat in his defense
of the uniqueness of space. In 1852 he delivered what was, I
think, his last word on the subject: "Experimentally mere
space is magnetic" (p. 443). But the experiments did not
satisfy, for though they were brilliantly successful at putting
into practice some of our dearest questions about magnetism,
A wire loop or ring thrust over the end of a bar magnet
"cuts" lines of force, which lines emerge in all radial direc-
tions from the bar. A current, detected by a galvanometer,
acts in one direction when the ring is placed over the magnet;
in the opposite direction when removed (308 5). Suppose this
ring were placed like a wedding ring at the magnetic equator
of the bar-position B in Fig. I 0-having initially resided at
-----
A
they left this one-the question of the materiality of spaceawkward, merely verbal, hovering about the regions of
Hypothesis but never bursting into the strength of Vision.
The experiments I mean are those clustering about the
phenomena of the Moving Wire, which will constitute our
next section.
/
I
I
IV. The Moving Wire
As I have so far described it, the evolution of the line of
force as a symbol has been the result of experiments which
disclosed the various shapes, groupings, and courses of the
lines (3234, 3237). With the Twenty-eighth Series of researches, Faraday turns our vision toward their quantity, their
number, and above all their power (3070, 3073).
"The Moving Wire" is Faraday's name for a device, or
class of devices, which make manifest the magnetic production of electricity. He had experimented with it in his earliest
researches•, long before he began to employ the Line of
Force as an interpretive image. Now his return to the topic
after an intermission of twenty years is distinguished with a
series of exercises that depend upon the image of the line of
force for their very design. One of the earliest such exercises
. is this one (Fig. 9):
Figure 10
some distant point A. The ring would cut, exactly once,
nearly all the lines of force which emerge from the ll1agnet
(3102, 3133).
Now the galvanometer, by which the currents of electricity
are indicated, was already understood by Faraday to be an
instrument which indicates the quantity of electricity evolved
in its circuit (361-366); and provided that the electricity fully
completes its action before the (slow-moving) galvanometer
needle has departed very far from its original position, the
needle will be hurled to a maximum deflection, according to
the amount of electricity evolved (3103-3105). The galvanometer is therefore a kind of bucket in which quantities of
electricity, which may in fact have been evolved not all at
once but in succession, can be collected together into one
single action.
\
\
/
/
./
/
I
11
I
'""
,,,
r
three times and so on upon the magnet, the galvanometer
would indicate the amounts of electricity evolved by these
' \.
'-
'--
I
~
\
8
unit of counting. If the ring were placed quickly once, twice,
l
{
\
(Adapted from Faraday).
the ring upon the equator of the magnet cuts the same
number of lines of force, and this number thus becomes a
I
\
Figure 9:
When, therefore, I first read Faraday's account of the
bar-magnet and equatorial ring I thought I could guess the
use to which it would be put. For each instance of placing
l
multiple actions, respectively. The galvanometer-and-ring by
this means would become "calibrated" in units of lines of
force. The apparatus would become an instrument with
which we would, in principle, "count" the lines of force of
any magnet; or we could count the number of lines of force
which inhabit any region through which the wire can be
made to move.
This "calibration" experiment was indeed performed by
Faraday, but only to confirm a relation that he had already
found out about in a different way. This relation was that the
quantity of electricity evolved is exactly proportional to the
�July, 1979
number of lines of force cut by the moving wire in its transit.
Now in the modern, axiomatic formulation of electrodynamics this law, the "Law of Electromagnetic Induction," as it came to be called, appears as one of the four
cardinal principles of that science, much as do Newton's
Laws appear in the science of mechanics. Nevertheless, for
Faraday the proportionality is regarded not so much for its
magnitude as for its meaning: it is a "principle" not because
of the testable consequences which follow from it, but it is a
"principle" in the sense of being the totally revealing form
under which the magnet displays itself. What I mean is that,
if a quantity of electricity is strictly proportional to a quantity
of magnetic lines, then each line may be acGounted responsible for a determinate share of the total effect; and the lines of
force come to be seen, for the first time, as agents, each exercising a determinate power.
The moving wire experiments are experiments of power,
and with these experiments the lines of force come before us
under a new and pressing image, that is as axes of power. The
power of the magnet resides in the lines of force, and moreover
it is through the electrical exercise of this very power that the
moving wire is able to count them so faithfully. For the electrical activity in the wire, Faraday thinks, is not a mere signature or concomitant of the magnetic force, but is itself the
equivalent in power to that force which constitutes the magnetic system. He writes:
When [the wire] is moved across the lines of force, a
current of electricity is developed in it, or tends to be
developed; and I have every reason to believe, that if
we could employ a perfect conductor, and obtain a
perfect result, it would be the full equivalent to the
force, electric or magnetic, which is exerted in the
place occupied by the conductor. {3270)
The interpretive consequences of the growing image of
power as the essence of the magnet are immense. Through
the moving wire, power is revealed directly in the form of
power; moreover, it is shown to occupy place, for the force
which the moving wire brings to light is exerted, not at a
distance, but in the very place occupied by the conductor!
The magnetic power is not to be thought of as an endowment
of the material of the magnet but is proportionally distributed
throughout the places about it. The power resides in the lines
of force, and each line is the locus of a constant action which
is neither lost nor diminished with distance. The system of
lines extends to indefinite size and therefore-contrary to
action-at-a-distance theories-the magnet does not act
"where it is not," for it is everywhere.
The images of power are the first fruits of the moving wire
and in fact the final experimental interpretation of the magnet
will be obtained under this imqge. But the moving wire is
also a probe of great subtlety which can illuminate even the
conditions existing within the interior of the magnet; a place
from where iron filings are necessarily excluded. The moving
------~~-------
'
'
~
'
''
/
I
''
''
''
'
Figure II
wire can disclose the fate of the lines of force when they enter
the magnet. Here, if anywhere, the question concerning the
relation between the magnet and its own lines of force will be
met.
As one of a series of experiments which route the galvanometer wire through passages made in the interior of the
magnet, Faraday constructs this arrangement, in which a
loop is guided down the axis of the bar, emerging at the
equator {Fig. II). It is thus partly interior and partly exterior
to the bar. When the whole apparatus is revolved, no current
is produced to the galvanometer, although the external part of
the wire is certainly cutting lines of force (I should explain
that Faraday previously showed that the lines remain stationary, even when the bar revolves). "We must look," Faraday
says therefore, "to the part of the wire within the magnet, for
a power equal to that capable of being exerted externally, and
we find it in that small portion which represents a radius at
the central and equatorial parts" (3116).
When this radial portion of the internal wire-which I
have labeled aE in the sketch-is revolved, it produces a current equal to and opposite to that which the exterior wire
produces when it alone is revolved (3116). Since the current
is equal, it must be that all of the lines of force external to the
magnet must therefore continue through into the interior of
the magnet, and, moreover, continue in directions parallel to
the axis, such that they can be cut by the radius wire! Furthermore, since the current evolved is opposite we can conclude that the direction of the lines from north to south exterior to the bar is continued unchanged within. For example, if the loop is at the north end, the magnetic action
from north to south passes from inside to outside the loop, in
those portions exterior to the magnet. To produce an opposite
current in the interior, the action must pass from outside to
inside the loop-simply a continuation of the direction of the
external line of force! I will quote Faraday's summary:
So, by this test there exists lines of force within the
magnet of the same nature as those without. What is
more, they are exactly equal ~n amount to those
without; and in fact are continuations of them, absolutely unchanged in their nature, so far as experimental test can be applied to tl1em. Every line of
force therefore, at whatever distance it may be taken
from the magnet, must be considered a closed circuit, passing in some part of its course through the
9
�The College
magnet, and having an equal amount of force in
every part of its course. (3ll7)
of the materiality of space are all taken up into a single powerful image, the most comprehensive, and yielding the most
explicit interpretation of the magnet. This image is the System of Power, and it is most completely set forth in Faraday's
paper titled "On the Physical Character of the Lines of Magnetic Force . " 10 This paper is, by itself, such a high and
humane model of scientific rhetoric and teaching, as to be
the most rewarding conclusion to this history.
V. The System of Power
N
Through the action of the moving wire, the magnetic line
of force was carried to its highest development as a symbol.
1D be not
onlythe moving wire magnet's exterior line of but the sign of
the locus of the has disclosed the
--=~~~~-~~i~~~~~~~~~~~-~~==~=-Forinterior condition as well. The line action, forceunchanged
its
of force is
in its nature, whether we view that part of it which resides
within the iron bar, or its continuation outward into the sur-
rounding places; power resides equally in both phases of the
Figure 12
The lines of magnetic force are closed loops. They have no
beginning or end. They only appear to rise and to terminate
at the extremities of a magnet, but we now see (Fig. 12) that
they are continued uninterruptedly within, compressed together but unchanged in nature. This is the same condition
as was represented, in the case of a material which was not
itself a magnet but which was subject to the action of an
external magnetic field, by the image of gathering power. 9
There is no longer any obvious fountain or sink of the lines,
such as was postulated by the theory of poles or magnetic
fluids, and therefore there is no longer any reason-or even
any possibility-to identify the place of appearance of the
lines with the cause of their existence. In the sense of limited
centers or active origins of the lines of force, "poles" do not
exist! (3289). The word "polarity" retains a meaning, but it is
a geometrical meaning only, marking the sense of direction to
and from along the lines, and distinguishing the places of
concentration of the lines as they enter a new medium.
Accordingly, the relation which the magnet (l should say,
the iron) has to its own lines of force does not seem to be any
different from the relation which the surrounding medium
has to its lines of force, that is, the relation of a conductor.
To be sure, we do usually want to think of the iron as somehow the active cause of the lines, and this conventional view
was given perfect expression in the theory of poles. But now
that notion is rendered untenable or at any rate occult: as we
find there is nothing in the unfolding of the magnet's power
which gives any visible confirmation to the idea that ponderable matter is "originative" of the lines of force. What the
magnet's relation to its lines is, has not become a settled question; but it is growing in its status as a question that can be
asked in practice. Through the Moving Wire, first, the unfolding of this relation, second, the rendition of "conducting
power" as geometrical in content, and third, the articulation
lO
line of force. Therefore we must not suppose that division of
the magnet into an "inner" or iron portion and an "outer" or
air portion is a division between the active and the passive .. The
inner, iron, part of the magnet is not the active origin of the
magnetic power; nor is the surrounding space the passive stage
whereon the magnet displays its peculiar action.
The outer medium, no less than the iron, is essential to the
magnet and defines what Faraday calls the system or atmosphere of power (p. 402). The family of closed magnetic
curves filling and surrounding a bar magnet constitutes an
atmosphere whose shape is that of a solid of rotation-really a
nest of surfaces of rotation-about the bar's axis. This interesting shape Faraday calls "sphondyloid," from the Greek
word for "beetle" (Fig. 13).
~----
Figure 13:
c
-----------------------B
--~
--- -,
"Sphondyloid."
"All the phenomena of the moving wire," Faraday writes,
"seem to me to show the physical existence of an atmosphere
of power about a magnet, which, as the power is antithetical,
and marked in its direction by the lines of magnetic force,
may be considered as disposed in sphondyloids, determined
by the lines or rather shells afforce': (3271).
The sphondyloid form is characteristic and exemplary.
Even those magnetic systems which do not display the
sphondyloid shape have forms which can be viewed as distortions and transformations of it. The atmosphere about a
spherical magnet, for example, comprises lines of force whose
�July, 1979
will be a corresponding irregularity imposed
angles of refraction are rather gentler than those of a hard,
well-charged bar magnet; the shape of the atmosphere is
somewhat stubby by comparison, but in it the characteristic
sphondyloid structure can readily be perceived. Another example is the horseshoe-magnet, which is really just a barmagnet bent into a U-shape. Bending the bar produces a cor-
upon the pattern of distribution of power; and the
sphonydyloid (or whatever shape) will distend, indicating by
this the new equilibria of power that have been set up within
the system (Fig. 15). Faraday writes: "if a piece of cold iron
responding distortion in the shape of the atmosphere, a comi-
by air or even mere space, there is a concentration of Jines of
cal one, I think: it turns the sphondyloid inside out (Fig. 14).
force onto it and more power is transmitted through the space
magnet, there
. . . is introduced into a magnetic field, previously occupied
thus occupied than if the paramagnetic body were not
there. . . . A new disposition of the force arises; for some
passes now where it did not pass before, being removed from
places where it was previously transmitted" (3279).
In the old rhetoric of action-at-a-distance one would have
described that event as an action between two bodies~the
magnet acting upon (attracting) the iron sample. But here,
one speaks not of the action of a magnet upon another body
but of the coming-to-be of an irregularity in the atmosphere,
the transformation of the sphondyloid into some other unnamed but perfectly definite shape. The subsequent motion
of the intruding iron sample is viewed, not as a passive submission to the magnet's force, but as non-equilibrium. The
original sphondyloid and its various distortions are like forms
of a soap-bubble. Ordinarily the spherical shape of a soapbubble is stable, just as the sphondyloid magnetic atmosphere
is stable. But if the bubble is stretched or elongated a new
disposition of tension arises in the surface; and the offending
Figure 14:
Lettered regions correspond to those of the Sphondyloid in the
previous figure.
body, if unconstrained, will tend to be drawn back into the
bubble as the latter regains, so far as possible, its spherical
shape. In just the same way that the shape of a bubble indicates the conditions of stress and strain within itself, so does
the shape of the magnetic atmosphere stand as the visible
symbol of the plurality-a plurality of relations but not of
agents~that
constitutes the magnetic system.
The magnet resolves itself into Form and Material in a way
quite independent of the nature of its iron or other ponderable "inner" medium. The true magnetic material is not iron
or nickel or anything other than power, and this power is a
magnitude possessing quantity and location just as much as
any ponderable body does. The power is disposed in an atmosphere of lines or surfaces of force whose presence and
number are displayed by the Moving Wire. It is because the
lines or surfaces are continuous and because they, not intersecting, contain one another, that we are permitted to speak
Figure 15
So the shape of the tangible core of magnetic material has
much to do with the form of the magnetic atmosphere, but as
Faraday says, "the condition and relation of the surrounding
medium has an essential and evident influence" (3274).
One change that can be made in the surrounding medium
is to introduce an inhomogeneity into it. If this is done, for
example by bringing a piece of iron into the vicinity of the
so emphatically of shape. The magnetic atmosphere has
shape and place in an Aristotelian way, that is by containing
and being contained.
Shape in this sense is independent of size. As a System of
Power, the magnet has shape without size, and I mean this in
two different ways. The first way that the atmosphere has
shape without size is in that it is a nest of forms (Fig. 16).
Now many bodies have shape only "on their surfaee"-think
of a marble statue, for example. We imagine that if we could
plunge into its substance, we would have left form behind,
and that everywhere beneath its surface there is only undifferentiated stuff. Not so the sphondyloid of power. Like an
onion, or like the figures of Silenus, each of which contains
another within itself, its form extends throughout all of its
ll
�The College
Figure 16:
"Dissection" of sphondyloid.
parts. Beneath every surface there is another, for it is a nest of
surfaces rather than a solid with a surface. No matter how
much or how little of the atmosphere we look at, form is
present. And this is the first way.
The second way in which a magnet has shape without size
is that it has no inherent size. An isolated magnet would be of
infinite extent, for there is no container or surface of accumulation of magnetic power so long as the magnet is absolutely
alone (3255). (In another place, Faraday calls empty space
"the great abyss" for lines of force [2852].) Every magnet is,
potentially, an infinite body; yet its atmosphere of power can
be compressed, contained, and distorted by other systems of
magnetic power. If a small bar-magnet is immersed in a
strong, alien magnetic field-such as the Earth's-and if it is
constrained so that its poles face toward the like poles of the
exterior magnet, from which poles they would normally repel;
then the two atmospheres will not mix, and the first will be
virtually contained in the second; as though it were a drop of
oil contained in a volume of water (Fig. 17).
power of the system, however contained or bent, remains the
same. In the case of the small atmosphere contained by the
larger one Faraday declares: "I have no doubt ... that the
sphondyloid representing the total power, which in the experiment ... had a sectional area of not two square inches in
surface, would have equal power upon the moving wire with
that infinite sphondyloid which would exist if the magnet
were in free space" (3275).
We are now in possession of the final experimental interpretation. A magnet represents a fixed and constant body of
power. Like that of a volume of gas, the distribution of this
power has no inherent size, but it can be given size by confinement. In a manner very much unlike a gas, however, the
magnetic atmosphere, a structure comprising shells or surfaces, has shape throughout itself; and this shape, though
tending to secure its own geometry, can be penetrated and
distorted by other magnetic systems. Tangible material is not
what defines a magnet. The iron in a bar-magnet is only a
sort of skeleton: it is the magnetic atmosphere, the sphondyloid of power, that can be named the body of the magnet,
and so revealed the magnet stands forth as an infinite elastic
corporeal extension, variable as to shape but incorruptible as
to power. That a magnetic system has corporeality independent of its skeleton of ponderable matter is the capstone of the
discoveries of the Moving Wire.
The magnet is above all a geometrical body, neither n1atter
nor space. Geometry resides not in a fictitious empty space,
but in the articulate extensive continuum; and the magnetic
articulation of this is what has been brought to sight. The
magnetic world is a new geometrical world, shapely, visible,
and fluid.
Epilog: The World-Traveler
N
Figure 17
In the figure the dotted curve AB represents the boundary
between the two magnetic systems. Though the space be ever
so densely filled with lines of force, there will always remain
such a curve as AB which divides all the lines of the smaller
atmosphere from all the lines of the larger. And the total
12
There are two questions, each of which leads to an aspect
of Faraday's scientific practice which is distinguished and excellent. They are, "What is rhetoric?" and, "What is experience?"
In my section called "The Image" I narrated the course of
appearance of space among the magnetic materials. Under
one view of. this appearance, space is to be considered the
neutral, passive ground through which materials-the only
true agents-relate to and interact with one another. According to a second representation, which I have associated with
Faraday's use of the Moving Wire, the division between space
and matter is subverted; and along with that the seat of natural power is ascribed not to isolated material centers but rather
to the great continuum of extension, with respect to which
the former "active centers" become only the boundaries.
These views differ in imagery. They do not differ in predictive power. Insofar as they are able to generate predictions at
all, the two views are indistinguishable. Their predictions are
the same. There is a current of thinking which holds that,
therefore, the two views are the, same: that it is their testable
content which constitutes their entire standing as scientific
pronouncements, and the additional differences between
�July, 1979
them are only, as Hertz once wrote, "the gay garment" in
which we clothe them. 11
But I will affirm the contrary, that it is the image, and
nothing else, which carries our knowledge of the object. It is
the image which tries to reveal what the object is. The following out of one image into another is rhetoric. The evolution
of the image of space as a passive ground, into the image of
space as a conductor among conductors is a rhetorical
achievement-it is exactly insofar as an account is deliberately and faithfully rhetorical that the account is scientific.
Natural science is rhetoric.
Earlier in this talk I labeled as the "manifesto" of the scientific laboratory, a pronouncement that symbols come into science through "experience." It is important to emphasize the
artfulness through which this experience is gained, for the
experience of which I speak is to be contrasted with the experience gained by, say, a world-traveler. There is a sort of
traveler, of whom let me take Gulliver or Herodotus as examples, whose experience is gained artlessly. They find themselves in a place and report what has happened. They return
with stories, legends, even with what might be called factsall of them of a new and strange character, which is why we
are so eager to hear about them.
What kind of thing do these experiences go to make up?
The answer is already seen in the relation which these "artless" storytellers have to their own stories-they carry them
back with them in the same way that they would carry back
riches and gifts from the far land. At home, the stories are
assembled into a picture, a mosaic; they depict the world for
us. This world that is depicted has its most important character in being large and therefore, for the most part, distant. It
is varied. And it stays put whilst we come and go. This last
points to the most important effect that travel stories have
upon us, for they incite us to give up the feeling that our
"place" is our immediate (Aristotelian) container. Thus the
contiguity between the storyteller and where he is, is lost; and
the first ground is cleared for the appearance of that duality
between the self and the world, of which thinkers have made
so much.
So. I am claiming that the "artless" encounters of travelers
are of a type, and that they go to articulate an order which
comprises knowing selves and objects. The objects are always
at a distance, the speech all on the part of the selves, and the
objects wait to be described. It so happens that there is one
traveler who is anything but artless and does not fit this picture; that is Odysseus. Faraday is like Odysseus. 12
Faraday's journey is a journey of sight, speech, and image.
Home is a world that is knowable and known, a world
enriched by powers newly brought to light. These powers are
not monsters like Polyphemus, that they must be tamed and
controlled by gods, wiles, or magic; and likewise Faraday's art
is neither magical, devious, nor divine. Faraday's rhetorical
art establishes an occasion in which the distance between an
act of speech and the things spoken about may become absolutely minimal. The result of this is that, under his art, the
things transform so as to become more articulate. They do
not become other than they are, or more perfect (his ex-
perimental art is not that of "eliminating errors'')-they only
become more articulate.
This scientific activity may also be compared to what we
may imagine of the philosopher who returns to the cave 13 .
He does not tell travel-stories-about the perfect world there
and the degenerate here. He does not scoff and deride. He
does not jeer, "Your fire is trash compared to Fire." What he
does is tell stories and legends that enable us to see Fire in
fire. We then love it, as one loves the Beautiful in the beloved. It is not the man who has seen perfection that mistreats
the world, it is the ignorant man who thinks things are merely
what they are, mere givens, pragmata, facts.
The hero's return from the land of the sun at once elevates
and shames. The two are forever connected! Most people
read the hero's return as destructive, in that the cave is to be
judged by an impossible high standard; but such fears are appropriate only when the hero returns from another world literally. When the perfect is not "other" but is seen in the
object at hand, then does the object have meaning and value;
and one who has gained this vision acts, not bestially and
tyrannically, but honorably and well.
I. Thomas King Simpson, A Critical Study of Maxwell's Dynamical--Theory
of the Electromagnetic Field in the "Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism,"
Diss., Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University, 1968. Available through
University Microfilms, Ann Arbor. For other important studies on Faraday,
Maxwell, and electromagnetism in general: "Faraday's Thought on Electromagnetism," The College 22, 2, Annapolis: St. John's College, July 1970;
"Some Observations on Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism,"
Hist. Phil. Sci., 1, 3, 1970; "Maxwell and the Direct Experimental Test of
His Electromagnetic Theory," Isis 57, 4 (number 190), 1966.
2. Plato, Phaedrns, 275 B.
3. Michael Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity, 3 volumes,
London: Bernard Quaritch, 1839 and New York: Dover, 1965. References in
parentheses are to article number unless otherwise indicated.
4. In the context in which this remark is introduced by Faraday, it has in
part the function of justifying the image of the line of force, the most visual of
all of Faraday's images.
5. Faraday, "On Some Points of Magnetic Philosophy," Philosophical
Magazine, February 1855. Appears as articles 3300-3362, Exp. Res.
6. Faraday states the theory here, but he does not ascribe it to Coulomb
until article 3307. See also Charles Coulomb, "Sur I'Eiectricit€: et le
Magnetisme-2e Memoire" (1785}, Collection de Memoires, Paris: Societe
Franpise de Physique 1, 1884, 116.
7. Faraday frequently, but not uncritically, uses the words "space" and "vacuum" interchangeably. See especially articles 2784 and 2787.
8. Faraday, Exp. Res., article 36, November 1831.
9. Compare Figure 12 with Figure 6.
Hi. Philosophical Magazine, June 1852. Appears as articles 3243-3299, Exp.
Res.
ll. Heinrich Hertz, Electric Waves, trans. D. E. Jones, London: Macmillan,
1893, 28.
12. Simpson, A Critical Study.
13. Plato, Republic, 519 D.
13
�Odysseus
Among the Phaiakians
William O'Grady
When Odysseus awakens alone on Ithaka after an absence
of twenty years, the land looks strange to him and he fears
that he has been betrayed by the Phaiakians, who promised to
take him home. Odysseus says, "Come, let me count my
goods and look them over," lest something have been taken
away. "So speaking, he counted up the surpassingly beautiful
tripods and caldrons, and the gold and all the fine woven
clothing. Of these things nothing at all was missing." Having
returned home, Odysseus needs to know what he has brought
with him, what he has to offer. The most important things,
the things he most cares about, the things he must possess if
he is again to be husband to Penelope, father to Telemachus,
son to Laertes, king to his people, are not things that can be
counted and looked over. Still, there is some solace in count-
ing what can be counted, and finding that of these nothing is
lacking. But in the measure that Odysseus is able to trust that
he has also managed to return home with what is most impor-
tant, with a heart that is whole and brave, he is greatly indebted to the Phaiakians, the people of Scheria, among
whom he stayed for three days. They are indebted to him as
well, as I shall try to show. My attempt here is to understand
something of what happens while Odysseus is among the
Phaiakians.
Odysseus' encounter with the Phaiakians immediately prior
to his homecoming is not a chance encounter. Two assemblies of the gods on Olympus (recounted in books one
and five) have been held to arrange that his return, which is
clearly a big and difficult matter, should come about in the
right way. In particular, both when Athena comes to
Nausikaa in the form of a dream, bidding her to think of her
marriage and to do her laundry, and when Athena herself
goes through the city calling the Phaiakians to assembly, she
is said by Homer to be "devising the return of great-hearted
Odysseus." The assembly culminates with Odysseus weeping
boundless tears as he hears the story of the fall of Troy. We
must try to understand in what way the encounter with
Nausikaa is important for Odysseus, supplies him with something needful; and, we must try to understand the meaning of
the tears shed by Odysseus as he hears his greatest victory
sung. The premise of my attempt to understand is that according to Homer the gods sometimes make available to
human beings what they need most.
That Odysseus' needs as he comes to the land of the Phaiakians are urgent and delicate appears most vividly in this
A lecture read at Santa Fe on January 12, 1979.
l4
simile describing his shelter during the first night. "As when a
man buries a firebrand beneath the dark embers in a remote
place where there are no neighbors, and saves the seed of fire,
having nowhere else from which to kindle fire, so Odysseus
buried himself in the leaves." The fire has almost died in
Odysseus; only a seed remains from which however the full
blaze of fire might grow again. But if the seed dies, there is
no other source from which fire might be kindled. And this
seed has come to be, in a strange way, outside of Odysseus:
he must dispose of it, protect it, care for it, in an anxiously
self-conscious way.
Odysseus and Nausikaa are together only twice, the second
time very briefly. Nausikaa asks Odysseus to remember her,
since he owes her his life. Odysseus, promising to remember
her always, uses a different and extraordinary word:--"You
have given me my human life" (the difference in Greek between bios and zoe). One could almost translate: "You have
en-humaned me." Odysseus means, to begin with, that when
he first saw Nausikaa in her loveliness and innocence he
knew for certain that the world does not contain only, or even
chiefly, monsters. He has, after all, seen so many monsters
that as he swims toward the island of Scheria Athena must
specially intervene to supply him with presence of mind
when, afraid of being dashed against the sharp rocks or,
again, of being carried farther out to sea, a third fear suddenly
rises up-a monster may appear. Thus the wholly convincing
gentleness of Nausikaa's appearance is immeasurably important. But even more important, perhaps, is a discovery Odys-
seus is led to make about himself. He hears himself saying to
Nausikaa: "I have never seen anything like you, neither man
nor woman. Wonder takes me as I look on you. Yet in Delos
once I saw such a thing, by Apollo's altar. I saw the stalk of a
young. palm shooting up. I had gone there once, and with a
following of a great many people, on that journey which was
to mean hard suffering for me. And as, when I looked upon
that tree, my heart admired it long, since such a tree had
never yet sprung up from the earth, so now, lady, I admire
you and wonder." Not only is Nausikaa herself invincibly
lovely and innocent, but she reminds of other lovely and innocent things seen long ago and almost forgotten: there have
always been such things in the world. Above all, Odysseus
becomes aware that just as long ago-so much violence ago
and so much hideousness ago-his heart was capable of responding in awe and gratitude to the appearance of lovely and
innocent things, wholly without reference to how they might
be useful to him; so now his heart is capable of the same: it is
somehow the same heart. This is a very difficult thing to
�July, 1979
know, and it is the sort of thing that human beings, sometimes, most need to know. This is the deepest meaning,
perhaps, of Odysseus' gratitude to Nausikaa for having been
an indispensable source of his human life.
Athena in arousing Nausikaa to go to the river where she
will meet Odysseus is said to be devising the return of Odysseus. The very same words are used as she summons the
Phaiakians to assembly. Why is the assembly, described in
book eight, of such importance for Odysseus, even before he
begins to tell his story? Near the beginning of the meeting
Odysseus weeps, though he tries to conceal it, as he hears the
minstrel sing of a quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus.
Then athletic contests take place, and Odysseus' heart seems
to lighten. After his victory in throwing the discus, he speaks
"in language more blithe," as Lattimore translates. Again,
Odysseus seems to share fully in the enjoyment of all the
Phaiakians as Demodicus sings of the adultery of Aphrodite
with Ares, although this enjoyment is perhaps not altogether
easy to understand. (The gods are of course immortal, so that
their doings always seem somehow comic, but here Hephaestus is so pained as to utter the wish that he had not been born;
moreover, Poseidon's urgent attempts, apparently inspired by
compassion for Hephaestus, to bring to an end the unseemly
spectacle of the vulgar laughter of Apollo and Hermes, remind us disconcertingly that Poseidon is other and more than
the mere persecutor of Odysseus.)
After these incidents, and before he reveals his name,
Odysseus weeps again, but this time in a vastly deeper and
wider way, as he hears the song, which he himself requested
of the strategem of the horse and the fall of Troy. What do
these tears mean? How have they come about? Is it good that
Odysseus should shed them? Before trying to understand this
happening, let us listen to a translation of Homer's astounding words: "So the famous singer sang his tale, but Odysseus
melted, and from under his eyes the tears ran down, drenching his cheeks. As a woman weeps, lying over the body of her
dear husband, who fell fighting for his city and people, as he
tried to beat off the pitiless day from city and children; she
sees him dying and gasping for breath, and winding her body
around him she cries high and shrill, while the men behind
her, hitting her with their spears on the back and shoulders,
force her up and lead her away into slavery to have hard work
and sorrow, and her cheeks are wracked with pitiful weeping.
So Odysseus shed piteous tears from under his brows."
The earlier tears, the tears over the quarrel with Achilles
who has died, are perhaps not too difficult to understand. But
what of these final tears, necessary before Odysseus can name
himself? How can the tears of the victor be likened to the
tears of the vanquished, the tears of the sacker of cities to the
tears of a woman trying to hold on to her dying husband,
which she cannot, to shelter him from further blows from his
enemies, which she cannot?
I think the pain in Odysseus' soul at this moment has two
sources. The first has to do with Odyssesus' request to the
singer that he sing Kosmos hippou which means, to begin
with, the ornament of the horse, the device of the horse, the
horse as the product of resourcefulness, artfulness, cleverness,
the horse as the manifestation of wit and talent considered in
isolation from all else. But Kosmos hippou, as the singer well
knows and truthfully sings, means finally and fully the world
of the horse, the world out of which the horse came to be,
the world of prodigious single-mindedness, of goals to which
all else becomes subject, of the breaching of Troy as the end,
an end justifying all things, including the perversion of worship represented by the horse. Again, the world of the horse is
the world the horse leads to, the fall of a holy city, the
broken-heartedness, homelessness and utter forlornness of
Andromache. Odysseus weeps because he is deeply implicated in the perversion of high things and in vast human suf-
fering, and because his delight in the play and display of his
own incomparable resourcefulness has in some way distracted
his attention from what he has been implicated in.
But this sorrow felt by Odysseus, a deeper sorrow perhaps
than most human beings ever know, is not the deepest sorrow
felt by Odysseus, who has come to Scheria from the island of
Calypso, where deathlessness and agelessness are available to
human beings. The deepest and widest sorrow that Odysseus
feels, which somehow makes bearable all that is involved in
facing his responsibility for the fall of a city whose men and
women also prayed to Zeus, is sorrow over a world-the
world of mortals-in which all dear things perish and in
which all attempts to shelter those dear things are doomed to
failure; which attempts, however, except in the eyes orutterly
base human beings, are never objects of scorn or condescensiOn.
The breadth and impartiality of Odysseus' sorrow shows itself again in book twenty-three. When Odysseus and
Penelope are finally in their bed together, and after they have
made love, Odysseus tells stories. He begins after the fall of
Troy, and what he tells is "all cares, both so many as he had
placed upon human beings and so many as he himself, sorrowing, toiled through."
As Odysseus weeps these tears in which the whole mortal
world is bathed, Alkinous, king of the Phaiakians, asks Demodicus to cease from singing, and tells Odysseus that the
time has come for the stranger to reveal his name. But Alkinous, who surely suspects strongly that this stranger is Odysseus, in whom Poseidon is going to be exceptionally interested, if he is in the fate of any storm-driven wanderer,
"digresses" remarkably. After requiring of Odysseus that he
declare his name, he recounts what he has heard from his
father, namely that some day Poseidon, angry with the Phaiakians for giving conveyance to some man, will turn the re-
turning ship to stone and surround the city with a great wall
to hide it. Alkinous gives Odysseus a chance to lie, to deny
that he is Odysseus, or at least to present himself as an Odysseus on good terms with Poseidon. At any rate, if Odysseus
does present himself as persecuted by Poseidon, he had better
have some great good thing to offer the Phaiakians, in gratitude for which this people would be willing to run a very
great risk-this people which has enjoyed, ever since its removal from the vicinity of the Cyclops who harried them savagely, a perfectly riskless existence; an existence, moreover,
requiring no patience: the fruit trees are always in season, and
15
�The College
human sorrows are understood to be fashioned by the gods
"so that there will be a song for men who are to come" -as if
to say: let's get the sorrows and the lives over with, so that the
song can begin.
And it turns out, after Odysseus has told his story, that it
seems to the Phaiakians that he has given them a great good
thing, namely, the most wonderful stories they or anyone else
and ending his life. The alternative, as he puts it to himself,
is not simply to go on living, but rather "to go on being
among men." All that Odysseus and his companions have
shared during ten years at Troy seems to stand revealed as
mutual infidelity: there is mistrust, jealousy and resentment at
ingratitude on the one side, and on Odysseus' side absentmindedness, lack of imagination and complacency. That
have ever heard; moreover, he has somehow brought them to
Odysseus brings these charges against himself is clear from
understand that it is not quite right for human beings who
live and choose to live a riskless existence to delight in stories
about human beings whose lives are full of risks. The Phaia-
two considerations: first, in narrating the adventure to the
kians somehow understand, when Odysseus has finished
Phaiakians, Odysseus speaks of the prospect of an early return
having been ruined by "our own folly;" and, second, Odys-
return, namely, conveyance to his homeland, regardless of
seus after the fact is able to reconstruct in his previously inattentive imagination the pained and resentful conversation
among his men which he did not hear because he was asleep.
Odysseus decides to endure in silence and remain, but he
the risk to themselves; but also that in order truly to possess
conceals himself (kaluptesthai) and withdraws, as, we under-
Odysseus' wonderful stories, genuinely to enter into them,
they themselves must run risks, must not lead an altogether
stand, do his men: no one has the heart to look anyone else
speaking, not only that sheer gratitude for a wonderful gift
requires that they try to give Odysseus some good thing in
sheltered-hence storyless-existence. And so they risk the
thing they love best, their access to the sea, for the sake of
Odysseus, and for their own sake. It is not entirely clear how
their risk turns out, partly because of a textual question: Zeus
says to Poseidon either "Turn the ship to stone but do not
surround the city with a mountain to hide it" or "Turn the
ship to stone and surround it with a huge mountain to hide
it" (in Greek the difference between mede and mega). But in
either case, we are told by Homer that Poseidon turned the
returning ship to stone "and then he went away."
in the face.
In what follows the aloneness of Odysseus is not spoken of,
but rather presented in three tableaux. When they come to
the island of the Lastrygonians, after the adventure of the
winds, the other nine ships drop anchor inside the harbor,
Odysseus' ship alone outside the harbor. On this island, as
again on the island of Circe, Odysseus alone climbs up to a
high place of outlook and there takes his stand, a solitary figure against the sky. But then, on the island of Circe, a sort of
miracle happens: as Odysseus is returning to the ship, "Some
one of the gods pitied me, being alone, and sent a great stag
with towering antlers right in my very path." Odysseus slays
the stag and, with much trouble on account of its size, man-
II.
Now let us consider for awhile the tales Odysseus tells to
the Phaiakians during the wondrously long night of the assembly. The tales are full of monsters of various kinds and it
is difficult for us to understand the status of these beings.
Perhaps it would be good for us to keep in mind Socrates'
statement in the Phaedrus that to know myself includes knowing whether I am a being as fierce and complicated as the
monster Typhon or one to whom a gentler and simpler na-
ture belongs-it seems difficult to speak of the human soul
without speaking of monsters of one kind or another.
But however uncertain we may be about what account to
give of the Cyclops, Skylla, the Sirens and others, Odysseus'
tale is never unintelligible to us. This is so, I think, because
centrally the tale is about human companionship, human
pain at its being fractured, and human joy at its being restored.
Let me try to sketch briefly what happens to this companionship in the tale he tells the Phaiakians from the Adventure
of the Bag of Winds to the Adventure of the Stag, and then
make a suggestion about how such stories co.me to take shape.
When Odysseus sleeps, and while his ships are within sight
of Ithaka, his companions open the bag given to Odysseus by
King Aolius and a hurricane drives the ships far from Ithaka.
Odysseus immediately considers throwing himself into the sea
16
ages to carry it back to the ship. And then "I threw him down
by the ship and roused my companions, standing beside each
man in turn and speaking to him in kind words: 'Dear
friends, sorry as we are, we shall not yet go down to the house
of Hades. Not until our day is appointed. Come then, while
there is something to eat and drink by the fast ship, let us
think of our food, and not be worn out with hunger.' So I
spoke, and they listened at once to me and obeyed me, and
unconcealing themselves (ek-kaluptesthai, the undoing of the
concealment and withdrawal resulting from the Adventure of
the Bag of Winds), along the shore of the unresting sea, they
wondered at the stag; for truly he was a very big beast. But
after they had looked at him, and their eyes had enjoyed him,
they washed their hands and set about preparing a communal
high feast."
Well, I think that it is not exactly the stag they are wondering at, big though it be, but rather, shyly, they are wondering
at the miracle of the restoration of companionship and the
possibility of communion that has somehow taken place.
A number of important events affecting their reconstituted
fellowship follow, events which show that not only has their
fellowship been re-constituted, but it has been constituted at a
deeper level. The next morning Odysseus addresses his men
in a way he has never addressed them before. He says that
none of them, including himself, knows the place of the rising of the sun or of its setting: they are deeply ignorant regarding the encompassing things. But perhaps, all the same, there
�July, 1979
is some metis, some device, some plan, says polumetis Odysseus, the man of many devices. Then he says: "But I do not
think so." Odysseus is at a loss, and says so out loud.
Events, however, arrange themselves, and Odysseus must
risk' emasculation, that is, in some way risk his relation to
Penelope for the sake of his men whom Circe has turned into
swine. This adventure has a happy ending, and Odysseus'
men, having feared that he was lost, tell him in winged
words, "0 great Odysseus, we are as happy to see you returning as if we had come back to our own Ithakan country." But
this moment is not enough. As Circe says to all of them_,
"Now you are all dried out, dispirited from the constant
thought of your hard wandering, nor is there any spirit in
your festivity, because of so much suffering."
Odysseus recognizes the truth of this: the companionship,
which is not forever, needs festive time spent together. And
Odysseus must let his companions tell him how much time is
necessary. They come to him at the end of a year spent on
Circe's island and say that the time has come to go. Once
more they make for home. But of course only Odysseus returnp.
The others perish at sea for having eaten the sacred cattle
of the Sun, after valiantly resisting this temptation for a long
time. In response to their urgent plea not to measure their
endurance by his own endurance, nor to ask of them that
they make his endurance their own measure, Odysseus wanders off while his companions choose likely death at sea over
starvation. Once again, Odysseus knows exactly what they say
to each other without having been present. He knows their
ways and respects their dignity. Above all, he has heard Elpenor, the youngest and most foolish of them all, who fell to
his death because of athesphatos oinos, "more wine than even
a god could say," pronounce his blessing upon the time "I
was among my companions."
Let me try to say a few words concerning this story Odysseus tells to the Phaiakians about his experiences in companionship in the middle of a world populated by monsters. How
does it become a story rather than a mere sequence of happenings? For me this question means especially: how does
Odysseus know that the appearing of the mighty stag was
brought about by some one of the gods-he does not say
which one-who pitied him because he was alone? For after
all, only on this "interpretation" of the appearing of the stag
does the stag become the beginning of reconciliation and the
restoration of communion. My suggestion would be that, although at tl1e time of this happening Odysseus was somehow
aware of its meaning, he comes to comprehend its full meaning only when he puts it into a story. I mean two things by
this. First, Odysseus does not describe his feelings of loneliness; rather, he describes one ship outside a harbor and nine
within, and a man twice taking his stand by himself on a high
place of outlook. Again, he describes himself and the others
withdrawing into concealment and emerging from concealment. Happenings seem to be more important than feelings
for story-telling.
But second, and more important, and in some way qualifying my first suggestion, I think it is of decisive importance
that Odysseus tells his story to Alkinous and Arete, not to
himself. It is probably true that important stories, true stories,
the narration of the truth of what happened, must be prepared in solitude: perhaps Odysseus could have said nothing
true about what happened if he had spent any fewer than
seven years in concealment with Calypso. But, I suggest, the
most important truths of any story are the truths we hear for
the first time as we tell the story to someone else, try to reach
his soul with our words, try to make him understand how it
was. I cannot, of course, prove this, but I firmly believe that
when Odysseus heard himself telling Alkinous and Arete that
the stag appeared because some one of the gods pitied him in
his aloneness, he knew immediately that this was the truth of
the matter, although he had never before said any such thing
to himself, even tentatively.
As we read in the first lines of the Odyssey, Odysseus suffered many sorrows deep in his heart struggling to achieve his
soul and the return of his companions. These two objects of
his striving seem to involve each other deeply. The return of
his companions turns out to be impossible. This impossibility
is rooted both in the nature of the world-the adverse winds
holding Odysseus and his companions on the island of the
Sun cannot change until the prohibition against eating the
sacred cattle has been violated; and in the nature of the
companions-as the encounter with the Lotus-eaters indicates, to become forgetful of one's return follows frOrTI~ not
being ready to bring back tidings: unlike Odysseus, his companions are not able in imagination and speech to make their
life before the departure to Troy and their life after that moment into one life~that is why they cannot return. But, as
the next line informs us, what Odysseus desired most of all
was to draw his companions to himself (erusthai). This was
his ultimate task in relation to them, as theirs was actively to
allow tl1emselvcs to be drawn to Odysseus. In this task both
Odysseus and his companions succeed. Their success receives
its perfect seal in Elpenor's words to Odysseus in the underworld, that is, from beyond life in which of course it is always
possible to re-appraise what has happened. Elpenor, the
youngest of Odysseus' companions, wholly affirms his life in
the companionship. He asks Odysseus to remember him, and
he asks that the oar with which he rowed be erected on his
burial mound as a memorial to the time when "I was among
my companions." These final words spoken by Elpenor, and
the affirmation they contain, render articulate and therefore
somehow bearable the sheer gesture which Odysseus describes
as "the most piteous sight my eyes beheld in my sufferings as
I questioned the ways of the sea": six of his companions
seized by Skylla reach out their hands toward an impotent
Odysseus and utter his name.
Let us leave Odysseus for now. He has many troubles still
to face when he reaches lthaka. But for now we can with
Homer be happy as the ship of the Phaiakians carries him
homeward: "She carried a man with a mind like the gods for
counsel, one whose spirit up to this time had endured much,
suffering many pains: the wars of men, hard crossing of the
big waters; but now he slept still, forgetful of all he had suffered."
17
�Kant's Empiricism
Arthur Collins
According to Kant, nature is the system of interconnected
spatia-temporal objects and events comprising the total range
of possible hum~m experience, and nature is the subject matter of all human knowledge. At the same time, nature is itself
a product of the activity of the human cognitive constitution,
and it would not exist at all were it not for human mental
activities. The mind creates nature. This is a summary expression of a radical subjectivist tendency in Kant's thought.
He says that we are affected by an unknown and unknowable
reality, and this provides a raw material that excites the operation of our various faculties. In particular, it activates the sensitive aspect of our cognitive constitution which organizes the
input as a system of "intuitions" in space and time, and it also
awakens the conceptualizing aspect of our mental makeup
which works up intuitions into representations of objects and
thus gives rise to conscious experience and to the realm of
objects of such experience. All of the objects with which experience can ever acquaint us must be found in this spatiatemporal world of perceptual experience. Even philosophical
knowledge as expressed in principles like the principle of universal causality is only knowledge about the empirical world
of possible experience. Kant never tires of warning us against
interpreting such metaphysical principles as are accessible to
us as truths about reality outside the mind-imposed conditions of possible experience. His Transcendental Dialectic is a
catalog of erroneous theories produced by philosophers who
have made the very mistake that he so urgently requires us to
avoid.
This is radical subjectivity because the only reality we get
to know, on Kant's theory, even though it is called "nature"
and is the subject matter of all science, is not a reality that is
independent of our existence as subjects of experience, and
not independent of the occurrence of our thinking processes
as subjects. The content of our experience cannot be characterized at all without ineliminable reference to contributions
that we make in working up raw materials into a unified and
comprehensible system of objects of experience. The objects
we get to know would not exist at all, they would be nothing,
in Kant's own explicit and dramatic way of putting it, without
our mental activities. That is, the very mental activities that
go into our getting to know about the existence and character
of objects of experience help to create those objects and to
determine their character. Without our thought nothing
Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York, Professor Collins
is finishing a book on The Critique of Pure Reason.
18
would be caused by anything else, nothing would be prior to
or later than anything else, or simultaneous with anything
else either. For space and time and causality are among the
features of empirical things that owe their standing entirely to
the contribution of the knowing subject. Of course, the things
that originally set in motion all of this creativity of the mind
would exist even though we did not exist. But these are, as
Kant calls them, things as they are in themselves, and we can
never know anything at all about them. Things in themselves
are never objects of our experience and the failure to realize
that we can know nothing about them is the greatest source of
error in metaphysics according to Kant.
I think that the magnitude and the daring of the claim that
the mind itself fabricates the world it experiences has always
been one of the reasons for great interest in Kant's philosophy. At the same time, it is generally believed, and I believe
also, that Kant was not only one of the great original figures
of philosophical thought, but that his philosophy contains insights of permanent value, insights from which we can learn,
and which make the arduous penetration of his obscurity and
his inconsistency worthwhile. It is his thinking about experience, objects of experience, and consciousness, that is, it is
his radical and unattractive subjectivist theory, that also embodies his most valuable permanent contributions. It is of
these contributions that P. F. Strawson speaks, in his wonderful book on Kant, saying that Kant made " ... very great and
novel gains in epistemology, so great and so novel that, nearly
two hundred years after they were made, they have still not
been fully absorbed into the philosophical consciousness." 1
What I have to say here is organized with a view to showing
how this permanent and large contribution of Kant's thinking
can be approached in the setting of an explicit doctrine the
subjectivism of which appears so extravagant.
I have already said that Kant holds that all human knowledge, apart from appreciation of merely formal truths of logic,
has for its subject matter the realm of possible experience,
which is the perceivable natural world. This much is in itself
appealing to empiricists like all of us because it is a powerful
empiricist commitment. Kant is indeed an empiricist of sorts.
We can think of empiricism as a doctrine concerning
knowledge or as a doctrine concerning reality. As a theory of
knowledge, empiricism is the view that all knowledge claims
rest ultimately on appeal to perceptual experience. As a
theory of reality, empiricism is the view that the world accessible to us in sense experience is reality. Kant's thinking has a
�July, 1979
major anti-empiricist component corresponding to each of
these two conceptions of empiricism. First, there is his theory
of synthetic a priori knowledge, that is, the claim that we do
possess factual knowledge about the world which is not justifiable by appeal to experience. So Kant thinks that there is
knowledge which is not empirical knowledge. Second, there
is Kant's doctrine of the thing in itself, that is, a reality which
we never do, and cannot possibly, encounter in experience.
So Kant thinks that there is reality which is not empirical
reality.
Both of these central themes of Kant's philosophy are crucially connected with his subjectivism. The theory of synthetic a priori knowledge is connected with subjectivism in
that the constitutive role of the mind in forming the spatiatemporal world is the foundation of Kant's explanation for our
possession of synthetic a priori knowledge. Kant is persuaded
by Hume's analyses that no necessary propositions and no
universal propositions can be given a rational justification, if
the admissible foundation for such justification is limited to
experience. Experience cannot prove that, in the future, it
will not itself overthrow any universal generalization that we
find supported today. And any factual proposition defended
by appeal to experience can hardly be necessary, since further
experience might always show it false. Kant accepts this much
from Hume, He does not follow Hume in simply abandoning
the task of justification of our necessary and universal beliefs.
He does not fall back, as Hume does, on mere naturalistic
explanation rather than justification of our possession of such
beliefs. How can we simply abandon justification here? What
leads Hume to his famous scepticism is precisely what sets the
fundamental question for Kant. If knowledge of scientific law
cannot, and if knowledge of causal necessity cannot, be justified by experience, then Hume says we do not really have
any such knowledge. Kant agrees that such knowledge cannot
come from experience, so it must be a priori. It is not merely
analytic knowledge, that is, these known truths do not reduce
to formal and barren identities, so it is synthetic knowledge.
But we do have such knowledge. It is absurd to suppose that
scientific and mathematica.J understanding, the greatest
achievement of human reason, is in fact no achievement at
all but, rather, a collection of rationally unsupported beliefs
with which nature happens to endow us. Thus, for Kant, the
question cannot be whether we have synthetic a priori knowledge but only, "How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?"
Many philosophers before Kant thought that man has some
inner source of knowledge or other. What is special about
Kant's view on this point is precisely the empiricist element in
it. What we know on the basis of our constitutional resources
are, for Kant, truths about the world of experience even
though they are not truths derived from the world of experience. It is beliefs about the world of experience that Hume's
scepticism undermines. The general disparagement of perception in rationalist thought led to the idea of siphoning away
the perceptual as the locus of secondary qualities and mere
phenomena. Rationalists thought that scientific grasp was attainable only when an intrinsically misleading perceptual pic-
ttue of reality was replaced by mathematical representation.
Kant rejects both the scepticism engendered by radical empiricism and the downgrading of perceptual reality by the rationalists. The world of which mathematical science is a true
representation is the world of objects in space and time. That
is the realm of perception.
The second major anti-empiricist theme in Kant's thought,
the concept of the thing in itself, is also directly connected
with his subjective theory of the constitution of the natural
world. That there must be another reality apart from the one
that is created in the course of our attainment of conscious
experience is a fundamental feature of Kant's theory from the
outset. Although the end product of the activities of our mental constitution would not exist without those activities, and
although this end product exhausts the range of scientific investigation, the subject is not also asserted to be the source of
the initial input upon which these lavish creative powers are
to operate. Kant's notion of affection by things is patterned on
the analogy of perception. This is only an analogy, however.
To say that we are affected by outer reality is not just an
extremely abstract way of saying that we perceive things. The
objects we encounter in perception, according to Kant, are
produced by our mental faculties working on a raw input
which first awakens their creative potential. We cannot suppose that Kant is referring to objects of perception as the items
that originally affect us. He cannot be telling us that the input
that awakens our faculties comes from the finished product
that their activity creates. It must be reality independent of
our thinking that provides the origina] source of affection out
of which we construct objects of experience. We know, for
example, that these objects all exist in space and time. But
this is because the raw material of the initial encounter with
outer things is subjected to the fonns of our sensibility. Space
and time, according to Kant, are those forms and they constitute a framework provided by the subject upon which the materials of receptivity are deployed. The original sources of this
affection are not spatia-temporal things at all.
Thus, the idea of a second reality composed of things in
themselves is a fundamental part of the theory of nature that
ascribes it to the creative activities of the knowing subject.
This is reflected from the start in Kant's use of the word "appearances" ("Erscheinungen") as a general term of reference
for the constituents of the world of possible experience. There
would be no point in calling the items encountered in experience "appearances" without a correlative reality that is not
merely empirical. There must be things in themselves even
though we cannot get to know anything about them.
Another deeper aspect of the relationship between Kant's
subjectivism and his conception of things in themselves is illuminated by comparing Kant's position with Berkeley's
idealism. Early reviews of the Critique of Pure Reason were
disappointing and rather shocking to Kant because they
bracketed his views with Berkeley's idealistic philosophy. The
attitude of those who saw an affinity with Berkeley is not any
mystery. Berkeley, too, rejected the theory of secondary qual19
�The College
ities and insisted that the reality we encounter in our perceptual experience is the only reality we come to know. Furthermore, in his way, Berkeley makes the empirical world
depend for its very existence on the mental activities that we
naively think of as giving us access to it. Is that not a view like
Kant's? It is not, in the first instance, because for Kant perceptual experience is founded upon an affection by a nonmental reality even though the object of which we ultimately
become conscious is not that nonmental reality. For Berkeley, there is no reality apart from empirical reality, and that
means, apart from the content of consciousness. Kant never
entertained such a view and was legitimately alarmed when
his ideas were taken to endorse it. At the same time, this
distinction which was so crucial to Kant tends to shrink in
significance just because Kant holds that we do not and cannot know anything about this nonempirical reality. His theory
then seems quite like Berkeley's with the difference that Kant
adds a gratuitious commitment to a wholly unknowable reality.
I want to use the difference between Berkeley's and Kant's
subjectivism, as the motif for a first effort of rethinking Kant's
thoughts in a way that captures what is valuable in them. I
said that the thing in itself is the core of the difference, but
the fact is that, though Kant mentions it, he does not emphasize the thing in itself when he argues at length against the
viewpoint of idealists and distinguishes his position from
theirs. Instead, Kant tries repeatedly to formulate a surrogate
distinction between subjective and objective, although both
sides of the distinctions he introduces inevitably appeal to
empirical reality, that is, to the reality that is thoroughly undermined by the subjectivism of his overall view. In the Prolegomena, for example, Kant offers a distinction between
"judgments of perception" and "judgment~ of experience". If
I judge that the room feels warm to me, the correctness of
this judgment of perception requires nothing more than my
own perceptual state. In a judgment of experience, however,
I judge that the room is warm, and if I am right an objective
quality exists in the object of my experience. Therefore, my
judgment is objective and generates predictions about the experience of others which are not entailed by assertions limited
to my perceptual states. This distinction is supposed to divide
public intersubjective knowledge from mere private appreciation of one's own mental states. Kant tries to make the distinction within the realm of natural objects of experience all
of which are products of our own constitution as subjects of
experience.
In the second edition passage entitled "The Refutation of
Idealism" and in the Paralogisms dealing with spurious
philosophies of mind, Kant makes similar and more complex
efforts to distinguish between a level of subjective experience
and a level of objective fact, again without relinquishing any
of the overall subjectivism of the thesis of the minddependence of nature. Kant organizes his views with reference to a philosophy of mind which he rightly takes to be
held in common by many philosophers of both rationalist and
empiricist schools, and which he regards as the foundation of
various species of idealistic philosophy. The definitive and
20
most influential articulation of this philosophy of mind is
Descartes'. Descartes' scrupulous pursuit of indubitability led
him to a revolutionary conception of the conscious mind and
its immediate objects. This conception has dominated philosophy and determined the schedule of philosophical problems
since the time of Descartes. Kant, of course, shares this inheritance. It is prominently reflected in his notion of "representations" as immediate objects of consciousness. Kant also recognizes fundamental limitations and illusions of the Cartesian
philosophy of mind. He rejects outright the essential premise
that, as conscious subjects, we are in direct touch only with
the private contents of our minds, and that all other realities
are at best subject matter for relatively tenuous hypotheses. A
line from Hume's Treatise is a fine statement of this Cartesian
premise and an indication of its power over philosophers of
all schools:" ... 'tis universally allowed by philosophers, and
is besides pretty obvious of itself, that nothing is ever really
present with the mind but its impressions and ideas, and that
external objects become known to us only by those perceptions they occasion.'' 2 This is the view that engenders
idealism. It does so when arguments for the existence of
extra-mental realities are left problematic or are flatly ruled
out, as they are by Hume and Berkeley respectively. If we
cannot get beyond our ideas, beyond "perishing" mental existences, as Hume calls them, with which we are i:n_direct
contact, then perhaps those perishing ideas are reality and
nothing beyond and in addition to such mental things exists
at all.
This epistemological starting point, shared by Descartes,
the classical empiricist tradition, and so many later thinkers,
does not offer a minimally coherent account of conscious experience according to Kant. \Ve cannot start with the idea of
a conscious subject surveying wholly self-contained and
ephemeral materials, such as Hume's perishing impressions
and ideas. The missing ingredient necessary for the coherence
of this viewpoint is the enduring conscious subject for whom
the transitory contents are objects of consciousness. For we
are not given any self except as one among other objects of
experience. Experiences of a self are just experiences of "empirical self consciousness" and they are, as such, together
with their content, as transitory as other experienced contents. We do not experience our selves as an enduring content that goes with all the other transitory contents. The empiricists actually share elements of this insight with Kant, but
they do not pursue it to the end. Berkeley recognized that the
concept of a perceiver, a thinking self for which ideas are
conscious contents, could not be simply another idea. So
Berkeley posited the notion of "spirits'' to fill in for the missing idea. To Hume, this account of a needed owner of impressions and ideas was not only unconvincing but also incompatible with Berkeley's own brilliant demolition of the
corresponding concept of a material substance as the needed
owner of sensible qualities. Paralleling Berkeley's repudiation
of material substance, Hume repudiated mental substance.
The only reality to which experience attests is the reality of
the conscious contents of experience. Thus, ". . . when I
enter most intimately into what I call myself . .. I never can
�July, 1979
catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can
observe anything but the perception. " 3 This is much the view
that Kant expresses when he limits knowledge of the self to
empirical selfconsciousness. Transcendental selfconsciousness
(or apperception), the principle of the necessary ownership of
all my experiences by a single subject, corresponds to nothing
that I experience and is, therefore, reducible to the barren
analytic formula: "All my experiences are mine." An "abiding
self" contemplating hypotheses that might account for its
fleeting conscious states is not a part of any epistemological
starting point to which we are entitled. An abiding self is not
given, and our idea of an abiding self is itself something that
needs to be accounted for.
Kant's solution to the problem posed by a starting point
that lacks a given subject of experience is more or less dictated
by the problem. The stability and unity of experience does
not come from an antecedently given enduring subject.
Therefore, the antecedent existence of enduring objects of
experience must provide the foundation of stability and unity.
Kant expresses this saying that there must be a "pennanent" in perception. The content of experience must support
the thought that the same object is encountered again and,
thus, the object must endure unperceived in the interval between perceptual encounters. Then the sameness of the object of perception can introduce the fundamental stability
which the absence of the given sameness of the subject leaves
wanting. For this, objects of perception must be independent
of our perception of them. Kant reads this independence as
the necessary existence of enduring objects in space. Space is
the presupposed region for the existence of unperceived things
which, a fortiori, cannot be found in the given temporal sequence of our perceptions. The concept of an enduring self as
an accompaniment of experiences is itself derivative and depends upon the continuity provided by episodically perceived
but continuously existing spatial objects. Kant thus solves the
problem of the external world by refusing to allow it to arise
and rules out all solipsistic philosophies and all the conceptions of mind that give rise to the theories he co11ects under
the pejorative title "rational psychology." Perceived objects in
space must exist unperceived, our acquaintance with them
must be direct and no mere question of inference or hypothesis, and they must not depend upon our perception of them
for their existence.
The core of Kant's profound contribution to metaphysics
and epistemology ·is to be found in these views about the concept of experience, the subject and the object of experience,
consciousness and self-consciousness. It is in just these areas
that much remains to be learned from Kant, for just these
views have "still not been fully absorbed into the philosophical consciousness" as Strawson says. I cannot try to restate
these views here in a way that satisfies us and conforms to
current philosophical perspectives and usage. I will address
the much more modest question of the compatibility of this
promising view of e~perience with the pervasive subjectivism
that we find in Kant's conception of the empirical world. For
notwithstanding his anti-idealist arguments for the indepen. dent existence in space of immediate objects of conscious-
ness, Kant never retreats from his contention that space is
itself subjective and that perceived objects exist "only in our
faculty of representation." Here, as in the contrast between
judgments of perception and judgments of experience, Kant
tries to substitute a distinction within subjectively constituted
nature for a distinction between subjective experiences and
objective realities. How can Kant have supposed that his
anti-idealist views could be consistent with his assertion that
the mind makes nature? How can we find these strands of
Kant's thinking compatible? If we are to regard his opposition
to idealism and the philosophies of mind that engender solipsistic problems as part of his permanent contribution, we
need a way of looking at Kant's subjectivism that mitigates its
seeming irretrievable unattractiveness.
I want to look again at the premise that makes Kant's
theory seem so extravagantly subjective. The continuously existing spatia-temporal. world of perceivable objects is our own
creation. The a priori knowledge we have of it is explicable
precisely because we have made this system of things ourselves, and that is why we are in a position to say what the
fundamen.tal principles of its structure must be. Given this
understanding, all our knowledge, and not merely synthetic a
priori knowledge, must be regarded as knowledge of a-~mere
construction, a world that is a creature of our thought and,
therefore, a world that deserves to be called imaginary. This
is why Kant's subjectivism seems to collide with his refutation
of idealism. In his refutation he insists that immediate acquaintance with independent objects is essential if we are to
have experience and not just imagination of outer things.
How can this distinction move us if Kant presents the whole
of possible experience together with all objects in space and
time as products of our own minds which exist only in us? It
appears that we are asked to distinguish between reality and
imagination in a context which is all imagination to begin
with.
It is imagination that carries the burden at crucial junctures
in Kant's own construction. Imagination is at the heart of
memory and all synthesis. Imagination, for Kant, is the capacity to think a non-given object. All the mental activities
upon which conscious recognition of objects depends involve
appeal to something not presently given. Imagination enables
us to conceive the existence of objects unperceived, and to
appreciate the continuous existence of what is experienced
intermittently. Imagination is Kant's fundamental tool for the
construction of a stable world out of transient receptions of
raw material. Thus, that stable world is an imaginary world.
I have intentionally pressed Kant's subjectivism to the
limit, reading it as the view that the world is a figment of the
imagination. I mean to show how very close Kant's view is,
even in this extreme form, to another passage of thought
about experience which can be presented so as not to seem
extreme at all but, on the contrary, so as to seem quite
common-sensical. This view does not promote a despairing
ignorabimus concerning things in themselves, nor does it
generate Humean scepticism concerning the empirical world.
21
�The College
Finally, this view is quite like the thoughts that Kant presents
and sometimes it seems to be none other than just Kant's
thought.
This alternative interpretation can be expressed within the
framework of a rough empiricism that endorses the general
idea of a perceptual foundation for knowledge while remaining noncommittal on the analysis of perception and a11 other
matters of detail, crucial though they must be in the long
run. One thing is certain for any such empiricism: The perceptual experience upon which our knowledge is thought to
depend is episodic. Our visual experiences, for example, start
and stop as we open and close our eyes. The content of visual
experience shifts gradually and abruptly depending upon our
movement, and the movement of obstructions to vision, and
upon what it is that happens to be visible. Tactual impressions require contact and are interrupted or broken by broken
contact. There are comparable discontinuities affecting the
other perceptual modes. Sleep ends experience altogether and
awakening restores it with new content. This is the character
of our experience. It is for this episodic character that Hume
said that impressions and ideas, the only things truly "present
with the mind," are perishing existences. Episodic character
is not a disappointing or regrettable fact about perceptual experience. It is not feasible at all to suppose that experience of
all the things we perceive would be better if it were more
continuous, or that our perceptual experiences would be
more helpful to us if they coincided in duration with their
objects.
In saying that we are empiricists we mean that we take this
mass of episodic experience to be the only foundation we
have for knowledge of the world. That world of which we do
get to have knowledge does not have an episodic character,
and its constituents are not perishing things as all of our experiences certainly are. On the basis of intermittent and relatively chaotic visual, auditory and tachtal experiences we get
to know a stable world of things that has permanent existence
globally and of which prominent local constituents are relatively enduring things. These enduring things are not given.
I state rough empiricism in this way in order to suggest
Kant's conception of representation. Kant says that appearances exist only in our faculty of representation and this
strikes us as a hopelessly subjective conception, giving nature
the status of an imagined world. But in one way Kant only
means that objects are never the given content of any perceptual experience, and that such content is all that ever is given.
Properly viewed this is undoubtedly correct. The given content of a perceptual experience is, for example, a view of a
bridge. The bridge itself is not given. It is this view that
perishes, should the viewer close his eyes. The bridge does
not perish. The view, not the bridge, is, as Kant says, necessarily locatable in time with respect to all other mental contents of the subject. One might say, speaking of the view, that
part of the bridge is obscured by an office building. This sort
of thing is true of the given content, but not of the enduring
object. This content and not a stable object is what is given.
Such reflections will always eliminate the possibility that the
content of an experience might be an object in nature.
22
Our thinking is complicated by the fact that we can only
describe the given content of experience in terms of objects
which are not given in the experience. This is Kant's view.
Only when quite a bit of collecting, comparing, abstracting,
in short, a lot of synthesis has taken place can we have an
idea of an object of perceptual experience such as a bridge.
Only then can we describe anything as "a view of a bridge."
All description, being irreducibly comparative, necessarily
goes beyond the immediately given and alludes to a range of
related contents. Furthermore, consciousness of perceptual
experience is itself dependent upon the same synthesis that
makes description possible. Consciousness presupposes that
experience involve recognition. So, in order that experiences
be conscious at all, they must be recognized as experiences of
this or that, and that means just that they must fit descriptions
framed in terms of objects of experience. Therefore, it seems
that we can only describe our experiences in terms of a picture of stable objects that we form on the basis of episodic and
perishing experienced contents. Intrinsically, that is, apart
from all comparison, the given is indescribable, for description is comparative. So we can describe the given only in
terms of the non-given. This dark sounding formulation
means that to describe our experience at all we have to say
things like, "] can see part of the bridge from here," although
the bridge itself is not given for it does not perish, and~ the
bridge is not. in itself partly obstructed, and so on. After we
have attained consciousness and can describe our experiences
in the language of objects, it remains the case that what is
truly given is not objects but always perishing views, or representations.
Empiricists generally concede nowadays that we can devise
no language of empirical description short of the so-called
material-object language in which descriptive terms fit, in the
first instance, relatively durable public objects. This is certainly part of what Kant means in arguing for permanence as
part of our necessary conception of objects perceived. That is
the argument that Kant depends on in opposing subjective
idealism and the Cartesian starting point in epistemology. It
rCmains to be seen whether this conception of permanence in
immediate objects of perception is compatible with the subjective tendency of Kant's own commitment to the transience
of the given in experience. So far we have seen that Kant
shares this commitment with all roughly empiricist viewpoints.
The known world of permanent existence is not what is
given. Certainly from the point of view of empirical learning
theory, it must be supposed to take some doing on the part of
any organism to get to recognize what it is in experience that
betokens objects of continuing existence. But we do succeed
here, and when we do, we have a picture of a stable empirical
world of which our experiences are transitory representations.
We speakers can describe our experiences precisely by characterizing them as experiences of that stable world. The natural
philosophical question here is, what is the status and the validity of the conception of the stable world to which we attain. Sticking to the factual level which is itself undercut by
sceptical speculation, we all tend to think that the picture we
�July, 1979
have of the stable material world is something like an automatic interpretation we make of our episodic experience quite
early in life. What I want to emphasize is that, however it is
formed, it must be formed, for it is something like a picture of
the world and not the world itself which we come to possess.
What is given, when we have matured and learned a bit, is
still a transient content. The attainment of the level of conscious description gives us two things to talk about. One is the
now-describable experiential episodes themselves and the
other is the picture of the world that we form on the basis of
those episodes. We form the picture. Doing so is coming to
understand our experience. As a picture, it exists only in our
thinking and without our thinking processes this picture of
the world would not exist.
intuition must represent objects since "the properties of things
in themselves cannot migrate from those things into my faculty of representation. "4 Thus, to say that we must represent
things is just to say that the things we get to know cannot
themselves enter our minds. This is hardly a limitation or a
reason for any discouraged subjectivism. The idea that our
knowledge is drastically limited requires the further thought
of a contrasting cognition of reality that does not involve representation. If we could go beyond mere representation, or
strike through the veil of appearances and, thus, encounter
reality itself, then our knowledge would be unfiltered by subjective mediation. It is this thought that supports subjectivist
conclusions. But this thought is very implausible when explicitly stated and examined. Surely it is only because we are
able to represent the world that we are able to get to know
anything about it at all. Representation is a necessary means
At this point 1 think it looks as though Kant's subjectivism
will inevitably follow and it will not be compatible with the
objective claims of his refutation of idealism. Kant thinks,
and it seems that we shall have to follow him, that one kind
of request for objectivity is inevitably going to be disappointed. Suppose we ask, How does our picture of a stable
world compare with reality? Is it a good representation? Or
does it fall short? When he is at his most subjective, Kant
thinks, first, that these questions cannot possibly be answered
and, second, that the fact that we cannot answer them has
.something to do with the limited character of merely human
cognitive capabilities. For have we not agreed, as empiricists,
that the accessibility of the world consists in our possession of
a picture of it in terms of which we describe and interpret the
ephemeral given? We are in no position to compare reality
to knowledge, not an obstacle. We noted above that the episodic and perspectival cht_uacter of perceptual experience
cannot be thought a regrettable feature of it. Essential properties of experiences can never be properties of objects, and
essential properties of objects can never be properties of expe-
riences. This is as it should be. Objects could not possibly be
given. They cannot migrate into our minds, as Kant says. We
have to see the world from somewhere. But an object does not
exist from somewhere. The world does not start and stop~~ but
how could we expect that our experience of it might be other
than transient? A continuous experience of everything at
once, from nowhere in pa-rticular, would not be experience at
all. Exactly what is required is transient experience (in which
objects are not given) which we come to recognize as experi-
ence of objects.
with our picture, as though both the world and our picture of
it were available for comparison. The closest we get to reality
is the picture. There is no comparing to be done. At the same
time, Kant continues in the conviction that just such a comparison would have to be made in order to justify any claim
that the picture we have in our minds is not just something
created by us, but is also a valid indication of things as they
exist apart from our experience and our capacity to create
conscious pictures in terms of which fleeting impressions are
Kant loses sight of these relations because he always thinks
in terms of an alternative mental constitution, superior to the
human, namely, the mind of God. In the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth centuries, philosophers still commonly adverted
to God's thinking, not merely as part of a theological commitment, but also as a convenient vehicle for expressing
we cannot compare the picture with the world itself, for we
views about necessity and objectivity. The greatest philosophers thought it profitable to argue about what God might
have done, and what He could not have done; and whether
He might have created the universe earlier than He did; and
only know the world insofar as we have this picture. Kant
whether He preceives the world; and what sufficient reasons
ordinarily reads this as entailing a limited subjective horizon
for human knowledge. But no such discouraging conclusion
actua11y follows from the character of our experience and our
conception of the world based on experience. Subjectivism
He has for creating as He does. Along with its other functions, the idea of the mentality of God operates in Kant's
thought to make our human intellectual undertakings seem
interpretable.
We have only our picture of the world of stable objects and
here is an intellectual illusion to which Kant and many other
philosophers are susceptible. Things must be represented if
they are to be known and representation does lead to knowledge of things and not to knowledge of itself. Kant is sometimes partially aware of this himself and that is why he never
abandons the idea that the needed distinction between subjective and objective must be formulable within the framework
of the assumption that stable objects are "thought" by us but
never given. In the Prolegomena; for example, Kant says that
comparatively inadequate. This encourages Kant to read the
necessary role of representation in knowledge as a limitation
and a falling-short of theoretical possibilities. For example,
Kant says that human intuition is sensuous, meaning that we
have to be affected and thus representations have to be
engendered in us. These representations and not the affecting
reality are given. God's intuition would not suffer these limitations. God knows reality without having to be affected. He
does not really have to look down through the clouds, nor
wait for a propitious moment for his apprehension of things.
23
�The College
He does not, then, rely on representations as we must. The
idea of this kind of mentality is just what makes our apprehension of reality seem disappointing.
Consider Kant's conception of space and time in this light.
Men have to apprehend things from somewhere and at some
time. Since a thing must be viewed from somewhere, if it is
going to be viewed at all, its being somewhere relative to a
man's viewpoint is a necessary condition for its intellectual
accessibility to him. But this is a consequence of the fuct that
men must rely on representations. If we did not have to take a
look in order to know reality, as God does not, it would not
have to be somewhere in order to be known. If we knew everything without bothering with a sequence of transient experiences, interrelatable in time, and, therefore, surveyable by
memory and understanding, then time would be all at once
for us. There would be no time. These are precarious speculations. The idea of the mind of God helped Kant to feel
supported by thoughts on the margin of intelligibility like
these. God does not have to create a picture and then face the
unanswerable question of its adequacy. He grasps things as
they are in themselves, without a perspective and without imposing subjective conditions. Further, while human intuition
is passive and receptive and only our understanding is active
and creative, God's intuition is called "creative intuition" by
Kant, suggesting the theory of Malebranche inherited by
Berkeley that God's thought of realitY is the same as his sustaining creation of it. Naturally, God does not have to acquire and collect subjective views of things, retaining old ones
for the sake of comparison and eventually for the construction
of descriptions cast in terms of abstracted empirical concepts.
But this is just what man must do. This fanciful thinking
about divine cognition prevents Kant from recognizing the
potential of his own theory, not as a quasi-factual account of
our mental faculties, but as an ex;Jloration of the very concepts of cognition and experience. If we do reinterpret his
thoughts as philosophical analyses of these concepts, then
they do not have to carry nearly the burden of unattractive
subjectivism that Kant himself ordinarily presents along with
his best insights.
Verbal expression is a form of representation and a helpful
model for the relationship of representation and reality. Consider propositional expressions as our pictures of the world.
To contemplate the world at all we have to frame propositions. To believe anything we have fo assent to propositions.
To know anything is to assent to a proposition in a context
wherein other complex conditions are satisfied. It looks as if
our knowledge will always be mediated by propositional expression, and this looms as an obstacle to some fancied unmediated objectivity. Are propositions, then, an unavoidable
distorting lens, imposed by our needs, through which we
have to approach reality? We are tempted here to complain
about a logical feature of the perspective of any knowing subject as if it were a factual obstacle to human knowledge.
Propositionality makes thought possible. We cannot put a
natural object in the place of a propositional subject. A structure of words makes it possible to say something. A structure
of objects says nothing. Therefore a structure of objects does
24
not say anything that might be true, or believed, or known.
Still we come back to Kant's question: If all we have is the
proposition, then how do we know it is true? Kant often
thinks that the fact of the matter is that we do not. Our picture of the world goes no further than the systematic interconnectedness of our thought1, for it can go no further. Then
Kant leans toward something like a coherence theory of truth.
Scientific knowledge is the coherence of appearances. But his
thought about perception and his refutation of idealism pave
the way for something better than this. As empiricists we
ought to answer the question, How do we know that propositions are true? by appeal to experience. Of course, when we
have attained consciousness and our experiences have become describable, we cannot literally follow the "plain historical method" Locke envisioned. We cannot retrace our epistemological steps back to the unsynthesizecl and indescribable
given. But we are entitled to call attention to simple situations
where "I see it" is the only right answer to give to questions
like, "How do you know that the mail has arrived?" This is a
good answer and one that Kant's understanding makes available for epistemology. For does he not say that enduring objects in space must be the immediate objects of perceptual
consciousness?
Idealism is the thesis that the objects of consciousness are
all mental things, that is, that they are all ideas. Ideas are
dependent upon thought for their existence. But Kant a-rgues
that the things of which we are conscious in perception are
not mental things but objects, independent of our thought,
that exist in space. These are the immediate and not the inferred objects of perceptual experience. Of course, this is inconsistent with the Kantian claim that there are no spatial
things apart from our mental activities. To say that objects are
"independent" has to mean that they exist in themselves. It is
the comparison of human with divine apprehension of things
that encourages Kant to make space and time systems of
purely subjective relations, and not just systems of relations,
following Leibniz. If we drop the rhetoric of the limitations of
mere human faculties, we are free to characterize the objects
of consciousness in perception as spatia-temporal objects
while conceding that such objects are never given. The given
is always a perishing content. As such, the given is not an
object of consciousness at all. Synthesis of the given, that is,
integration and learning which results in a conception of a
stable world of objects is required for all recognition, description and consciousness. When we attain consciousness we
can recognize an experience as a view of a bridge. Only thus
recognizable can experience be conscious at all. The experience retains the perishing and perspectival features of a representation. That is its subjectivity. But when a perceiver does
see a bridge, for all the subjectivity of his experience, the
object of which he is conscious is a bridge and not a representation.
To say that objects are not given is to say that objects do
not migrate into our thought, as Kant put<; it. Upon reflection, this cannot be a shortcoming of our thought. Objects
could not migrate into God's thought either. We can and do
become conscious of objects. That we do is a presupposition
�July, 1979
of consciousness in general, according to Kant. That means
that self-consciousness and consciousness of our representations as such are conceptually dependent upon our success in
attaining consciousness of enduring independent objects. As
objects of consciousness, the status of mental things, of ideas,
is derivative. This ordering of things is quite the reverse of
idealism. It is at the center of Kant's most valuable philosophical insights.
1
The Bounds of Sense, London 1966, 29.
Selby-Bigge, Editor, London 1888, 67.
3/b;d .. 252.
4 Section 9.
2
Some Classical Poems
of the T'ang and Sung Dynasties
translated by Julie Landau
Meng Hao-jan
Li Po
(689-740)
(701-762)
Spring Dawn
Spring sleep: dawn takes me by surprise
The birds sing everywhere
All night there was the sound of wind and rain
How many blossoms have fallen?
Wang Wei
(701-761)
Autumn Dusk m the Mountains
Deserted mountain, fresh from rain,
The air by evening turns autumnal
Moonlight spattered among the pines,
A clear spring over rocks,
The rustle of bamboo around the washing girls
Water-lily leaves part for a fishing boat
Spring fragrance has vanishedBut why not linger?
Julie Landau has studied Chinese at Columbia University and for a year
(1967-1968) in Hong Kong. Trained at the University of Hong Kong, David
Fung translated at the United Nations from 1946-1970.
Fighting South of The Wall
Last year war
At the Sang Kan source,
This year war
Along the Ts'ung,
Swords washed in the sea at T'iao Chih,
Horses put to graze in the snows of T'ien Shan:
Miles of war, years of war,
The armies aging.
The huns think killing cultivates the land
And reap, time and again, white bones in yellow sand.
The Ch'in built the wall against them,
The Han kept the beacons burningThey burn on ... and on,
Expansion never ends
In the fields, men fight and die,
Butchered horses scream to heaven,
Black ravens carry human entrails
And drape them over withered branches
Soldiers are smeared over the grass,
Generals act-but to what end?
An instrument of evil, that's what an army is,
Good prince, don't use it, 'til all else fails!
"War Chariot Song," "For WeiPa, Living in Retirement," "Autumn Dusk
in the Mountains," "Spring Dawn," "Song of Ch'ang Kan," "Hard Road I,"
and "The People North of 'The River" were done in collaboration with David
Fung.
25
�I
A Hard Road
I
Gold goblets of clear wine, ten thousand a measure,
jade plates, rare food, worth ten thousand more
I put aside the cup, throw down my chopsticks
Draw my sword, look desparately about,
I'd cross the Yell ow River; ice blocks it!
I'd attempt Tai Hang; snow darkens the sky!
Oh to drop a line and fish beside a stream,
Or sail, dreaming, to the sun's edge.
It's hard to go on, hard, hard,
The road forks again-now where?
Oh, for a long wind and the breaking waves
And a tall sail to carry me over the sea.
A Hard Road
III
Have you ears? Don't wash them in the Yin!
Have you a mouth? Don't eat bracken in Shou Yang!
Hide your light, obscurity's valuable
Why compete in lonely pride with moon and cloud?
Observe: from antiquity the worthy who rise high
And do not then withdraw, end badly,
Tzu Hsu was thrown into the Wu
Chu Yuan drowned himself in the Hsiang
Lu Chi, despite his talent, could not protect himself,
Li Szu regretted not drawing in the reins earlier
And never heard the Crane's cry in Hua T'ien.
Only Chang Han, famed for perception,
Felt the autumn wind and turned toward home.
Drink while you canWhat are a thousand years of fame to the dead?
Climbing the terrace to watch for your return~
Sixteen now, and you far away,
Up the Yangtze, past gorges, torrents and rocks.
The fifth month I could not stand
The sad cry of the monkeys rising to heaven,
Your footprints where you lingered,
Covered by new moss,
Moss too deep to sweep away.
Falling leaves, early autumn wind,
The eighth month, a flurry of butterflies
Two by two in the western gardenMy heart aches,
My looks fade.
When at last you come back through San Pa,
Send word ahead,
I'll meet you, however far,
Even to Ch'ang Fung Sha.
Tears for Old Chi, Master Brewer
of Hsuan Ch' eng
So, Chi Sou, you've gone down to the Yellow Springs
Still brewing your best wine, no doubt.
On the terrace of night, where there's no dawn,
To whom do you sell it?
Yellow Springs means Hades.
Tu Fu
(7I2-770)
War Chariot Song
Song of Ch' ang Kan
My hair still in pigtails
I picked flowers, played by the gate,
You, astride a bamboo pole,
Trotted round the well, juggled green plums,
Shared childhood on a lane in Ch'ang Kan,
Easy together, not suspect, untroubled.
At fourteen I became your wife
Too shy to raise my eyes in your presence,
I averted my face, looked at dim corners:
A thousand calls, not one turn of the head.
At fifteen I dared laugh and look up,
Desired to mingle our dust and our ashes.
Like the lover in the story I keep my vigil,
26
Chariots rumble
Horses neigh
The men are ready, bows and arrows at their waists
Fathers, mothers, wives and children come
Dust rises, the view to Hsiang Yang Bridge is blockedThey pull, they stamp, they block the road,
The noise of their cries rises to heaven
At the side of the road, an old man asks the soldiers why?
They blame the endless call-up:
"At fifteen sent north to man the river defence
By forty moved west to work the frontier farms."
�"Before you leave, the elder binds up your black hair
White haired, you're garrisoned still!"
At the front, blood flows like water
But doesn't quench the emperor's ambition
You must down ten cups in sequence.
Ten cups and I am still not drunk
just warmed by your long affection.
Tomorrow, high mountains rise between us
Our course, vague and uncertain.
"Don't you know? East of the mountains China has
two hundred divisions?
A thousand villages, ten thousand towns, gone to seed."
When women work hoes and plows,
Rice grows helter skelter, you can't tell east from west
The men suffer
Driven like dogs and chickens
"And, old man, we don't even dare complain
Take this winter, no rest at the front
But here the district officer wants rents and levies
Where's the money to come from?"
"One thing is certain, a son's a misfortune
Have a girl
A girl can be married to a neighbor
A son will be buried in alien grass."
"Don't you see piled to the peak of Ch'ing Hoi
Generations of white bones no man mourned?"
New ghosts protest a futile sacrifice while old ghosts cry
The dark sky weeps for them.
For WeiPa,
Living in Retirement
Life keeps us apart
I move with Lucifer, you with Orion
But tonight, just tonight,
We share this candle.
Youth, health, how long can they last?
We're grey already
And when I ask about old friends
I find that half are ghosts.
How could I know twenty years ago
That only now I' cl step again into your hallYou weren't yet married,
Now suddenly a row of sons and daughters
With happy faces honor us
And ask me where I'm from.
Ask, answer, ask and are not done
When you bid them set out food and wine.
In night rain, spring chives are cut
To eat with steaming rice and millet.
You toast our meeting face to face~ so rare
Ch'en T'ao
{9th Century)
The Journey West
Sworn to wiping out the huns at any price,
Five thousand in fine sables fell in the Mongol dust.
Alas, the bones on the Wu Tung's banks,
Are men still, in dreams, within the inner chambers.
Wang An-shih
(1021-1886)
The People
North of The River
The people of the North
Endure the bitterness of two frontiers
Families teach the young to farm and weave
Paying taxes to officials and tribute to the huns.
This year's drought left a thousand acres bare,
Still conscripts are hustled into river service
Old lean on young and struggle south,
But there, even in good years, people starve
Sorrow extends from heaven to earth, dawn to dusk.
On the roadside, ashen faces,
Born too late for the great Sung times,
They measure out the grain and a few coins, without war.
27
�Su Shih
Li Ch'ing-chao
(1037-1101)
(1084?- c. 1151)
Sheng Sheng Man
Searching, searching, again and again
Cold and still, cold and still
Yung Yu Lo
P' eng Cheng: I lodge for the night at Swallow Pavillion,
dream of P'an-p'an, and write this tz'u.
Bitter bitter, cruel cruel sorrowFever, chillsNo stay, no rest.
Two three cups of thin wine
Can not hold off the evening or delay the wind
The geese have passed
And left me sick at heart
Though once, we were old friends
The ground is full of yellow flowers piling up
Dry, brittle, wounded
Who can pick them now?
I keep my vigil by the window
Alone, how can I stand its getting dark?
And the Wu Tung, and thin rain?
Dusk, day fades, bit by bit, drop by drop
One thing after another
How can one small word 'grief' tell it all?
Geese were considered messengers.
The Wu Tung is a tree whose leaves make a distinctive melancholy sound in
autumn. Last to lose its leaves, it is a symbol of autumn, which, in turn, is a
symbol of age, as spring is a symhol of youth.
Wu Ling Ch'un
The wind has dropped leaving the earth fragrant with fallen
flowers
I know it's late, but what's the use of doing my hair?
Things go on-all but you! Everything is finished,
And all I had to say has turned to tears.
Along the Suan, I hear, it's still springIf only I could take the skiff there!
But I'm afraid-that light boat in the Suan,
How could it carry so much sorrow?
28
Bright moon like frost
Fine breeze like water
Clear view without end
Fish jump in the pond
Round lohts leaves ooze dew
Not a voice, not a soul.
The third watch sounds
A leaf shatters on the ground,
Breaks my erotic dreamIn the vast night
I can not find it again
Awake, alone, I walk in the small garden.
I have traveled to the borders of heaven
Mountains block my return
Eye and heart strain toward home until they break
Swallow Tower is empty
What has become of its lovely lady?
Now only swallows are locked in
The past is like a dream
When one wakes
Pleasure fades, regret lingers .
You who will come
To my Yellow Tower on such a night
Will sigh for me.
P'an-p'an had been a beautiful singer and dancer, favorite of the military
governor of Hsu-chou, cenhnics earlier. Hsu-chou had built Swallow Tower
for her, and she had lived there after his death, faithful to his memory.
Yellow Tower was built hy Su Shih himself in the same area.
�Hsin Ch'i-chi
(1140-1207)
Chiang Ch' eng Tzu
Man Chiang Hung
On the 20th day of the first moon, 1075, I record the night's
dream.
Traveling on the river, rhyming with Yang Chi-weng
Ten years living and dead have drawn apart,
I do nothing to remember,
But I can not forget
Your lonely grave a thousand miles away,
There is nowhere I can talk of my sorrow.
Even if we met, how would you know me,
My face full of dust,
My hair like snow.
In the dark of night, a dream: suddenly, I am home,
You by the window
Doing your hair.
I look at you and can not speak,
Your face is streaked by endless tears.
Year after year must they break my heart,
These moonlit nights,
That low pine grave?
These selections come from two outstanding periods in the three
thousand years of China's unbroken poetic tradition: T'ang (618-907)
and Sung (960-1279). From the sheer volume of poems-48,000 in
the complete T' ang anthology by over two thousand poets, and much
more in the Sung-it is clear that people who wrote poetry didn't think of
poems as monuments. It was an everyday form of expression. Often it
simply recorded an event-a meeting, a holiday, an excursion.
Most poetry was written by officials, or aspiring officials. For centuries, examinations, which gave entrance to the bureaucracy, centered on poetry. Quite naturally, therefore, the poets thought of themselves primarily in their political role, and only secondarily or not at
all as poets. Most of the greatest poets aspired to political success.
Few achieved it. None achieved it for long.
Of the great T'ang poets, Li Po went unrecognized until after he
was forty. He enjoyed favor at court for only a year or two before
court intrigues and a series of unfortunate accidents forced him into
exile in remote, disease-ridden provinces. Tu Fu failed the imperial
examinations three times and spent his life drifting from one miserable post to another. Meng Hao-ian, too, failed, gave up, and became a recluse. Of these poets, Wang Wei had the least troubled
career, but even he had periods out of favor and in exile. For almost
all poet-bureaucrats, it was a life of constant wandering. Three years
was the normal time of duty in one place.
In Sung times, Wang An-shih was the most controversial states-
I have seen the mountains and rivers
We're quite old friends
I still remember, and in dreams can travel everywhere
South of the river and north.
Lovely places one should visit with just a staffThe shoes I've worn out in a lifetime!
1 scoff at the world's work-what a waste for thirty nine years,
Always the official, the wanderer.
The lands of Wu and Ch'u
Rise to the east and south,
The great deeds
Of the rivals Ts'ao and Liu
Have been blown away by the west wind
And left no trace.
By the time the watch tower is finished, its occupant is dead,
The banners are not yet rolled up, but my head is white
I sigh over life's vagaries, now sad, now happy,
Now as in ancient times.
man. Radical even by our standards, his ideas shaped China for almost two decades until a new emperor rescinded his reforms. History
did its best to forget him until recently. Su-Shih was his main political rival. Although Su's opposition to Wang's policies led to repeated
exile, the two remained friends and exchanged poems.
Li Ch'ing-chao is virtually the only woman poet most Chinese acknowledge. Other women are known to have written, but almost
nothing has been preserved. Li has fifty-odd poems out of an oeuvre
known to have been much larger. The two poems included here were
written after the death of her husband. The T'ang poets brought several older forms to excellence never surpassed. They added two of their
own that had, not only a fixed number of words per line, but a fixed
number of lines and an exacting prosody.
Partially as a reaction to these constraints, the Sung poets, while still
using these forms well, began to experiment with a form that came out of
the singing houses: tz'u. These were lyrics "filled in" to tunes that came
to China from central Asia. In the beginning, it was a much freer style:
length was not fixed, there were long lines mixed with short, and
enjambement was frequent. Initially, it was sung. With time, the tunes
were lost and the patterns codified, and all thought of singing tz'u
forgotten. About all that remains of their not quite respectable origin is
these song titles which now identify simply a pattern. Over six hundred
are commonly used. In the preceding selection, the tz'u have their
pattern-titles simply transliterated. -J.L.
29
�For Bert Thoms
July 15, 1917
Between classes at about ten fifteen on the morning of December 12, 1978, Bert Thoms collapsed of a heart attack. He
died soon after in the hospital. His colleague and friend, the
Reverend J. Winfree Smith, conducted the funeral service in a
crowded Great Hall on the morning of December 16, a soft,
bright, almost balmy day. He is buried in St. Anne's Cemetery within sight of the College in Annapolis. I have asked
several friends, colleagues, and students to write on him.-
L.R.
Eva Brann
Some of the masters whose influence left a trace upon my character
to this very day combined a fierceness of conception with a certitude
of execution upon the basis of just appreciation of means and ends
which is the highest quality of the man of action.
Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea
Bert Thoms, whom I shall miss over and over as the seasons roll round, was my friend. Our friendship flourished
largely in one element. We saw each other on land only
occasionally-just to exchange a word of agreement on some
plan or situation-and during the annual spring scraping,
when the boat's bottom was cleaned and painted in his yard.
This nautical working bee had a ritual tinge, and it was
topped off by a hearty and hilarious lunch, hospitably provided by his wife, Josephine.
But twice or thrice a year we were thrown into the closest
proximity, for a day or two or even for a fortnight. That was
when he invited me to sail as part of his crew for a Sunday
sail on the Chesapeake or for the school-end northward cruise
to Buzzards Bay, where he always brought the boat for the
summer. I think he was pleased with my pleasure in sailing
and regarded me as permanently signed on. For the rest, he
was an inveterate recruiter of crews, usually St. John's students. Now and then he even made a press gang of me, for it
is not easy to find an able-bodied-and sound mindedcomplement of four, free at the same time; and to be on
board of that boat with a passable crew was, I think, the great
recreation of Bert's life. I am already regretting the times I
backed out, unable to get away and sometimes, truth to tell,
unwilling to subject myself to the heat and the head and the
green stuff in the drinking water-for the small tortures of
each trip were transfigured by marvellous moments.
30
December 12, 1978
Bert's last and best-loved boat was called the Cygnet. There
are many fancy and funny names to be seen on sterns in
Annapolis harbor, but the Cygnet was unwhimsically named
after its class, and a stumpy little swan of a boat it was. Bert
himself was a no-nonsense sailor; he wore old slacks and a
visored cap and some ratty but warm gloves preserved from
his days as a pilot in the Second World War, when he ferried
planes across the Atlantic. He was totally without nautical
affectation, but to his crew he was the Skipper, and that,
quite untinged by facetiousness, is the image I have of him.
For he knew what he was doing, at every moment and in
every situation. Of course, pleasure boating in a sloop of little
more than twenty foot length may not seem a major
enterprise, but nasty, even dangerous, situations can arise:
you can run hard aground or be becalmed in a shippiiJgJane
or caught in a squall. Bert could work us off, get the outboard
going (we had a standing bet of a quarter on its starting by the
third pull), take in sail. And so, in the comfort of his competence, we enjoyed our scrapes.
He was infallible-almost-but when something did go
wrong it was wonderful. One night, on the dreary waters of
the Delaware Bay, I had gone below early to sleep off a
headache. The next morning my bunk partner, Janet Christhilf (later O'Flynn) woke me up with the unforgettable words:
"Have a look, we're sitting in a meadow." I made a rude reply
and raised myself to the porthole. We were sitting in a
meadow. The Cygnet, which had two flat keels for just this
contingency, had somehow-Bert never vouchsafed an
explanation-come to rest on a water meadow in the delta of
the Maurice River, only a few miles of knee-deep black muck
away from the town of Bivalve. Our consolation was apparently to be that we were not in the Cohanssey(?), a river
famed for flies, and indeed turned in Bert's telling into a kind
of £luminal Lord of Flies. It was typical of sailing with him
that a river, so obscure that on no map in Walla Walla is its
name printed, should have become a byword to me. Oddly
enough that day turned into a cosily memorable one. When
the wind failed, the mosquitoes came in black clouds, but we
closed the hatch, sipped Southern Comfort, the boat's universal elixir, read novels and gave ourselves over to a swamp
existence. Noon tide came in and went out without us. Night
tide would, Bert had said, be higher. A wind sprang up;
clouds were chasing across the moon. A fishing skiff with two
drunk anglers turned up and offered to tow us off in return for
being pointed toward home port, Bivalve. No success for
either side. Finally Bert with Donne! O'Fiynn kedged us off,
having packed the other half of the crew into the dinghy to
�July, 1979
lighten the boat, which, suddenly swimming free, flew off
into the night. All these events are told in the Cygnet's log.
But usually the mistakes were committed
by the crew, si-
lently noted and silently rectified by Bert. They rarely perturbed him, though once, during a night watch off Point
Judith, shared by Meredith Anthony and me we managed it
thoroughly. Bert had given us a course and told us to hold it;
then he and Michael Anthony had gone below and stuffed
themselves into their quarter bunks. Soon the wind stiffened,
but we, intoxicated by the blowy black night air and secure in
the roguish pretense of sticking by orders, sailed on as we
were, heeling hard and the deck awash. Presently he shouted
up, and on bending down I saw him hugging the ship's store
of liquor to his bosom and angrily accusing us of causing
"internal shipwreck." In my kitchen there still hangs~and
always will~a carefully engrossed Greek quotation from
Sophocles, which he later presented to me, advising that "he
who will not slacken sail betimes, shall sail home sitting on
the keel"-a very Bertian present, savoring at once of round-
about rebuke and affable reminiscence, not to speak of
learned wit.
1942
Said quarter bunk, a coffin-like ·container extending under
Hence he knew about the aeronautical significance of the
the cockpit seat, was my joy: To be lapped in the leeward
bunk, with the boat going fast and the water soughing against
the side, made for the most delicious naps available this side
of Lethe. There were a number of other specific delights so
acute that they overbalanced hours of mild torture~which
flight patterns of wild geese and how to catch and clean
fish~under his tutelage I used a mackerel tree to haul in my
first and last catch: five mackerel and two pollock at once. He
could judge a distance, spot a buoy in a fog, show up a cheating car mechanic, fell a tree so that it would fall between two
others. He knew materials: what glue would stick what to
Bert, however, never seemed to regard as an avoidable evil
but as a source of stoic relish. For example, he would rarely
let us land to eat or shower, partly because it was a source of
pride to sail frugally and self-sufficiently, but ultimately, I
concluded, because he liked discomfort on board better than
luxury on land. But those delights were worth it: ghosting on
a zephyr up an Eastern Shore creek on a frosty fall morning
with the sky covered by honking wedges of wild geese and
white flights of wild swans, floating through the meadows of
the inland waterway watched by a heron on the banks, sailing
into a lovely New England town harbor for a rare bowl of
clam chowder, warming up at anchor after nightfall with a
cup of cocoa-cum-Southern Comfort accompanied by lots of
clowning.
The boat was often resonant with Bert's intoning of hymns
and ballads, of which he had a cyclically boundless repertoire, including my favorites, "The Christian Cowboy" and
"Ballad of the Dismal Swamp." Bert had an often-foiled longing to sail down to the real source of this latter mournful
song, the North Carolinian Dismal Swamp, and that had
been the very destination for this coming spring cruise-but
now that trip will never be. Once, in Long Island Sound, I
discovered that he knew by heart more stanzas of the "Internationale" than I knew it even had. But then he had more
curious knowledge~which he retailed with sly unobtrusiveness on the proper occasion-than anyone else I know,
knowledge stored away in the course of his varied occupations: he had been music major, labor organizer, lumberjack,
pilot, hunter, mechanic, professor, and, of course, St. John's
tutor.
what at what temperature and under what tension. He knew
what doohickey would turn what trick and what tool was exactly right for what job~although he could always devise a
jury rig, in a pinch. He could fix anything, under the most
unlikely conditions, going to work with inexhorable, slow,
sure doggedness, pitting his patient know-how against the re-
calcitrance ofthe thing.
He sailed with seasoned correctness, like someone who
could write the manual as soon as read it. Like any good
captain, he was a tyrant, but a tacit tyrant, who would spot an
incorrectly tied knot right away but let it go until he was at
leisure to amble over and retie it with pedagogically ostentatious wordlessness. He persisted in hinting for lunch at 1300
hrs., when the landlubberly cook was willing at one o'clock. I
understood his insistence as stemming from that uncompromising sense of appropriate procedure which sometimes
suddenly becomes crucial on a boat. He had that nautical
"fierceness of conception" combined with "certitude of execu-
tion" of which joseph Conrad speaks. I wanted to learn, but I
was a little unnerved by his ways. So eventually I quietly resigned my position as anxious navigator and became a con-
tented galley slave, handing up always welcome cups of black
coffee laced with spiritual substance and unobtrusively giving
the captain the lion's share of the noodles; he needed it.
For on board he was indefatigable. The crew might goof
off, curl up in the sun with a book or retreat below out of the
cold rain. He sat in the stern, apparently impenetrable to cold
and wet. At home he had a reputation for deep and welltimed sleep~that is, when he had put everyone to work. But
31
�The College
on board he always had one eye open-incidentally, a blessing to a crew to whom his ship-shaking snoring was a legend.
He was, though not young, and lumbering rather than athletic, agile enough in an emergency, and tireless and tough.
Once, off the coast of New Jersey, we ran into a squall, one
accurately predicted by him, I should add. He sent us below,
closed the hatch tightly and battled the elements. Stupefied
by excessive carbon dioxide and the mad heaving and a heady
sense of safety-in-danger, we were startled scared just twice:
when the storm jib blew with a loud report, and again when
Bert urgently beat on the hatch door: his cigarette lighter
wanted refilling.
On board we seldom talked of teaching, but I did learn a
lot about certain sides of the college, especially about those
students who had made outsiders of themselves by their wild
and weird behavior and who had found in Bert someone to
calm and tame them. He was, as I said, a tacit though not a
taciturn man, especially where he felt deeply. l think there
were long-standing silent resentments; he thought that his
projects had been too often slighted and his opinions neglected. Perhaps I ought to have learned more of all this on
our long watches together, but he was a proud man, and I
was not sure that it was my place to ask.
This pride showed itself in an odd and characteristic mannerism. A mood would seize him for sesquipedalian utterance. For example, homeward-bound he would hand me the
binoculars with instructions to find the black nun buoy a
point off the port bow-only he would say to sight "a navigational marker of the female ecclesiastical class," an order
which strained more than the eye. I took it for a signal that
his practical know-how was not to eclipse his verbal versatility.
For he had a passionate relation to the logos, and it was
that which drew him back to the college after an enfOrced
absence. And this passion came in rare conjunction with a
capacity for action in Conrad's sense: not political activity or
technical efficiency, but a kind of masterful intimacy with
man's tackle and nature's tricks. We needed such a man in
the St. John's community, and we shall miss him very much.
Walla Walla, Washington
Janet Christhilf O'Flynn '74
Bert Thoms declared the supremacy of reason over passion.
From the first he carried this out in a most original way. At
the age of four Bert left home. For fuod he took along a box
of sawdust: he figured that since he couldn't eat much of it at
a time, it would last quite a while. The experiment ended
when his path led by the schoolyard where his sisters were
playing and he was returned to his mother.
I first met Bert during my sophomore year at St. John's
College. He had become a teacher in the years since he first
left home and he led his students into the same life of courage, originality, and respect for reason. He was hospitable,
welcoming the opportunity for discourse outside as well as
32
inside the classroom, and he was loyal. When lack of funds
threatened to make me take a year off from school, Bert invited me to live with his family, rent-free. His family had
welcomed live-in students before, at Washington-Jefferson
College, and a rich friendship with the whole family always
resulted from the arrangement. It is a privilege now to have
one p1ore paper to write for Bert.
Bert knew that the practice of reason demands faith and he
took to heart the warning in the Meno that misology is the
greatest evil into which a man can fall. So far was he from
misology that his daily work and play centered around words.
The work lay in awakening his students to the full weight of
meaning in speech and in being faithful to the conclusions
reached. The play lay in examining each English word anew
for its alliterative and rhythmic oddities, for its punning possibilities in any of several languages, and for the humorous
consequences of its careless and habitual use by lazy tongues.
In Bert's sophomore language class we used C. S. Lewis's
Studies in Words as a beginning for our discussion of the
shifts in meaning that occur through time. Bert pointed out,
for instance, that the word "discrimination" as it is used in
talk about racial or sexual bias today actually means "lack of
discrimination," or judging the individual on the basis of a
stereotype. He used this clarity of definition in seminar discussions to shock students into hearing themselves in similar
contradictions. Since grammar aids clarity of thought,- he
read the assigned language papers as thoroughly for form as
for content, and marked them accordingly. His award for
achievement, whether in Greek grammar or in geometric
propositions, was a button reading, &.peTi, €7TtO"'Ti,f.L7} ~<TTLv:
knowledge is virtue.
Bert did appreciate the deliberate ambiguities of meaning
used in poetry. One of his favorite poets was John Donne and
"Batter my heart, three-personed God" one of his favorite
poems for complexity of images. He also prized Donne for his
logic. Donne's poem, "The Flea," prompted comparison
with Marvell's poem, "To His Coy Mistress." Although
Donne attempts to seduce his mistress by belittling the action
desired, his poem is logical and, Bert suggested, his argument
should be more convincing to a reasonable woman than
Marvell's attempt at seduction which, though lyrical, is based
on a false syllogism. We were assigned one poem to
memorize for class, with the recommendation that we make
memorizing a regular habit. Bert claimed to have in his
memory thirty hours of verse which had stood him in good
stead whenever he did not have access to books.
Unfortunately for his friends, Bert's memory included verse
far worse than any of Donne's. The doggerel which he delighted in rendering, usually in song, included the "Ballad of
the Dismal Swamp," "Psalm 40" rerhymed and set to a nursery tune in which all the unaccented syllables came on the
down beat, and the spiritual which began, "Oh, I'm a cowboy, a Christian cowboy. I round up dogies for the Lord."
Some of these treasures came from his childhood in Michigan, as did the only piano piece he had mastered, the "March
of the Little Sages".
An earlier and sweeter memory was of the many names of
�July, 1979
flowers, some in Latin, that his mother taught him as she
grew them to sel1 in town. Bert's love of names and renaming
of familiar objects created a Thomsian world around him. A
newcomer was taught to say "fraudulent discomfort" for
cham-pagne, and "rational quadruped" for poodle. Even his
students were affectionately renamed. Donnel turned into
Donnelovitch, Janet into Janeticule, and Claire into Clairenon-de-la-lune.
In this Thomsian world, Bert reigned. His special throne
was at the helm of his sailboat, a Signet named Cygnet,
where his competence compensated for many errors of skill
and judgment on the part of the accompanying student crew.
He was a benevolent despot. Once, out on the open ocean,
we hit a storm at night and all but the captain went below out
of the heavy rain. We huddled in the hatch, growing drowsy
from lack of oxygen and queasy from the violent pitching,
while the indefatigable doggerel songs wafted happily from
above in the wet wind and lightning.
Bert at times fell into despondency, as do we all. One such
low period came after the death of a long-time friend and
neighbor in Onset, Massachusetts. During the ensuing
months Bert lost his appetite and became silent and withdrawn. He sought fortification, but not comfort: he read Epictetus and held fast to the statement that one must not regret
that which is not in one's power to change. This encapsulated
Bert's struggle not only against grief but also against attacks of
other passions such as desire, anger, and jealousy: he willed
that reason should win out over passion. But of these things
he said very little. One clue to his silence is in the playful
wedding gift he gave to me and Donne!. It is a handmade
cribbage board, carved with an inscription that is a translation
into Greek of c1 sentence from Eva Brann's lecture in praise of
Jane Austen: "Happiness is more deserving of speech than
unhappiness".
In speaking of Bert's life there is much more that deserves
to be said. But I am inadequate to the volume of it, and so I
dose here.
Patricia Pittis Sonnesyn '74
One day in Freshman Laboratory our professor plunged his
large hand into his pocket and retrieved a Kleenex. He proceeded to separate the "two-ply" tissues, delicately and carefully he folded one and returned it to its former place, while
with the other he blew his nose. This meticulous thriftiness
fascinated me. Although I considered myself to be thrifty, the
idea of separating Kleenex tissues had never crossed my mind!
Bert was thrifty; nothing was to be wasted with Bert, almost
everything could be reused or used for some other purpose.
Even his green work pants were creatively patched after a saw
had eaten through the pants and Bert's lower leg. Be1t ate
everything that was served to him~even the apple core.
Even as a dignified professor Bert had a great sense of
humor. In our early acquaintance in Freshman Lab I managed to persuade my lab partner to concoct a solution which
proceeded to explode the test tube and cut his finger. I feared
1969
the worst from Bert but he only laughed uproariously, probably thinking that my partner had to be more stupid than I to
allow himself to be duped in such a way.
Bert was a. surrogate father to me. He always encouraged
my questions and answered them whenever he could. I remember how when I would get annoyed because the seminar
readings were entirely too philosophical for my taste, Bert
would invite me over to help him fix the engine of his truck,
or build some new contraption for his boat. And still he managed to find some way to bring in Freshman Lab.
In the first years of our friendship we were most of the time
doing things: fixing a motor, building a dinghy, repairing or
cleaning and painting Cygnet. He had the knowledge, I had
the interest and the small hands. It made a good team. Here
was a man who had integrated his love of philosophy with the
practical world in a very tangible way. He loved to work with
his hands as well as with his mind. I was vastly impressed~
here was someone worth listening to.
33
�The College
But Bert was not only a great teacher, he was also a man of
great compassion and understanding. When I was in the hos-
of forgiveness. As one who made few mistakes himself, I
could understand how he might hold this view. He was a
pital he was the first to send a cheerful card in which he said
"it's times like these when all the poetry you have stored in
your memory comes in handy." When I found out that I had
hepatitis in my Senior Year, Bert dropped everything at a
moment's notice and drove me from Annapolis to Long Island without a second thought. When I wrote to him in great
distress from the Santa Fe campus, he responded im-
persistent, stubborn man. He preferred to repair the situation
mediately. His friendships were important to him, this was
obvious, and his loyalty was unmatched.
As far as Bert's own life was concerned, I do not remember
a time when he sought sympathy from others. He patiently
endured his own personal trials in silence. Others could only
conjecture the amount of pain and sorrow he might be suffering. In his last year I experienced him as more silent than
usual; he was a solitary and lonely man yearning for a sparring partner-someone with a mind equal to his own. Yet, in
rather than admit a mistake and leave it at that.
One summer Bert, Josephine, and I took a weekend sail
around Martha's Vineyard. One day we decided to fish instead of sail because the weather was unfavorable. By dusk we
had barely caught enough for dinner, nevertheless, we rowed
back to Cygnet, and Bert proceeded to clean the five porgies.
It was raining, cold, and the sea was thrashing. While rinsing
the porgies Bert managed to lose two of them. You could not
imagine the face of a more dejected man than Bert's at this
moment-we had worked all day in the cold and Bert had
managed to lose two-fifths of our meager prize. He practically
threw himself headlong over the side in .an effort to retrieve
them. Every nerve and every muscle was concentrated on the
immediate task at hand. Bert's attention could hardly have
been distracted by anything short of a greater castastrophe.
the eight years that I knew Bert, I cannot recall him ever
After much persistence, he managed to retrieve one of the
having complained about anything. Nor was he ever sick in
those years. At least, if he was, no one ever knew about it. He
was a man of great strength and few tears.
two, but we mournfully followed with our eyes the other fifth
of our meal as it floated downward and away and was finally
eaten by others less deserving.
Bert's hands fascinated me; they were powerful hands. I did
not know him when he played the piano with those hands,
Bert did not dwell on the negative. He was a man of few
words-we often sat at meals in which long periods of silence
were not uncommon.
Bert rarely got angry, but when he did, watch out! His fuce
would take on a darker complexion; one could almost hear,
and feel, the rumblings of a volcano ready to erupt inside
him; but he rarely let it. out, instead he would become stone
cold and deathly silent. He rarely let you know explicitly why
you made him angry; that was for you to figure out for your-
self.
Bert had a slow, steady pace when he worked. I do not
remember him ever getting flustered or angry if what he was
doing was not going right. He was careful, cautious, and very
precise in his work. I cannot remember him ever swearing
when a tool slipped and he scraped his knuckles or cut himself on a sharp edge. His speech likewise was slow and care-
fully worded. He walked at a studied, controlled pace. I do
but it would be hard to imagine, for they were not a musi-
cian's hands with long gangling fingers and a wide ieil"ch.
They were not the usual hands of a scholar either. Bert was
unusual-after all, who still wore a crew cut in the 70's or
narrow bow ties when wide ones were in? His hands were the
hands of an engineer, a mechanic. He built from nothing, he
repaired, he remodeled with those hands. He was an artisan
as well as a builder of minds. Often in the evenings we would
make popcorn, and Bert would grasp half the bowl with one
hand. On the Cygnet we often had hot soup and saltines; Bert
would take about five and with one hand he would pulverize
them like a compressor then drop them into his bowl of soup.
When he lighted a match he enjoyed entertaining his students by waiting until the last moment before he extinguished
the flame.
not remember ever having seen him hurrying somewhere.
One of Bert's hobbies was to outsmart the auto manufac-
Most everything that he did was carefully and thoroughly
done.
talents until they were needed. His next door neighbor in
Onset once boasted that he was an excellent cribbage player
and pestered Bert to play with him. Bert put it off many times
until finally he could put it off no longer and beat the man so
badly that he never asked Bert to play with him again.
In times of crisis (particularly sailing), Bert would become
turers and auto parts dealers. Whenever he did he would
chuckle and be happy with himself for the rest of the clay. On
one occasion I had a fuel injector in my VW which did not
seem to be working properly. The dealer told us it would be
$3 5. 00 for a new part. When we took the old one out of the
car we found that it was just the tubing (which had been
crimped) which was defective. When the tubing which cost
all of ten cents had been replaced, the injector was as good as
new. Bert chuckled whenever he recalled that little maneu-
increasingly more calm. In a controlled, quiet tone he would
ver.
Bert was a modest man; one usually did not know of his
give orders and his "deck apes" would carry them out. He
It was on his boat that Bert was most content, I think. With
thrived in the challenge of the moment. Fear was not known
when one was with Bert. He was in charge; we all knew we
were in good hands, even when the raging seas pounded our
good company, lively conversation, "Southern Comfort,"
lemon drops, pork & beans or corned beef in a can, saltines,
small craft.
Bert did not believe in forgiveness. He thought forgiveness
was ultimately harmful to both the forgiver and the recipient
34
and a light breeze to move Cygnet along, he was a happy
man. On the night watches, when he thought his crew was
sound asleep, one occasionally heard old Christian hymns
floating from the stern.
�July, 1979
Leo Raditsa
Bert Thoms was careful-a care which showed itself also
in his exactness of dress. He was bold, shy, in some matters
almost the creature of his conviction, courteous, not anxious
to please. There was something disconcerting in his grace,
something fierce in his softness that kept me awake and my
eyes open in his presence. He impressed me as a man who
knew something of courage-who knew the wonder of words
but also their limitations, the frontiers beyond which they
have little consequence. That is, he knew the distinction between action and words: he knew when you had to do something instead of talking and wben you could talk freelywhich always meant to him, more than anything else, careful
listening with eyes bright in attention and recognition.
Because he had known courage, he also knew beauty, although he hardly ever talked about it (to me): the knowledge
of beauty was evident in his eyes and in his smile which illuminated his whole face in intelligent recognition. This love
of beauty made it possible for him to help some students yield
to the best in themselves. What first brought me to his friendship was wonder at a Senior Essay he had supervised: every
word, every observation in it moved of its own sweet will. At
my admiration he remarked, a spark in his eyes and modesty
passing through his face for a moment like a shadow, that he
too thought the paper "pretty good." He knew something of
the art of midwifery and the toughness of love it requires.
His presence made you recall independence of mind-and
with it the surprises and disappointments of freedom.
He made you aware you were standing on your own two
feet on the turning earth when you talked to him. He knew
about danger also-that was evident in the respect he gave to
people and things. That respect meant also he would not suffer casual blunders in simple matters one could be expected
to know something about, like the position and angle of the
sun at various times in the year. But when I asked him real
questions, for instance, on the meaning of a passage in
Ptolemy, the care he took in his explanations and drawings
told something of the love with which he had studied that
author.
He did not devour books but questioned them. He did not
substitute them for life. I always felt there was a world
elsewhere ·for him-in that sense he was worldly. He saw
what was going on before his eyes. He knew other people
lived; his courtesy and grace-and his ferocity-came of that
knowledge.
He spoke little but he did not have to speak to make you
feel his presence. In fact the silence, the pauses, in conversation with him taught me often more than the words. They
taught me about pace and thereby reminded me life moves of
its own. They showed me my impatience. They encouraged
me to reflect and to Jisten to myself. There was something
deliberately slow about his pace-but it also had its own lilt
which came unmistakably of nature. This capacity to teach
with few words sometimes made his presence insistent, even
occasiona1ly insistently oppressive. His greeting was almost
always joyous and deep as if he were welcoming you to his
1952
own house.
He had an appetite for thought, knew its strength and its
capacity to strengthen. With gaiety in his eyes and energy in
his voice he told me a few weeks before his death that the
struggle of reading Michael Oakeshott's On Human Conduct,
which he was reviewing for this journal, was well worth it.
Earlier he had rejected with some impatience my suggestion
that he review a first-rate study of Adam Smith. He did not
like secondary sources: they did not have enough fight in
them and yielded (as a result) little sustenance.
He remembered vividly. When he talked of his former
teachers in graduate school critically, almost vehemently, it
brought me up sharp: it was as if he had just walked out of
their classrooms. I could not find the words to talk to him of
the War when he was a Navy pilot: it is still too big and
intimate an event for easy words. But his remarks about the
Depression, .wbich had left its indelible mark on him, taught
me unforgettable things about those years-about the teachings of rough necessity. He did not remember; he recalled:
the past lived in him strongly enough to be palpable. I suspect
he wondered whether people who had not suffered through
disaster could summon the courage to avoid it in the
future-but he never said a word of it.
Of his death, this much can be said in thanks, it was swift
and painless.
Cum semel occideris et de te splendida Minos
fecerit arbitria,
non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te
restituet pietas;
infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum
liberal Hippo]ytum,
nee Lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro
vincula Perithoo.
Horace, Odes 4, 7
35
�Don Giovanni,
or
the Triviality of Seduction
Wye Jamison Allanbrook
One striking feature of El Burlador de Sevilla y convidado
di piedra, the first Don-juan play, 1 and of many versions
thereafter, is its beginning in medias res, with cries of rape
and pursuit in the darkness. If in the earliest versions of the
first scene some of the names and faces differ from those
Mozart's Don Giovanni has made us familiar with, nevertheless all the openings share the same silhouette, and for sound
dramatic reasons. The story itself has the thinnest of plotlines:
Don Juan is a libertine, so Heaven punishes him. For a successful presentation of the plot on stage two scenes alone are
indispensable: one to make a compelling display of the depth
and depravity of Don Juan's crimes, and another to bring the
final vengeance of Heaven down on his head. In between
these pivotal scenes the author was meant to improvise, inventing as large and varied a bouquet of seductions as might
please him. Tradition, however, fixed the outer scenes firmly
in place in order to assure a modicum of dramatic power and
coherence in a work which could be easily weakened by diffuse and errant improvisation in its episodes. Final vengeance
took the shape of the "Stone Guest," whose visitation became
the hallmark of the legend. The opening and indictment
scene, with Giovanni bursting from a darkened house pursued by an outraged noblewoman, provided evidence of at
least one sin commensurate with the high degree of celestial
attention afforded by the Statue's visit and gave the play a
dark and galvanizing opening.
By the eighteenth century the traditional beginning had
been supplied with a brief upbeat-a monologue by Don
Giovanni's comic servant as he plays sentry for his master
outside the house of Donna Anna. It was left for Mozart to
bind the two traditions-of low comedy and high tragedy,
This essay is taken from a longer essay on Don Giovanni which is part of a
book entitled Two Mozart Operas: A Grammar of Musical Gesture.
I. The Jester of Seville and the Stone Guest, written by the Spanish playwright Tirso de Molina in the early seventeenth century.
2. "A desperate fury" (I, i, 102-103). (The measure numbers given throughout this essay are from the Eulcnberg miniature orchestra score.)
3. "Constantly trying to conceal his identity" (measures 79-80).
4. "Chi son'io tu non saprai" (measures 81-83).
36
opera buffa and opera seria-into perhaps the most stunning
opening scene in all operatic literature. Leporello introduces
the subject of seduction in an aria which is a vulgarly hearty
smack of appreciation for the cavaliere's way of life, delivered
with rolling eyes and the occasional leer. The high passion of
the chase is grafted directly onto his final cadence. Donna
Anna enters on the wings of opera-seria indignation, moving
to the rhythms of a quick and passionate march:
'"'
14
.. ...
14" spe·
~
"'
.. sc. ,..,.,
,..•~o.c-
..,._ J..i1 d8o h" 1<- sei ~1- 11"
....
·I
:
'-
v
She characterizes herself as a "furia disperata," 2 and has the
bearing of a classical tragic heroine. Nobility is as full-blown
and majestic in this opera as buffa is salacious.
We are used to this combination of modes, and rarely let it
raise the questions it ought to about the tone of an opera
which today is largely presumed, probably due to the accounts of its nineteenth-century admirers, to be about the
seducer as superman. But at the least the supple farce of buffa
would seem bound to undermine the monolithic intensity of
the grand style, suggesting a rather ironic perspective on the
postures of passion. Furthermore, the protagonist's music is
not of either mode, neither comic-the style of a sardonic
rake-nor heroic. At his first entrance he wants only to identify himself as No-Man. The stage direction describes him as
"cercando sempre di celarsi," 3 and his response to Donna
Anna's challenge is oddly oblique: not "you will never detain
me," but "you will never find out who I am. " 4 He also conceals himself in his music, adopting for his first utterances
Donna Anna's vocal line and never in the remainder of the
trio (Leporello supports the duo throughout with patter imprecations about approaching trouble) originating any of its
rhythmic or melodic material. It is hardly surprising that a
�July, 1979
pursued seducer should try to conceal his identity from his
intended victim. Yet although Tirso's Don Juan, pursued by
Isabella and several Spanish nobles, also at first calls himself
No-Name, he finally cannot resist revealing himself, crying
out "Fool! I'm a gentleman!" (nor could Odysseus leave the
Cyclops without informing him that No-Man was Odysseus,
son of Laertes 5 ). Giovanni is strangely free from this besetting
vanity. Chameleon-like, he doesn't even betray himself in
speech, borrowing Anna's music, and Leporello's and Anna's
words. 6 The most striking thing about him is that he sees
nothing demeaning in escaping, pursued and nameless, into
the darkness; he feels no need to regain his public dignity. In
fact if the music of the movement were not so elevated, Don
Giovanni's first appearance on stage would amount to a simple sight gag. Certain musical images in Leporel1o's ariahorn calls, and triplets for galloping horses-made the hunt a
live metaphor for seduction. Now suddenly the gentleman
hunter sprints out, determinedly stalked by his erstwhile
prey~" exit, pursued by a bear."
In other eighteenth-century versions of Don Giovanni the
chase scene might well have been played for laughs. Don
Juan Tenorio had fallen into disrepute in the eighteenth century. His story belonged primarily to the popular theater,
where it had degenerated into the spectacle of a comic gentleman scrambling out of windows, inventing adroit lies to
cover misdemeanors, and taking the occasional pratfall. Of
the two eighteenth-century versions beside Mozart's of any
reputation, Goldoni's Don Giovanni Tenorio is merely, on
his own account, an undercover attack on a lover who had
spurned him, while in Giuseppe Gazzaniga' s popular opera II
convitato di pietra the tale is eyed from a certain remove,
placed, as it were, in quotation marks. It is presented as the
second act of a two-act opera, the first half of which shows
the members of an Italian opera company travelling in Germany debating what work to produce, and deciding on Don
Giovanni despite the fact that it is a vulgar farce. In his
choice of libretto da Ponte was perhaps less to be praised for
prescience than he was to be censured for panderiflg to low
tastes. For the eighteenth century the subject of hellfire and
damnation had lost both its dignity and its shock value. 7 And
to the refined libertines of the Enlightenment seduction as
grand guignol must have seemed merely adolescent. To be
5. Ody'"Y IX. 500-505.
6. "Questa furia disperata/Mi vuol far preeipitar" ("This desperate fury wants
to make trouble for me") combine.~ Anna's epithet for herself with Leporello's
predicate-"Sta a veder ehe il malandrino/Mi fara preeipitar" ("It's clear that
this rogue will make trouble for me").
7. In Tom Jones, Fielding remarks on the status of hell as a literary subieet
matter that "Had this history been writ in the days of superstition, I should
have had too much compassion for the reader to have left him so long in
suspense, whether Beelzebub or Satan was about to appear in person, with all
his hellish retinue; but as these doctrines are at present very unfortunate, and
have but few, if any believers, I have not been much aware of conveying any
such terrors. To say truth, the whole furniture of the infernal regions hath
long been appropriated by the managers of playhouses, who seem lately to
have laid them by as rubbish, capable only of affecting the upper gallery-a
place in which few of our readers ever sit" (Henry Fielding, The History of
Tom Jones, A Foundling, Book XII, Chapter XII).
caught out in attempted seduction was ridiculous and unmanly, behavior beneath a gentleman's dignity; the preferred
sport was drawing-room intrigue with the tacit consent of the
seduced. Most eighteenth-century works which are notoriously about seducers turn out under closer scrutiny to be
about something quite different. The burden of Richardson's
Clarissa Harlowe is the unflagging virtue of the heroine, and
the role of Lovelace her seducer is to make it manifest. Tom
Jones is a doughty adventurer whose amorous interludes happen to him because of his winsome beauty and sheer niceness. Even the arch-rogue Rousseau- of the Confessions is passive in his escapades; he makes a point of describing his frequent amours as the result of his weakness, and not a matter
of premeditated pursuit.
In fact, although there is much talk about the "Don-Juan
type," it is difficult to name any other representative of ihe
class except for Don Juan in his various manifestations; when
dealing with such a character, writers seem to have been
drawn exclusively to the Don as sui generis, the full and sufficient expression of a creature which, although perhaps frequently enough encountered in ordinary life, did not cut a
very attractive figure as the center of a play or a novel. For
the straightforward seducer is a difficult literary hero in any
era; depending on the sophistication of the audience his exploits will be either too horrible or too banal to be witnessed
with approval. The reason for the extraordinary popularity of
the Don-Juan figure previous to the eighteenth century may
have been that he was inextricably paired with as galvanizing
a figure invented for his despatch-the famous Stone Guest.
When sin was punished by damnation, the audience need
not be uneasy about enjoying either.
But with hellfire emasculated and seduction reduced to a
vulgar and demeaning pursuit, the eighteenth century could
have little interest in a morality play. Where the theme of sin
and just damnation was retained, it was. usually so thickly
veiled as to be unrecognizable: in Choderlos de Laclos' Les
liaisons dangereuses 8 the seductions are cerebral campaigns of
the utmost refinement, and the seducers are punished by
natural, not supernatural, causes. 9 In the face of these fashions it is surprising that da Ponte retained the traditional armature of the Don-Juan story, even discarding the disclaimer
provided by Gazzaniga's ironic introduction, and that Mozart
played the chase scene seriously. Of course the elevated gesture is Donna Anna's, and Giovanni remains almost a cipher
in the scene. But the potential joke of the hunted turning
tables on the hunter must have been intended to comprise a
more significant image. Starting from Mozart's vignette of the
hero locked in ungraceful flight from a bristling fury, we must
somehow manage to assimilate faintly ridiculous behavior
into the account of a man whom, variously damned or worshipped for the past two centuries, Kierkegaard termed the
8. Published in 1782, iust five years before Don Giovanni was produced in
Prague.
9. A duel, for the Vicomte de Valmont, and for the Marquise de Mcrtcuil a
disfiguring disease.
37
�The College
"expression of the daemonic." 10 The extraordinary reputation
of Giovanni the superman must be squared with the thin
melodrama of his story, the insignificance of his introduction,
and the banality of his pursuits.
The conclusion of the first scene reveals more of the Don.
Donna Anna's father, the Commenclatore, enters and challenges Don Giovanni to a duel. Giovanni refuses, having no
desire to cross swords with an old man, but the Commendatore persists, and Giovanni finally accedes in exasperated decision ("Misero! Attendi,/Se vuoi morir" 11 ). He battles with
and kills the Commendatore. Then with Leporello gaping
from a nearby hiding-place he stands over the old man as he
dies.
Musically the five through-composed sections of the overture and first scene are arranged in a symmetrical hierarchy of
gesture. From the supernatural heights of the grim 0-minor
fantasy introduction the affect declined to the bright clarity of
the D-major galant style, touching bottom with Leporello's
ribald buffa grousing. The high galant with Anna's stirring
exalted march began the reascent and, at the entrance of the
Commendatore, there returns the somber pathos of the fantasy style:
'
/
Jll,hCI
.(:1-.f.f. ....
vt .. ,V'uC~~
c..-..,, ....
~
.;.
. . . . . ..
.(.
1'
•
f.
.
'
.
.
'
g, d, f: tragic fantasy
~ant, courtly ma~ ~~: highgalant, exalted march
F: buffa foot march
In the fantasy section time is taken in very special ways. The
fantasy gesture is suited to the depiction of high tragedy because, unlike the galant and buffa styles, it is free from the
normal gestural and temporal restraints of the dance and of
the period. Here the fantasy communicates both the immediacy and the enormity of the event, first by a pantomimic
choreography of the actual challenge and battle-a literal
representation of time's passing-and then by a surreal distention of time to mark the Commendatore's death throes. Time
is taken first below and then above the threshold of periodic
10. Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, "The Immediate Stages of the Erotic."
His full appellation for Don Giovanni is "the expression of the daemonic as
determined by the sensuous."
II. "Poor wretch! Look out, if you want to die" (I, i, I 55-56).
I2. "Ah, the poor devil falls alr~ady" (sciagurato is related to sciagura, "bad
luck").
13. The alia-breve sign (¢) is an appropriate choice for the death music with
its motet-like quality, since the eighteenth century thought of it as originally
an ecclesiastical meter with its roots in the sacred style of the Renaissance.
I4. Giovanni's words are a dispassionate report of the Commendatore's death
throes: "Cia dal seno palpitanteNeggo !'anima partir" ("Already I see his soul
departing from his throbbing breast"). The Commendatore's words are almost
the same.
38
.
'
Figure I
d: fantasy, ombra
dance structure, the normal time element of the opera. The
fantasy and its temporal distortions cause a sense of the portentousness of these events to pervade the scene, fulfilling the
less specific portent of the overture; its tone is never again
matched in the opera until the Stone Guest appears in the
next-to-final scene.
Giovanni's behavior throughout the challenge and battle is
marked by an insouciant and natural nobility; it is honorable
and properly formal. The sequence of challenge and refusal,
second challenges, and final assent, is portrayed musically by
a series of formal antecedent-consequent phrases (measures
139-46), not set in a continuum of ordinary periodic rhetoric,
but meant to be directly mimetic of the ritual formality of the
meeting. Giovanni's acceptance follows a decisive measure of
silence and is couched in a squared-off phrase of eight measures which puts the brakes on the semi-regular phrase rhythm
set up at the outset; it has the stern and ceremonial flourish
appropriate to the occasion of a formal calling-out:
For Giovanni to refuse the Commendatore's challenge would
be an insult, a violation of the code of honor. That he is
acting from the sense of a nobleman's necessity and not from
viciousness is made clear by the detachment of his death knell
for the Commendatore after the fatal blow is struck. His
words, "Ah, gia cade il sciagurato," 12 are coolly free from
either triumph or regret.
A careful choreography for a sword fight follows until, at
the moment of the death blow, time and pantomime are arrested by a fermata. The new time signature, alia breve (2/2),
and the instruction Andante slow the tempo by half, 13 making the previous d equal .I. The strings mark time with
gravely ticking triplets over a dominant pedal; they measure
out the precious seconds of life remaining to the Commendatore. The very deliberateness of their ticking puts the scene
out of time. Time passes normally only when attention is not
called to it and the shapes of events in time themselves are
left to measure its passing for us. The monotony of the measured triplets is temporarily open-ended, fixing on the bare
phenomenon of time's passing to make the present moment
seem capable of enduring forever. Over the ticking of the triplets the low murmurs of Don Giovanni and Leporello seem
automatic, elicited from them involuntarily. They are not
singing to us or to another character, but are transfixed and
private in awe of the moment at which "the vital spirit leaves
the throbbing breast." 14 Giovanni's first music is again not of
his own invention; it uses Anna's "come furia disperata" of
�July, 1979
the chase music cast in F-minor and slowed to twice its original tempo:
Hearing the familiar figure in sl~w motion and in the minor
heightens the dream-like effect of the scene. Giovanni's voice
emerges from the sepulchral mix of bass tones occasionally to
sculpt a phrase, either by a sharp dissonance or by a reach for
a high note. His torpor underlines the preternatural quality of
the moment: "real" time has been suspended so that the audience may be made to recognize the grave import of the
Commendatore's death.
A chromatic line in the oboes descending from the dominant marks the flight of the soul from the body and returns us
to familiar measured time. By supplying the implied resolution of the chromatic line which ordered the swordplay and
by turning directly mimetic again (although now of a "supernatural" event-the hushed gravity of the death scene made
such a fancy possible) this second chromatic descent puts
time back on the track, heightening the fantasy's quality of
parenthesis, of a moment frozen in time:
behavior of an arrant blackguard. He wears no mask in either
episode; he is not "playing a role."
It is precisely this perplexing contradiction in his nature
which brings many delineators of the character of Giovanni
to elevate him. George Bernard Shaw's counter to Ruskin's
outraged attack on the libretto of the opera 16 cheerfully embraces the prodigy of the Don:
As to Don Giovanni, otherwise The Dissolute
One punished, the only immoral feature of it is its
supernatural retributive morality. Gentlemen who
break through the ordinary categories of good and
evil, and come out at the other side singing
Finch'han dal vino and Ld ci darem Ia mana, do
not, as a matter of fact, get caJJed on by statues, and
taken straight down through the floor to eternal torments; and to pretend that they do is to shirk the
social problem they present. Nor is it yet by any
means an established fact that the world owes more
to its Don Ottavios than to its Don Juans. 17
Attacking Ruskin for prudishness, Shaw displayed his habitual
reverse prudishness as far as the question of the existence of
the Divinity is concerned. A visit from a stone deus ex
machina (or machina dei) may be a bad way to solve the "social problem" posed by Don Giovanni, but Shaw clearly did
not in truth consider the Don to be one. In the Don-Juanin-Hell sequence of Man and Superman 18 he ultimately installed the Don in heaven, there to ponder through his high
intellect a mysterious quantum called "Life: the force that
ever strives to attain greater power of contemplating itself'; his
task in heaven was to be "the work of helping Life in its struggle upward." For Shaw Giovanni's intent pursuit of earthly
pleasure was n)erely a passing phase in the evolution of a
superhuman intelligence.
Kierkegaard's word "daemonic" imputes so111ewhat the
same kind of surpassing worth to Don Giovanni's nature, and
the word has since become the adjective most commonly associated with encomia of the Don. It< orthography is intended
to recall its derivation from the Creek llat!Lwv-divinity,
genius, or tutelary deity-and to extend its implications be-
15. "Leporello, where are you?" "I'm here, more's the pity . . . . Who's
dead? you or the old man?" "What a sh1pid question! the old man" (I, ii,
But returned to ordinary time Giovanni is impatient of last
rites, and forestalls the anticipated tonic by hissing out for
Leporello. The drop from high fantasy to the lowest buffa
dialogue in recitative secco ("Leporello, ove sei?"/"Son qui,
per disgrazia ... ./Chi e morto? voi o il vecchio?"/"Che
domanda da bestial il vecchio." 15 ) is immediate and stunning. It only underlines Giovanni's polymorphic nature: a
gentleman when answering the Commendatore's challenge,
at his opponent's death he slips back down into the seamy
194-98).
16. "And yonder musician, who used the greatest power which (in the art he
knew) the Father of Spirits ever yet breathed into the clay of this world; who
used it, I say, to follow and fit with perfect sound the words of the
Zauberfl6te and of Don Giovanni~foolishest and most monstrous of conceivable human words and subject of thought-for the future amusement of
his race! No such spectacle of unconscious (and in that unconsciousness all
the more fearful) moral degradation of the highest faculty to the lowest purpose can be found in history" (quoted in G. B. Shaw, Shaw on Shaw, ed.
Eric Bentley [New York 1955], pp. 50-51).
17. Ib;d., pp. 51-52.
18. Man and Superman, Act III.
39
�The College
yond the limits of the field of Christian demonology. 19 For
Kierkegaard "daemonic" signifies the supernatural not as
above the natural, but as quintessentially natural. To him the
Don is a life force, a power of nature-in his own words,
"primitively controlled life, powerfully and irresistibly
daemonic." Giovanni's cruelties and vulgarities are to be
excused-or veritably embraced-because "his passion sets
the passion of all the others in motion ... the existence of all
the others is, compared with his, only a derived existence."
The daemonic man's sins are sins only in the eves of the
petite bourgeoisie, whose restricted vision is mean and crippling. The daemonic man is above the morality of the vulgar,
and properly the only moral being: as Shaw has the Devil
observe after Don Juan departs for heaven, "To the Superman, men and women are a mere species ... outside the
moral world."
The music of Mozart's opera will not, however, suffer a
similar apotheosis of the character of the Don. Let us for the
moment characterize as "natural" the mode of behavior appropriate to the galant and buffa worlds which formed the
full and resonant cosmos of Le nozze di Figaro and which
reappear in Don Giovanni more narrowly circumscribed.
Then Giovanni is a man whose behavior is both super- and
sub-natural. The opera's melange of musical styles, and more
particularly the brilliant mobile inverted pyramid of social
gestures which constitute its overture and first scene (see Figure I), carry the theme of the opera with them. The hero is a
buffoon; the buffoon is a hero. By being both he is fully
neither. Were he only an obsessive seducer he would be of no
interest to us, but he can behave like a Don as easily as not.
He redeems himself from mere vulgarity in the battle with the
Commendatore, acting with clean and spirited disinterest: secure in the propiety of having granted Anna's father an opportunity to avenge the insult to his daughter, "L'ha voluto: suo
danno, " 20 he says indifferently to Leporello afterward, his
elevated disinterest degenerating into a careless flippancy. He
is a galvanizing and disturbing figure-daemonic, if you
must-because his sphere of action encompasses the highest
and the lowest possibilities of human behavior. Rarely do we
encounter a man at once of such silliness aDd such intensity,
such spirit and such utter lack of humanity.
Nor can it be said-although it might save the dark
hero-that Giovanni runs the moral gamut in a conscious or
wilful manner. There are some striking similarities of attitude
between Don Giovanni and the notorious seducer of Les
liaisons dangereuses, but one crucial difference separates him
from the Vicomte de Valmont: Valmont is all selfconsciousness and calculation, 21 while Giovanni's conduct
cannot be explained by recourse to any principle or deliberate
intent; he is not purposefully anarchic, or involved in a willed
rebellion against ordinary moral standards. Early in Act II, in
response to Leporello's importunities, Giovanni makes an insouciant defense of his way of life:
40
Gio: Lasciar le donne! Pazzo!
Lasciar le donne? Sai ch' clle per me
Son necessarie pill del pan che mangio,
Piu dell' aria che spiro!
Lep:
E avete core
D'ingannarle poi tutte?
Gio:
E tutto amore:
Chi a una sola fedele
Verso l'altre crudele.
Io, che in me sento
Si esteso sentimento,
Yo' bene a tutte quante.
Lc donne, poi che calcolar non sanno,
II mio buon natural chiamano inganno. 22
e
He delivers his sophistical argument with an easy indifference
to its truth or falsehood, taking the lazy pleasure in casuistry a
child might display. And Leporello, easily giving up the protest, answers him in the same spirit: "Non ho veduto mail
Naturale pill vasto e pill benigno. " 23 But Giovanni's first lines
state the truth of his case: women are to him like food 24 and
the air he breathes; he pursues them at the command of a
stimulus-response mechanism as natural to him, and as
automatic, as the instinct to maintain one's life by taking
nourishment. Accounts don't interest Giovanni, and he is in
fact incapable of giving one. Obsessive natures don't have in-
19·. Goethe, to whom the word "daemonic" was of great importance, defined
it as "that which cannot be explained by Reason or Understanding," and
which "manifests it~elf in the most varied way throughout all nature." He
denied that it was an attribute of Mephistopheles (on the ground of his being
too "negative" a creature), and when asked whether it entered into the "idea
of the Divine," he responded, "My good friend, what do we know of the idea
of the Divine? and what can our narrow ideas tell of the Highest Being?"
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Conversations with Eckerman, March 2-8,
1831).
20. "He wanted it-it's his loss" (I, ii, 201).
21. His most effective enemy, Madame de Volanges, says of the Vicomte:
"He has never, since his youngest days, taken a step or said a word without
having a project, and he has never had a project which wasn't dishonest and
criminal. ... His conduct is the result of his principles. He knows how to
calculate all the evils a man can allow himself without being compromised;
and so as to be cruel and wicked without danger, he has chosen women as
his victims" (Choderlos de Laclos, Les liaisons dangereuses, Lettre IX).
22. Gio: "Let the women alone! Madman! Let the women alone? You know
they are more necessary to me than the bread I eat, than the air I breathe!"
Lep: "And yet you have the heart to deceive them all?''
Gio: "It's all a matter of love. Whoever is faithful to only one woman is
cruel to all the others. Since I feel in myself such a generous sentiment, I
love them all. Then the women, because they don't know how to reckon my
good nature, call it deceit" (II, i, 82-95).
23. "I have never seen a more broad or more kindly nature" (II, i, 95-97).
The two go on then to plot the seduction of Donna l'::lvira's maid.
24. Frequently the Don describes the attractions of his new favorite with the
imagery of food. Zerlina has a "viso inzuccherato" (a "sugared complexion")
and fingers "like curds" (I, ix, l06, 115-116). Giovanni's canzonetta describes a beloved with "la bocca dolce pitl che il miele" ("a mouth sweeter
than honey") who carries "zucchero ... in mezzo al core" ("sugar ... deep
in her heart"-II, 3, 25-28, 29-32).
�July, 1979
sights; they can hardly be said to have sight, insofar as that
sense is a human faculty. The objects of his obsession swim
into his ken conducted by one or another of his senses-he
picks up a scent, 25 he pricks up his ears at the sound of a
female voice-but he lacks the impulse to combine these impressions into the articulated whole which brings men to the
threshold of a moral world. He is merely inexplicable-a
monstrum, a prodigy, spontaneously at the service of an obsession. Questions of morality can have no relevance to his
actions.
Although one function of Leporello in the opera is to project, as a pale double of Don Giovanni, the trivial vulgarity of
incessant womanizing, he also serves to provide a realistic
moral standard for the measure of base behavior. He helps us
to remember that most ordinary men cleave to one woman,
with occasional lapses, and fear God, although an occasional
touch of pride may make them forget their proper place; their
sins are committed, judged, and shriven in a familiar moral
sphere. There are certain depths beneath which even
Leporello refuses to sink. He probably regards his own seductions as mere flirtations, the prerogative of a bachelor who
will eventually settle down with some Giannotta or Sandrina.
When Giovanni flaunts his seduction of one of Leporello's
girls, Leporello asks in an aggrieved tone:
E mi dite la cosa
Con tale indifferenza?
... Ma se fosse
Costei stata mia mog1ie? 26
And although he comes to take a certain delight in playing
25. So he greets the first entrance of Elvira: "Zitto: mi pare/Sentir odor di
femmina! ... "("Hush: I think I smell the scent of a woman! ... "-I, iv,
254-55).
26. "And you tell me that with such indifference? . . But what if she had
been my wife?" (II, xi, 212-213). Giovanni answers "Meglio ancor!" ("Better
still!")
27. "Quasi da piangcre/Mi fa costei./Se non muovc/Dcl suo dolore,/Di sasso
ha i] core,/0 cor non ha" ("She almost moves me to tears. If he isn't moved
by her grief, he has a heart of stone, or no heart at all"-II, xiv, 247-302).
28. In I, iv, Leporello tries to chide Giovanni for his wicked ways, but is
immediately bullied out of it. In the buffa duct "Eh, via, buffone" opening
Act II Leporello threatens to leave Giovanni, but easily changes his mind
after a bribe of four gold pieces.
29. "Il padron con prepotenza/L'innocenza mi ruhO" (II, 7, 22-33).
30. I, II. The traditional sobriquet "Champagne Aria" is not actually appropriate to the aria. Its music is inebriating, and its text speaks of intoxication, but strictly in anticipation of the coming festa. To have the Don sing
with champagne glass in hand is to obscure the point that his galvanic energy
arises from the spur of his obsession, not just from .strong wine.
3 L The contredanse "democratized" social dance: it moved the activity from
the court into the dance hall, and, with its emphasis on walking through
follow-the-leader figures rather than performing a series of difficult characteristic steps it opened the field to the enthusiastic amateurs of the
bourgeoisie.
32. "Let the dancing be without any order: make some dance the minuet,
some the follia, some the allemande" (I, II, 33-56).
the stand-in for Giovanni with Elvira in Act II, he is moved
to pity for her in the finale to Act II when Giovanni pitilessly
mocks her efforts to make him repent. 27 That his attempts to
reform Don Giovanni or to leave the Don's service 28 come to
nothing, does not change his function as moral measure. We
are not concerned to find in Leporello a model of perfection,
but merely to discover in him some vague consciousness of a
moral imperative no matter how feeble or fleeting. In indulgent self-defense he pleads subornation: Giovanni has robbed
him of his innocence. 29 His besetting sins are all too human,
his very moral weakness an acknowledgement of a nodding
acquaintance with the way things ought to be.
Don Giovanni's actions, on the other hand, are characterized by a moral neutrality: he is not evil but banal, not
noble but punctilious, and without fear where true courage
would discern what properly is to be feared. His "baseness"
amounts to a trivial obsession with seduction, his "nobility"
to mere freedom from the passions of hate and fear. The obsession and the freedom are opposite sides of the same
coin-an habitual disposition which forfeits the right to be
judged as excess and thus traps him outside, not above, the
limits of human virtue and human vice.
The moral world of the opera is delineated by the familiar
ga/ant and buf{a-courtly and peasant-dance gestures. To
be fully human in the opera is to move in such-and"such a
way, to be defined by a particular gesture or stance. In the
anonymity of his moral void, Giovanni is strangely denatured. Moving across the hierarchy of classes quickly established by the opening music he gives allegiance to none, although he partakes of them all by imitation; he is veritably
No-Man.
Mozart marks Giovanni's non-participation ingeniously,
casting almost every one of his solos as a performance or a
disguise. The Don woos Zerlina in the guise of a nobleman
in "L3 ci darem la mano" (I, 7), serenades Elvira's maid with
a canzonetta, providing only his voice for Lepore11o dressed as
Giovanni {II, 3), and sings to Masetto and his band disguised
as Leporello {II, 4). He does, however, have a "theme song,"
sung in a private moment, when he is giving Leporello orders
for the peasants' ball-the famous "Champagne Aria," "Fin
ch'han dal vi no. " 30 Mozart made a telling choice of gesture
for Giovanni's sole unguarded moment-a rapid and feverish
contredanse. The contrcdanse had no place in the hierarchical vocabulary of eighteenth-century social dance. Resembling our modern square dance, it was a new dance, cutting
across the established order of classes and affects, 31 and hence
the true dance of No-Man. The text and the macro-rhythm
of the aria expand the social connotations of the contredanse
into a thorough-going metaphor for Giovanni's nature:
Senza a1cun ordine
La danza sia:
Chi'l minuetto,
Chi Ia follia,
Chi 1' alemanna
Farai ballar."
41
�The College
Giovanni's command to Leporello calls for the very anarchy
the contredanse had introduced into the orderly cosmos of the
social dances. Another antithesis of this hierarchy is the famous list which Leporello keeps for his master; Giovanni reminds us of it here:
Ah! la mia lista
Doman mattina
D'una decina
Devi aumentar. 33
The insatiable cry of "just one more" grants the preceding
units no particular identity, and hence no dignity or worth;
the counter is interested in the counted only insofar as they
resemble each other and thus deserve a place in the list.
Mozart perceived the listlike nature of the contredanse-an
additive dance in which phrase piles on phrase as the dancers
intemperately improvise yet another figure-and took pains
to make Giovanni's music reflect it To leave the impression
of additive or chain construction on the form of the aria (going against the grain of the essentially dramatic plan of the
Classic movement with its clearly delineated beginning, middle, and end), he built with clear-cut and even-measured
units, repeated without alteration. The staple of the piece is a
"tonic phrase" -three similar two-measure units punctuated
by a fourth:
This phrase is deployed as a stabilizer whose mere recurrence
marks the aria's major hinges. Lost in a relentless moto perpetuo we know where we are only when we hear yet another
tonic phrase.
Since the list as a form of ordering is in truth an analogue
of anarchy, it is one with the middle-class contredanse, which
is placeless and classless. The Greek word 1:f-r07ro,, literally
"without a place," came to mean "strange," or "paradoxical,"
and, particularly when applied to human beings, "repugnant," or "harmful." Giovanni's menace seems to be of the
same nature. Just as the contredanse cut across the established
orders of dance gestures, so does the Don cut across the world
of Donna Anna and the other characters, threatening to subvert it. What brought this rootless creature into being is left
unexplained. He is merely a phenomenon whose nature has
33. "Ahl hy tomorrow morning you should increase my list by a decade" (I,
ll, 70-85).
42
been molded not by the proper moral orders, but by an illusory liberty whose obverse is an idee fixe. Although he is
hardly aware of the threat he poses, its power to destroy the
world of the other characters is unmistakeable.
To counter Giovanni's anarchic contredanse no human
music will suffice. Only divine justice can take on a man for
whom there is no judgement on earth, and only the
superhuman rhythms of the alla-breve pathetic fantasy can be
measured against the breathless, intemperate music of the
"danceless dance." Yet, symptomatic of the Dan's moral neutrality, the instrument of his punishment must issue from a
situation related only indirectly to the crimes he is to be
punished for -a situation in which, according to some
criteria, he can be said to have acted well. The murder of the
Commendatore, by redeeming Giovanni from the perpetual
venality of a career of seduction, makes him worthy of
punishment on a grand and celestial scale. Giovanni's transgressions are all concentrated into that one stroke of the
sword. The spectral hush of the Commendatore's requiem
music raises the moment out of the opera's time, to compel.
recognition of the horror and pathos of the act itself free from
any moral palliative (the Don's quasi-decent behavior, for example). It renders inexorable the ultimate arrival of the divine
avenger: his retribution will be postponed only until Giovanni
has thoroughly demonstrated the mean and trivial preoccupations of the dedicated seducer of women.
There is music in the overture, first, and last scenes which
is cast in the high tragic style, but it would be a mistake to
consider the "tragedy" to be Don Giovanni's. If there is any
pity and fear to be excited in this opera, it is for the lives of
the people he has left behind him. Their habits and pursuits
have been denigrated and diminished by the mere existence
of a man who cannot be touched by the moral order; in the
opera's bright commonplace of an epilogue they reappear
briefly to repair things as best they can. Not the tragic mode
itself, but the mixture of genres, of exalted style and low
farce, manifests this diminution to us throughout the opera in
increasingly dark and turbulent colors. Don Giovanni gives us
a panoramic view of all the orders of society, showing them
stretched to the breaking point; the mixed genre has a vision
both less noble and more encompassing than tragedy.
�Inner and Outer Freedom
Eva Brann
Vast topics are notoriously easy to avoid, and those who
undertake to wrestle with them in public owe their audience
some concrete reason for their choice. Let me begin with
mine.
First, this summer I had occasion to study Supreme Court
decisions bearing on freedom of religion and the public
schools. The graduate students with whom I read these included a number of inner-city school teachers, who were
both black and strong churchwomen. They were peculiarly
alive to a jolting paradox powerfully suggested by these decisions. Baldly stated it is this: In the interest of freedom of
religion, that is, in order to protect the possibility of living by
one's beliefs, it is required to keep the public realm, in which
students and teachers spend the most strenuous part of their
waking life, vigorously free from all particular beliefs and all
religious exercises. In other words, freedom of religion requires freedom from religion. This quandary raised for me a
general question concerning freedom as it appears in the external world. What is this notion which feels so exhilaratingly
rich and yet requires so stringently enforced a void, which
holds such promise of fullness but presupposes the most carefully constructed vacancy?
Second, in one of my classes this term we are reading a
work by Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of
Morals, which culminates in a consideration of human freedom. For Kant, freedom is entirely internal, ciur inner power
to overcome all the natural laws of psychology by which we
are determined and driven, and to act original1y and independently as rational beings. Freedom is inner selfdetermination. It is a harsh view, for it means that the only
clear index of the actual exercise of our freedom comes when
we are opposing our natural inclinations and desires, when
we do not as we want, but as we ought. Freedom is preemmiently self-control. It is a noble but negative test that it is
neither possible to accept nor to forget.
Eva Brann is Arnold Professor for 1978-79 at Whitman College, Walla
Walla, Washington. This is the text of the Arnold Lecture read on
~o~cmber 6, 1978. At present reviewing its curriculum, Whitman College
mv1ted her as a representative of St. John's College. With materials and
meth_o?s used at St. John's, she is teaching courses in Kant, Hegel and Marx,
Euchd s Elements and Lobachevski's Theory of Parallels, the Parthenon,
Oedipus Rex and the Phaedrus, and on "Education in a Republic." The
University of Chicago Press has just published her book, Paradoxes of Education in a Republic.
And finally, the following observation gave food for
thought. When I first arrived in Walla Walla, I discovered
Pioneer Park as a lovely place to jog. You all know the place.
The point is that it is a small park, but laid out on the lines of
a grand European city park, and very handsome. Every day I
ran by a sign that read as follows. It said that the park was
closed to vehicular traffic for a month in order "to determine
the possible effects such an action might cause." (I don't need
to tell you that the actual effects such an action did cause
were dozens of letters to the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin.) I
kept asking myself why the public prose writer hadn't found it
in him just to say "to see what will happen." And it came to
me that this magnificent prose had a point to make: The park
is not just a place of beauty but also the scene of passionate
contention and rational compromise, a microcosm of the
double nature of the free world. Of course, I shall make myself clearer later.
Let me begin my inquiry, then, with a description of the
sense of freedom, and with examples of the feeling of freedom, both to recall to you the familiarity of the notion and to
have evidence for certain observations.
Case 1: When I first drove into the Walla Walla valley I
was amazed by its-oddly unsung-beauty, by the contoured
hrlls, colored mocha and mauve and mat gold, and the
velvet-faceted Blue Mountains. With that sense of beauty
came a feeling of expansiveness, of beckoning aspects and accessible vistas and magical destinations, in short, a sense of
the freedom of the land.
43
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Case II: Long ago, when I set off in my first car to leave
home for graduate school-! was going from Brooklyn to
New Haven, from the frying pan into the fire, a Westerner
might say-! recall feeling, all love and gratitude to my parents notwithstanding, an enormous sense of being out from
under, a ballooning feeling of freedom from constraint.
Case III: I have worked hard all week, and there is a friend
on the phone wanting to know if I would like to go for an
exploratory ride in the country and then perhaps tea. There is
a little click of satisfaction. I'm exactly in the mood and free
for the occasion.
Case IV: We're in the car, ready to take off from Walla
Walla, with the map before us. East to the Blues, west to
Lake Wallula, north to the Snake and south into the
Wallowas-each is a possible direction; all we have to do is
exercise our freedom to choose.
Such personal examples are, I am sure, familiar to
everyone. They are the small daily appearances of freedom in
our lives, modest recurrent phenomena which add up to a
free life. I could, of course, have begun with examples of
unfreedom, of daily oppression, which can take an equally
small, even trivial or absurd shape. For instance, I have been
told that in a popular restaurant in Moscow ice cream dishes
come in cosmic form: there are nine planetary choices named
from Mercury to Pluto. But what a disappointment: if you
order Pluto, you get vanilla-flavored state base with plum
jam, and Mars turns out to be vanilla-flavored state base with
marmalade, and so on; thus freedom of choice is covertly
frustrated.
The trouble is that the relation of small personal freedoms
to the grander notion of civic freedom is different from the
relation of small deprivations to political oppression. Except
on certain ceremonial occasions, freedom with a capital F
does not itself make anyone wildly happy. It is its small consequences that we cherish. The obverse for oppression, however, does not obtain, for the political unfreedom from which
those small frustrations arise is by no means innocuous; it can
itself cause the most terrible suffering, suffering too great to
speak of in a lecture like this. That, incidentally, is what refugees from oppression, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, sometimes fail to understand. They are so accustomed to the soultrying enormities of unfreedom that they cannot properly
value the diffuse, unextreme, even unedifying appearances of
freedom. But these are the ones with which a positive inquiry, the kind that is appropriately carried on among us,
who daily experience freedom, should begin.
So I will return to my cases, which I listed only in order to
go from observation to theory. (When I speak of theorizing I
do not mean the vigorous but dry exercise of attempting to
find a definition of freedom, but rather the attempt first to
articulate the perplexities contained in the phenomena and
then to penetrate the appearances themselves.)
Notice, then, that in all the instances freedom is followed
by a preposition: freedom of the road, freedom from parental
supervision, free for tea, free to indulge my preference. (I
omit such familiar phrases as freedom under the law, freedom
through discipline, freedom in Christ, because these reflect
44
on the conditions of freedom rather than on its nature.)
These prepositions, "of, from, for, to," seem to be almost
unavoidable when we speak about freedom.
Now when used of ordinary situations and notions and
things in this world, prepositions are not particularly mysterious; they usually express spatial relations: sitting under the
apple tree, passing through the looking glass. But what about
the case of freedom, which is nothing spatial?
I think the prepositions of freedom also express situations
and motions and relations, but not of bodies to bodies as when
lovers sit under the apple tree, but of souls to the world.
Freedom of the road, or, more importantly, freedom of
speech or of religion, then means being in a situation to take
hold, to take advantage of the outer world. For example, we
have the ability to utter words, which means literally to
"outer" them, to make loud meaningful sounds. Freedom of
speech means being in a position to appropriate this power.
Freedom from constraint, on the other hand, or those old
freedoms articulated during the second World War, freedom
from want and fear imply an aversive motion, a motion of
shaking off the shackles of the world.
Again, being free for anything, from a talk to a new friendship, means being so well-ensconced in the world as to be
receptive and ready for it, while being free to choose means
being set up for action, ready to sally out and do things._
In sum all our feelings of freedom express various aspects of
a relation we have to the external world as we range through
its beauties, realize our powers within it, secure ourselves
from its oppressions, ready ourselves to receive it and reach
out to act on it.
The fact that this relation has a number of facets, expressed
in the various prepositions "of, from, for, to," must follow
from the different ways human beings, souls, are in the
world: they take possession of it, withdraw from it, await it,
step into it. That is outer freedom.
How the world can be constituted so that our relation to it
must have these half-metaphorical aspects is the subject of a
different-and deeper-inquiry usually called phenomenology. But what is the relation of freedom itself?
Let me give a two-word answer. Outer freedom is real possibility, that is, power not over people but over things and
circumstances. Again, I must leave aside the most abysmal
question, namely, what the world is such that we, embodied
souls, can have within it what in mechanical systems are
called degrees of freedom. I shall assume that we all have a
working knowledge of possibility.
Then external freedom is real possibility. "Real" is Latin
and means pertaining to things. Real possibility is to be distinguished from mere, logical possibility. Let me take you
through an example.
All of us have some property. Now it is logically impossible
for all of us, legally and responsibly, to give that property up.
For although it is in the very notion of property that we may
sell it or give it away-alienate it, as the term goes-it is also
part of its meaning that we are responsible for disposing of it
to another person or quasi-person, like a government. We
have no right, for instance, simply to abandon our house so
�July, 1979
that it becomes a dangerous neighborhood nuisance. Consequently it is logically impossible for all persons to give up
their property at once, for each must, as I said, give it to
someone: humanity holds property like a wolf by the tail-it
cannot let go. But it is logically perfectly possible for half of
all the people to give up what they own to the other half. The
other half might, perhaps, be willing to receive it (though
once they had the stuff they might be sorry). Yet is it not a
real possibility. It will not happen because it is against human
nature and worldly circumstances. Finally, that one or two
people we know should give away all they own is both logically and really possible, though it takes a good deal of preparation and arrangement. Some people are free, by nature and
circumstance, to get rid of the gear of ordinary life.
Now the point is that to be free, either from things, or for
them, takes much planning and careful arrangement. A
world of chaos and inchoateness, the tohuwabohu of the Bible, holds no real possibilities except for a divine creator, and
we are not creators, but only organizers. A perfectly structured, motionless world, on the other hand, has no scope for
action either. In Dante's Divine Comedy there are two kinds
of hopeless hell, the heaving horror of the upper circles of
sinners, and the nethermost circle of perpetual ice in which
Satan is suspended. Real possibility exists in a world which is
at once organized and open.
Outer freedom therefore requires a land crisscrossed by
paths surfaced with road metal, bridged by toll booths, edged
with service stations, lined by fences, and marked by signs
setting limitations and giving directions. And what holds for
the freedom of the road goes for all the other freedoms. They
ali require multifarious physical and mental arrangements,
arrangements for production of goods and prevention of evils,
for delivery of services and collection of debts. But most of
ali our freedom demands the ten-thous~nd real constraints of
the liberating law. (Incidentally, those pioneers who first
found these paths, like the two local heroes, Lewis and Clark,
had far fewer freedoms than we who follow them, though
they had one in an irrecoverable degree: that of really acting
in the world.)
One more observation on the character of external freedom: it goes the way of self-abrogation, of self-cancellation.
Free time without engagements begins to hang heavy on our
hands. Long aimless travels suddenly begin to pall and we
want a destination. Too many options with no preference
drive us crazy. It is the natural fate of freedom to terminate in
commitment. We all know that perpetually free spirits, who
fail to foreclose on their freedom, acquire a peculiar reek
about them, as of stale ozone; a world fixed up for freedom
compels us to take advantage of it. That is why we are all so
busy. For, in Shakespeare's words: "Lillies that festersmell far
worse than weeds."
It is in the very nature of real possibilities, then, to compel
us to realize them, and external freedom is secured by innumerable constraints. People who are not born free but released from slavery by human arrangements are called freedmen. With respect to outer freedom we are all freedmen, for
such freedom is established by myriads of positive contri-
vances.
But we are also free simply-not free to or for or from, not
free as situated in the world, but simply free. This
freedom-let me call it inner freedom -cannot be secured by
external arrangements. For example, the law can protect
freedom of utterance, but a legal freedom of thought is an
absurdity: who could stop us? Nor does this freedom push us
to take advantage of the world. On the contrary, its index is
often a capability for serenely sitting it out.
What, then, is inner freedom? Let me begin by sketching
out two extreme answers, not the most extreme answers possible, but such as will yield a useful framework.
The first is sternly and soberly deflating. It is that there is
no such freedom. There is none because we have no inside,
no interior. Our psychic system is continuous with or, at
least, analogous to our physical organization. Our inner and
outer natures obey the same mechanical (or statistical) laws.
As in physics we rely on observations of motions for our
theory, so in psychology we depend on the evidence of behavior (indeed, this view is usually called behaviorism), and that
tells us that human beings are pushed by needs and pulled by
incentives as bodies are moved by collisions and attractions,
and that interpersonal behavior is as predictable as are the
actions and reactions of bodies. This view is difficult to deal
with in its own terms. It will not do to produce some_tmpredictable behavior because, first, such behavior would itself be
a mere reaction, and second, because inner freedom does not
display itself as erratic behavior The freest people are also the
most reliable. Perhaps the ultimate defense against this view
lies in the difficulty this sehool of thought has in saying what
it means by, and how it comes to care about, its stern and
sober truth; but that development is beyond this lecture.
At the other end stands the Kantian view I mentioned in
the beginning. It is also severe, but it is grand as well. Kant
agrees that we are natural beings, subject to the pushing and
pulling laws of psychology, to our wants, desires, and inclinations. But, he claims, there is also a universally acknowledged
fact, a moral fact. It is not known through any outer or even
inner evidence because it is entirely internal-internal even
beyond our inner sense of ourselves. It is the fact that sometimes we determine and lay down the law to ourselves: we
withstand our own nature, deny our own inclinations and do
not as we want but as we ought. Freedom is an inexplicable
fact; it makes itself known in moral action, which in turn is
eVidenced as rational opposition to our natural inclinations.
Human freedom shows up as radical, reasoning resistence to
human nature. It is a grand view because it assigns to us, as
rational beings with a supernatural root, infinite responsibility
for our actions. But it seems to me to make too harsh a division between our reasoning and our feeling self.
Let me, therefore, take a great chance and tell you what I
think inner freedom, what being free simply, means. I think
it means nothing more and nothing less than having an inside, that is, a plaee where one is genuinely and literally by
oneself-though not alone.
One way to remind ourselves that we are capable of having
such a space is to think of cases we know where it has become
45
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vacuous or obstructed. It has become vacuous in people who
have gained the whole world and lost their own soul by allowing themselves to be entirely, hectically, absorbed in exterior
business, especially the kind that has no solid substance. It
appears obstructed in obsessed people, who have what is so
graphically called a "hang-up;" that is to say, their own inner
space is strung through with psychic barbed wire in which
they have entangled themselves. Indeed, every loss of human
interiority points to some personal or public pathology, as
fearful as it is instructive.
Positively speaking, it is in this inner space that imagina-
tion and thinking have their place. Or perhaps better, it is in
this place that we think things out in the imaginative presence
of everything we care about. I feel sure that everyone here
knows just what I am talking about, and why one might say
that the possession of such an inner place is identical with
being free: here, inaccessible to the world's manipulations but
not isolated from its gifts, we fulfill our most intimately
proper function, which is-! think-to think. By thinking I
mean simply our episodic efforts to recover and clarify our life
within ourselves.
But this inner freedom is not a set of real possibilities, that
is, possibilities supported by things, but an actuality within
the soul. For when we are within ourselves we are already in
the act of being what we were meant to be, whether we are
shaping images, or pursuing a perplexity, or reaching a reso-
lution. This freedom is not in what we might do but in what
we are. And that has important external consequences, for
what we are issues in what we do.
For, although this activity usually takes place in secluded
and quiet episodes-what Shakespeare calls the "sessions of
sweet silent thought" -once it is done, it consolidates into
conviction and clamors quietly but insistently for expression,
for communication and common action. And that is the
source of the problem which made me attempt this lecture.
are, of course, the schools which are generally considered to
be the great public facilitators of opportunity. ("Opportunity"
is, evidently, another word for real possibility.) So, naturally,
the Court was eventually asked to decide whether the governments, particularly state governments, might facilitate ex-
pressions of the inner life through the schools by making it
easier for parents to send their children to religious schools,
or by releasing children to attend religiou-s instruction, or by
giving them opportunities to say a non-sectarian praxe!~ By
and large, the court has held that all such facilitations were
unconstitutional, since they tended either to establish one
religion in special benefits or, by sanctioning religion in general, to interfere with the consciences of non-believers. Consequently, in the interests of conscience, religion must be
banished from the ever-expanding public scene. And that is
what my students found at once persuasive and perplexing:
that the public scene, which is full of means for the enjoyment of outer freedom, requires vacancy with respect to the
expression of inner freedom.
hibiting the free exercise thereof." It is usually understood to
I think we succeeded in formulating the resolution this
country has worked out. It consists in the fact that we all lead
double lives, sometimes exhilarating, often dangerous, always
wearing. This is our double life: we are all, always, both
members of factions of interest and participants in fellowships
of conviction.
have two clauses. One says that no government, federal or
state, shall push or prefer one religious organization over the
Factions-the word is Madison's; we would say interest
groups-are the numerous shifting col1ection of externally
others. The second says that no government shall make difficulties for individuals over their religion. The author of
free people who band together to get the public to facilitate
their rationally selfish way; they have a perfectly legitimate, if
not very noble, common cause. Indeed Madison thought that
a well-constituted polity was precisely one which gave these
inevitable groups scope by exerting themselves to delimit each
Let me revert here to those Supreme Court decisions I
mentioned in the beginning. They were concerned with reli-
gion in the public schools, and they were all based on that
section of the First Amendment which says: "Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or pro-
these clauses, Madison, was crystal-dear about their purpose:
they were equally intended to protect and to strengthen the
expression of the life of conscience, and so of religion, since
that is precisely what religion, in one of its aspects, is. Con-
other. Parties, unions, business organizations are examples of
science, a Latin word which James Joyce rendered in English
factions of interest. The space of factional activity is the pub-
as "inwit", or "inner knowledge," is, of course, a principal
mode of inner freedom.
So far so good. But recall that worldly freedom demanded
lic realm in its official and civil forms.
Fellowships of conviction, in contrast to factions of interest, are communities of people who draw together as in-
not only constraints to keep us from interfering with each
ternally free human beings, that is to say, as human beings
others' enjoyments of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but, even more, conveniences and facilities to make
whose inner lives have some agreement and who are therefore
in some manner friends. Churches and private schools are
such enjoyment a real possibility. Chief among such facilities
examples of fellowships of conviction. The place where the
46
�July, 1979
life of conviction is carried on is the inward looking, semiprivate association.
Of course, parties, unions, and chambers of commerce are
based on some principles and will, insofar as they recall
them, be communities of conviction. Conversely, churches
and schools are going businesses, albeit very much non-profit
businesses, and have interests to defend. Indeed, how communes of conviction behave as interest groups is a fascinating
matter. For example the Maryland college where I ordinarily
teach was founded in the year after the Revolution, in 1784,
as a non-sectarian, secular state school with the eager support
of the local Catholics, who, in the absence of a Catholic
seminary in which to train their priests, were anxious to send
them to a school that required no religious test and attendance at all; in this they obviously acted as an interest group.
There are, incidentally, some associations that have lost all
sense of this distinction. Those are called movements, that is,
ideological interest groups. Let me interject a very biased remark: the recent tragedies of Europe are the consequences of
such unsober politicizations of faith (which is precisely what
totalitarianism is), and this country doesn't need them.
That we all belong to these two kinds of groups, and usually in a somewhat fused and simultaneous way, is a fascinating fact of American life. But how in the world do we do it?
For these groups are not merely different in flavor-lifestyle would be the current word-but evidently incompatible
in mode. Let me sketch out how that is.
Interests are eminently negotiable. A friend of mine, who
used to be high in the councils of government, Robert
Goldwin, says that a really brilliant negotiator is not one who
finds a compromise, a middle ground, but who devises an
alternative that gives the parties something different but more
attractive than they had ever thought of demanding. But who
can compromise, not to say negotiate, his genuine convictions? In the early Christian church a long and even bloody
battle was fought over the littlest letter in the Greek alphabet,
the iota. The iota's difference was between· the words homoiousios and homo-ousios which mean respectively "of like
substance" and "of the same substance." The issue was
whether Christ was merely like God the Father but not equal
with bim, or whether the godhead was a trinity of equal persons. This battle between the so-called Arians and Athanasians has been the laughing stock of moderns (though so great
a scientist as Newton was still deeply involved in it). But is it
really so comical that people should be unable to compromise
their convictions about the nature of God?
There are numerous other contrasts between the worlds of
conviction and interest, which show themselves, and are very
familiar to us, in their different atmospheres. Let me briefly
delineate these appearances.
The world in which we associate by interest is on occasion
brutal but ordinarily impenetrably bland. It is calculating and
civil, hard-headed and reasonable, selfish and serviceable. In
accordance with the evanescent character of external freedom, it shifts constantly to provide new means, but it also
requires accretions of the most rigid emptiness, like bureaucracies. We all recognize its various dialects. For example,
we all understand and, I think, approve of the calculations
that go into the instructions which the girl at the check-out
counter in the super-market has to say: "Have a pleasant
day." It is a bland civility which is intended to give a tiny
edge on the competition by lubricating the shopper's exit.
Or, again, take the park prose I cited in the beginning. It
signifies that Pioneer Park is not only a little paradise for the
recreation of the soul, but also the scene of contending interests, namely of those who want it to be free to cars and those
who want it to be free from cars, interests to be satisfied by
objective experimentation and compromise. This broad and
multifarious, but at bottom uniform, world in which we float
fairly free, as in a medium, secures us the means for what
Hobbes called "commodious living." It is therefore not to be
despised. There are even occasions when it becomes a community full of pride in the rational decency, reciprocal respect, and staunch reliability which founded and which preserves it.
The world in which we unite primarily by conviction, in
contrast, is intimately exclusive and inevitably quarrelsome,
alternately stagnant and ardent, intense and durable. This is
the world of expressed interiority, of "spiritual substance" or,
rather, of many substances, for the very way such communities float in the free world tends to multiply and even
competitively differentiate them, both from that world and
from each other. That is the blessing and mystery- of
pluralism.
That pluralism is a blessing because it permits us to live at
once in both worlds, the outer and the inner. That it is a
mystery is plain when we ask ourselves how in the world we
emerge from the concentration of our convictions to live
civilly and reciprocally with those who think otherwise or not
at aH or, again, how we ever succeed in collecting ourselves
out of the dispersion of the external world into communities
for furthering the life of the soul.
Of course, there are perfectly practical circumstances that
make for toleration of each other's secular selves: the steep
loss of interest, like a rapidly diminishing field of force, which
comes from the distance a big continent affords; our mandatory public affectation of fallibility {we might be shocked to
hear a minister declare in church that "''m probably wrong,
but I feel that we may well have immortal souls," but we
would not be utterly amazed to hear him say it on a talk
show); the fact that the follies of the wide world are grist to
the mill of faith and as such induce a certain fondness.
Of course, equally, there are human-all-too-human reasons for joining communities of conviction: for social purposes, out of convention, as a kind of insurance.
But when we look beyond these circumstantial explanations, there is still the undeniable fact that we-all but the
most lukewarm-have found a way to exist, like doppelgangers, in two ultimately diverse worlds. You must forgive me if
I have done little more tonight than to formulate an inquiry.
I do know one thing though: the attempt to resolve this mystery must always run concurrent with the preservation of the
fact, the fact, namely, that in this country we can live a life
both of outer and inner freedom.
47
�The Collapse of Democracy at Athens
and the Trial of Socrates
Leo Raditsa
Thucydides did not finish his account of the "intense
movement" (so he named it) among the Greek peoples that
he judged to be the greatest event of history including the
Trojan War. The incompleteness of Thucydides' account
suggests the war never ended-and perhaps there is some
truth in that. For the kind of war-and in his opening paragraph he carefully defines it-Thucydides describes, without
specific political aims and which proceeds by revolution, is
difficult to end. One can terminate hostilities-but to make
peace: that is another, much more difficult matter.
The crisis which we call the Peloponnesian War did, however, come to some sort of end and it is about that end and
what came after it, especially the trial of Socrates, that I am
going to talk to you tonight. The period runs. roughly from
410 to 399, the year of Socrates' trial.
The historical question I wish to face is what is the relation
of the trial of Socrates to the collapse of democracy which
occurred at Athens with the slow ending of the war. To put it
simply, why was Socrates prosecuted in 399 instead of some
time earlier, for instance, in 423 when Aristophanes had the
Clouds produced?
Xenophon, who begins his narrative about where
Thucydides leaves off, does not mention the trial of Socrates,
although he does mention Socrates' attempt when he was in
Prytany to prevent the illegal trial of the generals who had
commanded at Arginusae in 406. Diodorus Siculus mentions
the trial, but only in passing, the way he mentions the death
of Sophocles in 406. I think ancient historians did not include the trial of Socrates in their compositions because they
understood history to deal with the public life of a city, of its
officers and of its citizens in public assembly and in battle.
They did not conceive history to include the relation of private to public life, something which was the subject of much
of Socrates' activity. Although Socrates was charged with a
public crime-a -ypacf>.f), not a 8tK'I), which referred to a civil
suit, as Socrates reminded Euthyphro at the start of his conversation with him-he was charged as a private citizen, not
as an office holder.
There was another and deeper reason for not including the
trial of Socrates in the ancient accounts of the period. In contrast to Plato-and in this he is profounder than PlatoXenophon admits that he does not understand how it could
have happened that Socrates was tried and condemned. That
A lecture read at Annapolis on February 18, 1977
48
is, Socrates made him question the world his eyes saw-and
this involuntary questioning is Xenophon's greatest tribute to
Socrates. But this questioning did not extend to history. For
Xenophon, history bore some relation to tragedy. But public
men and cities suffered tragedy. To include the trial of Socrates in his composition Xenophon would have had to conceive of the tragedy of a private man. He could not-like
most Athenians.
Think on it a second. All the Athenian tragedies are about
public individuals, kings and princes, when they are not
about gods. There is something radically wrong with the way
we read tragedies, as if they were about the lives of private
individuals. The private individuals, the individuals who hold
no office, appear in comedies. There they trip over their fantasies which they take for actions, grow embarrassed at -themselves, at the greatness they feel trapped in their insides but
which betrays them when they open their mouths. There
they grow haughty with their magnificent and outrageous
gods. It is a measure of what happened to Athens that a generation after he had been subject to a comedy Socrates became protagonist of an event that the best of his contemporaries knew they could not understand. 1 For it was the
tragedy of a private man. Even now we cannot easily integrate
the trial of Socrates into the history of Athens and of the other
Greeks-just as historians of the Roman empire hardly ever
include the trial of Jesus in their accounts of that period.
The Collapse of Democracy at Athens
The last ten years of the war, the period from 411 to 401,
represent the precipitation of that crisis in leadership which
we call the Peloponnesian War. It is the period of the war in
which the war became more and more something that happened to Athens and something that Athens did to herself. It
is also the period in which Sparta took to the sea and in
which Persia became increasingly deeply involved. 2
The events of 411, the formation of the oligarchic government of the 400 and then of the Five Thousand, which represented a reaction to the Sicilian disaster, not only shook
Athens' domestic political confidence. They isolated Athens
in the Greek world. The oligarchic revolutions in other allied
cities which had accompanied the changes at Athens in 411
had not served, as the oligarchs at Athens had expected, to
�July, 1979
make settlement with the Lacedaimonians possible, but had
lived on the brink of civil war. At Athens itself the situation
was tense. In 410 the returned democracy had passed strict
laws encouraging the punishment of those who had been involved in the oligarchic movement of 411. There were many
exiles. The division which had occurred with the coming of
Of these events the collapse of Athens or the time of the
Thirty, as it is usually called, was the most devastating. The
experience of Athens during this period left an indelible impression on the whole ancient world. People thought of it
with the same horror as the men of Colonus looked upon the
face of Oedipus. Sallust's Caesar, written during the death
agony of the Roman Republic, in the face of the proscriptions
of the young Octavian, recalls the horrors of the years of the
the oligarchs in 411 had not been overcome. In an important
Thirty at Athens with a vividness which makes one imagine
sense Athens in 410 was no longer one city but two. This
meant nobody knew what might happen next.
With the weakening of the predominance of Athens and
Sallust had lived through the time. The Thirty, who were led
by two of his close relatives, and Socrates' trial-these are the
two central experiences of Plato's life.
Somehow no matter what she did Athens always wounded
herself. This is the terrible sense of this last decade and
earlier-for it really started at Melos in 416. When the Athenian people illegally condemned commanders they suspected
instead contributed to bringing these cities under Lacedaimonian sway. Everywhere there was instability, and the cities
her instability, other Creek cities grew more aggressive in
their views. For the first time during the Peloponnesian War
Greek leaders, especially the Spartans, reckon with public
opinion outside of their cities. For instance, Pausanias, one
of the Kings of Sparta, is said to have intervened in the Athenian civil war at the end of the period of the Thirty because he
feared the consequences to the reputation of Sparta if the
slaughters of the thirty continued.
In the first part of this period, the six years leading up to
the destruction of almost the entire Athenian fleet at Aegospotami in September 405, the war is largely at sea for both
to be innocent after the great victory at Arginusae in 406,
they hurt themselves. As Socrates later pointed out, the)'_discredited themselves, destroyed their public life and made
themselves incapable of recognizing and standing up to their
real enemies, when they violated their own Jaws.
In Socrates' presence Athenians knew they were doing this
to themselves. This is the meaning of Alcibiades' wonderful
sides. The sea war of these six years takes place mainly in the
and terrifying remark that Socrates was the only man in
Hellespont and in the Bosporus, and along the adjoining
Athens who made him feel ashamed. In Socrates' presence he
could not fool himself-he knew that what he did somehow
coasts of Thrace and Asia Minor with its three major islands,
Lesbos, Chios and Samos. It was through these straits that
betrayed what he was. Alcibiades meant Socrates made him
many of the Athenian grain ships sailed. When she chal-
feel alive. Socrates gave men something like the feeling you
lenged Athens in this area Sparta was aiming at her life lines
sometimes get from infants when they make you wonder how
you have become what you are.
but not, in the beginning at least, for total victory. For after
several of the major battles she attempted to negotiate with
Athens. For the first time in the War Athens was on the defensive in a way she had never been when Sparta had wasted
Attica in the first years of the war.
For her part Sparta appears to be without a coherent policy
in this period. Her most noble commander drowned at the
battle of Arginusae, Callicratidas tried to keep free of Persian
entanglements, but Lysander, the Spartan commander who
was to bring the war to an end, had no scruples about taking
all the money he could from Persia for building the fleet and
paying its crews.
The main events of this period are the return of Alcibiades
to Athens in 408; the victory of the Athenian fleet at Arginusae in 406 and the unlawful trial and execution of the
generals of the fleet which followed upon it; Lysander's destruction of the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami in the fall of
405; and the collapse of Athens in the period 405-401, espe-
Alcibiades' return to Athens in 408, with his appearance
before the council and the assembly and his election to position of Commander in Chief, made a deep impression on
Athens. They saw him now almost like an outcast, like
Oedipus, forced to live beyond the protection of the laws, his
life always in danger, in Sparta and in Persia. Here was the
man who in his life, almost in his person, summed up most
of the destructive and constructive actions of the years since
415: the castration of the Hermae and the parody of the mysteries (from which he was now exonerated), the expedition
against Syracuse, the Spartan fortification of Decelea in Attica, and the involvement of Persia in the war-and constructively and more recently, the prevention of civil war during
which run from May 404 to August 403, when the Thirty
the oligarchic crisis in 411 and the re-establishment of Athenian control of the Propontis and the Bosporus in 410.
When Alcibiades sailed into the Piraeus he waited cautiously, without disembarking, for his friends and relatives to
escort him up to the city. To many, both rich and poor,
democrats and oligarchs, he seemed like the one individual
were in power.
capable at the same time of overcoming the division which
cially after the siege and surrender, in the fifteen months
49
�The College
remained within the city and of prosecuting the war with in-
telligence.
But something like six months later he is either not reelected or removed from his command because a
subordinate-against his express orders-engages Lysander
and loses fifteen Atpenian ships. He goes into exile on his
estate in the Chersonese. The great expectations had come to
nothing-the crisis continued.
Almost a year apart, the two great naval disasters of Arginusae and Aegospotami were in a sense both self-inflicted. l
call Arginusae a disaster even though it was an Athenian victory, because its repercussions at home did much to discredit
the unstable democracy. When Athens learned that the Spartan commander Callicratidas had encircled the Athenian
commander Conan at Mytilene she sent out a hastilygathered fleet of II 0 ships which she manned with free men
and slaves (who were later awarded their freedom).
Immediately after the Athenian victory a storm suddenly
rises which prevents the Athenian commanders from picking
up the several thousand dead and survivors floating in the
rammed and waterlogged ships that had not sunk. At Athens,
the news of the losses blunts the joy of victory. Following a
little after the news the Apaturia, a festival which draws together families to acknowledge births and marriages, makes
the grief worse.
The matter comes up in the council and the assembly.
Under the influence of their politicians the people seem unable to accept that some things are not under human control,
that a storm occurs in "divine necessity," as one speaker puts
it. Their politicians dominate them by nourishing their yearning to make someone responsible for everything.
tion for sentencing from the assembly. The generals are condemned as a group and immediately executed.
Sometime later the people regret their action, as they had
been warned they would in the assembly. They turn upon
their leaders and prosecute them, depriving one of them of
fire and' water. But it is too late. All along they had known
what they were doing was wrong, but they could not stop it.
Against the speaker who had opposed them they had shouted
that it was unthinkable that the people should not be allowed
to do whatever they desired.
After Arginusae the tension in many of the cities increases.
Returned as acting Commander of the Spartan fleet, Lysander, with headquarters at Ephesus, supports the so-called
oligarchs in a bloody seizure of power at Miletus. Four
hundred of the wealthy and prominent citizens of Miletus are
executed in the market place. For his predecessor Callicratidas' attempt to lead the Greek cities with words, Lysander
substitutes terror, for which party labels are mere pretexts. In
Karia, a city allied to Athens is wiped out.
Sailing from Samos, the Athenian fleet finds no support
among the Greek cities. Except for Mitylene, all Asia turns
away from Athens. When news comes that Lysander is retaking Lampsacus on the Hellespont almost the entire Athenian
fleet, one hundred and eighty ships, sails to Aigospotami, a
barren stretch of beach just fifteen stades ( a slade is 600 feet)
across the water from Lampsacus. Despite Alcibiades'
warning-from his estate on the Chersonese he watches the
whole disaster take shape before his helpless eyes-the Athenian commanders remain in their exposed position and offer
bly is adjourned.
In a subsequent assembly it is proposed to vote on the guilt
battle to the Spartans for four days. On the fifth day Lysander
surprises the Athenians after they have disembarked and destroys or captures more or less their whole fleet. It is the Fall
of 405.
At Athens they prepared for siege: all the harbours except
one were filled up, walls were repaired and guards put on
them. The city sought a hasty and incomplete unity in the
restoration of full citizen rights to those who had been partially deprived in the previous troubles. But they did not recall the exiles.
At Aegospotami in assembly with the allies of Sparta, Ly-
of the generals as a group and to count their previous tes-
sander executed one of the Athenian commanders, because
timony as a trial-all highly illegal. A brave speaker in the
assembly attempts to stop the proceedings on the grounds of
unconstitutionality (the ypacf>Tj 7mpavoJLwv); but the
people, turning into a mob, threaten him. This is the first,
crucial attempt to resort to the ypacf>T, '11'apavoJLWV since it
had been restored after the Four Hundred had abolished it in
411. 3 It fails. But the grounds of the illegality have been
clearly stated in the assembly. The crowd also intimidates all
of the council except Socrates when it seeks to keep the mo-
he had been the first to break the international law of the
Greek cities. He had hurled the captured crews of two ships
of Sparta's allies from a precipice, and in the assembly at
Athens he had supported a motion to cut off the thumbs of all
Theramenes, an important and able politician who had been
a subordinate commander at Arginusae, accuses his superiors
of neglect. There is debate both in council and assembly, and
the six generals who had dared to come back to Athens defend themselves ably and with witnesses, even though they
have not yet been formally accused. At the point when it
appears the generals will win some kind of release the assem-
50
prisoners of war and make them incapable of ever rowing
again. Lysander also showed himself as the undoer of other
Athenian outrages: at Melos, Torone, Scione and Aigina he
restored the remaining original inhabitants.
From Chalcedon and Byzantium on the Bosporus and
�July, 1979
elsewhere, Lysander set the Athenian garrisons loose on con-
dition they sail nowhere else but to Athens. He wanted to
burden Athens with as many mouths as possible. Everywhere
the Greek cities turned to Sparta.
But at Samos, the other port of the Athenian fleet, the
democracy .held, and again knew itself in the slaughter of
prominent citizens. For the first time since before the Persian
wars, Athens is cut off from the sea, closed in upon herself,
Athens, whom almost ten years before, Peisthetaerus in the
Birds had called "the city of the lovely triremes."
Throughout the whole winter and until April of the following year, 404, Athens and the democracy resisted-and
writer, son of Cephalus and brother of Polemarchus, who appear in the first book of the Republic), believed in them at
first.
The commission delayed the reform of the laws, but appointed magistrates and council, and started to rule. Before
the council and with public ballotting, they tried and killed
notorious sycophants, individuals who had used the threat of
prosecution for extortionary purposes. Although illegal, these
killings won wide consent among the citizens, because men
felt they were justified.
Soon, however, Critias, a close relative of Plato, and an
interlocutor of Socrates, asked Lysander for a Spartan gover-
people starved. There was an early attempt at negotiation in
nor and garrison to support him in dealing with unruly and
which Athens offered to accept Sparta's leadership in alliance,
a situation that would have allowed her considerable independence. But at Sparta the Ephors insisted on tearing down
part of the walls. In response the people at Athens forbade
subversive elements. With Spartan troops behind them, the
Thirty now began to kill all individuals who might oppose
them, and whose property would furnish the money necessary
for the support of the Spartan garrison.
At these outrages many went into exile, including Anytus ·
(who later instigated the prosecution of Socrates) and
Thrasybulus, who was to lead the democrats. Megara and
Thebes teemed with Athenian exiles despite Sparta's order
forbidding any Greek city to receive them. (By January 403,
when the Thirty left Athens for Eleusis, where they had exterminated the population, perhaps as much as half of the
male population had left Attica.)
Among the Thirty themselves the outrages also produced
any motions concerning peace. Men grew convinced that any
terms with Sparta meant the fate of Melos.
In this tense and dangerous situation Theramenes managed
to persuade the assembly to let him find out from Lysander
whether the Spartans wanted to destroy the Long Walls to
reduce Athens to slavery, or simply as a guarantee of their
good conduct. Theramenes remained with Lysander, who
was besieging Sames until, with the worsening situation at
Athens, the assembly granted him power to negotiate.
The new terms which the Lacedaimonians and their allies
opposition. Theramenes, who knew the distinction between a
offered were much harsher than the previous demands of the
moderate oligarchy and terror, told Critias that they were now
much worse than the sycophants of the democracy who had
extorted money, but not killed for it. Critias answered, brutally, that changes of constitution required killing: "How do
Ephors: Athens was to have the same friends and enemies as
Sparta. (In our terms this meant Athens lost the capacity for
an independent foreign policy.) She was to tear down the
Long Walls. Her fleet was not to number more than twelve
ships. The exiles were to return.
When Theramenes returned to the starving city with these
terms, men crowded around him in fear-but in the assembly there was still some resistance to surrender. In acting as
go-between between the Athenian democrats who desired to
resist to the end and the probably undecided Spartans
Theramenes had saved his native city from total
destruction-or rather from destroying itself. To the intoxi-
cating sound of flutes, Lysander had sections of the Long
Walls tom down. The Spartans and the returning Athenian
exiles, according to Xenophon, imagined that that day meant
the beginning of freedom for the Greeks. It was April 404.
In the following month the Athenian assembly, in the
presence of Lysander, voted to give thirty men the power to
revise the laws and reform the constitution. The Thirty promised to make the city clean and honourable and to impell the
citizens to justice and excel1ence. Plato, then twenty-four
years old, and many others, perhaps even Lysias (a speech
you think thirty can rule over many without terror?"
Critias now disarmed all the population except three
thousand of the more wealthy. All, except these three
thousand, could be arrested and executed without trial. As
Socrates later pointed out in his own trial, Critias sought to
dominate by involving as many as possible in his outrages.
Under the swords of the Spartan garrison he compelled the
three thousand to condemn the inhabitants of Eleusis to
death. When he could no longer tolerate the freespokenness
of Theramenes, he made the council his accomplice in his
death.
Sometime during the early winter of 404, Thrasybulus,
with about seventy followers, took the border fortress of Phyle
which overlooked the whole Attic plain to Athens. The
Thirty immediately responded, but were repulsed in a minor
skirmish. This minor set-back shattered their confidence and
showed their cowardice matched their brutality.
Sometime after this Thrasybulus, now with something like
seven hundred badly armed followers, took the section of the
51
�The College
Piraeus called Munychia. There in pitched battle the men of
the Piraeus, as they now came to be called, managed to defeat
the Thirty and the three thousand. Critias, first cousin to
Plato's mother, and Charmides, his uncle, were both killed.
Mindful that the enemy dead were citizens, the men of the
Piraeus did not strip their bodies. They sought instead to use
their victory to shake the by now largely forced loyalty of
many of the three thousand (especially those who had not
committed crimes) to the Thirty. Shortly after the battle the
three thousand removed the Thirty from office and elected
twelve to rule. The Thirty and their followers fled to Eleusis.
It was January, 403.
At this point Athens was no longer a living city but three
factions, one in the city, one in the Piraeus, and one in
Eleusis. From Eleusis the Thirty sent men whom they fancied ambassadors to Lysander, saying there had been a revolt
of the mob at Athens and requesting his help. Intent on surrounding the democrats at the Piraeus, Lysander managed the
forget did not cover the Thirty, "the twelve" who had committed their "executions," and several other categories. It was
contractual and could only be enforced upon appeal from in-
appointment of his brother as naval commander .and authorization for himself to hire mercenaries. But Pausanias, one of
the heroes of Phyle and Piraeus had been few. Lysias tfilderstood the deep struggle for self-respect Athenians waged during this time. "The Thirty killed my brother" he says, "they
even made it hard to bury him-! will not forget." 'Then,
under the Thirty, you were afraid," he tells the judges, "but
the kings of Sparta, alarmed at the thought that Lysander
might turn Athens into his private possession, convinced the
Ephors and the Spartan assembly to send him to Attica with
companies of the regular Spartan army-ostensibly to help
Lysander, but actually to prevent the destruction of the men
of the Piraeus. Pausanias' expedition, with the Spartan army,
amounted almost to a reopening of the war. In fact, Thebes
and Corinth refused to join, because they said Athens had not
violated any of her treaty agreements. With Spartan authority
to come to a settlement, Pausanias managed to negotiate an
agreement in which both the oligarchs of the city and the
democrats of the Piraeus agreed not to fight each other. At
Pausanias' insistence the oligarchs also agreed to return prop-
erty expropriated under the Thirty to its owners. The consitutuion of th" democracy was restored. It was probably August 403, fifteen months after the assembly had first elected
the Thirty.
For the next two years Athens lived in fear of renewed attempts to undo the democracy. In 401, upon rumours that
the Thirty at Eleusis were hiring mercenaries, the whole city
took arms and went out to meet them. During the ensuing
negotiations the men of the city killed the commanders from
Eleusis and managed a reconciliation with their followers,
with the help of their relatives and friends in Athens.
Either at this time or two years earlier, in August 403,
dividuals in court. (Andocides, for instance, appeals to it in
his speech "On the Mysteries" in 399, the year of the trial of
Socrates. )4
II
Athens After the Thirty and the Trial of Socrates
The atmosphere in Athens after the Thirty was somewhat
unreal. It had become a city that feared disturbances and
feared itself. It also remained in an important sense two cities.
When you spoke at Athens during this time you always addressed two audiences, the men of the city and the men of
the Piraeus. In these years Lysias speaks directly to a deep
sense of unease and complicity with terrifying events which
must have prevailed among the majority of Athenians. For
now there is nothing stopping you from voting the way you
desire, now there are no excuses."
Lysias attacks Theramenes, not distinguishing him in any
way from Critias. Theramenes had betrayed the trust the
people had shown him and brought the city down in starvation. Everything which had occurred in the assembly that
voted authority to the Thirty in the spring of 404 had been
arranged beforehand, secretly, between Lysander and
Theramenes. The vote had not been freely taken. If the
Thirty had not killed Theramenes the democracy would have
had to-a remark that, in its inverted way, pays a deep compliment to Theramenes.
In all the violence the only obvious palpable tie that remained between the factions was the gods; to them the city
now made appeal. Of the Thirty, Lysias said, "they wanted us
to participate in their shame instead of the gods, to substitute
complicity with them for our common relation to the gods."
He also described the Thirty as men who believed their power
to be firmer than the vengeance of the gods-something
quite like what the Melians had said to the Athenians.
When the men of the Piraeus addressed the three thousand
after their defeat in January 403, they spoke first of their
when Pausanias negotiated the reconciliation, every individual in Athens swore not to beiu grudges for anything in the
past. This meant nobody could prosecute for offenses under
common gods. Immediately after Pausanias had succeeded in
the Thirty, probably including the expropriation of property
which Pausanias had sought to undo. The agreement to
belonged to Athene, who lived on the Acropolis. Perhaps
Euthyphro exemplifies this new-found, somewhat showy
52
bringing peace between the factions Thrasybulus went up to
sacrifice on the Acropolis: he meant to reaffirm that Athens
�July, 1979
piety of Athens after the Thirty. It is full of unquestioning
assurance~and yet at a loss for words.
With this piety there is a forced and unconvincing blustering patriotism. Andocides does not blush to compare the
Athens of the year of Socrates' trial with the Athens of the
Persian wars. Anytus shows the brittle, touchy confidence of
these years when he takes "personal" {as we would say) offense at Socrates' observation {in the Meno) that the sons of
the pillars of the community had not turned out so well.
People yearn for conviction, but are incapable of it.
Socrates came from another world. The world of Athens
and the Greeks before the Peloponnesian War. At its outbreak
in 430 he was about 40, and already famous throughout at
least the Greek world. Men came from as far as Cyrene to
listen to him. 5 This is the Athens of the fifty years between
the Persian and the Peloponnesian War, the Athens that
neither feared itself or others. It was a city that did not fear
the unexpected. A city in which important things beside
crime happened on the streets. In fact, to that street life and
its casual encounters, to how one can live on the streets, Socrates is one of our greatest witnesses. I think his refusal to
wear sandals speaks of his feel for that life and of his insistence on its importance.
Another witness to that street life is Herodotus, whose
book, like the Odyssey, is also a book of manners.
Although-or perhaps because-careful and cautious,
Herodotus is confident and respectful of his readers' intelligence, of their capacity to think. Socrates has the same respect for the intelligence of the people he encounters. He
could tolerate the movement of other peoples' minds {when
they did actually move) and he knew that movement to be as
unexpected as truth. That is why he preferred to talk, to listen
as well as to speak, rather than to write or teach.
Unlike Herodotus, Socrates did not travel-as he remarks,
he never left town. Even when everybody went to a festival,
he remained behind with the cripples and beggars in the deserted silent city. Herodotus instead went everywhere with the
same ease that Socrates stayed at home. Both give an example
of the best kind of courage, the unassuming kind, the kind
that does not have to prepare a face to meet the faces that you
meet.
The Athenians of that time were used to living in a world
that strengthened them, in a world where the throbbing flow
of the sky was palpable, in a world that knew nuance, that
could see the shape of the human body because it knew it to
be more than the sum of its parts. Pericles says Athens was
largely free of the jealousy of the lives of others which contributed so much to the later hatred of Socrates. In the presence of Herodotus and Socrates one feels one's pretensions
like a kind of awkwardness that one could drop.
The only man who breathes this confidence during the
Pe1oponnesian war besides Socrates is Aristophanes. Aristophanes knows in the way he appears to know everything,
that in this time you can only breathe it in laughter, his kind
of laughter which serves for reverence and respect. Alcibiades
knew this confidence lived, but it always eluded his grasp
although he traveled the world to seek it-when he knew
perfectly well (but only Socrates could make him admit it)
you could only find it at home.
This kind of unassuming confidence cannot be experienced
without remembering Aeschylus, a man with strength enough
to have compassion for a god. Significantly, during the time
of the war it is only Aristophanes who can approach Prometheus with something equivalent, but at the same time
entirely different from, the pitiless tenderness of Aeschylus.
Most of the spectators and judges at Socrates' trial knew
nothing of this world of Athens before the Peloponnesian war
except what they saw before them in Socrates. Plato was~ born
in 428, Xenophon, who was not at the trial, perhaps in 435.
Meletos, Socrates' official accuser, was perhaps Plato's age,
certainly not much older; "a youthful defender of the youth,"
Socrates calls him. Ashamed at appearing in Court-for the
first time in his life, he emphasizes-Socrates at his trial feels
the weight of seventy years of living and the dignity they demand. He says he did not prepare a speech because it was not
something for a man of his age to do-especially since his
whole way of life with its love of justice speaks for him-in
his defense.
Plato knew, of course, that Socrates came from another
world; in fact one major part of his work is remembering and
recreating a world he had never entirely known, but which he
knew to be destroyed. Remember that Plato lost Socrates just
after the experience of the Thirty had forced him to acknowledge the dishonour of his family, perhaps not of his parents,
but of the brothers of one of his parents and of another close
relative. His repudiation of their acts is strong, and it awakens
admiration. For Plato, the trial of Socrates was as terrible as
the time of the Thirty.
Plato's love for Socrates is for a dead man; everything he
writes is about a man who has disappeared. Unlike Aristophanes, Plato never had to face Socrates with any of his
writings. His writings were meant to substitute for Socrates, to
replace him, to keep him alive once he was dead. This is the
hardest illusion to deal with when you read Plato, the illusion
that you are inside Socrates, that you are hearing his voice. It
is also the drama of reading Plato, who is an artist, a different
kind of artist than the poets, for he thought he was not an
artist.
With Xenophon it was different. He stayed outside of Socrates. In Xenophon you can hear how Socrates' vmce
53
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sounded to somebody who did not entirely understand Socrates but who knew he did not understand him, who knew he
was out of his depth but had the courage to stay there-that is
rare. "I cannot forget him, I cannot forget him, the memories
keep overwhelming me," Xenophon says somewhere with
wonder. But unlike Plato, he never forgot they were
memones.
Socrates was charged with impiety. The specific charge,
which is preserved, with slight variations, by Xenophon and
Diogenes Laertius, was that he did not worship the gods that
the city worshipped and that he introduced new gods. The
second charge is that he destroyed the youth. There are other
examples of charges of asebeia with other charges attached to
them. For instance, Aspasia was charged with asebeia and
letting Pericles meet free women in her house. There is a text
of Aristotle that associates asebeia with disrespect for parents
and corrupting the youth. In any case it is clear that corruption of the youth was a prosecutable offense. 6
Plato's stress on corruption of the youth accords with Anytus' own views. In the only direct quotation from his speech
we have, Anytus told the judges he had not expected Socrates
to appear in court, but once he had, they had no choice but
to condemn him. Otherwise, he would ruin their sons. In
this Anytus agreed with the Thirty, who had actually attempted to order Socrates not to speak to the young.
Anytus' argument to the fathers to protect their sons is the
strongest kind of appeal. As Socrates points out in his questioning of Meletus, it makes him responsible for all the troubled youths in the city. How lucky they would be if I am the
perhaps even death. 8
These disturbed relations between futhers and sons were intensified by the war. Thucydides mentions the enthusiasm of
the youth for the war at its beginning. Pheidippides would
have been brought up in the country if it had not been for the
war.
Socrates was one of the few people in Athens willing to
look these troubles in the face rather than deny them and, by
denying them, wish them away. Anytus instead wanted to
wish them away, in somewhat the way locasta tried to talk
Oedipus out of what he had learned-and then committed
suicide. "Because I can help," Socrates says with something
like astonishment, "I am overwhelmed by their jealous rage,
as you put it, Euthyphro"-the word is ¢8ov€w used
elsewhere of the gods' resentment of overreaching human bemgs.
Anytus' relation to Meletus shows something of what Anytus thought the proper relation of the elder generation should
be to the younger. He put Meletus up to charging Socrates,
Meletus who was just a kid in Socrates' astonished but fearful
eyes. How did he dare accuse him of impiety? Socrates asked,
Did he not know what he was getting into? With a charge of
impiety anything could happen.
Meletus was one of those young men for whom the world
is unreal, for whom, as Socrates said of others, everything is
thetaerus, where Pisthetaerus manages to show him, by con-
upside down. He was one of those youths who wished to be
serious but did not dare to be, who wanted to be a hero but
feared the risks. Anytus offered him the easy way out, the
illusion of self-respect, the easy way· to grow up: the role of
protector of the city and of his peers. Socrates is fierce when
he questions Meletus, catching all the irresponsibility of that
pretended earnestness. Anytus trapped Meletus with his
conceit-and to all intents and purposes he ruined him.
Contrast Anytus' manipulation of Meletus with Socrates'
handling of Glaucon, Plato's brother, as Xenophon tells it.
Like Plato, Glaucon at twenty wanted more than anything
else to go into politics. Uncontrollable and the despair of his
family, he was making a fool of himself climbing up to speak
in public, and doing the other things you did to have a politi-
versation not unlike those of Socrates in Xenophon, that he
cal career at Athens.
belongs on the Thracian front. Aristophanes means to show
here-and it is probably meant as a compliment to
Socrates-that the youth can be talked out of these wild fan-
Socrates cared about him because of Plato and because of
Glaucon's uncle Charmides, and because he must have had
all the charm of intelligence awakening. (There is always
cies if there is anyone around who knows how to take the
something important to be said for young men who dare
time to talk to him. (Incidentally, in our world, where we do
not call things by their proper names, the would-be father-
make fools of themselves in defiance of their family-as long
as it is on their own-and not to please somebody else.)
Socrates asked Glaucon some questions which incidentally
show something that I do not think is apparent from Plato,
that Socrates had a fairly extensive knowledge of the facts of
Athenian politics. He asked how long could Athens live off
only one who ruins them, Socrates remarks.
There is plenty of evidence of disturbed relations in Athens
between fathers and sons during the Peloponnesian War. The
son of Pericles in Xenophon speaks matter-of-factly of Athens
as a place where sons held their fathers in contempt. 7 You
remember the struggle between Pheidippides and Strepsiades
in the Clouds, where there is little question of the father holding the respect of his son. In the Birds there is a scene between a youth who desires to murder his father and Pis-
killers pass for revolutionaries.) There is in Xenophon also a
remarkable conversation of Socrates with his son who is
deeply angry with his mother. In all this we should keep in
mind that disrespect for parents carried severe penalties,
54
�July, 1979
the agricultural production of the Attic countryside, how
much food did she need in general, what were her expenses,
what were her revenues-the list reads like a catalogue of the
facts Pericles had at the ready when he spoke to the Athenians.
Glaucon cannot answer any of these questions. At one
point he answers, "But, Socrates, I can make a guess." "No,
when you know we will talk." Then Socrates asks him something else, "Why don't you run your uncle's estates?"
Glaucon answers innocently, "Because I cannot persuade
him to entrust them to me." "You cannot persuade your uncle, but you think you can persuade the city!"
This is pretty much the opposite of what Anytus did to
Meletus. It is the kind of humiliating conversation which
teaches the difference between dreams and facts, between illusion and life-without learning that distinction (and it is
not something you learn in the head), you live your whole
life among the shades.
Politics is also a struggle to distinguish the actual from illusions, enemies from friends, war from peace, what you can
do from what you cannot, and, most importantly, aggression
from goodwill and life from death. In the fifteen years preceding the trial of Socrates Athens had clearly failed in that
struggle, over and over again misjudging situations. When
the consequences of those misjudgements turned to disaster,
it grew difficult to put up with Socrates: he reminded people
of too much. Without wanting to he made Anytus feel he was
a bad father, and that there might be a connection between
the kind of father he was and the kind of political leader he
was. More generally he made people feel they might have
been responsible for what had happened to them. Or, as he
puts it to the judges, "You cannot hurt me but you will hurt
yourselves putting me to death."
Nobody in public life after Pericles, and probably not even
Pericles, had been able to make people feel responsible for
what happened. Socrates made them feel responsible because
he came in between the relations between generations. You
remember how he says, "if I went abroad and had conversations, the fathers would drive me into exile; and if I did not,
the sons would." In Athens it had taken collusion between
generations, between Meletus and Anytus, to prosecute him.
For it is the relations between generations which determine
whether cities live or die or merely survive.
People had gone through disaster; they had seen their
fathers and brothers and children and friends killed. They had
taken that, but they could not take the dim but unmistakable
sense they had in the presence of Socrates that these disasters
were of their own doing, that these disasters had to do with
how they thought and talked and what they were. When Socrates told them they took better care of their slaves than their
friends, of their bodies than their lives, he reminded them,
quite unwittingly, of that.
Because he knew his own smallness Socrates struck other
men as grand, boastful, even arrogant. Because he took his
own measure, he appeared to tower over other men who had
trouble telling themselves from gods. And this was intolerable, especially after the events of the last ten years had held
up their smallness to them. A generation before they had
laughed at him and respected him-now in the narrowness of
defeat, possessed by memories they could not face, they killed
him-because they feared themselves in him.
l. For the relation of The Clouds to Socrates, Bruno Snell, "Das fruehste
Zeugnis ueber Sokrates," Philologus 97, 1948, 125-134; Wolfgang Schmid,
"Das Sokratesbild der Wolken," Philologus 99, 1948, 209-228; T. Gelzer,
"Aristophanes und sein Sokrates," Museum Helveticum !3, 1956, 65-93.
2. On the sources for this period, S. Accame, "Le fonti di Diodoro per Ia
guerra Deceleica," Rendiconti della R. Accademia dei Lincei (Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche) l4 (sixth series), 1938, 347-451;
"Trasibulo c i nuovi frammenti delle Elleniche di Ossirinco," RiviSta di
filologia classica 28, 1950, 30-49.
3. J. Hatzfeld, "Socrate au prod:s des Arginuses," Revue des Etudes Anciennes 42, !940, 165.
4. For the character of this agreement, Ugo Enrico Paoli, Studi sul processo
Attica, Padua, 1938, 121-142, especially 122; also, Studi di diritto Attica,
Florence, 1930.
5. J. Burnet, Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates and Crito, Oxford, 1970
(orig. ed 1924), especially V and the commentary to the "Apology".
6. For the charge, A. Menzel, Untersuchungen zum Sokrates Processe,
Abhandlung der Sitzungsber. d. kais. Akd. zu Wien 145, 1901-1902, especially 7-29. Also E. Derenne, Les proces d'impiete intentes aux philosophes d
Athfmes au yme et au JVrne sif!cles avant J.-C., Liege, 1930; N. Casini, "II
processo di Socrate," Iura 8, 1957, 101-120. For the association of asebeia
with disrespect for parents, Aristotle "On Virtues and Vices," 1251" 31:
lxfJ8{3eta J.LBv 7j 1rep't 8eoV~ 11'A'TJJ.LJ.LBAeux Ka't 1rep't fiai.J.Lova~ i) Ka't 1rep't
ToV~ KO'.TOtXoJ.LBvov~ Ka't 'TT'ep't yovels Ka't 1rep'i 7ratpl.fia. Also J. Lipsius
(with Meier and Schoemann) Das Attische Recht und Rechtsverfahren, Leipzig, !908, 359.
7. On the relation of Xenophon's "Defense of Socrates" to Plato's "Defense," U.V. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, "Die Xenophontische Apologie,"
Hermes 32, 1897, 99-106; J. Mesk. "Die Anklagerede des Polykrates gegen
Sokrates," Wiener Studien 32 (1910}, 56-84; E. Gebhardt, Polykrates
Anklage gegen Sokrates, Diss. Frankfurt. 1957. For the attitudes of Socrates'
judges, see Larissa Bonfante and Leo Raditsa, "Socrates' Defense and his
Audience," The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, 15, 1978,
17-23.
8. For the death penalty for disrespect of parents (KaKWrrew~ yovBwv
ypmpi)) Lysias, 13, 91. As with many crimes, the penalty for disrespect of
parents was probably not specified (for leeway in Attic legal procedure after
conviction, U.E. Paoli, Processo Attica, Padua, 1938, 86-89). Recent scholars think disrespect for parents was usually punished with partial loss of citizen rights. (0.nJ.Lf.a) for life, for instance with loss of the right to hold office
and speak in the assembly-but not with the loss of private rights, such as the
right to hold property. L. Beauchet, Histoire du droit priv€ de Ia Republique
Athenienne, Paris, 1897, I, 362-371; A.R.W. Harrison, The Law of Athens,
Oxfmd, !968. !, 78-8!.
55
�German Resistance to Hitler:
Elites and Election
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
It is my task today to start with German resistance to
Nazism, such as it was. The title of the whole conference is
"The Role of the Educated Elite" and the subtitle "An examination of the response of the professional, intellectual,
and religious communities to the rise of Nazism and the
Holocaust." Yesterday's speakers have addressed themselves,
among other things, to intellectual and political antecedents
and developments, and social or sociological conditions and
preconditions of the Nazi period. We also had a brilliant discussion of some goings-on in the bureaucracy. It is now my
task to say something about German resistance.
In thinking about the subtitle, I stumbled over the word
"communities." It gave me pause. It sounded so American,
so un-German, so inapplicable to the German social
configuration-and yet it was Germans who made so much
of Gemeinschaft, community; as, for instance, contrasted
with Gesellschaft, or society. The togetherness of community
or Gemeinschaft was the soulful thing, the thing engaging the
inner man, the thing which could cure or counteract the ills
of society, Gesellschaft.
Perhaps there's the rub-and a method of access to the
subject. If one proceeds by word association, by listening to
overtones and compounds, one may get into it. The rub
seems to be that Gemeinschaft or Gemeinschaftserlebnis, the
experience of community, did not, on the whole, provide the
human cohesion that acted as an effective barrier to inhumanity. No, on the whole not: but what barrier, what resistance there was, did depend on community or communities,
on family and on friendship. Perhaps what is awkward-and
helpful-about the subtitle is that it elicits the difference between, say, America and Germany, certainly the Germany
before 1945.
The point of difference seems to me to be that Germany
had no professional or intellectual communities, or had at
This is the somewhat shortened text of a paper presented at a conference,
sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews, on The
Holocaust: The Role of the Educated Elite, held at San Jose, California,
March 27 to 29, 1978.
56
best some pockets of solidarity in the professions, or some degree of professional ethos. Community did exist in somewhat
higher degree among co-religionists and that may have been a
difference in kind as well as degree. Christians speak of the
communion of saints; and the German word for that is
Gemeinschaft der Heiligen: Gemeinschaft here has to do for
both communion and community. By "communion of
saints" is meant the community of the faithful. But it is salutary, not just an archaism, that the sacramental word, the
name of the sacrament, is kept in English. It may have contributed to the German perdition that they only had one word
for the religious and the secular community, that that word,
charged with religious connotation and increasingly perverted, was appropriated for the paramountcy of the People's
Community, the Volksgemeinschaft. The other communities
the Nazis broke up and atomised and used the atoms to fill
the totalitarian system. That is what totalitarianism is and
does. It absorbs the de-structured or destroyed.
As you know, all parties, unions, and associations but one,
the National Socialist, were destroyed, that is, abolished or
nazified. Only the churches remained.
Why did not a sense of danger make the opponents to Hitler and his victims into a community? There may be several
reasons: Hitler's uncanny gift for timing and deception; an
inadequate discernment, among his opponents and victims,
for seeing where the greatest danger lay; an inadequate talent
for apprOpriate and effective combination; economic insecurity; an almost nationwide resenbnent of the Treaty of Versailles and the Western powers which had imposed it and
were still enforcing it-and looked like giving to Hitler what
they had denied to his predecessors. This was probably Hitler's strongest card in the months and years of consolidation
of power. His promise of removing "the Shackles of Versailles," getting rid of reparations and removing
unemployment-promises which he seemed, surprisingly, to
be able to keep-helped him immensely and hindered the
formation of early and effective oppositional groupings.
And then, of course, there was a whole series of punitive
decrees and laws, brought in with breathtaking speed, which
punished any banding together and any protest or dissent. A
legal profession brought up on an overemphasis on positive
�July, 1979
law and without a tradition of natural law (a lack probably
due to the prevalence of Lutheranism), applied these laws,
decrees, and regulations-even if many members of the profession did their best to circumvent them or to interpret them
in ways favourable to the accused. And then there were the
extra-legal means of coercion, concentration camps and, in
the summer of 1934, the blood purge ostensibly directed
against rebellious Nazis, but in fact also against anti-Nazis,
such as the Berlin head of the Catholic Action.
The records of the Gestapo and Security Service show
where resistance persisted, where groups that had avoided
Gleichschaltung continued to cohere in some sort of fashion
and continued not to conform. The Secret Police files are the
chief source for what resistance there was.
On the subject of sources, the following needs to be said:
they have to be read in the original, because the business of
wrong translations goes on and seems to be getting worse.
Because of these mistranslations there is a risk that written
history will seriously misrepresent what happened.
Let me give you an example. On 29 April 1937 Hitler addressed a gathering of Party Kreisleiter or District Leaders. It
contained what is, to me, the most telling and-on the sound
recording which I have heard-most frightening utterance by
Hitler on the subject of the jews. Lucy Dawidowicz in her
book The War Against the Jews 1933-45 even translates it
correctly, but gets the setting wrong. She calls it "a speech
before a regional NSDAP meeting. " 1 The important point,
however, is precisely that it was only the medium level party
hierarchs-a section of the Nazi elite, if you will-who were
thus addressed, in confidence, which is why the speech was
only found and published long after the war. It was not generally known at the time. The significant paragraph was a
response by Hitler tO a question in a newspaper why more was
not being done against the Jews. Its gist was the inexpediency
of uttering a clear and premature challenge to the enemy one
means to destroy. Before this audience of Party Leaders Hitler
explained, in a voice rising with emotion, how he does not
tell his enemy to fight, but calls on his own inner wisdom to
maneuver him into a corner before striking the final blow.
The translators of that passage, in a book containing some
background papers prepared by members of the Munich Institut fiir Zeitgeschichte for the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt
in the middle sixties, have Hitler telling his audience that he
shouts louder and louder as he tells his enemy what he has in
mind for him. 2 There are probably two reasons for this misrepresentation; the translators' insufficient knowledge of the
subject and their failure to notice a pair of square brackets
that show that Hitler on the sound recording shouts louder
and louder as he tells this select audience of his internal
dialogue: "and now, wisdom .... " 3 In the case of Hitler but
also in that of Goebbels, historians should hear the original,
not just read a transcript. In this case, however, punctuation
showed what happened.
If that speech had been generally known at the time, if it
had been published-let alone broadcast-in April 1937,
many jews would not have waited until November 1938 before beleaguering foreign consulates to get out of Germany,
now an unmistakable .death trap. Because they did not know,
despite the Nuremberg Laws and everything else that had
happened and been written, it took the pogrom or Kristallnacht on November 10, 1938, to step up the rate of emi. gration.
Like the victims the bystanders, including the "educated
elite," also did not know about the threat of physical extinction. Before Hitler had come to power I had read Mein
Kampf, secretly, because of its obscenity (sex, sadism, an obsession with syphilis and the "racial" pollution of blood) and
other objectionable features that, to put it mildly, made it
unsuitable for a nice young girl. Among other things that
reading prompted me to leave the country in the summer of
1934, at the age of 16. But put yourselves in the position of
fathers of families, perhaps aging fathers with unexportable
professions, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis and
unemployment everywhere and restrictions on emigration not
only to the Western democracies but also Mandatory Palestine, and you will see why many stayed so long-many too
long. As for Hitler's old book-few seemed to know how seriously to take it.
You will also see why friendly and decent gentiles did not
think of removing Hitler by force until 1938 and why the
final plot did not happen, and miscarry, until 1944.
But to turn more specifically to the reactions of the--educated elite in Germany, let me start with the professional
academics~or rather with the leading luminaries in the
politically and ethically most relevant disciplines. There was
quite a spectrum, from instant and continuing collaboration
to instant and persistent recalcitrance and resistance. There
was also early collaboration, or at least toleration, and later
resistance, and vice versa. In some cases there was more than
instant co1laboration, there was anticipation. And remember,
the student organizations were nazified before the Nazis came
to power. Much of academic youth, inasmuch as it was political, was in the vanguard of the Nazi Movement and exercised pressure on the professors._ Not all students were
Nazis, and there were many spontaneous nationalists and
even some Nazis on the faculties. The organized student
body, however, was far more advanced in Nazism than its
teachers. This readiness to embrace Nazism among students
may have had something to do with the economic crisis and
academic unemployment as well as with the restlessness of
youth. Speedy faculty adaptation to the new regime was
enforced from below as well as above, from the students as
weB as the Party and government. Some professors, many of
them, were responsive to pressures, including at times physical violence, from the students and the younger faculty.
The leading German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, was
not, one would think, intimidated; more probably he thought
his Moment had come with the momentous upheaval in the
country. He was probably not mainly or merely or primarily
subject to the mental climate prevailing in 193 3 because of
his philosophy. I think it was his relationship with language
that was his temporary undoing when in 193 3 he made a
nauseating Nazi speech as the newly-installed Rector of
Freiburg University• and when later, in the fall of that fateful
57
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year, he fulsomely endorsed-as did the prominent theologian Emanuel Hirsch-the government's decision to leave
the League of Nations and to put that decision to a plebiscite
that won the nation's overwhelming support. 5
Heiclegger's philosophical language was so deep, his spirit
dwelt on such heights, that he could be badly mistaken about
what happened in the middle ground of politics where
people's livelihoods and lives are at stake. I would say that he
had a tin ear for everyday political language-and he had
never read Mein Kampf. This was, admittedly, a distasteful
reading-but I think it was a duty, certainly for anyone who
took part in the political dialogue.
There was a general weakening of the sense of language
among the educated; not only because political emotions
were inflamed and the language in which they were expressed
of Holy German Art, even if the wicked and shallow West
were to make the German People and Holy Roman Empire
fall apart, or the patriotic and anti-Eastern harangue of King
Heinrich, Henry the Fowler, in Lohengrin, that are the most
objectionable. What strikes me as bound to be either acutely
uncomfortable or dangerously de-sensitizing is the combination of massive rejection of single figures that resemble
Wagner's "Jew" and the incestuous narcissism of the rejectors, the heroes and heroines, whether human or divine, or
half-and-half. The desensitizing language in which all this is
transacted leaves those who submit to the experience with an
impairment of their sense of language or linguistic judgment.
Whoever sits through a work by Wagner without at least
tended to extremes, but also because nineteenth century phi-
some reservation or revulsion is bound to be brutalized by the
exposure. Can opera or music drama really have such an effect? Yes, but, of course, mainly on people whose German is
losophers, from Hegel to Nietzsche, had disdained common
comprehensibility and played their own games with language
only _mitigating circumstance about the Anglo-American and
which, in Nietzsche's case, was often aphoristic or poetic. But
in a nation as given to music as Germany, music provided
the chief corrupter: Richard Wagner.
In all the discussion of Wagner's contribution to Nazism
(and we know what a Wagner-addict Hitler was ever since his
attendance, in his teens, at a performance of Rienzi in Linz)
and in all the discussion of Wagner's anti-Semitism, too little
attention has been paid, so far, to his destruction of the sense
of language (and of shame) among his compatriots. Whatever
he served up as language (written, remember, by himself: he
did not employ librettists), with its compulsive alliterations
and hypnotic music, cast its spell, its destructive spell, on the
music-loving educated elite-to the extent that it went to the
opera and did not avoid Wagner. Remember Mime in the
Ring? He is the excessively unattractive foster-father of Siegfried. He has also been interpreted as an incarnation of heartless capitalism. Remember the terms and manner of Siegfried's rejection of him before storming out, free at last, into
the world? Take Mime himself. Although he is a mere
mythological dwarf, he sounds exactly like "the jew" who, in
Wagner's article on "The Jew in Music," is said to be incapa-
ble of human speech and therefore also of music. Everyone
knows about Beckmesser in The Mastersingers, that sunny
work (when compared with the gloom of the others): he was
meant to represent Eduard Hanslick, Wagner's "half-Jewish"
critic. What people do not seem to realize or to have, so-to-
up to understanding the language of the work. That is the
Jungian new wave of Wagnerism. Its followers and afficionados know not what they hear.
The Berlin opera celebrated Hitler's arrival in power, in
early !933, with a Wagner opera. In my remaining months
in Berlin-until june !934-I got most of my operatic education: it included quite a dose of Wagner. I am grateful for
the experience.
While finishing high school in Holland after leaving Germany, I noticed that other "intellectual" young German refugees, including especially Jewish Germans, were not only
reading Thomas Mann, with whom I was acquainted, but
also Stefan George, whom I did not know. For me it was the
beginning of an interest in George which was both philological and political. I had not got much beyond Christian
Morgenstern before, in German poetry.
Stefan George is not much in favor now, largely because
he and his circle are rightly regarded as "elitist." There are
those who consider him a counterpart to Wagner. They are
wrong, I think. There may be snobbery in the Wagner cult,
but one can hardly call its devotees an elite.
George's poetry had power, although it strikes many as
forced; it helped to keep the language truthful and forceful.
The George Circle was elitist and it included Jews. They left
the country as did George himself. He evaded Nazi approaches to him by going to Switzerland in !933, where he
died in December. Led by brothers called Stauffenberg, some
speak, any gut-reaction against, is the frightening text of
Beckmesser's garbled version of the prize song in Act III. I do
not see how any solid citizen, Bildungsbiirger, or opera buff
can sit through that scene of the good people of Nuremberg
all turning against the limping plagiarist who delivers a
nonsense-text full of frightening metaphors, among other
things about hanging and deprivation of air. True, few people
really hear or know the text-but that is what Wagner, as
always, wrote first, read to others, and published separately.
What no-one can help noticing in this scene of ''radiant joy"
and apotheosis of peoplehood is the all-against-one scenario
on the sun-drenched Festwiese outside Nuremberg. It seems
tion in listeners who could be expected to share Stauffenberg's
detestation of the regime and, possibly, his willingness to take
to me it is not so much Hans Sachs's aria about the survival
risks to remove it. Stauffenberg made it his business to brief
58
young disciples took care to foil the new German government's attempt to claim George as its poet laureate at his fu-
neral. Claus Stauffenberg was the man who tried to kill Hitler
on 20 July 1944. Until their execution for complicity in the
plot to remove the Nazi regime, Berthold and Claus Stauffenberg were George's literary executors.
To denounce the regime and rally opponents, Claus Stauffenberg recited "The AntiChrist," a poem not in George's
usual hellenic and pagan manner. This was not just a case of
using an appropriate old poem of George's to elicit recogni-
�July, 1979
himself on the theology of resistance and tyrannicide, both
Catholic and Protestant, in order to overcome the conscientious scruples in the pious men he recruited for the conspiracy. It may sound strange that this needed doing. But it is not
strange if you put yourselves in the shoes of a Catholic or
Calvinist or Lutheran. The Lutherans especially had the
greatest difficulties of conscience. Gestapo interrogators knew
the connection between religion and resistance. They always
asked those they questioned about church connections and
religious ties.
I am inclined to say, after what I have seen and heard of
the surprisingly pervasive presence of Christian faith among
those who did resist, among the educated elite as well as
among common folk, that Bonhoeffer was right in his statement, in his Ethics and elsewhere, about the rediscovery of
the Christian· foundation of Western culture brought about by
the attack of the neo-pagan barbarians.
It was the turn or return of so many men of conscience to
their faith that made Helmuth James von Moltke-a landowner and lawyer far removed from George and his circle,
though acquainted with the lawyer Berthold Stauffenberg...,-work quite systematically to bring Catholics into his own
group of planners for a better Germany. He may not have
been far from the truth in a letter to his wife written during
and after the trial that sentenced him to death: he commented
sardonically that he was dying as a martyr for St. Ignatius of
Loyola. A Protestant, he had had the temerity to bridge the
denominational gap and to bring three Jesuits into his circle.
One of them, Alfred Delp, was sentenced to death in the
same trial. And it was not just the judge's, Roland Freisler's,
personal aversion to Jesuits that caused his diatribes and death
sentences. Hitler himself had, on the one hand, officially deplored and, on the other, energetically exploited the religious
schism in Germany. To oppose him effectively one had to
overcome the division between Protestants and Catholics.
It is surprising that the cultural historians of our time have
paid so little attention to the factor of religious faith and
theological foundation, and only little more to its attenuation
and perversion. An Israeli, Uriel Tal, 6 seems to be the notable and laudable exception. He limits himself to the Second
Reich, but within those limits he traces, with great seriousness and subtlety, the differences between "Christian" and
anti-Christian anti-Semitism and shows the deadly danger of
the replacement of the first by the second.
Attention to or neglect of this aspect may be a matter of
generations and personal experience. The generation of
Thomas Mann and Max Horkheimer saw the significance of
religion in the Jives of those who had it, in times of pressure
and persecution. The younger generation that stayed in Germany and did not succumb to the National Socialist pseudoreligion saw it too.
The small group of student rebels who were executed in
Munich in 1943 for a campaign of anti-Nazi leaflets deplored
the failure, the sins of omission of the educated majority.
They pleaded for a recognition of guilt and for an uncompromising struggle against Hitler and his all too many helpers. In their indictment of the most~detestable tyranny the
German people had ever put up with, they mentioned the
misguidance, the regimentation, the revolutionizing and
anaesthetizing of a whole young generation, in order to make
it into godless, shameless, and conscienceless exploiters and
murderers. Their~at first cautious, at least circumspect, and
finally quite reckless-campaign against the regime ended in
a proud and willing expiation on the guillotine. One professor
died with them. It was he who had undertaken to help them
to get something like a real education-both in his classes
and in extra-mural meetings involving some of the leading
figures of Munich's displaced intelligentsia, such as Theodor
Haecker and Carl Muth, the former editor of the Catholic
monthly Hoch/and 7 Among these students, too, there was
the realization that an education without a metaphysical and
religious dimension was making their academic generation
into tools of the regime. They made up the deficiency as best
they could and were fortunate in finding older mentors to
help them.
"Elites" are apt to be faithless. The part of the educated
elite which resisted the Nazis found its faith again in surprising measure. And I think there are enough records left, if one
knows how to read them, to show the role not only of a
proper education, but of faith, in a person's ability to resist
the devil and his works.
Perhaps I should not end without saying that these eoneh!sions were reached by an agnostic observer.
l. Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933-45, New York 1977,
488.
2. Helmut Krausnick and Martin Broszat, Anatomy of the SS State. Translated by Dorothy Long and Marion Jackson. London 1970, 51-2.
3. "Es spricht der FUhrer": 7 exemplarische Hitler-Reden. Hcrausgegehen
und erlii.utcrt von Hildegard von Kotze und Helmut Krausnick, unter Mitwirkung von F. A. Krummacher, Giitersloh 1966, l48.
4. Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitiit, Brcslau 1934, 22. For a
fuller treatment of the subject see the texts of two lectures, "Student Rebellion and the Nazis," St. John's College Press, Annapolis 1972.
5. Bekenntnis der Professoren an den deutschen Universitiiten und Hochschulen zu Adolf Hitler und dem nationalsozialistischen Staat. Oberreieht vom
Nationalsozialistsehen Lehrerbund Deutsehland/Sachsen. (Dresden, n.d.,
pp. 13-14 and 36-37 [Heidegger] and 15-17 and 38-40 [Hirsch]).
6. Urie1 Tal, Christians and Jews in Gennany: Religion, Politics, and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870-1914. Translated by Jonathan Jacobs. Ithaca,
N.Y. 1975.
7. See "Student Rebellion and the Nazis," (Note 4); also loge Scholl, Students against Tyranny: The Resistance of the White Rose, Munich 19421943. Translated by Arthur R. Schultz, Middleton, Conn. 1970; Christian
Petry, Studenten au{s Schafott: Die Weisse Rose und ihr Scheitem, Munich
1968.
59
�The College
BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEW
The people had been misled, but so
An Autobiography, by R. G. Collingwood. 167 pages. Oxford University had their leaders. They had been taught
by philosophical "realists," obsessed by
Press 1939.
the task of refuting the "idealism" of
Green and Bradley. According to ColIn 1933, at the end of his life, the pro- lingwood, Green and Bradley were not
fessional English philosopher R.G. Col- "idealists"; their school was critical and
lingwood wrote a short autobiography. derived from Hume. Its criticism did not
He called it the story of the thought of a paralyze, though, since "it sent out into
man whose business was thinking. It is public life a stream of ex-pupils who carnot, however, directed to others in the ried with them the conviction that phibusiness. Its audience is the moderately losophy, and in particular the philoswell-educated public which cares more ophy they had learnt at Oxford, was an
about the front page than philosphers' important thing, and that their vocation
disputes. The Autobiography records was to put it into practice."
The realists held that "knowing makes
how Collingwood came to understand
the importance of the link between the no difference to what is known." Their
front page and philosophy. A revolution model for all knowledge thus was those
in the teaching of philosophy at English disciplines which give a formal, quanuniversities had broken that link around titative description of relations among
the turn of the century. The conse- phenomena but do not say anything
quence, he learned to believe, had been qualitative about the phenomena themthe corruption of public life.
selves. These disciplines make up modThe Autobiography itself reforges that ern natural science. Just as the "realists"
link. It contains a clearly argued account understood modern natural science to
of the English philosophy of his youth. reduce natural things to a common,
It leads us step by step through a life of mathematical standard, so they wanted
thought on apparently unrelated to reduce human things to some comsubjects-philosophy, history, archae- mon, formal standard. Traditional moral
ology-yet shows us how all his pur- philosophy, it now appeared, had been
suits turned out to be parts of a single based on a mistake, because it went beconcern. And it is written with the pas- yond a formal description of moral besion of a decent man whose country havior and claimed to teach students
had, in the year he wrote, forfeited its how to be moral. "Realism" set to work
on a "new kind of moral philosophy,
decency.
The process of corruption had been purely theoretical, in which the workgradual. Newspapers had stopped ings of the moral consciousness should
educating active citizens; instead they be scientifically studied as if they were
had started to treat public affairs as spec- the movements of the planets, and no attacle and turned their readers into voy- tempt made to interfere with them."
The new moral philosophy came to
eurs. The public had learned "to forgo
that full, prompt, and accurate informa- nothing. The realists soon discovered
tion on matters of public importance that the very words and categories they
which is the indispensable nourishment used to describe "moral behavior" were
of a democratic society." It had devel- shot though with qualitative, "unscienoped a "disinclination to make decisions tific" assumptions. The notion of "moral
in the public-spirited frame of mind behaviorism" was, as B.F. Skinner has
which is a democratic society's life- most recently demonstrated, a contradicblood." Moral debasement had culmi- tion in terms. In the hands of the "realnated in the betrayal first of Abyssinia ists," every part of philosophy suffered
and then of Spain and Czechoslovakia. the same fate. Even the theory of knowlAppeasement of Fascism abroad, Col- edge, where "realism" had begun,
lingwood concluded bitterly, had been turned out to involve self-contradiction.
accompanied by surrender to Fascism at How could a theory of knowledge be
home, for the essence of Fascism was the developed on the implicit assumption of
politics of naked self-interest, the appeal the impossibility of actual knowledge?
to fear or greed.
As the masters of realism fell silent, its
60
students learned that philosophy was a
"futile parlour game" which could not
help men to live. Taught to reject reason,
the British ruling class could only turn to
passion for direction. They had been
trained, Collingwood lamented, "as the
potential dupes of every adventurer in
morals or politics, commerce or religion
who should appeal to their emotions
and promise them private gains .... "
Collingwood rejected "realism" on
philosophical grounds before he became
fully aware of its political consequences.
Among the best passages of the book are
those which recount how he groped his
way to an initial break with the realists.
He brought his experience as an archaeologist and historian to bear on
their chosen field of logic.
Both the realists and their opponents,
Collingwood came to see, held that truth
inhered in propositions which were in
turn understood as analagous to a
grammatical sentence. Thus the realists
were "intuitionists," maintaining the
existence of a one-to-one correspondence between the factual truth and
its expression in a logical prop<?:~ition.
By asking himself what he was doing
when he excavated a Roman site or contemplated the supreme ugliness of the
Albert Memorial as he walked through
Kensington Gardens every day, Collingwood came to the view that the
propositional model of truth was a fallary. Before you could judge the truth of
a proposition you had to know what
question the proposition had been advanced to answer. Until he could comprehend what the architect of the Albert
Memorial had thought he was doing,
Collingwood's aesthetic judgment, formulated perhaps in respect to quite different problems, would be unfounded.
Collingwood was not preaching relativism; he did not mean that aU "questions" were equally intelligent or appropriate, much less that anything, no matter how muddled, could be justified as
an "answer." By his logic of questiOn
and answer, he insisted on carrying into
the elements of rational discourse the
principle that you have to understand
what is being said before you can refute
it or agree with it.
When the realists refuted their predecessors' "errors," it usually meant that
they misunderstood them because they
misunderstood what it was their predecessors had been trying to do. Those
who refuted the ancients' "theories of
moral obligation" translated f:iel as
though it contained the notion of moral
�July, 1979
obligation. It was, Collingwood contended, like saying "trireme" meant
"steamer" and then proving that the ancients did not understand steamers.
Collingwood found support for the
logic of question and answer in much of
the philosophic tradition, notably in the
Baconian-Cartesian scientific method, in
Plato and in Kant. Contemporary philosophy, however, was dominated by
propositional logic; it had taken a philosopher who was also an historian to
see the difficulty. It is therefore not surprising that for Collingwood history became the discipline which served as his
model, as natural science had been the
model of the realists. The historian, after
all, worked by setting himself a series of
questions whose purpose was to understand the actions of the past. The historian tried to put himself in the place of
other men, now dead, and think their
thoughts. This reliving was never total;
the historian relived Caesar's thoughts
on the banks of the Rubicon while remembering that he was not himself actually Caesar. But though the reliving
was "incapsulated," kept apart from the
historian's life in the present, it was
real.
Collingwood brought philosophy and
history close together. The study of a
problem, he argued, was actually the
study of the history of thought about
that problem, and the study of history
was actually the study of past thought.
He might then appear to be simply an
historicist, supplanting philosophy with
history as the subject for rational attention. Quite the opposite seems true to
me. The characteristic mark of historicism is that time changes everything,
even human consciousness. Consequently each age is unique and the experiences and thoughts of its men cannot be recalled by the changed minds of
later generations. Collingwood's absolute assurance that re-enactment of
thought is possible, that time can be
crossed as readily as space, is diametrically opposed to the- historicist view. If
anything, that assurance could be questioned. Is that "capsule" in which reliving takes place, really airtight, i.e. timetight? On what prior assumptions does
this assumption rest?
In turning to history and the logic of
question and answer in reply to a philosophy of propositional logic that based
itself on natural science, Collingwood
was trying to "save the phenomena,"
the way human things appear to human
beings and the way humans talk about
them. He understood the futility and
perversity of studying human beings by
pretending they were not human. In this
case, the measurer and the measured are
the same-the human mind. A standard
alien to the measured is alien to the
measurer as well. A mathematical description of moral "behavior" does not
help someone with a moral problem,
though it may tell him the untruth that
there is no such thing as a moral problem. Through history, Collingwood tried
to save philosophy from sterility and the
language of human discourse-of feelings and judgments, of praise and
blame-from degradation.
For us, Collingwood's Autobiography
raises disturbing questions. We seem
more confused and cynical than Collingwood's England in some ways. His
shock at newspapers which substitute
entertainment for sober information
seems quaint today. Our political language is poorer than England's in 1940.
just compare the debates of the 1976
presidential campaign, with their timid
reliance on social science jargon and
meaningless accumulations of incomprehensible statistics, with parliamentary speeches of the thirties and forties.
Or consider the Mayor of New York who
followed contemporary convention in
finding no epithet worse than "senseless" for the murderous bombing of
Fraunces Tavern.
Even when moral issues are faced directly, the terms in which they are
treated often blur them beyond recognition. A high government official extends
the term "political prisoner" to criminals
whose poverty may have influenced
them to commit their crimes. The same
official uses "racismrr for insufficient
sensitivity to the problems of racial
minorities. Others extend the term to
mean those who oppose policies of race
preference. (And the United Nation
smears as "racist" anyone who defends
the existence of a Jewish state.)
Recently, however, our academic philosophy has begun to show lively concern for moral and political issues. Books
with titles like A Theory of Justice and
Taking Rights Seriously have had great
success outside departments of philosophy. They have even demonstrably influenced high public officials. Has this
new moral philosophy begun to clarify
our discourse? There is evidence that its
effects are at least mixed. A liberal professor of law, for instance, justifies his
belief that liberals (but not conservatives) should be exempt from the libel
laws by referring to a principle laid
down by the author of Taking Rights
Seriously. The principle is that "inequality to enhance human dignity is permissible." A justice of the United States Supreme Court follows the same author's
argument that discrimination against an
individual by reason of his race is permissible if that race is not thereby stigmatized as inferior.
Will the revived concern with moral
philosophy among those who determine
policy improve the health of our democracy? Or will it merely provide the attack
on its fundamental principles with new
and sophisticated weapons? Was Collingwood right in longing for a revival of
philosophic interest in the ruling class,
or were we better off without it?
Are the basic principles of our republic properly revealed as inadequate in
the new thought? or; perhaps, is there
something unphilosophical about some
of the new philosophy which accounts
for the curious results that can obtain
when it is applied to contemporary
political problems?
Collingwood's Autobiography advocates the logic of question and answer as
opposed to the logic of propositions.
Philosophy, he contended, should return
to the Platonic "dialogue of the soul
with itself" in order to escape the dogmatism of a teaching that assumes its
own categories. The power of the view
of philosophy as dialogue extends beyond Collingwood's attack on a particular dogmatism, the positivism that
sought to replace philosophy with its
version of natural science method. Philosophy conceived as question and answer excludes all dogmatisms, all ways
of thinking that start with the answers
already in place.
If one wanted to pursue further the
question of the new moral philosophy-its authenticity as philosophy-Collingwood's Autobiography
would be a book to reflect upon. It is not
only that its argument reminds us of
what philosophy must be if it is not to
become sterile. Rather it is that it shows
us what real philosophy looks like in action as it records the life of questioning
and answering of a genuinely undogmatic man.
FRED BAUMANN
Fred Baumann is a program officer at the Institute
for Educational Affairs in New York. He is finishing a book on the concept of fraternity in Schiller
and the late eighteenth century.
61
�The College
RECENT READINGS
Tolstoy's Letters. Selected, edited, and heart."
translated by Mr. R. F. Christian, 2 volIn the 1850's letters to the editors of
umes. New York: Charles Scribner's current literary journals appear as
Sons, 1978.
Tolstoy then in his mid-twenties begins
to write for publication. He forms close
Professor Christian has selected whole associations with a few among the sociletters and portions from 608 out of the ety of writers, with whom he corremore than 8,500 of Tolstoy's letters now sponds over the years. He reads extenpublished in the Soviet edition of sively the contemporary novels, drama,
Tolstoy's works. The letters are pre- poetry, and criticism. His letters to felsented chronologically in nine periods in low writers give his opinions on works
Tolstoy's life, each with a short introduc- written, advice and criticism of the use
tion. Bibliographical notes introduce of characters and plot, his evaluation of
each of Tolstoy's correspondents as they the grace, clarity, authenticity of style
appear. Tolstoy wrote the earliest letter and its lack of contrivance. Tolstoy is
in 1845 when he was seventeen; he dic- critical of his own writing while imtated the last a few days before he died mersed in it; he does not know whether
in November 1910.
it is good or bad. He needs to share it
As a young man Tolstoy writes fre- with others, to read it aloud, to see its
quently to certain relatives: to tante effect upon himself and the audience.
Toinette Yergolskaya, and to his second For him dishonesty and lies are exoldest brother Sergey. These letters are ceedingly ugly.
informal, conversational, affectionate,
He travels in 1857 to Paris and Switfull of descriptions of what he is doing zerland. During his travels he writes of
and people he has met. He tells of plans the impression scenes make upon him:
to study music, drawing, languages, and peasant women about their domestic
work, a horrifying experience of a public
law.
Interrupting his university studies, he beheading in Paris, a night stagecoach
goes with his brother Nikolay to the ride through Switzerland sitting beside
Caucasus to serve as a soldier. In his the driver. He speaks about the state of
travels and his life in the army he is con- mind and health of Russians living
tinually interested in the customs of the abroad: the social freedom and the
people, in army life and the character of charm of living abroad changes many.
the officers with whom he associates. In He, however, considers the state a conhis leisure time, which appears to be spiracy designed to exploit and corrupt
abundant, he spends much time hunt- its citizens with loathsome lies. He caning, gambling, debauching, reading, not distinguish between the greater and
and beginning to write. He is frequently the lesser among the lies politics speaks.
sick. At times bored with army life, he "I will never serve any government
feels a lack of rapport with his compan- anywhere."
ions: " ... there's too big a gap in eduOn his return to Moscow and
cation, feelings and outlook on things Petersburg Tolstoy finds people conbetween myself and those I meet here tinually
shouting
and
angry.
for me to find any pleasure in being Everywhere he sees incidents of patriwith them."
archal barbarism, thieving, and lawlessHe keeps himself busy with quiet ness. He feels disgust for his country.
pursuits such as reading and writing, The only salvation is to be sought in a
and the intimacy of a few friends. Yet he moral life, in art, poetry, and friends,
evaluates this period as a beneficial ex- undistrubed by government intervenperience in the trials of life, in activities tion. Yet it is" ... not possible to create
and physical deprivations which teach your own happy and honest little world,
him to yearn for the tranquillity and in which you can live in peace and
peaceful delights of love and friendship. quiet, without mistakes, repentance or
But after almost two years he says he's confusion". "To live an honest life, you
bored beyond endurance-everything have to strive hard, get involved, fight,
seems meaningless. "If only there were a make mistakes, begin something and
single person one could talk to from the give it up .... "
62
In the early 1860's Tolstoy feels that he
will not write again, that he is ashamed
of all he has written. He had not said
what urgently needed saying with courage and strength. He gives himself to
farming at his estate, Yasnaya Polyana.
He starts a school for boys and girls and
for older people that are interested. He
is impressed by the disproportion between educated and uneducated Russians: the majority remains ignorant.
With no regard for the children's needs
or for society's interests, Government
schools make pupils stupid. Tolstoy develops methods of teaching and materials such as a primer and selected readings. He appoints teachers and supervises the teaching. He is enthusiastic
over the response of the children, their
fondness for him, their attentiveness
and good behavior. "I don't reason
about it, but when I enter a school and
see this crowd of ragged, dirty, skinny
children with their bright eyes and often
angelic expressions, alarm and terror
come over me, not unlike what I feel at
seeing people drowning."
Real life is too rich in events for anyone to have time to think. In-- Ofder to
write, he must arrange to be free of interruption. He must "get off the anthill,"
where one is continually intruded upon
and struggling with pretense and falsehood. Tolstoy withdraws to a distance
(without closing his eyes), in order to
allow creation to occur. When so inspired he plunges into his work with
enthusiasm. In his early years as husband and father, he feels happy in family life: "I've never felt my intellectual
powers, and even all my moral powers,
so free and so capable of work. ... Now
I am a writer with all the strength of my
soul, and I write and I think as I have
never thought or written before."
Of War and Peace, Tolstoy in 1865
says, " ... I describe events and the feelings of people who have never existed."
They are marvelous people, nhis children," whom he loves very much and
would like to move his readers also to
love. Art must tell the truth, must convey what real people do and feel. The
reader can participate only if the author
understands his characters. The artist
desires to show his readers the wonder
of life:
The aim of an artist is not to solve
a problem irrefutably, but to make
people love life in all its countless
inexhaustible manifestations . . . .
if I were to be told that what I
�July, 1979
should write would be read in
about twenty years' time by those
who are now children, and that
they would laugh and cry over it
and love life, I would devote all
my life and all my energies to it.
In the 1880's, distressed by the futile
and frivolous life in Moscow, Tolstoy returns to the country or travels in Russia.
Partially estranged from his family, he
writes to his wife distantly, but says he
will be delighted to return to the family
and to her if she wishes. For his peace of
mind he needs to love her. But repulsion
for the family's way of life shows
through. In 1896 he writes his wife of
the pain of seeing in his family just the
opposite of everything he considers
good: they have proved unresponsive to
his pleas and urgings to amend.
He becomes acutely aware that his
way of life with its material advantages
and vanity contradicts his beliefs and
undermines his credibility in his own
eyes-but also in the eyes of others. He
rejects his great property and struggles
to change personal habits; he withdraws
from social pursuits that do not conform
with his professed ideals and seem evil
and meaningless. To change the evil in
the world each individual must try to
live well and to love.
The answers to these questions of the
heart are translated into actions in the
ritual of the church. Tolstoy will submit
to tradition when it accords with what
lives in his heart. He seeks to understand the meaning of life given by
Christ. For him prayer is asking for
God's help-but also asking another
person for help. Tolstoy wants to know
what he should do when he sees a
mother beating her child, when he sees
bribery, terrorism, censorship, religious
persecutions. Activity must satisfy the
needs of the soul but it must also help
others.
At times miserable, confused, he
wants to rest. He wishes to die, yet feels
that he is living the last years of his life
badly, angry with those around him, a
grumbling old man. Tormented by his
relationship to his wife, he writes to her
describing his state of mind, asking forgiveness, anticipating recriminations,
reviewing disagreements, and solutions.
He fears to lose his freedom and betray
his own convictions in a false reconciliation. But he wishes not to hurt
her. The weakness of his physical powers intensifies his sense of going downhill without the ability to resist-and
with the world's wrongness mercilessly
before his eyes.
From conviction he continues to do
the work he can do best of all and which
he considers pleasing to God and useful
to other people. He corresponds extensively with people who are interested in
his social, ethical, and religious ideas,
with artists, teachers, philosophers, and
musicians. He writes to foreign newspapers about the persecution of the religious community of the Dukhobors. He
writes to authors and editors of journals
about ways to convey to the public an
attitude toward life in accord with Christian principles. Many letters are to his
children growing up. The tone of his letters to everyone is honest, wonderfully
candid; he is open in his words.
Tolstoy does near the end leave his
wife, to go he knows not where, a mystical sort of departure. He travels with
friends, and then, falling ill, dies in a
train station. He had said goodbye to
everyone.
LAURA BRIDGMAN '75
A registered nurse, Laura Bridgman works at
St. Luke's Hospital in New York.
AT HoME AND ABROAD
Talking With Pictures:
'Les Bandes Dessinees'
Paris: One aspect of individual selfassertiveness in French culture is the
cult of disrespect exhibited in French
literary graphics, a type of art which is
sometimes labelled caricatures de moeurs
and one in which French artists have excelled since the time of Honore Daumier
(1808-1879).
Literary graphics are drawings produced in a printed or lithographed form
that satirize morals and manners. They
are composed in a literary, compositive
manner, relying upon the combined use
of dialogue, narrative sequence, and
linear representations to achieve their effect. They encompass a wide range of
subjects, including the lower classes and
their way of life, caricatures of societies'
"solid citizens" such as businessmen,
doctors, lawyers, politicians, the petits
bourgeois, and well-known literary
characters.
The modern school of French literary
graphics was greatly affected by les
evenements of spring 1968, the shortlived, student-led "revolution" which
resulted in the liberalization of many
previously ossified French institutions
(such as the Sorbonne) and encouraged
an atmosphere of inciteful, witty commentary among the Paris intelligentsia.
One way this criticism of society was
expressed and subsequently distributed
throughout France was in the monthly
bandes dessinees journals such as Pilote,
Metal Hurlant, Charlie Hebdo, Hara Kiri,
L'Echo des Savanes, and (A Suivre). The
majority of these journals were estab-
lished in the aftermath of les evenements
of spring 1968 and contain much of the
best work of contemporary French literary graphics.
In addition to the work published in
these and other journals, deluxe, largeformat albums are regularly produced as
individual roman by Parisian publishing
houses. The work of these artists and
their predecessors is regularly evaluated
in the French academic quarterly Les
Cahiers de la Bandes Dessinees, now in its
tenth year, and the less scholarly, intermittently produced Phfnix.
Since its establishment in 1959 Pilote
has offered the general reader a comic
assessment of everyday French life. Curreritly one of its best artists is the fortyfive year old Claude Klotz who has al-
63
�The College
ready published twenty-four romans and
is especially well-known for his Le cafi
de la plage stories. These stories are concerned with droll caricatures of the ambitious, middle-class Frenchmen, who
are portrayed, as David Overbey has
written in The Paris Metro, as "suave
dogs, cats, and other creatures, on the
make for money, fame, and romance,
but whose minds are so crammed with
dreams and illusions fostered by the
popular media and filtered through a
nutty self-psychoanalysis that they
rarely succeed in being anything but
funny."
Most of the work which appears in
Metal Hurlant represents a future in
which men and women are oppressed
by machines, totalitarian political regimes, or their own uncontrollable
psychoses. There is also a tendency in
Metal Hurlant to focus on images to the
exclusion of words, as in the work of F.
Cestac, Michel Crespin, "Moebius" Q.
One of the more striking ads for the Pilote
Giraud's pseudonym), Philippe Druillet series of roman.
and Bihannic, that lends this collection a
cinematographic quality.
Charlie Hebda and Hara Kiri offer, as
the latter's name might suggest, highly pointed out, this use of black-and-white
satirical, sometimes distasteful and vi- graphics is effective because it directs
cious parodies of contemporary French the reader's attention first to the use of
life. They represent a strain of trium- space, of light and shadow, and thereby
phant nihilism in French literary imparts a purity of line to the narrative
graphics in which the idea is no longer that cannot be gained with color. In
to criticise in order to illuminate a par- other words, with color literary graphics
ticular problem or to bring about the reader's attention is distracted from,
humorous relief-but to criticise for the rather than directed towards, the actual
sake of criticism. An internationally story and the language that is being
aimed example of their distinctive brand used.
Probably the best example of this
of nihilism could be seen on a recent
cover of Charlie Hebda which showed a technique in (A Suivre) (whose name is
vomit-yellow caricature of a Chinese the English equivalent of the "[to be
soldier and a Vietnamese peasant trying continued]" message that comes at the
to bite each other's mouth off-with a end of a serialized story) would be the
huge caption emblazoned above their surrealistic work of Tardi-Forest, Monheads: "GO! GO! YELLOW PERIL!"
tellier's bleak stories of the wastelands of
The artists of L'Echo des Savanes are suburban life north of Paris, the more
more in touch with the mundane prob- adventurous material of Hugo Pratt and
lems of life such as pollution and French Deschamps-Auclair, and the sardonic
politics. They try to combine their caricatures of Benoit Sakal.
criticisms with a sophisticated use of
French bandes dessinies artists proudly
black-and-white graphics. The editor of trace their tradition back to Honore
L'Echo des Savanes recently explained Daumier. A set of his literary graphics
their artistic philosophy, "I see L'Echo which St. John's readers would be espedes Savanes as living up to its title ... cially sensible to would be Daumier's il[for it] means to me the echo of things lustrations for Homer's Odyssey, first
heard in open space ... the sounds of published in the journal Charivari in
1842 as part of the series Historie Anthe city heard in images."
The most consistently sophisticated cienne.
One lithograph of june 26th, 1842,
use of black-and-white graphics can be
found in (A Suivre), which first appeared Ulysses and Penelope, is meant to illusin Paris in February, 1978. As the trate Odyssey, xxiii, 295ff., the final bedAmerican critic David Pierce has room reunion of Odysseus and
64
Penelope, which Homer lovingly described in the following manner:
They then
gladly went together to bed, and their old
ritual.
[And when they] had enjoyed their lovemaking,
they took their pleasure in talking, each
one telling his story.
She, shining among women, told of all she
had endured in the palace ...
[While] shining Odysseus told of all the
cares he inflicted
On other men, and told too of all that in
misery
he had toiled through. She listened to him
with delight, nor did any
sleep fall upon her eyes until he had told
her everything.
(Od. xxxiii, 295-296; 300-303; 306-309)
In contrast to Homer's version,
Daumier's illustrated version of this
scene shows an octogenarian, petits
bourgeois Odysseus lying back in bed,
sound asleep, probably snoring, with a
huge stocking cap covering -his bony
skull, while a chubby, slovenly,
throughly middle-aged Penelope stared
down at her returned beloved with an
adoring but bewildered look on her
face-as if she were about to say,
"What? You're asleep?"
john Dean '70
�LETTERS
March 18, 1979
To the Editor:
The Jacob Klein memorial issue of The
College was most welcome. In particular,
it was good to have a record of Mr.
Klein's spontaneous speaking manner,
irresistibly turning even a speech into a
kind of dialogue, in the lecture on the
Copernican Revolution; the silent presence of the student audience could be
vividly felt. One phrase in the transcription puzzles me. On page 16, paragraph
2, line 8, there is a sentence beginning,
"But Rheticus had already chosen as a
model for the first report (Narratio Prima)
this sentence of Albin us ... " I spent
some time wondering in just what ways
a sentence could be a "model" for a
treatise and what the significance of that
description was, and ended by wondering whether Mr. Klein had not said
"motto". As you know, Albinus' sentence is the motto of the Narratio Prima.
Further, this would lend point to the following remark that Rheticus also used
the sentence within the report. Could
you clarify this?
The photographs were also welcome. I
well remember the snow sculpture.
There was a lot of excitement building
it, and then everyone waited impatiently
for Mr. Klein to appear, to hear what he
would say. He approached it with faultless self-possesion, stood contemplating
it for a moment, his body as still and
stable as Ptolemy's earth-he had a
curious choreographic capacity to transform anyplace he stood into a center-,
but with his eyes full of animation. Finally, waving his arm at it, he passed
his judgement: "It's a good symbol. It
melts," and dissolving back into motion
went on to his office.
RICHARD FREIS '61
Millsaps College
Jackson, Mississippi
Professor Freis' conjecture is correct: the
tape of December 6, 1967, says "motto,"
not "model." Also, the translation from
Osiander is Edward Rosen's, not Klein's, as
I wrongly stated in footnote 9.- L.R.
�The College
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Annapolis, Maryland 21404
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Radista, Leo
Parran, Jr., Thomas
von Oppen, Beate Ruhm
Wilson, Curtis A.
Allanbrook, Wye Jamison
Brann, Eva T. H.
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THE COLLEGE
ISSN 0010-0862
St. John's College • Annapolis, Maryland- Santa Fe, New Mexico
January 1979
�THE COLLEGE
Volume XXX
Number 2
January, 1979
Editor: Leo Raditsa
THE COLLEGE is published by the
Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404;
Richard D. Weigle, President, Edward G. Sparrow, Dean. Published
Managing Editor: Thomas Parran,
Jr.
Consulting Editors: Eva Brann, Beate
Ruhm von Oppen.
twice yearly, usually in January and
July.
IN THIS ISSUE:
Three lectures by Jacob Klein:
The Art of Questioning and the Liberal Arts
The Copernican Revolution
....................................... .
6
On a Sixteenth Century Algebraist ................................... 17
Texts from the Memorial Service
for Jacob Klein ................................................... 20
An Unspoken Prologue to a Public Lecture at St. John's,
by Leo Strauss ................................................... 30
About Jacob Klein's Books About Plato, A Commentary on Plato's
Meno and Plato's Trilogy, by William O'Grady ........................ 32
1 should like to thank Douglas Barton
for reading proof and for helping put
together the lecture on "The Copernican Revolution."-L.R.
Cover and end photographs by
Charles Post '74.
�The Art of Questioning and
The Liberal Arts
by Jacob Klein
1. I propose to talk about what questioning means, what it
entails, what it presupposes. Let me state from the outset that
I could have said as well that I propose to talk about thinking.
For thinking and questioning are inseparable. To raise a question means to be engaged in thinking. And to keep on thinking means to try to find answers to questions. If we ever reach
a state of knowledge, we are in possession of the right answer
to a question or a series of questions. And if there is such a
thing as an assimilation of a body of knowledge without previous questioning-something we are al1 familiar with from
our early school days-this thing has very little to do with
learning and even less with thinking.
2. It is necessary, I think, to distinguish different kinds of
questions, better perhaps, different kinds of questioning attitudes. I have to give you a number of examples to characterize the various kinds of questions. ® I may need a pencil.
I may ask anyone of you: do you have a pencil? or: can you
give me a pencil? A question of this kind is raised with a view
to an action. I am, strictly speaking, not interested in knowing whether you have a pencil at hand or not. All I am interested in is to have a pencil in my own hand which I could
use to write something down. Or I may wonder whether it
will rain today, the question itself being whether I should
A lecture given at St. John's College, Annapolis, Md., on Oct. 5, 1956
Brackets [ ] indicate a word inserted by the editors.
have an umbrella or a raincoat or whatever else could protect
me from the rain or whether I should not do so, because I
have to go somewhere for a definite purpose. Here again, I
am only interested in something that I have to do: my interest
concerns an action and the means I have to use to carry it
out. Questions of this kind are, as we say, practical questions.
And most of our questions are of this kind. ® Another kind
of questions is of a very different nature. I meet an old acquaintance whom I have not seen and have not heard of for
many years. I inquire: what have you done all these years?
How many children do you have now? Or: what are you
doing now? How is your wife? I may or may not be genuinely
interested to know the answers. If I am not genuinely interested, these questions can be called polite questions. If I
am, they may be characterized as affectionate questions. In
the first case, they are not really questions, but rather manifestations of my desire to show some interest which I actually
do not have. In the second case, the questions, although
genuine, reflect not so much an interest in the answers as in
the person to whom they are put. I may mention in this connection another kind of questions which are really not questions at all, the so-called rhetorical questions, that is, questions which anticipate the answer as an obvious one: for example, And who voted against this bill in Congress? it being
understood that the obvious answer is: the Democrats, or the
Republicans, depending on the audience to which the question is put.
® and ® have this in common, that the answer is in itself
not important to the questioner. But then again there are
�The College
questions of a very different kind. © You might hear somebody ask: what did Mr. X say to Mr. Y? Or: what kind of dress
did Mrs. Z wear last Wednesday? The questioner may indeed
be genuinely interested in the answer, and yet it is clear that
the answer merely satisfies a desire of the questioner to add
some fuel to his malice or to his grudge or to his vanity or to
his envy. The answer may also satisfy something in him that
may be called "idle curiosity". He may traverse a street and
suddenly notice that some house has been altered in some
peculiar way, which observation may lead him to wonder:
How come that Mr. Z, the owner of the house, decided to do
that? It is of no importance to the questioner one way or
another, and yet he is interested in knowing. All such questions can be characterized as gossipy questions. But it is worth
while to stop here for a moment and to reflect upon the nature of "idle curiosity", a curiosity, that is, not guided by
malice or similar feelings or passions. All gossip has an element of curiosity in it, of wonderment, and that means some
quest, however infinitesimal, however distorted, for knowl-
edge. lf we use the metaphor "body of knowledge", we may
perhaps say, paraphrasing Winston Churchill, that gossip
constitutes the underbelly of knowledge. And it may even
reach far nobler parts of this body if it is channeled in a certain direction. One may say that gossip is the small tribute
that our passionate and appetitive life pays-in very, very
small coins-to intellectual life.
® And this brings me to still another kind of questions.
We might wonder: what is beyond that formidable mountain
range? We question other people, who might know, about
what is over there, what sort of vegetation, what animals, who
the inhabitants are, what they do. We raise these questions
because we are curious to know and for no other reason.
Odysseus in his journeys constantly displays this kind of
horizon of our daily lives, which includes the familiar and
the surprising, routine and novelty, that which has precedents
and that which has not. The usual and the unusual are labels
put on things and events within the frame of our common
experience. The unexpected is still within the frame of the
expected. And it is this frame of the fundamentally familiar
that actually allows [us] to formulate our questions. That is:
they can be put in words. We are guided in our questioning
by language itself, which is oriented towards the world around
us, as we know it, including those parts or elements or factors
that in some way remain hidden to us. There are usually
some dark corners behind or in back of pieces of furniture in
a room full of light. The world is full of such dark corners.
Questions of the kind I mentioned before are like flashlights
the beam of which we direct towards these dark corners. This
beam is our language. And it is not too difficult to see that
the articulations of language correspond to the various ways of
questioning which we address to ourselves and to others as
beings having a primordial although not always habitable
home, namely the world. For being in a world is the most
elementary and the most crucial character of our existence.
Aristotle was if not the first then perhaps the most careful to
analyze the articulation of language and thereby to indicate
the various modes of our being in a world. He looks at the
various ways in which we speak about things, in which we say
something about something, and calls these various ways
"categories" (Ka'rljyopim). (The word means colloquially accusation, accusation in a court, in a public assembly. For
example, this man stole my horse. More generally [and cer-
tainly in Aristotle] it means the way in which we say [not
casually, but seriously, willing to defend what we say] something about something, in which we predicate something of
something.) And in each case the mode of our speaking, pre-
curiosity, which we may caB idle, but which seems to deserve
dicating, is an answer to a question. The categories are in fact
a better name. In a trial, where crucial facts have to be estab-
the various kinds of questions that can be asked to which cor-
lished, in our travels, where we meet with unfamiliar customs, we ask questions in order to win certainty about things,
situations, people and their characters and so forth. Such
responding kinds of answers can be given. First of all, we ask:
what is this, or what is an electronic computer, or what is the
questions could be properly called exploratory questions. And
what size is this room? We also ask: how is this car-gray,
in raising such questions we want to know, either in order to
powerful? How is this man-kind, violent, lazy? We also ask:
what is the relation of this to that, of this man to that man? of
this tree to that telephone pole? We also ask: where is he? and
also: when will he be here? or when did this happen? We ask:
base a judgment on the knowledge obtained or just simply in
order to know. It must be granted that it is not always easy to
draw the line between "idle curiosity" and a nobler sort of
curiosity.
North Pole? We also ask: how many people are present? Or:
in what state or condition is he-awake, sleeping, resting,
3. However different these kinds of questions, they have
breathing? We ask: what does he or it do (or did do or will do
something in common. They are all confined within the
or might do)? He cuts wood; or she was preparing a meal; or
2
�January, 1979
the hurricane might smash this tree. We ask: what did he
suffer: he was beaten by Mr. Smith, he was told to go to a
Giorgionc, Frieze with Attributes of the Liberal and Mechanical
Arts, Castelfranco, Veneto, about 1500.
movie. In each case we can easily discern that the question
(as weB as the answer) requires a kind of word or word form,
to which a specific grammatical form can be attached. To the
question what? corresponds a noun. To the question how
many? a numeral. To the question how? an adjective. To the
question what relation? a genitive or dative or a preposition.
To the question in what state? an intransitive verb or a participle. To the questions where? and when? adverbs; to the question: what did it do? and so forth, a transitive verb in the
active voice and the indicative, subjunctive or optative mood;
to the question what did it suffer? the passive voice. And beyond that questions and corresponding answers require the
building together or separating of words, that is, conjunctions.
All our speaking and conversing with each other, making
statements, declaring, proclaiming, lecturing, is a web of
questions and answers, even if the questions can sometimes
[be] the answers, be tacit or inexplicit. And it is important to
note-in our context-that the very possibility of our questioning depends on the grammatical structure of our language
and correspondingly the grammatical structure of the world
around us.
Does this mean that we could not raise questions unless we
knew some grammar? Or are we in the position of one of the
characters in a Moliere play who, not having heard of the
term "prose" before, is surprised to learn that he has actually
always been speaking in prose. I think we are. Our speech,
and that means our questioning and that means our thinking,
is grammatically structured even if we never studied
grammar. That is, it can be, and so often is, faulty and artless. The art and science of grammar has its origin in our
becoming aware of the pitfalls in our speech. This becoming
aware means that we begin to reflect on what goes on when
we speak. And I shall have to say more about this reflecting a
little later on. The discovery of rules and canons and patterns
in our speech converts or at least may convert our questioning
from an artless one into an artful one. To give you perhaps
the most impressive and most significant example of this, let
me tell you or remind you that the first and foremost question
of Socrates is: what is this or that (justice, virtue, courage, but
also tragedy, comedy, and also star, man, dog, stone): Ti €ern
... and some of you have seen and some of you will see how
far such a question leads. But the discovery of rules and canons and patterns in our speech leads also to the establishment
of the art of grammar itself which, pursued for its own sake,
becomes the liberal art of Grammar. And most important,
with this discovery the horizon of our daily lives recedes: a
new domain, a new dimension of our lives comes to the fore.
And with it a new }jossibility, a new kind of questioning,
quite distinct from the one I mentioned before. But before I
enlarge upon this point let us look at another aspect of the
phenomenon of questioning.
4. I am permitted at this point to ask the question, What is
a question? Let me try to answer: it is a state of mind in
which I want to know what I do not know. But then what is
the condition of my knowing or my thinking (rightly or mistakenly) that I know? I shall try to answer: it is my abilitY to
locate that which I do not know within a greater whole that I
do know or, note please, do not know. I come to a city for the
first time. There are houses and streets and bridges in a confusing array. I feel lost. I want to know where I am, where the
street corner I happen to find myself is. I look at a map. After
some searching I establish where I am in relation to the
whole city on the map. I have found an answer to my question. I do not know the city, and yet I have now some tiny bit
of knowledge concerning that street corner I am on. Taking
my clue from this example, I can say: A question is not
merely a state of mind in which I want to know what I do not
know, but it is one in which I also anticipate that there is a
greater whole, in which that which I want to know is located
or of which it is a part. In my questioning then, I am always
anticipating a greater whole, which ultimately means that the
simplest question supposes a hierarchy of wholes
@lJ
That's why any classification is an answer to a question or a
series of questions. And that's why all thinking always implies
a connecting of particulars to universals. And that in turn
means that our questioning depends on logical relationships
which are always relationships between particulars and universals. Does this mean that we cannot raise questions unless
we know some logic (Mr. Jourdain in Moliere again)? No,
the logical relationships are within our thinking, whether we
are aware of it or not. But being aware of it may actually help
us to avoid mistakes. Here again the reflection on what goes
on in our reasonable speaking as far as the discovery of rules,
canons, and patterns in the relationship of particulars and
universals that guide our inferences leads to the establishment
of the art and science of Logic. And the art and science of
logic, pursued for its own sake, that is, liberally, makes it
3
�The College
possible for us to transcend the horizon within which we live.
We have yet to consider another aspect of the phenomenon
of questioning.*
5. I have said three times that some reflection on what we
are doing in speaking, thinking and questioning must precede
tioning ultimately depends of these primordial scier.ces and
not the other way around. Even our gossiping may ultimately
the establishment of the liberal arts of Grammar, Logic,
Rhetoric (Trivium). Now I have to take up this theme of reflection, to reflect upon it. In all the kinds of questioning I
put on the board, we stay within the confines of our daily
horizon. But it is within our capacity as questioning beings to
adopt a questioning attitude of a totally different kind.
possibility of a total conversion.)
I said before that within the confines of our horizon, there
is the expected as well as the unexpected, the old and the
new, the known and the unknown, the familiar and the unfamiliar. We do, however, experience a kind of question
which, as it were, tends to smash those bounds which limit
us. We do occasionally, and I trust you know what I am
speaking about, stop altogether and face the familiar as if for
the first time. Anything: a person, a street, the sky, a fly. The
overwhelming impression on such occasions is the strangeness of the thing we contemplate. This state of mind requires
detachment, and I am not at all certain whether we can con-
trive its presence. We suddenly do not feel at home in this
world of ours. We take a deep look at things, at people, at
words, with eyes blind to the familiar. We reflect. Plato has a
word for it: J-tETaa7po<pij or 7TEpuxywyij, a turnabout, a
conversion. We detach ourselves frOm all that is familiar to
us, we change the direction of our inquiry, we do not "explore the unknown" anymore. On the contrary, we convert
the known into the unknown. We wonder. And we burst out
with that inexorable question: why is that so?
This "why" seems to have its roots in those other worldly
questions. Obviously, I can ask, why did it rain yesterday and
does not rain today? Why did Mr. X say this or that to Mr. Y?
And this "why" I am talking about now is itself of a different
kind. It seems not to assign causes to the existence of things
or to events, but rather to find reasons for the being of things
as they are, among other things for our language and questioning being guided by rules of Grammar, Logic and
Rhetoric. It seems (again in the phrase of Plato) to account
for what is the way it is-!..6yov lhll6vat. And that's how the
arts and sciences of the Trivium become established. We may
begin to understand that our simple and common-day ques-
rest on the transcendent power of this "why". (Even the children's "why", repeated endlessly, to the disgust of their
mothers and fathers, may ultimately derive from the human
Can I give other examples of answers to this kind of why?
(Other, I mean, than the arts of the Trivium.) I think I can. I
shall try to indicate three of such possible answers.
(A) I gave you the example of the man who wants to find
out where he is in a city that is totally unfamiliar to him. He
has recourse to a map. Please reflect [on] what sort of thing a
map is (or a blueprint). There is nothing on a map of a city
remotely resembling the city it is supposed to represent. In
fact, the detachment needed to conceive that a multitude of
lines on a piece of paper represents a city requires an immense intellectual effort on our part, an effort of detachment
from the familiar, which is difficult to understand, very difficult indeed, once you try to look at a map with unfamiliar
eyes. A map is one possible result of detaching ourselves from
the usual and the familiar. Note please that the detachment
which is at the base of the conception of a map is not to be
confused with the fact that maps are familiar things for most
of us. Imagine now that we try to answer the question: why
are things, all things, the way they are, by giving a map of the
world. I do not mean of course an astronomical map including all galaxies. I mean to project in a certain order, according to certain rules, all that we are more or less familiar with,
living and inanimate things, vices and virtues, passions and
sciences, monsters and trivia, onto something resembling a
geographical map. It would contain all relationships (not spa-
tial ones) that bind everything together and separate some
from some. Such a map is something called a philosophical
system-and sometimes a poem and sometimes a novel.
(And if it is not such a map we might as well disregard it.)
(B) We have seen before that even the simplest question
presupposes a hierarchy of wholes. We may justly wonder at
that. How can there be many wholes? We may reach in the
state of /LETaurpo<p1) the idea of the one whole, not lacking
anything, which we may variously call The One, or God, or
the Idea of the Good, as Plato did.
(C) In answering the question how many and what size, we
can reflect on the strangeness of this question itself and what
it presupposes. We may (just as in the case of the Trivium)
raise the question about the intrinsic possibility of these ques'" A section on Rhetoric is missing from the manuscript at this point.
4
tions: how many and what size. We would reflect about the
�January, 1979
nature of numbers and of spatial arrangements. And we include the contemplation of motion in relation to numbers
and spatial arrangements. We should establish the liberal
mathematical arts, which would give us an ultimate account
of why things are as they are. Such procedure is the way of
science (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy-today,
mathematical physics).
To preserve the detachment in all these three cases is not at
all easy. Not in the sense that it is perhaps difficult to remain
for any length of time on the top of the Himalayas, in the
profound pit of a coal mine. The reason seems to be the
ambiguity of the why? It is one thing to pursue the exploring
within the confines of our horizons, another to detach oneself
from them. And yet the confusion necessarily arises. In all
these cases we begin to interpret the ultimate answer in terms
of our worldly experience.
We tend to understand a philosophical system, a poem or a
novel as a mere extension of our horizon. We say it enriches
our lives. If it does, we run the risk of misunderstanding it.
We tend to reduce the One, or God, or the Idea of the
Good to the level of our gossipy curiosity.
We tend to interpret our scientific insights as a re-statement
of our daily experiences, [a] confusion of exploration with
this different "why?"~-not only [a] confusion, but [one
which is] essential to science.
I can't help ending all this by inviting you to look at this
strange word: responsibility. It obviously implies response, that
is, answer. Answer to what question? I think it is the answer
and the proper reaction to the nature of questioning itself.
For who or what is it that does the questioning? Man? But
Man facing himself and the world. His very existence raises
these questions. They may be of very different kinds, as we
hope we have seen. Responsibility seems to me to demand
from us an effort not to confuse the nature of the questions.
We have to answer on all levels. Not to confuse these levels
seems to be the life of a responsible man.
5
�The College
The Copernican Revolution
by Jacob Klein
This is an historical lecture. And that means that it will
hardly be convincing and the best it can do is to raise in you
some questions and to make you try to answer these questions
and perhaps to read some books. And in this sense, it may be
useful; otherwise, it is not. 1
Copernicus' book, On the Revolutions of the Celestial
Spheres appeared in 1543. That was the year he died. He had
no way of supervising the publishing. When the book first
appeared, and even in later editions, the text was fu11 of misprints. Hardly a number is correct. Now the main significance of the book is, as you know, that it tells that the earth,
our earth, is one of the planets moving around the sun and,
in addition, rotates daily on its own axis. Furthermore, as you
all know, I am sure, there is a third motion, and we'll talk
about that a little later. This theory, let me use this modern
word, this theory was in itself nothing new, and Copernicus
insisted on its not being new. A number of people in antiquity and later on, especially in the 14th and 15th centuries,
had envisioned the possibility of a daily rotation of the earth,
in antiquity Heracleides of Pontus, in the 14th century
Nicolaus Orcsmus and in the 15th century Nicolaus of Cusa.
But, above all, Aristarchus ofSamos, around 275 B.C., had a
heliocentric system. We know that from Archimedes. Also
there were more or less legendary Pythagoreans who thought
of the revolution of the earth in an orbit around the center of
the universe. And all the consequences or, rather, the necessary assumptions connected with this theory were certainly
known in antiquity. The Copernican astronomical theory is
in itself no revolution. It gained its revolutionary character
through the interpretation it was subject to and through the
immediate, far-reaching conclusions drawn from it and, I
hasten to add, latent in it. By the way, you know the title of
l. For many years Jacob Klein gave a yearly talk on Copernicus. He spoke
from notes without a written text. The following text is pieced together from
transcriptions and tapes of three of these talks. I have made minor changes
throughout and bracketed them only in instances where they were important
enough to need notice. In several instances I have omitted sentences, for the
most part, asides to the audience. Winfree Smith edited the first section
(until the asterisks). For the sake of clarity he slightly expanded the sections
accompanying the three diagrams. I should like to thank him for his help and
the instruction that necessarily came with it, given as always unstintingly.
L.R.
6
the book is On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres, and
our word "revolution" [as used in reference to certain historical events] is indirectly related to this title.
Now the Ptolemaic theory and all classical ancient
theories, like those of Eudoxus and Hipparchus, are based on
a mathematical-physical postulate, which can be formulated
as follows: all motions of celestial bodies must be deducible
from, or reducible to, regular, that is, uniform motions on
circles.
You probab,ly know that in the 17th century a law was formulated by Newton and others, which is called the law of
inertia. You know about it, I think, because you heard about
it in school. This law of inertia says that a body, if nothing
troubles it, continues in its motion uniformly in a straight
line. When I was about 16 or 17, I thought that was perfectly
self-evident. Well, it is far from being self-evident. It is not
even true. One of the great difficulties in this law is the notion of a straight line. You will all remember the fourth definition of the first book of Euclid where the straight line is
defined and that the definition is not quite clear.
Now the postulate I just enunciated, that the motion of
celestial bodies must be deducible from or reducible to uniform motions in circles, can be called the classical law of
inertia. That's how bodies behave. That's what this postulate
says. It is implied in this postulate that the motion in the
circle is uniform about the center of the circle. The tradition
attributes this postulate, and the attribution may or may not
be true, to Plato. A late commentator on Aristotle,
Simplicius, quotes other commentators such as Sosigenes and
Eudemus to the effect that Plato posed a certain problem out
of which classical astronomy arose:
What are the uniform and orderly movements, the
assumption of which permits to save the appearances
in the movements of the planets?
The phrase "save the appearances" seems very simple. It isn't
so very simple. To be cautious, it is pretty certain that
Simplicius understood that in an Aristotelian way. That
means that, given a certain phenomenon that is not quite
understandable, you have to make certain assumptions so that
from these assumptions you can make the phenomenon un-
�January, 1979
derstandable, intelligible, rational. By doing that you save the
phenomenon as phenomenon. That is, if a certain planet
makes strange motions in the heavens which are observed as
strange and you don't quite understand what they mean, then
if you introduce certain assumptions or, as the classical term
is, certain hypotheses, then these hypotheses will make you
understand what goes on in the motion of the body and will
save the appearances. It is not certain that Plato ever formulated this problem the way it is reported, i.e., whether he
meant it the way Simplicius and the entire tradition, and certainly Ptolemy, meant it.
So what we have is that the fundamental hypotheses are
necessary. These are made in Ptolemy. They include, for instance, circles called deferent circles because the centers of
other circles called epicycles are traveling on them, the motions of planets on the epicycles and of the epicycles' centers
on the deferents being uniform. Furthermore, I am sure you
remember, Ptolemy proves the total equivalence of the
epicyclic and eccentric hypotheses, the eccentric hypothesis
being that something moves on a circle the center of which is
not the earth's center. Now this is one way in which Ptolemy
deviates from the fundamental postulate. He assumes the
equant. You all remember the equant, right? He assumes that
a body can move on a circle while its motion is uniform
about a point that is not the center of the circle. That is not
what the classical postulate demands. Ptolemy is quite aware
of all the difficulties his view presents. He apologizes for
them. In Book IX of the Almagest, Chapter 2, he says:
We are compelled by the very subject we are dealing
with to use devices that go against reason, as for instance, when for the sake of convenience we carry
out demonstrations on simple circles described by
the movement of the planets in their spheres and
supposed to lie in the plane of the ecliptic. We are
also compelled to lay down some fundamental
hypotheses, starting not directly from an appearance,
but conceiving them after a continuous series of trial
and adjustment. (This seems to refer to finding the
center of the equant.) We are, moreover, compelled
to assume for all the planets not one and the same
kind of motion and, as to their circles, not one and
the same kind of inclinations. We agree to do all
that because we know that the use of those devices
does not lead to any· appreciable difference in the
results and, consequently, does not impair in any
way the solution of our problems; and also because
we know that the hypotheses arrived at in a way that
cannot be strictly demonstrated, once they are found
to agree with the appearances, could not have been
arrived at without some methodical thinking, though
it is hard to describe how they are got hold of, which
is not surprising since universally the fundamental
principles have either no cause at all or one that by
its nature can hardly be grasped; and also because we
know that as far as the hypotheses of circular motion
are concerned their diversity cannot be considered
strange or unreasonable, since the appearances of the
planets themselves are found to be different for every
planet; provided that we save in qualifying in all
cases the regular motion in circles and give a demonstrative account of each of the appearances according to a higher and more universal similitude in
all the hypotheses.
Now let's turn to Copernicus and remind ourselves of what
Copernicus does. First of all, Copernicus is much more
Ptolemaic than Ptolemy. That happens very often in the history of human thought. He rejects the equant. There can be
no equant. Then, in addition to the rotation of the earth and
its revolution about the sun, he assigns to the earth a third
motion. For he supposes that without this third motion the
SUN
•
Figure 1
axis of the earth would not during a single revolution about
the sun point to the same place in the sky, whereas in fact it
always points to a place very near the "pole" star. The picture
we would get would be like this (Figure 1). Why does Copernicus suppose that? Because he still thinks of a moving epicycle. He thinks of the equator of the earth as an epicycle with
aphelion F and perihelion G. So he has to introduce a third
motion; namely, such a motion of the axis that in a wonderful way describes a double cone in a little less time than it
takes for the earth to complete its revolution about the sun in
relation to the fixed stars. 2 Just by making the time a little
less, Copernicus accounts for the great phenomenon of the
precession of the equinoxes.
Now let us compare the way Copernicus explains the motion of an outer planet, for example, Mars with Ptolemy's
explanation. Figure 2 exhibits this very well. What this figure
shows is the superimposition of the Copernican view on the
Ptolemaic view. For Ptolemy the earth is at E. The center of
the deferent is D and the center of the equant is Q. Then
2. For the double cone see figure XXV in Ptolemy and Copernicus, Theory
of the Planets (St. John's Press).
7
�The College
Figure 2
there is an epicycle with center Mt that moves around the
deferent. This Ptolemaic figure takes care of both the socalled heliacal anomaly and the zodiacal anomaly. But there
is that villain, the center of the equant, the point Q. It is only
in reference to Q that the motion of Mr on the deferent is
regular. Now, if we take Copernicus' view, then, first of all,
we replace the earth at E with S, the sun; and the earth
moves, right?, the earth moves. It moves in the circle
Er E2 Sr S2. In the Ptolemaic diagram Mr, the center of the
epicycle, is the mean planet, while the planet itself is moving
on the epicycle. Now Copernicus chooses as center for his
deferent circle not D, and certainly not Q, but a point halfway between Q and D. That's point C. This is the center of
Copernicus' deferent, which is a deferent because it bears an
epicycle, the little circle with center A in the figure. This
little circle is much smaller than it appears in the figure-this
diagram doesn't reproduce the relative sizes of things but is
really only the pattern in which the circles and their motions
may be conceived. On this little epicycle the planet really
moves. Now Copernicus might have substituted the planet for
the Ptolemaic mean planet, the center of the Ptolemaic
epicycle. Then he would have had a single circle for the
planet's motion with center 0, and if we take the positions E,
Pr, and Mr as Ptolemaic starting positions for earth, planet,
and mean planet and S, Et, and Mt as Copernican starting
positions for sun, earth, and planet, then with the Ptolemaic
planet and mean planet, after a certain time, at P2 and M2
and W as the angle of observed motion we would have the
Copernican earth and planet at E2 and M2 and W* as the
angle of observed motion. It is easily proved, as you must
have done, that W* = W. But then the planet would have its ·
motion uniform about the equant point Q, a thing intolerable
8
for Copernicus. Copernicus, therefore, introduces the little
epicycle with center at A.
Now, once more we assume the same Ptolemaic and
Copernican starting positions. Only we suppose that Copernicus' position for the planet is on the litttle epicycle on
which the planet is moving in a clockwise direction and with
the same uniform angular velocity about A with which the
center of that epicycle is moving on its deferent circle about
the center C. Now, as you remember, the planet will not
describe the circle which the mean planet describes in
Ptolemy. For instance, the point I on the left does not coincide with the point Mz. Moreover, the diagram here has two
angles, W* and W'. W', which equals W, is the angle of
vision, or observed motion, in Ptolemy and W' is the angle of
vision in Copernicus. These two are not quite the same, so
that, if Ptolemy's angle agrees with the observations, Copernicus' does not. But the difference between the angles is very,
very small, much smaller than the diagram shows, so small
that it couldn't really be drawn in a diagram [or detected with
any instruments that Ptolemy or Copernicus had]. Now,
therefore, the planet does not describe, strictly speaking, a
circle, but something which is very close to a circle, very
close. [The dotted curve FGL in the diagram on page 742 of
On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.] And there is an
eccentric deferent circle and an epicycle. Everything is totally
Ptolemaic.
Now I have to say two things here. This diagram presupposes something very important which you all know; namely,
it presupposes that the sphere of the fixed stars is at an immense distance from the system of the planets. Let's say that
the earth is at Er in Copernicus and we on the earth look at
the sky at a certain hour of night, perhaps in the direction of
Et F. We see certain stars. Then the earth moves, let us say
to the position E2. So it changes position. We again look at
the sky and locate one of the stars we saw before. It is exactly
where it was before in relation to the other stars. No parallax.
Why? Why? Let's formulate it this way. The stars are so far
away, so terribly far away, that it doesn't make any difference
where our earth on this ridiculous little orbit is. No matter
where Ez is, the distance between E2X andErF, though it
may be millions of miles, is as nothing compared with how
far away the stars are. That's one thing.
The second thing has to do with Ptolemy's observations.
You know that Ptolemy possesses the first of many kinds of
observations. Certainly he himself made some observations;
and these are on the whole very precise. The word "precise"
is a very difficult word. By the way, they are very precise. And
the margin of error is about ten minutes, ten minutes of arc. 3
Ptolemy and those people whom he quotes could make
measurements that were that close and, by the way, they had
3. It used to be thought that this was the Ptolemaic margin of error. But it is
now generally agreed among those who have really studied the question that
this is not so. Ptolemy must have made some observations with the instruments he describes; but, since it is known that some of what he reports as
observations are not genuine observations, it is hard to tell which are genuine
and which are not. One, therefore, cannot say anything with certainty in
comparing Ptolemy and Copernicus as observers. J. W. S.
�January, 1979
very simple instruments. But they had great patience. They
could do this good measuring because the sky over the
Mediterranean is clear and wonderful. But Copernicus sat
somewhere in East Prussia and Poland where the sky is awful.
Copernicus never could measure and observe anything well.
And all the observations he made are certainly not within the
Ptolemaic margin of error. And then Copernicus has the
conviction that all observations preserved through the centuries from Hipparchus and Ptolemy on to his days were
good. And, therefore, they must all be accounted for. And,
therefore, incredible hypotheses must be made. And he accounts for all his observations, be they right or wrong. That
doesn't matter. They must be accounted for. In his way
Copernicus is an incredibly great artist.
Now, the thing is that when finally Copernicus decides
that the Ptolemaic account is not right, he publishes this
book, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres; by the way,
he worked on it for years and years and years, and there were
pupils of his that helped him to work and one of the most
important ones is a man whose name I am sure you have
heard. His Latin name is Rheticus, his real name George
Joachim, and before Copernicus published his book Rheticus
published a first report (Narratio Prima) on it from which we
learn many things. Now, for example, this is what Rheticus
says about what Copernicus is doing:
My teacher was especially influenced by the realization that the chief cause of all the uncertainty in
astronomy was that the masters of this science-no
offense is intended to the divine Ptolemy, the father
of astronomy-fashioned their theories and devices
for correcting the motions of the heavenly bodies
with too little regard for the rule which requires that
the order and motions of the heavenly spheres agree
in an absolute system. 4
There is a book which is called The Hypotheses of the
Planets. This book is attributed to Ptolemy. It is probably
written by him, though some doubt is allowed. This book is
to some extent an attempt to make the world, to see the
world, as one body. But, while I am saying that, I must call
to your attention that this is not necessarily the intention of
this book. One can say only this much, that it tries to give a
view of the solid body of heavenly motion; I mean, of the
heavenly motion in three dimensions. Whether one can
really connect the different planetary motions which are given
by Ptolemy, namely, those of the Moon, Mercury, Venus,
the Sun, Mars, jupiter, and Saturn, to make one big body
with spheres that fit into each other with solid rings or drums
where the epicycles are located is a big question. It would
certainly be a very difficult undertaking. Now that's what
Rheticus criticizes, and he means that in Copernicus it is not
this way.
In Copernicus we have one work; there is unity and congruity and simplicity. For instance, as Rheticus says, all irregularities in the motion of the earth and, by the way, there
are quite a few (some that are truly irregularities and others
based on faulty observations), all irregularities are determined
by the motion on one tiny little circle. How many of you
know this? Please raise your hands. How many know? That
all irregularities in the motion of the earth on its orbit are_due
to the motion of a certain point on a tiny little circle. I know
you know it because Mr. Winfree Smith told me that. Aha,
we'll see, we'll see. Look at the diagram (Figure 3).
And Copernicus himself says:
Former astronomers have not been able to discover
or to infer the thing which is chief of all, that is, the
form of the world and the certain congruity, or
symmetry, of its parts. But they are in exactly the
same fix as someone taking from different places
hands, feet, or head, and the other limbs, very fine
of themselves, but not formed with reference to one
body and having no correspondence with one
another. So that such parts make up a monster and
not a man. 5
That is, he means that if you take together all the statements
Ptolemy makes in the Almagest and, by the way, the tradition
on which it was made, then. you do not get an orderly world,
a cosmos, but some monstrous construction.
4. From the Narratio Prima translated by Edward Rosen in Three Copernican Treatise.~. New York 1939, 138.
5. From Copernicus' Preface to On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.
Figure 3
According to Copernicus, the earth has three regular motions, the daily rotation, the annual revolution, and the motion of the axis that makes the double cone. Of these the third
motion is affected by two irregularities which can be thought
of as librations of the poles, and the second, the annual revolution, is affected also by two, a change in eccentricity and a
motion of the line of apsides, the line that joins aphelion and
perihelion. Now look at the diagram (Figure 3). If you understand the earth as moving counterclockwise, eastward, on the
circle that has C as center and make G revolve clockwise on a
little circle, with center C, that does not enclose the sun,
which is at 0, then the eccentricity will change from
maximum when C is at E to minimum when G is at F, and
9
�The College
so on. This change constitutes, according to Rheticus, the
wheel of fortune. Have you never heard of that? Surely you
have heard of the wheel of fortune. That is the wheel of fortune. It determines all irregularities, 6 including the motion of
the apsides which it produces as the whole wheel with its
center C moves regularly with the signs, eastward, 24 seconds
annually. Now let me read what Rheticus has to say about
the wheel of fortune. I am sure some of you have heard it.
But it is good to hear it again. "I shall add a prediction." It is
Rheticus who says that.
We see that all kingdoms have had their beginnings
when the center of the eccentric was at some special
point on that small circle. Thus, when the eccentricity of the sun was at its maximum, the Roman government became a monarchy; as the eccentricity decreased Rome too declined, as though aging, and
then fell. When the eccentricity reached the boundary and quadrant of mean value, the Mohammedan
faith was established; another great empire came into
being and increased very rapidly, like the change in
the eccentricity. A hundred years hence, when the
eccentricity will be at its minimum (by the way, this
is written in 1540), this empire, (the Mohammedan
empire, the Turks), will complete its period. In our
time it is at its pinnacle from which equally swiftly,
God willing, it will fall with a mighty crash. (Now it
is true that a hundred and forty years later the Turks
were chased out of Europe.) We look forward to the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ when the center of
the eccentric reaches the other boundary of mean
value, for it was in that position at the creation of the
world. This calculation does not differ much (not
much, but somewhat) from the saying of Elijah,
who prophesied under divine inspiration that the
world would endure only six thousand years, during
which time nearly two revolutions are completed.
Thus it appears that this small circle is in very truth
the Wheel of Fortune, by whose turning the kingdoms of the world have their beginnings and their
vicissitudes. For in this manner are the most significant changes in the entire history of the world revealed, as though inscribed upon the circle. 7
6. There is no obvious link between the irregular change in eccentricity and
the irregular librations, which are crosswise to one ;mother, of the poles of
the earth. Of these lihrations (which, of cOllfse, have to be reduced to regular
circular motions) one gives the change irr'the rat~ of the precession of the
equinoxes and the other the change in the angle of obliquity of the ecliptic
(the angle between the plane of the earth's ·equator and the plane of its orbit
around the sun). Copernicus supposes (without giving sufficient reason) that
the period for one complete cycle in the change of eccentricity (i.e. one
complete motion of point G in circle EGF in figure 3) is 3434 years, the
same period that he assigns (without reason) to the change in the obliquity of
the ecliptic (Narratio Prima, 121) and which he claims (also without reason)
is double the period of the change of rate of precession. That is what is meant
by saying that "all irregularities are determined by the motion of one tiny
little circle." J.W.S.
7. Narratio Prima, 121-122.
10
Why did I read that to you? I read it to you to show you that
what goes on in this book, On the Revolutions of the Celestial
Spheres, is more than astronomy. It implies certain things
which regard the whole world and which concern us men
here on our earth. That is how Rheticus understood it from
the very beginning. And that's how I think we all should always understand anything that's presented to us as a theory.
Now let me continue with the report. The tendency to
what is unity and simplicity is especially clear in the fact that
the one orbit of the earth, and I will have to repeat it later,
replaces five Ptolemaic circles, namely, three epicycles in the
outer planets and two deferent circles in the inner planets.
And this again is determined ultimately by the little circle,
the small circle, the wheel of fortune.
'
'
*
*
'
What now does the Copernican system accomplish, simply
and strictly, in terms of a mathematical description of the
universe? It does unify the universe by means of the great
circle of the orbit of the earth. It does give a greater unity to
the whole thing because there are [in Ptolemy's conception]
these whirling epicycles with their tremendous radii from
which certain inconveniences arise, namely, if you take
Venus' epicycle, which is much larger in that it is actually
three quarters of the radius of the deferent circle, and jf you
notf: Venus at the perigee and Venus at the apogee, then it's
clear that Venus ought to appear, I think, something like sixty
times larger sometimes than at other times-which it never
does. That's the case of the moon, too, but not very important there, because Ptolemy could have changed that also.
Then if I were to trace the path of the planet in Ptolemy, I
would get an incredibly involved curve. I have a book in
which anyone interested can see the path of Mars, for instance, in a period of approximately twenty years. It is a very
beautiful curve with incredible loops and so on, but terribly
complicated. If you trace the path of the Copernican planet,
as you will remember, you will get in each case what he calls
almost a circle, a quasi circle, so that although the planet
itself does not move in a circle its motion is simply the result
of certain circular motions. There is a certain unification
and, in virtue of this, a greater simplicity.
Let us not forget that this greater simplicity is brought
about at the expense of a fantastic complication with incredibly many irregularities. Also the sun, although being the center of the universe, has nothing to do with the whole thing.
Each planet has its own center around which it moves and
each center is at a different distance from the mean sun. And
then the mean sun is at a certain distance from the big
sun-and the big sun simply is and shines and does nothing
else.
The question that is very much in my mind is this: why
should anyone have accepted the Copernican hypothesis?
And that is a terribly difficult question to answer because the
physical arguments advanced by Ptolemy are simply not negligible. Any kind of proof and any kind of evidence for the
plausibility of the Copernican system was not available for
hundreds of years afterward. Further, certain great and really
�January, 1979
important discoveries that were made following the publication of this book and which culminate in the discoveries of
Galileo when he first looked at the sky through a telescope at
no point could justify the acceptance of Copernican astronomy.
Now I must talk about these discoveries because they are
essential to what I want to say. First, in the years between
1543, when the book appeared, and 1572, and then later in
1604, there were two incredible appearances in the heavens.
Now such things occur often, not daily, but often. (You read
about them in newspapers and magazines, although you don't
pay too much attention to them.) These are called the appearances of a nova. Now a nova is a new star and that means
that at a certain spot in the heavens where there was no star
(not even through a telescope) suddenly a star appears-an
unbelievable star, brighter than all the others. And it burns
brightly for years and then declines and, after a certain time,
disappears. This happened especially in 1572 and 1604.
Now of course these stars had appeared before, too, and
people, since at that time they looked at the sky more carefu11y because there was not so much electric light from cities,
being aware of the sky as sometimes we aren't, noticed this.
The understanding of these phenomena was that they occurred within our own atmosphere~within, in Ptolemaic or
Aristotelian terms, the sublunar sphere. Beyond this nothing
could change. For if it could, such an appearance as a bright
new star would indicate an incredible change up there in the
divine intelligence. That could not be.
Now, when these phenomena occurred in the 16th century, Tycho Brahe, one of the greatest observers of all times,
began immediately to calculate the possible distance away of
these new bodies. He found that they could not be so close to
the earth as people imagined, and his observations were impeccable.
You know there are certain difficulties the moon presents
to all of us, including Ptolemy, since you can never observe it
accurately because of the parallax. The position of the moon
differs because of the position of the observer on earth. Now
if a thing appears within the sublunar sphere, then the parallax would be very bothersome. But Brahe established by extensive travel and observation that these new bodies involved
no parallax. Therefore, these bright objects could not be
closer than the moon. He wrote a book about that; by the
way, quite a few people did. It was a tremendous thing to find
that there are changes beyond the moon.
The next thing is that a comet appeared. Now these, too,
appear very often and these, too, had been understood to belong to the sublunar sphere. And Brahe again, by computations of a very ingenious kind, proved that this comet
traversed the outer regions of the world. Moreover, if one
observed it carefully, it was clear that it had to traverse other
spheres-the spheres of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, which at
that time were supposed rigid, transparent but rigid. Let me
mention that there is nothing particularly dumb or archaic
about that because, even until 1905, the ether, in which all
the electromagnetic motions were supposed to take place, was
considered to be a rigid body-mathematically necessarily so.
But certainly comets could not pierce this rigidity and, if they
did, obviously these spheres could not exist. Therefore,
Tycho Brahe did one very important thing, quite apart from
Copernicus, in his computations and his observations. Due to
his work-mostly the work of observation, by the way-he
did away with the notion that celestial bodies move on
spheres or by means of spheres, which made it more imperative to find out how they did move.
Now Tycho Brahe, as you know, never agreed with Copernicus. On the contrary, he thought Copernicus was dead
wrong. Copernicus said that this transition could only take
place if the stars are very far away. And Brahe proceeded to
compute how far away they must be if they were not to show
parallax. By the way, I can't guarantee the figures I writethey are only approximately correct, but the order of magnitude is right.
In the ancient view, the distance from the center of the
universe, namely, the earth, to the sphere of the fixed stars
was approximately 20,000 radii of the earth. Now Brahe
computed that, in order for the stars not to show paral1ax in
the motion of the earth on its orbit, the stars had to be
60,000,000 earth radii away, that is, 3,000 times farther away
as a minimum requirement.
Then he argued: look what happens. Here is the sun, according to Copernicus, at the center: Then there are, in _this
succession, Mercury, Venus, the earth, Mars, Jupiter and
Saturn, and then the stars are very far away. That means that
between the region of Saturn and the fixed stars, especially
since there is no rigid sphere anymore, there is nothing.
Nothing. Could God have done that? Such a waste of space.
And, furthermore, which is much, much worse, if the stars
are that far away and I can still see them, twinkling at this
immense distance, think how big they must be. One must be
bigger than the solar system-certainly bigger than the great
circle. How can one imagine such a thing?
These are the two arguments of Brahe which, by the way,
were absolutely reasonable. You, of course, are accustomed
to this sort of thing-tremendous galaxies and so on.
How do you know, by the way?
These things are very difficult to understand and Brahe had
a perfect right to put this difficulty before everyone. I suspect
that Copernicus had asked himself the same question because, obviously, he was as intelligent as Brahe. I suspect that
this has something to do with that strange and immensely
interesting little remark which he makes in the first chapter of
the first book. He says that it is possible that this world of
ours, including the sphere of the fixed stars which are far
away, is simply a big hole in an infinite solid universe. He
simply envisages this possibility. The best example is Swiss
cheese.
There might even be more holes. One of the holes is ours
and there we sit and enjoy life. Now the question is, by the
way, there are many questions: why did Copernicus envisage
this possibility? There is one thing about it which might have
something to do with Brahe's objection. If there is this big
hole extending to the sphere of the fixed stars set in the infinite solidity, then it is not quite impossible that there are
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many huge, fiery objects at the edge of this solid, which is
also perhaps a kind of solid fire. And Brahe's objection was,
since there was no solidity anymore beneath and beyond the
moon, that there was an incredible expanse that could not be
justified. Nevertheless, he said that Copernicus might be
right.
Within Ptolemy's account of the planetary motions, we
could adopt the hypothesis of the moving eccentric circle for
the outer planets and the hypothesis of the epicycle for the
inner planets. In that case we have the centers of the eccentric circles and the centers of the epicycles all moving with
the speed of the mean sun. Then, why not identify those
centers with the sun itself? 8 And so Brahe had this simple and
wonderful system in which all the planets move around the
sun, and the sun and moon move around the earth. Now I
maintain that all appearances and phenomena from 1543 for
centuries after are completely justified and made intelligible
by Brahe's theory. This includes Venus, by the way, which
does not appear sixteen times bigger at some times than at
others. Even all the things that Galileo saw fit completely
into Brahe's pattern.
And now I must tell you what Galileo saw. In 1610 when
he looked at the sky by means of a teleseope~one of the
most exciting moments in the history of man-he saw, first
of all, that the moon's surface is like that of the earth. That is
strange, although we are very used to it. (One of the craters
here is now called Copernicus, but that doesn't mean much.)
Secondly, he saw that the light of the stars was conspicuously
different from that of the planets; thirdly, that the Milky Way
is a conglomeration of stars. He saw the four moons of Jupiter
and that Saturn had a strange shape which he called threecornered. Not until a little later did it become clear that this
last was not three-cornered, but a ring. After a while he saw
that Venus had phases like the moon. And then finally he
saw the spots on the sun which everyone had seen before but
never interpreted as belonging to the sun. They also were
supposed to have belonged to the sublunar sphere. [These
things do not necessarily support Copernicus' view.]
You must understand what the incredible excitement was
when people looked through this rude kind of telescope and
saw that. Nevertheless, simply looking through a fantastic
new machine didn't vitiate anything. What went on in that
machine had to be evolved into a theory. People were deeply
impressed by these new phenomena, but every single one
could be explained by Brahe's theory.
And now this is the important thing. Many people of the
time did accept Brahe's theory. That is, in 1610 and after,
many respectable professors of astronomy in all the universities of Europe accepted Brahe's theory. And it was the right
thing to do: it was reasonable, accounted for all these appearances, and it preserved the theories and savings of the other
phenomena as they were done by Ptolemy. Don't forget that
Brahe's theory is, again, merely a transition.
And, yet, there were some peoPle who said no. There were
8. Winfree Smith wrote the sentences up to this point in this paragraph to
substitute for a murky passage in the transcription.
12
some people who said that Copernicus was right, and only
Copernicus-that the earth does move and there is nothing
hypothetical about it. There was no physical evidence for accepting the Copernican theory until the 19th century. Instruments that could show the distances of the stars and the
parallax came much later, in 1837. The rotation of the earth
can be shown by a certain experiment which was first performed in 1851. It had been tried before but never was conclusive.
The question is: what made some people, not too many,
don't forget, claim that Copernicus was right? I spent some
time in counting the number of people who accepted this
theory. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of this because, if I
kept searching and kept reading books and I don't know what,
I would come to a greater number. I know of 25 people certainly who, in the course of 70 years, accepted the Copernican theory. I don't think that this number can be increased to
more than 40 with any amount of research. So 40 people
accepted that. And the interesting thing is how they accepted
it. They accepted it as if everything depended on it, as if this
were the only thing, as if the life of mankind would be different after acceptance of this. Men of the greatest
importance~certainly Galileo and Kepler~accepted it.
Giordano Bruno accepted it. And what I want to ask is~
why?
I shall read part of the Preface to On the Revolutions of the
Celestial Spheres, which, as you all know, was written not by
Copernicus but by his pupil, Osiander, who feared certain
things:
Then, in turning to the causes of these motions or
the hypotheses about them, he must conceive of a
device, since he cannot in any way attain to the true
causes. He must conceive of and devise such
hypotheses as, being assumed, would enable the motions to be calculated correctly from the principles of
geometry, for the future as well as the past. (This is
what is done in Ptolemy all the time.) The present
author, Copernicus, has performed these duties excellently. For these hypotheses need not be true nor
even probable; if they provide a calculus consistent
with the observations, that alone is sufficient.
Perhaps there is some person so ignorant of geometry
and optics that he regards the epicycle of Venus as
probable and thinks that this is the reason why
Venus sometimes fo11ows or preceeds the sun by 40°
or even more. Is there anyone who is not aware that
from this assumption it follows that the diameter of
the planet at perigee must appear more than four
times, and the body of the planet more than sixteen
times, as great as in the apogee-a result contradicted by the experience of every age? In this study
there are other no less important absurdities which I
will not state here. It is quite clear that the causes of
the apparent, unequal motions are simply unknown
to this art. And if any causes are devised by the
imagination, as indeed very many are, they are not
�January, 1979
put forward as if they were true, but merely to provide a correct basis for calculations. When, from
time to time, different hypotheses are offered to explain one and the same motion (as, for instance, eccentricity and an epicycle), the astronomer will accept above all others the one which is easiest to
grasp. The philosopher will perhaps seek the
semblance of the truth. But neither of them will understand or state any such thing as certain unless it
has been divinely revealed to him. Let us, therefore,
permit these new hypotheses to become known together with the ancient hypotheses, which are no
more probable. Let us do so especially because the
new hypotheses are admirable and also simple, and
bring with them a huge treasure of skillful observations. So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one
expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish anything of the kind, lest he accept as
the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and
depart from the study a greater fool than when he
entered. Farewell. 9
say: why wasn't that accepted? Why, on the contrary,
should a certain man, 80 years later, say of this very good
Osiander that he is "an ignorant and arrogant ass, who pretends to help Copernicus, but who only permits people like
himself to pick lettuce and vegetables in that book"?
Let me say that the usual understanding is that Osiander
wrote the preface in order to protect Copernicus from persecution by the Church. This seems to me a terribly simple
and, I would say, not quite true statement. It is true that,
from the very beginning, everybody was a little apprehensive
about what the ecclesiastical authorities would say. By the
way, it was not only the Catholic ones; it was also the ones in
Wittenberg, especially the Protestants and Lutherans.
And immediately after publication of the book, a whole
literature sprang into being (Rheticus among the first of these
writers) to prove that this astronomical theorizing did not in
any way contradict scripture. This literature persisted, literally, for a hundred years. Everyone participated in writing
some kind of book or pamphlet or letter to show that what is
stated in the scripture is not contradicted in any way by what
is stated in Copernicus, that the scripture talks a certain language which is not scientific language, and that it is silly to
assume that divine revelation has to be of an astronomical
nature. This is perfectly true by the way and I, personally,
don't think that this is the essential point in the struggle.
Further, I do not think that Osiander simply meant to protect Copernicus from the persecution of the Church. I rather
think that he was, in this preface at least, quite seriously of
the opinion that truth about these matters can only be revealed divinely and that we men must be satisfied with certain
mathematical devices, according to the lights that God has
given us. Also, it is not the job of astronomy to state the
9. From Osiander's address to the reader at the beginning of On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. The translation is Klein's.
truth. I do not state this as true, but it is quite possible that
Osiander felt this strongly.
And let me also say that, later on, when Galileo, who is
the great Copernican, was indeed convicted by the Church in
Rome, the charge wasn't for entertaining such hypotheses.
He was convicted for stating these hypotheses as truth, and
the only truth. There is no other reason.
The Church did not forbid men to try to show that the
appearances in the heavens could be saved and made intelligible by the Copernican assumptions. The Church forbade
men to state this as the truth; as a matter of fact, there was
something right about that.
Why are the Church and Protestant authorities so concerned about this-concerned not immediately after 1543, by
the way, but about 60 years later? This is not simple. This is
very dark at this point. Do not forget that the vulgar kind of
arguments for the salvation of the soul and such cannot be
advanced, for they simply don't hold water. It is too easy to
show that Copernicus doesn't contradict scripture. It is easy to
show that what the Church teaches is affected not at all by
heliocentric or other systems. On the one hand, there is a
kind of black obdurance on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities and, on the other, a kind of wonderful insight on the
part of the "scientists." It doesn't seem to me that this is simply the ease. r think that it can be shown that this is not true.
People insisted that the Copernican system was truth without sufficient evidence, and the ecclesiastical authorities
combated this opinion without ever stating why. Now this is a
very interesting thing,, because it is in this that the Copernican revolution truly consists. The question is then: what are
the reasons? And I will give you four-four very different
reasons which do not at all, by the way, go together. I wish
they would go together, but they don't. I would even say that
they contradict each other-at least in part.
The first one is simple. I must repeat the question: why did
people so fanatically claim that something was true, although
there was no real evidence? And, on the other hand, why did
the Church and other authorities oppose this, although it
wasn't clear why it was so terribly important that they should
do so? Now I am concerned with 25 or 40 people. Historically, and now I must speak historically, this is the time when
nothing pleases more than that which is not accepted. Such
times are called revolutionary. This is the time when the authorities of Aristotle and all the ancients, of Thomas, of the
Pope, of kings, become shaky. It suddenly seems wonderful to
come up and say: that which I learned from Ptolemy is all
nonsense; it should be just the other way around. And sometimes this is one of the strongest ways to convince people. I
give you a diabolic device: in seminar, sometimes, try this.
Don't pick simply a little point, but say about the whole:
that's all wrong-it's jUST THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
Shortly, e\'eryone will agree with you, maybe. Now this general kind of opposition is one of the reasons that one can
advance. It pervades the times and there is something very
attractive about that. Let me hasten to add that it's a rather
poor reason, not unimportant, but poor.
And in this case it is important-the universe is stated to
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be just the other way around. In Ptolemy the earth is in the
middle and the sun revolves around it at a certain distance.
And now Copernicus and all of his immediate and later followers say that the sun is in the middle and the earth is where
the sun was. Simply a reversal. And you must not forget that
this is not simply stated as a geometrical transposition and
astronomical theory, but as the truth ....
Now [there] is something which I will call the Protagorean
fascination. I refer to the man called Protagoras, whom you
have met in Platonic dialogues, among other places. Now we
know from tradition that Protagoras has a famous sentence
which is called, in the sixty-four dollar phrase, the homo
mensura proposition, and you have all heard about that
"Man is the measure of all things, of those that are that they
are and of those that are not that they are not." Now Copernicus in the dedication to the Pope says, and I quote:
I finally discovered through long and intensive study
that if the movements of the other wandering stars
were referred to the circle of movement of the earth,
and if the movements were computed in accordance
with the revolution of each star, not only would the
phenomena they present follow from that but also
the order in magnitudes of all the planets and of
their orbits, and it would bind the Heavens together
so closely that nothing could be transposed in any
part of them without disrupting the remaining parts
in the universe as a whole."
Then in the beginning of the fifth book he says, "The mobility of the earth binds together the order and magnitude of
the planets' orbital circles in a wonderful harmony and sure
symmetry." Rheticus, again in that first report says, I quote:
These phenomena, the apparent motions of the
planets, besides being ascribed to the planets, can be
explained, as my teacher shows, by irregular motion
of the globe of the earth, that is, by having the sun
occupy the center of the universe while the earth
revolves, instead of the sun, on the eccentric circle
which it has pleased him to name the great circle.
Indeed, there is something divine in the circumstance that a sure understanding of celestial
phenomena must depend upon the regular and uniform motions of the terrestial globe alone.
By the way, the expression "great circle," (the Latin is orbis
magnus) is used until the late 17th century, even Locke uses
it. About the six moving spheres of the other planets,
Rheticus says, "their common measure is the great circle
which carries the earth, just as the radius of the earth is the
common measure of the circles of the moon, the distance of
the sun from the moon, et cetera.'' And, by the way, he has
something to say about the expression "great circle." He says,
"if emperors have received the surname "Great" on account
of successful exploits in war, of conquest, of peoples, surely
this circle deserves to have that august name applied to it. For
14
almost alone it makes us share in the laws of the celestial
state, corrects all the errors of the motions and restores to its
rank this most beautiful part of philosophy."
The orbit of the earth, then, is the great unifying factor in
the spectacle of the wandering stars. Moreover, the daily motion of the earth, its rotation around its own axis, accounts for
the daily motion of all the other stars. The higher and more
universal similitude in all the hypotheses of the planets becomes an identity in Copernicus. We see the earth's motion
in its orbit projected into the heavens in the guise of the irregular motion of the planets, especially their apparent retrogradations. The irregular motion of the planets is the result of
their own regular motion plus our regular motion. The appearance of irregularity is clue to the different rates of speed of
the planets and of the earth. Our own motion, more precisely, the difference between our motion and the other
planets, projected outside of us, is visible in the heavens. we·
see it, as it were, in a mirror, as an image. I quote Copernicus: "When a ship floats over a tranquil sea, all the things
outside seem to the voyagers to be moving in a movement
which is the image of their own. And they think, on the
contrary, that they themselves or the things with them are at
rest." We determine by our motion the appearances in the
heavens. Once we understand that, we also understand that,
to quote Rheticus, "the order and the motions~ of the
heavenly' spheres agree in a most absolute system." The Protagorean proposition receives an absolute twist: applying the
right measure, namely, our own motion, to things outside
our orbit, we grasp their true and absolute order. The measure becomes an absolute measure.
Kepler's astronomy, as well as his physics, is under the
spell of what I have been calling the Protagorean fascination.
The earth is to him "the home of the contemplative creature," that's a quotation, "of the measuring creature," and
occupies a position in the universe most suitable for measuring purposes. The orbit of the earth is the yardstick of the
universe. Far from detracting from the dignity of man, which
some people say the Copernican theory does, the new function of the earth gives man an unprecedented dignity and
priority ....
Any cosmology is a science of the order in which and
through which everything exists. This cosmology, as any
cosmology, has certain metaphysical and theological implications. Now, for the first time in a long period, the sun has
recovered its former position of dignity, which we observe in
Plato, in the nco-Platonic tradition, and in a certain cult
called the Mithras cult.
The Mithras cult is the cult of the sun-god. In the early
centuries A.D., it was as popular as Christianity. At certain
points in the history of Christianity it is very difficult to distinguish the part that Jesus plays from that of Mithras, the
sun-god. This, by the way, is not my opinion-it is part of a
long tradition that stems from the Orphic and other ancient
mysteries. Macrobius, a pagan writer of early Christian times,
says:
It is not a vain supposition to believe that almost all
�January, 1979
gods, to wit, the celestial ones, refer to the sun. A
divine reason support'i this belief. The sun is the
ruler of the universe.
Behind this is that tradition I mentioned before, which
goes back unbroken to the early Greeks. You can find such
statements everywhere-the sun is the ruler of the universe,
the king of the universe, the father of the universe, the selfborn father of the universe. Proclus, whom you know as one
of the great commentators of Plato and Aristotle, wrote a
hymn to the sun. And I will quote a bit of it from the translation by Thomas Taylor:
Hear Golden Titan, King of Mental Fire, Ruler of
Light-to Thee Supreme belongs the splendid key of
life's prolific font. And from on high, Thou pourest
harmonic streams in rich abundance into ... [the]
world. Hear, for, high raised about the ethereal
plains and in the world's bright middle orb, Thou
reignest. While all things by thy sovereign power are
filled with mind exciting providential care ....
Now this tradition, and there are many more examples of the
kind, was perfectly well known to Copernicus and his followers. Copernicus himself mentions in the tenth chapter of
the first book that the sun is the lamp of a very beautiful
temple, lantern of the world, mind of the world, mentor of
the world. He quotes Hermes Trismegistus (a fantastic man
who is quoted by everyone in a broad nco-Pythagorean and
gnostic literature, and no one knows who he is) as having
called the sun the visible God. Copernicus also, as you remember, quotes Sophocles: "The sun is that which sees everything." Now he translated Sophocles from Greek into
Latin and he knew him very well. And in Sophocles you can
find many things of this sort; for instance, in Oedipus, he
says:
Sun, God of all gods, the father of everything .. .
everyone worships the whirling disk of the sun ... .
Rheticus, when he comes to speak of the sun in the Narratio
Prima, says:
The sun was ca11ed by the ancients leader, governor
of nature, and king. But whether it carries on this
administration as God rules the entire universe, a
rule excellently described by Aristotle in De mundo,
or whether, traversing the entire heavens so often
and resting nowhere, it acts as Cod's administrator in
nature, seems not yet altogether explained and settled.
Now let me repeat this thing of Rheticus in order to be
perfectly clear. There are two ways in which the ancients
seemed to see the sun, either as God ruling the universe or as
the administrator of nature empowered by God. Which of the
assumptions is preferable, he leaves to be determined by the
geometers and philosophers who are mathematically
equipped, for without mathematics this cannot be solved. In
the trial and decisions of such controversies a verdict must be
reached, not in accordance with plausible opinions, but with
mathematical laws. The former manner of rule, that is, that
God rules the universe, has been set aside, and the latter accepted, that the sun does not rule as God rules, but as an
administrator empowered by Cod. He goes on:
My teacher (that's Copernicus) is convinced, however, that the rejected method of the sun's rule in
the realm of nature must be revived, but in such a
way that the received and accepted method retains its
place. For he is aware that, in human affairs, the
emperor need not himself hurry from city to city in
order to perform the duty imposed on him by God;
and that the heart does not move to the head or feet
or other parts of the body to sustain the living creature, but fulfills its function through other organs designed by God for that purpose.
He's saying, then, that if the sun moves around in the
heavens a controversy might arise, since the ancients spoke of
the sun as the ruler of the universe. Does it mean that the
sun is God? Or does it mean that God entrusted to a divine
messenger the subsidiary role of a minister who goes aro~md
the universe to see that everything is in order. That controversy has been adopted, but his teacher now says that that is
all changed now because the others move around but the sun
stays fixed~ right in the center.
Now it seems to me (this belongs to the 30% opinion in
this lecture) that this had something to do with the fanaticism
with which the Copernican theory was adopted, in the sense
that a suppressed ancient theology of the sun rose to the surface. This then would be what the ecclesiastical authorities
were afraid of really, because this would mean a real revival
of pagan understanding. And Rheticus seems to me, in what I
have quoted, to state that quite clearly.
It was certainly, you understand, not a very popular
movement. It was confined to a small group of people who
had an esoteric cult, who nowadays would be called
intelligentsia-a strange word from Russia. That is a thing
which has happened, and which will happen, often. It is a
thing which has many possibilities if once you understand the
full implications of it. I don't think you can ignore this when
you look in the middle of the 16th century and see the whole
world in a great excitement over the very foundations and
meanings of religion. So I think we can call this one of the
reasons why Copernicus was put forward by certain
people ....
Now we have a curious document. And that is a book
called The City of the Sun by Campanella. [Campanella was
one of the people who championed Copernicus.] He was born
in 1568 and died in 1639. He lived mostly in jail, mainly for
political reasons-the attempt to overthrow the kingdom of
Naples to establish a republic, and so on. He wrote a defense
of Galileo in 1616, the year of his condemnation, and began
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writing The City of the Sun in 1602. It was first published in
Italian in 1614, then translated into Latin and published in
162 3. The book is conceived after the model of Plato's Republic. It is written in direct opposition to The City of God.
And throughout the book there is a constant transposing, and
upsidedowndom.
Somewhere in the book, speaking of the people in that
city, he says, "they praise Ptolemy, admire Copernicus, but
place Aristarchus and Philolaus before him." In fact, the
cosmological basis of the book seems to be not Copernicus
but Tycho Brahe. But it is not difficult to see its Copernican
roots. Let me quote:
They (the people in the city) say it is very doubtful
whether the world is made from nothing, or from
the ruins of other worlds, or from chaos, but they
certainly think that it was made, and did not exist
from eternity. Therefore, they disregard Aristotle
whom they consider a logician and not a philosopher. From analogies with other writers they can
draw many arguments against the eternity of the
world. The sun and the stars they regard, so to
speak, as the living representatives and signs of God,
as the temples and holy living altars, and they honor
but do not worship them. Beyond all other things
they venerate the sun, but they consider no created
thing worthy the adoration of worship. This they
give to God alone, and they serve Him that they may
not come into the power of a tyrant and fall into
misery by undergoing punishment inflicted on them
by creatures of revenge. They contemplate and know
God in the image of the sun and they call it the sign
of God, His face and living image, from which light,
heat, life and the making of all things good and bad
proceed. Therefore, they have built an altar like to
the sun in shape, and the priests praise God in the
sun and in the stars, as it were, His altars, and in the
heaven, as it were, His temple; and they pray to good
angels who are, so to speak, the intercessors living in
the stars. For God long since has sent signs of the
beauty in heaven and of His glory in the sun. (They
reject Ptolemy's and Copernicus' eccentrics and
epicycles.) They say there is but one heaven. And
the planets move and rise by themselves when they
approach the sun or are in conjunction with it.
Campanella seems to have been the first champion of what
became known later as the natural religion. All positive religions, including Christianity, were considered by him merely
political and social institutions. He saw himself as entrusted
with a great mission to establish before the end of the world
the religion, the laws, and the perfect republic of the golden
age. In 1632 he writes to Galileo as follows: "l venture to say
that if we could spend one year together in a country house
great things would be accomplished. These novelties of ancient truth, the new worlds, new stars, new systems, new nations, are the beginning of a new era. May he who guides the
16
universe make haste. As for us, let us help him on our small
globe. Amen." He considered Columbus the greatest of
heroes: "Spain found the new world so that all nations could
be gathered under one law." The City of the Sun is the blueprint of the new order, of the one law, under which mankind
was to live in the approaching golden and last age. The high
priest personifying the new law was called Sol, which is the
Latin word for sun, in the edition of 1623. And Campanella
also uses the astronomical symbol 0 for the sun to designate
him. The main helpers of the priest are Pon, the abbreviation
for potentia, power; Sin, abbreviation for sapientia or scientia, wisdom, knowledge; and Mor for amour, love: the natural trinity-and this is under the direct influence of Giordano
Bruno.
The sun for Campanella is not God. It is an image or a
symbol of divinity. God itself is the universal reason. To worship God is to follow reason, that is, to free oneself from all
institutional chains, to be a "free thinker". In the letter to
Galileo I just mentioned, Campanella refers to the personage
who in Galileo's dialogues represents unbiased reason, as a
"free mind". And, by the way, Kepler calls Copernicus that
too. But Rhetieus had already chosen as a model for the first
report (Narratio Prima) this sentence of Alhinus, which was
attributed to Alcinous, and he quotes the sentence again in
his book. And the sentence is: "Free in mind must he be who
desires to have understanding." That's what Copernicans saw
in Copernicus. And that's why there has been a Copernican
revolution.
[There is finally] the question of the immensity of the universe, which seemed to be foremost in the minds of certain
people, notably a man named Giordano Bruno. It is the idea
of immensity that fascinates Bruno. Copernicus himself, as
you have seen, hesitates to attribute infinity to the world. He
says that "the heavens are immense and present the aspect of
an infinite magnitude." Bruno blames Copernicus because he
does not say whether the universe is finite or infinite. "If the
first principle is the creator of the world," Bruno says, "he is
an infinite one and the creator of an infinite effect. As the
active power of God is infinite, so is the subject worked upon
by it.
If he intended body and dimensions, he intended
them to be infinite .... The intelligible species of body is
infinite." The intelligible species of body is space.
Why is this so important? The finiteness of the world is a
main point for the ancients and for the medievals. The Aristotelian philosophy stands or falls with the finiteness of the
world. For Aristotle, there is nothing outside, not even nothing. There is a dear understanding of what 7rf.pas means.
This seems to be in contradiction with the infinite power of
God. The understanding of God as an infinite being begins in
the sixteenth century. One of the assumptions of our mathematical science is the infinity of Cod. We have forgotten that
the Copernican revolution is a revolution.
May I repeat again that everything that I said cannot be
convincing, can only raise certain questions and lead you to
consider certain problems and read certain books. It is now
ten to ten. I am perfectly willing to sit here and answer questions.
�January, 1979
On a
Sixteenth Century Algebraist
by Jacob Klein
After reading the title of this paper you certainly did not
expect that it would deal with mathematics. And I think you
were right. I feel, however, that the short historical survey I
am going to make may interest you on account of its relation
to the foundations of modern mathematics. Although the development of human thought is continuous, it can be fairly
said that the foundations of modern mathematics were laid by
two men: Francois Vide (or Vieta) and Simon Stevin. I will
deal with the latter only.
In the first place I must admit that the title of this paper is
misleading, since Slevin died in 1620 and belongs, therefore,
also to the 17th century. But his main work, entitled Arithmetic, appeared in 1585. The time at my disposal is very
short. So I can talk only about the first pages of this work
which contain to my opinion propositions fundamental to the
modern understanding of mathematics-especially Algebra.
But let me first say a few words about the life of Stevin. He
was born in 1548, five years after the publication of the great
book of Copernicus. He was of Flemish stock and lived in a
part of Europe, namely the Netherlands, which after their
declaration of independence in 1581 became a centre of
learning and education and actually the first European country having religious tolerance. Like many men of his time,
Stevin -was active in very different practical and theoretical
fields. lt is characteristic of his way of thinking never to separate theory and practice. He was an engineer who constructed
dams, bridges, marine fortifications; furthermore, he was
Quartermaster General of the Dutch army, General Comptroller of t.he finances; he thought out improvements in the
methods of bookkeeping; he was an astronomer, a geographer, a linguist; his main interest, however, lay in the mechanical arts, especially statics, and in mathematics, especially Algebra; he made the discovery of the principle of the
parallelogram of forces and is best known for that; and he was
A lecture given on December IO, 1938, to the Mathematical Association of
America, at the University of Maryland, College Park.
the most advanced algebraist of his time. He was very much
aware of the peculiarity and novelty of his intellectual preoccupations. His own interpretation of his work-and this is
important-is characteristic of the way in which modern science thinks about itself. He was captivated by the idea of an
"age of wisdom" which had existed before the Greeks _and
which he and his contemporaries were going to renew. The
16th century as a whole strove for a renewal, a rebirth, a
restauration of almost lost or forgotten wisdoms. Stevin is
peculiar in that he goes back beyond the Greeks. He gives a
"definition" of the "age of wisdom" thus:
We call age of wisdom that age wherein men have
had an admirable knowledge of the sciences, and
this age we recognize infallibly by certain marks, although we do not know who those people were or
where they lived or at what time.
At any rate, he calls the entire period from the Greeks to
the 15th century the "age of barbarism". And he thinks that
the leading personalities of that age of wisdom which precedes
the age of barbarism were for example Zeus, Hermes, Apollo
and other Greek gods as well as Abraham, Isaac, Moses and
other people in the Old Testament. For him all these personages were actually scientists whom the age of barbarism misrepresented as gods or shepherds.
Ii1 order to restore the "age of wisdom," he proposes a general plan of scientific research-the first of this kind, I
presume-containing four articles: l) As many observations
as possible should be made, especially in Astronomy, Alchemy (that is to say, Chemistry) and Medicine, by a great
many people living in different regions of the earth and belonging to different nations; 2) The results thus obtained
should be expounded methodically, according to the mathematical method used by Euclid. The order followed by
Euclid is to Slevin's mind the "natural order" which that
Greek author had gotten somehow from the "age of wisdom";
3) It is possible to carry out so many observations by so many
people only if these people use their own language and not
the scholarly Latin, the command of which is possessed by
17
�The College
but a few people. Even the Greeks used their own language
and not a special learned or artificial one; 4) It might, however, be very convenient to use the Flemish idiom, because
of the abundance of monosyllabic words in that language.
For science requires terms, and terms are often very complex
words;. the composition of words is easily done, if the words
are monosyllabic. Hence the usefulness of the Flemish
idiom, which is much richer in monosyllables than French
or Latin or Greek, as Stevin tries to demonstrate statistically.
As a matter of fact, Stevin taught mathematics only in
Flemish and wrote most of his works in this language, although he knew Latin and himself translated some of his
works into French. His official title at the University of
Leyden was "Professor of Dutch Mathematics". (Flemish and
Dutch were identical at that time.) It is noteworthy that Descartes, who probably was his disciple in 1618-1619, writes in
a letter of January 1619 that at that time he is mostly concerned with the study of the Flemish language (sermo Be/gicus, as he calls it in Latin). We shall see why the influence
of Stevin on Descartes is so decisive.
Stevin himself considered the question of a right language
highly important and was rather pessimistic about the possibility of renewing the age of wisdom merely on account of the
unfortunate fact that the Flemish language was used on this
earth by a comparatively small number of people. But on a
different level he found the proper, and at the same time
universal, language in the symbolism of Arithmetic and
Algebra. And that is the topic which we shall now approach.
What reason did he have for going back beyond the Greeks
and for formulating the hypothesis of an "age of wisdom"an hypothesis accepted by many of his contemporaries, and
by Grotius among others? Mainly this: the Greeks had no
notion of the Zero. The entire "age of barbarism" is characterized by this ignorance, whereas the "age of wisdom" is distinguished by the knowledge of the Zero and the Arabic numeral system.
The Arabic numeral system had been brought into Europe
in the 12th century and had been in constant use since then.
But it was Stevin who first recognized the tremendous importance of this innovation. Of course, the Greeks also were able
to reckon and to solve problems, which we today call
arithmetical and which they called logistical. But calculation
and also the solution of numerical equations did not belong
for them to Science in the proper sense of the term. Stevin
ascribes that fact to a fundamental confusion on their part
with respect to their use of this sign : ". ". According to Stevin
the point"." was the sign for 0 in the "age of wisdom". The
Greeks, however, misinterpreted this Zero-sign as the sign for
the Unit. Hence a great many fundamental errors, for ex18
ample: the definition of number, the definition of the principle of number, the distinction between Geometry and Arithmetic, the misunderstanding of the nature of Algebra.
According to the Greeks, the definition of number is "multitude of units," a definition universally accepted until the
17th century. The principle of number is the Unit, in the
sense that you cannot count without distinguishing the single
units of a number, whatever the number or the units in question might be: apples or horses or stars or pure mathematical
units. The Unit or the One is, therefore, not a number itself.
The main consequence of this understanding of the Unit and
the Number is the sharp distinction between the numbers, as
consisting of separated, discrete units, and the continuous
magnitudes, as lines, planes or solids, that is to say, the sharp
distinction between Arithmetic and Geometry. Furthermore,
numbers in the precise sense of the word (in Greek aptOp.oi)
are only integers. Fractions are understood as parts of the unit
occurring in the calculation. Fractions are not numbers. Scientifically they can be dealt with as ratios, more exactly as
ratios between integers. "Negative" and "irrational" numbers
are not conceivable at all. During the 15th and 16th centuries
irrational numbers, although actually used by calculators and
algebraists, are called "absurd" or "inexplicable" or "deaf"
numbers. As late as 1560 a French mathematician, Peletier,
admits readily that we cannot avoid making use of such "inexplicable" numbers, especially in measuring continuous
magnitudes, but goes on to say that their relation to true or
"absolute" numbers (as he calls them) is similar to that of
beasts to men.
According to Stevin, all this is the consequence of the
wrong definition of the principle of number. Says he: "0 unhappy hour wherein was first uttered this definition of the
principle of number! 0 cause of the difficulty and obscurity
of things which in Nature are so easy and clear!" To him, "in
Nature" the true principle of number is the Zero, which he
calls the "arithmetical point," in analogy to the principle of
the line, namely the "geometrical point". That is even more
than an analogy. To understand the full extent of Stevin's
radicalism in mathematics, we have to consider for one moment the arabic system of numeration in itself.
The Arabic numeral system has two main features: 1) it is a
decimal system, and 2) it is a system of positional numeration. TI1e composition of signs in 333 is of the kind that the
sign 3 in the middle means thirty and the sign 3 on the left
means three hundred, merely on account of their respective
positions. The decimal numeration as such is common to
many peoples. The positional numeration as such was already
used by the Babylonians, or more exactly Sumerians, but on
the basis of the sexagesimal system. The arabic system is
�January, 1979
unique in that it combines both, the decimal and the positional numeration. Stcvin was the first to draw the final consequences out of these characters of the numeral system of
the Arabs, whom he was inclined to consider as the true heirs
of the unknown peoples of the "age of wisdom". To begin
with, he identified the ciphers, the signs meaning the various
numbers, with the numbers themselves. Thus he was able to
argue as follows. We can see that the Zero and not the Unit
is the principle of Number and that the Zero is the equivalent
of a geometrical point by comparing directly the succession of
ciphers with the extension of a line. A line is not extended
through the addition of one or many points. Nor is a number
increased by addition of one or many Zeros. But even if we
think of a quasi-extension of a line through the addition of a
point thus:
we could speak of rational as well as of irrational numbers.
Stevin also understood an expression like this: 4x 2 - V5x+ 3
as one number, which he called a number representing an
"algebraic multinomial". He was also the first to understand
subtraction as the addition of negative numbers.
I mentioned the usc of decimal fractions by Stcvin. Actually, he was not the first to use them, but he was the first to
understand them as basically connected with the general system of numbers. The "tenfold progrcssion"-as he says- of
the decimal numeration can be continued infinitely not only
to increase the numbers, but also to diminish them in the
same way. Thus we can get rid of all fractions in the ordinary
sense of the word. Whenever we deal with numbers, we have
to put them in certain columns, as for example:
@G)
A
B
B
c
we can conceive a quasi-increase of a number through the
addition of a Zero, thus: 0.6, 0.60. This argument involves
the use of decimal fractions. I sha11 return to this point in a
moment. But the argument shows clearly that Stevin could
not conceive of a difference between the nature of a continuous magnitude and the nature of a discrete number. The unit
and any fraction of the unit are parts of a number, and consequently numbers themselves, just as a fraction of a line is
part of that line, and consequently a line itself. The Zero,
however, is not a part of a number, but a principle of
number, just as the point is not part of a magnitude, but a
principle of magnitude. Therefore, number and magnitude
are not to be distinguished through discreteness and continuity. He says: "As to a continuum of water there corresponds a continuum of humidity, so to a continuous magnitude there corresponds a continuous number. Again, as the
continuum of humidity of a1l the water undergoes the same
division and separation as the water, so the continuous
number undergoes the same division and separation as the
magnitude." In other words: for Stevin there is not only an
analogy between the Zero and the point or between number
and magnitude, but perfect correspondence. In this respect
his influence on Descartes cannot be overestimated. In fact,
Stevin thus contributed more than anybody else to Descartes'
discovery of Analytical Geometry. Descartes-and this
applies more or less also to Fermat-interpreted Apollonius,
as it were, through the eyes of Stevin.
A further consequence of Stevin's understanding of the
ambic positional numeration was the recognition of irrational
quantities as true numbers. It has been only since Stevin that
®®®
6 3 0 4
5 4 0 1
0 2 0 7 8
We would write the first number of this series, namely 6. 304,
in the following way:
6 (1/10) 0, 3 (1ho) 1, 0 (1/to)Z, 4 (1/to)'
The ciphers within the circles are really decimal exponents.
"He had understood that any decimal fraction was identical to
an integer but for a decimal coefficient," as George Sarton
put it. Thus he became the real discoverer of the decimal
fractions as we use them today. Moreover, not only did he
suggest the universal use of the decimal fractions, but he suggested also the application of the decimal system to all kinds
of calculation and measurement. He demanded that all
measures and weights be expressed in decimal units, a demand which was to be fulfilled in France during the French
Revolution and which was later on followed by practically all
the world, except for England and the United States.
Strangely enough, Stevin linked his symbolism of the decimal
system with that of his Algebra. He writes what we express
as follows
today as the unknown quantities x, x2 , x3 , x4 .
CD, ®, ®, @ . . . , whereas @ means not-as we may
think-the unit, but any known number.
I cannot speak about his Algebra any further, because my
time is up. But I should like to emphasize that Stcvin's idea
of an "age of wisdom"-that is to say, a golden age of science
or, more exactly, an algebraic age of science-is still leading
the modern conception of Science in general. The only difference between the idea of Stevin and the modern outlook is
that we place that golden age not in the past but in the future.
It is a question, whether we arc right.
!9
�The College
MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR JACOB KLEIN
Born: March 3, 1899, Libau, Russia
Died: July 16, 1978, Annapolis, Maryland
St. John's College, Annapolis
September 29, 1978
Presiding-President Richard D. Weigle
Order of SpeakersPresident Weigle
Curtis A. Wilson
Simon Kaplan
Samuel S. Kuder '54
Brother Robert Smith
J. Winfree Smith
Mr. Weigle spoke without a written text. He ended his remarks with the following passage from Jacob Klein's Dean's
Statement of Educational Policy and Program 1958.
All a school can do-c:md St. John's is no exception-is to
establish the conditions under which learning may take place.
In some important respects the College has succeeded in
doing that. The curriculum provides a wide basis for the exercise of the skills of discussion, translation, demonstration
and experimentation which in turn help the learning mind to
experience the discipline of the Hbeml arts and to acquire an
understanding of them. It is not a panorama of opinions, or
styles, or disciplines, or systems, it is the sharp edge of a crucial question, the stumbling block of a massive contradiction,
the labyrinth of complexities in a given problem, that furnish
link after link to the chain of learning offered to the student at
St. John's.
One of the great virtues of teaching that goes on at St.
John's is the patience with the shortcomings of the students,
with the difficulties of a given subject matter explored in
common, with the disappointments and frustrations, the
faithful satellites of all teaching and learning.
All improvements of instructional patterns depend ultimately on the way the teacher follows them up, responsibly,
patiently, generously, and full of fear before the immensity of
the task.
zo
Music by Douglas Allanbrook
Robert S. Bart
Robert G. Hazo '53
Barbara Dvorak Winiarski '55
Elliott Zuckerman
F,va T. H. Brann
Curtis A. Wilson
During a number of years-exceedingly memorable years
for many of us-the first Friday-night lecture of the College
year began with a statement that is likely to seem unremarkable enough when repeated now, but which I have never
heard made by anyone else but the lecturer of those years, the
then Dean of the College. Nor can I imagine its being made,
with the same meaning and effect, by anyone else. I cannot
quote exactly, but with some huffing and clearing of the
throat, the lecturer would say something like this: I have to
begin by saying that, before the immense, the immeasurable
difficulty of my task, I am filled with trepidation. The task he
was speaking of was, of course, to speak of the task of education, the task of this College.
He proceeded to do that with a certain soberness, slowly,
deliberatively, choosing words with care. The words were not
fancy or technical; they were simple and arresting. We were
asked to think-and first of all to think on the fact that our
understanding of ourselves and, hence, of everything else
was, of necessity, bound to intellectual traditions. And these
traditions, while preserving the traces of the original insights
and experiences from which they had sprung, necessarily did
so only in a veiled and distorted way. That was an unavoidable consequence of our dependence on language, and of the
�January, 1979
evanescence to which every understanding is inevitably subject. Hence this task: to penetrate through the layers of forgetfulness and distortion, to recover the foundations of our views
and attitudes, and to assess, as far as possible, their truth.
An enormously difficult task; extravagantly ambitious, incompletable in a lifetime. Yet not to undertake it is to remain
prisoner, chained, with vision confined to the shadow-play on
the cave's wall. Hence an inescapable tension. On the one
hand, there is the finitude of our human condition, of which
we must not lose sight. And on the other there is the extravagant goal which is implicit in, yet transcendental to,
every attempt to say the truth. This is the peculiar twofoldness in the Delphic Oracle's enigmatic command: know
thyself.
jasha Klein, who often remarked with a special appreciation that someone or something was in some way remarkable,
was himself the most remarkable person that many of us are
ever likely to know. His gifts of imagination and intelligence
and judgment were truly extraordinary. But more remarkable
still was their union with qualities of heart-spiritedness,
warmth, a spontaneous and irrepressible energy, abundant
enjoyment and delight in many things. And with such qualities of mind and heart, during many years, he devoted himself urrstintingly to the teaching and learning at this college,
believing, as he said, that the annoying and time-consuming
efforts and tribulations that necessity imposes upon the
teacher are-I am quoting-"beyond measure compensated
by the insights he gains in the struggle with young and vigorous minds and in the witnessing of intellectual growth."
Teacher, guardian, guide, friend: it is impossible to think
that he is gone, impossible not to imagine that he is looking
on with a certain quizzical smile that some of us know. As for
us, we shall pay proper tribute only if we recollect the meaning of the task of which he spoke so unforgettably, its difficulty, the constant danger of misconstruing it or reducing it
to something other and less, its fearsome immensity.
Simon Kaplan
Mr. Weigle and Mr. Wilson spoke about Mr. Klein and
his contribution to this College. I would like to say a few
words as a friend of Mr. Klein, and trace our friendship,
which lasted for more than a half of a century. More exactly,
we first met in Berlin in 1925. I remember the day when a
friend of mine told me that he had met a young man who
was studying philosophy, and he proposed to invite him to
our group, the members of which were mainly Russian emigrants interested in philosophy and theology. The participants
of this group were Russian scholars of philosophy, theologians
of the Russian Orthodox Church, and an Orthodox Talmudic
scholar. There were also a few young people, such as Mr.
Kojeve, Mr. Klein, who brought also Mr. Strauss, and myself.
The fact that most of us were Russian emigrants who spoke
Russian made this circle more personal and intimate. Mr.
Klein was not an emigrant. Although he was born in Russia
Mr. & Mrs. Kaplan and
Jacob Klein, 1938.
(as it turned out, in the same town as 1), he was educated in
Belgium and later in Germany. This made him a kind of
cosmopolitan, speaking fluent Russian. He soon became one
of us, and more intimate relations developed between the
younger members of this group. Mr. Klein's penetrating
mind, open to all kinds of problems, as well as his benevolent
attitude toward his fellow man and his good-hearted readiness
to help, impressed all of us.
It was in those years that Mr. Klein helped a common
friend, who had difficulty in expressing himself, to write a
logical treatise on negative judgement. It was also at that time
that Mr. Klein translated from Russian into German a book
on Dostoevsky by A. Steinberg, a common friend of ours. I
think that it was at the same period that he helped somebody
to write a Ph.D. thesis. All this was done at the time when
Mr. Klein must have had enough worries about his own fuhue. But he seemed not to be concerned about it.
At this point I have to say that this kind of selflessness and
unconcern about his time and his own tasks and achievements has been a basic character trait of Mr. Klein, and this
trait accompanied him until late in his life. He could patiently converse for hours, sitting with people in a coffeehouse, disregarding any time limit. With his open and inquisitive mind, he could for hours listen to people as if he
were trying to find out what lies behind the words of his not
too articulate interlocutors.
This same selfless attitude, combined with an intellectual
and humane interest in people, made Mr. Klein always
generously available to everybody in the College, to a degree
which seemed to some people a waste of time. There was in
the College a few years ago a tutor who greatly admired Mr.
Klein, but he used to say about him that he never saw a man
so generously wasting his time.
In 193 3 all of us had to leave Germany. Our group dispersed, and what remained was a lasting friendship between
Mr. Klein, Mr. Strauss, Mr. Kojeve, and myself. Mr. Klein,
21
�The College
Mrs. Kaplan, and I met briefly again in Prague, and then we
left Prague in different directions: Mrs. Kaplan and I went to
Paris, and Mr. Klein to London and then to this country. We
met again in 1941 in this country. By that time Mr. Klein
was already at St. John's. He immediately suggested to Mr.
Buchanan that I should teach at St. John's. When we came
to Annapolis it was again Mr. Klein who was very helpful in
introducing me to the program and in helping us to settle
here.
These were the years of enthusiasm for the program of this
college, and of endless discussions about it. For many years,
Mr. Klein and other friends met regularly in our apartment
after the Friday night discussion periods, and continued to
converse, drinking tea until late at night. All of us were at
that titne younger, and drinking tea helped us to stay awake
until late. It was on one such midnight that Mr. Klein and
Mr. Winfree Smith appeared in our house with a shiny
samovar to facilitate the tea drinking and the discussions.
After Mr. Klein's marriage, many years of friendship with
Mrs. Klein and Mr. Klein followed.
I shal1 conclude my reminiscence about Mr. Klein by saying that Mrs. Kaplan and myself will always cherish the
memory of our friendship with Mr. Klein and feel deeply
indebted to him. His rare metaphysical gift, the precision and
elegance of his mind, and his noble generosity to his fellow
man wi11 be long remembered by all of us in this community.
Samuel S. Kutler '54
There is a difficulty in speaking on just this occasion, for I
am aware of how well jacob Klein appreciated that precious
gift that we all share: speech. It is easier to describe this in its
negative instances. His anger would flare up when he heard
speech being misused. Even late in his life, upon hearing in a
question period a discussion of whether or not the apparent
hierarchical ordering of the world was real or not, he shouted
out, "What do you mean by real?" For he was quick to notice
the presence of unrevealing speech. He called it seclimented
speech. He said that he himself meant nothing by real except
what he had learned, and that meant through years of dedicated study, from Plato and Aristotle. That same anger was
turned, with even more emphasis, on himself: "What was the
subject of your doctoral dissertation, Mr. Klein?" "It was on
Hegel, and it wasn't worth the paper it was written on. IT
WASN'T WORTH THE PAPER IT WAS WRITTEN
ON." He knew that in his early life he had spoken and written in unrevealing ways, because later, with the help of his
teacher, Heidegger, he had learned to get beneath the surface
of things. He had learned to ask penetrating questions.
Through careful study, he had formed illuminating opinions,
which he recognized as opinions. "Don't believe this ... " he
would begin, as he offered a radically new way for me to look
at a Platonic dialogue or a work of Nietzsche. These were
amazing attempts to understand.
His thoughtfulness was not back there in antiquity. It was
22
Klein, Gisela ami Lawrence Berns, and Eva Brann at Commencement <lt
Annapolis, 1967.
present, right there and then, in whatever happened.- Stalin's
daughter had left Russia. She appeared on television. We
each saw that program. "Do you understand what that
shows?" "Nothing," I answered. "There was nothing important." "Don't you see that the nature of man was supposed to
be changed by that revolution? She is just like everyone else."
What was Mr. Klein for me? I want to ask you to think of
him, as I do, as a wealthy man. Not the kind of wealth that
inspires envy. No one need have less, because he had more! I
had arrived in 1950 at St. John's College with whatever stars
were in my eyes brought there by the catalogue. By then
Jacob Klein was Dean of the College. I couldn't tell very well
the difference between Mr. Klein and the College, and it was
for this reason: he was the very soul of the College. And at
this College I became open to thoughts which began to touch
me, finally very deeply, thoughts which otherwise, in all
likelihood, I would never have entertained.
I learned much from Jacob Klein, hut I don't know how!
He was not one of my classroom teachers. It must have been
magic. But some of it must have a prosaic explanation. Turn
for a moment to that unjustly despised part of the St. John's
Program: the formal lecture. I am not thinking now of the
fine occasions when Mr. Klein lectured on a Platonic
dialogue, on Aristotle, on Leibniz, on speech, on nature, on
precision. I am thinking of how-week after week-as each
lecturer appeared in the question period, when the discussion
had been perhaps quite good, perhaps not so good, almost
unfailingly jacob Klein would ask a probing question which
invited the lecturer, and all of us, to question one of the
foundations of his whole talk. Maybe this would lead to
fireworks as others joined in. At best it would lead to nothing
decisive then; but years later those questions could be stirred
�January, 1979
up in someone's thoughts, and a new way of looking at things
would become possible to him. With his striking way of putting things, Mr. Klein was a wonderful teacher. Of course
this was not a surface cleverness. It was backed up by years of
careful study in those early years, when I knew him not at all.
But the fruits were there. There was the wonderful summer
when the Meno book was written and last minute smoothing
was taking place before it was sent to the publisher. For those
of us who had not deserted tropical Annapolis, there were
gatherings at the Kleins' to hear jacob Klein read from his
book. Because of the more than 750 footnotes, it was difficult
to guess that the book was written to be read aloud. Mrs.
Klein served one magnificent meal after the other, and in the
evenings we discussed wh<lt was read. This went on for days. I
don't believe that I have read that book all the way through.
A lot of it must be in my bones.
And what about the earlier book on the notion of number
that the ancients possessed and that we have lost thanks to the
art of algebra and the works of Descartes and all? That book
did not exist for the students, since it was then untranslated.
Yet it was alive, for Mr. Klein would give talks at just the
right time of year and share the fruits of his study. These talks
were not easy to follow. Nor is the book. This isn't jacob
Klein's fault. Some things need to be studied many times.
The paradox is that mathematical things ought to be preeminently learnable.
Yes, Mr. Klein had great wealth, shared wealth, which he
bequeathed to all of us. Rather than make a speech about
this, I want to ask myself what I am inspired to do. I know
that when he was honored by the alumni association last
year, he spoke a few words. He spoke of his long association
with St. John's College. He said that he had tried to do his
best. He cared so much for that activity of trying, of making a
noble attempt.
To me it implies that to his memory I dedicate myself in
these coming years, to trying ever harder to understand, and
to caring for this College in which he invested so much.
To you-! don't dare, or hardly dare to say it-you should
do so too.
Brother Robert Smith
From the beginning of the New Program I began to hear
about St. John's. One of my teachers was acquainted with
some of the original committee on the Liberal Arts at
Chicago and had told me about the work clone there and the
decision to transform St. John's. I made up my mind to visi't
the College as soon as I hac! an opportunity. In the summer
of 1943 I was able to do so.
When I arrived, armed with letters of introduction, I had
only heard vaguely of a brilliant addition to the original faculty, Mr. Klein. As was proper, I arranged to meet Mr.
Buchanan, and was invited to lunch by Mr. Barr. So much
for the power of letters.
Then began the serious work of visiting classes and talking
to everybody I could find. Jasha was teaching Ptolemy at the
time-it was a hot Annapolis summer. The College then had
a summer semester. Jasha was asking about the relations between epicycles and eccentrics. Some students couldn't see
how they could be used interchangeably. One explained the
matter quite clearly. What he left unsaid Jasha completed
brilliantly. He had everyone in admiration of how each explanation in its way helped to tell a likely story. The center of
reasonableness and order seemed to be right there in that
classroom. just before the class ended Mr. Klein turned to
one of the students who had not been able to speak well about
either eccentrics or epicycles. The young man was an oriental, I believe (though memory may be playing tricks with me).
Jasha pointed at him and said, "Mr. Chu, you are not a sinner. You need not look like a mourner. You just did not
study. Tonight you will study, and tomorrow everything will
be fine." Mr. Chu looked up shyly, half smiling.
Those two impressions of a brilliant teacher who made it
seem that some things are wholly reasonable and of a man
who spoke directly to his students in such a way that they
could hear have remained. Nothing in the many years of intermittent association since that time has superseded or fundamentally changed those initial impressions.
During the next few years I saw Jasha on many occasions
and in a number of places. Once I met him in New York,
just after he had spoken in Russian on the Voice of America.
It was still, I think, war-time, or shortly afterward, and there
was no jamming of American broadcasts. His subject was St.
John's College; the talk was part of a series on American education. We had lunch afterwards, quite appropriately, in the
Russian Tea Room. When Jasha told me the subject of the
broadcast, he said, "Now my worlds are coming together."
That comment was appropriate and important. We are all so
used to thinking-and quite rightly-of St. John's as his
world, that we may forget how many other worlds he belonged to, and how easily he moved in them, always showing
the same intelligence, seriousness and wit that he displayed
year after year in Annapolis.
For instance, his work, Greek Mathematical Thought and
the Origin of Algebra, written in Germany, was published in
Germany in 1934-1936, when jasha had already left that
country. To publish anything by some one named Jacob
Klein at such a late date was bold, even dangerous. jasha
expressed admiration for those responsible, though I believe
he was in disagreement, on other subjects, with one of those
concerned. Their action showed how highly some people in
Germany thought of his work, and how much his thought
was part of what remained of German academic life.
One more illustration of Jasha's essential sameness in
widely different settings. At least once, though somehow I
think twice, jasha came to visit Quebec while I was still living
there. Once he came with Mr. and Mrs. Kaplan. Quebec was
an international center then. Refugees from everywhere were
there. Some were students; some were professors in the University; some simply lived there, talking of the war and planning their return to Europe when it would be over, or in
some cases making plans for their part in a European future
that seemed far off.
23
�The College
I remember Jasha talking to two professors-one a Belgian,
one a Frenchman recently escaped from extreme hardship in
France. Hardship did not make him forget the manners of the
French salon. There was an artful appeal to Jasha-who had
gone to secondary school in Belgium-to confirm or perhaps
discredit the Belgian's claim to the importance of his native
and minuscule village. Jasha's response was all nuance and
irony, as if his world too were that of the salon. In fact, it was
the true world neither of him nor of the otl1er two. Very
shortly they turned the conversation to an author named
Meyerson and to the question of truth in sociology. Not long
ago I met the Frenchman who took part in that conversation
and he asked about the professor brought up in Belgium who
talked so well about Meyerson. He remembered Jasha for
what was essential in him.
Berlin and Raymond Aron. What they shared was a belief in
and admiration for reason as it occasionally shone on .the
world of human affairs.
Jasha spoke many languages easily and comfortably. What
one must say is that in all of them he spoke well and about
what was important to him, to his hearers, and to all of us.
This last phrase alone is important. He used his power in the
service of what is best in us. That is why he and his wife
could give so much of themselves without weariness or condescensiori. Jasha, when he was in middle age, called himself
an Averroist, with full attention to what he was saying, and
with his usual seriousness about how he used language. Averroes interpreted the words of Aristotle in the de Anima to
mean that when we saw something of the eternal, the imperishable, it was the living light that was shining through us.
In the last public meeting where Jasha and Buchanan~so
far as I know-addressed one another, Buchanan was talking
of the perils to which the life of the mind was exposed. He
said, "If reason lives ... " Jasha interrupted him to say ...
"Reason lives." Buchanan smiled, and went on to say whatever it was he intended to say. Some seconds later he relapsed
and said, "If reason is to live ... " Jasha again interrupted,
"Reason lives." This time Buchanan said, with, I think some
sense of what he was saying and to whom he was talking,
"Yes, reason lives."
J. Winfree Smith
Portrait of father and son, Brussels, about 1914.
This international side of Jasha is not an accidental or unimportant fact about him. No one saw through sham and
low-mindedness better than he. But almost no one else that I
have known believed as much as he did in the possibility of
Human greatness. What he admired in Virgil and Dante
(witness what he said in his lecture on them) is that there
could be nobility in political action. He admired greatness
where he saw it. No one but Jasha would have used the opening pages of de Gaulle's memoirs in a language tutorial. On
the other hand, failure on the part of gifted men to measure
up to high office offended him personally. I remember that
he once said of a man who held high office, "He is very
intelligent, and extremely vulgar. The combination is hard to
take."
No doubt Jasha thought other matters than politics were of
the highest importance. He could and did say of the first
seminar of the year, "This is the beginning of a great adventure, and what its result will be nobody knows." Still he remained a friend of Kojeve. He knew and admired Sir Isaiah
24
My acquaintance with Jacob Klein began in 1939 shortly
after he had come to be a Tutor at St. John's and when I was
a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Virginia.
He came in that year to the University of Virginia to read a
paper to our philosophy club. The paper was about the way
the Greek mathematicians understoOd numbers and the importance of that for Greek philosophy, especially Platonic philosophy. He took us back to the sixteenth century. He made
us forget all modern sophistication about numbers, look at
&ptOJLot, and share with the Greeks the questions that they
raised about the &pd}/Loi and that have to become our questions. He led us by simple steps to see that these questions
lead to questions which are at the center of Plato's
philosophizing about being, which questions are equally our
questions. It was all done in a dramatic and exciting way.
I mention this particular episode because it seems to me
that it typifies several things about Mr. Klein as a teacher. He
believed that modern thought generally has so formed us that
it puts a screen between us and the world, so that it is very
difficult for us to look at things simply and directly. Yet he
had a remarkable ability at least to produce certain moments
of such looking and a remarkable ability to lead students (and
I mean to include faculty as students) to see that, whatever we
may make of the answers, there are genuine questions raised
by both ancient books and modern books and that those questions are inevitably our questions unless we unphilosophically
simply decide to turn our backs to them. He also knew that
the dialectical art needs a rhetorical art to bring these ques-
�January, 1979
tions out as 1ive questions. Hence the drama and the excitement.
The range of Jacob Klein's interest and understanding and
learning was immense. When on his 75th birthday he was
presented with a collection of essays, Mr. Kutler read a list of
the titles of lectures he had given here. Those lectures covered a tremendous variety of books and themes, great poetic
works such as the Iliad, the Aeneid, and the Purgatorio,
dialogues of Plato, the philosophy of Aristotle, the philosophy
of Leibniz, the 19th century with Hegel and the antiHegelian Hegelians, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche; and
many, many more. Every one of these lectures contained
something solid and something fresh. It was Mr. Klein, I believe, who was responsible for the addition of certain of the
writings of Kierkegaard to our seminar list. There is one lecture he was thinking of giving, but did not give. The subject
of ihat was to have been the thought of the apostle Paul.
Klein and Dr. Irwin Strauss, 1972.
I have already mentioned his concern with the effort to
recover the insights and the questions of ancient philosophy.
No doubt that concern was central, especially in recent years
when his preceptorials always had to do with Platonic
dialogues. Moreover, of the three books he wrote, two are
about Platonic dialogues and even the third is designed to
show how intimately connected the difference between ancient and modern mathematics is with the difference between
ancient and modern philosophy. Insofar as we know how to
read the dialogues of Plato, we have learned that from Jacob
Klein, which, of course, does not mean that when we become participants in what is happening in a given dialogue
we necessarily agree with him as to what is going on at some
given moment. He would expect us to argue our case as
tenaciously and searchingly as he would argue his.
For nine years, from 1949 to 1958, he was Dean of St.
John's College. As Dean he led the College to realize as it
never had before the dream of Scott Buchanan. He was never
one to be blind to faults and failures, and he knew very well
that St. John's was far from being a perfect community of
higher learning. But he knew what was good and even precious about St. John's and he embodied it in his own person
and his own work. May that person and that work live in our
memory.
Douglas Allanbrook
Mr. Allanbrook played a composition, the fifth of Five
Transcendental Studies, on which he was working at the time
of Mr. Klein's death.
Robert S. Bart
Mr. Klein was a great man. We have occasion to speak
often of the greatness of books, but rarely of the greatness of
men. He was a great man, not only because, as Richard
Scofield said, unlike all the rest of us, he possessed genius,
but because he had a great soul.
He disliked even a hint of praise, not, I think, because he
feared flattery, but because he always had better things to
think of than himself. Nonetheless, perhaps he would not
mind too much our thinking of him today. He himself
thought a great deal about other people: he cared to understand them exactly. On the occasion when we met together
like this to honor the memory of Victor Zuckerkandl, he
spoke briefly but faithfully and vividly. Above all he hated
what was pompous, inflated, sentimental. He had a distaste
for the expression of feeling, perhaps because he was indeed
passionate. Yct his mighty indignation rarely obscured his
wonderful fairness. He was generous in judgment, liberal
with his hospitality and his time. He was without pretense,
though he always had many crotchets. As Mrs. Klein once
said to me, and it was an extraordinary truth, he had no vanity. He must have turned upon himself that open, dark-eyed
brilliant gaze, his light eyebrows slightly drawn together and
curling upward in cheerful scepticism. He could lose himself
better than any other man in order to enter into his passion
for the College, for a text.
He was the most exciting of readers, and the best of
teachers. In the course of his life he loved a vast variety of
young people. He said once with utmost seriousness that the
most beautiful sight in the world was the face of a young
person learning. As a teacher he guarded the spontaneity of
thought in those who would learn from him; he could be
almost cruel to anyone who would be a disciple.
I knew him best when I was young myself, young enough
to be disappointed that he was reluctant to talk about Plato at
dinner, but young enough, too, to relish it when he and Mrs.
Klein would tease one another, for all the world like Antony
and Cleopatra.
Some of you have heard me tell the following anecdote
before. But I know he would be glad that I should tell it now.
A few years ago, on one of my by then rare visits to the
house, I betrayed my interest in his writing by asking him
what he was doing. Instantly he replied in indignation,
"Studying. Studying." As if to ask, "What else would a man
be doing who had any sense?"
25
�The College
"Studying," he said. Let us then all honor him always by
studying, studying the world, studying the books and the men
and the women in it.
Robert G. Hazo '53
The year 1949 was a very long time ago, but I have no
trouble at all recalling the original and enduring impression
Jacob Klein made on me. His reverence for intellect was the
central feature of his personality. He delighted in reason and
design. In an age when humility was fashionable, he did not
disguise the fact that he was a man of high intellectual pride.
His artistry and dedication in the development of intellect
were both obvious and acknowledged. He always managed,
while many others failed, to say something important about
something important. Using a language he learned only fairly
late in his life, he spoke interestingly and compellingly to a
wide variety of people, on an even wider variety of subjects,
with a very high degree of success.
I, for example, as a devoted student of his for a very long
time, and then later as an equally devoted friend, never had a
serious conversation with him, studied any of his books, listened to any of his lectures, read any of his correspondence
(or reflected on any- of these experiences) without learning
something. Since being called a real teacher is one of the
best-and rarest-things that can be said of any man, saying
it without qualification of the man we honor today is the best
memorial I can offer him, and the one he would have most
appreciated.
Jacob Klein was a man who, in an altogether extraordinary
degree, understood what he was dealing with in the various
phases of his life and encounters. He measured a whole
panoply of changing events and confused situations in political life, in the public life of this College, and in the private
lives of those who passed his way, with remarkable accuracy.
His judgments regularly shed light where there had been
darkness. His insights (for that is what they were, flashes of
intellect rather than conclusions from labored syllogisms)
were frequently of astounding excellence and authenticity. I
have never met anyone before or since who, in dealing with
both theoretical and human material, was able to bring so
much order out of chaos.
I am not suggesting, through eulogistic exaggeration, the
absence of error in his judgments. He understood very well
how fallible human judgment is, and how sad it is to see it
made subservient to rosy feeling or depression, to hopes or
fears or, for that matter, any distorting emotion. The measures of his singular concern for the truth were his contempt
for self-deception, in himself or others, the care with which
he would draw a conclusion and, above all, his willingness to
alter his views when he saw that they were not in harmony
with reality. The example of his uncompromising intellectual
integrity serves as a reminder of just how rare a real reverence
for truth is, and also of how much discipline and courage are
required to sustain it.
That consistent reverence for truth was, I am sure, behind
26
his many years of devoted service to St. John's. In a very real
sense he was, for a very long time, it') intellectual guardian.
The result of what he accomplished through endless effort
should, I believe, be recorded in high relief and given a
foremost place in the annals of this College. I do not think it
is any exaggeration to say that St.· John's College would not
be what it is-or perhaps not even be-were it not for what
he did.
I loved Jasha Klein. My personal debt to him is measureless, but !loved him as much for what he was as for what he
did for me. Those who were familiar with him know that his
tact, his graciousness, his charm, his taste, his hospitality, his
patience, his consideration for others, his unfailing sense of
propriety, his constancy, and his courage set an example for
all of us.
The love of truth is what guided his life and the stature,
weight and elevation of his work showed again and again that
there is no substitute for intelligence, particularly a trained
and gracious intelligence. Through it he was able to see and
signal the exceptional, the noble and the excellent amidst the
commonplace, the mundane and the pedestrian. With exquisite artistry and care he caused wonder for the sake of
learning. He had the sharpest eye for seeing the slightest mental glint or spark, and was nothing less than a genius in cultivating it, knowing that there is mixed with our mortal dust a
precious fire to nourish.
I can never forget him. He was a very, very rare and special
man. To find another like him I would take the brightest
lantern on the brightest morning of the brightest day of the
almanac and look and look and look.
Barbara Dvorak Winiarski '55
I cannot speak about Mr. Klein directly, but must borrow
words:
"You don't know about me, without you have
read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was
made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth,
mainly. There was things which he stretched, but
mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never
seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without
it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary.
Aunt Polly-Tom's Aunt Polly, she is-and Mary,
and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that
book-which is mostly a true book; with some
stretchers, as I said before.
"Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom
and me found the money that the robbers hid in the
cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece-all gold. It was an awful sight of money
when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher, he took
it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar
a day apiece all the year round-more than a body
could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she
took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize
�January, 1979
me; but it was rough living in the house all the time,
considering how regular and decent the widow was
in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no
longer 1 lit out. I got into my old rags and my
sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But
Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going
to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would
go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went
back."
A student tribute
to Dean Klein,
before 1958
-with a perhaps
inadvertent recall
of Rodin's Balzac.
Eventually, of course, Huck becomes to some extent
civilized. Not civilized according to the standards of the town
of Hannibal, but perhaps more truly civilized than Hannibal
ever dreamed of. And, in reading about his "civilizing"~the
first time he is required to live according to decent standards
and to attend school-we learn about the important differences between the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, her
sister.
Miss Watson, "a tolerable slim old maid," was, of course,
very civilized by Hannibal standards. She was ideally suitecl·to
teach Sunday School, with all the unfortunate limitations
therein implied. She was just about perfect at imposing restrictions.
The Widow Douglas, on the other hand, would not have
done to teach Sunday School in Hannibal. She had, we infer, a larger acquaintance with the world, that escaped Hannibal as a general thing. She had also a faintly raffish air that,
had her ties with respectability been less substantial, Hannibal
would have regarded as not quite nice ... not to say dangerous.
Beyond all this, she is, I think, in all of Tom Sawyer and
all of Huckleberry Finn, the one adult who combines being
civilized with being interesting. And she is, perhaps not incidentally, the naturally kindest, most generous adult in both
novels.
Now, about Huck. He was an outcast, a friendless soul,
worse than an orphan because he was tied to his natural,
still-living father. The first person Huck is attracted to in
Hannibal is Tom Sawyer~the only artist in town. Tom is
the first person Huck knows who passes on something of the
larger civilization~beyond Hannibal, beyond the Americas
even~who passes on his knowledge in an inviting, a palatable, a digestible way.
But Tom, being an artist, is not reliable. And Huck somehow perceives that Tom can't be relied upon in his fireworks
of gorgeous information.
In addition to being an artist, Tom is a hero; and Huck is
his natural and innocent accomplice, not to say foil, within
limits, with the result that Huck becomes a hero in his turn.
As such, he is brought to the attention of the authorities. The
final result is that the widow~a more substantial vessel than
Tom-tmdertakes to civilize Huck, and succeeds in doing so
more than anyone else can do.
Mr. Klein had a very good eye for the Huckleberrys of fhe
world. In turn, the Huckleberrys generally came to be very
fond of him; and, by his means, came to submit to restrictions and demands which would have been unthinkable when
suggested by the Miss Watsons.
Because of him, we managed to get to class long enough so
that the classes eventually got to us. Eventually, even we became subject to the power of discourse, which Mr. Klein
once called "this marvel . . . this greatest marvel perhaps
under the sun."
Elliott Zuckerman
I wish I had been able to consult )asha about this speech.
He always knew precisely what to say on these occasions. He
would have told me whether the sentiments were appropriate.
He might have objected to certain words; and I would then
have known that those words had to be strictly scrutinized,
and probably replaced.
Our friendship, indeed, was in large part based upon an
interest in words. He would be indignant when they were
mispronounced~and it was a joke we shared that my instinct
for accenting Russian names on the wrong syllable was almost
as unfailing as that of the news broadcasters he listened to
every evening. Far more important was his objection to certain words even when they were pronounced correctly. It is
well known that in his final years there were words that, regardless of the context, could not be used safely in his presence. At lectures, for example, he would respond to those
words as though they were blemishes on the texture of the
discourse. Behind this categorical rejection there lay, of
27
�The College
course, the most serious concern for meaning, particularly for
uncovering those unexamined misconceptions that creep in
attendant upon the favorite terms of philosophical jargon. I
learned from him how certain words-'reality', for example,
and 'mind' -may have implications that vitiate the arguments in which they are embedded.
He could have had no better justification than that he
wrote so precisely himself. In the most immediate way, to be
precise was to be good. Before I knew him, I had known
some very articulate people. But for the most part they contented themselves with saying what they had already discovered to be easily sayable. Or they were so proud of their
articulateness that they had little concern for whether what
they said ought to be said. jasha, in contrast, could succeed
in saying with simplicity the most profound and difficult
Mr. & Mrs. Klein
with the physicist,
Werner Ehrenberg,
about 1951.
things. And he did so without ever deceiving us into thinking
that those things had been easily arrived at or easily understood. Contained in his sentences is the acknowledgment that
it is the simplest things, such as Being itself, that few of us
ever even begin to wonder about. Hence his prose could
sometimes achieve what all teachers ought to consider their
highest task, which is to nurture some glimmer of that wonder.
He could also write beautifUlly, as in those passages of
hard-won simplicity. And he did so in a language which, according to a favorite anecdote, he didn't, when he was a
young man, think he'd ever have to use. He was not concerned with the superficial decorativeness of the sound of
words, and not usually with the mere charm of a metaphor. I
remember that once, when he was visiting me in Santa Fe,
we had a rare talk about poetry. I had just begun to see, as I
think the Ion requires of us, that one's love of poetry is
scarcely earned until one has entertained the possibility that
we are being deeply deceived by even the greatest poetry-1
should say especially the greatest. In the discussion I was reluctant to think of Homer or Shakespeare as deceptive. I recall that jasha alluded to a kind of poetry that could be called
Philosophical. I did not understand then, and I still don't
28
understand, how one could tell whether poetry was of the
philosophical sort or the sort that misleads. The most obvious
interpretation was that he wanted to place in a special category those aspects of the Platonic dialogues that are dramatic,
or mimetic, or metaphorical, or mythical. But I wonder now
whether both the words philosophical and poetic couldn't also
be applied to those passages of his own in which difficult
things are said simply, and in which the understatement
leaves space for the beginning of wonder.
The sound of those passages is that of spoken words. When
I first arrived here, Jasha was engaged in reading the manuscript of the Meno book to his friends. I was too new to be
among them. But fifteen years later it happened to be to me
alone that he read, twice through, the manuscript of the book
called Plato's Trilogy. As a kind of preliminary editor, it
would have been easier for me to see the manuscript-and
eventually, of course, I did have to look at it. It turned out
that I wasn't very much needed as an adjustor of pronouns
and commas. It was as listener that he wanted me to serve, for
it was the teacher who was speaking. And in the months since
he died I realize how much I miss the sound of his voice-as
I heard it in the long periods of his last readings, as I heard it
in those brief and clear questions he asked on the telephone,
as I heard it in words of advice and encouragement.
But more than the speech I shall miss the silence. Even
more than the words, the silences were eloquent. I ierllember
that five years ago, when I was ill and he was elderly, he
visited me almost daily. There was little to say that was new
or amusing, but his presence alone was touching. In his final
months, when he sometimes confined himself to his upstairs
room, I could, in return, visit him. There was no manuscript
to read, and by then he seemed to have lost interest in what
was happening at the College, or in the world. I sat there in
silence while he silently rested. He would break the silence
only to thank me for being there. We both knew that one
thing we could never share was the love for music. But now I
think of those silences as a kind of music-or, to say it more
daringly, as the sort of stillness that must be the ultimate aim
of even that music that moves the most.
jacob Klein was never formally my teacher or officially my
dean. I knew him best in his years of waning activity-the
same years which have so far counted as the second half of
my adult life. I heard the stories of his thoughtful and worldly
early years, of his importance as a scholar, of his inspiration
as a teacher, of his strength as dean-and some of the qualities that marked those eras were still remarkably present up
until almost the very end. The true end of his life-the telos,
which is, as he often said when talking about Aristotle, the
beginning-that end is still alive in the people he has taught
and those whom they in turn shall teach. But he was not
allowed to die as Socrates died. There was a brief and final
decline that preceded the ending of his life. It was difficult to
watch, and until very recently I found it hard to find my way
behind the mask of death. Yet at the same time I feel that
there was a certain privilege in witnessing the end. What that
is I find it hard to articulate. Part of it was to notice the
echoes and reminders of his wisdom and his humanity. But
�January, 1979
perhaps my sense of privilege has to do with something I
learned mostly from Jasha himself: that one must try to see
things in their wholeness. Right now the final days seem mysterious to me. I still feel haunted by them, and I feel bereft.
Eva T. H. Brann
A memorial meeting such as this, which is intended at
once to confirm and to foil a death, seems the proper occasion for careful and clear-eyed recollection of the man we
have lost.
He was, first and last, every inch a teacher, a teacher who
stymied discipleship in the very effort to induce learning. He
did, indeed, have some teachings to convey-a few, though
those were powerful and of large consequence; above all, the
understanding of the arithmetic structure of being set out in
his book on the origin of algebra.
But these doctrines, central as they were, were obvious; obvious, that is, once they had been told. It is doubtful that they
would have been soon discovered without him. As they went
home in their obviousness, they displayed their originality.
They were not cleverly fabricated by reference to the opinions
of others, but direct and deep. As they were original, they
were faithful, faithful to the text of which they were interpretations.
For he spent his most characteristic effort in recovering the
way to the conversations of that most artfully communicative
lover of wisdom whom he followed. Yet as his readings were
faithful, they were fresh, as immediately the thought of jacob
Klein as of Socrates.
His way into the dialogues was emphatically not a method.
He insisted that each had to be approached in its own terms.
But as he shunned unthinking method, he practiced unfailing
meticulousness. His manuscripts, written in a small, fine
hand, were thickly annotated with precise references to the
text. Nonetheless, for all this carefulness, he was blithe to cut
sweeping swaths through the blind thickets of scholarship.
In sum, his learning was at once inimitable and influential
for the reason that it did no more and no less than rouse a
sort of recollection. I often ask myself whether I learned anything or everything from him.
He was solid; he possessed himself what in his commentary
on the Meno he called a solid soul, that is to say, a soul with
dimensions enough for inward depth. Yet as he was solid he
was plain and also playful, inventive in the explanatory and
evocative devices of the talented teacher.
He preserved the humaneness of his energy by reserving it
for a small community, for this college; he chose this life in
accord with the verse of the Preacher spoken on a mellow
Maryland summer day at his grave site, as close as could be to
our campus: The words of the wise man are heard in quiet
more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools.
In behalf of his school he was fiercely parochial, though by
personal and political fate the complete cosmopolitan, a wanderer who in spirit never gave up his Nansen passport, determinedly unrooted. And yet he achieved a home, the most
Jacoh Klein about the age of 6 in Russia with grandparents.
comfortable and animated, hospitable and private domesticity
anyone could wish for.
He was fully free from his own time, but as he was free of
it, he was a most knowledgeable contemporary, a passionate
bystander who listened to the hourly news as one appointed to
be the world's monitor. As his world was large, he cherished
immobility and its accumulations. His study was the repository of sacrosanct piles of undusted and outdated documents.
He was altogether an indoor man, who would take the car
from Market Street to campus, but he was light and supple,
and could break into a sudden caper. In looks he was at once
small and grand, soft and manly; in bearing he could be excitedly mobile and regally dignified.
He lived a life bare of all esthetic paraphernalia, but he was
the most sensually appreciative of men, not least, of all the
pleasures of the table. Caught off guard, he would admit that
he had no ear for music, but he loved epic poetry, especially
the spacious warmth of Russian novels. He spoke English
with a soft, gravelly Russian accent, and he wrote it in a
strong, sound style. As his life's preoccupation was the wonder of the word, so he battled with ever-fresh fury it' smart
and thoughtless perversions.
In the small world he had chosen he was ubiquitous. As
dean he would station himself at the bottom of the McDowell
stairs to take the pulse of the place. Yet he was devoid of all
intrusive curiosity and his gossip was without smallness. He
suffered his own fools gladly and met youthful contentiousness with sweet serenity, but he could be royally irascible with
incompetent meddlers.
29
�The College
He came conveniently equipped with those eccentricities-he called them his pathologies-which are the joy
of student communities, and he was balanced and sane-the
Greeks would say, sound-minded-above anyone; he was
harmonious in his oppositions.
He could be shamelessly affected by others' grief, and he
could be stonily unforgiving when the bounds had been overstepped. He was coolly reserved in the face of pretentious impertinence, but his usual way was the warmest, most irresistible pedagogic eros.
And finally, he was in birth and in appearance unmistakably a Jew, but his soul belonged to that unending enterprise
which has its origins among the Greeks.
He was a man, take him for all in all, we shall not see his
like again.
*
'
*
*
*
In conclusion Mr. Weigle read Miss Eva Brann's and
Brother Robert Smith's tribute to Jacob Klein, adopted by the
faculty on September 6, 1978:
All students who had the good fortune of being in his
classes remember him as the best of teachers. All members of
the College felt the inspiration of his wise guidance. None
can forget the depth of his intellect, his passion for learning,
his love for the young, and his care for his colleagues. He
wrote three books: Greek Mathematics and the Origin of
Algebra, A Commentary on Plato's Meno, and Plato's Trilogy, as well as many essays and lectures. But for him philosophy was never so much a matter of books as a living conversation. In his modesty he would have refused a comparison
which the whole community felt: that he was, like Socrates,
able to elicit from his friends truths beyond their own expectations.
An Unspoken Prologue
to a
Public Lecture at St. John's
by Leo Strauss
The common sense of mankind has granted old men certain privileges in order to compensate them for the infirmities
of old age or to make it easier for them to indulge those infirmities. Not the least of these privileges is the permission
granted to old men to speak about themselves in public more
freely than young men can in propriety do. I have always
regarded it as both an honor and a pleasure to come to St.
John's to lecture and to meet faculty members and students.
But I also had a private reason for enjoying my journeys to St.
John's. St. John's harbors-it is a perfect harbor for-my
oldest friend, Jacob Klein. Permit me to pay homage to Mr.
Klein on the present occasion, the first occasion after his sixtieth birthday. What I intend to do I regard as an act of duty,
Leo Strauss sent this statement to Jacob Klein on April 7, 1960. Published by
the kind permission of the Executor of the Estate of Leo Strauss.
30
although of a pleasant duty. Yet however innocent our actions may be as regards their intentions, the circumstances in
which they are performed may cloak those actions with an
appearance of malice. In such a situation one must not be
squeamish and still do one's duty. In addition-such is the
complexity of the things of the heart-even if we are virtuous
men, we may derive some pleasure from the appearance of
malice, provided we keep within certain bounds. In the present case the appearance of malice arises from Mr. Klein's
idiosyncratic abhorrence of publicity-of anything which
even remotely reminds of the limelight. I always found that
Mr. Klein went somewhat too far in this but all too justified
abhorrence. When we were in our twenties we worked every
day during a longish period for some hours in the Prussian
State Library in Berlin, and we relaxed from our work in a
coffee house close by the Library. There we sat together for
many hours with a number of other young men and talked
about everything which came to our mind-mixing gravity
�January, 1979
Klein (upper left) in Marburg, 1923? 1924? The
man in the center with his right hand up to the side
of his face is Nikolai Hartmann, Professor of Philosophy at Marburg. Hartmann played a major part
in bringing Heideggcr to Marburg about this time ..
and levity in the proportion in which youth is likely to mix
them. As far as Mr. Klein was concerned, there was, I am
tempted to say, only one limit: we must not appear to the
public as young men cultivating their minds; let us avoid at
all costs-this was his silent maxim-the appearance that we
are anything other than idle and inefficient young men of
business or of the lucrative professions or any other kind of
drones. On such occasions I derived enjoyment from suddenly exclaiming as loudly as I could, say, "Nietzsche!" and
from watching the anticipated wincing of Mr. Klein.
Nothing affected us as profoundly in the years in which our
minds took their lasting directions as the thought of Heidegger. This is not the place for speaking of that thought and its
effects in general. Only this much must be said: Heidegger,
who surpaSses in speculative intelligence all his contemporaries and is at the same time intellectually the counterpart
of what Hitler was politically, attempts to go a way not yet
trodden by anyone, or rather to think in a way in which philosophers at any rate have never thought before. Certain it is
that no one has questioned the premises of philosophy as radically as Heidegger. While everyone else in the young generation who had ears to hear was either completely overwhelmed
by Heiclegger, or else, having been almost completely overwhelmed by him, engaged in well-intentioned but ineffective
rear-guard actions against him, Klein alone saw why Heidegger is truly important by uprooting and not simply rejecting
the tradition of philosophy, he made it possible for the first
time after many centuries-one hesitates to say how manyto see the roots of the tradition as they are and thus perhaps to
know what so many merely believe, that those roots are the
only natural and healthy roots. Superficially or sociologically
speaking, Heidegger was the first great German philosopher
who was a Catholic by origin and by training; he thus had
from the outset a pre-modern familiarity with Aristotle; he
thus was protected against the danger of trying to modernize
Aristotle. But as a philospher Heidegger was not a Christian:
he thus was not tempted to understand Aristotle in the light of
Thomas Aquinas. Above all, his intention was to uproot Aristotle: he thus was compelled to disinter the roots, to bring
them to light, to look at them with wonder. Klein was the
first to understand the possibility which Heidegger had
opened without intending it: the possibility of a genuine return to classical philosophy, to the philosophy of Aristotle and
of Plato, a return with open eyes and in full clarity about the
infinite difficulties which it entails. He turned to the study of
classical philosophy with a devotion and a love of toil, a penetration and an intelligence, an intellect~al probity and a sobriety in which no contemporary equals him. Out of that
study grew his work which bears the title "Greek Logistics and
the Genesis of Algebra." No title could be less expressive of a
man's individuality cmcl even of a man's intention; and yet if
one knows Klein, the title expresses perfectly his individuality, his idiosyncrasy mentioned before. The work is much
more than a historical study. But even if we take it as a purely
historical work, there is not, in my opinion, a contemporary
work in the history of philosophy or science or in "the history
of ideas" generally speaking which in intrinsic worth comes
within hailing distance of it. Not indeed a proof but a sign of
this is the fact that less than half a dozen people seem to have
read it, if the inference from the number of references to it is
valid. Any other man would justly be blamed for misanthropy, if he did not take care that such a contribution does
not remain inaccessible to everyone who does not happen to
come across volume III of section B of"Quellen und Studien
zur Geschichte der Mathematik, Astronomic und Physik" and
in addition does not read German with some fluency. One
cannot blame Klein because he is excused by his idiosyncrasy. I hope that you, faculty and students of St. John's, do
not accuse me of trespassing if I say: soine man or body
of men among you should compel Klein, if need be by
starving him into submisSion, to close his eyes while you arrange for a decent English translation and its publication.
The necessity for this is in no way diminished by the fact that
Mr. Klein is said to prepare now a new book which may
contain a very long footnote giving the first intelligent account of the Platonic dialogue and which will probably be
entitled Mathematics in the Curriculum of the School of Gorgias. But it was not in order to make to you the foregoing
suggestion that I made these prefatory remarks: I ask you to
rise and join me in giving Mr. Klein an ovation.
31
�The College
About Jacob Klein's
Books About Plato*
by William O'Grady
The best human being Plato knew or could imagine spent
his life thinking and conversing and wrote nothing down.
Plato himself made more than thirty thought-things which
have endured and become part of the world. Of these writings
Plato wrote (Second Letter) that they are not his, but rather
belong to "Socrates who has become new and beautiful". The
Dialogues exist when Socrates becomes new and beautiful,
that is, when under his inspiration living conversation comes
to be. The Dialogues exist fully only when they pass away as
written works. But first they must be encountered as written
works, as made things, wholes with parts, dramas with decisive moments. jacob Klein's two books about Plato, A Commentary on Plato's Meno and Plato's Trilogy, help us more
than any other books I know, both to encounter the
Dialogues as made things and to remember that living
speech-conversation between people who are trying to understand important matters-is better, more truthful, than
anything that can be written down. That they are so helpful
has many causes, but one of them is a certain clarity about
the wrongness of trying to do in writing what can be done
truthfully only in living speech.
By this I mean that the great insights in his books-which
are simple, definite and, I think, undeniable, though very few
of us, if any, would have come to them without his helpare emphatically not conclusions or solutions: they settle
nothing. Rather they are beginnings, at once secure and exciting, of a wondering reflection that requires to be worked
out in endless conversation. By taking the dialogues seriously
as made things, by noticing, counting, remembering, checking, comparing, and being ready to smile, he is able to make
sense of much in them that is otherwise merely baffling and
even tedious. But he does not clear up what we were wondering about. Rather our wonder is educated, directed to where
*Jacob Klein, A Commentary on Plato's Meno {Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1965).
- - - - - · Plato's Trilogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1977).
32
it will do the most good, provided with simple and direct
words so that the question to be faced is distorted as little as
may be.
I shall give three examples from the Meno book. First, the
dependence of image upon original is the model proposed by
Plato for trying to understand the relation of visible and tangible beings to beings in speech and thought. Second, the
slave boy questioned by Socrates has a choice in answering
but the choice is not between "yes" and "no"; rather it is
between answering in submission to the necessity inherent in
the matter itself and revealed by his thinking, and answering
"personallY", that is, in a way determined by the memories,
desires, hopes and fears that are uniquely his. Third, in order
to understand "rcco11ection" as a descent of the soul into itself
beyond memory (the ana of anamnesis and analabein indicating "up" as well as "again"), one must be able to speak
unapologetically of the depth of souls, so that the likely story
of the Timaeus attempts to show that "depth", a "third dimension", is somehow intelligible as prior to body: to speak of
souls having depth is no more metaphorical, no more derivative, than speaking of bodies having depth. Such insights as
these clearly cannot become part of a system; but to have
made them, in some measure, one's own, is to have learned
something unforgettable about what is truly worthy of wonder, and of discussion.
What is true of the Meno book is true of Plato's Trilogy. In
the Theatetus, Sophist and Statesman (with the Parmenides
somehow present), it could appear that we are concerned not
so much with the being of the learning soul, as in the Meno,
but rather with the ruling beginnings or sources of Being itself. But this appearance is somewhat deceptive. For although
it turns out that there is evidence, beautifully assembled by
Mr. Klein, that Aristotle was right in saying that Plato posited
two ruling beginnings (how after all could Aristotle have been
wrong?-Mr. Klein must have spent a great deal of time imagining what it was like when Plato and Aristotle talked together, as they did for twenty years), the remarkable fact is
that Plato called these ruling beginnings by a variety of
�names. For one of the two sources "beyond Being" he used
the names: the Good, the One, the Same, the Limit and the
Precise itself. "Which of these words is chosen depends upon
the context in which it is used" (p. 174). For example, in the
Statesman the context is provided by "the faultiness and imprecision that pervades the conversation." "Why is there so
much stress on faultiness and inaccuracy in the drama of the
dialogue? Is it not because the theme of statesmanship requires it? There is nothing that imposes a greater burden on
human lives than faulty statesmanship, and no greater fault
than that which occurs in governing states" (p. 161).
Thus the context is always determined by the particular
inquiry of the learning soul. Because it is a learning soul, it
cannot say that one of these contexts is simply prior to the
others, hence that one name is most revealing. It is far too
much in the middle of things to be able to do that. That is
why, although for Plato "at any time of his adult life" (p. 6) as
much as for Aristotle, the question is the question concerning
Being, for Plato there can be no systematic metaphysics. Mr.
Klein's great thought is that the question concerning Being is
inseparable, not from the question concerning soul in general
(still less, of course, from the question concerning the Transcendental I), but from the question concerning the learning
soul.
What the learning soul might be shows itself as now Meno,
now the slave boy, now we ourselves, respond to the injunction to make an attempt, to try to "recollect", to try to think
"impersonal1y" about the question we face rather than being
dominated by the "menonic" memory of which "all of us
have a share" (Meno book, p. 188) .. The response to this injunction is an utterly personal matter, and in it human excellence is at stake and Being somehow comes to light.
�The College
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�
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St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Radista, Leo
Parran, Jr., Thomas
von Oppen, Beate Ruhm
Brann, Eva T. H.
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The College
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Text
THE COLLEGE
ISSN 0010-0862
St. John's College • Annapolis, Maryland- Santa Fe, New Mexico
July, 1978
�THE COLLEGE
Vol. XXX
July, 1978
Number l
ON THE COVER:
The Liberty Tree, McDowell Hall, and
the walkway from the Library somehow
seem appropriate for this, the last of the
"old" magazmes. Photograph by Lawrence Ostrovsky of this year's senior class.
Old Editor's Note:
Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. '42
This Issue of The College IS devoid of a Campus and
Alumni section and is thus a first step in the new direction
indicated by my editorial Note in the January issue. Subsequent steps will be taken by the new editor, Leo Raditsa,
who is away this year and will assume his duties in the new
academic year. He wilt I am sure, do bold and interesting
things. I am happy to have such a seasoned and energetic
successor, and wish him well in his new task.
Edito.rial Advisory Board: William B.
B.R.v.O.
Editor: Beale Ruhm von Oppen
Dunham, Barbara Brunner Oosterhout
'55, E. Malcolm Wyatt, Elliott Zuckerman.
THE COLLEGE is published by the Office of College Relations, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404,
Richard D. Weigle, president, William
B. Dunham, vice president.
IN THE JULY ISSUE:
A Reading of the Parable of the Prodigal Son,
Published twice yearly, normally·
January and July.
111
by Edward G. Sparrow ............................... .
Freud's "Dora," by Alan Dorfman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . .
9
"The Scientific Revolution Will Not Take Place,"
by Thomas K. Simpson '50 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chaos, Gauss, and Order, by Michael Comenetz . . . . . . . . . . . .
Credits:
Cover photo by Lawrence Ostrovsky '78; pages 1-8,
sketches by Lydia H. Sparrow.
16
28
�A Reading of the Parable
of the Prodigal Son
by Edward G. Sparrow
f I ask you to listen to a lecture about the parable of the
it is
of us
I prodigal son, somebecauseinI believe that there is none chalwho has not at
time
his life had to meet the
lenge of forgiveness, and who, having had to meet it, has not
wondered to some extent about what it was that had challenged him. We might have had to meet it as a demand
made on us by a parent that we forgive a playmate who had
injured us. We might have met it as a request from someone
that we forgive him. Or we might have sensed sometime that
now was the moment for saying something to another person
that would transform the tension between us into a bond of
peace. But we cannot have lived long without being challenged to forgive.
I would like this evening to share some thoughts about forgiveness with you. And I hope that if some of you have not
wondered about these things much before, well, perhaps you
will wonder about them with me tonight. The thoughts I
have in mind have to do with such questions as these: What
is forgiveness? How does forgiveness differ from forgetting?
Can we forgive somebody else if he does not ask for our forgiveness first? Can anybody forgive? Can we forgive ourselves?
Can anybody be forgiven?
To be sure forgiveness is the first among those things that it
is more important to practise than to know. But we surely
cannot be the poorer for knowing what it is-or, at least, for
Text of a lecture given by Mr. Sparrow, the Dean of St. John's College,
Annapolis, at Santa Fe on 27 January 1978. Mr. Sparrow took his B.A. and
studied law at Harvard (LL.B., 1954); after an M.A. at Teachers College,
Columbia University (1957), he became a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, in 1957. He served as Acting Director of the Integrated Liberal Arts
Curriculum at St. Mary's College, California, from 1964 to 1966, was
chairman of the St. John's Polity Review Committee, 1974-75, and became
Dean in 1977.
...
trying to know what it is. There are some important things
that we cannot truly understand unless we have given some
thought to what forgiveness is.
to consider
looking
the
parable
the prodigal son. That
all about
I want us of because it forgiveness byaparable itistogether at forgiveness; and
is a parable, story, can give us an
image of what we want to understand in terms that we can
easily recognize and readily appropriate to our own experience. The word "forgiveness" itself does not appear in the
story. But the prodigal, at an important moment in his life,
when he is hungry and among the swine, resolves to go and
say to his father, "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and
before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.
Make me as one of thy hired servants." Later, however, he is
found in his father's house feasting and dancing. We have to
say in view of these two strikingly different moments in his
relation to his father, that, whatever forgiveness might be,
and although it is not mentioned by name in the parable, the
father has forgiven his son by the time the son has gotten
home. We can attach no meaning to the word forgiveness if
we deny that the father has forgiven his son.
Let us read the parable now with these questions in mind.
Where is the forgiveness in it? When does the father forgive
his son? And how does he do it? After I have read it I will give
you some of my thoughts on these questions.
A certain man had two sons: and the younger of
them said to his father, "Father, give me the portion
of goods that fall unto me." And he divided unto
them his living. And not many days after the
younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his sub-
�The College
his son. He divides his property into two parts, assigns to each
son his part, and makes these parts available to the two sons.
"And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there
wasted his substance with riotous living." When his father
obliges him, the son at first stays at home for awhile. But
then he begins to find his life at home offensive. And since
he has no need to be there, where the presence of his father
and elder brother are irritating reminders of his disloyalty,
and since he can live well in just as fine a place elsewhere, he
collects his part of his father's estate and goes off to a far
country. Once in the far country, he behaves in a new way, a
way thoroughly in keeping with his new freedom and independence. He is his own man -there.
self to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into
What has happened? By denying his father's life, and his
life in his father's house, he has done all he possibly can to
un-son himself. He has, therefore, at the same time done all
he can to un-father his father. He has broken two relationships: the relationship which he had to his father, and the
relationship which he had, through his father, back to him-
his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have
filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat:
self as a son. For him, his father is no longer a father; for
himself, he is no longer a son.
stance with riotous living. And when he had spent
all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he
began to be in want. And he went and joined him-
and no man gave unto him. And when he came to
himself, he said, "how many hired servants of my
father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish
with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and
will say unto him, 'Father, I have sinned against
heaven and before thee and- am no more worthy to
be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants."' And he arose, and came to his father. But
when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him,
and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck,
What does it mean for the son to take offense at his father
and at his life iri his father's house? It means for him to resent
the presence of his father, and of the order of things at home,.
because they do not provide him with what he thinks he deserves to have from them. It means that he thinks he has a
claim to have things h1rn out the way he wants them to because of some merit of his own which he has just by virtue of
being alive. It means that he thinks he is just, that his justice
has no root besides himself, and that this justice within him
makes him worthy of getting whatever he wants. He is con-
and kissed him. And the son said unto him, "Father,
vinced that his deserts justify all his desires. For him to take
I have sinned agairlst heaven, and in they sight, and
offense does not require that anyone have given him offense.
Offense does not have to be given in order for it to be taken.
am no more worthy to be called thy son." But the
father said to his servants, "Bring forth the best robe,
and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and
shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf,
and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: for this my
His father has done nothing to offend his son, and yet the son
is offended at him.
"And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine
in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and
son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is
joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him
found." And they began to be merry.
into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his
belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave
unto him." Want and perhaps self-pity now preoccupy the
T et me make some comments about this part of the story.
L "A certain man had two sons; and the younger of them
said to his father, 'Father, give me the portion of goods that
falleth to me."' The younger son, perhaps because of what he
consciousness of the son. He is no longer intent on leading
an independent and sovereign life. Rather, he is glad enough
to submit himself to someone who can promise to give him
thinks is an inferior status at home, perhaps as the result of an
argument with his father or his elder brother, takes offense at
his condition of dependence at home. More specifically he is
enough to eat in exchange for some kind of hard labor. But
offended that his father, by continuing to live, keeps him
from having what he regards as his rightful share of the
give him anything in addition: he has no friends-and if he is
not to live in utter m·isery, he will have to steal from the
domestic wealth. And so he makes an extraordinary demand
on his father. He makes a demand which, in effect, is that his
husks assigned to the pigs, that is, he will have to go out by
night to feed at the pig trough. He is in a condition of ex-
father remove himself, get out of the way: that he die. For he
demands that his father's property be divided among his heirs,
treme abjection-he has nothing of his own now: no family,
no property, no friends, and no assurance whatever about
tomorrow. And he has no memories that do not sharpen the
pain of his present condition.
and this is what would happen if his father were to die.
"And he divided unto them his living." The father obliges
2
even this turns out to be an illusory hope: he does not get
enough to eat to satisfY his bloated appetite, and no one will
�July, 1978
"And when he came to himself, he said, 'How many hired
servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I
perish with hunger!'" He suddenly remembers a far more
comfortable place of work for servants than the one in which
he now is, and he sees his current situation in strong contrast
to the remembered one. But to recall this comfortable place is
to recall that this place is his father's place. It is, that is, to
recall his father. He remembers that his experience is of his
own home, and that there is (or was) at this home one who is
(or was) to him "my father." But to recall his father is for him
to remember that his father is not only just to his servants but
gives them more than they deserve. They have bread "to
spare." Because he can remember his father now, he can
begin to have hope for a way out of his condition. He has an
"in" at his father's homestead, as it were.
However, he necessarily also remembers that he is the son
of this father. And he cannot remember his sonship without
remembering that he has tried to rid himself of this sonship.
No sooner does his father's superior condition come to mind,
and, with it, his remembered being as the son of his father,
than there comes to him also the memory of his having taken
offense at his father and at his father's house and of his having
cut his father out of his life by asking for the inheritance
prematurely and leaving home with it.
Sketches by Lydia H. Sparrow.
A nd he now begins to contrast the memory of the largesse
I\. of his father with the niggardliness of his present master.
And he realizes that this is the man he wanted to die. A
feeling of dismay and shock and revulsion at himself, overcomes him. What a good father he had! And he never knew
it! What a terrible offense he must have given to his father!
And how terribly his father must now be offended at him. He
takes offense at himself as his father's would-be murderer. He
now abhors himself. The sonship to which his memory has
brought him is the one which he has wrongfully destroyed.
"I will arise and go to my father." Yet his needs are pressing, there is probably no famine in that land of his father's,
nothing else is available, and there may be work for him
there. Despite his offense he must return home or perish. But
a return means that he has to face his father, for it is his
father who will hire him. More than that, however, he has to
acknowledge before his father his wrongful destruction of
himself as a son and of his father as a father. He has deeply
offended his father, and he knows that he cannot approach
his father with any request without the matter of his having
broken their relationship to one another being confronted. At
the same time he thinks the generosity of his father makes
him approachable.
"And say unto him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven
and before thee .... "' This will be his confession to his
father. It is doubtful that much can be said by way of explaining a most compelling moral fact, the fact that when we see
persons again whom we think we have in someway wronged,
and whom we have not seen for a while, we must, before
anything else, if we are to be able to live with ourselves, confront that past with a confession of wrongdoing. It seems that
we want to remove the offense we have given them by telling
them we were wrong to take offense at them in the first place.
Perhaps we sense that we hurt them by taking offense at
them, and now, by telling them we do not take offense at
them any more, we hope to heal that hurt.
'" ... And I am no more worthy of being called thy son."
The son wants his father to know that, although he may be
his father's blood offspring, he has destroyed the moral foundation for any obligation that his father might have to him.
Nothing now flows from his being the offspring of his father.
He is dead as a son, just as his father must be dead as a
father. And so he determines to pronounce his condition of
non-sonship. He determines to appear before his father as
would any other laborer seeking a position from a rich and
generous landlord.
"Make me as one of thy hired servants." Once the truth of
his wrongdoing has been acknowledged, he will make his request to be allowed to serve his father like any other hired
hand. However, because the rich and generous landlord is his
father whom he has wronged, the request to be treated as one
of the hired servants cannot avoid having a penitential dimension or even perhaps cannot avoid being in fact a request for a
life of penance in permanent exile from his father's house.
Before any other rich employer the famished son might say,
"Make me one of thy hired servants." But since it is his father
who is the landlord, and since it is he, the son, who has
offended him, he has to say "Make me, i.e., your son, as one
of thy hired servants." That is, pay no attention to what I
would deserve from you if I were your son. Do not look at my
former sonship. Do not give me what a father should give a
son. Give me, rather, what as a sinful ex-son and patricide I
deserve, and what as a hungry stranger l beg: the opportunity
to earn my bread by being merely one of your hired hands.
He will ask that his father give him the suffering that he deserves to have by virtue of his wrongdoing.
"And he arose, and came to his father;" the son starts to
carry out his plan.
"But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him,
and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and
3
�The College
given offense to his son and only deserves good things. The
father understands the remorse that his son is now feeling,
and he sees his humility, He is aware of the offense that his
son, in his repentance, is now taking at himself. He knows
that the closer his son gets to his house, the more he feels the
anguish of having done wrong. And out of his sorrow for the
pain that he knows his son is experiencing, the father rushes
out to reassure his son that he has never taken offense at him
for his disloyalty. When he falls on his son's neck and kisses
him, he presents himself to his son as his father; that is, he
tells his son that he is indeed his son's father and has always
been so; that his son is indeed his son, and has always been
so. He enacts his thought in his deeds. He has never abandoned his son although his son. has abandoned him. He has
never thought of himself as not his father. He has never taken
kissed him." Things do not, however, go according to the
son's plan. It is still as a father that the old man sees his son
when he is yet a great way off. He sees that he has walked
through the famine-ridden land a great distance, and that he
is desolate, hungry, ragged, but determined to see his father;
and it is a father that, moved with pity, runs to greet his son,
fall on his neck, and kiss him. There is no indication in the
story of how far the father has to run to find his son, how
rough the terrain is or how old he is, but there is no reason to
suppose that the father is not looking out anxiously for his son
during the whole time of his absence, that he does not have
good eyesight, that he does not run as fast as he can, and that
there are smooth paths on which to run. In short, there is no
reason to suppose the father does not exhaust himself running
out of his house to greet his son.
l'l Jhy
offense at his son, and so his son has never offended him, has
never given him offense. His relation to his son, his son's
relation to him, and the third thing that springs out of their
mutually recognized relations to one another, their mutual
love for one another, is all that matters to him.
"Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and
am no more worthy to be called thy son." The son then
makes his confession in preparation for his request. The son
begins to make his speech. But his father interrupts him, and
does not let him make his request that he be made as one of
the hired laborers. When he draws back from his embrace of
his son, and when he looks into his son's eyes with tears of
joy on his face, he hears his son call him "father" and he
hears him make his avowal of wrongdoing.
'"Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him, and put a
ring on his hand and shoes on his feet. And bring hither the
fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry. For this
do things not go according to the son's calculation?
my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is
V VWhy does not the father wait for his son to knock at the
found.' And they began to be merry." In his joy the father
orders that the best robe, presumably his own, be brought for
door of the house and make his request as his son had
thought he would? Because the son does not know his father,
i.e., he does not know that his power to break off his relation
to his father has\ an uncrossable limit, a limit which is deter-
mined by his father's love for him. Although he may on his
side un-son himself and un-father his father, he cannot, by
this action, make his father do to him the very same thing
that he has done to his father. He cannot make his father
un-father himself and un-son him. If the father does not take
offense at his son for having taken offense at him-that is, if
the father does not condemn his son, although his son has
condemned him-he may remain the father of a son and his
son may remain the son of a father. The son does not have
the power to make his father condemn him if his father does
not himself will to condemn him.
And the father does not will to condemn him. The father,
seeing his son returning openly to his home after all these
months in his wasted condition, understands that his son has
determined to meet him and acknowledge his wrongdoing.
He understands that his son will avow that he has broken the
relation that he had to his father; he understands that his son
regrets the hurt he did to his father when he condemned him.
He understands that his son knows that his father has neVer
4
him; he has a ring, symbol of union, put on his finger; and
he orders the fatted calf, perhaps prepared every year for just
this moment, killed in honor of his homecoming. It is meet
to do this. His son was dead, and is now alive. Since the son
was always in some sense alive, what the father means is that
his son is now again alive as his son when before he was dead
as a son. His son's un-sonning of himself ari'd his un-fathering
of his father has been undone. From his son has soared again
the relation to a father. The destruction of the relation has
itself been destroyed. Father and son once again, or perhaps
for the first time, can meet one another in the freedom of the
mutually recognized love relationship. In his father's recognition of him as his son the son can recognize himself as a son
and his father as a father. In his son's recognition of him as
his father the father on the other hand can recognize himself
as a father and his son .as a son.
When the father says that his son was lost, and is found, he
means the same thing. His son was lost as son. His father
looked, but could not find him, i.e., his son was not there,
next to him, in his proper place, next to his heart. He was
lost, not so much in the sense that his father did not know
where he was, as in the sense that the son himself did not
�July, 1978
know where he was. And when the father says his son is
found, he means, likewise, not so much that the father now
knows where his son is, as that the son now knows where he
is; that his being is to be near his father as son; that he can say
"I am found."
The son says nothing more during the story. I think we
have to assume from his silence that he concurs in his father's
judgment-at least for awhile. He was dead, and now he is
alive. He was lost, and now he is found.
So much, then, for the story. Where is the forgiveness?
When does it happen? How does it happen?
T et me approach these questions by first making some re-
.L marks about the word "forgive." The word "forgive" is
one of the class of English words whose prefix, the prefix
"for-," has the effect of undoing what the root words posit.
Thus the "for-" in "forget" undoes what "get" posits. The
"for-" in "forbid" removes what "bid" posits. Similarily, the
"for-" in "forgo" and "forswear" deny what "go" and "swear"
assert. To "for-give" is thus to "un-give" or "de-give," i.e., to
take away. Confirmation that to forgive means to take away
comes from an examination of the other expressions that are
used to express forgiveness in English. There are three of
them at least. They are "pardon," "remission," and, of
course, "taking away," itself. Of these, the first, "pardon," is
evidently nothing but an English adoption of the French
"pardon." But "pardonner" is the French word for forgive.
And the parts of pardon "pare" and "donner" exactly reflect
the English "for-" and "give." The English "for-" is the very
same word as the French "par-" and "give" is "donner." (The
German word for "forgive," "ver-geben" is also composed of
the two same elements, "for-"-"ver", and "give""geben.") The second English word, ''remission," is based on
the Latin "remittere." And this word means to send back, and
so also to take away.
But if to forgive is to take away, what is it that the forgiver
takes away? The evident answer is "sin," "trespass," or "debt."
Although we speak often of forgiving somebody, the more
customary usage always makes the "somebody" forgiven the
indirect object of the action of forgiving rather than the direct
object. The direct object of the action is always either "sin,"
"trespass," or "death." "Forgive us our trespasses" is probably
the most common expression. Sin is always forgiven, or taken
away from, someone.
But if forgiveness implies the presence of sin, to see where
there is forgiveness in the story of the prodigal son, we first
have to see what sin the prodigal has in him when he is with
the pigs and that has been taken away by the time he gets to
the feasting. And then we have to see how this sin is taken
away. What does the son have when he is with the pigs that
can be called "sin" and that can be taken away?
here
senses that the
"sin"
of
three are
But
three,
T whichaare several very prominent. word of thesecan have,only
two have sense that allows a meaning of something that can
be taken away quickly. The first has to do with a human act,
a deed, a temporal phenomenon, such as a killing, a slander-
ing, or a thinking evil of someone. Such a thing has a temporal beginning, middle, and end. It is a being of time. It is
finished when the time of its performance is over. There is
nothing that remains behind to be taken away. The very act
carries with it its own destruction. The act of sin disappears in
the first moment that succeeds the last moment of sinning.
True, the memory of it remains, but that is not itself a sin. It
is his memory of his having committed acts of this sort, acts
of sin, that leads the prodigal son to say, "I have
sinned ... .''Clearly, however, those acts are no longer with
him. They have ceased to be. They are not forgiven him by
his father because they were forgiven by the first instant of
non-sinning.
A second sense of the word "sin" has to do with the internal dispositions that lead to a sin in the sense mentioned
above. This is a sense of the word "sin" that is used in the
phrase "seven deadly sins." It is sin in the first sense, the
sense of acts of sin, that finds its appropriate response in the
circles of hell imagined by Dante in his Inferno, but it is sin
in the sense of a disposition, or a vice, or habit, for example,
anger, greed, envy, lust, that is purged on the various terraces
of Mount Purgatory. Here too, although perhaps rrot so
clearly, we must say that the son's sins have not been forgiven
by his father by the time he gets home. But this is for a totally
different and even opposite reason from the other. It is because such dispositions are not readily or instantaneously
made to disappear.
A third sense of the word "sin" is a sense of the word in·
which it means the condition that results from an act of sin,
the condition of guilt. This condition is an abiding sense of
dislocation, discomfort, anguish, or anxiety. The "Ennui" of
which Beaudelaire speaks in his preface to the reader, the
"Vrai rongeur" of Valery's Cimetiere Marin, and the disorientation and sense of alienation of modern times, all have
something to do with it. Within it lies the fear of death, the
terror of the abyss. Unrepentant guilt leads to fear of discovery, to lying, and to the destruction of what threatens to
expose it. Repentant guilt leads to a desire for confession and
punishment, to a desire to place all worth and justice in the
one whom the sinner has offended, to the acknowledgement
of deserving condemnation, and to a fear of its being immi-
5
�The College
that in his father's eyes he has only merits and that those
merits are his only because his father loves him.
What is it then to forgive sin? It is to remove from the one
forgiven his assurance of condemnation· by the one who forgives him.
ll. Je
nent. The word "sin" is used to mean guilt in the phrase
"original sin" and "sin came into the world." Sin in this
sense, i.e., guilt, can be taken away if the fear of death can be
replaced by the hope of life: if the source of condemnation
turns out not to condemn at all.
he son is in the condition of repentant guilt as he returns
that his
his
He is quite
T home.presumptuous:sureattempt tofather will athink thatrelaan
count on broken
return is
tionship, and so he determines to proclaim right away that he
renounces any claim to special treatment as a son. He determines to put himself in the position of a suppliant, not of a
claimant. He intends to ask only for the position of a servant,
not for the status of a son. He only wants the opportunity to
serve out a life in penitential exile from his just father. He
thinks his father may refuse his request, and he knows that he
cannot contest such a refusal.
He is convinced that his demerits make him worthy, at
most, of being a hired servant of his father for the rest of his
life and if need be, of returning to death in the land of
famine. The demands of justice are clear to him. Only something he thinks is wholly different, mercy, can save him.
He is not so convinced of the power of his guilt, however,
as to make his forgiveness impossible. We will see later what
would happen were he to dwell on his worthlessness and so
refuse to accept the robe, the ring, the shoes, the fatted calf,
and the merrymaking because they are not what he deserves.
It is clear, then, that the son, as he returns, is in sin, and
that this sin is his guilt, his fear of death based on his conviction of his deserts. He does not know that he deserves absolutely nothing in his own name from his father, not even a
life of penance.
How can the father forgive his son this sin? How can he
take away this ignorance from his son? How can he make his
son know that he does not deserve bad things from his father?
He can do so, arid he does do so, by running down to embrace his son and, embracing him, telling him that he deserves only good things from his father. The father's exhausted and tender grasp of his penitent son, and his gifts to
him, rid the son of his ignorance about what he deserves in
fact from his father. The father's gesture reveals to his son
6
can now try to answer some of the questions which
V V were raised earlier. Can sin be forgiven if the one who is
to be forgiven does not first ask for forgiveness? Yes. The
prodigal son never asks for forgiveness. All that is necessary in
him is repentance and a willingness to face the possibility that
he is in ignorance about the power of his wrongdoing to prevent his being loved by his father. This willingness constitutes
in him the capacity to have his sin forgiven.
Does forgiveness differ from forgetting? Yes. The two are
almost direct opposites: forgiveness is a taking out of ignorance; forgetting is a plunging into it. Can one forgive oneself?
No. Forgiveness presupposes an ignorance that wrongdoing
cannot compel condemnation. But only another's telling a
penitent that he does not condemn him can remove that ignorance from him. For a penitent cannot in good conscience
tell himself that he does not deserve to suffer.
Is it possible to forgive someone who is not repentant? No.
Why? Because such a one is in ignorance not only about the
impotence of his wrongdoing to compel condemnation. He
is in ignorance about something prior to that. He thinks he
deserves to have something good in his own name. To see
how this is so, we must look at the story of the elder son.
Now his elder son was in the fields; and as he came
and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and
dancing. And he called one of the servants, and
asked what these things meant. And he said unto
him, "Thy brother is come; and thy father hath
killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him
safe and sound." And he was angry, and would not
go in: therefore came his father out, and entreated
him. And he answering said to his father, "Lo, these
many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at
any time thy commandment: and yet thou never
gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my
friends: But as soon as this thy son was come, which
hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast
killed for him the fatted calf." And he said unto
him, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I
have is thine. It was meet that we should make
merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead,
and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.
T et us look at this story carefully also: "Now his elder son
L was in the fields; and as he came and drew nigh to the
house, he heard music and dancing." It is the end of the day,
and the elder son is returning home. But he hears unusual
noises coming from the house.
"And he called one of the servants, and asked what these
things meant." Music an4 dancing! What does this rejoicing
mean? What can there be for his father to rejoice about? His
�July, 1978
father has been anxiousiy looking for that younger brother of
his all these months. Can he have come home? Can the
music and dancing be for that no-good wastrel? The elder son
is on his guard. He does not trust his father. Before he can
join in the celebration, he must judge whether the occasion
for it is fitting. He must find out what this is all about.
But be must do so without showing himself. For if his
younger brother has come home, he doesn't want to make a
scene in the house in front of all the servants and musicians.
And so he does not m.n to the house but stops nearby.
"And he said unto him, 'Thy brother is come; and thy
father hath killed the fatted calf, because he has received him
safe and sound."' The servant tells him that his brother has
indeed returned, and he tells him what his father has done in
his joy.
"And he was angry, and would not go in." The news confirmed the elder son's worst fears. Floods of resentment swirl
within him. He feels the burning constriction in his chest
that blocks out thought in a turmoil of rage and hate, and he
proceeds no further. No, no, no,-this is not for him, this
music and dancing. His father has done a terrible thing. It is
all wrong, all unjust. It is an abomination. It should not be.
His father has wronged him terribly". He has in no way given
him what he deserves. His father should never never welcome
in this way this brother of his who has used up so much of
the family fortune, and, even worse, used it up by spending it
on doing wrong! Here he has been working in the fields all
day long for years, helping his father, and such a reception
has never been given to him on his return home. But the
minute this no-good son of his father returns, his father kills a
fatted calf for him and orders music and dancing. No, no,
no. It is too much!
"Therefore came his father out." Perhaps a servant has told
the father about his son's angry reaction to the news. Perhaps
the father, waiting to tell him the news when he got home
from work, has been looking out for him, and, seeing him
stop on his way home, runs down to tell him. In any case,
once more, the father goes out to greet a son who has taken
offense at him.
"And entreated him." But the meeting with this son is very
different from the meeting with the younger son. The elder
son does not speak first. And the father does not fall on his
son's neck and kiss him; or if he does, the son draws baCk
from him in anger. When the father ran to greet the younger
son, the younger son was moving painfully but steadily to.:.
wards home. l-Ie spoke first, and his first word was "Father."
Now, however, the older son is standing still, scowling in
anger at this man whom he calls his father. The sullen silence moves his father to speak first and urge him to enter the
house. He implores his son to join him in the merrymaking.
But the son refuses.
"And he, answering, said to his father, 'Lo, these many
years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy
commandment; and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I
might make merry with my friends. But so soon as this thy
son was come which hath devoured thy living with harlot<;
thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.'"
'\'I Jhy does the son speak? He speaks to answer his father's
V V plea that he come into the house and make merry with
him. He speaks to justify his refusal to comply with his
father's request, to justify his remaining outside. He knows
that his staying outside hurts his father and is contrary to his
will; that it is, for him to dishonor his father. And he thinks
he must justify himself to his father. His justification is that
the hurt he inflicts on his father is a just punishment of his
father. His depriving his father of the joy his father would
take in his presence at the feast is rationalized by him into a
punishment; as a justifiably inflicted hurt. His father deserves
punishment because he is guilty of injustice toward him. His
father has wronged him by giving him less than he deserves.
His father has given "this thy son ... which hath devoured
thy living with harlots," "the fatted calf," whereas to him who
"served thee these many years neither transgressed ... at any
time thy commandment" he "never gave[st] . . . a kid." lf
justice is giving to each his due, the father is not giving his
sons their due. He is not just. The worse is getting the better.
The superior son is getting less from his father than the inferior son. Such a crime deserves punishment, and the elder
son is prepared to punish his father by staying out of his
father's party.
"Son ... " The father begins to speak and addresses the
elder brother as "son". He shows with that word that he still
considers him a son, and himself a father, although this same
son has condemned him as unjust-although he, too, like
his younger brother has un-fathered him and "un-sonned"
himself. The older son has done that because, by referring to
his brother, before his father's face, as "this your son," rather
than as "my brother," he has said that since the younger son
is not his brother, the father of that son is not his father.
"Thou art ever with me." This is as much as to say, "you
have all that you deserve as my son. You have all the comforts of the house and of a land where there is no famine.
You have also the opportunity to be near me, to know me,
and to learn from me, and you have had these all your life."
More importantly, these words mean "you are ever in my
thought and love. Your welfare is always on my mind." In
other words the father tells his son, "I have always been, and
still am, everything to you that a father should be."
7
�The College
The elder son now is in exactly the same position as his
brother once was. But he does not know it. He still thinks he
deserves something in his own name. He thinks he deserves
not to have a brother who has behaved as his younger brother
has behaved and that he deserves not to have a father who
treats his younger brother in this fashion. Can this sin of his
be also forgiven? Can the father remove the ignorance from
him as well as from his younger son? The parable does not
exactly say, but the context in which it is told suggests that he
cannot.
If the younger son had said in an outraged voice to his
father, condemning him, "Father, I have devoured thy living
with harlots, and you propose to have the fatted calf killed for
me on my return! What kind of justice is that! What kind of
father are you? And look! What have you done for my
brother? He has served you these many years, and he has
He then adds, "And all that I have is thine." Not only has
he given his son what his paternal relation requires: he has
gone far beyond his son's deserts by giving him prematurely
his share of the family property, as we saw earlier, and he
now reminds him of this. So much, then, for the verdict of
guilty on the charge of injustice because the elder son has
gotten less than he deserves. just the opposite is true. He has
gotten much more than he deserves. The father is not guilty.
\1: Jhy does the father speak, since he has been already
V V condemned by his son and is now suffering punishment?
To lighten the punishment? Only indirectly. Yes, of course
his son has hurt him, and he wants the elder son to join him
in the celebration. But this is not for his sake. It is for the
elder son's own sake. He speaks because his delight is in the
knowledge that his sons are in delight. He therefore speaks
not to be declared innocent before his son's justice but to give
him the chance, by considering his words, to withdraw his
charge against his father altogether. He wants to give the elder
son a chance to see that he is good and generous. He wants
him to stop taking offense at him and he wants him to begin
to take offense at himself for speaking this way so that he can
then forgive him.
"It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad."
The father meets the elder son's objection straight on. That
objection is that it is not proper to celebrate the return home
of a worthless spendthrift and sinner. His father contradicts
him. He says that it is meet to do that. Why?
"This thy brother was dead, and is alive again. And was
lost, and is found." The elder brother has condemned his
younger brother just as he has condemned his father. But his
father points to his continued love of his younger son. The
younger son has remained the son of his father even in his
worse excesses. Because of this the same son can be at one
time dead and then alive, lost and then found. The elder son
does not know the love that the father has always had for the
younger son. He does not know his father's burning desire
that the younger son be with him always-just as the older
son is-for the sake of the son's own happiness. It is meet to
make merry, says the father, because now the younger son
can be where the elder son has been all along.
8
never transgressed a single commandment. But have you ever
given him so much as a kid, that he might make merry with
his friends? A fine father you are!" If the younger son had
spoken this way, he could not have been forgiven by his
father. He would have refused his embrace and refused the
gifts his father offered to give him as unjust.
But the younger son does not act and speak this way. Conceptions of the things he deserves to have in his own name,
even though they be bad things, are not at the foundation of
his life. But it is not clear that this is the elder brother's case.
The elder brother's life may well be centered on conceptions
of what he deserves to have because of his own innate justice.
The parable stops at the father's last words to him, and it may
be that he will finally enter the house. But it looks more as if
because of the strength of his conviction of his own merits he
will not repent and so will continue to be ignorant of the
nonexistence of his merits. Hence his father will probably
also not be able to reveal himself to him as one who gives
him everything and cares nothing about his wrongdoing.
it possible to
someone who is not repentant?
as the
forgive someone is to
I Why? Because forgiveparable tells, tobeen taken at him.No.
reveal to him that offense has never
by
s
another from whom he has everything that he deserves. But if
someone is not repentant, he still thinks he deserves to have
things in his own right.
Finally, we must ask who can forgive? Only he who, loving
deeply, very, very deeply, is willing to drink the cup of death
in utter desolation in order by revealing the depth of that love
to show the ones he loves that he never has condemned and
does not now and never will condemn them.
�July, 1978
Freud's "Dora"
by Alan Dorlman
I shall tonight examine the evidence for Sigmund Freud's
theory of psychoanalysis. More exactly, I shall examine the
evidence as it appears in one of his case histories and consider
his theory as it appears in one domain, that of the
psychoneuroses.
All who read Freud's General Introduction to
Psychoanalysis must be impressed by his claim that his
theories derive from his own extensive observation and treatment of psychoanalytic patients, an experience which is inaccessible to his critics, and to the ordinary reader. A
psychoanalysis is a private affair, which cannot be observed by
the outsider, nor even adequately described to him. To judge
fairly of his theories we must trust Freud, or else ourselves
become analysts or analytic patients.
Nevertheless, since Freud did write some, although not
many, detailed case histories, he does offer us some opportunity to stand on his own ground. I believe it can aid our
judgement of psychoanalysis, to study these case histories.
The one I have selected tonight is entitled "A Fragment of
an Analysis of Hysteria". It is a fragment because the
patient-named "Dora" -broke off her analysis abruptly at
the end of but three months. It is the first of Freud's
psychoanalytic case histories, and the most complete. It was
written at the turn of the century, and there is reason to think
Freud regarded it-along with his most important work, The
Interpretation of Dreams-as marking the beginning of a new
era of mankind, in which man would finally understand himself scientifically, and guide his course by that science. Of the
Fragment itself, Freud wrote, in a letter to a friend: " ... it is
the subtlest thing I have so far written, and will put people off
even more than usual. " 1
Our limitations will be severe. We will be unable, for example, to explore in depth the issue of the unconscious. We
will be limited to telling a psychoanalytic story written when
psychoanalysis was young and most simple. We will be able,
This is the text of a lecture given in Annapolis on 20 May 1977, and in Santa
Fe on 3 March 1978. Mr. Dorfm"an graduated from St. John's in 1963 and
joined the faculty in 1974, after further studies at the Johns Hopkins University and teaching in the Math Engineering Division of Catonsville Community College.
in fact, to tell only part of that story, leaving out much that
Freud would consider important.
The lecture divides itself into two parts, namely ( 1) The
Story of Dora and (2) My reflections on that story. There will
also be a brief epilogue.
Part I. The Story of Dora
The story concerns a young woman, "Dora", turned 18,
suffering from a variety of hysterical symptoms, which have
gotten noticeably worse the last two years. She has become
isolated socially, complains life is meaningless, and has even
threatened suicide.
Others, who, besides of course Freud himself, play a role
in Dora's life are:
Dora's Father, who brings Dora to Freud, and in
Freud's words, hands her over
Herr K, a friend of Dora's father, and, m earlier
days, a frequent companion of Dora
Frau K, Herr "K's wife, and Dora's father's mistress
A nameless governess of the K's
A nameless young man, who sends Dora a Christmas
present
Dora's mother. Freud regards her as suffering from
"housewife's psychosis", and being somewhat of a
pest, but of little consequence. As a rule, mothers
have but a small role in Freud's case histories.
We are first introduced to Dora by her father, who describes to Freud what he thinks the problem is, while she, I
assume, is sitting out in the waiting room.
Two years ago, he says, when Dora was 16, she was supposed to spend the summer with the K's in a house they had
in the lake region. He had accompanied her there, but when,
9
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several days later, he was about to depart, she insisted on
leaving with him, and wouldn't explain why.
Only some weeks later did Dora tell her mother that Herr
K had tried to seduce her, as the two of them were walking by
one of the lakes. He had written Herr K at once demanding
an explanation. Herr K claimed to know· nothing of any such
incident. Frau K had informed her husband that Dora had
lately taken to reading Mantegazza' s Physiology of Love, and
other such stuff. The scene she described was no doubt the
product of a teeming imagination. Since then the K's and
Dora had not spoken to each other.
"'I have no doubt,' continued her father, 'that this incident is responsible for Dora's depression, and irritability, and
suicidal ideas.' "
Now Dora is always bothering him to break off relations
with Frau K, but he can't do this. It is an honourable' relationship, and he can't disturb it for the sake of Dora's phantasies. Can Freud do something?
Dora's analysis begins, and she soon tells Freud of another,
earlier, incident that was, he says, "even better calculated to
act as a sexual trauma." She was 14.
Herr K had arranged for them to be alone in his shop, had
closed the shutters, and then had passionately kissed her. She
had felt disgust, and, without saying a word, run out of the
shop. Neither she nor Herr K mentioned the incident again,
to each other, or to anyone else, except now, Dora to Freud.
Freud notes the disgust Dora felt, the lack of pleasure at a
sexual approach. He says, "I should without question consider a person hysterical in whom an occasion for sexual excitement elicited feelings that were preponderantly or exclusively unpleasurable.... " A healthy girl, in Freud's view,
would have responded genitally, and not in her alimentary
tract, where Freud locates disgust. The disgust could not have
been due to the person of Herr K, whom Freud had met, and
found "of prepossessing appearance". Freud, in a lengthy
theoretical aside, elaborates his view of the roundabout sexual
and somatic mechanism of Dora's disgust.
We note, that besides Dora's disgust, there was also her
pervasive silence. She runs from K wordlessly. Afterwards she
neither complains to him, nor confides in anyone else. We
are intrigued to know what Dora's silence means. What was
she feeling? And we wonder if her absence of speech concerning such an event can be without consequence. Freud does
not pursue these questions.
Curiously enough, one of Dora's symptoms is aphonia, a
loss of voice which can last for weeks. This symptom should
be sharply distinguished from the simple act of not talking.
There is a difference between not being able to bring forth
sounds, .and not attempting, or wanting, to speak.
As the analysis proceeds, Freud surmises two things:
( l) Dora is in love with Herr K, and she matters to
him, and
(2) the incident at the lake actually occurred.
Let me elaborate.
After the attempt behind the shutters, K began to woo
Dora, sending her numerous presents, giving her flowers
every day for a year, whenever he was in town. These, of
!0
course, young Dora accepted, as well as his frequent company. Her parents, who to be sure knew nothing of the kiss,
saw nothing strange in this married man's behavior.
Freud interprets Dora's aphonia in terms of a love on her
part for Herr K. He used to go away on business for short
periods of 3-6 weeks. Dora's loss of voice, Freud asks, how
long did it last? 3-6 weeks. Now Dora's sharp eyes had noted
how Frau K would get sick, just when Herr K returned home,
revealing in this way her lack of conjugal affection. Was not
Dora's case just the opposite: she would be ill just when Herr
K was away: it was as if she said, now there is no one left
worth talking to.
Dora, however, adamantly denies that there is anything between Herr K and herself. Freud has a hard time getting her
to talk about him. She is much more interested in complaining about her father, whom she accuses of carrying on a relationship with Frau K, the true nature of which he disguises.
She declares he is hypocritical, dishonest, and interested only
in his own pleasure. In her most bitter moments, she complains that he had formerly handed her over to Herr K as a
kind of barter for Frau K.
Although Freud thinks her charges against her father have
foundation, he notes that these complaints of Dora's did not
arise till after the lake incident. Prior to that moment Dora
did little to discourage her father's affair, and, in fact, tacitly
encouraged it.
- -What happened at the lake?
Dora had been at the K's resort home for several days. One
morning, Dora and Herr K went for a trip together to one of
the more distant lakes. In the midst of a walk, they stopped
and Herr K lit up cigarettes for Dora and himself. He began a
long speech, the intent of which soon became clear. He said,
"You know I get nothing from my wife .... "This is the only
sentence Dora actually remembers. But it was enough. Dora
slapped Herr K and ran off.
On the return home, apparently by steamer, K again approached Dora, pleaded for forgiveness, and asked for secrecy. Dora turned away, and did not reply.
Later, in the afternoon, Dora was in her room napping,
when she woke to find Herr K at her bedside. She asked him
what he was doing there; he left, but not before replying that
it was his house, and he could go where he pleased.
Dora got a key from Frau K and locked the bedroom door
that night, fearing an intrusion. Sometime the next day, she
realized the key was missing, and suspected Herr K of taking
it.
She left the K's three days later, with her father, and some
time afterward told her mother of K's proposal.
Freud tl1inks that, despite the offense, Dora still loves Herr
K, but out of pride and other motives, she denies the very
existence of any ~uch inclination to Herr K. Only a powerful
inner force could bury it so effectively. Dora, thinks Freud,
has raised from the depths a passion for her father, active in
childhood, but dormant since, and now calls on it, as it were,
as a substitute for, and protection against, her feelings for
Herr K. She flees a real affair with Herr K, by indulging in
unconscious phantasies of relations with her father. This re-
�July, 1978
newal and exaggeration of her old love for her father accounts
for her jealous intrusiveness in his affair with Frau K.
It is interesting to note here that the psychological movement, as Freud describes it, is not from father to Herr K, as
we might expect, but from Herr K to father. Herr K is not
here viewed as a father substitute; rather her father is a Herr K
substitute. The movement is from the later to the earlier relationship.
All this is soon confirmed by a dream. Here it is: "A house
was on fire. My father was standing beside my bed and woke
me up. I dressed myself quickly. Mother wanted to stop and
save her jewel case, but Father said: 'I refuse to let myself and
my two children be burnt for the sake of your jewel case.' We
hurried downstairs, and as soon as I was outside I woke up."
The dream, it turns out, is a recurring dream. Dora recalls
having dreamt it at the lake, and, as it seems, on those very
nights after K had taken the key from her door. The dream,
Freud suggests, represents a resolution to get out of the house
in which she feels herself endangered. In the dream, her
father replaces the dangerous Herr K, by her bedside, and
leads her to safety. And, of course, in actuality, she does take
advantage of her father's leaving, a few days later, to leave
herself.
Freud continues at length his analysis of the dream, focussing on the sexual inclinations and worries of Dora as a child.
The image of her father beside her bed in the dream, seems
to reflect the distant memory of when he would wake her in
the night to prevent a bedwetting incident.
Thus, in repressing her desire for Herr K, Dora retreats to
her father, who stood by her, lovingly and protectingly, when
she was a child.
But Freud asks himself: "If Dora loved Herr K, what was
the reason for her refusing him in the scene by the lake? Or at
any rate, why did her refusal take such a brutal form?"
The analysis goes on. Dora has a second dream, in which
her father is dead, and she is a wanderer. We shall not go
into it in detail. Suffice it to make the following assertions:
( 1) The dream reflects a revenge phantasy against her
father. Freud is emphatic concerning Dora's
"morbid deSire for revenge" against her father,
and K, and, as we shall see, against Freud as
well.
(2) Dora associates a scene in the dream to a certain
young man, who has shown interest in Dora,
and has recently sent her a Christmas present.
Freud thinks he may have matrimonial interests.
(3) Some nine months after the lake incident, Dora
had serious stomach troubles, which the doctors
had uncertainly diagnosed as appendicitis. She
had also a difficulty in her leg, so that she had to
drag her foot, a fact the dream recalls. Freud
suggests that this difficulty with walking was Dora's symptomatic way of saying, she'd taken a
false step. In her unconscious phantasy, she had
succumbed to Herr K at the lake, and nine
months later, manifested her "pregnancy". Dora
does not object, as she usually does, to Freud's
suggestion, and he takes her silence for assent.
The last day of the year comes and Dora begins her session
by saying, "Do you know that I am here for the last time
today?" and Freud replies, "How can I know, as you have
said nothing to me about it." Dora indicates she had decided
to put up with the treatment until the New Year. Freud says:
"You know that you are free to stop treatment at any time.
But for today we will go on with our work. When did you
come to this decision?"
One notes that if Freud is pained at Dora's surprise announcement, he does not show it. We should also note the
form his question takes. Most of us, I think, would have
asked what made her come to that decision, but Freud asks
when.
Dora replies, "A fortnight ago, I think."
Freud remarks, "That sounds just like a maidservant or
governess-a fortnight's warning."
Amazingly, this comment touches off the denouement of
Dora's story. She responds, "There was a governess who gave
warning with the K's, when I was on my visit to them that
time at ... the lake." Freud: "Really. You have never told
me about her. Tell me."
Dora tells the tale: this governess and Herr K had been- on
strange terms. "She never said good morning to him, never
answered his remarks ... and in short treated him like thin
air." Not long before the lake incident the governess had confided in Dora: Herr K had seduced her. He had approached
her-the governess-saying things like, "I get nothing from
my wife".
These words, which t11e governess reports to Dora, were, of
course, the very ones K later used, in addressing Dora herself.
Dora must have been shocked and jealous, when he made
the same speech to her, which he had made to this other
woman. Freud's earlier question, why Dora had behaved so
bruta1ly to Herr K, seems answered.
Dora completes the governess's tale: After a while, Herr K
had grown tired of her, and they had entered into the silent
war to which Dora had been witness. Even so, the governess
entertained hopes that Herr K would seek a divorce, and
marry her. When this didn't happen, she finally gave notice.
Freud concludes that in telling the governess's story; Dora
is telling her own. After giving K a decent interval to approach her again (two weeks in fact), she had told her parent'
of K's attempt with her in the hope of indirectly inducing K
to seek her out. In this way, Freud suggests, her longing for
him would have been appeased. To F'reud's surprise, Dora
actually nods assent.
Freud tells Dora the sih1ation as he sees it. There had in
fact been talk between the K's of divorce. It's not impossible
that K' s speech at the lake was meant to be a proposal, not a
mere proposition. Freud points out to her that she had not let
Herr K finish his Speech, and so can't be sure what he meant
to say to her. An arrangement, whereby she would marry K,
and Frau K would go to her father, would not after all, Freud
tells her, have been so impracticable. Had she gotten preg-
11
�The College
nant, it would have been the only way out, satisfactory to all
concerned. (Freud seems here to have forgotten the mother.)
This is why she, Dora, so regretted the actual event, and
emended it in the phantasy which manifested itself in the
appendicitis. Dora must have been very upset, when at Frau
K's instigation, Herr K had not only not come to her, but had
actually denied her story. Freud reminds Dora that nothing
makes her so angry as its being thought she merely fancied
the scene by the lake. She had thought K's proposal was serious, and that he would not leave off, until he had married
her.
Freud tells the reader: "Dora had listened to me without
any of her usual contradictions. She seemed to be moved; she
said good-bye to me very warmly, with the heartiest wishes for
the New Year, and-came no more."
Part
II. Reflections
It would be hard to overestimate the importance of
symptoms, for Sigmund Freud. It is the symptoms that reveal
a person as neurotic, i.e., as ill, and the symptoms which, by
tying up his life's energies, incapacitate him for work and
love. Freud extended the idea of symptom well beyond its
ordinary usage, to include symptomatic actions and the elements of dreams. His genius lay in determining the meaning
of these symptoms, that is, of what, in the patient's unconscious thoughts a.nd feelings, they were symptomatic.
Correlative with this emphasis on symptom and meaning
of symptom is a depreciation of the idea of character. Freud
begins one of his essays as follows: "When the physician is
carrying out psychoanalytic treatment of a neurotic, his interest is by no means primarily directed to the patient's character. He is far more desirous to know what the symptoms signify, what instinctual impulses lurk behind them .... " 2 The
notion of character as something that leads us to act despite
influences and temptations, is missing in Freud's work, or
barely adumbrated. The word "habit" occurs almost nowhere
in his writings. When character is talked of, it is generally as
a collection of character traits, that is, symptom-like formations, the residues of early experiences.
The emphasis on and widening of the idea of symptom,
and the banishment of character, have an important corollary. Psychoanalytic tl1erapy aims solely at the removal-the
permanent removal, to be sure-of symptoms. There is .no
notion, in Freud, except perhaps late and grudging, of a
character analysis, that is, of an attempt to turn a person
about from one mode of life to another. All there is, is the
removal of symptoms, and the shifting of mental contents.
Interestingly, however, symptomology is not the whole
story of neurosis for Freud. At one point in Dora's analysis,
Freud tells Dora that the whole purpose of her illness is to get
her father to break off with Frau K. He goes on to say: "I felt
quite convinced that she would recover at once if only her
father were to tell her he had sacrificed Frau K, for the sake
of her health."
12
So a neurosis is here regarded, not just as a collection of
symptoms, but as a single thing, with an aim, that can be
overturned at a single blow, under the right circumstances.
There is a purpose, a motive, for being ill.
Freud emphasizes the distinction between the motives of
illness and the material-the thoughts and wishes out of
which symptoms are formed. This distinction is not easy to
understand. What is the difference between the wishes from
which particular symptoms spring, and the motives that actuate a neurosis as a whole? I think what Freud means is that
the wishes of a neurotic give rise to fantastic, that is, imaginary, satisfactions, that are embodied in the symptoms. The
motives, by contrast, are real, in the sense that the neurotic
is-through his neurosis-really trying to accomplish something. Dora,_ e.g., is, according to Freud, trying to separate
her father and Frau K, not only in her phantasy, but in actual
fact.
Not every neurosis seeks to manipulate the environment in
this way. Sometimes the motives are, according to Freud,
"purely internal-such as a desire for self-punishment." At
the very least, "falling ill involves a saving of psychical effort;
it emerges as ... the most convenient solution when there is
a mental conflict (we speak of a 'flight into illness') .... "
This is exemplified in Dora's case, by her flight-both literal
and figurative-from Herr K, and her turning to fanciful, but
unconscious, satisfactions with her father.
In this regard, Freud, reflecting on the case, raises the
question: what would have been Dora's reaction, had Herr K
(informed that Dora's "no" was not wholehearted) persisted in
his attentions. The result, Freud says, might have been the
total overthrow of her defenses, "a triumph of the girl's affection for him over all her internal difficulties." But she might
equally well have taken it as an opporhmity for revenge, and
rejected him again. The repression of her tender feelings for
him could have been lifted, or it could have been reinforced.
One can't tell which.
Freud elab~rates: "Incapacity for meeting a real erotic demand is one of the most essential features of neurosis.
Neurotics are dominated by the opposition between reality
and phantasy." What they long for in phantasy, they will flee
from, if it presents itself in reality. Neurosis is the flight from
reality into unconscious phantasy.
We should emphasize several things:
(1) Freud is saying a neurosis need not wait for
psychoanalysis to be cured. There are more straightforward
possibilities. In Dora's case, her father, certainly, and Herr K,
possibly, could have acted in such a way as to take away Dora's illness. We wonder, though, whether there was anything
Dora herself could have done.
(2) In his willingness to envisage Dora and Herr K together,
Freud seems strangely blind to Herr K's moral failings, and
his generally poor relations with women. Is it not at least
possible that a relationship with K would have worsened
things for Dora?
(3) When Freud says neurosis is the flight from reality into
unconscious phantasy, he seems to define neurosis, and, by
implication, distinguish it sharply from normality. However,
�July, 1978
he avoids such a definition, and, later, in, e.g., the General
Introduction, explicitly maintains the lack of a theoretical distinction between neurosis and normality. 3 As an important
consequence, the theory of psychoanalysis in his view applies
to all men, not just to those who are clearly neurotic.
(4) That from which and to which Dora flees is the sexual,
retreating from her lust for Herr K, to her lust for her father.
Freud says: "Sexuality ... provides the motive power for
every single symptom, and for every single manifestation of a
symptom." And again he says: " ... I can only repeat over
and over again-for I never find it otherwise-that sexuality
is the key to the problem of the psychoneuroses .... "
In a 1908 essay considering the question why modern man
is so much more nervous that his predecessors, Freud allows
some weight to factors suggested by others: discoveries and
inventions that bridge time and space, increasing competition, hurry and agitation, participation in political life, the
stimulation of modern literature, and so on, but he concludes
"the injurious influence of culture reduces itself in all essentials to the undue suppression of the sexual life in civilized
peoples .... " 4
The case of Dora seems to confirm this. The tale seems to
be, in overwhelming measure, the tally of her sexual inclinations and difficulties. Although not all of Freud's interpretations strike us, nor, I imagine, Dora herself, with equal cogency, still, the impression of the importance and relevance
of sexuality is inescapable.
On the other hand, reading the story, we also gain the
impression that Freud has a particular orientation, and is on
the lookout for the sexual. The possibility arises that there arc
other factors, important in neurosis, which Freud overlooks.
One of the aspects of Dora which Freud the theoretician
ignores, even as Freud the storyteller reveals it, is Dora's silence. The fact of her non-speech is striking: it is present during, and after, the kiss when she is 14, and in the crucial
incident at the lake, and during her analysis, especially at the
end, when she waits till the last hour to let Freud know her
plans. Dora, in fact, has the habit of not speaking on crucial
occaswns.
Now it is curious that Freud does not attend very much to
Dora's silence. For, in the first place, psychoanalysis is the
"talking cure"; speech is the tool of Freud's trade. We might
expect to find something commensurate and opposite in the
condition it treats. In the second place, words have a curious
and perhaps irriportant role, as it happens, in Freud's psychology. 5 It is they which allow for the existence in us of that
which is distinct from the primal psyche, from the unconscious. In a way hard to understand words give tone and quality to the purely quantitative charges and excitations of the
unconscious mind. We should note, though, that there is no
good account in Freud, of speech, as opposed to words, or, as
he sometimes calls them, word objects.
In the third place, the symptoms themselves "speak", as
Freud puts it, and can even enter into the dialogue, during
therapy. Did not Dora's aphonia tell Freud of her love for
Herr K? We would be curious to know the connection between Dora's deliberate not speaking on certain occasions,
and her occasional helpless voicelessness, lasting for weeks.
It may not be unimportant, therefore, to reconsider Dora's
story, especially the crucial lake incident, from the viewpoint
of her silence.
To begin with, I think we should assume that Dora was a
fairly isolated young person. Her parents, certainly, do not
have the proper concern for her. There seems to be no one to
whom she feels able or willing to confide important things
about herself. It's a lonely and loveless existence.
Now Herr K kisses her when she is 14. He and Dora establish a silent pact of silence on the episode, and then, this
weak man, ignored by his wife, begins to pay court to Dora.
He brings her gifts and woos her with flowers, beneath her
parents' unseeing eyes, for two years.
What does Dora feel for him? We do not, and cannot,
know precisely. This much seems clear: he means a great deal
to her, and he is the principal and perhaps only buffer against
her isolation. It is likely, too, in a ripening young woman that
her sexual feelings are stirred up, with all the uneasiness that
entails, and that her vanity is tickled. In addition, he is a
friend of her father, and she must feel towards him, what a
child feels towards grownups: he is one of the revered them,
someone slightly fearful.
Now K's awkward proposal at the lake, whatever its immediate sexual intent, could have the effect of clarifying Dora's posture towards him, and his towards her. K may even
have that intc::ntion, in part; he is, in effect, asking Dora to
drop her childlike and passive role, and tell him where he
stands in her eyes. It is important to keep in mind that he
does not know about Dora's knowledge of his affair with the
governess.
Dora cannot be certain what direction the relation will
take, if she speaks, nor can we. If she had spoken-! mean
spoken plainly from her heart-it is most likely that at that
moment her first expressions would have been colored by an
anxious and jealous rage. Herr K is insulting her; he is trying
to seduce her with the very words he used on someone else.
To have expressed her wrath and the cause of her wrath
would have marked the moment as a turning point: this
couple would have had to come clean with each other. Their
relationship could end, or it could clarify itself into some
form of friendship, or into something else. It is impossible it
would stay the same; for Dora, by expressing her wrath directly, would have established her young self as Herr K's
equal, a being of moral judgement and responsibility. Her
words would have stung Herr K much more sharply than her
slap. But at least he would then have known the charge, and
would have had the opportunity to explain, and to show himself in either a better or a worse light.
Dora does not speak, and by running away, denies Herr K
speech as well. Not speaking at this moment becomes decisive for Dora's life, for her relationship to Herr K, and for her
neurotic state of soul. By not truly responding to him-by
acting out some Victorian pantomime~ Dora loses all.
13
�The College
She also keeps all. The relation never has a spoken ending,
and, in her secret imagination, can continue forever. Her
feelings for Herr K were never acknowledged to him; she can
be safe in the thought there was really nothing between them.
She can derive the sweet pleasure of the vengeance of denial,
at the same time that she denies that anything was ever at
stake. She maintains her childish innocence, and her womanly pride. It all remains confused, conflicting, and murky,
and Dora soon finds herself in that comfortable and agonizing
state of isolation called neurosis.
We now have two stories of Dora, centering on the lake
incident, Freud's, Which describes Dora as a woman in conflict, and in which her sexuality plays the key role, and
another, in which her isolation and her silence predominate.
The impulse to reduce the second story to the first is '!>trong;
to see, for example, Dora's silence as the manifestation of
some, as yet unknown, sexual inhibition from childhood. But
would it not be equally possible to see the first story in terms
of the second? Would Dora's sexuality have been so important in her life had she had a decent grounding in the human
sphere of speech?
Moreover, it would seem better to take Dora's speechlessness on its own terms, at least at first, and possibly always.
We have, by implication, characterized it, as a way of gaining
very great satisfactions, with a minimum of effort, or responsibility. Dora can, through it, stay passive, and confused. At
the same time, she gets the bitter satisfaction of punishing K,
and a sense of being righteous. But that is a false sense, since
she treats K unfairly, for she does not give him a fair trial.
Her non-speech is a lying non-speech, for it is she who, before K, denies that anything happened at the lake.
But what about psychoanalytic therapy? Is not its effectiveness the warrant of the strict truth of Freud's hypotheses? Let
us assume for a moment that effectiveness. In what way must
that therapy be understood, to be taken as confirming Freud's
theories?
Freud says (in the General Introduction): "The solving of
[the patient's] conflicts ... succeeds only when what he is
told to look for in himself corresponds with what actually does
exist in him. Anything that has been inferred wrongly by the
physician will disappear in the course of analysis ... and be
replaced by something more correct. " 6 The words of the
physician must correspond exactly to what lies buried in the
patient's unconscious. The patient is cured when he finds in
himself what the physician has proposed. Only the literal
truth has any effect, and a cure is a vindication of that truth.
But ~ince when have people been so moved by an exclusive
use of the literal truth? Must not the story of herself that
Freud gives Dora contain the seeds, at least, of an
encouragement to be different from what she was? Let us examine the therapeutic advantage of Freud's vision of Dora,
from this viewpoint.
I think Freud's account and his approach can help Dora in
several ways: first, it makes clear to her that something was at
stake, that she did, like an idiot, give up a great deal, with
little recompense. Second, it gives her a story of herself,
14
which, although not flattering or precise, still does picture her
as a grown woman, with lusts and loves and even pregnancies. It gets her thinking of the person she could be, as if she
already was that way. Thus, there is an element of
encouragement. Third, it portrays Dora as having precipitously fled from the possibilities of womanhood, into shameful and childish phantasies. So there is an element of reproach
as well. Fourth, it gives her the example in Freud's own
speech, of honesty and candour, not as an explicit teaching,
but as something to be absorbed, as it were, through the skin.
Facing the forbidden topic sexuality is important in itself, but
important in this regard as well. We conclude that
psychoanalysis can help Dora even if as descriptive truth
it is partial or even distorted.
Nevertheless, we can't help thinking that a therapy based
on a limited view of human nature, must, in the long run,
prove itself limited. If it is possible to generalize from Dora,
and claim that every neurosis involves an evasion or a distortion of the human power of speech, then any complete
therapy, if such there be, must take this into account.
Psychoanalysis is, as it were, the laying on of words. But
human speech is more that that. Speech must be two-sided.
If an important part of the patient's neurosis is the retreat
from the unpredictable two-sidedness of speech, then should
not such speech play an important part in psychothera_py?
Freud himself raises the question whether it would have
been beneficial for him to have bestowed on Dora the affection, the "warm personal interest", she so much needed. To
do so, he says, would have been deceitful. Freud implies he
felt no affection for the girl. We must wonder: did he feel no
affection for the girl?
In his desire to be scientific, to be objective, Freud places a
severe hindrance on the very therapeutic enterprise that he
inaugurated. By avoiding the human communion, which
speech affords, the analyst himself becomes less than candid,
· his theory less than sound, and every psychoanalysis no more
than a fragment.
Epilogue
Some 15 months after the end of treatment, Dora paid
Freud a visit. She said that after leaving treatment, she'd been
"all in a muddle", then h~r attacks had grown less, and her
spirits had risen. One of the K's two children had died in May
and Dora took the opportunity to visit them. Freud says: "She
made it up with them, she took her revenge on them, and she
brought her own business to a satisfactory conclusion. To the
wife, she said, 'I know you are having an affair with my
father', and the other did not deny it. From the husband she
drew an admission of the scene by the lake which he had
disputed, and brought the news of her vindication home to
her father. Since then she had not resumed relations with the
family."
To us, Dora's outspoken revenge marks her as half cured.
The callousness and passivity of her timing make clear it is at
best half a cure.
�July, 1978
To Freud's surprise, Dora tells him that in October she'd
had another attack of her aphonia, which lasted six weeks. He
asks her what might have excited it. Dora is evasive. "She had
seen someone run over by a cart. Finally she came out with
the fact that the accident had occurred to no less a person
than Herr K himself. She had come across him in the street
one day . . . he had stopped in front of her as though in
bewilderment, and in his abstraction he had allowed himself
to be knocked down by a cart. She had been able to convince
herself, however, that he escaped without serious injury. She
still felt some slight emotion if she heard anyone speak of her
father's affair with Frau K, but otherwise she had no further
concern in the matter. She was absorbed in her work, and
had no thoughts of marrying."
There, pretty much, is the story of Dora. Freud let quite
some time elapse, before handing it over to his publisher, a
fact which allows him, and us, the following ending:
"Years have again gone by since her visit. In the ...
meantime the girl has married, and indeed-unless all the
signs mislead me-she has married the young man who
came into her associations at the beginning of the analysis of
the second dream. Just as the first dream represented her
turning away from life into disease-so the second dream announced that she was about to tear herself free from her
father and had been reclaimed once more by the realities of
life."
All works cited below are by Sigmund Freud.
Quotations which are not annotated are from the Fragment. (May be found
in Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. [New York: Macmillan, Collier
Books, 1974], or in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund
Freud [London: Hogarth Press, 1962], [hereafter cited as Std. Edn.], vol.
VII).
1. The Origins of Psychoanalysis: Letters, Drafts, and Notes to Wilhelm Fliess
(1887-1902) (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., Inc., Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957), Letter 140, p. 327. See also letters 139 and 141.
2. "Some Character Types Met With in Psychoanalytic Work (I 919)",
Character and Culture (New York: Macmillan, Collier Books, 1974), p. 157;
or Std. Edn., vol. XIV, p. 311. One should not be misled by the conclusion
of this paragraph to think that character in the ordinary sense becomes of
primary interest. For Freud, "character" is a perpetual, occasionally benign,
set of symptomatic traits; that is, it is the superficial reflection of something
deep, instinctual, and past. The rest of this essay, as well as the fundamental
essay, "Character and Anal Eroticism," bears this out.
3. See A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (New York: Simon and
Schuster, Pocket Books, 1972) Chapter 23, pp. 366-367; or Std. Edn, vol.
XVI, p. 358. Also see Pocket Books edition, Chapter 28, pp. 464-465, or
Std. Edn., vol. XVI, pp. 456-457.
4. "'Civilized' Sexual Morality and Modern Nervousness," Sexuality and
the Psychology of Love (New York: Macmillan, Collier Books, 1974), p. 24;
or Std. Edn., vol. IX, p. 185. Why is the question (of what is peculiarly
"modem" about nervousness) no longer much raised?
5. See The Interpretation of Dreams (New York: Avon Books, 1965), Chapter
VII, pp. 613, 656;orStd. Edn., vol. V, pp. 574,617. See also "The Unconscious," General Psychological Theory (New York: Macmillan, Collier Books,
1963), Section 7, pp. 142 seq.; or Std. Edn., vol. XIV, pp. 196 seq.
6. General Introduction, Chapter 28, p. 260; or Std. Edn., vol. XVI, p. 452.
15
�The College
"The Scientific Revolution Will
Not Take Place"
by Thomas K. Simpson
"The Scientific Revolution will not take place." Surely this
proposition, which I have taken as the title of my lecture tonight, makes a very curious claim. I have not altogether lost
my senses of sight and hearing-I recognize that we are surrounded, beset by evidences that something enormous is
going on, something which by common consent we call the
"Scientific Revolution," or its products. I understand that we
have ''split the atom," that we have begun our exploration of
"space," that we are, at an ever-increasing rate, raiding the
Earth of its natural materials, and converting them by art into
synthetic surrogates, or into a new Earth of wastes. Let me
make clear: this is not a lecture in which I will attack modern
science and its triumphs- I am, I attest, one of its most devoted admirers. And not only what we call "science," but that
even greater rational order which we call "technology," in
whose service for the most part science works-and even beyond these, that still more vast and impressive technology of
corporate structure, law and finance, wi)ich energizes and directs the motions of the whole. All of this immense system of
thought and action, in which "science" in the strict sense
plays a relatively Jimited role, constitutes our modern, technical world-the world of our "Scientific Revolution." I am
not unaware of it, and I do not fail to respect and admire it.
We cannot move in any direction, even in thought, without
sensing that it is present, that we are in some way part of it.
How, then, can I possibly assert that "The Scientific Revolution will not take place"? Let me repeat: there is no doubt
that something has taken place, and we know that we call it
the "Scientific Revolution." But we know, too, that there is
something deeply, pervasively wrong with it. It has, it seems,
This is the text of a lechue given at St. John's, Annapolis, on 27 January
1978, and at the University of Notre Dame on 21 February 1978. In the
latter instance it was as a university lecture under the sponsorship of the
General Program of Liberal Studies at the university. Mr. Simpson is a
member of the Santa Fe faculty.
16
a serious internal defect-perhaps it should be "recalled."
This new world, which is so pervaded by rational
technologies, is also obviously mad. It is hardly possible to
find a kinder term: we live in a world which is insane. I
realize it is not polite to call attention to such things, and
these days it is hardly done-we no longer refer in public to
the fact that our world is poised to blow itself to piecesmen, women, and children-on the instant, and that our
most advanced and luxurious technologies are dedicated first
of all to this very purpose. Our most intelligent mathematical
strategies, our most intricate electronic techniques, are devised specifically to compute and implement mass death and
long-term debility. Ranked beneath this master-madness is a
hierarchy of destruction of the Earth and tyranny over the
human race, all masked with a verbal technology of hypocrisy, of "freedom" and "peace" and "progress," which is itself
perhaps the ultimate affront to reason. I have said too much,
beyond the bounds of politeness, and I will not labor this
point: but I take it as evident that we live in a world which,
while it is pervaded by reason in a limited technological
sense, is at the same time dominated by irrationality on a
scale which can only be called madness.
Now this, I submit, is not the real Scientific Revolution.
We have had something else, we have not had the Scientific
Revolution. And I fear that we never will. So the title of this
lecture is seriously intended-not, perhaps, as an absolute
assertion, but as a proposition worthy of anxious attention: as
a problem for serious concern.
Well, if this is not the Scientific Revolution, what would
that real Scientific Revolution be? To answer this question, I
suggest that we seek help, and where better than from the
authors of the original Scientific Revolution themselves?
Something has gone wrong. Very well, let us go back to the
original designers, to the Instruction Book, and determine, if
we can, where we have made our mistakes. There would be,
�July, 1978
of course, many worthy candidates as consultants in the
case-Galilee, Descartes, Newton; some maverick might
even suggest Ptolemy-but I propose to turn to Francis Bacon. In many ways, Bacon can be faulted-for not having
adequately anticipated the role of formal mathematics in the
new sciences, for not having contributed to scientific discovery himself, even for having been out of touch with the
science of his own time, or for having made some bad judgments on topics such as Copernican astronomy. But Bacon
drew up a set of plans for the Scientific Revolution with a
boldness of vision and thoroughness which are unique. The
very fact that Bacon did not devote his life to science per se,
but rather to the law, to Parliament, and to affairs of stateand yet all the while kept in the forefront of his mind his own
project, to introduce a new era of reason for mankind-may
suggest that he would be better able than most to view the
Scientific Revolution synoptically, in its social aspect, as a
human proposition. That is, Bacon may have most to teach
us precisely in that aspect of the Scientific Revolution about
which we have most gone wrong. So, for tonight, I shall take
Francis Bacon as author of the Instruction Book for the Scientific Revolution, and seek his counsel about our errors.
Bacon wrote a very great deal, the largest part of it about
"science" in the broad sense in which he took the term. In
part, the complexity of his writings-overlapping, unfinished,
attacking the same topics by way of a variety of literary forms
and disguises-has to do with the delicacy of the rhetorical
problem which he faced. He, too, thought he faced a world
gone mad-seized, he said, with a kind of frenzy he called
idolatry-and he hoped, as a practical proposition, to persuade the world that it was indeed in such a condition, and
that it should undertake on a large scale a course of radical
therapy. Conversation with a madman about his problem is
always touchy. But what made Bacon's problem unusually
difficult was the fact that he was addressing these suggestions
to his employer, the King of England-Bacon was Lord
Chancellor, a kind of Henry Kissinger, to King James, and he
was intent on persuading James of the urgency of funding a
variety of projects of deep reform. Therefore he tended to
disguise his purposes and adjust his methods in the manner of
practical politics.
He finally drew together, however, his program under one
great heading, as the Magna Instauratio-the Great Instau-
ration, the "great restoration," or "renewal". By this he
meant the restoration to mankind of an original governance
of the Creation-or the restoration of the Kingdom of Man.
The Great lnstauration required many parts, of which Bacon
could not have hoped to complete more than a few in his
own lifetime. In fact, what we have consists primarily of the
first two parts, the Advancement of Learning (put into the
common tongue, Latin, and enlarged, as de Augmentiis Scientiarum, "On the Increase of the Sciences"), and the
Novum Organum, which is the text I beli.eve currently on the
list of Great Books. These are the two works, the first, cgmpleted works of the Great lnstauration, which I will have
primarily in view tonight, though some others lurk in the
background.
THE BACONIAN ACCOUNT OF THE "SCIENTIFIC
REVOLUTION": THE NEW ORGANON AND THE
OLD
Bacon, as we see, did not call his project the "Scientific
Revolution," but rather the "Great Restoration," or "Great
Renewal." Why Bacon thought of his project as a "renewal,"
rather than a "revolution," as we do, I think we shall see. But
with this interesting difference, his "instauration" is the real
"revolution" -in effect, we may without injustice think of his
overall work, his book of books, as if it had been entitled The
Scientific Revolution instead of Magna Instauratio. In it he
tells us, through stages of preparation, analysis and example,
what the new era is to be, and what it is to bring to manwhat, indeed, man is to become under the new dispensation.
We should, then, be able to extract from Bacon's work, if not
exactly a definition, at least a characterization of the real Sci-
entific Revolution. Let us try.
Bacon tells us, directly enough, that he intends the "resto-
ration of the Kingdom of Man" -but what might this mean?
It appears to mean to Bacon the restoration of man's reason,
at least in part, to a state of integrity it possessed before the
Fall, and a corresponding return to man of his dominion over
the Creation, including above all the rational direction of his
own life. It means the cancellation of all the counsels of despair which have burdened him over the ages: dark advice
from the ancients, in the mode of tragedy; and admonitions
17
�The College
from the theologians, concerning the Fall and the corruption
of human powers. These counsels have, one or the other,
over the ages denied man's competence to guide his own affairs, or to command his own resources or the resources of
nature toward goals of his own determination. Although there
seems to have been abundant evidence over the ages to support these dark views, this long era of denial Bacon tells us is
to end with the advent of the Instauration. It is, surely then, a
bulletin of Good News, a Gospel message; and I think indeed
Bacon saw his own work-as Newton later was to see his-as
a stage in the historic work of the Holy Spirit in the world, a
stage on the way to the Final Days. He calls it, not an invention of his own, but a "Birth of Time."
What is this renewed, restored reason to be, and how is it
to function as the basis of a liberated world? To answer this
question, Bacon writes that part of the Instauration called the
Novum Organum, or New Organon. This is the body of logic
in the broadest sense, a theory of language, which is to answer to, and replace, an old "Organon," which is Aristotle's.
To grasp the character of the great reversal Bacon intends, we
will do well to begin by contrasting the new organon with the
old.
Aristotle's Organon consists of a body of works, beginning
with the Categories, going on to the work called On Interpretation, and extending through the so-called Prior and Posterior Analytics, the Topics and Sophistical Refutations. To
these we should in principle add the Rhetoric and the Poetics,
which together project the account of language and the
theory of scientific argument onto the looser subject matter of
human situations, on the one hand in the enthymeme of
rhetorical argument, and, on the other, in the logic of plot
and character in works of poetics. When this body of work,
the Old Organon, is taken as a whole, we see that it constitutes a formidable bastion of the liberal arts, indeed the foundation in the arts of language of Aristotle's body of works on
the sciences and the arts. And all of it, Bacon in effect
claims, is based on error, and must be taken down and reconstructed from the beginning. One often hears it said that
Bacon introduced a new theory of induction, called "scientific inference" or something similar, and thereby introduced
the Scientific Revolution: but in fact his own view of his task
was very much broader. Although induction is indeed at the
center of the enterprise, as we shall see, the foundations of
IS
the new human reason are very much more extensive.
At the outset of the Organon, in the Categories and On
Interpretation, Aristotle explains what words are and what a
proposition is: we might say, he begins by teaching us how to
talk. And it is exactly here that Bacon's criticism beginsAristotle, he claims, has taught us to talk wrongly. Aristotle,
according to Bacon, misunderstood what words and propositions are, and therefore his "categories," his modes of predication, are systematically misleading. In turn, his syllogisms,
whose theory is developed in the Prior Analytics, become
chains of reasoning based on invalid words and propositions,
and hence arguments of mere words, words empty of meaning, and thus, finally, empty arguments. For Bacon, then,
the Scientific Revolution begins at the beginning, by teaching
us to talk anew-nothing less will do the trick. How can this
be?
Roughly speaking, Aristotle's theory of language can be
thought of in terms of f/tp.:rycrt.r.;, imitation. For he tells us at
the outset of On Interpretation that there are in the soul
likenesses (oftOtWft<:<m) of the things which are in the world
{rO! Ovra); words, in turn, are conventional signs of those
likenesses. That is, the human soul is for Aristotle in a direct
and natural relation with the world: the careful, studious
mind reflects the world in this mimetic mode, and in turn,
the world is projected into human speech and the written
word. So it comes about that in Aristotle's Organon-the Old
Organon-the structure of the world is reproduced in the relations among words and propositions; the theory of language
is a theory of the grammar and logic of the world itself. For
Aristotle, then, learning and speaking are direct and natural
acts. They are not necessarily easy, but they are within the
compass of human virtue. One measure of this is simply in
terms of scale: one man, in a lifetime devoted to study, might
hope to gain mastery of all the principal arts and sciencesafter all, Aristotle did!
For Bacon, this is all wrong; not because of technical
errors, correctable by a new adjustment of the theory of induction. On the contrary, I think Bacon respects the integrity
of the Old Organon from a technical point of view: it is a
correct Organon, but for the wrong world: the right Organon,
for the wrong world. As Bacon explains, he and Aristotle
really have no argument with each other-they cannot possibly, because, strictly, they do not speak the same language.
�July, 1978
The abyss between the old world, the world of the Old Organon, and the renewed world of the Novum Organum is so
great in Bacon's view that one world can barely communicate
with the other. Aristotle would be right about language, that
is, if the world we lived in were indeed the world he describes
in the Physics-a world of eternal forms, without past, future,
or history: without beginning or end in time: an uncreated
world, a world which does not have ruling over it a Lord
God, omniscient and omnipotent, its Creator. Forms would
then inhabit the world in the way Aristotle imagines they do,
and mind would then have easy commerce with them, by
nature, in the mode of JLLp:YJcns. But, Bacon says, the ways
of the Lord God in the Creation are totally different from
this, and man's ways of thought and speech must be correspondingly different, as well.
Creation is a mystery: Aristotle is altogether right to argue
in the Physics that there could not have been a creation, because from the point of view of reason it is indeed unthinkable that being should arise out of nothing. The world created
by the Lord God, then, incorporates the impossible; it is not
an object natural and accessible to the mind, but rather divided from mind at the outset by the mystery of Creation.
Those forms which God made in the first days are not the
eternal forms of the Physics, natural objects for the mind, but
themselves mysteries of the Creation, secrets, not impressed
on the surface of nature where mind can have easy commerce
with them, but embedded deep beneath the phenomena.
Mind, then, cannot grasp them by mere .uLf.t'l}O"t,s-the
forms of cats and gold and heat are superficial, our ideas of
them are correspondingly erroneous, and the words of our
language, signs of these erroneous ideas drawn from superficial forms, are not !he right words. To find the real forms, to
learn to speak the real words about the secrets of the Creation, requires not nature but art, and long, strategic effort:
that newly discovered art which Bacon sets forth in the New
Organon, and which he calls "The Interpretation of Nature."
In the interim, at the point of tangency of the old and the
new worlds, the encounter, Bacon's rhetorical strategy is to
use the old words, for we have no other common coin-but
warns us to read with caution: a word like "form" in its old
and new uses will not mean the same things, words will not
mean even the same kinds of things.
Not only did Aristotle, according to Bacon, speak the
wrong words; he misunderstood predication. Aristotle teaches
us in the Categories to say of a certain white object, not simply "This body is white," but more strictly, "Whiteness is in
the body/' or still more strictly yet, "A particular whiteness is
in the body" (To i..evKov €v Tiji rrwJLom eO"'T[). One thinks of
whiteness as a form, a quality, which has come to be in this
particular body, this stone. The crucial notion in predication
is being: the stone is white, or whiteness is in the stone. Even
in the triumphant formulation of motion in the Physics, Aristotle understands motion as occurring between two states of
being, actual and potential-thus if the stone is bleached. or
painted, it is first potentially and then actually white. Between the states of potential and actual whiteness, the motion
of becoming white is something of a blur.
For Bacon, this again requires radical correction: predication is not fundamentally of being, but of action or operation.
"Form," he says, means law or pure act. Law ordains the act;
so, for example, where there is heat, that law which is the
form of heat is present, and so is the act which the law ordains. If we heat our white stone, it is not that somethinghotness-comes to be there, but that something comes to
happen there. Heat will not be something in the stone, but
something going on in the stone. Whiteness, or heat, will be
something going on.
Let us look at one specific example of predication from the
New Organon, to see what it will mean to predicate law
rather than Aristotelian form. This example happens to be a
negative proposition concerning heat, one of the initial findings of a sample "interpretation of nature" Bacon offers as a
paradigm of the new method, namely a search for the form of
heat. The investigation has shown that, although in some
cases such as that of air, a substance when heated becomes
rarefied, this is not universally the case, and so the following
negative predication is to be made:
"Rarely does not belong to the form of heat."
This sounds innocent enough as a propositional form, but
that is because it has not yet been recast into the appropriate
mode of predication. The real predication will express law
and action. Transposed into the predicates appropriate to the
New Organon, which is to say, appropriate to God's Creation, we get the following pair of expanded propositions:
19
�The College
"It is possible for man to superinduce heat in a dense body."
and
"It is possible for man to reduce or prevent heat in a rarefied
body."
The first, short form was merely a mode of predication borrowed from another world. The expanded form, the true
mode of predication for the new world, is operational: it tells
us what works the law of heat permits us, or does not permit
us, to do. The true meaning of "form" is just such a law of
operation. The Creation is ordered, not by static forms which
are objects of contemplation, but by fixed laws ordaining action. These, too, are intellectual objects-but objects of a
faculty which is itself new, despite its old name: intellect
primarily ordered to works, not to thoughts-or better, to
thoughts which are works.
.
Bacon intends no deprecation of intellect here. It is crucial
for him that the first work of the Creation was Light-but
that Light is the beginning of a sequence of Works. In turn,
he sees the Sabbath of the Creation as contemplative, but that
contemplation is a contemplation of works completed and
good. Bacon's understanding of form and intellect might be
seen as a counterpart to other theories of forms: and the Creation story, as Bacon interprets it, as a surrogate for the
Platonic myth of recollection. That is, Plato and Bacon
deeply agree that truth exists and is accessible to man-that
learning is possible. They agree, too, that this means that
forms exist, and are the objects of our intellectual search. But
the new forms are not within us, or to be sought by a dialectical examination conducted in private, as an inquiry into the
content of our own souls. They are within the Creation, but
external to us, and the possibility of learning is assuredMeno's question, which Bacon asks himself, is answered-by
the possibility of conducting a dialogue with Nature. Our
"forgetting," our Lethe, was the Fall, in which, in the vanity
of false philosophy based on a false understanding of the nahue of knowledge, man turned away from God's Creation
and thereby lost the power to seek true forms. But that power
remains latent within us, and can be restored by an act of free
will, an act of deep humility, in which the vanity of the philosophers is rejected, and man turns instead to a long, patient
20
dialectic with Nature. This is the Baconian peripety, which
would make man once again teachable, and this willingness
to be taught by God through the Creation is for Bacon the
foundation of the Scientific Revolution.
Against Plato's visions of the Forms, Bacon sets the image
of the Garden. The Garden is of course an object of contemplation; but it is not simply an image of order and beauty, it is
an image of Works: in which man will find, not static truths,
but an intellectually luminous task. That Garden is the Creation; man's intellectual task is to know it, and thereby to govern and cultivate it, in the Kingdom of Man. Otherwise said,
the Kingdom of Man is Bacon's counterpart of the Platonic
Republic. Where the Republic is ordered to the forms, that
is, to knowledge as the highest good, for Bacon God's forms,
the laws of Nature, are ordered to the Kingdom of Man as the
Light of the First Day is ordered to the Creation. It is as a
Work that the Creation is to be grasped by intellect as luminously good.
BACON'S INDUCTIVE LOGIC
I have been anxious to emphasize the total reconstruction
of the arts of language which Bacon undertakes, and therefore
have spoken thus far about the first elements of the Organon,
the word and the proposition. It remains true, however, that
the central issue is "induction" -for it must be by a reformed
mode of induction that the new secret words and operational
predications are to be found out. We should consider first
what we may mean by "induction" in general, and then very
briefly compare the accounts of induction in the Old and the
New Organons.
Our Latin word "in-duction" means a leading-in; Aristotle's terms, irv-aywy'f} or €7T-aywyr], suggest leading-up to a
goal, and of course the Platonic imagery is of an upward ascent. Whether we figure the process as moving inward or
moving upward, it is in any case the primary phase of the
learning process. Induction is the mode by which we move
from initial confusion to clarity, from the obscurity of common opinion or sense perception to the light of first
principles-or, as Aristotle says, from what is most knowable
to us, to what is most knowable by nature: i.e., from what
appears to be clearest, to what really is clearest to the mind.
This is of course not the only kind of learning that we do:
�July, 1978
when we learn from Euclid, we are, in the first instance at
least, moving the "other way"~taking the first principles as
known, and deriving a long series of consequences from
them. This is "de-duction," the motion "downward". Aristotle caBs this second operation of reason &7T6-0Hgt..~, or in
Latin de-monstration, showing the consequences which follow
from the first principles, which are either best known, as in
true scientific argument yielding €1TLa-TiJfL'YJ, or are granted
by the learner for the sake of the argument, as sometimes has
to happen at the outset of our study of Euclid, in relation to
the definitions of "straight line" and "point."
Now this second phase of reasoning can, in some sense, be
carried out by that method which Aristotle teaches in the Old
Organon, calling it (]1)/..-!..oy'a-!"O<;, syllogism, the art of
weaving propositions together into a binding demonstrative
chain. If you have ever tried to apply Aristotle's theory of
syllogism to Euclid's text, 1 think you will have discovered
something that Aristotle, or the fate of his texts, has
omitted-namely, the th<ory of the relational· syllogism,
0'1J"J\.Aoytcr!J..6r; in the case in which the predications are of
relation, 7rp6r; n; all that seems clear about this is that Aristotle did not really intend to omit it. But with all this theory of
deduction, Bacon has no serious complaint. The issue between Bacon and Aristotle or Plato is over induction-but
since this is the original, generative motion of the human
mind, it is really reason itself which is at issue. Bacon claims
that Aristotle and Plato are wrong about the very nature of
human reason, in being wrong about induction.
With this understanding of the significance of the question
of induction in general, we can turn now to Aristotle for his
own account of the inductive process. I take the following
passage from the close of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle's
book about science; although it is likely to be familiar to most
of you, I am going to quote it at some length because it
epitomizes that concept of a natural process of induction
which Bacon feels is a fundamental and ruinous error:
Thus from sense-perception (aZcrlh]crtr;} arises
memory ... and from repeated memory of the same
thing arises experience (€!J..7TEt..pia); for memories
which are many in number are one in experience.
From experience, or the coming to rest of the universe (TO Ka()6Aov) out of the many in the soul-of
the one out of the many, the one which is the same
in them all-arises the first principle (apxi}) of art
or of science ....
Thus these powers (~gets)
arise from senseperception, just as, when a retreat has occurred in a
battle, if one man halts so does another, and then
another, until the original position is restored. The
soul is so constituted that it is capable of having this
happen to it. ... It is clear then that for us the first
things (n~ 7rpWTa) are known by means of induction
(E7Tl>ywyi}).
Now, we certainly do the sort of thing Aristotle describes
here, all the time-the process is altogether familiar. But according to Bacon, what results is not at all the true first principles, TCx 7Tp&Ta, but only popular wisdom, an account of
the mere surface appearance of things-what both Bacon and
Newton call vulgar, i.e., common, impressions, as opposed
to truth. Experience does not in this way present us with the
true universal; it is not present in that first "halt" in the soul.
The soul is not "so constituted," as Aristotle claims, that it
can in any such natural way arrive at serious truths. When
Aristotle goes on to say here that "it must be intuition (v6Vr;)
that apprehends the first principles" he is, for Bacon, sealing
his error. Unaided voVr;, in its natural, spontaneous operation, merely assembles our perception of the surface of things:
to take this for truth, and the objects of vOvr; thus arrived at as
the true 7TpWTa, first things, is to substitute the surface for the
underlying reality of the Creation-to substitute a merely
human concept of truth for the Divine. For Bacon, this imposition of an opaque screen between man and God is the
real temptation by which Satan, through the offer of an illusory "truth," led man to sin and the loss of Paradise. Aristotle,
and mankind in his train, are not simply in philosophical
error; this substitution of vain voVr; for Divine truth is idolatry
and sin. Thus we sec the momentous significance, for Bacon,
of a correction of the theory of induction.
The way to the new understanding of Reason and Truth,
then, is through a total repudiation of intellectual intuition in
its natural operation. Only after such a cleansing repudiation
will we be ready to turn our minds toward the immense task
21
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Bacon now lays before us-the New Induction, the lntetpretation of Nature.
The New Induction is a great construction, an art, and for
guidance in its design Bacon calls upon various existing arts
as sources of suggestion. Since the universe has become for
Bacon a cryptic text, full of truth, but requiring penetrating
analysis, the art of interpretation, a branch of the art of
rhetoric which flourished out of the need to unveil Scriptural
secrets-a kind of inverse, or mirror-image of the art of
speaking-becomes the overall paradigm for the New Induction. On the other hand, since the problem is that of coming
upon hidden things, or discovery of secret axioms and true
arguments, Bacon looks as well to another branch of the art
of rhetoric-that aspect which was traditionally regarded as
the highest and most esoteric mystery-the art of discovery,
coming-upon, or, in Latin, in-venting truths or lines of argument. Aristotle dealt with this as part of the Organon, in
the Topics, Tinrot., literally "places." This is a collection of
loci of argument in all areas of thought, collected to facilitate
invention of new lines of logical attack. Bacon is of course
not interested in such stale collections, but the notion of
tabulating places or instances as powerful resources for invention is taken over from the Topics in a massive way as a fundamental method of the New Organon. If we think of the
Creation as a cryptic text requiring interpretation, Bacon's
tabulated instances become organized collections of crucial
passages in the text, and at the same time, tables of
phenomena, or natural histories, arranged so as to be in the
most powerful way spurs to the discovery, invention, of hidden things. We thus see Aristotle's Topics transformed into
tables of scientific phenomena and data, clues to the discovery of hidden scientific laws.
A third model for this new art of induction is suggested by
the fact that the object of search is law-and is no doubt also
suggested 'to Bacon by his own principal training and experience as a lawyer. Since the search is for law, the problem is
not unlike that which regularly faces a judge, and which was
a particular preoccupation of English common law. Where
the law is indefinite, or where it is a law of custom and
precedent rather than positive legislation, it may fall to the
judge to determine the law, by the analysis either of disparate
written formulations, or from precedents. When this is the
problem, documents and precedents will be arrayed before
22
the judge, perhaps in opposing tabulations by opposing attorneys, and the judge's task becomes that of determining the
one consistent interpretation of the underlying law, sUpposed
to obtain in all the instances.
This legal procedure is on the one hand a problem in interpretation, and on the other a problem of discovery and an
application of the rhetoric of invention, so that these three
methodological paradigms converge in the New Organon.
The legal model is in fact perhaps the most prominent: Bacon
sees scientific method primarily as a problem in the law. We
might add that one of his own greatest interests was---in the
rational reformulation of English common law, the transformation of Common Law into a written, rational code: Bacon
was, at least strategically, a Royalist, and in matters of law, a
Roman. For him, English Common Law was one of the urgent and exasperating instances of an alchemy in need of reformation by the New Organon.
The actual implementation of the new logic is extensive
and complex, and need not detain us here. The Creation is to
be searched for the widest possible spectrum of instances in
all fields of learning, which will then be channeled by vast
efforts of imagination into Tables of all sorts, for presentation
to reason for judgment; each judgment will suggest new
works, which will on the one hand be fruits of the new
method, for the use of mankind, and on the other, will put
tentative judgments to the test. Because Nahue's secrets arc so
deeply hidden, works will often take the form of experiments,
in which by art Nature is forced out of her normal channels,
to yield revelations which would never otherwise come to
light. In all of this, we recognize the roots of the enormous,
brilliant system of research and publication which is the working structure of modern science; the system which Bacon
summarized as "Literate Experience." It may be criticized,
but not because its results are not interesting-they are interesting, and of the greatest importance: the question is not
of their value or importance, but of what we do with them.
Avoiding any discussion of the details of Bacon's method,
let us try briefly to draw up a first characterization of new
human intellect which emerges from the New Organon.
First, we see intellect conceived as judge, and hence the
subsuming principle of judgment on the strength of valid evidence. Where the object of intellect, truth, is embedded in
the Creation, external evidence is the lifeline of intellect, the
�July, 1978
essential clue leading to its goal. Hence every effort will be
bent toward gathering, arranging and reading those signs.
Second, since mind no longer moves in the ancient circle,
but advances constantly to new discoveries, new intellectual
worlds, then foresight, anticipation, and inventive imagination will support intellect in its process of learning. Probing
new depths and reaches of the Creation, the intellect will
itself, in the shock of its discoveries, seem creative-science
will move closer to poetic, the intellectual object will be new
to history, and in turn, it will no longer seem inappropriate to
speak of the poetic artist as "creative." For Bacon, the dominant symbol of the Great Instauration is the discovery of the
New World-which is both an "emblem," as he says, of the
new endeavor of the human intellect, and a sign in history
that he lives at a time which is giving rise to new births.
Third, the new intellect will combine humility on the individual level-for no one thinker can carry the work of mind
forward far alone, where the scale of the endeavor is so vast
and the ultimate goal so remote-with new courage and hope
on the level of mankind as a whole. The new intellect will be
social, and the individual will draw upon this and contribute
to it in an inquiry which is essentially a rational dialogue on
the part of mankind as a whole. Fourth, perhaps as a corollary to mind's new social context, progress will often occur
through negation. The denial of the partial and erroneous
insights of any one mind in any one time, by the larger findings of mankind over the generations, will not mean a chaoS
of wasted efforts and abandoned ideas, but a dialectical progress of mind to which any one individual, however heroic,
can do no more than contribute. This conviction of the overall positive rOle of a limited or negative result, the understanding that refutation is the way, not to despair, but to
deeper insight-the dialectical principle-Bacon rightly sees
as his fundamental debt to Plato. The passage through negation must be .sustained by deep conviction-for PlatO, belief
in the possibility of knowledge of the forms, through recollection; for Bacon, faith in God's truth, impressed upon the
Creation, and attainable through the new method of Interpretation of Nature. Finally, the new intellect learns through
experiment, and contemplates its results in the mode of
Works. As mind's grasp of the axioms of nature deepens,· their
operational form yields growing power over nature: this power
to command Nature, to rework the Creation by art, to re-
create, Bacon calls metaphysics, or "magic." The new intellect, then, unites a contemplative side, in which it is
metaphysician, and an operative side, in which it is magician. The fusion of the two reflects the new concept of
created forms.
THE SCOPE OF THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
To what extent is this new intellect a counterpart of v6Vr;?
We have seen the enigmatic union of contemplation with
operation, and the new paradigm of judgment by art on .the
basis of external evidence, rather than learning by nature
through inner recollection. Truth is attainable, knowledge is
possible, but Bacon's intellectus is surely not quite the same
as vOvr;. Let me add now another consideration, through
which intellectus and vOvr; may seem after all to move a little
closer together. I think in so doing I will take us closer to the
focus of our initial concern with the threatening version of
the Scientific Revolution which now surrourlds us.
Recall the difficulty Socrates describes concerning his early
enounter with Anaxagoras-or rather, with the book
Anaxagoras had written, entitled NOvr;. Socrates had begun
with the human question "Why?", and had seized upon
Anaxagoras' work because he thought a book entitled NOvr;
ought to deal with his question. In fact, he found that it answered the question "Why?" in all the senses except the interesting one, "To what end?" -that is, Anaxagoras had
failed entirely in the real enterprise of intellect as Socrates
understands it, because he omitted consideration of the good.
Now, our modern science is generally understood, and generally understands itself, to be Anaxagoran in this sense: it is
"objective," it says, or purged of what it calls "value judgments," and hence, it, too, omits consideration of the good.
Insofar as it rises above mere skepticism to speak about truth
at all, it believes it can deal with truth precisely to the extent
that as it does not deal with the good. Hence our image of
what we call modern science: austere, sterile, morally
neutral-all those characteristics symbolized by the white
laboratory coat-which, when coupled with the Baconian
magic it obviously does command, breed terror in the hearts
of mortal men.
Now, is the Baconian intellectus morally neutral in this
way? Is the Great lnstauration indifferent to human value and
23
�The College
purpose, in the way we ascribe to our supposed Scientific
Revolution? The answer is decisively, "No."
Perhaps a shudder of apprehension will greet his report: the
only thing more terrifying than a science which is morally
indifferent, might seem a science which presumed to pronounce on moral issues. But I think it is already clear that
Bacon does not mean by intellect and its object what we refer
to as "science" and the "scientific object": though he typically
uses the term scientia, science, he intends it, it seems, in a
way after all much closer to its ancient meaning. Let us see
how Bacon deals with the relation of the new science to the
human good.
You might expect Bacon to say that we have two texts before us: the Creation on the one hand, and Holy Scripture on
the other-and that, although we turn to the first for intellectual knowledge of the laws of Nature, we must turn exclusively to the second for guidance in human action. On the
whole, our western world has taken this path, confining what
we call "science" to so-called "objective" questions, and seeking moral light by other means. But that is not the answer
Bacon gives. He turns again to the account of Creation, his
Myth of Recollection, as paradigm. The Lord God carried
out the Creation, which in this context means for Bacon that
God im-pressed upon Nature forms in the mode of laws-and
with each day's work, pronminced that it was "good." The
Sabbath is the contemplation of a whole work which is very
good; and the Garden is a vision of an order which is at once
intellectually luminous, and good. That is, for Bacon there is
no doubt of a deep and total union of the intellectual and the
moral object: of the True and the Good. This faith in the
goodness of the Creation reflects Bacon's faith in the goodness
and power of God. Allowing for an infinite difference between worlds with and without God, we might nonetheless
say that this faith of Bacon's is a counterpart to the Platonic
belief that the intellectual object is illuminated by the
Good-that v6V~ in answering the question "Why?" does so
ultimately in terms of what is best. For Aristotle, this same
conviction of the union of the intellectual and the moral object is reflected in the priority of the Final Cause over other
causes in the account of the cosmos.
Bacon is thus able to assert that the New Organon is inclusive. It does not merely define our intellectual relation to a
limited class of natural objects, called "scientific" -but ex24
tends to all intellectual objects. The entire Intellectual Globe,
as Bacon calls it, is the object of the new scientia. This will,
then, include for example ethics, politics, law, history, and
economics. Though in some of these areas we can more
safely borrow from the old learning than in others, in principle all are equally concerns of the new science. "Science"
properly deals with all aspects of human thought and action.
We begin to see that Bacon understands the lnstauration to
be coextensive with the body of Aristotelian learning: founded
on a New Organon which defines the new human speech and
reasons as totally as Aristotle's did the old, Bacon -new proposes to ·construct counterparts to all the Aristotelian arts and
sciences. This is the scope of the real Scientific Revolution,
of which we can now see our so-called "Scientific Revolution" must be only a small and relatively minor part.
To go directly, then, to the crux of the matter: how does
Bacon understand the new science to deal with the human
good? How does value, the weighing of human purpose,
enter the forum of scientific evidence and rational judgment?
Bacon's answer is very simple in principle: we look at the
evidence of human goals, human a-p-petitus, "appetites," and
inquire with the same rational care as in other investigations,
what it is which human beings by nature want. Just as he sees
other natural forms lying deep beneath the surface of things,
he believes that we have yet to inquire deeply into our own
nature. He suggests that when we do, we will find three levels
of human intention; individual appetites; social goals at the
level of political loyalties, the proximate community; and finally, deepest and truest though not yet popularly recognized,
what he calls philanthropia, the projection into human nature of the Christian virtue of charity, a love _of mankind as a
whole, or of man as human. It is this philanthropia, he
senses, which has moved him throughout a long legal and
political career to bend all efforts towards defining and instituting the Instauration. In short, Bacon has profound faith
in human nature, reflecting his faith in God: faith that we
can safely ground the ethics of the Kingdom of Man on a
candid effort to know human nature better, and to achieve
our natural human goals-not natural appetite as vulgarly
conceived, but human desire as truly and deeply known.
To avoid misunderstanding, let me add without delay that
Bacon was anything but nai've about human "nature" as
commonly encountered: in his political function as Lord
�July, 1978
Chancellor, he moved in a realm of constant deception,
strategy, villainy, and treachery; his brother, with whom he
had close relations, had been Queen Elizabeth's CIA man in
France for many years. But Bacon had also perceived the possibility that man's nature, restored to itself, and above all, to
faith in itself, in a.n era of a new use of reason, could indeed
make a Garden of the Earth. Man need be no more helpless
in relation to himself than he will be in relation to other parts
of the Creation. Man's nature, once better understood, can
be liberated from the alchemy of social accident and superstition, and can then find its way to a society more consonant
with its own deeply felt aims. This reasoning together toward
common human goals is the highest work Bacon intends for
the New Organon, and the Great lnstauration-this highest
function, we might say, defines for him the new era. And it
seems that it is precisely this which we have omitted from our
abortive "Scientific Revolution." We reason massively and
precisely about everything except our goals, or rational means
for achieving them. We have embraced the Scientific Revolution in its easier and minor aspect, that part which omits
man's purpose; and have systematically eliminated from the
scope of reason, ourselves, and what we most care about.
THE MEASURE OF OUR RELATION TO THE SCIENTIFIC
REVOLUTION
Let us now review certain bench-marks of the true Scientific Revolution, by which we may appraise more carefully
our distance from it.
(1) The true Scientific Revolution is neither an exercise in
empiricism, nor in skepticism. Though it moves by way of
evidence, it follows a road toward truth. It finds laws of nature which are true, and the power which they convey is not
the power of the empirics, as Bacon calls them, who move by
analogy from work to work, but of intellect, which has
grasped a universal object.
Thus the lnstauration does not set us on that skeptical path
through Hume and Kant; if the modern world has indeed
taken that route, it is not from following Bacon, or, we may
add, Bacon's disciple, Newton.
(2) The true Scientific Revolution is not materialist, nor
does it look to either mathematics or mechanism as paradigm
for the forms of nature. Insofar as we understand "laws of
nature" as "binding" mathematical equations or mechanisms,
we have followed Descartes, not Bacon, or, again, Newton.
Bacon sees mathematics as important, but in the rOle of appendix to the real enterprise, on the simple principle that the
Creation contains a rich variety of things, and it is primarily
important to know them directly, and distinguish them, before measuring them, and reducing them to undifferentiated
magnitude. Our algebraic reduction of all things and all
human acts to number, whether in the laboratory by way of
rulers and balances, or in the market place by way of exchange of all things and our very selves as commodities, owes
nothing to Bacon.
What is at issue, and becomes the crux of our misunderstanding of Bacon and of our frustration with our own scientific era, is the concept of "law." We tend to think of scientific law as an iron bond, a restraint on freedom: and indeed,
in self-fulfillment of our prophecy, our science becomes just
that. But "law" does not mean that in principle, and it does
not mean that to Bacon. He is a student of the classics, of
Scripture and of English law, not a mathematician or a
machinist. What does Bacon mean, then, when he asserts
that the forms will be laws? He means that they are intelligible rules of action, meaningful and significant elements of an
organic whole. The better we grasp them, the better we will
grasp their significance as well. His image of Nature governed
by law is not that of a machine-shop or a computer, but of a
Garden. Laws of Nature, then, are not blind connections,
like links within a machine, but ways of acting, like the ways
of flowers which the gardener comes to know, and to love.
If we moderns respond to Bacon by reporting to him that
he was unfortunately mistaken in this, and that we have
found that the laws of nature are indeed strictly mathematical, Bacon might be puzzled, but Newton would offer an
answer. He tells us in the Principia that we are in danger of
misunderstanding mathematics~that we have failed to see
that mathematics itself can bear intelligibility, and be meaningful and not blind. The same book that taught us how
mathematics rules nature, teaches also that this mathematics
can be the subject of as luminous interpretation as any other
text. Unfortunately, we have understood the first message of
the Principia, but not the second.
When I say that the lnstauration does not propose a materialism, I mean not only that its laws are those of a Garden
25
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and not of a machine, but that Bacon has no notion of reduction of the Creation to the motions of matter. We should not
forget that the laws of human nature are at the very center of
his concern, not as bonds upon us, but as a rational grasp of
our rOle in the Creation, as Gardener. Gardeners who know
what they are doing can be very creative; they are not in
bondage to their work.
(3) The true Scientific Revolution is at its very center a
social enterprise. With the depths and expanse of an unexplored Creation as the object of inquiry, man can only learn
in the company of all mankind. And since learning immediately and continuously weaves with action, we will act,
as well, in the company of mankind and in relation to history. In this, ·we modems are in one sense close to Bacon.
We understand and practice this new art of reasoning and
acting in common, on what is rapidly becoming genuinely a
world scale: our vehicle for this is our de facto world community of scientists, technologists, and businessmen, ordered by
the social structure of a network of international agencies and
corporations which they serve, Our position seems to be,
then, that the limited rationality of our science and
technologies is rapidly forging this community of mankind de
facto, on a correspondingly limited basis, without our having
understood or endorsed what we are doing. We retain a
mythology of society which is pathologically out of touch
with its reality, a disparity which leaves society effectively unguided.
I think it is clear that between our world and Bacon's vision, the distance is very great.
With these observations to guide us, let us now, as well as
we can, take the measure of our present distance from the
real Scientific Revolution, as Bacon envisioned it. That real
revolution, the Instauration, was to have been founded on a
renewal of man's faith in himself as a rational being, and in
the power of a new form of dialectic to seek truth in broad
areas of human concern, including, above all, man himself,
his goals on this earth, and the forms of social institution best
adapted to achieve these aims. It was to take the form of a free
and open dialogue on the part, ultimately, of all mankind-a
dialogue not at all unlike that which our scientists presently
conduct world-wide, based upon evidence and the critical,
logical examination of positions and proposals. But the Baconian dialectic would draw not only upon evidence from na-
26
ture and the laboratory, but would draw as well upon careful
study of our history, our institutions, and in general, the vicissitudes of our common human experience. It would yield a
continuous series of works, which would at the same time be
the vehicles of the new dialectic, and fruits leading to a better
life for man on earth-works which would include not only
new substances and new powers, but new forms of government, of production, and of human relationship.
Can we put our finger on the crux of our difference from
this Baconian invitation? I suggest that it lies in the lack of
that faith which lay at the foundation of his enterprise. We
are-highly prematurely, I believe-disillusioned about any
relation between science and "truth," and we do not dare
subject our human aims and institutions to the free rational
· study which we bring to bear on atoms or on animals. We
fear science as mathematical, mechanical, sterile, and
threatening to the human spirit. As a result, we hide our
thoughts concerning such matters as politics and economics
under veils of superstition and illusion, we persecute those
who bring these beliefs under serious critical attack, and we
insulate the discussion of them as nearly as possible along
rigid national or cultural boundary lines. All this, I suggest,
reflects lack of faith-in humanity, and in the possibilities of
far-reaching rational discussion of our common human situation,
WILL THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION TAKE PLACE?
Not everyone will be persuaded by Francis Bacon, or by
me, that the Great Instauration-the real Scientific
Revolution-would be desirable, or even preferable to the
abortive "Scientific Revolution" we are now having. I for one
would be very much interested in a change of Revolutions
before it is too late. But what are the chances that the real
Scientific Revolution might after all take place?
It appears to me that the chances are very slight-that the
auspices for a broader and deeper reign of human reason, or
for the free and ra:tiorial government of our human affairs, are
highly unfavorable. I will not try at this point to analyze the
present situation even briefly, although it is interesting to note
in passing that this problem, too, falls within the compass of
investigation by the new method, and that Bacon devoted a
great deal of his own effort to the analysis of the prospects for
�July, I 978
the Great lnstauration in his own time. He thought then that
the prospects were pretty good-a prognosis which, as it turns
out, is perhaps not a very good advertisement for the prophetic powers of the new method!
Bacon diagnoses the obstacles to the Great Instaurationthat is, to a free application of human reason to human
affairs-in terms of a theory of idolatry. Idols for Bacon are
all those factors which together block the motion of reason.
Without considering his theory at this point, let me simply
mention the one great obstacle which I think today decisively
stands in the way of human freedom. This is, very simply,
the effect of our abortive Scientific Revolution on the power
of thought itself. Thought has become the principal victim of
the technology it has devised. Virtually every medium for the
conduct or dissemination of thought-every forum-is itself
enmeshed in a hierarchy of technologies-technologies, that
is, of our barren kind which seal themselves off from evaluation and re-direction with respect to the human good. I do
not mean only what are called the "media" -television, publishing, the press with its special technology of the wire service and the press release, or advertising, with its subdivision
called education: but as a cumulative consequence of all this,
our very language, our concepts, the questions we ask and the
principles we reach for in attempting to answer them-the
very structure of our language and our thought itself become
impenetrable to criticism, and hence to rational understanding of change. Bacon thought he faced just such a problem in
confronting the closed system of Aristotelian and scholastic
thought-but while it was closed, it was not technologically
closed. Now, closure appears to be sealed by the very powers
which Bacon's original invitation, so misunderstood and misapplied, has unleashed.
It is because of this technological closure that I fear we are
now locked into a sterile misunderstanding of the Scientific
Revolution, and that we will never be able to find the moral
and intellectual purchase which would be needed to wrench
ourselves free. It would be tempting to describe our situation
of powerlessness as "tragic," but I fear we cannot lay claim to
such depths of mystic insight; it would be fairer to say that we
are simply in a very bad pickle.
If there is any hope for the real Scientific Revolution-any
hope that reason will break free from this silent, faceless
tyranny of technology-! think it must come from the fact
that our present system, for all its complacency and appearance of totality, is in fact deeply in conflict-with itself, on
the one hand; and with a certain ineradicable sense of man's
purpose, on the other. Perhaps out of sheer exasperation, despair, or disgust beyond the ability of technology to neutralize
or veil, mankind will succeed in turning from the present
order of things to one not unlike Bacon's vision, in which
reason, unbound, may after all come to guide and serve
mankind.
27
�The College
Chaos, Gauss, and Order
by Michael Comenetz
This is a bicentennial lecture! Gauss was born in 1777. He
was a very great mathematician, perhaps the foremost of all
mathematicians. Archimedes and Newton may be his peers.
Gauss deserves to be honored by us: he may be the greatest
thinker we don't read. But it is difficult for us to approach
Gauss. His work, like the man himself, is forbiddingly austere; and it comes not at the beginning of modern mathematics, but at a time when it was already well under way.
Nevertheless, I'd like to try to bring one small part of his work
before you tonight.
I'm going to tell you about an idea Gauss had in 1795,
when he was 18, and continued to develop for some 30 years.
I'll try to show how his thought evolved; and perhaps there
will be something to be learned about the way mathematics is
discovered. I should say that other men worked on the idea
too; but I'll talk only about what Gauss did, which was quite
enough for one lecture.
Gauss was concerned with the problem of drawing conclusions from astronomical observations. His ideas apply to all
kinds of observations. That he was led to the problem by astronomy gives us one more indication~as if we needed
morel-of the central role astronomy has played in the development of scientific thought.
Suppose that I want to determine the value of some unknown quantity, by taking observations. I will encounter two
kinds of difficulties. The first is that I may not be able to
observe directly the quantity I want to determine, but may
Michael Comendz received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University in
1965, M.A. from Brandeis University in 1967, and Ph.D. from Brandeis in
1972. From 1972 to 1975 he was Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the
University of Kansas. He has been a Tutor at St. John's, Annapolis, since
1975. With regard to this article, which derives from a lecture given there on
October 28, !977, he writes: "The present text represents as nearly as possible
the lecture as delivered. (The 'placards' were large cardboards on an easel; the
other items centrally displayed in the text were written or drawn on a
blackboard during the lecture.) Certain mathematical inaccuracies arc present; these arc, I hope, only such as are almost inevitable in a popular lecture
of this kind, and not so grave as to result in any serious misrepresentation of
Gauss's thought."
28
have to observe other quantities and deduce the value of the
one I want from the observations of the oth~rs. In astronomy,
I can see only what is put before me. If I want to know the
shape of a planetary orbit, for example, I can't directly observe its length and width, but must deduce them from observations of such things as the planet's height in the sky.
The second problem is that no matter how careful I am,
my observations are affected by errors. Some I can compensate for: if the atmosphere bends the light of a star, I can
allow for the amount of bending in my use of the observations of the height of the star. Others seem entirely beyond my grasp. My own vision is not quite LmifonTI;· the air
shakes in a random way; the telescope is not quite firm on the
earth. The resulting errors I consider to be chance errors.
With care I can make them small, but I cannot eliminate
them; my repeated measurements of the height of a star will
vary slightly, although I assume the height to be actually constant. Given the results of such variable measurements, what
conclusion can I come to as to the best value to accept?
Here is another example. According to the law of gravity,
the force with which two bodies attract one another depends
on the square of the distance between. them; that is, on the
distance to the power 2. Is that "2" quite correct? Only observation can tell me. But I can't observe an exponent! I have
to observe certain physical quantities as well as I can, and
deduce the value of the exponent from these observations.
Let me give one more example. Suppose I want to know
the average height of a student here. To estimate it, I measure a few of you. Your heights vary! But I am somehow to
use them to estimate the true average height of all of you.
This example is quite different from the other two, as ybu
may see; but the same ideas illuminate both.
I hope it is clear that this problem is one of the most fundamental importance, having to do with all our precise
knowledge of the world of things. l hope it also appears as a
mystery.
Now in considering this problem of observations I become
aware that the observations not only vary but are afflicted by
the presence of a kind of chaos. The errors occur helterskelter. When I look at the star I have no very good idea in
�July, 1978
advance what height I wil1 observe. How can I hope to comprehend this chaos in order to find what I seek?
Well, I can make a beginning this way. I classify my observations, as follows. I make a wooden box
If I look once more and see it at 64° again, I put another
pebble in slot 64.
~
1>-<
~
J
61
61
62
64
63
65
66
67
with a bottom and a back and a glass front and vertical partitions, open at the top, and I label each slot with a numbersay, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67; these could be degrees above
the horizon at which a star can be observed. Each time I take
an observation I put a pebble-! have lots of pebbles, all the
same size-into the slot corresponding to the measurement I
made. Thus, if I look at the star and see it at 64°, I put a
pebble in slot 64.
1\.
63
''
J
64
65
66
67
62
63
64
65
66
67
and let's look at the curve formed by the tops of the columns
of pebbles .
h
62
63
And so on.
The pebbles go in now here, now there, without rhyme or
reason-in a perfect chaos. Or is it? Let me take more observations and put in more pebbles, so they start to mount up,
61
61
62
.)
64
65
66
67
If I look again and see it at 62°, I put a pebble in slot 62.
63
1,........,
61
62
1,........,
63
64
"'
65
66
67
64
65
66
67
(Actually, it will have steps; but if the slots were many and
narrow, as would be the case if I were taking more precise
observations, the steps would hardly be noticeable. I shall ignore the steps.) I would expect the pebbles to cluster about
29
�The College
the true value-say, 64-but what I find is that the curve
gradually takes on a definite shape!-something like this:
Gauss did not think of questions 2 and 3 at first. When he
was 18, he decided on an answer to the first question, his
so-called Method of Least Squares. Now you may be thinking: the first question is easy to answer. If I observe a quantity
PI•:BBLE-CURVI•:
""
several times in the same way, the best value of the quantity
is the average, or mean, of the observed values. For example,
if I observe a star at heights
f
__.
64", 63", 66", 63"
the accepted rule is to estimate its true height at
~
IH \9 60
61
62
61 64 6\ 66 67 6H 69 70
Placard I
Of course it gets bigger and bigger as I put in more pebbles;
but it acquires and keeps a definite form.
This doesn't look like chaos! To say that the curve has a
64
+
63
+
shape as the pebbles went in, one would have a deeper chaos,
more difficult to comprehend-to make something of, as here
I have made this curve.
Now th:Jt experience has shown me that there is hope of
comprehending my data, I can formulate two questions:
+
Suppose I want to know the value of a quantity
X.
(X, X. I wanted to keep X out of this talk, but when it heard I
was giving a- serious lecture on Gauss's work it insisted on
being let in. Now that it's here, it's going to bring Y and Z
with it. But I won't let them take over. What you have to
keep in mind is that X is the quantity I want to know~ and Y
and Z will be the quantities I can observe.)
If I can observe X itself, I take as the best estimate of X the
mean of the observed values. This is the usual rule.
If I can't observe X, but I can observe one other quantity Y
which is closely related to X, then I simply apply the usual
rule of the mean to Y, and then get X from Y. For example,
l. HOW COMBINE RESULTS
OF OBSERVATIONS TO GET
BEST VALUE OF UNKNOWN?
suppose I know from theory that
2. WHAT IS SHAPE OF PEBBLECURVE OF OBSERVED QUANTITY?
and I observe these values of Y:
3. WHAT HAVE# l AND #2
To Do WITH ONE ANOTHER?
Placard 2
l. How should I combine the results of a number of observations so as to get the best value of the quantity
sougl)t for?
-That's my fundamental question.
2. What is the shape of the pebble-curve of a single observed quantity?
And if I am very thoughtful, I can formulate a third:
3. What have questions 1 and 2 to do with one another?
30
63 ~ 64".
Most people know that. So did Gauss. But remember the
other problem with observations: I may not be able to see
what I want. Let's see what difficulty this will cause us.
form is to say that each measured value has a particular
likelihood-a particular frequency of occurring-relative to
every other. For example, if the pebble-curve is twice as high
above 64 as it is above 62, twice as many pebbles go in at 64
as at 62: 64 is twice as likely to occur. If one could never
make such a statement, if the curve continually changed its
66
4
y =
xz
64, 63, 66, 63.
Then I estimate the true value of Y to be the mean 64,
y
~
64,
and therefore I estimate X to be 8, since
X2 = 64.
There is nothing new here: I apply the standard rule to Y,
then find X from Y.
But what if I am lucky enough to be able to observe not
just Y, but also another quantity Z? This ought to be cause
for rejoicing. The more observed quantities I can use, the
better my determination of X should be. (And this is the
usual circumstance: several observed quantities for each unknown.) So suppose my situation is this:
�July, 1978
X
WANT TO KNOW:
CAN OBSERVE:
Y ANDZ
OBSERVE
= 64 AND
sma11 at once.
To make them all small, I'll make their sum small. But
some of them might be positive and some negative, so that
cancellation would occur in their sum, and the sum might be
small while they were not. So I'll make them all positive by
squaring them. Then I choose X to make
l
Z = 2X
{ Z:
(THEN X 2
choseTI values-that is, the errors. So I want all these errors
y = X2
~
KNOW FROM THEORY:
Y: 62, 66
14, 22
2X
=
18??)
Placard 3
I want to know X, and can observe Y and Z, and theory tells
me that, say, Y = X2 and Z = 2X. I observe the values 62
and 66 fur Y and the values 14 and 22 for Z. Proceeding in
the usual way to take means, I find the mean of the Y-values
to be 64 and the mean of the Z-values to be 18. Since Y =
X2 and Z = 2X the best estimate for X must satisfy X2 = 64
and 2X = 18. Then what is X -8 or 9? 1 don't know what to
do. 1 mustn't throw away any data, but it is tempting. Should
1 average 8 and 9, and say X = 8Y2? That would be a desperate act. It is one thing to average observations of the same
kind, but quite another-and entirely unacceptable-to average derived values such as these.
Thus 1 see that the means of the observations of Y and Z
don't give me X. I need a new approach. Gauss furnished it
in 1795, saying: When I choose a value for X, 1 am also
choosing values for Y and Z, since Y = X2 and Z = 2X.
What I want is to choose X so that
Y = X 2 , Z = 2X
WANT
Y CLOSE TO 62
y
"
" 66
14
22
z
z
"
"
"
"
all at once. If I do choose Y and Z, these differences will be
the amounts by which the observed values differ from the
WANT SMALL ERRORS
Y - 62 SMALL
y - 66
"
14
"
22
"
zz-
MLS: CHoosE X So THAT
(Y-62)2 + (Y-66) 2 + (Z-14) 2
Is AS SMALL AS POSSIBLE
+
(Z-22)2
(Y-62)2
+ (Y-66) 2 +
(Z-14) 2 + (Z-22) 2
as small as possible.
This is the Method of Least Squares: to choose X so that
the sum of the squares of the differences between the corresponding values of Y and Z and the observed values of Y and
Z is as small as possible-that is, so that the sum of the
squares of the errors is as small as possible.
This choice of X is easily made by using calculus. The
details needn't concern us. (You might like to know that the
result in the present case is 8. 02-very different from the 8. 5
we desperately considered before.) The precise formula
needn't concern us too much either. What is important is
this:
There was an old working rule: when you observe a
quantity several times, the best estimate of its true
value is the mean of the observations. This usually
fails to help when only indirect observations can be
made. For that case Gauss gave a new working rule:
Choose X by the Method of Least Squares. It reduces to the old one in the case of direct observations.
For this method we have the authority of Gauss, aged 18.
That's something, We have more: the method proved very
successful in astronomical applications. That's fine, but there
is something arbitrary here, Granted that one wants to make
these errors small, and even that it is appropriate to form their
sum, why square them? Why not use their absolute values, or
their fourth powers? Gauss said that the calculations were
easiest his way. Very well, but one could ask for a firmer basis
for something so important.
Gauss was not satisfied, and two years later he thought
about the first problem
Placard 4
Y is close
Y is close
Z is close
and Z is close
to
to
to
to
62,
66,
14,
22,
all at once. That's the same as saying I want
Y-62 small,
Y-66 small,
Z-14 small,
and Z-22 small,
l. How COMBINE RESULTS
OF OBSERVATIONS TO GET
BEST VALUE OF UNKNOWN?
2. WHAT Is SHAPE OF PEBBLECURVE OF OBSERVED QUANTITY?
3. WHAT HAVE# 1 AND #2
TO Do WITH ONE ANOTHER?
Placard 2
31
�The College
again, in a new way. So we'll begin again too. We have no
Method of Least Squares; we are again facing question I.
Let me think about this problem from the point of view of
likelihood, and see if I can find a logical approach to it. Given
my data, what I would like to find is the most likely value of
X. What does that mean? Well, if I considered two possible
values of X equally likely before i had the data, I will consider
one of them more likely than the other afterwards if the data I
did get are more likely to have been obtained if the first value
was the true one than if the second one was.
Let me illustrate this in the case of direct observations of X.
DIRJ<:CJ'0BSERVATIONS OF
X
Tl-n•: DATA 64, 63, 66, 63 MAKI·:
X
= 64 MORF. LIK~:LY THAN X
= 60
JJJ1lUiNJl
57
58
59 60 61
AXIOM: X
=
62
63
64 65
66 67
Ml<:AN Is MosT LIKELY
Placard 5
Before observing, I considered 60 and 64 equally likely to be
the true value of X. I observed 64, 63, 66, 63. Here is where
the pebbles fell. Now if the pebble-curves for the two values
60 and 64 look like this, I can see that pebbles would be
much more likely to fall where they did if X was 64 than if X
was 60. So I consider 64 a more likely value for X than 60.
And by this kind of reasoning I can make sense of the most
likely value for X.
This approach can be extended to the case of indirect
observations~where I can only see Y and Z; so I would seem
to have a logical principle for choosing X: just take the most
likely value. But there is a hitch: this method depends on the
shape of the pebble-curve. If I don't know that shape, I can't
compare the likelihoods of different values of X to find the
most likely. And I don't know it.
What to do? Gauss said: In the case of direct observations
of X I already have an accepted rule: use the mean. Suppose I
assume that that rule in fact gives me the most likely value.
That is, I take as an axiom that the mean of several direct
observations is the most likely value for the unknown. Does
this help? Does it help to assume that I know how to handle
this special case?
Yes! The astonishing thing is that if I alter the working rule
of the mean to that axiom, there is only one shape the
pebble-curve-can have! (I could write down a formula for it.)
With this shape determined, I can pursue my approach of
finding the most likely value of X; and that turns out to be
precisely the value given by the Method of Least Squares!
That method is thereby re-established, this time as the method
which chooses the most likely value of X. And questions 2 and
3 are answered.
But what about that new axiom of the mean? What Gauss
did was to take the working rule of the mean-"Take the
32
mean and you will get the best value, whatever that
means"-alter it to a specific prediction-"Take the mean
and you will get the most likely value" -and then elevate it
to an axiom, from which the Method of Least Squares could
be deduced. But the axiom is stronger than it looks: its acceptance entails the acceptance of a precise shape for the
pebble-curve. If that shape is in fact slightly different, the
axiom fails, and can no longer provide a foundation for the
Method of Least Squares.
Now experiment does show that the shape predicted by the
axiom is approximately correct for all kinds of observations,
and the discovery of its precise description was an achievement of the first order. Nevertheless, Gauss was ag.lin not
satisfied. So we face question 1 again.
l. HOW COMBINE RESULTS
OF OBSERVATIONS TO GET
BEST VALUE OF UNKNOWN?
2. WHAT Is SHAPE OF PEBBLECURVE OF OBSERVED QUANTITY?
3. WHAT HAVE#! AND#2
To Do WITH ONE ANOTHER?
Placard 2
Almost a quarter-century later Gauss adopted a different
approach, perhaps closer in spirit to his original naive one.
He thought of the act of determining a quantity by taking
observations as the playing of a game-gambling-a game in
which there are only losses to be had, no winnings. The
game goes like this. I observe Y and Z several times, and then
I say, "I think X is ... this!" In so saying, I probably miss the
true value by a little. I count the miss as giving me some loss,
and I ask: What is my best strategy for choosing X, the one
which makes this loss smallest on the average? I have a new
principle for choosing X: I seek to do well in the game of
estimation.
Now to choose my strategy, I need first to decide how
much loss a given error represents to me. Should I consider
that the losses increase as the errors-that an error twice as
big as another means a loss twice as big? Gauss admitted that
the choice is somewhat arbitrary-under what rule do you
play? -but chose the square of the error as the measure of
loss, thus:
THE ESTIMATION GAME
X Is REALLY
64
= 65, I
" , , X = 66~ ,
, , , X = 67, ,
IFI SAYX
Placard 6
LosE$!
,
,
$4
$9
�July, 1978
If you agree that large errors are much less frequent, and
more serious, than small ones, this is not unreasonable; and
besides, said Gauss, it is mathematically simple.
With this version of the game, Gauss proved a remarkable
theorem, namely that there is a best strategy, and it is-the
Method of Least Squares! no matter what the shape of the
pebble-curve is. This is remarkable because it says that no
matter how the errors occur-no matter how the pebbles go
into the box-the same computational method gives the best
value of X. The Method of Least Squares is established once
more, no longer as the method which gives the most likely
value of X-it does that only for one shape of the pebblecurve-but as the method giving the most prudent play in the
game of estimation.
Let me recapitulate. We can regard these successive developments as giving choices of the proper meaning of "best
value" in the problem of choosing the best value of the unknown X.
OLD RULE:
1795 RULE:
1797 DEF:
AXIOM:
THM:
1821 DEF:
AXIOM
THM:
BEST VALUE Is
Mean
by MLS
BEST VALUE Is Most Likely
BEST VALUE Given
MEAN IS SUCI-l
1. SHAPE OF P-C KNOWN
2. MLS GIVES BEST VALUE
BEST VALUE Minimizes Loss
LOSS GOES AS SQ. OF ERROR
MLS GIVES BEST VAL. FOR ANY
P-C
Placard 7
The old rule was: If X is observed directly, the best value is
the mean of the observed values.
In I 795, Gauss proposed a new rule: The best value of X is
that given by the Method of Least Squares, in which the sum
of the squares of the errors is minimized.
In 1797, he offered this definition: The best value of X is
the most likely one-the one which makes the data most
likely to have occurred. To use the definition he needed an
axiom: In the case of direct observations, the mean gives the
best value in the sense of the definition. From the axiom he
could prove a theorem, or rather two theorems: The shape of
the pebble-curve is known; and because of its shape, the
Method of Least Squares gives the best value of X.
Finally, in 1821 he employed a new definition: The best
value of X is that which results from the strategy which
minimizes loss in the game of estimation. Again, he required
an axiom: Loss in the game goes as the square of the error (a
doubled error means a quadrupled loss). And he proved a
theorem: The Method of Least Squares gives the best value of
X, regardless of the shape of the pebble-curve.
Now what of this long study? What kind of achievement
does it represent?
First, Gauss was right. The Method of Least Squares and
Gauss's curve have dominated the theory of observation and
its applications in all areas of science since his time. It is
really difficult to exaggerate their practical importance. Only
recently has there been significant departure from these ideas.
One can still say that the world of chance phenomena is to be
seen essentially as Gauss saw it. Thus, Gauss's mathematics
was good: it applied where he meant it to.
But how did he come to be right? Did he proceed deductively, as mathematicians are sometimes said to do? No; there
was nothing from which to deduce his method. Yet the
Method of Least Squares is a theorem-at least, Gauss felt it
to be one. So the theorem came first~ not itself a first principle, nor an established fact from which one could induce
with all certainty. Rather, it was a perceived truth, perceived
with confidence if not certainty. Perhaps the ability to discover, or to recognize, such truths is the essence of the mathematical intellect. Proofs often come later; so do axioms.
We are privileged to see here the search for foundations
which did come after. Axioms are called up by the
theorem-and, of course, are bound by it. Now sometimes
such a search may appear to be nothing but a clearing up -of
details. For example, the great work of the nineteenth century
on the foundations of calculus may appear that way-as mere
necessary criticism. But in the present case we see the probing
of a mystery which is open to everyone's attention. The seemingly "logical" approach of choosing the most likely value of
X did not come first. When it came, it needed an axiom to
support it; and that axiom was felt to be too restrictive, and so
was replaced by another, representing another point of view.
A very interesting development! And of course the appropriateness of the axiom we are left with is open to dispute. And
the search for foundations was undertaken in the full knowledge that this might be so. Gauss may be considered the
founder of the modern axiomatic method, in which axioms
take their place as tools of discovery rather than unalterable
truths.
We observe the world-insofar as observation is a matter of
precise measurement-only through a chaos. Faced with this
apparent chaos, the chaos of observations, Gauss showed us
where to see what we look at, and discovered a fundamental
shape hidden in the world. He penetrated to the connections
between his intuitions of error, likelihood, and the game of
estimation, on the one hand, and the order waiting to be
perceived, on the other.
The foundations he provided arc as firm as his sight was
clear. They were not the last word; there is no last word in
these matters. But in looking over the sequence of his thought
we see that one might say that order was first brought out of
chaos by fi-at-as we are also told elsewhere. Thank you.
33
�The College
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St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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The College, July 1978
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von Oppen, Beate Ruhm
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Dunham, William B.
Oosterhout, Barbara Brunner
Wyatt, E. Malcolm
Zuckerman, Elliott
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Volume XXX, Number 1 of The College. Published in July 1978.
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The_College_Vol_30_No_1_1978
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The College
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f/L~
THE COLLEGE
ISSN 0010-0862
St. John's College • Annapolis, Maryland- Santa Fe, New Mexico
January 1978
�THE COLLEGE
Vol. XXIX
January, 1978
Number 4
Editor's Note
ON THE COVER:
Charles C. Post '74 captured the bell
tower of McDowell Hall in a mood appropriate to the winter season.
Editor: Beale Ruhm von Oppen
Managing Editor: Thomas Parran,
Jr.
Editorial Advisory Board: William B.
Dunham, Barbara Brunner Oosterhout
'55, E. Malcolm Wyatt, Elliott Zuckerman.
THE COLLEGE rs published by the
Office of College Relations, St. John's
College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404,
Richard D. Weigle, President, William
B. Dunham, Vice President. ·
Published four times a year, in January,
April, July, and October. Second class
postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland,
and at other mailing places.
Last summer Tom Parran, our indefatigable managing editor, wrote
a memorandum on the periodic college publications, this journal and
The Reporter. In his other capacity as director of alumni activities he
had come to the conclusion, after representations from William W.
Simmons '48, president of the Alumni Association, and various other
communications, that The College in its present, hybrid, form does
not and cannot give enough attention to news or stories about alumni.
The other half of the hybrid was not fully itself either, having to meet
a quarterly schedule with texts of lectures, articles, poems, or
translations~which might or might not be available m sufficient
quantity and quality. We had had much praise and many requests for
back numbers, sometimes from quite unexpected quarters, but there
had also been puzzled enquiries from people who wondered why they
were getting our alumni magazine.
A separation of the two halves seemed indicated and is about to take
place. This issue is the last in the old format.
At a special publications meeting held on the Annapolis campus on
2 5 September 1977 representatives of both campuses and Mr. Simmons found themselves in agreement on the following points:
(I) that increased publicity about alumni and their activities is desirable; (2) that the magazine of the college should be limited in content
to material which reflects the intellectual life of the college; (3) that
The Reporter is the proper vehicle for news items and other dated material and alumni notes and should expand its coverage of the alumni;
(4) alumni of the Santa Fe campus should be more adequately represented in print.
It was therefore decided that The Reporter was to expand in size and
increase in frequency, from five to seven issues per year, two of them
done by and for Santa Fe. The first Reporter of the new type will
probably be published by Santa Fe in May.
(Continued inside back cover)
IN THE JANUARY ISSUE:
On the Imagination, by Eva Brann
Picture credits: Cover, Charles C. Post '74; pp.
12-17, Lester Miller, courtesy of Historic Richmond
Foundation; p. 25, State of Maryland, Tom Parran
'42; p. 27, Abingdon Press.
A Preservationist Looks at Housing,
by Michael W. Gold '61 ............................... 12
An Open Letter to St. John's Alumni,
by William M. Goldsmith '45
Campus-Alumni News
.......................... 18
.................................. 25
�ON
THE IMAGINATION
by Eva Brann
Tonight I shall commit the deliberate indiscretion of trying
to say what may be, all in all, unsayable. Let me, therefore,
begin with a little disquisition on ineffability.
First, there often exists an insuperable inner resistance to
speech. We may declare something to be unspeakably terrible, or unmentionably shameful, or, again, unutterably beautiful or inexpressibly deep. W c do not mean that we have
made a laborious effort to find the right words and have
failed, but rather that we do not want to speak, that we do not
want to rekindle or precipitate, tarnish or dissipate, amplify or
diminish our inner experience by exposure. (Of course, there
is also the trivial reluctance to find language, expressed in the
routine adjectives "incredible" or "unbelievable" or "fantastic," which stems from mere indolence.)
Second, and at the other extreme, it is conceivable that, as
the very consequence of the most faithful and methodical
pursuit of speech, it may come to its own end. For by speaking thoughtfully and searchingly it may be possible to talk
oneself, as it were, to the very edge of the realm which speech
intends, there to confront immediately that which speech is
about-whereupon there would be only the silent passage
into being.
Third, the outer world, in its multifariousness, may outstrip speech, which is, for all its copiousness, inadequate to
the infinity of appearances. Speech not only expresses and
searches, it also describes, weaving itself around things in
their inexhaustible variety and detail and failing for lack of
world enough and time. For we live, as one of. Pascal's
Thoughts observes (I, 72), in a double infinity between the
Miss Brann delivered this lecture in Annapolis on November 18, 1977,
and in Santa Fe on December 2, 1977.
minute and the enormous, which makes our researches endless and our speech incomplete. I might add that the bulkiness of the most characteristic modern novels is the consequence of a strenuous effort to master the appearances in
words.
Fourth, it is barely possible that there arc experiences
which are inherently private, ineradicably internal, ultimately
unique, and hence incommunicable.
And fifth and finally, I come to the kind of ineffability with
which my discourse tonight may be afflicted. There may be a
realm which solicits speech but never yields to it, not by reason of being ifself the object of speech or by being affected
with infinity, but because it is the other of what is sayable,
that which always absconds from speech. It is what Valery
intends when he says:
The beautiful perhaps demands the servile imitation
of that which is indefinable in things.
Only I shall not call it beauty but, more widely, appearance,
or better, apparency, meaning precisely that in things which
speech so often hopefully intends and always hopelessly
misses: their extended, shapely, shining looks. I say "shining"
not for effect, but to render the sense of our Greek word for
the appearances, phenomena, that is to say, whatever comes
to light, shines out. To put it briefly and simply: think of a
picture and all that can be said about it. The words will be
larger in scope than the image, but the image will not be
contained in the words-that latter difference is appearance.
Now we have a special capacity for entertaining pure appearances, and it is that to which I want to devote the evening. Our ability for consciously taking in sensation, for bring-
�The College
ing together our senses and our understanding, is technically
called perception. We perceive "real" appearances, appearances in which some thing evidently appears, which have behind them some stuff that is there, externally at work. Attention to perception necessarily leads to its substrates, to things.
But we also have a curious capacity for mere or pure appearance. Here strictly no thing appears, no immediate other
source, no sensory stuff, no supporting substrate. This capacity has two names, one Greek, one Latin, and unlike "perception" these are not philosopher's terms. ThE:y arc fantasy and
imagination.
"Fantasy" is the noun from the Greek action verb phantiizo, which comes in turn from the verbal form of the same
verb, phaino, to shine, whose passive yields the word
phenOmenon. In sum, therefore, "phantasy" means "that
which renders apparent," a faculty for bringing to light.
"Imagination" on the other hand, is related to the Latin verb
imitari, to imitate. The imagination is therefore a faculty for
images, for likenesses of things. Taking both aspects together,
then, it is·a capacity for appearances without "real" reference.
I should note here that although perception is more frequently and more technically discussed, the imagination, too,
in its most sober as well as its most splendid functions, has
had its share of treatment. But not so the peculiar and
perhaps somewhat private aspect of which I want to speak
tonight. In the many writings on the imagination covering its
laws and its magic, its bodily basis and its transcendent
source, there are few, and those not easily found, which deal
with that.*
Now when engaged in the dubious and delicate business of
expounding a recondite matter in public, the safe course is to
delimit it as rigorously as possible. And so, I shall begin with
a review of the ordinary, well recognized imagination. Not
that there would be much profit in reciting to you the multitude of understandings that have been proposed: it has been
regarded as a faculty, a function, a structure, a condition, an
instrument, a mode, a power, a potency, a process, a treasury, a theatre, a place in the soul, an organ of the body. For
these are, all of them, determined by the position which the
imagination is assigned within the topology of the soul, and
that is how I ought to begin.
In all major accounts the imagination is an intermediate
power, positioned somewhere between the outermost reception performed by the senses and the inmost work done by
thought. Furthermore it is neither the lowest faculty (except
* Brief Bibliography:
Aristotle, On the Soul, Bk. III, 427 ff., on phantasia.
Augustine, Confessions, Bk. X, on memory.
Pico della Mirandola, On the Imagination.
Jean Paul Richter, The Life of Quintus Fixlein, Ch. I, "On the Natural
Magic of the Imagination".
Hegel, Encyclopaedia, Philosophy of Spirit, 455 ff., "The Imagination".
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Ch. XIII, "On the imagination, or
esemplastic power".
Ruskin, Modem Painters, Pt. III, Sc. II, Chs. II-IV, "Of Imagination:
Associative, Penetrative, Contemplative".
Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, Time Regained, Ch. III.
Sartre, The Psychology of the Imagination.
2
for certain moralists for whom it is the source of evil imaginations) nor the highest (except for certain mystics for whom it
is a theophantic power).
Let me convey to you the range of these positions by
sketching out their outer and inner limits, as it were. You will
recognize them as derived from Plato and Kant respectively,
but the provenance is not the point~the scheme is. On the
other hand, it is not entirely insignificant that these positions
are philosophically formulated. For the imagination is not a
distinguishable power until the world begins to appear. But in
the ever present and ever recurrent condition not implausibly
called "pre-philosophical", the world docs not, properly
speaking, appear to us at all; rather it is at hand for our use
and absorbs us as we absorb it, just as in a warm embrace the
human appearance is eclipsed in closeness. For the world to
become phenomenal, we must tear ourselves away from it,
and look and reflect.
Therefore, I ought to begin where the philosophers have
already been at work. First I must dispose of the slightly mad
hyperbolic case proposed in all degrees of sophistication by
people who place the imagination outside the soul altogether,
in an effort to recapture the satisfying immediacy of prephilosophical existence. For them appearance is simply the
outer shape or envelope of solid stuff, and the imagination is
a bodily organ on which material things leave a negative imprint or trace of themselves. They mean to save the world
from any possible imputation of unreality by making appearances perfectly inseparable from matter. What is absurd is
that they choose just such non-bodies as negatives or traces to
testify to the handy, plump solidity of things.
The scheme itself lies all within the soul. It begins with the
fact that when our senses are stopped the world disappears.
We then conclude l. that something comes to us, is conveyed into us; and 2. that it comes through receptors, ducts,
as it were, such as Augustine calls the "cinqueport" or "fivegates" of our body. What comes, insofar as it comes by the
senses, is called sensation. But even as it comes it is taken in
and taken up, judged to be mountain, man, or mouse, as the
case may be. Usually this judgment seems simultaneous with
the reception of the sensation, not only when there is an, instant recognition of something previously known, but when
we know merely that a shaped "something" is present. (When
I worked in the excavations in Athens, we had a catalogue
classification called "little mysteries", namely recognized
"somethings" which it was, however, a scholarly triumph to
"identify" specifically.) Sometimes, to be sure, 'twixt sleep
and wake, for instance, the judgment lags and we get an apprehension of mere sensation, a raw "manifold" as Kant
would say. But usually we pronounce immediately, and such
judged sensation, sensation met at the gates of the soul, is
what Plato calls phantasia. For him phantasia is simply the
noun for phafnetai, "it appears", namely the "mixture of sensation and judgment", or "the contact of sensation and understanding". (Sophist 264, Theaetetus 195.) Here imagination occurs at the interface of outside and inside, at the junction of soul and world.
I pass quickly over Aristotle's most important intermediate
�January, 1978
placing of the imagination, now well within the soul but still
facing out. He denies that it is the event of judged sensation
and declares it a special potency for receiving and holding
sense objects but without their matter. The resulting "phantasms" represent the accommodation of the world to the soul;
without them there can be no thought about things. (On the
Soul 428, 432.)
So finally I come to that view of the imagination which
places it at the other extreme, in the very center and depth of
the soul. It is still a mediating faculty insofar as it is the hidden common ground of the outer and inner faculties. To explain its position it is necessary once again to treat of the
phenomena, now in Kant's Way. Kant, as you will remember,
claims to be effecting a second Copernican revolution.
Copernicus, having failed to "save the phenomena" when
making the stars turn about the observer, tried turning the
observer himself. So Kant, unable to become perfect master
of the appearances when they were allowed to move the soul,
had the soul itself make the motion: the appearances do not
come to us but arise within us in our faculty for representing
appearances or sights to "look at", our intuition. To be sure,
some amorphous sensory stuff arrives from the outside, but it
brings no informing news and is a mere occasion-we provide the shapes and schemes in which sensation and understanding are synthesized to make what Kant calls "real appearances", reality, the things as they represent themselves to
us. ("Reality" is, after all, merely Latin for "thinghood".)
When I say "we'' provide the schemata within which sensation is shaped and understood, I mean, or rather Kant says,
that our faculty of imagination does this work. (Critique of
Pure Reason B xvi, 180 ff.) And so the imagination is a faculty first for producing things and then for knowing them, a
faculty for "real" recognition, the very world-making and
world-knowing power.
But as we all know, in the ordinary understanding the
imagination is assigned no such tremendous function. Often
the fantasy or imagination is thought of merely as a capacity
for inner pictures, "another craftsman in our souls", or "a
painter who . . . draws likenesses . . . in the soul", as Plato
says; it is for him the source of what he calls the "phantastic"
art, the art of making deceitful semblances, or as we say,
"works of art." (Philebus 39, Sophist 2 35.) Kant, too, recognizes an imagination productive not in the sense of bringing
together the faculties according to fixed "schemata" to form
real appearances, but in sponsoring that free interplay between them which he regards as the source of art. Coleridge
fixes this distinction when he writes:
The IMAGINATION, then, I consider either as
primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent
of all human Perception. . . . The secondary
Imagination I consider as an echo of the former.
. . . It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; . . . to idealize and to unify. It is essentially
vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially
fixed and dead.
The passage hints at an interesting circumstance, namely
that the value placed on the secondary, re-creative, imagination in fact varies directly with the centrality of the primary
imagination. As it turns out, its potency varies inversely.
What I mean is that where the imagination is placed toward the outer regions of the soul, receiving appearances
from the outside, the secondary or poetic imagination is represented as a mischief-making faculty of dissembling
semblances, phantasms of a grade still lower than an at least
scrupulous imitation of the inherently illusory appearances
might produce. But who does not know the potency Plato
accords the poetic imagination, particularly in using it to
eclipse the enchantment of the world of appearance by means
of myths of other worlds? Furthermore, the imagination, in
painting the shapes of pleasures into the soul, engenders desire; accordingly in the Christian tradition the origin of "evil
dispositions" is located there. Here the imagination is dangerous and potent.
On the other hand, where the- primary imagination is itself
the maker as well as the knower of the world, the poetic
imagination is invariably highly, even anxiously, valued. For
the first imagination makes a uniform, rule-governed, ordinary world, a mundane, not a cosmic order:
That inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,
as a poet s'cornfully says. Therefore the power of a second,
extraordinary creation, of introducing colorful singularities
into a rule-ridden world is more than welcomed-it is nearly
worshiped. But the more eagerly it is courted the less vigorous
arc its products and its effects. Let me propose a reason,
which has to do with the distribution of this power among us.
The primary imagination (if it exists at all) is universal; all
normal humans are capable of having real appearances. To
be sure, its reflective cognitions, that is to say, the contents of
the science of nature, do not come equally easily to all,
though every responsible plan for universal education acknowledges that they are inaccessible to none. The secondary
imagination-"genius" and "originality" are its Kantian
names-is, on the other hand, very rare. Those who are
gifted with the nimble play of the faculties needed to produce
coherent appearances in the absence of sensation, and with
the mental and physical talent needed to materialize them
and set them back into the world as real appearances, form a
small elite; that is a human fact, but evidently a fact next to
unbearable in a mundane and egalitarian world. So whereas
at first the "genius" is encouraged to value himself alone infinitely, soon a public conscious of its rights assumes for itself
the same power: "creativity" is universalized. There fo11ows a
rage of making, a frantic constructiveness, sometimes aridly
geometric and again wantonly amorphous, an obligatory originality which plays havoc with craft and tradition. And sure
enough, all manner of poetry declines in public power. I am
treating you to this diatribe only because, we being to some
degree· in the condition described, I want to summon attention to yet a third, a "tertiary" imagination, which is neither
3
�The College
so very ordinary as the cognitive nor so very special as the
re-creative imagination.
I can do that best with reference to the two names, fantasy
and imagination. As it happens, the former term, in its English form, the fancy, has in the tradition come to connote a
lesser faculty, a faculty of pure unreality, of dreams and phantasms, of either inadvertent or arbitrary inner appearances. So
Kant calls the imagination, insofar as it produces images involuntarily, "phantasy", while Coleridge includes an element
of wilfulness. "The Fancy", he says
is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is
blended with, and modified by that empirical
phenomenon of the will, which we express by the
word CHOICE.
These two apparently opposed aspects of fancy are in fact
complementary, as the day dream, that half wilful, half passive exploitation of memory in the interests of desire, shows.
Let me say right now that I would not deprecate day dreams,
which are the lubricant of life and corrupting only if they are
constructed out of indigent wantonness in such a way as to
ask to be rebuffed by life. But as the open-eyed, imaginative
inner shaping of our ardours they are the very emulsion from
which our sober and sustained plans float up. I here uphold
day dreams~much maligned by the maturity-mongers-as
indeed a prime product of that tertiary imagination I want to
defend tonight.
Why should I? It is because unlike the cognitive and poetic
imaginations it is neither universally active nor rarely found.
Instead it is, I believe, present in many people, but often only
potentially, for it can be starved and polluted and drowned
out. It has always been beleaguered: by the exposed hardness
of life or its debilitating comfort, by classical formalism or
romantic exploitation. But in our day it is endangered from
all sides at once: from expectations of doom and constructions
of convenience, from the enormity of our universe and the
tainting of our earth and even more by the over-stimulation
of our senses and the overstraining of our expressive
abilities-but most of all by the abuse of our intellect; for
when the intellect is desiccated into mere rationality the
imagination also withers. Later I would like to give some reasons why we should value this third imagination communally, and right now I can give some of the negative conditions
for returning it to vigour~though many of you will probably
find them off-putting and objectionable.
These rules for the recovery of the imagination would be:
to desist deliberately from artless, therapeutic self-expression,
to inhibit mightily all originality and "creativity", to invent
little, contrive little, construct little; either to recall to awareness or to turn off all stimulation-musical or visual-which
is a circumambience rather than an object of pointed attention; and finally, to exercise the intellect strenuously and incessantly, especially in respect to our emotions and passions
and feelings.
So finally I am ready to come directly to the description of
4
this third imagination. It is first and last a capacity for
momentary panoramas, for wide visions. A sight will rise up,
filJ the inner fram.e, fade. It is, next, a faculty at once passive
and active; its works are affections and its affections works. It
is involuntary insofar as its sights. cannot, in their full enchantment, be summoned at will (though we can always provide ourselves with their pale replicas). It is voluntary insofar
as we can make ourselves ready and receptive by seeking out
certain sights and sounds and texts, and nurturing an aversion
to others. I shall not now advertise its magic and its meaning,
but read to you instead a descriptive sample. To be sure it is a
musical rather than a visual example, but it will serve to
exemplify the kind of incident this imagination gives rise to.
It is taken from the novel of novels, War and Peace. The
youngest Rostov, Petya, has run away to war and joined a
guerilla band in their camp. It is the morning of his first
battle-and his last. The auditory vision arises-as it is not
untypical-on the border of dreaming.
Rain-drops dripped from the trees. There was a low
hum of talk. The horses neighed and jostled one
another. Someone snored.
Ozhik-zhik, ozhik-zhik . i • • hissed the sabre on the
whetstone. And all at once Petya heard a melodious
orchestra playing some unknown, sweet, solemn
hymn. Petya was as musical as Natasha, and more so
than Nikolai, but he had never learnt music or
thought about it and so the harmonies that suddenly
filled his ears were to him absolutely new and intoxicating. The music swelled louder and louder. The
air was developed and passed from one instrument to
another. And what was played was a fugue-though
Petya had not the slightest idea what a fugue was.
Each instrument-now the violin, now the horn,
but better and purer than violin and horn-played
its own part, and before it had played to the end of
the motif melted in with another, beginning almost
the same air, and then with a third and a fourth; and
then they all blended into one, and again became
�January, 1978
separate and again blended, now into solemn church
music, now into some brilliant and triumphant song
of victory.
'Oh yes, of course, I must be dreaming,' Petya said
to himself as he lurched forward. 'It's only in my
ears. Perhaps, though, it's music of my own. Well,
go on, my music! Now! . . . '
He closed his eyes. And from different directions, as
though from a distance, the notes fluttered, swelled
into harmonies, parted, came together and again
merged into the same sweet and solemn hymn. 'Oh,
this is lovely! As much as I like, and as I want it!'
said Petya to himself. He tried to conduct this trem·endous orchestra.
'Hush, now, softly die away!' and the sounds obeyed
him. 'Now fuller, still livelier. More and more joyful
now!' And from unknown depths rose the swelling
triumphal chords. 'Now the voices!' commanded
Petya. And, at first from afar, he heard men's voices,
then women's, steadily mounting in a slow crescendo. Awed and rejoicing, Petya drank in their
wondrous beauty.
mention in passing, though the chief one is in place right
here; it is that he is more hell-bent on exploiting these moments to assuage his literary anxieties than on fathoming
them. However, no more shall I succeed, and, except for an
attempt to formulate the possibilities, my lecture will have to
be aporetic.
The most immediate beginning of our inquiry into the
imagination is given by its sensory triggers. For although
imaginative appearances have no sense content (or perhaps
precisely because they have none) they are often set off by an
accidental sense impression; for example most people have
had the experience of the sudden vivid resurrection of a scene
by an odor. Indeed, it is, oddly enough, the very senses
which are most "sensual", the senses activated by ingesting,
inhaling, clasping, that is, taste, smell, touch, which most
effectively set off the imagination. Petya hears the knife on
the whetstone. In Proust's novel the taste of a tea cake, the
feel of a napkin, the touch of a pavement, play a great releasing role. They bring back in a magical mode scenic memories
The singing fused into a march of victory, and the
rain dripped, and ozhik-zhik, ozhik-zhik . . . hissed
the sabre, and the horses jostled one another again,
and neighed, not disturbing the chorus but forming
part of it.'
It is not by chance that the incident occurs in a novel. It is
in novels that such epiphanies are most at home. Novels,
namely long works of fictional prose, are a very modern
genre. They are essentially faked documentary reports, case
histories of the ordinary world synthesized by the cognitive
imagination. Their great bulk is a consequence of that attempt to master phenomenal infinity I spoke of before. It is
within this prosaic world that the episodes of the imagination
become acutely valuable, and they do indeed play a central
role in many of the most massive novels. But they are the
very crux of the longest of them, Proust's In Search of Lost
Time, usually known by the English title taken from the
Shakespeare sonnet:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
(30.)
Proust proposes to himself one great problem: how to penetrate the mystery of what he calls the "privileged moments" of
the imagination; in particular he is determined to find a solution in the last book, Time Regained, which contains the
point of departure for the writing of the novel itself. He does
not succeed, for a number of reasons some of which I shall
*Translation by Rosemary Edmonds {Penguin Books).
of Venice, of Balbec, of Combray which his "descriptive efforts and pretended snapshots of memory had failed to recall".
His explanation of the magic is, first, that since the recall is
required to be inadvertent, ordinary, flattening, wilful intelligence plays no part in the recapture, and, second, that, since
the sensory identity occasions a virtual resurrection of memory, the resulting visions are released from mundane, weary,
enslaving temporality. But that does not explain why the
imagination, a faculty of mere, or true, appearances, namely
of asensual but vivid aspects presented for our attentive contemplation, should be so intimately related to the senses of
repletion, the senses sometimes called "subjective" because
they cause an effect in us while leaving the appearing object
itself obscure. I can only speculate that it is because as a rule
for us the way to delight is through desire: we must want
before we truly see-hence the body makes the beginning,
then the soul takes over.
Next I want to ask after the very imaging character itself,
the imitative nature of the imagination. Aristotle makes a
most undeniable statement when he begins his discussion of
the imagination with the words: "Things are unclear concern-
5
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ing the imagination". (On the Soul, 414.) For what could an
appearing form without sensory freight be? What is a bare
appearance, an imitation of reality? Jean Paul Sartre, who
wrote much on the imagination, is preoccupied with it for
just this reason-because it is the capacity for the nonpresent, the absent, the non-existent; it is a sterile and derivative mode-there is no world of the imagination. He echoes
the classical, deprecating view of images: that they are not
what they are, that they are a curious interweaving of being
and non-being, and that phantasms are something less even
than seeming, a pseudo-seeming. (Sophist 240.) Such views
turn the imagination's activity into a central metaphysical
problem while depriving it of all lustre. Arc they adequate?
Now it seems to me that there are three kinds of imaging:
the world imitates itself, in shadows, reflections, mirrors,
usually with the loss of a dimension but without any tampering intention, as it were. Next, human beings copy the world
either faithfully according to .ability, or mechanically by
measure, or in a modulated version according to an inner
appearance. These first two kinds of imagings result in a real
image, that is to say, a material likeness. They are problem
enough, but my interest is in the third imaging, which IS
entirely internaL
How does it differ from real or realized imaging? Here is
the problem of appearance at its acutest. Inner sights arc
somehow according to the outer world, they echo or imitate
it. On the other hand, they arc without givcnness: without
thisness or hereness or nowncss. They arise "out of nowhere",
out of all context: they endure indeterminately, unamenable
to exact delineation or measurement, and their fading seems
to be spurred by the very effort to hold them.
But for all that, they shine. The word "phantasy" says Aristotle, comes from phdos, light. And indeed, these imaginative
images display a pregnant perspicuousness, a significant patency which I have called pure appearance because it is not
the appearance given off by some thing. They have that unfolded extendedness, that spreading openness, (whose body is
color), which is the chief mark of visual appearance. But
what is it that appears, and what is it that is imitated?
In search of this answer let me insist once again that the
imagination is primarily visual. To be sure, there are auditory
imaginations, like Petya's music; and Keats can claim that
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter. . . .
But music is too essentially a temporal development to have a
place in this faculty of singular moments; it is usua1ly the
occasion but not the content of images. It can make the
clouds of heaven open to show riches even to a Caliban,
whose isle
. . . is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that
give delight and hurt not.
Or it can be the accompaniment of a sudden vision, as in this
6
account of a man surveying his ancestral estate:
Sebastian heard the music and saw the vision. It was
a tapestry that he saw, and heard the strains of a
wind orchestra, coming from some invisible players
concealed behind the trees. His thoughts turned to
the house itself, and there also found their satisfaction, for there also was activity; the pestle thumped
in the kitchen; the duck turned sizzling on the
spit; ... (Sackville-West, The Edwardians.)
Tangibility, on the other hand, is entirely excluded. It is
possible in the imagination to see oneself touching, say, a
face, but is impossible to imagine touch-one can only feel
it. Imaginations are intangible precisely because they are immaterial, unbodily, and for the same reason they are also undynamic- they lack all the characteristics of naturally moving bodies. They do not have a principle of motion within
themselves. They may be transmuted but they cannot be
transported. Nor can we move through them as we do
through the natural world. Think, for instance, of making a
landfall. A pale blue shield floats up on the pale blue water;
in an hour it has turned into a grey arid green-faceted range
lapped by dark blue waves, and yet an hour later we arc
clambering about in the hot and fragrant ravines of an Aegean island. We cannot similarly close in to make contact in
our imagination or, for that matter, engage in increasingly
precise observation. We cannot turn on it the mental microscope or reversed telescope through which Gulliver sees the
gross-textured Brobdingnagians and the insect-like Lilliputians. The inner world has no coordinates, no perspective and
no scales-only shapes, places, and the absolute attributes of
delicacy or grandeur. What appears internally is static because it appears in its one privileged aspect.
But precisely as they are intangible and unapproachable, so
inner images form a world. For that is just what a world is: a
�January, 1978
region of regions" as C. S. Lewis defines it, a setting, a
scene, a theatre which forms our background, the containing
environment for our more collected moments~for when it is
necessary to come too urgently to grips with it, it disappears;
at such a moment we lose the wood for the trees. What I
mean by a world is perhaps best illustrated in those Renaissance paintings in which human beings carry on-pray,
mourn, celebrate or just smile-against a lovingly rendered
backdrop of a wide and vanishing, yet enclosing, landscape,
full of city walls, steeples, hillocks, thickets and winding
paths-their world. Again, think of fairy stories: how much of
the tale, particularly of the English sort, is apt to consist of
world-building, of the devising of a characteristic topography
as a frame for wonders-its terrain is often laid out on the
end papers. Or, on the other extreme, what is if that turns
that tool of mere transience, the car, into a rushing cubicle
of confessions and confidences for the American imagination,
if not the exhilaratingly enfolding vistas of the passing continent? But, of course, I am thinking not only of landscapes
but of cities and buildings, those more concentrated enclosures of human life.
Now insofar as these scenes are· in us, we are not in them;
indeed they are unpeopled. In this they differ from dreams.
For often the very burden of a dream is a distillation of the
peculiar pathos of a person, whose essence, however, appears
not so much to us as through us; it is our feeling of them that
we reveal to ourselves. And though the redolence of dreams is
probably far more significant than their plot, still, unlike
phantasms, they are compositional efforts-there is work in
dreams, as Freud says, So also landscape paintings or architectural vedutas may contain people, albeit faceless. But
the scenes of the fantasy have no figures, as is amply attested
in written accounts: witness Proust's visions of Combray,
Martinville, Balbee, Venice, or Thomas de Quincey's accounts of his opium dreams. De Quincey precipitated himself
into the hells of opium eating partly to recapture and enhance
the imaginations of his childhood, and he is a knowing,
though tainted, connoisseur of the imagination. He speaks of
his visions as follows (Confessions of an English OpiumEater):
. the splendors of my dreams were indeed
chiefly architectural: and I beheld such pomp of
cities and palaces as was never yet beheld by the waking eye, .unless in the clouds, From a great modern
poet I cite the part of a passage which describes as an
appearance actually beheld in the clouds, what in
many of its circumstances I saw frequently in sleep:
The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city-boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,
Far sinking into splendor-without end!
Fabric it seem'd of diamond, and of gold,
With alabaster domes and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright,
In avenues disposed; there towers begirt
With battlements that on their restless fronts
Bore stars~illumination of all gems!
(Wordsworth, The Excursion, II)
Nonetheless, if we ourselves do not appear within the inner
scenes, yet we are there. An acecdote is told-at least I recall
it as being told-of a Chinese or Japanese landscape painter,
who on having completed his masterpiece, picked up his ink
and his brushes and disappeared off into it. In such a way we
ourselves have been absorbed into our inner sights, and con-
7
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sequently as we scan them they look back at us familiarly:
Man wanders among symbols in those glades
Where all things watch him with familiar eyes.
(Baudelaire, "Correspondances. '')
Augustine gives a vivid account of such an inner circumambulation:
And I come into these fields and spacious p3laces of
my memory, where are the treasures of innumerable
images of every kind of thing conveyed into it by the
senses. . .. And all this I do withiny in the huge
court of my memory. For there I have in readiness
even the heavens and the earth and the sea. . . .
There also I meet with myself. . . . (Confessions
X.)
Since Augustine is speaking particularly of the memory
rather than the imagination, the next thing is to investigate
the close relation between them which is generally observed.
Is all memory imagination and all imagination memory?
Arc they convertible terms? All memory, it seems to me, is
indeed imaginative in this sense, that whatever is remembered has the form of an appearance, and primarily (but not
exclusivc1y) a visual appearance. That is attested by the ancient and now forgotten art of "topical" or place memory, in
which every item to be remembered was assigned a place in
an imagined mansion, theatre, or cosmos, there to be located
and recalled at will. (Sec Frances Yates, The Art of Memory,
1966.) So, also, if a poem is to be remembered, it is as if an
inner prompter whispered it, so that we have an auditory appearance. In short, in the memory things re-appear-Kant
calls it the "re-productive imagination," a faculty for reinscribing into the consciousness former appearances, voluntarily or involuntarily. (The peculiar reminiscence of invisible
being called mythically "recollection" in the Platonic
dialogues no reader of the Meno will confuse with ordinary
appearance-memory.)
Conversely, al1 imagination is memory-though that is
also, in a strange way I will attempt to articulate, not all it is.
There is, however, general agreement that the imagination
can only re-compose, re-arrange, re-form real remembered
appearances, but it can bring forth no hitherto unseen shape.
The unicorn is but a white horse with a horn on its forehead.
(Indeed those extravagantly extended and strenuously contrived novelistic fantasies, like MacDonald's Phantasies, most
intrusively display the character of being mere mosaics of fanciful constructions and literary reminiscences.) But what is of
more interest than the fact that the memory is the sole source
of imaginary forms is that in being so it casts all imagination
in the mode of pastness. A fairy tale properly begins with
"Once upon a time".
Hence the notion of the "lost paradise" figures large in
theories of the imagination. Schopenhaucr, for example,
holds that "the sudden remembrance of scenes of past and
distance flies by us as a lost paradise" because in them we
8
have forgotten the "subjective" tortures of the will and its·
striving that all present reality brings with it, and recall only
the pure "objective" appearance. (The World as Will and
Representation, 38.) And in a general way, events are well
known to undergo purification and enhancement in
remembrance-past picnics are without mosquitos, and even
the mundane sprawl of daily business can in retrospect be
turned into a nostalgia-laden world:
Thus the telescope of fantasy draws a diffuse region
of brightness about the blessed isles of the past. .
(Jean Paul, "On the Natural Magic of the Imagination".)
Through the past things grow perfect.
For Proust, above all, "the true paradises arc always the
paradises one has lost," -but he has a different explanation,
touched on before. It is not so much the perfective power of
the past which makes imaginative reminiscence blissful, as
the very fact-the mere fact-that the renewal of a memory
betokens a liberation from the bondage of the inexorably COB:tinuous flow of time. To be precise: a "hard law of our nature" allows us to imagine only that which is really absent,
which is without reality. In those privileged moments, however, a remote childhood scene is suddenly recalled in all the
vividness of its perceived presence: it is at once devoid of
weary reality and ful1 of shining existence. The sensory trigger
has therefore by a stratagem
effected a contact between the dreams of the imagination and that of which they arc habitually deprived, namely the idea of existence.
Mundanity has been transmuted into timelessness. The difficulty of this explanation, the fruit of twelve laborious volumes, is patent: The explanation is purely formal, for it
attributes the enchantments of imaginative scenes not to
something in them but solely to their relation to time, which
is, after all, a mere form of appearance. But those childhood
scenes whose resurrection is the source of such felicity, what
was it in them which made them memorable?
Yet, however unsatisfactory Proust's solution may be, it
docs bring to the fore the roots the imagination has in childhood. Its capability in adults is altogether dependent on the
proper cultivation of that "dream-theatre" which, as de Quincey observes, is naturally rich in children. The malnutrition
of the imagination in childhood, or its contamination by
amorphousness and crudity is, I will argue, a recognizable
public problem.
However, to return to the question of the association of the
imagination with the past: I speculate that it is only a
similitude. The archetypal impressions of childhood, and indeed a1l deep impressions, already include even at their first
occurrence the element of recognition, and hence the dimension of the past. Images are not memories because they come
out the past but they seem to come out of the past because
they are the cause of memorableness; they stand behind all
�January, 1978
memorable real appearances to give them their depth and
significance, and their past mode is only a likeness for their
priority.
Neither can the perfective power of the past be by itself
responsible for the most remarked and remarkable aspect of
the imagination, which is that is a faculty of fleeting but deep
felicity. Proust reports:
. the intoxicating and elusive visiOn softly pervaded me as though it said: "Grasp me as I float by
you, if you can, and try to solve the enigma of happiness I offer you."
Whence the happiness? It is of a specific sort, not to be
confused with the detached pleasures of pure sensation, such
as the liquid silver of a single flute tone; nor the blissful absorption in an object of love, such as the facial topography of
a human being, nor the_ engrossed perception of the formal
perfection of beauty, such as a classical temple.
The beginning of the answer lies in the fact that images are
affectively charged. Now there are various affective modes not
characteristic of the imagination. For example, there is lively
emotion tending toward expression-but the delights of inward imagining induce silence rather than eloquence. There
is passionate desire which seeks possession-but the sights of
the imaginative theatre are for contemplation rather than appropriation. Then there is rapt feeling, which suffuses the
soul-and this is the mode of the imagination. Here a possible objection has to be disposed of. There is a romantic extravagance which Ruskin terms the "pathetic fallacy". (Modern Painters, Ill, Pt. iv. ). It is the wilful fancy of endowing
external nature with feelings and moods, especially of the
morbid and maundering sort, like revery, brooding, nostalgia,
all quite contrary to cool fact. But happily the inner landscape
has no principle of motion within it and is neither nature nor
a cool fact, so there can be no pathetic fallacy in regard to it.
On the contrary, it is its very character to be invested with
feeling, for it occupies the very locale of feeling, the soul. It is
precisely by this affective investment that the imagination
goes beyond the mere reproduction of previously perceived
forms. It begins with a tuning of the soul, a musical mood or
coloration-that is why music, though not often the content,
is the surest occasion for fantasy, far more so than isolated
sensations. This scenic eros, as one might call it, breeds and
sustains the image, just as its failure lets it fade away into
flatness. It would be false to say that the image "expresses"
feeling; rather it contains it. That is the mode in which we
are in our own visions-they are both the scat and the theatre
of our feeling. Such feeling is, as I have noted, not a particular, nameable, passion or property-not pride or love, not
elegance or magnificence-but that strong aura which gives
the appearances meaning. So far the question "Whence the
felicity?" seems to have this answer: it is the appearance in the
images of the very feeling that conditions them.
But again the answer is insufficient. For it does not tell how
imaginative sights contain the affections of the soul. What is
it in these colored silhouettes that responds and corresponds
to the summons of feeling? Here is the source of a whole class
of curious, laborious, but irresistible musings, all of which
are approaches to the prime question concerning imagination, namely "How can sights appear in the soul?'' and its
converse, "How can the soul be contained in sights?" Plato
acknowledges th~se questions by presenting a mythical answer, as Plotinus admiringly points out (Problems of the Soul);
in the Timaeus (36) the soul encompasses the world of
appearances-the cosmos is in the soul, not the soul in the
cosmos.
Hegel, on the other hand, presents a rigorously systematic
answer. (Encyclopedia 452 ff.) It is given in terms of the selfdevelopment of spirit, at the stage in question called the intelligence. The intelligence is memory insofar as it internalizes
(Hegel exploits the fact that a German word for memory is
literally internalization, Erinnerung) those most immediate
intuitions which come to it as mere feeling, turning them
into inner pictures which are as yet isolated, out of context,
indeterminate. The intelligence as active among these
memories is called reproductive imagination; it is responsible
for once again bringing forth these pictures in the inner mode
proper to the self. Its consummation is the fantasy, that stage
of the intelligence which organizes the images and appropriates them into a connected self-intuition. This fantasy, an
"inner workshop", then gives coherent pictorial existence to
the contents of the intelligence; it is everywhere recognized as
the central agency in whose formation are unified the spirit's
own and inner possessions and its outer, adventitious, and
intuitive acquisitions.
However, such answers are too grand to solve those more
precise puzzles raised by immediate imaginative experiences.
For example, how can a face, a figure, a scene, in their
much constrained mobility, in their mere surface structure,
evidence the motions and meanings of the soul? Why would
it be futile (if it were possible) to take a magnifying glass to an
imaginative appearance to learn more of its significance? Do
we look into eyes and into panoramas, or do they look out at
us? Is the infinite significance of any object of imaginative
attention tr{lceable, so that we can eventually answer the
question:
9
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What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
And why is double vision, the superposition of contrary visions, so poignant a part of the imaginative pathos? Take, for
example, that most amazing of Homeric similes, used in behalf of an obscure warrior, a very casual casualty, who happens to come in the way of an arrow meant for Hector:
Like a poppy he dropped his head to one side, a
poppy in a garden, weighted with fruit and spring
moisture, so he bowed his head heavy with his helmet. (Iliad VIII, 306.)
But most enigmatic of all is the question: why we are continuously drawn to attribute meaning or reference to our
imaginative visions, although strictly speaking only words can
have meaning, (for they alone naturally intend thoughts or
things), and only symbols can have reference (namely insofar
as referents have been conventionally assigned to them)?
Such are the questions, entrancing even to distraction, intriguing even to irritation, which are posed by the imagination.
I do not mean to leave them totally unresolved. But before I
make an attempt not so much to give answers as to articulate
possible solutions, let me go to a more tractable task.
For I want to conclude with a grand defense and apology in
behalf of this tertiary, this entirely internal, quiescent, faculty
of phenomenal contemplation. Shelley makes such a defense
of poetry, "the expression of the imagination", calling poets
"the founders of civil society" and poetry "the great instrument of moral good." I want to praise the private poet, the
painter within, as indispensable for both theory and practice.
First, the imagination is the great helper of the intellect
and not only, because, as Aristotle observes, there is no thinking without images. (On the Soul 432.) Rather, precisely by
reason of being not one wit irrational-and yet certainly
a-rational-it is designed to be the support and complement
of thought, the refuge and renewal of the inquiring intellect,
which leans into it, much as a child leans against a parent
\vhile gazing into the world, in secure curiosity. The imagination invests the world with that richness and resonance which
makes it an attractive dwelling for the intellect. Again, the
imagination is the complement of thought because it holds its
matter in the mode of a unique totality, while the intellect
works toward comprehensive wholeness; the former contains
worlds of the most arresting particularity, the latter tries to
reach the realm of universality. The best exemplification of
the complementing of intellect by imagination is to be found
in those panoramic philosophical myths each of which imagines a brilliantly particular cosmos designed as a visible consummation of the intellectual endeavor to encompass the
whole.
But the imagination is indispensable to action as well. For
the real world is worth our exertion only insofar as an inner
scene is projected on it, or rather behind it-only \Vhen the
visionary imagination sets the scene for action. No community can be an incitement to intense effort until it is resonant
10
with remm1scences and until it is situated not only on the
grid of the earth but also in a place of the soul. Of course, as
I have shown, this place is often reached through the past,
which also lies "behind" communities. (I think that the much
disparaged liking for architechual reminiscences, like fake
half-timbering, for instance, is an expression of the wish to
give depth to the habitat by adding that temporal dimension.)
Such are what might be called the utopian, public functions of the imagination. And as it calls forth action in communities, so it stands behind action in individuals. Thomas
Mann, who was particularly charmed by this discovery, finds
what I am talking about to be a typical antique mode:
The antique consciousness stood, as it were, open
toward the back, and absorbed much of what is past,
in order to repeat it in the present. . . . Ortega y
Casset expresses it in this way: that antique man
. . . seeks an exemplar in the past, into which he
slips as into a diver's helmet, in order thus . . . to
precipitate himself into the present problem at once
protected and disfigured. . . . But this living as a
re-living, a re-vivification, is living in myth.
These enabling myths arc the works of the scene-setting
imagination; I do not see why they should be the preserve of
antiquity.
And finally, even-or especially-in ordinary private existence, the imagination serves to make life livable. For it occasionally breaks out into that sober daily routine which is our
predominant mode to unveil the golden fond of life. Such
occasions are the inner <fountcrparts of public celebrations,
only without calendar. The imagination is the impresario of
these private festivities as the city is of public festivals; both
serve the same purpose: the illumination of daily life.
I have described and defended this appearance-producing,
world-making, meaning-laden capacity of ours. But what in
the world, or out of it, does it betoken? As I warned in the
beginning, I do not know, but I do have a roster of possibilities. Here it is:
First, it is conceivable that such imaging is merely a kind
of open-eyed hallucinating. If Hume and other dissipators of
the human mysteries were right, and if the imagination
really, as he says, "amounts to no more than the faculty of
compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the
materials offered us by the senses and experience" that would
indeed be the case. (Enquiry II.)
Second, and at the other extreme, imaginations may be
virtual recollections, or even current influxes, the remembered or present intimations of a world beyond, of an actual
"lost paradise," where "paradise" means another world, a
world of self-sufficient ultimate appearances. Whether there
is such a paradise, and whether the embodied soul has access
to it by being, as it were, open and receptive not only in front
toward the "real" world, but in back, inwardly, toward that
final realm-those arc serious theological questions. But certain it is that the recurrent written accounts of such revelations usually refer to cities, replicas of the "holy city, new
�January, 1978
Jerusalem, coming clown out of heaven from God" (Revelation 21, 2), though bearing different names; for example:
Then, between sleeping and waking, there rose before me a vision of Trebizond: not Trcbizond as I
had seen it, but the Trebizond of the world's dreams,
of my own dreams, shining towers and domes
shimmering on a far horizon, yet close at hand,
luminously enspe11ed in the most fantastic unreality,
yet the only reality, a walled and gated city, magic
and mystical, standing beyond my reach yet I had to
be inside, an alien wanderer yet at home, held in the
magical enchantment; and at its he.irt, at the secret
heart of the city and the legend and the glory in
which I was caught and held, there was some pattern
that I could not unravel, some hard core that I could
not make my own, and, seeing the pattern and the
hard core enshrined within the walls, I turned back
from the city and stood outside it, expelled in mortal
grie£ (Rose Macaulay, The Towers o{Trebizond.)
(There is a secular pendant to this understanding, proposed
by Jung, namely that each separate human soul has access to
a supra-individual soul from whose archetypes it derives its
images. I cannot bring myself to consider it seriously.)
Third, there is the possibility, first set out by Plato in the
Phaedrus (2 50), and strongly fixed in the tradition, that
beauty, "the most shiningly apparent and loveliest" of the
ideas, is precisely the very shining out of being in appearance.
while being itself is only mythically a realm of "whole and
simple and calm and happy phantasms" which were once beheld by every human soul. That is to say, all appearances that
have any radiance at all, and so certainly imaginative appearances, are an expression, an externalizing, an epiphany, an
incarnation, of the sightless intellectual world; everything
truly visible signifies a thing of thought, essentially invisible.
Fourth and finally, the imagination may be in its very nature a faculty of infinite reference, the striving of the soul in
its sensing body to make appearance itself significant. What I
want to convey is difficult (but not impossible) to express. I
mean that the soul endows its own appearances with essentially incomplete references which keep us continually casting a'bout for a meaning, so that we turn first to temporal
prototypes, that is, memories, and eventually hypostatize
even prior experiences, out of time. But in vain, since in the
very search we remain enmeshed in appearances, and it is in
them that the enigma is seated. For, on the one hand it is of
the very essence of appearances-if they can be said to have
an essence-that they should have transparency and let a
background shine through. Yet, on the other, these inner images are fairly saturated with the inimitable fragrance of their
self-sufficient singularity. To say it once again: When the attempt is made to catch particular appearances in a verbal net,
that aspect which eludes any articulation-that is the locus of
the mystery. As Thomas Mann, ever laborious in the service
of verbal sufficiency, confesses:
How many literati before me have moaned over the
unfitness of language for achieving visibility, for
bringing forth a truly exact picture of anything individual! The word was made for laud and praise. To
it has been given the power to admire and bless and
characterize appearance through the feeling that it
arouses, but not to invoke or reproduce it. (Doctor
Faustus, Ch. XLIV.)
This plaint is doubly and triply applicable to the inner appearances. One might conclude that the imagination is engaged in its own, peculiarly competent version of the old
project of "saving the phenomena", not, as thought does, by
making them rational but by making them inexpressibly enchanting.
I can think of these four possible answers to the problem of
the fantasy, but I cannot fix on one of them and be finished
with the inquiry. I see that it must be a permanent pursuit,
that all answers are premature and only preparatory approaches are possible. Indeed, no preoccupation can bring
closer to home Socrates' saying that philosophy is a preparation for dying and being dead. (Phaedo 64.) For then it will
most certainly have to appear whether the whole mystery is to
be dissolved in the blankness of oblivion: or whether luminously invisible intellectual sources will blot out the shadowy
phenomenal shapes; or whether another world of substantial
ultimate appearances-above or below, as our case may':
be-is to receive us; or whether the enigma of sights has still
another, as yet unimagined, solution. And so a certain consolation for the ending of our life is as much the gift of that
most wonderful power of the soul about which I have tried to
speak tonight, as is the illumination of our daily existence.
II
�The College
A Preservationist
Looks at Housing
by Michael W. Gold
has been
but
the past several years, inhe crux of the
is not
I cluding thelittle noticed, of theforcurrent presidential admin- T enough money tohousing problem is that isthere willful
first months
maintain all housing. It the
t
istration, there has been a relative neglect of housing policy
discussion. Undoubtedly the reason is that the programs of
the preceding administrations have been acknowledged by
their proponents and administrators to have failed in the main
sphere to which they were addressed, namely, adequate housing for the poor. Revenue sharing has now largely supplanted
the categorical grants of the Johnson administration, and
local governments arc using the revenues for more modest
programs which, in general, may be expected to succeed, but
which are directed to goals more limited than those in the
past. This is known as "a more conservative mood," and
seems to have been greeted by most people with some relief.
However, ignoring the critical matter will not make it go
away. One day, not too far off, "the housing crisis" will be
discovered all over again. The corps of Program Planners will
be ready with a whole new set of ambitious programs, the
fifes will play and the drums will roll, and in the absence of
any resistance born of true understanding, we will be swept
along in the tide of new programs, such as Slum Clearance,
until we are exhausted and become "conservative" again for a
while. It would be good if we could break this cycle. Is there
a true understanding upon which far-sighted policy can be
based?, or which, at least, can be used as a touchstone for
foolish policies? This is a suggested outline.
Michael W. Gold, a graduate of St. John's in the class of 1961, is the
director of the Historic Richmond (Va.) Foundation. Before assuming that
position about three years ago, Mr. Gold was director of New York City's
Landmark Preservation Commission.
12
avoidance of this simple fact which spawns futile programs. It
is hard to believe that experts and political leaders can be
unaware of it, but pronouncing it is forbidden, and ignoring
it, and forgetting it, are therefore assured. Constituents will
not know it unless they are told, and those who can tell will
not or cannot. Yct it is neither mysterious nor difficult to
understand. A simple comparison of the cost of housing and
median family income is sufficient.
We can calculate the cost of housing roughly but
adequately for our purpose. In 1976, the median price paid
for a new house was $44,200. Let us take a minimum house,
which today would have to sell, if not subsidized, for between
$30,000 and $35,000: say $32,500. (It might seem that the
cost of a dwelling unit in a multi-family structure would be
much less, but in fact it is about the same). The builder of
such a unit would have about $30,000 in costs. The major
components for owning and operating this house are: the cost
of the investment, real estate taxes, maintenance, and depreciation.
1. The cost of the investment in homeowner's terms would
he interest on the mortgage plus the interest or other dividencls lost on the equity. Profit, which is necessary to make it
attractive enough for anybody else to own it, would be a fair
word for it too. 8¥2% is the present cost of money. At that
rate an investment of $32,500 should return $2,763 a year.
2. Real estate taxes. Let us take $2 per $100 of assessed
value, which is a good figure, if on the low side; and let us
assume assessment at fair market value, but where the assessor
too has erred on the low side. If the unit is assessed at
�January, 1978
FUk Y~ _; l~fLr~J'l.~d l(d!
J'N- 2317 ~ 2315 E;...t 8~ ,J'J;,..J; R~~~<~. )0;,(~
(in 1975, the last year for which figures are available), is
under $14,000 per annum. Thus more than half the households in America do not command the income necessary to
encourage new investment and proper maintenance in a
low-priced house. Another way to say this is'that, apart from
subsidization, units cannot and will not be provided, or existing houses reinvested in and maintained for long-range survival, for over half our population.
{h,;,a
?~ Jl~. 21fu1 ['cu:trJ~
J'z;;_,_a
}(-tfl{Vf~ '(JI~;c.lf,;4~o-J ~cl~
$28,000 the taxes would be $560 per year.
3. Maintenance used to be calculated at 1% per year of the
value, but now, and especially for an inexpensive house,
1Y2% per year is better. $488 is probably still not quite
enough, but we will usc it.
4. Depreciation is not just a tax term. The full value of a
unit must really be reinvested every 30 years-not for maintenance, but for modernization, replacement of worn out
plant and major, non-recurrent repairs. Let us say 40 years,
rather than 30: at this rate the cost for our unit would be
about $800 a year.
The annual cost of this house adds up, then, as $2,763 for
interest paid or lost, $560 for real estate taxes, $488 for maintenance, and $800 for depreciation-a total of $4,611, or
about $385 per month.
Using the accepted rule of thumb-a good one-that a
person should pay no more than 25% of his salary for rent,
this unit would have to rent to someone with an annual income of over $18,000 in order to be properly maintained and
to call forth the investment necessary to provide it in the first
place. The national median income for all families, all races
his conclusion must be
however,
take
T count of people's hope ofmodified,gains in realtoestate accapital
investment. This is an important factor. Its effect is that some
people will be willing, either with knowledge of what they arc
doing or~as often-without, to disregard the cost of their
investment for the sake ultimately of benefiting from the appreciation in the value of their property. That hope rarely
warrants total disregard of the investment cost, and few people
do disregard it totally: the most unsophisticated homeowner
or investor is perfectly aware of how much interest he is paying on his mortgage loan, and he certainly takes it into aci
count in deciding if his budget can support it. But for the sake
of the argument, let us totally disregard it. The owner will
still have the costs of maintenance, real estate taxes and replacement of the obsolescent. For the unit under consideration these add up to $1,848 per annum, or $154 in twelve
monthly payments. This is for a unit which is completely
paid off: there are no mortgage payments, and we arc ignoring
the lost income of the whole investment. This is also discounting greed: the assumption is that every investor is going
to pay his taxes, replace what is obsolescent, and maintain the
property before paying himself for his investment, or even for
the time and considerable nuisance involved in the ownership. This, too, is obviously a false assumption. Still, it will
take an annual income of over $7,400 to support this piece of
property.
Thus any housing unit which is being rented at less than
$154 per month, or any owner-occupied unit-if owned free
13
�The College
I?O<r!M -PhVI_..._t/JiotU<-< ~
7(£._p___,_JJ!J-«-U-,16oo~,..J 2to.:< f'-f&,.J.I....
sJW
f?~~d, 'VMif~
and clear-where the owner's family income is under $7,400
a year, cannot have adequate maintenance. 20% of American
households make less than $7,400 a year. There arc somewhat more households than there arc housing units, but it
follows that something very close to 20% of our housing units
are not being properly maintained and hence are in the cycle
of deteriorating-and this is calculated on the most minimal
basis. Adding in the factors of financing and the reasonable
and proper necessity for some return on investment, not to
mention greed, the figure must be much higher.
If this is a "housing gap," it is a gap of such magnitude that
government cannot fill it without disastrous moral and economic dislocation. The fiction that the "housing gap" could
be filled at all is undoubtedly a major source of the continuing "housing crisis". What then?
the
that
live in deF irst, facingclearlyfactwhen manyanpeople must spectre. bad
teriorating housing is not pleasant, but it is not as
as
it is
unutterable
To
when viewed
begin with, not all housing which is deteriorating is unhabit-
14
able. Most of it is quite habitable., When income does not
keep up \\'ith expenses the first thing to go is usually not
maintenance but replacement of obsolescent features. It is essential that housing standards-both official standards and
the unarticulated standards that form the bases of our everyday thinking about housing-be pitched according to a relative and not an absolute measure. Unfortunately our official
and unarticulated standards are being guided by an ideal
which is not only excessive but is improperly universalized.
For example, central heat certainly is taken for granted as a
minimum necessity for modern living. It is undoubtedly
shocking to most middle class people that space heaters persist
as the standard heating system for the poor in many places. It
is a fact, however, and people who have been raised with
wood or coal stoves do not find it a hardship until they are
taught to do so. It would perhaps take personal experience (as
I have had) to show someone unaccustomed, say, to coal that
it is an excellent source of heat, requiring minimal initial
investment, easily controlled and operated, and inexpensive
to run. The cost of a BTU produced by burning coal at $100
per ton is almost half that of a BTU produced by an electric
heat pump, the most economical modern system. Purchased
wood is even more economical-and many poor people with
rural roots have access to wood which is theirs for their labor.
At the same time, the cost of fuel oil and electricity have
reached the point where they have created a gypsy class of
renters who must move continually under assumed names
because they have defaulted on their electric bills. Yet the
replacement of space heaters with oil or electric furnaces is an
unquestioned part of housing standards.
Besides, the fact that poor people must live in poor housing
really should not be such a scandal. That is what it means to
be poor. It is the unpleasantness of being poor that makes
people strive to become rich. We may institute a dictatorship
to take from everybody according to their abilities and give
according to their needs, but until we do we must not be
scandalized if poor people live harder lives than rich people.
�January, 1978
J~M~-fi',J J(=",J5JOf:a-Jr~.tf.;._J'~
i?d.~~J, 'V.c,,~.w.
his account obviously
housing
T expert nor ais sociologist.the product neither ofa alayman's
It is unashamedly
presentation to laymen. Though the account is simplified,
and though peripheral, and even some modifying arguments
arc left out, the overall argument is so simple that it is the
experts who owe an apology for obfuscation and not the
layman for simplification. Leaving aside a certain amount of
cant which he undoubtedly had to include in order to be
acceptable to his professional peers, the thrust of George
Sternlieb's two authoritative books on the subject' hardly differs from this simple argument.
I am, however, if not an expert, at least a professional employed in the field of historic preservation. The following
brief suggestion that the attraction of the best old houses can
be the key to the efficient channeling of investment where it
can do the most good is based in my area of competence.
'
*
*
W
hat is proposed is a doctrine of "Housing
Darwinism" -a doctrine which is not at all obnoxious
as applied to inanimate things like houses. Many forces governing housing investment already favor survival of the fittest;
other forces which inhibit survival of the best housing are
artificial, arc doing no good, are vestigial in any case, and
1George Stcrnlich, The Tenement Landlord {New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1966). George Sternlieb and Robert W. Burchell, Residential
Abandonment {New Brunswick: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers
UniVersity, 1973}. Sternlieb's findings, especially his finding that the slum
property investor-owner was not reaping much profit, and that the maintenance of most slum property could not be improved without displacing lowincome renters, was attacked when it appeared by those whose living depends
on the pretence that It is only the grasping slum landlord who stands in the
way of a solution to the housing problem, but his findings have not been
refuted, and arc generally accepted.
tUdf J/tn&U, J. 70 2 co4' 0/l.CLU.- J'4ed'
If~~) y.v-,1_,;,_~
should be done away with; and yet other forces which arc
necessary are already present and only need to be encouraged.
It is a sad reflection on contemporary building, but any
redistribution of investment from new construction to rehabilitation will tend to bring about a higher standard simply
because older houses arc better than new ones. The main
factor favoring rehabilitation is the recent increased cost of
building materials out of proportion to the cost of labor. But
the vastly increased cost of labor, too, is such a factor: more
labor goes into rehabilitation than might be thought, but less
than into new construction. Much rehabilitation labor requires no great skill-but care-a specialty of the resident
owner.
Any forces which favor the city over the suburbs favor survival of better houses because, excepting tenements and recent construction, town houses are better than the past twenty
to thirty years' crop of suburban houses. There are a number
of these forces, among them increasing suburban taxes, increasing distance of reasonably priced housing from places of
employment, the increasing cost of gasoline, which will
15
�The College
m~ c.11~r, 2 5(i(). r;J c~
-r.tw:r
O,_,..J £.;- J/;.IQ,u. I?.J,~d F-d~mount endlessly, and the returning receptivity of inner city
school boards for neighborhood schools, Perhaps most important is the very fact of the deterioration of inner city housing,
which has brought the cost of many urban residential lots
with houses below the cost even of undeveloped suburban
lots.
One does not wish to beat a dead horse, so the vestigial
forces which inhibit survival of the best housing will not be
dwelt on. These arc, mainly, code enforcement used for
harassment, which is based on the false premise of windfa11
profits, and condemnation for slum clearance, which creates
an artificial market for slum property after it has been milked,
and has the effect, therefore, of providing an incentive for
milking slum property instead of putting it on the market before it hits bottom. These are largely discredited and well on
the way to being abandoned.
the absence
expected to
I nhappen is whatofisdistorting forces what may benamely, that
generally happening now,
neighborhoods go through thirty to fifty year cycles of investment, decay, and reinvestment in existing stock or redevelopment. It is a pity that neighborhoods are not more stable,
but in order to make them so we would have to countenance
changes in our dynamic society that we would in fact not
countenance. What happens now, to put it crudely but accurately, is that the segment of the population which cannot
afford enough in rent to support adequate maintenance occupies each neighborhood in turn as it approaches the nadir
of its decay cycle. It is proper that the plight of these people
be ameliorated as much as possible; and that should be done,
but it is not specifically a housing problem. As far as housing
goes, they are occupying better housing than if they lived in
housing built specifically for them.
In the natural course of things the succeeding phase will be
redevelopment or rehabilitation. If it is redevelopment, the
chances arc that it \Vill be "luxury housing", \vhich may or
may not be to everyone's taste architecturally but docs at least
16
represent the highest practical standard of which we arc capable at this time. If it is rehabilitation, the chances are that it
will be by resident o\vners or small-scale speculative
operators. In both cases a portion of the labor will be contributed by the owner himself. This is by far the most efficient
way we have of providing good, imaginative housing in the
$30 to $50 thousand range. Forces which arc necessary to get
the best out of this process are mostly already present. Each of
them points to private and governmental policies which need
to be argued in detail and at length. Here we will only list
them.
he most important thing
public opinion, and so
T occasion should be lost foris portraying the advantages no
of
older houses. Wherever possible, rehabilitation should be
linked up with historic preservation: the line between a slum
and an historic district is a fine one, and the energy available
for historic preservation is enormous. Local government and
private preservation organizations should have a clearly understood, if not necessarily publicized, priority ranking of
neighborhoods-in general the oldest first. Local government
should enlist the aid of the preservation organization to publicize the historic and architectural quality of the target
neighborhood, and should consider channeling rehabilitation
funds through its "revolving fund" rather than through the
local housing agency; or, perhaps it should engineer a marriage between the two.
In its budgeting, government must, much more than it has
done, look ahead to consider where historic quality may be a
factor in rejuvenation even twenty or thirty years hence. In
those areas it must maintain such things as distinctive pavings
and fencing around parks. Tax abatement is extremely complex, but there must be some assurance to the renovator that
he will not be penalized. Lending institutions must be flattered, cajoled, and forced to loosen up a little more in making construction loans and permanent financing available for
restoration. Much, very much, can be done by preservation
�January, 1978
C'""'""Y/h. rf~, 71~.-:131J-O'!-o7Ead-C~ .f'.fi<<P/t
R.:d,,.z,,.,., 4, Y;,~~~.v
organizations with their own funds, and by charitable foundations and individuals inducing banks to make loans by
guaranteeing them.
W
ith all this, two things ought to be done to alleviate the
dislocation of low-income tenants in a neighborhood
which has started back up. First, an effort should be made to
retain some number of them by subsidizing rents. There are
governmental programs set up to do this. They have not
worked well, but they could be improved, especially if they
are viewed purely as an ameliorative measure and not as a
solution to the housing problem. Rents could also be subsidized, in effect, by charitable organizations and wealthy individuals seeking a tax shelter and a good deed. This is sometimes calJecl paternalism; it would be better to call it kindness
and take advantage of it-it can work extremely well. Second, every effort should be made to get low-income tenants to
buy when their neighborhood is at the bottom of its cycle.
The same house they arc renting for $100 a month can probably be bought for under $10,000, with lower monthly payments. This requires: that someone, somehow, help them
\:vith the down payment; that they be persuaded by someone
they trust (because they have never thought of being property
owners); that someone help them with budgeting and management on a continuing, personal basis. Most important, the
people who arc in a position to help this happen must give up
the idea that poor people can live in good housing. A family
that can afford $125 a month can afford to buy a $10,000
house but they cannot afford to improve it or to maintain it
any better than when they were tenants, except (which could
be considerable) for their pride of ownership which would
make them impart their own labor. They may actually derive
little improvement in their housing. The improvement will
be in their environment and in their equity. Realistically they
will probably move out of the neighborhood as their taxes go
up, but by that time their house will have at least doubled in
value.
1/M~ 7/tfUA-<. ) 308" EWL! Gh4U S'~
0Whd ~ ~~~~ I?~AMO><c/ ;/OUA<c(ai".um.
*
'
*
must be
more
I tstable nowremembered that our population level This in
than at any time in recent memory.
IS
itself will be a big factor in diffusing the housing crisis. It
seems possible to resume now what surely must have been the
pattern of housing in all normal times: "the inevitable cycle
of growth and decay". If we arc wise and alert, however, we
ought to be able to throw out of the inevitable cycle, each
time around, some of the worst houses of each generation,
and lift out of the cycle each time around, some of the best.
Houses do belong, after all, if they arc reasonably good to
begin with, to that select class of things which start getting
more valuable with age once they get over the hump of being
merely old.
17
�The College
An Open Letter to St. John's Alumni
by William M. Goldsmith
August 24, 1977
Early last summer [1976] I received a letter from (then)
Dean Curtis Wilson containing an invitation to give the Friday night lecture at homecoming weekend in the fall. It
dawned upon me that I had not been back to Annapolis in
twenty-five years and I was not sure what to expect. I had
experienced some intermittent contact with the Alumni Office and occasional1y received fund appeals from the class representative, but what St. John's was really like after my absence of a quarter of a century began to intrigue me. I reflected upon my self-imposed exile from the old place; why
was it that I had not gone back to any of the previous
homecomings or other events? Why had I drifted away from
the concerns of the College during those years when it apparently needed its old friends very badly? A sense of guilt permeated these reflections.
I
Certainly there were reasons and explanations available.
Much of it was wrapped up in Scott and Winkic's decision to
withdraw from Annapolis and the refusal of the Board to go
along with that decision. I was very close to Scott in those
clays, in fact I later worked with both Scott and Winkie on
several foundation projects and I was a dyed-in-the-wool
loyalist. It is not my intention to open up dated argument<; or
throw salt into old wounds, but Scott and Winkic's sudden
departure from Annapolis had created an initial breach with
the College for many of us from which we had never quite .
recovered.
They had both symbolized the idea of St. John's so concretely, that their departure constituted something of a per-
Mr. Goldsmith, a graduate of St. John's in the class of 1945, is a professor of
history at Brandeis University.
18
mancnt rupture for many of us, a wound too deep to heal
very quickly.
Perhaps that is putting our estrangement only in its best
light. All of us who left, whether as graduates or not, went
out into the world to tilt with its imposing windmills. We had
our lives to build, our careers to establish. We left the family
hearth to strike out on our own and we were eager to do it
. . . at least most of us were. We wanted to test theory
against practice, ideas against reality. We had been true believers, in a sense, and the world, or perhaps more circumspectly the country, became our laboratory where we
could test our theories, try our skills, measure our worth in
the public marketplace. I think most of us felt we were ambassadors of the program, and our success or failure(s) would
in some way test its validity. I know Scott had counseled us
that we would be misfits, but then we wanted to be striking
misfits, oracles, Cassandras, able to retain our .bearings while
those all about us might be losing theirs.
For many of us this was too heavy a burden to bear. yYe
discovered initially just the opposite of what we had expected.
We stepped forth into our chosen occupation (whether job or
profession) with a somewhat arrogant feeling of our own special virtues (if I dare) and quickly discovered that we were not
so recognized by those around us. In fact, we had to play
"catch-up" to stay alive. We were surrounded by many who
were far better prepared than we were to fit into the roles laid
out for us, and although we had been warned about this, I
venture to say we were not quite prepared for it. Whether we
became students of law or medicine, academics or young advertising account executives, those around us appeared to be
making far greater progress, even understanding better what
was expected of them and certainly better prepared for the
circumstances that confronted them than we were. We
might, as Winkic used to put it, "have read the notes of. the
previous meeting," but some of them had memorized those
notes, at least those that were considered to be immediately
expedient, and they could operate in the new (for us) circum-
�January, 1978
stances with far greater facility than we could. We consoled
ourselves with the thought that our qualities would surface
"in the long run", but then someone told us that "in the long
run" we would all be dead. Nice thought.
I guess survival, pure survival was the first order of business. For some reason, neither the pons asinorum nor the
divided line 'provided ready guidelines in this endeavor.
Perhaps the myth of the eave suggested the closest analogy to
our present condition, for in our return to the environs of the
world of reality, we were stumbling blindly, dazed by our
previous experiences and lost in a maze of shadows which
were distorted in our confused and myopic vision of the past,
present, and future. We had to learn the rules of the game
and the tricks of the trade in which we were _immersed, and
our previous experience which drove us always to ask "why",
did not particularly help in this phase of our worldly education. I think most o(us suff~red humiliations, even despair,
during such periods and wondered many times why we had
spent four years in preparation for such traumatic failure.
Little by little, after long periods of loneliness and rejection, many of us began slowly to find our way. I'm sure many
compromises, or what we thought were compromises, and
much soul searching marked this period of exile. W c had to
come to terms with reality, to join the human race largely on
its terms. just as Scott had "to become regularized" by getting
hi,s Ph.D. ·at Harvard, we had to pick up our degrees, serve
our apprenticeships, and demonstrate our ability to master the
liturgy of the field we had embraced. This was a trying time
for most of us but it was not without some compensations.
We did learn some necessary things. Vocational education is
not devoid of its own discipline, its own values, its own
merits. I began to learn something about my own country
and its history that went beyond the Federalist Papers and the
Constitution. I discovered that history is not simply a reenactment of ideas and classical models, but is made .up of
continuing crisis and response, and men and events. I discovered that the Constitution provides a framework, a skeleton
for our institutions and laws, but that the muscles, nerves,
and fatty tissue of the body politic are forged in the crucible of
ongoing events, problems, and responses, and one has to encompass this rich body of material to know where we came
from, and what are our resources for moving on.
But at this point in our development, having learned the
new rules of the game and read its accompanying literature,
we met, if not Plato and Socrates, certainly Scott coming
back. Once we had mastered the idiom of our new disciplines, we were in a position to raise questions again, questions which those who memorized the minutes of the previous meeting could not begin to answer or even recognize.
This did n-ot always increase our popularity or our standing
with our new colleagues, but now that we had established our
bona fides, convinced them by our commibnent and mastery
of the operational level of the field that we now "belonged",
our right, not necessarily our sanity,- in raising such questions
was acknowledged. In other words, we began to employ the
deeper resources of our St. John's experience, and although
this didn't always provide satisfaction, it did give us something
of the special identity we had earlier expected and also provided a sense of the integrity we thought that we had all but
lost.
When the questions didn't come, at least in the beginning,
there was always Scott around to remind us of our larger responsibility to the community of ideas. I can remember the
occasion when many of us got together with him for the last
time at Ping Ferry's place in Westchester before he and
Miriam left for the West Coast. [May 31, 1958] We hadarranged a little celebration for him, and there was, of course,
some speechmaking and good discussion. Winkie was there
and Mark Van Doren, Kip Fadiman, Jasha, Jack Neustadt,
and a large number of students. Scott used the occasion to
give us all a don rag, reminding us of our intellectual responsibility to push the questions further than they were being
pursued in the public discourse currently going on. It is vintage Buchanan:
For a few minutes I want to stage a little tableau for
you, a composite oral examination and don rag. I
have some questions I want to ask you, questions for
St. John's graduates and questions for American citizens. As I understand the questions, one leads to
another, and they all add up to: How are you doing?
The first question is: Do you believe in and trust
your intellect, that innate power that never sleeps?
This is not a -theoretical nor a dogmatic question,
but rather one of experience. Do you recognize the
action of this power as you live and learn? Many of
you have gone on to graduate and professional learning, and, I happen to know, many of you have lived
a lot in addition. You have fallen into the hands of
scholars and into the grooves of practice. You have
suffered the winds of doctrine, and have gotten lost
in the jungle of ideologies. Latterly you have been
stormed by scientific miracle and guess. In all these
learnings and practices have you listened to the small
spontaneous voice within that asks continually if
these things are true? Have you allowed this voice to
speak louder and remind you that you do not know,
that you know you do not know, and that you know
what you do not know? Do you believe that knowledge is possible, that truth is attainable, and that it is
always your business to seek it, although evidence is
overwhelmingly against it? That is the first question;
I shall not just now press for an answer.
The second question seems to flow from the first.
Have you in the course of your life, before, after, or
while you were at St. John's, become your own
teacher? Perhaps this is not quite the question that I
intend. This may be better: Have you yet recognized
that you arc and always have been your own teacher?
Amidst all the noise and furor about education in
this country at present, I have yet to hear this question raised. But it is basic. Liberal education has as
19
�The College
its end the free mind, and the free mind must be its
own teacher. Intellectual freedom begins when one
says with Socrates that he knows that he knows nothing, and then goes on to add: I know what it is that I
don't know. My question then is: Do you know what
you don't know and therefore what you should
know? If your answer is affirmative and humble,
then you arc your own teacher, you are making your
own assignment, and you will be your own best
critic. You will not need externally imposed courses,
nor marks, nor diplomas, nor a nod from your
boss-in business or in politics.
My third question is different from the first two,
more superficial perhaps, but fateful, nevertheless.
Under the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
have you persuaded yourself that there are knowlcdgcs and truths beyond your grasp, things that you
simply cannot learn? Hnve you allowed adverse evidence to pile up and force you to conclude that you
arc not mathematical, not linguistic, not poetic, not
scientific, not philosophical? If you have allowed this
to happen, you have arbitrarily imposed limits on
your intellectual freedom, and you have smothered
the fires from which all other freedoms arise. Most
of us have done this and come short of what that
threadbare slogan, human dignity, really means. We
arc willing, and shamefully relieved, to admit that
each has his specialty, his so-called field, and the
other fellow has his, and \:VC are ready to let the
common human enterprise go by default. We are
willing to become cripples in our minds and fractions of men in our lives. Some of us are willing to
crush the Socratic formula and say, I know nothing.
The fourth question: Do you accept the world? This
is reminiscent of Margaret Fuller's saying to Carlyle:
But I do accept the universe, Mr. Carlyle. I am
thinking of a slightly different context in The
Brothers Karamazov, when Ivan tells Alyosha that he
finds it easy to believe in God, but that he finds it
impossible to believe in the world. The second
clause follows from the first in a crushed syllogism:
Because he believes in God, he cannot accept the
world. For most of us these days, the case is that we
have believed in some things so \:vcakly or fanatically
that other equally or more real things have become
absurd or impossible. This results from our crippled
minds, our self-imposed limits on understanding,
our deafness to the voice that asks: Is it true?
I am persuaded that the cure for this sickness of
mind is in some vigorous and rigorous attempt to
deal with that most puzzling and mysterious idea,
the idea of the world. It is not a simple idea, nor
even a merely complicated idea. Kant called it an
antinomy, an idea of speculative reason governing
20
all other uses of the intellect. There have been other
such ideas that have governed thought, the idea of
God or Being as it puzzled and dazzled the ancient
world, the idea of Man as it stirred and fermented
the world from the Renaissance on. God and Man
have not disappeared as charts and aids to intellectual navigation, but they are in partial eclipse at present, and the world is asking us the big questions,
questions in cosmology and science, questions in law
and government. They are not merely speculative
questions; they arc concrete and immediately practical; they are as much matters of life and death and
freedom as the old questions were. Most of us have
made, with Ivan, a pact with the devil, an agreement
not to face them and accept them-yet.
I am not going to mark you on any attempt you may
make to answer these questions here today; we don't
mark at St. John's. But I would guess that none of
us, certainly including myself, would stand very
high, if we tried. Perhaps we ought rather to ask
whether these are valid questions. If they are valid,
they may come somewhere ncar indicating a standard by which we judge our common intellectual life,
and therefore our common education in this country. I myself think the questions arc valid, and I draw
a drastic consequence, namely, that we need a national system of education, from university to kindergarten, from federal to local, and that it should
aim at the intellectual confidence which would dare
to act freely and go wherever it pleases, wherever it
ought to go.
No one has asked us questions like that since then, and
with Scott gone we will just have to develop the habit of asking ourselves. When we do, the New Program will have more
than justified itself.
Another reason for my disappearance from Annapolis and
estrangement from Scott for so long was that I didn't really
want to face either until I accomplished some intellectual fask
in which I could take real pride. I was certainly not ashamed
of the unsuccessful labor struggles I was involved with in the
South (five years of lost strikes), nor the Civil Rights efforts
and work at compensatory education for the underprivileged
in Boston, but I felt very strongly that I had to use my mind
in some creative way and complete some major piece of work
before I could really look Scott in the eye again. The tragedy
of that perhaps foolish notion was, that although it inspired
me to go beyond my natural limits and attempt something
that I never really thought I would finish, Scott died before it
was finished. Only he would have understood the truly comic
aspect of what for me \:vas something of a personal tragedy.
Annapolis is a confusing city when one has been absent
twenty-five years and I got lost more than once when I strayed
away from the immediate central area. West Street has become a typically American jungle of stores and used car lots
and the outer reaches of the community have grown enor-
�January, 1978
mously, with shopping centers and suburban real estate. But
the heart of the inner city is remarkably unchanged, despite
some expansion of the Naval Academy, and the chic development of a number of jet-set watering spots around the market place at the foot of Main. Carvel Hall, alas, is no more,
but there is quite a comfortable little Hilton, of course, at the
foot of Main, right next to the Yacht Club and overlooking
the harbor. I brought my wife and three children with me,
and we had great fun eating cherrystones and oysters on the
half shell at the market, walking the grounds of the College,
and even smelling the unprofessional sweat of the old gym.
Nostalgia set in. It was a delight to see the old buildings,
along with some striking new ones, in such good shape, and
my immediate reaction was that those who had stayed behind
had minded the store well and kept the lamp brightly lighted.
More important than the plant, the College appeared to be
very much alive, students still very enthusiastic and quite
willing to transfer that enthusiasm to returning old fogcys.
The faculty has changed but that was to be expected. Mr.
Kaplan is still there and remembers and so arc Jasha, Winfree, Bob Bart,* and a few others, but for the most part there
are new faces, as there should be, and things appear to be in
good order. Of course, I cannot report on the quality of learning on the basis of a weekend's visit, but more intensive observers like David Riesman and Gerald Grant, along with
considerable criticism and a remarkable insight, have concluded fairly recently:
Its (St. John's) curriculum raises questions and
doubts more than it increases confidence. It tests and
encourages the development of a fairly narrow range
of important skills. It teaches appreciation more than
it spurs the ambition to create something at least
marginally new. Too many students, perhaps, learn
at St. John's how great a failure they arc, at how
great a distance they lie from the masters.
Yct the program that exist<; is remarkable. Its community is founded on a radical faith in the ability of
liberal education to teach men and women to think
for themselves and to become conscious of their
moral and social obligations. It has embodied a vision and fostered a dialectic in the culture because it
has been there to be criticized. It has kept alive an
ideal of the liberal arts and a concern for the wholeness of intelJectual experience in a pure form. It has
been a kind of conscience of the liberal arts college,
a goal to all higher education, and a declaration
about how men should live. 1
ll
considered one of the best small universities in the country.
We came into existence not too long after the New Program
at St. John's was instituted, in the post-war years when the
famous Harvard Redbook-General Education in a Free
Society-provided the ideas and the curriculum for undergraduate education, not only at Brandeis University, but most
of the other institutions of higher learning in America. The
Harvard Redbook was itself a response to the challenge that
Hutchins and St. John's had hurled out upon the unfriendly
ears of higher education in America. It granted the argument
that there existed a body of ideas and subject matter that were
the foundation of a liberal education, and it rejected the Elliot concept that students should be entirely free to select their
own course of study, from beginning to end. It proposed the
outline of a core curriculum that should be common to all
students in higher education, embracing substantial exposure
to the humanities, the physical sciences, and the social sciences.
The faculty at Harvard and later at Brandeis and other institutions adopted this concept, and in its early history, Brandeis even organized its course of study around these categories
and eliminated the highly specialized deparhnents. But as the
centrifugal forces of research and scholarship took their toll in
a rapidly expanding university, the overall divisions grew into
departments, and the core curriculum gradually disappeared.
It was replaced by a watered down successor: "distribution requirements" which allowed students merely to fill out their
programs with several courses of their own selection in each
of the aforementioned general categories (i.e., physical science, humanities, etc.}
The gradual erosion of any coherent curriculum of study
under this scheme led to a Faculty-Student Task Force
created by the Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard recently to review the last twenty-five years at Harvard
where the poficies of the core curriculum proposed by the
Redbook were in practice. With regard to the growing freedom of choice where students can select almost any course in
the university to fulfill the core curriculum requirements, the
draft report of this Task Force observes:
No doubt many students could profit substantially
from an unfettered opportunity to find their way
through two thousand or more courses now offered
in the Harvard catalogue. Our judgment, however,
is that more students are bewildered than stimulated
by this cornucopia. Though they cherish their freedom, they also seek guidance, and at present that
guidance is not forthcoming from the one group that
ought to be an important source-the Faculty.
A student member of the Task Force goes even further:
There was never a time when American higher education
needed a conscience more than it does today. I have been
teaching for the past seventeen years in an institution which is
*This was written before Mr. Bart's translation to Santa Fe. Ed.
Harvard has gone soft. . . . Increasing numbers of
alternatives exist to meet requirements, and minimal
1
Change 6 (May 1974) No.4, p. 63.
21
�The College
competence is required to fulfill them . . . . The
potpourri of courses leads (students) to suspect that
there are no educational guidelines structuring
course content, that there are no goals to provide
some kind of organizing focus to the diversity. Faced
with the formidable task of shouldering the burden
of intellectual development single-handedly, many
retreat from the challenge. In designing a course of
study the concern shifts from achieving such growth
to finding an easy "A".
The Harvard Task Force goes on to quote John Stuart Mill
on the subject of liberal education on the occasion of his
inauguration as the Rector of St. Andrews in 1867:
Universities are not intended to teach knowledge required to fit men for some special mode of making
their livelihood. Their object is not to make skillful
lawyers, or physicians or engineers, but capable and
cultivated human beings. It is very right that there
should be Schools of Law and Medicine . . . . But
these things are not part of what every generation
owes to the next, as that on which its civilization and
worth will primarily depend. . . . Men are men
before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants,
or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and
sensible men, they will make themselves capable and
sensible lawyers or physicians . . . . Men may be
competent lawyers without general education, but it
depends upon general education to make them
philosophic lawyers-who demand, and are capable
of appreciating, principles, instead of merely cramming their memory with details.
Sound familiar?
I place so much emphasis on this Harvard Report, not yet
accepted by its Faculty, because Harvard has always been a
leader in educational developments in this country, and because this report records the failure of liberal education at
Harvard over the past twenty-five years, a failure even to implement properly the very modest requirements outlined in
the Redbook drawn up by a similar Faculty Committee a
quarter of a century ago.
In concluding its appraisal of the currently almost nonexistent core curriculum at Harvard, the Task Force argues
that the purpose of requirements in the curriculum "is to insure that all students are exposed to those significant intellectual skills and elements of culture that, given free choice,
they might well neglect to their own regret and loss." Specific
proposals follow which include the enumeration of eight (8)
areas of study in which every Harvard student will be required
to meet standards reflected in comprehensive examinations.
These areas include: (a) Expository Writing; (b) Mathematical
Reasoning and its Application; (c) Physical Sciences; (d)
Biological Sciences; (e) Western Culture (1) Western Literature and Art, (2) Western Thought; (f) Nonwestern Civiliza22
lions and Culture; (g) Political and Moral Philosophy; and (h)
Modern Social Analysis. Both course work and examinations
in these eight fields will be required and provision will be
made for close Faculty supervision of the designation of
courses to meet these requirements.
What all this means is that American higher education is
slowly awakening to that fact that it is facing another major
crisis, particularly obvious among private institutions. With
the astronomically rising cost of higher education, greater
pressure is being brought upon the leading institutions in this
area to justify their high tuition costs, and consequently to
defend their undergraduate educational programs. Upon careful scrutiny they arc or increasingly will be discovering that
their performance has not kept pace with their rhetoric, and
the restive consumers of tl1eir product are becoming increasingly aware of the shortcomings of what they are being offered
and dissatisfied with the results. In such an explosive, even
revolutionary environment, the role of St. John's, the "liberal
conscience" of American higher education, becomes even
more significant.
I have never thought that the St. John's program contained
the final answer to all the problems of American higher education. And yet, as Riesman and Grant argue, St. John's with
its "radical faith" and unswerving commitment to its program
tends to goad the rest of American Higher Education into
deeper reflection of its own shortcomings. It serves as a point
of reference of comparison, an irritating gadfly like Socrates,
constantly to remind all of the others what is possible when
the courage and the commitment to a coherent value system
are present.
In my own university, I have flooded the Educational Policy Committee with stinging inquiries and appeals for careful
self-examination, and have recently run for election to that
Committee and the Faculty Senate (successfully) in order to
pursue my criticisms with more constructive action. I have
also been leading a sem.inar on higher education in America,
which has drawn a good number of the more critical student
leaders together and provided them with some substance to
accompany their already inflated critical rhetoric. Reform. is
in the air, but the critical question is still: what kind or'fcform? What will be the concepts and values that mark the
coming reconstructiOn of the undergraduate curriculum in
American higher education? Will they follow the pattern of
the post-war changes, where something was promised to every
gfoup making substantial demands, and the end result was a
patchwork quilt of timid "core curriculum" proposals and
"distribution requirements"? These reforms never did get to
the root of the problem, and with the passage of years, whatever constructive substantive changes they did make were easily eroded. The centrifugal forces of the modern university,
particularly in the physical sciences, dominate the educational structure of the university and weaken its commitment
to undergraduate liberal education. As the Dean of Harvard's
Faculty of Arts and Sciences recently put it:
For a long time there has been a contradiction in the
mission of this faculty. W c are all scholars intent on
�January, 1978
moving forward in our particular subject. At the
same time, we are also charged with educating undergraduates . . . . In the former capacity, we act as
specialists seeking to communicate with other likeminded individuals. In the latter capacity, we should
be generalists, communicating on a more fundamental level with young people. No university college
can avoid this contradiction. . . . Nevertheless,
this contradiction has to be minimized if the social
contract within the university is to be preserved.
But the question is how and under what terms? I am trying
to suggest that in this very sensitive and potentially explosive
period of reform of undergraduate education in this country,
the St. John's program and its influence appear to me to be
even more important than ever. Now let me address myself to
that aspect of the question.
III
The burden of my argument from the outset has been that
too many of us, for one reason or another, have become estranged from St. John's and its ongoing effort to survive and
flourish in an otherwise hostile educational environment.
Too many of us have left it to those who stayed behindDick Weigle, Jasha Klein, Simon Kaplan, Bob Bart, Winfree
Smith, and others-to carry on the struggle, not only of keeping the college alive and the quality of its program flourishing, even expanding, but also of carrying on the struggle that
Winkie, Scott and Bob Hutchins initiated-of affecting the
quality of undergraduate education in this country.
This is not a simple nor an inconsequential issue. The future of all our institutions and the quality of our civilization
depend upon the future of our educational system. Granted
that most of us came to St. John's because we believed it
offered us the best college education we could obtain in this
country, we were also concerned at that time with its impact
upon education in the country at large. Some of us were even
active critics within the program and at various times raised
our voices in order to bring about consideration of changes
aimed at improving the program.
For too many of us, that once-active concern and those
critical voices have been silent too long. Individually, we may
have had some influence within our own areas of activity, but
for many of us our links with St. John's have been severedor almost so. Many Of us were overjoyed at the chance to
meet one another recently at Winkie's eightieth birthday, but
for some of us the occasion ended too quickly and we hardly
had time to exchange vital statistical information (married,
single, how many children, etc.) when the afternoon was over
and we drifted away for perhaps another ten or twenty years.
It more closely resembled a reunion of Spanish-American
War veterans than a meeting of committed cducatio.nal revolutionaries. And maybe that's where it's at.
I don't want to admit this is true, however. From visiting
with the Board and the active alumni, I have discovered how
important the interest of the New Program graduates is to the
future of St. John's. Every nickel raised from foundations and
corporations depends on the level of participation and interest
demonstrated by St. John's own graduates. If we don't give a
damn or a cent, how can we expect others to show any interest? After all, we are the ones who ought to know the significance of such an education better than anyone else, and if we
are indifferent to the future of the College and its influence,
what can we expect from the rest of the country?
But over and beyond this critical problem, I think the College needs the benefit of our vastly differing experiences and
points of view. Barr and Buchanan never looked at the Program as a static idee fixe and I don't think it ought to be. No
idea or institution can continue to flourish without the revitalizing force of constructive internal criticism. I want to
find out more about what has taken place since I left Annapolis twenty-nine years ago, and I damn well intend to put
some effort into the exercise. I want to discover what has
happened to many of you, not simply the vital statistics concerning marriages and jobs, but what's going on inside your
heads and hearts. I think one of the criteria of the quality of
the St. John's education is our ability to communicate with
each other after ten or twenty years. A dead silence on the
part of a majority of St. John's graduates in the faec of a
potential revolution in American higher education is something of an admission of failure and an indication that we
have nothing to contribute. I don't think this is true.
As I have carefully examined the rather vacuous discussion
of the content of liberal education in the professional journals
and among leading American educators, from Harvard to
Way Below Normal, I think we do have something terribly
important to contribute. Many of the colleges and universities
are filled with brilliant minds, interesting and dynamic faculty members, and bright and eager students. That is not the
problem. What is lacking is a clear and coherent idea concerning the purpose of undergraduate education, a program
for implementing it and the educational leader-ship to put it
into practice. We arc approaching a period when the intensity
of the debate will rise astronomically, and the quantity of
words will multiply geometrically. But what the outcome will
be is still very problematical, and there arc not many en-<
couraging signs that the right steps will be taken.
I think St. John's ,College and St. John's graduates ought to
be heavily involved in this ongoing discussion and I would
like to propose that we begin right now among ourselves. I
think to begin with, we ought to reconsider Participating in
the endowment drive-the Fund for 1980's. Without this
economic base, St. John's and the St. John's idea are not
going to be able to survive the competitive and inflationary
era of high educational costs. Furthermore, many of us enjoyed the luxury of financial aid while we were at St. John's,
either from the Government through the V cteran' s Administration or through grants raised by the Administration. That
made it possible for many of us to attend who would never
have been able to accumulate the funds to do so on our own.
If this "money-blind" admission policy is to continue at both
schools, this large-scale underwriting of the expanding cost of
education is a sine qua non. And here the small contributions
23
�The College
arc as important as the larger ones, because as I indicated
above, the large contributors, such as foundations and corporations, base their contributions on the interest expressed by
the immediate consumers-the graduates of the college. If
the school is not able to attract the participation of its own, its
chances of obtaining the support of outsiders will be greatly
diminished.
A second concrete proposal I want to make is to establish
something like a committee of correspondence-an enlarged
symposium. I think there are a lot of us who might be interested in communicating our thoughts to each other if th·ere
was such an intimate medium of communication. I am not
suggesting another alumni journal, God forbid, but rather a
symposium of letters, articles, essays, and what have youanything worth communicating to others with whom you
have been out of touch for many years. I am certain that my
ideas will draw many negative responses, along with perhaps
some positive ones, but this might be a way of getting things
into motion.
Be patient, I'm almost finished. I'm comfortably ensconced
at a desk I made out of the scraps of lumber left over from the
house I just finished building with my own hands on
Martha's Vineyard. Of course, I had some help, but its been
one of the great experiences of my life. When my wife,
Marianne (if she gets a few minutes off from her internship in
Pediatrics a\ Children's Hospital in Boston) and my three
kids-Cricket, Mike, and Suzy-climb to the top of the
craw's nest we have built on the roof, we can see at least ten
miles of Nantucket Sound, all the Elizabeth Islands and the
rolling Vineyard landscape that tumbles into the sea. And
the sunsets-wow! In this mood and under these conditions I
bid you farewell. I want very much to hear from many of you
and I know many of you feel the same way about others you
have not heard from or about in decades. What ever happened to our Rhodes Scholar, Steve Terry? I got a scribbled
note on the back of a match box with his address on it ten
years ago, brought to me by a student who had been interviewed by the Rhodes Committee in the Midwest. What
about R. 0. Davis, our spellbinder? What does Don Kaplan
have to say about the New Yark City School system and Mike
Keane on the same subject? Where is John Larkin Lincoln
IV, Verne Schwab, Cas Krol, Rogers Albritton and dozens of
others? Can't all we prodigal sons (and more recently daughters) come home agaih and keep the conv(;':rsation going?
William M. Goldsmith
162 Heath's Bridge Road
Concord, Massachusetts 01742
PARENTS' WEEKEND
St. John's will sponsor a weekend on the Annapolis campus for parents again
this year. A student committee, as in each of the past two years, will plan and
organize all events and will be in charge of managing the weekend's activities.
Parents may plan to visit classes on Thursday and Friday, seminars on Thursday evening, and attend the all-College lecture on Friday evening. There will
also be seminars for parents, and students who wish to participate, on Saturday
morning.
A more detailed announcement will be sent to all parents later in the winter.
Meanwhile, experience dictates that hotel reservations be made at the earliest
possible date in order to avoid possible disappointment.
THE DATES: MAY 4-7, 1978
24
�January, 1978
1
CAMPUS-ALUMNI NEWS
Bunny Gessner (left) and Bill Simmons
Boh Goldwin and Bill Simmons
Maryland's acting Governor Blair Lee III signed the St. John's College bond bill last summer. The bill
provides matching funds for various renovation and new construction projects on the Annapolis campus
between now and 1981. In the picture above, from the left: seated, President of the Maryland Senate
Steney Hoyer, Governor Lee, Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates John Hanson Briscoe; standing, St. John's seniors Daniel Jerrems, Christian Jenifer Smith, Rollie Feuchtcnberger, President Weigle,
{almost hidden is Miss Beth Garraway, executive director of the Maryland Independent College and University Association), senior Nancy Lee Coiner, St. John's vice president William B. Dunham, and Charles
Cooley, until recently director of the Fund for the 1980's.
Alumni-in-Residence
The availability of one dormitory on the Santa Fe campw makes it possible
for the College to try an experimental Alumni-in-Residence Program.
We believe that alumni and their spouses might enjoy spending a day, a
week, or a fortnight in residence, visiting seminars and tutorials, and meeting
and talking with tutors and students. Actual participation in any class will require the permission of the tutor, but auditing will be welcome in any class.
"Students themselves seem to welcome the opportunity for discussion with their
seniors, as the presence of occasional retired persons in the student body attests.
Other attractions in Santa Fe include skiing on the nearby slopes, shopping,
sightseeing, or ju~t relaxing.
The charge for a single person for room and all meals is $8.00 a day, for a
couple $15.00 a day. The weekly rate is $50.00 for a single person and $90.00
for a couple. The College is not equipped to provide care for small children,
but teen-agers will be welcome at the rates which I have quoted.
Space is limited so reservations should be made as soon as possible by writing
to my secretary, Mrs. Geneva Mantelli, St. John's College, Santa Fe, New
Mexico, 87501. The telephone number is 505-982-3691.
Richard D. Weigle
President
A ward of Merit
Awards of Merit were presented this
year at the Homecoming dinner to three
alumni: Bernard F. Gessner '27, Dr.
David Dobreer '44, and Robert A.
Goldwin '50.
With appropriate ceremony, William
W. Simmons '48, president of the
Alumni Association, presented scrolls to
Messrs. Gessner and Goldwin. Dr. Dobreer was prevented from attending the
dinner by professional commitments. His
award was delivered later in October by
Alumni Director Tom Farran, when Parran was on the West Coast to meet with
alumni in the Los Angeles and San
Francisco areas.
Bernard "Bunny" Gessner served as
executive vice president of the Alumni
Association from 1970 to 1972, then as
its president for three years. His service
to St. John's includes also three years as
junior varsity coach in football, basketball, and lacrosse. (In the first and last of
these Gessner had been a stand-out as a
student.) He has been very active in the
affairs of the Annapolis Association chapter since his retirement from the CocaCola Co. in 1970.
25
�The College
Dave Dobreer, a physician in Los
Angeles, since 1950 has been the St.
John's "key man" in the Southern
California area. He has been particularly
helpful in the alumni admissions assistance program. He has served with distinction since 1974 as an alumni representative on the Board of Visitors and
Governors, and just this past spring was
re-elected to a second three-year term.
Bob Goldwin has had a distinguished
career in education at St. John's, the
University of Chicago, and Kenyon College. He was the first director, and one of
the planners, of the Graduate Institute in
Liberal Education. He served as Dean
on the Annapolis campus from 1969 to
1973, leaving to be special advisor to the
Ambassador, U.S. Mission to NATO.
Subsequently he became special consultant to President Gerald Ford. Mr.
Goldwin is now a resident scholar and
Director of Seminar Programs at fhe
American Enterprise Institute for Public
Policy Research in Washington, D.C.
Golden Anniversary Gift
At the Annual Meeting of the Alumni
Association on October I, the fifty-year
reunion class, 1927, presented the College with a unique gift, an idea. The
idea was the creation of an Alumni Great
Hall, a structure to commemorate the
accomplishments of alumni of the past,
present, and future. It would house records and memorabilia, with particular
emphasis on our first "famous" alumnus,
Francis Scott Key 1796.
Presentation of the gift was by Edward
J. Lush of the donating class, who was
responsible for the concept. Mr. Lush
stressed that St. John's should have some
suitable location on campus where the
many accomplishments of St. John's
alumni could be recognized and displayed for all to see. He thought it unfortunate that there was no proper exhibit
centered around Key; such a place would
be a natural drawing card for tourists,
and St. John's would in the process become better known.
During the subsequent discussion, it
became clear that, even if a suitable
building were given to the College, and a
place on campus found to erect it, the
added maintenance and operating costs
26
would be beyond the College's capability. President Weigle suggested that
perhaps a location could be found in one
of the several buildings slated for renovation or expansion.
The Association consequently approved in principle plans to honor
alumni, and urged that all possible steps
be taken to establish a fitting memorial
for that purpose. Association president
Simmons subsequently asked Association
past president Bernard Gessner to head a
committee to study ways of implementing the Association's action.
Back Issues Available
Listed below are issues of The College
which are in stock and available to our
readers. There will be a charge of$. 50 a
copy for postage and handling, with a
minimum charge of $1.00. Since
supplies of certain issues are limited
(shown by an asterisk), orders will be
filled on a first-come, first served basis:
1971: April', October', December';
1972: January ('73); 1973: April, January
('74); 1974: April, July, October, January
('75); 1975: April, July, October, January
('76); 1976: April, July, October, January
('77); 1977: April, July, October, January
('78).
Directors Reelected
Among other actions at the Annual
Meeting on October I, the Alumni Association elected four directors: Janet
Nelson '72, Thomas MacNcmar '39,
Edward Heise and Gilbert Crandall,
both '36. Their terms expire in 1979.
This was the off-year election, involving only four of the elected directors. At
Homecoming 1978 all four officers and
four directors must be chosen. This provision of the By-Laws assures continuity
in the direction of the Association.
Homecoming Reunions
Several classes made a special effort to
hold reunions at Homecoming, and the
results were most gratifying.
From the sixty-year class came John
W. Noble and Ernst 0. von
Schwerdtner. (They and their wives were
joined at the dinner by Helen Davidson,
Alumni Representatives
There were no nominations by petition of alumni representatives to the
Board of Visitors and Governors in response to the announcement in the
October issue.
The directors of the Alumni Association have nominated incumbents
James H. Frame '50 and William W.
Simmons '48, whose terms expire this
spring.
In the absence of other nominations, and in accordance with the
provisions of Article VIII, Section lll,
of the By-Laws of the Association,
Messrs. Frame and Simmons are considered elected for three-year terms
terminating in 1981.
Thomas Parran, Jr.
Director of Alumni Activities
Addresses, please!
If you're moving, the Office of College Relations would like to have your
address change· six weeks prior to your
move. It will save the college 25• for
each address change. The office receives between 300 and 400 changes
every month, so your help can save a
lot of moriey.
whose late husband, George, was a
member of the class of 1916.)
The Golden Anniversary class-fifty
years out and one-third as old as the Association itself-was led by Bernard
Gessner as chairman. From the class of
1927 he brought Frank DeSantis, Elmer
Jackson, Edward Lush, Lee Nichols,
Frederick Smith, and Richard Williams,
the last all the way from California.
Merrill Mitchell and Alan Pike combined efforts with the class of 1937; with
them were John Brown, Ernest Cory,
Okey Michael, and Robert Snibbe, for a
reunion dinner on Friday. (Pike was the
"longest-distance-traveled" winner: all
the way from Honolulu.)
The thirty-year class, 1947, was under
the command of Col. George Van San!,
and a fine group it was: Stephen Benedict, William Elliott, Gerald Hoxby,
William Ross, W. Kyle Smith, Jr., and
John Van Doren. (John's son Daniel is a
freshman in Annapolis this year.)
�January, 1978
This year's Silver Anniversary gang,
1952, was chaired by Thomas Carnes of
San Francisco. For the reunion Tom
brought in Paul Cree, John Fuller,
joseph Manusov, David Napper, and
Adam Pinsker.
The twenty-year class, not really having a formal reunion, was represented by
joan Cole, John Kinloch, and Marcia
De!Piain Reff.
From the class of 1967 were Gay
Singer Baratta, Nancy Goldwin Harvey,
Arthur Kungle, and Mark Lindley.
And off to a fine start by coming to
their first Homecoming reunion were
Ted Burke, Dan Jerrems, Pamela Lobdell, Rick Plaut, and Jenifer Smith.
Looking forward to next year, how
about you alumni from the classes of
1918, 1928, 1938, 1948, 1953, 1958,
and 1968? We are especially interested in
the classes of 1928 and 1953, for the
golden and silver anniversaries, but certainly hope that Clyde Bourke, Charlie
Burton, Russell Cook, Tom MacMannis, and others will represent that sixtyyear class. If we have half-a-dozen classes
making a special reunion effort, a successful Homecoming just sort of fol1ows
naturally. Start making your plans
NOW.
CLASS NOTES
1911
At age 90, Clarence L. Dickinson has been made
a Life Member of the Automobile Club of Maryland. He has served for thirty-seven years on the
Cluh's Advisory Board in Salisbury, Md.
Pheme Perkins and Edward Stevens were married
3n June 7, 1977.
1968
Another medical doctor among our alumni: John
fi'armer writes that he is Post Surgeon at Ft.
Ritchie, Mel. He was married in April, 1976, and
he and his wife, Rosaline, just had their first son,
Martin. Rosaline is a nurse-midwife.
Nancy (Goldwin) and Steven Harvey '70 and
their children, Joshua (4) and Eliana (I), have just
moved to Silver Spring, Mel. Steve received his
Ph. D. degree in Ncar Eastern Languages and Literature from Harvard University, is working on a
translation of Averroes under NEH sponsorship,
and is teaching at the University of Maryland. He
and Nancy have started a successful business designing, manufacturing, and marketing innovative
products for infants and children.
1969
S. Paul Schilling '23
School at Yale University. (At about the same
time, Harris's daughter Eloise '79 was elected president of the Student Polity on the Annapolis campus.)
1950
From Daisy Goldwin, wife of Robert A., mother
of three graduates, mother-in-law of another (with
a second son-in-law three-quarters of the way
through the Graduate Institute), she herself having
completed three G. I. summers, comes a fine report
on the Goldwin family, circa 1977-78. Husband
Bob is a resident scholar and Director of Seminar
Programs at the American Enterprise Institute for
Public Policy Research in Washington. Bob and
Daisy plan to spend a month visiting seven countries in the mid-East, he as a member of the Presidentially appointed Board of Foreign Scholarships.
For news of the rest of the clan, see notes under
1968, 1971, and 1973-Santa Fe.
In October John M. Ross wrote that he had-just
returned from two-and-one-half months in London, where he attended a course given by the
British Broadcasting Corporation in "Management
of Resources in Broadcasting." His studies and the
chance to live in London "were a marvelous experience," John writes. His home hase is Seattle,
where he works for KRAB, "trying to hustle money
for listener-supported radio." John reports that Paul
Ollswang had an exhibit of satirical drawings in the
Eugene (Ore.) Public Library in September.
1971
Jane (Goldwin) Bandler and her husband Don
live in Washington, D.C. Jane is director of Little
People, a nursery school in Georgetown, and ·is
furthering her training at the Washington Montessori Institute. Don is a Foreign Service Officer on
the West African desk in Cultural Affairs, and attends George Washington Law School. He has
completed three summers at the Graduate Institute
in Santa Fe. Jane and Don have a daughter, Lara,
who is one and one-half years old.
1972
S. Paul Schilling, author of God Incognito
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1974), has just published another work, God and Human Anguish
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1977). Dr. Schilling is
professor of systematic theology emeritus, Boston
University, and makes his home in Centerville,
Mass. Both of his hooks are now part of the Alumni
Authors Collection in the library in Annapolis.
lations at Boston University. AI was recently married, and wonders in. his last letter why he waited so
long. (As he readily admits, he graduated twenty
years after the rest of his class; in this, as in marriage, better late than never, AI. And our most sincere congratulations on the latter-also a bit late!)
1948
Ray Cave, former reporter for the Baltimore
Evening Sun and later a staff member of Sports Illustrated, in September was named managing
editor of Time magazine. Ray moved from SI to
Time in March, 1976, as assistant managing editor.
cessfully passed her Maryland Bar examinations,
and was scheduled to be sworn in as a lawyer in
December.
A letter in September from Theophus Smith, reporting the good news that he and "Rahbit" (Marguerite Judson '74) arc expecting a baby in February. The Smiths graduated together from the Virginia Theological Seminary, receiving Master of
Theological Studies degrees. They currently live
with Russell and Margaret Frame Lipton '73 & '74,
in Santa Cruz, Cal. The Liptons have launched a
religious retreat there, and were expecting a baby in
November. Marguerite is interning with a therapy
program for persons convicted of driving while intoxicated. Thee is working as a writer and research
assistant for Eldridge Cleaver in Palo Alto. Thee's
evaluation of Cleaver, "for those interested in personal opinion": ".
he is not a charlatan, nor
even a 'super Christian,' but a mature, travel-wise,
ex-radical from the 60's-'born again' after seven
years of political and spiritual exile."
1966
David Z. Landow is spending this year as
1973-Santa Fe
Elizabeth "Liz" Goldwin is also living in Wash-
On Thursday, October 20, the Reverend G.
scholar-in-residence at the White Burkett Miller
Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, doing a study of the "legislative veto."
ington. She completed training at the Montessori
Institute there in 1976, and now teaches two Montessori classes in the Arlington County (Va.) Public
1923
Harris Collingwood was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity hy the Berkeley Divinity
1952
Alvin Aronson works in the Office of Public Re-
1955
Barbara Brunner Oosterhout during the fall suc-
27
�The College
Reproduced to the left are the obverse and reverse
of a photo postcard from fudith Sharlin S75 and
Elliott Marseille S74; the reason for their joy is obvious.
the world. She has been named editor for a new
company-published architectural review of international projects.
1977
Schools. In November she exhibited her soft
sculpture and batik work (her avocation) in a Washington gallery.
1974
October brought a welcome note from Valerie
Kozel, who lives in Takoma Park, Md., and works
for the World Bank in Washington, D.C. She is,
she reports, "generally absorbing as much as I can
of the world around me." She plans to return to
school next year, for graduate work in systems
analysis/transport planning.
1974-Santa Fe
Virginia Boyle writes that she spent her first
post-St. John's year laboring on construction projects to finance a six-month stay in Europe. Working, studying, and skiing in and around Munich
were hard to beat, she says, and the stay lasted two
years. She is now back in Colorado, attending real
estate school, and is planning to enter law school in
the fall of 1978.
1975
Elizabeth (Betsy) Bassan is enrolled this year at
Columbia University's School of International Affairs.
One of our Alumni Communicards arrived the
other day from Dale Mortimer, bringing us up to
date on his wanderings the past two and one-half
years. After hitching around the West Coast in the
fall of 1975, looking for the ideal place to live, he
found the spot in Oregon, Ashland,· to be exact. He
has been a naturalist's assistant in several nature
preserves, fought forest fires as a forestry technician, driven an ambulance, and played crew medic
as an emergency medical technician. He is currently helping start a Great Books discussion group;
learning chemistry, human anatomy, and physiology; and is avidly investigating altered states of consciousness such as self-hypnosis, dream control,
and meditation. Dale's long-range plans involve
medical school after he learns "lots of chemistry."
1975-Santa Fe
Leslie Marie fohnson, for two years "lost" from
our alumni records (for which we apologize), has
been found! She and Teff Shea '75 are classmates at
McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, Cal.,
and through Jeff Leslie found her way, via the
mails, to the Alumni Office. She says she is having
a good time in first year law school.
28
On November lO Dan M. Roddy represented St.
John's at the inauguration of Dr. William Anthony
Shields as president of the College of Great Falls
(Mont.). Dan will continue working on his family's
farm until January, when he hoped to start
graduate work in the Plant and Soil Science Department, Montana State University. He has been
employed by the USDA-Agricultural Research
Service for the past seven months.
1976
William W. Campbell is in his final year at
Tulane University Law School. Last summer he
worked at the Southern Poverty Law Center in
Alabama-"exciting"-under the sponsorship of
the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council.
He lives in the New Orleans Free School, and frequently sees Larry and Hazel Schlueter '67 & '69
and their son Charlie. Hazel teaches at the School,
and they get together to play old-time musicheavy on "fiddles and mandolins." Geoff Cockey
'74 has roomed with Campbell on and off during
the past two years.
fames C. "Kimo" Mackey is a curator (we are not
certain of t}lat title) at the Smithsonian Museum of
History and Technology, caring for the boat collection.
1976-Santa Fe
Pablo Collins, as reported in the October issue,
is studying at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of
Public Affairs at tl1e University of Texas, Austin.
Pablo says the only undergraduate requirements not
met by the St. John's program are microeconomics, macro-economics, and introductory
statistics. These, he advises, can be met by inclc_:
pendent study.
Until next June David Shapiro will be a resident
of Kirchheim-Teck, West Germany. There since
last June, David builds· and repairs fiberglass
sailplanes, and flies them as weather permits. His
employer is Schempp-Hirth and Co.
Katya Shirokow, back in the United States after a
sojourn in West Germany (April issue), writes that
her direction has finally crystalized toward multinational business; she will be applying to schools of
management in this country as well as to the In-
stitut pour l'Etude de Methodes de Direction
d'Entreprise in Lausanne. Meanwhile, she lives
and works in Santa Barbara, Cal., for a company
which markets architectural products throughout
September brought us, among other visitors,
Daniel ferrems, both by letter and in person
(Homecoming). Dan spent the summer doing construction work near Juneau, Alaska, before entering
the two-year Health Associate Program at Johns
Hopkins University. The program yields a B.S. degree and certification as a Physician's Assistant.
The Jerrems Five Year Plan, as of September 16,
involves two years (summer included) at Hopkins;
one year working and gaining experience; and hvo
years in the Peace Corps. After that he's keeping his
options open: a Ph.D. degree in Public Health,
medical school, or continuing as a Health Associate.
1977-Santa Fe
Sam Atwood, an active member of the mountain
rescue unit while at St. John's, is at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. He is assistant operations manager for logistics for the Ross Ice Shelf Project of
the University of Nebraska. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project involves
drilling through tl1e lee Shelf to the sea surface and
down to the ocean floor, acquiring data and samples for scientific purposes. Sam was crossing the
International Dateline on his twenty-first birthday;
the result was a birthday only a couple of hours
long. Sam's parents reside in Annapolis Roads, just
outside the Maryland capital.
In Memoriam
1913-William A. Ruhl, Sr., St. Michaels,
Md., November 28, 1977.
1914-The Hon. Godfrey Child, Pocomoke
,
City, Md., November 25, 1977.
1918-Dr. Earle E. Broadrup, Bel Air, Md.,
October 5, 1977.
1923-James Sudler Cockey, Stevensville,
Md., September 21, 1977.
1932-George R. Vickers, IV, Ocean City,
Md., October 6, 1977.
1934-Bernard Casassa, Bowie, Md.,
November 20, 1977.
1936-John S. B. Hodges, Baltimore, Md.,
November 16, 1977.
1940-C. Osborne Duvall, Annapolis, Md.,
October 20, 1977.
1946-Thomas J. Cosgrove, Washington,
D.C., November 5, 1977.
The class of John D. Warfield, whose death
was reported in October, should have read
"1932".
Ralph Borsodi, Exeter, N.H. October 27,
1977. (MA 1942)
�January, 1978
(Continued from inside front cover)
The first issue of The College as a
journal without a campus and alumni
section will appear in the early summer.
We have in the past had profiles of
alumni (e.g., David Moss in The College
of April 1976) and articles by alumni, as
in the present issue. Otherwise the contents of the front part were made up of
the texts of lectures (sometimes in expanded form), of articles written for or
submitted to the magazine, poems and
translations of poems, music, drawings,
and photographs.
The last may help to explain why a
semi-annual journal {with the President's
Report making up a third issue) may
open up new possibilities. Years ago
there was a marvellous lecture by Curtis
Wilson on "Kepler and the Mode of Vision". It was richly and tellingly illustrated in the oral delivery. Printing it
would have meant tracking down
copyright holders for months and probably years (in some cases), to get permission to reproduce. A quarterly journal
could not do it. There was never enough
time. A semi-annual might. Also it
could easily print such a lecture with il-
lustrations in one-larger-issue. Until
now this kind of thing was ruled out, as
were long serious articles or student papers, by considerations of space. The
new journal will have more flexibility.
It was expected that I should remain
its editor and I was looking forward to the
new venture and continued collaboration
with Tom Parran. But I am not going to
be here next year and there will be a new
editor. He (or she) will have the support
of an editorial board (which includes the
previous editor ex officio) and he (or she)
will have Tom Parran's invaluable experience and generous help to lean on. TheCollege in ·its new form should attract
and be able to carry a good deal of interesting material it did not get and could
not give before. May it prosper and continue to show the country and the world
what goes on at St. John's.
B.R.v.O.
�'
"
:;
••
',.
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
'
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The College </em>(1969-1981)
Description
An account of the resource
St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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thecollegemagazine
Text
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28 pages
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paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
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Office of College Relations
Title
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The College, January 1978
Date
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1978-01
Contributor
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von Oppen, Beate Ruhm
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Dunham, William B.
Oosterhout, Barbara Brunner
Wyatt, E. Malcolm
Zuckerman, Elliott
Description
An account of the resource
Volume XXIX, Number 4 of The College. Published in January 1978.
Identifier
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ISSN 0010-0862
The_College_Vol_29_No_4_1978
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Publisher
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St. John's College
Language
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English
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text
Rights
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
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pdf
The College
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